Karma is the accumulated impression of past activity, either of thought, emotion or physical action. The quality of the karma that you gather is not necessarily in terms of action alone; it is also in terms of the volition with which action is performed. This moment, the very way you think, feel, understand and act is a deep conditioning of past activity. That is karma.
When there is a clear space between you and your body and mind—it is not that you are trying to watch this or that—simply a clear space has come, then whatever karma that is there in the mind, the body or energy, everything has become separate from you. If one establishes this distinction in their life, if it becomes a living reality, there is no karma for that person. Nothing touches him anymore.
If you try to do this mentally, you are only trying to avoid karma more. Then you will only be acquiring more karma, because it is resistance. It is creating an aversion which builds the karma. If you have an aversion to karma and are trying to push it away, in the effort to push it away, you are only building more karma. Once you come to a living experience that, ‘this body is not me, this mind is not me,’ then there is a different kind of wisdom and understanding in you. When you understand only with the intellect, it leads to deceptive states.
A philosophy will give you some semblance of balance in your life, but it does not liberate you from the deeper karma, because you are only trying to avoid it, and in that avoidance you find a little balance in day-to-day life. But slowly, if a person follows this philosophy, he will become joyless. He will become reasonably balanced and stable, at the same time he will slowly become lifeless.
If you bring lifelessness into you, that itself is a very negative karma because you are just suppressing life. Krishna says: ‘Hesitation is the worst sin.’ In hesitation you kill life. Suppression does not mean, ‘Okay, now I want to eat but I will not eat.’ It is just that you are not allowing yourself to experience life totally. Denying what is happening within you right now is self-denial. If you deprive yourself of any experience, whether it is pain, suffering or joy, if you avoid it, that is big karma. If you go through it, it is not so much of karma. Today, in the name of civilization, education or etiquette, educated people are not able to experience any of their emotions fully. They cannot cry fully, they cannot laugh loudly. For everything, there is etiquette.
With this, slowly they will become joyless. A deep sense of frustration will establish itself. You will see, simple people who laugh and cry as it comes are so much more free because the very process of life is dissolution of karma. Every living moment of your life, if you live it totally, you dissolve enormous amounts of karma. Living totally does not mean just having fun. Anything and everything that comes, you experience it fully and intensely. That dissolves enormous amounts of karma.