We keep hearing the term karma so much in our daily lives, but do we know what karma truly is? Karma means action. It is also a concept, more specifically known as the law of karma—a law of action and reaction. The universe works with many cosmic laws. This is one of the universal laws that works on the principle of ‘as you sow, so shall you reap’. It is the law of karma that decides we cannot get mangoes if we sow apple seeds. According to the law, every action of ours is recorded and rewarded either through the good or the evil that our action has caused. Nobody can escape the law of karma and nothing can manipulate it.
Many things keep happening around us. What is the cause of all that happens? It seems that
a law of cause and effect is unfolding, which means that for every effect, there must be a cause. The cause is our karma, actions or deeds of the past that were captured by the law of karma. The world today believes that whatever goes around, comes around. If someone treats other people badly, he or she will eventually be treated badly. People intuitively have an idea of how this cosmic law works.
The law of karma is complex. Sometimes, one may instantly get rewarded for their actions or have to wait several days, weeks, months, or even years for the repercussions of their deeds on them. The truth is that we cannot escape this law even after our death. Every human being has to act. They need to get out of their bed every morning and do something. Thus, you can’t escape from action. But you can be free in action. There is a way to transcend karma.
To understand karma, it is important to know the three karmic accounts—agami karma or the current karmic account, prarabdha karma or the opening karmic balance account, and sanchita karma or the cumulative karmic corpus. Agami karma captures whatever actions we do in our present life—good or bad. Hence, this account can be referred to as our current karmic account. We, however, do not start our life without an opening karmic balance. The opening balance that we bring to our life at birth is the second account or prarabdha karma. At the end of our life, the prarabdha karma that we start with and the agami karma of our present actions merge and are tabulated as our closing karmic balance. Thus, our net karma or closing balance is carried forward and added to our cumulative karmic corpus, called sanchita karma.
What is the role of karma in spirituality? Spirituality helps us connect with our deepest selves, and understand and realise our true selves. It makes us realise that our life has a purpose and while it must be lived with optimism, work must be done following the ‘ABC Principle’—A: Accept life without protest as it is the result of our prarabdha karma or past actions. B: Doing our best in whatever we do. In that way, our agami karma or present actions are positive. Finally, C: Surrender in consciousness, in thoughtlessness where thoughts come one after another and don’t disturb our peace. Therefore, when work is done as karma yoga and we start working as a divine instrument, our life itself becomes divine. This is the true essence of spirituality.
To attain the ultimate goal of this human birth, we must transcend karma. People work, live and try to create good karma, but they don’t realise the simple truth that creating good karma also means that they have to return to this earth in a rebirth to reap the rewards of their karma. Spirituality liberates us from karma because we can’t be free from action, but can be free in action. When whatever we do is not done by us but the divine action through us, we experience oneness with the divine. We live in acceptance and surrender to the divine will. And thus, we become a karma yogi. When we live as a karma yogi, our life ceases to have a separate identity because we transcend our Mind and Ego, or ME. We become nothing and in that, we become everything. Just like when the wave becomes an ocean, there is no difference between the wave and ocean, when we become connected with the divine through karma yoga, there
is no difference between us and the divine.
With spirituality, we become one with the divine. There is no duality. We realise that God is not God, God is SIP—the Supreme Immortal Power. We live as a divine soul realising that we are nothing but a part of SIP. The SOUL is a Spark Of Unique Life and we move towards enlightenment. We realise that at the death of the body, the soul goes back to its source, SIP. Our ME, based on accumulated karma, returns to earth in a rebirth. When we attain enlightenment, we are not the body that dies, nor the ME that does karma and returns in a rebirth, but we are, in reality, the divine soul. We attain liberation from all suffering on earth and at death, from the cycle of rebirth. And finally, there is unification with the divine.
The author is a spiritual leader and founder of the AiR Institute of Realization and AiR Center of Enlightenment