Understanding Karma: The universal law of action and its path to spiritual liberation
The word ‘karma’ literally means action. It is ‘doing’, not thinking. However, when we talk about karma, we normally allude to the Law of Karma, the Law of Action and Reaction. According to this law, every action of ours is recorded and rewarded either through the good, or evil that our action has caused. Good for good. Bad for bad. What we give, we get. Likewise, when we plant apple seeds, we get apples, not mangoes. As we sow, so shall we reap. The Law of Karma is universal and holds good for everybody. Nobody can escape this and nothing can manipulate it. It is meant to help us evolve on our ethical journey. It is reformative, not punitive.
Even as a common man, if we understand the Law of Karma and how it works, we will live better lives. To begin with, good karma ensures a good destiny because what goes around, comes around. If we understand that what unfolds in life is because of our own karma, a reaction to our actions, it can help us live with accountability, acceptance and surrender. We will also rejoice when suffering comes our way because we will realise that our negative karma is being negated. We will try to do more positive karma to balance our karma. While it seems that the body is doing karma, it is the mind along with the ego that is directing the body to act. Therefore, karma belongs to the mind and ego, not the body.
Both birth and death are controlled by karma. In a lifetime, our life unfolds as per the twin karma—the karma of past lives that we bring with us that we cannot change and the karma of our present life, what we do now.
There are three accounts of karma:
1. Opening Balance: This is what we bring at birth from our corpus or cumulative karma. It decides our current life, including where we are born and how we are born.
2. Current Account: All our deeds in the current life, good and bad, get recorded. When our life ends, this gets added to the Opening Balance and the net balance is carried forward and added to our Cumulative Karmic Corpus.
3. Cumulative Karmic Corpus: At the end of life, our net karma, including the Opening Balance and Current Account, positive or negative, gets added to our cumulative account of many lifetimes. Every life we live has a net karmic balance which is added to the corpus. It is from this corpus that our next life is chosen.
Karma, spiritual growth and evolution are deeply connected. Ultimately, a seeker of God, a seeker of truth or anyone on the spiritual path has to transcend karma to attain moksha, the ultimate goal of human life. The idea is to be free from karma and not to be a doer. It is because of karma that we get caught in the cycle of death and rebirth, and are born again and again.
How? The body dies, but the Mind and Ego or ME carries the unsettled karma and comes back into this world in a new body to settle our karma. If a child is born into a good, happy family and goes on to live a happy life, it is heaven but if one is born with challenges and suffers adversities, then that is hell. Heaven and hell, therefore, are experienced right here on earth. The challenge is to break free from this endless cycle. So, how can we be free from karma and from being born again and again?
Enlightenment, the realisation of the truth and finally moksha liberate us from the karmic cycle of death and rebirth. Therefore, it is critical for a seeker on his spiritual journey to transcend karma by realising the truth, by self-realisation and God-realisation. What is the truth that a seeker has to realise? It is—I am not the body, mind and ego. I am the spirit, the atman, the soul or a ‘Spark Of Unique Life’. The body dies and people say that we passed away. Who passes away? I am that.
We are born nine months before our so-called birthday, the body is formed after conception, after we come to life. Therefore, we are not the body. Neither are we the mind. Nobody has seen the mind! We cannot be the mind because it doesn’t exist. The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. Are we the ego? No, the ego that says I is a lie. As the ancient scriptures, the Upanishads state Neti Neti, Tat Twam Asi (Not this, Not this. Thou art that.) The soul is a part of the divine, the Supreme Immortal Power we call God. With the realisation of the truth, we live as instruments of the divine who act on behalf of the divine.
We do not ‘do’. The divine does through us. Therefore, while we cannot be free from action, we can be free in action. For such realised people, there is no karma and therefore, there is no rebirth. In fact, all the past karma, carried forward over many past lives, dissolves and disappears the moment we realise the truth that we are not the ego, mind or body, we are the divine soul. Of course, the body may still experience pain, disease and decay but there is no suffering. The mind and the ego have been transcended and along with the two, the misery, anguish and suffering that they create.
The realisation of the truth liberates us from all karma. We evolve to live as a Karma Yogi, one who lives as an instrument of the divine; one who has surrendered to the divine. One becomes a Jivanmukta, free from all suffering and at the moment of death, such a realised soul attains moksha, unification with the divine. There is no karma and no rebirth.
Atman in Ravi is a happiness ambassador, author, spiritual mentor and philanthropist.