More About Karma from the late Guru, Charan Singh

The Law of Karma

The world is a place in which we learn. Is that called karma? What do we learn in this world? To feel unhappy? To be a part of this agony? What are we learning? What advantage are we taking now from our experiences in our previous births? Do we remem­ber them? Are we not repeating the same mistakes which we repeated in our last birth?

How much have we learned from these mistakes? Nothing. So how are we learning?
We are just reaping the fruit of what we have sown. We even do not learn from the mistakes in this life, what to say of our past lives. This world is a field of karmas. Whatever we have sown, we reap, and whatever we sow now, we reap here in the future.

We have come here again and again to fulfil those desires, to reap the fruit of the seeds that we have sown in our previ­ous births, and while reaping we also sow for the next birth, and the excess also increases our stored lot. That is karma.

Question from a Desciple: "Master, if a man acts like a beast will he have to come back as a beast?"

Ans: " He may have been a beast in his last life and is still carrying all those instincts in him. Or he may come back again as a beast. Our own karma decides that. According to the karma theory, man can merge back into his Source, the Lord from whom he originally came, and he can also go back into a lower species such as an animal or even below that, to which he may have descended in a previ­ous life and come up to the status of a human being again.

The Lord does not find excuses to send us back. He gives us opportunity after opportunity to improve, to go ahead. But if we refuse to make use of this opportunity, we can go back.
Our attachments, our unfulfilled desires, our karmas can pull us down. We do not like to think so, but that is a fact."

Question: " Maharaj Ji, is it possible to have unconscious attachments without really realizing it?"

Ans: "Sometimes we are not aware of our attachments. We feel that we are detached, but when the situation arises, we realize how much we are attached. Our present attachments as well as our previous attachments can bring us back to this earth, because unless all our karmas, unless all our attachments are loosened, we cannot go up. We may have some previous attachments of past births which may still be strong and for which we still have to give an account. They may even pull us back to this world. " Ques: "Even if we do make progress?"
Anns: "Even if we do make progress. But we will, of course, go ahead, not backwards. We will be born in much better circumstances where we can clear our karmic accounts in a much better way. Once we make a start, we will always go ahead, not back­wards at all. There are no failures in Sant Mat. But unless our attachments are loosened, we cannot go back Home. And all this meditation takes care of our previous attachments also. When we think that we are not making progress, we do not know actually what progress we are making, how much we have to pierce through in order to get to the light."

"We all have a store of karmas from previous births, and unless we clear those karmas from previous births, as well as our fate karma and do not sow for the future, how can we go back?
Meditation takes care of all those stores of karmas. By meditating we are loosening those attachments, and when they are being cleared, sometimes in meditation we see many types of faces coming before us of gents and ladies, moving about."

" We do not know who they are. Those are our previous re­lations, our previous attachments. We are not to pay any atten­tion to them. We are just to keep ourself in meditation. Automatically they will cease to come before us. Their accounts with us are being cleared in this way. Only if we still have very strong attachments left at the time of death, then we are brought back into this world to clear them."

Ques: " Astrologers claim that when one is born in a certain month of the year, one is given a certain type of life and guaranteed a certain way of living. Is this true or not?"

Ans: " If you know what is going to happen to you, what difference will it make? Nothing can be changed. We will have to face what is in our destiny. So why add to our agony by knowing beforehand what we are going to face? If one is told that he is going to have an accident two years before it is to happen, one is living in that anxiety and agony for two years. Whereas if he did not know in advance, it may have bothered him for perhaps only two or three hours.
What is the use of it all? Astrology is a definite science, which very few have mastered, so mostly these predictions are not correct. One should not dabble in these things. Whatever has to come, will come, so why bother about it?"

Ques: "If we do something for someone and it turns out badly, and we find out that we were wrong and were truly sorry, does that rectify anything?"

Ans: " We should honestly, with the best of intentions, try always to do good. Then if it turns out differently, we should not worry. We should take it as our pralabdh karma, fate or destiny.
There is nothing to rectify. The thing that had to happen, has happened. Our conscience is clear. We have not done it knowingly. But we should not try to justify such weaknesses. When we are honest in our efforts to do good, then it is up to the Lord. W e cannot help it if it takes another shape."

Ques: "Regarding animals and our relations to them, is it detrimen­tal to our own progress to have affection for an individual animal?"

Ans: " It depends upon the attachment. If you are attached to an animal, naturally it will pull you down. If the animal is at­tached to you and you are not attached to the animal, but you are attached to something much better than the animal, then you may pull that animal up.
If we are meditating, we are attached to that Sound so strongly that it is pulling us, and if the animal is attached to us, we will also pull him along with us."

Ques: Is it possible to rise to some level where you can negotiate with the mind and these attachments and balance them without actually having to live through the karma?"

Ans: " We can always burn our karmas. They can always be des­troyed. That is the purpose of meditation. Otherwise we would have taken hundreds of lives to fulfil those karmas. But by meditation it can be done in one, or two, or three lives, and four at the most. The object of meditation is to destroy those karmas, to clear those karmas. Kabir says that if you have a big stack of hay, it takes only one matchstick to burn the whole lot. Similarly, one little portion of Shabd, an atom of it, burns thousands and millions of our karmas. We actually burn or destroy and rise above them, and do not make new ones in the process. These old karmas have relations with our mind. When with the help of Shabd our mind goes back to its origin, these karmas just drop down. However rusty a knife may be, if you hold it against a revolving grindstone, all the rust is removed. The knife again shines like new. It becomes pure. That is the condition of the soul when it leaves the mind after coming in touch with the Shabd."

Ques: "What is the reason for not remembering what has happened?"

Ans: "If you remember what has happened, what has brought you back into this world, you will not repeat those mistakes. That means you will never come back to this earth again, but will go back to the Lord. In that case, eventually everyone would do so, and the crea­tion would come to an end. If we all know why we are here, which bad habits or which bad karmas have brought us here, we will stop doing those bad karmas. Kal ( The negative power) has received certain boons, prerogatives, certain advan­tages. That is why this whole universe is going on.
One of the boons granted to him was that all creatures for­get their past. Those boons are essential for the continuance of this universe. Since the Lord wants this universe to go on, naturally we have to forget all that has happened in our pre­vious lives, for which we are here now. "

Ques:" Why would the soul want to come back here from the superior planes, knowing how much suffering and misery is here?"

A ns: "Even now, we do not want to go back. We see suffering all around us. If anyone tells you to prepare yourself, you are going to die, are you prepared to die at once? We say, "No, we have so many things to do yet." So even now we are not prepared to leave in spite of all the suffering in this world. We may think we are prepared to die, but realize that we are not when faced with the situation. Knowing that we are weeping and suffering, knowing that we are so miserable and unhappy, still we are not doing any­thing to get rid of this condition. We are doing the same things again and again. We are not taking lessons from that deed we have done in the past birth for which we are suffering now. We are victims of the senses, just the same as we used tobe. We are not taking any lessons from the past. Nobody does.When the situation arises we do the same thing, and we are again sorry. We have forgotten the reason why we are unhappy."

Ques: "Do I understand correctly that at a certain point in the unfoldment we are able to review all the past karmas? If so, is it necessary, and is it of any advantage?"

Ans: " We do know about our whole past when we go beyond Trikuti, the second stage. When the soul gets released from the mind, your past will be crystal-clear to you, as if you are look­ing in a glass. This is possible only when you go beyond the second stage, and then perhaps you will not be interested in knowing your past. You are not interested at all. You are rather looking ahead, and not at the back. You do not feel inclined to see what sins you have been committing, nor what you have had to go through. You are not concerned. Only those who reach their True Home obtain everlasting joy and peace. They break out of the cycle of birth and death forever, and return at last to the Father, thereby escaping the repeated torture of the Messenger of Death."

Ques: "With whose grace do we gain admission to the Court of the Lord? Surely not by our own efforts. Alone we can do nothing. We can never, by ourselves, traverse the uncharted terrain of the inner path. We owe everything to the immeasurable grace of the Master. He showers his blessings on us by joining us with the Shabd and Nam, removing all our doubts, and pulling us out of this quagmire of illusion. It is our Master who puts us on the right Path and awakens in our mind abiding love and devotion for the Lord. Blessed with his infinite grace, through meditation, we seek, we find, and we knock. All beings in the world are helpless puppets in the hands of destiny. There is nothing that they can accomplish by their own efforts."

"Those on whom the Lord wishes to shower his mercy and grace are given the gift of the human form. Out of these fortunate souls, he draws the attention of the marked ones( Marked Elect) to himself. These are the souls whom he, in his supreme bounty, wishes to deliver from doubt and delusion, whom he wishes to call back to his Mansion by joining them with the Light and Sound. It is the Lord's will which is supreme. It is His will that is "done on earth as it is in heaven". Man is helpless. Not till he himself takes us into his fold are we redeemed through the Master's grace. And that grace is showered on us through his gift of devotion and love, which eventually tunes us to him and draws us to our home to merge with the Lord forever..
- "Die to Live" by Maharaj Charan Singh