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Taking Theosophical
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century
Nature
is Conquered by Obedience
Can
you get Karma working for you?
Yes,
But there’s no quick fix
Posted
29/12/06
In her
article “Karma”,
Annie Besant begins with this extract from A P Sinnett’s Occult World. The
basic premise is that thoughts are things and that once they are generated,
they become entities in their own right. The entities can be good or bad and as
such create the environment that the thinker inhabits.
Working on
the “As a man thinks, so he becomes” principle, positive thoughts will have an
effect not just on other people but will also rebuild the thinker. You may have
noticed that all religions seem to have “positive thinking” in their
philosophy.
Extract
from Karma by Annie Besant
“EVERY
thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes an
active entity by associating itself, coalescing we might term it, with an
elemental—that is to say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the
kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence—a creature of the mind's
begetting—for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original
intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus a good thought is
perpetuated as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon.
And so man
is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded
with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions; a current
which reacts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in
contact
with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls it his
"Skandha"; the Hindu gives it the name of " Karma". The
Adept evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw them off unconsciously”
Having
this knowledge enables you to take charge of your thought world and although
you won’t have the skill of the Adept, you can at least make a conscious effort
to create conscious thought.
Unfortunately,
there is no quick fix. If you have been a fairly negative person then like a
flywheel changing direction, you will find going over to positive thoughts a
bit difficult but even just making the effort will generate some good Karma.
Of course
you might enjoy being negative but then you probably wouldn’t have read this
far – if you have? – please keep going.
Another
problem is that except for very developed people, we are all haunted by the
past with a Karmic overdraft that we will have to pay off and for which we can
get reminders anytime. Annie Besant confirms this:-
“Of
course, we never find ourselves initially
free, for
we come into the world encumbered with these fetters of our own past making;
but the process as regards each separate fetter runs the above round—the mind
forges it, wears it, and while wearing it can file it through.”
However,
one has to start somewhere and the first extract from “Karma” gives a key as to
where to begin by referring to the intensity of thought in relation to its
benefit or harm. Long standing grudges and hatreds, if you have any, will have
to go, and if you often get angry then that is something worth looking at.
The
writings of Dion Fortune contain examples of extreme anger generating
malevolent thought forms that will become self sufficient and develop on their
own. Occult wisdom dictates that these will eventually come back and attack
you. Notice that as well as advocating positive thinking, most religions say
“let it go”.
Annie
Besant gives a similar description to Dion Fortune’s for the development of
anger generated thought forms:-
“an angry
thought will cause a flash of red, the thought-form vibrating so as to produce
red; that flash of red is a summons to the elementals and they sweep in the
direction of the summoner, and one of them enters into the thought-form, which
gives it an independent activity of a destructive, disintegrating type.”
And of
course thought forms good and bad will affect our Karma
“Angels
and demons of our own creating throng round us on every side, makers of weal
and woe to others, bringers of weal and woe to ourselves—verily, a karmic
host.”
Trouble
you cause to other people can ultimately
become more of a problem to yourself. The reverse is true, so it pays to
send out a bit of good.
Annie
Besant also outlines a further complication in that like attracts like and she
explains the implications of this, which can produce long term problems for
anyone who enjoys being negative and makes it part of their act.
“Not only
does a man generate and send forth his own thought-forms, but he also serves as
a magnet to draw towards himself the thought-forms of others from the astral
plane around him, of the classes to which his own ensouled thought-forms
belong. He
may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy from outside, and it
lies within himself whether these forces that he draws into his own being from
the external world shall be of a good or of an evil kind.”
Creating
problems for the next time round.
Annie
Besant points out that the tendencies we choose to develop in this life will
become harder to resist in our next incarnation.
“The
desire to do in one life reacts as compulsion to do in another, and it seems as
though the desire worked as a demand upon Nature, to which she responds by
affording the opportunity to perform.”
______________
Back to
the positive – how about developing the habit of stopping yourself when you go
into a negative thought mode? If you make up your mind to like the world a bit
more then the world might be a bit keener on you. Appreciating people’s needs
has to be better than thriving on hassle.
____________________
Karma is not Random
Karma is an absolute law of cause and
effect and the concept of randomness or accident just isn’t in the equation.
The workings of Karma to the end user are often seen as “fate” which suggests
the whim of a higher power but there is no effect without cause.
In this extract from Karma, Annie Besant
postulates that Karma is a law of nature and like all such laws is reliable and
can be worked with by those with knowledge and strategy.
“That we live in a realm of law, that we
are surrounded by laws that we cannot break, this is a truism. Yet when the
fact is recognized in a real -and vital way, and when it is seen to be a fact
in the mental and moral world as much as in the physical, a certain sense of
helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we felt ourselves in the grip of
some mighty power, that, seizing us, whirls us away whither it will. The very
reverse of this is in reality the case, for the mighty power, when it is
understood, will obediently carry us whither we will: all forces in Nature can
be used in proportion as they are understood—
" Nature is conquered by obedience
"—and her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by
knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her
boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction,
and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success.
On the invariability of law depends the
security of scientific experiment, and all power of planning a result and of
predicting the future. On this the chemist rests, sure that Nature will ever
respond in the same way, if he be precise in putting his questions. A variation
in his results is taken by him as implying a change in his procedure, not a
change in Nature. And so with all human action; the more it is based on
knowledge, the more secure is it in its forecastings, for all "
accident" is the result of ignorance, and is due to the working of laws
whose presence was unknown or overlooked. In the mental and moral worlds, as much
as in the physical, results can be foreseen, planned for, calculated on. Nature
never betrays us; we are betrayed by our own blindness. In all worlds
increasing knowledge means increasing power, and omniscience and omnipotence
are one.
That law should be as invariable in the
mental and moral worlds as in the physical is to be expected, since the
universe is the emanation of the ONE, and what we call Law is but the
expression of the Divine Nature. As there is one Life emanating all, so there
is one Law sustaining all; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as
on a secure, immutable foundation.”
___________________
These are only brief extracts from “Karma” by Annie Besant,
which is an extensive and comprehensive document on the subject.
Karma by Annie Besant (Complete text)
______________________
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