The Enigma of Karma - PN Santhanagopal

Are the Laws of Karma universally applicable? Or are they just meant for Man?

If someone can count all the insects, just the insects, excluding the animals and birds that live within an area of one square kilometer on earth, their number will exceed the present total human population on earth. If one can count all living organisms including the plant kingdom, within this area, the number would still be bigger than the total number of all the human beings that have inhabited the Earth, since the time the first man made his appearance on its surface.

The question is, in the scale of evolution, if one also concedes, for the time being, the theories of Karma and Reincarnation, then, are all these lives on their way to becoming one day human beings who are the only creatures on earth with the capacity to think and rationalize?

The question arises because our scriptures tell us that the goal of human life is to reach the stage of self-realization, which is realizing the fact that there is only one reality and everything else is only a projection of this reality. Every life that has power of cognition, everything in existence that procreates and sustains its species, is as much a life as a human being.

If every life is a spark of divinity in manifestation, it is reasonable to assume that every life, from a cell that begins to divide itself to the dictates of the code embedded in it to the human beings, have souls of their own and hence have to ultimately progress towards acquiring the capacity to reason and think.

© "Bhavan’s Journal" (July 15, 2003) published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapati KM Munshi Marg, Chowpatty, Mumbai 400 007. Reprinted with permission.

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