Karma, Reincarnation, and Freedom - Robert S Corrington

Part VI

SEVERAL years ago, I had a conversation about the concepts of reincarnation and karma with a Swami of the Ramakrishna Order. At one point, feeling a little exasperated, I asked him about the seven million deaths in the Nazi Holocaust, and he answered my query with two simple words: ‘Who cares.’ This answer stunned, perplexed, and yet intrigued me, especially since the Swami is a gentle soul without a hint of anti-semitic beliefs. I have never let those two words out of my mind as I continue to ponder the power of karma in social and personal history. I am persuaded that karma is quite real and that reincarnation is the fundamental truth of the journey of our Monad’s external manifestations through time, but I remain deeply concerned about the issue of historical tragedy and responsibility; namely, with the problems of freedom and responsibility for others in the context of karma.

In her masterpiece, The Ancient Wisdom, Annie Besant correctly argues that the reality of karma only makes sense within the context of reincarnation and vice versa. Both concepts entail each other in a tightly bound dialectic that seems to have no room for anything like our contemporary notions of freedom. In his wonderfully concise The Ocean of Theosophy, Willian Q Judge makes this point in his own way.

It [karma] is the twin doctrine to reincarnation. So inextricably interlaced are these two laws that it is almost impossible to properly consider one apart from the other. No spot or being in the universe is exempt from the operation of Karma, but all are under its sway, punished for error by it yet beneficently led on through discipline, rest and reward, to the distant heights of perfection.¹

Thus from the length to the breadth of the world, karma and reincarnation work in consort to ensure that the divine laws are maintained, even though neither karma nor reincarnation require a divine law giver who rewards and punishes. Karma is what is transmitted and reincarnation is how karma is transmitted in the time process.

In classical terms, our karma, the ongoing deposit of all of our previous incarnations shapes everything that we do, think, contrive, or envision in this current incarnation. The freedom that we sense we may be little more than the freedom to accept or deny the inevitable unfolding of our personal karma during our biblical three score and ten years of earthly life. Consequently, the Nazi prison guard and the Jewish inmate are merely acting out a drama that was prepared perhaps millions of years ago. For us to say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to this event is to violate the deeper logic of karma – or is it?

Our moral sensibility tells us that this conclusion is profoundly wrong, yet our equally strong awareness of the truth of karma compels us to accept that in some sense we are behind our own triumphs and tragic denouements. Does this logic apply to whole peoples? Were the native Americans decimated by the English and European invaders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of a debt owed to their conquerors from so long ago? And if so, how do we know when the debt, so called, has been paid? Were the people of India partly enslaved by the British Raj because of some past transgressions, or were the British tied to India because of something deeply missing in their world view and psychic reality? The questions are endless.

However, some progress can be made in our attempts to understand how karma and reincarnation work in history and in the lives of discrete individuals. Besant comes to our aid with one piece of sage advise: ‘The knowledge of karma, that threatened to paralyze, becomes an inspiring, a supporting, an uplifting force².’ Rather than reminding us of our utter littleness in the face of the inertial power of millions of previous incarnations and choices (if they were such), the doctrine of karma reminds us of our powers of transformation in the light of this knowledge – for no change is possible without a prior grasp of just what forces brought us to the point where change is now demanded.

To become aware of the power of karma is to become aware that there is meaning in the world, a meaning that penetrates right down into the heart of reality. If karma exists, then everything living has some meaning in its own given life span, and that meaning can be seen by those who have been liberated by the ancient wisdom alluded to by Annie Besant. If I were to name this insight I would call it the philosophy of ‘pansigni-ficance’; namely the view that sees everything (the prefix ‘pan’) as having some significance in the vast scheme of things, even if that meaning, that significance, is exceedingly hard to find. Clearly it is one thing to believe in the doctrine of pansignificance, it is another entirely to find meaning in each and every case of living and dying. But an ability to do the latter does not follow logically from the belief in the former. All it asserts is that, given ideal conditions of wisdom, meaning can be found in every actual and possible event in the world (or worlds) we inhabit. Even the masters of wisdom cannot see the meaning of absolutely everything, but their view extends beyond ours, and it follows that beings yet more advanced have greater vistas within which to approach the truth of pansignificance.

References

1. Judge, William Q., The Ocean of Theosophy, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, 1973, p. 100. Original edition 1893.
2. Besant, Annie, The Ancient Wisdom, The Theosophical Publishing House (TPH), Adyar, 1998, p. 271. Original edition 1897.

© "The Theosophist" (August, 2003) published by The Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. Website: www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.

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