by admin » Wed May 09, 2018 1:01 am
Chapter 5: The Astral Light and Karma
While we may believe that our present experiences are the fruit of our past acts or thoughts, and that our present acts and thoughts will beget future consequences for ourselves, we often fail to see the links connecting cause with effect. This is not surprising in view of the limitation of our knowledge of nature: we see only a small part of nature, and there must be much that we do not see. But the teaching about the astral light will enable us to supply some of the missing links. Every act, every thought and desire, imprints itself on the astral light, so that we may be said to "people our current in space" with our own creations, the offspring of our thoughts and deeds. And the consequences of such acts will return to their doer in accordance with two laws, for which we readily find analogies in physical science. One is the law of action and reaction; the other is the law that like attracts like. Any energy thrown forth in one direction tends, when the force is spent, to flow back in the opposite direction, as in the swing of a pendulum or a stone that is thrown up; and as each impression is stamped with the quality of its creator, the law of affinity tends to bring it back to him. Karma is the adjuster of disturbed equilibrium; it may even be said that what we call an act is only half an act; the whole act includes the reaction as well. But the deed and its reaction may be separated by long intervals, so that we fail to trace the connection. The two may even be separated by the gap of physical death, so that the causes set in motion in one incarnation will not yield their results until a later incarnation. But the astral light provides for this, for it is the great storehouse of nature and can preserve impressions indefinitely.
Misunderstanding as to karma may be caused by confusing physical acts with moral acts; and much of this misunderstanding will be cleared up if we bear in mind that the astral light is only one of seven cosmic planes, and that karma acts on all planes. Also, we must remember that karma is not a blind mechanism, such as is imagined by materialistic thought. There can be no such thing as a blind mechanism anywhere; life and consciousness lie behind all phenomena, even the phenomena of physical matter, as is better realized now than it was last century. It may be convenient sometimes to use mechanical terms in speaking of karma and the astral light, but we must not forget that the astral light, like the rest of nature, is alive. Spirit and matter are opposite poles of the same fundamental substance; and the higher we advance from physical matter up through the various cosmic planes towards spirit, the more accentuated become the spiritual qualities. So the astral light may be thought of as an intermediate grade between spirit and matter, or between mind and matter (it is hard to find exact terms in our language); and when we remember that there are seven planes of the astral light, we can more readily understand how mind and matter may be connected by a series of graduating links.
When we speak of a chain of causation connecting acts with their results, we must bear in mind that the links in this chain are not the inert bodies dealt with in physical mechanics, but are more or less conscious living beings, endowed with volition and purpose to a greater or less extent. It is taught that when a thought-form leaves our mind it may coalesce with an elemental, and by this coalescence there is engendered a living being, which thereupon begins a life of its own. Its conscious life consists entirely in the tendency to repeat the act which it represents, so that it is instinctual and is not endowed with more intelligence than is necessary to enable it to execute that function. Here then we have an intelligible explanation of the phenomenon called habit, as also of a large class of actions known as impulsive. Each one of us has surrounded himself with a host of such elemental beings, which are continually trying to express themselves through our minds or our bodily mechanism. Such words as tendency, proclivity, and the like, as used in common parlance or by science, are mere counters; they are abstract nouns or uncashed checks or algebraic letters for unknown values; so that our explanation is not superfluous but necessary.
As soon as we begin to study our own daily experiences, with the above ideas in mind, we shall find plenty of corroboration for the teachings. Previously we had overlooked this evidence because we were not seeking it. It helps people greatly in the work of understanding and ruling themselves, if they can realize that they are to a great extent permitting themselves to be controlled by actual obsessing beings -- namely, these thought-elementals and elementals of desire, continually prompting to unconsidered speech or acts, and inspiring moods of anger, sarcasm, levity, etc., which we afterwards regret; and a poor excuse it is to say that "I don't know what made me do it, but something came over me."