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Going Beyond Karma
“Most people are doing good Karma
For a good 'next life'.
The wise ones, transcend Karma…
And escape from life after life.”
When one climbs the Ladder, spends time in Silence and Contemplation, finds a Guru and Overcomes Ignorance, what is the next step, the 12th step? It is understanding the Law of Karma and going beyond it. What does this mean?
Those who believe in God believe in doing their Dharma. They must do their duty as per the ethics and values taught to them. Most believers know that God doesn't direct the universe and control our life sitting somewhere up in heaven and giving orders as to what should happen. God controls the universe through Universal Laws and one such important law is popularly known as the Law of Karma. It is the Law of Action and Reaction and it advocates – what you give is what you get. Those who start climbing the Ladder to Heaven, who respect God and live with faith, hope, and enthusiasm, respect the Law of Karma and trust it completely. They know it is a Universal Law, and nobody can escape it. It is the Law of the Boomerang and states that what goes around comes around.
What is the Law of Karma? It is a law that governs the universe based on the principle that if we do good deeds, they will come back to us as positive circumstances, and if we do bad deeds, we will suffer! When bad things happen to people, it is not God who is instructing that bad things should happen to us, but rather it is our own negative Karma coming back to us. Therefore, whatever be our circumstance, our birth, our gender, our parents, all these are predestined depending on our Karma. But our present actions are in our hands. As per our present actions, new Karma is created, and it determines our future life. Believers in God know that God is not to be blamed for their good or bad luck. Everything is unfolding as per the Law of Karma. However, as we climb the Ladder to Heaven, we go beyond the Law of Karma and move further on the Ladder.
When I went on a quest for the Truth, I stumbled upon the Kathopanishad that led me to realize the truth about Karma, about life, death, and rebirth and this opened the doors towards self-realization and God-realization. What did I realize? Every human being has to die. But who dies? It is only the body that dies. The one who was alive, the ME – the Mind and Ego, moves on based on its Karma. This happens when the Life Energy or the Soul departs. Then there is death as there is no breath! Therefore, we human beings are more like a computer that has hardware, software, and a power supply. The physical body is just the hardware. The mind and ego are the software. The Soul is the power supply. Just like the source of power to my computer is the same as the source of power to your computer, the Soul or the Life Energy has a common source. It is the Divine Life Energy that is giving life to one and all.
The body starts its journey as a zygote, a tiny fusion of two cells that grows into an embryo and is finally delivered on earth. Then it is given a name and it lives performing actions or Karma. It is this Karma, good or bad that becomes the cause of our life's circumstances. All Karma is not settled in the same life. When the body dies, all its Karma which is not redeemed, is carried forward to a corpus of Karma based on which ME – the Mind and Ego is reborn in a new body. If our Karma is good, we will be born in fortunate circumstances. If our Karma is bad, then we will be born in miserable circumstances only to settle our past Karma.
This is how the world seems to continue its existence, with people dying and others being reborn. God does not interfere, and he lets the Law of Karma execute on its own.
The Law of Karma is a perfect law. Have you ever seen apples growing on mango trees? Never! Why not? Because the Universal Law does not permit it. The law states - as you sow, so shall you reap. If bad things are happening to seemingly good people, it does not mean that God is cruel, or the Law of Karma has failed. It only means that our own bad Karma is coming back to us. These bad deeds may not be the deeds of the recent past that we can remember. Maybe, they are the deeds done several years ago or even in our previous life. We cannot escape our deeds, even if we die. The body dies, but death is not the end. For the ME – the Mind and Ego, it is only a bend.
Those who climb this step and go beyond Karma as they contemplate in silence and continue their quest, realize a profound Truth. They realize that the body only experiences Karma during its lifetime. The one that is really responsible is the ME – the Mind and Ego. However, while the body is not permanent, it arrives at birth and departs at death, even the Mind and Ego, ME, is an illusion. It does not exist. All along, we believe that we have a gross physical body that dies and a subtle invisible body that is reborn based on Karma. Going on the 12th step makes us transcend Karma and realize that we are neither the body nor the ME – the Mind and Ego. We are the Divine Soul. Somehow, we live and die in ignorance and we are unable to realize the truth. Therefore, we suffer.
What does this 12th step on the Ladder do in our climb to Heaven? It makes us 'drop' all Karma that we may be carrying from several Janmas or lifetimes. Life after life we, the ME – Mind and Ego, accumulate Karma due to ignorance. When we climb this 12th step, we go beyond Karma. We realize that we are not the body, not even the ME – Mind and Ego and we are liberated from all suffering that occurs due to rebirth after the death of the physical body.
We have now reached the 12th step on the Ladder to Heaven. We have started our quest and we have overcome ignorance. Now, it is the final climb - the climb towards the Realization of the Truth.
Going Beyond Karma
TAKEAWAYS