The Law of Karma: What You Give is What You Get
Law of Karma states: “Everything that you do, everything will come back to you; all that happens to you is a fair reward” (“Sutra about law of karma”).
Why is it very important to understand this law not only for yogis but also for usual people? We all need to choose and make decisions. Those decisions will be absolutely different depending on what moral foundation we have. The one who lives life without thinking about the consequences of his actions, usually creates negative karma. The one who understands that sooner or later he will need to pay for everything, looks at his actions much more responsibly. He is unlikely to do negative actions towards others.
Person who does not think about the consequences of his own actions, it’s unlikely that something good will happen to him. I’ve got a question: “Do Gods reincarnate?” It is paradoxically and surprisingly for many, that they reincarnate for real, and scriptures say that they often reincarnate not as human, but as animals because in the higher worlds they are using the maximum amount of goods, and enjoying themselves without thinking about what await wait them in the next lives.
People usually react very differently to karmic rewards that can come to them. Discussing that, A. V. Trechlebov says: “An egoist scared of karma, doesn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of his actions, and sees karma like a mouse sees a cat. Righteous, who gets karma returned, meets karma as a kitten meets his mom”. The law of karma is very cruel for egoists and very rightful for people who are engaged in self-improvement. Karma serves not to harm a person, but for their benefit. Specific institutes (God Shiva and his assistant demons) are watching people’s actions. In order that souls would not degrade (demolish) themselves by endlessly accumulating amounts of karma, they give back to them karmic return. When they fall as a result of personal actions in their own life, somebody finally starts thinking about their own adequacy and changes.
But not everybody can understand how the law of karma works: “Karma [can be] direct return and return after some time” (“Patanjali Yoga-Sutras”). It means that accumulated karma can be realized immediately, it can be returned in the next life or stretch out to several future lives. It depends on the energy that surrounds the person. If it is energy of goodness (sattva), then everything is happening as quickly as possible. The lower the energy, the longer the return will be delayed and the more harder it will be for a person to see connection between action and reaction in one or another situation that happens. People who are in ignorance, karma returns with a very long delay. Such people have the illusion that they are “lords of the world” who can do whatever they want, that there is no God and they need to live according to the principle: “Take everything from this life.” Such a person would not understand from his experience how karma works, the energy of ignorance will not allow him to experience the results of his own actions.
Why do people smoke? That karma would not come to them. A person encounters some problem and suffers, and acigarette makes it easier by delaying karma for some time. What are the reasons to drink? A glass of alcohol looks like it removes the problem, allows you to relax. But for real, with alcohol, person just becomes ignorant in order not to see the real situation. Alcohol and cigarettes just add more ignorance around. The one who is carried away by passions has so many important things to do that he can’t spend his time thinking about karma. Karma returns fast only for those who are in maximum good (sattvic) energy.
The law of karma can be formulated as: “Whatever you do for others, it will return to you” or another one: “Whatever you did earlier to someone now returns to you.” If some kind of situation happens with you, it happens for one simple reason: either you accumulated this karma and now you get return, or you are accumulating karma now and the return will be later. For example, if you eat meat, in one of your future lives you will reincarnate as a pig or cow, and you will be the one who they will eat. Or now you eat meat because many lives before you had lives in animal bodies, and they were killing you for food.
How to recognize the first situation from the second? Take a look at your whole life. If you keep growing in self-development, it’s possible that you, by returning your karma, will respectfully go away from this world. Here is a very important factor – the possibility of doing yoga, because your practice will state how you will reincarnate.
If your situation is so bad that you can’t even come close to yoga, it’s possible that the direction of your reincarnations is directed down. In this situation, on the way to practice, you will meet a lot of obstacles. Yoga in this situation is like a test. If person even did some negative actions and still can do practice, then there is a possibility that he is returning karmic debts. If no, it means accumulating karma.
Nobody comes to yoga easily, it is very rare. Mostly obstacles come – it is karmic returns for previous actions. For most of people there are too many karmic debts, because of that, they are not able to do practice. By returning those karmic debts, they do not find time for inner work. In the first five to ten years in the yoga path, you can expect any surprises from karma and only after that it is possible to talk about more or less stable moving to self-development.
Knowledge about the law of karma is necessary to use in everyday life, and your actions (behavior) should match with this law. The more a person becomes conscious, the more he starts to understand that in this world, understanding of “good” and “evil” often is wrong. What people think is good usually leads to degradation, and what they think is evil actually absolutely not like this.
Grandmother gives chocolate to grandson – everybody thinks that it is good. But yogis look at this differently. Grandmother just consumed that energy that created the kid by getting pleasure. That chocolate harms kids, she does not even think.
Young man in market buys a bouquet of flowers and gives it to the girl. Girl is very happy by getting them. In society it is normal. Let’s think about what happens from a yogic point of view. A person by satisfying the primitive pleasures of another person, takes his energy. What’s more happens from an energy point of view? Girl, enjoy the gift, put the bouquet in the most visible place, watch it, and fill the flowers by her own life energy. But after some time those flowers are thrown away in the trash, where they starts to rot, and the most interesting moment happens: aura of this girl starts rot together with those flowers. It is primitive magic. Open any manual book of black magic. By reading it, you will be surprised at what you do with yourself. And in those illusions created in this world, that’s the reason why it’ sometimes hard to understand what decision will be good. In order to understand how to make those good decisions, you can see your own attitude to action. Do for others whatever you would like to get by yourself.
You can reduce the amount of negative consequences that you did if you engage in self-development by changing your energy. The value of yoga is exact in this. A person with help of yoga can change that negative amount of karma that he has.
There are opinion that karma of lower worlds accumulates in human legs, hell karma in feet, animal karma in shins and knee joints, karma of hungry ghosts or very poor people in hips, and karma of asuras (half gods or demons) in joints of hands. By overcoming those limitations with asanas, by freeing the directions of mobility, and by enduring pain, you can overcome personal limitations, overcome personal karma.
Material from Andrey Verba lectures
