Karma

1999-10-10 12:29:00

Geoffrey writes:
"There is ONLY good karma; bad karma is not having any good karma." In order to follow the spiritual path, we must take full responsibility for our every thought, action and reaction. Blaming our failings on to our karma from past lives is finding something to blame, making a scapegoat. I believe karma was invented to control the people through fear, as hell was, by the churches. We have a LOVE god, not a vengeful god."

A basic point where I have agreement with Saul is that good and evil interplay and if there is good there must be evil.

Karma is in principle the law of cause and effect. To determine whether or not there is bad karma we must merely look at the causes and effects that we all agree upon as the real thing.

We know that if we cause money to be put in the bank we will have the effect of available money (good karma). We also agree that if you cause a loan to be made at the bank that you will then owe some money (bad karma).

To say that there is no bad karma is to say that there are no negative effects. Therefore if there were no such thing as bad (or negative) karma is the same as saying that when you take out a loan from the bank that you will owe no debt. In this case if negative karma is denied long enough you will awaken to reality when you watch the bill collectors haul your car off.

To say there is no bad karma is the same as saying that when you drive over a cliff that only good things will happen. I think here we all will agree that when we create a cause in this life that an effect will follow.

Now perhaps some think that when we die all of our causes die with us and we carry no effects into the next life, but in principle a cause always is followed by an effect and they are carried over into future lives.

On the other hand, Geoffrey is right in the fact that we should not blame our failures on karma. That is like saying, because I owe the bank some money I cannot succeed. You might have to work a little harder to pay off your loan but such a debt is not an excuse for failure.