Question::
How are Karmic links formed? Why can’t we avoid our karmic debts and dues? Why is getting out of “karmic entanglements” so complex?
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Is there any provision to get out of the ‘karmic debts and dues’? Is there any shortest and surest way?
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How does the supreme art of NON-BINDING KARMA help emancipate oneself from karmic ties? How come Perfect Master is the key figure in this regard?
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What sort of benefit can one avail of having a Perfect Master in one’s life?
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Can one’s ‘good karma/action’ earns Perfect Master’s grace?
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Why is it necessary to surrender to a Perfect Master? What does such surrender do?
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Is “spiritual progress” automatic ie., can one progress spiritually without any active effort on one’s part?
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What happens if one enters the ‘spiritual path’ without the guidance of any Master?
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What DRIVES everyone onto the “spiritual path”, sooner or later? What sort of “inherent capacities” manifest in the aspirant, once he enters “the Path”?
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What sort of pitfalls/setbacks does one encounter, when there is no Perfect Master’s guidance?
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Are Yogis free from “Law of Karma”? Who is called a Yoga-bhrashta?
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What is unintelligent karma? Why is it called unintelligent, in the first place? How come it delays one’s spiritual progress?
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How come God-realization is not the attainment of a single life?
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What power makes us reincarnate?
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Why do we “crave”, in the first place? What is the cause of our cravings?
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How come ‘ego-mind’ is cause of our ‘reincarnations’? What happens when the ego-mind ceases to exist?
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How is it that “God-realization/Self-Realization” puts an end to reincarnation process?
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Why should one go through the “reincarnation process”?
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What does ‘ripening of experience’ constitute?
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What constitutes “Divine Life”??
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Why ‘life’ is considered a drama? Who is the ‘author’ of this drama, and who are the ‘actors’? What is this drama meant for, in the first place?
Answer::
(Extracted from Meher Baba’s literature, which is a copyright of Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust (©AMBPPCT), Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Bharat/India)
The series of incarnations, which the soul is impelled to take through karmic determination, has a tendency to become endless. Through innumerable lives, an individual has come into contact with countless persons, and he has had all kinds of dealings of give-and-take with them. He is entangled in a web consisting of all sorts of debts to pay and dues to recover.
According to Karmic Law, he can avoid neither the debts nor the dues, since both are the outcome of karma inspired by desire. He keeps incarnating in order to pay off his debts and to recover his dues; but, even when he means to clear up the account, he is often unable to do so.
- All persons with whom an individual has Karmic links of debts or dues may not be incarnate when he has taken a body.
- Or owing to the limitations imposed by his own capacities and circumstances, he may be unable to meet all the complex requirements of a situation.
- While he is trying to clear up accounts with those with whom he has past links, in this very attempt he cannot help creating fresh claims and counter-claims concerning them. Even with new persons, he cannot help create debts and dues of diverse kinds and magnitudes, and get involved with them.
An individual thus goes on adding to his debts and dues, with the result that there is no getting out of his endlessly increasing and complex Karmic entanglements.
The spinning of the yarn of karmic debts and dues would be endless if there were no provision for getting out of the karmic entanglements through the help of a Perfect Master. He can not only initiate an aspirant into the supreme art of NON-BINDING KARMA, but can directly become instrumental in freeing him from his Karmic entanglements.
The Master has attained Unity with God, whose cosmic and universal life includes all persons. Being one with all life, and in His representative capacity, HE CAN BECOME, for the sake of the aspirant, the medium for the clearing up of all debts and dues that have come into existence through the aspirant’s dealings with countless individuals contacted in his incarnations.
If a person must get bound to someone, it is best for him to get bound to God or a Master, because this tie ultimately facilitates emancipation from all other karmic ties.
When the ‘good karma of past lives’ has secured for the aspirant the benefit of having a Master, the best thing that he can do is to surrender himself to the master, and to serve him.
Through surrenderance, the aspirant throws the burden of his Karma on the Master, who has to find ways and means of freeing him from it. Through serving the master, he wins an opportunity to get clear of his Karmic entanglements.
The relationship between the Master and the disciple is often carried on from one life to another for several incarnations. Those who have been connected with a Master in past lives are drawn to Him by an unconscious magnetism, not knowing why they are thus drawn. There is usually a long history to the apparently unaccountable devotion that the disciple feels for his Master. The disciple is often beginning where he had left off in the last incarnation.
When the disciple invites the attention and grace of a Master, it is not without reason. Sometimes the Master seems to impart spirituality to a disciple without there being any apparent effort or sacrifice on the part of the disciple. But these are always cases in which the disciple has earned the right to this favor by his associations and endeavors in past lives.
The ‘love’ and ‘devotion’ the disciple may have felt for the Master in his past lives have formed a deep connection between him and the Master, so that the awakening of “spiritual longing” in the disciple has its counterpart in the ‘grace’ and ‘help’ that flow to him from the Master.
It is through his own past ‘non-binding karma’ that a person invites the grace of the master; just as it is through his own ‘binding karma’ that he invites upon himself the pleasure and pain as well as the good and evil of which he is the recipient in this life.
As a rule, the person who has entered the spiritual path gradually advances until he attains the goal; this does not apply to those, who have not definitely entered the path or have no Master to guide them.
Through their chaotic pursuits of several lifetimes, most persons are likely to go further away from the goal by the heaping up of binding sanskaras. Hence, spiritual progress cannot be said to be automatic, in the sense that it will come about without the active effort of the person concerned.
Sooner or later, the “logic of experience” gathered through several lives drives everyone to enter the path and seek the highest goal. Once the aspirant enters the path, he usually goes forward with steady progress.
As he advances on the path, he often develops certain latent capacities that enable him not only to experience consciously the inner subtle and mental worlds but also to manipulate the ‘forces’ and ‘powers’ available on the higher planes of consciousness. Yet, the crossing of the first few planes does not necessarily ensure safe and steady progress. There are many pitfalls on the path itself, and unless there is the assured guidance of a Master, the aspirant is in danger of falling back.
From any of the first few planes, the aspirant, instead of going forward toward the goal, may have such a setback. In exceptional cases an aspirant of the fourth plane may, through abuse of his powers, invite upon himself such a fall that it takes ages for him to return to his earlier point of progress. The aspirant who has such a fall is known as a yoga-bhrashta.
Even the YOGIS are subject to the unyielding ‘Law of Karma’, which knows NO exceptions, concessions or preferences.
It is only when the aspirant has the advantage of the guidance by a Perfect Master that the spiritual journey is rendered safe and steady, and it is only then that there is no possibility of a fall or retrogression. The Master steers the aspirant from negative Karma in which he might otherwise become involved.
Treading the spiritual path continues for several incarnations before the aspirant attains the goal. Centuries of continued sacrifices, service, self-purification, suffering and determined search have to roll-on if the aspirant is to be spiritually prepared for the final realization of God.
God-realization, which is the goal of the reincarnating individual, is never an attainment of a single life. It is always the culmination of his continued endeavor through many lives.
Unintelligent Karma of many lives has created bindings of the individual soul, and it has to be undone by the persistent creation of intelligent and non-binding karma carried on for many more lives.
The power that keeps the individual soul bound to the wheel of life and death is its thirst for ‘separate existence,’ which is a condition for a host of cravings connected with objects and experiences of the world of duality. It is for the fulfillment of cravings that the “ego-mind” keeps on reincarnating itself!
When all forms of craving disappear, the impressions that create and enliven the ego-mind disappear. With the disappearance of these impressions, the ego-mind itself is shed, with the result that there is only the realization of the one eternal, unchanging Oversoul, who is the only Reality. God-realization is the end of the incarnations of the ego-mind because it is the end of its very existence.
As long as the ‘ego-mind’ exists in some form, there is an inevitable, and irresistible urge for incarnations. When there is cessation of the ego-mind, there is cessation of incarnations in the final fulfillment of Self-realization.
The life of the reincarnating individual has many events and phases. The wheel of life makes its ceaseless rounds, lifting the individual to the heights or bringing him down from high positions. It thus contributes to the enrichment of his experience.
- ‘Ideals’ left unattained in one life are pursued further in the next life;
- things left undone are finished;
- rough edges left by incomplete endeavour are rounded off.
- wrongs are eventually set right.
- The accounts of give-and-take between persons, receive renewed adjustment by the repayment of karmic debts, and the recovery of karmic dues.
At last, out of the ripeness of experience and through the dissolution of the ego-mind, the soul enters into the sole unity of ‘divine life.‘
In this ‘divine life,’ there is neither the binding of giving nor the binding of taking because, the soul has completely transcended the consciousness of ‘separateness’ or ‘duality.’
The drama of the CONTINUED LIFE of the individual soul has many ‘acts.’ From the standpoint of the worldly existence of the soul, a curtain may be said to be drawn over its life after the closing of each act. But no act yields its full significance if it is regarded as complete in itself. It has to be viewed from its wider context as being a link between the acts already performed and the acts still to come. Its meaning is entwined with the theme of the whole drama of which it is a part.
The end of the act is not the end of the progressive theme. The actors disappear from the stage of earth, only to reappear again in new capacities and new contexts.
The actors are so engrossed in their respective roles that they treat them as the ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’ of all existence. For the major part of their continued lives (running into innumerable incarnations), they are unconscious of the closely guarded truth that– the Author of the drama, in His imaginative production, Himself became all the actors and played the game of hide and seek in order to come into full and conscious possession of his own creative infinity.
‘Infinity’ has to go through the illusion of finitehood to know itself as Infinity; and the Author has to play the parts of all the actors to KNOW Himself as the Author of this greatest detective story, worked out through the cycles of creation.
– Meher Baba
Source ::
Discourses, Pg:: 334-338
© AMBPPCT, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India/Bharat
