Section 1

OF MlUc^i MAY 13 1918
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BP 563 .K47 1918 Besant, Annie Wood, 1847
1933. Karma
Theosophical Manual No. VIII.
'1AY 13 1918
KARMA
BY
ANNIE BESANT
Theosophical Publishing House
Krotona,
Hollywood, Los Angeles, Cal.
1918.
PREFACE.
Few words are needed in sending this little hook out into the world. It is the fourlh of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too ab- struse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordin- ary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these manuals are not writ- ten for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and ivomen of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fel- loiv-men.
KARMA.
Every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes an active entity by associating itself, coalescing tve might term it, with an elemental — that is to say, with one of the semi- intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence — a creature of the mincVs beget- ting— for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action tvhich generated it. Thus a good thought is perpet- uated as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man is continually peopl- ing his current in space ivith a world of his own, crowded ivith the offspring of his fancies, desires, im- pulses and passions; a current which re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its intensity. The Buddhist calls it his " Skandha;^' the Hindu gives it the name of "Karma.'' The Adept evolves these shapes consciously ; other men throw them off un- consciously.'^
* The Occult World, pp. 89, 90. Fourth Edition
6
No more graphic picture of the essential nature of Karma has ever been given than in these words, taken from one of the early letters of Master K. H. If these are clearly understood, with all their impli- cations, the perplexities which surround the subject will for the most part disappear, and the main prin- ciple underlying karmic action will be grasped. They will therefore be taken as indicating the best line of study, ,and we shall begin by considering the creative powers of man. All we need as preface is a clear conception of the invariability of law, and of the great planes in Nature.
The Invariability of Law.
That we live in a realm of law, that we are sur- rounded by laws that we cannot break, this is a truism. Yet when the fact is recognized in a real and vital way, and when it is seen to be a fact in the mental and moral world as much as in the physical, a cer- tain sense of helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we felt ourselves in a grip of some mighty Power, that, seizing us, whirls us away whither it will. The very reverse of this is in reality the case, for the mighty Power, when it is understood, will obediently carry us whither ive will ; all forces in Na- ture can be used in proportion as they are under- stood— "Nature is conquered by obedience" — and her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against
them. AVe can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in di- rection, and so on, and their very invariability be- comes the guarantee of our success.
On the invariability of law depend the security of scientific experiment, and all power of planning a result and of predicting the future. On this the chemist rests, sure that Nature will ever respond in the same way, if he be precise in putting his ques- tions. A variation in his results is taken by him as implying a change in his procedure, not a change in Nature. And so with all human action; the more it is based on knowledge, the more secure is it in its forecastings, for all ''accident" is the result of ignor- ance, and is due to the working of laws whose pres- ence was unknown or overlooked. In the mental and moral worlds, as much as in the physical, results can be foreseen, planned for, calculated on. Nature never betrays us; we are betrayed by our own blind- ness. In all worlds increasing knowledge means in- creasing power, and omniscience and omnipotence are one.
That law should be as invariable in the mental and moral worlds as in the physical is to be expected, since the universe is the emanation of the One, and what we call Law is but the expression of the Divine Nature. As there is one Life emanating all, so there is one Law sustaining all ; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as on a secure, immutable foundation.
The Planes op Nature.
To study the workings of Karma on the line sug- gested by the Master, we must gain a clear concep- tion of the three lower planes, or regions, of the uni- verse, and of the Principles^ related to them. The names given to them indicate the state of the con- sciousness working on them. In this a diagram may help us, showing the planes with the Principles re- lated to them, and the vehicles in which a conscious entity may visit them. In practical Occultism the student learns to visit these planes, and by his own investigations to transform theory into knowledge. The lowest vehicle, the Gross Body, serves the con- sciousness for its work on the physical plane, and in this consciousness is limited within the capacities of the brain. The term Subtle Body covers a variety of astral bodies, respecitvel}^ suitable to the varying con- ditions of the very complicated region indicated by the name psychic plane. On the devachanic plane there are two well-defined levels, the Form Level and the Formless Level; on the lower, consciousness uses an artificial body, the Mayavi Rupa, but the term Mind Body seems suitable as indicating that the mat- ter of which it is composed belongs to the plane of Manas. On the formless level the Causal Body must be used. Of the Buddhic plane it is needless to speak.
* See, for these, Manual I.
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10
denser than that of the one above it. This is accord- ing to the analogy of Nature, for evolution in its downward course is from rare to dense, from subtle to gross. Further, vast hierarchies of beings inhabit these planes, ranging from the lofty Intelligences of the spiritual region to the lowest sub-conscious Ele- mentals of the physical world. On every plane Spirit and matter are conjoined in every particle — every particle having Matter as its body. Spirit as its life— and all independent aggregations of particles, all separated forms of every kind, of every type, are ensouled by these living beings, varying in their grade according to the grade of the form. No form exists which is not .thus ensouled, but the informing entity may be the loftiest Intelligence, the lowest Ele- mental, or any of the countless hosts that, range be- tween. The entities with which we shall presently be concerned are chiefly those of the psychic plane, for these give to man his body of desire (Kama Rupa) — his body of sensation, as it is often called — are indeed built into its astral matrix and vivify his astral senses. They are, to use the technical name, the Form Elementals (Rupa Devatas) of the animal world, and are the agents of the changes which transmute vibrations into sensations.
The most salient characteristic of the kamic Ele- mentals is sensation, the power of not only answer- ing to vibrations but of feeling them ; and the psychic plane is crowded with these entities, of varying de- grees of consciousness, who receive impacts of every
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kind and combine them into sensations.. Any being who possesses, then, a body into which these Elemen- tals are bnilt, is capable of feeling, and the man feels through such a body. A man is not conscious in the particles of his body or even in its cells ; they have a consciousness of their own, and by this carry on the various processes of his vegetative life; but the man whose body they form does not share their conscious- ness, does not consciously help or hinder them as they select, assimilate, secrete, build up, and could not at any moment so put his consciousness into rap- port with the consciousness of a cell in his heart as to say exactly what it was doing. His consciousness functions normally on the psychic plane ; and even in the higher psychic regions, where mind is working, it is mind intermingled with Kama, pure mind not functioning on this astral plane.
The astral plane is thronged with Elementals simi- lar to those which enter into the desire-body of man, and which also form the simpler desire-body of the lower animal. By this department of his nature man comes into immediate relations with these Elementals, and by them he forms links with all the objects around him that are either attractive or repulsive to him, he influences these countless beings, which sensitively respond to all the thrills of feeling that he sends out in every direction. His own desire-body acts as the apparatus, and just as it combines the vibrations that come from without into feelings, so does it dissociate the feelings that arise within into vibrations.
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The Generation of Thought-Forms.
We are now in a position to more clearly under- stand the Master's words. The mind, working in its own region, in the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, generates images, thought-forms. Imagination has very accurately been called the creative faculty of the mind, and it is so in a more literal sense than many may suppose who use the phrase. This image- making capacity is the characteristic power of the mind, and a word is only a clumsy attempt to par- tially represent a mental picture. An idea, a mental image, is a complicated thing, and needs perhaps a whole sentence to describe it accurately, so a salient incident in it is seized, and the word naming this inci- dent imperfectly represents the whole; we say 'tri- angle," and the word calls up in the hearer's mind a picture, which would need a long description if fully conveyed in words; we do our best thinking in sym- bols, and then laboriously and imperfectly summarize our symbols into words. In regions where mind speaks to mind there is perfect expression, far be- yond anything words may convey; even in thought- transference of a limited kind it is not words that are sent, but ideas. A speaker puts into words such part of his mental pictures as he can, and these words call up in the hearer's mind pictures corresponding to those in the mind of the speaker ; the mind deals with the pictures, the images, not with the words, and half
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the controversies and misunderstandings that arise come about because people attach different images to the same words, or use different words to represent the same images.
A thought-form, then, is a mental image, created —or moulded — by the mind out of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, in which, as above said, it works. This form, composed of the rapidly vibrat- ing atoms of the matter of that region, sets up vibra- tions all around it; these vibrations will give rise to sensations of sound and color in any entities adapted to translate them thus, and as the thought-form passes outward — or sinks downward, whichever expression may be preferred to express the transition — into the denser matter of the lower psychic regions, these vi- brations thrill out as a singing-color in every direc- tion, and call to the thought-form whence they pro- ceed the Elementals belonging to that color.
All Elementals, like all things else in the universe, belong to one or other of the seven primary Rays, the seven primeval Sons of Light. The white light breaks forth from the Third Logos, the manifested Divine Mind, in the seven Rays, the ' ' Seven Spirits that are before the Throne," and each of these Rays has its seven sub-rays, and so onwards in sequential sub-divisions. Hence, amid the endless differentia- tions that make up a universe, there are Elementals belonging to the various sub-divisions, and they are communicated with in a color-language, grounded on the color to which they belong. This is why the real
14
knowledge of sounds and colors and numbers — num- ber underlying both sound and color — has ever been so carefully guarded, for the will speaks to the Ele- mentals by these, and knowledge gives power to con- trol.
Master K. H. speaks very plainly on this color lan- guage ; He says :
Hoio could you make yourself understood, command in fact, those semi-intelligent Forces, ivhose means of communicating with us are not through spoken words, hut through sounds and colors, in correlations be- tween the vibrations of the two? For sound, light and color are the main factors in forming those grades of intelligences, these beings of whose very existence you have no conception, nor are you alloived to be- lieve in them — Atheists and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward their respective arguments against such a belief — Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a degrading superstitution*
Students of the past may remember obscure allu- sions now and again made to a language of colors; they may recall the fact that in ancient Egypt sacred manuscripts were written in colors, and that mistakes made in the copying were punished with death. But I must not run down this fascinating by-way. We are only concerned with the fact that Elementals are
* Occult World, p. 100.
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addressed by colors, and that color-words are as intelligible to them as spoken words are to men.
The hue of the singing-color depends on the nature of the motive inspiring the generator of the thought- form. If the motive be pure, loving, beneficent in its character, the color produced will summon to the thought-form an Elemental, which will take on' the characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, and act along the line thus traced; this Elemental enters into the thought-form, playing to it the part of a Soul, and thus an independent entity is made in the astral world, an entity of a beneficent character. If the motive, on the other hand, be impure, revenge- ful, maleficent in its character, the color produced will summon to the thought-form an Elemental which will equally take on the characteristics impressed on the form by the motive and act along the line thus traced ; in this case also the Elemental enters into the thought-form, playing to it the part of a Soul, and thus making an independent entity in the astral world, an entity of a maleficent character. For ex- ample, an angry thought will cause a flash of red, the thought-form vibrating so as to produce red ; that flash of red is a summons to the Elementals and they sweep in the direction of the summoner, and one of them enters into the thought-form, which gives it an independent activity of a destructive, disintegrat- ing type. Men are continually talking in this color- language quite unconsciously, and thus calling round them these swarms of Elementals, who take up their
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abodes in the various thought-forms provided ; thus it is that a man peoples his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions. Angels and demons of our own creating throng round us on every side, makers of weal and woe to others, bringers of weal and woe to ourselves — verily, a karmic host.
Clairvoyants can see flashes of color, constantly changing, in the aura that surrounds every person: each thought, each feeling, thus translating itself in the astral world, visible to the astral sight. Persons somewhat more developed than the ordinary clair- voyant can also see the thought-forms, and can see the effects produced by the flashes of color among the hordes of Elementals.
Activity of Thought-Forms.
The life-period of these ensouled thought-forms de- pends first on their, initial intensity, on the energy bestowed upon them by their human progenitor; and secondly on the nutriment supplied to them after their generation, by the repetition of the thought either by him or by others. Their life may be con- tinually re-inforced by this repetition, and a thought which is brooded over, which forms the subject of re- peated meditation, acquires great stability of form on