My old teacher's new book - on KARMA

[Hermes]

I am delighted to introduce this to you and I will post some material for discussion. He is almost 80 but still very active.

His book (Everything is Karma!) is available on smash-words hence on a bunch of platforms as an eBook.

Before I even post a link I will post some interesting excepts - I have no fiscal interest if anyone buys it or not....

The Inner Workings of Karma
To go into karma just a little bit deeper: all the thoughts, actions and emotional desires and
cravings we have in life create magnetic vibrations in our aura which affect a bank of psychic
mechanisms in our consciousness which are called “Skandhas” in the Ancient Wisdom.
The Skandhas (it’s a Sanskrit word) are groups of qualities which make up both the
subjective and objective personality of a person. There are five groups of Skandhas in our
psychic make-up: 1) Form (Body), 2) Sensations, 3) Consciousness, 4) Motives (Karma), and 5)
Knowledge. These Skandhas are constantly—every second of our lives—changing and
rearranging themselves according to our every thought and action. It’s our own inner computer.
Thus our consciousness improves or degenerates by means of these Skandhas according to the
quality of the vibrations we generate. These Skandhas put together what is our “Karmic life disk”
—the one which goes into the Cosmic Mainframe and, after being processed, is reformatted for
the next life. Thus it is our Skandhas which stay with us from lifetime to lifetime; organizing and
determining our spiritual progress towards perfection through everything we think and do. This
is the most profound of the operating procedures of the Law of Karma, vividly pointing out that
there is a karmic link not only between planes of the visible and invisible worlds but also
between our human and psychic bodies as well as our present and past lives. As Marcus Aurelius
observed, “That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before.”
The work of the Skandhas comprises the very foundation of our spiritual growth. This is
what is behind the fact that we never reincarnate as the same personality we were in our previous
life. We may have some of the same karmic traits, especially mental ones, but we are never the
same person. All physical and mental life in the Universe is in constant progressive motion and it
is reflected in our new appearance and new purpose in our new life. All of this is controlled by
our Skandhas. Thus, our new personality will be the sum and substance of the latest combination
of our Skandhas at the end of our previous life and carried over to our new re-birth. And each
succeeding incarnating personality will be correspondingly different.

 

[Hermes]

Neither will we ever reincarnate as animals, as some people love to speculate. The stream of
life flows ever onward, forward and upward and never regresses. We have all been through the
mineral, vegetable and animal phases of evolution before we ever reached the human stage on
earth and we can be sure that karma is always ongoing, never acting in reverse, i.e., by sending
us back to a previous stage of evolution. We should remember this when we come across human
beings who act like animals--and there are many. Chances are that they are actually only one or
two lifetimes removed from the animal kingdom and they have a lot yet to learn. When we see
such people and are disgusted by their manner, it doesn’t hurt to remember that we were once at
that stage, too. So be kind to them rather than resentful. It will help their karma and yours, too.

The “Desire” Factor in Karma

The biggest determining factor of any new personality being born into any new lifetime will
be the last desire of the previous personality at the moment of death. You might do well to read
that again because it is a very weighty concept. This last Karmic impulse, more than anything
else, influences and gives an overall direction to how our Skandhas will re-form for the next life.
The most interesting thing about this very sacred moment is that it cannot be controlled
intellectually. It is an entirely involuntary karmic action which is solely a product of one’s
accumulated karma up to that point.
In other words, if one’s most overwhelming desire at the moment of death is a desire for the
reality of God as a Divine Principle, that will be reflected in that person’s karma in the next life.
If one’s biggest desire is for the illusions of earthly life, that will also be reflected in the next life
and will undoubtedly keep the person trapped in his own karmic revolving door. This last desire
can’t be faked or consciously controlled. It is purely a product of, or lack of, one’s spiritual
accumulations.
Probably the most important thing about karma is that its purpose is not so much to punish
as it is to teach. That’s why there is a special “plug-in” program in the Karmic Cosmic
Mainframe which assures us that regardless of a very heavy load of negative karma, we will
never get in our next life—or any new life for that matter—more than we are able to handle.
That’s because nothing can be learned if one is so overloaded with negative karma that he can’t
function. Knowing this, we can deduce that there is always a way out of even our most desperate
situations and, karmically, we are obliged to find it. Thus we learn to grow.
My guru, Ralph Houston, used to ask his disciples “what would you do if you were in a
circular room with 13 doors spaced evenly around the wall and all were locked?” We strained
our minds to come up with some answer, usually anything from busting down a door to climbing
the walls. After we had exhausted the possibilities, he gave us the answer: “You would keep
going around and trying each door again and again because one of them, sooner or later, is going
to open!”