Karma and Destiny

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AUM SRI GURUVE NAMAH

Dear Jyotish fellows!

 

I have written this mail to the vedic astrology list a few days ago... I am

mailing it here now.. please give your comments and opinion..

 

 

I am writing someting which i was willing to write for many days but couldn't

get the time to do that. In a mail, I supported the concept of fatalism and

said that I shall write some more things on the same topic. Here I shall write

my understanding of two things:

 

1. How the karmic forces influence us.

 

2. How do the planets interfere in the life of human.

 

Anyone who has read the hindu scriptures or understand the indian philosophy

wouldn't deny the influence of karmic forces in the life of human beings and

the theory of life, death and rebirth; the theory of reincarnation. karma and

all the above mentioned concepts are highly related and interwined.

 

Whatever we do is the karma and also reap the result of the karma. The result

may be got in this birth or the next birth. When we think that why shall we

get the result of this birth in our subsequent birth, we may not get an answer

if we think as a physical body. But if we consider to be spiritual beings and

come to the earth for a brief journey, they we may feel that though the body

has changed, we haven't- we are the same being in differnt body... u may call

the being as the soul.

Irrespective of the body the soul presently have, he has to borne the result

of the past karma.

 

The results are nothing but the situations that arise in our life-good or bad,

the events that happen in our life-good or bad. But then these situations and

events force us to behave in a particular way... that is the karma we are

performing in this birth...which again will cause some situations or events to

happen in the future. If this is the case are we really so much bound by the

unending chain of cause and action...karma and the result, that we cannot get

out from this chain. Is the situation so hopeless? No, it is not.. The

situation is not so much hopeless.... we have free will. But the natural

question arise here is that if we are so much bound by the cycle of cause and

effect, where is the scope of freewill? Though apperently there seems that

there is no scope, there is enough scope for exercise of the free will.. I

will explain it after sometime. But let me say something else before that.

 

Now I shall take up the issue of who is the doer? Are you are the doer of

whatever you are doing? You would find the answer very soon.. Just think, how

many organisms you kill when you respire.. How many ants or other insecrs you

kill when you walk over any place. These figures are innumerable. If you are

asked that who is the killer all these organisms, you would probably say that

it is not you. Because the death of these organisms had come thats why the

went into your mouth when you respired or came below your feet when you

walked. Again think how many people you influence knowingly or un-knowingly in

day which lead them to act in a particular way. Lets take an example here, you

had a fight with some one say RAM and that fellow got so much angry that he

tried to kill someone else say BALRAM. Here if you analyse the charts of all

the persons involved in the process you would find that there is some

indication of the happening. You will feel that it is a mere coincidence that

these things happen that way only. The BALRAM was supposed to be threatened by

the RAM at that moment and RAM was supposed to have a fight with you at that

moment it happened, that is why it happened. You are only a link in the chain

of cause and effect.

 

When a person say PARSURAM has to die, he may get a heart attack, but do you

say that heart attack was the doer of the the death of the person. No,

probably you do not. We would rather say that the heart attact was the cause

of the effect (Heart attack). But if someone else say KASIRAM kills PERSURAM,

why we say that the KASIRAM has killed PERSURAM, why don't we say that KASIRAM

was only a means to the end, or a cause to an effect or an instrument with

which PERSURAM was supposed to be killed. Extrapolating the same concept we

may see that whatever we do have some or other implication whatever may be its

intensity-small or large. We must understand that he implecations had to

happen that is why we were inspired to the action.

 

In all the cases we have means to some end which again becomes the means to

some other end and the chain goes on. In these chain all these means and ends

or the causes and effects are the links. In other words we are not the doer

whatever we do, we are only means or the instruments in the hands of some

invisible force. But the question here is why we do the things the way we do.

Why we don't do it in some other way. Could we have done the things we did in

our past in some other way? I would say because each of the actions done by us

lead to many other actions and ehich would lead to many other and if analyse

the horoscopes of all these situations we would see that there are indications

of their happenning the way they have happend, it is very unlikely that the

actions performed could have been performed in some other way. Again as answer

to the question why we acted in a particular way in a given situation, who

inspired us to behave in that way, I would say that it is the PRAKRITI and THE

GUNA of the person, who inspired him to act in a particular way. We act in a

prticular way in a given situation, because we get the urge to act that way.

And this urge is controlled by the PRAKRITI and GUNA we have.

 

If we introspect on the teachings of GITA we will find the same essence that

we are not the doers, we are only an instrument in the hands of someone else

(KRISHNA/ BRAHMAN/ SUPREME CONSCIOUSNESS). When we are not the doers, why do

we expect the result of the actions performed by us. Lets take an analogy to

understand this. Lets say you have invented a robot which works for you. You

programmed(PRAKRITI/GUNA) the robot to kill some one or help someone. If the

robot kills or helps someone, do you condemn or praise the robot for those

actions. Probably not. You, who have programmed the robot should be

accountable for or held responsible for whatever the result. So when we are

not the doers, we should not expect the result of the actions we have

performed rather we shall surrender ourselves to the supreme and accept

whatever he does with us.

 

Now I shall take up the topic of free will. Before that we shall know that the

human birth has some importance attached to it. It is not a mere accident.

This is a vehicle with which we can attain the BRAHMAN or self realization.

This the birth which accumulates karma (good or bad). Because we don't have

any control of the situations or the events or the actions we are doing, what

matter is the attitude with which we are doing the same job. Different

attitude towards the same action can accumulate different types of Karma. Here

comes the importance of FREE WILL. How we are performing the karma and not

what we are performing. If a person does a particular action with the feeling

that he is doer of the karma, then the result-negetive or positive will be

accumulated in his repertoire of karma and may lead to bad or good situation

in subsequent or even the same birth. But even the good or properous condition

as a result of a good karma is not that good as it attach the soul to the

material world. But if the same action is done with complete self surrender to

the BRAHMAN, then whatever the result may be good or bad won't be having any

effect on his karma repertoire rather he will exhaust some of his past

accumulated karma in the process, and in a way break some links of the chain

binding him to this material world and move towards attainment of

self-realization. Thus we can exert our freewill in having an attitude which

take us towards self-realization, i.e., the attitude of self-surrender to the

spureme and have unbroken faith in his actions. If we have the same attitude

in all of our actions we would see that our ego is vanishing and we are

reaching towards supreme/infinite consciousness from individual/ finite

consciousness.

 

Thus though we seemed to be bound by the law of time-space and causation or

though the destini seems to be fatalistic, we can get out of this unending

cycle by exerting our free will in surrendering ourselves to the almighty.

 

Lets see how with self-less or surrendered action we can reach near the

almighty. Here we see what the prakriti of a person is? It is accumulation of

attitudes. If we behave in a particular way in a given type of situation

similarly again and again repeatedly , it becomes our inherent nature (this is

the prakriti) and we would spontaniously behave the same way in future given

similar situation. Thus with exertion of free our nature of self surrender

would become more and more stronger and more and more we reach near the goal

of self realisation.

 

 

 

 

Now let me take the issue of planetary movements and human destiny. Here I

have some different viewpoints. If we presume that everything is goverened by

some law and nothing is haphazard or accident, then everything can be

predicted. We can predict the motion of earth around the sun very precisely

because it is a regular motion and guided by some celestial law. Had it been

haphazard, we couldn't have predicted that. Take anything in the universe from

the smallest atom to the galaxies, everything is guided by some law and hence

have some pattern in their behaviour. If we understand the underlying pattern

in their behaviour we can predict how they would behave in future. Deciphering

the underlying pattern is the most difficult this. There is caos nowhere....

everywhere there is a very regular patterened behaviour we fail to decipher

and we see caos. Lets take an example to see this. Lets try to find the

pattern the given series of number.

 

1,2,4,2,3,9,3,5,25,4,7,49,5,11,121,6,13,169,7

 

here if we are asked to predict the next number, we may feel apparently that

there is no pattern but a jumble of number instead. But if we try to analyse

deeply , we would find that this a interweaving of three different series.

 

1,2,3,4,5,6,7

2,3,5,7,11,13 (prime numbers)

4,9,25,49,121,169 (squares of the prime numbers)

 

now that we have deciphered the pattern in the series, we can predict the next

number in the series. Even in case we don't find any pattern after any number

of try, that would mean that we haven't explored the total possible

environment of the system. For example if we have series like

 

1278838923484981

here we may not find any pattern but if more data is taken we would find that

there is a repeatition of the following set of numbers in the total system,

and that is the pattern.

 

12788389234849811278838923484981

 

AND because nothing in this universe is unconnected with each other, there is

a pattern of relation within so called apparently unconnected systems. Though

it seem that solar system, the universe and the earth and the life in earth

are unconnected system, they are the part of a bigger system. So if the

pattern of connection or the relation between these apparent unconnected

system is deciphered, the future can be predicted taking cues from any part of

the whole system.

 

Maharihis have tried to decipher how the planets and the stars in the sky

during the birth of a person is connected to the destiny of that person. Thus

they have found out the pattern of such connections and that is jyotisha. Thus

the configuration of planet during the birth time can only indicate but not

influence the destiny of the person. This is somewhat similar to statistical

analysis of trend over a period of time. The coorelation between the celestial

even and the occurance of a particular incidence in a persons life has been

found out and wherever they are found to be strongly coorelated, those

predicters are retained. But coorelation by itself doesn't show any causal

relationship. This is why we can predict the destiny from palm of our hands.

That doesn't show that the lines in our palms cause somethings in our life,

but only show that there is a high correlation between the lines and the

events occuring in the life. This can be done with any such thing which is

seemingly unrelated to us... but in this case deciphering the pattern will be

very difficult or near to impossible. Because the law operating everywhere is

the same everywhere, the properties present in the macrocosm is also present

in the microcosm. Thus those this which can be predicted with the help of

planets and stars in the sky, can also be predicted with the help of palm or

for that matter the little finger or thumb alone. For that matter we can go

much smaller level to the genetic composition of the person. Everything would

yeild the same result.

 

 

Now I shall end with a statement which may stimulate some thinking... " If we

are guided by our own karma, prakriti and Guna, why are we allowing the

planets to interfere with our destiny and influence us " Why we bring planets

in the picture to govern us, whereas in reality it is not so. " PLANET CAN ONLY

INDICATE BUT NOT INFLUENCE OUR DESTINY "

 

Please feel free to ask any question...

 

Pranaam

Sarajit

 

 

Note:Sarat!! Can you include this mail in the coming Jyotish News... Please

write back... Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

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