Cleaning up our Karma

I first remember thinking about the possibility of reincarnation when I was in elementary school and began listening to the Indigo Girls’ song “Galileo” incessantly. The lyrics to this song are very fruitful for beginning to think about reincarnation, especially when one is young, impressionable and unsure about most things in this life and beyond. I was always comfortable with the idea of having had past lives and the possibility of living different lives in the future; it seemed too limiting and fatalistic of a thought-system to pin yourself down to this single episode in history. More and more, I have come to be more certain of this idea. As I continue to learn more about yogic philosophy, from more literary and spiritual sources, I have found so much hope by placing my belief in this system of cause and effect, action and reaction, or karma, if you want to be more definitive.

In Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda explains karmic law:

Death and indeed sleep, “the little death,” are a mortal necessity, freeing the unenlightened human being temporarily from sense trammels. As man’s essential nature is Spirit, he receives in sleep and in death certain revivifying reminders of his incorporeity.

The equilibrating law of karma, as expounded in the Hindu scriptures, is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself. […] An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from resentment against God and man.[1]

Karmic law works much like the law of conservation of energy. Energy can be transformed into varying mediums; however, there is a finite amount of energy in the world. It is how the energy is harnessed and for what purposes it is used that creates new and seemingly different actions or materials. In the same way, our souls – our true Selves – are part of a finite and all-encompassing system in which our actions and reactions determine the bodily forms and experiences we each have in each of our incarnations. The notion that we are each in control of our actions in this birth is very reassuring. While there may be past actions from previous bodily incarnations for which we are facing the effects in this life, we have the agency to clean up our karma so each subsequent incarnation is less affected by the previous one. If you choose to accept this and to live presently and to be very self-aware with a meditation on a higher life force, you have the opportunity to advance each of your future Selves to a more blissful state, enlightening your spirit. We are all interconnected and a part of the vastness that is the universe. Krishna illuminates this idea to Arjuna:

Because you trust me, Arjuna,

I will tell you what wisdom is,

The secret of life: know it

And be free of suffering, forever.

This is the supreme wisdom,

The knowing beyond all knowing,

Experienced directly, in a flash,

Eternal, and a joy to practice.

Those who are without faith

In my teaching, cannot attain me;

They endlessly return to this world,

Shuttling from death to death.

I permeate all the universe

In my unmanifest form.

All beings exist within me,

Yet I am so inconceivably

Vast, so beyond existence,

That though they are brought forth

And sustained by my limitless power,

I am not confined within them.

Just as the all-moving wind,

Wherever it goes, always

Remains in the vastness of space,

All beings remain within me.

They are gathered back into my womb

At the end of the cosmic cycle –

A hundred fifty thousand

Billion of your earthly years –

And as a new cycle begins

I send them forth once again,

Pouring from my abundance

The myriad forms of life.

These actions do not bind me, Arjuna.

I stand apart from them all,

Indifferent to their outcome,

Unattached, serene.

Under my guidance, Nature

Brings forth all beings, all things

Animate or inanimate,

And sets the whole universe in motion.[2]

           

In “Galileo,” Emily Saliers asks: “How long ‘til my soul gets it right? Can any human being reach that kind of light?” These are questions that many of us might often ask ourselves, especially after endeavoring upon a yogic way of living. While these questions are a valid means of critically examining a thought-system, they should not be dwelt upon too much. That energy is better put to use by living well now and not letting questions of the past or the future weigh us down so that we are unable to live presently. If we do as Krishna advises Arjuna to “dive deep into [ourselves],/fearless, one-pointed, know[ing] [Him]/ as the inexhaustible source,”[3] we can have faith in the karmic laws and live by right actions knowing that we are living well and evolving our soul so future incarnations will have less karma born unto each of them. In this way, of sure and steady practice, the hope is there of someday achieving that light of which Emily sings. When we eliminate all of our karma and all of the obstacles we face, we reach the ultimate bliss that is self-realization[4]. For this to occur, we have to act without expectation of results and without attaching meaning to each action. In this way, each of our actions will cease to necessitate a reaction and our subsequent incarnations will be less and less filled with karma with which to be dealt.

We are each on separate paths and no two paths are alike. Thus, we must each take responsibility for our own Selves and make the appropriate life choices that we require at this episode in our spiritual journey through this universe. This is encouraging news because we are offered many births to “get it right”[5] and live better for ourselves and for each other. Rather than thinking that we are each “let[ting] the next life off the hook,”[6] let us each become more aware of who we really are as we journey toward self-realization.

[1] Paramahansa Yogananda. Autobiography of a Yogi, p.289 n. Los Angeles, California: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1998.

[2] Bhagavad Gita. Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 9.1 – 9.10. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.

[3] Ibid., 9.13.

[4] Sutra 4.30 reads: “From that Samadhi all afflictions and karmas cease;” Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.

[5] Lyric from “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls, 1992.

[6] Ibid.

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