Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

VI

Fate and Karma and a Sadhaka's Duty

We have advised our readers at the end of the preceding chapter that a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not torment himself with the apprehending imaginary thought that some of his unknown "prarabdha karmas" may be all the time hiding behind the veil and pounce upon him at any moment to bedevil his life. No, he should know that whatever the heritage from his past, it is possible to wipe that out without any residue left behind; there is no "karma-seed" which cannot be prevented from germinating. The chain of Karma is not unbreakable; it is not that only actual experiences can exhaust the effect of a karma or action done in the past.

Fate and Karma can be completely neutralised and this can be done by three different means:

(i)by the application of personal tapasya and effort;

(ii)through the mediation of divine Grace; and

(iii)by the agency of yogic power.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have both discussed in their writings all these three means in great detail. Because of dearth of space we cannot but succinctly give their gist here.

(i) Let us first discuss the factor of personal effort and tapasya. It is true that it has been asserted with force that "niyati kena bādhyate", "Who can frustrate the action of Fate?" But the wise men of the past have also affirmed at the same time that "niyatirapi puruṣena jīyate", "Even Fate can be conquered by personal tapasya". The sage Vasistha has unambiguously stated in his Vedantic treatise, Yoga-vashishtha:

Aihikaṁ prakṛtaṁ vāpi

Karma yad sañcitaṁ sphurat;

Puruso 'sau paw yatno

Na kadācana niṣphalaḥ —

meaning thereby: "Puruṣakāra or personal tapasya never fails to

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annul a karma done in the present life or in the past,"

Here are two short but pregnant messages of Sri Aurobindo concerning this issue:

"Because God has willed and foreseen everything, thou shouldst not therefore sit inactive and wait upon His providence, for thy action is one of His chief effective forces. Up then and be doing..." (Thoughts and Aphorisms, 1992 ed., p. 21)

"... man is mightier than his sensations or vitality or the sensational or vital forces of the universe. Our fate and our temperament have been built by our own wills and our own wills can alter them." (SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 258)

(ii) Let us now come to the procedure of the annulment of Karmas through the intervention of divine Grace.

If the sadhaka becomes truly pure, washes himself clean with the tears of genuine repentance, and ardently prays to the power of Grace of the Divine, it will surely be found that the action of that Grace will either scorch out all his past karmas to ineffectivity or will so arrange the circumstances of his life that these very karmas will produce great good for the sadhaka's spiritual progress.

But the Mother has warned us at the same time that the aspirant should not nurture a false hope which may be formulated in this way:

"Let me repent a little for my past misdeeds and address my prayer to the Divine: this will surely neutralise the bad consequences of my actions. I can then indulge in a new misdeed in a great sense of security; for, why fear? I shall repent again and pray. And so on and so forth."

No, this sort of indulgent attitude will not do: nobody can deceive the Divine. For, this is not repentance at all. The Divine will accept that the sadhaka is truly repentant, only when, along with repentance and prayer, he tries his best to eradicate the bad impulse which prompted his bad action. He must not continue to entertain even the slightest fascination for the weakness which was at the base of his former misdeed. As the Mother has reminded us:

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"The truth is that when you ask forgiveness you hope that the dire consequences of what you have done will be wiped away. But that is possible only if the causes of the error you have committed have themselves disappeared. If you have made a mistake through ignorance, the ignorance must disappear. If you have made a mistake through bad will, the bad will must disappear and be replaced by goodwill. Mere regret will not do, it must be accompanied by a step forward." (CWM, Vol. 10, p. 47)

The Mother adds: "Therefore it is not a vague and abstract forgiveness that one should ask of the Divine, but... to make the necessary progress. For only an inner transformation can wipe out the consequences of the act." (Ibid.)

And if the aspirant is sincerely ready to fulfil this condition, he can rest assured that there is no karma done by him in the past which cannot be wiped away by the action of the Grace. Here are the words of assurance from the Mother:

"... each thing... always produces an effect and... this effect produces still another and that other produces yet another and so on... indefinitely....

"An act carried out has always a consequence and this consequence brings along another and so on. And this is absolutely ineluctable.... And you cannot escape it except through the intervention of Grace. Grace is exactly something which has the power of changing all that. But only the Grace can change it. It [universal justice] is so strict a law and so terrible that once one has entered within it, one cannot get out.... Do you understand?... Unless the Grace intervenes. And as the Grace is omnipotent, it can change everything.... But without the Grace there is no hope." (CWM, Vol. 5, pp. 362-63)

"... the Divine Grace completely contradicts Karma; you know, It makes it melt away like butter that's put in the sun." (Ibid., pp. 91-92)

(iii) Now comes the third means of neutralising the fruits of

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karmas. This relates to the effective application of Yoga-Shakti (Yogic Power). But before we can hope to understand the true rationale of this action, we must make some basic ideas clear to our mind.

The very first thing we have to know is that the level of mental consciousness in which the general run of humanity is at present living, is not the only or the highest level possible to consciousness. There are many ranges of consciousness above the human level, one after another, in an ascending scale, till one reaches the paramam dhāma, the supreme abode of the Divine.

Now, through the successful practice of yogic sadhana, it may become possible for any individual person to ascend to these higher levels of consciousness, dwell there and even act from there.

Now, one of the principal characteristics of these supernal ranges of consciousness is that the more a sadhaka reaches a higher level, the more freedom of action he acquires, and the more liberated he becomes from the knots of Karma.

A second important point to note is that if an aspirant sadhaka manages to climb to a higher level of consciousness and become able to make its characteristic law of action descend below and be operative in the field of the functioning of our normal lower level, the whole arrangement changes, and the "karma-phala" already having the lower outer existence of the doer in its iron-grip changes its character for the better or vanishes altogether. Let us listen to the Mother giving her views in the matter:

"Freedom and fatality, liberty and determinism are truths that obtain on different levels of consciousness. It is ignorance that makes the mind put the two on the same level and pit one against the other....

"In the plane of matter and on the level of the ordinary consciousness you are bound hand and foot. A slave to the mechanism of Nature, you are tied to the chain of Karma, and there, in that chain, whatever happens is rigorously the consequence of what has been done before. There is an illusion of independent movement, but in fact... you revolve helplessly on the crushing wheel of her [Nature's] cosmic machine.

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"But it need not be so. You can shift your place if you will; Instead of being below, crushed in the machinery or moved like a puppet, you can rise and look from above and by changing your consciousness you can even get hold of some handle to move apparently inevitable circumstances and change fixed conditions." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 29-30)

And the Mother significantly concludes: "This precisely is the aim of Yoga, - to get out of the cycle of Karma into a divine movement." (Ibid., p. 30)

Sri Aurobindo too is quite explicit in stating that the bond of Karma can be easily loosened, if one practises the life of sadhana in all seriousness. He says: "Neither Karma nor Astrology... points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate." (Letters on Yoga, p. 468) He further adds: "Here too [in the case of the 'utkat prarabdha karmas'] the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma." (Ibid.)

It is thus manifestly clear that the chain of Karma can be disrupted, its so-claimed ineluctable consequences be annulled, either through the automatic result of the dawning of spiritual self-knowledge (ātmajñāna) or by the invocation of the divine Grace or by taking recourse to yogic powers. But a point of curiosity may tickle our rational intelligence: "What happens to a realised soul after all his karmas have been exhausted or made infructuous?"

The traditional Karmavadi's answer is direct and simple: The body of the Jivanmukta drops off in time like a withered leaf of a tree and he attains to what is called "videha-mukti", the status of "disembodied liberation", which then endures for eternity. The Videhamukta will never again assume a new physical body and come upon earth to lead another round of worldly existence. For him will cease the intractable "cycle of rebirths", "janma-cakra-nivṛtti". And that is supposed to be the ultimate spiritual goal placed before all sadhakas.

And this is so because the traditionalists affirm that man's physical life upon earth cannot but constitute an uninterrupted series of karmas and each karma represents a new fetter for the soul tying

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it to Ignorance (avidyā) and to the painful wheel of rebirth. Therefore, while still in life, the only principle of sadhana the spiritual aspirant has to assiduously follow is to renounce all actions, karmasannyāsa, and thus to terminate the round of earthly existence and depart and merge in the static Silence of the spaceless and timeless Transcendence.

Well, that may be the view and attitude of the traditional yogis, but the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga has another Vision and another Goal in view. He does not fear or shun rebirth; for he knows that the earthly life is not meant solely for the exhaustion of karmas through the "bhoga", the "undergoing", of rewards and punishments for one's past deeds. Human life has a greater and sublimer purpose behind it. But what is this purpose? That purpose is for each soul:

(i)to reach the perfection of Sachchidananda through the progressive development of his consciousness;

(ii)to establish divine life upon earth itself in a human body if possible, through the integral transformation of the triple instruments of mind and life and body;

(iii)to be a willing and effective participant in the divine action of achieving collective liberation and perfection on the earthly plane.

Now, as there is no end to the self-manifestation of the Divine in the earthly field, nāsti anto vistarasya me, we shall not seek to draw a "finis" to our repeated rebirths upon earth in physical bodies. We shall rather willingly and joyously welcome this phenomenon of rebirth, punarjanma; for Sri Aurobindo has told us:

"The will of man is the agent of the Eternal for the unveiling of his secret meaning in the material creation.... This is his [man's] dignity and his greatness and he needs no other to justify and give a perfect value to his birth and his acts and his passing and his return to birth, a return which must be - and what is there in it to grieve at or shun? - until the work of the Eternal in him is perfected..." (The Problem of Rebirth, pp. 91-92)

This is so far as the Purnayoga-sadhaka's attitude towards

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re-birth is concerned. But still a lurking sense of unease and fear may remain there underneath to trouble the mind and heart of the aspirant. For the sadhaka may reasonably argue: "A new life upon earth cannot but be a new series of 'sañciyamāna karmas leading to all their adverse fruits. How to avoid the consequences of these karmas if we have to live a new life upon earth?" The answer is:

No karma as karma is a bondage. It becomes a source of bondage when it becomes polluted with the sense of ego and desire, ahantā and vāsanā. The sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should try to do all his actions non-egoistically and in an attitude of "utkrānta-vāsanā", "free from all desires for fruit". The sole motive-force behind all his activity should be to serve the Divine in conformity with His Will alone. In that case, no action will be able to stain him nor will it lead to his being tied down to the chain of Karma, na karma lipyate nare.

So one need not be scared on that account and seek to terminate the ever-unfolding self-manifestation of the soul in time and space and escape into the peace of Static Brahman. Sri Aurobindo has expressed in the following words the right attitude of the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga:

"... who shall persuade me that my infinity can only be an eternal full stop, an endless repose, an infinite cessation? Much rather should infinity be eternally capable of an infinite self-expression." (The Problem of Rebirth, p. 95)

It is time to close this chapter on Fate, Karma and the Sadhaka of the Integral Yoga. But before that we would like to address a few words of recommendation to the sadhakas of Sri Aurobindo's Path.

Whatever may be the ideas and beliefs of others concerning the so-called puṇya-karma and pāpa-karma, merits and demerits of one's deeds, these should not unduly bother the sadhaka. He should know that from the point of view of the Integral Yoga a "good" deed is one which helps him to advance on the path of his spiritual progression, and an "evil" deed is one which either retards his progress or makes him stagnate on the Path or even

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reverses the gear and pushes him on a retrograde movement. There is no other definition for him for a "virtuous" or a "sinful" deed. And, from the deeper point of view a particular action of the sadhaka will be adjudged to be a "merit" or a "demerit", depending on whether it is done in conformity with the divine Will at that moment or not.

But a question may immediately arise in the sadhaka's mind which requires some satisfactory answer. For, the aspirant may reasonably argue that he is still a novice on the Path, not by any means a Siddha-yogi. So, how can one expect that he will be able to discern at every step of his daily life which of his actions is in conformity with the Divine's Will and which ones not? Thus the practical difficulty remains for him in all its seriousness; for, has not the Gita warned: "Gahanā karmano gatiḥ"? - "Inscrutable are the ways of Karma"?

But let us hasten to add that the problem is not so serious as it seems to be at the first glance. For, what the sadhaka is expected to do - and that he has to do always without fail - is to maintain at every moment of his life, under all situations and circumstances, the really right attitude behoving a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga. And if he can do that, he will find to his happy surprise that the Divine Providence itself will arrange at every moment all that is really good and beneficial to the growth of his inner consciousness. And that is what is most important in life, not the acquisition of outer prosperity and happiness, or the avoidance of what is ordinarily considered as failures and sufferings. For, the object of all his deeds should be the union with the Divine and the establishment of a secure spiritual consciousness in himself. He will never seek any "punya" or "merit" for the sake of obtaining any earthly or heavenly reward; nor will he deliberately refrain from doing any "papa" or act of "demerit" simply to avoid punishment here or beyond death: these are of no concern to him. The only consideration behind his choice of any action is whether this action is what is expected of him as a sincere and fully dedicated sadhaka. The only fruit he will always yearn after and which he will surely be privileged to have is constant advancement on the path of the Divine. In Sri Aurobindo's words:

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"There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., Vol. 25, p. 16)

To sum up: A sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not bother about Fate or Niyati or Karma; he should always stay on the path of the Divine and, having completely surrendered himself to the Divine Mother, fearlessly move forward into the bosom of the still unknown future with the confidence of someone who knows that the divine Mahashakti is always with him with her protecting arms guarding him in all situations. And there is no agency either in the visible world or in the invisible ones who or which can do him any harm.

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