This picture shows mother carries her childIt is a strange world in which we live – a world which is governed by the law of karma. A son is born to a father. He feels happy and rejoices. Little does he know that the child has come to settle up old accounts.
A young man his first cousin were in love with each other. After they got married, the girl found that her husband could not provide her with all the luxuries she wanted. She asked for a divorce and claimed from her husband the house in which they lived. Poor man, he had to surrender his house and is today, wandering homeless!
We come into contact with those whom we have karmic debts. We give them what we owe them and receive what they owe us.
Birth is never a matter of accident. Karma determines the family in which I am born. It is commonly believed that if I do evil, I shall be punished for it. The law of Karma, however, is not punitive but reformative. It may appear that the law of karma is punishing us for certain misdeeds we may have committed in a near or remote past. The law of karma never punishes. It puts us in an environment where we may have opportunities for self-growth. The law of karma provides us with experiences meant to help us to grow into better and nobler persons. Therefore, let us accept the situation in which we find ourselves and make most of it by learning the lesson which a particular experience has come to teach us. That is way of spiritual progress.
Karma binds those who identify themselves with their bodies (and the mind).
Karma binds those who are conditioned by time and space. So many of us think: "I was born at such and such time and at such and such place. I am so many feet tall and weigh so many pounds. I am living in a palatial mansion and am prosperous and have great influence over the people." When we think along those lines we create a cage of time and space within our own minds and stay cooped up in it all our life. In reality we are not bound by time and space for it is we who have created time and space: time and space have created us. "Birthless and deathless art thou, O Arjuna!" says the Lord in the Gita. "Weapons cannot cleave thee, fires cannot burn thee, water cannot wet thee, nor winds dry thee away. Thou art immutable, eternal, all-pervading beyond time and space."
Blessed is the person who realises the self: to him there are no problems. He has the freedom which belongs to the children of God. For us – children of time and space – there are seemingly endless problems. Our greatest problem is we ourselves.
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