KARMA

by The Mother

Talk on 22 November 1958

This sort of fatality that one sometimes feels weighing heavy on one's life, which is called Karma in India, is the result of past lives; indeed, it is something that has to be exhausted, something that weighs on one's consciousness.

This is how things happen: the psychic being passes from one life to another, each life on earth being the occasion and means for a further progress, for a further growth.
But it can happen that the psychic takes birth with the intention of going through a certain experience, of learning a certain thing, of developing a certain faculty through a definite experience. Then, in that life, in the life in which that experience has to be gone through, for one reason or another - there may be several - the soul does not fall exactly on the spot where it should: a displacement of some kind can occur, a set of contrary circumstances - it can happen - and in that case the incarnation miscarries totally and the soul goes away to wait for a better occasion.
But in other cases, the soul simply does not find it possible to do exactly what it wants and finds itself dragged into untoward circumstances - untoward not merely from the objective point of view, but untoward for its own growth. And that makes it necessary to begin the experience again, often under much more difficult conditions.

And if - anything can happen, you see - if this second attempt is also a failure, if conditions make it impossible once again for what the psychic wants to do, if, for example, it is in a body with an inadequate will or a deformation in the thought or too tough an egoism and the attempt ends in suicide, then it is something frightful. I have seen it many times; it creates a dreadful Karma which may repeat itself life after life before the soul becomes capable of conquering and doing what it wants to do. And each time the conditions become more and more difficult, each time a considerably greater effort is demanded.
It has sometimes been said that one cannot get out of it.
Indeed, the subconscious memory of the past creates a sort of irresistible desire to avoid the difficulty and one begins again the same stupidity or an even greater stupidity, and to the difficulty already so great is added yet another.
Also, there are moments - moments or circumstances - when nobody is there to help you, to instruct you, to guide you. You are all alone, not knowing what to hang on to. The situation then becomes so terrible, the circumstances are so abominable.

But if only once the soul has made an appeal, if once it has made contact with the Grace, then in the following life, one immediately finds oneself in conditions where everything can be swept away at one stroke. At that moment you need to have a great courage, a great endurance, though at times a true love is sufficient. And if there is faith - a little, a very very little is enough - then everything is swept away.
But in most cases what you need is a great stoic courage, a capacity to endure and to hold out: the resistance, especially in the case of a previous suicide, resistance to the temptation to again begin this foolishness - because it makes a terrible formation. There is also this habit of not looking the difficulty straight in the face, which is translated by taking flight. When suffering comes, fly, fly, instead of absorbing the difficulty, instead of holding tight, that is to say, not stirring within, not yielding, yes, above all, not yielding when you feel within: "I cannot bear it any longer." Hold your head as quiet as possible, do not follow the movement, do not obey the vibration.

That is what is needed, just that: faith in the Grace, perception of the Grace, or else, intensity of call, or better still, the response, the response, the knot opening, breaking, the response to this wonderful love of the Grace.

It is difficult without a strong will, and above all, above all, the capacity to resist the temptation which has been the fatal temptation through all the lives because of its accumulated power. Each defeat gives fresh force to it. A small victory can dissolve it.
The most terrible thing is when you do not have the strength, the courage, something indomitable. How often they come and tell me: "I want to die, I want to run away, I want to die." They get the answer: "Well, then, die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage to die to your egoism."

But because it is a Karma, you have to do something yourself. Karma is a construction of the ego; the ego must do something, everything cannot be done for it. The truth is: Karma is the result of the actions of the ego, and it is only when the ego abdicates that Karma is dissolved. You can aid the ego, you can assist it, you can give it force and infuse it with courage, but it must use them.

There is such a gulf between what we truly are and what we are at present that it turns your head giddy at times. You must not yield to the giddiness. Do not move. Be still like a stone until the thing passes away.

Generally, when the time has come for a Karma to be conquered and absorbed by the Grace, there also comes the image or the knowledge or the experience of the exact facts that are the cause of the Karma, and then at that moment you can start the cleaning.
But it is just at the most painful point, there where the suggestions are the strongest, that you must bear the blow. Otherwise you will always have to start over again.

One day a moment comes when the thing has to be done, when one must make the true inner gesture that liberates. To tell the truth, just now there is upon earth an opportunity which presents itself only after thousands of years, a conscious help with the necessary power. It was once believed that nothing had the power to wipe away the consequences of a Karma, that it was only by exhausting it through a series of purificatory acts that the consequences could be transformed, exhausted, effaced.
But with the supramental power, this can be done without the need of going through all the steps of the process of liberation.

The Mother

in CMW vol. 15, Part 2 " Conversations" pages 391-394
published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA