Reversing Karma

People wonder why they were born in a certain family, why they became members of a particular group or organization, why they were born in a certain nation. They wonder why they feel that they stand alone no matter where they are and do not feel any affiliation with anybody, any group, any nation.

Two kinds of karma bring people together:
1. Karma which is built by harmful actions toward each other
2. Karma which is built through service and cooperation
Groups can be the result of these two kinds of karma.

Harmful action can be divided into many parts:
1. Physical harm
2. Emotional harm
3. Mental harm
4. Actions that prevent the spiritual progress of others
These kinds of activities pull people together to work out their karma — to pay or receive the bills or checks for their past deeds.

Karma as a result of service or cooperative action for good can also be divided into categories:
1. Service related to the physical plane
2. Service related to the emotional field
3. Service related to the spiritual needs of people
4. Cooperative work to enlighten, to protect, to lead people
Such actions create a very powerful personality or spiritual ties between people, and life after life it brings them together in group formation to render greater service for humanity and the Divine Plan.

Another factor which brings people together is devotion directed to the same Teacher or to the same Teaching. This creates very strong ties between people, and for centuries and many incarnations this tie continues with advancing mutual benefit. For example, those who are in Ashrams for a long time followed the same Teacher, the same principles, or the same Teaching.

Karma formed by hatred, crime, and harmful actions brings many parties together. Usually people do to others as others did to them. We can see this in families, groups, and nations. Wars and conflicts among nations originate from past causes. And sometimes on battlefields the cause is dissolved if the nations are led by Sages to reverse the karma.

The reversing of karma is a very interesting fact. Christ gave the clue to this when He said, “Pray for those who do harm to you.” Buddha said something similar: “Hatred cannot be dissolved by hatred, but hatred can be dissolved by love.” These can work in group, family, and individual cases too. Because of the wisdom gained from the Teaching, people do not exercise “an eye for an eye” method but use love, understanding, and power so as not to allow the formation of similar karma.

Karma created by service and cooperation creates those groups who are born together, life after life, in order to bring enlightenment and beauty to humanity all over the world.

Often they act in groups in one location. Sometimes they are scattered all over the world as individuals and groups. In the seven fields of human endeavor you see the result of their united cooperative labor. It is such individuals and groups that lead humanity from chaos to beauty.

As people advance in service and cooperation, they go closer to the source of their light, their Ashrams. Gradually, because of their service and cooperation, they build a karma that leads them directly into Ashrams and into the ashramic activities. It is at this stage that they turn into sources of inspiration and impressions for those who are engaged in building karma through service and cooperation.

The greatest victory of our life is to be a part of a group that serves the highest good of all humanity.

Karma not only creates positive or negative groupings but also creates those conditions in which certain people feel aloof, detached, indifferent, within or outside of any group. The Teaching says that these people lived in the past only for themselves without trying to help or harm others, and karma gave them what they wanted.

Does such a condition continue indefinitely? The Teaching says that it can, and it cannot. It can if the individual continuously isolates himself and forms a tumor in the body of humanity. On judgment day he is operated on and thrown into the forces of chaos. It cannot because the pain and the pressure of aloneness reach such a degree that he eventually relates himself to people through harmful actions or through cooperation.

The same law works in astral and mental worlds. People are divided into these three camps. In the higher mental world all groups are engaged in cooperative work. In the lower mental plane there are divisions because parties do not yet see the causes of their differences.

In the higher astral plane there are groups for pleasures, ecstasy, and love. In the lower astral planes there are oppositions.

Lonely people often are seen in etheric planes. Aloofness creates an energy field around them which repels the attraction of higher realms. Their ego and vanity build a wall around them,and this wall becomes the cause of their future suffering and their breakthrough.

Usually these lonely people who make a breakthrough go directly to higher levels of the mental plane if they accumulated much knowledge and wisdom to be used for the common good of humanity.

People think that karma can be changed only if the bill is paid. This sounds right, but the payment of a bill can take many forms. For example, you killed me in one of my lives. We meet again in another life to get even — which means I have an innate urge to kill you. But instead, I kill within you the urge, the tendency, to commit crimes. I enlighten you and annihilate your obessession or possession — thus gaining great merit.

There is no higher action than the action that reverses karma. That is why Christ said, “Love your enemies.” But these words are mistranslated. To have an enemy means to reverse the karma by enlightening your enemy, by cultivating in him greater virtues, and eventually bringing his consciousness to the level where he will pay his own karma by heroic sacrifices for you to fulfill the Law of Righteousness. The greatest friendship is built between people who reversed their karma. Their friendship will never end.

Do good for others that do evil to you. All progress and merit are gained by our actions, on all levels, by our good karma. All our suffering and pain, failures and defeats came upon us as the result of our past bad karma.

One day in a study group our Teacher addressed the students, “All your knowledge, information, positions, possessions, and your certificates will not benefit you if you do not have the power of discrimination between what is good for your future and what is bad for your future. It is this distinction that will enable you to be aware and alert every minute of your life to choose the path of the good: — the good for you — the good for others — the good for all sentient beings “It is this discrimination and choice of good that will decide the level you achieved on the path of your evolution. Once the path of good is chosen, all your virtues and achievements will cooperate with you to lead you to the highest bliss.

“But if you choose the wrong path, all your education and knowledge and positions will not help to bring you back into light and into the path of joy and bliss.”

Then he spoke about how we must develop discrimination in all that we do, say, feel, and think.

The first thing we must learn and teach is karma. Once we learn about it we must choose the action that liberates us, expands our consciousness, and opens an unlimited contact with the Universe.

-From Karma and Reincarnation by Torkom Saraydarian.