KARMA, CAUSE & EFFECT
Question: So what about karma?
Answer: As I’ve said all along, there is a grain of truth in every philosophy, every religion, every spiritual path; but in the first half of the Human Game, that truth had to be perverted to a greater or lesser degree in order for a Player to experience limitations and restrictions or the Game wouldn’t work.
In this case, the truth about karma has been twisted in many ways until it means many different things to many different people: “an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth1;” “you reap what you sow2;” you will be rewarded for being good and punished for your sins; you have to suffer retribution for wrong done in previous lives; if you’re bad, you’ll come back as a lesser form of life next time; if you do spiritually valuable acts, you deserve and can expect good luck; or conversely, if you do harmful things, you can expect bad luck.
You can see first-half “thinking” and “judgments” and “beliefs” in every one of those concepts – clear evidence that karma, no matter what it means, belongs inside the movie theater.
So what’s the truth about karma?
“Karma is not punishment or retribution but simply an extended expression or consequence of natural acts. Karma means "deed" or "act" and more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction that governs all life.”3
Karma, therefore, at its most basic level is “cause and effect.”
Karma means if you do this, that will happen. “Bad” karma is seen as having done something “wrong” in the past (or in a past life) that will come back to you in the present or future for you to “work out.” “Good” karma is seen as having done something “right” in the past (or in a past life) that will come back to you in the present or future as a reward.
But if a Player can never do anything “wrong” – which is the Truth – how could there ever be any karma to work out? Karma is simply another belief that will fall by the wayside during your transition in the cocoon.
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Actually, most Players in the Human Game hold the belief that if I do this, that will happen, even if they don’t call it karma. Most people just call it the “law of cause and effect”…
…except there is no “law of cause and effect.”
In truth, the “law of cause and effect” is nothing more than a belief system, and, like space and time, is a function of the hologram and is therefore not real.
Remember that “believing is seeing;” so if you believe in the “law of cause and effect,” you will see it in action all around you.
But what if you don’t believe in the “law of cause and effect?”
Various people over the years have demonstrated what could be called a “total disregard” for the “law of cause and effect.” Jesus, for example, ignored the law of cause and effect when he walked on water4, or fed the multitude with a few fish and some bread5, or healed the sick6 or raised the dead.7
Sai Baba apparently ignores the law of cause and effect when he produces vibuti or jewelry out of thin air.8
In his book, The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot mentions other documented examples of lesser-known individuals demonstrating feats outside the law of cause and effect. For example…
“[Biologist Lyall Watson was investigating] one of the so-called Philippine psychic healers, but instead of touching a patient, all he did was hold his hand about ten inches over the person’s body, point at his or her skin, and an incision would appear instantaneously. Watson not only witnessed several displays of the man’s psychokinetic surgical skills, but once, when the man made a broader sweep with his finger than usual, Watson [himself] received an incision on the back of his own hand. He bears the scar to this day.”9
“One investigator, a member of the Paris Parliament named Louis-Basile Carre de Montgeron, witnessed enough miracles to fill four thick volumes on the subject…. In one instance a convulsionaire bent back into an arc so that her lower back was supported by ‘the sharp point of a peg.’ She then asked that a fifty-pound stone attached to a rope be hoisted to ‘an extreme height’ and allowed to fall with all its weight on her stomach. The stone was hoisted up and allowed to fall again and again, but the woman seemed completely unaffected by it. She effortlessly maintained her awkward position, suffered no pain or harm, and walked away from the ordeal without even so much as a mark on the flesh of her back.”10
Stories abound of yogis who can sleep on a bed of nails without pain or evidence of skin damage11; and there are perhaps some 5,000 members of the Pentecostal Holiness churches12 who show no effects from the bite of a poisonous snake or from drinking poison.
Of course, the phenomenon of firewalking13 (made popular in the West by Tony Robbins) is nothing more than convincing people to temporarily suspend their belief in the “law of cause and effect,” and walk across hot coals which would normally “cause” burns on the feet without suffering the “effects.”
In Chapter Twenty I talked about multiple personality disorder and the large number of cases where the human body seems to defy “cause and effect.” There are many other examples of diseases occurring without any “cause,” or not occurring when the so-called cause is present but the effect is not. If smoking “causes” cancer, for instance, how can some people smoke their entire lives and never get cancer? If HIV “causes” AIDS, how can thousands of people have lived for thirty years diagnosed HIV-Positive, not take any medications and still be happy and healthy14?
The movie, The Matrix, was all about Neo learning to break out of his belief in the “law of cause and effect.” There are two famous scenes toward the end that demonstrate his success – first, when Neo is shot close range with six bullets, seems to die temporarily, and then gets up again to continue the fight; and then when he unravels the matrix and stops the bullets coming at him, plucking one out of the air and looking at it, then letting them fall on the ground in front of him.
Our tendency is to explain away these examples as “supernatural,” when in fact they are simply occurring outside the belief system of “cause and effect.”
A Course in Miracles says, “This is a course in cause and not effect.”15
The great quantum physicist David Bohm “argued that the way science viewed causality was also much too limited. Most effects were thought of as having only one or several causes. However, Bohm felt that an effect could have an infinite number of causes…. Bohm conceded that most of the time one could ignore the vast cascade of causes that had led to any given effect, but he still felt it was important for scientists to remember that no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever really separate from the universe as a whole.”16
But despite much evidence to the contrary, “cause and effect” remains one of our most basic, most ingrained, and most unchallenged belief systems; and its history goes way back to the beginning when our Biblical ancestors, Adam and Eve, were told it was eating the apple that caused them to get in trouble with The Lord.
“And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”17
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There is an interesting phenomenon I want to mention that, on first glance, might appear to be “karma,” or “cause and effect,” but it’s not.
As Players in the Human Game, we seem to experience similar holograms from time to time. In fact, patterns of experiences seem to follow us – in some cases, plague us – repeating over and over. A woman might constantly attract a certain kind of man, an alcoholic who abuses her, for example. A man might find himself getting fired from one job after another, always for the same reason. I’m sure you’re aware of at least a few of your own patterns.
So what’s going on here?
One way to look at “karma” and “cause and effect” is that we, as Players, can continue to experience similar holograms as long as we feel like we’re victims of someone or something “out there” – the “effect” of someone or something else that is the “cause,” until we have accepted the fact we cannot be the “effect” of anyone or anything at any time; until we have let go of the ideas of victim and perpetrator; until we no longer think the “cause” is anywhere except with our own Infinite I.
This is even true in the beginning of the second half of the Human Game, as our Infinite I creates situations for us similar to what we encountered in the first half when we assigned power “out there,” to give us the opportunity to “reclaim” that power and no longer see ourselves as the “effect” in our holographic experiences.
In other words, “karma” could be seen as a series of holographic experiences created and offered by an Infinite I to give the Player the opportunity to assume full self-responsibility – 100% “cause” – for their own reactions and responses.
On the original “grade chart” developed by L. Ron Hubbard for Scientology in the 1970’s, the EP (“End Phenomenon,” or end result) of the level called OT VIII was “at cause over life (matter, energy, space and time).” This was revised in 198818 (after Hubbard’s death) since it was impossible to achieve using the techniques offered by the Church; but it was a good thought to begin with.
And it is achievable; but part of the process of getting there involves dealing with this belief in the “law of cause and effect” and the judgment and fear beneath it.
As I said in Chapter Twenty-One, this is a tough one, and I’m not finished with it myself. So that’s all I can say about it for now.