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converging to a point of action of an undesirable kind; he can introduce a new force among the converging energies, and so modify the event, which must be the resultant of all the forces concerned in its generation and ripening. For such action he requires knowledge, not only the power to see the past and to trace the lines which connect it with the present, but also to calculate exactly the influence that the force he introduces will exercise as modifying the resultant, and further the effects that will flow from this resultant considered as cause. In this way he may lessen or destroy the results of evil wrought by himself in the past, by the good forces he pours forth into his karmic stream; he cannot undo the past, he cannot destroy it, but so far as its effects are still in the future he can modify them or reverse them, by the new forces he brings to bear as causes taking part in their production. In all this he is merely utilizing the law, and he works with the certainty of the scientist, who balances one force against another and, unable to destroy a unit of energy, can yet make a body move as he will by a calculation of angles and of movements. Similarly karma may be accelerated or delayed, and thus again will undergo modification by the action of the surroundings amid which it is worked out.
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