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THE KARMA PHENOMENOLOGY.
to put the idea with all the Orientality we can command, because the karma of the human being is different. Karma, here, does not mean 'heredity' through the principle of which the offsprings are alleged to inherit the qualities of the fathers. In Jain philosophy, it signifies what the soul carries with itself from an anterior stage of its being by virtue of its prior deeds and desires. The idea is that every thought we think, every act we do, tells upon our souls and thereby leaves an impression upon them, as it were, which continues to exercise influence them in their subsequent careers. And accordingly our present happiness or misery is not the award of any power existing outside ourselves but is rather the consequent of what we ourselves had done in the past, either in this life or in an anterior birth. None is exempt from the operation of karma -Nor Krishna, nor Buddha, nor Christ Jesus. This doctrine of karma thus unquestionably furnishes the key to the interpretation of the phenomenal greatness in humanity. Christ Jesus of Nazereth was a Christ by the virtue of his own karma. So..angels
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