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278]
Karmas
[September
of fast walking. It is really the wind that is operating,- of course the man lets it control him, but still it is the wind and not the man. In the same sense, people do things under the influence of forces that are as different from themselves as is the wind different from the man. The things that a man may do under the influence of these external-internal forces are killing, lying, stealing, lust, acquiring too much property, etc., etu. And the forces in question are such forces as faer, anger, deceitfulness, passion, greed, pride, etc. These forces are as different from us as the wind is; the wind is felt only on the surface of the body while these forces of anger, fear, etc. are felt inwardly, and may be supposed falsely to be our own factors. They become the causes of our actions, like the wind is the cause of the ship moving along; we do these unnatural things like lying when these external-internal forces like fear are blowing (so to speak, they are the means;) when they are operative, we lie, when the wind is blowing, the boat moves.
But there is an important difference between the examples used and the analogue of the wind;, in the latter case there is one wind which everybody in it feels, whereas in the case of arger, fear and such forces, which are urging us on to action, no one is operated on except the one person who feels them and this is because he is combined with them or has generated them so that they are in combination with him like soot sunk into oil, or mud stirred up in water. He is the water and these forces are the mud obscuring the natural qualities of the water.
Your question in one of your recent letters as to by what 'light' (or means) I am conscious of darkness is a very good question; it certainly is not by means of any artificial light; it is truly my own faculty or nature that makes me aware of darkness.
1 sometimes take the view that feelings of any unpleasant character, like sorrow, fear,etc. are to be regarded as the same
