Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

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plane, and lived in by the trained Seer. If this imperfect description be followed by the reader, he will be able to form for himself some faint idea of karma in its aspect as cause. In the ākāsha will be pictured the mental image created by a soul, inseparable from it; then the astro-mental image produced by it, the active ensouled creature, ranging the astral plane and producing innumerable effects, all accurately pictured in connection with it, and, therefore, traceable to it and through it to its parent, each such thread-spun as it were out of its own substance by the astro-mental image, as a spider spins its web being recognizable by its own shade of colour; and however many such threads may be woven into an effect, each thread is distinguishable and is traceable to its original forth-giver, the soul that generated the mental image. Thus, for our clumsy earth-bound intelligences, in miserably inadequate language, we may figure forth the way in which individual responsibility is seen at a glance by the great Lords of karma, the administrators of karmic law; the full responsibility of the soul for the mental image it creates, and the partial responsibility for its far-reaching effects, greater or less as each effect has other karmic threads entering into its causation. Thus also may we understand why