Karma

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

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earth. If the mental image was formed out of desire to do beneficent actions, it would give rise to the mental performance of these actions in devachan; and this performance, the reflection of the image itself, would leave it in the Ego as an intensified mental image of an action, which would be thrown out on to the physical plane as a physical act, the moment the touch of favourable opportunity precipitated this crystallization of the thought into the act. The physical act is inevitable when the mental image has been realized as action on the devachanic plane. The same law applies to mental images formed out of baser desires, though these never pass into devachan, but are subjected to the process before described, to be reformed on the way back to earth. Repeated covetous desires, for instance, out of which mental images are formed, will crystallize out as acts of theft, when circumstances are propitious. The causative karma is complete, and the physical act has become the inevitable effect, when it has reached the stage at which another repetition of the mental image means its passing into action. It must not be forgotten that repetition of an act tends to make the act automatic, and this law works on planes other than the physical; if then an action be constantly repeated on the psychic plane it.