Karma

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

Page 64

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Service rendered to the full measure of opportunity in one life will produce, as effect, enlarged opportunities of service in another; thus one who in a very limited sphere helped each who came in the way, would in a future life be born into a position where openings for giving effective help were many and farreaching.
Again, wasted opportunities reappear transmuted as limitations of the instrument, and as misfortunes in the environment. For instance, the brain of the etheric double will be built defectively, thus bringing about a defective physical brain; the ego will plan, but will find itself lacking in executive ability, or will grasp an idea, but be unable to impress it distinctly on the brain. The wasted opportunities are transformed into frustrated longings, into desires which fail to find expression, into yearnings to help, blocked by the absence of power to render it, whether from defective capacity or from lack of occasion.
This same principle is often at work in the cutting away from tender care of some well-loved child or idolized youth. If an ego treats unkindly or neglects one to whom he owes affectionate duty and protection, or service of any kind, he will but too likely again find himself born in close relationship with the neglected