Karma

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

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one, and perhaps tenderly attached to him, only for early death to snatch him away from the encircling arms; the despised poor relation may reappear as the much-honoured heir, the only son, and when the parents find their house left unto them desolate, they marvel at the “ unequal ways of Providence” that deprive them of their only one, on whom all their hopes have been set, and leave untouched the many children of their neighbour. Yet are the ways of karma equal, though past finding out, save for those whose eyes have been opened.
Congenital defects result from a defective etheric double, and are life-long penalties for serious rebellions against law, or for injuries inflicted upon others. All such arise from the working of the Lords of Karma, and are the physical manifestation of the deformities necessitated by the errors of the Ego, by his excesses and defects, in the mould of the etheric double made by them. So again from their just administration of the Law come the inwrought tendency to reproduce a family disease, the suitable configuration of the etheric double, and the direction of it to a family in which a given disease is hereditary, and which affords the “ continuous plasm ” suitable to the development of the appropriate germs.