Karma

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

Page 74

precepts on their knowledge of the law; Their followers who obey without fully seeing the scientific foundation of the precept, lessen the heavy karma that would be generated if they answered hate with hate. But men of knowledge deliberately destroy the evil forms, understanding the facts on which the teaching of the Masters has ever been based, and sterilizing the seed of evil, they prevent a future harvest of pain.
At a stage which is comparatively advanced in comparison with that of the slowly drifting, average humanity, a man will not only build his own character and work with deliberate intent on the thought-forms that come in his way, but he will begin to see the past and thus more accurately to gauge the present, tracing karmic causes onwards to their effects. He becomes able to modify the future by consciously setting forces to work, designed to interact with others already in motion. Knowledge enables him to utilize law with the same certainty with which scientists utilize it in every department of Nature.
Let us pause for a moment to consider the laws of motion. A body has been set in motion, and is moving along a definite line; if another force be brought to bear upon it, differing in direction from the one that gave it its initial impulse, the body will move