Karma

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

Page 88

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characteristics were strongly marked, and whose time for rebirth had come, would be drafted into the English nation by his karma and would then share the national destiny for good or for evil, so far as that destiny affected the fate of an individual.
The family tie is naturally of a more personal character than is the national, and those who weave bonds of close affection in one life tend to be drawn together again as members of the same family. Some-, times these ties recur very persistently life after life, and the destinies of two individuals are very intimately interwoven in successive incarnations. Sometimes, in consequence of the different lengths of the devachans necessitated by differences of intellectual and spiritual activity during the earth-lives spent together-members of a family may be scattered and may not meet again until after several incarnations. Speaking generally, the more close the tie in the higher regions of life, the greater the likelihood of rebirth in a family group. Here again the karma of the individual is affected by the inter-linked karmas of his family, and he may enjoy or suffer through these in a way not inherent in his own life-karma, and so receive or pay karmic debts, out-of-date, as we may say. So far as the personality is concerned, this seems to bring with it a