Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: Albemarle Street London

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CHAPTER I
THE LAW OF KARMA
The word Karma, or in its neuter form, Karman (in Pali, Kamma), is a Sanskrit word from the root kri, meaning to do or to make. Karma is therefore 'doing' or 'making', but in the course of time the word has been applied to what Lessing has described as the oldest doctrine in the world. It may be viewed exoterically, from the material point of view, in which case it is merely the law of causation, the balance of cause and effect, the fact known in every science laboratory that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Esoterically, from the spiritual point of view, Karma is the law of moral retribution, whereby not only does every cause have an effect, but he who puts the cause in action suffers the effect. Professor Radhakrishnan has called it “the law of the conservation of moral energy.". It is magnificently described in the eighth book of the Light of Asia, one stanza of which must here suffice.
That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields !
The sesamum was sesamum, the corn Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew !
So is a man's fate born. This law of merit and demerit, Karma in the sense of the reign of moral law, is neither particularly Hindu, Buddhist nor Theosophical. It is fundamental in all Oriental philosophy, and was preached by St. Paul.“ Brethren, be not deceived. God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." For the first few centuries of Christianity it remained a cardinal belief in the West. But at the Council of Constantinople, in A.D. SSI, the Christian Fathers, finding the doctrine of Rebirth incompatible with the curious system of thought which they were in the process of creating, decided that belief in Rebirth should be henceforth anathema, and with
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