Karma and Rebirth

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

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CLASSIFICATIONS OF KARMA Karma (wrote W. Q. Judge in his Aphorisms on Karma) may be of three sorts : (a) Presently operative in this life through the appropriate instruments; (b) that which is being made or stored up to be exhausted in the future ; (c) Karma held over from past life or lives, and not yet operating because inhibited by inappropriateness of the instrument in use by the Ego, or by the force of Karma now operating. In the same way the twelve Nidanas, already described, are often grouped in three, ignorance and 'mental formations' belonging to the past lives, the next eight in the list to this life, and the last two, rebirth and decrepitude and death belonging to the future life or lives. But whether ‘Now working', 'In the making' or 'Held over', the process is in fact indivisible. In terms of time, however, it is obvious that the complex causes of a busy life cannot all be worked out in that or in the succeeding life, and in any one life a man receives the results of only a small proportion of his own past causes, whether 'good' or 'bad'.
Karma reacts, as already explained, on all three planes, the mental, whence it originally sprang, the psychic and the physical, and the make-up of a man in any life will accord with the differing Karma that he has produced on the several planes of consciousness. A great mind may abuse its body and be reborn with a poorer one ; a glorious body, exquisitely cared for, may harbour a poorly developed or even vicious mind. Yet the interaction is close. “As we think, so we are”, and evil thought will mar the body even as it shows in the face. Again, the cvil in the mind may be rectified by a greater understanding long before the effect, say, of cruelty practised by the body has worked itself out on the physical plane. Hence the hunch-back with a lovely mind.
In the well-known chapter on Karma in her Buddhisin, its Doctrines and Methods, Madame David-Neel describes the Tibetan classification. General Karma perpetuates the round of existence as set out in the twelve Nidanas, which may be applied to all manifestation. Then comes Inanimate and Animate Karma. The Karma of inanimate' objects proceeds
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