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Law of Karma
for the Law of Karma. It is spirit that fundamentally determines the evolution of the soul. Law of Karma is also one of the processes which helps soul's evolution. It is in this sense viz., the soul evolves, that the soul is greater than the Law. If there is no conscious spirit behind, the world would be chaotic. It would be entirely mechanical in its character. But this spirit is free. “It is not that the spirit within is an automation in the hands of Karma. a slave in this life of its past actions: the truth must be less rigid and more plastic. If a certain amount of results of past Karma is formulated in the present life, it must be with the consent of the psychic being which presides over the new formation of its earth experience and assents not merely to an outward compulsory process but to a secret will or guidance. That secret will is not mechanical but spiritual; the guidance comes from an intelligence which may use mechanical process but is not their subject. Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life."10 There are, therefore, two factors in the law of Karma, viz., (a) Karma is an instrument; and (b) there is a secret consciousness and will working through mind, life and body as the doer.
Sri Aurobindo takes the Law of Karma in his own way. For him, the law does not indicate the mechanical and natural law of causation. In all natural, physical or mental events, things are related and they have their impact on our experience. In the same way, pleasure and pain, good and evil, happiness and misery are also for experience. From a particular point of view, an evil is evil but, broadly speaking, there is no evil at all. The same evil varies for the same person in different context of time and also in the same time for different men. Hence it is meant for the growth of the individual being. And for this purpose of growth, there is rebirth also. "Happiness and success bringing happiness are, no doubt, a legitimate demand of humanity; it is an attempt of life and matter to catch a pale reflection or gross image of felicity; but a superficial happiness and material success, however, desirable to our vital nature, are not the main object of our existence. If that
