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Law of Karma
of will. Suffering is mentioned as the result of man's own action. Man is free to perform good and bad actions. That is why he is responsible for his own fortune. If we suffer from misfortunes and imperfections, it would be consoling to believe that these are punishments of our own acts in the past. One does not think about indifferent nature over which we have no control. “The world, I think on this bypothesis would at least seem juster than it does on the positivist view, and that in itself would be a great gain." -2
The doctrine of Karma admits that man is the result of his past actions and will be of his present actions, but it prescribes no compulsion for him to do any work. He may do, whatever he likes. This very freedom of will endures him to be happy or unhappy. If we see a pious man suffering from evil here, how can we believe that he has done any wrong? Very often, a noble man suffers and a wicked enjoys. What is the cause of this? Here we have a justification for freedom of will. We can maintain that such is the result of his past actions which he was free to perform. Secondly, it is freedom of will, which saves God from the responsibility for our suffering. God, as a just observer, only observes our actions and either punishes or rewards us accordingly. So, Karma, may be regarded both as a mechanism as well as a product of conscious free-will. There must, therefore, be two elements: Karma as an instrument, but also the secret consciousness and will. "Fate, whether purely mechanical or created by ourselves a chain of our own manufacture, is only one factor of existence. Being and its consciousness and its will are a still more important factor."28 It is the demand of the soul to use the energies of Nature and reflex of her energies on the soul that must determine the steps of our progress in our births. The progress may be in a given direction or in a perpetual cycle.
Freedom is somewhere in our being and action, and we have only to see how it is limited in our outward nature. Why are we here at all under the dominion of Karma? We appear to be bound by the law of an imposed energy because there is separation between our outward nature and inmost spiritual self. We do not live in that outwardness with our whole being, but.
