Sambodhi 1972 Vol 01

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 49

In the Vestíbules of Karma
understand how Potter interprets Karma as a type of habit, Psychologists tell us that habit is a learned activity that lias becomc almost automatic, and habit has the same relation to learolog as the secondary automatic reaction bas to the reflexes The fuaction of habit 18 to simplify the movements required to achieve a given result, to make the actions more accurate and to diminish fatigue, because we have a structure weak enough to yield to an influence but strong enough not to yield atonce Karma 15 lcast to be considered as babit in this sense I cannot understand Potter s interpretation I can only say one must be steeped in the Indian tradition in order to understand the nature and significance of Karma
CJ Juog, while distloguishing, Personal and the Collective Unconscious, hints at the possibility of comparing the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious to the Karma in Indian thought The Collective Unconscious stands for the objective psyche The personal layer ends at the earliest memories of infancy, but the collective layer comprises the pre-infantile period that Is the residue of ancestral life The force of Karmo works implicitly and determines the nature and development of personality The Karma aspect 19 essential to the deeper understanding of the nature of an archetype 29 Although it 18 possible to say that Kerme has essentially a reference to 10dividual differences and bence a personal acqısition, yet each individual has a common heritage which he shares with the community and which shapes his being The archetypes refer to the common beritage To this extent they refer to the Karma aspect However, Sung was primarily concerned with interpretation of dreams and fantasles in presenting his theory of the Collective Unconscious Had he developed the archetypes of the collective Unconscious, he would have reached the doctrine of Karma, the store-house of the physical and psychical effects of the past 24
Fundamentally, "the meaning of Karma is that all existence is the working of a universal Energy, a process and an action and a buildiøg of things by that actlon, - an unbullding too, but as a step to farther building, - that all 1s & continuous chain 10 which every one llok 18 bound indissolubly to the past infinity of numberless links, and the whole governed by fixed relations, by a fixed association of cause and effect, present action the result of past action as future action will be the result of present action, all cause a working of energy and all effect too a working of energy" The moral sigoificance is that all our existence is a putting out of an energy which is in us and by which we are made and as is the nature of the energy which is put forth aa cause, so shall be that of the energy
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Jung (CJ) Essays in Analytical Psychology (Personal and Collective or
Transcendental Unconscious) p 76 Footnote Radhakrishnan (S) Indian Philosophy Vol I (1941) pp 109-110
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