Does Karma Affect ‘You’?

Photo Credit: UpLift

Does Karma Affect ‘You’?

We have heard and read a lot about karma and how we have to pay off our karmic debt – whether it is for doing good or bad. We have to take re-birth if we have a bank filled with either good karma or bad karma – we need to either suffer or enjoy its fruits, and for that re-birth becomes necessary.

I was listening to Osho the other day and there he says that there is no such thing as karma at the very core level – if you reach a state of nothingness, karma does not exist. Karma affects all those people who live their life without knowing ‘who’ they are.

It exists only for those who live in unconsciousness; for the one who has become conscious, the law of karma does not exist. You suffer because of the unconsciousness. When you do something unconsciously, karma is created and you will suffer. ‘Karma’ means unconscious action. If you do something consciously, in a completely alert and awakened state, no karma is created. If your act is totally spontaneous, then it is finished in that moment itself. It does not leave any trace.

When consciousness dawns on you, you act for the first time, you don’t react and that action is beyond the law of karma. This law applies only to those who live in unconsciousness – and that is the brute majority of the global population. Those who live in awareness, totally in the present moment, they have absolute freedom. No law binds such people. Such people are as vast as the sky, infinite as the sky – Swamiji for instance during this Anushthan – is omnipresent, you close your eyes and you feel his presence. His freedom is absolute, and because he is absolutely free, in certain states of consciousness you can feel his perceptible presence around your own self.

This is a very fundamental law: any experience that is complete, you are finished with it. It leaves no karma; it creates no karma. It does not create any trace; it leaves no trace in you – not even footprints. Nothing is left of it. It simply disappears, evaporates.

To reach this state of living in consciousness, meditation under realised Master or Guru is necessary – we could do it alone, but in this modern lifestyle, we will probably take several lifetimes to reach that goal. Getting initiated, taking diksha, is the beginning of escaping the law of karma. It is the beginning of getting out of the rut that we have lived in for many lives.

The primary reason for waking up before sunrise is to sit in meditation and wait for the dawn of consciousness within, to see the light within, to search for awareness within. Once you start becoming more and more aware, the lesser will you be a part of the law of karma.