Karma
The popular
understanding of karma is that if you do good things, good things will
happen to you. If you do evil, bad things will happen to you.
What people
perceive as good or evil, however, varies with their values. Your parents,
your friends, your work, and the teachings of religious or spiritual groups
with whom you affiliate influence your values. You formulate some of your
own values through your reflection and experience. So there are very different
notions of what constitutes good and bad karma between individuals and
between groups.
Karma as presented
in religion takes this cause and effect relationship to a deeper level.
Some religions predict that you will reap a heavenly or hellish experience
in the hereafter based on your deeds in human life. Other religions believe
that you may obtain a good rebirth or even freedom from birth and death
if you live well and meditate successfully, or have a horrendously miserable
human birth or even transmigrate into animals or plants if you live an
evil life and don't meditate.
Religions make
these predictions based on their particular standards of what constitutes
right thought, words and deeds. Opinions vary widely on what will get
you into heaven and what that heaven world might be like once you get
there. Some religions even hold that heaven worlds are illusory, and that
union with the spiritual origin is the only worthy goal.
The Mudrashram®
lineage teaches that karma is the raw material of the unconscious mind
that gives rise to desire-driven impulses, fantasies or behavior. Depending
on where karma layers on the continuum of the mind, it expresses in four
different ways. These four types of karma are:
Adi Karma
- layered behind the ensouling entity, this is the template of potential
spiritual development. In the Western esoteric tradition, these are
referred to as your future Initiations, the unfolding pattern of your
Soul moving ever closer to Mastery.
Sinchit
Karma - layered behind the spirit in the channels of the Nada, it
exists as impressions of passions, fantasies and unfulfilled desires.
In Christian religious groups, these impressions are known as sins that
separate the spirit from God.
Kriyaman
Karma - layered behind the nuclei of the vehicles, it is a reservoir
of unfinished goals. It also contains the consequences of your past
actions and saves your current thoughts, words, and deeds for future
fruition. This karma is created by your choices, the activity of your
will. This is the popular 'as you sow, so shall you reap' vision of
karma.
Pralabdha
Karma - these are the issues and circumstances in your life that
are outside of your voluntary control. This karma is layered upon the
template of your human life in your causal body. This is popularly known
as your Fate.