Most people are aware of the law of cause and effect—that your thoughts, words, and deeds have short and long-term consequences. They are not typically aware, however, of the changes that occur as they evolve spiritually and bring successive orders of conative faculties to bear on their karmic substrate.

These seven orders of your interface with karma are shown below. These are seven progressive karmic cycles that appear as you evolve spiritually.

Karmic cycle one – Dynamic Kriyaman Karma—the law of consequences for desire-driven and reactive behavior—predominates. Your actions reap rewards or negative consequences based on your choices. Some aspects of this karma become deposited in your unconscious mind, adding to the karmic issues you must resolve. In this cycle, your choice aims to fulfill your desire, and your reactive emotions fuel negative behavior. You have little internal ability to check this behavior; is it controlled largely through social pressure, or your fear of being punished or imprisoned.

Karmic cycle two – Your human volition begins to curb desire-driven behavior through the moral and ethical standards of the conscience. You begin to shape your personal destiny and begin to say no to certain desires.

Karmic cycle three – You further check behavior and egoic reactions through applying suggestion via intention or your spirit’s wish. At his stage, restraint becomes engrained in your character, and you are able to gain insight into the motivation and defensiveness of the ego, and detect the mind’s subtle attempts to manipulate you into giving into its desires.

Karmic cycle four – A higher octave of will begins to operate through a nucleus of identity to restrain desires and to curb reactive behavior. At this stage, a higher octave of altruistic or compassionate behavior begins to operate through the personality. You begin to express virtues like kindness, goodness, consideration of others’ feelings, prudence, caring for others’ health and welfare, charity to assist others in need, and loving support to others. You become capable of selfless actions; you respond to the needs and suffering of others.

Karmic cycle five – The transpersonal will begins to express the Soul’s purpose through your personality. At this stage, the influence of your desire-driven ego and its unconscious shadow has a decreased effect on your behavior; the Soul’s guidance and discipline directs you in what you must do.

Karmic cycle six – The Divine Will overshadows the transpersonal will, which is turn guides the personality. You become subject to the command of the Divine Will, which expresses as the Holy Yeah, where you are directed to carry out specific tasks; the Holy Nay, where you are forbidden to carry out particular behavior; and the Holy Wait, which postpones something you decide to do to a later, more auspicious time. The higher will overrules your desire-driven and reactive behavior, and Divine Direction governs your life.

Karmic cycle seven – When you reach the stage of Liberation (Jivan Mukta), only the elements of your destiny karma continue to operate—the Lords of Karma execute this type of karma until your predestined time of death. The Divine Will governs the activity of your personality and you become an instrument of Divine Grace. Those who do Bodhisattva projects on the highest Planes of the Bridge Path transmute this form of karma and use it in advanced spiritual work that develops the rays of Mastery for Adi Sat Gurus.

Aspirants and disciples need to identify in which karmic cycles they are currently operating. They will benefit from studying the effects that these higher aspects of conation have on the desire-driven and reactive behavior of the ego.

Failure to check these tendencies of the primary karmic substrate leads to enslavement to desires and the continued necessity to reincarnate to reap the rewards or expiate the sins that desire-driven actions generate.

If disciples make genuine progress on the spiritual Path, they will activate the higher octaves of conation and begin to check these tendencies that bind them to the wheel of karma. Ultimately, they will reach the stages where the Divine Will guides them and they will stop creating new karma—and at the end of their life, they will step off the wheel.