Q: How did karma begin?

A: To understand how this process began for you, you need to understand the four phases of manifestation.

In the first phase, there was only God. You weren’t there at all. These three stages of the first phase created the multiple worlds and Planes, and the physical universe that we observe.

1. Before Creation, there was only the Beyond-Beyond state of God, which was the original, Unmanifest State of God. Avatar Meher Baba referred to this stage as a soundless, shoreless Ocean. Some Hindu philosophers called this stage, Paratpara.
2. Then, in the Creator or Word State, God sets into motion the multiple worlds and Planes, ultimately, the physical universe. This original vibration goes out from the form of God as the Creator.
3. Then, there are the emanations of God. This established the Forms of God at each level of Creation, and they began to create the content at each level.

In the second phase, the aspects that make you an individual came out of the origin—your ensouling entity, your spirit, and the vehicles of consciousness that express them, and then the initial separation that occurred. This occurred in four stages.

4. Emanation of the Soul – This marked the separation of the individual ensouling entity from God. Hindu Philosophers call this form of God, Purushottama.
5. Emanation of the individual spirit – This marked the separation of the individual spirit from its source. In Sant Mat and Eckankar, they refer to this origin of the spirit as the Anami, the Nameless One.
6. Emanation of the vehicles of consciousness – This marked the separation of the vehicles of consciousness your ensouling entity activates and operates through. In each level of Creation where you have an active ensouling entity, you have vehicles of consciousness to allow it to express on each Plane of Light. Each vehicle comes from its origin.
7. Karmic veiling principle – This marks the initial separation of the Soul, spirit, and vehicles of consciousness from God. This process embedded karmic impressions in the unconscious mind, creating the veil between the Soul, the spirit, and its vehicles of consciousness from its origin. In Sant Mat, they believe Kal Purusha, who rules the Lords of Karma, was the Form of God who originally put in this seed of separation.

In phase three, your ensouling entity activates its faculties, so it can begin to operate and function. This comprises the activation of five innate powers, or Shaktis.

8. Activation of the will principle (Ichaichashakti) – This empowers each individual to act as a free will agent. This forms the basis of your transpersonal and personal octaves of volition.
9. Activation of the awareness principle (Kundalini Shakti) – This enables individuals to become aware of the content of their vehicles of consciousness. This makes you a Self aware and Soul aware individual.
10. Activation of the knowledge or wisdom principle (Jnana Shakti) – This forms the basis of your ability to remember and communicate your experiences.
11. Activation of the life principle (Prana Shakti) – This imbues the vehicles of consciousness and the body with life, which allows your ensouling entity to incarnate. This life force animates the causal body, your astral body, and your physical body—so in whatever world you are incarnate, life is there to animate that form.
12. Activation of the sensory principles (Indriya Shakti) – This activates the vehicles of consciousness and the body to become aware of the environment and other living beings. This is the basis of your ability to use your physical and subtle senses.

In stage four, you used these faculties to make new choices and you set into motion the Law of Karma. This set up the process of reincarnation—and after uncountable Aeons—got you to where you are now. So phase four is:

13. Activation of karma – Individuals create new karma as they live their lives, and this shapes future lives. They continue this process until they begin to do transformational spiritual work, which begins to dissolve, transmute, and integrate some of the karmic accretions they have generated over unfathomable amounts of time.

If this transformational process is continued, they can ultimately return to the source from which their ensouling entity, spirit, and vehicles of consciousness originated. This results in Liberation. This transformative, transmutation and integration process continues for each Band of the Continuum of Consciousness—Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental—until you have liberated each ensouling entity, spirit, and vehicle of consciousness.

When you complete this process, you become a Multiplane Master or Adi Sat Guru, and you gain Mastery over stages four through twelve. You can actually use karma from the universal reservoir to emanate an ensouling entity, spirit, or selected vehicles of consciousness—and to turn on those Shaktis—to carry out advanced spiritual work. In our tradition, we call this form of spiritual activity, Bodhisattva projects.

So you will continue to create some karma, but when you reconnect your volition with the Divine Will as you spiritually evolve, you will be stopped from doing a lot of the dumb stuff that gets you into karmic entanglements and produces the many crises and predicaments that have generated untold suffering and misery for you. And the misery and suffering you experience? Most of it is because of your own choices.

Those of you who wish to learn about how you can begin this transformation, transmutation, and integrative process that enables you to return to the origin at each level of the Continuum of Consciousness, can learn about how to do this in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.