The Toxicity of Karma
When you observe the horrible events people are experiencing, and the atrocities inflicted upon individuals through various criminal, oppressive and tyrannical forces, it is possible to have a specific thought:
“They had it coming.”
After all, the law of karma is deep. Souls that mindlessly follow their instincts that nature created them with, hunting and tearing apart other animals, end up being born as the slaughtered animal in return so that they can get a balanced perspective of the situation.
Similarly, humans that cause horrible offenses upon other humans, end up getting born into situations where horrible offenses are inflicted upon them.
And it goes, on and on an on…
While this line of thinking is perfectly rational and in line with the doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism, if you have only half a brain and a little bit of venom in your blood, you’ll reject this nonsense. If not, I pray to our serpentine ancestors that your blood will awaken and you’ll start to see through the conceptual mechanisms designed to control humanity.
The mainstream idea of the law of karma, just like the idea of heaven and hell, do one thing and one thing alone: control people.
These concepts inspire fear in the minds of individuals so that they don’t commit hurtful acts upon others, in order to avoid divine retribution. Similarly, the carrot of delightful experiences as a reward for kind natured and good hearted actions serve as a motivating factor. (By the way fear works twice as powerfully as the reward, a concept known as loss aversion)
Beyond the supposed social nicety it provides, the belief in the law of karma is nothing worthwhile. And we cannot take it on face value…
After all, the burden of proof lies in those who make the claim, and karma is not something that is provable unless you can observe and record events across countless lifetimes. Besides… Karma being so deep that even the gods have trouble understanding it, it’s supporters can claim that any evidence we find against karma is simply a play yet to unfold, effectively eliminating the possibility of disproving it!
Due to these facts, we can reasonably assume that karma was a clever mechanism invented by some people to control the behavior of other people.
Or if you want to take a stance that doesn’t see malicious intent, you can think of it as a type of natural human thinking, ingrained in our collective consciousness to keep humanity civil, which reveals itself during phases of paranormal consciousness. In other words, when people have mystical experiences, they see karma and believe karma due to the apriori structure of their mind, which was forged by evolution as well as social conditioning…
But, as you well know (if you’ve been reading these texts for a while), I don’t even particularly care about the reality of the belief, as much as the effect of that belief in an individual.
And in that regard, I see the mainstrea belief in the law of karma as a toxic condition.
Here’s an example:
With such a belief in karma, someone observing the following video of a war refugee who gets sold as a sex slave, would get detached from the situation, and mind their own business. After all, a perfectly rational outcome of karma based thinking is: “she had it coming”.
But, an observer with a belief in justice, real justice, as in the justice we create through our own efforts and enlightened thinking; such an individual would join and contribute the fight.
And yes, you CAN fight and even perform karma yoga at the same time. Just read a bit of what Krishna says…
Such a fighter would struggle and work to empower the rule of law, so that we can overthrow the contemptible natural law of the jungle.
And they would contribute to the righteous world we are creating, where we put offenders in jail and throw away the key.
And they would even understand the utility of sending some offenders promptly to their next incarnation…
Law of Karma is not deep. It takes exactly 695 words to see through it…