Karma Management Part 3

Seventh principleaccelerate karma. Saivite Shastras talk about this in terms of monastic 36-year pattern for training. Within his life he goes through four lifetimes of karma. One in first 12, one in second 24, third after 36th year. Fourth perhaps before he became a monk. When serious, regular meditation begins, our individual karma is accelerated. Eighth principleIncinerate karma. Practice of yoga burns up negative seed karmas without living through them. Dissolve them in intense inner light. Intense kundalini burns seeds, then they won't sprout.

Unedited Transcript:

Seventh principle: Accelerate karma.

I was looking through the Saivite Shastras this morning to see what it said about karma. I stuck in 'karma' through my search in the Shastras and it popped up all entries. One of them which I had forgotten about, was about accelerating karma and the monastic pattern. The 36-year pattern, remember we talked about that before? The monastic training pattern is thirty-six years long. It says right in the Saivite Shastras themselves, "When the monks were first told this, which was in 1973 or 74, it seemed to many of them a long, long, long time, thirty-six years of training."

But the other point the verse was making is: Within a monastic's life, he goes through four lifetimes of karma. Specifically, that is what it said. I hadn't recalled that, four lifetimes. It said one lifetime is in the first 12 years, one lifetime is in the second 24 years and another lifetime is after the 36 years. It didn't specify where the fourth one was. I imagine that it was before he became a monk. So, he goes through four lifetimes. That is a perfect example of accelerating karma. We skipped three lives. This is pretty good. We are obviously getting to moksha more quickly. That is the idea, accelerating. In that spirit why wait twenty more births to achieve spiritual maturity when you can achieve in it only five? This is the idea of accelerating karma.

Then, there is a quote from Gurudeva, "When meditation begins our individual karma is intensified. So just the practice of beginning meditation causes our karma to accelerate. Practicing it regularly, not just meditating once. But beginning the regular practice of meditation, sustaining it, causes our karma to accelerate. In our first four or five years of striving on the path, we face the karmic patterns that we would have never faced in this life had we not consciously sought enlightenment. In a few months we experience what would have, otherwise, taken a few lifetimes. Of course, the duties of our normal life do not allow much time for meditation. Thus this principle best fits in to Sannyasa, both those following the path of the monk, as well as, everyone after the age of seventy two, when in the sannyasa ashrama of life. So, retirement can be more than playing golf, hanging around the house. It is an opportunity to intensify our spiritual practices and thus accelerate our karma."

That is a natural part of Hindu dharma for the householder, the sannyasa ashrama. It is not understood in the West, it may seem a little strange. But is totally understood in Asia and it is common to find those in the sannyas ashrama, over the age of seventy two pilgrimaging in India, spending time in ashrams, living in Varanasi. They are following this practice of

accelerating their karma through intensifying meditation and other sadhanas.

The last principle we have developed, the eighth principle is: Incinerate karma.

I was meditating on that this morning. Homa fire was there, thinking about incineration, the practice of incinerating karma. Gurudeva says, "In the practice of yoga, the negative seed karmas can actually be burned up without ever having to be lived through. What we have to do is dissolve them in intense inner light." He goes on to say, "It is the held-back force of sanchita karma that the yogi seeks to burn out with his kundalini flame to disempower it within the karmic reservoir of anandamaya kosa, the soul body."

The idea is when the kundalini is very intense, then one of the consequences is that karmic seeds are burned. If you heat a seed to a certain degree, it won't sprout. I was thinking, you know alfalfa sprouts Normally, you get your alfalfa and you get it moist and put it in a jar or bag and it sprouts. Right? So it sprouts, that is like karma manifesting in your life. The seed karma when it sprouts is something you experience, it manifests an experience in the first world. That is what sprouting means. But if you take those seeds, heat them to a certain temperature, I don't know exactly how hot, then you try to sprout them and they won't sprout.

That is the idea of burning up a seed karma. You are taking the karma which is in seed form, sitting there but it is not going to cause anything to happen. You are getting it up to a temperature where the ability to sprout goes away. So it is incinerated. It won't manifest an experience anymore. That is the intensity of the kundalini. It causes that to happen, incinerates karma.

That is a pretty advanced practice and there is a beautiful explanation of it, even poetic, by Gurudeva. It says, "In the heart chakra, in bhakti, karmas are in a molten state blended together. The throat chakra molds the karmas through sadhana. Third eye chakra sees the karmas, past, present and future as a singular oneness. The crown chakra absorbs, burns clean enough of the karmas to open the gate, door of Brahman revealing the straight path to merging with Siva."

This adds the idea that it is the crown chakra, sahasrara chakra, that incinerates the karmas, when the kundalini has activated that up to a certain intensity.

That is our process. In review, we have eight principles so far.

1. Forego retaliation. Unless you do that, the whole thing doesn't work.

2. Accept responsibility.

3. Forgive the offender.

4. Consider the consequences.

5. Create no negative karma.

6. Mitigate past karma.

7. Accelerate karma.

8. Incinerate karma.

You can all get a certificate for having passed our seminar on, 'Effective Karma Management'!

Aum Namah Sivaya.

Photo of  Gurudeva