EP15: Law of Multiplier Effect

Commentaries by Vee Jay Attri during the Book Study - Secrets of Karma

Let’s continue with our study from the Secrets of Karma. We were talking about the Law of Lag Time. Of course, today, we shall have a short understanding of the inner world but let me first complete the three laws of karma and with then with time left, we will touch the inner world.

Regardless of how long it will take, what you sow you will have to reap. So, we were talking about the king Dhritarashtra story; how the king, despite all the efforts to save himself from the curse of one of the disciples of the Rishi, he was eventually killed by a snake which was hidden in a fruit, which eventually turned into a mighty one.

The king bit a fruit within which there was a deadly serpent and it killed the king in spite of all his great efforts to thwart it.

This is basically the principle of Lag Time we were talking about.

The Universe has a perfect record of all that you do So, no matter how long it may take to return, all the harm you cause and all the pain you inflict on others will eventually come back to you.

One of the worst ways to inflict pain on others is with your thoughts, mental injuriousness. You have to practice Ahimsa or non-violence right at the mental level. So, this is a very important way through which you can begin neutralizing whatever that you have created in the past.

You should work diligently on neutralizing most part of your karma that you had brought in this lifetime. The sooner the better, so that you do not have to face challenges over again and the time available to you can be spent in spreading the messages of the great masters. That is exactly how you can commit yourself to a greater service.

You can see around in the world, people are trapped. Even if they want to serve, if they want to meditate, they are unable to, basically because the challenges are so mighty. In countries like India, morning to night, people spend all the time, resources, and energy in survival.

So, if you are in a position that you do not have to fight for your survival to this level, you better use this time to uplift yourself and to uplift others. This is the better way to spend your life. Let’s go to the next law:

Law of Multiplier Effect

You have to pay your karmic debt often with interest. In the second part the Buddha states:
“…But when it (the action) matures, the fool experiences untold misery”.

So, we were talking about a very profound quotation from the Buddha. We talked about the Law of Lag Time. The second part of his quotation deals with the law of multiplier effect.

In the second part Lord Buddha says, “But when it, meaning the action matures, the fool experiences untold misery.” That means, a seed that is sown does not mature immediately, there is a time for the harvest. But when the harvest happens, one seed multiplies into several seeds which in turn multiply into several seeds.

That is exactly how it happens with the nature and with the laws of karma. So, one very potent seed that you had sown comes back to you multiplied; just like one seed of mango, when it is time for it to mature, gives you several mangoes.

The same thing apply with the laws of karma. It depends upon the kind of seed that you had sown in the past. Is it a benevolent one or is it something painful or harmful? Accordingly, you reap whatever you had sown.

So, problems of migraines, many other complications of ailments related to stress that people endure for a prolonged period of time, is actually the result of the same level of stress inflicted on people, especially at the thought level. You need to be so careful about it.

These are all things that I had witnessed in my own life for over four decades more than 40 years. Fortunately, the learning started at a very young age for me. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t done any mistake despite knowing what is right and what is wrong. These are all basically a part of the package I was put here.

Repeated mistakes definitely were committed but at least over a period of time, I realized what kind of inputs are giving me the kind of outputs and gradually, I refrained from repeating any mistake. Today, I can say that probably, I am actually successful over 90% in this, ensuring not to repeat any mistakes.

So, this is exactly what is the most important thing. It is possible that we repeat mistakes but we have to quickly learn to correct it. Learn the lesson connected with that and move on. We should never sit with any problem or limitations, whether it is with us or with the people around us.

So, I was talking about how people repeatedly face many pain and problems because they have no control over their thoughts, no control over their speech or action for that matter. You need to be extremely careful in all this.

There is a very beautiful story to make this point clear:

In ancient times, there was a sage by name Mandavya who was meditating under a peepal tree in his hermitage, unaware of the surroundings. Some bandits happened to come near to his place at that time, looking for somewhere to hide their loot. Seeing the sage in meditation, they took the chance to hide it in a corner of the hermitage and fled from there.

Unfortunately, the soldiers who came searching for the bandits found the treasure hidden in the hermitage and reported the matter to the king. The king accused the sage of aiding the bandits and as punishment, tortured and impaled him.

You know what is ”impaled him”? It is like you put lots of nails and then lie down on it. You do it normally in Cavadee I guess. So, these are all things that used to happen in ancient time. People were actually tortured to death.

The sage went to Yama, the Lord of Dharma or Justice, and asked, ‘I have not harmed anyone in my life. Hence I demand from you, Oh Lord of Justice, an explanation for my punishment that is a violation of Dharma.’

So, he was telling that he was simply meditating and in this lifetime, he did not harm anybody to this level, that he should be punished.

The Lord of Justice said, ‘When you were young, you took pleasure in torturing and impaling insects.

So, he had the pleasure of impaling insects, meaning pricking them with pain or whatever. So, in the childhood or even today, you can find some children take the pleasure in giving so much of pain to animals and other beings. You have to correct them then and there, don’t take them lightly.

Your suffering was repayment of karmic debt incurred by you for this act of cruelty towards other creatures.’
Sage Mandavya protested saying, ‘It is not fair to get punished to this extent for a crime committed out of ignorance. Yama replied, “This is the law of nature where you harvest in multiples of what you sow, knowingly or unknowingly.‘

So, of course, there are many levels of truth, because as we mentioned earlier, the level to which the karmic repercussion is faced by you, depends upon the level of your spiritual maturity. So, there is no one uniform scale for karmic repercussions to happen.

We took an example, perhaps you might be remembering that, if you enter a shop and if your child or kid happens to lift some item and move out of the shop, the shopkeeper is going to gently ask the child to put it back in its place smilingly but if you pick up a stuff and walk out of the shop you will have to face the consequences in a different way.

The same thing happens depending upon the level of your spiritual maturity; karmic reactions come in different levels and proportions. But in this case, it is basically a story to enumerate the laws of nature which is the law of multiplier effect, that one single harm that you cause to someone, when time matures, can come back to you several folds. That is the moral of this story.

Very distressing conditions are sometimes the multiplier effect of karmic debts that one must pay.
Generating good karma can help in improving the situation rapidly.

What is the Inner World?

We will have a short discussion. First of all, there are many planes of existence, many planes means dimensions of existence. The physical plane, you know about that. Together with that, we have the etheric plane. In the same way, we have the astral plane and the mental plane, many other planes.

But these are the most important things that are directly connected with our existence on the physical plane. Every time you have a thought, the thought is not basically coming from the grosser world, that is the physical world.

The thoughts are basically a product of a vehicle called the mental body which is in the mental plane. That means, regardless of the nature of your thought, it is coming from a plane that is much finer to the physical plane.

Though the thoughts might be negative, the thought can be grosser, but then, it is still subtler compared to the gross physical plane, what we call the solid, liquid and gas. Now, within the mental plane, there are so many beings. Same thing happens in the astral plane.

There are so many beings in varying degrees of evolution. Just like in the physical plane, there are people of varying degree of evolution, there are great masters, but there are many people who are not evolved to that level.

There are people who gives so much of pain, cruel people who are spiritually not developed. So, even in the physical plane, you can see a variation in the evolution. Same thing happens in other planes or dimensions of existence.

Now, because your thought is coming from a finer plane compared to the physical plane, depending upon the quality of your thoughts, you are attracting certain energies to you, to your mental vehicle. Same thing happens according to the quality of your feelings, you are attracting certain feelings or certain beings existing in those planes of existence.

So, we use certain words, technical words in theosophical terms, we call them thought forms or thought entities and also we call them elementals.

There are many elementals which are beings not so evolved but still, they are beings that actually get attracted to people with specific vibration. For example, if you are actually exhibiting intense hatred, by virtue of exhibiting that intense hatred, you are attracting beings that need the energy of hatred. So, they get attached to you.

So, repeatedly, if you are getting anxiety uncontrollably, it is an indication that there is a remarkable level of influence on these beings of the inner world and that is exactly what is happening to the world today. If somebody is committing heinous crimes, it is not just about that person.

It is about the beings which need a particular type of violence or energy of murder or whatever, which can incite a person, which can overrule the soul, take possession of the vehicles and make people do what they need to do. That is the reason why, you have to understand the inner world so carefully.

Further reading: Secrets of karma, Page 22