Commentaries by Vee Jay Attri during the Book Study – Secrets of Karma
Let’s have a short study from the Secrets of Karma. We shall continue from the last chapter which is path to freedom.
Be in tune with the study session. It is not important that everything is assimilated. One word can be a trigger to transform many conditions of your life. That is exactly what is called the principle of synchronicity.
Just one key word that is so essential for you to move to the next step. That is exactly what you need to look at. So, even though you know the subject of karma so well but try to be in tune with higher levels of what we are reading because truth is dynamic and what we are reading has got so many levels of understanding.
So, the finer your thought becomes, the finer would be your understanding. Keeping your thoughts, your emotions very refined, very subtle, will progressively help you to discover greater levels of truth. Let’s continue.
Act, do not react
That is the next title from the Path to Freedom. Yesterday, we were talking about creating awareness, learning to let go when it is necessary. We also talked about the peanut monkey story, very very profound and we reminded that you need to check what kind of peanuts you are holding dearly that is repeatedly giving you so much of pain, so much of discomfort.
Peanuts could be, for example, unnecessary pride. Repeatedly you suffer because of pride, that is a peanut. Excessive attachment, excessive desire, again, that is the peanut. All these are cause of miseries and sufferings. You have to identify what is that peanut which is so trivial that is holding you from progressing, that is holding you from sustaining the harmony at home, in your work environment.
More often, you will find that the issues are so trivial. Fear, for example, unnecessary fear, uncertainty. 99% of the time, the fears, the uncertainty that many people experience never happen. Still, they are overwhelmed with these kind of fears and uncertainty.
We had spoken about it many times in the past. Many of the emotions are not yours. It is actually a product of contaminations, intrusions. Different types of psychic energies that are surrounding you, surrounding the countries, surrounding the planet. They might actually make you to experience a particular emotion. That is exactly where discernment is necessary.
Self-analysis is necessary. The moment you ponder upon, “What is the cause of the fear that I’m experiencing? What is actually bogging me over and again with unexplainable worry, uncertainty?” When you start pondering upon deeply you will realize that, “After all I am so blessed! My life is blessed with so much of abundance, prosperity that the humanity does not have.”
Most of you, if not all of you have got no security issues at all, no uncertainty issues at all. For the rest of your life, you will continue to have your food, your shelter, your clothing and most importantly, good people. How many people have this kind of gathering? Think about it!
Many of the people in the world are actually having their own individual battle. They do not know what to do, to whom to ask, where to share and look at our blessings! So, when you start analyzing your life, you will realize that most of the time, the so called fear and uncertainty or any kind of worry that you are holding on is very superficial.
It’s basically a product of some kind of contamination. That is very important. So, leading a life moment to moment with awareness is so important. That was our topic yesterday. Today let’s move on to:
Act, Do Not React
So, there is a very profound quotation from Annie Besant. Perhaps, you can write it down and keep it in places where you would frequently look at, maybe your dressing table or mirror.
“Do not sow new while reaping the old.”
-Annie Besant
Do not sow new while reaping the old. That means, if you had sown some seed in the past, you are bound to harvest it. It is inevitable. So, certain seeds, whether you like it or not, you have to harvest. If you had given extreme pain to somebody in some lifetime, certain amount of pain will come back to you, through people or through conditions or situations.
You have to accept it but while such things are coming back to you, rather than bearing them cheerfully, if you bear them with pain and you react then it actually makes you to sow another seed. This is what we call action and reaction and action and reaction. You get trapped in the cycle of action and reaction.
And that is why Dr. Annie Besant, the great master reminds you, “Do not sow new while reaping the old!” Any reaction will bind you with the situation, with the people. Any reaction is a cause in itself.
Any reaction is a cause in itself. When you react, over and above reaping the bitter fruits of your past actions, you also set the cause for further sufferings. Moreover, you harm yourself more with your hasty reaction as in the story of sage Saktri. So in the scriptures, there is a profound story and this story is very important.
A king known as Kalmashapada was confronted by a sage named Saktri while crossing a narrow bridge. The King asked the sage to move. Saktri said, “As a sage I have the right of passage.” But the king refused because the king is the king. In rage, without even thinking, Sage Saktri cursed him to become a rakshasa, a man-eating demon and instantly the king was transformed into a rakshasa which unfortunately devoured Saktri!
Meaning, it killed and ate Saktri, the rishi. Now, first of all, this are all very symbolic stories from the scriptures. You have to remember that the sage was a perfected being and they cannot curse anybody.
But in the ancient times, again as we had mentioned before, symbolically just to ensure that anybody do not meddle with the saints and sages, these kind of warnings have been told to the people because in the ancient times, not everybody could understand greater spiritual truth.
So because of that, as a warning, people have been said, “Hey, listen, if ever you meddle with sages, you will be cursed!” So, symbolically, when we say curse, it is actually a kind of warning and it should not be literally taken because sages are perfected beings, great masters are perfected beings.
If you and I would not curse anybody and we learn to practice repeatedly forgiveness, how is it possible that the great masters and sages were getting so angry for trivial things that they started cursing people? These are symbolic representation of certain esoteric truth.
Here, the truth is when you have no control over your anger and you simply react, you cause extreme damage or harm to yourself and therefore, you need to be very careful before you utter a word or have a thought. Even at the thought level, you need to be very careful.
The author is narrating some experience:
Some years ago one of my mentors called late at night and abused me.
And this happened in front of Master Sangeeta, as well as one of my very close friend Lindsay Jean Pierre. When he happened to know that it was my mentor, he was really shocked. How is it possible that a mentor of that level could ever use such abusive words? Remember, I think it was over thirty minutes of a wholly of abuses.
I was in Mauritius at that time and the call came around I think 10:30 in the evening. We were just finishing our dinner with our friend. Very amazing experience and I still remember how I was so careful not to have any kind of reaction. Perhaps, I will study this particular story tomorrow. It will be interesting for you to know what happened!
Further reading, Secrets of Karma, Page 133