We all believe in Karma and understand that each one of our
actions has consequences either in near or distant future, and that our current
happiness or suffering is a result of our past actions. This is understandable
in most of the cases but sometimes we get confused when group of people meet
the same fate as a bus or train accident or a natural calamity and wonder how
they all performed same action in the past to beget the same result together. This
cannot be explained by the individual karma. There must be a collective karma
that belonged to the entire group.
If we take a classroom in a school for example, we see that
individual students score marks in an exam based on the level of effort they
put in and their intellectual abilities. But the class, as a whole, will also
get affected by the ability of the teacher and also external factors beyond their
individual control. Same way, when a country or a state goes through elections,
the new government is usually formed by whoever gets a majority of votes, which
could be only 30-40% of the population. But the consequences of it need to be
borne by the whole country or state. Nobody can escape by saying I did not vote
for this government. That is collective karma.
Moreover, not all our sufferings need to be a result of
karma. This body is just a machine and routinely undergoes wear and tear. We should
accept this inevitability and move on, instead of treating is as a suffering and
pestering God with questions like “Why me? What have I done to beget this?”. And
the interesting part is, people always ask these questions while suffering and almost
never ask the same during the times of prosperity and happiness.
Once a devotee asked our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj the same
questions, “Most of the humans are getting vision and hearing problems, losing
teeth and hair, or graying of hair etc. How is it possible that all of them did
same karma in previous lives to beget these common problems?” In reply he gave
an excellent explanation - “When it’s time for the school, they ring three
bells with an interval of five minutes. Some students reach school even before
the first bell rings. Some hurry to the school hearing the first bell, some on
the second or third and some don’t even care and always go to school late and
unprepared. These ailments are the bells that God rings to let you know your
time is running out and you better prepare well, at least now, in order to
reach Him before it’s too late. Some people realize this on the first sign and
improve upon their spiritual practice to reach Him peacefully. Some realize it
on the second or third sign and others don’t even realize and will be pushed to
hell to suffer or to a rebirth into a species of a lower intellect where it
takes much longer to realize the Self.”
While we may never know the real reasons behind our
happiness or sufferings, it is prudent to forget about the past and look at
what we can do to become strong enough to be unaffected by these. The solution
for that is to treat both happiness and suffering as a graceful grant of God
and take them with an equal mind. And also always remember that both of them
are temporary and will not last long. As long as there is ignorance of the
self, we tend to recognize this duality and enjoy or suffer. Once we attain the
knowledge of the self, this duality goes away and only thing that remains is
the ultimate bliss.
When devotees asked questions like, “If I am God, when did
this ignorance start in me that I am not able to realize my true self?” and Sri
Babuji used to reply with a question, “While walking on the road if you
accidentally step on someone’s feces, do you just go and wash your feet? Or do
you scrutinize it to find out whom did it belonged to and from what kind of
food it formed?” When a devote asked this question once Sri Babuji asked, “Do
you know Nuclear Physics?” and the devotee replied, “No Sir.” And Sri Babuji
asked, “Since when you didn’t know it?” to which the devotee got perplexed and
replied, “How can there be a starting point for not knowing? I never knew it.”
Sri Babuji explained, “Same is the case with ignorance. It’s always been there
and will be there as long as you don’t light the matchstick of knowledge of the
self. There is no point in trying to find out the origins of ignorance and you
can instead spend that effort in lighting the fire of knowledge.”
