Some Notes on Karma and Reincarnation Chapter 2

On Free Will, Karma & Destiny

A

new friend, a student from the university where I teach and study, once made this remark about her boyfriend and the future of their relationship, “Kung talagang kami ang magkakatuluyan Sir, kung iyon talaga ang kapalaran namin, kahit ano pa ang mangyari, kami talaga pa rin. Kung hindi talaga kami para sa ias’t-isa, wala na akong magagawa.”

At the time she said those lines, I was unable to discuss it further. There were things I had to do. Later in the day, I thought of writing my thoughts down. Aside from her, many people in this country think along the same line. Some religions even teach the belief that everything that happens is predestined. To them, people in this world simply act out a role whose script has all been written by the “Hand of Destiny”.

The topic on the “Hand of Destiny”, guhit ng kapalaran, tadhana or predestination involves two things: free will and karma. There is actually no such thing as destiny. These two things are quite big topic. I will only share a few basic ideas.

God, our Father Above, out of His infinite love, created us. He gave us a Soul whose spiritual genes, so to speak, was exactly the same as His. When the Soul decided to descend into this world to learn many things, it necessarily took on a human body. From thereon, the Soul opted for a human evolutionary path towards acquiring more wisdom and a deeper feeling and understanding of love. Thus, we have two natures here- a spiritual nature and a human nature.

Oftentimes, when a person commits a serious mistake, he says, “I am only human. Sapagkat ako ay tao lamang.”

It is actually a half-truth because we also have a spiritual nature. We have a Soul. The Soul is the more important half of our nature.

However, one of the Laws of nature and of life in our world is that when the Soul or a part of the Soul enters the body, the lower consciousness, a product of the evolution of our physical body, is not aware of this. The lower consciousness cannot ordinarily reach the higher Consciousness of his Soul except during rare instances as in dreams, hunches and inspiration. We have different levels of consciousness. For the lower consciousness to reach the Soul, the person must develop himself/herself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually until his/her lower consciousness can open the inner door that leads to the Soul.

The soul is given two things: one is immortality and the other is free will. We are primarily concerned in this discussion with the gift of free will and its relation to karma and the so-called destiny.

Because of free will we are free to do what we want to do. We can choose to do good and the follow the will of The Father. We can also go against His will and do foolish, wrong and even evil things. In this world, we can either be a good or a bad father/mother, a good or a bad husband/wife, a good or a bad son/daughter, a good or a bad friend, etc. We can either fool and hurt people or we can be honest and help people.

Whenever you think of and do right things, you become closer to your Soul. As a consequence, you also become closer to The Father. The opposite of course is also true. Whenever you think of and do wrong things , you widen the gap between yourself and your Soul. As a consequence, you become farther away from The Father. As you become closer to your Soul, your Soul can more properly control your human nature - the needs of your body, emotions and mind. The more you control and master yourself, the greater is your freedom.

Whenever you do wrong things, your Soul has less and less control over your body, emotions (passions, desires, etc.) and mind. The less your Soul has control of these three aspects of your human nature, the less freedom you have because your lower consciousness becomes a slave to the needs of your lower human nature. As the Soul loses control of the lower consciousness, the needs of the body for food and sex become excessive. This turns you into a lower form of animal. Your emotional need to love and be loved also becomes excessive. This leads to extreme possessiveness that strangulates the person you love. Your mind further becomes excessively focused on acquiring worldly things, on getting wealth and power for its own sake, and not as means to serve others and to develop oneself.

Many people believe that more food, sex, wealth and power bring more freedom. Consider smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. Many smokers and drinkers of alcohol believe that they feel more free and more alive whenever they smoke more cigarettes or drink alcohol. However, the more cigarettes they smoke or the more alcohol they drink, the less freedom they have. They have become more addicted and addicts obviously have practically no freedom.

A renowned mystical poet, Kahlil Gibran, beautifully spoke of people who used their freedom in a wrong way and so became obsessed with money, power and pleasures of the flesh. He said,

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.

All our thoughts and actions, whether good or bad, have results. A good thought/action inevitably produces good results. A bad thought/action produces a bad result. As written in one Spiritual Book, “What you sow, is what you reap”. A bad seed will produce a sickly plant or tree. A healthy good seed will produce a healthy plant or tree. In another religion, this is called the law of karma. This law is an impersonal law similar to the law of gravity. It is a universal law and like gravity no one escapes it.

Some poor people have asked, “I have been a good man, I have honestly worked hard and yet I have suffered and have to continue to suffer a lot. I cannot feed my family properly nor can I send my children to schools of higher learning. On the other hand, corrupt politicians and greedy capitalists appear to enjoy life. Why is this so if the law of karma is true?”

There is one social phenomenon related to the law of karma that has not been adequately discussed by those who study and/or teach the Art of Good Living and Spiritual Wisdom. For one thing, social science is a relatively new discipline. Social science has uncovered the laws governing the social structure. One law states that an unjust social structure where wealth, power and knowledge are concentrated in a few inevitably results in the suffering of many. No matter how hard a slave works, no matter how good a man he is, the unjust social structure makes him suffer. The saying “what you sow, is what you reap” does not apply on the social level. The poor honest man who plants many healthy seeds, does not enjoy the fruits of his labor. He doesn’t own the land he tills. The wealth produced goes to the landlord. Even when he has freedom to make his life, the circumstances around the social structure limit his freedom to improve himself.

In this country where there is a big unemployment problem and a serious maldistribution of wealth resulting in mass poverty, many poor people have virtually no option but to work abroad and become virtual slaves to abusive employers. Many women and children are forced to beg, steal or worse, sell their bodies.

One religion believes that poverty is actually the karma of a person. A person who lived a bad life in another lifetime is being punished today by being born poor. This is a big lie perpetuated by the rich and the powerful to justify their social position. The truth is, sometime in the early beginnings of man, a few people having tasted what wealth and power can do, have decided by all means to maintain their wealth and perpetuate themselves in power. They have thought of ways and means to pass on their wealth and power to their children, to their children’s children and so on.

One of the means they have used was the invention of myths and legends about themselves. In the process, the people who heard and/or read about them have begun to worship them and their descendants. A lie, repeated over and over again systematically and regularly, especially by those who outwardly look respectable, gradually becomes accepted as true in time.

Hitler used famous respectable scientists to tell the German people that indeed, they were the superior race and that it was their destiny to rule the world. Tens of millions of people were killed because of this lie. Some respectable American leaders told the American people at the turn of the century that it was their “Manifest Destiny” to colonize the Philippines. As a consequence, even if we had already gained our independence from Spain, the American expansionists turned us into their colony. Some hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were killed in the Filipino-American War because of this lie.

The older German people knew that it was not true, that it was nonsense, but Hitler correctly pointed out that the young German people, whose hearts and minds could easily be influenced, would believe his lies after some years of indoctrination. Indeed, these young Germans later became his loyal, mindless and heartless soldiers. They killed millions of people including women and children. That is why it is very important that we teach people, especially the youth, whose hearts and minds are like pieces of clay that can be easily molded and remolded, not to blindly believe something or blindly follow someone. We must teach people to always have a critical attitude to ideas and life.

Good thoughts/actions must necessarily produce good results in accordance with the law of karma. However, such good results, such good karma, are not seen on the social level because social situations are mainly the result of the laws governing society. Good results happen on an individual and personal level. Its effects are within the individual. The most important result of living a good life, of having good karma is that it strengthens one’s character positively. Good karma enriches the Soul because the Soul acquires more wisdom of what is right and wrong, more courage to do what is right and reject what is wrong and feels a more pure kind of unselfish love. And since the Soul is immortal, such good results are never lost. In a limited way, good karma also helps a person in his economic concerns. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Bad thoughts and actions negatively affect one’s character. It is also carried on to other lifetimes.

Karma affects the personal relationships one develops through life. Family ties, deep friendships and love, and the sacred bond among those who study together the Art of Good Living and Spiritual Wisdom result in karmic ties. The opposite is also true. Deep anger, distrust, hatred between persons also ends up in karmic ties. The good karmic ties are oftentimes repeated in the next lives so the concerned Souls can further help each other grow. The karmic ties related to a problem manifesting deep anger, distrust and hatred must be resolved in the next life or lifetimes. Until it is resolved, until the person/s involved see their mistakes or shortcomings and learn the lessons to be learned, the problem between these persons comes back again and again. Thus, in many cases, people who are close to you now are people who were once close to you in other lifetimes.

These karmic ties are often wrongly perceived or interpreted as the work of the hand of destiny. Many wrongly believe that destiny decides whether or not people in love meet again. They also believe that destiny also decides whether or not their relationship will end up in marriage. Some even believe that destiny decides whether they will be happy or not in their married life.

Similarly, my new friend believes that whatever happens to her and her current boyfriend depends on destiny. These are all wrong ideas. She has a karmic tie with her boyfriend. They have loved each other in one lifetime at least. They have met again either to solve an unsettled problem or their Souls have decided to meet again to possibly continue a beautiful relationship. Their meeting is not due to destiny. It is the result of the free wills of two Souls who freely decided to see each other again sometime in the next life or lifetimes.

The problem of course is that normal people have no access to the higher consciousness of their Souls. Thus, they cannot know that their Souls met and decided to meet again at a specific point in time. People believe that destiny makes them meet each other. In the life of a Soul, one lifetime is but a brief moment. Souls who have karmic ties decide which lifetime they think it is best to meet again. While people usually make appointments in a matter of days, weeks, or months, Souls make appointments in terms of decades or centuries.

Whatever reason there is for two or more Souls to meet again, after they have met “as scheduled”, it is up to them to decide what to do next. It is now up to their free wills to decide and plan what happens next. We make our own lives.

We can now see that there is no such thing as destiny.

On the social level, there is no such thing as someone destined to be poor. A person’s social situation is primarily determined by the social structure. An unjust social structure correspondingly makes the majority of the people poor. At special moments in history, the exploited and oppressed can no longer be deceived. They gather enough strength to wage massive protest actions like the revolution of out Filipino people against Spanish colonialism. The exploited and the oppressed, out of their own free wills, decide collectively to end their sufferings.

On the personal level, the gift of free will gives us the freedom to make our own decisions, our own choices in life. Such choices inevitably produce results - karma. Karma then comes back to us on the personal level. It affects our character and the personal ties we establish with certain people as we go through life.

There are two important things here we must always keep in mind: one is that karma is the result of a personal decision in the first place. It is the result of an act of free will. Second, karma can be changed. Even when karma affects our personal lives, we can always use our free will to make a new decision.

There is one more situation I wish to discuss which I frequently encounter. I have in mind those young people I have talked to who have had sad childhood experiences - broken families or cruel parent/s. The belief that it is their destiny, kapalaran or their karma to have such sad experiences is nonsense. The children have nothing to do with the thoughts and actions of their parents. Sadly though, the thoughts and actions of their parents have a very great effect on the children. Parents who do great harm to their children physically, emotionally and mentally will have a very bad karma and will pay for it. I advise the children of such parents to focus their hearts and minds on things that they have control of - their studies, their career, their choice of friends and the person they will love and marry. I advise them to let go of those things that they have no control or very little control of like their parents’ lives.

Similarly, there is the situation of those so-called martyred wives who have husbands that are irresponsible, drunkards, gamblers and womanizers. Some wives in this situation believe that it is their destiny, kapalaran to have such husbands. Such a belief is also nonsense. The thoughts and actions of such husbands are a result of their own free wills. The wives are free to decide whether to stop such a dehumanizing relationship or to continue to suffer. The wives must remember that it is never too late to end their sufferings … it is never too late to start a new life … it is never too late to pick up the broken pieces of your life …it is never too late to fight for your happiness and peace of mind.

There is thus no such thing as destiny. There is no such thing as being destined to live a happy life or a sad life. On the personal level, we make our own lives. If we have made mistakes in this life or in our previous lives which inevitably produced bad karma, we can change such bad karma by first learning from the mistakes. As we learn from these mistakes, we begin to have more realizations in life. We grow in wisdom. Next, we must make a strong resolve not to repeat the same mistakes. We must be brave in changing ourselves.

As we change ourselves, we develop good karma. Thus, we overcome our bad karma. Our Souls begin to have more and more control over our bodies, emotions and minds. Our spiritual nature guides our human nature more and more. With greater spiritual influence and guidance from our Soul, we make less and less mistakes. We are able to follow more the will of The Father. We become more free. When you no longer think of choosing between good or bad, when you have firmly decided to always do good, when all you think of is how to best serve others and The Father, then you would have achieved total freedom of will.

(Note: one of the extraordinary things that happened to me was I remembered my past lives. I wrote this poem to a student who “felt” she knew me well in one of her past lives. I checked it and found out she was once my student in the study of what was called then, the Mystical Arts. The setting was in Europe, at the time of the bubonic plague, around mid-14^th century.)

A Poem I Wrote For a “Former Student”

After around 600 years,

we met again,

“at ikaw pa ang unang nakakilala sa akin.”

Though it was “quite a long time ago,”

I could still recall many important things,

… You first heard of me thru a neighbor

whom I was privileged to have helped.

… With a mixture of curiosity

as well as, serious interest

and a deep longing for the Truth

you sought and found me.

… You were a good student,

You attended the lectures and sessions

as often as you could,

You listened well,

asked important questions,

and practiced what you had learned.

… You were around 16 years old then,

still quite young,

but you showed dedication

and determination.

… One day,

you had to leave as your parents

had decided to move to a far place

where lands were more plentiful

and fertile … and to be further

away from the Plague.

You visited me for the last time,

asked for my blessings

as well as some advice to guide you

as you might not see me again.

And I told you then,

“A good student is always a source of joy

for a teacher. Though I have known you only for a year or so, you have been a good student. You have made me very happy. I am proud of you.

As you seek my advice, I wish to tell you

the following:

… A Teacher of the Art of Good Living

and of the Mystical Arts like me

can only teach you so much

beyond which,

you must learn to teach yourself,

you must learn to think by yourself

and you must learn to decide

by yourself.

… Know yourself more,

take note of your strengths and weaknesses,

see what has to change so you could

become a better person.

… Meditate regularly,

so you could reach and be reached

by Higher Spiritual Beings,

by the Spiritual Masters,

and by the Father.

… Humbly learn from those who know more

than you, while selflessly share

what you really know to those who

seek your knowledge and advice.

… In facing and solving problems,

keep in mind two things:

first, correct what is wrong,

do what is right.

Second, trace the roots.

You can only solve a problem

if you go to its roots.

… Remember,

it is a privilege to help people.

Never seek anything in return

for you must help simply because,

it is the right thing to do.

… Strive for balance for the things you

have to do. Where there is balance,

there will be harmony,

and where there is harmony,

then you can make more progress

on “The Path.”

… Live a good life,

‘return kindness with kindness,

helpfulness with helpfulness

trust with trust,

love with love,

and injustice with justice.’

… Do not seek to develop “magical powers”

prematurely. Such powers will come

to you when you are ready,

when the Spiritual Master sees

that you can use such powers

properly to help others and to

develop yourself further.

… Continue to walk further on “The Path”,

Move on and on.

Strive to be the best you can.

Then,

I silently prayed for you as I gave you

my blessings.

And,

my parting words were,

“In the study of the Mystical Arts,

the relationship between the Teacher and the Student is sacred for it is not only two hearts and minds that communicate but two Souls exchanging “notes on life” and problems encountered along “The Path.” When you have a problem that is too heavy to bear, remember that my hand is always there for you to reach if and when you need it. Just let me know.”

You thanked me and as you were about to leave,

you unexpectedly asked me the question,

“How should I choose my husband?”

I smiled,

took note of the fact that in a few more years,

you would be like a beautiful, bright colored

flower in full bloom and many men then would

seek to win your love. Then I said,

“What is more important is what a man has inside,

the character of a man and not how much lands he has. For a rich man without a good character can only give what your body needs but he cannot give warmth to your heart, he cannot give peace to your mind, he cannot enrich your Soul. Do not allow your parents to choose for you as it is still the custom in many places. Fight for your right to choose the man you will love and marry. So much happiness or so much pain depends on that decision.”

Then you left and I watched you walk away … and, from

a distance, you looked back and saw me looking.

You waved goodbye for the last time and I, too,

waved goodbye.

And I never saw you again for many, many years.

… After around twenty years,

as you were going to a place near my town

you decided to drop by to greet me,

to share experiences and pay your respects.

I was happy to see you again and I said,

“You have continued walking on “The Path.”

I am happy and proud of you. Oh, it seems that

you have aged only a little since the last time

I saw you.”

You returned the compliment and said that I too,

grew old only a little and then we both laughed.

After some more exchanges of “notes on life”,

you asked me for my blessings again as we were

about to leave. After I gave you my blessings,

you told me,

“My husband is a good man. He treats me and our

children well. However, he gets angry whenever he

sees me ‘read cards’ to help people. Could you

please give me some advice on this problem?”

I paused for a while, thinking…

Then I replied,

“In our time, only a few people understand the true nature of the Mystical Arts. The Church at this time teaches so many superstitions and persecutes those who believe otherwise. Like many other people, your husband has set his mind closed on this matter and he is afraid of the Church.

Continue to practice what you have known, continue to walk on “The Path.” Continue to ‘read cards’ to help people but keep it a secret. Perhaps, you could reach your husband thru his heart. Continue to love him as he is a good man. Someday, he will tell you how he appreciates your being a good wife and a good mother. Then, that is the time to tell him that your practice of the Mystical Arts helped you a lot to be a good woman. There is then a good chance that he will be interested in knowing the truth about the Mystical Arts.”

Now,

After around 600 years,

… you reached for my hand,

you had a problem you found

for a time, too heavy to bear.

… though we met under different

circumstances, the sacred bond

between a Teacher and a Student

of the Mystical Arts is still there,

… it will always be there.

You thanked me and as you were about to leave,

I told you again that my hand will always be there

for you to reach if and when you need it.

And,

I never saw you again then,

you never reached for my hand.

Now,

After around 600 years,

… you reached for my hand.

You had a problem you found

for a time too heavy to bear.

… though we met under different circumstances,

the sacred bond between a Teacher

and a Student of the Mystical Arts

is still there…it will always be there.

… you still have the basic goodness and honesty

as well as the inner strength.

… comparing then and now,

these are more difficult times,

… there is now much more sufferings, lies

deceptions, greed, temptation, poverty,

predatory, unjust wars, exploitation and

oppression.

… there is then,

more that we have to do now.

we must help more people,

we must strive more in ending

the exploitation of man by man,

we must contribute more in the building

of a world that is truly just and

prosperous for all.

My dear “old student”,

If you wish to continue our studies “then”,

I would be very happy to share with you

all that I know.

People make their own lives,

they make their own decisions.

Your parents decided to separate,

and you as their child,

cannot change their decision.

Study what went wrong

with your parents’ relationship.

Find out the lessons to be learned.

Such lessons will be valuable to you

when it is your time to get married.

After learning the lessons,

then let go of this sad experience,

let go of situations you have no control of,

let the past belong to the past.

Focus on matters you can control.

Hold your life in your hand

and use it properly.

Take hold of your life,

… Make good in your studies. Later,

build a career. Consider your career

as one important way of developing

yourself and a way of serving people.

… Choose well the man you will love and

marry. Remember, the true value of a

man is not in the amount of money

he has in his pocket but what he has

inside him. What really matters is his

character, his values, his ideas on life.

As I told you “then”,

My hand will always be there for you

to reach if and when you need it.

Take good care of yourself…

Pi-Wi

December 30, 1994