Karmic Traditions

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="0a9785a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>The Healing Practice</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Healing Practice"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="karma__lessons_of_balance.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Karma, Lessons of Balance"><U>Karma, Lessons of Balance</U></A>   |   <B>Karmic Traditions</B>   |   <A HREF="time_concepts.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Time Concepts"><U>Time Concepts</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#A0A0A4" TEXT="#080000" background="0aad2b03.jpg"> <div> <B>return to </B><A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Karma"><U><B>Karma</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="12f72710.jpg" border=0 width="114" height="113" ALT="The Healing Practice Logo © 2003 - eXTempora limited" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> The Healing Practice</div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#DDDDDD" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I><B>Karmic Traditions</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="133b0cb0.jpg" border=0 width="176" height="203" ALT="escofet" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="3" VSPACE="2">All of the things you have or have not done in this and all of your past (and from our perspective future) lives generate certain effects in this life as well as in future (and from our perspective past) lifetimes. The laws of karma are just and balanced. The soul always has free will. Karma can bring you happiness or sadness depending upon actions you take, and the paths you have chosen. Karma does neither reward or punish. We no longer need karma, or the "karmic cycle," once we have learned how to perfecly balance our energetic creativity - godlikeness. The karmic cycle is the chain of lives we live make use of our actions positive or negative in previous lifetimes.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>KARMA REPRESENTS AN EASTERN TRADITION WITH A WESTERN APPLICATION</B></div> <bR> <div> The belief in the pre-existence of an individual soul has been called by many names. The terms <I>metempsychosis, transmigration, reincarnation, rebirth, </I>and <I>re-embodiment </I>have been used to describe this mechanism. <I>Karma </I>is a Sanskrit word that literally means "action." In some theories karma is the force that leads to reincarnation. <I>Destiny </I>is another synonym for karma. </div> <bR> <div> The basic law of karma has come to mean action and reaction, or cause and effect. In all reality there are only results though, actions in correspondence - we interpret the coming together of actions in a result as cause and effect. Cause and effect are linear, and indicate pre-destination - there is no predestined path, there is no other fate than that we choose to make ourselves.</div> <bR> <div> One of the basic principles of karma is that every soul (entity) has free will. There is always freedom of choice. Each soul is drawn to parents who can provide the biological heredity and physical environment needed to leam karmic lessons. Psychic genetics are more important than biological genetics in determining the character of our lives. </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="1357a8e0.jpg" border=0 width="122" height="142" ALT="escofet" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <B>Hinduism</B></div> <div> The Hindus called the soul atman, which survives many lifetimes until it accomplishes its destiny of perfection, enlightenment, and joy and finally attains direct insight into its identity with Brahman, the World Spirit, and thus eliminates the necessity of rebirth.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Tibetan Buddhism</B></div> <div> The <I>skandhas </I>(heaps of attributes or elements of limited existence) play a most important part in the transmission of "unfinished business" in Buddhist philosophy. These karmic connections between lives (skandhas) are similar in function to the DNA that makes up the chromosomes responsible for inherited characteristics in the physical body. These skandhas remain at death as karmic remnants and attach themselves to the subconscious and subsequently are reincarnated along with the subconscious. One striking difference between the Hindus and the Buddhists in their concept of karma is that the former believe in a permanent soul, whereas the latter maintains that everything in the universe is in a state of change. Buddhists consider the soul to be a conglomeration of habit patterns, attachments, and instincts which are all subject to change. Thus, Buddhists feel that there is no permanent soul, just a pulsating subconscious that goes from lifetime to lifetime learning lessons until it achieves its liberation by attaining enlightenment. Buddhists say that the existence of the three "fires" of craving, ill-will, and ignorance bring about rebirth. The extinction of these "fires" is symbolized by the word <I>nirvana, </I>meaning "perfection."</div> <bR> <div> <B>Zoroastrianism</B></div> <div> The teachings of Zoroaster of ancient Persia are preserved today by the <I>Parsis of India. </I>Mezoam separated man from the other animals by the presence of a soul. This soul is free and without a body or anything material. It is through the soul that man reaches God. </div> <bR> <div> <B>The Koran</B></div> <div> Under Islamic influence, Spain was a great center of philosophy. Avicebron, a Spanish Jew, brought the long forgotten teachings of Plato-who believed in a soul-back to European thought. During the Dark Ages in Europe, when the knowledge of Greece and Rome was all but lost, the doctrine of rebirth was being taught in the East by Al-Ghazali and Al-Batagni in the schools of Baghdad. However, the Sufis, a Muslim mystical sect, did the most to preserve reincarnational thought in the East. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Stone-Age Karma</B></div> <div> Primitive civilizations have often included human sacrifice as part of their rituals. They believed that only the body and not the soul was being sacrificed. Some North American and Central American Indians felt that human sacrifice helped the individual's karmic cycle. In Great Britain, the ancient Celtic religion of witchcraft, or Wicca, was eventually replaced by the incorporation of reincarnation into their religious beliefs. This also applied to France and Scandinavia.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Egypt</B></div> <div> According to Egyptian beliefs, transmigration was the accepted mechanism of reincarnation. After a person died, he or she would reincarnate as an animal for as long as 3,000 years until the soul became purified. Only then could this soul return to the human form. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Greece</B></div> <div> Orpheus was the founder of Greek theology. He taught the Greeks various sacred rites. Plato and Pythagoras used Orpheus as a source for their own philosophies. Plato (427-347 b.c.) states in <I>Phaedrus, </I>'Every soul is immortal. All that is soul presides over all that is without soul and patrols all Heaven, now appearing in one form and now in another. Every man's soul has by the law of his birth been a spectator of eternal truth, or it would never have passed into this our mortal frame, yet still it is no easy matter for all to be reminded of their past by their present existence.'' In <I>Laws, </I>Book X, Plato states, "Know that if you become worse you will go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like."</div> <bR> <div> <B>Ancient Judaism</B></div> <div> Flavius Josephus , the Hebrew historian, states that there were three sects of philosophy among the Jews. These were termed the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. The Sadducees believed that the soul died when the body died but both the Essenes and the Pharisees believed in rebirth. The Kabala is a sacred text supposedly representing the hidden wisdom behind the Hebrew scriptures. It was derived by the rabbis of the Middle Ages from older doctrines. Reincarnation often appears in the Kabala and was further developed in Has-idism. According to these teachings, all human souls have a common origin from primordial man (Adam Kadmon). Parts of Adam's soul <I>(nitzotzoth) </I>form every individual soul. Adam's original sin brought higher and lower souls into confusion. As a result, every soul had to pass through a series of incarnations before returning to God. The ancient Jews believed that Moses was the reincarnation of Abel, the son of Adam. Their Messiah was to be the reincarnation of Adam himself, who had already come a second time as David.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Rome</B></div> <div> The poet Ennius introduced karma to the Romans. In his <I>Annals, </I>Ennius tells how Homer appeared to him in a dream and told him that their two bodies had the same soul. Virgil (70-19 b.c.) in the <I>Aeneid </I>says, "All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in a great array, to the Lethean river. In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re-visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies."</div> <bR> <div> <B>Christianity</B></div> <div> An early Christian philosopher by the name of Origen (a.d. 185-254), considered by some historians to be one of the most prominent of all of the Church fathers, in his <I>Contra Celsum, </I>states, "Is it not more in conformity with reason that every soul for certain mysterious reasons is introduced into a body, and introduced according to is deserts and former actions? The soul, which is immaterial and invisible in its nature, exists in no material place without having a body suited to the nature of that place; accordingly, it at one time puts off one body, which was necessary before, but which is no longer adequate in its changed state, and it exchanges it for a second." </div> <bR> <div> Saint Augustine (a.d. 354-430), in <I>Contra Academicos, </I>discussed Plato's reincarnation by saying, "The message of Plato, the purest and most luminous in all philosophy, has at last scattered the darkness of error, and now shines forth mainly in Plotinus, a follower of Plato so like his master that one would think they lived together, or rather-since so long a period of time separates them-that Plato is born again in Plotinus." </div> <bR> <div> There were many disputes over issues of Christian doctrine- especially over the preexistence of the soul-in the 500 years after the death of Christ. During the Dark Ages, the doctrine of reincarnation became hidden but fortunately did not disappear. Heretical Christian groups kept reincarnation and karma alive in the West.</div> <bR> <div> In a.d. 529, Emperor Justinian closed the Neoplatonic School in Athens and banished the last of the Neoplatonists. For nearly a thousand years, with the exception of the Christian heretics, the concept of reincarnation disappeared from Christian Europe. Not until the fifteenth century in Florence, Italy, under the protection of the House of Medici, were the teachings of Plato and the concept of reincarnation revived. </div> <bR> <div> George Gemistus (1355-1450) is credited with being the first person to reintroduce Plato to the Western world. Gemistus wrote, "As to ourselves, our soul remains immortal and eternal. . . . Attached to a mortal envelope, it is sent by the gods now into one body, now into another, in order that the union of the mortal and immortal elements in human nature may contribute to the unity of the whole.''</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Oversoul Concept</B></div> <div> This particular karmic concept claims that you are part of a larger soul. You are merely an extension of this complete soul. In order for this oversoul to learn many different lessons, it creates smaller souls so that it is living many lives simultaneously. Past, present, and future occur simultaneously, according to this concept. One interpretation of this concept places the oversoul on the God plane. Thus, although we are functioning on the lower planes, we are all directly part of God. We would then all be Gods. Some regressions have uncovered parallel lives or one entity reporting two former lives at the same dates but in different locations, lending credence to this view.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Simultaneous Multiple Incarnation Concept</B></div> <div> As the earth's frequency begins to accelerate with technological advancements, more and more of the older souls will now be attracted to coming back to this era of time. These very mature souls have the ability to inhabit many bodies at one time. Thus, they can speed up our evolutionary process. Also, many parapsychologists feel that only highly evolved souls with certain vibrational rates would be able to survive in the twentieth century.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> I am indebted to Dr Goldberg. Some passages from Past Lives - Future Lives have been paraphrased here. Please see: <A HREF="http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/index.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/index.htm"><U>dr bruce goldberg.com</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> n</div> <div> <U>    P    </U></div> <div> © 2003-2011 eXTempora limited - All rights reserved.</div> <div> Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of any component of this site, in whole, in part, or as a derivative, </div> <div> is in violation of applicable US federal copyright laws and international copyright treaties.</div> <bR> <div>  <A HREF="http://www.copyscape.com/"><IMG SRC="http://banners.copyscape.com/images/cs-wh-234x16.gif" ALT="Content copyright protected by Copyscape website plagiarism search" TITLE="Do not copy content from the page. Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape." WIDTH="234" HEIGHT="16" BORDER="0"></A>  </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>