1. The Nature and Significance of Karma in the Personal and Individual; and in Humanity, the Earth and the Universe

We may now go a little further and form for ourselves a somewhat higher idea of the connection between cause and effect. For instance if we have a bow, and we bend it and shoot off an arrow with it, there is an effect caused by the bending of the bow; but we can no more speak of the effect of the shot arrow in connection with its cause as ‘karma’ than in the foregoing case. But if we consider something else in connection with this incident, we shall, to a certain extent, get nearer to the idea of karma, even if we do not then quite grasp it. For example, we may reflect that the bow, if often bent, becomes slack in time. So, from what the bow does and from what happens to it, there will follow not only an effect which shows itself externally, but also one which will react upon the bow itself. Through the frequent bending of the bow something happens to the bow itself. Something which happens through the bending of the bow reacts, so to speak, on the bow. Thus an effect is obtained which reacts on the object by which the effect itself was caused. This comes nearer to the idea of karma. Unless a result is produced which reacts upon the being or thing producing it, unless there is this peculiar reacting effect upon the being which caused it, the idea of karma is not understood. We thus get somewhat nearer to the idea when it is clear to us that the effects caused by the thing or being must recoil upon that thing or being itself; nevertheless we must not call the slackening of the bow through frequent bending, the ‘karma’ of the bow, for the following reason. If we have had the bow for three or four weeks and have often bent it so that after this time it becomes slack, then we really have in the slack bow something quite different from the tense bow of four weeks before. Thus when the reacting effect is of such a kind that it makes the thing or the being something quite different, we cannot yet speak of ‘karma.’ We may speak of karma only when the effects which react upon a being find the same being to react upon, or at any rate that being, in a certain sense, unaltered. Thus we have again come a little nearer to the idea of karma; but if we describe it in this way we obtain only a very abstract conception of it.