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

Then the man returns once more to life on earth. His consciousness is altered again. He does not recollect the time between death and rebirth, or the resolutions to make compensation. But the intention remains within him, and although he does not know that he must do such and such a thing to compensate such and such an act, yet he is impelled by the power within him to make the compensation. Now we can form an idea of what happens when a man in his twentieth year suffers bitter trial. With the consciousness he possesses between birth and death, he will be depressed by the trial; but if he could remember his resolutions made between death and rebirth, he would be able to trace the power which drove him into the position in which he suffered the trial, because he felt that only by passing through it would he win back the degree of perfection which he has lost and was now to regain. When, therefore, the ordinary consciousness says, ‘The trial is there, and you are suffering from it,’ it sees only the trouble itself, and not the effect it produces; but the other consciousness which can look back upon all the time between death and rebirth, sees the intentional seeking for the trial or other misfortune.