Karma Viewed from the Standpoint of World History

Will you then still be astonished by the legend of a philosopher who threw himself deliberately into the crater of a volcano? What can have been the motive of such a resolve on the part of one who was initiated into the secrets of world-existence? The motive could only have been a conscious intention to achieve through the agency of human will something that could otherwise have been achieved only through the agency of elemental nature: the sudden sweeping away of a process that would otherwise have worked itself to an end by slow degrees.