XII. Karma Technique

Let us assume an average citizen of today has his favorite dish, something he really enjoys. This pleasure in his favourite dish is not in his physical body, for that merely takes in the food, in physical processes. Such physical processes may be chemical changes. But that is not the enjoyment of the food. The enjoyment is in the gourmet’s soul. It is the same with all pleasure and pain known to the soul. When the soul delights in beautiful colours or other things, a physical eye is needed if pleasure in the colour is to enter into the soul. The element in the soul that demands to be satisfied through the senses is kama. In the kama loka, the soul still thirsts for the pleasure but it no longer has the organs for this after death. The soul then develops an inner feeling of a particular kind. It may be compared to what happens in the soul if one walks through a desert where there is no well and suffers raging thirst. The condition after death is therefore due to the fact that one does not have the organs to satisfy one’s desires. The individual then experiences a raging thirst which will continue until all desire has gone. The more he has managed to free himself from the need to have his senses satisfied during life on earth, and the more he has made the beauty and the good of the world his own, things that are pure and independent of the body, the sooner will the time in kama loka be over. If he has already found his way into the world of the spirit, if the ideas and thoughts that are behind the world perceived by the senses have entered into his soul, the time in kama loka will be short.