Here follows a short definition of karma by Roberto Assagioli
“By eliminating the illusions and blinders that veil or hide reality from us, understanding helps us to “see clearly”, to perceive the truth, to penetrate — behind deceptive appearances — the marvelous reality and the animating Spirit of the universe.
In this way we come to discover the great law of justice and balance that governs life in all its manifestations. It is the law of cause and effect, recognized and demonstrated by science in the physical world, which also operates in the psychological and moral world, in the human world. In fact, it would be absurd that a relationship of cause and effect, i.e. of “justice”, existed in the material world and not in the moral world. But this law (called the law of karma, or of action, by the Indians) should not be considered as something that binds us, constrains us, locks us into an inflexible destiny; on the contrary, if it is well understood and used, it helps us to free ourselves from the bonds created by our ignorance and our mistakes, it shows us the way and offers us the means to achieve our freedom.
An example can help us to understand the nature of this “freedom under law”. Man has gained the power to move freely in the air through aviation; but he has not done so by abrogating or violating the law of gravity, but by skillfully using it in such a way that he masters it while he obeys it. The same can be done — and the wise and enlightened do it — in the moral realm.” (By Roberto Assagioli, From Pain to Peace, original Title: Dal Dolore alla Pace. Translated by Jan Kuniholm and Francesco Viglienghi, derived from Archivio Assagioli – Firenze.)
Good and evil are relative, say the immoralists, for the same action can be good in one instance and bad in another. The Spirit is above such human distinctions and indifferent to them: the Spirit justifies everything. Morals, they go on to say more explicitly, are a product of society, made up of a series of traditional standards which ordinary people accept uncritically; but the initiated, the superior individuals, can be free from such limiting standards of behaviour, for they have such important tasks to accomplish that they are allowed to do what others cannot or dare not do, using means forbidden to ordinary mortals. But if we do not allow ourselves to be readily taken in by these fine-sounding claims, we will quickly realize how fundamentally ungrounded they are. In the first place such lofty statements are based on a confusion between the great moral principles of a universal nature, and the particular, imperfect application of those principles by human beings at various times and in various places throughout history. Actual moral
standards and the various codes of moral law are, of course, relative and at times contradictory, but this does not in any way detract from the validity of the great moral principles which are as fixed and certain as the laws of physics. The reason for this is that in both cases what in essence is being demonstrated is the great Law of Causality, of Karma. In accordance with this, every effect is not only a necessary outcome of its cause, it is also implicit in that cause.
So someone who commits a wrong action is not punished because of breaking a human law, nor for offending a personal God: the individual is not punished for the wrong action, but directly by the wrong action. The first and most important effect of an action is the immediate effect it has on the soul that committed it: a good action lifts up and ennobles a person – we might almost say automatically – whereas a bad action debases the person who commits it. This is a fixed law, and the justness and necessity of such a law is obvious. No fine-sounding claims or juggling with words can do anything to change this fact. (From Transpersonal Development, p. 152, Roberto Assagioli, 2007)
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