Into the pressure Cooker

Gurus do convey information. But more of the training involves character building and the purification of the mind. So they throw you into awful situations, like starting a medical center to help the poor and then putting completely incompetent people in charge. Can you maintain your spiritual center and your focus on serving others when your bosses are continually making irrational decisions that irritate the heck out of you? Can you stay calm when your guru, who was always so loving to you before, suddenly starts screaming at you for something you didn't even do?

These are the kinds of tricks of the trade the Hindu guru has traditionally used to help disciples clearly see the play of their egos and to test the strength of their commitment to spiritual life.

Very few, very special people have attained self realization without the help of a guru. Recent historical examples include Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Amritanandamayi Ma. Hindus believe exceptional people like these either had spectacularly good karma from the past, when they did work with the guru, or else they are incarnations of great sages of the past or even of deities, who entered our world to serve humanity.

Spiritual Mentoring

" There are some especially pure souls who have attained Self-realization, establishing their awareness permanently in their Inner Self ", wrote the Hindu adept Shankaracharya. " They bring blessings to all humanity, like the coming of spring. They have crossed the ocean of birth and death, yet selflessly remain here among us and help others to cross, too. It is the very nature of great men and women to help others".

In Hinduism , the guru-your spiritual mentor- ranks in stature second only to God. In fact, in some tradition the guru is valued even more than God. After all, it's the guru who introduces you to God in the first place. Without the assistance of this guide, may never find your way into the divine presence.

The Upanishads put in this way. If someone hits you over the head and carries you blindfolded away from your native town, then dumps you off in the middle of nowhere, you have a problem. Many of us have the sense of being spiritually lost, dropped here in the material world, blundering around without a clue. Now, if someone comes up to you and says,  " Oh, you're from Duluth? Duluth is that way! suddenly you're from lost . You're headed in the right direction, and with a little effort and resourcefulness on your part, you'll find your way home.

The guru shows you the way home. He or she teaches you the wisdom of the ancients and guides your moral and spiritual development. And most importantly, the guru prescribes the specific spiritual exercises you need to do to grow in self-awareness.

A guru is a very useful resource if you have begun a meditation practice. It's amazing, the crazy content thrown up by your subconscious and the confusion it can lead to. The guru helps you distinguish between the seductive but ultimately not very productive experience coming out of your subconscious and the genuine insights pouring out of your superconcious. The guru has been through the process and knows how to distinguish what's spirituality legitimate.

The Guru Hook-Up

Advanced gurus transmit enlightening energy of their tradition. They don't generate it- they serve as conduits for the living knowledge to flow. This is the famous of shaktipat, the " decent of spiritual power". You work very, very hard making very sincere effort to attain higher states of divine awareness. When you can't go any further by yourself, the guru does the hook-up, plugging you into the cosmic circuit box and - zap!- you spontaneously rocket into a higher orbit of being.

Swami Rama Bharati told me about his experience. He was so discouraged with his lack of progress in meditation after years of sincere effort that he actually felt suicidal. His guru, the great master Bengali Baba, called him to his side, touched his forehead and for the next nine hours, Swami Rama sat motionless in the highest state of bliss he had ever experienced.

My own experience with Hindu gurus have often been intensely frustrating. This is because I come from the Western academic tradition where teachers exist to give information. You ask a straight question, you get a straight answer. I'll tell you right now that if you want to get a straight answer out of a Hindu guru, you're better off going to dental school and learning to pull teeth.

In the Hindu tradition, gurus don't see their role as imparters of information. Their goal is not to help you become a brilliant authority or a Ph.D. their goal is to make you a sage. To awaken your intuitive powers so that you can find the answers in the inner world yourself. In Hinduism, it's said that a guru's greatest achievement is to propel a disciple to even greater levels of spirituality than the guru's own.

The Inner Sun

Let me state the obvious. Most of our lives we do not walk experiencing ourselves as a being of pure, radiant consciousness. We experience ourselves as a being of pure, radiant consciousness. We experience ourselves as harried housewives, aggressive salesman, bored students, starving musicians, or whatever.

An athlete or a sick person or a high- fashion model may remain intensely identified with her physical body. Her attention is most often directed at her health or strength or appearance. That is her reality.Hinduism says that no matter how well she cares for her body, one day it will die. But the Inner Self hidden behind her self-image will not.

A Scientists or intellectual or computer programmer may be very intensely focused at the level of thought. A lover or a new mother or a neurotic may be very intensely focused on their emotions. But eventually the field of experienced with which they're identifying will pass away. Their Higher Self will not.

You may feel who you really are is the mano maya kosha- your work-a-day thoughts and emotions. You may feel your real identity is your good old material body, the sthula sharira. Hinduism says that all our bodies, including the physical one, are nothing more than fields of energy, called prakriti in Sanskrit. They reflect the light of spirit and because of this appear to be independent and conscious, just as the Moon appears to shine with its own light but actually just reflects the Sun's.

What you experience as your mind has no more independent reality than your body. When you enter the state of deep sleep, for example, the light of spirit withdraws from your mental body for all practical purposes your mind cease to exist!

The Tripura Rahasya compares the Inner Self to a splendid gem locked in a chest that's fallen in the sea and become covered with mud. You have to find the chest, clean off the mud, and break open the lock. Then you"ll see for yourself the shinning gem of incalculable value. All Hindu spiritual practices are designed with the ultimate goal of helping us find the " pearl of great price" that lies buried in our minds and encrusted with the mud of our generally petty, run-of-the-mill thoughts. That gem is the pure, undying awareness that illuminates our lives.

Entering the Inner World

Many people have experienced the Inner Self at some point in their lives. If you haven't-if what I'm talking about here sounds to you like it came from Neptune- let's try a short exercise and maybe you can get a glimpse of Ramana's inner world yourself. 

< Sit up comfortably with your head, neck, and spine straight.

< Close your eyes and relax deeply

< Breathe naturally. Your breathe should be even, slow, and continuous. No jerky or shallow breathing!

< Don't feel dumb. This is just an experiment.

< Bring your full awareness to the point between your eyebrows. Then shift your awareness about three inches behind this point, inside your brain.

< If any visual images or mental chatter appear, ignore them.

< Rest your attention in the silent darkness in your mind.

< Ask yourself, " Who is aware of the silent darkness?" Focus attentively. Be fully aware of your own awareness.

< Open your eyes and relax.

Did you experience an intense inner lucidity? A sort of primordial awareness that wasn't thinking or doing anything just kind of watching?

If you connected, even for a second, with your Atman, you would have felt vividly alive, intensely focused, and very clear-headed. In the Hindu tradition, it's believed dramatic healing, and become much more creative and successful and much less fearful.

Great saints live in this state ( and even higher ones I'll describe later). They gain from it the ability to help others with tangible blessing power, as Ramana Maharshi did.

The Inner Self

Ramana Maharshi went on to become one of the best known and best loved saints of modern India. Hindus (and later foreigners) would come from thousands of miles away merely to sit in the presence of the master. By remaining fully centered in his Inner Self, he radiated a tranquil luminosity. These sitting near him reported their minds immediately became still. Some experienced inner peace for the first time in their lives.

Scientists in the West consider consciousness a by-product of the nervous system that ends with death. The sages of India don't buy this. During out-of-body travel they experience their consciousness moving independently of their body. The great masters have also reported remaining conscious and alert after their previous bodies died, and journeying through other inner worlds. To them the physical body is the by-product of consciousness, not the other way around!

The Inner Self is called Atman in Sanskrit. The Atman is who you really are-not your physical and subtle bodies, all of which the perishable. The Atman exists beyond space and time. It is the undying reality, your fundamental inner being and truth. 

Ramana Maharshi Figures It Out

Ramana Maharshi was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, in 1879. He impressed no one. He was a mediocre student and something of a bully on the playground. He felt no draw to spiritual life at all.Then at the age of 17, Ramana Maharshi woke up. " I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house", Ramana later related. " There was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. I felt, 'I am going to die' and began thinking what to do about it. I felt I had to solve the problem myself. there and then".

Ramana lay down on the floor and acted out the process of death. He stiffened his body as if rigor mortis had set in and held his breath as if his heart and lungs had stopped." Okay, the body is dead. But am I dead?" he inquired.

At that moment, he experienced an overwhelmingly powerful sense of the deathless spirit within himself. " This was not a dull thought but flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thinking. ' I' was something real".

From then on, Ramana was obsessed with his Inner Self. He left home and hid in a small storage cell in the Shiva temple near Mount Arunachala. There he did intense spiritual practice, learning to maintain his focus continually on the deathless reality he felt himself. Eventually he experienced the conscious root of his being constantly even while talking or reading. Ramana had become enlightened sage, living in the unflikering light of spirit.

Remember how I said earlier that Hindus call their tradition " the eternal religion" because anyone who explores the laws of consciousness will rediscover Hinduism's fundamental truths? Ramana was an average 17-year-old boy with no formal religious training whatever. Yet by lying down and focusing intently inward, he had rediscovered the ancient truths of the Upansihadic seers. " That thou art. You are that undying inner awareness".

Ramana had traveled beyond the physical body, beyond the astral body, and through even the causal body. Underlying them all he had discovered the true Self.

" Who Am I?"

If you've got some familiarity with the mystical traditions of the world, bells will be going off in your head like crazy. You'll recognize the breakdown of the soul into the five koshas or sheaths as virtually identical to the analysis of the soul found in the ancient Egyptian tradition. And the threefold scheme of the physical, astral, and causal bodies is exactly paralleled in the ancient Greek tradition. Plutarch, a priest from the temple of Apollo at Delphi, described it explicitly in his essays.

When you start to recognize all the amazing links between different mystical traditions, you can understand why, in the first century C.E; Apollonious of Tyana expressed his opinion that India was the motherland of the mystical heart of all the world's religions!

" Okay", you may be wondering. " So I've got all these different bodies. But them-which one of them is me?"

Life in the Three worlds

Let's swing around and come back at this stuff from another angle that the compacts the five bodies down into three :

< Shula Sharira : the physical body

< Shukshma Sharira: the astral body

< Karana sharira : the causal body

The sthula  sharira includes both the material body and the body of vital energy Why? Because at death, when the material body starts to disintegrate, so does the prana maya kosha. According to the yogis, the "wreaths" some people claim to see floating over graves are decaying pranic fields that no longer have a purpose. There no longer is a material body for them to animate, so their energies gradually dissipate.

The astral body is the mental body or mano kosha from the previous scheme. It continues to exist after death. Each of us still experience ourselves as the same entity who used to live in a physical body. Yogic adepts are said to be able to travel outside their physical bodies in this ball of mental energy.

At the time of rebirth, the mental body from the last life now also passes away. Only the causal body reincarnates. The causal body contains all your higher intellectual and spiritual functions (Vijnana and ananda maya koshas). Your karmashya, the habits and attitudes developed in your previous lives, is carried with the causal body like a piece of luggage.

Spiritual masters, because they have aligned their awareness with their causal body, retain full awareness of their previous lives when they reborn. Most of us identify with our physical or mental bodies, which disintegrate rather than travel with us into the next life, so we don't have detailed past life recall. When the vaishnava shakti I mentioned in Chapter 7, " Born Again!" acts, our connection with our old mental or astral body is broken, and we begin evolving a new mental body or personality which develops along with our new physical body.

If you begin exploring Hindu sacred literature you will find numerous references to " the three worlds". Western scholars often interpret these as the surface of the earth, the atmosphere, and the upper sky. But to Hindu spiritual practitioners they refer to the physical world accessible to our five senses, the mental world accessible to our mind, and the causal or formless realm beyond the reach of thought. We can travel in the formless world only with the highest powers intuitive inherent in our karana sharira, or causal body.

The mental and physical worlds were originally projected out of the causal or " seed" world, the world of concepts or archetypal patterns, and will eventually dissolve back into it. This is the extra dimensional world of " ideas" the Greek philosopher Plato spoke of.

The Body of Bliss

Back to the bank scenario. Let's look at the rest of the people standing around aghast at the poor guy with the heart attack. Most of them are decent, hardworking people. Some are passionately interested in sports. Some love to cook. Others wants nothing more than to go home, plop down on the sofa, and watch TV.

Very few of the people here are seriously interested in spiritual life.

The doesn't mean they're bad people-it just means they've got other priorities. Their Ananda maya koshas are undeveloped. They've never tested the Ananda, the bliss, of deeper meditative states. The possibility of expanding their awareness to experience higher states of consciousness has probably never occurred to them.

In these people, the body of mystical awareness is not enlivened. If a person doesn't exercise and eat right, her physical body is unlikely to be in good shape. If people don't meditate, or spend some time praying and contemplating a higher reality, them the ananda maya kosha, or subtlest body, atrophies.

I studied the Taittiriya Upanishad, the source of this doctrine, many years ago with the yoga master Swami Rama Bharati. I can't emphasize strongly enough that to the adepts of the Hindu tradition, the five separate and distinct yet interlinking bodies are just as real as the circulatory or respiratory systems are to us. The yogis say they use these different bodies as vehicles for travelling through different spatial dimensions.

Sheats of Living Energy

You're standing in line at the bank waiting to cash a check. Suddenly the man in front of you has a heart attack and falls down dead. How is the dead man so different from you, anyway? you're both made of physical matter and since he just died a few seconds ago, the matter in his body is pretty as good as the matter in yours.

The major difference between a living person and a dead one, according to the yogis, is the dead one isn't breathing. When the breath stops cranking, the prana maya kosha of life force can no longer animate the body, or keep the mind and body connected. The man's mind may still actually be present, perhaps hovering over his body wondering what the heck is going on. But he can no longer manipulate his fingers or toes the pranic connection to his body has been severed.

Suppose the man doesn't die. Suppose he just goes into a coma.

This means his pranic body is still operating so his physical body keeps breathing and doesn't start decompose. But now the mano maya kosha, or mental body, has gone missing. You're shouting, " Sir, sir can you hear me? " But he can't because his mental body has closed down. He's slipped into an unconscious state, and his ability to think or to connect with his body through his sense organs has shut off.

Let's consider another scenario. A teenager walks into his high school and shoots a dozen of his classmates. How could any human being kill another without the slightest feeling of remorse? In his case, the Vijnana maya kosha is not working properly. This very subtle of living judgments and decisions. When it operates normally it works as the conscience, the will, and the higher intellectual functions. A sociopath has no conscience. His Vijnana maya kosha is barely functioning.

Your Five Bodies

According to the yogis don't have just one body. You have five. Just as you wear layers of clothes- underwear, a shirt or blouse, a sweater , a coat-so your innermost spirit wears layers layers of increasingly subtle energies, with which it can operate in increasingly subtle dimensions of the universe.

The Taittiriya Upanishad describes five " sheaths" worn by the spirit, like a sword in a scabbard that's in a box that's in a chest that's in a closest that's in a house:

< Anna maya kosha : the body made of physical matter

< Prana maya kosha : the body made of vital energy

< Mano maya kosha : the body of thought energy

< Vijnana maya kosha: the body of higher intelligence

< Ananda maya kosha : the body of mystical awareness 

The anna maya kosha or physical body is made from anna, food. You eat, you grow. The physical matter in food becomes the physical matter of your body.

In a similar manner, the prana maya kosha is made up of life energy. This is the subtle energy medieval physicians in Europe used to call the vital force. In China it's called chi, and learning to manipulate it is the basis of acupuncture and in the martial arts. Western esoteric tradition, the prana maya kosha is sometimes called the etheric body.

Homeopathic medicines do not act directly on the physical body, but are used to balance the pranic fields around which the physical matter of the body takes shape, like iron filings arranging themselves along the lines of force emanating from a magnet.

Secrets of the Subtle Body

In the West, a minority of people are interested in weird stuff like astral bodies and out-of-body travel. They're often looked as harmless New Age flakes or wigged-out occultists. But in Hinduism, coming to grips with the mechanics of what the soul actually is and how it operates are fundamental to understand how to control your reincarnational cycle, you have to understand this stuff.

Inner realities are legitimate realities to Hindus. They're not cavalierly dismissed as outdated superstitions like they are in the West. We Westerners for the most part only hear about miracles that happened in Palestine 2,000 years ago. In India, however, every generation of Hindu has been exposed to living saints and yogis who demonstrate what seem like superhuman abilities to the uninitiated.

In India, science and religion have always worked hand in hand. There has been no burning at the stake of scientists in India! There the exploration of inner realities is considered just as valid as research into the outer world of nature. While Hinduism produced some of the greatest natural scientists in history, it also excelled in the science of spirit, pioneered by inner researchers called yogis.

Turning On Your Cycle

If karma and reincarnation from the spinning wheel of the cosmic process, the Inner Self is the unmoving axle around the wheel turns.

" Know Thyself" was the advice chiseled over the portico at the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. No religion has ever taken the quest for self-knowledge as seriously as Hinduism. At its core, Hinduism is not about believing what somebody else tells you about the nature of your soul, or accepting what other people claim about God. Ultimately, Hinduism is about exploring the very depths of your own soul yourself. And about getting to know God personally.

Breaking the Cycle

A pandit once told me that yogis don't fear death because " They know where they're going". They have, in effect, practiced being death in deep meditative states where they were completely disengaged from their bodies. They know how to remain fully conscious, alert and awake, in the after-death state, and can direct their out-of-body journey in full awareness.

The great saints and sages aren't driven around in karmic circles by the thoughts and desires stored in their subconscious, as happens to most of the rest of us in life and in death. They're like lucid dreamers, awake while everyone else is asleep. In fact, that's why some people enlightened people are called  buddhas. Buddha means " somebody who's awake".

You can spend a lot of time cycling through the universe. The cosmos is a long highway-there are plenty of campsites where you can pitch your tent. But when you finally tire of " exploring new worlds and new civilizations" like the heroes in Star Trek, there is a way to get off the wheel.

" Stop the universe! I want to get off!" In the next chapter, India's spiritual masters show you how.

Designer Heavens

Here is an important twist you need to understand. God doesn't create heaven and hell. We do. Whatever plane of consciousness we find ourselves in after the body drops away is a world of our own making, according to the rishis. If our thoughts have been predominantly cheerful and benevolent, our after-death experience is similar. If our thoughts have been filled with violence and anger, our afterlife will be, too.

The climate in the life after death is the atmosphere of our own minds.

Our karma- the mental vectors we've created by our thoughts and actions-carries us to a high state, a low state, or an okay in-between state like Pitri Loka. We're in control- if we're living life consciously. If we're not directing our lives with awareness, then the unconscious tendencies stored in our karmashya are in control.

For many Hindus, a long stay in heaven is just what the doctor ordered, and some Hindus devote considerable effort to building up enough karmic velocity to transport them into a higher world after they jettison their bodies.

surprisingly, however, many of the Hindu scriptures don't consider a long stay in heavenly disembodied states to be a positive thing. Most people in those "between life" states are in dream-like condition. In our dreams, we're propelled around the images in our subconscious rather involuntarily. We're not in control. Because we're not in control, we're not in a position to expand our awareness or make any substantial spiritual progress. This is why you're in a state of  full waking awareness and can make efforts to know God and yourself better and better.

Eventually, the mental energy propelling you through the disembodied realms peters out. Your stay in that world is up-it's time to return to a physical body. You remember how much you enjoyed whipped cream puffs. You remember how much you wanted to go to Mars. You remember that your brother-in-law owes you three thousand dollars.

Your unfulfilled desires draw back to an appropriate physical body and-poof!- here you are again, in another body. You traded the old model in for a new vehicle. Hopefully, thanks to good karma, you've traded up.

Life Between Lives

Let's talk about what happens when the Ferries wheel of karma rotates down where we can't see it anymore What happens after death?

Hindus believe in heaven and hell. But when while Christians and Muslims believe heaven and hell are forever   , Hindus see these as temporary after-death states.

The Veda talks about the paths most human souls take after death. The first is the path of the misty light to Pitri Loka, the world of the ancestors. This is where most of us average folk go, hanging out with friends and relatives who've gone on before.

The second is the path of the bright light into the heaven world called Deva Loka. Only very pure souls can enter this realm. It's a high heaven where we experience incredible knowledge and joy. Here we get to dwell with the devas,  the gods.

The third path, which some texts don't even mention because they assume you've got your act together and aren't heading there, is the path of no light at all. This lead to Patala, a very turbulent after-death existence. You want to be a kind person, so you don't wind up in this nasty place.

Washing out your Mind

Other methods of making for amends for misdeeds of the past are more internal :

1. Meditation. Deep meditation can actually release karmic complexes buried in the subtle body. When an "inner demon"  is recognized and released in meditation, it loses its ability to wreak havoc in the mediator's life.

2. Prayer. Many Hindus chant stotras or sacred prayers as part of their daily worship. Often these prayers involve contemplating so many good qualities helps elevate your consciousness and transform your personality.

3. Mantras Chanting the resonant divine sounds prescribed by a meditation master helps purify the field of one's consciousness and neutralizes the effect of bad karmas. Hindus use a rosary of 108 beads and make a promise to repeat a mantra many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of times. Your mind is not supposed to wander during this practice, which is called japa, It's a form of sacrifice your time and attention to God as well as all the thought energy that would otherwise be expanded on romantic fantasies and inner chatter.

4. Self-Inquiry. Self-knowledge is the greatest cure for what ails us. Some Hindus use various techniques of self-analysis to diagnose and correct the problems in their thinking and behavior that are reflected back to them as difficult karma. 

5. Devotion. In India, you will often encounter Hindus as devoted to God as many of us to our closest friends and relatives. Developing a living relationship with the divine takes the sting out of the problems life throws your way and turns life into a love affair a higher power.

6. Self-Surrender. If all else fails, surrender to the Divine Will may be the last and best prescription for ameliorating bad karma. Sometimes the best we can do is surrender to God and His will for our lives, with gratitude and humility. 

Redirecting the Flow of Destiny

If our life doesn't seem to be going in the direction we want it to, we can redirect the flow of our karma. At least so long as the strength of the karmic patterns in least so long as the strength of the karmic patterns in our life is flexible or medium - which most karma is.

Here are some of the most popular Hindu methods for clearing out our negative karma.

1. Pilgrimage. Hindus made long and difficult journeys to sacred sites. The journey itself is a form of spiritual practice, strengthening one's faith and reliance on spirit to help see oneself safely though to the journey's end. At Prayag, where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet, pilgrims bathe in the holy waters to wash away their  sins. I don't know if you can really wash off bad karma with water, but the tremendous faith of the pilgrims I've seen at Prayag must certainly have some effect!

2. Charitable Donations. Since much " bad karma" is the result of debts we've incurred in previous lives, making generous donations helps us balance our karmic accounts. Hindus struggling Hindu families may go out into the woods or meadows near their homes each morning and offer food to wild animals.

3. Rituals. By making offerings to the gods, Hindus hope to restore a positive balance in the karmic forces at work in their lives. They hope to make peace with the forces of nature and request the god's gracious intervention.

4. Selfless Service. Offering one's time and energy for the benefit of others without any expectation of reward is considered one of the most effective means of defusing bad karma.

5. Self-Discipline. By undertaking vows to perform a certain type of austerity for a certain length of time, Hindus hope to overcome various karmic complexes. An example of a common vow is fasting for a predetermined period or on certain days of the week.

Fate Is Free Will

Westerners are extremely uncomfortable with the idea of destiny. The Hindus, however, are very conscious that the actions we perform lead to a corresponding karmic result. Sooner or later we get our reward or our comeuppance. The Mahabharata says that just as a calf can always find its mother, no matter how large the herd of cows its mother has wandered into, so the karmic results of actions we performed in past lives eventually and inevitable seek us out.

The Hindus definitely believe in fate. The paradox is that we create our own fate through the use of our free will.

Karma can be strong or weak. If it's strong, a particular karmicly  predetermined event will almost certainly occur. If it's weak, you may be able to dodge the bullet. The three levels of karmic magnitude are :

< Flexible : We can easily deflect this karma.

< Medium : We can change this karmic pattern if we make a substantial effort.

< Fixed    :   There is nothing humanly possible we can do to prevent this karma from playing out. Only God can alter fixed karma.

Maybe you paid $60 for tickets to a world Federation Wrestling match, but on the night of the match you , but have a cold and don't feel like going. You hate to throw away the $60, but you stay at home in bed anyway. The karma you set in motion- to go to a wrestling match was flexible. It was easy to change.

Suppose you spend twelve years in medical school learning to be a doctor. Then just as you're about to graduate you decide you hate dealing with whining sick people, and you'd rather be an architect. Now you have to lay out lots more money and lots more years going to architectural school. It look to modify the flow of your karma, but you managed it.

Maybe you know of a politician who's repeatedly been accused of graft, who's been in one sex scandal after another, and who never made a promise he didn't break. Yet he keeps getting elected back into office! His fixed karma propelling him into government positions is still in effect in spite of his enemies' efforts to point out his incompetence and corruption. For this lifetime, at least, he continues to enjoy the benefits of positive karma earned in past lives.

If the karma we've got coming to us is good, everybody's happy. But if we're experiencing a spate of bad karma, we may want to look into some of the traditional Hindu methods for paying off our karmic debts. 

Collective Karma

Westerners think karma means that if a person is assaulted, say, or born deformed, they must have deserved it due to something terrible they did in a previous life. This is a terrible oversimplification.

A lot of karma playing through our lives is actually not our personal karma at all. It's group karma. There's no underestimating the impact of the way our personal karmic flow blends with that of the people close to us, with our community, and with our culture as a whole.

Let's compare the collective karma of two prosperous first-world countries. The United States, where I live now, has an incredibly high tolerance for violence.

Violence is glamorized on television and in the movies, and firearms are readily available. In Norway, where I spent part of my childhood, there is zero tolerance for violence and firearms are carefully regulated. The karmic result is that the U.S.has the highest rate of violent crime among first-world countries. Norway has the lowest.

Now suppose it's your karma to have a bad day. In Norway, this might play out as slipping on your skies and breaking your leg. In the U.S., However, due to the power of collective karma, your bad day might involve getting mugged on the way back from Bingo game. It's just that the personally deserved to be assaulted. It's just that the bad karma of your culture is playing out through your bad day.

In a country where the old gods are no longer honored- the intelligent forces of nature are no longer recognized -companies may feel free to pollute the environment. A child who developed in utero in a particularly toxic neighborhood may be born handicapped due to high level of poisons the culture tolerates in its landfills and water. It's not necessarily that the child deserved to be born with a deformity. It's that a culture that poisons its environment has karmically invited the birth of genetically damaged children.