FREEDOM - 1

FREEDOM

In addition to meaning work, we have stated that psychologically the word
Karma also implies causation. Any work, any action, any thought that produces
an effect is called a Karma. Thus the law of Karma means the law of causation,
of inevitable cause and sequence. Wheresoever there is a cause, there an effect
must be produced; this necessity cannot be resisted, and this law of Karma,
according to our philosophy, is true throughout the whole universe. Whatever
we see, or feel, or do, whatever action there is anywhere in the universe, while
being the effect of past work on the one hand, becomes, on the other, a cause in
its turn, and produces its own effect. It is necessary, together with this, to
consider what is meant by the word "law". By law is meant the tendency of a
series to repeat itself. When we see one event followed by another, or
sometimes happening simultaneously with another, we expect this sequence or
co-existence to recur. Our old logicians and philosophers of the Nyâyâ school
call this law by the name of Vyâpti. According to them, all our ideas of law are
due to association. A series of phenomena becomes associated with things in
our mind in a sort of invariable order, so that whatever we perceive at any time
is immediately referred to other facts in the mind. Any one idea or, according
to our psychology, any one wave that is produced in the mind-stuff, Chitta,
must always give rise to many similar waves. This is the psychological idea of
association, and causation is only an aspect of this grand pervasive principle of
association. This pervasiveness of association is what is, in Sanskrit, called
Vyâpti. In the external world the idea of law is the same as in the internal —
the expectation that a particular phenomenon will be followed by another, and
that the series will repeat itself. Really speaking, therefore, law does not exist
in nature. Practically it is an error to say that gravitation exists in the earth, or
that there is any law existing objectively anywhere in nature. Law is the
method, the manner in which our mind grasps a series of phenomena; it is all in
the mind. Certain phenomena, happening one after another or together, and
followed by the conviction of the regularity of their recurrence — thus enabling
our minds to grasp the method of the whole series — constitute what we call
law.