PART I: Essential Principles

There can be no real understanding of karmic law without recognition of several main precedents, as noted below. These recognitions also provide a philosophic gateway to all durable, universally valid spiritual wisdom regarding karmic operation in our own lives. Attachment to such differentiated conception must, of course, one day be transcended, but it is deeply useful at our stage of development. These elementary precedents to comprehensive realization of karmic law include the following:

(1) a relatively eternal, time/space independent soul (in the Buddhist approach, a non-solid/selfless yet continuing life-stream of mental tendencies);

(2) multi-dimensional existence (the basic so-called "inner worlds" which are, in actuality, far more complex than the outer physical form-manifestation); and

(3) intelligent guidance (equated with God, Logos, Creator, Higher Self, or simply a wholly lawful self-organizing principle of Life and Mind itself).

I have no doubt that all we experience has been chosen at some level of our being. All the minutiae and larger situational experiences coming our way were created by us, either consciously or unconsciously. Thus, each of us absolutely and without exception 'deserve' and are due exactly and fully all that we experience, down to the length and shade of each hair on the body. Karmic law is profoundly complex and exacting in all its details.

It is said that, "God never gives us more than we can handle," and that, "all things exist for a purpose." Such statements reiterate this view, essential to spiritual wisdom and the cognitive foundation to eventual total self-responsibility -- which is itself the basis of all durable self-healing and balancing.

Without such self-ownership of personal life details, we simply cannot make peace with ourselves, our fated life-components, and the current challenges we each individually face. This type of realization is itself a gateway to accessing the fuller powers of self, via personal linkage to the Logoic will. Comprehending karmic law is, in deed, an exercise in plumbing the mind of God, and thereby, divine omnipotent power.

This type of metaphysical analysis also points to the specific functions of karmic law, though the law goes far deeper than personal process. We cannot make true peace with the countless, ever-shifting, challenging dynamics of personality life without recourse to appreciation of karmic law, its complexity and profound subtlety. Without such understanding, we remain in the position of Job, railing against the Creator for the experiences of suffering we ourselves have created.

Nor can we grasp the course and directions of group-soul progress (in our case, this pertains to earth human collective history and current manifestations), without deep consideration of karmic process over millennia and across dimensions. Again, we can only achieve a mere toe-in to this comprehension while still embodied in 3D form, but even our elementary exercise of such wisdom has great personal value as a means to greater mind complex clearance and activation.

Indeed, these are most serious matters, and thus it is said that some of the highest, eldest, most sublime beings still at work in manifest Creation oversee the complex minutiae of karmic dispensation, at both collective and individual levels. For it must be noted that there are both karmic streams of individuated souls on their own polarized path (pursuing either unity or separation, the so-called positive and negative orientations), as well as countless major groupings of souls, at all dimensional levels. For the so-called Lords of Karma, there is vast life to coordinate and assist in seven-dimensional spheres.

Both categories of consciousness groups (that of relatively simple units of body-mind-spirit complexes, what we call "souls," as well as the greater coordinated streams of associated units evolving en masse), demand highly complex karmic arrangements for their continued, proper evolution. Obviously, the spiritual growth of beings cannot be overseen and coordinated at the same level of their own learning -- it can only be overseen by those finished with such progression -- ie, those done with the entire circuit of octave evolution.

In human affairs, this is comparable to the maxim that a problem cannot be solved at the same level of its genesis nor its same field of operation. In a little-appreciated statement, Einstein once remarked something to the effect that, "the problems we face cannot be solved by the same minds that created them." This is even more so in the case of karmic operation, since the 'problems" in that field are truly multi-dimensional.

All such groups (individual souls and collective soul groups) traverse inconceivable eons of time-space through multiple densities, along the course of which they are required to perfectly 'balance out' the consequences of all experiences they have consciously chosen and self-created through ignorance, distortion, and incomplete awareness of perfect love-unity. As the path is circular, souls cannot return to their original true nature unless they have come back into energetic conformity with the nature of their essential starting-point.

All such personal knots and blockages -- manifested in etheric energy fields as well as in apparent mental/cognitive confusion and imbalances -- must be resolved, untangled, and harmonized along the way. Only then can souls and soul-groups fully return to the innate condition of perfect love-unity, that is both our source and our destination. Thus, metaphysical teachings refer to soul evolution as, "the path of return."

The supervised dispensation of karmic dues and the gradual and meticulously timed precipitation into manifest (apparently external) form of all that yet remains fragmented to evolving soul consciousness, can only be effected by beings who are themselves so far outside time-space as to be entirely free of all karmic necessity.

Rightly, oversight for karmic operation begins at the level of Higher Self in late-sixth density, so we are admittedly a bit over our heads here! Nevertheless, some Wanderers on Earth have come from this level of being, and can thus appreciate this perspective...

Those beings in oversight of karmic operation can be said to have absolute mastery over the boundless ramifications of an infinite variety of soul choices. They wield with impeccable wisdom and skill the potentia of manifold experiential forms and incarnative experience, all for the purpose of catalyzing required re-balancing and soul orientation.

Obviously, this is no small matter, far, far beyond the comprehension of almost all Earth humans. The degree of intelligence required for administration of perfectly accurate karmic precipitation, for souls and soul-groups at all dimensional levels of Creation (simultaneously), is far beyond the human ken, to say the least.

Thus, RA noted that beings "from beyond the octave," beyond the sevenfold dimensional scheme of solar systems and individuated soul and group-soul evolution, fulfill such operative karmic functions. Only they are capable of such activity, and in the writings of Alice Bailey and the teacher Djwhal Khul, only these beings can rightly being called the "Lords of Karma." Down here on the ground, the most we can do (which is quite a task itself), is to process as best we can all such experiential distillates in personal life.

In line with this, the entire topic of karma was one of several themes Gautama Buddha deemed "the incomprehensibles." Such speculation for the monks of his day (even though many of them would be classed as advanced adepts, no small achievement) was deemed a fruitless topic for mental engagement.

Still under the sway of apparently real, dualistic space-time conditions, and still subject to variable and ever-unstable personal becoming through mental grasping, there really is little on these matters that can be known -- since, as stated before, we ourselves are certainly nowhere near beyond the operation of karmic law. Thus, it was deemed a waste of time to devote personal attention to mere speculation.

Nevertheless, in my view, there is value in attempting relative comprehension of the absolutely incomprehensible, especially if we are fully aware at the outset that the best we can hope for is but a tiny fraction of total gnosis. As RA said of soul work in physical 3rd density existence, it is wholly a task of, "working in darkness with a tiny candle." And yet, real growth can be made for those who accept the challenges of gross limitation, as we really can expand our access to the realm of knowable things.

And so, this essay is an exercise in bringing scant illumination to the 3rd dimensional mind complex of those who feel attraction to this rather advanced work. To know what is beyond us, even just a bit, refines and energizes our own development though long-term activation of greater spiritual seeking. To gain a bit more understanding of karmic law, its application to personal and collective life at this time in human history, and its nature and function in overall cosmic plan, is certainly worthy of our time and attention. Seeking that which is beyond seeking, if approached rightly, is highly effective catalyst for quickened soul growth.