Bodhinatha answers an interesting question: if we are making karma in each life, how can we ever possibly resolve all our karmas so that we can attain moksha? Bodhinatha reads Gurudeva's answers to this question and comments on how resolution of karma is accelerated through sadhana.

Master Course, Merging with Siva, Lessons 247, 316.

Unedited Transcript:

Last phase I had a darshan session with a very sincere Hindu couple and they were asking me about the possibility of this being their last life. Somehow, going to God's Feet at the end of it. So I explained that we can speed up our karma but it's really hard to go through it that fast. That's really rapid speed to get through it in one life. And it made me think, you know, what exactly, afterwards I thought what exactly does Gurudeva say. In other words, if you think about it, someone could throw up the argument, you're stuck forever. In one life you're working out the karma from past lives but you're making new karma at the same time, right? So isn't this a perpetual process? Each life you end up with the same amount of karma because you resolve a certain amount but you made an equal amount of new karma and you're kind of stuck forever. But, okay, an interesting philosophical question, right, to be faced with?

So, as we know Gurudeva had two definitions of moksha. The one that's more common is: "Moksha is achieved when God has been fully realized and all karma has been resolved." Right? And then sometimes he'll say that and add:" ... all dharma has been fulfilled." So we're not going to look at dharma this morning but karma resolved is an important part of it. Even though we fully realize God, if you have karma to be resolved, you have to be here. Well if you pass on at that point; you still have karma to be resolved, you have to come back. It's not just a question of God Realization it's also a question resolving the karma.

But back to the dilemma here: How do you resolve karma when you're also making it and not just end up in the same place at the end of each life?

Well, what did Gurudeva say?

"Now the soul seeks to know God consciously. That is the difference. It's a big difference."

Gurudeva's talking about the fact that everybody is evolving spiritually, whether they know it or not. Whether they agree with that idea or not they're still moving forward spiritually. It's just the nature of life, the soul matures.

"Now it seeks to know God consciously."

So at some point becomes a conscious effort. We start doing specific actions related to trying to know God consciously. Whether they are just happening as a matter of being alive.

"That is the difference. It's a big difference. By this conscious process of purification, of inner striving, of refining and maturing, the karmas come more swiftly, evolution speeds up and things can and usually do get more intense."

So, that's the answer to that question. Though we're making karmas at the same rate, probably, we're speeding up and resolving the ones we already have. So, that gives us less karma, the end of life.

There's a longer one:

"How can we work out karma? There are thousands of things vibrating in the muladhara chakra, and from those memory patterns that are going to bounce up into view one after another, especially if we gain more prana by breathing and eating correctly. (Period!) When meditation begins, more karma is released from the first chakra. Our individual karma is intensified as the ingrained memory patterns that were established long ago accumulate and are faced, one after another, after another, after another. In our first four or five years of striving on the path we face the karmic patterns that we would never have faced in this life had we not consciously sought enlightenment. Experiences come faster, closer together. So much happens in the short span of a few months or even a few days, catalyzed by the new energies released in meditation and by our efforts to purify mind and body, it might have taken us two or three lifetimes to face them all. They would not have come up before then because nothing would have stimulated them. "

Well that's even more specific, huh? We can go through a couple of extra lifetimes of karma by our consistent striving.

Then the other question which I thought about afterwards.

What happens to a great soul who has realized God? How does his or her karma work? In other words, the person is still acting right. Unintended, therefore if you act you make karma. How is that karma resolved? Why aren't they stuck in the same way. You know, there they are. They're acting; they're making karma.

So Gurudeva answers that:

"Through the power of his realization, the karma is created and simultaneously dissolved. (Sounds pretty good, right? ) This occurs for the one who live in the timeless state of consciousness. If one were to realize the Self each day, he would live his life like writing his karma on the surface of water. The intensity of the Self is so strong that action and reaction dissolve, just as the water's surface clears immediately when you remove your finger from having written or made designs upon it."

Isn't that a very nice analogy there? Just writing on water and as soon as you write on water your, the reaction goes away. Well it looks like the action of Jivan Mukti, great soul. The Jivan Mukti is neither making new karma, cause it's dissolved instantly. And Jivan Mukti means all the sanchita karmas, all the seed karmas have burned away. And nothing can bring it back. That's what the jivan, that's what the mukti means. There's no karma which is scheduled to manifest in the future. And therefore, the only karma that's there is not making new karma, there's no seed karma that's not active, there's only active karma. Therefore, all that's there is when the active karma works it's way through. Then that's it. No more karma.

Interesting to think about. All these answers are in The Trilogy. Just search, you know. PDF file and search on the right thing.

I searched for speed in this case. Speed up. I think you go ahead looking for so I found two references to "speed up."

Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Aum Namah Sivaya. Aum Namah Sivaya.