Virginia Hanson - Karma: Rhythmic Return to Harmony

KARMA

Rhythmic Return to Harmony

Cover design by Carol W. Wells

COVER PHOTO BY MOLLY DEAN

KARMA

Rhythmic Return to Harmony

Edited by V. Hanson, R. Stewart & S. Nicholson

A publication supported by

THE KERN FOUNDATION

Learn more about Shirley Nicholson and her work at www.questbooks.net

Copyright 1975, 1981, 1990 by the Theosophical Publishing House Third Quest Edition 1990

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 601870270

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Karma, rhythmic return to harmony / edited by Virginia Hanson,

Shirley Nicholson, Rosemarie Steward.3rd ed.

p. cm.

Rev. and enl. ed. of: Karma, the universal law of harmony. 1981.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 9780835606639

1. Karma. I. Hanson, Virginia. II. Nicholson, Shirley J. III. Stewart, Rosemarie. IV. Title: Karma, the universal law of harmony.

BP573.K3K37 1990

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 9700835621441

A stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate backward and forward till at lastthe water returns to its condition of calm tranquility. Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backward and forwardtill equilibrium is restored.

H.P. Blavatsky

Contents

Preface

In 1975 when Quest Books first published an anthology on karma, the concept was already becoming familiar in mainstream America. Introduced in the mid-1800s by Emerson and others who were studying Eastern thought, it was expounded in great detail in the late 1800s by H. P. Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society and author of the volumes of The Secret Doctrine, a major source book of modern esoteric studies. Those in the Theosophical movement and similar groups for long were the main custodians of ideas of the Ancient Wisdom such as karma.

Today the picture has changed. The word karma shows up in films, comic strips, conversations among ordinary people. Eastern and Western scholars, psychologists, astrologers, health practitioners, even students of society and economy have written about karma. This kind of literature had begun to appear in 1981 when the second and expanded edition of the Quest anthology came out By now there is a wealth of material on the subject of karma that has originated outside of esoteric circles. The term is even included in English dictionaries.

The present volume includes fourteen articles that were not in the earlier editions, by such authors as Joseph Goldstein and Ananda Coomaraswamy, who write from the Buddhist position, Christopher Chapple, scholar who specializes in yoga philosophy, Alfred Taylor, research scientist, Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo, psychologist/ astrologers, Roger Woolger and Harold Coward, Jungians.

Obviously, many points of view are covered, but they all contain, either explicitly or implicitly, the concept of karma as the harmonizer that restores balance, as the facilitator of a rhythmic return to harmony. As Joy Mills said in the foreword to the earlier editions:

The Sanskrit term, karma, has been adopted in English dictionaries as the all-embracing term for that universal law, the harmonic law of adjustment, of compensation, action-reaction, to which all natural processes are subject The ramifications of the law must be endless and complex as those processes; yet in its ultimate simplicity, the law is harmony, the perfect relationship which obtains between all things everywhere.

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that we live in an interconnected, holistic universe in which all things everywhere are interdependent In this context it is more evident than it was in the nineteenth century, when karma was introduced in the West, that past and future are connected, that events flow in the Whole where movement at any level of life affects all other levels. This current view of holism, which is held by many scientists, ecologists, philosophers, as well as esotericists, can easily accommodate the concept of karma. In the words of Prem and Ashish, who wrote from the point of view of The Secret Doctrine, (Man, the Measure of All Things, p. 210):

Particular events take placebecause of an organic linking of the whole of cosmic experience, a linkage which is such that all events in the Cosmos are bound together in one harmonious correlation.