Greetings and much gratitude to the Glorian instructors as always for their time and contributions. My being has allowed me the privilege for reflecting on a particular topic today and was wondering if an instructor could provide me with more clarification. Regarding cause and effect, how exactly does the effect unfold from the cause, both in an obvious manner and also from a less-obvious manner? More specifically, how do our thoughts harm others? An instructor said that one harms another with fantasy and doing so can engender the karma of blindness in subsequent lives. How can one harm others with their fantasies, even unintentionally? Much gratitude as always from my being. And if more detail can also be provided with the mentioned phrase.
Accepted Answer
Our mind is filled with an incredible number of subjective psychological formations. Each formation is a mechanical structure: a machine with limited functionality, that can only repeat itself.
For example, remember a situation where you felt that you looked bad to others; perhaps you were embarrassed by your clothes, your accent, your lack of education, or something like that. You reacted, feeling shame, and attempted to cover your shame by doing something to boost your pride. Perhaps you attacked the one who embarrassed you. Afterward, you told yourself that you were justified. This scenario was unconscious action that will rise again when the conditions allow. It will repeat. The trapped energy will emerge, and if we respond as usual, we will strengthen it.
Death does not end the repetition of desires, events, scenes... The energy of cause and effect must be settled, so we are reborn, to repeat once more the cycles of our desires. As circumstances allow, the cycles will repeat. If at age 25 we submitted to our lust, in our next life, the same event will repeat. If we repeat it unconsciously again, we make it stronger.
This is the law of recurrence.
Impregnated within all those formations are the conditions of their creation, conditions that will repeat themselves mechanically, over and over and over. What happened in one life will happen in the next, in exactly the same way and at exactly the same time, in the next life, and it will continue from life to life, as long as we continue reacting in the same way.
Observe yourself, and you will see that in situation after situation you react in the same way, all the time, because of inner pressures, inner pain, inner urges, anger, fear, envy... and there is maybe a feeling that you can escape the situation, or that you are justified in acting this way... The sad truth is that repetition of circumstance will continue as long as we repeat our reactions. We spin the wheel ourselves.
If you react with anger every time you are confronted with anger, then you are spinning the wheel onward. You are feeding it, and condemning yourself to repetition. And because we are all doing this, because we are all reacting to inner cravings and inner aversions, and we are doing this back and forth, you and me, repeating situations together, we are karmically tied and will continue meeting and repeating situations, deepening our troubles.
If Greg and I find ourselves in a situation where his pride needs to be superior to me, and he reacts to that, and makes sure that he looks better than me, and I am hurt by it, my pride is hurt, and my anger is engaged, and both of us are reacting to the quiet urgings of the mind, then we are creating formations in our individual minds, and we are creating a karmic link: the formations in my mind are linked to him, and his to me. And so, not only will his pride become stronger and seek to feed itself again, but it will do so in the same way, at the same time, with me, in the next life. Naturally, this is complicated, and if I am not reborn or some other circumstance overrides it, then it will change. But this is the tendency. Thus you can see, that karmic links are deep and subtle, and we are all in the midst of a vast and complex web of interrelations, all of which depends upon unconsciousness, or mechanical reactions to the mind and to external circumstances.
The repeating events manifest in a myriad of ways: but if there is karma to be paid, the event will be inverted: if we killed, then we will be killed.
https://glorian.org/books/karma-is-negotiable/recurrence
Regarding of harming others with our thoughts: Our thoughts are processed by our mental body, a body that also is made out of (subtle) matter, that breathes, that eats, etc. So if we think, we use our mental body and thus have an effect on others. A popular example is when you think of someone and moments later they call you, or stand at your door, etc. So you have already felt the person who was reaching out to your mentally, before you have connected physically.
We are not sure regarding the part of harmful fantasy leading to blindness. Maybe you have a quote for that? Master Samael Aun Weor mentions that blindness may result from being overly cruel:
A person is born blind because of past cruelties.
https://glorian.org/books/esoteric-medicine-and-practical-magic/ens-veneri
Both, your example and the one with the cruelty, result in blindness, because of the misuse of one's sight. The one with the harmful fantasies misuses their sight to inflict damage. The cruel one sees their victim's suffering situation, yet decides to act harmfully/to not see their own harmful acting. In both cases their sight will be taken away.
Accepted Answer
Our mind is filled with an incredible number of subjective psychological formations. Each formation is a mechanical structure: a machine with limited functionality, that can only repeat itself.
For example, remember a situation where you felt that you looked bad to others; perhaps you were embarrassed by your clothes, your accent, your lack of education, or something like that. You reacted, feeling shame, and attempted to cover your shame by doing something to boost your pride. Perhaps you attacked the one who embarrassed you. Afterward, you told yourself that you were justified. This scenario was unconscious action that will rise again when the conditions allow. It will repeat. The trapped energy will emerge, and if we respond as usual, we will strengthen it.
Death does not end the repetition of desires, events, scenes... The energy of cause and effect must be settled, so we are reborn, to repeat once more the cycles of our desires. As circumstances allow, the cycles will repeat. If at age 25 we submitted to our lust, in our next life, the same event will repeat. If we repeat it unconsciously again, we make it stronger.
This is the law of recurrence.
Impregnated within all those formations are the conditions of their creation, conditions that will repeat themselves mechanically, over and over and over. What happened in one life will happen in the next, in exactly the same way and at exactly the same time, in the next life, and it will continue from life to life, as long as we continue reacting in the same way.
Observe yourself, and you will see that in situation after situation you react in the same way, all the time, because of inner pressures, inner pain, inner urges, anger, fear, envy... and there is maybe a feeling that you can escape the situation, or that you are justified in acting this way... The sad truth is that repetition of circumstance will continue as long as we repeat our reactions. We spin the wheel ourselves.
If you react with anger every time you are confronted with anger, then you are spinning the wheel onward. You are feeding it, and condemning yourself to repetition. And because we are all doing this, because we are all reacting to inner cravings and inner aversions, and we are doing this back and forth, you and me, repeating situations together, we are karmically tied and will continue meeting and repeating situations, deepening our troubles.
If Greg and I find ourselves in a situation where his pride needs to be superior to me, and he reacts to that, and makes sure that he looks better than me, and I am hurt by it, my pride is hurt, and my anger is engaged, and both of us are reacting to the quiet urgings of the mind, then we are creating formations in our individual minds, and we are creating a karmic link: the formations in my mind are linked to him, and his to me. And so, not only will his pride become stronger and seek to feed itself again, but it will do so in the same way, at the same time, with me, in the next life. Naturally, this is complicated, and if I am not reborn or some other circumstance overrides it, then it will change. But this is the tendency. Thus you can see, that karmic links are deep and subtle, and we are all in the midst of a vast and complex web of interrelations, all of which depends upon unconsciousness, or mechanical reactions to the mind and to external circumstances.
The repeating events manifest in a myriad of ways: but if there is karma to be paid, the event will be inverted: if we killed, then we will be killed.
https://glorian.org/books/karma-is-negotiable/recurrence
Regarding of harming others with our thoughts: Our thoughts are processed by our mental body, a body that also is made out of (subtle) matter, that breathes, that eats, etc. So if we think, we use our mental body and thus have an effect on others. A popular example is when you think of someone and moments later they call you, or stand at your door, etc. So you have already felt the person who was reaching out to your mentally, before you have connected physically.
We are not sure regarding the part of harmful fantasy leading to blindness. Maybe you have a quote for that? Master Samael Aun Weor mentions that blindness may result from being overly cruel:
A person is born blind because of past cruelties.
https://glorian.org/books/esoteric-medicine-and-practical-magic/ens-veneri
Both, your example and the one with the cruelty, result in blindness, because of the misuse of one's sight. The one with the harmful fantasies misuses their sight to inflict damage. The cruel one sees their victim's suffering situation, yet decides to act harmfully/to not see their own harmful acting. In both cases their sight will be taken away.
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