Your Karmic Cycle

What’s the point of taking birth again and again if one doesn’t learn from past karmic lessons? — Neha S

■ If a person suffering from dementia forgets his family, it doesn’t mean that he is no longer a part of his family. Similarly, his past karma will always belong to him. It is like a banking transaction such as borrowing or depositing money in your account and then forgetting about it.

The money transaction will still show up in your name.

Likewise, when we take birth, we don’t remember our past life, but our karmas are stored in our subtle body. Our chitta, subconscious, is like a data bank that stores our previous experience, memories, and skills, like a microchip. But a manmade chip has limited capacity, while chitta has unlimited storage capacity.

If you are unable to use the chip’s data because of your ignorance, it does not mean that the data is lost. Similarly, if you are not aware of past karmic accounts stored in your chitta, it does not mean that you are free of your karmas. Many meditation techniques can take you to your past lives so that you can visualize your old karmic balance.

The principle of karma dictates that you will be visited by the fruits of both your good and bad karma through the joys and sorrows that you will experience in this life or in future births. Therefore, be ready to face the results of past karmas. God has no role to play in this karmic system; it is a process that continues till the time we finish our previous karmic account balance and do not accumulate anything new. ■

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