Karma and Salvation
Transcending the judgment of our past
Underneath the familiarity of our conscious lives, a maddening current swells. Those who say they are liberated from the superstitions of the past, from the fantastical myths and uncritical dogmas of their forefathers, kid themselves. Victims of our own self-enlightenment, we cannot see that we have not yet transcended our history.[1]
We are tethered to a certain primitive force, which nonetheless holds sway over us. In the west, we have called this judgment; in the east, karma. Judgment — upon the back of which is carried shame and guilt — was a necessary condition for the birth of civilization; necessary to maintain group cohesion and social order. But for once at best a necessary evil, it is now made all the more virulent by its being ignored. It might be repressed from our conscious awareness, but it still lurks there, in all of us, threatening at any moment to spew forth and consume us.
Our clamoring for retribution, for judgment — our self-righteous vitriol in the face of the Other, the outsider, the evildoer — is evidence of a deep-seated, karmic desire to balance the wrongs that have been committed. But judgment is inherently pathological, and its voracious appetite will not be satiated, even if it should cause the whole world to burn.
Karma is not a condition of the world — that is, of something external to humanity — but a condition of man. It issues forth from within. We are hell, and wherever we are, there hell is.[2] And here we remain, subject to karmic law, with judgment day fast approaching. But who is our accuser? God judges no man.[3] We alone are our own judge, jury, and executioner.
To refuse judgment is to liberate ourselves. But the darkness is addicting, and we will only give it up when we find something we desire more. Standing opposed to judgment and the karmic cycle is the possibility for transcendence. In the west it has been called salvation; in the east, liberation.
If hell arises out of man, so too does the kingdom of heaven. As our sense of judgment conjures up hell, heaven is awakened in our experiencing of salvation — a totalizing yet unassailing experiencing of reality in a way that is more real than real.
It is necessary that we have first been acquainted with karma, in that “it belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite”.[4] The path to liberation winds through the karmic cycle. Heaven is birthed in the fires of hell.
The primariness of judgment is deeply embedded in the psychology of the individual, providing the cultural milieu that shapes the destinies of individuals and societies. But for all its overawing grandeur, it is simply maya. It holds power over us only because we believe it does. It is an illusion — not because it lacks real effects — but because it is not ontologically real; not real down to the core. And this is the transcendence of salvation: an atemporal experiencing that shows being to itself, that brings being into total ontological exposure and reveals its identification with the good.[5]
The world is archetyped by these two forces: judgment and salvation. In refusing judgment, we become the liberator of humankind. Yet even should our mind run away with us, and create for us a home in hell, heaven cannot help but come to find us.
[1] We have become instead victims of our own enlightenment, of a self-deception that has “extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness”, leaving us blind to our own ignorance. [Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno, “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, in The Continental Philosophy Reader by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater. 1996: 199]
[2] “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.” [John Milton, Paradise Lost. <http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Milton/pl0.html>]
[3] “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son [John 5:22]. But neither does the son judge:“Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.” [John 8:15]. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” [1 Corinthians 6:2]. The Bible. KJV. <Biblegateway.com>]
[4] The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard. 1841.
[5] “And this idea of good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth, and the author not of knowledge only, but of being, yet greater far than either in dignity and power.” [Plato. The Republic.]
