IN THE END

The final paragraph of the previous posting is misleading.  It reads, “’Whatever this is’ has been and always will be protective of you.  We do not know why this is.  It has saved many of us more often than we can count, mainly saved us from ourselves, but then also saved us from others.  ‘Whatever this is’ allows us to do what we will in the world, while, paradoxically, not allowing us to do it at the same time.”  A sentence should have been added that this is how we perceive it to be.  We think that we are being protected and guided throughout our lives.

In point of fact, “Whatever this is,” speaking now of Vedanta's Atman/Brahman, is only a watcher, an observer, a witness, not at all a participant in our lives.  What participates is karma.  This is the meaning of the final sentence in that posting, “It can only go this one way.”  A person’s life can only go according to his good and bad karmas, with which everyone is born, and can only play out in the manner karmas play out.  Even an awakened, liberated, illumined person who, accordingly, will never generate any further karmas, must still endure the burning off of the last of his past karmas.

This would explain, to name one example, how Thomas Merton, the notable Trappist monk, writer, and mystic, who doubtless was an enlightened soul, could, in a trip overseas, step out of his bath, touch an electric fan that proved to have faulty wiring, and be electrocuted.  “How could God allow this to happen to the likes of Merton?” was surely on everyone’s lips. 

But, alas, the explanation that it is purely karma at work in our lives and not something divine is also a perception.  It is how we explain the course of our lives to ourselves even though in the end we don't really know.