“The soul already started its journey to its sufferings, during its stay in the womb. The karma starts to show its ugly head. If it is a human birth, it suffers on two counts. One is physical and another is mental. In all other living beings, intellect is not well developed and therefore they cannot think in the way you think and act. In your case also, you suffer more from mental worries than physical worries. I have already discussed about karmas. Let me explain how the karma works. Karmas are three types. The first one is called “sanchita” karmas. This gets accumulated on account of your acts done during the previous births. The second one is “prarabdha”. This is a portion of the sanchita karma, meant to be exhausted during your present birth. The result may be good or bad depending upon your activities in your previous births. The third is “agami”. This represents your future karmas. Sanchita karma is a big bundle of all your karmas accumulated by you during all your past births. Out of this prarabdha is taken out, and given to you to be exhausted in this birth.

The agami is the total sum of sanchita karma plus the karmas being accumulated by you during this birth. If your prarabdha karma is bad, you undergo more sufferings in order to reduce the size of sanchita. You may not be able to exhaust the entire prarabdha during this birth. The balance, along with the karmas accumulated by you during this current birth is added to sanchita. You continue to take births after births until you exhaust all your sanchita karma totally. As I told you earlier, even if your bundle of sanchita is full of good karmas, then also you have to take births. You do your duty as decided by your karma, without ego and without expecting a personal gain for your self. When you do your duty thinking that God is doing His duty through you, that is considering yourself as my messenger, then your karmic account is neither credited nor debited. The more and more you do your duty this way, your sanchita will totally be exhausted. When your sanchita becomes nil, you leave your body at that moment and your soul reaches me and merges with me, and become a part of mine. You cannot be distinguished from me. This is the karmic theory. Whatever action you do, will have an equal and opposite reaction is applicable to karmic theory also.

Let me take an example. You have a pet. You are very affectionate to this pet and the pet also equally likes you. This is the role played by you and the pet in this birth. This relationship has not begun in this birth. Both of you would have got associated with each other in earlier births, but not necessarily in the same form. Both of you could have born as birds, animals or any other form and would have got associated with each other. Such an association between you in any one of your previous births brought both of you together in this birth. These relationships need not be cordial always. It can be enmity also. If this was enmity, you will continue your enmity during this birth. This enmity or cordiality will be wiped out at some time in this birth or in any of the future births, depending upon your relationship with the other. Let us assume that, in the previous births, whatever be the forms, you could have suffered at the hands of your pet. In this birth or in future births, the pet suffers from you and thus the karma between you both gets nullified. All such karmas are embedded in your jiva, which suffers by your own actions. Therefore, you can understand that except you, nobody is responsible for your sufferings or otherwise. God in no way becomes responsible for your actions and the karmas derived there from. You very often use the word ‘fate’. This fate is nothing but your sufferings arising out of your karmas. So you become responsible for your fate. (To be continued)