Downward Spiral of Collective Karma

Several evenings ago I had a dream in which I was giving a small room full of people a lecture on Karma, in answer to a question regarding the almost total absence of saints, miracles and providential occurrences during the most recent times (just even a century ago there was so much more spiritual activity).

Now, as all of us in the West have been trained to believe, we are all to suppose that the Spiritual World is a perfect mirror of the Political World of Liberal Free Trade Capitalists, and since that Political World insists that we each must be treated entirely on an individual basis, then it follows that Karma must be entirely the province of the individual. So we are not even to consider that God may consider us in terms of families, ethnic groups, nations, societies, or any such collective grouping. God, who must be following some as yet unwritten Constitution, must treat us entirely as individuals. Indeed, this view is given much currency in the propaganda outpourings of the Protestant Churches who have made it their primary extra-scriptural doctrine that the goal of their cults is for each individual to have a ‘personal relationship’ with the human god of their religion. There is no justification for such a view in their scriptures, as it is more likely that the opposite view should prevail, noting that their Bible details the rise and fall of Nations, Peoples, Families and Cities based entirely on their collective Karma. But the Doctrine of Personal Relationship does sound good at the Tent Meetings, and as their favorite Apostle had taught, it is never wrong to say anything that contributes toward success in a membership drive (1st Corinthians 9:22 “Pretend to be all things to all people in order to beguile them into the Church”).

If you are wondering, this favorite apostle of those who have created one of the worse religions in the World is Paul, the one apostle who had never met Jesus, unless to condemn him as his fellow Pharisees certainly had, but if it should count that he had met Jesus in a vision, then, even in his own account of that vision, the only thing that Jesus had to say to him was that he was effectively his worst enemy in the world … which can hardly be seen to be an endorsement. It is often said that this vision occurred at the moment of Paul’s ‘conversion’, only I can’t discern that Paul ever changed, or that Christ ever acknowledged such a change.

Indeed, was not Paul the only apostle to never deliver a miracle, by anyone’s account other than his own? By the standards used today by the Vatican to determine the validity of a miracle, all of Paul’s miracles would be tossed out as fabrications or coincidences – a young man falling out of a low window and arising after he caught his breath, and then the shocking ‘miracle’ of Paul yelling at some poor old man until the old guy had a stroke. Even if it could be demonstrated to have been supernatural, it would be tossed out today for simply being mean-spirited. Paul eventually went on to redefine the ‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’ in order to strip them of any hint of the Supernatural, and reverted to the argument used by the Pharisees against Jesus Himself, saying that Miracles were tools of the devil used to fool the righteous. Jesus had called this Pharisaical Argument the “Unforgivable Sin”, but Paul was to make it the cornerstone of his Church. You see, Paul’s Churches would have lost membership to the True Christian Churches of the True Apostles, being attracted by all the Things of the Spirit, so it was necessary for Paul to successfully demonize everything that was true, so that his falsehoods could stand an even chance.

Anyway, when Jerusalem and the True Church was destroyed in 71 A.D., just as the Book of Revelation said it would be, the only Church that was left was the Greek Gentile Church of Paul… not the authentic and genuine Church at all. The only Religion in the World that promotes free sin… something that simply cannot be right, and it is extremely odd that Christians don’t see the problem there.

Well... to get back on topic... We were speaking of individual vs. collective karma, and how the modern political atmosphere emphasizes individual responsibility and individual identity, and so there is very little consideration that we may actually be living in a Spiritual World in which the Karmic Dynamics are mostly social and collective. But first lets examine more closely the development of the modern perception that Karma is largely individualistic. We can trace back the current models of social and political belief to the Wars of the Protestant Rebellion which in their turn had precipitated a series of other rebellions and revolutions, and an entire series of wars between nations no longer held together by common religion (Catholicism), or a common language (Latin) or sense of a wider World View (Christendom). Individualism lead quite logically into anarchy. And while history shows us that the cry for freedom is the virtual trumpet blast heralding in each Dark Age of Barbarism, well, that is all we hear today – “freedom, freedom, freedom”. Its an odd situation, as freedom is a rich man’s game (even computer models bear out the proverbial wisdom that the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer”, so while the poor man may enjoy his freedom for a moment, to destroy a Palace of Gold so that he may make away with a single gilded shingle, still, in the end, it is those richer than himself who will finally screw him even out of that), but the Wealthy and the Powerful, with their Media, Movies, books, art and literature, have convinced us that we all have to play their Game by their Rules. Well, the only results can be that of so many billions of players, there can be in the end only one winner, and on the other side a world full of desperate losers. No civilization has yet ever won that Game. Cut-throat competition kills everybody.

But if individualism destroys Civilization, then, we might ask, what recreates Civilization? And then, what is it that distinguishes the more successful Civilizations from those less vibrant, less healthy? Well, it certainly isn’t the destructive embrace of divisive individualism. The most functional Civilizations are those that can support the greatest population densities (and as we anticipate a World that will soon number over 10 billions of people, isn’t our greatest priority to focus upon the institutions that best enable us to achieve the maximums as regards to density of population levels?) and those most densely populated civilizations in History had been those with the most integrated network of collective institutions – Religion emphasizing cooperation, moral protections of property, which advance prosperity during good times, as well as moral injunctions enjoining charity, to relieve the bad times.

It is all more than just laws and education. You see, these young Civilizations had recently just finished going through their Dark Ages of Barbarism. They’ve tasted of the fruits of individualism – of constant warfare and pillaging, of individuals making their own way in the World. It is all what Thomas Hobbes called war between each man against all others, where life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Well, those who had wished to rise out of this horrible chaos came of necessity to experience themselves in terms of a collective identity. I simply have to suppose that it takes more than one or even a few generations before a person can automatically feel down into his very bones that he is a member of his Society rather than thinking, in 20th Century fashion, that he is simply just another individual Viking rapist and pillager out for his own pleasure, wealth, power and ambitions. Going from Selfish to Saintly seems to be one of those torches that must be passed from father to son, and sometimes we might suspect that the quest is interrupted before it can be successfully achieved. We can see this in European History, that the last peoples to become Civilized were also the first to go back completely into Barbarism. And as Chinese History teaches us, the easiest people to Civilize are those that had already been civilized the longest. China had just emerged from an insanely chaotic revolution, and after a mere couple of decades are already poised to become the greatest dynasty in their History. Which isn’t to say that they do not have their own problems… as quickly as their Dynasties rise, so also they have a speedy rate of collapse.

Anyway, what does that leave us if I am right – that Karma is largely collective, or that where it does involve the individual, then it would take lifetimes to see any result. Well, it would be demoralizing, wouldn’t it? Yes, we have all heard about the “journey of a thousand li starting with the first step”, but we had always been left to suppose it would be ourselves who would be allowed to finish. So, to surrender to practicalities, for this essay to be at all useful, I must relinquish arguments that insist upon developments that take more than one generation. My readers must feel as though there is something in their power. Well, yes, there is.

A friend of mine, a psychologist, had me review one of his papers before he was to submit it for publication, and it provides an interesting model for intellectually understanding some relevant dynamics here. A simple view of his Model is that we are each of us an amalgam of 1st Order, 2nd Order, and 3rd Order Selves. The 1st Order Self is what we are – our knowledge, our abilities, what we do, how people see us. Our 2nd Order Self is what we are working toward being, as a Medical Student is something of a 2nd Order Doctor, or student pilot is a 2nd Order Jumbo Jet captain. Finally, our 3rd Order Self, and it is a bit more complicated here, is what we wish we wanted to be. It seems similar to 2nd Order, but the difference is that no concrete effort is made to transition toward 2nd Order, or, really, the moment any effort was made to achieve a 3rd Order Wish, then simply by way of definition the 3rd Order daydream would become a 2nd Order agenda. An example here would be of a person wishing that he cared more about Classical Music, or a person wishing that he were multi-lingual, but that was as far as it would go. Now, what this does is that it determines the type of people that this person would admire. Our 3rd Order Being helps us decide whom in our Society we have respect for.

So, how does this apply to us and our present discussion. Well, we all want to be civilized. We all want our World to be successful and viable. We certainly do not all wish for a complete collapse of our economies as a few Winners decide to cash themselves out of the game and retire off to a few well stocked, fortified and hidden island retreats. But so far this has been all 3rd Order. It is what we have been wishing. Yes, we admire the Great People in our Culture who had been collectively oriented. But we have been doing nothing personally to achieve that realization. Now, yes, of course, the full realization of the Civilized Mindset is not likely to appear in just one generation. But any number of us now can make it a 2nd Order priority. We can begin to consciously strive toward it.

And, finally, this brings us to Karma. Again, Karma is not simply about the individual, though there probably is an individual strand within all of our Karmic momentums through life. Karma also follows families. For instance, I had noticed upon studying saints – Catholic, Hindu, Sufi – all kinds of saints, that saints generally come from very good families. Inversely, I encountered some anecdotal evidence that evil operates the same way on the inverse. One story I read had said that one particular superstition maintained that any child born of 3 consecutive generations outside of marriage – a 3rd generation bastard – would belong by default to the devil. Well, this particular story came as prelude to a frightful tale of demonic possession. It seems that this one 3rd generation bastard, a young lady in this case, converted to Catholicism but the devil himself challenged the conversion. Well, it was a stiff fight – several priests had to be hospitalized, and the nuns had to burn down their own convent just to get rid of the subsequent stink, but the girl was eventually saved.

Anyway, so while Family Karma can be substantially powerful, it is not absolute, and individual and social karma can be brought to bear in order to change its direction. You see, it is largely all about Will Power. Karma, after all, is all about applied Will Power. We use Will Power to educate ourselves into knowledge and abilities and then to set up life practices and daily routines, and then finally it all becomes habit and our Karma is fixed. But to change this Karma there only needs to be another application of Will Power – individual Will Power but also Social Karma as other people apply their own measure of Will Power in cooperative effort.

Now, how does all of this come to affect the amount of supernatural and spiritual activity we observes in the World today? Well, Karma is probably quantifiable, that is it takes a certain amount of karmic power to do anything significant. Each person’s personal supply of karma isn’t enough really to pack much of a punch. If everybody got together and pooled their Karma into a huge supply of collective karma, then there could be some huge manifestations, but with everybody so individual minded… with so many people with their own personal relationships with human god fixations, then there is not much collective karma to work with. And what little collective karma there is, from those few Catholics not deterred by the modern Catholic Bishops who in everything but words insist that their flocks start behaving exactly like protestants, dropping all penitential and spiritual practices from their lives; well from what little collective karma that remains, we might suspect that its energy is being saved up. Oh, and this is not to say that the other Higher Religions are not setting aside shares of collective karmic power, gained from whatever spiritual or ascetic practices that had been engaged in. Indeed, it is almost the definition of a Higher Religion that it recognize the importance of spiritual practice for collective ends.

Oh, regarding the insufficiency of individual karma, but that if individuals pool up their karma, if may begin to amount to something. Well, we have the example from the greatest saint in History, Vincent Ferrer, possibly greater than Jesus Christ. I believe that the secret of his success was that he went everywhere with a group of 10,000 ascetic prayerful penitents in his train, fasting and flailing themselves with whips. He would boast that he could march them about like that 30 miles a day, and none would drop out or get sick. What was happening was that all of these powerful karmic reserves were being concentrated into the hands of Vincent Ferrer. Well, today, how many people fast, or do anything much in the way of penitence and atonement for the sins of the World, not even beginning to suggest they march 30 miles a day touring all of southern Europe while whipping their backs raw the entire time. If one person should do that, then we could expect that it would carry a great deal of Karmic Intensity – think of how much Will Power such actions would require, and there we can see the intensity of the Karma involved. Now multiply that by ten thousand, and we can begin to explain a very powerful Saint.

So after all that, this brings us to an ambiguous conclusion. We may see little spiritual activity and next to nothing in the way of supernatural manifestations and phenomena because there is simply not enough karmic energy going toward generating such things. Or if there is sufficient karmic energy, then it is being stored away for some grand future event. Now, the skeptic might propose a third option, that there is no such thing as spiritual and supernatural manifestations and phenomena. Well, that is silly in that it is so misinformed. Even in relatively recent history there are any number of documented instances of the Supernatural. It is only puzzling that such things have seemed to drag to a halt.

Oh, yes, those of simplistic religious belief may say that people have lost their faith. Oh, blah! Faith was a concept made up to explain why miracles don’t happen. Think about it, that the concept of faith is always invoked in the negative – “the miracle you prayed for did not occur because of your lack of faith”. Only in stories do we hear of miracles occurring because of faith. In the real world, as we have always seen it, lack of faith is assigned as the cause for lack of miracles. Go back to first causes… Paul would yell at his congregations telling them that the only reason they were not getting the same miracles that all the other Apostles were getting in plenty was from lack of faith, effectively telling them that they were not throwing enough money into the pot. Jesus presented miracles before thousands of people constantly, and universal faith was never a requirement. My suspicion is that all instances of faith written into the gospels were included by later Paulists not so much to reflect what Jesus had actually said or done, but to superimpose Paulist doctrines onto Christ. If paul had never quoted Jesus a single time in all of his books and preachings, and he hadn’t, well the early Christian scribes and editors would be sure to make it so that Jesus would quote paul. So, anyway, faith explains nothing. What is important is simple Will Power and its psychological focus. If people actually begin to take actions for the good of their collective society – to work for the World View – then it is that which will give us miracles, or rather, the power upon which miracles depend.