So the evil which we uncomplainingly suffer now will be recompensed to the utmost in some bright and beautiful, though it may be far-off, life. What is time to the heir of eternity! Thus the everlasting patience of Karma assures us that no effort we make can be without its ultimate reward; that no wrong we inflict can escape final punishment. In closing this brief chapter upon a subject that volumes would leave unexhausted, we can do no better than to quote from the Teacher to whom the Western world is indebted for this revival of an almost forgotten truth. In the Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky writes:

"Yes; 'our destiny is written in the stars!' Only the closer the union between the mortal reflection, Man, and his celestial Prototype, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations - which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition; least of all is it fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, and man is a free agent during his stay on earth . . . Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray, the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations.

When the last strand is woven and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny . . . There is no return from the paths Karma cycles over; yet these paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of Providence, minus design, goodness and every other finite attribute or qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness nor cruelty of providence, but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil doer - aye, even to his seventh re-birth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma - an eternal and immutable decree - is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit.

It is not, therefore, Karma which rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward and punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through, and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or - break them.

"Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of these ways - which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism, and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them - would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause . . . With right knowledge * * two-thirds of the world's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the ways of Providence. We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of these ways being so intricate and dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then we accuse the great Sphynx of devouring us.

But, verily, there is not an accident of our lives, nor a mishappen day, nor a misfortune that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or another life.

"The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of Reincarnation , . . It is only this doctrine that can explain the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one acquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honor paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favors by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues - far more deserving in every way - perishing for want and for lack of sympathy; - when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and one's heart aching with the cries of pain around him, that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator. This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself.

It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigor. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils, through study and meditation, its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one absolute, one eternal, ever-present cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world."

The confusion of Karma with predestination or fatalism can easily be avoided by remembering that our Karma is predestined to the extent that we must experience the effects of causes we have set up in past lives, only. Yet, even while suffering, this effect changes into a new cause, according to our mental attitude towards it. Thus he who has been sent by deeds done in past lives into a diseased body, by his fortitude in bearing this just effect of his own acts can rise on the "stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things"; while, by rebellion and railings against what he is pleased - or taught - to call "fate," he enacts new causes whose effects can but be unfavorable.