Cause and effect exist because of time and space. If there were no time and space, there would not be cause and effect. In reality there is no time and space and there’s no cause and effect. But in the relative world there is. Cause and effect is another name for the law of retribution. For as you sow, so shall you reap or the law of karma. And as long as you are under that law, you have to deal with the God of that law. That God is called Ishvara in Hindu, Jehovah in the Hebrew religion, Allah in Mohammed religion, and it goes by many other names.
Those Gods exist as long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena. And so does cause and effect. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. That’s the law of physics. It’s the same as the law of cause and effect. Everything you do ends up in a result, there’s no escape from it. Unless you turn within and you no longer react to anything. Then you transcend the law and become free. But as long as we are still body conscious, we are under that law.
This is how it works. If you want to grow oranges and you do not know anything about seeds, you would grab a lemon seed, plant it in the ground and expect an orange tree to grow. The cause is the planting of the lemon seed. The effect, the lemon tree. The seed is planted in the earth. The earth is your mind and the seeds are your thoughts. And the effect is the result you get from planting seeds. So you plant a lemon seed and a lemon tree grows. But then you start crying and screaming about it, “I wanted oranges,” you say, “I demand oranges.” And you have a tantrum, you have a fit. Nobody cares. You planted the seeds and this is what you’re getting as a result. Lemons. Of course you can always make lemonade, but you wanted oranges. So why did you plant a lemon seed? You don’t know. Maybe you planted a lemon seed in a previous life. You set up the cause at that time. For the effect can back to you many lifetimes from now, as an orange tree, as a lemon tree rather. And you’ll still scream, “Why did I plant a lemon seed, I wanted oranges instead.” So it is when we see things we do not understand. For instance, when Mahatma Ghandi died, he got shot, why would an honorable man like that get shot? The last word he said to his attacker was, “I forgive you and thank you my son.” For he realized that in some other life he had set the cause in motion. And this is the effect he gets back. This is called “Delayed Karma.”
Now there’s instant karma. Like when you step on the edge of a rake. You step on a rake, what happens? It hits you in the head. That’s called instant karma. Who takes care of this karma? The God of karma is, Ishvara, Allah, Jehovah. It is he who hands out what karma you’re going to experience in each life.
Let’s take another example. Henry invites me to his house. I come into Henry’s house and I go to the refrigerator. I say, “What’s to eat?” I eat him out of house and home. Then I say Henry can I borrow your car? And Henry’s a good guy and he says, “sure.” So I borrow his car and I wreck his car. Break his headlights, his windshield and come back and park it like nothing happened. And Henry being the good guy that he is, doesn’t say anything. Then I say, “Henry can you lend me five hundred dollars?” So Henry being a good guy says, “sure.” And I never expect to pay him back, I just take his money. Now what happens?
By not reacting, Henry becomes neutral. When you’re neutral, you do not accrue karma again. You’re finished with that part of your life. When you react you accrue karma. What happens to me? I’ve got to experience the effect sometime, somehow, of what I’ve done to Henry. It’s got to come back to me somehow. Maybe not even in this lifetime, but it will come back, there’s no escape. This is why when we see certain things in life and we do not understand, we should never judge because everything is working out like it’s supposed to. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
Robert Adams
Transcript 23
The Law Of Cause And Effect
11th November, 1990
