supporting agent which is called alambana. These four come together and produce a
situation that is what is called karma. The cause of this situation called karma is the
ignorance of the ultimate nature of Reality, which is called avidya in Sanskrit. What
ultimate truth is—that is not known. The absence of such a knowledge itself is the
cause of the circumstances which create this so-called karma.
If we can recollect the philosophical background of the psychology of yoga, we have
already been told that ignorance of the nature of truth does not mean merely an
oblivion or a darkness that is present before the mind. It is a positive error which is
committed, and is not merely an absence or a negation of light as is the case with
deep sleep, for instance. When we are in a state of ignorance, we are not sleeping. We
are positively committing a mistake; that is what is called avidya. Though the world
is so construed that it appears to have a negative connotation—avidya, non-
knowledge—it is really something positive. It has a distracting character and forces
the commission of a positive error in the form of the perception of something which
is really not there. The absence of the perception of what is really there is
simultaneous, almost, with the perception of what is not there.
This is a very peculiar dual action of what is called avidya. It screens away truth and
presents untruth before us. It does not merely screen untruth and keep quiet. It does
something more mischievous, and that is the way in which the mind gets sidetracked
into a course of action which is totally contrary to the true nature of things. This
peculiar thing called avidya is the hetu, or the cause. If this had not been there, no
other trouble would be there. The essential nature, or the ultimate nature of things, is
somehow or other obscured from the vision of consciousness, and there is the
presentation of a picture in the form of what we call the world or the universe, which
is mistaken for the ultimate truth. It has to be taken for the ultimate truth because
nothing else is seen. We cannot believe in something which we have never seen or
conceived of. The only thing that is visible to the senses and conceivable to the mind
is this world. And so there is immediately an action of the mind in respect of what is
seen based on an urge towards this action.
Thus, there is a very interesting threefold error which simultaneously takes effect:
the obliteration of the consciousness of the ultimate nature of things and the
perception of an external atmosphere in the form of the space-time-cause relation, an
urge to deal with this external atmosphere in a particular manner, and an action
directed towards the fulfilment of this urge. This complex is called avidya-kama-
karma. These three go together. Karma is the action that we perform, the effort that
we make, the thing that we do to fulfil a particular urge from within us which has
arisen on account of a particular notion that we have got in respect of things outside.
The notion is the avidya, and it causes an urge in us to deal with that perceived
object in a particular manner; and our actual execution of the deed is the karma.
This is the cause. So we can imagine how complex is the cause itself. It is an
intertwined knot of avidya-kama-karma which has the support of the ego-sense, or
the asmita tattva, the principle of self-affirmation, and the support that is received
by the senses from their respective objects.
The objects of sense play an important part in the generation of what is called
karma. If the objects had not been what they are, the senses would have acted in a
different manner. Fortunately or unfortunately for us, what we call the objects before
us are the exact stimulants of the senses. If they had been dead things without any