operates—and we cannot go outside the universe. We are inside the universe
wherever we are. We may go to any realm or plane of existence, yet all these planes of
existence are within the cosmos. We may go from one district to another district, or
from one province to another province, but the law of the government uniformly
operates in all places. And if we are culprits, we will be caught by the law, and we
cannot escape merely because we have jumped from one district to another district
or from one province to another province. Likewise is this law. We may take birth in
another plane of existence, and yet the law of karma will be operating there because
there is a single government for the whole cosmos and the law will work wherever we
are. The point is, there is no escape from the law of karma. We have, perforce, to
enjoy or suffer the consequence of the deeds that we perform because we did them
and, therefore, we have to bear the fruit. If we have done the deed, who else will bear
the fruit thereof? Thus, there is a causal connection, says the sutra.
This causal connection is maintained by the capacity of the mind of the individual to
contain within itself everything, any blessed thing, in a very, very subtle form. The
mind is like a seed. It may look very small, almost invisible, but it can contain
potentially, or latently, the possibility of the spreading of a vast banyan tree of future
experience, notwithstanding that it looks so small. We see how big the banyan tree is.
How can it be contained in that seed which is so negligibly small? Yet it is there. Very
surprising! Such a minute seed—to see it we have to observe it with great care, with
focused eyes—can contain within itself such a mighty expanse of a banyan tree!
Likewise, a cosmic expanse of future experience can be contained in a very fine,
subtle form in the little seed of the mind, which is the individual that performs the
action. The reason why this continuity of cause and effect is maintained is the mind
itself. The mind is the cause, and it also contains the potential of the effect. And it
manifests itself from itself only; it does not come from somewhere outside. Whatever
the birth one takes, one cannot jump out of one’s own skin. In all the various births,
or incarnations, into which one passes, one cannot abandon one’s own mind. It is the
mind that really incarnates, it is the mind that performs the action, and it is the mind
that contains the seed of future experience as the result of the action.
We are the cause, and we also contain within ourselves the effect. We carry with us
the effect because we are the cause. The effect proceeds only from the cause, and
inasmuch as we are the cause, naturally the effect is there hiddenly present in us.
Hence, it should be very clear as to why the effect should be produced wherever we
are—at any place, at any time, in any plane of existence. That is the significance of
this sutra: jāti deśa kāla vyavahitānām api ānantaryaṁ smṛti saṁskārayoḥ ekarūpatvāt
(IV.9). The samskaras of action—that is, the impressions produced by a particular
action—become the cause of the reproduction of the corresponding effect in the very
same agent which performs the action.
Tāsām anāditvam ca āśiṣaḥ nityatvāt (IV.10), says another sutra. This circle, or cycle of
karma, is beginningless and endless, inasmuch as desire is eternal, almost. We
cannot say when desire began and how it will end. There is no limitation of time to
this law of karma, because it is not limited by the movement of time and the distance
of space. When did desire begin? Nobody can say. When individuality began, desire
also began, as they are identical. When did our individuality begin? God only knows.
No one can say when it began. And, simultaneously, desire arose. As I mentioned
previously, avidya and kama go together, and immediately they produce karma, or
action. But, says the Yoga Shastra, there is a solution for this problem. All this looks