“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Karma,” a Sanskrit word essential to Hindu and Buddhist wisdom traditions, has become embedded in the popular discourse of the West, ever since our collective “rediscovery” of Far Eastern traditions of thought and practice, back in the late 1960s. It first became popular among the Beatniks and later the “hippies” or flower children, who were often inspired by (while only slightly understanding) these Eastern traditions of the Indian subcontinent. This infusion of Far Eastern ways of knowing and thinking into Western popular culture was greatly amplified by the Beatles, and especially George Harrison, taking up meditation and traveling to India to visit the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Hence, for example, we have John Lennon’s song “Instant Karma” (1970) shortly after he left the Beatles to become a solo artist.
But what is karma, anyway? Most people have only a vague conception of the term, implied by the cliché, “what goes around comes around.” For many of a more positivistic, scientific disposition, the term is merely magical thinking, with no claim whatsoever on reality — nothing, that is, that they can measure and hence verify. But is there a case to be made that karma is anything more than magical thinking — that it is, in any way, worth serious consideration?
My short answer is yes, though I will not be able to substantiate my claim to the satisfaction of any positivist, who (quite rightly, for the most part) demands irrefutable evidence to support any claim of causality. So let me at least try to offer an argument (though not proof) that karma is real.
A claim of causality is simply that this causes that; without this, there would not be that. But it does not follow that this always causes that. Hence we open up the Pandora’s box of interwoven, contributing causes to any consequence. In the lab, of course, scientists strive to eliminate, or at least control, any contributing causes (variables) to a given hypothetical claim of causality in order to verify that this, indeed, caused that. But the real world, outside the lab, is a lot messier, such that every consequence has multiple antecedent and interacting causes, and in turn leads to multiple derivative consequences.
Aristotle, true to form, shed considerable light on the problem of causality by proposing four distinct, possible causes for any given event: material causes, formal causes, efficient causes, and final causes. But not all of these apply to every event. To illustrate this, let’s take three distinct examples: a quartz crystal, a frog, and a baseball.
1. Material causes are the essential preconditions, without which an event would not be possible. In the case of the quartz crystal, the preconditions are the chemical structure and electromagnetic properties of the silica molecule — silicon-oxygen tetrahedrons. This structure predetermines the octagonal shape of the quartz crystal as these molecules precipitate from groundwater and bond with one another. The material causes of a frog are likewise molecular — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and the other elements that constitute the amino acids that in turn constitute the interactive, self-replicating properties of DNA, RNA, and protein. And at a higher physical level, the material properties of a baseball, its basic ingredients: cork, rubber, twine, and animal hide.
2. Formal causes are the abstract design elements, whether innate or deliberate, that enable the material preconditions of any event, object, or organism to manifest, when conditions are sufficient. For a quartz crystal, the formal causes are implicit in the material causes: the electromagnetic properties and mutual attractions of the silica molecules of which they consist, constrained only by the random size of the subterranean spaces in which they form. The formal causes of a frog (like all living organisms) lie in its unique genetic code, written in every gene and passed on and combined from one parental generation to the next. Finally, the formal causes of a baseball derive from various branches of human knowledge incorporated into its design: the topology of a sphere and the physical properties of the materials of which it is made. So whereas material and formal causes are identical in a crystal, they can be differentiated in a frog (since the complex self-replicating interaction of DNA, RNA, and protein is mediated by coded and transcribed information, and not by intrinsic chemical properties). And of course they are entirely distinct in a baseball, which is deliberately and externally designed by humans.
3. Efficient causes are triggering mechanisms, that activate the potential material and formal causes, leading to the event or object itself. The efficient cause of a quartz crystal is merely the random occurrence of silica-rich water seeping into spaces within bedrock where the crystalline lattice of silica molecules becomes a template for the precipitation of further chemically attracted layers of silica. Once again, the efficient cause of quartz is indistinguishable from the material and formal causes. In frogs, conversely, the efficient cause of a frog — the sexual reproduction of its parents — is at an altogether higher level of organization, and thus can be clearly differentiated from the material and formal causes. Likewise, the efficient cause of a baseball entails, of course, an assembly line in a baseball factory.
4. Final causes exist in the future, not the past, and thus apply only to artifacts (like baseballs), and not to living organisms (like frogs or people) nor minerals (like quartz crystals). The final cause can be summarized as the purpose of the design which led to the artifact. Philosophers and theologians have debated for years, of course, over whether there is a “final cause” to life, human existence, or the universe, but such debate is only speculation — we have no way of knowing. We can only know the final cause of artifacts, and only hypothesize the final cause of historical events in certain cases. Hence, for our baseball, the final cause lies in the rules of the game, without which baseballs would not exist, and upon which depend all of the physical and formal characteristics of the baseball itself. Neither quartz crystals nor frogs (nor humans) have any “final cause” that we can determine.
So what does all this have to do with karma? First, karma lies in the domain of effects, which in turn become causes — not in natural causes (like crystal formation nor frog reproduction) nor formal (design), efficient, or final (purpose) causes like designing, manufacturing, or playing with baseballs. Second, as the Dalai Lama has said, karmic causality applies only to events driven by human intention, not to natural causes, the innate behavior of other animals, nor even inadvertent consequences of human behavior, like stubbing a toe or accidentally backing your car into someone else’s.
So in all, there are four levels of causality that can be distinguished: physical, biological, human (socioeconomic or psychological) and karmic. Physical causality is linear, by and large; it is the causality that Newton first set forth in his Principia Mathematica — the causality of billiard balls, molecules, rocks, planets, stars, and galaxies, where outcomes can be reliably predicted from knowledge of initial conditions.
Biological causality, though it “runs” on physical causality, is vastly more complex for it includes an array of feedback mechanisms that make prediction a lot more difficult. A simple example that Gregory Bateson once gave is this: what is the difference between kicking a soccer ball and kicking a dog? In the first instance, if you calculate the initial conditions precisely enough, you can predict exactly what will happen when you kick the ball: how high it will go, and where it will land. In the second, however, the kick operates at two causal levels simultaneously: physical and informational. Physically the dog will be dislodged and thrust away from its initial position, just like the soccer ball. But unlike the ball, since the dog is another living (information processing) organism, the kick will also convey information, and you have no idea how the dog will react; whether it will cower, run away, or attack you. No matter how well you know the dog, there will be a high degree of uncertainty in predicting the dog’s reaction to the kick. (Even if he has always been a docile and subordinate pet, you might just have pushed him too far…)
And it is at this exact nexus of intention and present and future consequences that karma enters the picture, even in the (relatively simple) relationship between a person and his dog. Even if the kick achieves its immediate purpose — of making the dog more servile and obedient — the violence implied in the kick, the complete disregard for the dog’s physical and emotional well-being, will likely have ripple effects throughout the lives of both the dog and his “master” (or abuser).
So this leads us to a possible definition of karma; that it inheres in the nexus between the intention, the action, and the consequences, both short and long-term, between two or more living organisms. And since, at the human level, intention can be expressed not only in physical actions (like a kick or a kiss) but also in language, in financial transactions, and in all other patterns of behavior, whether psychological, social, or political, the feedback effects of any given intentional action or set of actions can become complex and far-reaching, even beyond the lifetimes of the individuals or communities involved. In short, the laws of cybernetics and the laws of karma are one and the same.
So, as an example, let’s take the climate crisis. The physical causes of the climate crisis are obvious and well-attested: CO2 absorbs light energy at the infrared scale, preventing the reflected light of the sun from escaping into space, so that the energy is preserved as heat in the atmosphere, building up over time. The human (i.e. psychological, socioeconomic, political) causes are far more complex, deriving principally from the vast increase in available net energy from the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, resulting in a “feeding frenzy” of population growth, technological innovation, resource consumption, and pollution throughout the world, all adding to the buildup of excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
But further karmic causes enter into the picture as well: the money system (which depends on endless maximization of profits) and the mutually competitive avarice of the fossil fuel industry resulted in corporate boards, at Exxon and elsewhere, making the fatal decision to suppress public information about the dangers of CO2 buildup to our collective future, and instead spread disinformation and uncertainty through mass media campaigns and their captive (mostly Republican) politicians. As a direct result, their children and grandchildren (along with our own) have had their anticipated future stolen from them, to be replaced, in all likelihood, by a hellscape of social, economic, agricultural, and biological collapse from an overheated climate.
All of which raises the big question: do karmic consequences extend beyond our individual lifetimes? In the Far East, the belief in reincarnation is quite common — that we will reap the karmic consequences of our own intentional acts in future lifetimes, even as we ourselves are, in effect, either paying off or further incurring the karmic debts of our past selves. That, at least, is the theory.
But I don’t quite buy it. If the climate catastrophe we have wrought kills off most or all of humanity, who will be left to inherit the dire karmic consequences of our collective failure, some 40 years ago, to take serious action to reduce our carbon emissions? Obviously, we cannot know, so I prefer to remain agnostic on this question. The only certainty that I have about what happens after I die will be that I’ll be recycled, first back into the biosphere, for as long as it lasts, but finally back into the (effectively eternal) physiosphere of rocks, stones, molecules, and atoms. All I know, and all I need to know, is that karma is useful to think about in this lifetime, if only because it makes us think more deeply about the unforeseen consequences and ripple effects of our behavior toward others, and toward the “inescapable network of mutuality” — our living planet, Gaia — of which we are a part.