the key to theosophy…

“Mr. Sneyd:  Don’t you think ignorance is the cause of bad Karma?

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  It is.

 
Mr. Sneyd:  And that knowledge is the cause of all good Karma?  Supposing you did a thing and it increased your happiness; would not it be the reason of that would most likely be that you had done something with knowledge, as it were?

 
Mr. B. Keightley:  I don’t think so, because the effects produced by a given cause are not always of the same character. You see, a man who uses his knowledge to do good, to make good Karma for himself, acts fundamentally from a selfish motive, which is again a wrong motive, at the back of his good action.

 
Mr. Sneyd:  Would not the reason be that he was ignorant in so far as he did not know the interest of one conscious being was the interest of all?

 
Mme. Blavatsky: Wait a moment, there is another question about Karma here.

 
Mr. Old:  I thought it would not do to let each question go too far into the discussion, otherwise it might overlap some of the other questions. The second question is:  How far does this law operate in this life, and how far in Devachan?

 
Mme Blavatsky:  In Devachan, it does not operate at all. It is the law of Karma which sends a man to Devachan with a programme already prepared beforehand, which program is the consequence of his suffering and of the miseries that he had in this world, and it is already there; it is cut and dried for him.

 
Karma waits on the threshold of Devachan at the moment of reincarnation, and then it pounces upon the individual when he is rewarded. There is no punishment in the hereafter, in the other world, as you call it.

 
Mrs. Besant:  It only works then, really, in this world?

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  It is the hell, and the purgatory, and everything, and the paradise.

 
Mr. B. Keightley:  The good effects are reaped in Devachan.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  Reaped for those who want a consolation, and want a rest, and bliss, and care for it; those who don’t care for it won’t have it.

 
Mr. Gardner:  The fool’s paradise.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  For instance, you are perfectly indifferent to everything.”

 
H. P. Blavatsky.