“Enq: Then am I to understand that the murderer, the transgressor of law divine and human in every shape, is allowed to go unpunished?
Theo: Who ever said that? Our philosophy has a doctrine of punishment as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and consistent with absolute justice.
No deed, not even a sinful thought, will go unpunished; the latter more severely even than the former, as a thought is far more potential in creating evil results than even a deed. (“Verily, I say unto you, that whosoever looketh at a woman to lust after her, hath comitted adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matt. v. 28)
We believe in an unerring law of Retribution, called KARMA, which asserts itself in a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results.
Enq: And how, or where, does it act?
Theo: Every Labourer is worthy of his hire, saith Wisdom in the Gospel; every action, good, or bad, is a prolific parent, saith the Wisdom of the Ages. Put the two together, and you will find the “why”.
After allowing the Soul, escaped from the pangs of personal life, a sufficient, aye, a hundredfold compensation, Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of Devachan, whence the Ego re-emerges to assume a new incarnation.
It is at this moment that the future destiny of the now rested Ego trembles in the scales of just Retribution, as it now falls once again under the sway of active Karmic law.
It is in this rebirth which is ready for it, a rebirth selected and prepared by this mysterious, inexorable, but in the equity and wisdom of its decrees infallible LAW, that the sins of the previous life of the Ego are punished.
Only it is into no imaginary Hell, with theatrical flames and ridiculous tailed and horned devils, that the Ego is cast, but verily on to this earth, the plane and region of his sins, where he will have to atone for every bad thought and deed. As he has sown, so will he reap.
Reincarnation will gather around him all those other Egos who have suffered, whether directly or indirectly, at the hands, or even through the unconscious instrumentality, of the past personality.
They will be thrown by Nemesis in the way of the new man, concealing the old, the eternal Ego, and….”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 