Sin and Sorrow...

When a man has committed an evil action he has attached himself to a sorrow, for sorrow is ever the plant that springs from the seed of sin. It may be said, even more accurately, that sin and sorrow are but the two sides of one act, not two separate events. As every object has two sides, one of which is behind, out of sight, when the other is in front, in sight, so every act has two sides, which cannot both be seen at once in the physical world. In other worlds, good and happiness, evil and sorrow, are seen as the two sides of the same thing. This is what is called karma — a convenient and now widely-used term, originally Sanskrit, expressing this connection or identity, literally meaning "action" — and the suffering is therefore called the karmic result of the wrong. The result, the "other side", may not follow immediately, may not even accrue during the present incarnation, but sooner or later it will appear and clasp the sinner with its arms of pain. Now a result in the physical world, an effect experienced through our physical consciousness, is the final outcome of a cause set going in the past; it is the ripened fruit; in it a particular force becomes manifest and exhausts itself. That force has been working outwards, and its effects are already over in the mind ere it appears in the body. Its bodily manifestation, its appearance, in the physical world, is the sign of the completion of its course.[This is the cause of the sweetness and patience often noticed in the sick who are of very pure nature. They have learned the lesson of suffering, and they do not make fresh evil karma by impatience under the result of past bad karma, then exhausting itself. ] If at such a moment the sinner, having exhausted the karma of his sin, comes into contact with a Sage who can see the past and the present, the invisible and the visible, such a Sage may discern the ending of the particular karma, and, the sentence being completed, may declare the captive free. Such an instance seems to be given in the story of the man sick of the palsy, already alluded to, a case typical of many. A physical ailment is the last expression of a past ill-doing; the mental and moral outworking is completed, and the sufferer is brought — by the agency of some Angel, as an administrator of the law — into the presence of One able to relieve physical disease by the exertion of a higher energy. First, the Initiate declares that the man's sins are forgiven, and then justifies his insight by the authoritative word, "Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house". Had no such enlightened One been there, the disease would have passed away under the restoring touch of nature, under a force applied by the invisible angelic Intelligences, who carry out in this world the workings of karmic law; when a greater One is acting, this force is of more swiftly compelling power, and the physical vibrations are at once attuned to the harmony that is health. All such forgiveness of sins may be termed declaratory; the karma is exhausted, and a "knower of karma" declares the fact. The assurance brings a relief to the mind, that is akin to the relief experienced by a prisoner when the order for his release is given, that order being as much a part of the law as the original sentence; but the relief of the man who thus learns of the exhaustion of an evil karma is keener, because he cannot himself tell the term of its action.It is noticeable that these declarations of forgiveness are constantly coupled with the statement that the sufferer showed "faith", and that without this nothing could be done; i.e., the real agent in the ending of this karma is the sinner himself. In the case of the "woman that was a sinner", the two declarations are coupled: "Thy sins are forgiven . . . Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace". [S. Luke, vii, 48, 50. ] This "faith" is the up-welling in man of his own divine essence, seeking the divine ocean of like essence, and when this breaks through the lower nature that holds it in — as the water-spring breaks through the encumbering earth-clods — the power thus liberated works on the whole nature, bringing it into harmony with itself. The man only becomes conscious of this as the karmic crust of evil is broken up by its force, and that glad consciousness of a power within himself, hitherto unknown, asserting itself as soon as the evil karma is exhausted, is a large factor in the joy, relief, and new strength that follow on the feeling that sin is "forgiven", that its results are past