Spiritual Karma is determined by the use of the knowledge and power of the physical, the psychic, the mental and the spiritual man.

—The Zodiac.

THE

WORD

KARMA

IX

Spiritual Karma

THE idea of sex becomes manifest with the growth of the physical body; so does the idea of power. Power is first expressed in the ability to defend and care for the body, then to provide conditions which sex suggests to the mind as necessary or desirable.

As sex continues to dominate the mind, power is called upon to provide the necessaries, comforts, luxuries and ambitions which sex suggests to the mind. In order that these objects may be obtained, man must have a medium of exchange by which they may be procured. Such means of exchange is agreed on by every people.

Among primitive races, those things were valued which supplied a general demand. Members of a tribe or community endeavored to acquire and accumulate the things which others desired to possess. So flocks and herds were raised and the owner of the largest had most influence. This influence was recognized as his power and the concrete symbol of it were his possessions, with which he traded for the aims and objects as suggested by the senses. With the increase of individual possessions and the growth of the people, money became a medium of exchange; money in the forms of shells, ornaments, or pieces of metals, coined and given certain values, which were agreed upon to be used as the standard of exchange.

Since man has seen that money is the measure of power in the world, he desires eagerly to obtain through money the power he seeks and with which he can provide other physical possessions. So he sets about to acquire money by hard physical labor, or by scheming and maneuvering in various directions to get money and thus get power. And so with a strong body of sex and large amounts of money, he is able or hopes to be able to wield the influence and exercise the power and enjoy the pleasures and realize the ambitions which his sex yearns for in the business, social, political, religious, intellectual life in the world.

These two, sex and money, are the physical symbols of spiritual realities. Sex and money are symbols in the physical world, are of spiritual origins and have to do with the spiritual karma of man. Money is the symbol of power in the physical world, which provides sex with means and conditions of enjoyment. There is the money of sex in every body of sex which is the power of sex and which makes the sex strong or beautiful. It is from the use of this money in the body that springs the spiritual karma of man.

In the world, money is represented by two standards, one is gold, the other silver. In the body, too, gold and silver exist and are coined as the mediums of exchange. In the world, each country coins both gold and silver, but establishes itself under the standard of gold or the standard of silver. In the bodies of mankind, each sex coins gold and silver; the body of man is established under the standard of gold, the body of woman under the standard of silver. A change of standard would mean a change in the form and order of government in any country of the world and in the same way in a human body. Besides gold and silver other metals of lesser value are used in the countries of the world; and that which corresponds to such metals as copper, lead, tin and iron and their combinations, is also used in the body of man. The standard values, however, in the bodies of sex are gold and silver.

Everybody knows and appreciates the gold and silver which is used in the world, but few of the people know what the gold and silver in mankind is. Of those who know, fewer still value that gold and silver, and of these few, still fewer know of or are able to put the gold and silver in mankind to other uses than ordinary barter, exchange and commerce between the sexes.

The gold in man is the seminal principle. The seminal principle[1][1] The seminal principle, here so-called, is invisible, intangible, imperceptible to the physical senses. It is that from which comes the precipitation during sexual union. in woman is silver. The system through which the seminal principle in man or woman circulates, and which stamps its coin according to the standard of its particular government, is according to the form of government on which the physical body is established.

The lymph and the blood, as well as the sympathetic and central nervous systems have each their silver and gold, and each is of the character of gold and silver. Together they are factors in the minting by the seminal system, which coins the silver or gold according to sex. Upon the natural resources of the body and its ability to coin its gold and silver depends whether it has power.

Every human body of sex is a government in itself. Every human body is a government which has a divine origin and spiritual as well as material power. A human body may be conducted according to its spiritual or material plan or according to both. Few of either sex have a government of the body according to spiritual knowledge; most bodies are managed according to physical laws and plans and so that the money which is coined in each body is coined for use or abuse of the government of its sex only, and not according to spiritual law. That is to say, the gold or silver of sex which is its seminal principle is used for the propagation of the species or for indulgence in the pleasures of sex, and the gold and silver which is minted by the particular government is used up as quickly as it is coined. Moreover, great demands are made on the government of a body; its treasury is drained and exhausted by commerce with other bodies and it is often run into debt by excesses and attempts to spend more coin in commerce with others than its mint is able to supply. When the current expenses of its local government cannot be defrayed, the departments of its own government suffer; then follow a panic, general shortage and hard times, and the body becomes insolvent and becomes diseased. The body is adjudicated a bankrupt and man is summoned to an invisible court, by the court officer of death. All this is according to the spiritual karma of the physical world.

The physical manifestation has a spiritual origin. Though most of the action was in physical manifestation and waste, a responsibility to the spiritual source exists and man must suffer spiritual karma therefor. The seminal principle is a power which has its origin in spirit. If one uses it for physical expression or indulgence, he incurs certain consequences, which consequences are inevitably disease and death on the physical plane and loss of spiritual knowledge and loss of the sense of the possibility of immortality.

One who would learn and know of spiritual karma, of spiritual law and the interior causes of the phenomena of nature and man, must regulate his action, desire and thought according to spiritual law. Then he will discover that all the worlds have their origin in and are subject to the spiritual world, that the physical, psychic and mental bodies of man in their several zodiacs or worlds are the subjects of and must pay tribute to the spiritual man in his spiritual world or zodiac. He will then know that the seminal principle is the spiritual power of the physical body and that spiritual power cannot be used for physical indulgence only, without man becoming bankrupt in the physical world and losing credit in the other worlds. He will find that as he values the source of power in any world and works for the object which he values, he will get what he works for in the physical, psychic, mental or spiritual worlds. One who will look into his own nature for the source of power will find that the source of all power in the physical world is the seminal principle. He will find that into whatever channel he turns the seminal principle, in that channel and through that channel will he meet with the returns and results of his action, and according to the right or wrong use of his power will it be returned to him in its good or evil effects, which will be his spiritual karma of the world in which he used his power.

Though man is a spiritual being, he is living in the physical world, and he is subject to the laws of the physical, as a traveler is subject to the laws of a foreign country which he visits.

If a man who travels in a foreign country spends and wastes not only the money he has but calls on, wastes and exhausts his capital and credit in his home country, he is not only unable to maintain himself in the foreign country, but unable to return to his own country. He is then an outcast from his real home and a castaway without substance in the country foreign to him. But if instead of wasting the money he has, he uses it wisely, he improves not only the country which he visits, by adding to its wealth, but he is in turn improved by the visit and adds to his capital at home by experience and knowledge.

When the incarnating principle of mind after its long journey downward from the overworlds has passed the frontier of death and is born into and has taken up its residence in the physical world, it establishes itself in a body of one of the sexes and must govern itself according to the standard of man or of woman. Until his or her standard becomes known to him or her he or she lives an ordinary and natural life according to the natural law of the physical world, but when the standard of his or her sex becomes evident to him or her, from that time he or she begin their spiritual karma in the physical world.

Those who go to a foreign country are of four classes: some go with the object of making it their home and spending the remainder of their days there; some go as traders; some as travelers on a tour of discovery and instruction, and some are sent with a special mission from their own country. All human beings who come into this physical world belong to one of four classes of minds, and as they act in accordance with the law of their respective class and kind so will be the spiritual karma of each. The first are governed principally by physical karma, the second principally by psychic karma, the third principally by mental karma, and the fourth principally by spiritual karma.

The mind who incarnates into a body of sex with the determination of living its days here is mostly one who has in previous periods of evolution not incarnated as man and is now here in the present evolution for the purpose of learning the ways of the world. Such a mind learns to enjoy the world thoroughly through the physical body belonging to the mind. All its thoughts and ambitions are centered in the world and bargained for and bought through the power and standard of its sex. It goes into partnership and combines interests with a body of the opposite standard which will therefore best reflect what it seeks. The legitimate use of the gold and silver of the seminal principle is or should be according to the laws of sex and season as prescribed by nature, which if obeyed would preserve the bodies of both sexes in health throughout the term of their life as appointed by nature. Knowledge of the laws of season in sex has been lost by mankind for many ages due to a long continued refusal to obey them. Hence the pains and aches, maladies and diseases, poverty and oppression of our race; hence the so-called evil karma. It is the result of improper sexual commerce out of season, and all egos who come into physical life must accept the general state of mankind as brought about by man in earlier ages.

That there is a law of time and season in sex is shown among the animals. When mankind lived according to nature’s law the sexes united only at the seasons of sex, and the result of such copulation was the bringing into the world of a new body for an incarnating mind. Then mankind knew its duties and performed them naturally. But as they contemplated the function of their sex, mankind came to see that the same function could be performed out of season, and often for enjoyment only and without the attending result of the birth of another body. As the minds saw this and, considering pleasure rather than duty, later tried to shirk duty and indulged in pleasure, mankind no longer cohabited at the lawful time, but indulged their illicit pleasure which would be, as they thought, attended by no results involving responsibility. But man cannot for long use his knowledge against the law. His continued illicit commerce resulted in the final destruction of the race and in failure to transmit his knowledge to those succeeding him. When nature finds that man cannot be trusted with her secrets she deprives him of his knowledge and reduces him to ignorance. As the race was continued, the egos who committed the spiritual wrong of physical life, continued and continue to incarnate, but without the knowledge of the law of physical life. To-day many of the egos who then incarnated, desire children but are deprived of them or cannot have them. Others would not have them if they could prevent it, but they do not know how, and children are born to them in spite of attempts at prevention. The spiritual karma of the race is that they are at all times, in and out of season, goaded on and lashed by the desire for commerce of sex, without knowing the law which governs and controls its action.

Those who in the past lived in accordance with the laws of sex to gain physical prominence and benefits in the physical world, worshipped the god of sex who is the spirit of the world, and as they did so they retained health and acquired money and had prominence in the world as a race. This was lawful and right for them as they had adopted the physical world as their home. By such as these, possessions were acquired with the power of the gold and silver. They knew that with money they could make money, that in order to make gold or silver one must have gold or silver. They knew that they could not waste the money of their sex and have the power which the money of their sex would give them if saved. So they accumulated the gold or silver of their sex, and that made them strong and gave them power in the world. Many individuals of that ancient race continue to incarnate to-day, though all of them know not the cause of their success; they do not value and husband the gold and silver of their sex as they did of yore.

The man of the second class is one who has learned that there is another world than the physical and that instead of one, there are many gods in the psychic world. He does not place all his desires and hopes in the physical world, but he tries to experience through the physical all there is beyond it. He seeks to duplicate in the psychic world the senses which he uses in the physical. He had learned of the physical world and considered that the physical world was all, but upon his sensing another world he ceases to value the physical as he did and begins to exchange the things of the physical for others of the psychic world. He is a man of strong desires and prejudices, easily moved to passion and anger; but though sensitive to these affections, does not know them as they are.

If his experience causes him to learn that there is something beyond the physical but does not allow him to stop and see in the new realm he has entered and he concludes that as he had been wrong in supposing the physical world to be the world of reality and the only world of which he could know, so he might also be wrong in supposing that the psychic world is the world of final reality, and that there may be or must be something which is beyond even the psychic realm, and if he does not worship any of the things which he sees in his new world, he will not be controlled by them. If he is as sure that what he sees now in the psychic is as real as he had known the physical world to be real, then he has lost by his bargain for he gives up his surety of the physical and is hopelessly ignorant as to causes in the psychic, notwithstanding all his new experiences.

The spiritual karma of this second class of travelers depends on how much and in what way they spend the gold or silver of their sex in exchange for their ventures in the psychic world. To some men, it is known that in order to live in the psychic world the function of sex is transferred to the psychic world. Others are ignorant of it. Although it ought to be generally known, yet most who attend seances or have and give psychic experiences are unaware that in order to furnish such experience, something of themselves is demanded in exchange for the experience. This something is the magnetism of their sex. Exchanging the worship of one god for that of many gods results in the scattering of one’s devotion. The giving up of the gold or silver of one’s sex intentionally or otherwise results in the weakening and loss of morals and a giving way to many forms of excesses and to submission to control by any of the godlets which one worships.

The spiritual karma of one who functions in the psychic world is evil if he, a human, consciously or unconsciously, ignorantly or intentionally, gives up any or all of the sex power of his body to denizens of the psychic world. This is done invariably if he runs after, plays with or worships any of the phenomena of or experiments with, the psychic world. A man goes to and unites with the object of his worship. Through seminal loss by psychic practice a man may eventually blend all his powers with the elemental spirits of nature. In that case he loses his personality. The spiritual karma is good in the case of one who recognizes or knows of the psychic world, but who refuses to have any commerce with the beings of the psychic world until he shall have controlled the outward expressions of the psychic nature in himself, such as passion, anger and vices generally. When one has refused psychic communications and experiences and uses all effort to control his irrational psychic nature, the result of his decision and effort will be the acquirement of new mental faculties and power. These results follow because when one has wasted on the psychic plane the gold or silver of his sex, he gives away that spiritual power which he had and is without power. But he who saves or uses the gold or silver of his sex to acquire the power of the gold or silver controls the waste of the passions and desires, and acquires more power as the result of his investment.

The man of the third kind is of that class of egos who, having learned much of the physical world, and having gathered experience in the psychic world, are travelers who are choosing and determining whether they will be spiritual spendthrifts and will ally themselves with the useless ones and the destroyers of nature, or whether they will become spiritually wealthy and powerful and ally themselves with those who work for individual immortality.

The spiritual spendthrifts of the mental world are those who, after having lived in the psychic and worked in the mental, now refuse to choose the spiritual and immortal. So they stay awhile in the mental and turn their attention to pursuits of an intellectual nature, then devote themselves to the search for pleasure and waste the mental power which they have acquired. They give full rein to their passions, appetites and pleasures and after spending and exhausting the resources of their sex, they end in the last incarnation as idiots.

What is to be counted as good spiritual karma of this third class of men is that, after the long use of their body and sex in the physical world, and after experiencing the emotions and passions and attempting to put them to the best uses and after the development of their mental faculties, they are now able and do choose to go onward into the higher spiritual world of knowledge. Gradually they decide to identify themselves with that which is superior to mere intellectual plodding, display and adornment. They learn to look into the causes of their emotions, attempt to control them and they use proper means to stop the waste and control the functions of sex. Then they see that they are travelers in the physical world and have come from a country that is foreign to the physical. They measure all they experience and observe through their bodies by a standard higher than the physical and psychic, and then both physical and psychic conditions appear to them as they had not before appeared. As travelers passing through different countries, they judge, criticize, praise or condemn all they see, by the standard of what they conceive their particular country to be.

While their estimates were based on the physical values, forms and customs in which they have been bred, their estimates were often faulty. But the traveler from the mental world who is conscious of himself as such has a different standard of valuation than those who consider themselves permanent residents of the physical or psychic world. He is a student learning to estimate correctly the values of the things of the country in which he is, and their relation, uses and value to the country from which he has come.

Thought is his power; he is a thinker and he values the power to think and of thought above the pleasures and emotions of psychism and sex, or the possessions and money of the physical world, though he may still be temporarily deluded and have his mental vision obscured by these for a time. He sees that though money is the power which moves the physical world, and though the force of desire and the power of sex direct and control that money and the physical world, thought is the power that moves both of these. So the thinker continues his travels and journeys on from life to life toward his goal. His goal is immortality and the spiritual world of knowledge.

The good or evil spiritual karma of the third kind of man depends on his choice, as to whether he wants to go onward to immortality or backward to elemental conditions, and on the uses or abuses of his power of thought. That is determined by his motive in thinking and in choosing. If his motive is to have a life of ease and he chooses pleasure he will have it while his power lasts, but as it goes he will end in pain and forgetfulness. He will have no power in the thought world. He falls back into the emotional world, loses the strength and power of his sex and remains powerless and without money or resources in the physical world. If his motive is to know the truth, and he chooses a life of conscious thought and work, he acquires new mental faculties and the power of his thought increases as he continues to think and work, until his thought and work lead him to a life in which he actually begins to work for a consciously immortal life. This is all determined by the uses to which he puts the spiritual power of his sex.

The mental world is the world in which men must choose. It is where they must decide whether they will go on with or ahead of the race of egos to which they belong or with which they work. They can remain in the mental world for a time only. They must choose to go on; else they will fall back. Like all who are born, they cannot remain in the child state or in youth. Nature carries them on to manhood where they must be men and assume the responsibilities and duties of men. Refusal to do this causes them to become useless ones. The mental world is the world of choice, where man experiences his power to choose. His choice is determined by his motive in choosing and the objective of his choice.

Of the fourth kind is one who is in the world with a definite purpose and a mission. He has decided and has chosen immortality as his object and knowledge as his goal. He cannot, if he would, rebecome a man of the lower worlds. His choice is as a birth. He cannot return to the state before birth. He must live in the world of knowledge and learn to grow into the full stature of a man of knowledge. But not all men who are in this fourth class of spiritual karma have attained to the full stature of a man of spiritual knowledge. Those who have so attained do not all live in the physical world, and those who do live in the physical world are not scattered among ordinary men. They live in such parts of the world as they know is best for them to do their work in carrying out their mission. Other incarnated egos who are of the fourth class are of different degrees of attainment. They may be working in and through the conditions provided by the mental, the psychic and the physical man. They may appear in any condition of life. They may have few or many possessions in the physical world; they may be strong or beautiful, or weak and homely in the sex and emotional nature, and they may appear to be great or little in their mental power and good or evil in character; all of this has been determined by their own choice and their thought and work and action in and through their body of sex.

The fourth kind of man will either vaguely perceive that he must be careful in the control of the functions of sex, or he knows that he must use every means and effort to control his passions, appetites and desires, or he will clearly perceive the value and power of thought, or he will know at once that he must cultivate the power of thought, use all the force of his emotions and stop all waste of sex in the building up of character, the acquirement of knowledge and the attainment of immortality.

Before considering the matter, people of the world do not think how and why one’s sex and the forces which flow through it can have anything to do with spiritual karma. They say the world of spirit is too far removed from the physical to connect the two and that the spiritual world is where God or the gods are, whereas, one’s sex and its functions is a matter on which he should be silent and with which he alone is concerned, and that such delicate matter should be kept secret and not be brought into public notice. It is particularly because of such false delicacy that sickness and ignorance and death prevail among the races of man. The freer the license man gives to the action of his sex the more inclined is he to preserve a modest silence as to the value, origin and power of sex. The more he pretends to morality, the greater will be his effort to divorce what he calls God from his sex and its functions.

One who will inquire calmly into the matter will see that sex and its power comes nearest to all that the scriptures of the world describe as God or gods acting in the spiritual world, whether it be called heaven or by any other name. Many are the analogies and correspondences which exist between God in the spiritual and sex in the physical world.

God is said to be the creator of the world, its preserver, and its destroyer. The power which operates through sex is the procreative power, which calls the body or new world into existence, which preserves it in health and which causes its destruction.

God is said to have created not only men, but all things in the world. The power which operates through sex causes not only the existence of all animal creation, but the same principle is seen to be operative in all cell life and through every department of the vegetable kingdom, the mineral world, and throughout the unformed elements. Each element combines with others in order to produce forms and bodies and worlds.

God is said to be the giver of the great law by which all creatures of his creation must live, and for the trying to break which they must suffer and die. The power which operates through sex prescribes the nature of the body which is to be called into existence, impresses on it the forms which it must obey and the laws by which its term of existence must be lived.

God is said to be a jealous God, who will favor or punish those who love and honor, or those who disobey, blaspheme or revile him. The power of sex favors those who honor it and preserve it, and will endow them with all the benefits which God is said to favor those with, who cherish and adore him; or the power of sex will punish those who waste, make light of, revile, blaspheme, or dishonor it.

The ten commandments of the western Bible as said to have been given to Moses by God will be seen to be applicable to the power of sex. In every scripture which speaks of God, that God can be seen to have a correspondence and analogy to the power which operates through sex.

Many have seen the close analogies between the power as represented by sex with the powers of nature, and with what is said of God as represented in religions. Some of these who are spiritually inclined have been greatly shocked and caused to feel pain and to wonder if, after all, God could be only a being similar to those of sex. Others of a less reverent nature and who are sensually inclined, delight and train their lewd minds to study out some few correspondences and to dwell on the thought that religion may be built up on the idea of sex. Many religions are religions of sex. But that mind is morbid which conceives that religion is only the worship of sex, and that all religions are phallic and physical in their origin.

Phallic worshippers are low, degraded and degenerate. They are ignorant sensualists or frauds who play and prey upon the sexual nature and sensuous minds of men. They wallow in their degraded, fulsome and distorted fancies and spread immoral diseases in the world to minds who are susceptible to such contagion. All phallicists and sex worshippers under whatever pretenses are blasphemous idolaters and revilers of the one God in man and of man.

The Divine in man is not physical, though all things included in the physical come from the Divine. The one God and the God in man is not a being of sex, though it is present in and gives power to physical man that through his sex he might learn of the world and grow out of it.

He who would be of the fourth kind of man and act with knowledge in the spiritual world must learn the uses and control of his sex and its power. He will then see that he lives a deeper and higher life inside of and superior to the mental and psychic and physical bodies and their worlds.

The End

This series of articles on Karma will in the near future be printed in book form. It is desired that our readers send at their early convenience to the editor their criticisms of and objections to the matter published, and will also send any questions they wish concerning the subject of Karma.—Ed.

The editor's note above was included with the original Karma editorial, which was written in 1909. It is no longer applicable.

[1] The seminal principle, here so-called, is invisible, intangible, imperceptible to the physical senses. It is that from which comes the precipitation during sexual union.