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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1234
Yoga”—the Yoga, of Action and Works; and the corresponding teaching
regarding Dharma. The “Philosophy of Work,” in relation to the effects
resulting therefrom, is discussed at great length in the Purva Mimansa. The
various doctrinal points regarding “the fruits of Karma” are gone into with a
wonderful degree of clearness and wealth of detail and analysis, it being the
boast of some of the old teachers of this system that by it they were able to
point out the exact consequences of any single act, carried forward through
a hundred incarnations. They would take up some little action, and show
how, flowing from it, would emerge results of the greatest consequence to
the individual and the world. Every tiny event and action became the parent
of millions of results and consequences in the ages to come, so that one
should observe the utmost care to perform proper actions and to generate
good Karma, thereby avoiding the opposite, which would produce the
most direful results. Anyone familiar with this line of reasoning from Cause
to Effect, according to the great Law of Causality, may imagine to what
great lengths these old teachers carried their doctrine and theories—and
that without fear of successful contradiction. For instance, one might show
how the fact of a dark-eyed maid raising her eyes and glancing at a passerby
in her village, a thousand years ago, set into motion a chain of cause
and effect—action and consequences—which after the passage of nine
centuries resulted in the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose existence was
productive of destructive wars, involving the death of hundreds of thousands
of men, and the destruction of thousands of homes, and the production of
many thousands of widows and orphans, and the expenditure of millions
of treasure, and so on and on, with the numerous branches of subsequent
effects resulting from Napoleon’s life—all from the little roguish glancing
of a pair of dark eyes on a warm summer day a thousand years ago. Verily
these old Purva Mimansa teachers must have caused terror to the souls of
their students and followers, who would be afraid to breathe, less a chain
of cause and effect should thereby be started which might result in all sorts
of trouble in the years to come. For such is the result of any doctrine when