Question about Earthly & Astral Karma for Michael

It’s a fascinating idea. My answer is stupid because I don’t know the answer.

🙂

The first thing it occurs to me to say is that Saihung is kind of a fraud – well not that exactly, but the book is fiction. It’s a story that isn’t true, and he doesn’t mention this. Of course he never claims it *is* true… but people are taking it that way. According to Michael, Kwan Saihung was born in Germany not China. Eesh.

But this doesn’t dismiss the idea… some thoughts it brings up:

1) Not everone thinks that ‘merge with the void or fail in the attempt’ is really the name of the game, I myself don’t see things that way. Franz Bardon would agree with me. He sees merging with prime unity as a first step, then the idea is to reincarnate continually, master more and more, experience more and more, then finally at one’s own discretion dissolve the ego, after having been a blessing to humanity for many centuries earth time, and really having alot for the great void to chew on in oneself. In other words a life lived fully means not rushing to end one’s existence…

Bardon had kids. He was an expert in methods to determine their attributes by prior arrangement, and they gave him joy… the karma could be easily taken on board and transformed. It is a question of how good one’s mastery of life is, so I believe. But on the other hand, Bardon did not *want* to have them, for karmic reasons he gave in to the wishes of his wife who I don’t believe was a practitioner.

But I don’t see too many eastern masters with kids! I would love to know Michael’s take on the question – really would. I have been told that having kids makes spiritual work harder. I would love Wendy’s view.

There seems to be a constant tension in spiritual work between a ‘normal human life’ and a life of spiritual achievement. I’m certain that to make a better human way of life these two need to come together, and in addition, that Healing Tao is certainly trying to address this issue. But the two have been separate for so very long in history.

2) There is this question also of the nonlinear aspect of reincarnation. I am really sure that things don’t proceed in such an obvious way. Into all the traditional approaches concerning karma comes Michael’s ingenious concept that the human personality is a temporary one-time assemblage of different forces each with its own agenda. In all other traditional ideas this is not seen that way. The desire to create and form and live with the lower bodies is seens as pulling ‘stuff’ into one’s self… the ‘stuff’ is not seen as alive and desiring in many directions.

This may not seem relevant but to me it is. I must admit that at my stage of development I just can’t understand the answer to your question because so much does depend on the nature of a human individual, what goes into them. Again and again I observe that the parental influence on the child does involve a passing on of what I could loosely term ‘karma’… Michael feels that inherited karma from ancestors can be dissolved but he doesn’t mention what happens in the other direction! 🙂

It is bound up with sex. It’s plain the standard use of sex in human beings has become to continue a deep line of ‘karma’ which in a psychological sense the child is expected to ‘solve’ – but this is not the way sex *has* to be used. It can be more controlled than that, as we know. Sex can be had in such a way as to be purely generative on other planes… it is still a method of resolution then, just not physical resulting in physical offspring.

I’m running myself into a roadblock here so I will stop… but it’s a fascinating question. Something tells me that it is a much more complex question than the quote is suggesting. But certainly, having kids means a part of you is outside of yourself and unresolved. The question then becomes: what is this resolution? Is cessation of self the idea(l)? Bardon would say: no, it is something that can be done in the end but it is not the only goal, there is alot to experience and master and contribute first. Michael would say: in any case, nothing ceases.

Eesh… I hope someone else becomes interested in answering.

Jason

I would first question the assumption of ‘merging with the void’ as the ultimate end of cultivation…

From the way I see it, spiritual immortality is being as the void but individuated…

I also view karma as the parts of us that are separate – or the parts of us that keep us separated.

Would having a child keep you separated? Well I’m sure it would keep some people separated, but if we’re talking about sages and masters I suspect they can integrate the karma of having a child – so in a way they become part of you but individuated and you are part of them but individuated.

If you’re not a master but are awakening, a child can teach you so much – how to learn, how to be innocent, how to be in your body and out of your ‘intellect’. Children also have a way of reflecting with no judgement what the parent does – yesterday I saw a dad and his young daughter (4 or 5) walk into a shop, the daughter was talking sternly at him “we’re not going in the shop, I dont want to go in, it’s a bad place” etc. But her tone and expressions were so adult – the dad gave her a ‘look’ and she shut up immediately. She might have been playing ‘mom’.

This is Buddhist claptrap, trying to defend the monastic way of life where they cut off sex. Its a male, anti-femine, anti-life view of Karma that ends up with no more humans being born once we all achieve enlightenment. Basically, it s a death wish for humanity, desguised in flowery visions of heaven.

In my view, the enlightened Taoist sage embraces Heaven AND Earth, s/he doens’t cut off the Earth.

Deng meng dao is a novelist, recycling popular ideas floating about and in the process glorifying his teacher, who I also studied with – and who was not my ideal of the zhen ren, the enlightened person. A good martial artist and trickster, tha’s it. The novel is fiction , not autobiography.

Having children can speed up your completion of your destiny. Parenting requires thehighest virtue on the planet. Heaven and earth are not separate and cannot be separated in their process. The eight immortals are ordinary people who achieved themselves, but its through their virtue, NOT thorugh asceticism. That is just a reflection of a disembodied other worldly Buddhist ideal and notion of karma. You won’t read about it in the Tao Te Ching.

Michael