So I have been thinking yet again about karma and something occurred to me. It was so obvious and yet it had not reared its face until now. How can a necessary outcome rely on a contingent act? This does not require a great deal of illustration. Say someone murdered in a past life, and must bear the result of that, being murdered himself in the next. One’s fate in that instance is sealed. One has to be murdered by necessity of eternal law. But, in the following incarnation, that same person is murdered by a murderer – who we ourselves assume had the free will either to go through with the act or deny himself that criminal course of action! Had he not murdered, we would applaud his moral fortitude, and yet justice would not be fulfilled in terms of the guilty party. On the other hand, had he murdered, we would scorn him and heap condemnation on his head, justice however being, on the sly as it were, totally fulfilled.

Here is how I have thought of solving this conundrum. We are free, but only at the timeless “Moment” of death, and with the onset of time we choose a possible world, out of the infinitely many, in which our necessary karma phala will come to fruition according to the non-compulsory actions of certain individuals who, either directly or indirectly, by a causal relationship either harm or benefit us. Thus, the “life-script” and everything in it, is already written. We all chose this world together, in congruity with all our desires and the combined vasanas which form our current material body-mind complex. And, while we are indeed partially on a necessary track due to the impressions received through former experiences, creating the “grid” as it were on which this life is led, our own free choices will be responsible for the future karma of others as well as ourselves.

I’ve also thought of a perfect analogy for this. Say that our soul, in its capacity to be free, is like a growing shore wave arising from the indeterminate motions of the lake. Before it reaches a certain pitch all it amounts to is a set of quantum probabilities. But, once it picks up enough steam in the form of momentum, it rapidly ascends the sandy shore, and its balled foaminess becomes splayed across the sand in various definite shapes. First existed freedom, then it transformed itself into its opposite, necessity. Just so, death gives way to life. Pure spirit molds itself onto the features of matter and actuates it into creative frenzy.