Cause and effect

By Rajen Vakil Any event is born from one of three causes. For simplicity, we name them as seen, unseen and real cause. Initially let us try to see what seen and unseen mean, and how an understanding of their relationship can transform our future.

Say, we are enjoying a walk and a jogger mistakenly bumps into and trips us, we fall and break our cell phone. Instantaneously, we snap and blurt ‘Can’t you see where you’re going you blind #@*%’. The obvious reason for getting angry is him tripping us and as a result breaking our phone. If we look deeper we may realise that the anger was already present in our unconscious mind and now found an excuse to express itself. The jogger running into us is the seen cause or the instrumental cause. The fact that unexpressed anger was already lying within us is the unseen cause or the material cause. Just like a potter needs mud as raw material, so do we need anger as the raw material within us to get angry; the provocation is the excuse or the instrument to express the anger within.
Could it be possible that the jogger would not have hit us if there were no anger within our unconscious in the first place? Did the anger send an invisible invitation to the jogger to bump into us? Was the gravitational pull of all our unseen anger so powerful that it mesmerised the poor runner into doing something he had not even thought about?
Should we then not be apologising to him rather than he to us. Some of us may feel we are treading on thin ice here, but if we rise above our logical brain, then we may be able to feel and understand the truth in what is being said. Our unconscious is full of such raw material. Every moment this seeks expression in our thoughts and emotions.

Karma is this material seeking expression, which in turn invites the events that shape our lives. Our destiny is only the powerful gravitational attraction of our unconscious minds. By changing the material of the unconscious, we can change our destiny; for that we have to work with our thoughts and emotions every moment. This is real ‘sadhana’.

The real cause is not about one particular event; it is the screen or mirror that reflects the movie of life. It is universal, the why of everything. This cannot be understood but only woken up to. When that happens, we then realise that everything is exactly the way it should be.