Karma Book Summary - Karma Book explained in key points

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Karma summary

Name: Karma
Rating: 4.5 (205 reviews)
Author: Sadhguru

Sadhguru

A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Own Destiny

4.5 (205 ratings)

24 mins

Brief summary

'Karma' by Sadhguru is a guide to understanding the law of cause and effect and how it plays a role in our lives. It offers insights into the power of our actions and thoughts and how they shape our future.

Topics

Happiness Eastern Philosophy Spirituality

Table of Contents

Karma
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? A crash course on karma.

Karma is an often misunderstood concept. Many think of it as a judgment mechanism that punishes or rewards you for deeds or misdeeds committed in the past or during past lives. But there’s more to it than that. These blinks explain the scientific nature of karma and how it is possible to approach the concept in a liberating way that can bring you hope, joy, and freedom.

So get ready to learn what karma is, how it accumulates, and how it affects your life, emotions, and actions. By truly understanding these concepts, you can take control of your life with confidence and live in a blissful state.

In these blinks, you’ll also discover

that there are eight dimensions of memory;
the role that love plays in liberation; and
how death isn’t the end of anything.

Karma is something we generate within ourselves.

Imagine you exaggerated a qualification on your résumé when you applied for a job. A few months into the job, you learn that you’re being fired due to budget cuts. “Why do these terrible things happen to me?” you lament. “It must be my bad karma.”

Or maybe things swing the opposite way: You drop coins into a homeless person’s jar, and, later that day, someone you’ve had your eye on asks you to dinner. “Ah,” you might say. “My good karma is kicking in.”

Actually, neither assumption is true. Rather than some mechanism of justice imposed from above, karma exists within you – and it’s 100 percent within your control.

The key message here is: Karma is something we generate within ourselves.

Here’s what karma is not. It’s not paying a price or reaping rewards for past deeds. There’s no one sitting in judgment with a nice-and-naughty book deciding who to send to heaven or hell.

Instead, think of karma as an internal cycle that we generate ourselves. All through life we respond to stimuli. We have a mental reaction, which causes a chemical reaction, which results in a physical sensation, which then reinforces the chemical and mental fluctuations. These responses form patterns, and these patterns form a shape that we refer to as our personality. In turn, this “personality” affects the way we see the world.

Karmic memory isn’t just something that we create with our minds. It’s a cause-and-effect cycle that operates at multiple levels, including the cellular and genetic.

Here’s another way to look at it: Karma is a sort of software you write for yourself, and it runs repetitively. Due to repeated patterns that result from running this software, our karma creates a vasana, which roughly translates as “scent.” Obviously, the vasana you create for yourself can't be detected with the nose – but, like a good or a bad scent, it can either attract or repel other people or situations. For example, one person may attract the same type of abusive partner over and over again. Another might attract financial fortune.

But karma isn’t in control. You are. Once you recognize and understand it, you can rewrite the software and reclaim the driver’s seat of your own life to live in confidence and joy.

Karma isn’t about action alone. It’s about the volition behind the action.

Let’s say you’re chopping vegetables when your partner says something that enrages you. Furious, you whip around and stab him with your knife. Does this act earn you some bad karma – as well as some legal problems? Definitely.

Here’s an alternate scenario. Let’s say you’ve been angry with your partner for a few months and have decided to take violent action. He comes over, he upsets you, and you lunge with your knife. This would earn you even more negative karma than the first scenario, since you’ve compounded the violence with months of resentful and vengeful thoughts. No surprise there.

To understand how karma works, it’s important to understand the role of memory in yogic tradition.

In 2013, Emory University researchers released the fragrance of cherry blossoms into a cage of mice. Right as the smell was released, the researchers administered a mild electric shock to the mice. Over time, the terrified mice learned to associate the smell with the pain of the shock. They soon began to run as soon as they smelled cherry blossoms, even after the scientists stopped administering the shock.

But here’s the interesting thing. Those mice had babies, and even though the second generation was never electrocuted, they were just as afraid of the smell of cherry blossoms. This fear persisted into the third generation.

Your goal should be to unload yourself of your karma.

Each culture has its own origin myth. The origin myth of yogis is that everything started from pure intelligence. To merge back into that intelligence – or God, vibrations, energy, whatever you want to call it – is the ultimate destination for every human.

What stops us from attaining this goal? According to the author, Sadhguru, it’s merely the notion that we’re individuals and our very strenuous efforts to maintain that myth, all of which adds to our karmic load.

We can’t choose the karma we already have. But we can choose what we do with it.

Sadhguru tells the story of an aspiring yogi who spends hours meditating under a tree until hunger pangs compel him to go home. He returns the next day, vowing to be stronger, but notices a crippled fox sitting by the tree. How did this fox survive in the jungle? The mystery is solved a few hours later when a lion enters the clearing. The yogi is terrified, but the lion walks over to the fox and drops meat at its feet.

Aha, the yogi thinks. It’s a message from God: trust and I will be provided for.

We must work to erase our karma on three levels – the physical, the psychological, and the energetic.

Sadhguru believes that about 40–48 days after a child is conceived, its karmic fibers begin to tighten. Imagine karma as a coil that gets thicker and denser. At death, this karma slips out of the body in the form of energy.

In between – between that first tightening and that final release – is that individual’s entire life. How that person chooses to expend their karma in that lifetime will determine how much is left to work on in the next. We can act upon our karma on three planes: physical, mental, and energetic.

Once you’ve learned how to manage karma in the physical and mental planes, it’s time to attend to the energy plane.

Sadhguru once visited a monastery carved into rock that was used by Jain monks 1,900 years ago. He worked hard all day cleaning the place. At one point, he sat down on a rock bench upon which a Jain monk had lain nearly 2,000 years prior to that day.

Immediately, Sadhguru began to feel powerful vibrations. The monk had left behind a significant amount of his energy, so much that Sadhguru could make out a physical outline based on the energetic vibrations. He could tell that the monk’s left leg had been amputated at the knee.

Karma is our attachment to the limiting illusion of our individuality. Cleansing ourselves of this notion allows us to live joyfully.

You’ve learned what karma is and isn’t, and how to manage your karmic load in the best possible way. But there are still questions. Do you need to understand rebirth in order to buy into the concept of karma? Should you explore regression into previous lives to work out issues?

The key message here is: Karma is your attachment to the limiting illusion of your individuality. Cleansing yourself of this notion will allow you to live joyfully.

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What is Karma about?

Karma (2021) is a crash course in karma. Filled with explanations, stories, and personal anecdotes, it dispels myths and common misperceptions about karma, explains the science and universality behind the concept, and presents practical tips on how to live a free and joyful life.

Best quote from Karma

With a little awareness, every human being can begin to transform habit into choice, compulsion into consciousness.

—Sadhguru

Who should read Karma?

Anyone interested in spirituality, mysticism, and the afterlife
Students of Hinduism
Seekers of techniques to find peace and joy

About the Author

Sadhguru is a mystic, yogi, and internationally renowned speaker. He’s the founder of the Isha Foundation, which has attracted legions to its world-famous ashram and yoga center near Coimbatore, India. His other best-selling books include Inner Engineering and Death.

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