Are we required to settle karmic accounts with people, especially close relatives?

Q: What about settlement of karmic account with people, especially those in close relationships, is it required?

ALOK DA: Dear A., Fortunately God is not an accountant, otherwise this universe would have had no hope. Nor is He a judge who is busy judging us from afar with a carrot and stick. For Him , to His supreme consciousness there are obviously no others since all is Himself and there is nothing else but He. The vast material universe is His outermost body and He resides within it, in each of its elements in the subtlest of forms. We too are His portions who carry His wonderful Presence in our own depths. It is given to us by become conscious of our depths and thereby become conscious of Him, one with Him and work upon creation with Him as co-sharers and partners of His divinity. The path towards this highest consummation possible for man is through works, karma, as we call it. But karma itself is not something mechanical and outward but the whole internal mechanism starting from our inmost state of consciousness, our inner motives and intents, the action of guns or modalities of nature through which the will operates and finally the instruments developed so far to execute the work. The energies thereby released go back to the Divine through this entire machinery. We think it is to this person or that person but it is ultimately moving towards that secret Goal from where ultimately all impulsion and power and knowledge comes.

Now here comes the real purpose of the law of karma. Its sole purpose is to perfect ourselves and through us the world around us. The more we are attuned to the higher and highest state the more we engage and collaborate in fulfilling this purpose. On the other hand the more we deviate from this truth, the more we add up to the chaos and confusion. The karmic law therefore is not a law of transaction between individuals as it is a transaction between Soul and Nature with god as the eternal Witness whose role is not merely to watch the play indifferently or to judge and reward and punish us but to keep realigning each one of us and the world in general so that the secret Will that has gone into creation and operates in it is fulfilled. That Will is the will to be Divine in each of its units, it is the will for Ananda, the will for harmony and unity and peace, the will to conquer darkness and thereby grow strong, the will to manifest the entirety of the Divine Perfection. The results of actions, the consequences etc. are so designed so as to realign us back to the Goal. If we stray far, very far, then the sudden jolt of realignment comes to us as pain. But as we grow nearer to the Will and align with IT then there is automatically a growth of Peace and Joy and Harmony and Wisdom within us and in all who are touched by the same Will through us. Through all experiences, the seemingly pleasant and the seemingly painful we are growing towards Him who is the Source of endless peace and Beatitude and Love and Harmony and Sweetness and Power and Knowledge and Bliss. In this process there are cosmic agencies that help or hinder but they too in the end, even when they oppose end up fulfilling God’s plan. Quoting from Savitri (p. 458):

Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate,—they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God.
O soul, intruder in Nature’s ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit’s fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless self.

But it is given to us to choose whether we want to pass longer through the hands of the darkness lingering through the purifying fire of suffering or else through the hands of light and the gods who help us pass through the evolutionary journey in lesser time and through least pain. Or else we have a still better choice, the best of all wherein we give ourselves to the Divine, offer all our action to the Divine and live and act for the sake of the Divine and the fulfillment of His Will in us and in all. Accordingly the outer events unfold. The law of karma then turns out to be a law of evolution and not so much about the balance of justice or worse still an exact mathematical account balance in the book of God. Justice is no doubt a part of the divine working in creation but it is a law of balance against an excess of evil. So too there is something which can be called as a reward but it is not related to the good done to this or that person but a law of nature whereby we receive back from creation what we have issued forth into it, though not necessarily from the same people. It comes back in its own way and in its own time and the soul accepts it. It comes when it is needed for our growth to the next level rather than as a crude system of reward and punishment.

To turn this unconscious process into a conscious one is what is called as yoga. It means to do things for the Divine even though apparently they are being done for this or that person.

Affectionately,
Alok bhaiyya