Is Sin a Religious Myth or a Spiritual Law?

What is sin, and how does it differ from karma? In this episode, I look at the concept of sin, karma, cause and effect, spiritual laws and the consequences of actions — and at how people perceive bad and good actions.

Why are people afraid of sin, and what actually counts as a bad action in the spiritual world? What if sin is more than a religious rule or simply a “bad deed”? And is it possible at all to rise to a level of perception where the division into bad and good begins to look different?

What sin is and why people fear it

When we come to the word “sin,” to the concept of sin and to our own experience of sin, it is important to figure it out. On the one hand — the source of this word and what it means in different systems. On the other hand — the structure of the world and spiritual laws, the structure of truth. That is what we will do now.

If you read the basic definition, sin is an action, thought, desire or failure to act that goes against — I am reading straight from the text — established norms, rules or the will. And look at what is written next: of a divine, moral or social order. Elsewhere it says that sin is a violation of God’s will by deed, word or thought. And then again — of religious and moral precepts or rules. That is, some rules have been broken.

Why is a person afraid of sin? Of course, they are afraid of the consequences. In essence, if you look at everything that happens more broadly, then basically, from the standpoint of the spiritual world, these are the consequences of karma. And here it is very interesting: does a person mean the consequences of karma when they speak of sin?

Sin and karma are not the same thing

Yesterday I went to a piano concert with three of my children — a well-known French pianist was playing. There were my two girls and my son, who is older. And my son behaved really badly: he couldn’t sit still, something inside him was fidgeting, he kept disturbing everyone. And I think my eldest daughter says to him: “The time will come, and you may get karma for this.” I don’t know where she got that phrase, but she said it. To which I added: “Wait, you are already getting karma and will keep getting it.” Why did I add that? Because they — or one of them — perceived karma as something bad, or something super-unique, like sin.

And if you look at it basically — is sin worse for you than karma?

– For some reason I thought they were sort of the same thing, just a different name.

– Yes, you are right again. But basically a person perceives sin as something heavy. And if you truly read the definition — even the one given on Wikipedia or accepted in society — we will see that it is simply the violation of various rules. Moreover, they can be different rules:

• religious — the church established them;
• divine — someone got them from somewhere, took them from some books, treatises, or someone heard them and said them — the question is who;
• social, socio-moral — society decided that this is a sin.

But the most important thing is why a person is afraid of sin. They are afraid of the consequences; they see sin through its consequences. Of course, there are people who don’t want to sin because, in truth, one must not sin. The point is not the consequences. A person says: “I am not afraid of the consequences, and I am ready to live through them.” But these are fairly highly spiritually developed people. If you have such a consciousness that the consequences make no difference to you at all, the point is that you know: you must not commit bad actions against another person. That is, you understand the law of karma, of cause and effect.

So, one person has committed a bad action, a sin. And another person says: “I know that karma exists and that everything will have to be answered for. That doesn’t interest me. I don’t refrain from sin because I am afraid of karma. I refrain from sin because it is not a true way of living in relation to other people.”

So when we discuss the word “sin” with you and you ask your question, we come to the idea that sin is committing some action that is not true in the Universe. We will not go into the concept of untrue things from the standpoint of social life, because in social life truth and untruth are a kind of abstraction. We can see this in different countries. In some countries they say that killing other people is permissible, and that it is socially, morally and religiously right. Others say: “No, this must absolutely not be done.” It all depends on faith, religion, laws. In some countries there are laws that are obviously sinful: not committing such an action is a sin, a violation of the law in that country, while the action itself is a sin in the first place.

Does the spiritual world have a concept of a bad action?

But if we move into the spiritual system, the question is very interesting: does the spiritual world have a concept of a bad action? On the one hand, it does, because a bad action, an untrue action, a violation of a certain law leads further to certain consequences in terms of karma. And karma appeared as a counterweight to the harmonic system — so that a person would not sink endlessly into darkness. Otherwise, the more they sink into darkness, if no one stops them, the more they will want to sink into it.

By the way, this is a very interesting story that everyone should take in: a person usually wants to take up something good or restore their system when they are already feeling bad. They fall ill — they want to take care of their health. They have done some bad things — they want to go to a priest to confess or go on a retreat, because they are tired: spiritually they were in a state of narrowed perception and perceived nothing around them. And that means they were harming the world: since they perceived nothing and acted without awareness of everything happening, they obviously caused harm. And so they think: “Now I’ll find a little time and correct my actions. I’ll come and correct them.”

But they can by no means be corrected that way. Karma doesn’t work like that. Moreover, cause and effect is not linear within your current life.

It is not that you have just committed a bad action — and lived it through right away. Right now you may be living through an enormous number of good things because you have good past karma. And starting tomorrow, incredibly negative events may come, because you need to live through some negative aspect of this karma.

Why people look for cheat codes

And people try to fight karma. Notice: everyone tries to use cheat codes, everything is cheat codes. However much people talk about good or proper spiritual development, they still want a cheat code. They even say: “If you come to our retreat, you will feel better.” Let’s read retreat slogans. If a slogan said: “Come to the retreat — and you will become aware of all the many facets of the misfortunes you have caused and start living through them even more seriously” — which, in fact, is exactly what is required if you want to live through things more fully, for real — nobody would go to retreats. Why would they? A person wants to get a good, blissful state from a retreat. The same attitude applies to bad events from the standpoint of the spiritual world.

But if we rise a certain level higher — once again, Olya, if we apply the word “sin” to events that lead to karmic consequences… And karmic consequences appeared because, with the coming of Ahriman, the human being began to sink into darkness.

Take karma away from people — and everyone will instantly sink into darkness.

Self-interest, money, power, malice, one’s own personal opinion, a lack of understanding of how the system works, a lack of understanding of this balance in perceiving the system — all of this will gradually begin to take over everything. There is a good saying: nothing is worse than being angry at the state of your country’s political or economic system, or at the people living around you. Everything that happens happens as cause and effect of the spiritual system and spiritual life, of the spiritual component of the sources of life. That is, committing a bad action — if we call it sin — leads to living through such cause-and-effect, karmic consequences.

The layer where there is no concept of bad and good

But can we say that higher up there is a layer where the concept of bad and good does not exist? That there is a layer where the very fact of a person living through something bad is merely their living through a particular path?

Can one reach such a layer of experience? One can. But it is a different spectrum of perception. It is not a question of moving into the zone of material reasoning — there is no material reasoning there.

After all, when a person wants to move to this layer of perception, they still want to keep the material aspects of reasoning and analyze material events. And analyzing material events is meaningless in this case.

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