What Is Karma and How Does It Work? The Main Law of the Universe That Governs Us

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

This is such an interesting topic. I'm really looking forward to hearing you, Sasha: the fundamental law of the universe that governs life. People fear random blows of fate; for many, that's probably their main fear. Life seems unpredictable. Who could have imagined COVID, for example, or other events that seem to be happening so often now? Is there a universal law in this world—

AVAlexander Volchek

Mm-hmm.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

—that an ordinary person can rely on to feel trust in life day to day, explain events that sometimes seem unfair, and generally use as a guide? Karma is such an overused word now; it's been devalued a little. It's almost a joke. When something doesn't work out, someone says, ‘What do you expect? Karma.’ There are even YouTube videos about twelve laws of the universe: do good, and money will come. It's presented as a direct consequence. You do something good, then sit and wait for your reward. I think that's a widespread understanding of karma now: like a child imagining an angry old man in the sky watching you and punishing you if you do something wrong. It seems most people perceive karma at that level. I'd really like to hear how you see it and broaden my understanding of these laws and karma. It's a very complex concept that can almost cause a mild allergic reaction in people these days.

Karma: everyone talks about it, but no one knows what it is.

AVAlexander Volchek

To start with whether the system of cause and effect is one of the universe's fundamental laws—

—it certainly is. To describe and understand karma, how the world is organized, and how causes and effects work, we first need to recognize that people perceive the world differently. This is crucial. Without that foundation, we'll be speaking from opposite poles. We need a basis for asking: will the things I've done in life bring me good events or bad ones, or any at all? If I do something good or bad now, will it bring something good or bad? People ask, ‘Why was my child born ill when I've never done anything bad?’ I had a friend in that situation. Or a child died, or three children died. ‘I've done nothing bad, but my whole family died in an accident.’ Or, more simply, ‘I've done nothing bad, but I can't earn money.’ Why do people ask that? Interestingly, when something good happens, they say, ‘I did that.’ They don't credit outside circumstances. They say, ‘I deserved it, so I made it happen.’

People do this very clearly. To understand why, we first need to examine their basic views and points of reference. Most people on Earth today—in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—perceive the world as material. A person lives in a material world, and the spiritual world is part of it. When they speak of karma, they mean some invented story within the material world. When they speak of the laws of the universe, they mean laws within the material world. This matters: it's an entirely different perception. If someone says, ‘Obviously, when we discuss the laws of the universe and karma, we aren't talking about the material world,’ I'll explain very clearly what that person would ask, say, and suggest. There is a view that is guaranteed to be true and real, though everyone is free to choose what they want: the spiritual world exists, and the material world exists within it. The material world follows the laws of the spiritual world while having its own laws, rules, and nuances. It was created within the spiritual world and is a projection of it, grounded in it.

From that perspective, karma is something that exists and operates outside the material world, too—primarily outside it. We'll come to that. How we examine this subject and make decisions depends on the perspective we take. I'll try to show both so you and everyone watching can orient yourselves according to your own foundation: where you stand, how you perceive things, what you think and understand. Is it something you simply believe, as in the examples you gave at the beginning, or something you know? There's a big difference. You know the difference. What color is that plant? Green, right? And this lamp is beige. It's clear enough. We might be mistaken about a tone, a shade, or a particular color, but you don't believe it: you know it. Suppose a blind person were sitting here with us, or someone wasn't in this room—someone watching this video who can't see the plant.

Do they know the plant is green? They believe it; they don't know. They can know only if they see it—for example, in a photograph or video taken in this room—and identify the plant. We haven't even said whether it's real. It's a Ficus lyrata. We live here in California and know there are many artificial ones in cafés and restaurants. I sometimes see such beautiful fiddle-leaf figs that I can't tell whether they're artificial or real. Have you ever checked? I sometimes go over and check, too, because they're so beautiful. Usually they're real; there are many real, incredibly beautiful ones. They're undemanding plants. But notice: someone who can't see it doesn't even know whether it's alive, let alone its color. This distinction between belief and knowledge is incredibly important. There's discussion—simply discussing something. Then there's a transition into belief and into knowledge. Fundamentally, these are three different states: disbelief and discussion, simply talking about something, then belief.

Belief is a fairly stable state. But there's also knowledge, and knowledge is definitely different from not knowing.

UPUnidentified participant

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

Most of the time, when people talk about karma, they're simply discussing it. That matters. If you're discussing and studying it, your standpoint is crucial. Are you viewing the spiritual world from within the material world? Or do you understand that the spiritual world exists, that you're in the material world, and that karma—which also operates here—is outside it, on another plane of perception? Most people today are completely materialistic. They'll say, ‘That's bullshit. What karma? What other lives?’ Yet they'll go to church, light candles, pray, hang icons, and avoid a road a black cat has crossed. They'll do all kinds of strange things. They'll travel to a country where they're supposed to perform a ritual. Tell them the Dalai Lama performs it every day, saints performed it fifteen thousand years ago, and the monastery is seven thousand years old—the more details you pile on, the sooner even the staunchest materialist will stand in the front row, spend time there, and film a ree—

They'll spend time there and film a reel. Not just as a precaution: they'll film it and say, ‘Today I visited the holiest, most enlightened place. Just imagine where I was.’ They'll do anything. They'll spotlight that whole framework and step right into it. But wait: make up your mind. If you've constructed this as an object within the material world, understand that all you've done is create a computer program. It isn't real. How would that program change your inner state just because you walked through a place and performed a ritual? Yet people do it. Why? Because certain impulses act from outside, and no one has explained them or ever will. Humanity wants to explain how the universe works, saying, ‘Twenty million years ago, this happened, and in thirty million years, that will happen.’ It projects from a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years of science, then turns out to be wrong. They say some professor, academician, or laureate won a Nobel Prize. Ten years later they say, ‘He was wrong,’ and give a new Nobel Prize to someone who has studied it all again and taken another look.

Then they discover and study something else. How can someone study thirty million years when they can't study their own ocean or themselves? They can't even make a copy of a human being. If you think you're so brilliant and understand everything, make a human copy. It seems so simple to you. You talk so easily about doctors, health, and everything else. The crucial part of approaching cause, effect, and karma is understanding your own point of reference. Now let's examine another question: what does it mean to be born and enter a chain of causes and effects? A person is born and chooses the family to be born into. This matters: the person chooses the family. A child resembles their parents not because the parents wanted it, but because the spiritual being chose to resemble those parents. Where the resemblance differs, there are other reasons. The person arrives with a particular chain of tasks, actions, and a life they must live. Karma isn't simply something good or bad that's supposed to happen to you.

It's life. Broadly speaking, karma equals life: in terms of the movement of energy, elements, and planets, that's what the concept means. But by entering a particular family, a person enters heredity. People tend to say, ‘That probably came from a grandmother or grandfather.’ It isn't that simple. Entering heredity makes a person its slave, especially today, when parents cram children full of so many things that their perception closes off. An enormous number of people on Earth haven't even reached their karma yet. They haven't come close to living it out; they've remained in heredity. By the way, it makes no difference to their spiritual being, to the universe, or to the world's spiritual beings that they haven't reached it. They haven't, so they haven't. They'll get there in the next life. A child gets loaded with tutors. Soon, I think, a tutor will arrive before the child has even opened their eyes. Read faster, write faster, train with coaches faster—everything. Has the huge increase in coaches and trainers produced more Olympic champions?

No, not at all. People imagine there are more and more. They load the child with everything in pursuit of achievement, creating a karma of heredity and closing the person off from perceiving themselves. One of the best things a person can do for their development—really, the key thing—is to learn to keep developing, remain aware, and perceive personal, business, professional, relationship, and family development continuously over a long period. That's why I launched V100 fifteen months ago. Anyone can join by subscription and stay month to month. Classes take place every two or three weeks. You can ask any number of questions, which I personally work through by topic. We're starting a new round now. Come and register. You can join and unsubscribe at any time. It mattered to me that someone could consciously decide to leave whenever they wanted. It costs very little—fifty dollars—and it's a powerful step toward development. Read the details at the link below this video. Now suppose someone has made it through and is living their karma. Briefly, before twenty-one, a person isn't living according to their karma; their life is being shaped and prepared for living it.

Living karma fully begins at twenty-nine. From twenty-one to twenty-nine, it's a mixture of preparation and living it. There are cycles of connections and movements, of course, but this is a different way of perceiving life: a person has periods. Again, they might never even reach their karma. What does that mean? A person might think, ‘I've done things and taken actions. Certain things didn't happen, or it seems the wrong things happened. I need to find my life's purpose. Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing.’ They say, ‘Now I'll figure it out,’ placing themselves above life itself by deciding to find their life's work. But you've already spent twenty, thirty, or forty years doing something. Who told you you're capable of approaching other aspects of perception and self-understanding? Someone says, ‘If I do good things now, good things will come to me.’ If you really want to study karma, though, you'll say: if karma exists and involves events unfolding, then there is a movement of good and bad things.

That means there's an accumulated amount of karma that hasn't yet unfolded, and that accumulation is always greater than your lifetime. If that's so, who told you the good things you do now will produce a good result? Who said the accumulated negative things don't outweigh your positive effect ten thousand times over? Whatever positive things you do in this life, you won't even feel them because negative aspects offset them. Or who said your good actions will bring you anything in this life at all? It may only arrive one, two, or three lives later. Most major events between twenty-eight and forty-nine, and beyond twenty-eight generally, accumulate karma for the future, not this lifetime. They don't even belong to it. What's more, doing a good deed may itself be a consequence of living your karma: you're already living through and working through other things. You think you've done a good deed so things will be good ahead.

You did the good deed because your karma called for you to do it. It has nothing to do with things being good in the future. That brings us to a fundamental problem: a person says, ‘I'll take this action because it will be good for me,’ or, ‘I won't do it because it will be bad for me.’ The only reason you must not do wrong, untrue things—kill, deceive, steal from, punish, mistreat, or manipulate people—is that other people are people, not whether it will be good or bad for you. There isn't a direct pattern—

There isn't a direct pattern between doing good or bad and what follows. It's nonlinear. What does that mean? People have forgotten how to exchange energy—or rather, they never knew how. They've learned a little about exchanging money, and even that isn't reliable. Suppose watching this video cost five dollars. Would it be right for everyone to pay five dollars? Not necessarily. For someone, this video might trigger a state that transforms the next forty years of their life. Perhaps that person should pay fifty thousand dollars.

Does the person feel, see, and understand how to exchange energy properly? We see the circumstances around us: someone built a company and earned ten billion dollars, while their richest employee earned one million. Are we absolutely sure the exchange of energy was right? Often the owner earned the money while an employee did the work—or the reverse. That happens very often, too. Is this really the right exchange of karma, the right chain of causes and effects, the right set of actions?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

My first question follows directly from yours: what is good, and what is bad? We're taught that the world isn't black and white, that there are many shades. If we explained cause and effect to a first grader, it might seem to mean you do something good and something good awaits you in this life or the next. But what's good for you may be bad for someone else. Even if I want to take a spiritual path and follow this law, what measure should I use to judge whether an action is good or bad? The laws of the Bible, the commandments? Please explain.

AVAlexander Volchek

The first point is that when you start dividing things into good and bad, you're primarily doing it for yourself. Why do you want to make that distinction? ‘I want to determine whether I'm doing good or bad because I want to receive good or bad in return.’ That's why you need the explanation. If, instead, I need to do what is true simply because it needs to be done, the distinction between good and bad disappears.

Then you begin trying to see what's happening truthfully. But that's very difficult.

I recently mentioned in a video two children born into the same family: twins. At five, one looks at a cat and feels a powerful love for it. The other looks at the cat and wants to kill it. What is that impulse?

Where does it come from? What's happening? Some people say, ‘We can kill other people, and we have the right to.’ They believe that's truly right. Others say, ‘You mustn't kill people—’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Under any circumstances.

AVAlexander Volchek

‘But you can deceive them.’ Others say, ‘You mustn't deceive people, but you can manipulate them.’ Others say, ‘You mustn't manipulate them, but you can steal.’ Some say, ‘You mustn't deceive others, but you can deceive yourself.’ People move between these positions. It's a question of their inner state. We can explain things, tell stories, and show examples endlessly, but a person either has the impulse or doesn't. They either have the impulse not to cheat on their husband or wife, or to have only one spouse, or they don't. We can talk as much as we like, but they may come to feel and believe that killing people is permissible. Believe. This is interesting: there's discussion, and then there's a state of belief—‘This is how I see it.’ How do you reach knowledge? That's what you're asking about. How do you avoid confusing reasoning, belief, and knowledge? The only thing that can help is expanding your own perception. That's a separate subject: what does it mean to expand your perception, to feel yourself?

What does it mean to hear the world and understand different things? Let's return to perceiving the laws of the universe. First, if you can't tell whether something is true, ask: do I want to take or avoid this action for myself, or am I thinking about other people? For example, I want things to be good for me. I think doing something would benefit me, and that's why I want to decide whether it's true or not. That's destructive from the outset. It's the first and greatest mistake in karma: doing something so that I can have something.

There are many approaches built around that—even something called karmic management. But you need to understand the consequences you'll bear. Since people don't understand the exchange of energy, something swells in one place while other energies transform. Ten years later, that transformation manifests as an elemental force: a devastating experience of losing someone you love, for example. Every morning you wake up unable to live with it. Meanwhile, something swelled elsewhere: you got what you wanted and made money. Karmic management is about money. You earned it. Do you connect it with that painful experience? Not at all. You don't understand the connection, and you won't make it, because you're operating from a strictly material view: do good things and get good things; be a good person and everything will be fine. That's completely untrue. You can be a good person and have everything go badly in this life. So when we discuss cause and effect and human development, does it matter that a person should be happy?

Does it matter that everything should go well for a person? Or does following the laws of the universe matter?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, that's interesting.

AVAlexander Volchek

A person follows the laws of the universe to be happy or have things go well. But you can follow them simply because they're the laws of the universe. Here's another interesting point, Tanya. If someone talks about these laws, they should at least acknowledge that they don't control their life. Yet people who talk about karma often think they've found a cheat code and control everything. If the universe has laws, we need to understand clearly that you're a cog in the machine.

What difference does it make which laws they are? Do you understand that you're a cog or not? We can investigate and try to understand endlessly, but someone thinks they control reality and know what to do right now: ‘Today I'll figure out karma and all these abstract concepts.’ Yet they don't understand any of it. They may have visited someone who told them who they were in a previous life. People love hearing that they were an emperor's assistant, a pharaoh's deputy, or lived some particular life. Or they assume that doing something important in this life necessarily means having good karma. It doesn't mean that at all.

Do you know how many lives you've lived? Do you know what the time between death and birth is? That period is greater and longer than the time between birth and death. When you look back at causes and effects, they don't occur only during your incarnation. There are causes and effects between incarnations, too; something happens there. You need to ask yourself what's there, what's happening, and how it works. If you truly understand that karma exists, that there are laws of the universe, incarnations, and a certain span for your incarnation… Many people have had one incarnation, or two; someone else has had a hundred.

One person's spiritual being may be utterly incomparable to another's. People compare themselves using measurements. This morning, I led a meditation, and a woman wrote, ‘What experience do you have?’ I replied, ‘What kind of experience are you asking about? Years, numbers of people, or the experience of a spiritual being? What do you want to see? Are you interested in how much money I've earned as a qualification to lead meditation? The spaces I've visited? What experience, exactly? How long I've sat in a cave—or haven't?’

‘Whether I wear a robe? Whether I live in the material world? Raising children? What precisely interests you? The experience of my spiritual being traveling outside time? What experience do you want? Do you want me to reveal my spiritual being? No problem. Are you ready to comprehend it, encounter it, and see it?’ One of the central questions in cause, effect, and karma is truth. Are you ready to face it? Imagine discovering the whole truth today. Everything your neighbors, employees, and people online think of you. Everything about everyone. Where you lie or don't, manipulate or don't; where others or your husband manipulate. What will happen to your children, exactly how it will happen, their destinies, details, feelings, and states. How many years you'll live and how you'll feel every year, in every state. You'll experience it all at once.

Most likely, you'd immediately shut down. You couldn't live through that amount. How would you go on living with it? People don't want the truth. They'll do everything to shut it out, however much they say they want to see the future. Just watch a film like What Women Want. There are many movies on this subject. It shows quite simply what happens to someone who knows a little more truth than they need to. It's a collision with reality. For ninety-nine percent of their lives, people don't feel reality, pay attention to it, or want to see it. They want some neutral framework. Can someone in that state perceive the laws of cause and effect? No, under no circumstances. Remember: you absolutely should not set yourself the task of understanding karma in its entirety. It's impossible. If you could perceive everything, the whole complex of what's happening, you wouldn't be human. You can begin looking at it and trying to understand causes and effects. That's one of the most important tasks in human life.

Understanding causes and effects requires expanding your perception, being aware, and being able to hear what's real. People want to hear real things from a drug addict with a billion dollars, a celebrity, television, or someone on social media with lots of followers. That's where they look for truth. But the one possibility is to learn to hear it yourself, to develop to the point where you leave behind the idea that the world is material and contains something spiritual. Not only do we imagine a material world with spirituality inside it; we imagine leaders who connect to that spirituality within it. It's funny. Religions and churches say, ‘We're the ones who will connect you with God.’ Wait: if the world is spiritual, what do you have to do with it? If I'm a spiritual being, why do I need you? I'm a spiritual being living in a spiritual world. I die, and I'm still a spiritual being.

Are you sure you're needed to connect me to the spiritual world? Perhaps my own spiritual being can connect me if I begin fully feeling myself as a spiritual being. What are you there for? Every person is a spiritual being, without exception. Everyone has this possibility. Every living being on Earth has a spiritual aspect. Certain physical, material objects have no such component, though we could discuss for a long time what we mean by that. But however much someone thinks they live in a material world that contains a spiritual component, and however many constructs they invent within it, that doesn't change the fact that they're a spiritual being. Wherever they go, whatever they see, think, or do. You don't have to look far: if you live in a material world and control everything, change your mood from bad to good instantly. Just like that!

Change it as if clicking a button on a computer. You can change a character on a computer, so change yourself. People talk about medications and hormones: cortisol, dopamine, endless names. Just words—so many clever words they've invented. Quantum physics is the new thing: ‘It's like quantum physics.’ I look at someone saying that and think, ‘You don't know the basic formulas of physics. What quantum physics? What are you talking about?’ This is the material-world approach: ‘Let's package everything we can't explain into a theory so complex that we can tell everyone it's simply a complex theory. Every process falls within it.’ They invent complex explanations and pack them inside the material world. The spiritual world looks on and says, ‘That's funny.’ Bam: a hurricane tomorrow. ‘Oh, we didn't know!’ Bam: a new virus. ‘Why didn't we plan for that? We didn't know a new virus had appeared.’ Bam: a new technology. Bam: a piece of the earth wiped away.

Bam: half a billion people dead. ‘We don't understand. That wasn't in our plan. Nothing like that was supposed to happen.’ People can't write a program that understands how exchange rates work, yet they want to control karma and explain everything scientifically.

Then they lie in bed feeling strange things: anxiety, apathy, madness, or joy—euphoric joy. Working with karma becomes possible only when it doesn't matter whether something is joy or sorrow. It makes no difference. It's easy to talk about longevity. Everyone does. But say, ‘Your child could die tomorrow,’ and someone replies, ‘Don't jinx it.’ What does ‘jinx it’ mean? Or they say, ‘Thoughts materialize.’ What are you talking about? ‘It's quantum physics,’ they say.

That's the easy modern explanation: quantum physics. They turn to it and invent endless explanations. Step back and ask whether you're able to study causes and effects without wanting a personal benefit. I want to be clear: I'm not opposed to people benefiting. I'm not opposed to someone earning a billion or a trillion dollars, expensive purchases, large families, joy, vacations, or happiness. Not at all. In exactly the same way, I don't protest against death, losing money, changes in the world, any possible misfortune, stress, apathy, or anything else. I don't protest. The question is how you relate to it. Is it real truth for you, or a fantasy you use occasionally? If it's an occasional fantasy, understand that you live in a world you don't comprehend. What you think you understand is identifying chairs, types of wood, country names, exchange rates, or who opened which business where.

That's one percent of your actual, real life. Look at your life and how you feel. Can you even describe how you felt throughout yesterday's twenty-four hours: what happened to you, what impulses you had, what they were, where they arose, how they arrived and developed? So when we discuss any truth in the laws of the universe, we need to look at—

—the framework we're using, the law we're discussing, and the level of reasoning or knowledge we want to reach. Your example of children was good. You explain something to a child, and they understand part of it. Everyone recognizes that. An adult needs to say the same thing: ‘I've understood only part. I haven't understood it fully, and I don't know my way around it.’ Ask a child whether they've figured it out, and they'll say it doesn't really matter to them. Tell them a business is good or bad, big or small: they look at you, and it makes no difference. It simply doesn't matter to them. But people create conflict and competition: ‘Wait, this religion says something different. This author says one thing, and that author says another.’ They haven't really studied the religion or the author, yet they think they have because they were born in a particular country, went to church five hundred times, and were baptized.

They think they've studied it. Or they've listened to some author and ask, ‘Have you read Confucius or books on Buddhism?’ Fine: how many books have you read? Four hundred volumes on Buddhism? Have you truly understood the material, every word, description, and detail? Even if you want to act on book knowledge, have you really studied it and understood how it works? I find it strange when people who never go to church start going and lighting candles after someone dies. Why? What's happening to you? The person has died and is no longer here. What are you doing this for? Are you sure it's for that person, or is it for yourself? Most tears when someone dies are about the person crying, not the one who died. That's not so bad as a way of calming yourself. But do you realize it?

When someone goes to church and lights a candle, do they understand exactly what's happening and what action they're taking? If they understand that energies and worlds are involved and that something is happening within them, do they really understand whether the effect on the other person is positive or negative, and whether it's positive or negative for themselves? Why are they doing it? Because society says they should? Because they have a fear they can't handle? Or because they know clearly that these three, four, or five things need to be done? That's right. It's like burying someone deeply enough after they die. Otherwise an animal might dig them up, something might seep out, and so on. There are practical questions. The person understands what they're doing rather than simply leaving the body in the street. Is there a clear connection with knowledge, or is the action driven by fear? Most people who try to understand karma act out of fear. Studying the laws of the universe out of fear, manipulation, pride, ego, or some particular perception; studying them with the desire to say, ‘I've understood the laws of the universe’—

Understanding the laws of the universe is an endless process. It has no end. That's the point. One of those laws is that the laws of the universe are beyond complete comprehension. Say that to yourself calmly. ‘Okay, Sasha, but I want to put together a framework.’ A framework—is that what you want? People usually start there. I say, ‘Wait. You want to turn the laws of the universe into something you understand one hundred percent?’ ‘Yes.’ You're already making a mistake by asking that question. You don't need to grasp it all now. Life is about learning, developing, and moving throughout your life. If you've learned something and stopped moving, what do you need the rest of life for? Then jump into death. Move through the time between death and birth. There's a new stage there: work with spiritual hierarchies, which work with your spiritual being and decide what you do next. Then you move into the next configuration. But this one is over—if that's your purpose and karma. People often reduce karma to a single event. They spotlight it and say, ‘Here it is. Let's look at it, talk about it, reason about it, and act.’

It's an incredibly complex area of knowledge, and an entire lifetime will never be enough to describe karma. How could you describe it? If twenty-four hours have passed, it takes twenty-four hours to describe them. Someone will argue that you can summarize them, as books do. But that's a summary, not a description of your life. Everyone wants summaries now, all energies described in text. Then it's a computer, not you. Someone says, ‘Then I'll control that computer.’ You'll control some little part while bad moods, stress, and all kinds of things arise alongside it, and you'll try to fight them and figure them out. Ask your program to resolve your stress. Ask ChatGPT why one boy wants to kill a cat and the other doesn't. GPT will start talking. Talking is easy. ‘Were their parents alcoholics? Was one beaten?’ No, he wasn't beaten, and the parents weren't alcoholics. In fact, they have the same parents.

‘Do they go to school?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are they in the same class?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What about their teachers?’ ‘Both teachers are wonderful people.’ So why does one have that desire and the other doesn't? How can the question be answered from the material world? It will say genetics. I'll say they have the same parents. ‘A different chromosome came along.’ Fifteen years pass, and the one who loved cats goes and kills a person. You say, ‘But you were talking about genetics. Why did the chromosomes or genes work one way at one age and another way at another age? Explain it.’ Quantum physics. Or psychology, which loves explaining everything afterward. Here's another question: wasn't the person supposed to commit that act because it's important for them to live through other things later? That's a crucial point. I have a contracture in my arm; it won't straighten. It's a lifelong injury that won't be resolved, though hundreds of doctors have told me they could fix it.

Of course they'll never fix it. It constantly pulls on my whole body, creating tension. My arm is tense. I fell as a child, and now I have the consequences. Did I fall because of something I'd done before? Or did I fall because certain things need to happen now? I needed to fall so my life would unfold in a particular way—not simply that my life unfolded that way because I fell. Could the cause of my fall lie ahead? Of course it could. In many respects, it does. That's one of the difficult aspects of karma. Now for an even harder one: besides individual karma, there is the karma of a people, a country, and a family line. In a number of countries now, including the Russian-speaking sphere and people connected with it, people will bear their country's karma very quickly. Imagine someone was supposed to experience minus three hundred in karma over the next three years. Then the country's karma suddenly lands on everyone.

Everyone gets minus three hundred. One person was supposed to get minus five hundred; now minus two hundred remains. Another had minus six hundred, so minus three hundred remains. Someone had minus a thousand, so minus seven hundred remains. But someone else had plus five hundred and asks, ‘Why did you take three hundred from me? That wasn't supposed to happen. There's no reason I should experience minus three hundred now.’ They're told, ‘Don't worry. We'll give you plus three hundred in the next life.’ There are many such aspects. It's important to understand that things can happen—negative ones, but positive ones too—that have nothing to do with you personally. Laws and consequences then balance them, because the world also contains plenty of freedom and chance. That adds a whole other layer. Some places balance karmic experience; others improve or lessen it. A child's birth changes the balance. Some places simply mix up the state of karma.

They mix up certain paths and roads. Sometimes random events occur. Random events do occur—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

So they do happen after all.

AVAlexander Volchek

They do.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Because sacred texts, the Bible for example, say nothing is random, that not even a hair falls from someone's head by chance.

AVAlexander Volchek

It depends on the level we're looking at. At one level, there are no random events; at another, there are a great many. At one level, black and white exist; at another, neither does. There's no point debating whether my pants are black. Someone will say, ‘No, they aren't. If you break everything down into molecules—’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

All the shades, yes—

AVAlexander Volchek

And everything else: there's an enormous amount there.

But let's not get carried away. Again, we need to recognize calmly and reasonably the perspective we're studying it from, what we're actually talking about, and what exactly we want to examine.

AMAlexander Mineev

You were talking about karma. What if someone is born, lives for a few days, and dies?

They were supposed to live through that?

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course. If someone is born, lives for a few days, and dies, that was the life of that spiritual being. It's entirely natural. The person had to live through it, and so did the family they were born into.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, even—

AVAlexander Volchek

It's a natural manifestation—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

They might never be born; they might die before that.

AVAlexander Volchek

They could die before birth. That's an entirely natural situation. Looking at a human life, people dislike it when someone lives for one year and more or less like it when they live a hundred. Twenty years: they don't like it. Fifty: more or less okay. But if we're speaking in terms of incarnations or different lives—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, it doesn't matter.

AVAlexander Volchek

What difference does it make? It doesn't matter. There's no concept of good or bad there.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

No concept of time.

AVAlexander Volchek

Neither time nor good and bad. An event simply had to happen. It happened, and things move on. Imagine a spiritual being born for one day, then a hundred days, then a hundred years, then two days. Do you think that's bad for it? If we looked at it linearly—there are complicated processes there, too—we might say it's interesting for the being. It knows it can move and act this way. As a spiritual being, it isn't attached to one family. It knows different families, feelings, spaces, people, and worlds, and can move through different situations. That's even better for it. A person today would say, ‘That's exactly what I'm looking for: variety.’ Well, there it is. They'd be delighted to move around like that.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Do the people change, or is it like the belief that they move in clusters from life to life, from karma to karma? Or is it—

AVAlexander Volchek

Very profound transformations can happen as a person moves between lives, Tanya.

There are circumstances in which a particular soul cannot be born in a particular country, and people and nations can strongly affect this. For example, Great Britain once brought large amounts of opium into China so certain souls would not incarnate there in the future. Some types of souls won't incarnate where huge numbers of people are addicted to drugs or killings go on endlessly. That isn't their path; they wouldn't be able to accomplish certain tasks. It's important to understand that if you were born in a particular place, it's because you were supposed to be born there and live that particular life. As for the idea that in the next life you'll be born as a rooster—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I probably killed a chicken.

AVAlexander Volchek

That's complete nonsense, of course. When someone asks why things are this way, why they can't just get answers, and why karma is needed, they're speaking from the ego. ‘Why is it so complicated? Couldn't he quickly give me all the answers so I could move through life easily and comfortably?’ ‘What's the point of it all? I'd like to know everything.’ Understand: on one hand, you want to become God and know everything. And if you want to become God and know absolutely everything, then everyone will know everything, and you certainly won't be God. On the other hand, you'd become a vegetable, not a human being. There would be no reasoning, reflection, emotion, states, lived experience, or state of soul. Everything would be in equilibrium, and you wouldn't develop as a human. That's the point. To approach that understanding, you need to grasp how human beings develop through evolution. People stop short. They say some people lived long ago, occasionally spotlight them, and say, ‘They used some interesting drug. Let's go there and try it.’

Wait: six thousand years have passed, and you call those people idiots, too. They supposedly lived in tents. Do you want to live in tents? You don't understand their thinking, their inner state, the structure of their soul and spirit, their people, what grounded them, or what they perceived and felt. People in Egypt knew they had previous lives as surely as we know I have two eyes. They didn't remember those lives, but they knew about them. No one had to convince them. They had absolute, precise knowledge, just as everyone here knows they were born from their mother's womb, from a woman. Perhaps in a hundred and fifty years, someone won't know whether they were born from a woman or from—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A laboratory.

AVAlexander Volchek

—some laboratory. They might begin to doubt it. Now there's no doubt because, apparently, those circumstances don't exist. But suppose you created a laboratory and showed that people had been born in it for a hundred and fifty years. Everyone would say, ‘Wait a minute!’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

How was I—

AVAlexander Volchek

‘How exactly was I born? Maybe I was born there, too. There's no video proof.’

‘Maybe I was, too.’ Then they say the laboratory traveled through fifty countries over the past hundred and fifty years: Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Italy, France, the United States. It moved around in particular years. You think, ‘Wait, it was there in 1983, exactly when I was born. Maybe I came from the laboratory.’ Someone could move from knowledge into a more neutral state. Again, you didn't witness your birth, yet you know it. There's hardly room for debate. In the same way, someone in ancient Egypt knew they had previous lives and relied on that knowledge, without doubt or argument. Knowing that changes your decisions completely. Today, when raising a child, the priority is knowing as much math as possible. It's unclear what consequences people have actually established from that.

The priority is spending more hours with a tutor. Which tutor? Who are they? What do they carry and transmit? What energies and inner states do they plant in the child? The child might draw well while a suicidal energy has been set in motion inside them.

Perhaps an energy has been set in motion that makes them constantly feel suicidal. Some people have experienced that, or periodically want to take their own lives. Others have never felt it. Explain, using medicine, science, quantum physics, or anything you like, why that state arises in a particular person on a particular day. Explain it. This matters for understanding. To understand a person's future and movement, rather than knowing every foundation right now, you need at least to understand how human beings developed through evolution, where they were heading, where they're going, and what stage they're actually at. Why do certain events happen in the world? If we study our own karma, we need to recognize that karma also exists for other people, events, the Earth, and the planets. Everything moves and develops. If there's a plan and a structure to the events, it exists for everything.

Are you sure you're ready to see and truly understand all that?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

What about an example of karma unfolding instantly? We've discussed this: people think they'll do something and quickly work through their karma, but then processes begin that make them regret starting them. I think you told me about accelerating karma. Here's another example: someone knowingly says something hurtful to their wife, knowing there will be consequences, and those consequences come as a car accident. Can that really happen?

AVAlexander Volchek

Or is the person imagining that they're creating it? This is important, and I mentioned it today or in earlier material: people don't realize how an action or cause will connect with an effect, either in timing or in the particular result. We're talking about someone acting consciously. ‘Consciously wishing harm?’ Yes, with an understanding of cause and effect. A great many things people do are unconscious; they lie further along, being packed, unpacked, and repacked. But someone may perceive and understand themselves as a spiritual being and act wrongly from within that awareness. They immediately know they're doing wrong. It's completely inappropriate. They know there will be a price, even if they don't know what it will be. Usually that price is paid very quickly: they say something bad, go outside, and crash. They crash and move on. The consequence comes very quickly, instantly. But, Tanya, that kind of consequence happens in awareness, and in awareness there's no concept of good and bad as such.

There's an understanding that you're moving untruthfully, not living by the laws of the universe. The more you become aware and understand the real processes, the faster various processes unfold. What does ‘faster’ mean? In one sense they aren't faster, but in another, many things can happen almost instantly because they're happening in awareness. Those instant events can be much more serious and painful. When we talk about accelerating karma, people go on retreats and trips. I have a close friend who's even in my spiritual Life group; we've worked together there. I remember him going on a trip to Altai and calling me: ‘I've taken the spiritual path. I'm living a spiritual life.’ I remember it clearly: I was walking alone in a city in Spain, talking to him on the phone. I said, ‘Dima, are you ready for a spiritual life? You're going to a profound, serious place with a serious group of people. You want some amazing spiritual things to happen.’

‘But do you understand that amazing spiritual things can mean receiving a powerful surge of energy that rapidly unfolds events and energies, including your karma? For realization, at a minimum, karma that hasn't yet unfolded must unfold. You might live through your hereditary karma and become neutral toward the karma of a country or different spaces. It's possible to be neutral toward a country's karma, to experience it in synchrony, simply living: receive, give back; receive, give back. You need to live through that entire experience. Now imagine wanting to do it quickly. Suppose your karmic experience includes difficult events you need to live through: two children die, you lose an arm and a leg, someone close becomes ill, something else happens. You start a business and lose it, start another and enjoy it. You earn a billion dollars and owe five billion. You go to prison for four years. Someone gets you out, you become president, you're shot at and lose both legs. You're lying there and become a genius.’

‘You publish a scientific work and win a Nobel Prize. Finally, someone comes and shoots you in the head. That's the volume of experience you need to live through. Are you ready?’ He immediately said, ‘No. Of course not.’ As soon as I mentioned losing an arm, both legs, a child, and everything else, he said no. I asked, ‘Are you on the spiritual path?’ He said, ‘No.’ Here's another good example. I was on a retreat at Lake Baikal with a woman who kept talking about realizing the body of light. It's a well-known concept, described in many teachings and traditions: realizing the body of light and dissolving into it. At a particular moment, you dissolve into that body. Many descriptions say your physical body begins to glow after death and even shrink a little. She said it was the most important thing there was. She talked about it to people all week.

At one point, we were standing in the kitchen, and I joined the conversation. I don't remember her name. I said, ‘May I ask a couple of questions? Do you really want to realize the body of light?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Imagine doing it right here, right now. If you think that's a person's main goal in moving forward—it's an entirely egotistical goal. You can understand that moving naturally through certain spaces may bring you into a particular energetic state, but that doesn't make it your goal, because you keep moving. There are things far beyond realizing the body of light, just as a person cannot make samadhi or enlightenment their goal, because there are millions of layers of enlightenment. Anyway, imagine that in five minutes, right here, you realize the body of light. I'll snap my fingers, and it will happen. Let's recognize immediately what that means. You know what the body of light is.’

‘You no longer live here on Earth. In fact, the descriptions say someone who realizes the body of light no longer incarnates. I think there are many such descriptions. Perhaps you do incarnate, because some spiritual beings incarnate under other systems, arrangements, and tasks. But you aren't living here now. You have a son. You won't see your son or the people around you anymore. Shall we do it?’ She said, ‘No.’ This is important. She could have put on a brave face and said yes. But I asked with such an amount and range of energy that she couldn't lie to me. She immediately said no. I said, ‘Then what body of light are you talking about? You'll never realize it if you aren't ready. That's what the descriptions themselves say. You aren't ready to do it. What does not fearing death mean? Being ready to die right here, right now. Everything else is just stories and speculation.’

Games of the ego, an out-of-control ego. Imagine the egotistical structures of a Luciferic nature built around this: enormous, extraordinary structures in spiritual terms. Hundreds of millions of people live within this idea of realizing the body of light as the most important thing. They're ready to kill others for it. They are willing to neglect their children and avoid working on what's real or watching how they treat others, yet pursue the body of light single-mindedly. These are terrifying worlds. At the same time, you absolutely mustn't say there are no pure things within particular concepts, descriptions, or teachings. We're discussing a specific example here.