Dear Ram,

For me, getting off the karmic wheel is all about accepting, receiving and appreciating God's creation as a fact and dealing with it accordingly and not allocating it to the realm of illusion.

Ram: This is almost what I’ve been saying. The operative word in your sentence to me is ‘dealing’ with it. What is the understanding that makes it possible to deal with it as it is and not take it as synonymous with one’s mental/emotional projections.

As far as getting off the karmic wheel is concerned as the Self you’re already off it. And as an ego, a limited individual, what makes you think that you can get off it? It seems to me that as long as you see yourself as incomplete and limited you will have to do various things to relieve yourself of this feeling – create karmas. I think the ego can reduce the store of karmas that are accrued in its account by letting the existing ones exhaust and not replacing them with new ones, but at what point does the source of the karmas, the Unconscious Mind, become empty?

If you don’t understand what is causing the karmas in the first place and how deep the backlog of karmas actually is, you keep creating them even when you are doing things to get rid of them. Desiring to get rid of karma is just another subtle karma…one that keeps you bound to the idea of yourself as a limited being, a doer.

Vedanta says that the cause of karma is desire. You want something so you set the body mind in action to achieve it. When you do so you reinforce the existing desire and set yourself up to repeat the action. If you look at your life you will find that on the karmic level it is really just a lot of continually repeated activities, emotions and thoughts. So wanting and doing don’t get anybody off the karmic wheel.

The only way you really get off is through realizing that you are not a wanting being, that you are whole and complete. Then karma is not a problem.

Ram