By Lazaris

This is an excerpt from an interview with Lazaris, and was originally published in Lazaris Interviews, Book II. (This book is out of print.)

Well, what about karma?

Time is an illusion. Do we all agree on that? Is there anyone who doesn’t agree? Anyone think time is real? Because, you see, Einstein proved that it was an illusion. Scientists subsequently have proved it’s an illusion.

You have only straightened out time in the last 500 years to accommodate your Renaissance and to satisfy scientific and JudeoChristian ethics. Both rely very heavily on a beginning and an end of reality — on a beginning and an end of time. Both need time to be a straight line.

Prior to 500 years ago, time was a spiral, and it was created to serve you and assist you. It can still be of service as a convenience. ‘Let’s get together at 8:00 tonight’ makes sense.

‘Let’s get together at frum-frum.’ … {laughter} … ‘What time?’

‘Um-hmmm-hmmm.’ … {laughter} …

‘Well, we’ll just flow with it, all right?’

So you create time to say, ‘Let’s do it Sunday the 13th at 8:00 p.m.’ It’s much more convenient that way. So you create time as the illusion of convenience. Time is an illusion, which means there is no ‘then,’ and there is no ‘before,’ and there is no ‘after.’ There is only now.

So tell us about karma? What is karma? Karma is called the Law of Cause and Effect. Karma is supposedly the law that says that what you did then you are paying for now. Now wait a minute. We all agreed there is no such thing as time, and therefore, what happened then and what happens now are all happening at the same time.

You say, ‘If you murdered someone in another lifetime, then you’re going to have to get murdered in this one.’ Poppycock! Absolute sheer nonsense! If you get murdered in this lifetime, and you murdered someone in that lifetime, both events are happening simultaneously. How could one cause the other? How could that happen? It can’t! Therefore, this idea that what you did in your past lifetimes you’re paying for now is a philosophical, political, metaphysical statement — and not an accurate one.

Where does the Law of Karma come from? Primarily it comes for most of you out of Eastern religion. Now here again, think about it. Imagine: Here you are the Holy Man, right, and here are your 4,000,000 followers who are starving, who have miserable lives, who exist in absolute, abject poverty.

So what do you tell them? ‘Well, you created this because you don’t love yourself good enough.’ Oh! Talk about a self-destructive statement! You’ll get stampeded, yes? Absolutely. … {laugher} … So instead you say, ‘Ummm, all your suffering now? Be glad for it, because you’re burning off karma. You must have been some rotten-to-the-core human being based on the karma that you’re burning off, but nonetheless you’re burning off karma, and every lifetime after lifetime filled with misery is burning off karma.’

What on Earth did you do that was so horrible that you deserve 40, 50, 60, 100 lifetimes of misery! Good grief! No, that’s what you say to placate millions of people when you can hear the growl of their stomachs and see the starvation in their eyes. It’s what you do when you know of no way to silence the growl or end the starvation.

‘You’re burning off karma. There was a time that you were gluttonous and ate too much, and now you’re burning it off. There was a time when you deprived people of their food, and you’re burning it off.’

Some suggest that the Jews in World War II were the Romans that threw the Christians to the lions. No. What happened to the Jewish people in World War II should not be devalued or trivialized like that; it should not be thrown off as some sort of karmic thing to be dismissed. It is far more important than that.

What happened to six million Jews and 12 million Russians and 11 million witches throughout your history should not be just thrown off as ‘karma,’ because it’s not. All things are simultaneous. There is no such thing as the Law of Karma. There is a kind of karmic choice that you create for yourself. That’s the importance: a karmic choice, not a law.

You see, you may have done something dastardly in a past lifetime, and you decide, ‘Look, I’ve got to work on that. I can’t let that stand. I want to fix that.’ You may have betrayed someone, and therefore said, ‘I can’t walk away from that. I am choosing, I am deciding, I am believing that I want to pay for that. I want to pay for that by going through it myself.’

Now we ask you, if you cut off someone’s finger and afterwards you feel, ‘What did I do?,’ does cutting off your own finger fix it? No, it doesn’t. Does cutting off two fingers fix it? How about cutting off your hand at your wrist? Does that fix that? It doesn’t fix it, does it? What does? Any ideas?

Forgive yourself. As you forgive yourself and apologize to them, on whatever level you need to do that, that’s what fixes it. That’s what fixes it. So you may have done betraying and dastardly things in your past, absolutely. And you may have failed miserably at love, and you may have failed miserably at power, and you may have been an oppressive person, and you decided, ‘In this lifetime I want to deal with love, and I want to learn about oppression, and I want to deal with this, and I want to deal with that, and I want to deal with power.’ But that’s your choice – not the imposition of karma. That’s your choice.

Therefore, karma does exist as long as you believe in it, and as soon as you’re willing to drop it, it’s gone. Not as soon as someone gives you permission, but rather as soon as you’re willing to drop it, it’s gone. So yes, you do have karma, because you chose it. God didn’t impose it.

Some say karma is a law. We say it is choice. We encourage you to think for yourself. You know time is a simultaneous illusion. Therefore, how can something happen before and something happen after? It is all happening now. How can something cause something else when both are simultaneous? How could there be karmic law? How could you be paying retribution for a lifetime that’s happening right now? No, karma is not a law. It is a choice.

An example: Assume you were betrayed in a previous lifetime, and you also were betrayed in this lifetime. How you respond to that current betrayal may be influenced by the past betrayal. Some may handle it poorly because ‘it’s happened to me before.’ Others may handle it superbly because ‘it’s happened to me before.’ How will you handle it? It’s not written in a book: ‘All betrayal will be handled this way.’ No, it’s not. You decide how you’re going to handle it.

If you were betrayed before and are betrayed now, the cause of that current betrayal is now, and you choose whether the previous betrayal is going to make it easier. It’s your choice, not the law. And when you can realize this, then you can let go, and you’re done with the ‘Wheel of the 84.’

You’re done with karma when you allow yourself to let it go, just like you’re done with physical lifetimes when you decide you’re done, when you can realize, ‘I’ve learned enough. I didn’t really have to learn anything at all. I chose to learn, and I’m done.’ We didn’t say you don’t learn. We suggest that you don’t have to. You don’t have to, but you do. What about karma? It’s a choice, a self-determined and self-imposed choice.

With love and peace …
Lazaris