Let us visualise a situation in which someone wrongs you in really bad way and you, in retaliation wrong the person. In such a situation, normally one would be tempted to feel that one has brought about justice and settled the Karmic balance by engaging in such retaliatory reaction. Also, sometimes, one could go so far as to say that since the law of Karma says that anybody who does wrong gets it in return so God used me to settle the other persons Karma. However, understanding the law of Karma well would bring one to the realisation that instead of settling the other person’s karma, we only created a negative karmic account for ourselves.

Karma (thoughts, words and actions)  done under the influence of negative emotions creates negative karma. While engaging in the retaliatory action, one is fuelled by ego,anger criticism,greed and so on and so forth creating negative karma. Also, the one who is facing the retaliatory action is not facing it with spiritual strength. He is also creating the same negative emotions, thereby only aggravating his negative karmic balance. So, only God has the power to settle someone’s Karma. A person cannot and should not take law into his own hands because we human beings are full of negative emotions and when someone wrongs us, we cannot be dispassionate about it and when we are in the surge of our own emotions then we cannot act as an instrument for settlement.We can only be creating new negative karma for ourselves. Only God who is non judgmental and completely dispassionate about the acts of people can place the person in such a position that the situation becomes an instrument to settle his own Karma while God again stands with the person and helps him cross this test by showering His virtues and powers on the person and equipping him with the positive energy to settle the karma. We will discuss other aspects of this tomorrow.