Rohit Arya on Karma, Healing and Predictions

 

 

I had a long career as a ‘miracle worker’. Now it is over. After you get burned consistently your thick skull finally entertains the possibility the Universe is trying to tell you something. It was not called miracle working; I called it ‘manifesting; or ‘beaming energy’. I had begun Reiki, discovered a completely disconcerting talent for it, and progressed to such an extent that over the years I attained all the exalted grand panjandrum levels the Reiki crowd so love. More importantly my Reiki went to a level that very few people manage, it began to flow cold, - still does- like ice water from a Himalayan stream, and the healings that resulted were supernatural. I made a lot of money and got entangled into a lot of futile karmic bonds as a result of this, but the discovery of cold Reiki almost made the whole process worth it.

Almost.

I did incredible things with healing, I see that today, what counts as bonafide miracles, and all I want to do today is kick my own silly ass. But healing was how I came to realize I could bend reality as it is understood, basically because it is imperfectly understood. All the healing and working as the editor of my Guru’s book on the Kundalini Shakti – she was not my guru then – caused the awakening of the Kundalini within myself. I began serious meditation and a spiritual process. My powers amplified and naturally I made an even bigger ass of myself doing ‘miracles.’ I once kept a vehicle going for nine kms, till we got to the destination, after the gear shaft came out in the hand of the person driving it. And unless you have seen urban Indian traffic you don’t know how bat-shit insane this was! This is the only example I will give, for good reasons. I know what I did, the people concerned know what I did, and disbelief is irrelevant

 

My Other great skill was in making predictions and advice … I remain very good at reading hands, very skilled at the I Ching and I am the only person in India who has written two books on the Tarot, apart from creating a deck based entirely on Indian mythology and Yoga. I also know, to some extent, the ancient Indian skill of Mukha Lakshanam, reading the signs of the face. In Tarot reading I am a god, modesty be dammed, especially as I do not read any more unless in dire circumstances. I got very, very good at these interventions, in seeing how things were going to play out, though I was somewhat of a Cassandra. This was a blessing; I did not know it then. My predictions seemed to be most potent in the long term where they were crushingly accurate. Of course I developed schandenfreude, a mean streak of “I told you so, but you did not listen, so suffer now!” Power in the hands of fools intoxicates and degenerates. I made a lot of money from the tarot too, but when the stream started thinning I could not comprehend the lessons it was seeking to communicate. This was not the proper use of the Tarot, which is a Yoga, a spiritual path, in its own right. To utilize it primarily for questions about money grubbing and relationship failure was to demean it and you don’t demean a dragon no matter how tolerant.

 

As my Yoga got stronger, I began to understand the sombre consequences of such meddling. Here are some of the lessons I learnt. When you do such things, a certain quality of people begin to cling to you, and the experience is akin to being embraced by a weepy sentimental octopus in a gas chamber. When we perform such actions, no matter what we feel or say, we have expectations of gratitude from the others. That is bound to be disappointed. People have no concept of the energy drain involved in doing such things and more importantly they do not care – they are only interested in their benefit.

If you do something remarkable once, you have to be remarkable all the time. When you display the truth of Somerset Maugham’s statement, “Only a mediocre person can be at his best all the time” they are disappointed and feel cheated. You can never satisfy expectations once you have made the blunder of miracle mongering. Siddhis, the inner energy powers, are the biggest temptation and flaw for a yogi. The people you perform miracles for, the karma between you and them is so imbalanced, it burns out and such relationships rarely survive. When you heal, when you intervene, when you fix things, you are actually starring in a spectacular heroic role in your mind, the hero, the saviour. It is complete idiocy.

 

When you perform an intervention like this you are interfering with karma. There was a karmic originating cause which manifested a situation as a response. That situation is causing trouble; by fixing it you merely remove the reaction. The karma that caused the first situation is still active, and it sends another packet of karma from your store across lifetimes, the sabija, and almost always the replacement karma is worse than the original karma! This is why healing is a blunder of enormous magnitude. As the healer, the reader, you interfered with the karma, you peeled back the veil which mercifully covered the process. Your responsibility is therefore great, as much as the person who asked for and participated in the intervention. Such things do not come without consequences, such abilities cannot be paid for only in money. In any case you cannot heal anybody, the best you can do is to help them integrate themselves. Once they become integral, the dis-ease also dis-appears. 

 

The same principles apply in making predictions and suggesting pratiharams or remedies. But over time I began to see something even stronger manifest. So there is a situation and you do a reading of some sort, a “read the future, see what is in store and how can trouble be avoided” intervention. Well and good – or so it would seem. However …I began to comprehend something so much deeper it refused to be consciously acknowledged at first! It was so massive in scope, so prodigious in its implications, and so athwart my skills that I did not wish to acknowledge it, not really. The stunning realization was this. Once you foresee the consequences of a situation {or heal it} you are bound to that outcome - and there may be much better possibilities that you are therefore aborting!!! The head reels…I know. Karma operates in such peculiar fashion. What we call destiny, or Dridha – ‘fixed karma’ is also just one band of vibrational possibility. This aggregate of forces can be changed with Purushartha, or mindful effort, the application of Will, but if we venture into prediction, into foresight, we are, so as to speak, bound to that particular line of possibility. All other, greater, more desirable results get shut off. This is staggering. It is also completely inexorable. We have no choice but to accept what we have foreseen, though if we had not done that, and creatively responded to the situation we might have ended up with much more splendid outcomes. In fact, not to intervene, to heal, to read, is almost always the best option as it retains space for creative response, and that usually leads to optimal results. What we desire as outcomes is predicated upon our limited natures and expectations, whereas karma may have something transformative in store for us, which we impede with our unthinking actions.

 

When I could no longer deny the relentless nature of this process, my readings and healings dwindled almost to zero. Every intervention is now an interference with karmic possibility. There has to be very compelling reasons indeed for such impertinence and I no longer have the hardihood to rate myself so highly. Genuine healers, those with an unmistakable Vocation, in the grand old sense of the word, have enough karmic links - Rnanubandhana, the debt-bond - with those they heal. The rest of us are muddling ourselves up in karmic quicksand. It is very difficult to accept this, especially when you are supernaturally skilled at something, as I remain. It is Skill, not Vocation and the difference is critical. The humiliating realization is that such interventions are a loss of freedom and for a Yogi such a thing is an impossible affront. For you cannot accept or reject evolving circumstances and tailor a creative response anymore, you can only go by the parameters you have created by your own good intentioned meddling. Even your movement of energy, your every action, is then circumscribed by what you have anticipated. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” warns the old saw, and if not hell, at least long term ineffectualness is your lot when you do such things. I desist therefore, unless there is a clear internal command, an adesha, to intervene, but Shiva is merciful and such occasions are rare. 

 

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}  published in the last quarter of 2011. He has also written A Gathering of Gods due at the same time. He is the Editor of The Leadership Review, a corporate trainer, as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga