y no means strewn
with roses, judged from the limited standard of Relativity.

A man's karma simply and mathematically, proves the direction of his former
desires. Karma does not punish or reward, as is frequently imagined.

The general impression that one is reaping "good or bad karma" according as
his life is one of pleasure or of pain, is not the solution of the problem
of karma, and has no relation to the law of karmic action.

If a soul has in a previous life outgrown or outworn that evolutionary
phase of development, in which the mind seeks temporary pleasures, and has
come to the place where he wants to distinguish the Real from the Illusory,
his karma, in compliance with the law of desire, will bring him in relation
to those conditions which will teach him to know the Real from the
Illusory, and in those conditions he will experience pain because he will,
if he remain in the activities of the world, be acting contrary to the
ideas of the _average_.

Thus, to the onlooker, and in accordance with the general misinterpretation
of the law of karma, he will be thought to have reaped a "bad" karma, while
as a matter of reality, he will be making very rapid strides on the path to
godhood. Said a famous Japanese high priest:

"Desire is the bird that carries the soul to the object in which his mind
is immersed, and thus his future actions are the result."

This means that by the law of desire, acting in accordance with the
evolutionary pilgrimage of the soul, the karma is produced. The American
poet, Lowell, says: "No man is born into the world whose work is not born
with him." However, whether or not this applies to man in the first stages
of his upward climb to the goal of attainment of conscious godhood, it most
assuredly applies to those souls who have become aware of their purpose,
and who have made a _conscious_ choice of their karma. And of this class of
souls, the world to-day has a goodly number.

The end of a kalpa finds many avatars, and angels on earth, and however
obscured the mind of these may become in the fog of Illusion, the inner
light guides them through its mists to the safe accomplishment of their
mission.

There is a story of a Buddhist priest, who when dying, was comforted by his
loving disciples with the reminder that he was at last entering upon a
state of bliss and rest. To which the earnest one replied:

"Never so long as there is misery to be assuaged, shall I enter Nirvana. I
shall