sical pain,
disease, deformity, poverty, ill fortune, etc., that we see among
people, is the inevitable result of some moral wrong or crime committed
by that person in some past life, and that therefore every instance of
poverty, want or physical suffering is the just result of some moral
offense. Some of the extremists have gone so far as to hesitate at
relieving poverty, physical pain and suffering in others, lest by so
doing they might possibly be "interfering with Karma"--as if any great
Law could be "interfered with." While we, generally, have refrained from
insisting upon our personal preference of interpretation in this work,
we cannot refrain from so doing in this instance. We consider that such
an interpretation of the Law of Karma is forced and unnatural, and
results from the seeming natural tendency of the human mind to build up
devils for itself--and hells of one kind or another. Robbed of their
Devil, many people would attribute to their God certain devilish
qualities, in order that they may not be robbed of the satisfaction of
smugly thinking of the "just punishment" of others. And, if they have
also discarded the idea of a Personal God, their demand for a Devil
causes them to attribute certain devilish qualities to Natural Law. They
are bound to find their Devil somewhere--the primitive demand for the
Vengeful Spirit must manifest itself in one form or another.

These people confound the action of Cause and Effect on the Material and
Physical Plane, with Cause and Effect on the Spiritual Plane, whereas
all true occultists teach that the Cause operating on one plane
manifests effects upon the same plane. In this connection, we would call
your attention to the instance in the New Testament (John IX., 2), in
which Jesus was asked regarding the cause of the affliction of the man
who was BORN BLIND. "And his disciples asked him, saying, 'Master, who
did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?'" The
question being asked in order that Jesus might determine between the two
prevailing theories: (1) That the blindness was caused according to the
operation of the law of Moses, which held that the sins of the parents
were visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation; or
(2) that it was caused according to the Law of Karma, along the lines of
reincarnation, and because of some sin which the man had committed in
some past incarnation (for no other interpretation of the passage is
possible