Q&A: Is there such a thing as collective karma?: Part III
Group dynamics, collective action, and group experiences as collective karma
Note: These next few articles will be devoted to answering questions asked by readers. If you have questions, please submit them by clicking the button below!Is there such a thing as group karma or collective karma, not just the individual?
For example, the karma of a nation?
As an example, in the 1920s we went through the Great Depression. People said it felt like "getting the rug swept up under them."
Right after, the US experienced a polio wave, and the president that got us out of the Depression was FDR, who had...polio.
I feel this for a lot that is going on in the world right now…
Om Sri Gurubhyo Namah. Salutations to all the teachers.
Over the past few weeks we have been investigating the topic of collective karma in response to this question, through the following five aspects:
The concept of collective karma at face value
Collective tendencies
Group dynamics and group experiences as shared karma
The utility of the idea of collective karma
Whether, in fact, all karma is collective karma
Thus far, we have established that karma is simply cause and effect, and not a sort of magical cosmic serendipity, we have covered the topic at face value, as well as dug into the idea of collective tendencies, or patterns of behaviour in groups of various sizes.
You can find the articles below:
In this article, we will continue the discussion on collective tendencies by looking at how these patterns appear in group dynamics, collective action, and shared experiences.
Collective tendencies: “You bring out the best/worst in me”
When we meet up with old friends, we often find that old patterns of behaviour awaken.
We can also notice this phenomenon with parents, old coworkers, school or college mates, and even those with whom we did not get along.
We also find the same phenomenon appear in a different way, when we notice that different people bring out different aspects of our personality.
One may find themselves, for example, to be more talkative around one person, and more quiet around another person.
This phenomenon occurs due to the awakening of particular samskaaras given particular conditions - just as a mango tree ripens in the mango season, and not otherwise.
Just as this is true with individuals, it is also true for groups. One may find that they feel certain behaviours to be more “natural” in one group, and the very same set of behaviours to feel forced in another group of people.
In any group, there are multiple minds, each with their own set of samskaaras (aka tendencies, or impressions) that awaken in a particular way in the presence of the others in that group. This set of samskaaras that awaken in the presence of one another is, in effect, the collective karma of the group.
As these samskaaras awaken, they ripen into thoughts, words, and actions. The words and actions, observed by the others in the group, awaken latent samskaaras in their minds, which then ripen into words and actions, which further awaken latent samskaaras in other minds, thus creating a web of shared actions and results.
Notice, while these samskaaras may awaken when faced with a particular person or group of people, they are ultimately stored in the individual mind. That is, they are independent of the others in the group, and may also be awakened by other situations.
In this way, while these tendencies appear, on the surface, to be at the collective level, they are actually present within the individual minds.
As an aside, this principle of “collective” tendencies is the underlying reason why it is helpful, on the path of Yoga - in any tradition - to initially surround oneself with like-minded individuals, so as to cultivate a shared set of tendencies that can generate momentum towards the goal of Yoga in each individual mind.
Collective action: Inciting one another
Collective tendencies, like individual tendencies, ultimately lead to collective action.
The following example from the 4th Century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu demonstrates how this takes place:
“When a group of people are united with the intention to kill, either in war, or in the hunt, or in banditry, who is guilty of murder, if only one of them kills?
As soldiers concur in the realization of the same effect, all are as guilty as the one who kills.
Having a common goal, all are guilty just as he who among them who kills, for all mutually incite one another, not through speech, but by the very fact that they are united together in order to kill.
But is the person who has been constrained by force to join the army also guilty?
Evidently so, unless he has formed the resolution: ‘Even in order to save my life, I shall not kill a living being’.”
- Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakoshabhaashya
In this example, even though only one person actually conducts the final act of killing, all the individuals in the group incited one another towards the final outcome.
The group came together with the explicit intention to kill, and moved towards the goal together. Only the very final act was conducted by a single individual in the group.
In this way, it seems that they are each somewhat responsible for the outcome.
However, this is a somewhat limited analysis. After all, what about the people who encouraged the soldiers to join the army in the first place? Are they not responsible too? What about the people who started the war, or even further back, the people who drew the borders in the first place?
This is certainly true. If the blame or credit for collective action goes to the individuals in the group, even if the action itself was done by the individual, then stopping at the individuals in that group is somewhat arbitrary.
Given that there is no good reason to stop at this group, we must then extend responsibility to all people who were involved in the chain of causation.
If we try to do this, we will very quickly find that the chain of causation extends to all living beings everywhere, throughout time.
This idea is described further in the article linked below:
P: So then is it just the fault of the individual?
Jogi: The very concept of fault is based on simplistic assumptions about the nature of causation. There is no such thing as fault, since there is never a single responsible causal factor. All causal factors are simply nodes in an infinite web of cause and effect.
P: In this example, the intention to kill was only within the group. If the others, such as those who encouraged the soldiers to join the army in the first place, did not have this intention, how can they be responsible? Shouldn’t responsibility stop where there is no intention?
Jogi: Intention is a mental happening. Specifically, here, the intention to kill can be classified as adharma, since it violates the Yama of ahimsa by strengthening a separation between “self” and “other.” Adharma begets adharma. Said another way, the cause of adharma is itself adharma. In this way, the suggestion to join the army requires, perhaps at a subtle level, a distinction between self and other. This may come in the form of tamas, wherein the person who recommended that they join the army simply did not think of the consequences. Given this, the action of recommending that they join the army itself strengthens avidya and leads to dukkha, even if the person did not themselves have the intention to directly kill.
P: Ok. It is reasonable to expect that the person thinks a few steps ahead, so if you recommend that someone join the army, you are to some degree responsible for them killing others. However, everything is interdependent, and so me reading this right now is in some way connected to violence somewhere.
Jogi: This is true. All actions are ultimately violent. We can only try our best to be as non-violent as possible, so as to minimize the effects of this karma that comes simply from living an embodied existence.
P: So then does it matter at all?
Jogi: Yes. Every action has a consequence, and so we are able to minimize violent consequences by minimizing violent actions, and putting in the effort to expand our view of causation beyond ourselves. This expansion is an effect of sattva, and the more sattva, the more peace and clarity in the mind.
There is an important teaching in this analysis. We have the ability to decide1, and thus to prevent the action from occurring. Since we are all nodes in the causal chain, our actions (including inaction) have an impact on the ultimate outcome. Sometimes the impact will be more tangible than others, but in all situations, the impact is there.
This is the reasoning behind the Yamas as a Mahaavrat - the Great Vow. More on this topic here:
To summarize, actions that contradict the Yamas, whether krit, kaarit, or anumoditaa (ie. done by oneself, done by another on your behalf, or allowed), are all considered as violations of the Yamas, since even allowing such actions to take place is a manifestation of tamas, the veil through which we hide from Reality.
It is easy to sit back and say, for example, “what can I do”, or “my actions won’t have any effect”, but this is far from true. The effect of your actions is threefold, represented by the three audible sounds in ॐ (Om) - A (अ), U (उ), and M (म):
The direct consequence
The mental consequence
The unseen consequence
The first one is the direct impact of your actions. If, for example, you donate towards the victims of the genocide in Palestine, your actions have a direct positive impact, however small, on the people there who are suffering. If you do not, this impact will not appear.
The second is the mental consequence. Using this example, if you do not donate or speak up, it is a way of putting the blinders up, to hide from the reality of the violence for your own mental well-being. Said another way, you would be putting the individual body-mind over those of others (ie. “I’d rather protect my mental well-being than think about the violence being inflicted upon others), and so strengthening the very boundary between “self” and “other” which Yoga tries to weaken.
The final one is the unseen consequence. Your actions, however small, have an infinite set of knock-on effects which we cannot directly perceive.
For more on this topic, you can take a look at the article here:
Shared experiences
While samskaaras, actions, and experiences are ultimately at the individual level, there are two interesting angles to consider when it comes to the topic of shared karma:
Shared experience (ie. common Ishvarsrishti, common Jivasrishti)
Each other as experience
Shared experience
Karma, as we have discussed, results in experiences. You can find more on the mechanism for how this happens in the two articles here:
There are essentially three ways in which this happens. The first two are mechanisms, while the third is a shifted point of view on causation itself.
First, actions leave samskaaras which strengthen or weaken kleshas, resulting in a layer of attraction, aversion, fear, etc. This layer is known as jivasrishti, and is the cause of “pleasure” or “pain” which lead to the classification of experiences as “good” or “bad.”
Second, actions have unseen consequences - adrishta - which, through a web of cause and effect, result in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Every circumstance is an effect, which has an infinite set of causes, including your previous actions.
Third, samskaaras themselves ripen into experience. The waking and dream worlds emerge from deep sleep, the storehouse of samskaaras. Given this, every samskaara that we deposit through our actions directly results in a different experience.
Starting with the first mechanism, when a group of people act together, or “share” a collection of samskaaras as described in the sections above, they generate a sort of shared jivasrishti. We can see this occurring in our lives when we find that a group of individuals, over time, creates a sort of shared reality - a common lens through which they view the world. This often comes in the form of shared language, shared concepts, and shared memories which create a shared framework into which shared experiences are placed.
Let us use a simple example.
A group of three friends went to a restaurant where they ate some bad food, following which they all fell ill. A few months later, a fourth person came into the group and recommended that they eat dinner at this restaurant. Given their prior experience, the group expressed their distrust for the food, and suggested that they eat elsewhere.
In this example, the group of friends shared an unpleasant experience. The cause was the food, and the effect was sickness. While they did not experience each other’s sickness directly, they all fell sick, and discussed their individual experiences with one another. This led them to realize that the food was the cause of the illness, and not some other factor. This led to the formation of a klesha of dvesha (aversion) layered upon the memory of the restaurant, deposited as a samskaara in each of their minds.
As a result of this klesha, when the fourth person, months later, suggested that they eat at the restaurant, they all expressed their distrust of the food, and desire to eat elsewhere.
Here, we see that the group of friends, despite having an individual mind with an individual set of samskaaras, generated similar samskaaras to one another due to a shared experience. As a result, the result of this samskaara was also similar (ie. that they did not eat at the restaurant when someone brought it up to them).
This is a very simple example, but the fundamental concept can be extended much further, to larger groups, and to much more complex sets of circumstances.
For example, students of yoga who come from an Abrahamic background will often try to frame Yogic ideas into Biblical constructs, trying to superimpose ideas about faith, sin, free will, conversion, God, heaven, hell, and so on.
Another example, when the CEO of a company shares the strategy for the year, or a segmentation of the market, the individuals in that company will, over time, start to use the same kind of language to describe their experiences of talking to customers, prospects, and each other. This is, incidentally, why using the right framework is so important when bringing clarity to an ambiguous problem space.
One interesting example of this same phenomenon of shared frameworks at a larger scale is the manner in which different cultures view time.
There are, essentially, two types of cultures in the world with regard to how time is viewed - polychronic and monochronic.
Generally speaking, in monochronic cultures, schedules are viewed as sacred, plans are fixed once they have been agreed upon, showing up late is a sign of disrespect, and time is often equated to currency in language such as “save time”, “spend time”, or “waste time.” In polychronic cultures, on the other hand, schedules are viewed as flexible, plans are expected to change despite prior agreement, showing up late is a norm, and time is talked about in broad strokes.
Some examples of monochronic cultures include the United States, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, while polychronic cultures include India, Hawaii, Spain, Italy, and Mexico. There are, of course, subcultures within each of these nations which exhibit different types of chronicity. Interestingly, these differences in how time is viewed also extend to other aspects of behaviour, some described below:
This is an example of a tendency at a group level, which will lead to similar kinds of experiences. For example, Americans going to India will often find themselves confused or even exasperated (ie. unpleasant experience, or dukkha) when people routinely show up late. Although these individual Americans may have never met one another, they still share a degree of karma in this respect.
Each other as experience
In order to understand this, somewhat more esoteric, aspect, we must first consider how we know that other people exist in the first place.
If we notice closely, we will find that the only way in which we know that “other people” exist is because they appear in the mind as perceptions. That is, in Yogic terms, what we call “other people” are in fact groupings of pratyayas - individual mental happenings - in our own minds.
Note: This is not to say that other people are not real. As long as we consider ourselves to be real, other people are real too. Furthermore, this point of view is not the same as solipsism. More on this topic in a future article.
This is not only true of other people, but also of every experience that we have, from the moment of birth to the moment of death (and perhaps afterwards as well). All “experiences” are simply a collection of pratyayas appearing in the mind, grouped by the buddhi, given names, and, often, layered with kleshas.
In fact, taking this a step further, the mind, the buddhi, the kleshas, and even the experience of awareness itself (specifically the chidaabhaasa) are a part of Prakriti, or “experience”. To paraphrase Swami Virujananda, the individual and the “external” world appear and disappear at the same time, so we are either all of it, or none of it.
To summarize this, other people are themselves a part of the experience that You, the Purusha observe.
Now, as we know, all experiences stem from samskaaras, and emerge from the causal body (in deep sleep) into the waking and dreaming worlds, merging back into deep sleep once the “day” is complete. This means that other people - the groups you are a part of - also emerge from deep sleep and merge back into deep sleep.
In this way, all the people that you know, all the groups that you are in, and all the shared experiences you have, are all simply a ripening of your own samskaaras.
This idea is sometimes, in a somewhat “woo-woo” manner, described as “soul groups” or “soul families.” However, this kind of framing requires an aspect of faith.
Rather, if we can see, through reason, that all experiences, including the individuals that you experience, are simply a manifestation of your own samskaaras, we can understand this idea without taking anything as a matter of belief. That is, rather than seeing an individual as a product of karma in isolation, we can also see an entire group, with its overlapping individuals, as a product of karma.
This is applied in two ways - as jivasrishti, and as Ishvar-srishti.
With Ishvarsrishti, we literally create the people themselves, since all experience is, after all, a fructifying of your own samskaaras emerging from deep sleep. However, since this understanding takes some time and practice to get used to, it is not always of the highest immediate utility.
On the other hand with jivasrishti, the teaching can be directly and easily applied.
Here, we must first notice that we cannot put people in boxes.
People are highly dynamic - constantly shifting and changing. However, we retain ideas about them in our memory, which then influence how we view them. For example, a friend of yours may have told you at one point how they love to dance, and perhaps when you would go out together you would see them dancing all night. Then, one day, when you see them standing silently in a corner at a party, you feel that something is wrong.
The reason for this feeling that “something is wrong” is that you generated an idea about your friend in your mind, in the form of a vikalp that “they like to dance.” Then, when your perception doesn’t match this vikalp, you feel like there must be some cause. This is an example of a superimposition - a box into which you tried to fit a constantly changing individual.
Another such example is “personality.”
When we meet new people, we - often subconsciously - judge them, putting them into categories that we are familiar with. Then, we say things like “that’s so you” or “that’s out of character for you” when they either hit or miss these categories in their actual actions.
We also apply this to ourselves, trying to put ourselves into boxes that we have heard about from our families, cultures, education, and other conditioning. We may think that we are “hard workers”, “happy-go-lucky”, “loving”, “generous”, “successful”, “fun”, and so on.
Then, if we ever act in a way that is outside of these boundaries, we feel sad, insufficient, or as though we are somehow failing, not realizing that “sad”, “insufficient”, and so on are themselves superimpositions upon a much more complex reality.
In this way, when we meet another person, we apply a frame, or a superimposed set of our own samskaaras onto them. This superimposition has nothing to do with the other person, but is rather a manifestation of your own samskaaras.
In this way, each individual creates the group of people that they are a part of, based on your own karma.
“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
- William James
TL;DR
In this article, we continued the investigation into collective karma, exploring the aspect of collective tendencies through group dynamics, collective action, shared experiences, and the idea that we create the groups of people that present themselves in our lives, through our karma.
Next time, we will continue with this topic, looking into the utility of the teaching, as well as some discussion around where it can and cannot be effectively used. Following this, we will discuss, on a somewhat more philosophical note, whether all karma is, in fact, collective karma.
In the meantime, please share your questions by clicking the button below.
More on this later, but at the transactional (aka vyavahaarika) level, this is true.