Karma and Kriya

Dr. Ted Thornton · Confusing Words Series · 4 pages

A compact set of definitions built from the Sanskrit roots. Karma, from the verbal root karman, denotes physical action or motion: physically it is action as opposed to inaction, its purpose being to produce change; metaphysically it is both the cause and the effect of every action; ethically it is the law of ethical causation. Three kinds are then separated — sanchita, accumulated actions, the sum of all karmas of this and past lives; prarabdha, actions begun and set in motion, the portion of sanchita now bearing fruit and shaping the conditions of the current life; and kriyamana, being made, the karma created and added to sanchita by present thoughts, words and actions, or in the inner worlds between lives.

Kriya comes from the root kri, to do, make, transform, accomplish or create, and is defined esoterically as the noetic process by which Fohat helps the Logos to express, externalise and reveal Eternal Thought to the perception of finite minds. The note on creation attached to it clears up a related confusion: since the Ever-existent is the source and sum total of all beings and things, in essence nothing has ever been created in the Christian sense, everything being of the very stuff and be-ness of the Boundless — yet the word has a legitimate use in its original sense of coming forth from being into existence, production of something out of something else rather than out of nothing. Prakriti is derived at the end from pra, forwards, and the same root kri.

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