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Quotes #2: Trail of Diamonds in the Sand: Famous Quotes on Karma

We are All Karma Chameleons

More people in the world believe in karma than do not. Unfortunately, for those of us who live here, most people in the United States of America do not.

Yet, just in case, you believe that the only people who believe in the principles of karma and reincarnation live in the East, below are quotes from famous Westerners to show that "you are not alone".

Of course, to balance my karma, there are quotes from famous Easterners. For after all, most Easterners believe very firmly in the concepts of reincarnation and karma.

Trail of Diamonds in the Sand

Like a trail of diamonds in the sand, these quotes reveal the truth of our existence.

For as we journey through life, we learn tolerance. For we have been and will be all things... If you have any quotes to share about reincarnation, karma, or past lives, I invite you to send them to me so that I can share them here.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Karma:

Wisdom of the West: The Bible & Teachings of Jesus
Wisdom of the West: The Bible & Teachings of Prophets
Wisdom of the East: The Bhagavad Gita and Buddha
Wisdom of the East: The Upanishads and Others

From the Great: "Born Again, Begin Again… Not Quite"
From the Great: "Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth"
From the Great: "Karma a Teacher, Not a Slave Driver"
From the Great: "Whither Thou Goest, God is There"

Wisdom of the West: The Bible - New Testament & the Teachings of Jesus

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
   - Bible: Galatians (6:7)

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
   - Bible: Matthew (5:18)

"And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail."
   - Bible: Luke (16:17)

"He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."
   - Bible: 2 Corinthians (9:6)

"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever."
   - Bible: 1 Peter (1:24-25)

"And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, 'Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but the works of God should be made manifest in him'."
   - Bible: John (9:1-3)
......(the works of God in this case being the fulfillment of karma)

"Put not off from day to day and from cycle to cycle, is the belief that ye will succeed in obtaining the mysteries when ye return to the world in another cycle."
   - Jesus Christ in the Gnostic Gospels: Pistis (Knowledge) Sophia (Wisdom)

"When you make the inner like the outer, and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower… When you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male, and the female will not be female… then will you enter the Kingdom of God."
   - Jesus Christ in Gnostic Gospels: Gospel of Thomas (Saying 22)

"And Amulek hath spoken plainly concerning death, and being raised from this mortality to a state of immortality, and being brought before the bar of God, to be judged according to our works."
   - Book of Mormon (Alma 12:12)

"If the karma of man has brought him nothing more than a capacity to love, then he has not lived in vain for a thousand past lives. It is this love which makes the most humble of Souls so great that it lifts him beyond all life into the worlds of God."
   - Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad (Eckankar: Book 2)

Wisdom of the West: The Bible - Old Testament & Teachings of Prophets

"God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time for every purpose and for every work."
   - Bible: Ecclesiastes (3:17)

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment."
   - Bible: Ecclesiastes (11:9)

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
   - Bible: Hosea (8:7)

"Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same."
   - Bible: Job (4:8)

"All souls are subject to revolution… but men do not know the ways of the Holy One… They are ignorant of the way they have been judged in all time, before they came into this world and when they have quitted it."
   - Zohar (Kabbalah)

"I am a sorcerer. Everything I see I create. I have created and will continue to create my own world."
   - The New Living Qabalah (Kabbalah as arranged by Will Parfitt)

"The knowledge of the commandments of the Lord is the doctrine of life: and they that do things that please him shall receive the fruit of the tree of immortality."
   - Apocrypha (Sirach 19:19)

"For after death shall the judgment come, when we shall live again: and then shall the names of the righteous be manifest and the works of the ungodly declared."
   - Apocrypha (2 Esdras 14:35)

"In all things that thou hast brought upon us… thou hast executed true judgment: for according to truth and judgment didst thou bring all these things upon us because of our sins. For we have sinned and committed iniquity, departing from thee.. and not obeyed thy commandments, nor kept them, neither done as thou hast commanded us, that it might go well with us. Wherefore all that thou hast brought upon us, and all that thou hast done to us, thou hast done in true judgment."
   - Apocrypha (Prayer of Azariah 5-8)

"Every soul... comes into the world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its' previous life. Its' place in this world as a vessel appointed to honor or dishonor, is determined by its' previous merits or demerits. Its' work in this world determines its' place in the world which is to follow this."
   - Origen

"She cries when the season comes for corn plants to dry out, signifying the death of her grandsons, and rejoices when they sprout again, signifying rebirth… The ground bone thrown into the river… becomes the substance for the rebirth…"
   - Mayan Popol Vuh

"In other worlds I lingered through the length of many nights;
And God alone can ever know how great the sorrow of soul I saw -
In Brooksvalin, where souls are subject to the cosmic cause of judgment."
   - Scandinavian "Song of Olaf Ostensen"

Wisdom of the East: The Bhagavad Gita and Buddha

"The immediate source of a mind… must be a mind which existed before the conception took place; the mind must have a continuity from a previous mind. This we hold to prove the existence of a past life."
   - The Dalai Lama

"He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword." ( Note the similarity to the Western phrase is "Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword")
   - Bhagavad Gita (Song Celestial: 4)

"The embodied one within the body of everyone, Bharata, is ever undestroyable. Therefore you should not grieve for any being…. (It) is as when one layeth his worn-out robes away… taking new ones, sayeth, 'These will I wear to-day!' so putteth by the spirit lightly its garb of flesh, and passeth to inherit a residence afresh."
   - Bhagavad Gita (The Song Celestial: 2)

"Therefore, thou noblest child of Bharata!
Govern thy heart! Constrain thy entangled sense!
Resist the false, soft sinfulness which saps knowledge and judgment!
Yea, the world is strong. But what discerns it stronger, and the mind.
Strongest; and high o'er all the ruling Soul.
Wherefore, perceiving Him who reigns supreme,
put forth full force of Soul in thy own soul!
Fight! vanquish foes and doubts, dear Hero!
Slay what haunts thee in fond shapes, and would betray!
   - Bhagavad Gita (The Song Celestial: 3)

"For, owners of their deeds (karma) are the beings, heirs of their deeds; their deeds are the womb from which they sprang; with their deeds they are bound up; their deeds are their refuge. Whatever deeds they do-good or evil-of such they will be the heirs. And wherever the beings spring into existence, there their deeds will ripen; and wherever their deeds ripen, there they will earn the fruits of those deeds, be it in this life, or be it in the next life, or be it in any other future life."
   - Gautama Buddha

"Surely if living creatures saw the results of all their evil deeds, they would turn away from them in disgust. But selfhood blinds them, and they cling to their obnoxious desires. They crave pleasure for themselves and they cause pain to others; when death destroys their individuality, they find no peace; their thirst for existence abides and their selfhood reappears in new births. Thus they continue to move in the coil and can find no escape from the hell of their own making."
   - Gautama Buddha

"Dependent Origination is the teaching… (that life) is not the mere play of blind chance, but has an existence that is dependent upon conditions. That, precisely with the removal of these conditions, those things that have arisen in dependence upon them-thus also all suffering-must perforce disappear and cease to be."
   - Gautama Buddha

"The 'Craving for Eternal Existence' is intimately connected with the 'Eternity- Belief', ie, the belief in an absolute, eternal, Ego-entity persisting independently of our body… Verily, because beings, obstructed by Delusion, and ensnared by Craving, now here now there seek ever fresh delight, therefore such action comes to ever fresh Rebirth. And the action that is done out of greed, anger and delusion, that springs from them, has its source and origin there. This action ripens wherever one is reborn; and wherever this action ripens, there one experiences the fruits of this action, be it in this life, or the next life, or in some future life."
   - Gautama Buddha

"As men think so they are, both here and hereafter,
thoughts being things, the parent of all actions,
good and bad alike, and as the sowing has been, so will the harvest be."
   - The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Wisdom of the East: The Upanishads and Others

"Ho! Ye who suffer! Know ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels."
   - The Lords of Karma

"The individual self, augmented by its' aspirations, sense contact, visual impressions and delusion, assumes successive forms in accordance with it's actions… So it is that we live in accordance with our deep, driving desire. It is this desire at the time of death that determines what our next life is to be. We will come back to Earth to work out the satisfaction of that desire."
   - Svetasvtara Upanishad

"What becomes of this man? Indeed, one becomes good by good action and bad by bad action."
   - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Sage Yajnavalkya)

"We never made for any mortal before thee immortality… Every soul shall taste of death! We will test them with evil and good, as a trial; & unto us shall they return!"
   - Koran (Prophets)

"A stone I died and rose again a plant,
A plant I died and rose as an animal,
I died an animal and was born a man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"
   - Jalalu'l-din Rumi

"It is nature's kindness that we do not remember past births. Life would be a burden if we carried such a tremendous load of memories."
   - Mohandas K. Gandhi

"The natural laws of the universe are inviolable… what you say and do determines what happens in your life… You are the master of your life and death.
What you do is what you are."
   - Lao Tse ("Hua Hu Ch'ing": 40)

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
   - Confucius

From the Great and Near Great: "Born Again, Begin Again… Not Quite"

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
   - George Santayana

"The Soul which is approaching its' liberation, as it looks back over past lives... down the vistas of the centuries along which it has slowly been climbing,... is able to see there the way in which the bonds were made, the causes which set it in motion. It is able to see how many of those causes have worked themselves out and... how many... are still working themselves out."
   - Annie Besant

"Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds us as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices."
   - Annie Besant

"'Nature is conquered by obedience' - and her resistless energies are at our bidding, as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success."
   - Annie Besant

"…as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that."
   - William James

"Just as an age was ready to receive the Copernican theory of the universe, so is our own age ready for the ideas of reincarnation and karma to be brought into the general consciousness of humanity. And what is destined to happen in the course of evolution will happen no matter what powers rise up against it."
   - Rudolf Steiner

"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
   - Italian Proverb

"Forgetfulness of the past may be one of the conditions of an entrance upon a new stage of existence. The body, which is the organ of sense-perception, may be quite as much a hindrance as a help to remembrance. In that case, casual gleams of memory, giving us sudden, abrupt, momentary revelations of the past, are precisely the phenomena we would expect to meet with."
   - William Knight

"There is no argument so cogent not only in demonstrating, the indestructibility of the soul, but also in showing that it always preserves in its nature traces of all its preceding states with a practical remembrance which can always be aroused. Since it has the consciousness of or knows in itself what each one calls his me. This renders it open to moral qualities, to chastisement and to recompense even after this life, for immortality without remembrance would be of no value."
   - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

"You are everything you have ever been - right now."
   - Hazel Denning, Association for Past Life Research and Therapy

"You have inherited (the) most from yourself, not from your family! The family is only a river through which Soul flows."
   - Edgar Cayce

"We meet no Stranger, but Ourself."
   - Emily Dickinson

"The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius."
   - Honore de Balzac

"The choice of souls was in most cases based on their own experience of a previous life… Knowledge easily acquired is that which the enduing self had in an earlier life, so that it flows back easily."
   - Plato

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
   - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live forever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more."
   - Edward Young

"Karma chameleon: we come and go, we come and go…"
   - Boy George

From Great and Near Great: "An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth"

"God is in the details… and it's all details."
   - Anonymous

"Though the mills of the God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small: though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness He grinds them all."
   - Friedrich von Logan

"O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better… In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven."
   - Plato

"Since karma is meeting self, we acquire karma as we meet self in our many attitudes and emotions; when we serve in loving kindness and patience or hold resentful malicious thoughts… What we do to our fellow man we do to our Maker… our karma or problem is within self."
   - Edgar Cayce

"Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds."
   - George Eliot

"There is a destiny that makes us brothers: none goes his way alone,
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own."
   - Edwin Markham

"Men's minds do not die with their bodies but are made more happy or miserable after this life according to their actions."
   - Benjamin Franklin

"Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven."
   - Mary Baker Eddy

"Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."
   - William Shakespeare ("Twelfth Night")

"Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites?"
   - Socrates

"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."
   - Edwin Hubbel Chapin

"Who hath a prospect of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all men after this life, depending on their behavior, the measures of good and evil that govern his choice are mightily changed."
   - John Locke

"I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime."
   - Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

"Nobody is ever a victim without cause."
   - Dr. Edith Fiore

From the Great & Near Great: "Karma is a Teacher, Not a Slave Driver"

"'Perfect justice rules the world' for the Powers that are superior to us know the whole life of the Soul and all its' former lives."
   - Iamblichus

"We are where centuries only count as seconds, and after a thousand lives, our eyes begin to open."
   - Eugene O'Neill

"Belief in karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene, and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us; only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the soul that by wisdom has gained power and uses both in love."
   - Annie Besant

"Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave.
I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride…
And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave,
Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave.
The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again.
The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain.
I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain."
   - William Ernest Henley

"Actually, we have no problems: we have opportunities for which we should give thanks… An error we refuse to correct has many lives. It takes courage to face one's own shortcomings and wisdom to do something about them."
   - Edgar Cayce

"Man peoples his current living space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions."
   - Annie Besant

"If the soul be pure, then shall she obtain favor and rejoice in the latter day; but if she hath been defiled, then shall she wander for a time in pain and despair."
   - Josephus

"The past situation has just occurred and the future situation has not yet manifested itself so there is a gap between the two. This is basically the bardo (life between life) experience." This is the place where your life is reviewed - where you get another chance to let life teach you and end the cycle of pain (-EM).
   - Chogyam Trungpa

"There is none that is more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the supposition that the soul of the brutes is of the same nature with our own. And consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear, more than flies and ants. In place of which, when we know how far they differ we much better comprehend the reasons which establish that the soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body. And that consequently it is not liable to die with the latter; and, finally, because no other causes are observed capable of destroying it, we are naturally led thence to judge that it is immortal."
   - Rene Descartes

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice…" (to reduce karma!)
   - Meister Eckhart

From Great & Near Great: "Whither Thou Goest, God is Always There"

"Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One,
Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all."
   - Alexander Smith

"Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time."
   - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Love - is anterior to Life - Posterior - to Death - Initial of Creation, and The Exponent of Earth."
   - Emily Dickinson

"What thou seest, that thou be'st: dust if thous seest dust, God if thou seest God."
   - Edgar Cayce

"…a healer's heritage is as much Christ and Krishna as it is Freud and Jung… therefore a healer's capacity to help is limited only by his spirit which is limitless…"
   - Krishan Bir MA PhD

"The journey of Soul… by the lessons gained in the physical experience… it may take (its) place in the realms of soul activity in an infinite world among others that have passed through the various realms… which first called every soul and body into experience."
   - Edgar Cayce

"For we have come by different ways to this place… I can tell by the natural ease with which you wear fine clothes and the way your mouth moves when you speak with waiters in good restaurants. You have come the way of castles and cathedrals, of elegance and empire."
   - Robert James Waller

"Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities:
that of race and that of Soul…
A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear…
Though grave diggers' toil is long…
They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again."
   - W. B. Yeats

"World War II showed it was not gods that must be placated, but something inside the heart of man that lets him to destroy with savage intensity and on a grand scale those of his own kind who have offended him."
   - Helen Wambach ("Life Before Life")

"It is not enough to know about reincarnation; we must live it."
   - Guenther Wachsmuth

"Once I leave this earth, I know I've done something that continues to help others."
   - Jackie Joyner-Kersee

"My karma ran over my dogma."
   - American Proverbs

"What goes around, comes around."
   - Willie Nelson

"Know that I am always with you…"
   - The Mahanta, The Living ECK Master


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