The actions that operate in the life of every individual according to this law have been divided into three categories. By applying the scientific law of cause and effect to the first category, it is seen that in a person’s life-time some activities have effect immediately, some have effect after a few years, but some perhaps have no effect at all in this life-time. What happens to an action whose effect has not been worked out in this life? The potencies of such actions—the potencies of reactivity, as it were, of unresolved causes—go on accumulating in each individual’s storehouse of Karma. That is one category of seeds of Karma.

The second category is this. Out of the re-active stores, a certain supply is taken out to be worked out in the form of sweet and bitter experiences during a particular life-time. That supply forms the seed, as it were, of experiences in that particular incarnation. That supply determines man’s birth and death—all that he weeps over, all that he suffers and enjoys. All that he experiences, in short, comes out of that part of the store of accumulated Karma. That is the second category.

And what is the third? In this earth-life, man goes on instigating action. He thinks in certain ways and he acts in certain ways and the activity of this particular earth-life is contributing towards the formation of fresh seed. Sometime in the future he has to reap the effect of this activity. To what category does this fresh Karma belong? Naturally, it belongs neither to the experiences of this life nor the accumulated store. It belongs to a fresh batch, and this is the third category. In it are the activities of the present and it is referred to as “that which is being done” (Kriyamana) and also as “that which is to come” (Agami), because that which is to come is actually the product of that which transpires in the present. Therefore, there is the threefold Karma: the accumulated store, the experiences chosen for this particular incarnation, and that which is created in this life.

The actions which are done in this life have two distinct effects. One is the effect which is on this earth-plane and this effect may be produced immediately or tomorrow, or next week, or in ten years, but the effect which this action produces on the mind is instantaneous. The mind immediately receives the impression of the nature of the action that is done. If a harsh and cruel act is committed, then the impression of harshness and cruelty is immediately etched upon the mind. Repeated impressions contribute towards the formation of distinct tendencies in the mind and they build up and impart to the mind a particular quality. The sum-total of all qualities thus acquired by the mind through impressions, through these tendencies developed by it, becomes the nature of the individual. It is often called the character of the individual. The outward effect of action is not the main concern of the spiritual being, but the impression that the action creates in the mind is of vital concern to him. Why? Because, these impressions form the natural bent of the mental being and they portend what harvest will later be reaped.

Now, the sower has to return to his field if he has to reap his harvest and, in the same way, man has to return once again to this field of activity, i.e., to the earth-plane, in order to reap the harvest of his threefold activity. Thus, the soul returns again and again to work out the effect of its activity. As long as the causes in Karma are there, there is a necessity, by law, for them to be worked out. When man finds the way in which to act so that he does not create fresh causes, then perhaps, after a series of lives, the storehouse of Karma would become depleted and thereafter, in one glorious incarnation, he would find himself without any Karma at all at his back. This does not usually happen, because man never allows the pile to be reduced—it is ever being added to—and that is the great folly of man.