What Is Karma? Actions and Everyday Life

What is karma, and how does it shape everyday life? Umesh Guruji explains it in the simplest terms: what we did in the past makes the present, and what we do now makes the future. Like seeds that can only grow into their own tree, our actions come back to us, and so do love and kindness.

Karma as seeds and a mirror

If you plant a mango seed, Umesh says, you cannot expect an apple tree, and every religion teaches the same. Whoever studies medicine becomes a doctor, whoever studies engineering becomes an engineer. Karma also works like a mirror, the way a sound echoes from a wall or sunlight bounces back from a mirror: what we put around us returns. In his words, "you give the love, you return the love".

Karma across lives, and how to rebalance it

Umesh connects karma with rebirth through the akashic record, a memory of all our words and thoughts held in akash, the Sanskrit word for sky or ether. He also shows how balance can be restored, like the two pans of a village scale: if you have hurt someone, you give love, say sorry and receive their forgiveness. His advice is to do as much good karma as possible, which builds an inner strength he calls soul power. The rules of karma return in the lesson on the Bhagavad Gita.