Karma and guilt in Sukyo Mahikari

You know, I'd never thought much about karma, and the associated notion of reincarnation, till a few months ago.

At the point when I joined Mahikari, the New Age notions of the 70's had already made the concepts of karma and reincarnation pretty familiar and popular. Even before then, quite mainstream people who had Christian rather than Eastern religion backgrounds would often joke about "coming back as a man next time", for example, or attribute a spate of bad luck to their karma. I don't know that any of those people would actually have claimed to believe in either reincarnation or karma if anyone pressed the point. Still, I guess these concepts did have a certain psychological appeal.

So, when I heard the teachings about karma and reincarnation at primary kenshu, I didn't even blink. If anything, I think I might have been happy to have these concepts, which I'd never known whether to believe or not, confirmed as "fact".

I first started thinking analytically about the Mahikari teachings concerning karma (and guilt) when I was trying to make sense of a debate between former and current kumite on the question of whether or not Mahikari is anti-Semitic. This debate arose out of a bit of a kerfuffle at the Hebrew University in Israel, which was caused by some people there accepting financial sponsorship from Mahikari without due consultation. I don't want to go into details here, but you can read about all this at the Mahikari Project blog site if you like.

It suddenly became startlingly obvious to me that the concept of karma is a handy mechanism for "blaming the victim". I must be slow. It seems so obvious now that I've thought of it! Remember those teachings about the Jews being persecuted throughout the ages, and suffering through the Holocaust, due to the negative karma of not having enshrined God in Solomon's temple? So the Holocaust was the Jews' fault, rather than the Nazis'? I don't think so.

I then proceeded to think about the concept of karma and guilt in Mahikari in more general terms. Okada was pretty big on teaching that we all have enormous amounts of negative karma...from ancestors, from our own previous lives, and from this life...and that we therefore really needed to put all our efforts into serving God (in other words, be diligent in our Mahikari activities) in order to save our own skins. But what evidence do we have, other than Okada's supposed revelations from God, that we and/or our ancestors were so bad?

The main "evidence" that I can see again comes from Mahikari doctrine...from Okada's "holy" words and from the pat statements kumite say to each other to explain their experiences. If we experienced any sort of problems in our health, finances, relationships or whatever, despite the fact that we were busily serving God, then this was taken as evidence that we had severe negative karma and needed to make even more effort. We also needed to apologise for our past sins (admit guilt)...for what?... and be grateful for the "purification". Perhaps, really, we were all good, kind, upstanding citizens in our previous lives (if previous lives exist)!

We could have been using simple commonsense strategies to deal with any problems that arose, rather than living with our problems AND trying to be grateful for them AND feeling guilty.

Supplementary "evidence" also came from spirit investigations. I've just been reading an experience story on the Mahikari Exposed site. Part of it says:

"She [Maria] claims that when she received Light for the first time that she was taken over by a disturbed spirit, which proceeded to speak with the Socho who was giving her okiyome. Maria has no recollection of this, but the Socho told her about it in explicit detail. He also told her that her karma was so bad that she needed to receive Light at least once a day. Heeding his advice, she began making daily trips to the dojo and after spending most of her time there, she decided to become a member herself."

Huh? Weren't we cautioned to not pay much attention to spirit disturbance? Perhaps that doesn't apply when the so-called spirit disturbance can be used to make someone feel that they can't get along without Mahikari. Certainly, I remember kumite talking in hushed tones about the dreadful things they had learnt about their karma during a "spirit investigation".

There's a very thorough analysis of how guilt is used in Mahikari to manipulate kumite's emotions on the Exposed site. I'll leave it to you to read that, rather than repeating that sort of information here.

For weeks, I kept on thinking, if Okada's teachings are nonsense (which I think they are), what on earth made us accept all those unprovable notions about how much bad karma we have?

Then.....[drum-roll].....the penny finally dropped. What evidence do we have that reincarnation and karma even exist?!?

Of course, they might exist. I really don't know. But after being led a merry dance by believing, once upon a time, that Okada knew truths about the unseen world, I'm not about to believe anyone who insists that they know whether or not karma and reincarnation are true. I'd rather be left wondering.