Wise Words
Laws Of Memory : Part 18 : Law Of Action - 1
Tarun Pradhaan
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# Laws of Memory Part 18 Welcome to Pure Experiences. This is a series on Laws of Memory. Today we are going to talk about a very well-known and very important law of the memory. It is the Law of Action, also called the Law of Karma or the Law of Cause and Effect. ## 15 - Law of Action In simple words, it means actions have consequences. This is actually a very accurate definition. It means anything that happens in memory is followed by more events. There is no occasion in the memory where an action happened, something appeared and disappeared completely without causing secondary effects. That sudden, abrupt change is impossible. That's what this law is saying. Now, it has many interpretations. Why is it called karma? Why do we say it is getting stored? Why it is divided into two categories of cause and effect? What is cause? What is effect? And all these terminologies are confusing, so we'll try to explain the basics first. And since this is a very big subject, law of action, probably two or three books can be written easily on this one law alone, so we'll try to be very short. Why it's called karma? This is a Sanskrit word which comes from *kar*, which means arms or hands. So literally it means whatever our hands or arms do, whatever change they produce, because yes, that is very familiar to us. If you want to do something, we want to change something, we use our hands. So whenever something is changed in the memory, it can be called an action. The definition of the word action is a change. The memory is disturbed, the structure changes. According to our model of memory and vibrations, action means this. And in ordinary language, you can say doing something. Doing something always causes a change. The words cause and effect are actually not pointing to anything specific in the memory. These are concepts that are created by humans. The event, the action, previous to the current action will be called cause. And the following action or the consequence will be called an effect. But the law of action says that every action has a consequence, so the effect has further effects. The effect then becomes a cause and produces effects, more consequences. So it is synonym for action-consequence, cause and effect. But yes, there are many interpretations of the word cause. It is seen as a reason for the following effect. It is seen as a necessary condition for the consequence or the effect to happen, which is logical. If there is no first action, you cannot imagine the second action. There will be always a question: What produced the second action? What caused it? The mind, the intellect will ask. Although there is no cause and effect. The action does not produce consequence. The action does not have any kind of mechanism to produce consequence. We can only say actions have consequence. That is more accurate. But yes, human intellect divides it into cause and effect, doing and the done, karma and its fruit, which is good for practical reasons. ## Misunderstandings There are more misunderstandings about the law of action. The most common one is that if you do a bad action, it will produce bad consequence. And similarly, if the action is good, it will produce good consequence. And this is simply misunderstanding. The law of action never says this. The law of action does not define good action and bad action. It also does not define the right action, wrong action. It simply says, if you change something, the change will not stop at one place, at that place. It will continue happening, consequences will follow. That's all it says. In the memory, no action is good and no action is bad. These are, again, concepts invented by humans for their use. That which is helpful, keeps me happy, keeps me alive, beneficial for me and others will be called good. It is a categorization, that's all. And the reverse will be called bad. And yes, it is completely relative, like we saw when we discussed the law of relativity, law of polarity, and so many laws now, that there is no real good, there is no real bad. So whenever actions happen, the consequences are then categorized based on this idea of good and bad. It is only an idea. What happens is an action happens and then some consequences appear. And if they are according to our desire, whatever we want, it is labeled as good. If not, it is labeled as bad. Which means anything can happen, depending on millions of conditions and parameters. And this categorization is arbitrary. Anybody is free to classify the consequence as anything. One person's good is another's bad. Another's bad is somebody else's good. Sometimes not bad, sometimes not good, not both. We call it a neutral action. So this is a big misunderstanding that if you do something good, you will get something good, always. No, that is not guaranteed. There is no good. So whatever is produced as a result of your action, anybody's action, is always neutral. Then, in retrospect, it is labeled as good or bad. Another misunderstanding is there is a doer of an action. It is very natural to assign a doer, a concept of doer, but it is an invention of humans again. There is no doer in the existence or in the memory. There is no doer at any level of the memory. Even the vibrations are not the doer. They just appear. It is very natural because just like it is defined an action, doing through the hands and so on, that to whom these hands belong will be called doer. If you cooked food, hopefully tasty food, you will be called a doer. And that action will be called a good action. Fruit is dinner, tasty dinner, good food. So: doer, action, fruit. Doer, action, and consequence. So you can see that these misunderstandings, they simply multiply at every level. There is superimposition upon superimposition on the simple event of change that happens. In case of humans, the change is seen as happening through hands or organs of action. Mostly thefor a human being, the organs of actions are muscles. But the concept of doer is extended to others, other things. For example, animals. The dog breaks something in the house, so dog is the doer. Probably dog also has a little bit of sense of doership, because they run away, thinking that somebody will punish me for my doing. Not only that, we assign doer to plants also. This plant produced a sweet fruit, very good job, good action. And we assign the doer or actor to machines also. "My car took me to my office." "This computer made a mistake." "My phone always rings when I'm busy. It does that." "The fan is making noise." So on. Although there is no doer or actor there. These are series of events. But since human intellect works in this way, it tries to assign an actor, an agency to everything, almost. So when we see clouds in the sky, mostly people don't know why they are there, but yes, we need to assign something, some doer to it. Something is imagined. Or somebody with a lot of education will say, "Sun did it. Heat from the sun caused it," something like this. So we always find some doer, actor, or whatever is the cause of that event, that is called doer or actor. We can see the cause, and we call it the doer. But actually there is nothing. You will always find a long sequence of other actions before that action. And the consequence does not stop. It is a misunderstanding that one action will produce one effect, one consequence, and then it stops. "I cooked the food, done. Nothing more will happen after that." But that is not true. There is no finite consequence. There are infinite consequences of any action. What happens is it goes beyond the range of senses or human understanding, and then we say, "Yes, it is done. The job is done. Somebody did it. It was good, it was bad." So that which is infinite sequence of changes is abstracted into something meaningful, just one cause, one action, that's all. That much we can understand. So let us take the same example of cooking. If you try to find a cause of that action, cooking, you ask why question: "Why did somebody cook? Why cooking happened?" And you will always get an answer, most probably. That person was hungry. This is the answer. Hunger caused action of cooking. You can again ask why, try to find the cause of hunger. You will get another answer: He was working since morning. That caused hunger, so on. "Why was he working?" He wanted this, and so on, you see. The original action is never found. It simply goes beyond understanding, or we get tired of asking. But what about the effects? The food is cooked, it does not stop there. The food is served, that is the effect. The food is eaten, it is digested, it goes in the body, and it produces more work. The body acts, and gets hungry again. The consequences do not stop. They become so weak or meaningless that we stop paying attention. We stop asking. And another major misunderstanding is: I can control my actions and I can control the consequences. This is simply wrong. Usually there is no control over actions. They happen because there is a cause, because of the stored impressions in the memory. Just like there is no doer, no actor, there is no controller. Because to control is another action. It can happen. The control can happen, but there is no one who does it. And if it simply happens, that simply means nothing controlled it. It was simply a consequence. And similarly, nobody controls the consequences. They happen. If the systems or the memory structures are very simple, you can predict the consequence easily. But if they are complicated, complex, nobody can predict. And nobody can say that I controlled this consequence. Simple systems are like a ball rolling down the floor, billiard ball. Very easy to control where it's going. But something like a human body or a society or a big company, nobody can control actions there. Nobody knows what will happen. But mostly we can work easily in complex situations also, because out of 10 actions, probably five or six produce desirable fruit, results, hit and trial. When the situation is very complex, nobody knows what will happen, nothing can be controlled. So control is an illusion. Sometimes it is useful, but there is no control over consequences. They follow the law of probability. So in short: no good and bad actions, no doers, no actors, infinite consequences, infinite causes, infinite effects, no control over action or consequences. Law of probability is useful, and somehow life goes on. ## The Nature of Action and Causation So now we'll try to find why it is called a stored action, stored karma. What is storing it? So as defined, action is a change in the memory. It is always changing anyway. Law of impermanence. So nothing new is happening. But our intellect can isolate a specific kind of change. It can recognize some specific changes, set of changes, sequences of changes that is arbitrary. It is called an action. For example, action of cooking is not a single change. You can break it down: cutting, frying, and boiling, and whatever. And there is no real beginning of it. When did it start? When you felt hungry? Or when when you went to the market to buy the vegetables? When you entered the kitchen? Or when you ignited the stove? What was the point of start of that action? It is difficult to define, but you can assume any arbitrary point. It is a continuous change. Things are just changing. Then we draw imaginary boundaries. We call it action. Usually the memory, if not disturbed, will settle into some kind of cyclic or equilibrium state. This is the nature of the memory. It keeps changing, but it tries to achieve some minimal energy and stays there. So in order to produce some other change instead of its usual change, you need to disturb the system. So the action can be called a disturbance in the memory. A good metaphor is the surface of the lake is stationary. If you throw a stone, pebble in it, waves of water are produced. That is the consequence. Throwing the stone is the action. It is a very good metaphor. The surface of the lake was stationary, which means it was in equilibrium. It was the lowest energy, although things were in motion. The water has random motion in it, atoms are spinning, water is evaporating, and so on. It is in state of equilibrium. But somebody disturbed it. That will be called an action. And the waves that were produced is the consequence. It is the change. So usually, even if the change is happening, if it is a state of equilibrium, rest, it is not called action. Or if it is very natural, not that meaningful, not intentional, we do not call it action. For example, wind blowing, it won't be called an action. Sometimes we say the wind is causing the trees to sway, leaves to flutter. Wind is doing it. The actor is wind here. But actually it is a natural event, disturbance in the wind, that's all. It is not called an action because it is not intentional. So anything which is assigned an intention: somebody did it because of this, there is a reason, there is a intent behind it, then it is called an action. This is the convention. You do not call random things actions. We need to find an actor, then we need to find an intention, then it's called an action. So we have somewhat refined our definition here. It is a change, it is a disturbance, but what kind of disturbance? There are so many kinds. So now we narrow it down: intentional change. Only living things have intentions. This is common sense, general knowledge. So yes, the name karma is justified now. So the fruits or consequences are simply echo of that initial action, that's all. The same action echoes in the consequences. This is very important thing to note. In our example of pebble falling in water, the hitting of the pebble on the surface, the surface is pushed down for a split second, and then water jumps back. And the same action then repeats again and again and again, that will be seen as wave, wave on the surface. This is very beautiful example because it gives you so much clarity. So the consequence is nothing, it is simply copy of the action. This is amazing. Although sometimes the actions and consequences are so complex that we cannot recognize this equality. We cannot actually see the action in the consequence, but it's always there. The cause is present in the effect. This is the rule of causation. Many people must be knowing this. There is no separate event called effect. It is simply a modification of the cause, or you can say it is simply cause in another form. A good example of this cause and effect, action-consequence is heating of water. You turn on the stove, the fire burns. You put the water in a pan, water heats up. Cause is the fire. You need to cut somewhere, start of the action. And effect is the hot water. You need to cut the effect also because it is going to continue. What has happened here? The heat in the fire is appearing in heat in the water. That's all has happened. The heat was already present in whatever we called cause, and then the heat is now appearing as an effect, hot water. What has happened is fire is a disturbance. It echoed or it propagated, transferred. The change continued towards water, pan, water, and the same disturbance appears there. And those who know science, they can understand. The disturbance is nothing but vibration of atoms. Fire is simply vibration of atoms. The vibration is so strong that it is emitting light, so that's why fire is luminous, like a candle flame. So that hitting of atoms on the pans is just like hitting of pebble on the water surface. Then the pan also starts vibrating, the vibrations are transferred to pan, and from pan, the vibrations are transferred to water. In ordinary, or you can say language of ignorance, we say now the water is hot. Fire made it hot. Fire is the doer of it. Because I wanted hot water, it is a good action. Suppose you are cooking something, and the water evaporates and food burns, bad action, bad fire, some people will say. Fire has a destructive tendency. We need to control the fire. So human beings, they live in some kind of delusion, but it's okay because it's useful for life. You don't need to know all this tiny scientific and spiritual definitions. And the effect was already present in the cause. Disturbance simply got transferred. And you can do this kind of analysis, contemplation for many cases. It is applicable universally. It is a law, Law of Action. So that's why nothing gets created in this existence. It is only transfer of disturbance. Only the action gets transferred. Something causes something, some effect. Nothing actually changes. Little bit modification, but no fundamental changes. There are no exact rules to specify the cause. So who caused hot water? The answer can be fire. Or the answer can be the person who placed that water on the fire. Or the answer can be the master of that person. Let's say the person is a servant, he is heating water for the master, so the ultimate cause is intention of the master. Otherwise there was no reason for heating the water. So the actual cause is also arbitrary. It is somehow assigned to something. The chain of cause-effect is infinite. You need to assume something somewhere to make any sense of it. So hopefully, what is action, this must be clear to the listeners. These are the keywords: change, disturbance, intention, echo of action. Effect is simply the cause in a modified form, and so on. If you understand this much, you understand action. And now you are in a position to know more than an ordinary person. ## The Mechanisms of Action So yes, for a human being, human perspective, actions happen through body, muscles. There are five organs of actions, but it is simply muscle, muscles, movement of body. So you can add speech into it. Although it is also movement of the mouth and lungs, andbut we treat it specially, because speech is a subtle form of action. It does not move anything in the world. Objects are not moved, nothing gets created, nothing is destroyed. Only air vibrates, that's all. But it is very powerful. It's not a small thing, as we all know. Right words cause right effects, never sure. It is not guaranteed, but we can try. Nobody's in control, you see. The third way to cause any change is thought. This is even minute kind of action, micro-action. Thought is simply movement of memory. You can sense it. You can call it imagination of speaking, thought. It can be imagination of doing. I can think of going somewhere, and then imagination is me walking somewhere, that scene appearing somewhere, that that is seen in the mind's eye. So thought is mixture of all these sensations, irreducibles: speech, vision, action of the body, so on. All can be imagined, and we can label it as thought. So micro-action, the medium action of speech, and the gross action of the body. There are even micro, nano-actions which nobody knows about, so we don't talk about them too much. And they happen even before the thought appears. That can be called a desire. Sometimes it is seen, but mostly the desires are seen in the form of thoughts, emotions, and so on. So yes, we can club emotions into thought, mental action. Speech is in between mental and physical, and actions of the muscles or the body are gross actions, physical actions. So what is beyond desires? There can be more actions. Desires appear as energy of the memory. Now we are getting more abstract. We will never see the energy of the memory, but we'll talk more about desire. This is the primordial action. We do not see anything beyond it, so we assume there is nothing. But there is always infinite chain of movements. That is what is action. So now the important thing: desire appears, we can cut off there as the initial action, cause, and it gets translated down, downloaded into speech, emotion, the body moves, and gross actions happen. But there is a feedback loop. The consequence of the action is sensed by the sense organs. You see what the body did, what was the result, what was the effect. Was it good, bad? You decide it. You hear what the mouth said, and you sense the thought, emotion, whatever. These are all sense organs that are affected by the action. Senses are collecting the effects, they are collecting the echoes of the action, and then they are transferred into knowledge store. They become knowledge. The output of the senses is impressed in the memory, local memory. So what is getting stored here? The whole loop is getting stored here, with a stamp: "I did it." The "I" comes and it it also gets stored there. Yes, similar thing happens if somebody else is the doer. Somebody else acted, our senses picked it, whatever they did through body, whatever they said in speech, and we pick it through senses, and that gets stored, stamped as name of that person, doer. If it is an animal, yes, animal. If it is an object, yes. The memory does not differentiate. We simply assume it, obviously. It's all an illusion. Yes, the funny thing is if the other person is thinking something, that is not transferred. That is not sensed by the gross senses, unless that person tells you what he was thinking, about which there is no guarantee, people lie all the time. So we simply ignore it because we cannot sense it. But what is the truth? What happens actually? Since there is only one memory, the memory has no walls, no breaks, no divisions. The thought also gets transferred to whatever you call as my memory or this memory. We never sense it. We are ignorant about it, but somebody's thoughts already affected, also got stored. This is amazing. Whatever you think, that also gets stored. "I am so hopeless, poor fellow." Yes, it is getting stored. Whatever gets stored determines the next actions, you see. That's why this law is so powerful and so important. That's why you can write many books on it, because it is not simple like Law of Relativity and Law of Hot and Cold and whatever, it's very simple laws. This is multi-dimensional law. ## The Karmic Cycle and Bondage So there comes the spiritual word, karmic cycle. Now, hopefully you understand what is karmic cycle: action, consequence, storage, action again, and repeats, loop. It opens so many doors now. It reveals so many secrets, which ancient people, ancient books, all the gurus keep telling us. But because we don't understand the Law of Action and what is action, we do not understand these teachings, very important teachings. There is a complete path, a spiritual path based on only action. That is called the Path of Action, Karma Yoga. It is so important. So now the secret of storage is revealed to you. The desire came out of storage. Storage means memory. We cannot see from which memory, what, when. Our senses are incapable, human senses. Sometimes we catch the desire. It has already appeared as in the form of thoughts, emotions, speech, and so on. "I want this, I want that." "Let's do this, let's go there." What is this? Expression of desire. It is already expressed, it is already in action. And then the loop happens. Anything goes here, because there is no control, no doer, and there can be any consequence depending on the complexity of the system. And there is a infinite series of effects that happen, but we cut it off somewhere, because we don't understand the infinite series, obviously. Then that is picked up by the senses. Whatever can be picked up by the senses, we come to know that happened. But some things are not picked by the senses, some changes in the non-physical, non-mental memory, and they are not picked by the senses, at least not by our regular senses, abilities of a ordinary person. They do not pick it. But everything then goes back in memory, that is stored in memory. And the memory is not static, like we saw. It is vibration. It is vibration, cannot be stopped. If it stopped, it's not memory, it's not an experience, it's not a change, so it's not vibrating, nothing is vibrating, there's no memory then. So it must be always dynamic, always in motion. Since the memory is in motion, some kind of action is possible, otherwise it was not possible, action was impossible. So our direct experience says it is there. So memory is in motion, and its motion is seen as a desire. Very simple. Sometimes that motion is very strong, and the desire gets expressed. Only the strongest of these movements of memory, energy of the memory appears as a desire. In case there is no strong movement, energy there, it is randomly fluctuating, it is randomly echoing the stored impressions, but nothing gets transferred into action, because the energy is less. But sometimes the energy is more, and then it appears as a desire, thought, action, whatever. This stronger kind of echo of the memory is called intention. That is the spiritual definition of intention. Nobody does it, you should keep this in mind. No doer of intention, no intender. Even the intention is not intentional. It simply happens. Whatever gathers energy becomes intention, and then it goes through the regular cycle, produces action, then again it is impressed back in the memory. So what will happen if you think that, "I am hopeless, I am loser, I am failure"? It is getting stored in the memory somewhere, and these will be echoed randomly. You will not probably sense them, but what if you keep thinking? Same thing. Now it gathers energy. You are pumping energy into it. You are you are pouring petrol into fire. So now the same thing will appear again. Same speech will happen, probably same kind of action will happen. This is amazing. If you think that, "I am confident, I am successful, I am this and that," yes, it is a positive cycle now. This is very simple example. Probably nothing happens by simply thinking, it's very low energy. But there can be strong desires that get converted into bodily action without even thinking. Most of the time, this is what happens. If you are hungry, that is a desire, yes, produced by the activity of the memory. If food is in front of you, you don't need to think, you simply eat. That action is stored in the memory along with a very important idea, that is pleasure, or happiness. Because that need was satisfied, that desire was satisfied, one of its effect is production of reward. That is called pleasure. There are many secondary effects like production of some kind of chemicals in the nervous system or in the body, reward chemicals that make this body feel good, relaxed, happy. That is what is called happiness, actually. The body producing a reward, nervous system producing a reward. That is a side effect of the desire getting fulfilled, and that is also stored in the memory. Similarly for punishment or pain or unhappiness, sadness, suffering. If you ate red chilies by mistake, yes, it will produce punishment. That also gets stored. So what happens is these rewards and punishments, they determine what will happen next. If it is reward, yes, the same cycle will be reinforced. It is like machine learning. If you reinforce certain kind of pattern in the machine, that happens more, that output is produced more, more frequently. Same thing can for in the case of humans. It is a machine. It is learning through reward and punishment. What actions it will do more that produce reward, happiness, pleasure? How does it know that? It gets stored in the memory in form of knowledge, patterns in the memory. And those that are reinforced again and again, they gather energy. We call it energy, it is a concept. It simply means strong vibration, higher amplitude of vibration. Remember, not higher frequency, higher amplitude. It is strong in strength. That becomes intention, and that causes more actions of the similar type. This is the karmic cycle. It is also called bondage, also called karmic bond. Now it must be really clear why it is bondage. Why are you bound by your own actions? It must be obvious now. Because you cannot do anything more than that. That reward, punishment, karmic cycle, storage, everything has frozen into a mechanical gear, wheel, karmic wheel. How many karmic cycles are there? And the answer is: many. I I am hesitating to call it infinite because it's too much, but we can count some important karmic cycles. And you can count 1,000, 2,000, whatever you want, whatever you think is important. And this whole bunch of cycles, they are running this body-mind machine, which you call human being. Not only human, all the animals. These will be called tendencies, because they tend to happen. "Tend" means to pull. These karmic cycles, the bunch of them, thousands of them, they pull the creature into some or other kind of action-consequence loops. This is called the worldly existence, or in Sanskrit we call it samsara, samsaric cycle. Hopefully it is clear now why gurus talk about these things. But they do not mention it so clearly, I've seen. They assume that everybody knows about all these words. My experience is nobody knows all these things. Probably for the first time it is clear for many people. Why why do they say you're trapped in this world? You're bound here? Because of this, Law of Action, this mechanism of the memory. Is it a bad thing? That is you need to decide, you see, subjective decision. It's a personal decision. Because this is what is life. Whatever you call as life is simply these karmic cycles. Defense, growth, reproduction: there's nothing else in life. And whatever other activities or actions this creature does is for these three. These three are simply survival. You can use one word for DGR: survival. All actions are related to survival. This creature cannot do anything else. Whatever it thinks and feels and does, it's all survival, mostly. Therefore it is bound. But we cannot say that survival is bad. We cannot say that this these karmic cycles are bad. In technical or modern language, you can call it programming, this neural network, which is operating this life. It is not bad, it enables life. It is good. So what is bad? Any karmic cycle that produces unwanted effects, mostly it is suffering. The unwanted effect will be called suffering. So any karmic cycle that produces suffering is bad. Not all, some are very good. Some, we call it virtuous cycles, and others are simply vicious cycles. They destroy things, they make the life hell, in simple words. So it is all your doing, your own action. Why are you crying? Nobody is doing it, there is no doer. But these actions happen through this body-mind, and ultimately they they become so solid, concrete. Like if you walk daily on a playground, many people walk daily on a playground on a specific path, that path becomes a road. Grass will not grow there. Same way, if water flows through a specific channel continuously, the channel becomes deeper, broader, it becomes river, stream, roaring stream of water. Same way, whatever we repeat becomes permanent cycle, karmic. And that impression is, we say, is mostly permanent. How permanent? Not much, thankfully, because everything is impermanent. So stop doing it, slowly it is erased. It's very amazing, it's not permanent. ## Evolution and Freedom So we can come out of this cycle, any cycle, simply by manipulating the storage in the memory. And the best way is not to repeat. So what is bad in this whole, but beautiful arrangement that enables life? First, the cycles that are destructive, that cause suffering. Second, repetition. Do not repeat. If you don't repeat too much, you will feel the freedom. You're not bound to do the same thing again and again. That is the definition of freedom. Many people will agree. You will need to do something, but you have a choice there: "I can do this also, I can do that also." There are a hundred more choices. So when that creature is very strongly bound, we call it a habit. And if that habit is destructive, we call it addiction. Now you can take a look, use your direct experience. See that people are mostly bound. Their lives are habitual, run of a mill. They go in the same rut. "Rut" means, yes, same thing. Wherever the wheel goes, it becomes a narrow channel. Now it cannot go anywhere else, like a a train track. They walk on the same track, they go on the same track every day, whole of their life. And many are addicted to one thing or the other, many are addicted to many things. Some don't even know that they are habitual or they are addicted. They don't know all these things. When you get up in the morning, turn on the TV, or start reading the newspaper, you think it is my life. You can ask any spiritual person, they will say it is an addiction, because you are bound to it. One day you don't get that, you suffer. It causes suffering, because the rewards are not there. There are many addictions: substance addiction, food addiction, relationship addiction, entertainment addiction, and so on. Some people are addicted to violence and wars. They cause suffering to others also. So all these karmic cycles, they become bad only when they cause suffering. Otherwise, they are necessary for the life. How did it it all start? You can guess now. It's very easy. The seed of action is the desire. When when somebody says desire is the cause of bondage, now you will understand, probably for the first time. How how desires can cause anything? They are something in the mind, something in the brain. No, this is very powerful thing. Desire is a very powerful event. It is the seed, it is the root cause. So your life totally depends on what you desire. This is like a formula. But the derivation of this formula is whatever I said just now, the detailed explanation that I gave. You can confirm this formula like this: you become that which you desire. So desires are important, and you cannot desire something which is not already impressed in the memory. So these the memory storage is important. So desire is called the primordial action, or the primordial energy. There is no other energy. The rest of the things are simply disturbances going through the systems: body-mind, world, whatever, layers of the memory. Although there is no start of the desire also, because we just defined desire as movement of the memory, so there must be something in the memory to cause the desire. So you can see it is all beginningless and endless. There is no end to desires, like they say. This is truth. But there is no beginning of the desire also. There is a question that people often ask on in spiritual matters: When was my first birth? What caused it? And there is bad news: there is no first birth, nothing caused it. Because you know, birth is an action that happened through a desire. There's no cause of First cause is not present. It is an error to assume a cause. You can call it the chicken and egg situation. So everything is instantly present, you can say, because there is no time. And cause and effects are simply our notions, our ideas. They are imaginary. So it is a wrong question, actually. Everything just is. Sometimes it looks like this. Sometimes it looks like we make a division, we cut somewhere the infinite chain of actions and consequences, and we say, "Okay, this desire caused this thing, and it can be a birth also." So we should not ask, actually. This thing, the cycles of births and deaths is also a karmic cycle. Now you will understand. It is a karmic cycle, one among many thousands and millions, who knows. Birth and death is a karmic cycle. So since it is a cycle, it is never-ending. There is no end to it. Very bad news for people who are trying to end something. It can be changed, this is the good news. You can modify the karmic cycle of births and deaths as per your desire. You see, desire is important, desire is the energy. How will you do that? Because desire is a product of the memory, you will need to change things in the memory. Sanskars must be changed, impressions, tendencies must be changed. If you desire a different kind of birth, because it will never end, you can bias it towards something better. That is called intentional evolution. Only human beings are capable of that. So if you change your actions, you change your impressions and tendencies, and that produces a different kind of desires, that produces a better karmic cycle of death and birth. Birth and death is also called reincarnation. You can push your reincarnation towards something better. Better defined by only you, nobody else. There is nothing good, nothing bad. You choose it. You can go down if you want, nobody is stopping you. So many answers were revealed, but we have discussed only half of the subject of Law of Action. So I want to continue the topic of actions in the next episode. It is becoming very lengthy, so we'll stop here today. We'll take a break and continue on this same law in the next episode. Thank you for listening to Pure Experiences. --- This article is a formatted transcript of a video in the series of videos on my YouTube channel **Pure Experiences**. Laws of Memory Video Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWKBCXU2oaNU