11-10-2006, 05:45 AM
I think Annie Besant is also saying that it is individual person's behavior that determines a group's karma, but she doesn't outrightly says it.
In light of this I wish to come back to my phonon analogy.
In quantum mechanics you can get the so called "collective excitations" where due to coherence a collection of individual particles starts to behave like a single particle. Superfluidity, superconductivity, bose-condensaton etc are some examples.
A phonon is quantized lattice vibration. Any crystalline solid can be thought of as a lattice. Lattice is made of all the atoms and is held together by the electromagnetic forces between the protons and electrons. Vibrations in the lattice are basically vibrations of individual nucleii. But when taken together these vibrations form the phonons or the sound-waves within the solid. Phonons behave like particles and interact with electrons by scattering off them just like photons do. In studying some aspects of a solid's behavior it is easier to use the idea of phonons, although everything about a phonon can be derived by a collective behavior of all the potons and electrons in the solid.
This is how I think of karma of a grouping. A grouping is formed by certain coherence amongst its members creating some collective behavior. That collective behaviour can be understood as a behavior of a collective individual for some purposes. Although everything about that collective individual is still explainable by the behaviour of its individual constituents.
It is possible to talk of 'karta-ness' and 'karma', 'phala' etc for a grouping treating the whole grouping as an individual, just as a phonon can be talked of a particle in its own right. But fundamentally, the behavior of human individuals can explain everything about the grouping including its karma.
In light of this I wish to come back to my phonon analogy.
In quantum mechanics you can get the so called "collective excitations" where due to coherence a collection of individual particles starts to behave like a single particle. Superfluidity, superconductivity, bose-condensaton etc are some examples.
A phonon is quantized lattice vibration. Any crystalline solid can be thought of as a lattice. Lattice is made of all the atoms and is held together by the electromagnetic forces between the protons and electrons. Vibrations in the lattice are basically vibrations of individual nucleii. But when taken together these vibrations form the phonons or the sound-waves within the solid. Phonons behave like particles and interact with electrons by scattering off them just like photons do. In studying some aspects of a solid's behavior it is easier to use the idea of phonons, although everything about a phonon can be derived by a collective behavior of all the potons and electrons in the solid.
This is how I think of karma of a grouping. A grouping is formed by certain coherence amongst its members creating some collective behavior. That collective behaviour can be understood as a behavior of a collective individual for some purposes. Although everything about that collective individual is still explainable by the behaviour of its individual constituents.
It is possible to talk of 'karta-ness' and 'karma', 'phala' etc for a grouping treating the whole grouping as an individual, just as a phonon can be talked of a particle in its own right. But fundamentally, the behavior of human individuals can explain everything about the grouping including its karma.