Similarly, on the negative side, refusing education to women is a (collective) negative action, which too will bring consequences especially for those who act them out. So I am not attributing these things to karma – karma works both ways: it is an action as well as the social and spiritual reaction that automatically follows, whether slowly or quickly.

Culture is part of the law of karma. Culture is the collective action (in thought, word, feeling and literal action) of groups of people. These actions bring about results.

ENQ. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL karma.

THEO. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life.

We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law, Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World?

The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

Blavatsky explains that the fundamental reason for the reality of group karma is that we are fundamentally not separate as individuals as we think we are.

ENQ. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

THEO. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world’s life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief.

It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as “separateness”; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive. (Key to Theosophy by Blavatsky, p202-3)