Can an Avatar take away a person's Karma?

The Law of Karma states quite comprehensively: "As you sow, so you reap, and you cannot reap what you have not already sown". If I sow wheat, I cannot reap rice, and if I am reaping rice, it means that I could not have previously sown wheat.

With every thought, word and deed, we send out forms into Creation, which return to us at their time of maturation or harvest as either reward or suffering, blessing or punishment according to the Natural Laws of development. Any exception to this would imply an imperfection in God's Will, which lies in His Eternal Laws - and since God is Perfect, an exception is completely out of the question.

Therefore, if a person had an ailment and went to a gifted healer, and successfully received healing, this does not mean that the healer has "taken away" the ailment. One who is gifted with the ability to heal can only catalyse the sickness, accelerating the symptoms tenfold, perhaps even thousandfold, such that the disease "miraculously" vanishes. This is possible even in handicaps like blindness, deafness and limb-deformities, so long as the natural mechanisms are already in place for the healing to work.

However, what is fundamental for the healing is not really the ability of the healer, but the inner change in the recipient! He must have recognised his former wrong-doings in some form (even if it comes from a past earth-life) and must be willing to change his ways. This builds the spiritual soil within him through which the Law of Karma can be hastened, speeded up several times over so that he atones for the karma much more quickly than he would have before. Nothing else is possible, otherwise aribtrary actions that do not swing in the Divine Justice of God could take place.

Hence, not even an Avatar or Son of God can take away one's karma, or bear it on one's behalf. Such a thing is akin to the Christian view that Jesus has taken away all our sins through His death on the Cross and that we need only believe in His Identity as well as in His Death and Resurrection to avail ourselves of this. Such a belief automatically implies that one can reap where one has not sown, which would be an injustice according to God's Laws. According to this belief, man can do whatever he likes, and in the end, in his last dying moments, turn to Jesus and receive Eternal Salvation. There is no provision to atone for one's deeds.

The case is not different with many of India's holymen and self-proclaimed Avatars, some of whom have claimed the ability to take away or dissolve karma. These people only delude their followers into a false belief, which leads them only downwards. Spiritual ascent and development become very difficult, if not impossible, under such conditions.