The cause and effect is reality, only on the base of false self.

Discussion

Lochan  says

Karma is the universal principle of cause and effect. Our actions,both good and bad, come back to us in the future,helping us to learn from life's lessons and become better people.

Karma is basically energy. I throw energy out through thoughts,words and deeds - mano vaakkaya karamaas, and it comes back to me in time,through other people. Karma is our best teacher , for we must always face the consequences of our actions and thus improve and refine our behavior, or suffer if we do not. The bondage of this karma or karmabandham is the root for repeated births and deaths and experiencing the pleasures and pains - sukhadukhaalu.Beyond this bondage is salvation.

Bhagavadgita suggests that the moment the fire of knowledge -jnaagnihi manifests itself the whole stock of sanchita karmas in the form of latencies disappear and one is above experiencing prarabhdha and aagami.

Understanding the way the karma works, we seek to live a good and virtuous life through right thought, right speech and right action and this is called dharma. We must also be very careful about our thoughts, because thought creates, and thoughts make karmas - good, bad and mixed.

I request you to listen to my humble understanding of Law of Karma.

Pranamas

Karma is universal principle only on the base of false self [ego], within the illusion. The cause and effect is reality, only on the base of false self.  The fact is formless  Atman is the true self. Atman is in the form of consciousness. Consciousness is cause of the illusory universe and it itself  is uncaused. 

  Buddhism says, there is nothing - nonentity. Advaita says there is some reality, even though things are not what they appear to be. If one knows the truth, he will know there is neither cause nor effect. Advaita is to know, what is it that is Real, and base the reasoning on that real.

When reasoning is done on true base, one has the yardstick to know what is truth, and what is untruth, and he will be able to reject the unreal or untruth.  Therefore one has to make sure whether the true self is body  or ego or true self is soul or Atman. If one accepts the self is body, then as you say the karma is universal principal. If one accepts the soul as self, then the physical body, ego, world and whatever one has seen, known and believed and experienced, as a person becomes unreal, on the standpoint of the soul as self.  By accepting karma theory, one is accepting the unreal, as real, and permanently remains in the clutches of duality, thinking the cycle of birth, life and death as reality.  Therefore, to overcome the illusory cycle of birth, life and death, one has to know the fact that, the body or ego  is not the self, but the formless soul is the true self.

Sage Sri, Sankara in Aparokshanubhuti:-

   88. When the whole universe, movable and immovable, is known to be Atman, and thus the existence of everything else is negated, where is then any room to say that the body is Atman?

  89. O enlightened one; pass your time always contemplating on Atman while you are experiencing all the results of Prarabdha; for it ill becomes you to feel distressed.

90. The theory one hears of from the scripture, that Prarabdha does not lose its hold upon one even after the origination of the knowledge of Atman, is now being refuted.

91. After the origination of the knowledge of Reality, Prarabdha verily ceases to exist, inasmuch as the body and the like become non-existent; just as a dream does not exist on waking.

92. That Karma which is done in a previous life is known as Prarabdha (which produces the present life). But such Karma cannot take the place of Prarabdha (for a man of knowledge), as he has no other birth (being free from ego).

93. Just as the body in a dream is superimposed (and therefore illusory), so is also this body. How could there be any birth of the superimposed (body), and in the absence of birth (of the body) where is the room for that (i.e., Prarabdha) at all?

94. The Vedanta texts declare ignorance to be verily the material (cause) of the phenomenal world just as earth is of a jar. That (ignorance) being destroyed, where can the universe subsist?

 95. Just as a person out of confusion perceives only the snake leaving aside the rope, so does an ignorant person see only the phenomenal world without knowing the reality?

    96. The real nature of the rope being known, the appearance of the snake no longer persists; so the substratum being known, the phenomenal world disappears completely.

     97. The body also being within the phenomenal world (and therefore unreal), how could Prarabdha exist? It is, therefore, for the understanding of the ignorant alone that the Shruti speaks of Prarabdha.

     98. “And all the actions of a man perish when he realizes that (Atman) which is both the higher and the lower”. Here the clear use of the plural by the Shruti is to negate Prarabdha as well.

   99. If the ignorant still arbitrarily maintain this, they will not only involve themselves into two absurdities but will also run the risk of forgoing the Vedantic conclusion. So one should accept those Shrutis alone from which proceeds true knowledge.

The above proves that the karma is reality only on the base of false self, where one thinks body and the universe as reality. When one becomes aware of the fact that, the true self is formless soul, then the karma becomes part and parcel of illusion.   My point is that, if one accepts the karma theory as reality, he will never be able to come out of the ignorance. And ignorance makes him believe the cycle of birth, life and death or pain and pleasure as reality.  Thus the freedom which one is seeking will remain distant dream. For the one who accepts the birth life and death as reality, Self-knowledge is impossible.

Thus it is necessary for the seeker of truth to know the fact that, the body which is born, lives and dies is not the self. Since he is taking the body to be the self, he is experiencing the duality as reality.