THE KARMIC ADDICTION

May 3, 2026

Parneet Sachdev
Chairman of Real Estate Regulatory Authority and a leading author

A friend of mine, a doctor, whose once abundant practice is now a pale shadow, stood at the edge of his own life and asked a question that has haunted humanity for centuries. Is my life shaped by forces beyond me, or does something within me hold the reins?

He asked in despair. His life stood at the very precipice of fading. Across the world, people grapple with illness, instability, and disorder in myriad forms. From this arises a pervasive conviction. That we are victims of circumstance over which we have no control. Such a belief makes us karmic addicts instead of masters of our destinies.

What makes this outlook particularly insidious is how it permeates our very being.
“A fatalistic belief is contagious, and when man submits to its influence, believing that the circumstances around him are stronger than the power within him, that man is defeated before the race is run.”
-Raymond Holliwell

THE SCIENCE OF WINNING

Yet history reveals a different story. When societies have fallen into the acceptance of their own defeat, it has almost always been regarded as reason. The circumstances were undeniable, the evidence overwhelming, and the conclusion shared by all. And yet, history does not belong entirely to the defeated majority.

History is the story of individuals who refused to accept the finality of circumstance. From the earliest anthropological records to modern scientific inquiry, one fact emerges with stubborn clarity:

Man is not merely shaped by conditions,
he is a participant in shaping them.
The scientist approaches the same questions of human life from a different vantage point and tells us plainly that the mind is the creative cause of everything that takes place in a man’s life.
Personal circumstances do not arise by chance; they are the results of action. Action does not arise without reason; it is born of ideas. And ideas do not emerge from nothing; they begin as images, intentions, and plans formed first within the mind.
These ideas are living forces, causes that produce effects faithfully aligned with their own nature, for good or ill. The scientist goes further still, revealing that such ideas, once formed with clarity and conviction, release an energy that shapes the very course of a life.
To train the mind, therefore, is not a philosophical luxury; it is a practical necessity. To employ thought constructively is to wield the most consequential power available to a human being.

THE POWER OF IDEAS

There is a marvellous inner world that exists within each one of us, and the revelation of such a world enables us to do, to attain, and to achieve anything we desire within the bounds or limits of Nature. No wonder, William Shakespeare writes in Julius Ceaser
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
but in ourselves that we are underlings.”

Each one of us has demons inside. Psychology has shown us how irrational fears, traumas, and even those inherited from previous lives tend to shape the very course of our lives. Going back to Shakespeare, we see Hamlet wrestling with his reluctant, indecisive soul. Macbeth is being pulled and driven by his ambition. It is this inner theme of thought, the very undercurrent that shapes each life. Yet the truth is

“You are the master of your circumstance; call forth your power, initiative, and ingenuity, and be the master. Fate is in your hands, determine it.”

The logic is inescapable. If all conditions are the product of our actions, and all actions are the fruit of our ideas, then it is our ideas and our ideas alone that ultimately determine the character of our daily lives.

What then is an idea?

An idea is a thought, or a constellation of thoughts, crystallised into an image within the mind. It is a mental picture, not necessarily visual (because people with Aphantasia also create!), precise and purposeful. And behind every great achievement, every landmark invention, every structure, there was first such an idea, formed in silence, within the mind of its creator, long before it assumed any visible form in the world.

The Bible says

“The Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” Gen. 2:4-5

The mental image/ idea preceded the physical reality. This has been the creative order from the very beginning.

A person constructs within before anything manifests without.

STUDIES AND PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY

Dr Guang Yue of the Cleveland Clinic found that participants who rehearsed physical exercise entirely within the mind, without moving a single muscle, achieved a thirty-five per cent increase in muscular strength. The body had responded to thought as though it were action.

The science of psychoneuroimmunology has since established the precise biological pathways through which this occurs, demonstrating that sustained patterns of fearful or anxious thought directly suppress immune function, disrupt hormonal balance, and accelerate cellular ageing.
What a man habitually imagines, he gradually becomes
not as poetry, but as physiology.

Perhaps no study illustrates this more vividly than the work of psychologist Ellen Langer of Harvard University. Elderly men were immersed in an environment faithfully reconstructed to reflect their lives as they had been two decades prior. Surprisingly, they exhibited measurable improvements in posture, strength, memory, and even vision within days. The mind had altered their biology.
In the last few decades, neuroscience has revealed a startling truth about the human brain. It is not a static organ. It is plastic. It rewires itself based on patterns of thought and behaviour. What we repeatedly think, we literally become. Neural pathways strengthen with use, weaken with neglect.

What is most remarkable and most sobering is that the very same faculty of mind which enables the engineer to conceive a great bridge is the identical faculty that can be directed toward the overcoming of disease, despair, and limitation. The method is the same. The power is the same. The only difference lies in the direction in which a man chooses to point it.
Raymond Holliwell says that he knew a woman surrounded by wealth and beauty who constantly expressed a desire for a smaller, simpler existence.

Over time, through a series of events, her life contracted exactly in that direction. One may dismiss this as a coincidence. But behavioural science would call it pattern convergence.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As we assimilate in mind these ideas or mental pictures, we, knowingly or unknowingly, exercise a power to produce them. This creative process is summarised in a sentence found in Proverbs.

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

The difficulty, however, lies not in understanding this principle, but in practicing it. For the mind is not easily disciplined. It gravitates toward habit. It resists change.

Neuroscience again provides clarity. Changing thought patterns is not an act of will alone. It is a process of rewiring. It requires repetition, attention, and time. It is, in essence, training the mind to operate differently. Just as muscles strengthen with use, so do patterns of thought.

People fix their gaze upon a heaven to be earned at some distant point in time, failing to recognise that heaven is not a destination to be reached; it is a condition of mind, a state of being, that is as available in this present moment as it shall ever be hereafter. The future does not bestow upon the unprepared what the present has already offered and been refused.
Everyone is governed by the Law, whether he knows it or not. When we are unaware, we think it is God’s fault or will. God is a convenient scapegoat for unanswered prayers.

THE HOW OF CRAFTING YOUR IDEAS

There is a scientific way of thinking about everything, a true and a right way. The question is not whether we are thinking, but what we are thinking. All things and events, all experiences and conditions of life, are results. The development of the mind, therefore, becomes central.

n A narrow mind, bound by prejudice, jealousy and limitation, produces limited outcomes.

n A broader mind, wide and tolerant views, wholesome convictions, and expanding conceptions are signs of growth. These create possibilities.

The basic thought stream, must change.

Therefore, we need to introspect every day. Where is it that I am overcome by jealousy? Where do I feel limitation?

As we affirm daily that ‘My mind is now one with the eternal thought’, slowly, the landscape of our inner world will change. The Universal Mind’s intention is for the universal good; therefore, our intention must take the same direction. When individual intention aligns with larger principles of growth, and gives up jealousy, limitation etc, growth happens.
Life is something to be crafted through thought, intention, and disciplined engagement with the laws that govern life. This leaves no
room for passive existence.

All failures in life are due to taking sides with the finite around us. All success in life is due to taking sides with the Law within us. You, who are seeking love, fortune, happiness and success, must understand that no one can give it to you; you must create it within yourself.

When a circumstance arises, we are not to submit to it in servitude, but we are to surmount it, to overcome and master it, by exercising the creative law of thinking, and thus grow in wisdom and power. And in that, perhaps, lies the quiet dignity of human life.