No.6: Karma and The Big Picture

Here Sundari is explaining that not even the sages can explain karma (the reason for why things happen), and that we can never see the Big Picture for the simple reason that it's impossible to look at something from the outside if your in it. She also calls maya "the hypnosis of duality"--a very apt definition. Maya is that which puts us under the spell and keeps us entrenched in samsara.

See if you can follow the logic (comments in brackets):

"Nobody can interfere with anyone else’s karma [merit or demerit gained through actions] and does so at their own peril. We can help others only if it is in keeping with dharma [universal laws], theirs and our own. To do the dharma [personal dharma] of another is fraught with danger, as Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Karma is impossible to understand from the jiva’s [individual] perspective because the individual can only look at what takes place in the apparent reality from within the framework of the apparent reality. This perspective will always be limited. The apparent reality will always be limited. We cannot see the Big Picture, only Isvara [God as the intelligence principle] can. And only Isvara takes care of the needs of the Total. The only solution to the suffering duality causes is to ‘step out of Maya’(the hypnosis of duality) and see it from the non-dual point of view of Consciousness."

—Sundari Swartz