Guilt is a reflection of the conscience. It is not a complicated thing, and there is only one way to be rid of it.

Every action is recorded. Every deed has a consequence. Whatever is done is equally and oppositely redone. This is the Law of Karma, or, for Newton, a Law of Physics. Karma and Physics are the same thing.

The conscience is the recording device. Whatever is done shows up in the conscience.

If one is a person, one has a conscience. It is part of the equipment that comprises being a person. There is no personality which does not have a conscience that is constantly recording everything that personality does.

Things which are not a personality do not have a conscience. Nor do they cause harm. In this class are animals, plants and rocks. That these things are not a personality does not mean, however, that these things are not alive. All of them are alive, very much so. There are no inanimate objects.

Only personalities cause harm. And only personalities are aware that they cause harm, through the conscience, as the attribution of guilt.

Guilt is the conscience saying that one has done something that has harmed someone or something, another personality or a thing, an [supposedly] inanimate object.

While not everything is a personality, everything is alive and registers harm done to it in the conscience of the personality doing the harm.

This is why the Prayers of the Church include animals, plants and rocks. These things, while not personalities, are living beings cared for by God just as much as a personality is. They can be harmed, and, harm done to them registers as guilt in the harming personality.

When we harm someone or something we steal from them or it. We steal their peace, their happiness, their equanimity, their property, their health, their livelihood, their family, their self-esteem, their opportunities -- something. The point is, harm is stealing something from some one or some thing.

Now, stealing is gorging on dung.

When we feel guilty, therefore, it is because we are holding stolen goods. And when we feel dirty along with feeling guilty, it is because we are tasting what we have ingested.

There is only one way to be rid of guilt, and that is, to make full restitution. Catharsis eliminates some things, but never guilt. Only restitution cancels guilt.

The enormity of psychiatrists and psychologists is seen in their claiming that guilt can be off-loaded in some way not involving restitution. The enormity of the sæcular clergy's dogma of surrogate atonement -- 'Christ died for your sins,' they say. -- also, should be visible.

Each person has to atone for their own sins, all of them. There is no other that can do it for one. Since all sin is, essentially, causing harm, atonement always involves restitution of some kind or another. And it always has to be gone through.

Of course, people do not like to make restitution. They have to give up the thing they stole, and they have to make a public spectacle of themselves. They have to admit, in public, that they stole. So making restitution is not an easy thing to do. It is destroys ego. And in fact, only a very great soul can make restitution and be rid of guilt -- because the process is so humiliating.

And of course, that's the point.

Humility is the essence of spirituality.

Living within one's means is preferable to stealing. If this fact cannot be seen before guilt has to be atoned, it certainly will be seen afterwards!

There are two ways that guilt is incurred, or, that theft which produces guilt occurs. I mention this because the atoning that must be done varies to an extent by the way in which the guilt was incurred.

One way guilt is incurred is this: a person is in bad company and does something chargeable on account of the company. This happens frequently and is the reason mothers tell their children not to associate with so and so. Bad company is, in fact, the supreme danger a personality faces in life.

The other way guilt is incurred is this: a person has improper impulses in their own heart and employs these to do something chargeable.

All guilt must be atoned. Atonement is making full restitution of whatever it was that one stole from someone or something. Only full, public, in-kind restitution will cancel guilt. An 'I'm sorry' won't do it. One has to return the exact thing that was stolen. In fact, it is best to return better than one took.

Forgiveness, too, is useless -- at least for the one harming. Forgiveness is for the forgiver, not the forgivee. It helps the one forgiving but not the one being forgiven. Only full, public, in-kind restitution by the offender helps the offender.

The time to make atonement for guilt is now, always now, because one does not know the future and nothing, really, is so important as being clean at the moment of death. Being clean means having an absolutely quiet conscience.

The purpose of life is an auspicious death.

So, one should be always ready for death

by having a clean conscience.

If guilt is not atoned in this career, one gets another to make it good. For the thing that follows one at death is the record of one's deeds -- all of them. And if there are any in the record that are not pure, one goes back to the reformatory -- this earthly career -- for further remediation.

That's the Law of Karma. God does not accept damaged goods. Only the pure in heart, the truly clean, can be near Him in Bliss.

Adwaitha Hermitage
March 24, 1993