The concept of karma as it applies to group activity helped to fill another gap in my understanding. I had struggled all my life to reconcile my sense of right and wrong. With human impulses to make war and perpetrate other negative group activities of all descriptions. Of course, this concept, in turn, creates another dilemma: what about the individual who does not agree with the decision of a group's leaders but who is helpless to do anything about it? How does the individual cope with such a conflict? If I were called upon to formulate an answer now I would say that the Guardian Angel of the individual knows what is in the person's heart -- and if the person knows about intended wrongdoing and objects to it, that person will not share the guilt of the group that accumulates the bad karma resulting from the wrongful action. This is how my Teacher described the responsibility of groups:
A group can earn good or negative karma by its actions taken with the consent of the group. The government of a nation is considered to represent the will of the people. The group will reap what it sows in the same way that an individual soul does. Therefore, if a government initiates an aggressive action upon another group of people, that aggressive group will incur retribution to the same degree. This is what the Bible saying, "an eye for an eye," really means. It does not mean that people should take it upon themselves to get revenge for others' wrongdoing. It means that according to the law of balance the concept of retribution will be activated by events as they unfold.
When nations take it upon themselves to revenge acts of war they only create more negative karma to be compensated for. Thus, when your government dropped the atomic bombs, even though the Japanese had wronged your people, so much negativity was created that your government created much more bad karma to be compensated for. Your government thus had much to answer for, and the suffering in the Korean War and Vietnam War was partly due to the need to balance the damage done by your bombing of Germany and Japan. Thus, negativity causes negativity and much suffering results to innocent people.
