Recently a famous LA basketball player, Kobe Bryant, died in a sudden helicopter crash. He died with 8 others, including his 13 year old daughter. Looking online, it seems the incident has shocked many because it was so sudden. I heard Yogananda say once that tech (especially vehicles) has its own karma in a way; is it possible that he died not just of his own karma, but that of the 'copter? Can people who don’t have the specific karma to die, still die in a 'group setting' like that?
—Rush, USA
Hi Rush,
Yes, I have read about it. It really seems tragic. But is it? For those remaining behind, yes, but for those who have left, it might not be at all. Often death is a release. Usually it comes because “the sands of karma have run out.”
I have never heard that Yogananda said that vehicles have their own karma, or that such karma might kill people who do not have that karma. Please tell me where you have read it — one never stops learning.
What I do know is that he taught about mass karma: “In an air crash, for example, it needn’t be that all who died in it had the karma to do so. The karma of the majority in that disaster may simply have been stronger than that of the minority to live. Those, however, with strong enough karma to live would be saved — either during the crash itself, or from taking that flight in the first place.” (From The Essence Of Self-Realization)
So Kobe Bryant and his daughter either had the karma to die, or too weak a karma to live. At any rate, they are not dead at all: they are happily cruising through higher worlds. After some time they will have forgotten their life here on earth. But of course his wife and other children won’t forget him.
That too, only seems tragic, but it isn’t. These things never come to crush us but always to teach us. His family and friends will all learn necessary lessons from it, if they don’t allow themselves to plunge into a lifelong bitterness.
May his soul feel peace,
Jayadev
