"If you simply say any action is bound to produce some reactions, it is possible to have scientific support for it. But man is hoping for much more. He is asking that a good action inevitably brings a good consequence with it, and the same with a bad action. Now, there are many things implied in this.

"First, What is good?

"Each society defines good according to itself.

"What is good to a Jew is not good to a Jaina; what is good to a Christian is not good to a Confucian. Not only that, what is good in one culture is bad in another culture.

"A law has to be universal. For example, if you heat water to one hundred degrees centigrade, it will evaporate – in Tibet, in Russia, in America, even in Oregon. In Oregon it will be a little puzzled, but all the same at one hundred degrees water will evaporate.

"A law has to be universal if it is a scientific law. If it is a law created by people themselves, by creating a constitution, a legal system, then it is nothing to do with science and nothing to do with existence. Then it is applicable only within the society that creates it. It is arbitrary, artificial. You can change it – and laws do go on changing. Something that was legal yesterday is illegal today; what is illegal today, tomorrow may become legal. These are man-made laws.

"Certainly the law of karma is neither a scientific law nor part of any legal system. Then what kind of law is it? It is a hope. A man wandering in immense darkness, groping his way, clings to anything that gives a little hope, a little light – because what you observe in life itself is something totally different from the law of karma. A man who is a well-known criminal may succeed and become the president, the prime minister; or vice versa: he was not a criminal before, but when he becomes the president or prime minister of a country he becomes a criminal.

"Lord Acton's famous statement I have thought about from every possible angle, and I have found it always gives some new insight."