Karma: The Inner Feedback System Governing Human Action

Photo by Stefan C.Asafti

What is Karma, really?

In its original sense, karma simply means action.

From a scientific perspective, action is not limited to behavior.
It includes all internal processes that shape behavior:

  • Thought patterns

  • Intentionality

  • Emotional tone

  • Attitudes and beliefs

  • Attention and perception

Every movement in the mind influences the nervous system.
Every human action initiates a feedback response within the organism.

Action and internal consequences

Neuroscience shows that behavior is always followed by an internal physiological and psychological outcome.

When a person acts from:

  • Greed → chronic activation, unease

  • Dishonesty → cognitive load, fragmentation

  • Cruelty → contraction, threat dominance

  • Manipulation → hypervigilance, anxiety

  • Carelessness → reduced sensitivity, dullness

Even when the external outcome looks “successful,”
the internal cost appears as a specific nervous system state.

This is not moral judgment.
It is biological accounting.

Reward and punishment as internal states

What cultures once called “reward” and “punishment” are, in reality, regulatory states of the nervous system.

Aligned action tends to produce:

  • Neural coherence

  • Parasympathetic balance

  • Self-trust and clarity

  • Cognitive ease

  • Psychological lightness

Misaligned action tends to produce:

  • Chronic tension

  • Restlessness

  • Fear-based cognition

  • Self-justification

  • Mental noise

Every human being lives inside an intrinsic feedback loop.
The organism continuously evaluates whether actions support integration or fragmentation.

Where this feedback actually occurs?


Internally.

Sometimes immediately. Sometimes cumulatively.

For example:

  • Acting from honesty
    → reduced internal conflict, stable identity, calm alertness

  • Acting from deception
    → split attention, increased monitoring, anxiety

This is karma expressed in modern terms:
self-regulating intelligence maintaining internal coherence.

A corrupt individual may appear successful externally. Internally: restless, guarded, unstable.

An honest individual may struggle externally. Internally: grounded, coherent, free.

Freedom as self-regulation

Freedom is not doing whatever you want.
Freedom is the capacity to act without internal contradiction.

Neuroscience calls this integration.
Subjectively, it feels like lightness, clarity, and steadiness.

This is why a well-regulated life becomes easier over time.

Awareness interrupts automatic karma

Most behavior is automatic — driven by conditioned neural pathways.

Awareness introduces choice.

When an impulse arises and you see it clearly:

  • Prefrontal regulation increases

  • Limbic reactivity decreases

  • Old patterns lose authority

You may let the impulse pass, or respond in a healthier way. No residue is stored. This is liberation at the nervous system level.

Practical application: dissolving karma in daily life

When a trigger appears:

  • Stay present

  • Observe without judgment

  • Allow insight to emerge

Do not blame. Do not rationalize. Do not dramatize discomfort.

Instead:

  • Observe

  • Act based on clear knowing

    This:

  • Strengthens regulatory capacity

  • Reinforces coherent neural patterns

Long-term neurological effects

As stored reactive patterns dissolve:

  • Baseline fear decreases

  • Nervous system stability increases

  • Sense of safety becomes intrinsic

  • Reactivity diminishes

  • Presence becomes the default state

At this stage, behavior becomes self-correcting. You are no longer governed by impulses.
You are governed by clarity.

A critical implication

Because karma operates internally,
there is no need to focus on correcting other people’s “bad” actions.

Trying to regulate others is often a sign of dysregulation in oneself.

The intelligent focus is:

  • Self-regulation

  • Ethical coherence

  • Right action based on clear seeing

When your internal system is aligned, your behavior changes.
Your environment responds accordingly. Life adjusts itself as the whole system.

In summary

  • Unconscious reaction
    → neural residue
    → future reactivity

  • Clear seeing and regulated response
    → no residue
    → freedom

This is karma — not as belief, but as biology.

Linh Nguyen