Within the Vaiśeṣika system, atomistic realism and karma are woven together through the notion of an unseen causal potency, often termed adṛṣṭa. Reality is understood as composed of eternal, indivisible atoms (paramāṇu) of earth, water, fire, and air, which combine and separate according to fixed laws. These atoms themselves are unchanging in their essence, yet their configurations are in constant flux. The observable world—bodies, objects, and environments—arises from these shifting atomic arrangements. This provides a rigorously realist and law-governed framework for understanding physical existence.

Karma enters this picture as the moral dimension that shapes how those atomic laws play out for each individual soul (ātman). Actions of merit and demerit generate adṛṣṭa, an invisible force or potency that adheres to the soul and persists across lifetimes. This adṛṣṭa does not violate natural law; rather, it operates as a subtle causal factor within it, influencing the motion, aggregation, and disaggregation of atoms. Through this influence, karma determines the specific bodies, circumstances, and capacities that arise for each being.

The relationship between moral action and material form is thus conceived as precise and orderly, not arbitrary. The particular species, form, health, and sensory capacities of a body are traced back to past karma operating through adṛṣṭa on the atomic level. Pleasure and pain are not dismissed as illusory; they are grounded in real contact between the soul, mind, senses, and atomic bodies and objects, all configured in accordance with karmic deserts. In this way, the moral history of a soul is inscribed into the very structure of its embodied existence.

On a larger scale, the same linkage between atoms and karma extends to the cycles of creation and dissolution. The emergence and breakdown of worlds are explained through the combination and dispersal of atoms, guided by the accumulated adṛṣṭa of countless beings. Karma thus functions as a cosmic ordering principle, ensuring that the unfolding of the material universe remains consonant with the moral order. Atomistic realism supplies the ontological building blocks, while karma, through adṛṣṭa, provides the subtle script according to which those blocks are assembled into the tapestry of lived experience.