26. Choose Your Rebirth- Consciously!

The Hindu philosophy, rightly called sanātana dharma, is a beautiful system which never conditions. When we meet a teacher who is enlightened through the practice of this philosophy, and if we taken them as our Master we will experience a freedom, a new kind of freedom we never knew before.

The Master will give us a technique and initiate us into meditation. When this happens, when we accept the Master and technique in our lives, we become reborn. The Sanskrit word for this event is Dvija- the man who decides to take birth or gives birth to himself.Our next question will be how can a man be reborn when he is alive? The truth is until that point in our lives we have neither been alive nor living consciously. When we are born, when we enter this body, only the seed, the potentiality of life is given to us, never life itself. When we decide to live, and that means to live consciously, only then we are born, reborn.

This is how it happens. Once the Gayatri mantra is given to us, if the Gayatri mantra is initiated for us, we become dvija or reborn. Being initiated into the secret of Gayatri does not make us religious. That is the beauty of Sanatana Dharma.

Understand the difference between baptism and initiation. In most religions, baptism is conditioning. Sanatana dharma is a beautiful system which never conditions. The Gayatri mantra says, let me meditate on consciousness which awakens my intelligence. Let that intelligence help me to meditate on it. That is all. Gayatri has no idea of any form, any Devi, any idea. We are not baptized, We are initiated.

Life is constantly changing and continuously evolving. If we are baptized, we are given a set of rules, concepts and beliefs. As we go through our life, we realize that we don't have either the intelligence or the deep understanding of the problem. We become stuck at some point or other. If we are given the consciousness, the understanding of the power of existence, then it is like someone handed us a torch. With the torch we can see

clearly and walk through our life all by ourselves. The initiation is the torch.

Gayatri does not have a religion. It is a decision to live consciously. The emphasis on consciousness is given to us. We can experience and understand the necessity of what consciousness actually means.