The Present Alone🔗

Matters!

Q: Master, please be very clear (Oh! here we are getting instructions first!). Are Krishna and Christ the same? Both were born in confined places. Krishna was born in Mathura; Christ in a place called Mathiria. Both were shepherds and so on. If so, please explain.

A historical controversy! I do not know the historical part because I am not a historian! I can only say that spiritually they are one and the same. I can only say in terms of spirituality, not historically. As I do not know history, I cannot make a controversial statement. In the conscious level, they are the same.

There are stories that the idea of Christ is built around the Bhagavatam, the famous book of Hindu mythology. We do not know the truth behind these stories. You may have heard of this beautiful book, The Da Vinci Code. If any of you have read this book, you will find it is controversial but at the same time solid. The writer is clear about what he says. We are not able to deny it completely. I read it, and honestly, am not able to deny the contents. There are so many things he says which make sense.

There are books written and research done about Christ's time and life after crucifixion, where he was between the age of 7 and 14, etc.

A couple of interesting things I read in the book:

The theory goes that Christ had his training in a Buddhist monastery in Puri. The Sermon on the Mount is an exact replication of a pali sutra which is repeated every morning in that monastery as a prayer. In this way, many research reports keep coming out but the only thing I can say is that at the conscious level, they are both the same.

Recently, there have been documentaries aired in the reputed BBC TV that Christ after crucifixion was taken to Kashmir, where he lived till he was eighty. They even showed the tomb where he was buried. This was based on a lot of researched data.

The fact is that the earliest documentation of the life and death of Christ was made a few centuries after he died. It is known that there was a lot of selection in terms of what was officially accepted by the Christian Church, from the vast material that was available as the historical evidence relating to Jesus.

But as I said, the energy of all enlightened Masters is one and the same. Their consciousness is identical.

Q: Krishna says that the truth is seemingly tangible in the middle and intangible in the beginning and the end. If he is referring to past, present and future, the past is also clear to us. Why is the beginning unclear then?

We arise from energy; we disappear into energy; for a while we live as matter even though we are energy.

Our senses can perceive only the material as long as they are focused on the external objects. They can only interact with material objects and experience material pleasures. That is the way our mind is programmed. So tangibility to us is what we can perceive through our senses.

It is when we go inwards that we can feel the energy within. When we lose our external identity and open ourselves to the universal energy, we too can feel that we are energy. We can understand who we truly are now, before and after. That is what meditation can do for you. It can take you through the inner journey of awareness that makes the truth tangible in the past and future as well.

When you say that the past is clear to you, even what you remember of the past in your own life is actually very selective. Only 5 to 10% of what your senses perceive is stored consciously. The rest is buried deep within. Ironically, the most powerful experiences, whether of pain or pleasure, are rarely in the conscious realm. They are buried deep within and come up without any conscious effort when the unconscious decides it is the right time to reveal them. This is why we are driven by addictions and phobias that are so difficult to let go.

Most of the time, we look into the future that is totally hazy through the mirror of our past. It is like driving a car through the rear view mirror. You know where you will end if you do that. Yet, that is how we drive our own lives.

The present is the only tangible moment. Not because it is about the material body-mind which exists in the present moment, but because only when you are in the present that you are centered in your energy. Your body mind system can focus inwards into your inner energy system only when you are in the present moment. It is because only in this state your inner chatter stops.

Your thoughts are nothing but the movement of your mind from past to future and back from future to past. It

is the constant oscillation of the mind that you call thought and which I term inner chatter. Once you settle into the present moment your thoughts cease and inner chatter stops. You are then in synch with your own energy.

Meditation is the key to bring you into this state.

Q: I read somewhere that the whole concept of rebirth is negative. It is all about continuance of suffering. All those who believe in rebirth are desperately trying to get out of it. So, what is the point in believing in it?

Rebirth is neither negative nor positive. It is a phenomenon of existence in which the spirit continues to exist as energy and the body-mind perishes as matter. There is nothing that anyone can do about it, in the same manner that there is nothing that can be done about death. Death happens and so does rebirth.

If you are at least aware that you are born again and again as a result of unfulfilled desires, then you can make an attempt to fulfill and transcend your desires so that you can be free from this cycle of life, birth and death, called samsara in Vedic science. One part of what you said is correct. People who are wise try to get out of this cycle of life and death so that they are liberated into energy forever. The concept of Self-realization and enlightenment follow from this effort.

Buddha refers to this again and again. He attributes suffering to desires and teaches methods to overcome these desires and get out of the cycle of birth and death. As I have mentioned elsewhere the desires Buddha talks about are the wants that we pick up through our conditioning in this lifetime, the samskaras that bind us. Once these samskaras are dissolved we are out of the clutches of samsara.

It is not a matter of believing or not believing. Truth does not change if you do not believe. Medieval Europe believed that the Earth is flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth. So, you too are at liberty to believe that there is no rebirth and that this lifetime is the end of the road for you.

If you believe so, would that make you a better person? Would that belief make you happier? In reality it makes you desperate. Your wish to acquire, enjoy and fulfill may end during this one lifetime. This obsession fills you with greed and fear. The understanding that one's spirit lives on as energy even after the body-mind perishes gives one far greater freedom.

When you realize that you are forever and not that you live and die only once, you don't need to be desperate and make choices that you regret later. There is no last train that you need to catch. You can lead a choiceless life, because life is forever.

This is the freedom that our Vedic sages experienced and transmitted so that others can experience the same bliss.