Rare Birth Of A Yogi🔗

6.41 The person who has fallen from yoga after many years of living in the world and doing virtuous deeds takes birth in the house of the virtuous and prosperous.

6.42 Or the yogi certainly takes birth in a family of wise people. Certainly, such a birth is rare in this world.

6.43 O son of Kuru, on taking such a birth, the person gains the intelligence of the previous body and tries again to attain yoga.

Krishna talks about how we choose everything in our lives, including our birth, when and where we are born and whom we choose as our parents. This truth may seem difficult for most of us to believe. Our birth is not just an accident. It is an incident and we are the ones who choose all the details about this incident. We must understand that it is only we who program and design everything and everybody in our life, including our parents and environment. Our choice of the next body is based on the way we have lived our life in this body.

For example, if we live to eat rather than eat to live, at the time of death, we will still have the desire to continue eating. So, we will design our next body to fulfill this desire. We might choose the body of a pig. Or, if we have lived our life only for sleeping and doing no creative work, we might choose the body of a buffalo. So, based on the attitude we have lived with, we choose the next body. This is the basic idea on which our janma-marana cakra (cycle of life and death) revolves.

We go into a birth-death cycle. We go and come back again, taking a new body. This phenomenon happens again and again. Whatever we choose at the moment of death will become reality in the next birth. You will be that. Some people think that they can manage if they remind themselves to think of the Almighty, at the last second of their lives. But that will never happen unless we make that a habit throughout our life. If we repeat ‘Coca-Cola’ our whole life, we cannot and will not think of Rama or Krishna during our last moments! How we live our life will decide the quality of our death as well.

Here, Krishna gives the assurance to Arjuna and to the whole of humanity that a person who has performed virtuous activities takes birth in a family of wise people or in a prosperous family. His pious activities will earn him a place among the higher worlds. After dwelling there for a while he will take birth in the family of righteous people to once again enable his spiritual seeking.

We can choose our body and the time that we wish to be born. When we live our life running behind our greed and desires, running after ‘what next? what next....?,’ naturally, at the time of our death also, we will not be ready to leave the body. The body will be tired of running behind desires continuously, but the mind will not be ready to leave. So we will leave the body in the pain and suffering of this push and pull of desires and fear. If we can just relax into the present and take life moment by moment, we will leave the body in a relaxed way, peacefully.

Once we leave the body, in three kṣaṇa, three moments, we get into a new body and we are reborn. Kṣaṇa in Sanskrit does not mean ‘seconds’. It means the gap between two thoughts. If we have been constantly running behind desires, the gap between two thoughts will be really small for us. When we learn to relax into the present, the gap between two thoughts increases and the three kṣaṇas can be a long time. In three kṣaṇas, we take on the new body to fulfill whatever desires were unfulfilled when we left the previous body. Here, Krishna says that on taking birth, we gain the intelligence of the previous body and continue the journey where we left off.

One thing we should understand here is that when we say death, it is not just the death that happens at the end of our life. It is what happens every day and night. Every night, we go from the physical body to the dream body and causal body. In the morning, we enter the physical body again. We die and take birth again.

People tell me, ‘No, no, Swamiji. Everyday when we enter into the dream we are not entering into the same dream, but everyday when we wake up to the reality we are entering into the same reality. So with this scale we can say this is reality and that is dream.’

Please be very clear, in one night's dream we live even twenty years of life, am I right? In one night's dream, don't we live even twenty years of life? In that twenty-year span, we are in the same dream. But is that reality? No! So be very clear, this whole life which you think as reality, may very well be part of one dream! This whole span that we are thinking of as real can be part of one dream.

Every day we leave the body. We go to the causal body when we fall asleep. Every day we die. When we wake up, we come back. Every day we come back to life. As of now, every morning, how do we come back to life? How do we take this body again in the morning? Just look deeply. What happens at the time when we get up from bed?

First thing, usually, the moment we gain awareness, either a thought based on greed or fear will hit us. There will be thoughts based on greed such as, 'I need to get this today,' or thoughts based on fear such as, 'I have to finish this work today in office. Will I be able to?' Some thought based on fear or greed will hit us. Immediately, we will jump out of our bed. The moment we assume our body, that moment is a moment of taking birth. Please be very clear, that is the moment we take the body.

Early morning, the thought with which we enter into the body, which makes us assume the body, is going to play a major role in our consciousness. The first thought is going to play a major role in our consciousness throughout the day. Just as the thought with which we leave the body on dying decides the kind of body we will assume in our next birth, in exactly the same way, every day the thought with which we get up in the morning and assume this body decides the quality of that day, that life. If we understand this once and alter our thoughts at the time of waking up, we will alter the whole consciousness. The quality of our consciousness can be changed.

When we get up from bed, let the first thought be related to love and compassion. Get up only to express life in bliss. Get up just out of joy. When we get up from bed, let us assume the body with gratitude to the Divine. With this, the whole quality of our consciousness will change. We will become a divine incarnation!

Krishna is actually giving a technique on how to become Krishna, how to enter into Krishna consciousness, to become an incarnation. The man who assumes the body out of love and compassion is an incarnation. If we assume the body out of greed or fear, we are human. Early morning, let the first thought be gratitude. Let it be out of love. Let it be from compassion. Our whole life will become pure eternal bliss. Our whole life will be lived with a different, enlightened consciousness.

Q: Beloved Swamiji, how can one go about getting closer to the present moment? How can we reduce our number of thoughts per second?

Your question is from an earlier discourse, when I was explaining about TPS (thoughts per second). The moment we ask, 'How can I start living in the present moment?,' we have already started living in the future. The very question means that we have escaped or missed the present moment.

We want an assurance that we must be able to live in the present moment throughout our lives.

We don't need anything to live in the present moment. Just live in this moment, that's all! Nothing else needs to be done. But we don't feel fulfilled by living in this moment. We need an assurance that we will live in the present moment throughout our life.

'Teach me something so that I will not forget to live in the present moment always.'

That's what we are saying when we ask this question. The moment we want an assurance about the future, we have missed the present. No wonder we don't feel fulfilled. Be very clear, the future can never be assured. Whenever you remember, come back to the present, that's all. And if we live in the present, in this moment, then naturally in the next moment also we will be in the present. This is because the next moment takes birth from this moment. This moment is the mother and the next moment is the child. So, if we are in the present moment in this moment, then the next moment also, we will be automatically in the present moment.

If we are postponing and escaping from this moment, then from the next moment also we will escape. So be very clear, a simple technique to be in the present moment is just to be aware of whatever we are doing at this point in time and focus on it completely. If we are reading a sentence, focus so completely on it to the exclusion of everything else, that we immediately rise into the present moment. Drop all thoughts about what happened a few moments or a few hours ago, and stop worrying about what you need to do after a few moments or a few hours. Just focus on these words.

Yes, when our TPS is zero, past and future both disappear, and only the present remains.

Thoughts are the movement of the mind from past to future, and back from future to past. This continuous oscillation of the mind is the inner chatter that is the cause of all our suffering. When the mind is stilled, thoughts stop; at least the perceived connection between one thought and another stops. Therefore, past and future disappear. When past and future have disappeared, what is, is, we can't even call that as the present. Present is present as long as we have past and future. When those too have disappeared, what is, is. Buddha says, 'tathāta,' 'what is'. We can't even call that as the present moment. This is what Shankara calls 'Brahman'.

The present by itself is eternal. It is eternity. It is the pūrṇa, the Whole that Shankara talked about and the śūnya, the nothingness that Buddha talked about. It is from the present that the future arises; it is that into which the past disappears. All that matters, therefore, is the present moment. Focus on it and be in bliss.