When You Mourn, You Mourn For Yourself🔗

Q: The question I have is about the past and the future. This has to do with astrologers and palmists who tell us our past and future. Some of them are correct and some of them are wrong. Does astrology have validity?

A: See, if you are sitting in a low point or a valley, can you see what is there at a distance? You cannot. That is how it is when your thoughts crowd your mind and the TPS (thoughts per second) is high. If you sit higher or closer you can see a little more clearly, like the Indian television Doordarshan! Closer still, with fewer thoughts, you can see still more clearly like a private television channel. From up close, you can see like your own personal computer.

A person with a low TPS can see very clearly. He can see through time. He can predict your past and future properly and clearly. If the person's TPS is high, he cannot predict at all because his mind is constantly moving between past and future. A person who has established himself in the nitya ātman or eternal consciousness can not only predict but also change the future!

There is a beautiful verse in the vedic scriptures that says that all the letters of your destiny so painstakingly written by Brahma, the Lord of Creation, on your forehead, can simply be erased by the Master's left toe when the Master casually walks past! The man who is established in the eternal consciousness can recreate the future.

Astrology, Jyotiṣa in Sanskrit, and any form of prediction, whether palmistry or tarot cards, is not so much about the science as it is about what state the individual who predicts is in. Yes, astrology is a science and it is based on valid principles of how the universal energy field affects individuals. In the vedic culture, astrology was rarely used beyond adolescence and even then only as a guidance to evaluate the aptitude of a student. A guru at the gurukul - vedic school, used astrology to determine the aptitude and potential of a young student, much as you would use SAT tests today, the Student Aptitude Tests.

Using astrology to decide what you have to do day after day is a misuse of that knowledge. When you understand that you are part of the flow of the cosmic energy, which is what astrology teaches, you need to have the intelligence to flow with that energy and allow what happens to happen.

Q: How can we not grieve for the dead? Perhaps it is possible for Krishna and great masters like you, but for ordinary mortals this is not feasible.

Please understand that you not only grieve for the dead but for the living as well. Constantly you grieve, you suffer, you regret because you expect and you get attached. Do you grieve for those who you think are evil? You celebrate, don't you? You only grieve for those who are close to you, those whom you consider your possessions.

What you grieve for has to be connected with the 'I' and 'mine', otherwise there is no grief. Grief can arise only from your perceived loss. You feel pain only when you think you have lost something you consider valuable. It need not be death; it can be anything that you consider you must have and you feel you are losing. It could be material possessions, relationships, name and fame and many other things that are totally insignificant but have assumed serious value for you because of your attachment to them.

If you truly are compassionate and you think that death is a punishment, you should grieve for all who die, be it a gangster or a murderer. No, your grief is selective and judgmental. That grief also happens whenever something does not go the way you wish for yourself and those whom you are attached to.

You may ask what is wrong with that behavior. What is wrong with that behavior is that it brings you grief! Instead of centering in on your blissful natural state, you settle into an unnatural state of grief and sorrow. What is it that brings about this state of sorrow?

All your grief for someone's death arises out of selfishness, nothing else. The person who has died has gone. He no longer has any problems. You have problems about that person leaving you. So you grieve. Psychologists say that the mourning process goes through stages of grief and anger before there is acceptance. Both grief and anger arise from selfish reasons.

The newly widowed lady was loudly lamenting her loss. Neighbors were surprised because she always quarreled with her husband and every day would curse him to die.

‘You are now free’, they said, ‘you can do what you want. Why are you crying?’

The lady asked, ‘But who will I curse now?’ and wailed some more!

In the case of Arjuna, his grieving is based on his perceived attachment to his kinsmen and elders and the fear of losing them. Ultimately this fear is related to the fear of losing himself and his identity. Krishna gets him out of this primal fear of losing his identity by showing Arjuna that he is much bigger than his body-mind.

So it is with all of us. We are all far greater than our body-mind systems. When the body and mind perish at death, we do not perish. Our energy lives on and reappears in another body again as matter. What is there to grieve once you understand this simple truth?

Everyone can understand and accept this truth. What is feasible for Arjuna is feasible for you. What was feasible for me is feasible for you. What is the alternative? What is the point in wallowing in sorrow when you can be liberated into bliss?

Q : You said earlier that you are repeating Gita. Do you mean you are Krishna? Many proclaim they are God. Are you also in the same business?

Nice question! I am not here to proclaim that I am God. I am here to proclaim that you are God. When Krishna says he is God and proclaims or proves His divinity, He creates a situation and prepares you to receive His message and realize that you too are divine. That is why Krishna has to prove and express his divinity.

So understand that I am not here to prove that I am God, I am here to show that you are God. If you can experience that you are God, it is enough; nothing more is necessary. You do not need to accept or believe I am God. You do not even need to bother about my divinity. Just understand and experience that you are God; nothing more is necessary.

I answered a question earlier on the process of the Guru-disciple relationship. I said that the Guru is a bridge between man and God. This bridge is a short cut. It is not essential that you use this bridge. There are masters who have realized themselves, who realized the truth of their divinity, without any external assistance from another master. I am one myself.

Understand, this is not a business. Business implies that there is some kind of a two-way transaction. As I mentioned earlier, any business is a win-lose relationship. One has to lose if the other wins. A Guru-disciple relationship is a win-win relationship. Neither can lose.

If a master treats his mission as a business, it will be a lose-lose relationship, similar to warfare. The Guru will not gain ultimately. In fact from a psychic perspective he will invite deep suffering. The disciple of course will be misled and will suffer.

How does one determine whether one is with the right master? More importantly, how does one determine whether the master, however good he may be, is the right one for you?

Ask my disciples and they can tell you. Whatever I say may not be convincing to you, since your query itself is one of doubt.

Some say that all questions that they have just disappear when they come in front of me, like dewdrops in front of the morning sun. Many ask me at first how they can remember me, what should they focus on? I tell them, ‘If I am truly your master, your problem will not be in trying to remember me, but in forgetting me!’

There are others who tell me that for the first time they felt they had come home. They had been searching ceaselessly, not even knowing what it was that they were searching for, and suddenly the search ended. It was a deep feeling of fulfillment, as if they had come home.

Spirituality can never be a business. It is a mission. It is a mission of compassion. What a master gives is unconditional, with no expectation of return.

You say I implied I am God. I am one with the divine energy; so are you. The difference is that I am aware of this truth; perhaps you need to realize this truth. When you do, there will be no difference between you and me.

For you the word God is a mere concept, something intangible. All you are focused on is your identity - your name, your status, your family etc. Without these you think you are nobody. You cannot introduce yourself to anyone else in any other way except through your material identity.

To me, God is reality. Every movement I make is with the permission of Existence. I am part and parcel of that Existence. I am aware every moment that I am one with that Existence. This body means nothing to me. Even my name is borrowed. The clothes that I wear are as irrelevant as my skin is to me. Every home on this planet is my home.

When you reach that awareness, you too will realize that you are nothing short of divine, that you too are God.

This is my mission. My mission is to create that personal transformation in individuals so that they too realize that they are God, and nothing less.

Q: Is death the thoughtless state that you talked about? Does that mean death is the ultimate present moment?

The thoughtless, no mind state is beyond death and beyond life. Death is a mere rite of passage. It is a transition between one life and another. As I explained, the spirit has only three kṣaṇas to leave one body and take up another. When the spirit is without body and mind, it has no thoughts. It is the body-mind system that is responsible for creation of thoughts.

Death can become a permanent passage into liberation and a celebration if you are prepared to let go. If you let go of all your attachments and all your desires, your inner space becomes pure. It can then merge effortlessly with the outer cosmic energy.

I described this earlier by drawing circles on a whiteboard. The whiteboard is the brahman, universal energy and the space within the circles is ātman, individual energy. In a situation where the inner space is pure, the space within the circles seamlessly merges with the space outside. There is no distinction. There is no taint that separates the inner space from the outer space when the body-mind perimeter disappears. The spirit that leaves the body does not have to look for another body to move into. It stays in the thoughtless pure energy space.

Thoughts, memories and desires are all creations of matter. They are part of the body-mind system. Bodies buried after death can still hold these memories. That is why people see spirit forms in burial locations. One of the reasons that Hindu customs require the body to be burnt after death is to remove these memories. Only the bodies of enlightened beings are buried under Hindu customs since these are no longer matter but pure energy. Many Hindu temples are built on such final resting spots, jīva samādhi, of enlightened masters and still radiate the enlightenment energy.

The thoughtless state can be achieved while living. One does not have to wait until death to reach the present moment! Meditation is the key to the thoughtless state. Meditation brings you to the present moment. This is the reason why meditation is often equated to death.

Through meditation you touch your inner space. You realize that you are no longer merely the body-mind that perishes, but the undying spirit. When that realization happens you are indeed reborn. You come out of the womb of knowledge, jñāna garbha. Until then you have only experienced bhū garbha, the physical womb.

Death is a rite of passage. Krishna says that in the same manner as the body passes through infancy, childhood, youth and middle age into old age, it also passes into death and then into another body. Shakespeare has described this beautifully in his piece 'All the world is a stage' in his play 'As You Like It'. He talks about the seven stages of life from the crying infant through the reluctant school going child, and finally to the old man, as seven acts in a play. This wise poet rightly compares life to a play and each stage in life as an act in the play.

Adi Shankaracharya in the verses of his Bhaja Govindam says that even when the hair is white, the teeth are gone and the old man needs a stick just to stand, he is full of desires! The problem is that we cannot accept getting old and leaving the body. As children we are all rushing to grow up and be adults and there we would like to stay. It does not work like that. The body-mind is dying every second and is getting reborn every second. Of the many trillion cells that we have in our system, many millions die every second and as we grow older some do not get replaced. This is a biological fact.

What is there to worry about it? You throw away a piece of cheese when it gets old and moldy. However much you may like that cheese, if you have any intelligence, you do not frame it and gaze at it, but just throw it away and move on. Treat your body the same way. You do not own it. Don't get attached to it. You are only a tenant in the body. Your spirit is the owner. Identify with your spirit. Forget about the body. When it gets to be a problem, when it is time to leave, just leave without packing your bags. There is no need to pack for where you are going. You will be provided for.

Yogi Baba was sowing seeds in his garden. His wife watched him for a while and saw that he was planting the seeds faster and faster as he went along.

'Yogi,' she cried out, 'What is the hurry, why don't you plant more carefully and slowly?'

'Oh no, I cannot,' Yogi shouted back. 'I don't have too many seeds left and I have to finish before I run out of seeds!'

We are just like Yogi. The seeds will take care of themselves. Whether you plant slower or faster, there are only a certain number of seeds in the bag. When you finish this bag of seeds, another will come to you. Where is the rush?

Death is not the only present moment. Every second of your life is a present moment to savor and treasure. It is because we do not live life in the present moment that we are afraid to let go. This is why we are afraid of death.

Q: Why is it that we do not have memories of our past lives? It would be so easy to know what to do if we knew what mistakes we made in our past lives.

Please believe me, you are very much better off not knowing what happened in your past lives!

What you have experienced and remember in this life itself is enough to drive you crazy. Why do you want to remember what you did in other bodies earlier? Nature is being kind to you by letting you not remember all this.

What happens is this: When the body experiences death and the spirit leaves the body, the spirit travels through seven layers of energy starting from the physical body layer. In each layer it experiences emotions and memories associated with that layer. When it reaches the subtle body layer, the fourth layer, all the painful memories of the past life surface. Immediately after this, the spirit enters the fifth layer, the causal energy body, and the body-mind goes into a coma. This layer is the layer of darkness which people experience when they go through Near Death Experiences (NDE). The light they see at the end of this layer is the sixth layer of energy, the cosmic energy layer.

The fifth layer or causal energy body is when the spirit detaches from the body. Until this point, the spirit has the option to return to the body-mind. That is how many people come back to life after having been in coma for years. They had stayed in their causal layer. Once the spirit crosses this layer into the cosmic layer, it has no option but to move on.

If it is a spirit that has fulfilled all the desires in its lifetime, it moves on to the final energy layer of nirvanic energy. A spirit which has not yet fulfilled the desires with which it took birth originally, will move into another body to fulfill these desires. The spirit will seek a body that has similar inclinations in terms of environment, culture, parental background and so on.

When the spirit moves through the pain and coma in the fourth and fifth layers, all memories of the previous life are lost along with the body-mind. This passage through the darkness of the fifth or causal layer corresponds to the passage through the mother's womb. This is the point at which the spirit enters the new body. This is the reason why you do not remember what you experienced in your past lives.

However, there are points in everyone's lives when some experiences are recovered when a state of intuition is reached. Suddenly when your TPS drops, that is suddenly when you touch a low thought-frequency state, you enter into intuition. Such experiences are recounted by Dr. Brian Weiss and others in their work with regression of people into past lives, using techniques to induce such states.

In general, such adventures into past life memories may be quite harmful unless undertaken by someone who is spiritually aware and understands the implications. Someone who is spiritually aware may be able to use less harmful techniques to heal a person without having to put them through past life experiences.

There are people who say that Existence is not fair in subjecting them to karma (unfulfilled actions from their past) and the effects of karma, without their being aware of what brought about that karma. All I can say is that there is no such thing as fairness in Existence as these people imply. Existence just is. It does not judge. It is you who causes what happens to you. There is no accident in nature. Everything is an incident caused by another incident.

Nature is protecting you by helping you not remember all your past memories. If you did, your entire life would be spent on a psychiatrist's couch!