The Karmic Cycle Can Be Broken🔗

If we are able to truly manage our mind with the understanding that it is our mind that connects thoughts to form shafts of pain and pleasure and if we stay unclutched, we can stay in what Buddha calls mindfulness. We can stay in awareness and in the present moment. It is our thought process that constantly takes us from past to future and back again and does not allow us to rest in the present moment.

Understand this clearly, when we are in the present moment we can stay out of trouble without fear and desire. We can act without fear and desire. You may ask how. How can I be motivated to do something ifI do not desire it? There is no need for motivation. Do you think that it is motivation that makes you breathe or digest your food? It is the intelligence of the energy that is within and without us that makes it possible for us to live and grow. We live not because of us but in spite of us.

When we act without attachment, there is no consequence to our actions, there is no karma arising from our actions.

There is a very beautiful verse in the Isa Vasya Upanishad:

From the Whole came the Whole. If you remove the Whole from the Whole, only the Whole remains. By very nature we seek the Wholeness. By very nature we seek fulfillment in anything we do.

Whether it is eating, drinking, jumping, reading, talking, sleeping, or meditating, in any activity that we engage, our being yearns to completely experience the activity and be fully involved in it. Are we fully conscious of every action we engage in? Are we aware every moment of our life?

A small story:

A man was travelling by cab to the airport. The cab driver was driving very fast even around corners and sharp turns.The passenger was getting terrified with his driving. Finally, the cab driver, seeing the terrified passenger, said, "Why don't you do what I do when I take turns? Just shut your eyes!"

When you are not completely aware and involved in the action you are engaged in, your being remains unfulfilled in that experience. The unfulfilled experience remains inside you and keeps pulling you to do the action again with intensity to fulfill it. This is karma.

Karma is the collection of unfulfilled experiences that stay in us and constantly pull us to fulfill them.

Anything that we do and experience intensely and deeply will always leave our system. It will liberate us. Any experience that we did not go through completely, through which we did not have complete fulfillment, that did not get our full energy, attention and awareness, remains inside us as karma.

Even though we carry some karma, basically we are complete fulfillment, Wholeness. So any karma that has not been fulfilled cannot rest inside us for too long. It will try its best to fulfill itself. It will drive us again and again to go through the same activity so that it can be fulfilled. Any desire, any

experience, which has not become complete in our system, will remain as karma and push us again and again to make us go through the same experience until it is fulfilled.

We think, speak and do things without clarity, without fulfillment and with deep ignorance. All these thoughts, words and actions collectively contribute towards our karmic baggage because none of them gives rise to fulfillment in us. When they do not give rise to fulfillment our karma pushes us to somehow fulfill them.

Our own thoughts, words and deeds become our karma and drive us to reach fulfillment in some way.

Understand clearly that now you are reading this book because of all your past decisions. You decided to pay attention to the book on display. You decided to buy it. You decided to sit down and read this book now. The totality of all these decisions contributes to your sitting here.

The totality of all these past decisions is your present moment. Now, applying the same logic, the totality of your present decisions will be your future.

This is the essence of karma theory: the totality of all your past is the present, and the totality of your present is your future.

The totality of all your past is the present. The totality of your present will be your future. The problem is that we make most of our decisions unconsciously. We take thousands of decisions unconsciously. That is the reason why we are not able to connect the cause with the effect. Flood more awareness, more intelligence into your thinking system. Flood more awareness, more consciousness into your decision-making system. In any given moment, the future is predestined but conditionally. It will be a certain future according to all the totality of events till that time - this is the predestined future. But it is conditional. There is an important factor that can and will change i—t your consciousness, your will.

A small story:

Once, two brothers met a sage who was known to be able to look into the future. The brothers paid their respect to the sage and asked him if he could tell them about their future. The hermit advised them, "It may not be good for you to know your future. Besides, your future can change later even if I tell you now."

The brothers insisted on knowing their future. The sage looked at the elder brother and said, "You will become a king ft a year." Looking at the younger brother he said, "You are destined to die in the hands of a murderer in a year "s time." The brothers started walking back home. The elder brother was overjoyed while the younger one was depressed.

Now the elder brother started creating his fantasy world dreaming of becoming a king. The younger brother who was destined to have less than a year to live, started spending his time in spiritual activities. He used his time to serve everyone and soon came out of his depression.

Eleven months passed. One day, the elder brother invited the younger one to his house. He wanted to look out for land for a grand palace he was planning to build since very soon he would become a king. They were walking on a huge open piece of land when the younger brother stumbled on a half- buried pot. The brothers dug the pot and removed it. It was a huge pot of gold coins.

The elder brother was thrilled and started shouting, "This treasure is just for me! It is for me to set up my palace and kingdom! “Just then, a bandit jumped out from a bush, gave a blow on the elder brother’s head and tried to snatch the pot from him. The younger brother jumped at the bandit to protect his brother. But the bandit attacked him with a dagger he had in his hand. During the struggle the bandit dropped the pot and ran away. The elder brother was very thankful to his younger brother for saving his life and offered him half the gold coins. The younger brother politely refused saying he was not going to live much longer in any case. The elder brother with his new treasure started living a lavish life, eating, drinking and being merry.

One year passed. There was no sign of any crown in sight. The younger brother was also enjoying good health. They decided to visit the sage again. They met him and asked, "How did your predictions go wrong? “The sage was also surprised and went into meditation. He then explained, “I told you, your destiny can be changed. ”

He looked at the elder brother and said, "Your destiny changed because of your irresponsible actions over the past months. The crown that you were to get was reduced to a pot of gold.“

He looked at the younger brother and said, "Your spiritual life, trust and surrender to the Divine changed your destiny also. Death in the murderer’s hand was reduced to only being wounded by him.“

Understand, destiny is not something written in stone. It very much depends on how you choose to respond to every situation life presents to you. Your awareness will give you the intelligence and the courage to change the flow of events in your life.

If you don’t know your past completely, you will repeat the same things in the future. If your Thoughts Per Second (TPS) can come down and you know your past as it happened, you won’t repeat the same past in the future. You will then become a karma mukta", liberated from karma. As of now you are a karma bandha", bonded to karma because you have not lived your past completely.

For example, your childhood always seems golden. It is the golden past. You may feel your life in college was great, but when you were actually in college, you didn’t really feel that way. Why? Because your suffering has become much more now and in comparison, the past seems very nice! Now you attribute joy to your past and if given a chance you want to repeat it. When you lived through it, did you actually experience it? No!

If you can relax in the present moment, at zero TPS, for at least 11 kshanas', you will penetrate the time shaft. If you can stay in zero TPS for 21 kshanas, you will penetrate the time shaft and can alter the future. This is in your hands. All meditation techniques are ways to bring down your TPS so that you can penetrate the time shaft.

It is important to understand the concept o kshana. There is no equivalent for this word in the English language. So, let me explain to you what kshana means. Kshana is a measure of time. It is not a second or a minute as many people believe.

The gap between two thoughts is one kshana. We are used to thinking of time in an absolute sense. But a kshana is absolutely relative! The thoughts of every person and the rate at which they come in a person are dependent on that person. Kshana varies from person to person.

If a person is restless and gets too many thoughts in a span of one second, his kshana is shorter because the gap between two thoughts is less. If a person is calm and collected like a meditator is, he gets fewer thoughts in a given span of time. His kshana is longer because the gap between two thoughts is more.

Your life is nothing but the totality of the conscious choices that you continuously make. Whether you want to or not, directly or indirectly, you are choosing everything. Someone else does not choose. It is you who chooses.

A small story: An employee approached his boss, "Sir my wife said I should ask you for a raise."

The boss replied, "Oh, I will ask my wife tonight whether or not I should give you a raise!"

Understand, continuously it is your choice, your decision. You may think somebody else decides. But it is only you who is deciding.

A small example can make you understand the basic truth. If somebody criticizes you, you choose to get offended. If somebody praises you, you choose to get flattered. Because of your habit, you may choose it unconsciously. It is not someone else who chooses, it is you who choose. Because it has become your habit to think that someone else influences your decisions, you have forgotten that you are choosing.

Every time someone criticizes you, you choose to get upset. Every time someone praises you, you choose to get flattered. It is nobody else’s choice but your own. You can decide either way. When someone criticizes you, you can choose not to get offended and you can choose to remain calm and relaxed. It is just your choice to feel offended or not. All your continuous choices every minute put together decide your life. If you don’t decide and if you allow incidents to decide your life you go into a mode of ‘paralysis’. Our lives as of now are nothing but paralysis. It is only when you decide to live your life without any outside events, situations or decisions being forced on you, you actually decide to live. As long as you don’t understand life is your choice, your living is just paralysis.

There are three interrelated concepts, termed vasana, samskara and karma, in Sanskrit.

Vasana

Vasana is the seed of desire. For example, you are walking and you happen to see a dazzling necklace displayed outside a shop. A desire arises inside you to possess it. This is vasana.

Samskara is the plant that grows when the seed of vasana sprouts. When you see that necklace again and again, the desire to possess it becomes stronger in you. When you feed the desire to possess the necklace, it is like supplying water and nutrition to the seed of vasana.

The comiption that happens to the inner space is what I call samskara or engraved memories. They are the memories that go and sit in your inner space and pull you to go through the same experience repeatedly. They pull you to do the same kind of actions repeatedly, pull you to run through the same kind of thought patterns, even if you don't want to. Those memories are what I call samskaras.

Any samskara that is operating in your conscious or unconscious layer is nothing but a hindrance to the fulfillment of your life. There is no such thing as good or bad samskara. No samskara is good. An inner space filled with samskaras is hell. An inner space without samskaras is heaven. Do not try to classify samskaras as good or bad.

A samskara by itself, by its very nature, is negative. By its very nature samskara is depressive. Anything done out of samskaras will reduce everything to boring emptiness. Anything that happens with a deep understanding, just out of your pure inner space, always adds value to you. Anything done out of samskaras adds more and more bondage to you. From our young age we collect so many different samskaras in so many ways. We accumulate them and also reproduce them. Samskaras do reproduce themselves even without any further action from our part.

Samskaras get strengthened in different ways. There are some samskaras that get strengthened only by action, when you repeat the action. There are some samskaras that get strengthened just by receiving information with regard to them, when you receive input from the world about them. There are some other samskaras that need neither action nor information, just remembrance is enough, and they get strengthened! We collect these different levels of samskaras, engraved memories, and store them in our system and expand them.

Finally when driven by the desire you execute the action and it becomes karma. The power of desire drives you into finally buying the necklace. That is the action — the karma.

Anything half done leaves a samskara (engraved memory) in your being. Anything not lived fully leaves an imprint or samskara in your being, which time and again pulls you, attracts you to travel the same path and fulfill it.

The cause of addiction is also related to samskaras. In my own experience of having worked with millions of people personally, at least a few thousand cases of addiction have been healed by meditation. The basic truth about addiction is that you have lived your life vaguely, not fully or with the whole being. Unfulfilled desires create a samskara in you pulling you back to fulfill the desire by re- experiencing the same desire again and again.

Any emotion lived intensely simply liberates you of that emotion - be it anger, fear, desire to eat or attachment to any object or person. You are liberated fully of anything when you live it fully. If a

person keeps going back to a problem time and again, it only means that he or she has not lived out the problem fully.

When we live, half our mind is somewhere else. Patanjali says beautifully, 'The more the quantity, the less the quality.' The moment the quality of enjoyment of any object increases, its quantity decreases in direct proportion, of its own accord. Therefore, it is the quality that needs to be increased.

Life is not a brief candle. It is a bright shining torch. Make it burn as brightly as possible in your life.

There are three types of karma - agamya, prarabdha and sanchita.

Sanchita karma is like a bank, a reserve bank. Understand, this may not be the first time you have taken a body and come to planet earth. You may have taken millions of bodies before! In those millions of bodies, whatever thoughts you had, whatever you spoke, whatever you did, all those unfulfilled experiences have become your engrams — engraved memories. Put together, they are like a bank called sanchita karma. When I say 'bank', it is not a collection or saving, it is debt! You will have to pay back all the loans!

The next type of karma is prarabdha' karma. Prarabdha' means this: from the sanchita bank of karva you take some karma out of which you create your present body. You then decide to enjoy and exhaust all those karmas that you brought with you through that body. So prarabdha is just a small bit of the accumulated sanchita karma account that you have brought into this life. You have planned to enjoy or exhaust these through this body of yours.

The third type of karma is the worst. It is the agamya karma, the karma that you start collecting after coming down to planet earth, because of fresh thoughts, words and deeds.

Anybody who lands on planet earth has to exhaust his prarabdha karma before he dies. For example, let us say you have 1000 karmas in your sanchita bank. Out of these 1000 karmas, suppose you take only ten karmas with you as your prarabdha karma when you take up your body saying, 'Let me finish these ten karmas this time.' However, after coming down, instead of exhausting your own prarabdha karmas, you start watching others and collecting karma based on their desires. These are desires that you have borrowed from others around you. Because of these borrowed desires, you create certain thoughts, words and actions.

For example, if you see someone more beautiful than you, your thoughts multiply due to comparison and jealousy. You create karma based on thoughts. Sometimes you talk ill of others, without knowing any of the related facts. When you do this, you accumulate karma based on words.

Let me explain the three types of karma from a different angle. You see, if you take all the possibilities that you are aware of and that are available to you in the cosmos, we call that as agamya. There are all kinds of possibilities. You can become a fish, you can become a snake, you can become a man, or you can become a god. All these are possibilities. We call that as agamya.

There are also other possibilities that are available to you. These are not only within the field of your awareness like the things that you know such as fish, monkey, dog, donkey and man, but also many other possibilities that are unknown to you. Those we call sanchita, the whole range of known and unknown possibilities.

The whole is sanchita and the possibilities that lie in front of you are agamya. You then decide to play only with certain boundaries of these possibilities when you come into this body. That is what we call prarabdha. See when you came down, you decided to play inside certain boundaries. That boundary is what we can call prarabdha.

After coming here you see many possibilities before you that you try to accumulate, that you try to acquire. Those possibilities can be called as agamya.

This prarabdha that you brought with you has the intelligence to run your life. One big difficulty is that you see too many agamya, too many possibilities in front of you. Because of that, your trust over your prarabdha or your own preselected possibilities reduces. You think your prarabdha may not be that powerful to run your life because of the agamya, the possibilities, which are in front of your eyes.

Let me tell you this. Trusting prarabdha is powerful. Fulfilling your prarabdha will take away one very negative aspect of your life - the continuous irritation. The constant irritation that you carry from morning till night is the gift of agamya.

From morning till night, from the moment you come out of your bed till the moment you fall asleep, you feel a constant irritation. We just need somebody to make some mistake and we jump on them! We are just waiting. Anybody who comes in our presence will have our 'blessing'! That constant irritation is because we are centered on agamya.

If our energy, our inner space is centered on prarabdha, we will not be carrying the constant irritation that we carry now. It is not that we will not be working or relating with the possibilities. It is not that we will stop working, no! We will continue to work but our base will be our prarabdha.

You see, the mood of constantly rejecting everything, constantly being irritated, happens because of our agamya, because of the possibilities we see around us. We are running behind the choices, the possibilities, the agamya. But we forget that the prarabdha is very intelligent, very powerful.

In the whole world, there are only two kinds of people, people whose inner space is centered on agamya and people whose inner space is centered on prarabdha, that's all. People whose inner space is centered on prarabdha live their life in restful awareness. The mind that is based on agamya will be inspired only by fear or greed. You can see this when you wake up. You will come out of your dream state only if you have a desire or if you are caught by some fear. For example, you may get inspired to wake up because you wish to send your child to school so that she gets a good education and has a bright future. Or you may get up out of fear of getting late for office because you are afraid of losing your job. Moving the physical body out of fear or greed is what I call living your life based on agamya.

All your actions are invariably driven by greed or fear and therefore end up being superficial actions, adding to your karma.

In this way, you end up collecting more karmas. By the time you go back, what will happen? Your ''karma bank balance' would have increased by the number of your agamya karma!

Say you came down with ten karmas, you did not exhaust these ten karmas With which you came, but you collected 200 more!

What will happen the next time you take the body? Your sanchita is now 1000 added to the 200 new agamya karmas you collected now. You now have 200 karmas more than in your last birth. Again you take ten out of that collection and come down with another body. But you only collect more and go back. This becomes a vicious circle. This is what we call janma marana chakra, life-and-death cycle, continuously taking a body and dying, again and again.

Instead, while you are living, if somebody gives you the knowledge that you are not just the body or the mind and it is karma that is influencing you, then the influence of that karma over you will begin to come down. You will then start exhausting the prarabdha karma that you came down with.

Let us say you brought ten prarabdha karmas with you when you took this body and came down. Suppose in these ten prarabdha karmas, you have three samskaras or three engrams that have the power to put you into depression. If you continue to obey those engrams and fall into depression, they will not remain just three, but will probably become ten. The additional seven karmas are the agamya karmas. If instead of exhausting your prarabdha you decide to remain with them, you collect agamya.

If on the other hand, whenever these three engrams put you in depression you have learned some technique to come out of the depression, then these three will start losing their power over you. So, over time, of the ten karmas, three will leave you. Whenever you reduce the influence of prarabdha on yourself, not only will the prarabdha get burnt, but the chances of accumulating new karma, the agamya karma, will also come down.

You stop collecting agamya when the prarabdha loses its influence over you. When the influence of these ten prarabdha engrams over you stops, the agamya collection will also stop because it is these ten engrams that are responsible for the collection of further engrams or karma.

Now let us come to the sanchita karma. Understand, you can't do anything directly with your sanchita karma bank. For sanchita to burn out, only Guru Krupa, grace of the master, will work. Only the master's grace can do anything to burn out your sanchita.

A beautiful story from the devotional vedic scripture Bhagavatam:

Krishna reached the banks of river Yamuna with the gopis, his milkmaid friends. They wanted to cross the river but there was no way to cross. Krishna declared, "If I am true brahmachari' (celibate), then let the Yamuna part and let us go across. The Yamuna parted.

Outwardly, it may seem that Krishna was with the girls like other ordinary men. But Krishna was beyond the body-mind. His actions did not carry the intention of an ordinary man. It is the intention of any act that matters, not the act itself.

Intention is the baggage, the karma, not the action. If action creates intention, it becomes the baggage. Pure action with no end objective is not karma.

See, whatever you are doing in the presence of the master, you are doing for the master. You know it is in no way going to build your name or fame. So, the action happens without intention. There is no intention. The intention is the master's. The action is yours. Intention is in the being of the person who has no intentions! You see, the total sanchita karma can be yours or mine. Mine is divine play. Yours is suffering. When it started, your total sanchita karma also started as a divine play. But, after gathering more and more agamya karma, it became dirty.

Because I have no karma, when you flow with me you will also act without intention. Action without intention is living enlightenment.

If a person has committed ten murders, the quantity of murders will not be recorded. But the intensity of the murderer will be recorded. It is the quality, the mindset, and the attitude, that carries the karmic burden.

That is why Krishna says again and again in the Bhagavad Gita that intention is much more important than action. That is the message of the whole Gita. He says, 'When you are without intention I will take care.'

Action does not get recorded. Only intention gets recorded. The Mahabharata' tells us the beautiful story of a courtesan and a monk.

There was a monk who lived across a courtesan's house. He used to keep a count of the men coming to her house and used to imagine all kinds of things about her lifestyle. The woman spent all her free time praying to Krishna to redeem her from her miserable

One day, they both died at the same time. Both reached the court of Yama", the god of death. Yama" looked at the record of their lives and gave the decision. the monk should go to hell and the woman should go to heaven. The monk was shocked and started protesting, "'I lived such a pious life while she lived such an immoral life! How can I be sent to hell and she to heaven!'"

Yama replied, 'In my court of judgment, your actions are of no value, only your intent matters. You wore a monk's robes and lived a good life outwardly but your inner space was filled with lust. So in the outer world, your body is now being buried with honor but you have to suffer hell. The woman's heart was forever with Krishna even while her body was sold to men. So her body doesn't have anybody to even do the last rites but she is going to heaven.'

It is the intention and attitude that counts.

An enlightened being, an incarnation, is one with Existence. An enlightened being can only operate in tune with Existence. He can never be out of tune. The actions of an enlightened master can never be without awareness and compassion.

Since we do not have the consciousness or awareness, we cannot justify our actions by saying they are similar to those of an enlightened being. Be very clear, the action may look similar outwardly but the intention, the inner space, the attitude, is completely different.

A beautiful story from the life of Adi Shankara:

Once while Shankara was wandering with his disciples, he suddenly felt thirsty. They were in the middle of nowhere. They traveled further and finally came across one shop. Shankara went up to the man in the shop and asked for some water to drink. The man said, "I am sorry but I have nothing to offer you except liquor. That is all I have."

Shankara replied, "Alright, please give me some." He drank a glass of liquor and thanked the man. The disciples were shocked to see their master drink liquor! The thirsty disciples decided to follow the master and they all drank liquor to their heart's content. When they resumed the journey, Shankara continued to walk normally but the disciples under the effect of the liquour were not even able to keep next step properly. They went up further and after some distance, came across an iron forge.

Shankara went upto the man who was pouring molten iron into the cast. He asked him for a glass of water. The man apologized saying he didn't have any water to offer. Shankara said, "Alright. Please give me the molten iron then."

The man and Shankara's disciples were all shocked. The man gave Shankara the hot molten iron which he just poured into his mouth as if it was water!

He then turned around to his disciples and said, You may also drink now. The disciples stood with their heads lowered. Shankara then explained, "Do not follow what I do. Follow what I say. Otherwise, you just choose to follow what your mind tells you."

Understand, the very plane on which enlightened beings exist is different from the normal human plane of existence. So they do not need to and cannot do things according to usual logic. Their intention is what is important, which cannot be explained in terms of ordinary logic.

An enlightened being has no personal interest because he has no individual identity — his identity is dissolved in the identity of the whole universe.

We have seven layers or seven bodies of energy, which are physical, pranic, mental, etheric, causal, pleasure and nirvanic,.. Please understand, in the causal layer our gathered ov agamya karma is completely available for us. See, in the causal body, you may have the skills to play cricket, golf and tennis. But if you get up from deep sleep with a strong will or intention to play cricket, then you will also bring from the causal body the intelligence to play cricket. You will be naturally led into the situations, the atmosphere and the intelligence for it. If you go to sleep at night with a strong intention to play golf and you wake up in the morning with the strong intention to play golf, then you will bring with you that intelligence to play golf.

The causal layer is an exchange place. It is like monetary exchange. In the causal layer you can exchange anything. When you go to the causal layer the karma of this birth itself can be changed if you have that strong intention every day. This is true freedom. Strong intention has the capacity to change the gathered agam ya karma and the prarabdha karma of this birth. It cannot change the total sanchita karma. Sanchita karma can only be changed by the grace of the master — one who is without karmas.

Reaching out to the master, doing what the master says and acting without intention, are what the whole game of life is all about.

Action without intention is mission. If you are acting with intention, you are like a machine. If you are acting without intention, you are the mission. Machine or mission, the choice is yours. Till you act with my intention without adding your intention, I will keep training you. Just do what I say without asking inspiration from your intention, from your greed and fear. Pure action without intention will lead to fulfillment.

Karma is not a law of reward and punishment. It is not a way god uses to punish people for committing sins. It is a reflection of your own mental state giving you the experience of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’.

A small story:

A traffic policeman caught a man speeding. He was about to issue him a speeding ticket. Suddenly a woman started screaming from the back seat, "See, I told you that you will get caught! Who asked you to drive so fast? And when I tell you to be careful, slow down and watch out, you tell me to shut up. Now see you got caught!" The cop asked the driver "Who is she?"The driver sighed, "My wife". The cop tore up the ticket and said, "Drive on. You have been punished enough!"

When you are angry, it is not that you will incur sin and pay for it in your next life. You are suffering with your anger now. That itself is the hell you suffer! You are suffering inside in the same way that you are torturing the person you are angry with.

The fire you spit outside will burn with the same intensity inside you also. No matter whether it burns the other person or not, the fire of anger will surely burn you. The sword used to cut someone outside will cut you inside with the same intensity. Remember, it is a double edged sword.

A beautiful story from Buddha's life: A man once came and spat on Buddha's face. Buddha wiped his face and asked the man, "Do you want to say something more, or is this all? " Ananda, his close disciple, was very angry. He was fuming that some man came and just spat on his master and that too for no reason at all. He said to Buddha, "Master if you give me permission, I will handle the man."

Buddha replied, "Have you forgotten that you are a monk, a sannyasi' (renunciate)? That poor man is already suffering with his anger. See his angry face, his body shaking with that anger. And before spitting on me, do you think he would have been celebrating and dancing? He is mad with his own anger. In that state of madness, he came and spat on me. What is a bigger punishment for him than being in such a state? And what harm has he done to me? I just had to wipe the spit off my face. Now you don'"t get agitated, otherwise you are building the same anger inside you. Why are you punishing yourself. That is foolishness. Feel compassion for the poor man instead."

The man was listening and was surprised and confused to see Buddha behave in this way. He was expecting Buddha to become angry. That is what he wanted. Instead the compassion and understanding Buddha showed was just too shocking for him!

Buddha said to him, "Go home. You look tired, you have punished yourself enough. Forget about what you did to me. You did not harm me. This body will return to the earth and people will do all kinds of things like spitting. Go home and relax."

The man was completely shaken by Buddha's response. He went back home. He came back that evening, fell at Buddha's feet and cried, "Please forgive me!"

Buddha calmly said, "I was not angry in the first place. How can I forgive you? But I am happy to see you relieved from the anger and in a state of harmony. Just remember. never do such acts again, this is how you create hell for yourself. "

Once the life force leaves the body, within three kshanas,, it chooses the next body. At the time of death the three most enjoyed experiences in that lifetime stand out as one's last thoughts. The choice of the next body arises from the mindset based on these three experiences.

These three thoughts will be based on one from each of the total karma (sanchita), this birth karma (prarabdha) and gathered karma (agamya). Based on this, the prarabdha karma will take shape for this birth.

Practicing spiritual life solutions in one's lifetime will reduce the gathered sanchita karma of that life because these understandings will help one to live with awareness. Meditation helps to reduce the prarabdha karma. It acts not only upon the conscious and physical levels but also has the capacity to penetrate and clean the unconscious on a physical, mental and being level.

However, the largest balance in the bank of karma, the total sanchita karma, can only be dissolved through the master's grace.

The more these three karmas are reduced, the less the constraints of choice for the next body. Since each of the three karmas will dictate a corresponding intense experience to be lived, the next body will need to provide a space for these experiences to be lived. It is like this. If I say, 'Let me meet a person who can speak English, I have more choice than if I say, 'Let me meet a person who can speak English, Spanish and German.' Similarly, if you have all the three types of karma, there are more constraints on your next birth.

For example, the desire influenced by your total sanchita karma may be, 'I want to be beautiful.' The desire influenced by your karma of this birth, prarabdha, may be, 'I want to be rich.' The desire influenced by your gathered or agamya karma, may be, 'I want to settle down in USA.'

It is more difficult to get a body for your life energy's next birth that will lead to the satisfaction of all the three desires within the short gap of three kshanas. So, it ends up choosing a body that satisfies the strongest desire amongst the three desires. The combined desires, the mindset, with which the life energy leaves the previous body is the vasana, the seeds of desire we earlier talked about.

These three desires, these three thoughts will be seen in one glimpse in three kshanas, as one vasana . The vasana is like a television channel and the body that attracts the vasana is like the television set

tuned to this channel. The depth of the vasana and the body that matches the vasana attracts the life energy. Just like a television set tuned to the satellite channel's frequency receives the corresponding electromagnetic waves, in the same way, the vasana is attracted by the body.

The life energy, the spirit, departing from the previous body enters the new body that it selected, as that body leaves the womb of the mother. It enters the body in the birth canal. The darkness of the causal layer that it left from the previous body corresponds to the darkness of the mother's birth canal. Since the body has been prepared by the energies of the parents, the life energy chooses the combined energies of the parents based on the desires, the vasanas, the mental attitude, with which it leaves the previous body. So the parents do not choose the child. It is the child that chooses its parents.

Having chosen a particular body, the spirit or life force has to satisfy the other two desires it had but could not choose an appropriate body for. However, during its transition through the darkness, the deep pain experienced by the spirit erases all memories of the vasana it carries before it enters the new body. The new entity no longer remembers the desires with which it left the previous body. Instead of fulfilling the desires with which it left the previous body, since it has forgotten them, the life energy in the new body seeks new desires and collects more karma.

Now, of the three types of karma, if one of them is gone, the choice constraints are fewer and the life force can be more focused in the choices. Cleaning the gathered agamya karma and this birth's prarabdha karma can be done by the individual by understanding about life and by meditating. The master's grace will reduce the total sanchita karma.

Once the total sanchita karma is cleansed, there is no reason to take another body. Then, if the next birth still happens, it is for no reason but out of overflowing joy and bliss. The birth is thus chosen consciously because there is no pull of karma. The life lived is a leela or reasonless play of an avatar or incarnation.

For all of us, our total sanchita karma initially was a divine play. For an enlightened master, it is still a divine play as he has no karma at all. Playing because you can play is the divine play.

We took birth out of choice. We forgot our prarabdha karma, started gathering agamya karma and expanded the total sanch ita karma. Then, to exhaust the increased load we had to take another birth where we collected more desires and karma. This is how the cycle of life and death continues.

Please understand, your gathered agamya karma is your bondage. The total karma and this birth karma can be a divine play. The result of this play is the karma of that birth. After birth, if we play without gathered karma, it will continue to be a divine play. The bondage comes with gathered karma.

This is a very good question. Let me boldly declare this truth and clear all the myths that have been surrounding this one question on the wheel of karma!

When a human being takes birth as human once, he will continue taking the life of a human unless he has acted against his consciousness like torturing others or committed violent acts in the physical, mental or verbal forms against Existence which is in the form of the master, nature and human

consciousness. The intensity of these acts is what gets recorded in the cosmic karwic record. Understand, it is not the act itself but the intensity of the act that matters.

When a person spends his whole life in lower consciousness, he can be reborn as an animal. For example, if he spends his whole life in only eating or sleeping, he can be reborn as an animal.

See, if the person has not experienced the unique human qualities like falling in love, seeking enlightenment, even once in his lifetime, he will be reborn as an animal because he had a human body but the channels of human experience have not been awakened.

Do we have to wait for the next birth if we feel strongly about something but it is not our prarabdha?

No. You can change your prarabdha through a simple, strong will or sankalpa'. The strength of the sankalpa' can cause a rebirth in you in this birth itself. The next birth can happen now itself. For example, people, especially householder disciples who feel they are caught up in their responsibilities ask me, '"'Swamiyi, please bless me that I should be with you at least in my next birth.' There are so many examples where they have been able to come and live in the ashram' just a few months later. It is just the strength of the will.