Life After Life🔗

1. 25

Those who worship the deities will take birth among the deities; those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings; those who worship ancestors go to the ancestors

Those who worship Me will live with Me.

1. 26

Whoever offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water,

I will accept and consume what is offered by the pure-hearted.

1. 27

O son of Kunti, all that you do, all that you eat, all that you offer and give away, as well as all austerities that you may perform,

Give them as an offering to Me.

1. 28

You will be freed from all reactions to good and evil deeds by this renunciation,

You will be liberated and come to Me.

We should study and understand these verses very deeply. Krishna talks about the life that we lead now. He talks about the birth that we will take next. Please understand that our present life is a result of our previous life. Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, this is the truth. There is life after death as long as we are not enlightened.

Once we are enlightened, we merge into universal consciousness. Until then we take birth and go through the process of life and death.

Krishna talks about the kind of life that we lead now. The last thought that we have at the time of death determines our next birth, next life. Please understand,

Secret of Secrets

our next life is completely dependent upon our last thought at the time of our death. If we think of money, we will be reborn as a rich man or as a dissatisfied man who always thinks about money. If we think of food, we will be reborn as a glutton or a pig. If we think of lazily relaxing, we will be reborn as a buffalo.

This is the truth. Our last thought determines our first thought in our next life. Actually we need not go to the extent of life and death. We see this in daily life itself. Our last thought affects our first thought. Every night we die and every morning we take birth. During the day, when we are in the waking state, we use our gross physical body or sth¦la sÁar¤ra to carry on with our activities. When we sleep, if we have dreams, we use the subtle body or s¦k¾ma sÁar¤ra to travel to the places that we see in our dreams. When we are in deep sleep, when we have no dreams, then we are in our causal body or k¢ra´a sÁar¤ra.

When we sleep at night, we actually change bodies. We are not aware that this happens. When we dream, we see ourselves doing various things in the dream. We run, talk, eat, and do everything in the dream. In our dream, we have created a world in which we live. If our body is on the bed, then who is this body in the dream? Our gross body is on the bed, while our subtle body is active in the dream. In the same way, the causal body is active during the deep sleep state.

Now, when we sleep, we actually die and are reborn in the gross body in the morning. We see that our last thought before sleeping affects our first thought upon waking. If we come back from the office with a frustrated mood about our boss, we wake up with the same mood in the morning. If we sleep with a blissful smile on our face, we will be happy the next morning.

This is the reason we are asked to pray before we sleep at night. When we pray with full awareness, we enter a meditative state. In the meditative state, we can only be blissful. When we sleep in a blissful state, we wake up in the same state.

One more thing you need to know is that whatever feeling we wake up with in the morning, that same feeling stays with us throughout the day. Be very clear, the first thought we have in the morning stays with us throughout the day. How many have felt this? If you wake up dull in the morning, you will be dull throughout the day. If you wake up energized, you will be active and energetic throughout the day.

I tell people, 'When you wake up, dance your way to the bathroom! Feel the toothpaste on your teeth, feel the water on your body when you bathe. Bring in full awareness to every action. Start the day with a blissful thought. For that we must sleep also in a blissful mood.

Exactly what happens everyday during sleep is exactly the same thing that happens during the time of death. Ramakrishna says beautifully: When we die and take the next birth, the soul just changes clothes. During death, the soul sheds the cloth and in the next birth, it puts on a new cloth.

Be very clear, the process of sleep and the process of death are not different. During the process of death, the soul passes through seven energy layers. The next body it enters depends on the vāsanā, or the carried-over desires that it comes with from the previous life. It takes up a body that can help shed that vāsanā in the next life.

Please understand this very clearly. The body that we take now is dependent on the vāsanā or carried-over desires of our previous birth. Our soul always tries to merge with the colorless and formless universal consciousness. However, the vāsanā creates a slight tinge on the soul and it cannot completely merge with the universal consciousness. So the soul takes up another body that can help remove this tinge and help it merge.

Now it is up to us how we make use of this lifetime. We can either fulfill our unfulfilled desires of the previous life or we can build new desires in this life and stay in the cycle of birth and death. The kind of life that the soul chooses in the next life depends entirely on the vāsanā and the last thought at the time of death.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, I was not inclined towards spirituality at all. I was not into meditation; however, when I did the meditation I felt like I had been doing this for a long time. What is it? Why is it like that?'

Understand that you see only this life. You may not have done any meditation in this life. But you see a deep connection with meditation because you might have meditated in your previous life. You might have been a seeker in your previous life.

A small story:

In a forest a person meditated very deeply in front of goddess Kali. He performed different rituals in a deep meditative state. He meditated for long hours in the dense forest.

One day a passer-by observed this man performing rituals and meditating in front of Kali. Suddenly, a tiger attacked and ate the man. After the tiger disappeared into the forest, the passer-by approached the Kali idol and completed the ritual. At the end of it, to his surprise, goddess Kali appeared in front of him.

This man was shocked. He asked Kali, 'Mother, the person who performed the rituals for such a long time never received Your darśan; You never appeared before him. He was even eaten by a tiger. I only came a few minutes ago and did the final waving of lit lamps, and You appeared in front of me! What is the reason?'

Kali says, 'You were a strong seeker in your previous life. You meditated very deeply in your last life. That is why I appeared to you.'

You see, our next life depends on our last thought in this life. That does not mean that throughout our life we can think about money and food and suddenly at the time of death, we can say, 'Rama, Krishna.' If we think about money, name and fame throughout our entire life, how can we expect to think about God when we leave our body? Naturally we will only think about money.

This is what Krishna says in the first verse. When we are continuously aware of the Existential energy, when we continuously meditate on It, when our thoughts are on it all the time, whatever we may call it: Krishna, Rama, Jesus, Buddha, universe, Cosmos, Parāśakti or anything, we will have only the same thought when we leave the body also. That is enough. We will start living with this energy. And It will ensure that our next birth takes us closer to this energy and liberates us from the cycle of birth and death.

He says next: