Question by user:
I just purchased your software online and was going through the online lessons and find them very fascinating.
Anyway, I have a question on lesson 5 - question that is actually posed by you, and is different from your conclusion in Lesson 5. If we are to conclude that everything is destined in this life then how do you answer the following questions posed so eloquently by you:
"So, if we say that in this life you are getting reactions to your past good and bad deeds and acting accordingly, then isn't it also true that that was the case in the last life. If we are constantly products of reactions to OUR OWN past deeds, then how can we create new good and bad deeds, if we are going to be limited by our past? "
I could not find the answers to above if we are to assume that the conclusion is true. I am currently going thru Jupiter Mahadasha (Jupiter in 9th house) — and hence have been spending a lot of time thinking thru these kinds of issues, etc (as you may well imagine).
Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on this? And thank you very much for spreading your knowledge and wisdom. It is much needed in this world.
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I just purchased your software online and was going through the online lessons and find them very fascinating.
Anyway, I have a question on lesson 5 - question that is actually posed by you, and is different from your conclusion in Lesson 5. If we are to conclude that everything is destined in this life then how do you answer the following questions posed so eloquently by you:
"So, if we say that in this life you are getting reactions to your past good and bad deeds and acting accordingly, then isn't it also true that that was the case in the last life. If we are constantly products of reactions to OUR OWN past deeds, then how can we create new good and bad deeds, if we are going to be limited by our past? "
I could not find the answers to above if we are to assume that the conclusion is true. I am currently going thru Jupiter Mahadasha (Jupiter in 9th house) — and hence have been spending a lot of time thinking thru these kinds of issues, etc (as you may well imagine).
Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on this? And thank you very much for spreading your knowledge and wisdom. It is much needed in this world.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello
Thanks for writing to me.
On the issue of Pre-Determinism.
Actually, my conclusion is this: Everything is predetermined in all lives. There is no free will. However, part of the great plan of Vishnu is that we feel perfectly one with our path that he has made for us, which includes problems and troubles, tortures and horrors.
We learn from these things. "We" make mistakes (so we are made to feel). "We" feel responsible (so the we are made to feel as humans).
But in fact we aren't humans. We're eternal souls. So, when we are feeling "free will" and "responsibility" we are in illusion as much as always. We know we have no control over things like death, car crashes, whatever. Everything is just happening. Think of Princess Diana at the moment of impact; the microseconds as she is smashed to pieces. We are all constantly in that much danger, when the gauntlet will fall on us is unsure, to us, but it's coming, and low and behold, the planets are always malefic over us at the times of our death; astrology shows that everything is happening in a perfect, predetermined order.
What I meant in the above was this same conclusion.
Namely, that we CANNOT be creating future bad karma now, even through bad actions, if we are doing so as a reaction to some past action. If we are being forced, out of past bad karma, to be a dumb fool committing bad karma in this life, then how can we be responsible for what comes as a result of our current actions.
Actually, this is also true of good karma, and everything in between.
If we think it through, it's impossible for the soul to ever even begin creating karma. All the preaching about different types of karma, and how some parts of our lives are controlled and in other free zones we're somewhat the creators, etc., I don't buy any of that. I find it in a lot of books, but I don't find those kind of things said in the Bhagavatam.
The Bhagavatam is said by Vyas to be his own teachings Higher Than the original vedas. The Bhag. is more like always saying, in my own paraphrasing of my understanding of it:
"Everything is controlled always, this is your mystic power Oh Lord, that although this is true, we still feel the pains of our lives as our own downfall, and the glories of our lives as our own triumphs. But actually it is all you Lord, through your external energy, the material energy, which holds and fully operates the lives of all the souls in it's clutches, nobody can escape this, not even Acharyas or Great Mahajans".
And further I've concluded that our understanding will then become once we are liberated, and this my view I learned from the book "Brihat Bhagavatamrtam" by an intimate associate and follower of Sri Chaitanya, namely Sri Sanatan Goswami, thus written 500 years ago around the time of the life of Sri Chaitanya and directly because of and in tribute to His teachings, at the end of which you'll find a speech by a newly liberated soul, talking to Krishna, which is something like this:
"My Lord, by giving me the MENTAL freedom in the material world to identify with and follow along my lives there, you thus gave me the ability to actually feel separate from You. In that condition I identified with my own physical bodies, and lived each life, and learned each lives lessons. At most times, I did not want you. I wanted other things. Later by your mercy I found a path back to you, my True Beloved."
At the end of the book, Krishna says to the new resident of Goloka Vrindavan (Krishna's eternal spiritual planet):
"I have missed you. I longed for you. I could have brought you here sooner, but you didn't want me. (Implying He doesn't interfere with our consciousness but gives us freedom, so to speak, in the consciousness, that's an important distinction.)”
We are incapable of creating our own grand sphere of illusion and giving that energy the energy it needs to function, to spin planets and create volcanoes, species of life, the central nervous system, etc. So God does that for the souls who need it.
Who needs it? The new souls who need to be trained fully, so that they can go to His ever expanding spiritual planets and play games and lovemaking with Him and His other devotees there. To enjoy eternally.
But to enjoy eternally you have to play by the rules there. Nobody can pollute that place at all. That's the magic, it never happens. No police are required. Nobody there even knows what malice is.
The magic is that this place gets all that out of our possibilities. A saint is a person who is no longer open to the illusion of separateness from God. They are no longer open to sinning, at all, and they know exactly what it is, and they know it's not pertaining to a certain object, or substance, or organ of the body. No, sin is individual, and related to the moment, and one's inner true inclinations and intentions. That's all.
The opposite of sin is giving oneself fully to Gods service. The opposite of that is to one degree or another something which will cause reaction. The opposite of sin causes nothing bad for anyone ever, except only apparently. The real answer to all problems lies in full surrender by all souls to a life of dedication to the center, who we call God generally, but I prefer Vishnu or Krishna. The reason I don't say Shiva is because He is clearly described in these scriptures as not being God exactly, but the very lowest of the Vishnu tattva in a sense, without being one. He is on the border between the material and spiritual worlds. He is God, but the first level, the level that deals with this place directly, as does his eternal consort, known by many names including Devi, Durga, Bhavani, Chandi, etc...They are God, but they are not the level we are told to worship to in the Vaishnava scriptures. But disrespecting Shiva in any way is also taught as utterly destructive to one's fortune, because He is God, in this sense. I hope I'm clear. It's not an offense. It's a careful ontological understanding which comes directly from scriptures written by Vyas. I'm not speculating here.
So back to the point: So I believe what is happening is quite mystical. We are controlled. God knows all if He wants, but He doesn't want, so he pays it no heed personally.
We can know a lot about what is to come through Jyotish. Therefore I think Jyotish is proof of the Vedic conclusion I'm presenting. I believe Jyotish blows the curtain off Mayas illusion.
"You're not free, but you feel free. This is because God wants you to feel free. God wants you to learn. You have no choice. You will be you no matter what, so accept it, and fight it out fully, but for Me, for Krishna, I'm God, I'm the object of your love, and the aim of your struggles, try to come to me, serve me, worship me, be my devotee, and I will also love you, and bring you to me, and my world. Surrender to me, give up all other conceptions of Dharma. Whatever my devotee has to suffer, he accepts that. He keeps focused on me. Thus he becomes purified."
This is the Gita in essence, but in my own words. This is consistent completely with the Bhagavatam. The Avatars (the ten) are covered individually and extensively story by story in the Bhagavatam. These personalities, as you learn them there, Varaha, Nrsingha, Buddha, etc., align perfectly with the planets assigned to them in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, a scripture supposedly by the father of Vyas, Parashara Muni.
So there is consistency here, very much so.
We are being bathed in these lives, in the various qualities of God Himself. We are trying to be Bhagavan (God, the owner of everything). We want things, we want to live and survive. That's an illusion. We are dying instead.
Our real life lie only possibly in eternal life since this one is obviously temporary and quite miserable in many ways, i.e., how many assembled here and facing serious diseases? Even death causing ones? Some of us are. All of us have the makings of real medical disasters brewing inside us. Therefore Shastra says, "Janma, Mrityu, Jara, Vyadha.”; this world is nothing but a miserable place wherein there is nothing but repeating birth, death, old age, and disease.
After liberation, we cannot remember the horrors of this nightmare. At that time, once we are accustomed to a few moments of liberated feeling (which I've experienced once briefly by the Lord's mercy upon me), we immediately realize that what we just went through was nothing short of a rapid, short and horrifying nightmare consisting of all our material lives in one long horrible dream.
It's over!
It doesn't come back. It never actually existed, since its history, and impossible to retrieve. Nobody there wants to go back to that. They got it. They get it. We're getting it now, we're them, inside the nightmare still, but very close to the edge.
What I'm writing here is very conclusive. It is hard to argue with it because it is so large as to encompass eternal time. It is rare to find this kind of condensation of Vedic thought. But that's my life. This article is what my life has concluded. This is the essence of my own path and research going on always inside me. Jyotish nailed it down for me finally too I must add.
After realizing this, one lives on in the illusion, because we must. Krishna says that. But we no longer actually identify with it. That's "liberating". We are open then to input from the environment more clearly. It opens the vision. Because, you are no longer thinking in any way opposed to its dominance over all things. So you begin to see more how all things are actually in the same current, tossing in the same waves. The synchronicity of simultaneous events begins to become more apparent. You begin to be able to easily read the Gunas as they unfold around you.
You are overwhelmed in love of God, because He and She are so beautiful. You can see them then in all things, because all things come from them, and are of their nature. At this point, the relationship between God and the Seeing Jiva becomes inextricably tied, and liberation comes soon.
Bhagavatam recognizes the merging into Brahman as a possibility too, but describes it as something done more out of a sour grapes nature, "turn off the bad" but "receive no positive alternative". Instead, the alternative is motionless bliss. It says this doesn't satisfy the soul, who then after some time descends again to finish with the Bhakti portion of their training. Therefore Sri Chaitanya recommends avoiding hearing glorification of this type of Mukti, and instead encourages everyone to focus solely on Bhakti to the Personal God, who He teaches is eternally existing actually in His Own Eternal Abode, who is not JUST a deity for our purification, which is ultimately abandoned as imaginary. No.
So we are both, free and controlled. One is true (the control) and the other is apparent to us, and therefore real (the freedom). The Lord wants it that way, that's why it works that way.
It's important to remember that it ends and is totally abandoned and forgotten. Just like "where is all the papers you wrote on in first grade?"
Think about that. You retained what you learned, but the paper isn't important.
So we walk on after shedding that skin, in a better place. Graduates.
Love,
Raghunandan Das
aka Das Goravani
Thanks for writing to me.
On the issue of Pre-Determinism.
Actually, my conclusion is this: Everything is predetermined in all lives. There is no free will. However, part of the great plan of Vishnu is that we feel perfectly one with our path that he has made for us, which includes problems and troubles, tortures and horrors.
We learn from these things. "We" make mistakes (so we are made to feel). "We" feel responsible (so the we are made to feel as humans).
But in fact we aren't humans. We're eternal souls. So, when we are feeling "free will" and "responsibility" we are in illusion as much as always. We know we have no control over things like death, car crashes, whatever. Everything is just happening. Think of Princess Diana at the moment of impact; the microseconds as she is smashed to pieces. We are all constantly in that much danger, when the gauntlet will fall on us is unsure, to us, but it's coming, and low and behold, the planets are always malefic over us at the times of our death; astrology shows that everything is happening in a perfect, predetermined order.
What I meant in the above was this same conclusion.
Namely, that we CANNOT be creating future bad karma now, even through bad actions, if we are doing so as a reaction to some past action. If we are being forced, out of past bad karma, to be a dumb fool committing bad karma in this life, then how can we be responsible for what comes as a result of our current actions.
Actually, this is also true of good karma, and everything in between.
If we think it through, it's impossible for the soul to ever even begin creating karma. All the preaching about different types of karma, and how some parts of our lives are controlled and in other free zones we're somewhat the creators, etc., I don't buy any of that. I find it in a lot of books, but I don't find those kind of things said in the Bhagavatam.
The Bhagavatam is said by Vyas to be his own teachings Higher Than the original vedas. The Bhag. is more like always saying, in my own paraphrasing of my understanding of it:
"Everything is controlled always, this is your mystic power Oh Lord, that although this is true, we still feel the pains of our lives as our own downfall, and the glories of our lives as our own triumphs. But actually it is all you Lord, through your external energy, the material energy, which holds and fully operates the lives of all the souls in it's clutches, nobody can escape this, not even Acharyas or Great Mahajans".
And further I've concluded that our understanding will then become once we are liberated, and this my view I learned from the book "Brihat Bhagavatamrtam" by an intimate associate and follower of Sri Chaitanya, namely Sri Sanatan Goswami, thus written 500 years ago around the time of the life of Sri Chaitanya and directly because of and in tribute to His teachings, at the end of which you'll find a speech by a newly liberated soul, talking to Krishna, which is something like this:
"My Lord, by giving me the MENTAL freedom in the material world to identify with and follow along my lives there, you thus gave me the ability to actually feel separate from You. In that condition I identified with my own physical bodies, and lived each life, and learned each lives lessons. At most times, I did not want you. I wanted other things. Later by your mercy I found a path back to you, my True Beloved."
At the end of the book, Krishna says to the new resident of Goloka Vrindavan (Krishna's eternal spiritual planet):
"I have missed you. I longed for you. I could have brought you here sooner, but you didn't want me. (Implying He doesn't interfere with our consciousness but gives us freedom, so to speak, in the consciousness, that's an important distinction.)”
We are incapable of creating our own grand sphere of illusion and giving that energy the energy it needs to function, to spin planets and create volcanoes, species of life, the central nervous system, etc. So God does that for the souls who need it.
Who needs it? The new souls who need to be trained fully, so that they can go to His ever expanding spiritual planets and play games and lovemaking with Him and His other devotees there. To enjoy eternally.
But to enjoy eternally you have to play by the rules there. Nobody can pollute that place at all. That's the magic, it never happens. No police are required. Nobody there even knows what malice is.
The magic is that this place gets all that out of our possibilities. A saint is a person who is no longer open to the illusion of separateness from God. They are no longer open to sinning, at all, and they know exactly what it is, and they know it's not pertaining to a certain object, or substance, or organ of the body. No, sin is individual, and related to the moment, and one's inner true inclinations and intentions. That's all.
The opposite of sin is giving oneself fully to Gods service. The opposite of that is to one degree or another something which will cause reaction. The opposite of sin causes nothing bad for anyone ever, except only apparently. The real answer to all problems lies in full surrender by all souls to a life of dedication to the center, who we call God generally, but I prefer Vishnu or Krishna. The reason I don't say Shiva is because He is clearly described in these scriptures as not being God exactly, but the very lowest of the Vishnu tattva in a sense, without being one. He is on the border between the material and spiritual worlds. He is God, but the first level, the level that deals with this place directly, as does his eternal consort, known by many names including Devi, Durga, Bhavani, Chandi, etc...They are God, but they are not the level we are told to worship to in the Vaishnava scriptures. But disrespecting Shiva in any way is also taught as utterly destructive to one's fortune, because He is God, in this sense. I hope I'm clear. It's not an offense. It's a careful ontological understanding which comes directly from scriptures written by Vyas. I'm not speculating here.
So back to the point: So I believe what is happening is quite mystical. We are controlled. God knows all if He wants, but He doesn't want, so he pays it no heed personally.
We can know a lot about what is to come through Jyotish. Therefore I think Jyotish is proof of the Vedic conclusion I'm presenting. I believe Jyotish blows the curtain off Mayas illusion.
"You're not free, but you feel free. This is because God wants you to feel free. God wants you to learn. You have no choice. You will be you no matter what, so accept it, and fight it out fully, but for Me, for Krishna, I'm God, I'm the object of your love, and the aim of your struggles, try to come to me, serve me, worship me, be my devotee, and I will also love you, and bring you to me, and my world. Surrender to me, give up all other conceptions of Dharma. Whatever my devotee has to suffer, he accepts that. He keeps focused on me. Thus he becomes purified."
This is the Gita in essence, but in my own words. This is consistent completely with the Bhagavatam. The Avatars (the ten) are covered individually and extensively story by story in the Bhagavatam. These personalities, as you learn them there, Varaha, Nrsingha, Buddha, etc., align perfectly with the planets assigned to them in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, a scripture supposedly by the father of Vyas, Parashara Muni.
So there is consistency here, very much so.
We are being bathed in these lives, in the various qualities of God Himself. We are trying to be Bhagavan (God, the owner of everything). We want things, we want to live and survive. That's an illusion. We are dying instead.
Our real life lie only possibly in eternal life since this one is obviously temporary and quite miserable in many ways, i.e., how many assembled here and facing serious diseases? Even death causing ones? Some of us are. All of us have the makings of real medical disasters brewing inside us. Therefore Shastra says, "Janma, Mrityu, Jara, Vyadha.”; this world is nothing but a miserable place wherein there is nothing but repeating birth, death, old age, and disease.
After liberation, we cannot remember the horrors of this nightmare. At that time, once we are accustomed to a few moments of liberated feeling (which I've experienced once briefly by the Lord's mercy upon me), we immediately realize that what we just went through was nothing short of a rapid, short and horrifying nightmare consisting of all our material lives in one long horrible dream.
It's over!
It doesn't come back. It never actually existed, since its history, and impossible to retrieve. Nobody there wants to go back to that. They got it. They get it. We're getting it now, we're them, inside the nightmare still, but very close to the edge.
What I'm writing here is very conclusive. It is hard to argue with it because it is so large as to encompass eternal time. It is rare to find this kind of condensation of Vedic thought. But that's my life. This article is what my life has concluded. This is the essence of my own path and research going on always inside me. Jyotish nailed it down for me finally too I must add.
After realizing this, one lives on in the illusion, because we must. Krishna says that. But we no longer actually identify with it. That's "liberating". We are open then to input from the environment more clearly. It opens the vision. Because, you are no longer thinking in any way opposed to its dominance over all things. So you begin to see more how all things are actually in the same current, tossing in the same waves. The synchronicity of simultaneous events begins to become more apparent. You begin to be able to easily read the Gunas as they unfold around you.
You are overwhelmed in love of God, because He and She are so beautiful. You can see them then in all things, because all things come from them, and are of their nature. At this point, the relationship between God and the Seeing Jiva becomes inextricably tied, and liberation comes soon.
Bhagavatam recognizes the merging into Brahman as a possibility too, but describes it as something done more out of a sour grapes nature, "turn off the bad" but "receive no positive alternative". Instead, the alternative is motionless bliss. It says this doesn't satisfy the soul, who then after some time descends again to finish with the Bhakti portion of their training. Therefore Sri Chaitanya recommends avoiding hearing glorification of this type of Mukti, and instead encourages everyone to focus solely on Bhakti to the Personal God, who He teaches is eternally existing actually in His Own Eternal Abode, who is not JUST a deity for our purification, which is ultimately abandoned as imaginary. No.
So we are both, free and controlled. One is true (the control) and the other is apparent to us, and therefore real (the freedom). The Lord wants it that way, that's why it works that way.
It's important to remember that it ends and is totally abandoned and forgotten. Just like "where is all the papers you wrote on in first grade?"
Think about that. You retained what you learned, but the paper isn't important.
So we walk on after shedding that skin, in a better place. Graduates.
Love,
Raghunandan Das
aka Das Goravani
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