What is Satsanga? Q&A

There are two, supposedly two beliefs about the future life, the reincarnation. What are those two? One is that one is a human being, always a human being. Or higher.

It cannot go down. Or higher. Or higher, right.

Never come down. Never come down. The other belief is one can... Yes, yes.

What is the truth? The truth is the second one. That a human being can also become an animal. Perfect... Can you say that again through 84? No, no, no, no, no, no.

Not 80 through 84. It is only temporary. Like, you know, a normal man, suppose he commits a crime, he goes to jail.

So it is not for eternity. You know, temporarily he will be incarcerated and then when the punishment period is over, he will come out. So the whole point is like this.

Many people, they do not understand why they ask this question. The point is the hope against hope, however bad I am, I am not going to go down. Even if I don't go up, at least I will not go down.

The Hindu belief reincarnation, you know, it is a most marvellous theory. What it is? Reincarnation is not a punishment. It is an opportunity for us to catch up with what either we have lost or we have not gained.

You know, it is an opportunity. Okay, this year I failed, second year I will try to pass. This is a hope, hopeful this.

Suppose somebody behaves like an animal and he develops animal samskaras, so then he becomes an animal, that particular animal, so that he can express his samskaras freely. But when he is corrected, he understands this is not the right way. Again he will be given an opportunity to be a human being.

So there are two things you have to understand in this respect. One, the natural evolution where from lower mechanism we develop the higher mechanism. Evolution means development of this instrument, both body and mind, so that we can experience life in greater fullness and depth.

That is what is called evolution. The higher we are in the scale of evolution, the more complex becomes our mechanism, brain especially, mind, to experience life in more perspective, right? So this is a, one does not start again from the amoeba state. Once we come to the human life, there are what is called three stages of evolution.

One is instinct, one is reason, another is intuition. Intuition belongs to saints. Instinct belongs to non-human beings.

Reason is supposed to work with human beings because we have a choice. We have got not only consciousness, we have got self-consciousness, means the ability to stand outside of our own selves and to evaluate our personality, right? Yes. So once we attain this stage, we are responsible for our own actions.

Animals are not responsible because they behave very naturally, means instinctively. Whereas we have been given this blessed privilege of both, we can be good or we can be also evil. So we have to correct ourselves if we are not behaving properly.

This correcting procedure is called going down. It is a temporary period. And once that experience is over, we learn our lessons and then we come back.

In offices, they call it retraining period, right? I do not know. Is it a correct word? They call it, you know, basic skills every now and then you have to… Continuing education. Continuing education, okay.

Nowadays, you know, everybody wants euphemistic word, tree surgeon, tree surgeon. Those who look after corpses and want funeral directors. If you ask them undertakers, then they will get very angry.

Tree surgeons, today we have tree surgeons here. Outside our house, you know, I brought one, what a beautiful mechanism. We are feeding the branches into it and it is becoming just pulp is coming out of it.

Have you seen that? Here, it was there until 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Anyway, so this is what Upanishads tell us. This is what our saints and sages are telling and Ramana Maharshi used to tell it.

And I will tell you a very interesting incident. You know, Ramana Maharshi used to love animals. Have you heard about Ramana Maharshi? And he always used to respect them.

You know what in Hindi we call? Aap, ve, not tum, o. It is a respectable word. Ve aaye hain, not o aaya hai. Because he used to respect animals.

So once a dog came, very intelligent dog. Ramana Maharshi's ashrama, there are some places on the hill to devotees go around. It is called Giripradakshina.

So this dog observed very well that most of the people who come to Ramana ashrama, they go around that hill early morning, come back in the afternoon, late afternoon or evening. And after a few days, this dog started standing in front of the newcomers and wagging its tail, indicating, you follow me, I will take you. So it used to go to those special places, wait outside, so that the people understand, they go inside, prostrate, spend a few minutes, come out, then take them to the next place.

Afternoon it will correctly bring them to the Ramana ashrama. And one day a Brahmin came, and you know South Indian Brahmins, they hate dogs. They think it is a very dirty animal.

So this dog was trying to go near him and he abused it, shouted at it, and then up next it was found in a pond. It committed suicide. Ramana Maharshi became very sad and said, it was a yogi in its former life.

It could not complete its sadhana. It came here to become perfect. It is highly intelligent, but this man, unable to understand it, mistreated it.

It could not bear that insult. That is why it had fallen from yoga. Ahankara, you know.

What is there if somebody abuses, it is all right. But anyway, so we do not know. Nowadays lot of scientific insights are being discovered, where animals, even ants have 27 words, expressions, language.

It is highly interesting. Because we are dumb, we think that animals are insensitive, or animals do not know how to language. They may be even self-conscious.

We do not know. It is quite possible. But anyway, the answer to your question is, according to Upanishads or scriptures, yes, a human being can become an animal.

Most of the, you know, one of our Swamis was asked, that why this human population is so much increasing like that. He said, you know, you are spraying DDT everywhere, killing all the mosquitoes. All the mosquitoes are reincarnating as human beings.

That is what most of our friends are doing. Go on pinching, you know, each other, behaving more like mosquitoes than human beings, right? Anyway, that is the considered opinion. So this is not to be misunderstood as natural evolution is different.

This is a temporary fall down, and again once he learns the lesson, the jiva comes back. During this temporary fall down, the complete power, the rest of the jiva, has it been given to God? No, no, no. The same body is in the body only, not in the current body.

You see, all our samskara, it is stored in the form of samskaras. Like your, you know, very huge hard disc. All your files are there, compressed and waiting.

As soon as you give the proper word, sometimes even without giving the proper command, it will come out and crash. Yes, virus also is a file, is it not? Very interesting. It is a note question because we have to depend upon scriptures for the answer.

The reason is, whatever our five sense organs cannot access, we have to have faith in what the scriptures tell us, right? So the answer given is that between two incarnations, there are three possible states. One, one goes to heaven. Then another, one goes to hell.

And another, neither heaven nor hell, but a kind of disembodied existence, which we call, you know, bhuta, preta, vishacha, like that. So depending upon what karma one does in this place, that is what happens. It is like this, you know.

I can give an analogy. It is not an exact answer, but it is an analogy to understand these concepts better. Suppose you work very, very hard, earn a lot of money, you can go on a Hawaiian highland or anywhere where you think you can enjoy.

That is called swargaloka. But as soon as your credit is exhausted, you come back. If you do something bad, then you go to, say, jail or something to get corrected and you come back.

But there are certain states of what is called sickness. In sickness, one doesn't go to heaven, one doesn't go to hell, one just tries to recuperate. So going to Hawaiian holidays like swargaloka, going to jail or some punishment, that is called naraka.

But being sick is like a disembodied state, very painful state. So these are the three states between two incarnations. But our scriptures tell us whether we want realisation, then this human instrument is the best instrument.

I have one question. Yes. So according to karma theory, the soul from one life to the next life carries all the avasanas and samskaras, experiences.

So those are carried, the sukshma, subtle body goes along with the soul? Yes. How does that work? They're all, because the bhautika deha, gross body, drops up, which we call death, is it not? The subtle body, all these avasanas are stored in the subtle body. So that subtle body is that... Consisting of... Mana, buddhi... Yes.

Mana, buddhi, chitta and ahamkara. Yes. So they are the subtle body.

Yes. What we call mind. And also mind.

That is called mind. Mana is mind. Yes.

Are you saying all these together are mind? Yes. That is, in Sanskrit, in English, we call, what we call mind, it is a general name for all these four faculties. So the subtle body has four faculties.

Cositation, remembrance, decision-taking, and this, identify what is called ahamkara. So ahamkara is common for all the three. I cositate.

I give a beautiful example to make this concept clear. Suppose in semi-darkness, you see somebody coming. You don't know who it is because you can't see.

Who is it? Who is it? Is it a human being? Is it an animal? Is it a... Then when you go near, is it man? Is it a woman? When he comes very near, is this person I know? Is it so and so? Etc. This cositation process is called manaha. It is a function of this antaranga, antarendriya to cositate.

When it cositates, it is termed as mind, manaha. Then memory comes. You know we all work with memories.

You can't recognise your friend unless you have seen him before and keep that picture in memory. So this figure tallies with that memory. Now I know this is my friend.

This is called chitta. Chitta means memory. So I cositate aham manaha, aham chittaha.

Then the chitta reports it. This is so and so. The buddhi says yes.

Now you greet him because it has taken a decision. So this is called buddhi's function is to decide. Decisive function belongs to the buddhi.

So I cositate, I remember, and I decide. So manaha, chittaha, buddhi. And behind these three is that faculty called aham.

These four together is called subtle, sukshma sharira. So that sukshma sharira goes with the soul, atma. And is sukshma sharira is considered as matter? It is also matter.

But you see Vedanta is a very deep subject. We had this discussion. Mr. Jain actually, he says the sukshma sharira is matter.

Yes it is. In a way of speaking it is matter. In a way of speaking finally there is no matter, there is no soul, everything is only one.

Because everything has come from pancha bhutas. Where from the pancha bhutas have come? From brahman only. From brahman, akasha came.

Akasha, dvayuh, vayuh, ragnih, agneh, rapah, adhyah, prithivi, prithivi, usha, deepya, etc. etc. So these sukshma things have become sukshma sharira.

Gross pancha bhutas have become gross world. So it is everything ultimately is nothing but sarvam kalvidam brahma. But in our state we have got three personalities.

What are those? Sthula sharira, sukshma sharira and karana sharira. Or sukshma and karana sharira lumped into one body, mind and soul, jiva. Right? So it is the sukshma sharira, it is also a sharira.

That is why he is right. He said it is matter only. But what is sukshma sharira? It is a subtle body is called sukshma sharira and gross body is called, gross mind is called sthula sharira and subtle body is called sukshma sharira.

It is an expression, different expressions. And this sukshma sharira goes with us from life to life. There is no break there.

It is only physical body which dies. The sukshma sharira does not die. It dies only as it were when the liberation comes, jnana comes.

Then one realises there is no sthula, there is no sukshma, there is no karana, there is sarvam kalvidam brahma. Until we reach that, we have to keep this distinction. So from one body, just like what you were saying, one life to the next life, so this atma along with sukshma sharira is it travelling? As it were it is travelling because you know there is a beautiful expression in English.

If I ask you a question, can God do everything? Give me the answer. God do everything. Can God do anything he wants? In the beginning you said... No, no, no, give the answer.

Yes? All right. No, no, I will ask second question. Can he go on a holiday? Where will he go? He is everywhere.

He can go on a holiday. Unfortunately God cannot go on a holiday. Right? Idea of saying is, where will the atma go? It is like your swapna.

As you imagine, you go to sleep and say, I am in Hawaii land, I am in India. Have you gone to India? Oh yes, I go every day. Oh you go every day? Oh God! How much money do you spend? You know it is all, the atman is everywhere.

Only our inability to see it. You know what is travel like? You know what it is like? I will give a simple illustration. Can you see this whole of this wall? Now, you just put your fingers like this and watch different parts of the wall.

It is like going on a holiday from this place to that place. Are you really going anywhere? It is, you know, our limitation which makes it say, the soul does not go anywhere, but apparently it travels from state to state, from place to place. This is human limitation.

Yeah. Okay. Ready? Please give them some nice prasad.

So let us all say, Om Om Om Om Shanti Shanti Shanti