Verses 6.41–6.43🔗

Kṛṣṇa talks about how we choose everything in our lives, including our birth, when and where we are born and whom we choose as our parents. This truth may seem difficult for most of us to believe. Our birth is not just an accident. It is an incident and we are the ones who choose all the details about this incident. We must understand that it is only we who program and design everything and everybody in our life, including our parents and environment. Our choice of the next body is based on the way we have lived our life in this body. For example, if we live to eat rather than eat to live, at the time of death, we will still have the desire to continue eating.

So, we will design our next body to fulfill this desire. We might choose the body of a pig. Or, if we have lived our life only for sleeping and doing no creative work, we might choose the body of a buffalo. So, based on the attitude we have lived with, we choose the next body. This is the basic idea on which our janma-maraṇa cakra (cycle of life and death) revolves. We go into a birth-death cycle. We go and come back again, taking a new body. This phenomenon happens again and again. Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 487 Whatever we choose at the moment of death will become reality in the next birth.

You will be that. Some people think that they can manage if they remind themselves to think of the Divine, at the last second of their lives. But that will never happen unless we make that a habit throughout our life. If we keep chanting ‘Coca-Cola’ our whole life, we cannot and will not think of Rāma or Kṛṣṇa during our last moments! How we live our life will decide the quality of our death as well. Here, Kṛṣṇa gives the assurance to Arjuna and to the whole of humanity that a person who has performed virtuous activities takes birth in a family of wise people or in a prosperous family.

His pious activities will earn him a place among the higher worlds. After dwelling there for a while he will take birth in the family of righteous people to once again enable his spiritual seeking. We can choose our body and the time that we wish to be born. When we live our life running behind our greed and desires, running after ‘what next? what next....?,’ naturally, at the time of our death also, we will not be ready to leave the body. The body will be tired of running behind desires continuously, but the mind will not be ready to leave. So we will leave the body in the pain and suffering of this push and pull of desires and fear.

If we can just relax into the present and take life moment by moment, we will leave the body in a relaxed way, peacefully. Once we leave the body, in three kṣaṇa, three moments, we get into a new body and we are reborn. Kṣaṇa in Saṃskṛit does not mean ‘seconds’. It means the gap between two thoughts. If we have been constantly running behind desires, the gap between two thoughts will be really small for us. When we learn to relax into the present, the gap between two thoughts increases and the three kṣaṇas can be a long time. In three kṣaṇas, we take on the new body to fulfill whatever desires were unfulfilled when we left the previous body.

Here, Kṛṣṇa says that on taking birth, we gain the intelligence of the previous body and continue the journey where we left off. One thing we should understand here is that when we say death, it is not just the death that happens at the end of our life. It is what happens every day and night. Every night, we go from the physical body to the dream body and causal body. In the morning, we enter the physical body again. We die and take birth again. People tell me, ‘No, no, Swamiji. Everyday when we enter into the dream we are not entering into the same dream, but everyday when we wake up to the reality we are entering into the same reality.

So with this scale we can say this is reality and that is dream.’ Please listen, in one night’s dream we live even twenty years of life, am I right? In one night’s dream, don’t we live even twenty years of life? In that twenty-year span, we are in the same dream. But is that reality? No! So be very clear, this whole life which you think as reality, may very well be part of one dream! This whole span that we are thinking of as real can be part of one dream. Every day we leave the body. We go to the causal body when we fall asleep. Every day we die.

When we wake up, we come back. Every day we come back to life. As of now, every morning, how do we come back to life? How do we take this body again in the morning? Just look deeply. What happens at the time when we get up from bed? First thing, usually, the moment we gain awareness, either a thought based on greed or fear will hit us. There will be thoughts based on greed such as, ‘I need to get this today,’ or thoughts based on fear such as, ‘I have to finish this work today in office. Will I be able to?’ Some thought based on fear or greed will hit us.

Immediately, we will jump out of our bed. The moment we assume our body, that moment is a moment of taking birth. Please be very clear, that is the moment we take the body. Early morning, the thought with which we enter into the body, which makes us assume the body, is going to play a major role in our consciousness. The first thought is going to play a major role in our consciousness throughout the day. Just as the thought with which we leave the body on dying decides the kind of body we will assume in our next birth, in exactly the same way, every day the thought with which we Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 489 get up in the morning and assume this body decides the quality of that day, that life.

If we understand this once and alter our thoughts at the time of waking up, we will alter the whole consciousness. When we get up from bed, let the first thought be related to love and compassion. Wake up only to express life in bliss. Wake up just out of joy. When we get up from bed, let us assume the body with gratitude to the Divine. With this, the whole quality of our consciousness will change. We will become a Divine Incarnation! Kṛṣṇa is actually giving a technique on how to become Kṛṣṇa, how to enter into Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, to become an Incarnation. The man who assumes the body out of love and compassion is an Incarnation.

If we assume the body out of greed or fear, we are human. Early morning, let the first thought be gratitude. Let it be out of love and compassion. Our whole life will become pure eternal bliss, Nithyānanda. Become A Yogi