Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji – April 13, 2016 – Chennai
Compiled by Smt Hira Duvvuri
Sri Maha Ganapataye Namah
Sri Saraswatyai Namah
Sri Padavallabha Narasimha Saraswati
Sri Guru Dattatreyaya Namah
This song, Ganagana ganagana nayakane describes the Mooladhara and the six Chakras (Shatchakra keertana). It is a yoga keertana, it is there in all languages. Three types of bhajans are composed by Swamiji. The first type is Nama Sankeertana, singing the names, glories, and attributes of God. The second type is Tatva Bhajans, which explain how man should conduct himself, what his purpose in life is, what his duties are, how he should use his mind, body, and speech to serve with purity and harmony. The third type of Bhajans explain: Who am I? What is my connection with God? What is the nature of this world? Why are we born on this earth? What is reality? How should one live in this illusory world? How does one conquer this illusion? How to swim across this ocean of delusion? What is attachment, and what is detachment? What happens in this lifespan of about a hundred years, and what will happen afterwards? What happened before?
All emotions and experiences such as happiness and sorrow all occur during this limited lifespan. After that only memory remains. All else is dead. As per karma, the buddhi remains and continues its journey. Buddhi is not the mind. It accompanies it. It continues its travel. It joins with the next mind according to the individual’s past karma. What happens in the present life continues into the next lifetime. The joys and sorrows continue. This is a big nonstop, self-propelling wheel. It energizes itself. No one else gives it fuel. Such is God’s Creation.
It created itself. No one created it. With mind, intellect, and ego whatever you do, whatever you are going to do, whether you gave or give control to your sense organs, or to your mind, or whether you obey only to whatever the intellect says, is of importance. Between the three, the senses, the mind, and the intellect, there is a continuous discussion going on. The three are always in consultation. Like a new shirt, or a new home, you keep acquiring and changing your sense organs. Mind and intellect are not renewed. The same are brought forward from the past life, like a savings account. There are two types of account, good and bad. Black and white, like black money and white money. They are called Rama account and Krishna account.
By the influence of these two accounts, your next lifetime will be designed. If you had been good, you will have a comfortable life in the next birth with good food, a good home, and a good family. Otherwise, always some sorrow, some sickness, some family problems will keep occurring. The two accounts should be properly adjusted. Bad deeds earn and give bad results. If you plant a good garden, there is fragrance, there is beauty. It is pleasing. If you plant only wild cactus plants, it will be like a forest, and even serpents will come. Nothing is pleasing there. Rama Krishna accounts are like good credit and bad credit. According to Karma, the mind-intellect equipment will conduct itself.
That is why the elders always say, we don’t know what we have done in the past to deserve this. When some good things happen to someone, people say he must have done something good that this good fortune has occurred to him. Such statements are made. Based on your sensual desires, your next life will occur. That is Sankalpa. That is the basis of Creation. What your thoughts prevail upon, what you keep dwelling upon, determine your future birth. A woman who is obsessed with a gentleman will be born as a gentleman in the next birth. If a man is obsessed with thoughts of a woman, he will be reborn as a woman. If, instead of such thoughts, if one thinks of God, he will be associated with pious people in the next birth. One does not right away become God. For that to happen, one has to go through several steps. One has to face many examinations and meet many conditions. You will keep approaching closer to God, going through the steps of Yaksha, Kinnara, Gandharva, Deva, and Human stages. There it stops. But if you keep only Satsang, and only think of Swamiji and if you put in the required effort, you can attain Goloka, an eternal divine kingdom. To attain that you must develop good habits and live a good life. But to go through these stages of Kinnara, and Kimpurusha, you must do a lot of practice. You must develop a noble mind. You must cultivate good habits.
Hastily shooting off the mouth is not a good habit. Telling lies, fabricating stories, carrying tales about others, scolding, exaggerating things, all these are not good habits. Momentarily you forget your good habits. It is a lesson about your losing your self-respect and self-esteem. It is a lesson about ego. These lessons keep occurring. You must analyze your actions and correct yourselves. If you put this into practice, you can overcome any type of sorrow.
Chennai has suffered from floods. Many have suffered. Many have survived the difficulties. That was a beneficial experience. When there are too many rains, people complain. Man makes many demands. If it gets hot, at once he wishes for cool weather and refreshing rain. If there is much rain, he wishes for immediate sunshine. Too many demands he has. Man does not have the power to control Nature. Man must adjust. That is what he must practice. He must not curse. He does not have the power. He must learn how he can adjust to the circumstances and get along. He must see how he can overcome the calamities?
There was an old favorite game called Snakes and Ladders, which is not popular today. That was a game for the olden days. Now you have computer games which are very different. They are very noisy, and involve only killing, killing, and more killing. These days, the games do not teach children any morals. They only teach violence, hatred, loss, rage, and sorrow. It is all competitive, always obsessed with winning. Life is filled with ups and downs. You cannot only get plus all the time. You must accept minus also. They do not teach how to overcome grief in life. In the olden days, every game or sport taught some philosophical truth or moral.
Now we have no time. How much can you achieve in 90-95 years? Even by age 80-85 life becomes difficult. It is not of much use to live a very long life. Even Sri Krishna only lived for a hundred twenty years. Rama lived over ten thousand years. Why? Both are divine incarnations. What Rama achieved in ten thousand years, the same thing Krishna achieved in 120 years. Rama was a human being, and experienced everything as a man. He taught how man should live, by living a life of exemplary human values. Not necessary to think of Rama as God. Think of him only as the ideal human being, and only as an exceptionally good king. You do not need to declare that Rama is God. Krishna may be considered divine. He showed his miraculous and superhuman powers and in 120 years achieved remarkable feats.
Harischandra and Emperor Nala and others lived for 30 thousand years. They had the will and the capacity to live that long. Every year, every day, every minute is valuable and accountable. That is why one should never waste time.
Carry over from the past to the present to the future is how life is determined. Many children do not like to carry over subjects from the past school year, because then they have to study additional topics. They prefer to fail and repeat a year in school. Some students do not mind the extra effort, since they get promoted to the second year and they like that. I accept both concepts.
What dies? Sense organs, mind, or the intellect? What turns into a corpse? What is Siva and what is Sava? When you carry over to the next year, what is pending from this year, your burden for the future will be more. It will be heavy to carry. The sins and confusions from this lifetime will get carried over to the future birth. You have no time to fulfill all your desires or to experience the consequences of your good and bad actions in this lifetime itself. Life flows by very quickly. You have entertained so many desires that in this lifetime there is not sufficient time to fulfill all of them. The sense organs are not equipped to enjoy all the things you have desired because they age and deteriorate quickly. The life force sustains the organs. But the organs perish faster than the life force which sustains them. The teeth fall out, and one cannot eat all the things as desired. Past life’s taste buds make demands now. An old man demands to eat a Masala Dosa. But the grandpa who has no teeth, cannot chew and eat it. The desires are more than what the organs can cope with. The grandpa is frustrated. It is because the body grows old, but the life energy does not age. But it cannot keep supporting a decaying body. The aging body cannot be repaired. Memory and vocal chords may function nicely. So the old people go to the extent of grinding the favorite foods into pulp and consuming them for the taste. It is a craving carried forward from the past life or from four decades earlier in this life itself. The old man insists on satisfying his desires for the tastes, unsatisfied in his earlier days, to the inconvenience of the people of the household. He complains and scolds and accuses the family of negligence of his needs.
Ten years ago an accident occurred and prevented him from satisfying certain desires. Now he wants them satisfied. His body is disabled, but the mind is young. The intellect is young. But the body gets old and disabled. Prana does not remain if the body-house collapses. So it is best to acquire a new home
In America, they have a system of simply totaling a car and getting a new car. In India, they keep repairing the old Ambassador vehicle repeatedly due to sentiment. Father’s car, grandfather’s car. Lucky car. It suddenly stalls in the middle of the road. In what you spend for repairs, you can buy two new cars. But people like to keep the old vehicles. There is no space to park more cars. Youngsters prefer to get new cars. They quarrel. The two generations disagree.
Regardless of how many organs transplants you go through, the body has to perish one day. It has to take a new birth. Where there is Karma bondage, the soul goes and falls in an appropriate womb. Where God wills, there that life will take birth again. No one knows where he will be reborn in the next life. He will not remain in the same family. Inside that new mother’s womb he takes shape again. The soul roams and searches for a suitable new home based on the last thought that the mind dwelt upon. Parents’ karma and your own karma must have a common association. It will join them and the new body and new life takes place. This is life’s secret.
What is liberation? It is very difficult to attain. It is not easy to obtain just for the asking. It is so difficult to get a paper from the government, to buy a cinema ticket, to get a bus or train reservation even if your own father is the station master, then, how difficult it is to get freedom from rebirth? Even a small thing to obtain, so much of effort is required. What you had desired ten lifetimes before, may come to you now. It takes that long. Till that fulfillment occurs, you have to keep on experiencing lifetimes. Something happened. Ten lifetimes ago you made some demand, and you have to now experience it. That is why Vedanta says, the best thing is to give up desires, or if that is impossible, keep only good desires. Even if you do not have desires now, whatever you had desired ten lifetimes earlier, you have to live and experience their fulfillment now. You cannot escape. Your new desires will not find fulfillment in this lifetime itself because there is a huge backlog of past desires yet to be satisfied. You forget the old desires you had even ten days ago. New desires will overlap and make you forget what you wished for, even a few days ago.
But the old desires have been recorded by Chitragupta, the relentless celestial accountant. As per chronological queue system, all the desires have to be fulfilled. Your desire count keeps increasing constantly.
That is why, without desires you should remain, accepting whatever comes your way. Just desire to maintain your devotion to God. That desire is allowed. No problem. Desires keep sprouting up and you cannot keep track of them. Ten days ago you desired something. Now a new model is in the market. Even if you are not interested any more in the old model, that previous desire must be fulfilled. You cannot wipe that desire away from your list. Is Chitragupta your employee? Are you paying him a salary? No. once you desire something it at once gets recorded. You have to experience the fulfillment of that desire. You select one site, or one particular home. Then you select another site and another better home, and say, Swamiji, I do not want that home, I want this one. Then you have to experience living at both. That is the difficulty with desires. The moment you feel it, it gets stamped and sanctioned. You have to experience the result.
Pray for strength only to experience whether grief or joy, whatever is given by God. Be ready to face whatever comes. If comforts come to you, be careful not to become egotistical. Do not take credit and boast. Remain humble. Always remain happy and contented. Lifetimes occur only due to carry over of desires and wishes. They occur as results of good deeds or bad deeds done in the past. All these are examples given in the Upanishads in the form of small stories.
This body goes away. These sense organs go away. If the organs and the life force have a conflict, or if the mind combined with intellect, has an inner conflict that cannot be resolved, then one sometimes becomes a ghost. Then, at the moment of birth, the previous lifetime’s memories return. The thought comes that proper funeral rites were not performed for the previous body. At such times the soul turns into a tormenting ghost. This happens sometimes. They then become their own ghosts. You do not have to ask if ghosts exist. One becomes one’s own ghost. You should not become a ghost. Then always think only noble, and gentle thoughts. Then you will never turn into a ghost in any lifetime.
If you think wicked thoughts, you will certainly turn into a ghost. That is why pious people are always very careful. They know this concept. They know that they cannot escape experiencing the results of their thoughts and actions whether they are good or bad. That is why they are determined to accept God’s will. They accept everything as God’s grace. They stubbornly refuse to be sad, no matter what happens.
Otherwise people get involved in worldly things, and will say, I did so much, they do not respect me, they are not grateful, they are not good to me, I was insulted, and I have lost my self-respect.
They are also humans like you. All homes make dosas with holes. Is your neighbor’s dosa flat and without holes like a chapati? No. everyone has problems and defects. All those who are born as humans, have joys and sorrows. Those who proclaim that they have no problems, are only acting. Everyone has problems. All those who are born as humans have problems. Only if you are not born as a human, you are free from certain problems. If you have taken a human body, you will certainly have problems. Like a human, if you have a sixth sense, you have problems. If you only have two or three senses, like a dog or a cat, perhaps you will have no anxieties.
Is a dog wearing clothes as it walks about? Is a cat wearing clothes? Man has that sense of shame. Even a mad fellow covers himself. At least he gathers leaves and covers himself.
I have a thousand witnesses. A person even in a state of unconsciousness will still try to adjust the clothing with a subtle movement as people move the body about. How can you call it loss of consciousness? That attachment to the body will always remain. Even an idiot has the sense of shame. It is very strong. Only when that attachment to the body goes, one becomes an Avadhoota.
A nawab, a Muslim king was holding a harem party in a tent. He had his numerous wives with him. They were all eating. Sadashiva Brahmendra entered the tent. He always only goes straight, no turns, he proceeds straight. If a house obstructs his path, he will climb straight up to the roof, and climb down on the other side. He does not look this way or that.
He walked straight through the tent. He walked naked through the entire harem. The nawab got very angry. No one saw the Avadhoota and so he was not stopped. Only the nawab saw him. He picked up his sword and cut off his shoulders. The Avadhoota kept walking. Avadhoota kept going, his consciousness fully absorbed in God. The nawab followed him. Somebody handed the Avadhoota the fallen shoulders. He attached them effortlessly. No operation. It was an eye opener for the nawab. The nawab fell at the feet of the Avadhoota. He begged forgiveness. He declared: You are Brahma. You are Maha Vishnu.
Now the Avadhoota opened his eyes and asked the nawab what happened? The nawab explained about chopping off his shoulders. Avadhoota said, what? Nothing has happened. ‘Yasya brahmani ramate chittam’. I am absorbed in God. You are preoccupied with women. That is your obsession. This is my obsession. The nawab was the first devotee of Sadashiva Brahmendra.
Man has attachment to the body. Rama taught us how to be detached to comfort. He taught how a human being should behave towards father, mother, brother, child, wife, kingdom, and so on.
Krishna said ‘Samharam avatara lakshanam’. You must kill the wicked. That gives moksha to the killer. Krishna completed his mission very quickly. He did not make any appeal to live longer. I would have made a recommendation, please live longer to inaugurate the a/c room in Velachery.
It is so hot outside. Inside it is nice and cool. I am very happy. Once before I thought, so many concerts take place here. The audience are desirous of enjoying the beautiful music, but are distracted by the heat and stuffiness of the climate that prevents their enjoyment. I am very happy now.
In January the inauguration was scheduled, but another inauguration was done by Varuna Deva (rain god) who cleaned up all the dirt from the ground. All the sewers overflowed and made the place dirty during the floods. People felt disgusted. Then with further rains, the rain god made it all clean again. But all that same filth is within us. We cover with beautiful clothes and pose as if we are fully clean. The filth is in our own bowels. God has given us a good covering.
Prior to the inauguration, we first had to clean our inner filth. I am very happy.
Vedanta is a serious, big subject. You must listen with attention and seriousness. It is Upanishads and Yoga Vasishtha. In a brief manner I have explained now the purpose and manner of human birth; of what happens after death, and how individuals are born. Someday I will explain in greater detail when there is more time. Tomorrow the New Year begins.
Jaya Guru Datta
Sri Guru Datta