Sree Krishna, the Lord of Love

by Baba Premananda Bharati

As a seed of a tree takes time to bear fruit, grow old and die, so a Karma-seed takes time to develop and die. As the periodical putting forth of leaves, flowers and fruits are the events in the life of a tree, so the experiences of a man's life represent the development of his Prārabdha Karma-seed. The time a Karma-seed takes to work itself out is measured by the duration of the sustaining power of its potentialities. One Prārabdha Karma may embrace two or three or more births if it is very powerful, or may end in the middle of one birth, if it be not so powerful. An extraordinarily powerful Karma may extend for a long, long time, covering many, many births, suicide for instance. The thought which leads to suicide makes the deepest impression on the mind, far deeper, in fact, than even the thought which commits murder. Why? Because we love our own life more than anybody else's or than anything else on earth. It, therefore, requires an extraordinarily powerful thought to overpower that innate, intense love of our life and incite us to destroy it. The thought back of this self-murder, therefore, makes the deepest impression on, our mind and thus becomes the most powerful Karma-seed of all Karma-seeds. This being so, it asserts itself to form the Prārabdha, every time it is worked out, to the exclusion of all other Karma-seeds, for a long series of births, in every one of which that soul commits suicide, sometimes, as it is often found, without any apparent reason. It is divine mercy alone that saves a suicide from committing suicide in every birth ever afterwards. Hence suicide is the greatest sin, greater than even murder.

To the average Western mind this Karma philosophy strikes as intolerably pessimistic on account of the inexorableness of its laws. There is, however, no help for it. These laws rule us all whether we believe in it or not. They are no man-created laws, they are laws which operate throughout Nature, as much within a white man as within a brown, yellow or black man, of all stations of life, of all grades of consciousness. Yet it need not strike anybody, who has found the easy and rosy path out of the woods of Karma, as pessimistic at all. But he or she must ever keep to that path and never stray out of it from sheer wilfulness, or else there certainly is no escape out of the labyrinth of Karma.

SECTION XVIII. REINCARNATION.

Reincarnation, as I have said, is the physical form in which groups of accumulated causes (Karma) of reaction manifest themselves in Nature. Reincarnation means rebirth. Rebirth means, to be born again in flesh after death. In order, therefore, to know what is rebirth, we must know what is death. To know what is death, we must know what is life.

Let us see what life really is. Human life is conscious mentality encased in flesh. To be briefer, human life may be summed up in one word—consciousness. Life of lower animals is negative consciousness, while human life is positive consciousness.

Human consciousness is subject to three states. The Waking state, the Dream state and the Dreamless Sleep state. In the waking state all our inner and outer senses work. The inner senses are; The Intellect, the Ego and the Mind. The outer senses are the five cognizing and the five working senses. These senses are fully active during our waking state. So long as the mind thinks, the intellect decides, the Ego is self-conscious, the eye sees, the ear hears, etc., they are acting. And activity (Rāja) brings about the reaction of weariness (Tama). In other words, the senses become tired out, owing to incessant work and need rest. It is the state of weariness of the senses that makes us feel exhausted and seek rest. But the senses cannot have full rest as long as we are in a waking state, for their activity never ceases while we are awake. Here Nature's law steps in and draws a veil between the senses and their objects, the veil of Tama, born out of the excessive work of Rāja. We fall asleep.

But in the first stage of sleep our senses still sustain their activity, though in a lesser degree than in the waking state, owing to their still cognizing reflections of the objects, and scenes impressed on our mind while we are awake. This is called the dream state of consciousness, Dreams are of three kinds. The ordinary dream is made up of the blended reflections of impressions of scenes and thoughts ill natural or fantastic shapes. The second kind of dream is a clear unmixed reflection of the mind's impressions of some of our experiences in a previous birth. The third kind of dream is a reflection cast upon our pure consciousness of coming events from their Karmic impressions on the Ether or on our own aura. The ordinary dreams belong to the dream state. The other two classes of dreams are experiences during the dreamless state of sleep, generally in the morning just before awaking.

The dreams in the first stage of our sleep keep our senses still employed and the mind active on that account, for the activity of the mind is generated by the operations of the senses with their objects. Hence neither the tired mind nor the tired senses derive the complete rest they need, until gradually the veil of Tama grows dense and shuts out even the mental reflections of objects from their view. This stops the operations of the senses which then are absorbed by the mind whose offsprings and agents they are, for the senses cannot exist when they are deprived of their function of cognition. The same thing occurs with the mind, for its activity, caused and sustained by the activity of the senses, is the only reason for its separate existence. With the loss of its function, therefore, the mind loses this separate existence and is absorbed by the Ego. The Ego is in the same way absorbed by Consciousness, for the Ego is dependent on the Mind which sustains its existence of self-consciousness. And then Absolute Consciousness, with the passive germs of the Ego, Mind and Senses merged in it, is absorbed in its turn by the Soul and dwells in its realm until the senses have rested sufficiently.

In the depth of this dreamless sleep state of our consciousness, Tama gives place to the reaction of Sattwa which is very pure during this state. This dreamless sleep may be called a negative trance state. When we awake, through development of the Rāja Attribute, we feel not only thoroughly refreshed but also in a state of mental harmony, a happy mood of mind. We also feel that we were, during that dead sleep, in a state of utter oblivion of everything. We feel we forgot then even our own existence, feel that we were not conscious even of our own self, that we were in an absolutely happy state, happy with happiness itself. We know of this condition, when we awake from it, by inference from the happy state of our mental mood, induced by the abstract impression of it upon our consciousness which was present then in its pure state. The cause of the refreshment and new strength of our body and senses is this dip in the Essence of the Soul, the source of all energy. The physicians try to put their patients into this deep sleep in serious cases of illness, knowing by experience that deep sleep is a quicker and more powerful restorer of health than any medicine, but they do not know where lies the balm of sound sleep.

The activity of Rāja brings about the awakening from this state by causing the unfoldment of the infolded Ego, mind and senses which resume their operations with external and internal objects as before. The difference between death and sleep lies here. After sleep we resume the functions of our senses, but death is caused by the confusion of our mind, on account of the senses not being able to resume their functions, owing to the disorder of the physical counterparts of the sense-organs through disease. Disease belongs to the physical body, and the senses with the mind and Ego belong to the astral body which we are. The pains we feel are caused by our identifying ourselves with our physical encasement. If we keep the fact constantly alive in our mind that our physical body is the earthly home of our soul, which is the centre of our astral self, we will not only not feel physical pain but prevent or do away with such pain even in the physical body. To know ourselves as nothing but our physical body is the densest, narrowest and the most mischievous ignorance. We often find proofs of this separateness of the physical and mental bodies from acts which present themselves in our daily life; we fail to cognize the experiences of our body or even of our senses when our mind absent from them and absorbed in some other direction. It is the mind that feels pain pleasure, not the body, neither the senses.