Unravelling the Mystery of Karma with QA

Talk at Murugan temple in Melbourne

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
By our past.
So, we are discussing today on the topic of karma and to understand the relevance of this topic first of all, the importance of understanding this topic, I’d like to begin with a thought exercise. Suppose you went for a cricket match, to watch a cricket match and you saw there are two teams over there, but one team has a starting score of 200, the other team has a score of just 0. Now, you wonder why the difference in the two scores? So, there could be three possible explanations. One is the scoreboard works by chance, the other is the scorekeeper is biased and is there any other explanation? We’ll think about that later.
Similarly, if we look at life, we see that all of us start with different starting points. We all start our life with birth chronologically at the same point. But, some people are born wealthy, some people are born poor, some people are born with great looks, some people are born with mediocre looks, some people are born with phenomenal memories, others with ordinary memories.
And, things like this, wealth, looks, memory, they do play a substantial role in one’s future success. So, an objective, critical look at life would make it seem that there is a lot of discrimination in the starting points we get in life. Now, what could be the reason for this? One thing is what we have got, we have to live with it.
But, if we could make more sense of it, then it would be easier to accept and easier to live accordingly. So, is there any way we can make sense of the inequities of life? So, the same three probabilities, I have not mentioned specifically the third alternative, I’ll come to that. But, if we look, apply these three alternatives, the first would be that the way we are born, the way we start our life, that is determined by chance.
Some people are lucky, some people are unlucky. So, this is the materialistic world view. Where the idea is that we are nothing more than the product of our genes.
And, somehow, the genes come to life and some people are born in good families, some people are not so good situations. So, now, if we accept this chance world view, then there are several consequences. As I said, the chance world view holds what we are is the result of the chance interaction of natural forces.
Certain molecules came together, somehow they came to life. And then, another aspect of this world view is one shot at living is all that we get. This is the only life that we have and at the end, existence will end and we will just dissolve back into the molecules of which we are made.
So, existence is just some flash between two infinities of nothingness. Before birth we did not exist, after that we did not exist and somehow, for a certain period of time, we exist and then we perish. And during the short lifestyle that we have, we are successes if we mine the maximum enjoyment from our brief lifetimes.
And because the whole world view is materialistic, so the only enjoyment is materialistic enjoyment. But, I will talk about material enjoyment, whether it is wealth or looks or power or prestige or learning, whatever. The material starting point makes a huge difference.
So, this is the aspects of the world view and what are the consequences of this world view? It makes the unlucky feel wronged and helpless. Those who are born poor, why should I be born poor? They feel unlucky and there is no more explanation, just your bad luck, what can you do? And it makes them feel helpless because not only, the differences that we see in life situations are not just at the starting point of life. Even during the course of life, some people seem to have a healthy life, some people just keep falling sick again and again.
Some people live relatively peaceful lives, others seem to be always prone to accidents. So, we see this difference throughout our life and that’s why a person who accepts the idea of chance will live constantly in insecurity. What may go wrong? What may go wrong? It’s a doctrine that reduces life to helplessness.
It makes even the lucky feel insecure because I may be lucky right now, but if things happen by chance, any moment anything can go wrong. And then whatever I have, I may lose it. And it is unappealing because it violates our intuitive sense of order and justice.
We all feel that there is some order in life. We want some order in life. I’ll talk about this topic more, about the sense of order, but whenever something happens, if say, your child comes home with a poor grade, you’ll ask, what happened? Did you not study? Did you forget at the time of exam? Were you not well? Now, whenever we see some effect, we intuitively assume that there is a cause.
And we try to make a correlation between the cause and effect by which we make sense of life. But this is unappealing because the chance worldview says there is no cause and effect. And it’s disempowering because it just makes one feel powerless.
Now, the alternative to this worldview, this is the worldview that there is, that everything happens by chance and we are just products of matter. One alternative to, so this is correlating with the scoreboard working by chance. So, the second alternative was the scorekeeper is biased.
So the alternative worldview is that there is a God and God arranges the starting points. So God arranges that some people are born wealthy, some people are born poor. But, so this is divine caprice.
Caprice means arbitrary will. So this is the worldview that is held by many of the mainstream religions of the world, especially the Abrahamic religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, they hold roughly this worldview.
My purpose here is not to criticize any religion, but we are trying to comparatively understand which worldview can help us to make sense. So, although there are references to karma and other things which I will build up, but the mainstream version of these religions have this idea that everything happens by God’s will and one life is all that we have. So, why are there inequities in life? Yes, they are God’s tests.
Yes, some people are born poor, that’s how they are being tested. Some people go through sickness, God is testing them. Yes, that is fine.
God can test us, but the problem with life’s inequities is not the test itself. It is the differential testing. That means that if a teacher conducts a class and after that has an exam and that teacher gives different papers to different students.
Some students get very easy papers, some students get very difficult papers. Then the student’s question will not be why is there an exam? The question will be why are there different exams for different people? So, if we say that life’s inequities, life’s problems are God’s tests, and the question comes, why does God test different people differently? And often the answer to this is, you know, God’s will cannot be understood. God’s justice is different from our justice.
Yes, that may be true. God’s will cannot be understood. God’s justice is different from our justice.
But if God is greater than us, then God’s justice should be better than ours, not worse than ours. So, if God is arbitrarily assigning different situations to different people, then that makes God seem capricious. You know, who would want to love a God who is so utterly arbitrary in doing whatever he wants with whoever he wants? So, many thoughtful people, if these are the only two options that they have, either to believe in chance or to believe in an arbitrary God.
Many people would prefer atheism. Why? Because how can one devote oneself to a God who is arbitrary? So, it is not that atheism offers explanations. But, it offers a less unappealing explanation than this kind of theistic explanation.
You know, Abraham Lincoln said about democracy, he said, democracy is a terrible form of government. But, it is the best among all terrible forms of government. So, it becomes like the best among the worst.
Neither is satisfactory, if you look at the theistic version, where God is added without any further explanation of life. This is like, as I said, the scorekeeper being biased. Now, if one team has got a starting score of 0, another has got a starting score of 200, there is a third possible explanation.
The third explanation is that it is not a one-day match. It is a test match. And it is second innings going on.
So, one team has got a lead. And that’s why, it has got a particular score. So, that is the world view that is based on karma and reincarnation.
Multi-life progression through karma and reincarnation. So, the scores are different, not because the scoreboard works by chance, or the scorekeeper is biased, but because each team has scored a particular number of runs in the previous innings. So, like that, our starting points are determined as per the karma and reincarnation world view, not by any arbitrary chance or any arbitrary God.
They are determined by our own past actions. Some of us have done good. Accordingly, we have got some results.
Some of us have done more good than others. Some of us have done less good than others. And accordingly, we get different starting points.
now, this also brings a purpose to life. And I will talk about this purpose more in detail, but the purpose is self-education. We are meant to learn how to make healthy choices.
And life is a university where as we learn to make wise choices, we progress onwards towards better and better conditions. From this life to the next life and onwards. So, now, as this topic is primarily on karma, I will not go into reincarnation much, although I will give you some logical and scientific pointers towards reincarnation at the end.
I will focus primarily on karma and whether karma makes sense. So, this is at one level, we can say at a broad picture of life, among the three, karma seems to make the most sense. But the idea of karma has its own questions.
So, we will discuss some of the questions now. So, what exactly is karma? Now, at a very basic level, karma simply means, karma is a broader application of Newton’s law of motion. Newton’s law that to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So, now, interestingly, that science progresses not just by observation. Science progresses by questioning observations. Now, millions of people had seen apples falling.
Most of them would have just picked the apple, eaten it and gone away. But Newton saw the apple falling and he thought, why did it fall? So, similarly, the inequities in life are seen by everyone. But most people just accept it reluctantly, resentfully or unthinkingly and move on with life.
But some people think about it, ask questions about it and then they can get answers. So, just as there is a correlation between an action reaction within the realm of physics, similarly, in broad life also, there is correlation. And this correlation is more complex because Newton’s law talks about only the interaction of physical objects.
Whereas, when we talk about karma, it involves the action of conscious beings who make moral choices. Who do certain things which are right or wrong or which are less right or more right. So, there are much more complexities involved over here.
But the broad principle is similar. So, Newton’s law is like a subset within the principle of karma. Now, if we look at karma further, what goes around, comes around.
Now, if we see, all of nature obeys laws. Why should humans be exceptions? What science has discovered as it has progressed more and more is that there is order in the universe from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. And even when scientists are not able to find order.
For example, at the start of the 20th century, Kelvin was one of the pioneering scientists and he said, now with the development of classical physics as given by Newton and further developed by subsequent researchers, now we have understood everything that is there to understand. For future generations of physicists there will be no work to do. But just 20 years later, the whole Newtonian classical physics had practically come crumbling down because there were developments in quantum physics and there were developments in relativity.
So now, quantum physics is very, very difficult to understand in the sense that things don’t make logical sense. So Einstein was so upset with quantum physics. Einstein championed relativity and he was so upset with quantum physics all based on probability.
So he said, God does not play dice with the universe. And then Neil Bohr replied, don’t tell God what he can or cannot do. So the point is that again, when scientists observe something which doesn’t make sense, they don’t abandon it as senseless.
They persevere to find some deeper order in it. So initially the observation that we make with our naked eye, Newtonian physics could explain that. But as science penetrated into microscopic realm or macroscopic realm, in both ways, Newtonian physics stopped working.
Then scientists did not think that, oh everything is disorderly. Science progresses by the assumption that there is some order and if we just investigate deeper, we will also find that order. So the study of karma also progresses by a similar assumption.
Even when there seems to be disorder, it’s just that we have not probed the matter deeper. If we probe the matter deeper, we will be able to find an order. So, yes, all of nature obeys laws, then why should humans be an exception? Is it that humans can behave arbitrarily and there are no consequences of that? We see the law of karma is impartiable and inexorable.
So as I said, we can never break God’s laws. We can only break ourselves against God’s laws. What this means is, somebody jumps from a ten-storey building and says, I don’t believe in the law of gravity.
Well, gravity is going to act irrespective of whether one believes in it or not. Similarly, the laws of nature, and karma is also a law of nature, it is going to act. So the logic of karma, as I gave the example, there is cause and effect everywhere.
Whenever we see an effect, we inquire a cause. Suppose, you know, a friend is playing, some children are playing, and one of them comes back home and has got a burn on the hand. And immediately, the other friends will ask, the relatives will ask, what happened? What this means is, when we see an effect, a burn mark, we presume that there must be a cause to it.
And that is how we make sense all of life, whether it is day-to-day life or scientific research. We presume that whenever there is an effect, there must be a cause. So cause-effect correlation is a foundational principle with which we operate in this world.
And that way, if we look at it from a further theistic world view, you know, we train our subordinates by reward and punishment. Now, if children study well, and they get good grades, parents will reward them. If the children are very unruly and undisciplined, the parents may discipline them.
So, reward and punishment is a normal human way by which training happens. And the same principle, would God not apply that? So now, logically, we will see that karma gels with our sense of order, it gels with the way we normally behave, and if God were the supreme parent, the way we would expect him to behave. But there are several observations that seem to contradict the idea of karma.
Let’s look at a few of them. One of course is the well-known question. Why do bad people flourish? You may see some people doing wrong, and you may say that there are underworld dons, and there are corrupt politicians, and there are all different kinds of people.
They seem to be living in prosperity, with nothing touching them. So here, we need to recognize a principle of accumulation of karma. So, here as you see, some people may become wealthy, but karma acts through accumulation.
That means, say, in the olden times, and to some extent even today, farmers would store their grains in silos, silos with long vertical containers, in which they would put the grains from top, and that’s where they would preserve, and they would be taken out from below. So, if a farmer in different years sows different grains, say, in three years, the farmer is sowing grains of three different qualities, A, B and C. A is high quality, B is medium quality, C is poor quality. And now all these three years of grains are stored in the silo.
So, from the top, we will see that in that grain container, C grade grains are being stored. Relatively low quality grains are stored. But, when the grains are taken out from below, what is coming out? A grade.
Why? Because A grade were put earlier. So, just as what the grains are put, now they will come out. But they may come out later.
So, like that, karma is not about instant action-reaction. It is about cumulative action-reaction. And that’s why some people who may have done good in the past, either in this or previous lives, they have got a stockpile of good karma now.
And because of which, they seem to live in prosperity, even when they are doing bad, even when they are putting in low quality grains, but still they are getting out high quality grains. But the important point is that their high quality grains are going to get over, and their low quality grains are going to come eventually to them. Same with those who seem to be doing good and getting bad.
It’s like they may have put in bad quality grains in the past, but if they are putting in good quality grains, those good quality grains will also come out. The bad quality grains will also get exhausted. So, it’s simply a matter of time lag.
It’s not a matter of falsification, but it is a matter of delay. Now that raises the next question. Karma gets stored in silos, as I said.
Good karma, bad karma. So, now this brings the obvious next question. Now, why do we suffer now for the actions of previous lives? Wouldn’t things be much easier to figure out if we got reactions immediately? At one level, we could say that, but we see that, even in nature, things don’t work instantaneously.
If we look at seeds, different seeds fructify after different time durations. If we sow grains, we can harvest them after 3-4 months. If we sow fruit trees, sometimes it may take 5 years, sometimes 10 years.
Some trees may even take 50 years. Sometimes parents or grandparents sow the seeds and then grandchildren get the fruits. So, in nature, just as we see different seeds fructify after different durations, every karma that we do is like a seed that we sow.
And the seed that we sow fructifies after different time durations. Now, this brings the… So, that’s why, sometimes a person may sow a seed in a previous life and get reaction in this life. Or a person may sow a seed in this life and get reaction in next life.
And this is not… This delayed reaction is not just a matter of philosophical belief. It’s also matter of, say, medical observation. As I said, if a child puts a hand in fire, the reaction comes immediately.
But, if, say, on a cold winter night, somebody eats 10 ice-creams, then at that time, every person may feel enjoying, but the next morning, I’ll be screaming. So, what has happened? There the reaction has come after 6 months, after 6 hours, 6-7 hours. Or suppose, somebody calls a doctor early morning and says, Doctor, I’ve got a stomach upset.
Probably the first question the doctor will ask is, What did you eat last night? So, what it means is that when we ate, the reaction doesn’t come immediately. It may come after 6 hours, 8 hours. Or, say, a young person, a middle-aged person at the age of 35-40 goes to a doctor and a chest specialist and the doctor says, You’ve got lung cancer.
Doctor asks, At what age did you start smoking? He says, I started at the age of 70. There the reaction came after 20 years. So, even in day-to-day life we see, not just in terms of seeds in nature, but even in terms of our own actions, in terms of how the reactions appear in the body, different actions produce reactions after different time durations.
The same principle, now, karma extends it to not just a few years, but to before this life and beyond this life. Now, that further may raise the question, Why such extension? Now, even if reactions are delayed, why can’t the delayed reactions come within the same lifetime? So, there is a story associated with the Mahabharata, which provides the answer to this. So, in the Mahabharata, most of you are aware of the basic storyline of the Mahabharata? Okay.
So, in the Mahabharata, Dhritarashtra is like the passive villain and Duryodhana is the active villain. So, Duryodhana is evil and Dhritarashtra sanctions his evil. Dhritarashtra has 100 sons who are the Kauravas and they are killed in the climactic battle at Kurukshetra.
So, after that battle, when Dhritarashtra, when Krishna meets Dhritarashtra, at that time Dhritarashtra asks, Krishna had 100 sons and all of them were killed. Why couldn’t even one son have been spared? Why did all of them have to die? So, Krishna told him that 50 lifetimes ago, you were a hunter and as a hunter, you went to hunt some birds but the birds escaped and in a fit of rage, you saw that there were birdlets with nests and there were 100 birdlets and you slaughtered all of them and there the parent birds, they had to watch in helpless agony while you slaughtered those their 100 birdlets and that is why you had to watch in helpless agony as your 100 sons were killed. Dhritarashtra became pensive and then he asked, okay, if the reaction for my own deed, then why did it have to come after 50 lifetimes? So, Krishna said that for you to get 100 sons in one lifetime, you had to do punya for 50 lifetimes.
So, after you did the punya for 50 lifetimes, then the reaction to that came to you. So, Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita, gahana karmano gatihi in 4.17 karmano yapi buddhavyam buddhavyam chavi karmana akarmanasya buddhavyam gahana karmano gatihi gahana karmano gatihi The reaction to actions, how it comes, the progression of karma is subtle, it is complex, it is difficult to understand. Why? Because when we talk in terms of reactions, we should not have a very simplistic understanding that this action will produce this reaction.
Because the purpose of karma is not punishment. It is rectification. It is to prompt us towards making healthy choices.
Rectification. That means sometimes one action may be so bad that its reaction may come as multiple problems over a long period. Or sometimes, one reaction might be a reaction for multiple actions.
So, although every action will produce a reaction, but the way the reaction will manifest can vary from person to person. And situation to situation. That’s why the important point when it comes to karma is not the specific causes but the general principle.
If you try to go into specific causes, it is like, suppose somebody gets malaria and the patient instead of taking malaria treatment says to the doctor, first I want to find out the mosquito which bit me. That’s impossible. Okay, we understand the cause.
Generally, mosquito bite is there. In the future, I will take care that I will make sure that I don’t get bitten by mosquitoes. I will use nets or whatever.
But now, I have to take treatment. So, finding specific causes is difficult. But if we understand the general principle, that can help us to make healthier choices.
So, with respect to karma, as I said, karma, there are certain doubts and if you have further questions, we can discuss. But the important logic of karma and the main doubts about karma, I have discussed. Now, I will briefly talk about reincarnation.
Before we go to reincarnation, what is this? W.S.A was a British playwright and he was quite influenced by the Vedic literature, by the Indian wisdom. And he said in one of his books that if the evils we suffer are the results of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive towards virtue, our future lives will be less afflicted. So, it’s an empowering word because ultimately it’s not that things are happening by chance.
If I make right choices, I will be creating a brighter future for myself no matter how bleak my present might seem to be. So, the logic of karma is something which will help us to make sense if reincarnation were true. If it were true that there is a soul who moves from one body to another body.
Now, is acceptance of reincarnation just a matter of belief? Not necessarily. There has been much research done in the field of past life memories. And I have written a full book on this topic.
So, I can’t go into that again. But again, I’ll just give four broad observations or empirical pointers that researchers have found for past life. It points towards the reality of past lives.
So, there have been in cultures all over the world people, and not just people, even small children who have spontaneously talked about previous lives. And not just some random talk. Children talk something very specific.
For example, a child may say, you know, mummy, mummy, where is my other mummy? Parents are shocked. What do you mean? And especially where the parents don’t believe in reincarnation, they think, has my child got some psychiatric problem? What is this? But when the child starts speaking very specific, you know, there is a woman who stays in this place, and this is her name, and this is how she looks, and this is what she does. Then, those memories are not just something which are spin-off from their imagination.
They could be, but when they are precise, when they correlate accurately with the factual existence of certain people somewhere else, and often these children start talking about this from the age of 3 to 4, when they really don’t know much about the world. And usually the memories fade off by the age of 6 or 7. Why? Because as this life’s impressions become more and more, then the past life impressions go back deeper and deeper in the subconscious, and they get lost. So, usually the children come up with these memories long before they can have the ability to make organized frauds.
These are spontaneous recollections that are coming up. So, the first is the precision of the memories. But more than the precision of the memories, many times there are researchers who decide that we will investigate.
And sometimes it may be possible that let’s say, some parents from this life and some other relative somewhere else, both of them might just come together and make a hoax just to get publicity or whatever. It might be possible in some cases. So, what researchers do is, if they come to know about the case, then they ensure that the child and the parents don’t meet the previous family without the presence of objective detached observers.
So, the researchers are themselves there, they hear the story here and then they go there and find is there a real person like that? And they go and find that person over there. Then they come and they themselves take the child. So, Ian Stevenson was a pioneer and he in research, he was from the University of Virginia.
They had a psychiatry department there. And he studied over 2000 cases. And he literally, he documented, he has written thousands and thousands of pages of his reported research.
And he made a scale of the strength of the case based on how many parameters for strong evidence it would satisfy. And there are subsequent many researchers in different parts of the world who have continued that research. Now, so, they themselves go and often these researchers take videos with them to record.
So, the child, for example, I’ll tell quickly two stories. So, there was one boy, Tutu, his name was, he was born in Lucknow. And right from his childhood he started saying that my name is Suresh Varma.
And I own an electrical shop. And I have a wife named Uma Varma. A small child, 3-4 year old child.
And so, he was in Lucknow and he said, I stay in Kanpur. And the researchers, they took him to Kanpur and when he came to Kanpur, what they found is, he just got, he had never been to Kanpur before, he got out himself. And he just said, you come to this Tonga, I’ll take you where to go.
He said, told the Tonga person where to go. And then they took him to electrical shop. And there, the owner of that electrical shop, it was called Varma Electrical Shop, and the owner of that shop was a widow named Uma.
And, not only was she there, immediately, he, you know, when, in traditional Indian culture, you know, when a husband and wife are there, they stand together. So, this boy, small T2, he went and stood next to this woman Uma. And he started telling her, hey, why did you change the shop like this? Now, she was a widow, so she could not reach up to certain things and she had rearranged the shop in certain ways.
So, he pointed out all the ways accurately, how she had rearranged this. She was shocked. He said, who is this? How do you do all this? And then, and he went home, he was, he just ran to his grandmother, his mother.
And he ran and put himself around her legs. And she thought this is her grandson. Because he was of that age.
And she started calling him by the grandson. He said, don’t you recognize me? I am your son, not your grandson. Now, all this was observed by researchers.
And then, this is Suresh Varma. So, now, this is the second level is past life recognitions. So, they are not just remembering something, but when they go there, they recognize people, they recognize places, and they recognize objects.
Recognize, okay, this was my camera, this was my car, this was my thing, like that. So, further, a third thing that is observed, I’ll come to the story little later, again. A third thing that they find is, there are matching behaviors and phobias.
So, for example, this, Suresh Varma had been murdered in a previous life with a bullet wound. And, this boy Titu, he was very paranoid of any sudden blasts. So, even Diwali firecrackers would mortify, cause him almost irrational phobia.
And further, so this is, now these phobias, they can have natural causes. Sometimes. If you look at psychology, psychology is not really very clear, psychology or psychiatry, not very clear about the specific neurological or genetic causes of phobias.
These come in some people, they don’t come in some people. It’s not that phobias run in generations. It’s not the father has a phobia, the mother has a phobia, the children get phobia.
So, these children have, many times, phobias corresponding to the way they had died in a previous life. So, if somebody had drowned in a previous life, the person who remembers that I was that person in the next life, that person has hydrophobia. Very fearful of water.
And not just phobias, in general, there are behaviours. So, for example, there was one case where this person, this lady, she was born in Nagpur, and she remembered being a Bengali in her previous life. And from her childhood, in Nagpur, she had not been exposed to any Bengali.
But, she could speak Bengali naturally. In fact, she could speak Bengali more naturally, more fluently than Marathi, which was supposed to be her mother tongue. So, how does this come about? That is actually a continuation from a previous life.
That’s the most logical explanation. And, all this may be considered to be subjective. You know, you thought that you remember something, you thought that you recognized something, you thought that you have this behaviour.
People may say this is all subjective. What is objective? What is measurable? What is observable? So, that, Stevenson, after he did around 10-12 years of research, he found that there are people who not only have memories, recognitions, and phobias, but also they have birthmarks and birth defects. Corresponding to the previous life’s wounds, fatal wounds.
So, this, as I said, Suresh Verma had been shot by, he had once come back from his office to his home, from his shop to his home, and his car had been parked outside his home, and he was about to come out, and somebody shot him point blank. So, the bullet entered from the right temple, right side of the head, and came out from the left side. And, right from his birth, had two birthmarks, swellings, right from his birth, and because Suresh Verma had been a police case, so, it had been documented properly.
And, the research, they found the locations of the two birthmarks in this body too, corresponded precisely with the location of the fatal wounds, the entry and the exit points in Suresh Verma’s body. And normally, when a bullet enters, the entry point is smaller, the exit point is usually bigger. So, correspondingly, the birthmark on one side was smaller, and the second side was bigger.
Now, could these birthmarks and birth defects have just come by chance? This happened coincidentally to be there like that. So, Stevenson investigated that possibility also. So, using an XY coordinate system, he divided the human body into 112 coordinate locations.
And, he found out the exact correlation between the previous life’s wounds and this life’s mark. And further, so, there was one case in Tibet, not just in India, they have happened in cultures where people did not believe in reincarnation also. So, in Tibet, there was this young boy, he had eight birthmarks on his body.
And, they write harsh, ugly scratches. Something that comes when a person has a wound, and the wound is, sorry, has a knife slash, and a knife slash is healed, but still a scar remains. And, this young boy, right from his childhood, he would say that, I am someone else.
So, he eventually, when he became around 7-8 years old, his parents took him to that place. And, there they found, there had been a young man, who had a drunken fight with someone else. And, in that drunken fight, he had been stabbed.
And, he had been stabbed 7 times. In 7 different parts of the body. And, at those 7 specific locations, precisely, there was a birth wound for him.
So, now, the, as I said, if you divide by XY coordinate system, the precision of one particular wound happening at the same place, that will be 1 divided by 112. But, when there are 7 wounds, then the probability becomes 1 divided by 112 raised to the power of 7, which becomes improbably low. And, apart from that, now, he also recognized his wife from his previous life.
He was a small 6-year-old boy, but when he saw that his wife had remarried, again remarried, she had been a widow, she had got married, he felt so jealous of her new husband, that he tore up her picture and said, you should come back with me. Of course, she wouldn’t come back. But, the point is that, now, this is almost impossible for a 5 or 6-year-old boy to imitate, not just to get the memories, but to have all those emotions and, most of all, to have the birth marks.
So, reincarnation itself is a huge subject and there are substantial proofs. But, I’ll stop with this, that there are these 4 substantially persuasive pointers, in terms of not just memories or cognitions or even just patterns of behavior, but also in terms of precise birth marks and birth defects. And another thing is with respect to birth defects, that many times, most of the times researchers found that the parents did not have any such birth mark.
Birth marks and birth defects generally have two main causes. One is they can be genetic, they can come because the parents have something or they can be because the mother has some problems during pregnancy and either she smokes or she has some disease because of which there is malnourishment or she eats some very burning, pungent substances, which lead to some reactions for the womb. Now, in the case of these people, it is well documented that neither was there any genetic history, none of their parents, grandparents, uncles, nobody had similar birth defects, nor had their mothers done anything which could have caused the birth marks or birth defects during the pregnancy and yet they had them.
That means there is no explanation from the mainstream materialistic scientific world view and there is a logical explanation from the karma reincarnation world view. So, if we look at it logically, the karma reincarnation world view can help us to make sense of not just the inequities of life but of all of life in large. So, I will talk about this now.
What is the practical benefit for us if we understand that there is karma and reincarnation and life is a progression? First of all, the jungle becomes a university. What this means is that if we do not have this vision of a multi-life progression, then the whole idea becomes that this life is all that we have, this world’s goods is what we need to enjoy and we are in a fight. Whoever can get the most wealth, most power, most position, that person is the happiest.
So, life essentially becomes reduced to a jungle. But, when we understand that there is multi-life progression, then the jungle becomes a university. Okay, some person may be more intelligent than me, some person may be wealthier than me, but why is that person like that? All of us are in a university which extends over multiple lifetimes and those people are ahead because they did some good in their previous life.
So, rather than being envious of others, just like if a student is in the kindergarten and there is another student now who is in PhD, the kindergarten student does not have to be envious of the PhD student because the PhD student has gone through the same grind which the kindergarten student is going through and the kindergarten student will also eventually get to PhD level. So, those who are at a lower level, they can free themselves from envy and resentment towards those who are at a higher level and those who are at a higher level, if they also understand this, then they will see that, okay, these people may be lower than, but that doesn’t mean I should exploit them and crush them because I was also there at this place one time. So, let me help them rise, let me help them in whatever way I can.
So, actually, instead of a grabbing mood, which is what comes when we have materialistic worldview, we have a sharing and learning mood. Let me learn how to make right choices and we move forwards. So, life is a competition, but when we understand the reincarnation worldview, then it is not a competition against others.
It is a competition against ourselves. That means we have our lower side which makes us do wrong things and because of which often we undercut our own potential. We have certain talents and if we act diligently in a disciplined way, we can do justice to our talents and we can rise upwards.
But often we become lazy, we become short-sighted, we become complacent and we sabotage our own potential. But when we understand that life is a learning curve, not just in terms of this lifetime, but in multiple lifetimes, then we understand our competition, our match is not against others. It is against ourselves.
So, yes, I may be starting with a score of 0 and somebody with 200. But from 0, I can move onwards and I can also come to 200. So, life’s disparities are neither arbitrary nor discriminatory.
They are progressive and tailor-made for our growth. They are all meant to help us move forwards. And the last point of this, what we understand from the reincarnation world view is that the world is a station, not a destination.
We are going through many lifetimes and this lifetime that we have, if you consider a train, this is one stop. It’s a station. And suppose, we are going in a train and we come to some station which is very dirty, unclean, messy, smelly.
Yeah, it may be displeasing, but we don’t get worked up with it. Because we know the station is going to pass. So, like that in life, we will go through various situations.
Some will be miserable, some will be agonizing, some will be boring. But, we will just move onwards. The train of life moves on and we will move on.
So, when we understand that this world is a station, not a destination, then we get a mood of stewardship, not a mood of proprietorship. I am not the owner, I am the caretaker. And then, that curbs the greed, that corrupts ethics.
When people think that this life is all that I have and I want to enjoy in this life, then there is no mood, there is no real intellectual basis left to the call for ethics. Because ethics will simply just come in the way. If I have to grab as much as I can, then why should I let ethics stop me? Materialism does not offer us any substantial reason for adhering to ethics.
But when we understand the karma reincarnation worldview, we understand that we should be ethical, not just because I will not be caught by the law, but because being ethical will help me to grow as a person. So it inspires greater and better performance. Because even if we do good and we don’t seem to get good as a result of that, but whatever good we do, the reactions are being stored and they will come eventually.
And we understand that ethics are beneficial for ourselves. By being unethical, we choke ourselves. By making right choices, we help ourselves to grow.
So this way, the karma reincarnation worldview helps us to become individually more productive and to become socially more contributive. And in this way, it can actually bring order in a world where people are becoming increasingly exploitative. So I’ll summarize.
I started by talking about if there is a cricket match where there are different scores. It could be because the scoreboard is fixed. Scoreboard is operating by chance or the scorekeeper is biased.
Similarly, when we see inequities in life, it could be because things happen by chance. But that is a very disempowering and unappealing worldview. It makes us feel helpless and it rebels, militates against our intuitive sense of order and justice.
And the alternative could be that the scorekeeper is biased. So God arbitrarily decides who will get what in life. But then that makes God seem discriminating.
And it becomes very unappealing to worship such a God. And people prefer atheism because of that. But when we understand that there is multi-life progression.
It’s like the scores are different because the match is in the second innings. And in the first innings, two teams scored differently. Then we can see the inequities not as arbitrary but as progressive.
Then we discussed about how karma is something which correlates with the universal way we live life. We assume that causes, that effects are produced by causes. And we assume that a normal way of training is by reward and disciplining.
We assume even in science that when we see disorder, underlying that there is some order. So even if karma as orderly principle doesn’t make immediate sense, if we look deeper, we’ll find an order just as we find in science. Then we discussed about some of the doubts about karma.
Why do good people, why bad people get good? That is because they have accumulated good karma in the previous life. The example of the celos. And then why not the reactions come immediately? Different seeds fructify at different times.
Why not the reactions come in the same lifetime? Because for a seed to produce a learning lesson, a certain set of circumstances are required. The story of Dhritarashtra and Krishna and the hundred lifetimes that, the fifty lifetimes that he had to go through. And then we discussed about how the karma worldview, when it is coupled with reincarnation, it will help us to make sense of life.
And for reincarnation, it’s not just a belief system, there are sounds, empirical pointers, there are precise past life memories, accurate past life recognitions, there are phobias and behaviors corresponding to previous life’s person’s behavior and there are also birthmarks and birth defects that have no other causes and that precisely correlate with the previous life’s wounds. And lastly we discussed how this worldview can help us in a practical way, individually and socially. So individually, it can help us to make sense of life and it can help us if we are less endowed to become free from envy towards those who are more endowed.
If we are more endowed to become free from exploitative attitude towards those who are less endowed. It can bring a learning and sharing mood instead of a grabbing and exploiting mood. And lastly, it can give intellectual basis for ethics.
Not just something we have to do because otherwise we’ll be caught, but because this will help us to grow in life. We can first take questions related with the topic and then we can go to other questions. Yeah, so here there’s a question.
If God knows past, present and future, then how does free will come to use? God’s knowledge about the future is like our knowledge about the past. It is knowledge without intervention. God’s knowledge about the future is like our knowledge about the past.
We know past. Yesterday I did this, then I did this, then this happened, then this happened. We don’t change that.
We can’t change that. It’s happened. So God’s knowledge about future is like that.
It’s knowledge without intervention. In our case, we can’t intervene. In God’s case, he doesn’t intervene.
In our case, we don’t have the power to intervene. What has happened, we can’t change it. God can, but he doesn’t intervene.
He doesn’t intervene. Why? Because he has given us free will. So when we say that God has knowledge about the future, what that means is that God has correlated choices with consequences.
And then if you make this choice, this will be the consequence. If you make this choice, this will be the consequence. And accordingly, we can make healthy choices.
So the point of God’s omniscience is not that we are deprived of our free will. The point of God’s omniscience is to recognize that God knows enough to guide us to make the better choices. See, one of the problems when we think about God’s omniscience is that often we project a mathematical sort of worldview or perception on God.
It’s like, okay, some person is very tall. So that person is eight, six feet. That’s a physical attribute.
Whereas, when you talk about God’s omniscience, when you talk about God’s omniscience, we need to know that omniscience is not just a physical attribute like somebody is six feet tall or somebody is 75 kg weight or something like that. God is a person. And he has a loving heart.
And with that loving heart, he wants the best for us. So the point of understanding God’s omniscience or accepting God’s omniscience is that we accept thereby that he knows what is best for us. And therefore, when he gives us some guidance from scripture, the revelations that he has given us, we take that guidance seriously and try to mold our life accordingly.
In the same way, if God’s omniscience had meant that we had no free will, the same scripture which tells us that God is omniscience also tells us that we have free will. In the Bhagavad Gita 7.26, Krishna says that he knows everything. He says, I know everything.
But in the same Bhagavad Gita, at the end, in 18.63, Krishna says, He is deliberate in what I have said and now decide what you want to do. So in the Bhagavad Gita itself, Krishna is saying both. On one side, he is saying that I know everything.
On other side, he is telling that now you deliberate and you decide what you want to do. So the point of God’s omniscience is not that he controls us like robots and he makes us behave in a particular way so that his omniscience turns out to be right. That is not the point.
The point of God’s omniscience is that he is a loving person and many times there may be people who love us but they may not know what is good for us. You know, if somebody has got a wound, a relative may want that the wound be healed but the relative may not know enough how to heal the wound. They have to go to a doctor for that.
But God not only loves us but he also knows what is best for us. So the point of understanding God’s omniscience is to mould our choices according to his guidance. It is not to deprive us of our free will.
We will go to the next question. If whatever questions I answer if those of you who have not addressed the question you can raise your hand and you can ask the question further. So the question is how do I change my karma so that I don’t suffer? The principle of karma is primarily that to the extent we cause suffering to others, we get suffering in return.
So if we minimize or stop causing hurt to others then we too will minimize the hurt that we get. Now in general, specifically in this present age which is called as Kali Yuga, there are four broad activities by which we hurt ourselves and we hurt others. So one of them is intoxication.
When people become intoxicated we can see the result even in this lifetime. People get intoxicated, sometimes people drive under intoxication. They sometimes have accidents when innocent people get killed.
So intoxication is the way by which we harm ourselves. Similarly, killing animals for food, eating meat that is also harmful for our spiritual potential. And because we cause pain to the animals so we get reaction to that also.
And then there is again similarly gambling and squandering money in the hope of quick gains without putting any effort. The principle of karma is that action will produce reaction. But in gambling what happens is people want gains without any efforts.
So that fuels the greed within us. That causes great anxiety and eventually that harms us. And then there is illicit sex.
When there is sex outside marriage often that leads to abortion which is actually killing of an innocent child and leads to a whole lot of complications. So there are activities like this where we hurt others and then we will get hurt in return. So to the extent we avoid that, to that extent we can minimize suffering that we get.
But along with minimizing whatever wrong we do now, along with that it’s also important that we cultivate a taste for doing the right thing. Because more often than not, it’s not just a matter of knowing what is right and what is wrong. Duryodhana in the Mahabharata he says that in the Sanskrit literature it is said in general that I know what is good but I don’t feel inspired to do it.
I know what is bad but I don’t feel like giving it up. So that is a more fundamental problem. So how do we deal with that? That we can deal with if we can get a taste for higher purer activities.
So one of the easiest ways by which we can get a taste for higher purer activities is by practicing Bhakti Yoga. When we devote ourselves to God, when we say chant the names of God, when we worship God, when we pray to Him, when we sing bhajans to Him, this gives us a higher happiness. And this higher happiness frees us gradually from the cravings for lower pleasures which make us do wrong things.
So one thing is to know what is right and what is wrong. Second thing is to have this inner strength to do right and avoid the wrong. And this strength it just cannot be a matter of this will power.
I’ll not do this, I’ll do that. We can’t sustain that for very long. We have to actually change our tastes.
We have to change our tastes. And this change of taste happens through purification. So God is all pure.
So when we connect with God, when we become devoted to God, we become purified and our tastes change. And then it will become much easier to avoid the wrong things and to do the good things. And moreover, when we become devoted to God, He also mercifully intervenes.
Krishna says, aham tvam sarva-papebhyo mokshe shami mahasuchaha. So, He says that, I will free you from whatever sinful reactions that might come because of your past actions. That means there are three things now, what I said here.
First is, if I am at this point, now, I want to stop doing wrong things so that I won’t get any reactions. So I get the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. But along with that, I need to purify myself so that I am not attracted or impelled towards the impure.
So we get from scripture, from Bhagavad Gita, we will get knowledge. But when we practice bhakti, we will become purified and our taste will change. But then what about whatever wrong we may have done in the past? That reaction is still going to come.
But then, as I said, the point of karma is not judgment. The point of karma is education. Just as even in this life we see that, even in the world, if a person is punished for a sentence for some crime, but if that person behaves well in prison, then the sentence is cut down.
Sometimes the president even has the power of forgiving entirely. So like that, God is above karma. And normally, he doesn’t intervene.
He lets action produce reactions. But when you see that somebody is becoming devoted, somebody is consistently making right choices, then the past reactions can also be minimized by his merciful intervention. And in that way, we can become… Misery, suffering cannot be entirely eliminated in this world.
Because the nature of this world is things are temporary and our bodies will grow old, they will get diseased, we will die. This is inevitable. But our miseries don’t have to become more than what they are unavoidably necessary.
And that can happen if we learn to live according to dharma by practicing bhakti. Okay. When a human kills an animal for eating, is it interruption of God’s plan or is it destiny of that animal? Okay.
There are two different points which we should not confuse. First is that what happens to people, it is not for us to take God’s justice in our hand. It is not for us to decide whom to punish anyone.
There is karma and there is dharma. Now, dharma means the knowledge of right actions. So, now, if say an animal is slaughtered, if a human kills an animal, butcher kills an animal, now yes, it is that animal’s destiny because of which that animal was killed.
So, that soul had in the previous human life done some wrong because of which now it gets slaughtered. But the point is the butcher was not thinking that, oh, this animal has done some wrong and I am giving it a due punishment. First of all, the butcher doesn’t think of that.
And secondly, the butcher has no right to give punishment on behalf of someone. Butcher is not authorized. The butcher is doing that because of his own selfish desires.
So, that’s why even if it is destiny of that animal to be slaughtered, because the butcher is not an authorized instrument to give that result, because the butcher is doing it because of one’s own desire, the butcher will get the karmic reaction. So, that’s why whenever certain things are happening, like say animal is being killed, our concern should not be what is whose destiny. Our concern should be what is my dharma? What is the right course of action for me? Now, if we start thinking of everything in terms of destiny, then there will be no sense of justice remaining at all.
So, Sita is abducted by Ravana and Ram can say it was Sita’s destiny. No, if we start thinking like that in terms of destiny, then there will be absolutely no order left in life. So, Ram is thinking, not whether it is Sita’s destiny or not, what is my dharma? My dharma is to protect my wife and therefore he will do whatever is required for that.
So, always our decisions should not be based on what is whose destiny. Our decision is based on what is my dharma. The question is birth and death of a human being pre-written according to one’s previous karma? Now, yes, when we say birth and death are pre-written, now what exactly do we mean by pre-written? There are two different things.
The body, we are like tenants in the body. If we consider the body to be like our house, the soul is a tenant in the body. We are not owners, but we are tenants and we live for a particular time and the time duration for which we have tenancy in the body, that is determined by our past karma.
So, in that sense, the time duration for which we will be in this body is fixed by our past karma. But, what is fixed is not in terms of time units as we measure it. It is in terms of breaths.
Because in the traditional context, life span is measured in terms of breaths. How many breaths do we take? So, the number of breaths that we have are fixed. And that is simply because based on karma, the body is something which we get for a particular amount of time.
And when that time duration of tenancy gets over, then the soul leaves the body. So, at that particular time, death can occur from various ways. It may occur by accident, it may occur by old age, it may occur because of some disease, whatever.
But, yes, the time of birth and time of death, the duration which we have in a particular life, that is determined by our past karma. Okay, this is another related question. So, if this birth and death are determined, then what about by some unfavorable circumstances or situations, if the person chooses to end one’s life, person commits suicide, then what happens? Yes.
When we are allocated a particular body by karma, there is a particular time duration for which that soul is going to be in that body. So, consider a situation where, say, a government or a company is allocating some residences for its employees. So, you stay in this quarters for this period and then you will be transferred to this house and you will have quarters over here.
So, if a person is supposed to stay in a quarters for 6 years, and after 3 years, that person burns down the quarters. And now, for the next 3 years, that person is going to be quarterless. That person will get a new quarter, but after this period of 6 years is over.
So, like that, if a soul, if a person because of frustration or whatever, destroys one’s own body through suicide, then that soul stays in a disembodied state, without a body. And that state without a body is what is in some in common language called as ghost. Now, ghost is, you know, many times when people hear about a ghost, people feel very scared.
People feel very scared. But the fact is, ghosts are themselves miserable people. They are miserable.
Why? They may make us miserable, that is true. But they are themselves miserable. Why? Because there is no tool for doing what you want to do.
What happens is, we have certain desires, and we want to do certain things based on those desires. But suppose we fall sick. Say there is some big celebration in our family, and there is a big feast.
And that time our stomach gets upset. Now, everybody is feasting, and we have to take soup. You know, we’ll be miserable.
So, like that, what happens to souls who deprive, people who commit suicide and deprive themselves of the body, then they are in a disembodied state. So, they have desires to do things, but they just can’t do anything. Because they don’t have a tool to do anything.
You see a gulab jamun, want to eat a gulab jamun, but there is no tongue. So, what to do? It’s a state of great frustration. And, in some cases, such souls, if they have very strong desires, they may forcefully enter into certain bodies.
That is what we call as possessions. So, possessions means, if some, especially some souls, some people, by their choices, they weaken themselves. That means they take too much intoxication or what in the Gita calls as tamasic living.
That means people subject themselves to lot of negative and dark influences. Then, they go into the area where ghosts have power. People who live purely, ghosts don’t have power in that consciousness, pure consciousness.
But those who live impurely, then sometimes they become possessed by ghosts. So, ghosts are desperate because they want to do certain things. And, again, this is a whole big field, but there are well documented cases of people who suddenly their personality seems to change.
They suddenly start speaking differently. So, what has happened is, some other person has entered into that body temporarily. That is called possession.
So, in general, if we live purely, then the danger of possession is not at all there. And as far as suicide is concerned, yes, that will lead to a person living for a particular period in a disembodied stage. And so, suicide is very unfortunate and if somebody is depressed, we should try to offer counseling and support.
And it’s been well documented that people who were suicidal, and if they got support and counseling and guidance, usually they feel it’s very good that I didn’t commit suicide. Because life, no matter how dark it looks, life is always moving up and down. No darkness is going to stay forever.
It is a darkness. Just as the good in this life is temporary, even the bad in the life is temporary. So, it’s important for us to offer encouragement to those people who become depressed.
Suicide is not a solution from life’s problems. Because it will create its own problems further. And more importantly, whatever problems are there, they are temporary and if you tolerate them, then they will go away.
So, again, the same question, similar question. If a person commits suicide, is it the destiny of that person or has he interrupted God’s plan? Certainly, it is nobody’s destiny to commit suicide. It is by our choice that we end our body, end our life.
So, suicide is never destined. Suicide is something which is chosen. Destined means essentially that which happens without our control, without our effort.
So, if I’m just going in a car and the car skids and gets off and I get an accident, then that we can say is destiny. Now, actually, this idea that something goes wrong and we say it is destiny, it has to be very carefully understood. In the Mahabharata, Vidura is a virtuous brother of Dhritarashtra.
And Vidura is always giving good counsel to Dhritarashtra, telling him, stop your son from his evil acts. And Dhritarashtra there uses the rationalization of destiny. Vidura tells him, if you don’t stop Duryodhana, the whole Kuru dynasty will be destroyed in a terrible war.
And then Dhritarashtra argues, if it is the will of almighty destiny that our dynasty be destroyed, then who am I, a tiny human being to stop the will of almighty destiny? So, Vidura cuts through his pretensions. Vidura tells him, destiny determines the consequences of our actions, not our actions themselves. Destiny determines the consequences of our actions, not our actions themselves.
You know, if a student doesn’t study for exam and fails and says it was by destiny. No, that is not destiny. Destiny, sometimes we may study and because of certain reasons still we may not get good marks.
So, that can be called as destiny. So, destiny is never, should never be used as an excuse for giving up one’s duty. So, suicide is never destined by anyone.
It is not destined, it is something which we choose or some people choose because of what they feel is overwhelming frustration. And as far as interruption of God’s plan is concerned, yes, certainly. Again, we have to understand that God’s plan is not frozen.
God’s plan is reciprocal depending on how we choose God guides us accordingly. So, the point is not that we interrupt God’s plan but the point is that we make choices by which we will grow in our life progressively. So, the question here is apart from scriptures, what are the evidence suggesting that the karma system exists? In fact, in this whole talk I did not quote scripture much.
See, how can we learn something? Broadly, there are three ways. We can learn from our observation, we can learn from our logical inference and we can learn from those whom we trust. So, for example, we see something and we learn but it is not that we have seen everything that we have learned.
Logically we infer, ok, this makes sense, this makes sense. And we always learn, trust trustworthy authorities. If I want to learn, say, now there is a great fear of Ebola.
So, now, if I want to know what all I should do to prevent Ebola, it is not that I am going to do a PhD studies in Ebola. I am going to refer to who are trustworthy authorities and I learn from them. So, scripture is a trustworthy authority but beyond so, but for us to develop faith in scripture takes time because we have to study scripture, we have to understand scripture.
So, it is not that scripture simply demands faith from us. Scripture also uses logical explanation. So, what I discussed today was largely based on logic.
So, observation, inference and scripture can all help us to understand the principle of karma. By observation, we can see in many cases, causes produce effects and effects have causes. And by inference, we can understand that this principle of cause-effect connection, this will extend beyond our immediate observation capacity also.
And how it extends beyond this immediate observation capacity, that we can learn from scripture. So, when nothing is in my control, why worry? Why worry? First of all, then why ask this question? The fact is, to say nothing is in my control also requires enough control to say the statement, nothing is in my control. So, it’s a self-contradictory statement to say nothing is in my control.
It’s like saying, I don’t exist. I have to exist to say I don’t exist. Otherwise, how will I say that? So, even from a common sense point of view, it’s not true that nothing is in my control.
So, that is one misconception. The other misconception is that everything is in my control. Everything is in my control.
So, these are basically, in Sanskrit, these are called as two schools of thought. One is called as Daivavada. Daivavada means everything is destined, nothing is in my control.
And the other is Karmavada. Karmavada is everything is in my control. Most people have this idea today.
Everything, everything is in my control. If I just work hard, if I just do this, do this, then I will become the next, whatever, the next world’s richest person, world’s most powerful person or whatever. So, these are both misleading.
Why? Because everything, first of all, nothing is not, everything is not in our control. Balanced understanding is there are certain things in our control and there are certain things not in our control. So, to understand simply this is that there is karma plus daiva plus kala is equal to phala.
Karma plus daiva plus kala is equal to phala. The example to understand this is say farming. Say, when a farmer wants harvest.
So, the karma, the duty of the farmer is to plough the land, to sow the seeds, to make sure that the land is suitable for growth of grains. That is the karma. And the daiva is that rains come properly on time and in adequate quantity.
So, in karma plus daiva, when both work together and after that also, time has to pass. Harvest is not going to come immediately. Kala.
Then eventually, the phala, the harvest will come. Now, it’s important that if we think nothing is in my control and the farmer will not plough, farmer will not sow. And then even if daiva is uncool, even if destiny is favourable, rains come but only weeds will grow over there.
Because nothing was sown. So, for phala, not only daiva is required but karma is also required. And secondly, sometimes the karma may be there but daiva may not be there.
Sometimes we may work very hard but destiny may not be favourable. So, the farmer sows, ploughs but then no rains come. Then the farmer will not get the phala.
But that does not mean that the karma itself has gone waste. That karma is going to contribute to a future positive daiva. The result will come.
So, the important point to recognize is that there are certain actions definitely in our control. And the whole point of scripture is to guide us so that what is in our control, we make right choices. And what is not in our control, we entrust to God.
So, do your best and leave the rest to God. So, that way we can work doing our karma, leaving what is beyond our control to God and being patient so that karma, daiva, phala and kala, all three working together will produce the result. If my current life is the reaction of my actions I did in my previous life, then is it fair to get punishment without knowing what I did wrong? Yes.
This is a fair question. And answering this requires, I said, understanding the purpose of karma. The purpose of karma is not to keep us perpetually in a multi-lifetime flashback mode.
What do you mean by multi-lifetime flashback mode? Say, right now, I get up and I start walking. And I slip and fall. I start thinking, what lifetime, what karma did I did because of which I slip and fall.
You know, we would not be able to live at all. And further, we have to understand that the actions which we have done in many previous lives, it’s just not possible for the human brain to remember them all. And the whole purpose of karmic learning is not just conscious choosing.
Yes, conscious choosing is important. This is right, this is wrong. I should not do this, I should do this.
But much of our learning happens subconsciously. That means, say, right now, I am speaking. You are hearing.
Now, can we remember the exact moment, say, when we learn language? When we learn A, B, C, D? When we learn the spelling of words? When we learn the sound of words? When we learn speaking? Now, we know that we have learned it. But we don’t remember that. And we use it constantly.
So, this is, so, we use right now much of the learning which is subtle and subconscious. So, most of the, most of our life’s behavior is determined not just by the consciously learned facts. Okay, this is left, this is right.
My house is, say, 500 meters from here. That this sort of factual information is important. But many of our decisions are shaped by subconsciously learned patterns of behavior.
Language is just one example. But other subconsciously learned patterns of behavior. So, the karmic learning is not just meant to be a matter of categorical, this is right, this is wrong.
Stop doing this, start doing this. No, it is a matter of changing our mentality. So, as I said, we may know something is wrong and still we feel impelled to do it.
So, that is, at least some level of control is good, we don’t do it. But still, the important thing is to change our mentality itself, so that we are not attracted to doing bad things, attracted to doing wrong things. So, the purpose of karmic learning is not just conscious categorization of right and wrong.
It is a subconscious changing of our mentality. So, what we are right now. All of us are a particular person.
Some of us may be introverts, some of us may be extroverts. All of us have different patterns of behavior. So, this is not something which we have consciously chosen.
It is something which is unconsciously grown by our past choices. So, karmic learning, the principle of karmic learning is to not just give us categorical information of right or wrong. It is to change our subconscious thought pattern, our subconscious tastes.
So, that happens gradually. We don’t need to know specifically, this was the wrong because of which I got this reaction. As I said earlier also that, the point is not to learn specific causes, but the point is to learn general principles.
Learning general principles means, accordingly reform, redirecting or purifying our tastes. So, that happens as we study scripture and mold our life accordingly. Okay.
Can you explain, what is the difference between killing animals for food and cutting trees to build human society? Okay, important question. As I said, the fundamental principle of karma is that we get suffering or to the extent we cause suffering. So, even from a scientific perspective, the nervous system of animals is much more developed than that of plants.
So, the animals, when they are slaughtered, they experience far greater pain than plants. So, the principle of karmic suffering is that the extent of suffering we cause others, we will get that much suffering. So, animals experience much more pain and that’s why as a consequence, we will get far greater pain.
Secondly, in many cases, with respect to plants, quite often, it is not that the plants are caused pain. For example, when you take for food, if grains are not harvested, they will anyway dry and die. If fruits are not plucked, anyway they are going to fall and get rotten.
So, much of the food that we get from the plant world, there is no violence directly caused to it. It’s just a natural product that comes and in the natural course of action, we get it. That’s the second point.
Third point is that intuitively, there is a difference which we all know between harvesting grains and slaughtering animals. Imagine, if say, you have some children and tomorrow the class teacher or the school tells, you know, we are going to take the children to a field trip to show them how grains are harvested. Most parents will not object.
If you go for harvesting also, there is a natural mood of celebration over there. Nature has given her bounty and we are gratefully receiving it. So, intuitively, emotionally, aesthetically, there is a mood of celebration over there.
But if tomorrow, say, in the school the teacher says, you know, we are going to take your children to a field trip to a slaughterhouse to show how animals are slaughtered. How many parents would allow that? So, we intuitively know there is a difference between killing animals and cutting trees. And yes, the principle is well taken that there should not be unnecessary cutting down of trees also.
There is certainly, because of humanity’s greed, we have enroached on the forest areas, we have disrupted the ecological balance and that is not supported. But when we are comparing the two, you know, animals are not necessary as a food. Some amount of violence, even if it happens to plant life, that is necessary often for survival.
So, we have to look at the principle of how I can cause minimum pain. And eating vegetarian food is the way to cause minimum pain. And as spiritually minded people, we take a further precaution, and as I said, that God can free us from karmic reactions also.
So, when we take food, we don’t just take vegetarian food, we take the vegetarian food and offer it to God with prayers. And then, when we offer it to Him with prayers and take what the remnants are there, they are called as prasad. So, prasad is freed from sinful reactions.
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that, Those who offer food in sacrifice, they become freed from all sinful reactions. Because their food has contacted with God. And that’s how, it has become purified.
So, thank you very much. There are several questions remaining, but I think we should not go too much over time. I have a website, thespiritualscientist.com So, most of the questions that I have not answered, they have been answered over there.
If you go to thespiritualscientist.com and search, you will find the answers there. And if any of the questions are not answered, I answer questions on the site also. If you submit the questions there, in a few days, I will answer there in audio format.
And you can hear the answers over there also. Thank you very much for your kind attention and participation.