Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

29. Karma and Rebirth

(Darshan given in April 1996)

A visitor: It is said that the reincarnation depends on the karmas, good or bad. Now, when the Aatma leaves the body…

Swamiji: The Aatma doesn't leave the body. It is the mind that leaves. The Aatma is all-pervading.

Visitor: Then does it go to a human form or a subhuman form?

Swamiji: It can go to either. It depends upon what that person was thinking their whole life.

Visitor: Suppose he has done a very bad karma?

Swamiji: Then he will become worse than a human being.

Visitor: A subhuman level like the animal level?

Swamiji: Yes. If it is a very good karma, he may go to heaven. If it is an ordinary mixed karma, he will come to the human level, but if it is very bad, he will go to the animal kingdom. He can become even a tree. It depends upon what he has done.

Visitor: But once he has become a tree, suppose, how will he come up then?

Swamiji: When the effect of that old karma which made him a tree is exhausted, he will revert to another condition, which is determined by another karma. People don't do only one karma. They do many karmas, and there are layers of these karmas. Some are very powerful, some are mild, some are very weak. The very powerful karmas take effect first, and then the mild ones.

Visitor: Then when the karmas are exhausted, he will come back to the…

Swamiji: Prarabdha karma cannot be entirely exhausted, only a part of it. One segment of it will be exhausted, and whatever is determined by the remaining karmas, he will become that. But if it is completely exhausted, he will reach the Supreme Being. He will not take birth at all.

Visitor: So the lowest level is the plant kingdom?

Swamiji: It can be a stone also. It can be mineral, it can be vegetable, it can be animal, it can be man, it can be a divine angel. Anything is possible.

Visitor: From matter to spirit.

Swamiji: Right. He can find himself at any level, according to the nature of his thought, feeling and action. And it is not difficult to find out. Everybody knows what they are thinking and feeling. What you are thinking and feeling the whole day, that will tell you what you are going to become. You yourself can know that; you need not consult any astrologer. Your feelings will tell what will be because what you are now will be continued in the next birth. It cannot be a different thing altogether. Whatever you have been thinking and feeling will materialise itself into a form or a body which is the thing into which the soul enters.

Visitor: But this reverse process from matter to spirit, how it happens?

Swamiji: It automatically takes place. When the pressure exerted by one karma is lifted because of the experience of it, then he reverts to the other one.

Visitor: Then from stone, or matter, he comes to the plant kingdom, and then from plant kingdom to the animal kingdom…

Swamiji: No, not necessarily. It depends upon what the person will become. He may not become a stone always. He may become an animal if the karma is not so bad as to make him a stone. It depends upon what level he is. From animal he may revert to man, provided the karma which made him an animal is exhausted by experience. It takes place automatically.

Visitor: This process continues from ages to ages, depending on the karmas?

Swamiji: The cycle will stop when all the karmas are exhausted.

Visitor: But in the initial condition of the universe, when matter and spirit are one, what are the initial conditions?

Swamiji: These are all cosmological issues. Unnecessarily you are taking me to cosmology. You yourself have read philosophy. Tell me how the world was created.

Visitor: There is no proper answer for that.

Swamiji: If there is no proper answer for that, there is no proper answer for anything that follows from creation. Actually, it is told to us in the Upanishads, etc., that the Universal Being, for reasons which no human being can understand, multiplied itself as the cosmic variety. That is what is called God's Cosmic Form. You must have read the Bhagavadgita where Sri Krishna is showing his Cosmic Form. It is a unified Absolute consciousness appearing as a vast multiplicity, but it is a multiplicity something like the multiplicity of the limbs of your body. You have got nose, ears, eyes, legs, hands. This is a multiplicity, but they are unified by a consciousness of your individuality. You don't feel that you have got an ear here, a nose here, and so on. It is one integrated body. So that Cosmic Form, for the purpose of explanation, is a multiplicity, just as your body is a multiplicity of limbs but actually it is one integrated experience. That is the Visvarupa, as they call it, the Cosmic Form.

You are thinking that you are isolated from the universe, and you are considering the universe as an outside body, but it is not outside. You have come from that. The universe is the cause and you are the effect, so it is futile for any individual to think that the world is outside; but you are persisting in that, and this wrong perception creates a clash between the world and yourself. You are in conflict perpetually between the outer and the inner, while really there is no difference between the outer and inner. It is the total whole which is creation. This is how the individuality started, and what you call karma is nothing but the action and reaction arising out of this wrong individual assertion, which is the whole of cosmology. Now your duty is not to worry about this but to see how you go back, a reverse process.

Visitor: Now the second point, we say the Aatma is in pancha bhuta…

Swamiji: Listen, this so-called pancha bhuta you are mentioning is the individual consciousness getting concretised into a physical form for the purpose of making itself a kind of self-complete infinite. Everybody is finite only, but each one feels he is complete in himself. Nobody says he is a little fragment. If you feel you are a fragment of the whole, you will be utterly miserable. You cannot exist for three days. So this kind of assertion of individuality is associated with the wrong notion of an infinitude of one's own self. The finite thinks that it is infinite. Some people say, “I am everything. Who are you to talk to me? I am everything, I know everything. Don't talk to me.” This is the assertion of the individuality, which wrongly assumes an infinitude and power though it is a little finite thing. This kind of thing is to be reversed by a process of returning to the original whole gradually, from the effects to the cause. So many effects are there, and so many causes. There is a gradual descent, so there will be a gradual ascent also.

Visitor: What is the location of the Self in our body?

Swamiji: The Self is not located anywhere. This isolated fragment of consciousness to which I made reference just now asserts itself as an individual and, firstly, it is in a state of unconsciousness from the shock it received due to the fall from the Universal Whole. That unconscious condition is what we call the causal body. One cannot exist in a state of shock always, so the consciousness, in a very wrong way, projects itself through the unconscious level, and it is seen shining out like a little ray of the sun beaming through the clouds. You are very blessed. There is nothing tragic about it. Just as the waking consciousness multiplies itself into the variety of dream and imagines that there is a vast world of dream, and the whole variety melts into a single comprehensive consciousness of waking, and all the problems of dream are solved in one minute of waking, all this tragic thing that you are seeing in the world will melt down like mist when your consciousness rises to the Universal Being. This is called liberation. For that, deep meditation is necessary.

Visitor: This is true, but when you say the Aatma is beyond the three bodies, beyond the mind and…

Swamiji: It is not beyond the three bodies; it is itself the three bodies. It has got concretised into this body, as water becomes ice. You cannot say the water is outside the ice. The water itself is the ice. This consciousness, which has individualised itself, concretises itself into the causal body, the subtle body and the physical body, so it is not inside-outside. It itself is this solid thing. They are not two different things.

Visitor: No, just like the body is the outer, and the inner is the mind…

Swamiji: There is no outer or inner. It is the degree of water forming itself into ice. In the lower part it will be liquid, then semi-liquid, then finally at the top it is very hard. All this is water only, so there are no inside and outside for that. It is the water itself congealed into this form gradually, and this is the five koshas.

Visitor: So we want to remain in the consciousness.

Swamiji: For that you must revert your consciousness to the Universal, and withdraw your individual consciousness. This is called meditation. Meditation is a technique which you have to learn from a competent person.

Visitor: It means our consciousness should not be identified with the body.

Swamiji: It should not identify itself with anything except the Universal.

Visitor: It should not be identified either with the mind or the body.

Swamiji: There is no mind, body, etc.

Visitor: It is the consciousness operating everything.

Swamiji: Finally, Consciousness alone exists, and nothing else. You must meditate on that.

Visitor: Can you explain when it is said aham brahmasmi?

Swamiji: When I have told everything to you, why are you repeating some unnecessary thing now? If you go on saying 'I am an emperor', you don't become an emperor unless there is the potentiality of becoming an emperor. So you should not use these words aham brahmasmi and so on.

Actually, what this formula means is, this consciousness which appears to be concretised in the form of this body is actually the original Universal Consciousness. That is the meaning of aham brahmasmi: the individual asserting itself as the original Universal, which wrongly thinks it has become the individual. Merely uttering something, it will not come. The feeling must be there, “I am the Infinite.”