Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1998

by Swami Krishnananda

12. The Next Life

(Darshan given in March 1998)

Swamiji: Your present life is chosen by the previous life itself, just as today you make a program for tomorrow. “Tomorrow I will go somewhere,” you are saying. That means now itself you have made a program. And similarly for your next life, you have already made the program. You may say, “No, I have not made any program for the next life.” You will say like that, isn't it?

A visitor: No.

Swamiji: Have you made a program for next life? Yes or no, tell me.

Visitor: Yes, I am making a...

Swamiji: So what do you want to become next life? If you have already made the program clearly, tell me what you wish to become in the next life.

Visitor: I would like to be in contact with God.

Swamiji: You want to be in Switzerland again? You want to be born in Switzerland?

Visitor: I don't mind which country – in Netherlands or in any country.

Swamiji: What do you want to become in the next life?

Visitor: I want to be able to be in contact with God in the next life.

Swamiji: If you have planted the seed for all those processes now in this life for being in contact with God, that seed that you have sown in this life will sprout up into a plant in the next birth. If you have done nothing in this life, nothing will come in the next life also. So, in a way, the way in which you are living in this life will decide your future. In some way you can know what you will be in the future. The whole day you are thinking something; the whole day you have been thinking, for years and years. All those thoughts will congeal into a solid, concentrated force and manifest themselves in a human form, or any form. You can be even an angel, not necessarily human. If you want to become an angel, you can be born as an angel. You can be a celestial. You can be anything, provided your mind is directed towards that form. Whatever you are thinking now, that you will get next birth. So you have to be very careful in thinking and operating your mind. You should not go on thinking hodgepodge, all sorts of distracted ideas.

If your mind is now concentrated on God Almighty, that will concentrate itself with a greater intensity in the next birth, and if you have been a real, honest, persistent spiritual seeker in this birth, in the next birth, in the beginning itself, you may be born as a saint because the practice of this birth will fructify in the next birth. So everything is determined by the impressions of actions and thoughts of the previous birth.

Life is not a watertight compartment; it is a flowing stream. It has a past, it has a present, and it has a future. Endlessly it moves, like a flowing river. So you had a past, now you have a present, you will have a future. So whatever you would like to be in the future you can decide now itself by a concentration of that feeling in your heart. That is called meditation.

[Later on]

It is nothing but a concretised form of desires only, the whole body. Desires have no consciousness of their own. They have to be charged with consciousness in order that they may work at all. So it is like a composite form of the remnant of unfulfilled desires which take the shape of this little child which has taken birth only for the sake of the fulfilment of those desires which have not been fulfilled before.

At a particular time, the fulfilment of desire is not possible without consciousness. A corpse cannot enjoy anything. So this little thing, which is otherwise nothing but a concentrated heap of unfulfilled desires, operates within itself a system of inviting the all-pervading consciousness into itself by opening an aperture in this formation of the body, like brain and heart and all this, which are all components which are contributory factors in the fulfilment of desires. All the functions in our body – brain, heart, lungs, whatever it is – they are all cooperative factors in the fulfilment of desires. Otherwise, one need not think, one need not breathe, one need not have a heart, one need not eat anything. These are all assistances given for the fulfilment of all the desires, which have been the cause for the rebirth. It opens up the aperture, like this, and the eye comes up, and the ears come up.

The fulfilment of desires is possible only in five ways: by seeing, by hearing, by tasting, by touching, by smelling. This is the way of fulfilment of desires. So desires which are determined to fulfil themselves open up apertures in this body which are of a rajasic, sattvic or tamasic nature, and allow the consciousness to enter into it; otherwise, it blocks. A merely material component cannot allow the entry of consciousness.