Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupda. All glories
to Gurumaharaj.
OnApril 9, about 40 young devotees came from Surat, headed by HG Subal Shyam
Prabhu. So Gurumaharaj gave a wonderful seminar on ‘The Art of Dying—the Way to
Immortality’. Below is the summary of the first part of the seminar.
The Art of Dying— the Way to Immortality
The problems of the body are janma-mrtyu- jara- vyadhi. This is the nature of
the body, especially when the body gets old, there are many problems. For
example new car gives no problem but when the car gets old, everyday you have
to go to the mechanic. In Bhagavad-gita, Krsna compared the body with
machine-yntra rudani mayayaithis material nature gave us this body and is
making us travel. When you have a car or an airplane or a cycle, you ride it.
Similarly when we have this body, we ride it. But we can’t control it
completely. It is controlled by guna and karma. And from this body we get
pleasure and pain. We don’t want pain, but it’s inevitable, we can’t avoid it.
So intelligence means to understand the nature of the body. An animal can’t
question about janma-mrtyu-jara-vyadhi. Can a dog question, ‘why I am
suffering? How can I avoid pain?’ With some little intelligence like when it is
beaten, it can be trained to do some sort of
work. But human beings are meant to have very developed intelligence to
understand the nature of the body. There are two kinds of objects which we see
around, inert and alive. Now our bodies are alive but at some point it will
become inert. When we see a dead body we say he left, he has gone to other
world. It indicates that somebody has gone somewhere. So the body was alive
because of that ‘somebody’ and that ‘somebody’ is the ‘soul’.
In America there were big posters on ‘Art of Living’. Everybody knows the art
of living, that’s not the big thing. What is important is the art of dying. In
Bhagavad-gita Krsna is not speaking the art of living, He is telling about the
art of dying. ‘yad gatva na nivartantei.’, ‘anta-kale ca mam evai.’ The point
is that we have to understand what our real business is. Are we here to enjoy?
Can we really enjoy? Here the basis of enjoyment is eating, sleeping, mating
and defending. When people want to enjoy they go to parties, and big part of it
is eating and then comes drinking, and then sleeping-mating-defending. But it
is said, “ahara-nidra-bhaya-maithunam cha, samanyam etad pashubhir naranam,
dharmo hi tesham adhiko vishesho, dharmena hina pashubhih smanah”. A man can
eat, but a pig can eat much better then a man and a bear can sleep much better
then a man. So these things the animals can do much better then human beings.
The
source of human enjoyment is ‘athato brahma jijnasa’. Human beings must try to
understand there spiritual identity.
In order to understand The Art of Dying-the Way to Immortality, we have to
first understand what is death? 'tatha dehantara-praptir’, dehantara means
transmigration from one body to another. Who is changing the body? I am
changing the body. Generally we identify our body with ourselves. I am hungry,
I am sad, I am cold, I am angry, but actually it’s the body which is hungry,
which is sad, which is cold, which is angry. That is misidentification of soul.
To think that I am body is false ego. When I leave the body, body dies, and
then what happens to me? What is our real identity? Who am I? Am I this body?
When you were 5 years old do you had the same body? When you were 5 years old,
you had a small child’s body, but where is that body now? That body is gone,
but the 5 year old you and 25 year old you are the same person. So the body
changed but you are not changed. Krsna is explaining this in Bhagavad-gita that
body changes from childhood to
youth, from youth to old age. When you will be 60, if you will look back, you
will see that your 25 year old body is gone. So in this way the body changes
but you remain the same. So when you say I was 5, 25, 45i it was your body
which was 5, 25, 45i.. We always use the expression, my body, my shirt, my
hair, etc.. So the body I possess and I am not this body.
Now how I get this body? The subtle body carries the soul with the father and
impregnates in the womb of the mother. Pregnancy means the mother receives the
soul in her womb and there it takes time to develop and grows. At first it
takes the size of a pea. In 7 months the body gets the shape, nails and things
starts to grow and another two months the body get matures and comes out of the
mother’s womb and this is called birth. Birth is when spirit soul gets a body.
All the months in the mother’s womb the body was connected to mother through
umbilical chord. So this is how from the father and the mother we get a
specific body.
So the body is like a machine. As every machine has a driver, the soul is the
driver of the body. And while driving the body, the soul fulfills his desire.
When the desires are fulfilled we call it pleasure and when the desires are not
fulfilled we call it pain. And after driving the body for sometime, when the
body gets old, we change the body. As when the car gets old it’s sent to the
garage for repairing. But when you see that the bill is very high and it
consumes a lot of gas and on top of everything if you have money to buy a new
car, you discard that old car. So when you discard the old body, it is called
death. Death is the rejection of the old body by the soul. And birth is the
acceptance of the new body by the soul. And the time span between birth and
death is called life. There are two types of material bodies, gross body and
subtle body. The gross body is made of five gross elements i.e., earth, water,
fire, air and ether. The subtle body is
made up of mind, intelligence and false ego. As earth, water, fire, air and
ether are substances; similarly mind, intelligence and false ego are also
substance. False ego is the development of our false identity by forgetting our
real identity as servant of Krsna. We began to think that we are the lord and
master of everything, it is called false ego. Through intelligence we began to
plan how to enjoy this material nature and through mind our senses flows to its
objects. When someone says, “you are such and such person, you are very
handsome”, we feel very good. This is false ego but the actual concept of false
ego is to think that we are lord and master. This mistaken identity is false
ego.
The gross body is constantly changing, but the general shape remains the same.
As in a water fountain, the water goes in and comes out, but the outer
structure of the fountain remains the same. In the body also, the cells are
changing, old cells die and new develops, but the general shape remains the
same. So this is how the gross body is constantly changing. Similarly the
subtle body also changes with the karmic reaction. As you act all the actions
leaves impression on your subtle body. When you do something good, you feel
good and when you do something bad, you feel bad. This is how good and bad
actions leaves the impression on our subtle body and accordingly the subtle
body takes the shape. As we say he is like an angle or he is like a demon. It’s
because the subtle body takes the shape of an angle or demon. If one’s subtle
body will be like a pig, the nature will reward him a pig’s body in the next
life. So when he will get a pig’s body, he
will be fully free to act as a pig. The subtle body doesn’t die, as it’s made
of the subtle substance, it is more abstract. And it doesn’t retains or
disappear. Therefore, at the time of death, subtle body remains and carries the
soul and accordingly we get the next body.
Beyond this subtle body is the spirit soul. We all are spirit soul coming from
spiritual sky. Now the question is, ‘why did we come here?’ The reason is that
in spiritual world Krsna is in the centre and everyone is looking at Krsna,
serving Him. But when somebody turns away from Krsna then what happens? When
our focus changes, we look away from Krsna, we look towards the material
nature. It is stated in prema vivarta, ‘krishna-bahir-mukha haiya bhoga vancha
kare, nikata-stha maya tare japatiya dhare’. The movement the living entity
looks away from Krsna, he desires to enjoy the material nature. It naturally
happens because the living entity is superior and the material nature is
inferior. Therefore he exploits. So that is the tendency of the living entity
and that actually gives the covering of the false ego. It’s ultimately the
tendency to lord over. How are we trying to enjoy? Through the material nature
and this is how we get the subtle
covering of false ego and forgets our actual identity, i.e. ‘jivera svarup
haya krisner nitya das’. And because of the false ego, we make plans to enjoy
in this material nature through our intelligence. And then the mind starts
flowing towards the objects of the senses in order to enjoy. In this way we try
to enjoy in this material nature.
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