It's my birthday.
My gift to myself: avoiding tumblr for a week.
October 2011
When you refer to the supreme primordial source as "God", you surely do not equate such with the Abrahamic demiurge, correct? I ask just for reference.
Do I strike you as someone particularly attached to Abrahamic forms? A bit bland for my taste, but it takes all sorts. ;) Hare Krishna!
another thing is soul mates, do you believe in such? i do so. 2 souls that in every life met in different circunstances an instantly connect? that's what i read but never happened to me. (yet, hopefully). :)
This is interesting, because soul mates are a concept which is more complicated than in the love stories. Yes, you will very often meet people with whom you have had past relationships, and sometimes this will be romantic, but just as often it won’t. Actually, most people you know now or will ever know, you have likely known in some capacity before. We can take thousands and thousands of births, and there is bound to be a lot of reconnecting with the same people over and over! You may one day meet someone and have a deep connection with them, and this may lead to falling in love, because it’s as if you’ve known one another forever — this person may have been in love with you in a past birth, or they may as easily have been your parent or a friend or even an enemy (which helps explain why relationships can be so difficult!). You are naturally drawn to those with whom you have had relationships in past lives, because there’s memories of them buried in your subtle body, and often karmic connections. Relationships of all sorts become all the more complex when you take into account all these thousands of years of lives in the past!
thank you i likde your answer because i've read many times that is not right to do this, but i just have this hunch that i need to do it, allthough im 16 i guess i have to wait till im 18 to make a regression or either meditate a lot hahah :)
With the aim of spiritual growth and understanding, it can be very useful. But you don’t have to wait till you are 18 to meditate! Anyone of any age can engage in meditation, all you have to do is make the choice to do it!
How do you feel about Jainism?
I confess that I am not very learned in Jain philosophy. From what I know, there are many aspects of Jainism which help its followers in spiritual understanding, of the soul and divine consciousness, but there is a lacking of God consciousness, which makes the philosophy dry, and ultimately unsatisfying for those who seek a personal relationship with God. I respect the root of the non-violence of Jainism, in the understanding that each living being has a soul, but I also realize that complete non-violence is not the way things work, nor should it be desired, for violence is simply one among many of the pastimes of the jivas. There is truth in Jainism, but for fuller understanding it is my belief one should look into Vedic knowledge.
and is it wrong if in this life i try to know some of my past lifes to improve my spiritual growing? ihave many more questions, i hope i dont bother you :)
You don’t bother me at all! I only hope I can help! Please, ask all you would like!
There is nothing wrong with looking into your past lives, because every life you have taken has been for a reason, and every life is an opportunity to learn some lesson and accomplish some task which is necessary for you. If you are able to gain insight to a past life or lives, it can help you understand yourself further as a spiritual being, rather than as the temporary designations of your current body. It can be informative to assisting on your path of spiritual growth.
so if i in this life get to a level of consciousness superior than in my past life? will i carry that ( my soul) will carry that in the next life and will have the same level ? or i wont remember?.. is it possible that in mypast life i reached something that in this one i wont reach? namaste my friend :)
Your existence has three levels. The gross body, which is your physical form, made of flesh, which will age, die, and decompose to dust. The subtle body, which is contained within the gross body, and is your intelligence, mind, and ego. And the soul, which is the essential part of you which never dies. When you take birth in a physical body, your soul is transplanted in the womb, covered by the subtle body. The process of birth is stressful and causes you to forget the memories of your past birth contained within your subtle body, but these memories remain present within you. Anything you have experienced in past lives remains in the subtle body, all things you have done, learned, accomplished, though you cannot access all of this. It is sort of like the subconscious part of your mind, but much, much deeper, containing all of your memories from all of your lives. All of these memories, all these past identities, are but coverings of the true self, which does not change.
When you reach advanced consciousness in one life, you will retain that progress indefinitely, though you may or may not benefit from it directly in your next birth. The subtle body houses the ego, which is as false and illusory as flesh, and this affects spiritual progress. In one birth, you may come to some realization that you are more than this ego, but at the time of death, you may become deceived by the material world’s illusions again, and carry this self-deception to your next birth. You will still have this greater awareness within you, but you will have for a time forgotten, due to distractions of the material world and your own gross and subtle body. You may go through you entire incarnation without realizing this higher consciouness again, but it will be there for as many lives as it takes. When you do seek out spiritual growth, your past progress will aid your advancement.
I shouldn’t be watching all these Serge Gainsbourg videos in the middle of the night.
2012 - not the end of the world - in accordance with the vedas. →
peaceloveandtea.tumblr.com
There is a great deal of propaganda afoot that something dramatic will happen in 2012 and maybe the world will end…
We have information from the Vedic scriptures about the nature of this material world. Very extensive information is given about the cycles this world goes through over and over again. It is not that we are in uncharted territory. These cycles repeat, just like every year we have the four seasons. The cycle of the seasons repeats over and over again. Similarly the cycle of the four ages or yugas also repeats over and over again. As we know each of the seasons will last for three months and then the next season will start these four ages or yugas also repeat in a very systematic way.
There are four yugas, Satya-yuga - the golden age, lasting 1,728,000 years; Treta-yuga - the silver age, lasting 1,296,000 years; Dvapara-yuga - the bronze age, lasting 864,000 years; and finally Kali-yuga - the iron age of machines and quarrel, lasting 432,000 years.
We are in the final age, Kali-yuga. So in one sense you could call the end of Kali-yuga the “end of the world.” But actually Kali-yuga is no more the end of the world than winter is the end of the seasons. After the winter there will be another spring. At the end of winter everything looks dead. But with the sunshine of spring everything becomes rejuvenated and new life springs up all over the planet. So at the end of this Kali-yuga everything will be very baron and devastated. However that is just like the end of winter. Just like the end of winter means the beginning of a new spring season, there will be another Satya-yuga or golden age and everything in the universe will be rejuvenated again.
There will be some big devastation at the end of the Kali-yuga. But we have just started the Kali-yuga. This age will last for 432,000 years and so far we have only passed 5,000 years of it. So that means that Kali-yuga still has another 427,000 years to run… So please be assured that the world is not going to end in the year 2012… Believe it or not the world will still be going on in the year 49000. Around this time the current Kali-yuga will end and there will be some devastation and a renewal which will usher in a new Satya-yuga…
So this claim that the “end of the world” is coming in 2012 is complete nonsense. There is no end to the material world. Although everything here in this world — except the living entities (the spirit souls, the atmas) — including the planet and the universe itself, is ultimately a temporary manifestation. Everything has a time of creation and will have a time of destruction.
However, in the bigger picture, the destruction is not actually a destruction. It is simply an exercise in the conservation of energy. Einstein came up with the proposition that both energy and matter cannot be destroyed. They can only be transformed from one form to another. This is the correct understanding.
There is a time when the universe will be destroyed. The universe will exist for one thousand catur-yuga cycles. That is one thousand cycles of the four ages [Satya-yuga, Treta-yuga, Dvapara-yuga and Kali-yuga]. Each cycle of four yugas takes 4,300,000 years. Therefore the “life” of the universe is 4,300,000,000 years or 4.3 billion years. We have currently passed through approximately half of that time. So the universe is about 2.15 billion years old at the moment. So in another 2.15 billion years the whole material world — not just our universe — the entire material creation of an unlimited number of universes, will all be destroyed.
However, as I mentioned before, this is not actually a “destruction” but a conservation of matter and energy. All the matter which forms the material elements in the universe will be conserved in the “mahat-tattva.” This means the “unmanifested material energy.” The material world has two possible states. Manifest and unmanifest. Currently it is manifest and we are here in the material world. But after the completion of approximately 2.15 billion years there will really be a complete and total devastation of the whole material existence. That is the ultimate “end of the world” that all the doomsday people are waiting for. I think that devastation will satisfy them. At that time the whole material existence will be “destroyed” and will become unmanifested for another one thousand catur-yuga cycles.
This means for 4.3 billion years there will be no manifest material world. Everything will be conserved, the matter will be conserved within the mahat-tattva and the living entities will all enter into the body of Maha Visnu and will exist there in a state of suspension.
Although the whole material creation will be “destroyed” in about 2.15 billion years time, in reality nothing will actually be destroyed. The matter will be conserved in the mahat-tattva and the living entries will simply sleep for 4.3 billion years in the body of Maha-Visnu. This is not liberation for the living entities. They just sleep. And when the 4.3 billion years is finished the material world will become manifest again and all the same living entities will enter it again and again resume their activities where they left off 4.3 billion years ago.
And it will be the same thing again. There will be the same grass, trees, donkeys, horses, elephants, people… The same sort of planets and sun and moon will be constructed, the whole thing will be again constructed in the same way.
It is just like every year it is hot in summer and cold in winter. There are no surprises.
The new material world will be much the same as the old one because the material world is created out of the desires of the living entities. It will be the same living entities entering the “new world” who left this world. So they will bring into the “new world” the same desires they left this world with. So they will simply continue in the “new world” where they left off in this world. After sleeping for 4.3 billion years.
There are also smaller devastations that happen periodically, but these only happen at the end of the catur-yuga cycles, so if the doomsday people really want a date that something may happen on then let them use the date of the end of this Kali-yuga, something around 49000, something quite dramatic will happen then for sure. To get the exact date you will need to consult an astrologer. Until then this world will go on, and on, and on, and on
It will get worse of course. That is the nature of time. In the end it will be very bad. But it will go on, and on and on. There will be no “end of the world” until some time around 49000 and that is, as I said, not really the end of the world. That is a time of renewal. A transition from the dark age of Kali to a new golden age of spiritual enlightenment.
The material world will never end. There will always be spirit souls like us who rebel against our natural position of rendering service to God. So Krishna mercifully creates this material playground for us. Here we can try to “play god.” Here we can try to enjoy separately from God. But this world is constructed in such a way that all our attempts to enjoy separately from God will end in frustration.
After many, many, many births in the material world, and many, many frustrated lives of suffering, an intelligent man comes to the conclusion that there is no happiness in the material world and decides to go back home, back to Godhead.
There is another world, a spiritual world. That is the place we are all hankering for. In the spiritual world we have a spiritual body which is eternally youthful, full of knowledge and full of bliss. That is our natural position.
The position we find ourselves in the material world is quite opposite to our natural position in the spiritual world. Here, in the material world, we are stuck in a material body that is getting old, getting sick, and ultimately dying. We are always suffering from three different types of miseries. Our minds are always giving us problems; nature [the demigods] is always giving problems in the form of too much rain or no rain, too hot or too cold, etc. And other living entities like the mosquitoes bite us when we are trying to sleep and our enemies attack us. In this way we are constantly suffering from many different types of miseries.
Therefore here, in the material world, we are full of anxieties, full of ignorance. The root cause of all these problems is we identify with the material body. Because of this bodily identification we think we are temporary. We think that we will die. We think that we are not permanent.
The reality is this material world is not our home. We can never be happy here. We are not in our natural atmosphere. We belong in the spiritual world, we will be happy in that spiritual atmosphere.
The purpose of our existence in this material world is to frustrat our material desires so that ultimately we give up our rebellious nature of trying to enjoy separately from Krishna. When we give up this rebellious attitude and surrender to Krishna we will naturally remember Krishna at the time of death and our soul will be transferred to the spiritual world, back home, back to Godhead.
But the material world will continue, it will go on, and on and on and on forever… There is no end to the material world. The doomsday people will always be wrong. They will always be frustrated. They want it to end but it will never end…
“The idea of ape-men is not something that was invented by Darwinists of the nineteenth century. Long before that, the ancient Sanskrit writings were speaking of creatures with apelike bodies, humanlike intelligence, and a low level of material culture. For example, the Ramayana speaks of the Vanaras, a species of apelike men that existed millions of years ago. But alongside these ape-men existed humans of our type. The relationship was one of coexistence rather than evolution.”
—Michael Cremo (via vimoh)
im glad you could do that and at least found out one or two of your lifes. i wish i could.. i read you can do it without regressions just meditating
Meditation can be helpful for obtaining greater understanding in this regard, and in general. Meditation is a method of coming to a greater understanding of your true self, and this can bring many things to light about yourself. I recommend mahamantram meditation as the most potent form of tapping into these realms of self awareness. I briefly posted on this form of meditation here and you can find more information on what this meditation achieves in helping you realize the significance of your past incarnations on this page.
‘Beyond Birth and Death’ is a short, concise book dealing with reincarnation which you may like to read. It can be accessed online here or in PDF format here or purchased for $1.50 here.
dukhalayam asasvatam