A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks, or does is without consequences.
—NORMAN COUSINS
Good and evil do not befall men without reason. Heaven sends them happiness or misery according to their conduct.
—CONFUCIUS
Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of cards. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose.
—THOMAS SOWELL
W e live in a rather modest house in New Delhi, with my office on the ground floor, where two colleagues and I consult with patients in the evenings from 4:30 to 7:30. One day I finished the clinic rather late, about 8:30 p.m., and went upstairs, had a wash, and changed my clothes. At about 9:00 p.m., as Shanti, the cook, was laying food on the dining room table, the bell rang at the main door. Shanti ran down the stairs to see who was there.
66 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
Suddenly Pushpa and I heard some unusual sounds, some thuds and grunts, and wondered what was happening. Soon three young men entered the dining room. All were armed with daggers and one held a revolver in one hand and was dragging Shanti with the other. Shanti was bleeding from scalp injuries and appeared scared to death.
The young men began shouting some abuses, but before they could say very much Pushpa said, "I know what you want. You need money and jewelry. We will give you whatever we have in the house. Your need seems to be greater than ours. Here you are." With that, on the spot in the dining room, she took off whatever jewelry she was wearing round her neck, removed her bangles and earrings and the ring on her finger.
"This is not enough," said the one with the revolver, who seemed to be the leader of the young armed robbers. "Get into the bedroom and hand over the keys to the safe.” They pushed us toward the bedroom. One of them yanked the wires out of the telephones, disconnecting them; he tied Shanti's hands with a rope and pushed him under the bed. The fellow with the revolver was still beating him on his bleeding head with the handle of the revolver.
Pushpa had handed over the keys to the safe to the other two fellows and was helping them find the valuables in the safe when she noticed Shanti being beaten. She shouted aloud to the fellow doing it: "Stop that! Don't harm him. He is very young and has two innocent little children. If you want to beat anyone or kill someone, we two are here. We don't mind being killed. We have had a good life, we have no responsibilities, our children are well settled. But don't you dare beat this young fellow. And in any case, what has he done? You are getting what you wanted.”
He stopped beating Shanti. I was astonished at the brave stance of Pushpa. She was courage personified. For fifty years I had always thought of her as a timid person. She was absolutely clear in her mind that it would be madness arguing with them, as they were young, strong, and armed, yet here she was, defying these desperate young men.
Suddenly the leader of the gang threw one small pair of earrings on the bed, touched Pushpa's feet, and said, "You have been very kind. It does not seem right for us to take away everything. You should have at least this." And turning to the others he said, "I now recognize this man. He is the doctor who treated my father seven years ago. Let's go."
Without ransacking the house any further, they tied both of us with rope and pushed us into the bathroom, took the keys of our car, and ran downstairs. We heard the car start and knew that they had gone.
Pushpa untied the knots of my rope with her teeth, and then I untied her and Shanti. We went downstairs to the clinic. The phone there was working. We called my two colleagues and our relatives, Pratibha and Vijay. They all came immediately to the house. Shanti was taken to the hospital, where the necessary treatment was given.
The police were at their job straightaway, investigating and trying to solve the case. From our descriptions they easily identified one of the fellows, the leader, who had been in jail previously for robbery. With the help of fingerprints and other circumstantial evidence, they caught all three within the next few days.
When the three robbers were lodged in Tihar jail, the ACP (Assistant Commissioner of Police) of the area came to our house to inform us about his success in solving the case. Pushpa had in her mind the effects of karma and how it influences the life of human beings when she asked the ACP how the men were getting on in jail.
"They are obviously misguided people," she said, "and I hope they are being looked after properly." She further asked if she could be of any help, such as by sending them something they required. "Some effort to reform them, to show them the correct path, might change the course of their lives," she said.
The police officer wanted nothing to do with this compassionate viewpoint. "Madam, what are you talking about? Once a criminal, always a criminal. These men are a danger to society.
68 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
They have to be punished and dealt with sternly, in accordance with the laws of the land."
"Won't that attitude make them into hardened criminals?" Pushpa asked. "You see, these young men did not kill us. They could easily have done so, but the leader stopped them from harming us further because Doctor saheb—my husband—had helped his father seven years earlier. This shows the fellow has some underlying goodness. Why not tap it and help him reform himself to a decent human being?"
"Madam, I cannot agree with you," the ACP replied. According to him, the fellow had been to jail for similar crimes and he was beyond reform. "He didn't spare you because of his father; he would have killed you if you hadn't handed over your valuables to him, or if you had resisted or struggled with them in any manner."
The discussion went on for some time, without any agreement. Recently, however, programs of rehabilitation, including meditation, have been started for inmates of Tihar and other jails. We hope they may have some salutary effect on the lives and futures of the inmates.
The Natural Laws of Karma
The word karma means "action.” Stated in its simplest terms, the philosophy of karma explains that every action has its consequences. One of the most fundamental laws of physics is "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." In the Bible, Jesus tells his followers, "As you sow, so shall you reap." This is the law of karma. We are all subject to it, just as we are subject to gravity. The Laws ofManu explains karma this way:
Action, which springs from the mind, from speech, and from the body, produces either good or evil results. By action are caused the conditions of men, the highest, the middling, and the lowest. A man obtains the result of a good or evil mental act in his mind, that of a verbal act in his speech, and that of a bodily act in his body.
All beings perform action. As Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, No one can exist even for an instant without performing action. Even He acts, though He doesn't have to: "In the three worlds there is no action which I need do, nor is there for Me anything worth attaining unattained; even so, 1 am engaged in action. Throughout the Gita He urges Arjuna toward action for the sake of Dharma and enlightenment.
Activity is seen everywhere, both in nature and in man, who is part of nature. There is activity in the movements of the stars and the planets, in plants and trees, in the animal kingdom. Even space itself is vibrating and pulsating with energy.
For the body to remain alive, one has to be active all the time. Our body is active when we are awake, our mind is active both in waking and dream state, and our heart, lungs, and intestines, our immune and endocrine systems, our metabolic processes are active in waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. We are active at work and in relaxation and recreation. Talking, listening, laughing, walking, working, thinking—any physical or mental act is karma. Even worship, prayer, and meditation are forms of action.
All created beings are interdependent and sustain one another by their actions. By means of actions we promote the harmonious relationship between man and all beings, and keep the wheels of karma in motion.
Every action has its inevitable effects. Indeed, every action we undertake has a wide range of consequences, both for ourselves and for the whole creation. According to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:
Through every thought, word, and action a man produces waves of influence in the surrounding atmosphere. The quality of the influence depends upon the quality of action performed; the degree of reaction spread through the surroundings depends upon the strength of the action performed. Thus we find that every moment in life produces some influence in the atmosphere, by the actions of breathing, thinking, speaking, and behaving.
70 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
Knowledge of the inescapable law of karma is very helpful. It helps us to accept what has come to us, because we know it is the result of our own previous actions. At the same time, it cautions us to be sure that our actions now, in the present moment, are creating the most positive influence possible for the future, for ourselves and for all others. “Even if I can't change the direction of the wind," someone said, “surely I can adjust my sails."
Karma and Rebirth
The ancient rishis taught that after death the soul assumes a new body, and that this birth is governed by the law of karma. So long as a soul is not liberated (merged into cosmic existence), it will maintain its individuality in one body or another, accumulating experiences, performing action, and creating future karma, moving forward or backward on the highway of evolution according to the nature of the actions performed.
Those who have led a wicked life are born as subhumans. A fellow who has been sucking the blood of the poor all his life may well be born as a mosquito; if he has been hiding and hoarding wealth and not sharing it with others, he may be born as a rat, said to be the greediest of animals.
If you smoke cigarettes and get cancer of the lung, you are to a great extent responsible for it. Your karma has given you its fruit in this very life. But what about the innocent ten-year-old child w ho has cancer? This can only be explained by his karma in previous lives—and the karma of his parents, for they also suffer greatly when the child has a disease like that.
Indeed, the doctrines of karma and rebirth provide the only reasonable explanations for many facts of life. How is it, for example, that some people show prodigious ability, such as in mathematics or music, at the age of three or four? Adi Shankara wrote commentaries on all the great ancient scriptures before he was sixteen years old. Where could such people possibly have gained the knowledge and experience to know what they knew, if not in some previous births?
Why do innocent, good people sometimes have to face tremendous difficulties and suffering, while others who are not so good may prosper? There is no plausible explanation, if one looks only to this one single life. As Swami Nikhilananda says, What does he know of life who only one life knows?"
People who don't believe in the law of reincarnation and karma squander away their lives, impressing others, pretending to be what they are not. For every unpalatable happening in life they blame their parents or their "fate." They believe "the world hates a loser and admires a self-made man," no matter how many victims he may leave in his wake. Such a person, no matter what he might believe, is building up a mountain of karma that will return to him without fail.
The aggregate of a person's actions—good, bad, and indifferent—over many lifetimes, creates the body, the personality and character, as well as the tendencies and desires that drive us to particular actions today. These abilities and tendencies may be building up over the course of many, many lifetimes.
Take the case of a Buddha or a Jesus. As Swami Vivekananda said in his book Karma Yoga, how can you expect a petty king, such as Buddha's father, to produce a son whom half the world worships as God? Similarly, millions of carpenters like Jesus' father had lived earlier, and millions of children must have played in their courtyards with blocks of wood. The rising of a gigantic figure such as a Buddha or a Jesus cannot be explained either by genetics or environment, "nature" or "nurture." The tremendous spiritual power that manifested in these two great beings must have been accumulating through the ages, growing continually greater until it burst upon humanity.
No deed, small or great, good or evil, can be without effect.
If a person is happy in this life, it is because he or she has produced a good, harmonious, positive influence in the environment by virtuous thoughts and deeds. When someone suffers in the present, it is the consequence of his having generated an influence of misery, ill health, and negativity in times past. This is the only logical explanation for the great disparities between
72 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
man and man in this life, the tremendous differences in economic status, environmental conditions, family life, physical and mental endowments, as well as happiness and unhappiness, that are
evident everywhere on the globe.
On the long path of evolution as it is understood in Indian philosophy, the individual's consciousness slowly unfolds. Consciousness (or Atman) is present in the stone no less than within the plants, the animals, or in man, but the stone can never know it so long as it remains a stone. It must evolve through higher forms until at last it reaches the level of humanity. Only in the human mind-body can the individual ego know its nature as consciousness.
Throughout the long journey toward total awakening to Reality, the individual is always subject to the law of karma. According to this law, his own desires and actions regulate the speed of his progress. By his own actions he builds or removes his own obstacles to ultimate enlightenment. His present state is conditioned by the karmas (actions) of his past, and at the same time he is continually determining his future by his present actions.
V. Dwarakanath Reddy explains in his book, The Physics of Karma, that karma, like gravity, is inexorable and knows no partiality. "Its lofty working," says Reddy, "determines every event and occurrence everywhere and at all times. Not a blade of grass moves and not a sparrow falls without obeying the impersonal and infinite dictates of the law of karma. The nexus between cause and effect is always one to one.”
All our actions involve three different instruments: mind, speech, and the physical body. Positive thoughts such as of love, compassion, and charity are good mental actions. Speaking softly and not angrily, using appropriate words that do not hurt anyone, not being sarcastic, all create good karma. On the other hand, negative mental karma, or speaking harshly, will lead to negative effects in the future. The same is true of actions on the physical level. Helping, serving, healing are examples of good karma; harming, injuring, destroying are negative actions that will lead to negative results.
All our actions will eventually bear fruit, according to their nature. Bad karma retards our progress and pushes us down the line of devolution; good karma in thought, word, or deed pushes us forward and upward in our evolution.
Neither death nor birth interrupt this ever-unfolding process. The accumulation of karma carries on from birth to birth, life to life. The individual soul, sometimes called th ejiva or
sukham sharira (^btle body), goes from body to body, canying its karma with it. As the Gita says:
Certain indeed is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable you should not grieve.
These bodies are known to have an end; the dweller in the body is eternal, imperishable, infinite.
As the dweller in this body passes into childhood, youth and age, so also does he pass into another body.
As a man casting off worn-out garments takes other new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, takes others that are new.
The conditions of each individual's birth—his body and mind, the parents he comes through, the nature of his circumstances— is determined by the sum total of his karma. Each person is born with a blueprint of his or her life already prepared by actions in previous lives. Some physical traits and mental tendencies seem to be structured in the genes—but a person's genetic make-up matches his karma.
Karma and Heredity
How does this happen? How does a person's genetic inheritance fit in with the laws of karma? Don't we inherit genetic patterns and predispositions from our parents and ancestors? What does this have to do with the samskaras (karmic impressions) the soul brings with it?
A child is born with certain tendencies and characteristics.
74 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
Modern science says this is due to heredity, whereas ancient Indian scriptures explain that these tendencies were acquired in previous incarnations as a result of thoughts and actions long forgotten. Are the two theories compatible?
It all fits together neatly if we view heredity as occurring when the individual soul is driven, by its existing samskaras, to seek rebirth in a particular family, of parents whose qualities are like its own, so that it can inherit the tendencies it already possesses! The "cosmic computer links up the soul with suitable parents, so that its karmic tendencies, its “merits” and “demerits," can find an appropriate environment for expression. This means, as tradition asserts, that you have really chosen your parents.
Tendencies for some diseases, such as cancer, are seen in certain families, and researchers consider the genetic factor important. Medical experts have been able to locate mutated genes that appear to greatly increase a person's risk of getting breast cancer, colon cancer, melanoma, thyroid cancer, and others, and tests are being developed to pinpoint the presence of these genes in a person's DNA. There is increasing talk of testing people on a wide scale and informing them, if they have the mutated gene, that they are likely to get cancer at a future date. Early detection, the theory goes, will help the person receive early treatment.
I find this idea alarming and I believe it will have detrimental effects. The candidates for cancer will get cancer earlier and with more certainty. Why do I say this? On the basis of experience.
I know of a number of completely asymptomatic persons who got a coronary angiography done because of some nonspecific changes in their ECG. The angiogram typically showed a 40 to 50 percent stenosis or narrowing in one or two of the coronary arteries. This is not sufficient narrowing to cause either angina or heart attacks. However, these people began imagining what the "blockages" could do to them, and soon began having real angina: their arteries went into spasm due to their fear. One
can well imagine what will happen when a person is told after his genetic tests that he is likely to have cancer after some years.
Instead, all those people who have a family history of heart attack or cancer should be told that it is not their parents' fault. Rather, it is they who chose to come into this world through those particular parents, because their karmic samskaras were similar. They have eveiy chance now of modifying these samskaras by taking care to avoid all known risk factors, such as smoking, a high-fat diet, getting angiy, etc. Modifying the effects of your past karma and healing disease is possible by resetting your mind. The person who thinks of himself as prone to sickness is more likely to get sick than a person with a healthy, optimistic attitude.
Karma and Free Will
Samskaras are built up by the continued action of thought waves, which in turn create new thought waves and lead to concrete actions and physical conditions. Swami Prabhavananda offers an analogy. On a lake, waves do not just disturb the surface of the water, they also, by their continued action, build up banks of sand and pebbles on the shore. These banks are more solid and permanent than the waves, yet they are not the same forever; they are constantly being modified according to the height, frequency, and strength of the waves.
If you expose your mind to constant thoughts of anger and resentment, you will find these anger waves building up in your life and resulting in concrete actions, even physical diseases. But just as a sandbank may shift if the current changes, the samskaras may be modified by the introduction and repetition of other kinds of thought waves in the mind.
Frequent repetition of positive thoughts and emotions, even something as simple as "Every day in eveiy way I am becoming better," can be very effective. There is ample evidence now from the growing body of literature on mind-body medicine that a positive mental setting has been responsible for many remissions
76 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
and healings of even serious diseases such as cancer. We can all shift the sandbanks of our samskaras by changing our thought waves.
I believe that by changing our habits and our thoughts, we can not only modify our own samskaras and our own destiny, but also those of our children and our children's children. Souls with a better "samskara track record" will be attracted to parents
with suitable, matching samskaras.
All this suggests that while the law of karma is always in operation, the law of cause and effect as it applies to human life is not rigid and mechanical. The "judgment" of our actions is not absolute and irrevocable; the individual soul can always get its sentence reduced for good behavior. One lifetime of good works for the welfare of others may equalize several sterile or negative lives. Free will, in short, is always stronger than karmic destiny. No soul is ever so encumbered with old debts that it must drearily resign itself to pay and pay and pay.
You had free will, and you used it to choose or create where you are at this moment. You are not the victim of some vengeful god, sitting somewhere in heaven controlling your destiny with invisible strings. If you have made some mistakes with regard to the laws of nature and the rules of the game of life, that does not mean you must remain where you are. Through your will and efforts now, you can certainly modify your lot in this life and in the life hereafter.
Karma and Fate
Karma, then, is not "destiny" or "fate." Fate implies the helplessness of man to determine his own lot. Quite to the contrary, karma makes him the creator of his own destiny.
Our present dispositions are the result of our past karma, our past actions. But our present actions create our future. What is called fate or destiny is really the accumulation of tendencies produced by past actions and thoughts. This "fate" can be altered by new thoughts and actions. Thus each man is the
architect of his own fate and the builder of his own destiny.
Accepting with calmness and strength his present experience he can shape a better future for himself.
Once we understand that our lives are the product of free will' the laws of karma, and reincarnation, our attitude toward life is bound to change. Without this knowledge, some of us tend to blame fate, our parents, our heredity, or even the government for our suffering or our present condition of life. Others say that everything is ordained by God. Those who have less than others, in terms of good health, material possessions, economic security, satisfaction in love and family, may disclaim
Understanding the Laws of Karma
For everything detrimental that happens to him, man wants to blame God or if not God, then someone else. This is psychological and spiritual immaturity. When you go to a good psychiatrist, he will encourage you to place the responsibility for overcoming your troubles on yourself, not others
"Neither God nor anyone else has caused the difficulties we face in life; if you think so, you have not understood the great truth of the law of karma, cause and effect. You are the way you are because you have behaved in a certain way, and the way you behaved determines the kinds of fruits you are reaping in your present circumstance. A seed produces its own kind. An apple seed does not produce a carrot; it produces an apple. In the same way, wrong thoughts produce wrong actions; and wrong actions bring forth a wrong result.
It cannot be otherwise. So you can forever continue to blame your problems on God, or your parents, or your environment, but that will not remove your troubles. It is like trying to remove darkness by beating at it with a stick. You may do that through all eternity, but it will never drive darkness away. The only way you can remove darkness is to bring in the light. If people only knew that this is what religion is truly about, there would be a spiritual renaissance in the world."
—Sri Daya Mata, spiritual successor of Paramahansa Yogananda and president of the Self-Realization Fellowship
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responsibility for their condition and spend their whole lives sulking and cursing their fate.
But knowledge of the law of karma and of reincarnation strengthens our faith in justice and order in the universe. We realize that it is we, and not God, our parents, the government, or any other force or power that is responsible for our present state of affairs. We are simply reaping the fruit of the seeds we have sown. And it is we who can change it or at least modify it to a very great extent by modifying our actions.
The ancient scriptures unequivocally state that our good and bad actions (karmas) in previous lives actively affect and determine our present life. Each individual soul is its own judge and passes sentence only on itself. But our prarabdha karma, the tendencies both positive and negative that determine our present life, can be modified and even overcome once we accept that our problems are of our own making and are therefore responsive to remaking. We only have to make sincere and persistent positive efforts.
We cannot just drift with the current; in order to counter the effects of the actions which have determined the present state of our lives, we have to swim upstream. We have to exercise what the Yoga Vasistha calls “self-effort."
The Importance of Self-Effort
“In this world,” says the great rishi Vasistha to his pupil, the young Lord Rama, “whatever is gained is gained only by selfeffort." The discourse that follows is perhaps the most powerful exhortation to disciplined, persevering self-effort that you will ever find. Vasistha clearly and strongly states that self-effort in the present is sufficient to counteract the karma of the past. “What is called fate," he says, “is fictitious and is not seen."
What is self-effort? The Yoga Vasistha (I will be quoting from Swami Venkatesananda's translation, published as The Concise Yoga Vasistha) defines it as “mental, verbal, and physical action" that “springs from right understanding that manifests in one's
heart which has been exposed to the teachings of the scriptures and the conduct of holy ones." We might safely substitute the phrase, behavior in accordance with the dictates of conscience," or "doing what we know to be good and right."
Vasistha tells Rama, "There is no power greater than right action in the present. Hence one should take recourse to selfeffort, grinding one s teeth, and one should overcome evil by good, and fate by present effort."
The great enemy to evolution and progress is lack of effort, and Vasistha has no patience with such a person. "The lazy man is worse than a donkey," he says. "One should never yield to laziness." He calls laziness "a dreadful source of evil" and declares, It is because laziness is found on earth that people live the life of animals, miserable and poverty-stricken."
As is the effort, so is the fruit, O Rama. This is the meaning of self-effort . .. When afflicted by suffering, people cry, "Alas what tragedy" or "Alas, look at my fate," both of which mean the same thing. What is called fate or divine will is nothing more than the action of selfeffort of the past.
But, he insists:
The present is infinitely more potent than the past. They indeed are fools who are satisfied with the fruits of their past effort (which they regard as divine will) and do not engage themselves in self-effort now.
Again and again Rama is taught:
You are not impelled to action by anything other than yourself. Hence you are free to strengthen the pure latent tendencies in preference to the impure ones [coming on from the past]. Persistently tread the path that leads to the eternal good.
The result of your endeavors, Vasistha says, "will be commensurate with the intensity of your self-effort, and neither fate nor a god can ordain it otherwise."
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The idea of fate or “divine dispensation," says the sage, “is merely a convention that has come to be regarded as truth by being repeatedly declared to be true." But, in fact, no one has ever realized the existence of fate or divine dispensation. Because of this, he tells Rama:
One who says, “Fate is directing me to do this" is brainless, and the goddess of fortune abandons him.
The Universal Nature of Individual Action
As we have seen, activity is present everywhere, on all levels of nature. By action the wheel of creation moves on. As part of creation, you are connected with all other human beings, all the other creatures on earth, the hills, the forests, the moon, stars, sun, the galaxies. Because of this interconnectedness, your actions, according to ancient Indian scriptures, have a cosmic significance.
When you drop a pebble in a pond, ripples spread outward across the entire pond, until they reach the shore. Similarly, all our actions create an influence in our surroundings that ultimately affects the whole creation.
As one action has vast and varied consequences, so also a myriad influences converge on any single event. When a cloud appears in the sky, it doesn't just pop into existence in a moment. Many causes, beyond one's comprehension, come together for the production of this single effect, the appearance of a cloud in the sky and the fall of rain. Such is the case with anything that happens anywhere in the world, including birth or rebirth. For someone to be born in a particular place in a particular time, with these parents and this vast storehouse of capabilities to unfold and desires to fulfill—for this to happen, thousands or perhaps millions of causes must have joined together.
We may seem to have cut ourselves off from the universal Being. We imagine ourselves to be individuals bound by time and space, but the connection with all other beings, nature, and the Supreme Being can never be broken. We are just not ordinarily conscious of it.
There is no such thing as a local event in this world. Every event is a universal event. Our concepts of individuality and separateness are based on limited perception. As a matter of fact, we should not regard anything or anyone as a local individual or a local event, for everything is interconnected, universal.
Consequently, every action performed should not be for individual gain alone; it should be performed with the aim that it might benefit all beings. He who ignores the cosmic significance of action and works only for selfish purposes lives and works in vain, he who cooks for himself alone, the sages say, vitiates the whole universe.
The Farther Reaches of Karma
Haji Mohammed Rahim, an eighty-year-old God-fearing man, was transferred to our hospital from a nearby town some time ago for implantation of a permanent pacemaker. After his recent heart attack, he had three episodes of what is called Stokes Adam's Syndrome, when his heart rate dropped to about twenty- five beats per minute, not enough for adequate circulation and perfusion of the vital organs. The brain does not get enough oxygen, episodes of unconsciousness occur, and one of these attacks may also prove fatal.
In the absence of a properly operating natural pacemaker, an artificial, batteiy-operated pacemaker is inserted in the heart to keep it beating at the desired rate. But after we implanted a temporaiy pacemaker and gave him two days of treatments, his own natural pacemaking mechanism started working normally.
"Haji" designates a person who has been on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Haji Mohammed Rahim was a veiy pious man and God was kind to him.
I told him, "You are fine now. You have recovered from your heart attack. You don't need a permanent pacemaker and we are going to send you home."
"That is news to me," he replied. "I thought this heart attack
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was my end. I came to your hospital because my son insisted, otherwise I was all set to leave the world and go up there."
I said laughingly, "But Haji Sahib, God refused to take you because there was no vacancy there in that world, so He has ordained that you'd better continue staying here in ours."
"I'm surprised,” he retorted, "that there's no vacancy. There seems to be some miscalculation. Every day we see that the population on our planet, and especially in our country India, is increasing by leaps and bounds. One fellow goes up there, and ten fellows are born here at that very moment. How can I believe there's no vacancy up there?"
For a while I didn't have an answer, then I suddenly remembered what the great Urdu poet Sir Mohammed Iqbal had written six decades ago in his poem, Sitaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain," meaning that there are many planets and galaxies in this universe, and there are endless, innumerable universes one beyond another (see Appendix 2). I recited the poem to Haji Sahib, explaining that the traffic of individual souls is apparently not confined to one or two planets. There may well be many other planets where we go to or come from in our previous and subsequent lives. That gave us both something to think about.
Action and the Three Gunas
The sage Patanjali, author of Yoga Sutras , the basic textbook on yoga, says that the quality of your actions depends on the gunas predominant in you. The three gunas—sattva, rajas, and tamas —are said to be the fundamental qualities of nature, or prakriti. To grasp this fully, we have to look at the Indian understanding of the creation and dissolution of the universe.
It is said that from time to time the universe dissolves and then is re-created. When in its undifferentiated, unmanifest phase, it remains in a seed state for a certain period. During that time the gunas are in a state of absolute equilibrium, and prakriti, or material nature, does not arise. As long as the gunas remain in balance, prakriti remains undifferentiated and the universe exists
only as a potential. All that exists is consciousness, unbounded, unmanifest pure Being, Brahman, the changeless Absolute, which has no beginning and no end.
As soon as the balance is disturbed, a re-creation of the universe begins. From the changeless consciousness, the continuously changing universe is created anew. The gunas enter into an enormous variety of combinations and permutations, with one or the other predominating over the rest. This gives rise to the endless variety of physical and mental phenomena that make up the world we experience.
The gunas are sometimes described as energies, sometimes as qualities or forces. They represent a triangle of forces, at the same time opposed and complementary, which govern the physical universe as well as our personalities and behavior patterns in day-to-day life, giving rise to our achievements or failures, happiness or sadness, health or disease.
As regards action, sattva is the creative force, the essence of form that has to be realized. Tamas is inertia, the obstacle to its realization. Rajas is the energy or power by which the obstacle is removed and the form is made manifest.
Let us follow the example offered by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood in How to Know God (Patanjali's Yoga Sutras). Suppose a sculptor wishes to create a statue of Lord Krishna out of stone. The idea of the statue, the form that the artist sees in his imagination, the creative impulse and image, is inspired by sattva. The marble represents tamas, formless solidity, the obstacle that has to be overcome.
Prabhavananda suggests that there may also be an element of tamas in the sculptor himself. He may think, “I'm tired; why should I work so hard? This is too hard. Maybe I'll do something easier." But here the force of rajas comes to his aid. Rajas is manifested in the sculptor's energy and will, by which he conquers the tamasic lethargy of his mind and the solid inertia of the stone. It also inspires the physical, muscular exertion that he puts into his work.
If, says Swami Prabhavananda, a sufficient amount of rajas is
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generated, the obstacle of tamas will be overcome and the ideal form conceived by sattva will be created out of the granite block. This example demonstrates that all three gunas are necessary for any creative action. “Sattva alone," he says, ' would be just an unrealized idea, rajas without sattva would be mere undirected energy, rajas without tamas would be like a lever without a fulcrum." And tamas alone would be inertia.
Sattva is often said to represent purity and tranquility; rajas refers to action, motion, and violence; tamas is the principle of solidity, immobility, resistance, and inertia. All three gunas are present in everything but one always predominates. Sattva predominates in sunlight, rajas in an erupting volcano, and tamas in a block of stone.
In our own minds, the gunas are found in rapidly changing interrelationship. Thus we experience many shifting moods during the course of a day. If sattva predominates, we may experience moments of inspiration, disinterested affection, quiet joy, or meditative calm. Sattva represents purity, light, intelligence, knowledge, contentment, clarity of mind, kindness, compassion, cooperation. Quietude and peace prevail in a sattvic person or a sattvic mood. As intelligence and clarity, sattva gives a right sense of direction. Qualities of a person with predominant sattva include fearlessness, uprightness, purity, forgiveness, and absence of passion, anger, and jealousy. Such a person is peaceful and happy.
When sattva dominates, the mind becomes steady like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. A steady mind is helpful for both activity and meditation, and he who is predominantly sattvic can meditate effectively and is capable of real concentration.
A person with dominant rajas never finds peace. Rajas brings on outbursts of rage or provokes intense desire. It makes a person restless and discontented, and spurs continuous activity. A person with dominant rajo-guna cannot sit quiet; he must continually have something to do. Great passion is rajasic, as are aggressiveness, greed, and anger. At the same time, rajas in its
more positive expression, especially when combined with sattva, is responsible for constructive, creative activity, as it brings energy, enthusiasm, and physical courage.
A rajasic person loves power and objects of the senses. Constantly engaged in activity, he will crave more and more power to lord it over people, and is very much attached to worldly things. The direct manifestation of dominant rajas is the insatiable fire of desire. Desires must be fulfilled or the person's life is miserable! The more he fulfills desires, the more he wants. He becomes a “morest"—a little more, a little more, a little more
. . . He is acquiring wealth, power, name, and fame, but it is never enough.
When rajas is intense it envelops knowledge and is the foe of wisdom. Under the pressure of rajas, a man harbors greed, lust, and anger. Rajas attacks a person through the senses, the mind, and the understanding, deluding the embodied soul. For a useful life, and to have peace of mind, rajas has to be pacified and balanced with sattva.
Tamas, says Swami Prabhavananda, is "the mental bog into which we sink whenever sattva and rajas cease to prevail." When tamas prevails in our minds and moods, we exhibit some of our worst qualities: sloth, stupidity, obstinacy, and the depths of heavy despair. Tamas is often described as darkness and inertia. Helplessness, dullness, confusion, resistance, and ignorance also characterize tamas. When tamas dominates, the mind may become forgetful, sleepy, dull, and incapable of any worthwhile thoughts or actions.
A person under the grip of tamas may be more like an animal than a human; without the power of clear judgment, he may fail to distinguish between right and wrong. Like an animal, he will live for himself and may hurt others to fulfill his desires. In his ignorance and darkness, he may perform vicious actions.
Sattva attaches to happiness, rajas to action, while tamas, verily
shrouding knowledge, attaches to heedlessness.
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Balancing the Gunas Paves the Way to Healthy Living
Successful action depends on having the right balance of the three gunas. Pure sattva, as desirable as it may seem, cannot stand by itself. It is always mixed with rajas and tamas. It is sometimes said that the right balance for a human being is to be dominated by sattva, but to have sufficient rajas to make action dynamic. Sattva provides the right direction, rajas the energy or motive power. Only a little tamas is needed. When sattva is combined with rajas, the result is positive and creative and will move swiftly toward fruition; if tamas teams up with rajas, the results will tend to be less desirable.
By pacifying and checking rajas and tamas, you can increase sattva. Thinking about and trying to develop virtues, such as forgiveness, compassion, love, empathy, generosity, truthfulness, contentment, naturally increase sattva. If you can get rid of unnecessary rajasic and tamasic thoughts, you can win the internal warfare among the gunas that goes on in our minds like the war between the gods and demons. Watch your thoughts through careful introspection.
Interest in music and the fine arts help to increase sattva, and regular yoga asanas and meditation help a lot.
When sattva dominates in your mind, thoughts of inquiry into Truth will manifest. Restlessness simply goes away. The mind becomes one-pointed, and a meditative mood will dawn upon you without effort.
The impurities of mind caused by tamas may be removed by purifying the mind in the fire of vairagya, or dispassion. Vairagya does not, as some people think, mean giving up anything in the world. It means that you must realize that all the material things in your life, including your wealth, your near and dear ones, even your body, don't actually belong to you: they belong to the universe. Like a stage actor, you may use these things and interact with them on the stage of life, but use them while remaining unattached. Since nothing belongs to you, what is
there for you to give up? If you have that attitude of dispassion, you can be at peace with yourself and with the world, and spontaneous right action, right karma, will follow.
The ultimate secret of successful action, as described by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, is not to balance the three gunas, or merely to increase sattva, but to go beyond the three gunas. As Swami Prabhavananda says, “Several chapters of the Bhagavad Gita are devoted to the gunas and their manifestations. The spiritual aspirant is advised to transcend them.”
Since Arjuna is a warrior about to go into battle, Lord Krishna wants to give him the highest teaching, to inspire action that will be both successful and evolutionary at the same time. What He tells him is to step entirely out of the field of the three gunas, to transcend duality and enter Unity or Oneness, the field of Yoga, Union, the realm of the Self.
Be without the three gunas, O Arjuna, freed from duality, ever firm in purity, independent of possessions, possessed of the Self. (2:45).
Then, He says, once established in this state, perform action.
Established in Yoga, O winner of wealth, perform actions having abandoned attachment and having become balanced in success and failure, for balance of mind is called Yoga. (2:48)
That, says Krishna, is “skill in action." In that state of realization, you are a witness, uninvolved in action. Then only can you be completely and spontaneously balanced in loss or gain, success or failure, pleasure or pain, because you know something greater, the Self, the Eternal Reality. In Prabhavananda's words, “He is like one who sits unconcerned, and is not disturbed by the gunas ... He rests in the inner calm of the Atman, regarding happiness and suffering as one." This is the fulfillment of karma yoga: performing action (karma) established in Union with the Divine (yoga).
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On Karma
The law of cause and effect is inexorable and unrelenting. You reap a harvest of suffering, poverty, pain, and sorrow because you have sown the seed of evil in the past. You reap a harvest of plenty and bliss owing to your sowing of seeds of good.
—Sivananda
Not in the heavens above, nor in the farthest reaches of the sea, nor by transporting yourself to the remotest valleys of the mountains, will you be able to hide from the consequences of your own evil actions. Likewise, certain are the blessings growing out of your good actions.
—Gautama Buddha
If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt. It is a mathematical law, and all life is mathematics.
— G. I. Gurdjieff
It is foolish to be surprised when a fig tree produces figs.
—Marcus Aurelius
We are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our karma, and it naturally follows that, having been ourselves the makers of our karma, we must also be able to unmake it.
—Vivekananda
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