CHAPTER 10

The Life of a Ghost

In a way, everyone is a ghost. Whether you are a ghost with the body or without a body is the only question.

What Are Ghosts

Ghosts are a part of the folklore of every culture in the world. Perhaps no child in the world grows up without hearing a big dose of ghost stories—about their lives, deeds and idiosyncrasies. So what are these ghosts? How did they come into existence? What is the basis of their existence? Why are they even around? This lack of understanding is because, right now, you understand only embodiment as life. Not because you are opinionated but simply because that is your experience of life. But life extends beyond the body as well. That is why you have what are generally known as ghosts.

It once happened: there was a very shy man. He got admitted to a hospital for a medical check-up. A very pretty nurse attended to him. So she checked his blood pressure, did a blood test, urine test, enema, and everything. She went out for some time and, in the meantime, before he could get up from the bed, his bowels revolted against all the atrocities committed upon them, and things happened on the bed. He could not control himself. Being a very shy man, he was too embarrassed. He did not want the pretty nurse to see this mess. When he heard the footsteps of the nurse coming in, he just grabbed all the sheets on the bed and threw them from the fifth floor window.

Down below, a man was returning home from a party. It is such an unfair world, you know, a man is expected to walk straight on a round planet while the damn thing is spinning! With great difficulty, he was walking sideways and the sheets fell on him and covered him. He screamed and fought these sheets. It took him a few minutes to get them off. By then, the security came rushing and asked, ‘What was all the commotion about?’ He was dazed and, looking down at the sheets, said, ‘It looks like I have beaten the shit out of a ghost.’

What are ghosts, actually? All beings are a combination of time, memory and energy. Of the three, time is not in your hands, but how you live your life will determine how much memory and energy you gather or dissipate. Let us say, with lots of activity and a certain focus you use up a lot of memory—the Prarabdha Karma part of it—very quickly. Now, if you are unable to open the warehouse of Sanchita Karma, then you may have an untimely death, because the energy is still intense but you have run out of memory. Once you run out of memory, you can either die or become vegetative. But generally you will die, because if memory collapses, there are many things which cannot function. However, if your energy runs out and memory is still there, then too you will die, but you will continue to exist as what we call a ghost.

A ghost has a manifestation but because there is not enough energy to keep the physical body integrated and keep it going, the body is gone. But its memory body is still strong, strong enough to be felt by other people. In a way, you can say, everyone is a ghost. Whether you are a ghost with a body or without a body—whether you are an embodied ghost or disembodied ghost—is the only question. And all beings, embodied or disembodied, are playing out their lives only as per their karmic structures. The only difference is that when you are embodied, there is more possibility of using your will. That is all.

What you call ghosts are those beings who left their body, usually, in an unnatural way. They had strong Prarabdha Karma left unfinished, but they died either because of an accident, a disease, a suicide or murder. Somehow, the body broke so much that it could not sustain life any more. Such beings will have a denser presence and their tendencies are very strong. They are active in a certain way so you can feel them or even see them more easily. Existence in the form of a ghost or the life of a ghost—if you want to call it that—is considered undesirable because it can unnecessarily extend for a long time. Let us say, this person who has died had some amount of unfinished Prarabdha Karma when they died. If they were in the physical body, maybe their Prarabdha Karma would have lasted for another twenty years. Now that there is no physical body, the dissolution of karma is only by tendency, not by conscious action. As a result, the lifespan may last for 200 or 2000 years instead of lasting for twenty years.

A ghost generally cannot have conscious intention because the intellect is gone. But they can function by tendency. Let us say, when the person was alive, his tendency was pinching people. Even after his body is gone, he will still want to pinch. It does not matter who, he will just want to pinch. Let us say, there was someone who giggled all his life. His ghost will also giggle. This action happens by tendency, not by conscious intention. If you happen to see ghosts, because of your own inhibitions and limitations, you may get really paranoid. Mostly, it is your psychological response. It has nothing to do with that being. Suppose you see a person floating and not walking around you, you will go through all kinds of weird emotions. This is not necessary and has nothing to do with these beings. Unfortunately, they get a lot of bad press for all this.

The English word ‘ghost’ is a crude and generic term that bundles all disembodied beings in the same category. But they are very varied in terms of where they came from, what they are capable of and where they are going. There are some who lost their bodies before they ran down their Prarabdha Karma and are hanging around. Then there are yogis without bodies who are wandering, always looking for a possibility for their dissolution. Then there are celestial beings who are on a vacation. Some others are of a completely different dimension and have no relevance to your life. Then there are certain forces which people generally refer to as Divine Forces, which can take on almost any form they wish. So there are actually a variety of things and you cannot bundle them all together.

Just to be able to classify these things, to be able to recognize one from the other is a serious amount of work. Traditionally, different levels of bodiless existence are referred to as bhoota, preta, pisachi, chaudi , yaksha s, kinnara , gandharva , deva , and so on. They are at different evolutionary levels, or we can say they are on different types of vacations. Someone is in the first class, someone is in the second class, someone is in another class, while someone else is in a bad condition, which you call hell. Essentially, they are all on some type of vacation, but their vacation will end sometime and they will take on another physical body. No one remains a bhoota or a preta or a yaksha or a gandharva or even a deva forever. He or she enjoys or suffers it for a certain time and then takes on a physical form again.

For simplicity, we can loosely call those beings who are aware and have refused to take a body and are looking for ways of dissolution as celestial beings. They still have some choice and discretion because they lived and died in a certain sense of awareness. The others are disembodied beings just functioning by compulsion, the same way you are. These are the ones you are most likely to come in contact with. Again, to make it simple, we can just classify them simply as intense, mild and meek types.

Those which are intense have a more active presence and people may feel it. They may even have a form which at least in other people’s experience is nearly physical. Mild types are not like that, but they could cause certain things to happen to people. If you interact head-on with an intense one, spooky things will definitely happen. Their tendencies will be very strong so they will behave in a certain way. It will be a very strong reaction. Some may be intense and calm, but generally they will be compulsive in some way.

If you meet the mild ones, unknowingly, people will go through some disturbances, like maybe someone will run a temperature or someone will be disturbed for no reason at all. It is not like a ghost is sitting on your head—that energy could have disturbed your system because they are everywhere in some way. Many of them may not be intense enough to maintain an individual form but they are there. Meek ones have almost no impact on your system unless you are super susceptible, which some people are. This is the reason why all these klesha nashanas are done—to clear out all such influences.

The problem here is to decipher what is just a psychological phenomenon and what is real. It is a serious challenge because every nutcase thinks they saw a ghost or a ghost possessed them. To completely deny it would be stupid. Though these beings are incapable of having intent, they may do something compulsively. And there is a tendency to seek their own Genetic Memory. They may not feel comfortable somewhere else. They want to seek their own Genetic Memory. So they may hang around places where these memories are. But are they out to harm you? Not at all. These beings have no tendency to interact with human beings, as such. They don’t have a discriminatory intellect to choose, ‘I want to interact with this person or that person.’ That is from your own psychological processes.

I think this entire problem is because people have been projecting that these ghosts are waiting and they will pounce on you or harm you in some way. This is all made up by people wanting to profit from it—you can call them commercial ghosts. It is because of all these movies that have been made where the person who died is waiting on a cloud, wanting to talk to you or hear what you say. All these things have deeply influenced the human psyche in such a way that they cannot draw a line between what is reality and what is made up in their mind. People’s psychological realities are so true for them that they think that is a truth by itself. These things have given much currency to all those ghost stories that you hear.

Native Americans maintain a strict code about places where they rest the dead. Once they create a place for the dead where they leave the bodies for the birds or whatever, no one enters that place. One reason is for your own safety. Another reason is you don’t want to disturb them. You want them to be comfortable and work their time out. This is also the reason why, traditionally, the crematoriums and burial grounds are usually outside human habitations—the dead should be given some space. This is a very wise thing to do.

Now, people ask, are all the disembodied beings human forms or are there any non-human disembodied beings too? Well, there is no such thing as non-human disembodied beings. For example, does a grasshopper go about hopping without a body? Not really. There are some exceptions to this—cobras are one. We already saw that cobras and cows are capable of having a subtle body. ¹ It is not completely logically correct to say this, but it is like saying that just as with human beings there are human ghosts, there are also some snake ghosts which can also possess a human being.

In Indian culture, it is common knowledge that there is something called Naga Dosha . ² Naga Dosha happens when a disembodied cobra has touched you somehow. Once again, we must understand that a disembodied being has no intention of its own. It is incapable of intentions but it has tendencies. So when you come in contact with it, it can impact you. When people have Naga Dosha, it can particularly affect certain layers of your skin. Usually, in such people, the skin breaks into rashes. It looks like psoriasis but is not exactly psoriasis. The skin begins to peel away in scales. It can also create a very strange sense of stillness and movement, where if not handled properly can lead to psychological distress. Otherwise, it can cause people to have serious hearing impediments. I have seen people who have recovered totally from those things by just doing Naga Pooja and things like that.

When a disembodied cobra impacts someone, the period of impact is not very long because its own structural integrity is in question. It will dismantle itself because it does not have the necessary integrity to hold itself for too long. The duration is usually between twenty-seven days to fifty-four days. That is about it. But Naga Dosha, the ailment caused by the impact, can last long. This is if the impact has affected you negatively. It can also impact you positively. If it impacts you positively, you will see that the strength of your spine, how it functions and your perception will be enhanced. It is because the disembodied cobra lingers about for some time after its death. In India, if people find a dead cobra, they perform a complete funeral for the naga.

Speaking of cobras and their impact, I have experienced both positive and negative ones. Once it killed me, ³ but at once it made my life in so many ways. After the consecration of the Dhyanalinga, my health situation was quite bad. We did many energy processes to recover and a few people really dedicated their lives to making me well again, but certain parts of my body—especially the right side, just next to my navel—were like a vacuum, creating problems. Tumours had started forming there. They used to form one day, and disappear after a few days. Doctors said my RBC count was excessively high because my liver function was starting to fail. We could have fixed it, but I needed time—at least a month or two for myself—but because of my schedule, I never got it. So this condition kept getting worse. Off and on, we did small patch-up jobs here and there, but we never really paid proper attention to the system.

One night, in December 2001, I was lying down in my bedroom in the Isha Yoga Center. It was about 4.45 a.m. and when I opened my eyes I saw a huge disembodied cobra next to me. It was larger than normal proportions. Its hood was raised. I have always kept a little brass cobra next to my bed; they were the ones who said good morning to me every day, and now there was a big one with a giant hood right there. I was looking at it and then it came towards me and bit me, next to the navel. I closed my eyes. It remained there for some time and then it left, not to be seen again.

The bite caused wounds to my belly—four fang marks, with blood oozing out. I even showed it to some people. However, from that day, the space or the vacuum was gone; this encounter with the mystical or celestial cobra took it away from me.

Ghost Troubles

Though most claims about ghost hearing and seeing and the ill effects that they can cause are largely psychological projections of individual people, there is a reality beyond physical body.

Most disembodied beings are incapable of holding any intentions of their own. So they cannot harm a person. However, you may get harmed because of them. They cannot kill you by direct action, but mostly by possessing someone or by just creating certain fearful situations that they can be fatal. When one is possessed by such beings, usually, death will happen soon, because they will create a situation where the person will walk into a well or walk off a mountain, or something like that. This being will possess everything, your intelligence, emotions and your body. One part of you may still be struggling but they can just walk off the mountain and fall straight down. It is not their body, it does not hurt them, but you die in the process. It is like when someone else drives your car, they don’t care. They bang it through everything and go.

It is not that they can do this to anyone they wish. There needs to be some sense of vulnerability in that person. If a person is well established, all these things will not have any power over them. If a person is a meditator, if some quality of meditativeness has come in them, then they cannot be possessed by anything. It is not possible, but these beings may create terror in you by just appearing in very distorted forms. Let us say, you walk outside and you see a distorted being. It need not do anything. If it just stands there, it is enough. If someone is standing there, carrying his own head in his hands, it is enough to freak you out, isn’t it? If you are very balanced, you may just look at him and go. Then there is nothing he can do. A headless person should be the easiest to manage—ask the wives! But if you are the kind to get frightened, then, by appearing here and there, it can kill a person psychologically. Just fear or terror can kill.

Disembodied beings cannot even see you as a physical being. They see you as an energy form. You may have heard that someone was possessed or tormented by some other being. Maybe you have even witnessed situations like that. This usually happens only if there is some kind of relationship to the energy. They could be of the same blood and the same karmic substance. In some way, those beings are drawn to this particular person who carries that kind of thing. Let us say, someone died in your family halfway through their Prarabdha Karma. If you happen to be wearing their clothes, unknowingly, they will come at you. It is not that they are seeking you. It is just that these clothes carry, in some way, a part of their body and energy, so they tend to gravitate in that direction.

This is why, traditionally, it was said that when a person dies, you should never wear their rings. If someone with strong Prarabdha Karma has died and you wear their rings on your ring finger, it becomes very easy for that being to enter you. You become very accessible. They are not trying to torment you. They are not trying to do anything. They have no such intentions. They will just function according to their tendencies, which will be a torture for you in some way. Otherwise, the situation of some disembodied being coming and tormenting you or even becoming visible to you does not arise.

If you have raised yourself to that level of awareness where you can feel these beings, you will have no problem with them.
So there is no need for you to do anything to protect yourself, unless you are involved in some kind of work which involves these beings and you are trying to draw them and do certain things with them. Only then, the question of protecting yourself arises. Otherwise, you don’t have to bother about it. If you become meditative, there is nothing that they can do to you. In fact, they become good company. If you are not, you can wear the Rudraksha ⁴ or a Linga Bhairavi pendant on your body. These are some simple things that can protect you.

One of the things not to do is to wear metal rings on your thumb. Unknowingly, these days, particularly all these New Age people have started to wear rings on their thumbs. This is a recent phenomenon. I don’t know how they got inspired to do it, or if it is just by chance and they are just fixing things upon wherever they can fix anything. Nowhere, in no culture, did people wear rings on their thumbs. If you wear a ring on the thumb, you will attract certain forces which you may not be able to handle. These forces that will be drawn towards you need not necessarily be pleasant. They are beyond your understanding and capability to handle, so they could easily bring illness, accidents or just a severe disturbance to one’s life. So no metal should be worn on the thumb. Never ever. Only those actively engaged in sorcery or black arts wear metal on their thumbs.

Ghost Solutions

Disembodied beings can be trapped. A tantrik, or one who is well-accomplished in the occult sciences, can do this. It is like how even a great sage like Sadhguru Sri Brahma was put behind bars during the British era by an immature social system. Similarly, on a different level, you can trap these beings too. If I have a being with me who does not have a body and who does not need transport to go from here to there, can you imagine how many things I can get done through them? But I will never use them in any way. My only interest is in their emancipation; my involvement with them is only on that level. But there are people who use them. They will put the disembodied being into some person out of whom they want to extract something. Now, that person will do whatever they want.

Trapping anything has its limitations also. You cannot keep something trapped forever. At least when the occult person dies, the being is going to be released. But for most people who are into such occult practices, their power does not last until their death; it goes before that. At some point, they lose their hold on it. When that happens, these things depart by themselves. Generally, these things will not hover around where that kind of a person is. They can easily sense it. An unaware or ignorant being may get easily trapped, but those who are a little aware will not get trapped so easily. They know what’s what. They can feel the energy around them and are very cautious.

It is a very negative karma to trap and use such beings, because these beings are, in a way, very helpless creatures. It is as treacherous as molesting a child. Moreover, it can backfire on you at any moment. But, usually, such people have their own protection systems. They take care of themselves in a certain way and do it. This is not something that a spiritual person will ever do. But there are people who find a lot of pleasure in terrorizing someone. It can become a means to wealth for them. However, usually, people who use such beings die a very horrible death; it catches up with them over time.

Do disembodied beings need help? Can they be dissolved? Yes. The difference between embodied beings and disembodied beings is just this: when you are embodied, you have more discretion. As you become more aware, you gain more discretion. When your awareness diminishes, you have less discretion. Once you are embodied and are here as a human being, you can either evolve or regress. Both are possible for you. That is the beauty of having an intellect which can discriminate and choose. As a human being, if you don’t make use of your awareness and discretion, if you waste human life, your goose is cooked! However, these disembodied beings can exist only in the level of awareness in which they left. They cannot gain or lose awareness. They are in a kind of a limbo. It is a stagnant state—like a light bulb; it has a certain lifespan, after which it will burn out. The bulb cannot choose how long to burn or when to go out. It burns for so many hours and then it goes out. These beings are just like that. They can neither evolve nor regress. What you have, you just experience, that is all. So even the disembodied beings who are a little aware can do with some help to progress.

The only reason why they are able to retain their form as a separate entity from the rest of the Existence is because there is a karmic structure. The physical body has been shed, but the karmic body is still intact. Only because the karmic body is intact, there is a form and there is an individuality about it. They too have individual likes, dislikes, compulsions and desires. But those disembodied beings that we call as celestial beings longed for something higher and they got there. But they too can do with some help. It is like this. Someone longed to be a rich person and they became rich. But only the rich person knows his struggles, his problems. The poor man on the street never understands that a man who is driving a Mercedes could also be struggling, but the rich person has his own problems and he knows his riches are not getting him anywhere. They are not adding to his happiness. Now, it is easier for him to understand the need to turn inward. It is a similar case with these celestial beings.

Now, in terms of dissolving that being, what we do is just break the karma. How do you break someone’s karma? Karma is stored on the level of your mind, physical body, sensations and energy. Once someone has shed their physical body, sensations don’t exist. The mind is there, but it has lost its logical nature. So, fundamentally, for a disembodied being, the karma is in the energy body. In ancient times, courtesans used to wear elaborate jewellery. With that, they played an elaborate game with the men who came to them. Their whole body would be covered
with jewellery. The man would come to this woman, full of desire, but he would be unable to get this jewellery off. It would take hours to get it off. Whichever way he would try, it would not come off. But the woman would know the trick. There was just one pin and, when she had teased him sufficiently, she would just pull that pin and all the jewellery would just fall off.

Both the mental and energy bodies are like this. All your karma is held by certain pins. These pins are in certain points of your body. In a way, we can say they are chakras. Not necessarily only the seven chakras; there are other points too. So all we do is pull those plugs and the karmic body just collapses. All kinds of jokers are talking about activating chakras and doing irresponsible things with them. That is very dangerous. If you meddle with these things unknowingly, it can be disastrous. The chakras are like pins. If I just pull them, I can release you right now, but you will not retain your physical body. You will be liberated, but you will be dead as far as the world is concerned.

The same can be done for disembodied beings also. All beings seek dissolution, whether they are aware of it or not. Out of their limitations, fears and misunderstandings, they may think they are not seeking it but every being seeks dissolution. Always. If your body would not fall on our hands, it would be so easy to dissolve you. That is why a Guru always waits until your body becomes ripe enough. When the moment of death comes naturally, he will interfere and do what he has to do. Maybe he will make you leave a few days earlier, but he will pull the pin and dissolve you completely.

Dissolving Frozen Beings

There have been many disembodied beings that I have come across and interacted with. One peculiar situation was with a Native American being. Native Americans are always portrayed as very proud, fit and strong people. They were good warriors, had great pride in their culture and were very straight. He would fight a battle with you today, and tomorrow, if you so much as called him a brother, he would be willing to give his life for you. That is how they were. For them, killing and dying in battle was an honour. They never knew that someone could come and usurp their land or take it away. They just did not understand. They saw the Earth as a live force that sustained them. This is one of the few cultures in the world that did not look up when you said God . They looked to the Earth as the force that created and nurtured them.

If you know American history, just south of Tennessee, there is this trail called the ‘Trail of Tears’, because in the mid-nineteenth century, whole tribal nations were forcibly moved westwards to free up land for European settlers. So entire tribes walked. Their weapons were taken away, because with weapons they could be dangerous. Without weapons, they could not hunt for food, so they starved and walked. The old and feeble died. The Native American way was such that if they buried their dead somewhere, they had to take care of that place. Now, because they were travelling, they could not bury their dead. So they carried their dead. The bodies rotted and fell apart, and they cried and cried and they walked on. By the time they reached their destinations, nearly 70 per cent of them were dead. So this is called the Trail of Tears.

These were very earthy people—they have a certain Earth sense. For them, their religion, their occult, their practices, were all about the Earth. They have a very deep connection with the Earth. When these people suffer, they leave puddles of suffering all over the place, and it stays. A few years ago, when I happened to be walking in a certain part of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee, I saw a man standing still, frozen in a certain position of despair and shame. I saw that he was just standing there in the full regalia of the ancient native tribes, completely frozen—frozen in time. Whenever I see someone in extreme movement or when they are intensely still, I put myself into it because both of these situations are possibilities for me to do something. People in extreme movement, they are a possibility. People who are utterly still, they too are a possibility. I cannot keep myself away from these two kinds of people. The in-between, medium movement does not mean much.

So then I saw that for almost 200 to 300 years, this man was standing there frozen. I saw that the situation behind this was that this person had the responsibility and the privilege of protecting his elder brother, who was a certain kind of a leader or chief of the community. He was like a right-hand man, protecting him in every way. Now, in that tradition, a brother need not necessarily mean that he was born from the same father or mother. You can take up brothers in the same way that you take up friends. This man held this elder brother in great esteem and he deemed it a great privilege to walk by his side and protect him.

A situation happened where he had set up a meeting for the chief with some military people, the white men. Somehow, this chief was deceived and killed by the white men. This man felt so responsible that he just stood there in absolute despair, failure, distress and shame. Such extreme emotions were within him that he had been just standing there for a few centuries. When I saw him, he was still standing right there. Not in a physical body—obviously, the earth fell back to the Earth—but the rest of him stood there, just as he had been in that moment. So I thought, it was time he moved on. Too much time in shame, too much time in defeat is not good. I helped him to move on from that situation.

This is a poem I wrote just after that incident.

America

The brooding darkness of these woods

Fed upon the native blood

In the twisted tangle of the fallen wood

The spirit of the fallen Indian stood

O brothers your identity a mistake

Those who oceans crossed did make

The greed for gold and land

Laid waste the spirit of wisdom and grace

The children of those, who by murder did take

Are taintless of their forefathers’ mistake

But those who lived, fed upon the milk of courage and pride

Stand as spirits of defeat and shame

O the murdered and the murderous

Embrace me, let me set your spirits to rest

Probably that moment—the encounter with this being—is the most painful moment of my life. And it was then that I started noticing how there is such a deep sense of pain in many parts of that region, which will play out in human lives whether we are conscious of it or not. If a rock can suffer, a human being for sure will not be spared. Untold suffering will simply happen without any reason. When there are puddles of pain like this imprinted in the Earth on which you live upon, you will never know what true well-being is in your life. You may build a big house, you may carry a shotgun and shoot whatever you like, ⁵ but you will not know a moment of rest in your life. When the Earth that you walk upon is in such a state, if you don’t know how to take care of the material which makes you, you will never know even one moment of well-being in your life.

There was another situation that lingered for a long time. During the Dhyanalinga consecration, there was a disembodied woman who used to frequent the roof of my house. Before the consecration, we have done many things with such beings and dissolved them, but this particular one hung around for more than a year and a half, maybe two. After the consecration, my body was in a certain state of instability and I did not want to deal with her. Such beings have no sense of judgement. They just have a longing. It is like someone who is in a deep state of desire has no judgement about life. Someone wants to drink, someone wants to rape, that is all. It is not because they are good or bad that they do it. They have no judgement about life, they only have longings. According to their karma, they have certain vasana s, or tendencies, and they simply go by that.

There are other kinds of creatures, which have gone totally out of shape. They have not been able to retain their human form. They have become subtle. But this was a woman who had retained a heightened sense of femininity in her form. No woman in the world would be like that. She was extremely beautiful and in a much larger proportion than normal. She also created an illusion of wearing beautiful dresses and presenting herself well. Her vasana was femininity, which was always in counter to masculinity. So if you tried to meddle with her, naturally, she would come as a woman. She would not know any other way to approach. This could have led to so many unnecessary situations, but she would not do anything on her own. If I had invited her into the shrine in the house to dissolve her, in a moment, it would have been over.

However, as I have mentioned earlier, those days, my body was in a state of fragility and instability after the consecration, so I did not want to risk it with her. In the night, she would be walking in the inner corridor of my house, her anklets making the sound: jing, jing, jing, jing. It was not just me who heard her. Whoever stayed in the house would hear her walking throughout the night. If you opened the door and came into the corridor, she would be sitting up on the roof with a forlorn look on her face. She sat up there for almost two years. She would not enter the shrine. She did not dare to, but she kept walking and waiting. I did not do anything with her. I just left her there. There was a bit of concern because my daughter was eight years old then and even she heard the anklet sounds. These kinds of disembodied beings can harm female children, so I had to take precautionary measures for the girl’s room. However, the woman never showed any signs of interest or violence at any time—just forlornness.

I did not try to ward her off because she was so forlorn and longing, seeking something. Once my body became more stable, I decided to dissolve her. Since her body had become so subtle, it was much easier to pull her pins than that of embodied human beings. I wanted her to leave in a very conducive atmosphere and did not want her to get into a state of fear or disturbance. So I just brought her inside and asked her to bow down to the shrine. When she did, I just pulled the plug and dissolved her. It was finished. She is no more.

Dissolving people in their disembodied state is a much easier thing to do, if the necessary conditions are in place. For example, if all the women on the planet decided that for the next one year there shall be no conception on the planet, then all those beings whose time has matured and who need a womb would be floating around in a limbo. Their unconscious desire would be to find a womb, but there would be none available—this would be an ideal situation for me to crack them before they find one more cycle. When they have just died and are floating around, you cannot fix them because they are too unconscious. But when their Prarabdha Karma is compelling them to find a womb, and none of the women are cooperating, it is an ideal situation for dissolving them.

There are so many young women with us who have not gotten pregnant and they will not get pregnant, because they have chosen to live a life of intense involvement that their biological urges have become insignificant. But if all the women on the planet decide not to get pregnant for the next one year, that would mean there would be at least 130 million beings waiting for a womb.

It is easy to do this with those who have bodies also, but until the final moment comes, people will not give up their personality. It once happened: Matilda and Agatha were sisters. For thirty-seven years they had not spoken with each other because of a feud. Then one day Matilda became seriously ill. So she wrote a note to her sister. It started, Agatha ,— not Dear Agatha , because she was still angry—Now that I am dying, I forgive you for all the nasty things you have done to me. Matilda. Then she thought for some time and added: PS: In case I recover, everything stands the way it is right now. When death knocks on your door, your life will be focused and naturally, you turn inward, because the outward is of no use any more. When people are approaching death, their personality drops and the pretensions that they carry on with the external will become unimportant.

Nirmanakaya

In spiritual circles there have always been talks about yogis who lived on the planet long ago but now make rare appearances by materializing and dematerializing their bodies at will. These days there is a lot of interest in people being able to materialize and dematerialize at will because there is too much talk about Babaji ⁶ everywhere. The popular stories doing the rounds about him in India is that there is one man who lives forever and appears at will, again and again. It is not so. It has become fanciful for people to talk about such things because people like legends. They don’t like the living because with legends you have the freedom to twist and turn them or blow them out of proportion or whatever. If you exaggerate something about me, for example, I will knock you on your head and tell you that it isn’t so.

Some confusion regarding this is because there are yogis who are nirmanakaya s. Nirman means ‘to create’, kaya means ‘a body’. It is very rare that this would happen, but there have been some beings who have done that. These yogis are of the highest calibre and are able to materialize their body at will. Essentially, they build a conscious energy body, which is all made by them but is not for serving the physiological purposes of the physical body. You know, at least 20 per cent of your energy body is serving physiological functions. So these yogis create a large energy body which has no physiological association but is just stationed in the physiology. So he has two energy bodies—one that he was born with and another to transmit what he wants to transmit, which is of another dimension. He cannot transmit without the second one. Both are the same as far as other people’s perception is concerned. Without this kind of an arrangement, with just regular physiology, it is impossible to run a programme like Samyama, for example. It cannot withstand the sheer intensity and complexity of what is being done there. It will die right there.

Now, even after the physical body is dead, the subtle body is preserved and he makes it visible now and then. It need not necessarily be full flesh and bone, it just becomes visible. That is all. Usually, these are yogis who have taken on this role where they will reappear once in so many years. That does not mean they are living somewhere. They keep the subtler aspect of the body intact, but the physical body is gone. They recreate it now and then. They are not reborn, nor is this forever.

When you are born through a womb, you too are creating a body. Your own energy is doing it. You take nutrients from your mother, but you create the body. It is not the mother who is creating it. After you are born, you are still creating this body, isn’t it? You are creating it in the same way—taking nutrients through food, through the air that you breathe, the water that you drink. Before you are born, that mechanism is not established yet. So you use the mother’s mechanisms of eating, drinking and breathing to structure the body, but it is your own energies which are doing it. Now, one can acquire the capability to create a body without the help of a mother’s womb. You can create it by yourself. It need not be a small body. The small body is created because only that can fit in a mother’s womb. But when you sit and create it, you can create an average-sized body or one that is 20 feet tall. Generally, people choose to create their youthful form.

So, these nirmanakayas are in subtle states and use elaborate processes. They have chosen to be in that state. They live in a very minimal way. They choose to be in that state, either out of their compassion, or they have been ordained by their Masters, who told them, ‘Don’t worry about your mukti, just do this.’ Once in a while, they may create a gross body to come back and do certain things. They can only do a minimal amount of work, because each time they create their bodies, they have a certain span and a limitation on activity. Most of the time, it is just an appearance that they can manage. The period of time in which they do this may be very long in normal human terms. It could be a couple of thousand years to even 10,000 years, but even that has a certain span to it. Eventually, they will dissolve completely.

Most of the time, they do this because they want to protect their lineage. They want to appear, so that minute corrections can be made in their lineage. They cannot do much with the general population. Now, for example, Isha is a certain type of Yoga, it is a lineage. Because people can go off track over time, some distortions will creep in. Now, I will not do such things, so you don’t have to fear that I may come back again. I will not. But let us say, we want to make sure that every 100 years corrections happen. So every 100 years, I could reappear and make some corrections and go back. There is a very short period for which you can appear and do such things.

You must know, not everyone who creates a nirmanakaya uses it the same way with the world. Not everyone uses it to make it appear and disappear in the world. It is like you have a great car, but how you use it is up to you. You may want to go to the office in it or race it or just drive it for fun—it is left to you. It is your vehicle. Even if you did not want to do anything with it, you could still own one. Maybe there are collectors who just keep the car parked in their garage! It is similar for nirmanakayas. It is very rare that these things happen, but there have been some beings who have done things like that. Without them, I would not be so knowledgeable. But the phenomenon has been too exaggerated and presented in many distorted ways.

Downloading Beings

About 35,000 years ago, there was a yogi called Sunira. This yogi floated a certain being. The idea was to create an ideal being who can transform the whole world in one shot. This being has been around for quite some time. Many other yogis have put their inputs into this being. Even Gautama the Buddha talks about this, and he also has put his inputs into this. Krishna himself did something about this being. Gautama predicted that somewhere around 2500 to 3000 years from his time, this being will mature and find a body in the world and he will be the ultimate teacher in the Creation.

We were not going for anything like that. It is just that there are so many exalted beings who are constantly after us to do something for them. For a time, we even accommodated a few of them in our own body. At one point, when we were in certain types of sadhana and certain states, without our permission, some of these beings got into us and stayed with us for a period of time. We carried them for quite some time, and physically it was not easy, because they were so desperate to find expression in some way. At that time, there were times when it was absolutely confusing for people who lived around us. There were many times when this would just drive Vijji to insanity because we would be just sitting in a chair and when she looked elsewhere and turned back, we would have become totally someone else. She would be terrified—terrified and petrified! We allowed those things for a certain time because we were working on the consecration of the Dhyanalinga.

So for some time we thought about downloading a few of these beings. These are beings who are highly evolved and are reluctant to take on a new body. They have that much choice—they cannot be compulsively drawn into a womb. They have become aware enough where it is a question of choice, so they are looking for a suitable vehicle through which they can fulfil the final phase of their lives. So if you make your body available—that is only if you have done sufficient work and preparation and are absolutely willing—they can be downloaded into your body. It will need lots of preparation and sadhana to make people receptive enough for something like that. They must be strong enough but not too strong. They must be vulnerable enough but not too vulnerable. It is a different level of sadhana altogether.

If one has to put that being in the same body as another being, that person also must be of the same quality. Otherwise, they will be bad company for them! They are choosy—so choosy that they find no worthwhile womb in the world to get into. When they are that choosy, you are going to have a hard time with them, isn’t it? Living with such a person is difficult. So what happens to you, where do you go? You don’t go anywhere. You cease to exist. Would you call this a takeover? No, this is obliteration. I could use a more positive word—mukti. This is called Moksha. Call it Nirvana, if you want to use negative terminology.

If such things are done, the existing being has to work to a certain point of willingness, where the life process could be untied completely and one can be unplugged so that this being is over for good. Now, if the physical body is still intact, if it is kept in a certain space and if the other being has been wooed close enough, they could be put into it. It is a complex process and one will not be successful every time with something like that. It is much more complex than people coming out of spaceships and doing some fix job and going back inside. I would say this is much more complex because keeping the body in a live condition but evacuating a person can be very difficult. Just getting people out of a rented home—getting a tenant out of the house is so difficult. So getting a person out of their body when the body is still fit and well is not that simple at all. It takes a lot of wooing. You can woo a man out of many things, but trying to woo him out of his body is the most difficult thing to do. But with the necessary preparation, it can be done. We are talking about getting a life to evacuate its physical structure without damaging it, so that it is still in good form to stage life.

I think we live in a society which is too logical and too immature for other aspects of life. So we are trying to do what makes the most sense to them—planting trees, running hospitals, schools. People are even beginning to call me a ‘tree planter’! This downloading is not just for entertainment. It will be a phenomenal boon to society. But after having been here for this long, if we could not produce sufficient beings here of such a level of evolution, then we have to import them from somewhere. I hope such a need will not come to us, we are doing good work. The work here is very intense and there are lots of dynamic and static volcano-like people with us. When all this is there, I am hoping we should not have any need for importing beings. So let us work with the people who have already slipped out of the womb. All of you are here! It does not matter how you came, let us see what we can do with you.