The Only WAY OUT

BY HDG B.S. TIRTHA MAHARAJ

It seems that the only news is violent news round the world, round the clock. The world is full of conflict, quarrels and discord also found in local communities and even in families. His Divine Grace B. S. Tirtha Maharaj reveals the basic roots of this situation and presents the only cure for it.

Round the world, the media is full of combat, conflict, controversy, debate, discord and dispute. These events are sporadic skirmishes on the borders between two unfriendly nations, occasionally threatening to escalate into a full-fledged war; pandemonium in parliaments and scuffles in senates of even most advanced nations; violent clashes and ghastly bloodshed between two hostile communities; non-stop corporate battles, regular violence in factories and workshops, and similar other happenings.

While internecine quarrels eternally exist in every family, flared tempers lead to constant provocations in personal dealings and invariably end up in physical confrontations. Even casual conversations among friends suddenly erupt into acrimonious debates that sometimes prove fatal. Deadly and diabolic destruction of life and property by terrorists has whipped up a fear psychosis throughout the globe. In short, the whole world is in a state of chaos.

A truly self-realized person is not disturbed by the current situation for he is fully aware that these are the signs of the present Age of Kali, a millennium of hypocrisy and dissension, as mentioned in the Vedic scriptures. Such a wise spiritual person also knows what underlies this anarchy is the physical conception of life - wrongly identifying oneself merely as the body. Confusing the physical body to be the actual self is as foolish as thinking that a motorcar is the driver or an aircraft is the pilot. Actually, humans, animals, birds or plants are all conscious spirit souls conditioned by physical bodies made of material elements. Without understanding this fact, everyone in this world performs all actions in ignorance. Due to this illusion, a person identifies himself/herself as belonging to a particular family, society, community, race, nation or religion. This wrong identification is the basic breeding ground for all antagonism culminating in brutality and violence.

With this mistaken identity, a person in the world becomes attached to a particular type of body and claims himself/herself related to other bodies as father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son or daughter. The reality is that every living being is a separate individual as a pure spirit soul, eternally free from all these labels. It is only owing to contact with matter (karanam guna sango asya) and thus acquiring a physical body that a person becomes falsely related to other bodies. Thus, false bodies create various associations in the name of family, religion, community and nationality. Due to the temporal nature of matter, our physical relationships and possessions are also short-lived. Therefore, no one is eternally related to anyone as father, mother, husband or wife within this cosmos, controlled by stringent physical laws. A jivatma or spirit soul constantly passes from one body to another after death. Once a person is dead, he is totally cut off from all current relationships and possessions, for ever. If at all he acquires another human body, he will have a new set of family relatives - father, mother, brother, sister and/or wife - with whom he will be again disconnected at the time of death.

Pilgrims in Haridwar are usually seen bending on the banks to set afloat small lamps in cups made of leaves over the running waters of the river Ganges. These floating lamps glide down together in the direction of the river’s current. With an opposite current, the waves toss these lamps this way and that (sroto vegena), till they overturn and sink. Similarly, all living beings, by the relentless passing of time (kala vegena) are brought together by the waves of the material nature and they form relationships with one another as a family, a community, a religion or a nation.

Eventually, they are forced to end all such relationships when they die. At death, all relationships end by the same time factor. Hence, no one can truly be a relative, a lover, a well-wisher or a protector of anyone in this world. This is because all of us are encased in the temporary physical body and everyone, without exception, has to leave the body when death occurs. Therefore, all Vedic scriptures describe the very existence in this world as Maya. In Sanskrit, 'ma' means 'not' and 'ya' means 'that which is'. Hence Maya means 'that which is not'.

Among the 8,400,000 varieties of physical bodies through which a living being transmigrates within this phenomenal world, the human form is like a junction from where one can upgrade to become a heavenly being or degrade to exist in hellish planets below the earth in abominable existence. However, our human life provides us with the greatest opportunity. This is the opportunity to make a proper inquiry about our actual identity so that we can be liberated from our conditioned existence. If we do not get proper information and guidance in this pursuit, we become victims to various pitfalls of enjoying our physical senses and keep rotting in this mundane realm - sometimes as a human, or sometimes as an animal. Thus, the deluded spirit souls falsely identify themselves as the physical body and foolishly try to enjoy the material resources. They gradually get entangled in various relationships and are implicated in the illusory maze of material activities with an imaginary sense of duties and responsibilities, prolonging one’s own bondage in this material world.

A cinema star playing the main character in a movie also has other actors playing the roles of a father, a mother, a wife and children in that movie. But when this particular star plays the main lead in a hundred movies, he may have different co-stars playing the roles of a father, a mother, a wife and children. Similarly, a person who has a father, a mother, a wife and children in his current life may have different persons as a father, a mother, a wife and children in his next life. Thus, one may have millions of fathers, mothers, wives and children during one's brief journey in this material world. Therefore, nobody is permanently related to anyone here. Every one is actually merely playing a particular role assigned to him or her, as if in a movie or a stage play, by the dictates of Maya. God is the producer (creator) of this world while Maya, the material energy, is the director and the conditioned living beings are the actors.

To understand this, one requires true intelligence. Since the physical body of animals, birds, plants and the human beings are made of five basic material elements (pancha mahabhoota or earth, water, fire, air and ether), factually, there is no difference between human beings and sub human species of life. Therefore, the Vedic scriptures point out that ahara, nidra, bhaya, maithunamcha samanametad pashubhih naranam, or eating, sleeping, fearing and mating are the common major functions among all living beings, whether humans or animals, because these are bodily functions.

Leaving alone the current civilization, even a great war hero Arjuna was caught in an identity crisis approximately 5,000 years ago in the battle of Kurukshetra in the epic, Mahabharata. Although a man of indomitable courage, Arjuna found the the idea of killing his own relatives most repulsive. Purely driven by the fear of the deaths of his kith and kin on both sides, Arjuna was thinking not to fight. Detecting that the bodily conception of life was the reason for Arjuna’s desperate attempt to desist from battle, the Supreme Lord Krishna delivered the most enlightening discourse known as Bhagavad Gita, highlighting the spiritual nature of all living beings and their eternal relationship with Him. After hearing the words of wisdom and experiencing the divinity of the Supreme Lord, Arjuna was reinstated in his spiritual identity and performed his duty to fight evil.

The Supreme Lord Krishna says in the Gita, mamaivamsho jivaloke jiva bhoota sanatanah or every living entity is my eternal fragment. This means that Krishna is the Supreme Spirit Soul (Paramatma) and we are His spirit particles (jivatma). Therefore, the actual identity of jivatma or the conditioned living entity is that he/she is the eternal servant of the Supreme Soul Krishna. As soon as we decline to acknowledge this and try to enjoy our physical senses independent of Krishna, our material conditioning and consequent sufferings begin.

The moment one abandons this false spirit of being an independent enjoyer, he/she attains liberation by being reinstated in his original constitutional position. In other words, by discarding the 'boss' mentality and reviving das (servant) attitude one’s life becomes successful. The whole world can live in absolute peace if all of us can understand this relationship between the Supreme Lord and the living entities. Thus, when we become self-realized we do not notice physical differences and serve the Supreme Lord as the one common goal. Then all sections of society can achieve perfect harmony.

The only effective method in this Kali Yuga to quickly achieve this realization, without cumbersome spiritual practice, is to merely start chanting the holy names of Sri Hari:

HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA
KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE
HARE RAMA HARE RAMA
RAMA RAMA HARE HARE