Giriraj Swami engaged in the following discussion with the students and teacher of world religion at Brewer High School, who had come to visit the Dallas temple.
“I imagine that in your school you have exams and that in order to graduate you have to pass your exams. Someone may think, ‘For now, let me just fool around. When the time comes, I will pass the exams — no problem.’ But if you don’t attend the classes, if you don’t do the assigned reading and homework, if you don’t pass the tests during the year, how will you pass the final exam and graduate to the next level? You have to prepare. It is common sense.
“Similarly, if we don’t prepare for the time of death, if we don’t practice chanting and hearing and remembering God, how will we be able to remember Him at the time of death? We will think of the things we are habituated to thinking of. Generally, we think of the things we are attached to. Whatever we are most attached to, whatever preoccupies our thoughts the most during our life, is probably what we will think of at the time of death. Therefore it is important that we practice chanting and hearing and remembering God now — that we become attached to God now — so we can remember Him at the time of death and be promoted to the eternal, blissful, spiritual realm.”
