CC Adi 4 – Life’s Final Exam, at the Higher Taste Beats Student Program

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna. So, I will read one verse from this book called the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, which highlights the importance of the time of death.

So, this book, the Bhagavad-gītā, is the literal record of God’s spoken word. Gītā means song. When God speaks, He doesn’t speak in ordinary prose like we do, but He speaks in song and poetry. And Bhagavān means God. And the literal meaning, bhaga means opulence, and van means one who possesses. So, Bhagavān means one who possesses all opulence. The six opulences are strength, beauty, fame, knowledge, renunciation. And we all possess those to some degree, but God or Krishna possesses them fully and unlimitedly.

So, in the Bhagavad-gītā, Chapter Eight, Attaining the Supreme, there are two very important verses here. I mean, they are all important, but in Text Six Lord Krishna says:

TEXT 6

Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kuntī, that state he will attain without fail.

COMMENT

So, our consciousness at the time of death is very important because it will determine our next life. Of course, the reason that that is the case is because we as living entities are not the body, but we are the ātmā or soul within the body. And as long as the ātmā is within the body, the body functions. We say the body is alive, actually, the body is never alive but it is animated. The body is a machine, but it is animated by the presence of the ātmā. And when the ātmā leaves the body, we say the body is dead, and actually, life is due to the presence of the ātmā. If you consider it logically, there could only be two explanations, one is that life is due to another energy, the ātmā, which is spiritual, or it arises out of a combination of chemicals.

Now, if life arose from a combination of chemicals or material ingredients, death would mean a breakdown in that arrangement, and by restoring that arrangement, one could bring the person back to life, but we have no such experience because it’s not possible.

If a car, which is also a machine like the body, if the car breaks down, you can find out what the broken part is and replace it and make the car work again. But at the time of death, when the ātmā leaves the body, practically all the material ingredients in the body are the same. I mean, within a moment, when the ātmā leaves, the person is dead, but everything is there. From one moment to the next, practically everything is exactly the same except that the ātmā has gone.

So, what happens to the ātmā, which is our actual identity, after it leaves the body? So, that, as stated here by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gītā, depends on our consciousness at the time of death, and whatever we think of at the time of death will determine our next life.

Now, this is called transmigration of the soul, the reincarnation. And actually, if we analyze it, we’ll see that even within this lifetime, we have passed through many different bodies. For example, when we were born, we had a baby’s body, now if I show you pictures of ten babies, you won’t know which one is me because that baby’s body and this body are different. So, I’ve already changed my body even in this lifetime, but I, the soul, the ātmā, am the same. So similarly, at the time of death, I will just change my body again. But we have some choice as to what body we get, and that depends on our activities during life, and also our consciousness at the time of death.

So, the title of this book, Life’s Final Exam, it actually refers to a verse in Indian language that says that whatever sadhana, that means spiritual practices, and bhajana, worship, you have done in your life, will be tested at the time of death, whether you are actually able to remember Krishna, God, Krishna is a name for God, at the time of death. And the present lifetime is practice.

Just like when you have final exams in school and you prepare, you attend the classes, you do the assignments, you take the midterm exams, and then if all goes well, you pass the final, and when you pass, then you move on to the next grade or you graduate. So, our final exam in life is the time of death, and the test is whether we’ll be able to remember Krishna or God, and if we do, we graduate, we don’t have to come back into another material body in the material world.

Now, someone might say, “Well, what’s wrong with having a material body? When you have a material body, you can enjoy.” And that’s true, but that enjoyment is not pure, it is mixed with suffering. We are in the world of duality, the material world is the world of duality, and so there is always pleasure and pain, happiness and distress. But we really want unadulterated happiness, permanent happiness without distress, and that is possible in a spiritual body.

Now, what is a spiritual body? We are the ātmā, and in our conditioned life, the ātmā is covered by this material body, and in this body, we are subjected to different miseries. There are four mentions specifically in the Bhagavad-gītā that we should always be aware of: janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duḥkha-doṣānudarśanam. So, janma means birth, mṛtyu means death, jarā means old age, and vyādhi means illness, disease.

Nobody wants these miseries, but as long as we are in the body, we cannot avoid them. Disease, nobody wants disease. There are so many doctors, so many nurses, so many hospitals, so many medicines, but disease is not stopping, there is always demand for more doctors, more hospital beds, more nurses, because we cannot eliminate disease, it comes with the body. And to think that we can is a sort of illusion, and we shouldn’t pursue that illusion. Which is not to say that we don’t take normal medical treatment, but we should know that as long as we are in the body, we cannot avoid disease.

And similarly, old age. There are many inconveniences in old age, people don’t want to grow old, but we can’t avoid it, it’s part of the miseries of the body that we grow old and we suffer so many inconveniences in old age. And then death, nobody wants to die, death is the ultimate calamity. Nobody wants to die, but death is there, as sure as death, as sure as death and taxes.

So, that’s the difficulty with the material body, but actually, we can enjoy better without it. I guess if you are in an insane asylum, they put you in a straight jacket. So, the body is like a straight jacket, you don’t have full freedom, you are very restricted. And when you leave the body in spiritual consciousness or Krishna consciousness, then you don’t have to get another material body with all of its concomitant miseries, but you get a spiritual body, or rather I should say you develop your spiritual body.

In the Bhagavad-gītā, Krishna gives the example that the body is like a dress, and the soul wears that dress for as long as it’s useful, and when it becomes old and useless, it discards that dress and accepts another dress. So, our dress, our clothing has shape because our body has shape. So, this body, which is like a dress for the soul, has shape because the soul, the ātmā, has shape.

The soul is a person, it’s us, that person who is us is the ātmā, and it has senses. I’m looking through these eyeglasses but the eyeglasses are not seeing, I’m seeing, the eyeball is seeing, but the eye is not the body, the eye is actually the ātmā because when the ātmā leaves the body, the body doesn’t have any sense perception. So, that real significant point of who I am is the ātmā, the spiritual spark, which is part and parcel of God or Krishna. And we have to live our lives with that understanding.

Again, our spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, gave the example that if you are doing a mathematical calculation and you make a mistake in the first step, even if you perform all the other functions perfectly, you may get further away from the answer because you made a mistake in the first step. So, if we make a mistake in the first step of understanding who we are, in other words, if we think we are the body, which most people do think, and we do everything perfectly for the benefit of the body, we’ll get further and further away from the real answer, the real solution, the real happiness that we want. So, you have to get the first step right, and that is, “I’m not the body, I’m the soul.”

Sometimes we give the example of a bird in a cage, that if you have a bird in a cage and you decorate the cage very nicely and polish the bars at the cage and put all sorts of nice things in the cage, but you don’t feed the bird, the bird will not be happy. So, the soul is like the bird and the body is like the cage. So, we can do so many things for the body, which is fine, but the soul, the bird in the cage will not be happy unless we feed it.

So, what is this food? What is the sustenance for the soul? That food, that spiritual nourishment, is connection with the Supreme Soul, or Krishna, and we can make connection with Him through His name. On the material platform, the name of the thing and the thing are different. For example, if I’m thirsty, I’m in the desert, I’m chanting, “Water, water, water, water,” chanting, “Water, water” will not quench my thirst because the word water and the substance water are different. But if I chant, “Krishna, Krishna, Hare Krishna,” Krishna is personally present, dancing on my tongue.

So, by connecting with Krishna, by chanting His name, or reading His words in the Bhagavad-gītā or reading words about Him. . . The Bhagavad-gītā is sort of the basic textbook and it’s seven hundred verses, and then there is an advanced book called Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, which is eighteen thousand verses. So, by reading or hearing the Bhagavad-gītā or Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, we come in connection with Krishna, and that nourishes us spiritually.

And there are other manifestations of Krishna that can nourish us spiritually, one is prasāda. Prasāda means literally mercy, and prasāda is food that is prepared with love and devotion for Krishna and offered to Him with love and devotion, and it is actually eaten by Him. And He could, if he wanted, like us, eat it in such a way that there is nothing left, but out of His mercy, He eats it but He leaves it in a spiritualized form called prasāda, and it resembles the food that it was before it was offered, but it’s not the same as before it was offered, it’s different.

I have a colleague who was in India in the peace corps, and when he got the opportunity, he would go to temples of Krishna. And every temple will distribute prasāda, so he would get prasāda, and he appreciated it seemed different from ordinary food. Then after India, he came back to America and he met the devotees, and he started to come to the Hare Krishna temple in Buffalo, New York, and he had the prasāda there and he recognized, “Well, this is the same special taste as the prasāda I had in the temples in India.” So, it’s not ordinary food, and it nourishes the soul and the body.

So, we want to feed that bird in the cage, we want to nourish our souls with Krishna consciousness, things that make us conscious of Krishna, help us to be conscious of Krishna, so that at the time of death, we can remember Krishna, and then we go to Krishna, we don’t have to take birth again in the material world in this samsara chakra, cycle of birth and death, we go back home, back to Godhead.

So, I had a student, she was originally from South Africa, European lady from South Africa, and she built a home in Vrindavan. Vrindavan is a holy place in India, it’s especially connected with Krishna, and people go there to prosecute Krishna consciousness, and in particular, to leave their bodies there, to die there.

So, she went to Vrindavan, built the house, and she loved Vrindavan, and she did eventually leave her body there in Krishna consciousness. And it was her last request of me that she wanted others to have that same opportunity to leave their bodies in Vrindavan. And at that time, the medical care in Vrindavan was quite basic or primitive, so she wanted them to have that opportunity but with better medical facilities. And so, that desire, you could say, was the seed of the Bhaktivedanta Hospice in Vrindavan, which we created following her desire.

I’ll show you a couple of pictures. Well, this shows changing bodies, how the soul is the same in all these different bodies within this lifetime, and then at the time of death, goes into another body. And this is a picture of that lady, Arca Vigraha devi dasi from South Africa, this is her. Oh, I didn’t mention that she had terminal cancer. And so, this is towards the end, I’m feeding sacred water into her mouth. There is a whole science of how to help people at the time of death, so that’s part of it. And then this is the front entrance to the hospice that we made in Vrindavan called Bhaktivedanta Hospice. And here are some pictures of the hospice outside and inside.

But the whole idea is to help the person remember Krishna at the time of death, pass the final exam and go to Krishna. And then, that soul and his spiritual body or her spiritual body will go to Krishna and be embraced by Krishna, that is depicted here when the devotee goes back to Godhead, Krishna welcomes him and embraces him or her.

So, there was an entrepreneur, well, I can mention the name, Steve Jobs who created Apple, and he heard a lecture or a talk in which someone said that you should live your life as if each day was your last, because one of those days will be your last. So, he took that to heart, and in due course, in the morning, he would look at himself in the mirror and he would think, If this was my last day, what would I do? And he said if too many days passed in which what he was doing was different from what he would do if it was his last day, he figured, I have to make some adjustment here.

So, some people don’t like to think about death. I mean, I commend you for coming here tonight and facing that topic. They don’t want to think about it, they think it’s morbid, I just want to enjoy life, not have to think about that inconvenient truth. But it is a fact, it’s really nothing to be feared.

When one is Krishna conscious, of course, material attachment may be there, but ultimately, we are not afraid of death because we know there is no such thing as death, that what we call death is just the soul leaving its body. And if we’ve lived our lives well and developed our consciousness spiritually, then we are confident that we will have a better next life, ideally with God, with Krishna. So, death for a devotee is very different from death for an ordinary person.

And Srila Prabhupada and our previous authorities give the example of a cat and a kitten and a rat. The mother cat picks up her kitten in her mouth. Do you know that? You ever seen that? So, the mother cat will pick up her kitten in her mouth, so for the kitten, the mouth of the mother is a loving transport. And the cat will also pick up a rat in her mouth, and for the rat, that’s doom, it’s death. So, it’s the same cat, it’s the same mouth, but the experience is very different for the kitten and for the rat.

So, the experience of death is very different for someone in Krishna consciousness, it’s like Krishna’s coming to take the person. And for an ordinary person, death is a very fearsome, fearful experience because he is leaving everything he knows, he doesn’t know where he is going, what’s going to happen, so it can be quite terrifying.

So, to help people overcome that fear of death, we try to give them this knowledge and this process by which we can actually realize we are not the body. We may have the theoretical understanding that we are not the body, but to actually realize that, we have practices such as the chanting and hearing and worshipping, and then we become free from that false identification, and we can leave the body just like someone leaves the outfit he was wearing.

Well, in a way, there is no such thing as death, as we’ve been discussing, so we can see it for what it is, it’s just the ātmā leaving one body and accepting another. And if one is prepared, that next body won’t even be a material body with birth, old age, and disease, and death, it will be a spiritual body with which we can enjoy with Krishna.

Srila Prabhupada gave an example, and it might seem like an odd example, here is the form of Srila Prabhupada, when he came to America, he was sixty-nine, he was a very elderly, distinguished Indian gentleman. But he gave the example, it seemed incongruous example or a striking example, that when you wear your clothes, you can’t really enjoy, you can only enjoy when you take your clothes off. So, he said in the same way, as long as we have these physical bodies, we can’t really enjoy. But when we shed them, then we can enjoy in our spiritual bodies with Krishna.

So, thank you for listening so patiently and attentively. Do any of you have any questions or comments? Yes?

Devotee: Yeah, I just want to say thank you, Your Holiness, for coming here. But my first question would be, this book on Krishna consciousness allowing us to go into the afterlife in our most prosperous form, do you believe that without Krishna being God, without that concept of God, that we would all be able to go into the most prosperous afterlife? Or does it require to have Krishna consciousness?

Giriraj Swami: Well, by Krishna consciousness, I mean, God consciousness, and it doesn’t specifically have to be Krishna, if that’s your question.

As the devotee said in his introduction, I spent time in Pakistan, and while there, I came across a book called, The 99 Names of Allah. In the Vedic tradition, there is a book called, The Thousand Names of Vishnu, Viṣṇu-sahasra-nāma. So, they had one called, The 99 Names of Allah, and in that book, they say that the best thing a Muslim can do for a departing loved one is to chant the holy names of Allah at the time of death. And we find that in other traditions also, in Jewish tradition, I would imagine in the Christian tradition, to sing the names of God at the time of death.

And we don’t know what condition the dying person will be in, we hope he can utter the name of God, but at least, if his friends and loved ones are there singing the names of God, that sound can enter his ear. The ear is the last sense to go, even when all the other senses are not functioning, the sense of hearing continues. And that will help that person go to God, Krishna, or Allah, or whatever.

Devotee: But without that, do you believe that they would not be able to transcend into the great spiritual realm, the greatest possible?

Giriraj Swami: Well, I don’t see how they would because their thoughts at the time of death will determine their next life, so if they are not thinking of something spiritual, I mean, there are only two choices; spiritual and material, so if they are not thinking of something spiritual, they’ll be thinking of something material, their mind can’t be empty. Consciousness means conscious of something, there is not such thing as consciousness without content. So, if they are not thinking of something spiritual, then they think of something material, then they’ll take birth again in a material form.

Devotee: Thank you.

Giriraj Swami: Good question. Yes?

Devotee: What is moksha and how does one know if someone has moksha?

Giriraj Swami: What is moksha and how does one know?

Devotee: If someone who’s just passed away.

Giriraj Swami: Oh, if someone who has passed away has achieved moksha. Moksha means liberation, liberation from the cycle of birth and death, and that is attained in essence by Krishna consciousness, by God consciousness, at the time of death.

And one can get an idea by the circumstances of the person’s departure if he has attained moksha. And when someone leaves, we can pray for them. I mean, they will be existing as ātmā, they will be existing and we can pray for them, we can pray to God to help them in their progressive spiritual journeys. Yes?

Devotee: The question is do you think that to God, whatever name people choose to call the Lord, do you think God sees us as children, as two different classes, one group of people who are His devotees and the other people, or does He see us as just His children?

Giriraj Swami: He is asking does God see us in two categories? Well, we are all His children, so does He see us as some as devotees and some as not devotees, or does He just see us all as His children? Well, He sees us all as His children, but He is also not stupid and He can distinguish between an obedient child and a disobedient child. It’s not that He has some ego that He wants people to obey him, but it’s in their interest if they obey Him.

Devotee: So, you are saying regardless of whether we are obedient or not, we would not be disregarded? Because in our daily lives, we meet with different kind of people, with different beliefs and different personalities. Some of them are very strong as to who are disobedient or the disregard. So, how can I better prove or how can I better convince them that no, that is not the case, whether we are obedient or not, we are still the children of God and it is up to us that we do good things or bad things here, but in the end of the day, we are still His children.

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, we are His children. But some children live at home with the father, and some who are criminal live in the jail. They are still His children, but they don’t all reach the same destination. Yes?

Devotee: Thank you for this enlightening talk. I’m curious, what determines the length of our material life? Some people live longer, some people not as much.

Giriraj Swami: Well, the duration of our life in one sense you could say is determined by our karma, and some people are destined to live longer and some people less. There is another perspective or a variation, which is that we are allotted a certain amount of breaths. So, there are yogis who slow down the breathing process, and they can live for hundreds of years by slowing down the breathing process. But our perspective is that whatever time we have, let us use it in the best possible way, to serve God. And we take normal medical precautions but ultimately, it’s sort of in the hands of God how long we stay in the body or when we leave the body. Yes?

Devotee: Hi. I was just wondering when you sit with someone, like you were showing in the book, who is on their way.

Giriraj Swami: Yeah.

Devotee: I might get the opportunity to do that for my grandfather and I was just wondering, what does that look like? What’s the kindest thing you can do for someone as they pass? Especially someone who believes in nothing, what’s something that I can do for him? Or [Unintelligible 00:47:20] that’s understandable, relatable, or to help calm him as he passes? That’s a weird question, I apologize.

Giriraj Swami: Well, it’s a very good question. I mean, you can do things that will help him spiritually even if he is not aware of it, like giving him sacred water. I mean, there are many, many things you can do, devotees here can help you, and chanting is good. It depends on how externally conscious he is, but just your presence as something like a devotee will be very beneficial for him. And he is just thinking kindly of you, you are holding his hand and praying for him, I think those things will definitely help him.

Devotee: I continue to draw his remembrance back to the people he has loved the most, I mean, I’m not really familiar with the list of things that I can do.

Giriraj Swami: I mean, helping him remember the people he loved, it’s okay, but where are they? If he leaves his body thinking of them, then where will he go? So, I think we could aim a little higher. Yes?

Devotee: Me? Yeah, I just have a comment. Thank you, Maharaja, for that very profound and nice talk. So, I’ve read a little bit of your book and I wanted to say that as you named it, Life’s Final Exam, because it’s the exam for the person who’s undergoing it, but I feel that through your book and your talking about so many people who have been helped, it’s also an examination of the process, that the process works to help people at the time of death. It really demonstrates that this is really beneficial.

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, that’s true, it’s a new twist to the meaning, and it’s very apt. Thank you. Yes, sir?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 00:50:44].

Giriraj Swami: You are saying what if you think of something inanimate at the time of death? Is that what you are saying?

Devotee: Yes.

Giriraj Swami: Well, I mean, one pretty common example of that is someone who lives in a mansion or a palace or a castle, is very attached to it, at the time of death, he thinks of it. So, you can’t take birth as a castle, that’s not a life form, but what often happens in those cases is the person will take birth as a ghost in that castle. That’s why there are so many haunted castles, because the residents were so attached that they thought of the castle at the time of death, so they took birth as a ghost in the castle.

Any other questions or comments? I think our time has come. This is it.

Devotee: Please, everyone, big round of applause to Maharaja and Maharaja’s class. Thank you, Maharaja. As Maharaja said, God and His name are not different, so we will be experiencing chanting the holy name, the sixteen-word mantra, twenty-seven times. So, this mantra.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare

Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

When we call out Hare, it is the divine feminine and compassionate form of love, Krishna means all attractive, and Rama instead is a word of pleasure, so it’s the maximum form of Lord. So, when we are chanting the sixteen-word mantra together, it’s like a cry to the Lord for purifying our hearts and filling it with love and devotion.

So, what we generally do for meditation is we sit straight, and then you can close your eyes, try to clear out all your thoughts for now, so when we’ll be chanting this, this is one of the essences of bhakti-yoga, try to hear the words. I’ll be doing the counting, twenty-seven times, there’ll be a rhythm, you can just follow me, and at the end, I’ll be changing the rhythm. So, the louder, the sound vibrations will be better.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare