Reincarnation, Karma, Enlightenment and Punya

Reincarnation, Karma, Enlightenment and Punya

[00:45] Q – Is reincarnation due to karma?

Is reincarnation necessary due to unresolved karma, or is it unfulfilled desires that makes reincarnation necessary?

[00:54] A – Karma, Desire, and the Fulfillment Field

See, the thing is unfulfilled desires and karma are the same thing. Karma means that which binds you, something that binds you. And what are we bound by? We are bound by those ideas that we have that, “If only I experienced this, my life would have been fulfillment.”

And maybe this might not be one thing, it might be fifteen things. “If only I had did this, if only I did that, if only I did that, if only I did that.” I noticed in the bedroom where I am staying right now, there is a book about the most commonly regretted things of dying people. What it is that dying people regret the most? And the top five, or whatever it might be. I have not opened the book because I know what they are already, but the thing is that what we have to realize is that fulfillment is not something that is going to come on the yonder side of fulfilling a desire.

Why? Let us think about it for a moment. You were a little child and you wanted to have a toy or a doll or a little car or something. You got that. And you were thinking before you got it, “If only I had that, if only I had that, if only I had that, my whole life would be fulfilled.” You got it finally, or maybe you did not, but you probably did get a few of these things. And what happened was, within a few weeks, you forgot about it, and you did not want that anymore, and you wanted the next thing.

And then, you wanted a bicycle. And bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, and the bicycle came, and then a year later, two years later, it is leaning against the thing, and the tires are flat and it has spider webs all over it. Why? Because now you want a motorized scooter. And then you got the scooter, and then that was not it, either. And then, “I want a girlfriend” or “a boyfriend,” and you got the girlfriend or you got the boyfriend, and now they are discarded. And then, “If only I had this, if only I had that, if only I had that.”

And so there is a pattern here, and the pattern is that it is fine to fulfill desires, but we need to understand that fulfilling a desire is not bringing capital F Fulfillment to my Beingness, because capital F Fulfillment to my Beingness is only available in one place, and that is in that deep inner bliss field that is inside you. If you experience that, you have a great realization. And this comes from Vedic Meditation.

That is the place you go to when you practice Vedic Meditation. You go to the fulfillment field, and then you identify with that fulfillment field. It is an inner state of supreme inner contentedness. You identify with that. After a few years of practice of Vedic Meditation every morning, evening, morning, evening, regularly, what happens is that inner fulfillment field awakens inside you, and it becomes a permanent feature of your deep inner sense of Self.

[04:24] Vedic Meditation and The Fulfillment Field

Who am I, and what am I? “I am this body. I am the history of the body. I am the history of the mind. I am the history of all that stuff.” But more than that, what is it that really defines me? What describes me is this deep inner place that I go to when I meditate. It is a supreme inner fulfillment.

Now, when I have become that, I do not have to acquire that, so long as I am convinced of the idea that, “If only I had really got a Ferrari and had a great partner in the Ferrari and we had a baby sitting on the lap of the great partner in the Ferrari. And if I had a job where I earned, you know, a million dollars a week, and if I, you know, had only spent more time with my family and all the children, then I would have got fulfilled.”

No, you would not have. You would have simply fulfilled a desire, you would not have gained that Oneness with the fulfillment field. When you gain Oneness with the fulfillment field, unfulfilled desires no longer possess you. There is a very interesting concept in one of the Vedic texts called the Bhagavad Gita. It is a famous text that is read outside the Vedic culture, one of the few that people in the West have heard of, Bhagavad Gita.

It is a discourse between a great master, Krishna, and his student, who is also his cousin, Arjuna. And Arjuna says to Krishna in one part of this text, “How can you describe an enlightened person?” And Krishna gives many descriptions, but one of the descriptions he gives that is relevant to this conversation is, “Though beyond desires, he finds himself yet desiring.”

[06:31] Beyond Desires Yet Still Desiring

This is really interesting. Beyond desires, meaning, I am the Fulfillment Field, and yet desires come up. It is not that when you are established in Oneness with the Fulfillment Field, it is not that you will not have desires, because there are things you need to do. You need to do this. You need to do that.

The Fulfillment needs to go on an excursion. It wants to go on an excursion. It is seeking, “Where is the need?” And so this is a reversal. I am not a big field of neediness, looking for fulfillment. No, I am the Fulfillment Field itself, and I am seeking out, “Where is the need? Where is the need for what I am? Where is the need for my creative intelligence? Where is the need for my energy? Where is the need for my Beingness?”

I am the answer to the question marks. “Where is the need?” And so I am Fulfillment seeking need, rather than I am neediness seeking fulfillment. If I continue being the neediness looking for fulfillment outside me, then the body is going to die. All these bodies die. I hope you know this. The death rate so far of humanity is 100 percent.

Some people might have longevity, like I have heard that Elon Musk wants to live to be 130. And I think, “130 only? And then die.” Well, okay, 130 and then die. If it was true that Methuselah lived to be 800 years old, from the Bible, well, he was 800 years old and then he died. Human life is a death sentence. It does not matter if you live to be 100 or 800, whatever, and then you are going to die.

If, when you die, you are still the neediness looking for fulfillment, what is going to happen? Your consciousness is still the neediness consciousness and is going to seek fulfillment the only way it knows how to get it, and that is to have a body that you put into action. And so that is karma. 

[08:57] Karma, Bondage, and the Roasted Seed 

Karma means bondage. You are bound by this false idea that fulfilling desires, whatever the latest desire is you have, that if you fulfill that, you are going to be okay. You are not, unless you are the Fulfillment, capital T, capital F, the Fulfillment. Unless you are the Fulfillment, you are coming back, because this body is going to die and you are going to need another one to keep on with this project, this futile project of trying to get fulfillment from where it is not. It is not in the relative world.

Fulfillment is your own inner nature. It is your own deepest Self. Experience it here and then the need to return into another body to fulfill desires is not there. And so the seed, to use the Vedic analogy, like a sesame seed, which could germinate, it has been roasted by the experience of knowledge, the fire of knowledge, knowledge of Fulfillment, has roasted the seed. It cannot germinate anymore. And so there is no more incarnations. There are just little carnations. You can have carnations without reincarnation.

All right, what next?

[10:49] Q – Can our actions create karma for others? 

I have heard you say, I do not remember when, that when there is an, whether it is conscious or unconscious, intent of trying to break the laws of Nature, you can create karma for yourself and others, and I was wondering how it is our actions can create also bondage for other people? 

[11:14] A – Inaccurate Expectations and Reincarnation Parties

So, see the thing is only to the extent that they are available for that. Nobody is going to create any karma for me. It does not matter what they do. There is no, it is not possible for anyone to create karma for me.

And so if somebody is relying upon you for their fulfillment, that is their mistake of their consciousness, and then you give them the impression that, in fact, you give them the inaccurate expectation that you are going to be their fulfillment, which is you giving them that impression. They have to be gullible enough to accept that. Then I will use the kinder word, suggestible, not gullible, suggestible is a nicer way of saying it, enough to buy into that idea, and you have to buy into the idea that you are also going to be the means of their fulfillment, and that you are going to get fulfilled, and you are going to bring all these people along with you into a fulfillment. All of this is inaccurate expectations, and so it is like a reincarnation party.

Everyone has inaccurate expectations, and all these bodies are going to die, and they are going to die without fulfillment. So everybody has bought into a mission that is a completely false mission. So fulfillment does not happen that way.

Fulfillment is not really a happening at all. It is a Beingness. It is a state of Being. Fulfillment is the secret to not having to keep on coming back again and again and again. And let me remind you, it is things like diapers, things like high school, things like, you know what I mean.

All of that, returning and returning and returning and again and again and again, having to experience these things all just so that you can, once again, end up with a body that is at that stage where it is due to die, and once again, the Fulfillment, capital T, capital F, the Fulfillment, has not been discovered as the realization of what you are.

As long as fulfillment is outside me, if I buy into that, and anybody else buys into it, because I have given them the impression that that is also going to work for them, then the whole lot will be coming back and coming back and coming back until that illusion is lost.

And the way to lose an illusion is to see the reality. You close your eyes and meditate, and a sufficient number of meditations, you realize, “I am That,” capital T, “I am That Fulfillment. I am That state.” And it is not that I do not have things to do. The things that the Fulfillment has to do will appear as desires, but there is no illusion that a desire is going to fulfill me, because I am the Fulfillment. I cannot get fulfilled by fulfilling a desire.

[14:54] Q – Can we engineer our enlightenment status for an ideal reincarnation?

Jai Guru Deva, Guruji. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is on record as saying that an ideal life can be had only by attaining 99 percent Cosmic Consciousness in the current life, then returning to enjoy Glorified Cosmic Consciousness, that is God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness, in our next life. Is this type of arrangement possible?

And could this explain why Guru Deva attained Unity Consciousness at such a young age? Could this also be the mechanism by which the Dalai Lama is able to return for multiple incarnations?

[15:43] A – The Relative States of Consciousness

I know Dalai Lama and he told me that he is not planning to return. There are not going to be any more incarnations of Dalai Lama. And he should know, he is Dalai Lama.

See, the thing is, what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, my master, is referring to is there are three stages of enlightenment: Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, which is Glorified Cosmic Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness. So let us give a quick review on what these are, just so listeners who are all new to this understand it.

Seven states of consciousness altogether. Sleep state. You all know about sleep state, you woke up sometime in the last few hours, and then dream state, that thing that happens during sleep, and sometimes it happens in the waking state too, because people say to you, “You think that is going to be happening? You are dreaming.” So dreaming consciousness is either something that happens when we are sleeping or it happens if we are completely deluded about something in the waking states. Then there is waking consciousness.

We are very familiar with these three, waking, sleeping, dreaming, waking, sleeping, dreaming. And when we are awake, the extent to which the wakefulness makes us tired affects the way that we sleep. And when we sleep, the extent to which we rest in sleepfulness and sleepiness gives us how much wakefulness we are going to have. And dream allows release of stress while sleeping. That is also affected by the waking state. It is affected by the sleep state. We cannot dream without sleeping, and waking affects how much we sleep, and sleep affects how awake we are.

So we call these states relative because they are related to each other. They are relative because they are ever changing, but they are related to each other.

[17:45] Cosmic Consciousness: All-inclusive Awareness 

Then there is a fourth state, Turiya. In Sanskrit we say Turiya, T-U-R-I-Y-A, Turiya, the fourth state. It is the transcendental state that underlies all of the other three. So in the waking state, you can kind of pull the waking state apart and practice Vedic Meditation, and you can drop into an underlying condition of Pure Consciousness, consciousness standing alone, without thoughts, without activity. That is the fourth state.

When you learn Vedic Meditation, and you learn how to drop into the fourth state, and you experience that with sufficient frequency, it purifies the nervous system, purifies the physiology, but it awakens that transcendental state, and it causes the transcendental state no longer to be transcendental. Transcendental means it is beyond. 

When you have awakened it sufficiently, it will persist during the waking state. It will persist and be experienced by you during the sleep state. It will persist and be experienced by you during dreaming state. So when we have the fourth state combining itself with waking, dreaming, and sleeping, that fourth state is a state of complete fulfillment. It is a state of knowingness about my deep inner reality, “The I inside here is only describable by this baseline reality, this thing that never changes and everything else changes, but this thing does not change, and this is the real me.”

When that is the experience and that is going on all the time, we call that all-inclusive awareness. All-inclusive is easier to say in one word, Cosmic. The real meaning of the word is all-inclusive. So Cosmic Consciousness, all-inclusive awareness, is, “I am aware of the backdrop of Being, pure Being, while in the foreground, the body is going through waking, dreaming, and sleeping states.” This is the first stage of enlightenment.

Now, if we have lived long enough, and the body is old and decrepit by the time we get to Cosmic Consciousness, and we wish to have more time in the next states of consciousness, we might suspend our full enlightenment at 99, to use Maharishi‘s analogy, 99 percent, and let the body drop, let the body die at a time that is suitable, whatever age it might be. Some suitable time, because the body is cascading into the death cascade anyway. That is what human bodies do.

From the moment the sperm meets the egg and the zygote is formed, that is pre-embryotic, and then the embryo, the fetus, the neonate, the newborn baby, from the time the sperm meets the egg, the death cascade has started. And it is not just the living cascade, it is how that body is going to die that is already programmed into those cells.

So you can postpone full Cosmic Consciousness and allow the body to die, so that when you get born, because if you are not in Cosmic Consciousness, you will be reborn. You will be reincarnated when you get born, then you can do that last 1 percent, have full Cosmic Consciousness, and then have God Consciousness.

[21:32] From Cosmic Consciousness to God Consciousness

Now, what is God Consciousness? God Consciousness. So here is this beautiful little flower, and inside this flower is colorless sap. The colorless sap, that is the transcendental aspect of the flower in our analogy, that colorless sap has the potential for yellow, it has the potential for green sepal, it has the potential for the shape of green stem.

But the colorless sap is not a stem, it is not a sepal, it is not a petal, it is none of these things. It is formless, and it is colorless, but it can make itself into anything in this flower, it can make itself into that.

Now, where does the colorless sap begin to change into yellow? Where does it begin to change into green? Where does it begin to change into a shape? From its shapeless, formless colorlessness, it has to begin to become something.

When the underlying transcendental field of pure Being begins to manifest, when the unmanifest begins to come into manifestation, when Being begins becoming, then something is coming out of the unmanifest first. And what is that? In the metaphysical language of Veda, we refer to it as the celestial layer. The celestial layer, what is that?

All the laws of Nature emerging out of the one indivisible whole Unified Field, emerging out of it. The first thing to emerge are the laws of Nature, and there they are personified. You will experience those laws of Nature in terms of, not just capital B Being, but beings, lowercase b, beings.

And there is a being which, for you, will be experienced as supreme amongst all those beings that is experienceable and that you would consider to be your ideal of supreme, a being that is supreme.

It starts to become visible on the level of the senses. One can taste, touch, see, smell, and hear that which is supreme, this emerging first out of the Unified Field, on the level of senses. This is the next state of consciousness.

So we have sleep, one, dream, two, waking, three, transcendental state when we learn to meditate, four, Cosmic Consciousness, permanent backdrop of the transcendental, five, fifth consciousness state, sixth consciousness state, God Consciousness, the capacity to directly perceive Supreme Intelligence personified. Supreme in the relative world, supreme.

Unity Consciousness, what would that be? The seventh state. That is the state of consciousness where that deep inner state of Being that you are and you have realized your status as that. Ever since Cosmic Consciousness, you realized your status as That.

That deep inner state of Being is able to experience through the senses the transcendental state of Being in every object, in every form, and every phenomenon. Being no longer is merely my own inner status, which it has been ever since CC, Cosmic Consciousness. It is now also the perceptible status of everything that falls within my range of perception. The self is experiencing the Self everywhere. Unity, Unity has occurred.

So Cosmic Consciousness, once that is attained, full 100 percent Cosmic Consciousness, no more reincarnation. There is no more reincarnation. If the body and the mind, mind inside the body, has reached Cosmic Consciousness, then if the body dies, supposing by some mistake I walk out this eleventh floor of this building and slip and go hurtling down to the footpath, but I am in Cosmic Consciousness, right when I splat, for a second or two before the body dies, there is going to be God Consciousness, Unity Consciousness, and then that is the end.

Anyone who gets 100 percent CC dies in Unity Consciousness. The body dies. They do not die. Their consciousness is everywhere. It cannot die. It is the Unified Field itself. A body dies. But 99 percent Cosmic Consciousness splat, and then next thing you know, a very enlightened baby, 99 percent Cosmic Consciousness baby, who then, what does that baby need in order to get to full 100 percent Cosmic Consciousness? There is only 1 percent left, and then to get to God Consciousness and Unity.

Now this explains why sometimes we come across, historically, there are characters that we have come across who got born and shortly after birth, already enlightened. Shortly after birth, fully enlightened within a very short space of time, straight after, “Wah, wah, wah,” and then enlightenment, and then God Consciousness, and then Unity Consciousness.

[27:54] Anandamayi Ma and Born Enlightenment

There are several instances of these. In most cultures that have a spiritual tradition, we will find instances, historic instances, of these. One I can think of whom I met was Anandamayi Ma. Anandamayi Ma was a great Indian woman saint who lived from the late nineteenth century up until about 1985 or 1986, something like that. She was a friend of Maharishi. She had no guru, she had no teacher. She was born and she was in a full enlightened state of consciousness before she was out of her single digits of body life, and she lived her whole life as one of the greatest saints of India.

Anandamayi Ma, if you want to look her up. One of the most astonishingly beautiful faces to look at imaginable. Her period of time of life was there at the advent of photography, when photography was first invented and became popular in India, and one of the consequences of that was she was one of the most photographed people ever in the history of India. There are literally thousands of photographs of her.

So Ananda, A-N-A-N-D-A, Ananda. mayi ma, M-A-Y-I M-A. Anandamayi Ma. And I knew her. She was someone I became, I had contact with her, and she was a close friend of my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. She was a great example.

Maharishi was not like that. He was not born enlightened. He had to gain his enlightenment by meeting his master and beginning his spiritual program, which he did not begin until he was well into his mid 30s. That is when he began his process of gaining enlightenment. The greatest teacher on Earth, in my opinion, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

In a certain way, far more relevant as a teacher than even Anandamayi Ma, though I have complete respect for her. Why? Because he lived a life without enlightenment, and so he knew what his students were experiencing, those who were going to be his students. He knew what it was like not to have Cosmic Consciousness. Anandamayi Ma, she had no idea what it was like to have not Cosmic Consciousness. Because maybe she got up to 99 percent and then splat, and then got born, and got the next 1 percent and then got God Consciousness, and then got Unity Consciousness, like that.

[30:56] Nobody Gets Born Enlightened

So this whole thing of Maharishi‘s quotation, I sense from having known him absolutely intimately for more than a quarter of a century, he was being very playful when he gave that comment that he is on the record of having said.

There are other ways. You do not have to go all the way to 99 percent and then splat, and then finish the 1 percent and then get the GC and UC thing. You can do what he did, which is Cosmic Consciousness, and then God Consciousness, and then Unity, and then live life in Unity Consciousness for decades.

Getting born almost enlightened, nobody gets born enlightened. Nobody gets born enlightened, because once fully enlightened, once fully in Cosmic Consciousness, one cannot go anywhere, because already you are everywhere. The individuality has, stage by stage, unified with its cosmic counterpart. Individual mind has unified with Cosmic Mind. Individual intellect has unified with Cosmic Intellect. Individual fine level of feeling, emotion, has merged with Universal Emotion. Individual ego has merged with Universal Ego.

So there is a body that has not merged yet, but inside that body is nothing but cosmic mergers. That is all. It is all cosmic inside there. When that body drops, there is no soul inside that body that can leave the body and go someplace, because inside that body is the everything-everywhere-ness, the everything-everywhere-ness is living in the body. That is all that is in that body. There is no individual soul in there.

There is Universe sitting inside of a body, looking out through the eyes of that body, hearing through those ears, tasting through that tongue, and all of that enchiladas or whatever. So the cosmos is all that is in there. When the body drops, there is nothing that can go anywhere. The everything-everywhere-ness is all that has been in there for however many years since full blown Cosmic Consciousness.

So if we were arriving at Cosmic Consciousness very late in body life, Maharishi, in his slightly jocular way, was saying you could put an end, you could slow down the process of complete enlightenment, and just allow the body to die in a natural way, and then pick up the program again in the next life, and get to 100 percent CC, and then get God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness, and live all of that for years. You could have years of it, because it requires a body.

[34:26] Heaven on Earth Requires a Body 

Now this is a really interesting thing. It takes a body to have heaven on Earth. You know, heaven on Earth, the Vedic tradition is the only tradition on Earth, not Buddhism, not Christianity, not Judaism, not any of these theologies or anything. All of those talk about how bodies are somehow an obstacle to heaven. Once the body is over with, then you get to the real place or whatever, get the nuisance of the body out of the way.

The Vedic worldview is the only singular worldview in which heaven is body dependent. If you want to live heaven, you live it on Earth. You live it in a body. And so if you can get your body to last a long time, get enlightened and have a body that lasts a long time, then there is a long time of living heaven on Earth. Heaven on Earth means cosmic living inside of a human body. That is the on Earth part.

So heaven is not a thing in the Vedic worldview. Heaven does not exist independently of this relative world. Heaven is seeking embodiment. Heaven wants to live inside of individuality and experience itself, experience all of creation and experience all of relativity inside of a body. And so that is the ideal, heaven on Earth, not just heaven by itself. Heaven by itself, boring. Heaven on Earth, fantastic.

[36:09] Q – What is the role of punya in reincarnation? 

What would be the role of punya, or spiritual merit, in these reincarnations to attain enlightenment?

[36:19] A – Spiritual Merit and Cosmic Deserving Power 

There is a word in Sanskrit, P-U-N-Y-A, punya, punya, and very often it is translated as “spiritual merit.” That is to say, your kind of cosmic credit rating, your FICO score, your cosmic credit rating. What is your cosmic deserving power? 

And actually, punya needs to be properly understood, and what it really means, what its real value is, the percentage to which you are grounded in realization of yourself as Universe. So we start off our spiritual progress, “I am a human looking for experiences of Universality.” And so I learned to meditate, and I learned Vedic Meditation.

I sit and practice it, and somewhere along the line, I will have an experience, come out of the meditation, and I will say to my meditation teacher, “What was that? My hands felt giant. My head felt giant. My consciousness felt like it was vast. What is that?” And the teacher will say, “That is the beginning of Cosmic Consciousness.” And you think, “Oh, good, great. My individuality has experienced some Universality right now.”

There is a certain turning point that comes as you continue practicing and you keep on awakening that deep, inner, vast Unboundedness, you start to normalize it. You do not even know anymore. The contrast is gone. You do not know anymore. If the old you could dive into the body and mind of the five-year practitioner of Vedic Meditation, the old you suddenly diving into that mind would think, “Oh, my God, I am as big as the universe,” but because you have normalized it, you do not even know that you are like that anymore. You just feel that way all the time.

This is an interesting fact of consciousness development. We do not know how vast our consciousness has become. Now we can kind of tell, because we see how other people around us behave. Somebody was going to be watching their favorite TV show and they discovered it was canceled, and then you see them crying for three days, and you think, “You are crying about that?” Or they wanted to get a particular flight, and it was delayed for an hour, and you see them having a panic attack, and you think, “Well, that is a…” 

In other words, you find yourself, compared with others, you find yourself being kind of unfazed by these things. Somebody, you have a friend, and they fell in love with somebody who was a bit of a jerk, and then they said afterward, “Oh, I do not know what happened. My lover has vanished,” or whatever. And you are just thinking to yourself, “Well, that is a good thing,” but they are crying for a month about having some jerk leave their life.

[39:38] Realization and Punya: Locked Together

So what is that? You are becoming the Universe having a human experience. And let us think of this in terms of percentages, the percentage to which you are the Universe now having a human experience, instead of the opposite, “I am a human occasionally having universal experiences.”

Now the table has turned, and now I am in higher percentage the Universe, living inside of humanity, inside of a human body. If that is true to the 60 percent value, I have 60 percent punya. If it is true to the 80 percent value, I have 80 percent punya. If it is true to 99 percent value, I have 99 percent punya. If it is true to 100 percent, 100 percent punya.

My spiritual merit is exactly the percentage of the degree of my realization of my inner Self being no longer lowercase s, my inner Self is capital S. I am Unified Field here, living inside of a body. And so Unified Field, living in a body, to what extent is that your truth? And that will be how much punya you have.

This is a very easy way of quantifying spiritual merit or punya. It is not all just like you cannot just be some greedy, sniveling little guy who has lots of punya. You could be a regular, ignorant person with a great credit rating who is a total ignoramus on Earth. But in the cosmic stakes, your punya is exactly the degree, the percentage, of your realization. That is your punya.

And so punya meaning, what if you are 100 percent punya, “I am 100 percent Universe having a human experience.” What is the deserving power of Universe having a human experience? What is the deserving power of the Universe itself? Well, infinite deserving power, absolutely infinite.

So infinite deserving power. If I have 60 percent punya, I have 60 percent deserving power. If I have 99 percent punya, I have 99 percent deserving 100 percent punya, 100 percent deserving power. Realization and punya, those two states are locked together. Those two words are locked together.