New Years 2010-Another Year Has Passed

(Synopsis of a lecture given by Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj in Shyama Shyam Dham, Bhubhaneshwar, India. This lecture was given 2 or 3 years ago, but the topic is as relevant now as it was then.)



Today is the last day of this year. Tomorrow, the world will joyfully celebrate the new year. But this is wrong. Because this is actually not a joyful situation. Rather it is an occasion for remorse. Imagine you saved 100,000 rupees. If you spent 50,000 of this, you don’t celebrate. Instead you think, “Oh, now only 50,000 are left!” Eventually only 2,000 are left. Now only 1,000 are left. Similarly, this human body was given to us by God to attain our ultimate aim. How much closer have we come to that aim? How much devotion or upasana did we do? Upasana (devotion) means to go ‘pas‘, close. The meaning of upasana is to go close to God. How much closer to God have we gone?

For example, someone is feeling cold. Before him there is fire. The closer he goes to the fire, the more his feeling of cold will lessen. If we went closer to God, how much closer did we go? How much farther are we from the world? We should think about this, be we don’t. Instead we celebrate happily. Now 20 years have passed, now 50 years have passed, now 75 years have passed. Elders say with pride to their children, “Son, what do I have left? My time has already passed. Be concerned about your own situation!” What has passed? Is this human body some kind of burden that it just ‘passes on’?

If someone is in jail for ten years, after one year passes he thinks, “Now only nine years are left.” Soon there is only one year left, then only one day – so if he celebrates the passing of time, this is fine. What are you celebrating? Are you going to be liberated after you die? Have you attained release from this jail of the 8.4 million species of life? You still haven’t done this as yet, nor have you even thought about it. If you were to think about this deeply and truly realise this even one second before your death and your mind became attached to God, your aim could be accomplished. The Bhagavad Gita (8/6) says that your thoughts at the time of death, whatever they may be, determine what you will attain in your next birth.

So our aim is not to celebrate happily but to think deeply about this and do an appraisal of our own personal situation. After elections have taken place in local politics, the candidates review their campaign. “Why did I win?” “Why did this problem arise?” “What lack should be remedied?” So we should also do a review of our devotional progress at least once in a year. If possible, it would be even better to do this daily. For two or three minutes we should reflect, “Today what did I do? Did I do good? Did I do bad? How much did I attach my mind in the world? How much did I attach my mind to God?” If you were to do this, then you would commit fewer mistakes the next day. If you did this once a month, you would make fewer mistakes the next month. But even when we are dying we don’t do this. Instead we have no fear. A 90-year-old says, “I’m not going to die soon.” How long are you going to live? 100 years? Even if you did live this long, what will happen after that?

So when you do this review, you will discover that you were very careless. However, there is still a chance. But as you never think about the time of death, when will you start thinking about your devotional life? You think a lot about making your life in the world, “When will my son, daughter and grandchildren be established? Of course, then after this everyone has to become millionaires…” You think a lot about these things. Now think about doing something for your soul. You are the soul, not the body. You have to leave the body – the body will be forcibly taken from you.

Therefore, every year review your devotional progress, realise your mistakes, and make preparations for the next year, and feel that, “This year, I should attain my goal.” You don’t know if you will receive the whole year or just 6 months or even one month. You may or may not live to see the next day. Once there was an engineer from Agra who did a lot of sadhana in Mangarh. One night he went to sleep in his home in Agra and never woke up. His own family had no idea what happened. He had a heart attack while he was sleeping.

This is death. When your time comes, death is not going to give you even one extra second. No matter who it is, everyone must go. When even God realised Saints must leave this world, what could be said about the souls bound by Maya? Some go laughing, some go crying. Even God Himself comes and goes. When Lord Ram had reached 11,000 years of age, Yamaraj, the god of death, appeared to Him and said, “My Lord, I have come only to remind you that your time is up. It’s possible that due to the love of your your devotees you may have forgotten. If you wish to stay longer, that is fine.”

So tomorrow is the start of the new year. Celebrate happily when you have accomplished detaching your mind from the world and attaching it to God. It won’t become attached to God on its own. You must practice attaching it to God. You have practiced attaching your mind to the world in uncountable previous births. The one who practices attaching his mind to God feels attached to God. Ved Vyas has said very beautifully in the Bhagwatam (10/14/27) If you keep on thinking there is happiness in worldly objects, you will become attached to them. If you repeatedly think there is happiness in God, you will become attached to God. It’s just a question of thinking. The more thinking you do, the more attached you will feel. We have to increase this kind of positive devotional thinking.

(Courtest of bhaktiblss - http://bhaktibliss.com/)