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The fourth post in the series “Creating Your Happiness” by Paramhansa Yogananda

Happiness depends to some extent upon external conditions, but chiefly upon conditions of the inner mind. In order to be happy, one must have good health, an efficient mind, a prosperous life, the right work and, above all, an all-round all accomplishing wisdom. A man cannot be happy just by holding the inner calm, while completely ignoring the struggle for existence and the effort for success. Even Jesus had to eat and clothe Himself.

Then again, without internal happiness, one may find oneself a prisoner of worries in a rich castle. Happiness is not dependent upon success and wealth alone, but real happiness depends upon struggling against the failure, difficulties, and problems of life with an acquired attitude of unshakable internal happiness. To be unhappy in trying to find the hard-to-acquire happiness defeats its own end. Happiness comes by being internally happy first, at all times, while struggling your utmost to uproot the causes of unhappiness.

The habit of preserving an internal happy attitude of mind should have been started when you were very young, but never mind, it is not too late to begin now. From today on, make up your mind that when you meet your trying relatives, when you come in contact with your overbearing office boss, and when you contact your enemies and the trials of life, that you will try to retain your internal calmness and happiness under all circumstances.

If you persevere in carrying out this resolution in your daily actions, and do not forget after a few days of trial, you will find that internal serenity and happiness depend upon a right mental habit and upon resolving to be happy in spite of everything, but remember, when you learn to be happy at all times do not allow this independent mental attitude of inner happiness to make you lazy, and do not ignore the material causes which stand in the way of your happiness. Strive to remove them and go through all the activities of life with this calm happy attitude of mind.

More by Paramhansa Yogananda from the series “Creating Your Happiness”:

• Creating Your Happiness – Paramhansa Yogananda
• Happiness Is in the Mind
• Discover Your Soul as Happiness Itself

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Just because something is the truth does not mean that we can easily grasp or accept it, however sincere we may be in our truth-seeking. How many years can go by without our fully grasping that someone we dearly love has left their body–they are so living to us. Sometimes we experience intense grief at their departure and absence, and at the same time really cannot feel that they are no longer with us. After all, we are in this earth plane because we are completely irrational–especially on the subconscious and emotional levels.

When my miracle-working grandmother died, I grieved and shed tears over the loss every single day for one year, and yet only on the anniversary day of her departure did I fully come to realize that she was gone! In my heart I could not believe that I would not find her in her house if I would just go there.

So an intellectual understanding about birth and death does not help a great deal. If the facts will not take root in our minds, then we at least need a better perspective on things. So Krishna is now explaining to Arjuna how he should consider these matters even if he cannot take in the truth that birth and death are mere appearances only. He continues:

“And moreover even if you think this to be eternally born or eternally dead, even then you should not mourn for this.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:26)

Even if we consider birth and death to be real (which they are, as impressions in the mind), even then we should have no sorrow because:

“For the born, death is certain; for the dead there is certainly birth. Therefore, for this, inevitable in consequence, you should not mourn.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:27)

The wisdom of Buddha

When we hurt, we want it to stop. That is the way with human beings, and when we lose something we want it back–no matter how obviously impossible that often is. So we demand miraculous intervention by God or His saints. When that happens we are happy, and the miracle gets written up in praise of God or the miracle-worker and everybody seems satisfied. But can they be, when the truth has simply been postponed or avoided? Truth is our very nature. How long will we violate it with more illusions?

How rare are those who never conceded to human demands for more fantasies to make them “happy”! Buddha was one such, and even after these thousands of years there are still many (including some who call themselves Buddhists) who consider that his utter realism was pessimism or indifference to people’s feelings. One incident that is not popular is his dealing with this subject of death and grief.

A young woman whose infant had died came to Buddha and begged him to bring her child back to life. Buddha told her to go into a nearby town and bring him some rice from a family in which no one had ever died. She hastened into the town and spent the day going from house to house with her request. Everywhere she was told the same thing: death continually came to members of the family. In the evening she returned to Buddha and, bowing, thanked him for showing her the folly of her request. Having understood the universality of physical death, she saw that her grief and her request were based on ignorance–ignorance which was now dispelled.

In the West, the brilliant Stoic philosopher Epictetus counseled his students to study their lives and environment and determine what lay within the scope of their power to influence, produce, or eliminate. Having done this, they should put everything else out of their minds as things they should not even worry about. Birth and death are certainly major elements to cultivate indifference to.

Swami Kaivalyananda, a disciple of Yogiraj Shyama Charan Lahiri, once told Mukunda Lal Ghosh, later to be Paramhansa Yogananda, about miraculous healings done by his guru. But in conclusion he stated: “The numerous bodies which were spectacularly healed through Lahiri Mahasaya eventually had to feed the flames of cremation.” So in the end it was all the same: death had its way.

We only torment ourselves with the desire and attempt to postpone or cancel the inevitable. Years ago I heard about a hillbilly who spent the entire day in a theatre, watching the same film over and over. When asked why he did this, he answered that he did not like the way it came out and so was waiting for it to end differently. It was his incomprehension of the nature of motion pictures that gave him such a foolish hope. And so it is with us.

Earthly life

“Beings are such that their beginnings are unmanifest, their middles are manifest, and their ends are unmanifest again. What complaint [lamentation] can there be over this?” (2:28)

Like the hillbilly we either do not know the truth about this evanescent life of earthly incarnation or we refuse to face it. Our appearances on this earth are but a part of our life history. For aeons beyond number we never came into material manifestation at all. Then we began doing so, like actors entering a theater and moving over the stage in a brief play and then leaving to return home until the next performance. Not only are our “appearances” but a fraction of our relative existence, they are fundamentally unreal.

As Krishna implies, life on this earth is completely unnatural for us. It is natural to be out of the body, not in it. Yet we irrationally cling to it and to our memories of it, even trying to make each life duplicate the one before it, not even wanting the drama to develop, to evolve. And we insanely identify with the ever-changing temporary states, totally forgetting the unchanging eternal state that is the only thing real about us.

Many metaphysically-mind people begin heaping up even more folly through striving to remember their past lives and attributing full reality to them. Rare are those who utilize the memory of past lives to illuminate the problems of the present life so that they all can be let go of in order to pass on to higher life beyond any births.

All our “lives” are really deaths–descent into the worlds of change and decay, dreams caused by the fever of samsara, a disease whose cure we must vigorously seek and even more vigorously apply. Only when we come to know that we have never been born and have never died will we have peace and the cessation of sorrow.

Related articles:

• Birth and Death–The Great Illusions
• The Great Benefit of Looking Toward Life’s End
• The Real Pursuit of Happiness

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It is virtually impossible to find any popular “guru” that does not live like “the jewel in the lotus”–both materially and socially. Although there is a pretense that their disciples are insistent upon it, it is really the guru that demands continual adulation and material accouterments that would have been considered extreme even for a Di Medici monarch. One guru in India has himself and his wife weighed every year and given their combined weights in gold. And the palatial living quarters of the gurus are like overdone satires of the houses of the most vulgar nouveau riche.

At the bottom of this outrageous aggrandizement on the psychological and material levels is a profound sense of insecurity and discontentment–and often self-loathing–on the part of the super-guru. I have had experience of this firsthand when visiting their ashrams and conversing with them. The pathology is very evident. Let me give a single example.

A personal experience

Once I was the guest of a super-guru after having spent several days at a yoga retreat sponsored by his organization. I had spoken to the retreatants several times during those days, and was being rewarded by being invited into the August Presence. (I had already been asked to sign a legal document stating that I would not be asking the institution for money in the future as payment for my speaking. I had refused to sign–and never asked them for money.)

As we sat at the table, being served by anxious, hushed, and devoted “gopis,” Super-G began to tell me about the well-known rock groups that had asked him to come speak during their concerts both inside and outside the United States. Since I disliked all popular music (especially rock music), and being aware of the negative character of the groups he was naming, I was listening with a mixture of amazement and disgust. And then I got the idea: he was trying to make me jealous! Did he really think that, having lived with great masters in India and having received the grace of so many other great saints, I would be impressed by a listing of these aberrant drug-addicted pandemonium peddlers?

More was to come. Since I did not swoon at the listing of the rock groupies, he passed on to speaking tours. He had been invited to speak in the Soviet Union! And also in a host of other gruesome places where there could not possibly be genuine spiritual interest. This list was peppered with the names of celebrities who would either be sponsoring or accompanying him.

That left me unaffected, so he moved on to the subject of living accommodations. First I got a recounting of what centers of his organization were engaged in providing luxurious apartments and houses for him, even stocking a complete set of his tailor-made silk clothes so he would never need to travel around the country with luggage. I dislike travel and being away from our ashram, so that moved me not.

Finally he resorted to real estate. First of all, a road for his exclusive use was being made into a local forest where some disciples had managed to purchase a large tract of land so he could be totally isolated. (No matter how “loving” and “giving” the super gurus are, they like to have inaccessible retreats away from their disciples, some of them–usually the Americans–even doing some kind of “early retirement” so they will not have to have contact with their adoring devotees. Some of them claim to need solitude so they can “write,” though little or nothing is ever published. However one super-guru emerged every week from his state of retreat to travel some hours to a major vacation-playground to take saxophone lessons from a well-known jazz musician.)

After the road was put in, a renowned architect was going to come and study the land and design a house specifically to fit in with the landscape and (of course) the ecology of the forest. Then the house would be built by “the devotees”–or at least by their money.

He had come to the end of the line. I was not impressed. I was appalled. He was miffed. I was glad to get out of there to never return.

The contrast of the truly holy

Fortunately I had many memories of simple, even barren, rooms in which I had sat with great saints in India, rooms where they stayed in joyful contentment, living the simplest of lives. Before going to India I had seen the two tiny rooms in which Paramhansa Yogananda, head of a world-wide spiritual organization, had lived for over a quarter of a century, as well as the simple little kitchen where he had so often cooked for his beloved students.

“Contented in the Self by the Self, then he is said to be one whose wisdom is steady. (Bhagavad Gita 2:55)” I had seen Krishna’s words verified in the lives of the true yogis.

Related Posts:

• Avoiding the Folly of Modern Pseudo Advaita Teachers

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The following verses from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad alone in all the upanishads describe to some degree the process of reincarnation.

Dreaming and waking

“Yajnavalkya said: ‘The Self, having in dreams enjoyed the pleasures of sense, gone hither and thither, experienced good and evil, hastens back to the state of waking from which he started.’

“‘As a man passes from dream to wakefulness, so does he pass at death from this life to the next. When a man is about to die, the subtle body, mounted by the intelligent Self, groans–as a heavily laden cart groans under its burden.’

“‘When his body becomes thin through old age or disease, the dying man separates himself from his limbs, even as a mango or a fig or a banyan fruit separates itself from its stalk, and by the same way that he came he hastens to his new abode, and there assumes another body, in which to begin a new life.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:3:33-36)

Passing from life to life is only a shifting in a dream. When the stored-up life force (a form of karma) for a life is running out, just as the charge in a battery is expended and fails, so do the physical and grosser pranic bodies. And, just as the ripe fruit falls from the tree, so the subtle body separates itself from the material body and begins its process toward another earthly birth in a new body. In between births, the individual spends time in the astral regions, sometimes just wandering and frittering his time away, and sometimes in learning and evolving so his next life will be markedly better–and wiser–than the previous one. This time spent in this intermediate state can be anything from a matter of hours to centuries and even thousands of years. This is precisely determined by karma.

(By the way, it is nonsense to say that unevolved people reincarnate quickly and evolved people only come back in thousands of years. Both ends of the spectrum are similar: very unevolved beings reincarnate very fast, and so do those that are highly evolved, for they are getting ready to graduate and are “cramming” for the final test.)

Leaving the body

“‘When his body grows weak and he becomes apparently unconscious, the dying man gathers his senses about him and completely withdrawing their powers descends into his heart. No more does he see form or color without.

“‘He neither sees, nor smells, nor tastes. He does not speak, he does not hear. He does not think, he does not know. For all the organs, detaching themselves from his physical body, unite with his subtle body. Then the point of his heart, where the nerves join, is lighted by the light of the Self, and by that light he departs either through the eye, or through the gate of the skull, or through some other aperture of the body. When he thus departs, life departs; and when life departs, all the functions of the vital principle depart. The Self remains conscious, and, conscious, the dying man goes to his abode. The deeds of this life, and the impressions they leave behind, follow him.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:1,2)

• He becomes apparently unconscious.

This is important. The person may cease to perceive anything, but that is not being unconscious. We are never unconscious at any time, but we mistakenly call total absence of sensory perception unconsciousness. There is a vital point I want to mention here. The very last sense to fail is the sense of hearing. Sometimes it never fails. A lot of people give up and die because they hear the doctor say there is no hope or that they will soon be dead. So if you are around a dying, “unconscious” person please remember this. You can speak to them and help them either revive or go to higher worlds. That is why both Hindus and Buddhists read scriptures to the dying or recite mantras or sing mantras. In Pure Land Buddhism people sit by the dying and sing the mantra of Amida Buddha, continuing to do so for several hours after the person appears to be dead, knowing that sometimes they may have trouble getting out of the body or may be disoriented when they do.

YoganandaYogananda spoke of this to his students, one of whom was the famous opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci. So when her brother was dying she talked to him and called him back to life. When he became “conscious” he told her that he had heard doctor saying he would soon be dead, so he accepted it and began drifting away. Then he heard her voice calling to him from far off, and telling him to return. So he did! At one point he even saw Yogananda, about whom he knew virtually nothing but he recognized Yogananda when his sister showed a picture to him.

It is sometimes possible to revive a person by intoning Om in their right ear. Yogananda also recommended this.

• Then the point of his heart, where the nerves join, is lighted by the light of the Self, and by that light he departs either through the eye, or through the gate of the skull, or through some other aperture of the body.

This is the Light that so many people tell about seeing who have returned from near-death. There are many gates by which a person may leave the body, and they are all determined by the level of consciousness (bhava) in which he has habitually lived during his lifetime. (This is one of the major teachings of the Bhagavad Gita.) To leave through a center in the head is the best, and will determine what highly evolved world he will enter. Those who leave through the center at the top of the head, the Brahmarandhra, will not return to rebirth. Those who leave at lower centers in the body or spine will go to lesser worlds, and some of the lowest centers are literally gates to negative worlds we call “hells.” Some even lead to rebirth in animal forms, though this is rare.

• The Self remains conscious, and, conscious, the dying man goes to his abode. The deeds of this life, and the impressions they leave behind, follow him.

Some of low evolution simply go to sleep and only wake a little before reincarnating, and some do not even awaken until they are born. But the people to which this upanishad is addressed will certainly depart in full consciousness and will review their life and be aware of the psychic changes their previous actions have produced. And they will be aware of exactly why and how they eventually find themselves in an astral or causal realm that corresponds to those karmas and samskaras. It is all a matter of learning.

Astral birth

“‘As a leech, having reached the end of a blade of grass, takes hold of another blade and draws itself to it, so the Self, having left this body behind it unconscious, takes hold of another body and draws himself to it.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:3)

Birth in the astral world is a conscious act. Only on earth or in the negative astral worlds do we mistakenly think that we are helpless and that we are not in charge. That is why the simile of a leech is used, and why the Sanskrit text literally says that we make another body for ourselves. And that happens in earthly rebirth, too. We choose where to whom we will be born, and we enter the womb of our chosen mother and, taking the material provided by both parents, make our next body-habitation in accordance with our karma and samskara–this is how powerful and intelligent we all are! Yogananda said in his Gita commentary that the individual consciously guides the growth of his body in the womb. (That was the first sentence of Yogananda’s teaching that I read, sitting in a public library in the fall of 1960.)

“‘As a goldsmith, taking an old gold ornament, molds it into another, newer and more beautiful, so the Self, having given up the body and left it unconscious, takes on a newer and better form, either that of the fathers, or that of the celestial singers, or that of the gods, or that of other beings, heavenly or earthly.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:4)

In the higher worlds, the individual creates a body that is appropriate to the world in which he shall be living until he takes rebirth–also voluntarily. This experience will train him for even more efficiently making his body when he returns to earth.

Sometimes in the subtle worlds an individual takes on a body that is higher than his present evolutionary status and practices living on that level. This prepares him for a higher level on earth, as well. This is mentioned as taking place even for animals in the forty-third chapter of Yogananda’s autobiography, “The Resurrection of Sri Yutkeswar.”

Misidentification

“‘The Self is verily Brahman. Through ignorance it identifies itself with what is alien to it, and appears to consist of intellect, understanding, life, sight, hearing, earth, water, air, ether, fire, desire and the absence of desire, anger and the absence of anger, righteousness and the absence of righteousness. It appears to be all things–now one, now another.

“‘As a man acts, so does he become. A man of good deeds becomes good, a man of evil deeds becomes evil. A man becomes pure through pure deeds, impure through impure deeds.

“‘As a man’s desire is, so is his destiny. For as his desire is, so is his will; as his will is, so is his deed; and as his deed is, so is his reward, whether good or bad.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:5)

Lest in all this we forget that it is really the dream-life of the individual spirit, Yajnavalkya reminds Janaka of this. For in all these changes, the Self is unchanging, in all these births and deaths the Self remains birthless and deathless. The fact that we so easily forget this truth is evidence of how good we are at fooling ourselves! We are always masters of the situation.

Desire

“‘A man acts according to the desires to which he clings. After death he goes to the next world bearing in his mind the subtle impressions of his deeds; and after reaping there the harvest of his deeds, he returns again to this world of action. Thus he who has desires continues subject to rebirth.

“‘But he in whom desire is stilled suffers no rebirth. After death, having attained to the highest, desiring only the Self, he goes to no other world. Realizing Brahman, he becomes Brahman.’”
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:6)

It is ignorance that causes our mistaken identification, but the power behind rebirth is desire. Once we cut off desire, rebirth is finished. Desireless, we transcend all worlds and know ourselves as Eternal Brahman.

“‘When all the desires which once entered into his heart have been driven out by divine knowledge, the mortal, attaining to Brahman, becomes immortal.

““As the slough of a snake lies cast off on an anthill, so lies the body of a man at death; while he, freed from the body, becomes one with the immortal spirit, Brahman, the Light Eternal.’
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:7)

All glory to those that have freed themselves by knowing their Self!

Related Posts:

• Reincarnation: Choosing Our Costumes in the Drama of Life
• The Authentic Christian View on Reincarnation
• Proofs of Reincarnation

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“Let your mother be a god to you; let your father be a god to you; let your teacher be a god to you; let your guest also be a god to you. Do only such actions as are blameless. Always show reverence to the great.” (Taittiriya Upanishad 1:11:2)

First, the word translated “god” is deva. Here is the definition given in A Brief Sanskrit Glossary: “Deva: ‘A shining one,’ a god–greater or lesser in the evolutionary hierarchy; a semi-divine or celestial being with great powers, and therefore a ‘god.’ Sometimes called a demi-god. Devas are the demigods presiding over various powers of material and psychic nature.” As you see, deva in no ways means God–Ishwara, Bhagavan, or Brahman. It is indefensible to cite this verse in an attempt to coerce innocent people into worshipping some guru as God.

The meaning is as clear as it is simple. We should revere our mother, father, teacher (acharya), and even our guests as citizens of higher worlds. We need not be blind to their defects, for the gods have defects, also–otherwise they would be free souls and not gods at all. We should do our best to accommodate these earthly gods and to care for them with all love and solicitude. Here, too, exaggeration is not intended. If our parents tell us to commit wrong or damage or neglect our spiritual life we should ignore it, but as much as is sensible we should defer to them in a reasonable manner. This is dharma.

There are many who “do good” grudgingly as though taking bitter medicine, or with a kind of weary “after all it’s my duty” attitude. Many treat the objects of their “care” or charity in a rude and contemptuous manner or adopt the attitude of an exasperated adult toward a worrisome or recalcitrant child. This is not dharma. So the upanishad continues:

“Whatever you give to others, give with love and respect. Gifts must be given in abundance, with joy, humility, and compassion.” (Taittiriya Upanishad 1:11:3)

This is a high ideal, but I have seen it done in both America and India by Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. All it requires is a pure heart free from ego and selfishness. One time In Varanasi I saw two people feeding hundreds of poor people. At the end of the meal, each person was given money and clothing. As they left, they walked by the benefactors who saluted each one with folded hands, saying “Thank you” to each of them. They understood: by letting them give in charity, those poor people were enabling them to create good karma for the future.

Victor Zammit
One of the most impressive collections of information about the afterlife we have come across on the web is on the website of Victor Zammit. He has written a book entitled A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife. One of the online chapters is dedicated to the scientific inquiries into reincarnation. In it he gives fascinating data gleaned from the thorough investigations of leading researchers. Below is a short segment from that chapter.

“Of the research I have done over the years, the most impressive hypnotherapist I have come across in showing how past life regression is linked with reincarnation is psychologist and former skeptic Peter Ramster from Sydney, Australia.

The following information is taken from Peter Ramster’s very important book, In Search of Lives Past (1990) and from a speech he gave to the Australian Hypnotherapists ninth National Convention at the Sydney Sheraton Wentworth Hotel on the 27th March, 1994 and from the films he made on reincarnation.

In 1983 he produced a stunning television documentary in which four women from Sydney, who had never been out of Australia, gave details under hypnosis of their past lives. Then, accompanied by television cameras and independent witnesses, they were taken to the other side of the world.

One of the subjects involved was Gwen MacDonald, a staunch skeptic before her regression. She remembered a life in Somerset between 1765-82. Many facts about her life in Somerset which would be impossible to get out of a book were confirmed in front of witnesses when she was taken there:

• when taken blindfolded to the area in Somerset she knew her way around perfectly although she had never been out of Australia
• she was able to correctly point out in three directions the location of villages she had known
• she was able to direct the film crew as to the best ways to go far better than the maps
• she knew the location of a waterfall and the place where stepping stones had been. The locals confirmed that the stepping stones had been removed about 40 years before
• she pointed out an intersection where she claimed that there had been five houses. Enquiries proved that this was correct and that the houses had been torn down 30 years before and that one of the houses had been a ‘cider house’ as she claimed
• she knew correctly names of villages as they were 200 years ago even though on modern maps they do not exist or their names have been changed
• the people she claimed that she knew were found to have existed?one was listed in the records of the regiment she claimed he belonged to
• she knew in detail of local legends which were confirmed by Somerset historians
• she used correctly obscure obsolete west country words no longer in use, no longer even in dictionaries, words like ‘tallet’ meaning a loft
• she knew that the local people called Glastonbury Abbey ‘St Michaels’—a fact that was only proved by reading an obscure 200 year old history book not available in Australia
• she was able to correctly describe the way a group of Druids filed up Glastonbury Hill in a spiral for their spring ritual, a fact unknown to most university historians
• she knew that there were two pyramids in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey which have long since disappeared
• she correctly described in Sydney carvings that were found in an obscure old house 20 feet from a stream, in the middle of five houses about one and a half miles from Glastonbury Abbey
• she had been able to draw in detail in Sydney the interior of her Glastonbury house which was found to be totally correct
• she described an inn that was on the way to the house. It was found to be there
• she was able to lead the team direct to the house which is now a chicken shed. No-one knew what was on the floor until it was cleaned. However on the floor they found the stone that she had drawn in Sydney
• the locals would come in every night to quiz her on local history?she knew the answers to all the questions they were asking such as the local problem which was a big bog—cattle were being lost there.

Cynthia Henderson, another subject of Peter Ramster, remembered a life during the French Revolution. When under trance she:

• spoke in French without any trace of an accent
• understood and answered questions put to her in French
• used dialect of the time
• knew the names of streets which had changed and were only discoverable on old maps.

Peter Ramster has many other documented cases of past life regression which in very clear terms constitute technical evidence for the existence of the afterlife.

Read more of Victor Zammit’s page on researches into reincarnation.

More on Reincarnation from the Atma Jyoti Blog:

• Reincarnation: Choosing Our Costumes in the Drama of Life
• The Authentic Christian View on Reincarnation

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