Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
So, let’s begin. So, these videos in this space of time are called the Big Picture; part of a series that wrap up all the teachings that we’ve given over years, past years, leading up to this high level view of the entire work. Why is that?
Well, because we can’t talk about the Big Picture until we’re clear on the details. We can’t talk about the high-level abstractions until we understand the underlying mechanism. We can’t meaningfully talk about taking a journey until we’re familiar with the map.
So all the background that we’ve been building up for like seven years, eight years now, is just to support these final high-level insights. I have avoided talking about death because, after all, it’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? Isn’t it why we go into spiritual life? Isn’t it why we strive for enlightenment? Isn’t it why we endeavor to understand what’s behind life and consciousness and knowledge and so many things?
Because we have to deal with this great unknown. But it doesn’t have to be an unknown. If we understand life, we can easily understand death. Life is called in the Vedas pañca-kośas, five sheaths covering the being, covering the consciousness.
These are upādhis. You see? You see why I have to talk about upādhis before I can talk about this? Five upādhis, limiting adjuncts, that make what we call an individual. So what are these five sheaths? Well, the first one is this material body, the gross body, the annamayakośa.
Anna means food, food grains. So this body is built from food grains and other food. And -maya means a construction, a fabrication. And kośa means a sheath. So the annamayakośa is the gross body, the gross senses and so on.
Then we have the prāṇamayakośa. Prāṇa means life energy. So besides this gross body made of matter, we have a more subtle body made of energy.
Then there is the manomayakośa, the mind body, composed of thoughts. Thoughts and thoughts and thoughts. Thoughts about thoughts and so on.
Then there is the vijñānamayakośa, the intelligence body or the will body that manifests the icchāśakti, the potency of desire and will.
And finally, the ānandamayakośa, bliss, consciousness, beauty. All these come from the ānandamayakośa.
So what happens at what we call death is simply that the annamayakośa wears out, which like any material thing, it’s going to do. So when it wears out, it drops off and we have to get a new one. Or it’s possible that we can go to a higher realm where there are no gross bodies. There are no annamayakośa. And only the subtle bodies are needed there.
So this is the idea behind religion. This is the idea behind salvation. This is the idea of release from saṁsāra, repeated birth and death.
So how do we know that this theory is correct? In scientific method, you make a postulate: “I think that such-and-such is true.” And then you design an experiment to prove or disprove the postulate. And the whole point of scientific theory, which a lot of scientists these days seem to have forgotten—that’s another story, we’ll get into it another time—is that your theory must be disprovable: falsifiable is the technical term.
So there has to be a preponderance of evidence either to prove or disprove your theory, isn’t it? Or to at least give more or less credence or believability to it. So what is the experiment that proves or disproves this theory that we can gain mokṣa, liberation, and get free from birth and death?
Well, it’s called meditation. What is meditation? It’s a rehearsal for death. It’s a simulation of death. It’s a death simulator. Just like if you’ve ever studied how to fly a plane. You can get in a simulator, and it has controls just like a real plane. But instead, it has a screen, and then the virtual world displays on the screen. So you can fly, and it does everything a real plane does. It even uses calculations of lift and airflow and so on to simulate the plane.
So in meditation, we simulate death. How do we do that? Well, the eight stages of the Aṣṭaṅga-yoga system give us a clue. First, there’s yama and niyama: what to do, what not to do to prepare for this simulation. To put ourselves in the right frame of mind for it.
Then there’s āsana. Āsana simply means sitting. So we have to be able to sit comfortably for a long enough period of time to run the simulation.
Then there’s prāṇāyama, control of the prāṇa, life energy. This is done through various breathing exercises. Of course, people have speculated and made prāṇāyama into a whole weird thing that it’s originally not meant to be. The whole idea of prāṇāyama was to reach the point where the breathing is minimized. In the Buddha’s teaching, ānāpānasati, the meditation on the breath, is for the same purpose, to calm the breath to the point where concentration is possible.
Then what? Pratyāhara. Pratyāhara means withdrawal of the attention from the senses. Once the sitting posture is nice, once the breathing is calm, then you can withdraw the attention from the senses. Once the attention is withdrawn, what then?
Dhārana. Concentration. We concentrate on an object. The object can be a mantra, or it can be the visualized form of a deity, or it can be a philosophical point, or it’s innumerable topics for meditation.
And then dhyāna. Dhyāna is the meditation itself. The meditation is something like watering a plant. We can’t force the plant to grow. The plant has to grow at its own rate. We can simply water the plant regularly, make sure it gets enough sunshine, fertilizer, water, and in its own time it will grow and blossom and bear fruit.
So we have to do a lot of dhyāna, a lot of meditation, a lot of watering the plant of whatever it is we’re meditating on, to get to the final stage that is samādhi. Samādhi means when the mind becomes effortlessly concentrated on a single object.
So at that stage we’re living in the mind, or we’re living in the energy body, or we’re living in the vijñānamayakośa, the will body, or the ānandamayakośa. It’s a gradual release of the lower bodies and a movement towards the higher, more subtle bodies. And this is what happens at death. It’s exactly the same process, only we’re doing it deliberately rather than having it forced on us by nature.
So what is death really? Death signifies that the prārabdha-karma of the present gross body is finished. That’s all. The causes that made this body, this gross body come into existence have run out of steam. Their influence is done. So the body disappears. It’s quite a natural thing.
Everything that we make, everything that we create, has a natural life span. And when it reaches the end, it’s finished. The classic example is an earthen pot. An earthen pot is nothing but earth. But then when it’s made into a certain shape, it can hold things—water, food, whatever. But at some point, the pot becomes worn out and it breaks. This is a natural thing.
And when it breaks, what do we do? We throw the pot on a pile with other pots and let it go back into the earth. So the pot comes from the earth. It’s nothing but earth in a certain shape. And then when it’s finished, it goes back to the earth. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
In fact, one of the great meditations in the Śiva tradition is that everything is ashes. Everything that we see, everything that we know, everything that we are, everything that we have, its ultimate destination is simply ashes.
At the end of the universe, when Śiva does his taṇḍava, nṛtya, then everything is destroyed by fire. And all that’s left is ashes, dust. It’s all finished. Then that matter is absorbed back into the mahātattva and creation is done.
So even this universe has to die. What to speak of ourselves? Oh, and I should mention in the Buddha’s teaching, the eight jhānas. The eight jhā
nas are nothing but a similar progression of more and more subtle meditations that can simulate the process of death. Because we need to know what is going to happen. We need to prepare. We need to rehearse. We need to practice, just like a musician practices before a performance. The ultimate performance is the moment of death.
Because as Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā 8.6,
yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ “Whatever state of being we remember at the time of death is where we go in the next life.”
So if we want to go to a nicer place—which I think we all do—this material world is full of suffering. That’s just the way it is. So if we want to go to a nicer place, we have to qualify ourselves. What is that qualification? We have to be able to remember this state of being that we want to attain at the time of death.
Now what happens at the time of death? The whole contents or the memory of this life passes before one’s mental eyes. This is a well-known thing. And what is the contents of this life? Well it’s what we do every day, isn’t it?
So if every day we meditate, if every day we pray, if every day we chant our mantra, if every day we make offerings and service, if every day we try to help other people understand these high spiritual truths, then what we’re going to remember at the end of life is that state of being, whatever state of being it is that we have meditated on, served, taught, and made the center of our lives.
So I really feel badly for people, atheistic people who don’t have any faith, who don’t have any belief, who don’t think there’s any afterworld or any God or any higher level. They’re just going to come back as a dog, you know, or if they’re lucky, as a cat. But why?
Because they’re meditating on this very low state of being, this low vibration, ‘I am the body.’ No: the Vedas teach us, “I am Brahman,” aham brahmasmī, isn’t it? So if we’re always thinking and contemplating on Brahman, or if we can’t conceive or concentrate on Brahman, we can concentrate on Śiva and Śakti.
We can worship Them, we can make offerings to Them, we can serve Them in different ways, we can teach the truths that They give in Their scriptures, and so on. And then at the end we remember that, and therefore we go to that.
I mean, you know, put yourself in God’s position, right? Look at it from God’s point of view. Do you want… what kind of people do you want coming into your world? What kind of people do you want in your heaven, your abode, your transcendental paradise? You want just any old rascal? I don’t think so. I think you want people who see things like you do.
So it’s very important that we study the scriptures, understand the point of view, and even if we can’t realize them here and now, which is very difficult for a lot of people, then we have to at least understand and try to see things from that point of view, to become the kind of person that can live in a subtle world, in a subtle body. Because these are where the heavenly places are. This is where the paradise is.
This is where everyone is loving, everyone is beautiful, everyone is kind, you see? These higher levels, higher states of being, where there is no gross body to bother us with its daily needs to be fed and whatever, you know? These senses that clamor for our attention.
That is all subtle, virtualized and purified at the time of death, when we leave the body in spiritual consciousness. And so that is why we practice sādhana, that is why we practice meditation, to attain that state of being, of living in paradise, to be ready for the time of death.
ĀŪṀ Tat Sat ĀŪṀ Śakti ĀŪṀ