The wise one

The wise one

………………….

“Do you believe in God?”

He smiled at me and said, “Why, your own Ramkrishna Paramhansa Dev has said …if you believe that God is there then He is there but if you doubt or look for proof then he is far away from you!”

It was pretty strong logic as I know many believers and the same time I know many non-believers. For example at Farakka Superthermal Power station we were facing a serious problem in our 500 MW turbine.I normally don't believe in rituals of puja etc but somehow thought of approaching the divinity for solution. Me,my wife went to Tarapeeth with two of my colleagues from finance Mukherjee and Thakur.We did puja there for BHEL. Parallely of course we were putting technical efforts to resolve the vibration issue.Lo,behold a letter from our collaborator from Germany resolved the issue. As it has been often found that one who keeps on helping others gets help from unexpected source. It's the circle of Karma, " Kar bhala to ho bhala ".

I have this habit of irritating the wise one by asking him random odd questions.

“Do you believe in rebirth?”

He laughed out loudly and said,” let me quote something for you!”

Quote

As per the scriptures, depending upon his good/virtuous and bad/sinful actions, the jivatama will be taken to Yama and after judgement he will be meted out the judgement as per his actions during his living years on earth, accordingly either he will be sent to heaven or hell .Only after he has experienced those that he will obtain another body on earth.

So the answer to your question, yes it depends upon the karma. More good karma means more time in heaven and hence it will take more time until the jivatma enters another body. Only after their stock of punya is over that they fall down to earth:

Unquote;

“Are you serious, The Wise One?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me?Ask Google? Google is the present day God, it has answer for all questions. It will give you both negative and positive answers. Even if I give any answer still you will check in Google. I know people are consulting Google before consulting doctor for any of their health related problem.” He said sarcastically.

“You are sidestepping my question” I said grudgingly.

“I know that you have been going to Varanasi every year, didn’t you find any answer there to your question?” He asked teasingly.

“Yes,I got part answer there. The devout Hindus go there to get Moksha from this life cycle of death and rebirth. I mean if they die there.”

“ If this rebirth is so certain then there is no scope of increase of population. It is soul the leaving one body and entering another body, it is one to one replacement.’ He said with a twinkle in his eyes and continued with the logic,” how does then new soul get created as in reality the population keeps on increasing?”

He confused me with his logics but made his point. Not only Hindu, Jain, Budhism talk about rebirth but Greek philosophers like Plato, Pythagoras held the belief of rebirth/metempsychosis.

I thought to myself not to pursue this topic of rebirth any further with him instead asked him , ‘What rules a man, his mind, body or soul ?”

“What is this QA session with me? When you asked this question to me then it is your mind prompted you to ask. My answer to you may be or may not be acceptable to you because instantly your mind will start analyzing. Take another instance you are passing a beggar in the street, you feel pity and want to give some money, here your soul has prompted you to act. The body is our external envelope but when that envelope starts dominating more than the content inside then the woes of acquiring more worldly possession start. Unfortunately, today we are in that materialistic world where people are in a hurry to acquire so you can say ruled by the body, bodily comfort is more important than spiritual fulfillment. There are many smart evangelists who are taking advantage of this mental chaos. You find televangelists giving out sermons day and night or those enumerable gurus operating from various ashrams. I see you are not wearing any ring in your fingers with stones but if you look closely then you will find most of the people wear rings with all kinds of stones to wade off evils or for good luck.”

True,I have noticed all kinds of artists, businessmen, politicians , in short celebrities have this ring fetish. So ring gets substituted for God. The other day a political leader told me that he had shouted on some guy for some work and later on he realized that he might get a curse from that guy so to escape that he paid him 500 bucks.

At the end of the day these are all faith or belief but somehow these click.

“Any more question?”

I could see he was enjoying the session with me.

“Next time I will come with some mundane questions.”

I got up and started walking out. He smiled at me with an imperceptible wink. While going out I could hear Righteous Brother’s “Unchained Melody” from the English movie “Ghost” was playing softly in the background and The Wise One was swaying with the music. I smiled back at him and walked out of the sanctum sanatorium.