After Death, What?

Self-Inquiry: Into Immortality:

(a) Mark the 2 or 3 most enlightening of the 14 teachings

below, and indicate the 2 you are not clear about yet.

(b) Assess your "Selfless Light Path" versus your "Selfish Dark Path"

ratio (see #11-14).

Everyone has both. Divide 100 points between the two:

"Selfless Light Path" _______%; "Selfish Dark Path"_______%.

(c) What changes in your outlook might be called for?

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In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna asks us to:

“Listen, as I explain immortality, the ultimate goal beyond life and death…

___ 1) The levels of existence beyond death are known as the lokas (the worlds). The highest among them is Brahma-loka (the world of the Creator).

___ 2) All these ‘worlds’ and all beings in them, from Brahma-loka down, are subject to rebirth, including even Brahma the creator (not Brahman). Climb beyond all these middle planes to reach Me, Brahman, the Godhead, and you will know no rebirth.

___ 3) One gets what one is worthy of. If you do not advance past the notion of heaven and hell you commit yourself to the intermediate worlds, and thereby tie yourself to death and rebirth.

___ 4) When Brahma the creator wakes up at the dawn of each ‘Cosmic Day’ this entire physical universe and all creatures are instantly manifested, only to be dissolved back into the unmanifested at Brahma’s ‘Cosmic Nightfall’ some billions of years later.

___ 5) In succeeding ‘Days and Nights of Brahma,’ the same multitude helplessly come to birth and death again and again, as the physical universe continues its expanding and contracting.

___ 6) But beyond even the mysterious state into which everything dissolves at Brahma’s cosmic nightfall, there is another, more mysterious reality. It is Brahman, the Ultimate Godhead, the Thing-in-Itself that is beyond even time, and does not perish even when all existence itself dissolves!

___ 7) Your ultimate goal is this Eternal, Absolute Thing-in-Itself, and I am That. All who come to this come home to Me, never again to be separate or return to the worldly.

___ 8) You need to transcend even the heavens (lokas) and reach Me, Brahman, the Imperishable Godhead, the Divine Love who lives in your heart.

___ 9) The only way to reach this eternal, immortal, absolute state is through love – unswerving devotion to Me alone.

___10) As the individual wave in the ocean does not have any existence independent of the sea, the separate soul does not have any real existence apart from Me, the Universal Soul.

___11) There are only two paths for the individual soul:

The path to freedom from the wheel of death-rebirth, &
The path to continued bondage to the wheel.

___12) The path to freedom is referred to as the ‘Northern Path’ – the way of light and brightness, symbolically a cloudless sky. This path leads selfless souls who are free of ignorance and egoism to the Supreme Godhead.

___13) The other, the ‘Southern path,’ is the way of darkness, smoke, or fog. This path leads selfish souls, ignorant of their True Self, to the lesser light of the moon, binding them to rebirth and death.

___14) These two paths (two states of mind), light and dark, have existed since the beginning. Once you know these two ways you can never be deluded or misled again.” – Krishna

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