Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, a revered spiritual teacher, emphasized selfless devotion in his teachings. His profound insights into the mind’s workings and the essence of devotion to Radha Krishna continue to guide seekers toward divine love and spiritual fulfillment, as reflected in his enlightening speeches and discourses. He illuminated the vast topic of karma in a speech that is transcribed below.
The Divine Souls. The topic is the consequence of karmas. Yesterday, we learned that the aim of human life is to receive God’s love. All the entertainment of this world, they only please you for a while. They never give you full contentment. Full contentment, full happiness, and full love you can only receive when you find God. To find God you have to do something, and you are always already doing something.
Whatever you are doing, they are all your karmas, and actions. The word karma, according to scriptural concepts, signifies your actions, your motivation, and your thoughts. Not only physical actions are karmas; karmas mean your motivation, your actions, and your thoughts. Suppose you are thinking evil for someone, you are doing bad karmas. Suppose you are thinking good for someone, you are doing good karmas. Physical actions in the spiritual government have no value; your motivation has the value.
Take for instance, a person is rebuking someone. That can be good action; that can be bad action. But on the face value, it seems bad. Because he is getting angry and mad, rebuking…so face value looks bad. It may be good. He might be a good father who is giving a lesson to his son, then he’s doing a good action. He’s trying to extend to his child not to go into bad company. Or if some person is doing such a thing out of jealousy, it’s a bad action. You see, a traitor comes, and a policeman shoots him down. He saved the community; he was a bad person, he was evil. The policeman did the right thing, although he killed that man. So the question is, the face value of any action does not determine the class of that action. That has to be understood. The class of that action is determined according to your motivation. And motivation is always hidden within your mind. No one can observe it. But the one who is noting/making a note of your actions, he knows. So, whatever you do, you think; and whatever you think is all noted down.
So, you have done all – in those lots and lots of these, in these past millions and millions of lifetimes – uncountable karmas. They are all in record. And where is that record? With you. You carry the record with you. Where? In your mind. So who inscribes that record? By your own nature, it is being inscribed. But who remembers? Godhead personality. Godhead personality has many kinds of work to do. In his one form, where He’s called, Paramatma, He remembers all the actions of every soul. At hand, He remembers everything. That’s why He is called Ishwar(Sanskrit name)- the one who rules this universe according to karmas. Ishwar. So Ishwar remembers all of your actions, but those actions are in your mind.
Your mind is very wide…big. A fraction of your mind, which you call, “conscious mind”, is known to people. There are other parts of mind which are subconscious, unconscious, fully unconscious – with many, many layers. They are unknown to (the) common mind, to your conscious mind; they are unknown. And because they are unknown, they will remain unknown. However, all of your actions are inscribed as an imprint in your mind. So, the farther actions, for instance the actions of your present life are very close to your conscious mind – even conscious and subconscious mind. The actions of past lives, they are a little further, in another layer of the subconscious mind. Actions of, suppose, 100 million lives past might be in your unconscious mind somewhere. You see, it’s like a microdot, a big plate of everything, and you make a small microdot. And if you set those microdots in a big sheet and make a microdot of a microdot, and again if you set those millions of microdot of microdots and again make again a microdot of microdot of microdot… you can go on multiplying. The question is, how subtle can you go? The science: How subtle can it go? There’s a limit.
But your mind has no limit. It can go to unlimited subtleness. So, according to the unlimited subtleness capacity of your mind, that contains the imprint of actions of your uncountable lifetimes. But the very close actions, close means of your past 10-15 lifetimes’ actions, they are very close to your conscious mind, in your subconscious mind. The rest are in the unconscious and fully unconscious mind. In fully unconscious mind, the sanskars, they are from billions and billions of lifetimes back.
So you always carry all of your sanskars. Every time, in every lifetime, you keep on adding, adding, adding, adding, adding. Your mind has a big capacity to retain all of that. Even after this whole universe comes to an end, there’s a big gap, then again, the universe comes into being. And you are actually carrying all of your sanskars from the previous universe when that was in existence, and previous to that, and before that. It’s all very complicated. However, you carry all of your sanskars with you. Sanskars means the imprint of your actions – it’s called, “sanskars”.
So, those sanskars, they are just the imprints. So, how many kinds of imprints? Many kinds, but they can be classified according to your motivation. So we can classify the motivations. We can have many kinds of actions but classify the motivations. So motivations can be normally three kinds:
- When you think of something bad and do bad.
- When you think of something good and do good.
- And when you think of God and begin to feel the need for God in your life and do some kind of devotion with such an interest that you need God in your life, and this whole world is full of misery, is not full of happiness – with such an understanding.
So, the first kind is called bad actions. The second kind is called good actions. And this third kind is called devotional actions. So, bad motivation, good motivation, and devotional motivation. Only three kinds of motivations: bad, good, and devotional. So, according to motivation, you classify your actions.
For instance, somebody is worshiping God Shiva and he’s desiring to get some power so he can rule the society. Is he doing a devotional action? Not at all. He is doing a bad action, evil action, because his motivation is evil. He is trying to get power from Shiva to terrorize and rule the community—evil. So don’t go by the face value, but by whatever is your motivation behind that action.
Suppose if you go to an Indian temple and you find somebody (mechanically) doing, “Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishn, Krishn Krishn, Hare Hare.” What is he doing? He’s a perfect hypocrite. He might be showing his vanity with closed eyes, looking to see if someone has come or not so he can close his eyes and try to pose that oh, showing that he’s in trance, or he is in devotion –like that. Why is he doing that? Showing his vanity to other people. So, if a person is doing any kind of such devotional activities according to the face value, but his motivation is to show it to others (sometimes he closes his eyes, sometimes he opens his eyes, sometimes closing his eyes), I mean it’s for showing to others. What is this called? It’s neither good nor bad; it’s neutral. I mean, taking God’s name cannot be bad, and his motivation is not that evil. He’s just showing his vanity; so all of his actions are in vain. They are neither devotion, they are neither good, they are neither bad—neutral.
So there are some more neutral actions also. For instance, you are doing your job in your office. You simply have the motivation to earn your pay, that’s all. So, all of those actions you do at your work…neutral actions. They have no direct good or bad motivation. Using your facilities, dressing up, driving a car, it’s all neutral actions. So there are lots of neutral actions also. I’m talking of those actions which give you consequences. Neutral actions will not give you any consequence; they are neutral. Although they are also recorded, your every thought is being recorded. Every thought of every fraction of a moment. But neutral actions have no consequence at all. Bad actions have bad consequences, good actions have good consequences, and devotional actions have devotional consequences. And when I say actions, I mean motivation. With good motivation – good actions; with bad motivation – bad actions; with devotional motivation – devotional actions.
So, three are main. We all know what are good and what are bad (actions). Whatever you feel bad in the world, it is bad for you. Whenever you feel pleased with in the world, they are good things for you. So good actions give you worldly happiness in the worldly sense. Bad actions give you worldly misery and pain – physical and mental. Devotional actions, they do not give you worldly pain or pleasure. They give you devotional experiences; they develop your affinity for Krishna because you want affinity.
Now, one more thing: all those good and bad motivated actions, their consequence is received in the next life. You do such actions in this life and receive in the next life, just like you have done in the past life and now you are receiving in this life, which you call your luck, or fate, or destiny. Your luck, fate, and destiny -it is your past collection of actions with good and bad motivation. But devotional actions, they fructify simultaneously, instantly, immediately. You think of loving God, and He is omnipresent. He receives your message and immediately transfers His grace into your heart. So, devotional actions, they are simultaneously rewarded.
Now, these devotional actions, I must clarify, they have only one motivation: to receive the vision of Krishna, to receive the love of Krishna, to be one with Krishna in his divine abode, to love Krishna. This kind of thing, when I say Krishna, I mean, if you are worshiping Rama or Vishnu or any God, you can think of that in your own mind. But actually, I’m giving here a seminar on Krishna devotion. So, for a Krishna devotee, he has only one ambition: how to find Radha Krishna, how to be in His abode, when will he have the vision of Radha Krishna. So this kind of motivation has no worldly ambition; no worldly desire from Krishna. He wants Krishna from Krishna, he wants Radha from Krishna, he wants Krishna from Radha -that is all.
So without any worldly motivation, just you must have divine motivation. When you have divine motivation and you do anything: you are chanting, or you are listening to a chant, or you are remembering Krishna name, or you are chanting Krishna name, you are worshiping the deity or picture of Krishna, you are doing arti, or you are doing all of these things in your mind – whatever you do, it is all devotion and devotional action. Because they all have one single motivation: how to find Radha Krishna. So, (the)motivation is to find Radha Krishna. With that motivation, whatever devotional actions you do, it is all devotional action. So, devotional actions develop devotional qualities. And devotional qualities you already have to some extent in your heart. They are developed and stimulated. That’s why I said you receive the consequence of your devotional actions instantly. There’s no time gap between your action and the consequence; they are simultaneous.
So there are three kinds of actions. Suppose a person is doing devotion. For any reason, suppose he fails to find Krishna in his lifetime and he expires. Before expiring, before leaving this Earth, he thought, “Oh Krishna, I didn’t reach you,” and then he died. He takes again, a finer situation, a birth in a finer situation. (Sanskrit verse) Gita says, (verse from the Gita). His next birth would be much better. He was born in a devotee family and from his very childhood, he will learn Krishna devotion or devotion to God. He will have that kind of atmosphere, and he will start again his Krishna devotion. Because he had done devotion in the past, on the base of that devotional effect in this lifetime, he will carry on his devotions. You should not think that if you start devotion and you die, then again you have to start. It’s not like that.
Say, for instance, a child is going into the first standard, and he studied for four or five years in primary classes. Suppose his parents, they had a job, and they had to transfer to some other town; the boy had to go with them. When he goes to another town, he should not start from the first standard. Whatever he has passed – the degrees, the classes, in the previous town, from there onward he will start in the new town. Suppose he passed the tenth standard in one town and he was transferred to another town, his family was transferred, in another town, in another school, he will start from the eleventh class. Something like this. So, whatever purity of heart you have gained, whatever affinity you have gained in one lifetime, from there onward you carry on in your next lifetime. So there is no loss; it’s accumulation. And when you reach the maximum purification of heart, with the grace of the Master, you find Krishna.
In this way, we see that good and bad actions and devotional actions, they have no similarity. Your actions, good and bad, they give you the result and they finish. But devotional actions, they don’t finish because they are not actions in technical terms. They are the purification levels of your heart. So, according to your purification level, you carry on your devotions life after life. I mean, if a devotee falls back into the world and his level drops, that’s another story. But whatever was his level of consciousness in divine love before death, in the next life, he will carry on from that point onward. So, whatever he was before death, he will be better after that; a devotee. But a good and bad person, he also carries on. Suppose he was a bad person in the past life; accordingly, he received bad associations in the present life and he became worse. He goes on falling.
The question is, whatever you are before your death. Before death means…actually (it’s) very difficult to determine the time of death. What happens when a person dies? Doctors when they say (the) pulse stopped, heart stopped, brain function stopped, he’s declare him dead after brain functions stop. But he’s not dead. Still, his soul is within his body. It takes from half an hour to about two hours more to be fully dead. So, he is in a perfect stillness state; his mind has stopped functioning. But still he takes some time to get out of the body – for the soul. And before the mind stops functioning, he enters into a coma state; he cannot think, he cannot imagine. So, what I mean is, at the time of death, no soul can think of Krishna or anything. So before death – and before death means, you might say roughly speaking, in the last days of his life. Suppose he’s going to die after two months. Within those two months or six weeks or a week, whatever was the average consciousness – average – before death, a few weeks before death, that is the average of his consciousness. He was more material, or he was more devotional; whatever he was, that affects his future life. There’s a saying (Hindi quote), “Whatever you are before death, you become the same.”
So, before death means a few weeks before death, the average state of your consciousness towards good, or towards bad, or towards devotion. So those souls who have affinity for Krishna,they maintain affinity for Krishna during that time because they have understood that only Krishna can help them. The world cannot help them, so they retain that affinity. But those worshipers of God who have no affinity, they are observing rituals or devotional formalities and their minds are attached to their family and friends – they cannot think of God at that time. Because their attachment is in their family and friends and their physical body. They only think of their physical body and family and friends before death. So, next life is no good for them. Even if they were worshipers of God for their whole life, that makes no difference, because they had no affinity.
But those devotees who are in divine love-consciousness, they have affinity. They realize,“Krishna is mine, I have a right on Krishna, he has to come to me sometime”. No matter whenever He comes, sooner or later, He has to come. So feel some kind of oneness, some kind of right on him because you belong to him, he belongs to you. There is affinity. So, actually, divine love consciousness…whoever has this kind of consciousness in his mind, that kind of devotee, he does not worship God. Because God is almighty, he would be afraid to go near him. He worships Krishna only; not God Krishna, just Krishna. His Krishn. So he worships his Radha Krishna because he belongs to them. So, with such affinity, he carries on that affinity all the way before his death, and his next life is much more beautiful. And if he has completed his devotion in this lifetime, he receives his vision, Radha Krishna vision in this life.
So in short I explained the consequence of karmas – the rest tomorrow.