Chapter 3
The grace of the divine
🌻 Day 26 🌻
ॐ इति ऐतत्
That is Aum. In all eastern traditions, all those who meditated experienced the sound Aum. All other sounds merge into this one sound Aum. Before birth you were in Aum and after death you will be in Aum. This is the sound of one hand clapping, one sound remaining.
So, at the moment of death, when someone says Aum and leaves the body, he will be immediately absorbed in Aum. When one dies, first he is able to see what is all around. His entire life comes before him like a film. All the sanskaras (impressions) open up. This is normally for people who are not deep meditators. If you are a deep meditator, all impressions are already gone! That is why you are dead while being alive. You usually hear, “Kill the mind”, “man maro” in Hindi. What does “Kill the mind” mean? It means to remove all the impressions.
In the Jain tradition, they do ‘pratikraman’. They sit after sunset and take their mind backward, unwind. What did I do one hour ago? If there are any impressions, they are erased going background in time. Jains are supposed to do this every day, but they don’t – sit, unwind themselves and let go of the whole thing. Every day sit and wind back till the time you woke up. Do it before you go to bed. People do it for half an hour or even one hour. This is their meditation technique. In the Hindu tradition, they say, “Why do you want to go on doing that? Forget about it. Everything is maya! It is all just nothing, no impression at all.” It is a way of seeing that everything is maya. When you think everything is maya, nothing comes into you. But it does not happen by thinking like that. In India, sadhus and saints study all the scriptures and keep saying that all is maya.
Once, we brought two swamis (recluse monks) from India. We took them to Disneyland. I wanted them to experience the world, have some fun. The first ride was ‘splash mount’ roller coaster and that really scared them. The came out and said, “Guruji, all our Vedanta went back to India. We keep saying everything is maya but we were so scared.” They accepted it with such innocence. It is easy to say everything is maya when we sit somewhere comfortably. But when we are falling
from such height! “My heart was beating so fast. All the scriptures we studied ran away to Bangalore. We were left shaking.” And they were laughing.
Body-mind complex can go through all these. They said, “Guruji, it is so scary.” When they saw next ride, they went off in the other direction. “No, no, no more rides. We just want to walk.” We had to convince them that ‘small world’ ride was good.
