Animal Life

[Gauracandra]

This week’s Srila Siddhaswarupananda television program deals with animal life.

For one who is born death is certain. For one who dies birth is certain. This is called reincarnation. You have lived in the past and will have bodies in the future. Sometimes you have a human body, sometimes a dog, insect, or a demigod a powerful angelic being. Reincarnation is not a desirable condition to be in. Any questions?

Audience member: How would a person’s next body be determined?

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: If your consciousness is like an animal you will take on that form. Your mind is a nucleus around which your gross physical body develops. Even now someone who worries to much they will get ulcers. At the time of death all you have is the subtle body, desires in the mind, the way your consciousness is molded will mold your body. Your body is wrapped around your mind. So a person’s mentality is the core. So what is an animal’s mind like?

Audience member: Animals eat, sleep, mate and defend.

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: An animal enjoys eating, sleeping, enjoying sex life, and fighting. You don’t see an animal going to church and praying to God. Or wondering what is the cause of his suffering. A human being can also be in animal consciousness.

Humans sleep. If your interest is only sleeping or defending fighting like a dog. Animal life is central enjoyment. Defending we have big armies today. Animal life means a person’s consciousness has no spiritual purpose or sense of responsibility. A person who lives like an animal tries to enjoy his senses and fights to keep it but has no responsibility.

His gross physical body is human but when he leaves it he will come back as an animal.

We are not making this up. This comes from God handed down from spiritual master to disciple. Let me read from scripture [reads a verse]. God arranges that we get what we want. Do animals feel guilt? No. If we are trying to be free of guilt we are trying to be free of our humanness.

Audience member: Why not come back as an animal?

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: If you don’t think having fleas is suffering. Or come back as a flea and be afraid of being eaten by a dog. The human being thinks animals aren’t suffering. So called Princess Grace died a little while ago. She was a former movie star. She was asked if you could come back who would she come back as. Her response was “Her dogs. Because they have the best life. They just eat and sleep in the palace.” This is the elite of our society. These kinds of people will get the opportunity to live like an animal.

You should seriously consider if you really want to be an animal. They suffer from birth, disease, old age, and death. I don’t know Princess Grace ever saw her dog die of old age. I saw it as a kid. Our pet dog died of old age and the suffering was immense. What the materialists like about a dog’s life is there is no responsibility.

The human form of life is meant to transcend the wheel of birth and death. The amount of pleasure in this world is small compared to the amount of suffering. You can exist without taking on new bodies. You can get off this wheel. A fool like Princess Grace does not recognize that truth that the world is a place of suffering. We want to make believe there is no suffering. This is false positive thinking. Real positive thinking is to know my eternal nature.

Audience member: Even if you think I’m eternal you still have to die.

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: No. Will you whine if you change your shirt? Because you are not your shirt. When you know you are not the body you can give it up. Get a heart machine or a lung machine trying to keep the body alive forever. The tattered shirt trying to patch it up. Just leave it behind.

Audience member: Where am I going to go?

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: Where will you go? The protection is in taking refuge of God. I place myself in Your care. I have not protection. Whatever you want that is what I want. Let my life be pleasing to you. An advanced yogi does not try to transcend the wheel of birth and death but simply takes shelter of the Lord.

Audience member: My teachers say when you reach the human form of life you can’t go back down.

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: Why are they teaching this when the scriptures say you can go down?

Audience member: Its easier to accept this.

Srila Siddhaswarupananda: They want to live like an animal but feel spiritual. Their interest is to get you to allegiance, to become their disciple. I am passing this knowledge from my spiritual master. Its called the Brahma Sampradaya. Scripture makes it very clear that you are responsible. No matter the guru saying you can wear orange robes, you are liberated. This is garbage and destroying people’s lives. You have to life a life of responsibility. You must control your senses and not be controlled by your senses. To be happy you must cultivate your love for God. My only motive in speaking is to help you cultivate love for God. You can get out of the material world. Thank you very much.

[Gauracandra]

This week’s Srila Siddhaswarupananda television program deals with “Nervous Breakdown: A Door To Spiritual Realization”?

A nervous breakdown is not bad. It is actually a possible door to open a person’s life to a new dimension. It is simply a materialist coming to the realization that they have no shelter. They experience “I can’t find happiness in this anymore.” They attempt to find happiness in material relationships, ambition, goals. A typical person like a businessman trying to be the number one guy. He gets in so much anxiety that the other guy will get the main job so he cracks. Politicians almost always come to the point of a nervous breakdown right before an election, unless he has the vote rigged [laughs]. Or a house wife overwhelmed in her purposeless existence of taking care of the house. So she takes medication to space out.

The cause of anxiety comes from material goals. All illusions of where you will find happiness. Because of lust you get wound up. Wound up so tight that you break apart. So most people don’t want to come to this point. They want to believe their foundation is this world is solid.

It simply means a person can not cope with the burdens of material existence. When they come to the end they have no shelter. They’ve been taking shelter in matter, in this world. So they think this is bad. But great devotees of the Lord also come to points of nervous breakdowns. They come to this realization that they have no shelter.

God is the best friend of every single living entity. Even if this whole world falls apart. When you come to this point you fall flat on your face and cry to God. My spiritual master told me to take shelter of the Lord. If you cry out to God to give you shelter then you’ll experience your real relationship with God. Then you can see the pain as an opening, a door, to enter the spiritual world where there is real love, real purpose, real meaning.

“If I aint got nothing I got nothing to lose.” What can go wrong? You then simply live in this world to please God. If they have anxiety it is anxiety to please God. Sometimes a person falls down because ignorance is powerful. If you sincerely ask to be forgiven you will be. “I have been foolishly trying to take shelter in the finite and again I’m suffering. Forgive me for turning away.”

God is there always waiting for an individual to turn to Him. A devotee of God has problems, pressures from this project or that project, but he doesn’t try to hold them all up. He doesn’t attempt to escape into drugs. When pressure mounts he goes into his secret relationship with God. Then he realizes he is nothing and so there is no burden.

I’ll have problems if I have my own desires. If my will is not done my will isn’t all powerful. If I’m trying to do His will and God is the supreme controller then where is the burden. God has not competitor like the devil. No one can compete with God. God doesn’t worry about losing control. Nervous breakdowns are for people who have their own will and ambitions.

A servant of God is already broken. Their arrogance is broken. Their ambitions are broken. They have nothing but God who is everything.

At death everyone loses everything. We lose our attachments and ambitions. Our bodies get older, whether you are a musician or entertainer it doesn’t matter. They all start to fall apart. They aren’t as loved as they used to be. At death we lose everything. A nervous breakdown means my source of security is taken out from beneath me. If the ground opens up beneath me I’d be surprised. I’m leaning on my wife, my job, my possessions, my identity. “I am Jack Jones, President of this corporation.” In my money, my bank account. During the depression people jumped out of windows because they lost it all. All of his security left.

There is a quote in the Bible about not building a house on the seashore at low tide. The tide of death comes in. A nervous breakdown allows you to see death before death. You have a perfect opportunity to meet God. This is a fact. It is not something you need to run away from. People taking shelter in the temporary instead of the eternal. Trying to forget the insecure position we are in. Remember there is a real shelter and when the walls of the house come crumbling down that God loves you and is the only shelter. There is no other shelter but God. Its not that we should try to have a nervous breakdown. But if you do just fall flat on your face and cry to God. Please let me know how to serve you. All my false places I try to find security will be taken away.