By Venkata Vemuri

Religion is on the altar of British courts once again. A female employee of British Airways, Nadia Eweida, was grounded in 2006 for wearing a cross — considered a Christian religious symbol — for work. The employment tribunal ignored her pleas that she was a victim of religious discrimination. But in 2007 BA changed its policy to allow some religious symbols, like the Muslim hijab and the Sikh kara. Now the employee is back in courts again, seeking damages for the tribunal ruling.

The case has sparked off another row on the issue of discrimination on grounds of religion at work places. Prominent lawyer Shami Chakrabarti who heads the human rights group Liberty — and is backing the employee — says one should always have the right to wear religious symbols, as long as they do not cause harm or stop one doing one’s job.

Arraigned against her are the liberals who argue that Britain is sinking into a “religious litigation culture”, as Guardian columnist puts it. This is not a case about freedom of religion but religious discrimination under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, 2003.The distinction being made is that the employee is not saying that wearing a cross is an article of faith for all Christians. Rather, she is saying that she was treated unfavourably.

They mean to say that the distinction is between the freedom to wear a religious symbol, like the cross necklace in this case, and the freedom to wear any necklace. While employers do consider cases where wearing strictly religious symbols is necessary, they should be able to ban wearing articles which religion does not require, for the sake of practicality, safety and equality at work.

They argue that Eweida has the right to file a case of discrimination on grounds of religion given the fact that BA changed its policy in 2007. Of course, even here the case stands only if it is proved that Christianity requires all faithful to wear the cross symbol. But to fight for the cause of freedom to wear anything to work is to question an employer’s rationale for banning certain articles in the work place. This amounts to unnecessary litigation in the name of religion, which it is not.

Debt threat

England’s leading football club Manchester United is in dire straits. The premier league championship is not going their way, with five losses putting them behind Chelsea. Now, the Man U fans are up in arms protesting the mishandling of the club’s finances by their current American owners, the Glazers.

The issue came to a head recently when it was revealed that the club’s overall debt had crossed the £700 million-mark and the owners announced plans for a £500 million bond issue to refinance the debt secured on the club. Man U’s profits, which had nosedived to a loss of £42.7 million last year, rose to £6.4 million this year. But the fact is the clubs losses this year would have crossed the £60 million-mark but for the fact that Man U received £80 million for the sale of striker Christiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid last July.

Adding fuel to the fire, it has now emerged that the club’s owners had taken £10 million out of the club in “management and administration fees” and had personally borrowed a further £10 million in the last one year.

Man U fans feel the club’s financial situation cannot improve until the club is in the hands of its current owners. They had protested heavily when the Glazers bought over the club in 2005. They have now threatened protests to keep the owners out of the club, including asking for the resignation of club manager Sir Alex Ferguson. They are also planning a 10-minute boycott of the Champions League clash against AC Milan on March 10 in an attempt to raise global awareness of their bid to force the Glazer family out of the club.

Meanwhile, the Man U management has asked its players not to maintain personal profiles on social networking websites.

Future jobs

Business, Innovation and Skills Minister Lord Mandelson wants to encourage the study of sciences among British school-goers. So he asked his department to make a list of careers available for them in the future. Some of the jobs of the future are really awesome!

The report says among the most popular professions in 2030 will be body-part maker, which is about using stem cell technology and prosthetics to create replacements for damaged, diseased and worn-out body parts.

The list includes memory augmentation surgeons, who will boost the brain’s storage capacity, and space architects, who will design accommodation on the Moon and perhaps elsewhere in outer space.

Space tourism is a fetching profession in the future, with space pilots, space tour guides and space architects expected to be highly popular jobs. With climate a big issue, climate change reversal specialists, weather modification police — who check scientific measures such as triggering rainfall — and science ethicists, will be in demand.

Other top professions include memory augmentation surgery, virtual law and nano-medicine, vertical farming, narrow-casting, and even waste data handling to stop people being tracked by cyber-criminals.

Eastern roots

Even as Britain questions Tony Blair’s rationale to wage a war against Iraq, new research reveals most Britons are direct descendants of farmers who left modern day Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago.

Researchers at Leicester University studied the DNA of more than 2,000 men — the common genetic mutation on the Y chromosome, the DNA that is passed down from fathers to sons — to conclude that four out of five white Europeans have roots in the ‘Near East’.

They found that 80 per cent of European men shared the same Y chromosome mutation and after analysing how the mutation was distributed across Europe, were able to retrace how Europe was colonised around 8,000 BC.

European farming began around 9,000 BC in the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf and which includes modern day Iraq, Syria, Israel and southeast Turkey. Until now, researchers were skeptical about the arguments of archaeologists that some of these early farmers travelled around the world, settling new lands and bringing farming skills with them.

But the new study, whose findings are published in the science journal PLoS Biology, suggests the farmers regularly moved west when their villages became too crowded, eventually reaching Britain and Ireland. The migrants brought their new skills with them, taught locals how to farm and even produced offspring though relationships with the local women, the researchers believe.

The following is an extract from 100 Roadblocks: Unblocked through the Words of Lord Krishna by Ajit Kumar Bishnoi and Anil Kumar Jha. The authors here have identified common problems afflicting mankind and tried to look for their solutions in the Bhagavad-Gita. From the chapter ‘Lack of Confidence’

Recently, a movie became quite famous. A young boy was the central figure in this movie. This boy was shown as being quite spoilt. He was bunking classes, creating mischief and was generally a problematic child. The parents were very disturbed and they kept on thinking of newer and stricter ways to punish the child in order to bring him around. This was not working and the tensions kept on increasing between the child and his parents.

Finally, the parents decided to send him to a school in a different town. The child protested vehemently but was helpless; he had to go. Once in the new school, his caretaker began to study the child for his strengths and weaknesses. He could see many shortcomings but he also spotted what the child wanted to do and was good at. This person encouraged the child to do what the child desired. Soon the child began to blossom, and even began to pay attention to his studies; he had turned the corner. He began to feel confidence in himself that he was not a failure.

Eventually this boy excelled in studies also. Such is the power of confidence; lack of which makes us failures…

What are the reasons for this shortcoming?

1. Lack of ability
2. Laziness
3. Lack of application
4. Absence of knowledge
5. Short on training
6. Absence of encouragement
7. Failures
8. Poor health
9. Too much criticism
10. Adverse circumstances

What harm does lack of confidence do?

1. One would be afraid to take up a challenge
2. May fail repeatedly
3. Others would not entrust with responsibility
4. Such a person would not have confidence in others
5. Shall be stricken with fear in unfamiliar circumstances
6. Cannot lead
7. Quality of life shall be poor
8. Shall be indecisive on important matters
9. Shall affect negatively the confidence of others as well
10. Such a person is likely to get easily depressed

How does one develop self-confidence?

1. Gain knowledge
2. Develop abilities
3. The realization that one is an eternal soul and can link with God, and therefore is never helpless
4. Small successes build confidence
5. Choose aims and targets on the basis of resources, time available and circumstances
6. Pray to God
7. Seek help from the right sources
8. Avoid unfair criticism
9. Seek company of good people
10. Try to maintain good health

By David Frawley

There are many movements going on today that aim to change or improve the world in this time of global crisis. Almost everyone is encouraging us to become an activist in one form or another, for one cause or another. While I don’t doubt the necessity of this position, and have been an active for several causes myself, I wonder whether it is enough. Can anything we do as mere human beings take us out of the rut caused by the unsacred way in which we live, by our human centered way of life that tramples the world of nature around us and blinds us to the spirit beyond?

We mainly look to human agencies to help us or to improve the world. We look to politics to elect a better party or better leader to show us the way beyond the problems that politicians have caused. Or we look to economics for a better plan to use our resources or a way to more equitably distribute the wealth, though our business and economic leaders have shown themselves to be woefully shorted sighted in their actions. We want governmental help, charitable grants or media coverage for our cause in order to better promote it in society, though the government and media often seem to be making our problems worse. We think by changing human institutions and those who runs them that the world will also change.

If we do look to the spiritual realm, it is also usually to human agencies, human teachers and manmade, historical beliefs and human-centered dogmas. We try to save other people through our personal belief or conviction, as if making the majority of people follow a certain religious or spiritual formula that appeals to us will magically solve all other problems. If we call upon God, it is usually a rather human God, sometimes with notable political biases, and it is to favor our particular group and its interests that our prayers usually go forth, not to transcend our differences or to dissolve them in the Divine presence that is beyond all names and forms.

The fundamental problem – which is at the root of all our outer social and personal problems – is that we as human beings are asleep and insensitive to the sacred world in which we live. We do not honor Nature and the Divine powers at work within her ever changing currents. The result is that we do not honor each other or even honor ourselves, much less the greater non-human world. We don’t see the beauty of life as a whole; much less sense its deeper consciousness. We plunder and pillage nature in our search for our human happiness, pleasure, wealth and power, or at best make nature into an adornment for our self-aggrandizement.

In the commercial realm, everything is a commodity to buy or sell whose value will go up or down in an unpredictable manner. We are judged by what we own, earn or – worse yet in the age of credit cards – by what we owe, as if these numbers had some positive value and lasting significance for the real meaning of our lives. In the religious realm, the individual is commonly regarded as a soul to be harvested or a potential donor for a belief or an institution. We are judged by a religious label or name that puts us in a limited camp, not by a greater sense of unity with the universe that transcends all human definitions. We seem trapped in an outer show of superficial quantities in which our higher Self, which is more akin to the stars, is forgotten along with the living world around us.

The Bhagavad Gita | Author: Juan Mascaro | Pages: 124 | Price: Rs 350 Penguin

The Bhagavad Gita, a scintillating jewel embedded in the great Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, is a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna set against the background of war. At the beginning of the poem, we learn that there is going to be a great war for the rule of a kingdom. On the battlefield, with armies of the Kuru clan ranged against each other, Arjuna and Krishna explore the necessity of war and the nature of the human soul.

The eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita encompass the whole spiritual struggle of a human soul, and the central themes of this immortal poem arise from the symphonic vision of God in all things and of all things in God.

Juan Mascaro’s illuminating translation conveys the essence of the original Sanskrit in pure, poetic English.

Subramanian Swamy

When India fought the First War of Independence in 1857, and Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ was installed as emperor by the Hindus in Delhi for a brief period, his Hindu Prime Minister, on the emperor’s proclamation, made the killing of cow a capital offence. Earlier in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s kingdom, the only crime that had capital punishment was cow slaughter.

One global patent has been granted for cow urine, neem and garlic as a pest repellent, fungicidal and growth promontory properties for all different crops.

Our West influenced intellectuals and mentally dominated by foreign idiom, sneer at the mention of the cow, leave alone speaking about the cow as an asset to the nation. But we know that these intellectuals first sneered at yoga, now it is a fashion for them doing pranayama at cocktail parties. They also sneered at our sanyasis, calling them disparagingly as “Godmen”. Now they flock to ashrams with their white friends ever since the Beatles did. Who knows, they may soon boast of a cow in their backyards. For those of us who are desi by pedigree and conviction, I place some facts about the cow in the new perspective of modern Hindutva.

India has 150 million cows today, giving an average of less than 200 litres of milk per year. If they could be fed and looked after, then these divine animals can give an average of 11,000 litres of milk as the Israeli cows do. That could provide milk for the whole world. The milk we produce today is the cheapest in the world. With enhanced production by raising the productivity of milch cows we can become the world’s largest exporter of milk and India’s biggest foreign exchange earner.

The cow was elevated to the status of divinity in the Rg.Veda iself. In Book VI, the Hymn XXVIII attributed to Rishi Bhardwaja, extols the virtue of the cow. In Atharva Veda (Book X, Hymn 10), the cow is formally designated as Vishnu, and “all that the Sun surveys.” This divine quality of the cow has been affirmed by Kautilya in his Arthsastra (Chapter XXIX) as well.

The Indian society has addressed the cow as gow mata. The Churning of the Sea episode brings to light the story of the creation of the cow. Five divine Kamadhenus (wish cows), viz, Nanda, Subhadra, Surabhi, Sushila, Bahula emerged in the churning.

Cow is there in the company of Bhagwan Dattatreya and Gopal Krishna. Cow is the vehicle of Shaillputri and Gowri – two of the nine manifestations of Goddess Durga. Ancient coins with image of bull Nandi on them have been found in excavations.

Thousands of names of places, persons and things in our country have name of the cow: e.g. Gauhati, Gorakhpur, Goa, Godhra, Gondiya, Godavari, Goverdhan, Gautam, Gomukh, Gokarna, Goyal, Gochar etc. , that signify the deep reverence and high ground reserved for the cow and her progeny in our culture. Why? Because of the deep abiding faith that the cow is verily the Annapurna.

In 2003, the National Commission on Cattle presided over by Justice G.M. Lodha, submitted its recommendations to the NDA Government. The Report (in 4 volumes) called for stringent laws to protect the cow and its progeny in the interest of India’s rural economy. This is anyway a Constitutional requirement under Directive Principles of State Policy. Article 48 of the Constitution says: “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle”. In 1958, a 5-member Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court { (1959) SCR 629} upheld Article 48 and the consequently held total ban on cow slaughter as a reasonable restriction on Fundamental Rights of all Indians.

For a Hindu, the very appearance of a cow evokes a sense of piety. See however the most reckless bus driver avoids the cow that squats in the middle of the road. The cow is serene by temperament and herbivorous by diet. It is multi-product animal. Apart from milk, cow dung known for its anti-septic value, is still used as fuel in its dried caked form in most Indian villages. It is also used in compost manure and in the production of electricity through eco-friendly gobar-gas. Thus, Mahatma Gandhi had declared: “Cow protection is more important than even Swaraj”.

The cow, according to Vedas provides the following four products for human society :

1. Godugdha (Cow milk): As per Ayurveda, cow milk’s composition has fat, carbohydrate, minerals, calcium, Iron and Vitamin B, an even a capacity for resistance of the body against radiation and regenerate brain cells.

2. Goghruta (Cow Ghee): Best among all kinds of ghee. As per Ayurveda classics it is useful in various kind of systematic, physical and mental disorders as well as it sustain the age for long time. When it is used in Yajna, it improves the oxygen level in the air around.

3. Gomutra (Cow Urine): A total of 8 types of urine are used for medicinal purpose now a days. Among those, Cow urine is held to be the best. Hence the Americans are busy patenting while we are busy sneering about it. Anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal property is found in it. It is also having anti-oxidant and immuno modulator property, which is very much useful for immune deficiency diseases which are increasing now a day. In classics there are so many references available where cow urine is mentioned as a drug of choice. Even Parsis of Zoroastrian religion follow this practice.

Besides milk and dung, the ancient Hindu wisdom that cow’s urine has medicinal properties and hence accessible at low cost to the rural poor, is borne out by Patents granted in United States.

Two US patents have been granted for cow urine distillate (US Pat. No. 6410059 & 6896907) for anti-micro-bial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-cancer properties, also it is having a lot of anti-exidants. Since it has got immumomodulatory compounds in it, it is a very good bio-enhancer to facilitate drug availability to high extent in our body. Patent from China is also granted to cow urine distillate as a DNA protector.

One global patent has been granted for cow urine, neem and garlic as a pest repellent, fungicidal and growth promontory properties for all different crops (WHO 2004/087618A1).

Another US patent has been granted for strains obtained from Sahiwal cow milk for plant growth promoter phytopathogenic fungi controlling activity, abiotic stress tolerating capability, phosphatic solubilisation capability, etc. (US patent No. 7097830 dated 29/8/06).

Also CSIR has filed US patent for Amrit Pani (mixture of cow dung + cow urine + jaggery) from NBRI Lucknow for soil health improvement properties.

All the above claims had been made in Charaka Samhita, Sushrut, Vaghbhati and Nighantu, Ratnakar, etc.

The above examples very well prove the utility of cow dung and urine for sustainable agriculture as well as for almost curing or giving relief in many serious diseases like psoriasis, eczema, asthma, diabetes, blood pressure, renal failures and cancer, etc.

This confirms Vedic message: Gomay Vasate Laxmi i.e. cow dung is a source of wealth, whereas in western culture dung and urine are considered to be waste, even if their modern medical research has begun changing its view.

4. Gomaya (Cow dung): Gomaya is considered equally valuable as Gau mutra and it is used to purify the environment. Cow dung has radium and it checks the radiation effects.

Furthermore, the common argument in the west for slaughtering cows is no more uncontested. Beef is not of high protein content as believed. Any dietician’s chart shows that beef, with 22 per cent protein, ranks far below vegetable products like soyabeen (43), groundnut (31), pulses (24). Moreover, excess intake of protein is not good as it only contributes to obesity, a bane of modern civilization. Moreover, to procure 1 kg of beef (or for that matter any flesh) it takes 7 kg of crops and 7,000 kg. of water.

Thus protection of the cow thus makes good economic and ecological sense. Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the scholar-sanyasi and convenor of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, a body of all prominent Hindu religious heads, has argued that non-vegetarianism indirectly contributes heavily to green house gases and other pollution.

He quotes a report from the United Nations of the year 2006 that reveals the surprising fact that “raising animals for meat as food generates more green house gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.” Ten of billions of animals farmed for food, release gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and carbon-di-oxide through their massive amounts of manure. Animals such as cows and sheep, being ruminant, emit huge amount of methane due to flatulence and burping. “The released methane”, the report says, “has 23 times the global warming potential of CO2″. It is alarming to note that the livestock industry alone is responsible for 37 per cent of human induced methane emissions. To make room for these animals to graze, the virgin forests are cleared. The livestock industry also needs a vast stretches of land to raise mono-crops to feed the animals. The CO2 that the trees and plants store escapes back into the air when they are destroyed.

Growing fodder for farmed animals implies heavy use of synthetic fertilizers produced with fossil fuels. While this process emits a huge amount of CO2 fertilizer itself releases nitrous oxide (3) – a green house gas that is 296 times more potent than CO2. Alarming though these facts are, Swamiji sees in them a reason for hope. All that the people ever have to do is to avoid red-meat eating. In the absence of demand for meat there is no more need for breeding millions of animals for daily slaughter. And then animals population would cease to be medicated or inseminated for continuous breeding, thereby the population would be regulated

A single individual by simply not consuming meat prevents the equivalent of 1.5 tons CO2 emissions in a year. This is more than the one ton of CO2 emissions prevented by switching from a large sedan to a small car. One needs to have an honest commitment to save the mother earth who has been relentlessly patient and magnanimous since she began bearing life. There are a number of reasons for one to be a vegetarian. People given to meat eating think that a pure vegetarian diet is optional. But now they have no choice if they are alive to what is happening to this life-bearing planet. There is no justification whatsoever for one to continue to be a non-vegetarian knowing the devastating consequences of meat eating.

As Swami Dayananda Saraswati has noted:

“Promotion of vegetarianism does not require any legislation from the State. It does require a change of heart on the part of meat eating individuals anywhere on this planet. I cannot appeal to the tigers and wolves. They are programmed to be what they are. Being endowed with freewill only a human being can make a difference by exercising responsibly his or her choice.”

If it is too much for one to switch to be a total vegetarian, then one needs to give up at least red-meat eating.

Cattle can be conveniently reared today only in villages because villages have open grazing lands and natural atmosphere and ponds, etc., which urban dwellings do not have.

But as the erstwhile Sar Sanghchalak of RSS Sri Sudarshan has observed at a meeting of ‘Gobhakta’ industrialists in New Delhi recently, for rural economic development cow-based industries should be set up. An example of this is of Dr. Shrikrishna Mittal who successfully made tiles out of cow dung that could be used in rural housing for a long period. Of course Cow dung gas has already come to stay.

Hence, a new fervour is necessary to create a cow-renaissance in the nation. As Bahadur Shah and Maharaja Ranjit Singh did, we should amend the IPC to make cow slaughter as a capital offence as well as a ground for arrest under the National Security Act, to give meaning and urgency to the total ban on cow slaughter. It is constitutional and is Hindutva.

The cow is thus a part of Hindutva, and we should defend it with all our might.

By N.S. Rajaram

Sacredness

The distinguishing feature of pagan beliefs and cultures is their sense of the sacred— of sacredness as something that pervades the universe, its every nook and cranny, its every creation. Krishna in the Bhagavadgita (4.11) says: “All creatures great and small— I am equal to all; I hate none nor have I any favorites.” And this, as we shall soon see, extends to all creation, animate and inanimate.

In contrast, revealed faiths like Christianity and Islam cannot exist without favorites: sacredness is confined to an anthropomorphic icon called the Messenger of God, Son of God, the Prophet or any of the sundry intermediaries that block or control access to an anthropomorphic God who created man “his own image.” As a consequence nothing else is sacred. This means the world, with all its creations was created for man’s exploitation. Here is how the Bible (Genesis 9.2 – 3) puts it:

“…the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast on the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes in the sea; into your hand they are delivered.

“Every moving thing that moveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given all things.”

The pagan view is totally different. The celebrated Isa Upanishad opens with the injunction: Isavasyamidam sarvam, yat kincit jagatyam jagat; tena tyaktena bhunjitva ma gridhah kasyavaitdhanam.

This may be summarized as: “The divine lives in everything, in the minutest creation in the universe. Enjoy what is rightfully yours, covet not that which belongs to another.”

This holds two ideas— divinity resides everywhere and in everything, and one should take no more than what one needs. “Covet not that which belongs to another,” includes nature also, for nature too owns its share. This means nature and all its creations are sacred. So, in the pagan tradition God is not necessarily anthropomorphic— an idea by no means limited to Hinduism. Pagans have sacred plants like the ashvattah and the mistletoe (of the Druids), sacred animals like the Hindu cow and the bull of the ancient Egyptians, and any number of them among the natives of pre-Columbian America.

This idea of the sacred in animals gives rise to the interesting phenomenon of composite creatures and even human-animal combinations. In Hinduism we have the elephant-headed Ganesha, half-man half-lion Narasimha and many more. Similarly, the Egyptians had the Sphinx, pagan Greeks Pan (goat-man), and any number of such creatures among the Incas, the Aztecs and other peoples of pre-Columbian America. The idea in all this is man’s oneness with nature. Unlike in the revealed (Semitic) religions, which look down upon creations other than man, the pagans exalted both the animal and the human by combining them. They are all part of the same creation.

The assault on pagan civilizations by imperial movements let loose by revealed religions like Christianity and Islam involved to a great degree the destruction of this sense of the sacred— the sense of divinity everywhere and in everything. This is part of what is called “conversion.” It makes one shift allegiance from one’s culture rooted in nature and one’s surroundings to an alien anthropomorphic God and his intermediary who claims to speak for God. Conversion goes further: it makes imperial demands. It is not enough to shift allegiance; the convert has to destroy everything, including the history of one’s former self. And this is what the imperial ‘jealous’ God ultimately demands.

Since God in revealed religions is knowable only through the intermediary, conversion entails a change from worship of nature and all of God’s creation to the worship of man. To understand the pagan sense of sacredness, and the cataclysmic impact of conversion, is it is necessary to understand what the revealed creeds like Christianity and Islam demand of their flock. It means much more than a change in the mode of worship. This is what we may examine next.

Ram Swarup

God or Man-God as God-substitute?

The idea of the divine in everything in pagan traditions, especially in Hinduism, introduces a profound concept— of religion, or more properly spirituality as a-paurusheya. A-paurusheya in Sanskrit means “not of human origin.” (From purusha, human in Sanskrit.) This has many dimensions, but mainly that spirituality must be in harmony with all of creation. It is not for any human to claim any special privilege in creation. All are equal in the eyes of God— or “I hate none, nor have I any favorites,” in Krishna’s simple words.

A-paurusheya means that any teaching like the Vedas simply exposes the cosmic principles discovered by human sages, but the principles themselves, like scientific laws are eternal and owe nothing to human existence. For this reason, a Vedic seer like Vasishta or Vishwamitra is simply a drashtara— or one who ‘sees’ the truth of the cosmic order. The same is true of scientific seers like Newton and Einstein. They perceived cosmic truths like the Law of Gravitation and the Mass-Energy Equivalence. But these truths existed before them as part of the cosmos; they are eternal truths that were discovered by Newton and Einstein. Even Krishna in his Bhagavadgita makes no claim to originality. In his words:

“I taught this timeless Yoga to Vivaswan, who taught it to Manu. Manu then bequeathed it to Ikshwaku. This ancient wisdom transmitted through generations of royal sages became lost in the tides of time. I have taught you, my friend and most excellent disciple, this best and most mystical knowledge.”

In contrast, revealed religions like Christianity and Islam cannot exist without a privileged human claiming exclusive access to God. This makes them paurusheya— or ‘man originated.’ Jesus is the purusha of Christianity while Mohammed is the purusha of Islam. Without these purushas, neither Christianity nor Islam can exist. Pagan beliefs like Hinduism have no such human founder or purusha. In the words of the great thinker Ram Swarup:

“The spiritual equippage of Islam and Christianity is similar; their spiritual contents, both in quality and quantum are about the same. The central piece of the two creeds is “one true God” of masculine gender who makes himself known to his believers through an equally single, favored individual. … (Emphasis added.

“The whole prophetic spirituality whether found in the Bible or the Quran, is mediumistic in essence. Here everything takes place through a proxy, through an intermediary. Here man knows God through a proxy; and probably God too knows man through the same proxy.

“In fact, to these religions, the chosen individual is not merely an intermediary, he is also a savior, a mediator. He intercedes on behalf of his flock with God. He can even delegate his authority to his disciples, who, in turn, appoint their own officials who too have the power to ‘bind and loose.’ As a result, these religions tend to deal not with God but with God-substitutes.”

The chosen intermediary does not tolerate a rival for he is the sole intermediary. Such a religion demands a single God— a jealous God, who, like his spokesman, brooks no rivals. This is what is behind the Only Son of God and the Final Prophet. The authority for this spiritualism by proxy is found in the Bible (Deuteronomy 18.18): “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, …and will put my word in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.”

This virtually defines exclusivism, which implies that the intermediary is authorized to be the exclusive spokesman of God, and there can be none other. It means that man cannot know God save through the intermediary, there can be no direct access. This exclusion of direct access to God shuts out alternative paths of exploration. As a result, any mystical exploration is treated as heretical and open to persecution.

The pagan approach to spirituality and mysticism is the antithesis of this. Here, there is no intermediary to bar access to the divine. This leads to freedom of choice in experiencing the divine. God resides within the soul of every individual, accessible to anyone through mystical seeking. As a result, pluralism is the rule in pagan cultures. And God being individual to the seeker, there are as many Gods — and as varied — as there are souls that seek. There is no intermediary to enforce any belief in the name of God. Socrates expressed it in this fashion (Dialogues of Plato, Cratallus 400-1):

“Of the Gods we know nothing, either of their natures or of the names by which they call themselves. …but we are enquiring about the meaning of men in giving them these names.”

That is to say God (or Gods) is the result of spiritual seeking, the mystical search for cosmic reality. He (or She) is not an external force speaking through an intermediary. This can be as varied and as manifold as the human experience and capacity. Dirghatamas, probably the most mystical of the Vedic poets recognized this truth when he said (Rigveda I.164.48):

“Cosmic reality is one, but the wise perceive it in many ways: as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, the mighty Garutman, Yama, and Matarishvan— the giver of breath.”

This links the diverse pathways of the search for cosmic truth to the pluralistic pantheon that adorns every pagan culture. ‘Conversion’ to a revealed creed involves a wrenching from such a free-spirited mystical milieu to be cast among a throng whose spiritual life is regulated by God-substitutes. It entails a total uprooting from the land and culture of oneself and one’s ancestors. The spiritual loss is immense.

V.S. Naipaul: the sacred place

V S Naipaul

It is not easy for a human to give up everything, from the soul to the sacred land in which one was born and raised and surrender to a remote land and an unfamiliar Man-God— or God-substitute in Ram Swarup’s picturesque phrase. This must wreak havoc on the psyche. In the case of conversion to Islam it means, as V.S. Naipaul puts it: “A convert’s world view alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters.”

Naipaul might also have noted that this is accompanied by an inveterate hatred of one’s ancestors and the culture into which they were born. A hatred deep enough to want to destroy one’s own land and join the ranks of the violators of ancestral land and culture, at least in spirit. Pakistan is an example. Its heroes are not the Vedic kings and sages who walked the land, but invading vandals like Ghaznavi and Ghori who ravaged them. Or as Naipaul puts it: “Only the sands of Arabia are sacred.”

It is curiously tragic that these vandals were themselves were converted Turks who had lost their identity, now acting like surrogate Arabs, or ‘Arab substitutes’. This means: for a converted Muslim, his janma-bhumi (land of birth) can never be the punya-bhumi (sacred land). That can only be the land where the Prophet was born and preached.

This idea of the destruction of the sense of the sacred is not widely recognized. The pagan spirit, especially the Hindu, attaches great significance to his sense of punya-bhumi, to tirthas made sacred by association with heroes and sages from the hoary past. Conversion entails giving up this attachment to one’s sacred land and symbols and even turning against it with destructive zeal. This is movingly narrated in Naipaul’s Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples.

V.S. Naipaul, whose ancestors were from India, was born and grew up in Trinidad. Its original pagan inhabitants along with their sacred places had been obliterated by European invaders following Columbus. It was only after he had left the island, some forty years later that he began to notice this void. What brought this realization was his coming into contact with India, the punya-bhumi. As he wrote:

“… it was much later, in India, in Bombay, in a crowded industrial area — which was yet full of unexpected holy spots, a rock, a tree — that I understood that, whatever the similarities of climate and vegetation and formal belief and poverty and crowd, the people who lived so intimately with the idea of the sacredness of the earth were different from us. …Perhaps it is this absence of the sense of sacredness — which is more than the idea of the ‘environment’ — that is the curse of the New World, and is the curse especially of Argentina and ravaged places like Brazil. And perhaps it is this sense of sacredness — rather than history and the past — that we of the New World travel to the Old to rediscover.”

It is this sense of sacredness that Christianity and Islam have destroyed wherever they have gone. This anti-sacred feeling is particularly virulent in lands converted to Islam. Again, as Naipaul observes: “…in the converted Muslim countries — Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia — the fundamentalist rage is against the past, against history, and the impossible dream is of true faith growing out of a spiritual vacancy.”

I have noticed the same rage, though perhaps more subdued and certainly less violent, among the converted Christians in India, many of whom have never reconciled to the loss of colonial patronage (which they mistakenly identify with Christianity). They are blind to sacredness around them, still clinging to the impossible dream of Western ‘Christendom’ coming to their aid in their hopeless, unnecessary struggle against the pagan Hindus.

In my travels in Central America, I have noticed that this sense of sacredness is not altogether lost among the converts, especially Native American tribes. Though nominally Christian, they retain their ancient beliefs and practices. They even paganize Christianity by identifying Christian figures with pagan gods and goddesses. In parts of Mexico, Virgin Mary becomes Our Lady of the Guadeloupe and Aztec sacred symbols often take the place of the cross.

Similar pagan traces with their sense of the sacred can be found among some Muslims of Indonesia. Naipaul found that among some of the people of Sumatra, there was great reverence for nature— a most un-Islamic idea. They believed that certain trees and springs had spirits. Speaking of her childhood in the village, an Indonesian woman told Naipaul: “We always have to ask permission when we cut down a big tree, or drain a spring, or build a house. We have to follow certain rituals, ceremonies, to appease guardian spirits.”

This of course is a throwback to the Hindu past, before the coming of Islam. Naipaul later visited the village, an enchanting place where rice had been cultivated in the same way, in the same place for time immemorial. So were the practices and the rituals. In his words:

“And yet very little was known of this immense history. There were no documents, no texts; there were only inscriptions. Writing itself was one of the things that came from India with religion. All the Hindu and Buddhist past had been swallowed up. …People’s memories could go back only to their grandparents or great-grandparents. The passing of time could not be gauged; events a hundred years old would be like events a thousand years old. All that remained of two thousand years of great social organization here, of a culture, were the taboos and earth rites…”

All this ancient tradition, with its sacred land and its guardian spirits were uprooted by the coming of Islam with its tribal Arab God and his Prophet who brooks no rivals, brought by an army of God-substitutes. As Naipaul sees it: “The cruelty of Islamic fundamentalism is that it allows only one people — the Arabs, the original people of the Prophet — a past, and sacred places, pilgrimages and earth reverences. These sacred Arab places have to be the sacred places of all the converted peoples. Converted peoples have to strip themselves of their past. …It is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism.”

This means the convert has no punya-bhumi. He has to be an eternal spiritual subject of the Arab people.

The result is rage without end. Having lost one’s own identity, the convert must destroy everyone else’s. The convert can never be at peace with himself or with the world.

References

Naipaul, V.S. (1998) Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples.

Viking-Penguin, New Delhi.

Rajaram, N.S. (2003) A Hindu View of the World: Essays in the Intellectual Kshatriya

Tradition. Voice of India: New Delhi.

By David Frawley

Is Life Predestined?

There is a destiny or karmic pattern to our lives. Whatever exists in the realm of time must follow the rhythms of time and the law of cause and effect. The present fruit must be of the same nature as the previous seed. Whatever we are in body and mind must be the result of our previous physical and mental patterns. This destiny for some people is very fixed.

For others it is capable of modification, though its basic features cannot be changed. For example, we cannot change our parents, nor can we alter the country or time in which we are born. Some people have such a developed nature along a particular line that we can say that they were destined to be great or destined to be a criminal, almost regardless of circumstances.

This is not to say that our being is predestined but only the outer pattern of our actions, which they can be modified for the future. Our consciousness, not being a product of time, is inherently free. Karma and destiny belong only to the body-mind complex, which is not really ours anyway but belongs to the world of Nature. Our ultimate destiny, which is inherent, is to realize our immortal Self. Everything else is an accident or illusion.

Are We Punished for Wrong Actions?

Reward and punishment are concepts of an undeveloped mind. The Divine Being is not some great parent or judge in Heaven dealing out rewards and punishments. There is a natural law (dharma) and its consequences according to the law of cause and effect (karma).

If you put your hand into a fire you get burned. God is not punishing you for the sin of putting your hand in a fire by burning you. It is not a sin but a matter of ignorance of natural law and consequent experience of pain or limitation. Just as there are physical laws, like fire’s capacity to burn, so there are mental and spiritual laws. Violence, for example, brings eventual destruction upon its perpetrator. But one is not punished for violence, violence as a negative state of mind with negative consequences creates its own punishment.

The problem is that the long term effects of our actions are not as obvious as their immediate results. For example, if we eat food, like too much sugar, which tastes good but is bad for us its negative effect will not manifest immediately, like fire burning us, but will take time, causing eventual disease through poor digestion which may manifest as arthritis, heart disease or any number of problems. Because of the time lap involved between the cause and effect of our actions we may not recognize the connection between the wrong food and the disease.

On the level of behaviour, anger is destructive to our finer sensitivities and prevents us from developing higher consciousness. However, if our minds are not properly evolved we may not recognize this pain; we may indulge in anger and find pleasure in it. But eventually we must experience the consequences of the forces we set in motion, both on a short term and a long term level. Our anger, fear and attachment must lead us into situations that make us suffer. Wrong action itself is its own punishment because it causes the constriction of our consciousness into the outer realm of life, which always results in unhappiness.

Do Heaven and Hell Exist?

Sanatana Dharma recognizes that the soul or reincarnating consciousness is one with the Divine and Eternal Reality. The soul is immortal and by its very nature ever blissful, free and happy. However, veiled by ignorance, it falls into darkness and confusion and through misconceptions about the nature of Reality makes various mistakes about life which lead to suffering in different incarnations.

Souls by their karma, the power of their own actions, create their own destiny, which leads to various happy or unhappy states of existence. A very happy state could be called heaven and a very unhappy state, hell. Yet there is no eternal or absolute heaven or hell. Any embodied state being bound by time must be transient and come to an end after a certain period of time. Nor does any realm contain such extremes of pleasure and pain that the ordinary idea of heaven and hell portrays. All embodied states must bring some degree of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow.

Moreover an unlimited result cannot arise from a limited action, any more than a limited seed can produce an unlimited plant. Therefore an unlimited or eternal heaven or hell can never result from limited creaturely actions, such as occur in an ordinary human life, which must lead to repeated incarnations, not to any final heaven or hell

The actions that we do in one life do not have eternal ramifications but only those into a corresponding field of time. Wrong actions lead to suffering but such suffering is equal to the nature of the action. There cannot be an eternal result through transient action.

The idea of an eternal heaven or hell is irrational and shows an ignorance of the basic nature and laws of the universe. Hindus believe in a loving God who would never condemn any creature to an everlasting hell. To them, such a God would be the worst of tyrants and unworthy of worship.

Heaven and hell have been used by various priests to entice or frighten people into certain beliefs. Such heavens and hells do not exist. This heaven and hell idea appeals to the basic reward-punishment conditioning mechanism of the undeveloped mind. It does not promote real ethical behaviour so much as creating emotional imbalance and sometimes religious fanaticism. It is important to recognize that our actions have their consequences in both this and future lives, but to hang the spectre of an eternal heaven or hell over people is only to promote fear and ignorance.

Author is Director of American Centre for Vedic Studies, USA.

By U. Mahesh Prabhu

Feelings and emotions are explicit testimonies to the fact that we are men. But when we fail to tame them and flow with them, our life is on a sure path to disaster.

There is a word in Sanskrit, which is largely unparalleled in any other language, called Stitaprajna. Simply translated the word can mean “Standing (Stita) Consciousness (Prajna)” in English. But its meaning is way too convoluted.

Imagine, for a moment, that you have slapped a kid. What will it do? Cry. Right? Definitely! What is its response when you cuddle it? It smiles – naturally. And when you stare with terrible look? It tries to ignore in panic. The same is true in case of adults too! The only difference is that grownups’ reciprocation pattern is largely varied and this is owing to their complex mental structure.

There are people who get carried away by their feelings and ones who know how to control them. But that they reciprocate, appropriately or inappropriately, is for sure. But once they react their mental equilibrium is imbalanced. Given this we can effectively conclude that feelings are paths unto miseries.

Yes, there can also be one more argument – not certainly for the heck of it. “What about the positive feelings?” one may ask. True, feelings like love compassion can be called “positive.” But what we should realize is that even such feelings lead to some sort of crisis. To demonstrate it: You love a dog and when the dog dies you are [sad]. So it is imperative to concluded, that every feeling leads to loss of mental peace.

So what is the way out?

The only way out is embracing the aforesaid concept of “Stitaprajna”.

“Stitaprajna” is a state of mind where your feelings have been effectively controlled by your own intellect. The person attains a state of equilibrium which isn’t easy to be disturbed. He doesn’t get wooed by praises nor is he saddened, or infuriated, with insults hurled at him. He’s always steady. True, it isn’t easy to be “Stitaprajna”. And because it isn’t great men are in scarce numbers.

There is one poem authored by an Imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling which attempts to simplify the concept of Stitaprajna – but not completely. Entitled as “IF” the poem reads as below:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

The Bhagavad-Gita has long fascinated humanity and has inspired some of the greatest minds of all time. It is a short scripture with infinite significance packed into virtually every verse. The following are some comments of some eminent personalities of medieval and modern history.

“The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race, a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization.” Sri Aurobindo – (1872-1950, mystic, visionary, philosopher and revolutionary of India)

“When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous” Albert Einstein – (1879-1955, Renowned Scientist)

“From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-Gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures.” Adi Shankara – (8th century AD, renowned Hindu non-dualist philosopher)

“I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was the first of Books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us” Ralph Waldo Emerson – (1803-1882, father of American Transcendentalist philosophy)

“The Mahabharata has all the essential ingredients necessary to evolve and protect humanity and that within it the Bhagavad-Gita is the epitome of the Mahabharata just as ghee is the essence of milk and pollen is the essence of flowers.” Madhvacarya – (13th-14th century, influential Hindu philosopher)

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.” Henry David Thoreau – (1817-1862, American Transcendentalist philosopher)

“When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-Gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow.” Mahatma Gandhi – (1869-1948, great religious and national figure of India’s freedom struggle era)

“In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it.” Rudolph Steiner – (1861-1925, century German social reformer and philanthropist)

“The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.” Aldous Huxley – (1894-1963, British biologist, novelist and philosopher)

By Stephen Knapp

Depression, according to recent statistics, is practically an epidemic, with over 70 million people suffering from its affects, such as a feeling of moroseness, uselessness, lack of energy, inability to sleep, and a poor attitude toward life in general, among other symptoms. Depression causes a pessimistic view of things. It also discourages enthusiasm and stifles one’s initiative. It may also produce despair and bring about sickness in the mind and body. It can make one resort to rash and thoughtless actions that a person may later regret. Much of the time such thoughts are completely unnecessary. Thus, it is imperative that we help cure depression so that people can live with more happiness, ingenuity, energy, and are thus able to reach a higher potential in life.

The reason for depression may be different for each person, and there are a variety of causes. So it must be analyzed and understood. So what can we do to help cure such an attitude, as long as it is not a biological problem?

Spiritually, there are many ways to help take care of this condition. So let us take a deeper look at this.

Causes of Depression:

Physical, Biological or Medical Factors

1. There are physical factors such as digestive problems, diabetes, anaemia, or other diseases which cause discomfort. This will naturally cause a lacklustre mental disposition. Having parasites is another biological factor that will deplete a person of their energy and well-being.
2. Sometimes the diet will also cause depression. There may be a lack of vitamins and proper nutrition. Or there may be too much of something, like sugar, which can also cause highs and lows in blood sugar levels which will certainly create changing mood shifts.
3. There is also the depression that new mothers may feel right after giving birth to a child. The hormones are often quite imbalanced at that time and a new mother may feel a multitude of changing feelings about things.
4. A weak nervous system, or overwork and tension are also causes of a depleted mental disposition. And a negative attitude itself can cause further digression in one’s outlook on life.

External Factors

1. It is often seen that something as simple as the weather or a cloudy day can cause melancholy and depression.
2. One’s social status that may be viewed as unsatisfactory may also cause one to feel dejected.
3. Sometimes a young girl in one ethnic group may be attracted to a boy from another group and then be very depressed and disappointed because such an arrangement would never be approved by the parents.
4. Having a husband that forces the wife to be or remain alienated from their surroundings or from family and society will also cause loneliness and depression in such a woman. This is also found amongst certain ethnic groups or religions.
5. Associating with other negative people or listening to music with dark lyrics or messages, will also cause a person to have a most negative outlook.
6. Being a victim of a burglary or robbery, or losing everything in a fire, tornado, hurricane, or similar causes.

Psychological or Emotional Factors

1. There may also be the recollection of bad habits or mistakes that we wish we could have corrected or had never done that still haunt our memory with guilt.
2. Emotions that are aroused such as anger, revenge, jealousy, and envy will also affect a morbid state of mind.
3. The inability to face difficulties or worries about the future can also bring depression. Unnecessary fear and anxiety will also cause despair.

Metaphysical Factors

1. Other unknown causes such as curses that have been cast can affect one negatively.
2. There are other subtle influences, such as ghostly beings, that may affect a person in the wrong way.
3. Disappointment in, or the perceived neglect from, one’s spiritual master or religious organization that a person may belong to if things do not go well, can also cause deep scars and depression that can affect a person for years.

These are a few of the causes that may bring about a feeling of depression or misery in a person. And what is worse, if the depression is not remedied, then it can escalate to feelings of suicide. When a person in despair feels that all of their basic defences are broken and there is no one to turn to, nor can they find a comforting voice to console or support them, then they may conclude that there is no way out but through death. But it must be understood that suicide is never the end. And suicide, and the state of mind that one has to compel one to commit suicide, is never a way for progressing into the next realm. Death is never the final act. It only opens the door to additional challenges that must be met or endured, depending on how one leaves their body.

Suicide and Reactions that follows:

Depression is very common today, and almost everyone goes through it at some point in life. Many are not able to overcome this negative state of mind. They seek medical and psychiatric treatment, and in extreme cases even resort to suicide, thinking that such a step will solve all of their problems or allow them to escape from life.

All the Vedic scriptures and sages of the East and the West have vehemently condemned the act of suicide. They declare emphatically that absolutely nothing is solved or gained by getting rid of the physical body by force. On the other hand, the results of suicide are disastrous in the extreme.

Scientists and psychologists today, researching in psychic phenomena, have corroborated some of the teachings of the sages. The sages state that at the time when the soul is to depart from the body, the dying person sees, as on a cinema screen, all the actions done by him during the present lifetime, from childhood up to the moment of death. And from all these varied scenes, the most prominent one arrests and engages the soul’s attention, and the soul leaves the physical body in that state of consciousness.

If there is intense attachment to someone or something, then the soul will depart with that person’s image in mind. Intense hatred means that the hated person’s image will remain in the mind as the predominant thought or image at the time of death.

A person who had been strongly addicted to liquor and drugs will leave the body with thoughts of liquor and drugs, or the desire for more intoxication. Sometimes they leave the body while under the influence of intoxicants, which has a most regressive affect on entering the next realm. On the other hand, a person who had lived a pious and virtuous life, with thoughts of God, will depart from the body with thoughts of God. The last thoughts determine the conditions and nature of the next birth. This is what the sages have said about the phenomenon of death.

This argument seems reasonable because the last dominant thought in our mind at the time when we just drop off to sleep can often be the thought that dominates our mind the next morning. It is for this reason that we are advised to sing the Divine Names of God or hymns at the time of death in order to focus the attention of the dying person on holy and noble thoughts.

It is needless to add that if the soul departs from the body with thoughts of anger, hatred, jealousy, worry and fear, or in a state of great mental turmoil, then such thoughts and agitation will be carried over and immediately experienced in that realm also. In fact, this state of mind will help determine which realm we go to next. That is why sages say that suicide does not solve anything whatsoever. On the contrary, it makes the condition of the soul much worse.

They give an analogy to explain this truth. When we experience a nightmare during sleep, we wake up abruptly with a shock. But we feel a sense of relief at the same time, because the consciousness has rushed back to the refuge of the physical body. In suicide the soul does not have a physical body to return to as in the case of a nightmare. Hence, it undergoes great misery and suffering, perhaps more than during its sojourn in the physical body. Furthermore, it is said that such a soul has to roam about as a ghost for a long time contemplating his misfortune for the foolishness of killing himself. Plus, you also leave others, such as parents or your children and friends, in so much pain as you leave them behind to suffer your absence, losing you, wondering what went wrong. This is also your responsibility for which you are accountable.