This is the message from Turiyananda. There are various states of consciousness acquired during your life on earth which will be your passport to where you will be going to be located in the astral world; that is the sum total of everything you have done, has made you vibrate in a certain way, and you will be drawn magnetically in various degrees of divine light that you can stand and absorb. Now that statement is an incredible statement, how much spiritual light can you absorb? When you sit down to meditate how do you feel, very restless and uncomfortable, why? The master says the moment you sit down to meditate and look at the point between the eyebrows suddenly trillions of specks of light from God begin to descend through His grace to re- harmonize you. If you don’t see that light now eventually you will when you meditate long enough.
How much light can you absorb in your body? Therefore your passport will be your vibration at the end of your life. How much light have you absorbed during your present life will determine what you can behold and how bright. Therefore, how much light you have within now will determine which place you are going to go in the astral plane. That is for those who are advanced spiritually, the other ones are going to be asleep in a coma state and they will not know it. When Jesus said in my Father’s house there are many mansions.
Now, the question is? Is the astral world heaven? No, the astral world is not heaven but it does have different schools leading souls to perfection. There is a clear difference between heaven which is a state of Cosmic Consciousness that few people reach at the end of their life. The astral world or what many call the astral heaven is where many go because of their righteous life during their stay here on earth. In the astral world there is a tremendous evil and spiritual realm.
According to the dictionary the word heaven is the abode of God, the angels, and the spirits of the righteous after death; the place or state of existence of the blessed after the mortal life or a spiritual state of everlasting communion with Spirit; a state of ever new blissful awareness of one’s infinite existence, heaven which means when you regain your own sat-chit-ananda, ever blissfully aware of your own eternal existence. That is oneness with God.
However when you have the etymology of words by scholars, they can never reach the depth of realization a master will give to you now. These are the words of Paramahansa Yogananda in what the word heaven means. The kingdom of heaven is not a land ruled by an autocratic divine king, it is a state of cosmic consciousness in which all dualities are abolished and the consciousness of the loving King, God the Father reign in the throne of all space in everlasting bliss in ever joyful love.
The reason why the beautiful astral world is called heaven is the astral universe is made of very subtle vibrations above our earth and the saint’s call this earth “The Dark Physical Prison” where the saints can’t believe we are able to live and breathe in such an incredible heavy atmosphere, so gross as this planet. The masters are not saying this to be negative; they are saying what Lord Krishna is saying “Get out of my delusion” get out of here. All men walk on earth fully deluded poisoned by thousands of inexorable laws of nature, get out of here.
This subject is to reawaken our divine memories of our lost paradise and to create in us a deep longing to return to our first love or oneness with Spirit. We are trying to reawaken within ourselves that once we were in a state of Cosmic Consciousness.
We are all cosmic beings and we all were once in Cosmic Consciousness and have been sent into creation by God in a state of cosmic amnesia which is called the Lila or Play of God in which He plays hide and seek with us until we regain our divinity. The scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man’s deeper subconscious memories of a long series of experiences in the beautiful celestial astral world and the disappointing terrestrial world where the earth is dark with warfare and murders.
If you say to me I don’t want to be reincarnated again, then I have only one thing to say to you, analyze what desires you have left in you because if you have even one desire that desire will bring you back into a human form. For you not to come back you must not have any desires absolutely. Most human beings say I love dogs, I love cats, I love birds, I love nature, I love the roses, I love being married, and I love babies, I love all of them. If you have any attachments to any of these things you are stuck to come back here.
Now comes the importance of your daily spiritual development in meditation. The master says people in the astral world develop for the good will of others and especially if they are spiritual during their earthly life. If you meditate deeply with devotion now no matter where you are when you go to the astral world you will through the force of habit remember to meditate and you will thereby develop on that plane faster than other souls who have not learned to meditate during their earthly sojourn. Your meditation is your most powerful passport for you to advance rapidly in the astral world and not come back here. You can be free from human desires through meditation in the astral world and avoid reincarnation. The spiritual path has the claws of Satan holding tightly to his victims with the rut of bad habits and sense pleasures keeping the victims away from the real joys of eternal life. Don’t be tempted by Satan and forget your daily meditation and God. On your altar of meditation and prayer give your offerings to God daily, and soon you will see the bad habits of Satan will have no power over you. His hold will weaken weakly before your strength.
Those who do not meditate with devotion should not expect much, you can classify yourself, and there you have your answer. Heaven is not a place or destination it’s a state of consciousness.
O Krishna! What happens to a person unsuccessful in yoga— one who has devotedly tried to meditate but who has been unable to control himself because his mind kept running away during yoga practice? Does a yogi perish like a sundered cloud if he finds not the way to Brahma (Spirit) – being thus unsheltered in Him and steeped in delusion, sidetracked from both paths—the one of God-union and the one of right activities? Remove forever all my doubts, O Krishna! For none save Thee may banish my uncertainties.
SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION
The discouraged devotee in deepest prayer resorts to God as the mighty Cosmic Physician who alone is able to cure the deep-seated disease of material doubts.
The blessed Lord said:
O Arjuna, My son! A performer of good actions never meets destruc-tion. Whether in this world or in the beyond – he falls not into evil plight!
SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION
Arjuna here receives a wonderful reply from the Divine Preceptor. This stanza of the Bhagavad Gita stands as a monument of inspiration to all sincere yogis who have failed to unite their souls with God because of obstructions arising from prenatal and post-natal actions.
The fallen Yogi who, has occasionally succeeded in experiencing the superior bliss of his soul cannot forget it; he well knows there is no comparison between ever-new divine joy and the gross pleasures of the senses. The yogi tries to sublimate the unnatural hunger for sense pleasure into the natural hunger for the soul’s joy. Even a fallen yogi is far superior to the materialist. The former is on the threshold of awakening from sense delusions; the latter is still asleep in ignorance.
God gives encouragement in this stanza to all devotees to seek their natural divine inheritance. The imperfect yogi, in spite of failures, tries to regain his memory of divinity. Once the devotee has tasted the superior soul-bliss, his heart becomes convinced of the inferiority of sense joys. No matter how many times a sincere yogi falls down in the path of yoga, he struggles again toward his Goal.
The devotee who performs meritorious actions develops divine memory and good karma that impel him to seek liberation in this life or in the beyond. The memory of the divine bliss of yoga practice remains lodged in his subconscious mind. If he is not able to find full liberation in one life, in his next incarnation the hidden memory of his past experiences of yoga sprouts forth in spiritual inclinations even in his infancy.
From the teachings of PY and the lectures of Turiyananda.
