A Question

Friends! You have read about Ravi Shree's previous birth. Besides the detailed discussion about his previous birth, we also learned that among Ravi Shree's past lives, one birth was in a Thakur family, two births in a Yadav family, one birth in a Brahmin family, and one birth in a Muslim family.

Knowing one's past lives is certainly going through a thrilling experience. Just like Ravi Shree, we too must have had many past lives. In those past lives, we must have done many things that are still authentically present today. The chains of our past lives are also continuously growing in the same way as Ravi Shree says Babukhan is a character in the extended chain of one of his past lives' families.

Consider seriously, from the perspective of a person who has taken birth in different castes and different religions and remembers all those past lives, which caste and which religion would be the best? Every person calls their own caste and their own religion the best. But a person who remembers past lives, who was once a Muslim, has gone through all the customs of the Muslim religion, has touched the Quran Sharif to his forehead, has offered prayers in the mosque - how would he, being born as a Hindu today, call Hinduism the best?

It is true that in this life, he will go through the customs of the Hindu religion, bow before the temple, call the Gita and Ramayana venerable, but if he remembers his previous life, how can he bring hatred towards the Muslim religion and Muslims into his heart and mind? Here, the matter of other religions is a broader scope. Today, Ravi Shree is Brahmin, but he has also taken birth in other castes of Hinduism, Yadav and Thakur. He has spent nine months in the womb of a Yadav woman in the same way as in the womb of a Thakur woman and a Brahmin woman.

Women of all castes have been his mothers, men of all castes have been his fathers, and his childhood, youth, and old age have passed in families of all castes. And the interesting thing is that he remembers all those births as well. Those chains of his past lives must have taken the form of vast families today. Now, if he is asked in a special situation to choose the best among Thakur, Yadav, and Brahmin castes, towards whom would he lean?

Now, may this same problem not stand before you as soon as you remember past lives. The Muslim religion and caste which you today sharply criticize in open words, declare their customs wrong, and dislike even seeing them – if upon remembering a past life you learn that in your previous birth you were a staunch Muslim and, as a Hakim (ruler/official), used to give the call to prayer (Azaan) every morning from the mosque in the name of Allahu Akbar – then what will happen to your poor mindset, currently growing against the Muslim religion after being born in Hindu dharma?

The Muslim religion is just an example. You could also be Christian, Parsi, or Sikh. You could also be born into a different caste within the religion of this birth. If you are a Shia Muslim, you could also be born into a Sunni family. Death is certain.........

One day everyone has to register their presence in that office of death; there are no holidays.

The next birth after death is also certain. And if you are thinking at this moment that you will take your next birth only in your own religion and your own caste, then set aside this childish ego, because this capacity is attained only by Yogi Purushas as a result of their intense spiritual practice and the strong self-power thus generated. As a result of this capacity, one can take birth in a desired place, desired family, desired religion, and caste. We are living by denying the spiritual aspect itself, hence we are miles away from the scope of this capacity. It is true that you do not remember your past lives, which could be in any caste or any religion. But by participating in riots happening due to religious or caste conflict, you are killing the chain that you yourself expanded in your past lives; this possibility cannot be denied. Today you are a Muslim and sharpening weapons for riots; may it not happen that the blood of your own son or grandson from a previous life, when you were a Hindu, is shed by your sword. What you were in a past life and what you will become in the next life is not at all certain. Today, becoming a Hindu and determined to take the lives of Muslims for the Ram temple, will you tomorrow become a Muslim and come to kill Hindus for the Babri mosque?

All these things are possible based on just one or two of your past lives, whereas your existence was also in Satyug, Treta, and Dwapar, and is also today. It is also possible that the caste or religion which you oppose so fiercely today, wanting to destroy it completely, you yourself may have been the originator of that caste or religion in previous lives.

You could be among those first disciples of Jesus who advanced this religion and gave it a form, and today you have become fiercely opposed to the Christian religion.

Today, the Gotra (lineage) name of this body, of this family, of this form of Ravi Shree is "Shandilya." Whereas in his previous birth, his Gotra name was "Kodand." Gotra means descendant of a particular Rishi (sage). That is, upon coming from one birth to another, even the names of your ancestral Rishis changed. With what pride we say that we are descendants of a particular Rishi. In the next birth, we will become descendants of another Rishi, and in a previous birth, we were descendants of some other Rishi. The reality is that the body you are confined within, which is called perishable, contains the existence of the Rishi within its properties.

The day you step out of this rented house, this cage, this body, your connection with that Rishi will end. Whatever effect the properties of the blood flowing within this body might have on your mindset, you do not take that effect with you to the next birth; rather, your next birth can be anywhere. This is somewhat like imagining a large field with six or seven dummies wrapped in different clothes, and behind each dummy, a microphone is placed. You have to find an empty space behind one of these dummies and stand there. It is also not decided behind which dummy you will find an empty space. You run and stand behind a dummy like in a "musical chairs" race. Many dummies like your dummy suddenly come and surround you and say, "You are a Christian," because that dummy was a Christian's, and you start speaking things of the Christian religion from the microphone. After some time, which is called your age, you get tired, you die, and you fly again. And then you again find an empty space behind a dummy and stand there. Here too, all the hidden dummies come and surround you and tell you that you are a Muslim and the name of Allah should be on your tongue, and you start speaking from the microphone what people expect from you. After this, it is not decided behind which dummy you will get space. You were in a Christian's dummy before this; you do not remember this.

As said by Jigar:

"This bird is a Hindu, it flies in the temple,

Let it fly up to the minarets, it will become a Muslim..."

We do not remember what we were in a past life, where we were, or what good or bad deeds we did. Nature's positive perspective behind this is perhaps that by not remembering the things of a past life, we are saved from the numerous troubles endured in that life, from their torment, and from being scorched in the fire of repentance for our mistakes. But nature must have thought that these humans would live together with love, affection, and peace. Our Rishis and Munis created these classifications of religion and caste for convenience. That classification was for those dummies (bodies). What we call 'we' is our individual soul, whose only connection with those dummies is that they prove to be rented houses for us for some days.

For the soul, every Rishi, Muni, Veda, Shastra, and Upanishad says that it is pure. Behind calling the soul (which is the subtle body) pure and behind the beliefs determining the next birth, under those मान्यताएँ (beliefs), the possibilities become even stronger that your next birth will be in the very religion or caste which you strongly oppose in this life. According to this belief, "God is very merciful. After death, when the mind of the subtle body becomes light, if it has done any unethical act against any person, caste, or religion, or has done work that tarnishes humanity, or has lived with a mentality contrary to humanity, then it becomes restless to repent. And to end this restlessness, it tries to take birth in the same caste or religion it was against. Under this same rule, if a person has usurped someone's wealth or property in this life, then upon entering the subtle body after death, they become restless to repay that debt and many times take birth in an animal form, living as a pet in that person's home." According to this belief:

"The repentance done upon entering the subtle body is under the rule of the invisible power or nature or God. You cannot escape it. To bear the fruit of past actions, God himself molds the desires of the being in such a way that it strives to go to the very womb that can free it from repentance."

'You had a past life and you will have a rebirth' – both these statements are as certain as your current birth. Whether your next birth will be human or animal will be decided by your work style in this life, the self-power generated as a result of your faith in the divine power, or the special grace of a capable Yogi.

The strength of faith in the divine power and the generated self-power is hidden in your morality. Faith is not fully achieved merely by bowing down in temples or mosques. If you do not have strong feelings of love, self-restraint, sacrifice, and altruism by considering the spiritual aspect paramount, your self-power cannot become strong. It is only because of those who walk the path of high spiritual objective and morality based on strong self-power that Indian culture is still in existence, and this is why Iqbal had to say:

"Our existence does not vanish, there must be something, otherwise, the era of the world has been our enemy for centuries......"

Only as a result of faith in the invisible power does a person become endowed with a high mindset. If feelings of separation, hatred, or violence are strong in any corner of your mind, you cannot escape your consequences, no matter how much you go to temples or mosques or stay in the company of a powerful Yogi Purush.

"By what countenance will he make God his own, When man does not adopt (love) man......"

The faith of Yogi Purushas themselves is inherent in 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', hence their special grace is also upon those individuals who hold such feelings in their hearts. 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' means the entire Earth is one family. If we think about the principle of past birth in a slightly broader scope, apart from religion and caste, it is also not certain in which country your next birth is to occur. Today you are Indian, yesterday you were American, tomorrow you could be Pakistani. Today we are Indians; it is appropriate to love India, but hating other countries does not fall under patriotism. And what if tomorrow we are also born in that same country?

"These relationships of pain are also very strange, Whoever you see, appears to be your own..."

Looking only at the classification of religion and caste, we created these for our convenience in our past lives. Today, the conveniences we created have become problems for us.

It is very important to ask a question to the people who are restless to increase the number of followers of their own religion: if your next birth happens in the same religion whose people you are pulling and adding to your religion today, then what will you do? Then only this will remain to think:

"I set my house on fire, and I too,

Was among the spectators..."

Today, we do not hesitate to call other castes inferior, nurturing the ego of our own caste's superiority. We pass by poor children on the roadside with dismissive glances. Look into their pleading eyes; tomorrow we too could be born into those castes that are considered low or inferior in our eyes today! The French philosopher La Fontaine used to say that "The path we choose to escape from fate is often where we encounter it." We are the past of tomorrow and the present of tomorrow too. The thorns we are sowing today will tomorrow pierce our own bodies.

When God, our creator, did not show favoritism towards us, we too have no right to stain human birth, humanity.

Today, we are surrounded by the problems of our own conveniences in the same way as a gentleman was regretting holding a gun and kept saying that he was always stressed about its safety now.

This fight of hatred must stop. This short life is already too little for love; if we take out time for hatred from this, what will remain?

Try to find a solution to this problem in your nightly thoughts, considering the "principle of reincarnation." Perhaps you too will reach the same conclusion that many poets reached long ago:

"Now let such a religion be created,

In which man is made human..."

Friends, today, just in the name of religion, two countries are clashing, becoming a threat to the existence of human life. Religion was like trees that we planted for our convenience so they would give us shade.

Now perhaps the time has come for us to overcome the tradition of "different trees, and my tree is the best," and these poisonous mentalities of hatred, separation, violence, and selfishness.

When it is not even certain that the religion and caste we are fighting for will be ours tomorrow, what is the justification for this blind fight, this hatred?

The narrow mentalities spreading in our minds regarding religion and caste are growing like weeds. The few people sitting among us even work to fertilize these weeds:

"All the crows of the country... have plastered themselves white on their bodies.

Fearing their mouths will turn black... my homeland trembles!!"

Why don't we destroy this crop which is now ruining our land and plant a new crop?

We are first and foremost human! Why can't we fix this thought in our minds? The principle of reincarnation says that your religion and caste do not remain the same, so why don't we think about getting rid of these rotten, poisonous mentalities?

We created our own religions, made their customs and rules, and gave our lives a path, saying this path is excellent, keep following it. If this path weren't there, we would be troubled, lost, sometimes here, sometimes there. But the sages understood this and tied you in religious bonds from birth. You were born into a Hindu family, and your Hindu religion started; you were born into a Muslim family, and the Muslim religion started; no need to ask anyone anything. But the way it is said that 'God is one' – we haven't tried to understand its meaning. The paths of every religion are different, but ultimately the objective of every religion is one, and that is to take you from the stair called religion to the room called spirituality, where the stairs of every religion lead, and it is only one room. It does not belong to Hindus, nor Muslims, nor Sikhs, nor Christians; that room is of spirituality, which is called God. You are getting entangled in narrowness on this stair itself and are destroying the objective of your own religion. The ultimate objective of every religion is the awakening of spiritual consciousness within man. Spirituality means that our life force expands throughout the entire world, that we have a feeling of oneness for every person, that we have a strong feeling of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family) within us.

The fundamental difference between religion and spirituality is this, or we have made it so, that spirituality cannot be narrow. In reality, we people have not understood that the ultimate objective of every religion is spirituality. You are a Muslim or a Hindu. In the desire to have your stair called the best, have you resorted to killing? You have forgotten that the stair you are walking on was intended to take you to that room where, upon reaching, you would yourself detest this narrow discrimination growing within you and repent, thinking, "Oh, what was I about to do?"

There is as much difference between religion and spirituality as there is between 'Aadmi' (man, generic human) and 'Insaan' (human being, with humanity/qualities). 'Aadmi' is born, and one has to become 'Insaan'. You could not stop being born; your birth was your compulsion, but now you have to create humanity and become 'Insaan'. Until the effort is born within you to take steps towards that destination which is called Brahmattva (divinity), spirituality, completeness, until then you cannot call yourself 'Insaan'. Just as the completeness of 'Aadmi' is in becoming 'Insaan', similarly, the completeness of religion is spirituality.

If we cannot attain that completeness, there will be no difference between a human (Aadmi) and an animal. Animal life also considers an intermediate stage as its destination; it considers obtaining food as a stage; it considers procreating as its destination. We too are the same, animals, or refine it, human animals (Nar Pashu). We consider eating, resting, and earning money as our destination, fighting like dogs, far removed from spirituality and humanity.

Once, a gentleman was sitting at his table and chair at home, entangled in files, when an old man suddenly came to the door and, in a pleading voice, asked for water to drink. The gentleman cast a fleeting glance at him and said, "Wait, let someone come." The sun was hot; the heat waves had parched the old man's throat. He again pleaded with the gentleman in a piteous but loud voice, but the gentleman also replied in an angry tone, "I am telling you to wait, let someone come! Why don't you listen?" The old man had reached a dying state from thirst, trembling. Falling there, he again gathered all his strength and said, "Babuji, I am dying, please give me water."

The gentleman, throwing the files aside with the intention of driving away the old man, came towards the door shouting, "Old man, when I am telling you to let some human being (Insaan) come, I will get it for you to drink, why don't you listen?" But by then, the old man, taking his last breaths, was preparing to leave, and he breathed his last saying:

"Babuji..... for just..... a little..... while.... you yourself.... could have become..... a human being (Insaan)..."

Religion has not been taken by you but imposed upon you, but spirituality cannot be imposed; you have to attain spirituality. The stairs named religion built for that have failed; our minds are becoming more poisonous than the thoughts of our ancestors. We cannot reach spirituality, so why not adopt spirituality itself as religion? The stairs are broken and damaged; put them aside. We go directly to the room that was the objective of those stairs to take us to. Why should we hate a human being just because he was born today in another house, which might perhaps be my house tomorrow? The trees we planted, instead of shade, fruits, flowers, and oxygen, are becoming the cause of heat, poison, and poisonous gases... So why don't we plant a new tree...?

Of Human Dharma

You have four sons, and you bought each of them a separate motorcycle to go to school so they wouldn't quarrel, and for this reason, you enrolled all four in four different schools. But after some time, you see that your thinking has proven wrong. All of them have resorted to fighting to get their own motorcycle and their own school called the best, and they quarrel every day.

You are explaining to them, "Don't fight, stop, everyone's school is good, the purpose of everyone's motorcycle is to reach school," but no one listens to you. Once the ambition to be the best awakens, you cannot put it to sleep your whole life, but you are trying, continuously trying, that they do not fight.

Famous psychologist Fromm says that there is a collective illness in India where followers of every religion consider themselves superior and others inferior. Muslims believe that they have the sole right to the path of ultimate truth and salvation; Hindus believe the same about themselves, and Sikhs believe the same about themselves. This very problem is the root of tension everywhere in the world.

Why not try keeping all four sons in the same school and sending them together in one jeep instead of four motorcycles?

Perhaps until now, you were afraid of who would drive the jeep, that a quarrel might start over this, but if we have a universally accepted driver whom all the sons accept and trust, then why not try entrusting the vehicle of life into his hands???

A pastor and his sons were burned alive; three humans were burned by one human, solely because their path was different. Our rulers called this incident a 'stain on the forehead of the nation'. Nothing new happened; these incidents are happening every day, and as soon as they occur, we start waiting for the sympathetic statements wrapped in compassion from our rulers. But how did the mindset of the human who committed this act become so polluted? We, you and I, are all responsible for his mindset. If we get a child addicted to drugs from childhood and when he grows up and commits a crime for drugs, we call him guilty – this is not justice.

People are harboring animosity based on the narrow mentalities of different religions. The only solution is to let the tree of 'one religion, one caste' continuously flourish. And let the contractors of our country, who were genuinely deeply pained by this incident of burning alive, take the first step forward and give society, the country, the world a new path, a new mindset, a new style. The beginning of human dharma can stop the repetition of these incidents.

"There is much darkness now, the sun should rise!

In whatever way possible, this weather must change..."

'Neeraj'

At this time, there is a need for a religion that is scientific, based on truth, and stands up to logic. The idea 'religion and logic do not go together' is not acceptable to today's generation. Our 'Human Dharma' will be based on truth instead of fanciful notions. One religion says rebirth doesn't happen, one religion says rebirth does happen. If this is a truth, it will be recognized in our religion. Today, you are determined to say, believe, and even die for things just because your religion says so, but if those things are wrong, if those beliefs and rules cannot be followed in today's era, then why not abandon them? Believe what is true, attain what is the actual objective of your human life. And based on these things, our religion will be 'Human Dharma'. The objective of prayers, rituals, etc., was to give you peace; the objective of mantra chanting was to awaken the sleeping power and greatness within you, i.e., a method of meditation and yoga practice. Therefore, we directly replace rituals and prayers with "meditation and yoga practice" in our religion. The meaning of all this is that if we are straying from objectives, from goals, by walking on different paths, then why not make these goals themselves our original path?

Can this dream turn into a reality????...

Today, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, people of every caste and every religion are going to Rawatpura in lakhs. People of all castes and religions will also be reading this book. We can all, at our own level, ask Ravi Shree to turn this dream into a reality. Our religion will be based on the principle of reincarnation.

'Love, brotherhood, and human unity will be our message,

Bringing peace to the world will be our goal,

Humanity simmering in the hatred and violence spreading

in the country and the world will feel coolness in our religion.'

Our real religion is humanity. This real religion of ours is our personal, caste-level private thing. The temple of this real religion of each person or human is their individual soul. The relationship of humanity is such that it does not change under any circumstances. We must protect humanity, and for this, the sense of duty requiring us to do something is not just necessary, but we must step forward and put our own decisions into action. Just stand up to take the first step. This feeling of yours, "As humans, we are against shedding human blood."

Just give it a voice!

When our future religion and caste are certainly not fixed, then why this separation? We are human, humanity is our religion. With this resolve, just create the mindset to plant this tree. These steps of ours will be a message to the world:

"Who says that there can't be a hole in the sky! Just toss a stone with conviction, friends."

Spiritual 'Yug Purushas' like Ravi Shankar Paramhans do not come repeatedly! The establishment of Human Dharma with the feelings of peace, unity, harmony, sacrifice, and love is the proper utilization of the capacities of this Mahamanav 'Yug-Purush':

"This pain has become like a mountain, it should melt...

A Ganga should flow from this Himalayas...

If not in my chest...

Then in yours...

Wherever there is fire, but

The fire must burn...

My intention is not just to create a commotion...

My effort is that this

Situation should change..."

'Dushyant'