From a satsang with Paramacharya of SWAHA, Pt. Hardeo Persad
Sages, echoing the words of the Divine, say, “Why fear when I am here?” The reason we are besieged by various negative emotions is that we do not realise the emptiness of life until we are confronted by its challenges. Why are we subjected to such negativities in life? What is the root cause? The answer is our own karma, the law of cause and effect. The seeds we plant throughout our many lives bear fruit in the present and the future. In addition to the karma that we sow and reap as individuals, we also experience the collective karma of the groups of people with whom we associate.
In the Ramayan, Shree Raam says that association with the sages is the first step of devotion. The sages have cleared away their negativities and impurities so that the resulting karma of that group is positive. When we associate with such positive people in a positive environment, our karmas are burnt away. However, if a good person associates with a negative group, where the resultant karma is negative, that good individual also suffers the consequences of the collective negative karma. There is group karma and consequently, daihik (physical), daivik (environmental), and bhowtik (caused by others) taap, the three types of afflictions and suffering. As individuals, we must make the right choices so that we will all gain from those actions, to some extent. We cannot carry each other’s karma as individuals, but we can suffer or enjoy group karma. Recently, several women died tragically, but they did not suffer alone; their parents, their communities and the country also suffered together in an instance of collective karma.
The Ramayan teaches that each of us is responsible for our karma. None of us has perfect karma; each has a mixture of the good and bad. Therefore, sometimes we are happy and at other times, depressed. Even the way we react to external stimuli is based on our actions in the past. However, we must also remember that each of us creates our own destiny through our actions. Everything that happens to us is our karma bearing fruit and nothing happens to us by chance. Devi Bhagwat specifically states that Shashti Devi advised Raja Priyavrat that everything is karma: having children or not having children; having children who are alive or not; wealth or poverty; sickness or health. Our past karmas will bear fruit at some point.
Life is a sum total of our experiences. It is said that every cause has an effect concealed and every effect is cause revealed. According to Vedanta, all these karmic experiences lead us to withdraw from the world and so understand our true essence. The saint Kabir states that we should live in the world but not get caught up in it. We should stick to our principles and accept that we all create our destiny. The only means of redemption is self-surrender (sharanaagati).
According to Shiva Samhita and Lakshmi Tantra, there are several conditions for attaining the state of self-surrender: We must believe in God, in whatever way we understand Him until the day we are able to realise Aham Brahmasmi (The Lord and I are one). We should follow the prohibitions and injunctions of the scriptures. We must surrender all duties to the Lord in an attitude of surrender. This was the attitude of bhakt Prahlad, whose father, King Hiranyakashipu, tried to destroy him many times for failing to worship him as the Lord. Prahlad’s refusal to worship anyone but Lord Vishnu, and his steadfast faith in that Lord, led to the incarnation of Narasimha Bhagavan, the half-man and half-lion avatar. Prahlad’s intense devotion, attitude of faith and self-surrender clear a path through the jungle of worldly existence so that all devotees may be guided in their quest to understand their own divinity.
