Tue to self-called disciples of Sri Chinmoy, many sections and questions in the Sri Chinmoy Library are willfully

removed. Here is the full section of "Palmistry, Reincarnation And The Dream State" with the missing questions. - Sri Chinmoy Books Rescue Project

Palmistry, Reincarnation And The Dream State

The left hand represents the past. On the left hand you will notice more lines, more marks. The left hand is like the storehouse; the right hand is the showhouse. Usually the lines are transferred from the left hand to the right hand. We always say that boys have impurity problems and girls have insecurity problems. This is true, as we see in the outer life. But your hands declare something else. Some of the girls, I tell you, have much greater emotional problems than the boys, but the girls keep these problems under control, and subdue them. The boys do not keep them under control. Question: Guru, have you ever had your horoscope drawn up? Sri Chinmoy: I have, but it does not affect me at all. But you would be affected. How many disciples here would have gone to the other world according to the astrologers? According to the astrologers, one disciple would have been in the other world three years ago. I said, "I don't believe it; I know you are not going to die." Now she is still with us. A great astrologer predicted it. Similarly, there are six or seven disciples whose parents were going to die, but they did not. Out of curiosity some disciples go to the astrologers and the astrologers tell the disciples that they are going to die. Then there is no end. You enter into a tunnel and you cannot get out. Question: Is it true that we have nightmares when we sleep with our hands on our chest? Sri Chinmoy: If you sleep with your hands on your chest, you will see all kinds of frogs, squirrels and cats in your dreams. When you sleep, sleep either on one side or on your back, but try not to have any pressure on your chest. Otherwise, you may enter into a solid wall, and it is a bad, bad wall. That is the best way. I see occultly that there are some disciples who keep their hands on their chests quite often. This is not at all good. Some disciples sleep for many hours, but they don't sleep well. They should meditate for a few minutes before they go to sleep. Question: What causes bad dreams? Sri Chinmoy: Sometimes before we go to sleep we eat undivine food. Then, it is not because wrong forces enter us that we have bad dreams, but just because of the food which has entered into our system. If we have wrong thoughts while eating, we may think that it is all over; but it is not. At night those wrong thoughts may create problems. So bad dreams are sometimes caused by food and sometimes they are caused by what we do while we are eating. Question: I have sometimes awakened in the middle of the night with a strong feeling of elation and joy. Is there something that takes place while we are sleeping that we are not aware of? Sri Chinmoy: If you can remember it, then you are aware of it. If you were not aware of it, you could not have told me about it now. After you had the experience, you came down through various

descending rungs of consciousness. Because you are a beginner in the spiritual life, there is no link between the first rung and the rung where you had the experience. If you remain in the physical consciousness during the day, then the experience that you have had in the inner world cannot function properly. The physical consciousness does not have a free access to that particular plane of consciousness where you have had the experience. The physical consciousness must be surcharged with the divine light; then only will it be able to have a free access to all the planes of consciousness. When you sleep, the soul moves from this plane to that plane like a bird. But if the physical wants to observe what the soul is doing, then the physical has to be moulded and guided by the soul's light. You were conscious at the time, but afterwards you could not bring the experience back because you were not aware of all the stages that exist between that plane and the physical plane. So the best thing is to always try to be conscious and open and to spend more time in meditation. If you right now meditate for one hour a day, then try to spend two hours a day. God has given you twentyfour hours. Out of this time you can spend more time in meditation. In silence you can speak more, in silence you can act more powerfully. Question: Can the psychic being be damaged? If it is damaged, how can it be brought back into harmony? Sri Chinmoy: Whatever is divine cannot be destroyed, but sometimes the divine in us is covered by ignorance. The psychic body cannot be damaged; it can only be eclipsed like the sun, which at times can be overcast by clouds. But then again the sun peeps through. If we pray, concentrate and meditate soulfully, then the psychic being cannot be eclipsed by human doubt, the cloud. Question: Will someone who leads a spiritual life in one incarnation choose to have a worldly life in his next incarnation? Sri Chinmoy: If a soul is very spiritually advanced, it will not take an ordinary life, because it has already gone through the ordinary life. Question: If someone does something extremely well in this incarnation, does this mean that he got this ability from a previous incarnation? Sri Chinmoy: Usually, people who are great in any field in this incarnation were great in that same field in their previous incarnation or in some former life. Question: Can I ask you something about your previous incarnations? Sri Chinmoy: What have I to do with my previous incarnations? Suppose I know that in my previous incarnation I was a thief. If I tell you people, then I will be exposed, so why should I tell you? A thief will never admit that he is a thief. Again, what if I say that in my previous incarnation I was very, very great and well known? Then you will say, "How is it that in this present incarnation, when you have already reached the age of forty-one, nobody knows of you?" So either way, it does not help at all. You have to know that you cannot live on yesterday's food. Yesterday if I was good, then today let me aspire to be better, and tomorrow let me aspire to be absolutely the best. And if I feel that yesterday was very bad, unsatisfactory, discouraging and deplorable, then the best thing is to forget about it immediately. The past is dust. Again, even if the past was satisfactory, in the spiritual life we know that that is not enough. If someone feels that he was very sincere, dedicated and spiritual ten years ago, then he will still want

to go farther, deeper and higher. He will feel that until he has realised the Highest, he cannot stop. Suppose you are a very good runner, running forward at top speed. Your goal is ahead of you. You have been running very fast, true, but the moment you look behind, you will fall. So since you know that your goal is ahead of you, you have to continue running the fastest towards your Goal and reach the Goal. Question: Do spiritual Masters make promises to return to earth until all human beings are realised because they forget what it is like in Heaven when they are on earth? Sri Chinmoy: When they return to Heaven, they see the difference between Heaven and earth. Right now all the previous spiritual Masters are enjoying life in Heaven. While on earth they said that they will come back even if one dog remains unrealised. Now perhaps they feel that all human beings are worse than dogs, so they won't come back. Here I am joking with you, but actually what bothers spiritual Masters most is earth's ungratefulness and non-acceptance. Ungratefulness they don't mind as much as non-acceptance: this is the earthconsciousness. No matter what one does, people are ungrateful. Although today someone is ungrateful, the spiritual Master hopes that tomorrow he may accept the light. But if tomorrow also he does not accept it, then what can the spiritual Master do? If I give you something, you may not show gratitude. But if you do offer me your gratitude, then your strength increases, your receptivity increases and your capacity increases. Without gratitude, these things do not increase, and so the next time you just reject it, you throw it away. Then what am I going to do? This non-acceptance is why spiritual Masters do not desire to return to earth. Question: Do people meditate in Heaven and does their consciousness go up and down? Sri Chinmoy: The souls can meditate there and their consciousness can go very high or it can go up and down to all levels. Question: If someone is violently killed, does his soul undergo the same suffering as that of someone who has committed suicide? Sir Chinmoy: No, it is not the same. If someone becomes a victim in the war, if someone is violently killed, then what can he do in that case? It is some wrong forces that have killed the person. On the other hand, if somebody destroys his body, he becomes the aggressor; so the victim and the aggressor cannot be in the same category. In Pakistan, many, many millions of spiritual, religious Indians were killed. I had a mentor, an elderly gentleman who was very, very fond of me. He was an authority on Krishna and on the Bhagavad Gita. One day he was in his room explaining some sloka from the Gita to fourteen of his friends and students and three Muslims came in with a revolver. My mentor was praying, thinking of Lord Krishna and explaining things from the Gita. Three Muslims came in and one by one they shot them. Only one person escaped; that is why we know about the incident. So my mentor was killed. Now do you think that his soul will go to the same place as somebody who commits suicide? Even if he had not been thinking of Lord Krishna, he was absolutely innocent. In India when the husbands died, the wives used to jump in to the burning pyre. Some did it because of their sincere love and oneness with their husbands. Their category is not the same as for those who did it because they were compelled to by law. Sometimes it happened that the wives were pushed into the pyres. They didn't want to die, they were afraid of death, and it was against their will. Again some entered into the burning pyre because they wanted people to think that they loved their husbands. Perhaps the whole time that their husbands were alive they quarrelled and fought. Without any love, the wives entered into the pyre only to escape criticism from the general public. Now, what do you think their fate will be? Will it be the same as that of the wives who entered the pyre out of sincere love and oneness? So here also we have to see from which point of view a thing

is being done. Again, suppose I have committed suicide in this incarnation and I have gone through sufferings and all that. If some spiritual Master saves me, then, even if I have committed suicide, it is all gone: washed away. And again, in my next incarnation, if I start praying and meditating under some spiritual Master, then there is every possibility that I will realise God. If someone is killed violently, it is not the same as if he has committed suicide. One can easily realise God after a crash or a car accident. Do you think that the soul of that particular person will not have any opportunity to pray again and to realise God? Question: Recently I was reading excerpts from a Russian writer relating the terrible sufferings of political prisoners under the Stalin regime. What if somebody in that situation committed suicide to end the unbearable sufferings? Would that person have the same punishment as someone who simply takes his own life in a mood of escapism? Sri Chinmoy: It depends on merits and demerits. During the war, how inhumanly and brutally the people in concentration camps were tortured and killed! What if they themselves wanted to destroy their lives because they didn't want to be killed or mercilessly beaten without any rhyme or reason? Here we have to know that there is something called God's dispensation. Let us say that these people are innocent and they are being killed. Or they fought for their lives and lost and now they are being killed. In order not to be killed by the enemy, they may want to destroy themselves. In India and elsewhere it has happened many times that two warriors are fighting, and one knows definitely that the other one has won and it is a matter of a minute or a second before he will be destroyed. Immediately he will put an end to his life. So here I tell you, his suffering will not be the same as if he had just committed suicide. Many times it has happened when Kings have been arrested and killed, the Queens say, "We don't want to be killed by our enemy. We want to kill ourselves. Since we are destined to be killed by our enemy, the best thing is for us to kill ourselves." You can say it is their sense of prestige that they don't want to be killed by their enemies. But in this case, when people who know they are going to be killed take their own lives, then I tell you, they are always doing the right thing. Again, from a different angle, you have to see if a war is a real divine war or not. Sri Krishna said to Arjuna, "It is your duty to go to war and fight because you have to destroy the undivine forces." At that time it was definite. The Kauravas were undivine and by comparison, the Pandavas were much more divine. Krishna was divine, and Krishna was saying "Fight." Arjuna used all his moral weapons. He said, "I won't fight. I won't fight. They are my brothers and cousins." But Krishna said, "Look, I am giving you divine advice. If you lose the battle because you are fighting for the divine, you will go to Heaven. And if you win, you will be the divine Lord. You will rule divinely . . . If you conquer the hostile forces, the undivine forces, you will not be an ordinary ruler but a divine ruler. And, even if you fail, just because of your sincere effort, just because you fought bravely against the undivine forces, the compassion, love and pride of the divine will take you directly to Heaven." But only you have to know whether in this war, the divine will and the divine dispensation is there. If it is the divine will that these people should be destroyed, then if you lose you will go to God in Heaven. I personally feel that when the other party is full of ignorance, it is not the wisdom that is punishing them, it is their poor judgement. They are fools and the ignorance force is destroying them. So why allow the foreign ignorance force to destroy you when you have your own ignorance force? Both are ignorance but in comparison the foreign ignorance force is much more destructive. If you have the capacity to escape, then you should try to escape. Otherwise, if the foreign ignorance force kills you and you are innocent, then, in the inner world the treatment will be much different than if you committed suicide. Sri Chinmoy, Palmistry, Reincarnation And The Dream State, Agni Press, 1977.