Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Rosie

You said:

do we "die"/leave our physical body at that point and so enjoy what comes next or do we hang about to enjoy our enlightened state in our physical form but in doing so, are we in danger of picking up some more karma that would then begin the cycle again?

From what I know of Buddhist belief, it is thought that at the moment of death there comes a window of opportunity where one can 'go into the light' ie climb off the wheel of karma and rebirth. But to be able to recognise that moment and also have the conscious awareness of how to go into it, is only available to those who have followed various spiritual practices through the course of this lifetime. Otherwise rebirth is certain, though - again if we practise - we take birth higher up the ladder each time.

This is the Buddhist viewpoint - or so I, a non-Buddhist - believe. Do you know, I have to think about the Hindu belief system here because it really isn't spoken of very much. The 'aim' of advaita vedanta is to attain oneness with Brahman, or 'self-realisation' and apparently from that point on there is no need of a corporeal body. But let's face it, we're all going to find out one day. Better to live in the present, IMO, than to spend too much time wondering 'what if'....

But, interesting topic...

Love
Sunanda xx

PS It's just occurred to me that ten years ago I wouldn't have had a clue what we are talking about. We're coming up to the tenth anniversary of my 'awakening'. I consider myself well blessed...to be aware and conscious! And yes, I had a lovely weekend in Norfolk, thanks!

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

hi sunanda,

my path is still not sorted, and i doubt it will be, being a true eclectic! if i like it, i'll nick and use it! and yes, our conversation and chats i have had over the last 5 years or so would have been gobbledy goop 5 years before that... although i like to think i would have been open to listen and learn.

hanging out on "spiritual" forums and talking to others is satisfying my, what seems to be, inherant quest for understanding and knowledge.

oh, i agree, the here and now is what we should concentrate on, but patience was never a virtue of mine, so whilst i dont wanna know what comes next, i do!!

scient*logists, after completing all their "learning" (yeah yeah, and $$$$ later!), once they have no more, what they call, engrams (ummm life crap, spanning all lives), they achieve clear... no more reactive mind stuff (sort of "karma", i guess), at which point, they would "drop" the physical body and become "spirit" (thetan), as they began. crikey, havent thought of this stuff for awhile and can only recall what my dear friend used to tell me of such things (aww i miss him :o( but he's living his dream in sunny cali-forn-i-a!). erks, there's an engram right there fer ya![&:]

i dont think i would like to be atheist... i do think there is more, in some way or other.

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Rosie,

ORIGINAL: ro§ie
do we hang about to enjoy our enlightened state in our physical form but in doing so, are we in danger of picking up some more karma that would then begin the cycle again?

Your question reminded me of a Hindu story from the Krishna Leela (miraculous tales about his childhood). He was reknowned for being naughty, and steeling the clotted cream from all the pantries in the neigbourhood. One day his mother, Yashoda maa, got so upset with his thieving that she tied him up between two trees to teach him a lesson (and to stop him stealing some more!). That hardly stopped him. He brought down the two trees, but in the process released two demi-gods, Nalkubar and Manigreev, who were being punished for their own crime . . . arrogance. It was through the divine grace of Krishna that the demi-gods found their release.

My own view is that no matter how far up the ladder of spiritual advancement we climb, we have to pay for our actions . . . that is until we attain enlightenment. I guess one of the easiest mistakes to make is to become full of our own selves and forget that we still need to pass the finish line.

I only started to realise how hard this is when a holy man gave me an analogy in my teens. I passed my GCSEs with flying colours and was really pleased. He explained that my exam results were like one grain of sand, and somewhat short of the beach I should be aiming for. It felt like a kick up the backside at the time as I wasn't showing off or anything and was grateful that my hard work had paid off. But I've realised over the years that he was setting the bar higher for me to aim for something more meaningful. I don't think that image will leave me in this life . . . I hope I carry it with me in to any future lives. 🙂

Cub

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

What a lovely story, Cub. Well, two lovely stories - your own and the Krishna one. But what is your take on Rosie's original question: after 'enlightenment' do we still wear a physical body and do we go on accruing Karma?

Love
Sunanda xxx

PS I didn't make it to the other two discourses: one was enough for me.

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Sunanda,

I always love the Krishna leela stories as it sounds like He had so much fun as a little boy. I always fancied demon bustin' 😀

After enlightenment . . . ? Never got as far as thinking about it in detail. I have a vague recollection that in the Jain faith post-enlightenment you become a star in the sky. I've not come across any specific mentions in Hinduism [:-]

My own view is that having worked so hard for enlightenment, I hope there's some permanency about it otherwise it'll feel like the task of Sisyphus, and then what's the point about life and the universe?

To hop to another branch of thinking, are the Ascended Masters of the 12th Dimension another level of progress? Have they achieved enlightenment? If not, then perhaps that's an indication that enlightenment is meant to be final?

BTW - I didn't manage to make it from work to the other two, but I've treated myself to the Ramcharitramaanas for the Saturday evening talks. It's got transliteration into English from the Sanskrit, and helpful explanations of what the poetry means. We've done 12 stanzas so far in the group. Judging by the size of the book we've got at least 10,000 more stanzas to go (no kidding!).

Cub

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Rosie,

I do not claim to be "enlightened" 100% (I mean everyone is to an extent) but email or PM and I will send you more. If I may say so I have made this a specialist subject of mine, and how Hindu thoughts on it compare to more recent ones.

TBH I think Hinduism has over time got some things wrong.

There is confusion about whether liberation means something final - oneness with God forever - or just being a wise man or woman. I use the idea to mean final liberation from rebirth.

But look up such sites as and this is the latest thinking on Moksha which is now called Ascension. Under that school of thinking it is a final reunion with God but no way an annihilation of "self" such as many Buddhists believe, since it a reunion with our own personal God Self, not a loss of individuality at all, ever. Rather, the individual is added to the wholeness of God and remains individual. (As in the idea of Ascended Masters etc.)

But it is according to that and also Hindu schools of thought, or most of them the end of incarnations on Earth. So the liberation or Moksha or Ascension means we do not incarnate again in the usual way.

I think "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda gives a great example of this, when his "dead" Guru appeared to him in a hotel room and told him all about the next state. Basically, "down here" is only the beginning, and it just gets more and more exciting. Check out the book!

BTW there is never any sense and should not be that we are lesser beings for not having attained Moksha yet! The modern idea is that this is the Divine Intent for us to take incarantions and - land with a thump, frankly. The Moksha or Ascension means that we return with far more attainment than we began with - so it is Divine process of growth. In fact the whole universe is about that... !!

Venetian xx

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Thanks for that, V. I am having a wander around the site, (tsl), and will report back… but the first thing I did notice, that I may as well ask here is this…

“The third and fastest way to balance karma is by using a special gift from the ascended masters –the violet flame. Invoking this high-frequency spiritual energy can literally dissolve negative karmic patterns, help you gain self-mastery and free you from the rounds of rebirth.”

This is referring to one of the 3 ways to balance negative karma… the other two being:

· The first and slowest way is to just live through it. This way can often be difficult. For example, in this life a person might marry and support those whom he abandoned or betrayed in a former life. Or he might have to suffer through the abuse he previously doled out to others.
· The second way to balance negative karma is to tip the scales by performing good deeds. This can be done through selfless service to life. Perhaps someone who serves tirelessly in a nursing home does so because she knows at a soul level that her karmic scale is leaning towards the negative.

So… why would I do the first two when the third way seems so much easier and quicker. There has to be more to it, I feel?

Also, would you say on reincarnation, that beings remember their learnt lessons and so can progress or do we/they forget and almost have to start over. Obviously, we are not always aware of previous incarnations, but is our “soul” aware and remembering?

good to see you back with us 🙂

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Also, would you say on reincarnation, that beings remember their learnt lessons and so can progress or do we/they forget and almost have to start over. Obviously, we are not always aware of previous incarnations, but is our “soul” aware and remembering?

Rosie, you ask the above and it seems to me that we may not consciously remember our lessons but isn't there usually a little voice somewhere within us which tells us what is right and what is wrong? I think we are hardly ever aware of previous incarnations except in little flashes, or the fact that we 'take to' some people and 'take against' others for no concrete reason. But our 'soul' (or Higher Self or whatever you like to call it) must know what's going on - we can choose to listen to it or not. And spiritual practice IMO is undertaken in order to increase our conscious awareness of what our Higher Self is telling us.

When you come down to it, though, one can go round and round in circles from now to eternity discussing all this esoteric stuff and it's only words. My teaching has been not to analyse, not to discuss, but to experience. And something that all the 'enlightened' beings that I have had the privilege of meeting or have read about all agree on is that 'enlightenment' is so far outside the normal human sphere of experience that it simply cannot be described in words. It is actually beyond belief. So I guess it all boils down to wait and see, after all!:D

As for karma, I try to remember what I read in the book called Karma by Robert Svoboda which is that every action we perform accrues karma, that this is neither good nor bad, it just is. So, for example, in my dealings with my fellow beings I now try to avoid getting sucked into performing needless actions as IMO it is probably a good idea not to amass more karma if this can be avoided.

(Here's a story - a couple of years back, I was sitting in a beach cafe in India one night and a chap I know from England - a work colleague - came along. Big reunion! He said he didn't like his guest house so I leapt up and offered to take him to another one. It was dark and we had to cross over a deep drainage ditch. I knew the path and he didn't. He fell into the ditch and cut his leg very very badly. Luckily, no permanent damage but I was still left with the guilty knowledge that if I had only kept my mouth shut he wouldn't have been hurt. And it doesn't bear thinking about that there might have been more serious consequences.... Lesson for me? Give help when it's asked for. Don't try to solve other people's problems.)

Anyway, enough for now.

Love
Sunanda xxx

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Lesson for me? Give help when it's asked for. Don't try to solve other people's problems.)

lol... i'll try to remember that and make sure i actually ask you for help, else i wont be getting any, eh!!!

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Rosie,

Yes, I suppose almost everybody with a working belief in karma and reincarnation would agree that lessons are learned "subconsciously" since we do not consciously recall 100 or more past lives - or even something of 20 years back. "Subconscious" is a bit of an inadequate term but will have to do. It may be that Al Capone was reborn under Divine Direction in poverty in India for example, and picked up lessons in compassion from that. And so forth. The basic idea is that the fundamentals of our character follow us through lives. So that if we become better or worse people over this life, we are reborn in the next life to carry on from there.

The concept also is that we are reborn into circumstances from which we can learn from if we didn't do too well last time. "Learning" of course isn't here like taking class lessons, but a matter of natural character-change. [&:] Remember how Glenn Hoddle got the sack for one comment on this?

You can see from this that it may be a very slow process, and hence the belief that we have lived very, very many lives. But then this gives rise IMHO to the wrong Hindu concept that it will take us all many, many lives from now to attain Moksha. IMHO if you get on the "right path" with great concentration, sincerity, and knowledge, then it can be just a handful of lives or less. One, two, three...

On the three ways of balancing karma, I personally agree with that. Just "letting it return passively" is an incredibly slow process. Deliberate good action is far speedier. Now, the Violet Flame is a whole other subject and difficult to discuss as probably only a couple of thousand people to my knowledge are actually using it correctly or know about it. So the reason IMHO that this speediest method is not being used is because it is still "new" - known of publicly from the 1930s. People can't use it if they don't know of it or don't accept it.

(There are lots of people saying "I use the Violet Flame" BTW who don't at all and know little of it - sorry if that sounds conceited but it's truth, and you read it all the time in New Age magazine ads.)

However it isn't as if anyone would just sit at home and do it all with Violet Flame! That's just a spiritual practice like meditation, and doesn't eat up your day, so such people typically "do good" at the same time.

You might even get scientific over the subject of "doing good" and you know how my brain likes that. 😀 So there's a lot more karma-balancing going on in effecting large numbers of people than in say healing the odd one or two per day. Or the two things could be combined. Ghandi might have been a lawyer and would have helped people, but he took on the role he did of shaping a nation.

V xxx

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

i havent been ignoring this... just been mulling it <g>.

what about this idea (a mate and i were discussing this)... do we get to choose the life/ parents/ circumstances that we reincarnate to? the idea being that we may chose a more uncomfortable existence in order to gain "brownie" points, as it were.

in our "in between state" we know what it is we need to learn/ do, so that we can make that choice... or conversely, choose a nicer life but perhaps slow our progress.?!?

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Absolutely, Rosie. This is the view I've been led to- especially after reading Michael Newton's books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls.

When things go 'wrong', it's helpful to be able to think 'ah, but I signed up for this.'

Love
Sunanda x

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

...and there are days, from time to time, when we briefly ponder, "Boy, what was I thinking while 'up there'? Did I have to bite all this karma off to balance in one life? 😀

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

😀 so maybe next time, we'll give it a bit more thought, eh?

and also, another ponderance... do you think we have soul groups? i see that there is the idea of soul mates, twin flames and karmic relationships... hmmm maybe it is covered in the last one... so we return not always, but often, within the same group of souls?

do we always recognise our fellow returners? what if one does and the other doesnt (soul mates?)... ?

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Hi Rosie

Again, my 'info' comes from those Michael Newton books and he reckons that yes, we have a group of soul buddies with whom we incarnate, in many different relationships, to help each other. ('OK, well this time round I'll be your mother so that when you have that accident I'll get to practise my selflessness and you'll get to practise your patience....'dah dah dah...Fascinating concept really. Apparently you set up triggers so as to recognise your actual prospective soul mate partner - but I guess that it's easy to miss, given the number of people (including me) who haven't found their soulmates, or who have found a mate that isn't the right one.

[BTW I have been told that my son and I have been together thru countless incarnations but not as mother and son. My son, aged about 3, said 'do you remember when you were little and I was big?']

Love
Sunanda x

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

The author Joan Grant, who was English through and through yet strangely more popular in America, wrote a series of vivid historical "novels" in the 1930s/40s going back to very ancient Egypt, which she later revealed were past-life memories. Recommended! Anyway, she would almost always incarnate with this close soul mate. The relationship might be husband/wife, brother/sister, etc. In "Life as Carola", one of the most wrenchingly soulful books I ever read, she had to get born with all her clairvoyance and healing into the plague and superstition of medieval Italy, and the soul mate was only a vague figure sometimes appearing in dreams - a very lonely life as he had to stay out of that one and be a guardian angel, as it were. This is a very vivid book and I do recommend all her "novels". The greatest is "Winged Pharoah" perhaps.

On decisions about how we shall live this / the next life, some 'average' people kind of drift back down into the best situation according to 'Karmic Law' which works as exactly as physics. According to my school of thought the more developed people who have useful missions to accomplish, or many people actually, are helped and advised 'up there', and even specifically trained to be able to deal with the challenges of this life. But still the training and instruction is only subconsciously absorbed of course, and is not a conscious memory we can call on.

Venetian

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

hi sunanda,

glad i am not the only one then, to have missed the triggers :D... hmmm

oooh that must be strange coming from one so young... although often people say its the little ones that "notice" these things. innocence and openess, i guess.

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Thanks David for telling us about Joan Grant - I hadn't heard of her and will now keep an eye open. You have reminded me again of Elizabeth Aitch's book (Is that her name?) Initiation which BTW has been reissued with a lot of biographical info on her - I didn't know for example that she was a very well known and respected painter and sculptor. Also the new book, which I didn't buy but found in Arcania in Bath, has photos of her and the Indian chap who got her out of ? Hungary after WW2.

Rosie - apparently little kids quite often come out with past life stuff as they haven't yet forgotten it all. 'Realised souls' remember life before birth - I have spoken with a French woman who remembers being with God and God telling her that he was sending her back to do some more work.

Love
Sunanda x

RE: Nirvana, Moksha, Clear, Karma

Elizabeth Haitch (sp?) is superb, yes. Joan Grant is similar but more "readable". She has eight books covering seven lives, plus an autiobiography of her recent life. I met her in London where she was in an old folks' home and still behaving like a queen. LOL if she didn't get attention from the call button within 60 secs she would set off the fire alarm every time, as she was used to instant service.

Also met her last husband who was ten years younger and still working and active at around 70. Less said in public about that the better except that I felt Joan was abandoned.

V