Posted on: 08 Sep 2018
Shri Balaji asked: Namaste Swamiji,
1) Kindly clarify the following question from one of my friends:
["My grandfather lead a decent life, did not not have bad habits, was a good devotee of Lord Rama and did a lot of puja everyday. But his death was very painful with lot of suffering due to disease. He needed help from someone even for eating, passing motion etc. I understand everyone has to die someday. But could God whom he prayed all his life not grant at least a fast death with minimum suffering and dignity of managing essentials? My mind is pained by this incident for many years and is not pacified on thinking of it as a karmic reaction. Kindly answer this query.."]
2) Also I have a query on role of free will of people and karmic results:
Just for example, if a criminal hurts a good person, is it because of some previous karmic result of the good person or is it a fresh result due to the free will used by the criminal? Sincerely, Balaji
Swami replied:- 1) This doctrine of actions and fruits implemented in this world as well as in the upper world is according to a general plan that the fruits are enjoyed in the upper worlds so that in this world (karmaloka or world for actions) sufficient free time is given so that the soul will have freedom to reform itself through the spiritual knowledge preached by the human incarnations of God. But, there are several superseding exceptions to this general procedure. The very powerful superseding factor is implementation of any fruit from the specific list of an individual soul is at the will of God because under His direction only each soul is guided and wherever God feels that a specific fruit is required at a certain stage for betterment of the soul, such implementation is immediately done. Fruits of very intensive deeds are enjoyed in this life itself, which act as witnesses of the divine administration to the public. There are so many permutations and combinations at every step in every fraction of second and the final decision is taken by God. This three dimensional network of actions and fruits interfered with several other factors like devotion, reformation etc., is said to be very complicated as said in the Gita (Gahanaa karmano gatih). Your observation of any soul is not very deep and you don’t have a continuous audio-video system to take the picture of a soul in and out. Our capacities are very limited and our study of a soul is very very superficial. We don’t know all the actions with in and out pictures of even this birth of a soul, not to speak of knowing the trace of any action of previous births, which is sometimes dragged to this birth by the will of God. Who knows that whether God wanted to exhaust all the bad fruits by this birth itself and wants to give the next birth as very good devoted life to your grandfather? We draw very drastic conclusions based on our very very limited study of souls. We must have perfect faith on God’s justified administration. He is your grandfather, but, do you know that your grandfather is the issue of God since all souls are issues of God only (Aham biijapradah pitaa— Gita)? Even in the angle of love, do you have more love on your grandfather than his Father? We must always remember that any soul in this world is more loved by God than ourselves and also that never administration of God has place for the trace of any injustice.
2) This question is answered by Me several times. When a criminal hurts a good person, it can be in any way of the two ways, which are:-
i) The criminal might have been hurt by the good person in the previous birth. The identification of this possibility is done by observing the silence of God on this issue and
ii) The criminal might have hurt the good person in this life itself freshly due to his egoistic criminal nature. This can be detected by seeing the damage of the criminal done by God for witness to others acting as a warning.
We always observe things for a short time and draw the conclusions as if based on our continuous observation of the soul in past, present and future. Our conclusions appear as if we are omniscient, but, it is totally false. If we understand our deficiency and limitations in studying a case, we will stop making such false comments. The best advice to anybody is to study one’s own self perfectly and take care of it always since there is some perfection when the self is studied and conclusions drawn are implemented. If everybody does this, there is no scope of such time pass comments about other souls.