Note from Guru Kurt: At long last, after four letters, Mr. Kazlev told me not to write to him anymore. He suggested that I launch my own website, as indeed I have now done, in my own time and in my own way. It is unusual that a person would be so committed to making a spiritual website, yet be so unspiritual as Alan was. Is it possible that mankind has abandoned God in favor of technology? Has the computer taken the place of God, and do we look to mankind for salvation instead of to our very Creator? To what a sad state the world has come! Yet, everything is contained in the Father's will; all shall occur as He desires. Beware, world! Isaiah and Jesus have given us terrible prophecies for what will come one day, in the "end days." Can these days be far away from us? Will the Father allow us to destroy His planet, using up all the resources that were meant for billions of years of future people? If the end times do not occur in this generation, then I openly declare it: They never will come! The Father will have given His planet over to His creatures, and will have decided to let them have their way with it, the way an irresponsible human father might give his daughter over to villains to rape in order to protect his own life. When, O Father, will you act? Do your animals rule this world, or does your Son? When will the slumbering Giant awaken, and save this planet?
Dear Alan,
I appreciate the candor of your replies, which I find refreshing. There is also a wholesomeness about your spiritual attitude that I like. When one enters the public arena, the statements that one makes are fully open to the scrutiny of all. In a calm, rational society the discussion of public ideas is one thing that gives life real interest. It is good to keep an open mind on all issues, that one may choose the best ideas available as signposts for one’s own personal life.
I am not contending that spiritual teachers are bad, or stating that I alone possess full truth. When confronted with published statements made by others with which I do not agree, I have two options. I can present my own views and ignore the views of the others, or I can point out obvious flaws that I see in their teachings as a means of focusing attention on the confusion that exists today between Avatars and illumined men. I choose the second option, and I do not choose it lightly, for the spiritual evolution of the world is at stake.
Imagine if you will a nutritionist who comes up with the absurd claim that people should eat red meat alone, and no other food. He makes this claim publicly, and publishes many popular books about it. Another nutritionist may come along, propounding a vegetarian lifestyle as being the most conducive to health and longevity. The second nutritionist can merely expostulate his own views, or he can in addition point out the clear mistakes in the claims of the “red meat nutritionist.” Such a diet can lead to heart disease, cancer, stroke, and almost surely to early death. Using both these options will lead to greater health in the society at large, and is therefore the wise and compassionate choice of this nutritionist.
Or, imagine an human physiologist who begins making the claim that the sedentary lifestyle is best. I have seen a book, which was written in a humorous vein, called “The Non-Runner’s Book.” It described many styles of non-running. One may simply sit in a chair. For a change of pace one may sit on a park bench. Then there is always lying on the sofa. Now, a different physiologist may come along and make the opposing claim that exercise is good for the body and mind of the human being. It enlivens life, makes the heart and lungs strong, and promotes longevity. He can merely state this, or he can also point out the obvious problems with the sedentary life recommended by his opponent: a weak heart, loss of stamina, and a dull existence. Which course will result in greater health and happiness in the society? People are entitled to know when they are not being presented with the greatest possible truth, the truth revealed by Avatars, that will shorten their journey to nirvana by many lifetimes.
My real aim is to restore Jesus, Buddha and the others I mentioned to their rightful place as true incarnations of earth’s Creator. I can go about merely stating this, or I can in addition show the flaws in the others. I think Eknath Easwaran was a very good teacher, and the best example of what an illumined man can do. He never claimed to be an Avatar, and that is what I like most of all about him. It is this claim that I find most objectionable in other teachers, since it misleads people more than anything else they could say. A good spiritual teacher should describe his experiences in detail, and try to relate them to life in ways that will help his students to grow spiritually. He shouldn’t try to add to his fame by making false claims about Avatarhood. My statements here have no extraordinary claim to validity. They can be refuted, as I stated in my last e-mail, by finding a flaw in an Avatar’s teachings, or finding a long passage of real truth in one of the other’s teachings. I am not in “attack mode” as you perhaps think. I am calmly stating truth as I see it, and I await a response.
Jesus said that one should have the attitude of a little child. Ramakrishna also made this statement. It is true. This is the best available analogy in the human context for describing the relationship of the soul with God. A child is guileless and innocent, meaning he has not had much experience of the harsh aspects of life, and does not as yet have a concrete plan for acquiring personal power and prestige. God, being a tender and loving Father, responds to an open heart such as this with joy and delight. A person approaching God with the attitude of an adult will have certain demands to make, he will have his own agenda. He wants a promotion, he wants a new color TV, and he may even want a different wife. A child will just happy to be in the presence of God, whereas an adult wants things. A real relationship with God is enough to satisfy. One should not ask God for mere things. It is sweetness beyond measure just to know this magnificent and glorious Being personally. He will supply the things He sees that you need without your needing to ask, for He is always watching, ever-aware.
This does not contradict my statements throwing light on the darkness that I found in Easwaran’s teachings. A human child is innocent by comparison with a human adult. As I said, this is the best available analogy, it is not a perfect analogy. Really, one should approach God with the heart of a Jesus, Chaitanya or Ramakrishna, but this is not possible for the human being either to grasp or to attempt to do. A child is innocent, but as I said fallen. This means his or her age-old samskaras (I’m glad that you know this word) are busy working themselves to the surface, although they are not evident to the untrained eye. As I said in my last e-mail, Easwaran’s statement is bound to have a beneficial effect on his listeners. It is just not wholly accurate. An Avatar would not make such an inaccurate statement.
As for the innocence of animals, I am going to present to you ideas here that the world has never seen. Animals appear innocent because they have not yet attained human birth, and have not developed the mode of rational thought. They are incapable of thinking as we do, although as I would suspect you’d agree they have their own types of thinking and emotions, which are primitive but nevertheless real. They are not capable of making advanced plots on how to use the material objects and other beings they encounter in the world for their own personal satisfaction. They merely move about, finding food, sleeping, having sex, enjoying themselves in simple ways. A monkey could never enjoy a play of Shakespeare’s, which human beings are able to do, for example. He would quickly run off in search of bananas or other fruit.
The innocence of animals is therefore not true innocence, but a lack of capacity. The lowest human is higher than the highest animal, but not by much. You see, because souls transmigrate from animal bodies to human bodies, the tremendous population explosion we have seen in the past one hundred years has come from, you guessed it: the animals. The objection immediately occurs, all humans seem so much higher than animals! They do not act sluggish or stupid, although you may admit the cruel tortures practiced in many third world countries, and for instance the genocidal war in Rwanda, support my claim. Why do the majority of today’s people seem like relatively decent humans, when they have just recently been in animal bodies?
The answer has never been revealed before now. This earth is not the first earth. There have been many, many earths before this one, and there will be infinitely many earths extending into the future. This is the true meaning of eternal life, that at the end of this cycle, when the sun burns out, a period of rest will occur. Then a new earth will be created, and we will all begin again, starting from the single-cell stage and marching upwards to where we now are, and further, since man’s evolution in the current cycle is by no means complete.
The answer to the question of why people who were recently animals appear as ordinary humans is that in the last cycle they were also humans. Their human traits were held as latencies within their souls, awaiting human bodies in which their already-developed rational faculties could be expressed. This is also the essential process of evolution. The souls that were humans in the last cycle also develop into humans in this cycle. There are many animals (in fact most animals at this period of high human population) who do not have these latencies, and who would make poor humans were they suddenly thrown into human bodies.
There are a number of profound consequences of these concepts. One is that there are essential differences between, say, the soul of a bacterium and the soul of a human. If one were to take a bacterial soul and throw it immediately into a human body, the body would just lay there like a slug. It could not move about, perceive the outside world, or think. These traits must be developed, and become attributes of the soul. They can be developed relatively quickly, in the space of one cycle, but at the end of this cycle the soul would be nowhere near so developed as the souls of humans living in the world today. It would be like a Neanderthal in its thinking and perceiving. The process of evolution involves gradually moving souls into higher and higher bodies, as they are made ready to enjoy and experience the world in wider and more interesting ways.
Another consequence is that a soul can travel in both directions, and traveling in reverse is what Jesus intended when he discussed the concept of hell. A human soul can be placed again in an animal body, and this is in fact what is done with unrepentant murderers. There are rumors, in this country anyway, that Hitler is in South America somewhere. He is indeed there, as a sloth in a Brazilian jungle. This is not all. The torture such a soul endures is unthinkable. Imagine being placed into a box so small that your body is unable to move, and you can barely breathe. You cannot see outside the box, or hear what is going on out there. You feel suffocated, but you do not know what is wrong or what to do about it.
This is exactly what occurs to the human soul when it is forced back into an animal body. It cannot think rationally, as it used to. It cannot perceive the world as it used to. All its rational faculties have been taken away, and this is torment for the soul that can last for a very long period, tens of thousands of years, although it gradually diminishes. I hope you see that Jesus was right to warn people about the grave danger of unrepentant sinning. The fate of such an evil soul is indeed like being cast into a lake of fire. The soul is brought up to the human context again when it is judged ready for another try, after its impure tendencies have been burned out. Of course, this is provided there are human bodies available to it.
The reason souls in the normal progression of evolution do not feel this agony is that during the long period of rest between cycles, all the hard-won traits that they have accumulated during the cycle are gently compressed into seed form. As they are born into single-cells to start life on a new planet, they feel all the joy of that state as their own, as though it were natural and all they could hold. This is true throughout evolution. Each creature is as happy as it can be in its current state of development. It is when a soul is forced quickly backwards, when it loses its abilities very suddenly, that it suffers torment. The alternative is to take a few million years time out of the soul’s evolution while the traits are gently compressed, and in the case of corrective action against murderers this is not desired.
I hope I do not frighten you with this talk, but it is central to my message. I am bringing religion into science, for nothing that scientists have discovered, or ever will discover, contradicts true religion. Brahman made matter, I (and Ramakrishna) said, from His own limitless spirit. In today’s world, I must add that He made tungsten, iron, magnesium and zinc. Brahman conceived of the entire periodic table, and made matter with the chemical properties required to form molecular bonds, giving rise to all the different material compounds and to life itself. The entire universe is purposeful. It has all been designed by an unimaginably vast creative intellect. All created beings in our corner of the universe are meant to be happy and find their complete fulfillment in the wonderful home that has been given them, planet earth.
Well, I have gone on long enough. I hope this stimulates your interest a little. In any case, I am enjoying our discussion. Top
Kurt