Sivarama Swami – Modern Morality From Ancient Wisdom
The Vedas say pitä na sa syäj janané na sä syät, that one should not become a mother or a father if one cannot raise and educate their children to be humans interested in self-realization. It is, in a nutshell, what I would suggest to parents.
OMTimes: In your view, how one can lead a progressive life? Is there a code of living?
Sivarama Swami: Let me clarify that I don’t have a view either on this question or any other. My subjective view would not be of any value. What I say is what I have heard from my guru, and he from his, and so on back in succession to Krishna and the Vedas. So the views that I express are Krishna ’s view, the Vedic view.
Vedic wisdom teaches that a progressive life is a life of spiritual study and self-discipline that leads to self-realization. It includes regular mantra-meditation, the study of sacred texts and associating with spiritually minded souls. That is a progressive life in which the benefits are immediate. By contrast, a regressive life is a life of indulgence and excess, the kind of life into which our consumer-oriented world is brainwashing people.
If we want a code of living, then Vedanta-sutra begins with one, it is the code of civilized life: athäto Brahma jijïäsä, “Now that you are a human, inquire into the Absolute Truth.”
OMTimes: What happens to a human soul after death?
Sivarama Swami: Our karma, which means our conduct in this life, will determine what kind of body we have in our next life. People plan for their future, but their vision of a future is limited to this life because they are not educated to understand that there is another life after this one. That next life may be the life of a dog, a pig, or a tree.
If people make dogs their best friend, they may well end up becoming a dog. If they eat all kind of forbidden things, they may become a pig. And if they like to go around exposing themselves in skimpy clothes, they can take birth as trees and stand around with nothing on, summer and winter.
It is the reality, like gravity or other laws of nature. Believe in it or not, conduct determines the future. Therefore, we should conduct ourselves in this life so that we do not become degraded to these lower species, but rather become elevated, preferably liberated.
The Vedas teach humans how to conduct themselves. Additionally, the behavior of perfected souls is also the conduct that humans should emulate to elevate themselves.
OMTimes: What happens with the soul of Non-Human sentient beings — do they have a different after-death destination?
Sivarama Swami: As I said, all living things have souls. However, only humans have free will, which means that they can change both their behavior and their destiny. By contrast, non-humans are obliged to follow the laws of nature, systematically passing from lower to higher species of life. It is the evolution of the soul through a series of set bodies, 8,400,000 different biological forms to be exact. And because non-humans have no willpower or rather, free will, they have no karma, and so they spontaneously progress to the human form.
At this point let me make two comments.
Firstly, in light of the Vedic version of the soul’s evolution, Darwin’s theory, or post-Darwinian evolutionary theories – which state that simple organisms transform to more complex ones and that unstable species mutate to become more stable ones – is erroneous. All species were created and co-existed; it is the soul that evolves from lower to higher forms of life.
Secondly, one outstanding reason why killing and eating animals is so offensive is because it obstructs the transmigration of that soul from body to body, thus interfering with its spiritual evolution.
In answer to your question, all species have an after-death destination. The further question is what that destination is. For non-humans it’s pre-destined, and for humans, the combination of their karma and will determine it.
OMTimes: Why do you say that Sustainable Development is not an answer to our Planet?
Sivarama Swami: Because it’s not! The very concept of sustainable development is consumerist opportunism underpinned by ignorance, greed, and exploitation.
I say that it’s about ignorance because our world is a closed eco-system with limited resources that replenish themselves at a limited pace. There is no way that you can keep using more limited resources for an increased standard of living. It just doesn’t work. And it won’t.
And it’s also about greed because what I say above is understood by those who propose sustainable development. They know it’s a fairytale. Still, they want us to gobble up whatever resources currently exist, at whatever cost to the environment. Why? For-profit today! They don’t care about tomorrow, about the future because they reason that they won’t be around to see it.
And finally, it’s about exploitation because the cost of this “sustainable development” is to handicap so the environment that successive generations will have less and fewer resources, and so will suffer a contracting standard of living. However, do we care? Do we care that our children and grandchildren will never know the world as we know it today?
So if you want a sustainable life, it has to be without development. It has to be about living with our needs and not our wants. And what we need is a fraction of our wants. Living by what we need is sustainable, living by our wants is not.
OMTimes: I have seen some of your videos and speeches, can you tell us why you say that ‘Yoga has lost its way’?
Sivarama Swami: Let me begin by saying that I am encouraged by the current upsurge of interest in yoga and spirituality. It has helped change how the world views what had been taught in India for thousands of years. When I took up yoga fifty years ago, it wasn’t as fashionable as it is today. My greatest good fortune was to have met an exemplary guru, from an authentic spiritual lineage, who taught me the science of bhakti-yoga in an uncompromising and yet contemporary way. He opened my eyes to the goal of yoga and the means to attain that goal.
From my teacher, I learned that yoga means to connect with the Supreme who is both within and without. So, while it’s encouraging that millions are turning to yoga, my experience is that it’s rare to find yoga schools, yoga teachers or yoga systems that know little beyond a few asanas, yoga apparel, yoga mats, and detox chai. And that goes for inside India as well as outside it. Therefore, while efforts at yoga may be good for staying healthy or controlling the mind, generally, the essential aspect of yoga, the spiritual awakening of the soul, remains lost.
Instead of hearing about and glorifying the supreme person, yoga has more-or-less become an industry, a part of the consumer apparatus that in many cases misleads innocent seekers from the real goal of life, self-realization, as taught for example in the Bhagavad-Gita.
Let me conclude on this question and this interview by citing the Gita. After explaining karma-yoga, haöha yoga, bhakti-yoga, and jïäna yoga, Krishna says mam-ekaà saranam Vraja, “Just surrender to me.” The meaning is that all forms of yoga must conclude in surrender to the Supreme. Where that essential wisdom is taught, yoga will find its soul, where it is discarded, yoga will certainly lose its way.
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