Questions:
What is autism? They sometimes seem normal and sometimes not. Why?
Why many people die in the likes of war and natural calamity?
Discussion:
Autism is a problem with social adjustment. There are different aspects: cognitive adjustment, emotional management, social interaction, spiritual anchor. Autistic people are have emotions and are not dumb but behave differently (not normal pattern of behaviour) in social spectrum. There are impairments in different domains; Schizophrenia is an emotional mismanagement, Mental retarded is no cognitive understanding. When there is any impairment we say it is abnormal. There is something we can call spiritual impairment. People who have spiritual impairment we call them normal and people who are not spiritually impaired we call them abnormal. Normal people are spiritually impaired they have no connection with spirituality. Since the number of such spiritually impaired people is large they consider themselves normal and the ones who are spiritually inclined are considered abnormal. More than 90% of the people are not socially, emotionally or cognitively impaired and we consider them to be normal.
If we consider the impairment to be a curse, it is said that one who has one curse is not cursed with anything else. One who is impaired with any ability is generally paired with spirituality. None of the above mentioned impairments is by birth.
Story of ashtavakara: he was not ready to take birth and because he stayed in the womb for longer, he was distorted from 8 places but he learned everything from the womb and then took birth. This is a metaphor. It is believed that garbha-sanskar can remove any kind of illnesses of the foetus in the womb. There are certain things that need to be followed before conceiving, during pregnancy and after birth which can create miracles which science can be surprised with. But these spiritual aspects are not propagated because they are difficult to follow and if followed, will take away the sources of income of many. So spirituality is not normalised and such a society is considered normal. The job of a society is to normalize everybody and the job of religion is to moralize everybody. The aspect of moral and immoral goes in the domain of legality and punishments by law, whereas normal-abnormal were the substitutes of right and wrong or good and bad.
Question: Are autistic people directly connected to the un-manifest?
Yes, that is discussed above; spiritual pairing is the un-manifest part of us. The spiritually paired person is abnormal and vice-versa. Any impairment that you come with has a high probability of having a connection with the spiritual component which is the un-manifest. That is why such impaired people were called ‘deouti’. All the saints like Tajjuddin baba, Anusuya mata, Gajanan maharaj were called auliya which meant saints in English. Auliya loosely translated meant mad. When we see them as divine, our ‘bhaav’ towards them can also give them divine powers (giving them ‘devatva’).
Our concept of normality is taken us away from spirituality. ‘Normal’ is a social component and spirituality is above that. Society is man-made and spirituality is un-manifest or divine. Man-made things can impair you from connecting to the divine.
Next: Why many people die in the likes of war and natural calamity?
Discussion:
When many people die together due to an accident or natural calamity or war or the likes of the Pahalgam attack:
Different people travelled from different parts of India and were selectively shot dead. The pain of their family members on losing their loved ones is so heart-wrenching but only in the worldly ways (prapanch). Form a spiritual perspective, the souls of the victims must have had a soul contract to depart this world together. Since the souls had chosen their destiny, their Chetana had chosen the experiences and knew when and where they will find it. But we shouldn’t preach this to the bereaved families as that would be antipathy.
There is surely some reason for such an event to happen. Just because we don’t know the cause of such deaths doesn’t mean it is random but we needn’t go searching for the reason. We don’t have to know the reason; the victims would know it. Must be aware of ourselves and be ready as any moment could be our last moment. After death also the further journey of the souls can be different.
There are different loks: naag lok, yaksha lok, kinnar lok, swarga lok, gandharva lok, patal lok, par lok etc. These are metaphoric.
Next question on what did the terrorist do:
Every soul has a destined time, place and method of death though we as humans have forgotten about it. With our limited knowledge we try to hood-wink or out run death by changing place or fortifying ourselves but we will eventually land up at the destined place on the destined time and encounter our death. In order to fulfil the death-wish of souls some people get possessed by ‘Yam doot’ and do the needful e.g. become a terrorist and kill. If we see these terrorist events in this perspective we will not get angry or judge them.
We have been taught that ahimsa paramo dharam: dharam hinsa tathaiva cha: which means the supreme dharma of humans is ahimsa and himsa (violence) for the protection of dharma is above that. This dharma is for the living beings, the role they perform, and not for the souls. Living beings have a perform their role well; like Arjuna being guided by Krishna to pick up his ‘gaandeev’ and kill his own kith and kin who are standing against him on the battle field. Here killing them is not himsa but his dharm or his role performance is to kill someone; then it is not called murder but is called ‘vadh’. Some such acts can either earn them a place in swarg or push them into hell. Will their name be praised or condemned after their role is performed; difference is of being called a shaheed or a murder victim. This is decided by what was their chosen role. The soul has selected their identity and role before birth, likewise the soul has also selected how will they die or by whose hands. After the deaths probably the souls sit around together having fun discussing their roles and their performances and decide on the next journey they want to take.
This is the difference between the role of the aatma in prapancha and what aadhyatma tells us.
This concept is for our understanding should not be preached to the bereaved as it will be antipathy.
The journey of the aatma of twins as separate souls is also different though they have the same parents, nature and nurturing.
The agani (fire) in tapa or tapascharya is not for hurting me but for purifying me; this understanding changes our perspective towards agni and other difficulties in life. For example when a doctor pricks us or cuts us we don’t hold it against him because we know we won’t be cured unless all that is done. We trust him, thank him, pay him and bless too for all the pains caused by him.
Sometimes discussions are fun and make you feel good; they needn’t be about accumulation of knowledge. We have an attitude to accumulate; be it money, material things or knowledge. Accumulated knowledge doesn’t equate to having wisdom. Tendency to accumulation is opposite to the attitude of having fun. Non-accumulation is ‘aparigraha’.
Question: Can we discuss about duties and disappointments?
Discussion:
Kartavya (duties) has a kartaa bhaav (doer-ship). When you work with kartaa-bhaav, you are vulnerable to disappointment. The outcomes of kartaa-bhaav are yash and apa-yash. Such work is evaluated if it was done well or not. The base of the word kartavya is ‘kru’ in Sanskrit or ‘do’ in English. ‘Doing’ will be either hopeful or hopeless. If it’s hopeless it will give rise to disappointment. So what should we do?
We should have a ‘karma-bhaav’; if we think what we are doing is not for the other person but we are doing it as a duty towards God. What we offer to God is not judged by its value (flowers etc) but by the emotions felt when we offer. Bhaav is important in karma-buddhi and outcome is important in karta-buddhi. When we act with karma-bhaav the act of doing itself gives us pleasure. The process gives us pleasure; pleasure is not dependent on the outcome. Being process-centric is karma-bhaav and being performance-centric is karta-bhaav. When we are performance-oriented then disappointment can be a natural outcome whereas work done in karma-bhaav has no disappointment. ‘Idam na mam’ follows karma-bhaav; neither is the credit mine nor is the disappointment. Karta-bhaan actions, when done properly, can give rise to ahankar too. Ahankaar when validated will eventually break and will end-up causing disappointment.
Sometimes we can be in karta-bhaav while asking questions as we expect self-serving answers. While asking questions we should neither be in doubt of getting favourable answers nor look for validation as both will lead to disappointment.
Conclusion/Takeaways:
Not to be disturbed by death: we do not express sadness about the death but about losing our person or of losing the benefits that came when the person was alive.
PS:
“Auliya” is the plural form of the Arabic word “Wali,” which generally translates to “friend,” “protector,” or “saint” in English. In Islam, “Auliya” refers to individuals who are considered “friends of God” and have a close relationship with Him, often distinguished by their piety and spiritual achievements. They are also known as saints or righteous people
