The 12 Signs on the Existence of God

7 Lucky Gods of japan (Photo credit: Steve-kun)

The signs answer, “Do You Believe in God”…

Aries: Yes, it empowers me / No, I don’t need God

Taurus: Yes, it makes my life better / No, I believe in love

Gemini: Yes, but not the way most people do. What about you?

Cancer: I don’t really even know you and you come and ask me this deep question? I have my own personal opinion about it.

Leo: God is in everyone and everything

Virgo: It’s not the most important question in the world, is it? Isn’t how I behave more important that what I believe?

Libra: Yes, if that makes people treat one another better / No, religion divides people.

Scorpio: I don’t think you would understand what I believe about this. I believe in a Spiritual Power more than in “God”.

Sagittarius: There are many different opinions on this topic, all of them fascinating…

Capricorn: No, I don’t “believe” in God. I *KNOW* God exists / doesn’t exist.

Aquarius: Yes, I want to serve God / No, I want to serve humanity.

Pisces: Would it be possible to even ask the question if there was no such thing as God?

Can we Change our Fate?

Can we Change our Karma / Fate?

Think of it like this:

If there is a ball in your hand, you can choose where to throw it. If you throw it through your window, you will come to regret it. Once you have thrown the ball, you’ve thrown it. There is nothing else you can do about it once you have thrown it. You cannot change the fact that you’ve broken your window – but you can change your karma in the future by taking care not to throw another ball through a window again. That is how you change your fate.

You cannot erase the fate you have already created, but you must learn from that fate to make a brighter one for your future.

Can God / Krsna Change our Karma / Fate?

Yes, but why would he?

You can destroy a complicated machine that you have created, but why would you? Fate / karma is not a mistake and is not evil. It is a carefully, meticulously planed machine that teaches us in an extremely deep and real way all the lessons we need to learn to gradually become more and more selfless and eventually become enlightened.

 

Does Devotion/ Bhakti “Burn” Fate/ Karma?

Yes, but not all at once. Sri Rupa describes how bhakti destroys karma (BRS 1.1):

Karma has several stages. First are all the things and situations tangibly manifest right now in your current life. That’s called “prarabdha-karma.” It’s like the broken window you’ve thrown a ball through.

Then there is also a long line of karmic reactions / fates waiting in line for the right opportunity to manifest. You’ve already caused these fates to happen, they just have not yet gotten the correct moment to do so. This is called “aprarabdha-karma.” It’s like you’ve thrown the ball at the window, but the impact hasn’t happened yet.

Then there are three more subtle states of Karma: First is “bijam” the seed of karma, the desire in your heart to, for example, throw a ball through a window.

More subtle is “kutam” which is the “point of origin” for desires; the soil in which the seed of various desires take root. In the example of throwing a ball through a window, kutam might be a sense of mischievous curiosity.

Finally, the ultimate root of karma is “avidya” – “unknowing.” Because we don’t know our true self, we develop inclinations towards desires for self-centered decisions and actions – which then start the wheel of karma moving.

Bhakti will burn the avidya completely to the root, and this will cut off the power to the spinning wheel of fate / karma. The first thing to blackout without power will be the general curiosity “kutam” and inclination towards self-centered acts.You will feel this right away as you take up a spiritual practice like bhakti. You will notice that your genuine curiosity for selfish desires is rather quickly sapped of energy and replace with curiosity of a spiritual nature.

Next, all the specific desires (bijam) for specific self-centered acts will be burned. After some time of serious practice you will start to tangibly perceive this karma disappearing: your desires for various specific self-centered activities will receed, disappear and be replaced by spiritual desires for love of Godhead.

After this, bhakti can burn  aprarabdha-karma. God sees that you have already learned through your spiritual path the lessons you needed to learn through karma, the machine of destiny deletes those karmas, which your sincere spiritual endeavors have now rendered redundant. It is difficult to directly perceive this because the effect is on an intangible thing. The result is that the long line of future births you are scheduled to have gradually becomes shorter and shorter until it finally evaporates completely and you require no further births.

At this elevated point you are left only with prarabdha-karma – the tangible destiny of your current life and body. You cannot keep a physical body in the material world without this karma. It burns very slowly and is not completely eradicated until one obtains prema-bhakti: full realization of divine love, at which point one no longer is kept within a material body in the material world, but enters directly into the divine play (lila) of Krsna. You may feel the very initial effects of the burning of prarabdha-karma as a gradual lack of bodily fixation, eventually a lack of bodily awareness, and finally a lack of a physical body entirely – when you enter into the spiritual realm.

Thank you,

Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

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Image via Wikipedia

God of the Star Named Vishakha

There is confusion among modern astrologers regarding the god empowering Viśākhā. The name of this god is Indrāgñi, and most people seem to think that it refers to two different gods: Indra (god of rain) and Agñi (god of fire). However this is not the case. Indrāgñi is the name of a single being noted in the Mahābhārata as well as the Ṛg Veda. There are many different forms of the god of fire, Agñi. The chief (“Indra”) of them is the form of fire used in sacrifices and rituals. Indrāgñi, therefore is the god of ritual fire.

The purpose of ritual is to obtain a specific boon. The god of ritual fire empowers Viśākhā to be a star that focuses and fixes our determination upon a specific objective, often to the point of obsession. The symbol of this star, a finish line, illustrates this mentality nicely.

Questions Relating to God, Fate, and Reincarnation

does lord krishna have control over the planets in astrology?

The us Government makes laws. In that sense they have control over US law. The police and courts enforce the laws, invested with the power of the US Government. Still it is the citizens who either break or obey the laws. The Government or police does not (ldeally, at least) bend the laws to make an innocent person guilty or a guilty person innocent.

Similarly Krsna has made the Purusha. the Purusha makes the universe with all it’s laws. The planets and other devas enforce the laws being invested with the power of the Purusha, who is the conduit for the power of Krishna. So in this sense Krishna has control of all the planets.

But the planets, Purusha and Krishna do not exercise favoritism. They use their control over fate only to ensure that it is enforced impariatially. Just as it is the citizens who control their punishment or reward by deciding if they will contradict or cooperate with the laws – similarly it is only you and I who truly controls our own fates.

who should we worship to ease the negatives of our planets?

Merely the concept of wishing to worship will itself ease the negativities, because most of the negativity arises from refusal to cooperate with higher authorities and powers. Worship ameliorates this rebelliousness, and therefore in and of itself is very efficacious for easing karmic negativity.

Those who still desire to enjoy power and prestige in the temporary world should worship various temporary deities to get their petty desires fulfilled. Those who are lucky and smart will want a permanent solution to suffering and negativity – and they will therefore seek emancipation. Such persons can only worship Vishnu’s category of divinity – for Vishnu is the god of pure clarity (sattva-guna), and therefore he alone can grant emancipation to pure clarity. I discuss this in more detail in my reading of the Bhagavata, here: On God and Gods

also when we die do we go straight to our next life?

No. Time is extremely complex and difficult to grasp. It is not as iron clad as the human mind in this era of human history perceives it to be. Aeons and milliseconds can be equalized by the powers of the universe. So time is a bit irrelevant what considering some questions, such as this one.

Every individual is slightly different. The general process, as far as I understand it, is that some time is spend in disconnecting ones emotions and attachments to the body and identity and life which has just expired. Thereafter, Yamaraja – the ultimate judge of karma – takes sometime to review things. Thereafter one is sent to the next destination. But the next destination is not always a birth in a conventional sense. Sometimes it is a manifestation on higher or lower planes of existence (heavens and hells). So there is a flexible amount of time, could be short or long, between one tangible birth and the next. Also the next tangible birth is (quite often nowadays) in subhuman wombs. Depending on how low down the evolutionary chain the birth is, it can take quite some time before the soul ascends the evolutionary ladder again to have the Human opportunity. Therefore there is absolutely no set time between one human birth and the next.

and why are there so many lower life forms than humans,

The universe was created for souls who dreamed of enjoying Gods varieties. Most of that is done very nicely through the minds and senses of various creatures.

The human form of life is quite sophisticated. The special feature of being a human is having intellect, and therefore the ability to communicate and thus read knowledge that humanity has accumulated. So the true purpose of human life is to elevate oneself and improve one’s fundamental nature, not just to enjoy the varieties of manifestation in Gods creation – but to come into better harmony with that creation, not as an enjoyer of it but as a lover, a giver of love to God through it. So interest in this facility is comparatively quite scarce among all the souls here in this world. Even among those who take human birth, explicit interest in such topics is relatively scarce. Therefore there is little need for zillions of human beings to exist at a time, or for there to be zillions of humanlike species. That said, however, I have heard that the Veda specifies 400,000 subspecies of humanity. Though I have no idea how fine the differentiation has to be to get that many, nor do I think that all 400,000 of them co-exist at the same points in history.

is the human life something that is very hard to get back after this life is over?

Not if you have not wasted your human life. If you have made use of your human facilities, nature will quite happily supply you with another one immediately or quite soon – probably even an improved one. But yes, after wasting a human life by not utilizing its intellect to come into better harmony with creation and God… then it usually takes quite a while, but it depends on how severely one has no interest in the human faculties.