Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, a revered spiritual leader, shared profound insights with his devotees in this recorded discourse. In his enlightening speech, Swamiji explored the intricate dynamics of destiny, devotion, and the cyclical nature of our Earth’s existence. He emphasized the transformative power of selfless devotion to Radha-Krishna and Divine love consciousness in shaping individual and collective destinies. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati’s teachings offer deep spiritual guidance, resonating with seekers on their path to understanding life’s mysteries and achieving spiritual fulfillment.
The written translation below has been slightly edited for clarity.
The Divine Souls,
The topic is: the elements affecting the destiny of this Earth planet where we live. It (the earth) also has its destiny as I have said, and thatdestiny was made according to the good, bad, and devotional karmas of all the souls collectively – prior to the birth of this planet. You will wonder that, prior to the birth of this planet, where were the souls? Actually, this Earth planet or this planetary system, was originally born roughly 38.88 trillion years ago.
During that time, our sun died and came alive many times – thousands and thousands and thousands of times. When the sun consumes its fuel, it becomes almost dead but does not completely finish. Then it stays in some small form, not as a bright sun but as an object- something in the sky. It does not completely finish.Then again, its energy is revived,and it becomes a sun. Earth is always there, so when the sun dies, all the beings on Earth also die. There is a mantra in theVedas declaring that ‘what was before the causal death of the sun, it will become again after the sun revives’. There existed human beings and vegetation when the sun lost its light, and heat which caused all the beings to die,according to our Vedic scriptures.
The sun firstbecomes a thousand times greater and a thousand times hotter. Imagine, when we get 40-45°C/104-113°F heat we feel terrible,so multiply that by a thousand times and everything turns to ashes. Then huge rains wash everything out, leaving just a bare-naked planet.
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So where do the souls go? Nowhere else.They stay in the space of this planetary system.Because the creator Brahma, the power which created this planetary system, holds all the souls within himself and sleeps for almost 4.32 million years. When he wakes up again, this Earth planet and sun come alive and remain in existence for the same length of time (4.32 million years). This cycle has been happening for 38.88 trillion years. Whatever it was before, exactly the same thing happens after the sun gets energy.
Who gives the sun energy? Brahma.Because he is a Divine personality, a Divine power. He gives energy to the sun, and the sun regains its energy. Plants become plants, humans become humans, vegetation becomes vegetation, animals become animals – exactly what they were prior to the causal death of the sun. Exactly the same.They appear when the sun regains its energy, and Earth flourishes.
In this way, all the karmas of all the souls related to this Earth planet affect the destiny of the Earth planet. You might wonder, “What is the destiny of our planet?” Its life and death are fixed.It cannot be extended or shortened. Destiny means, like your personal destiny – you are going to meet an accident, become seriously ill, something like that. All the physical disasters on Earth, the rise and fall of kingdoms, and many other things are mostly pre-scheduled; they happen in the same way. That’s how saints could predict that something is going to happen at that time.Otherwise, how could they make predictions? It’s all scheduled before the causal birth of our sun.
So, these kinds of physical disasters, rise and fall of big kingdoms, they are destined. It does not affect the planet itself or maya itself. Supposemayic energy has no mind.The one who has no mind, no matter what happens, it’s not going to affect it. Even if the whole galaxy turns into ashes and is scattered all over space, it makes no difference. It’s all mayic energy. Suppose there’s a big disaster and all the continental plates crash together; all the volcanos erupt, and all the oceans rise and fall.There would be no one left on this Earth. But what would happen to mayic energy? Nothing, because it’s mindless. So, we suffer if something happens.
If there is a big volcanic eruption, who is going to suffer? Human beings. Big earthquakes happen, who is going to suffer? Human beings. Their houses fall.Suppose there is atomic war. Who is going to suffer? Human beings. Any disaster, human beings suffer. Human beings suffer any kind of physical disaster happening on the face of this Earth – major physical disasters like big earthquakes, volcanoes and world wars.
But they are also pre-scheduled. Why are they pre-scheduled? On what basis? They are destined on the basis of our own karmas. It’s like, your personal karmaeffects your future destiny. So collectively, the karmas of all the souls of this Earth planet affect its destiny. That destiny is suffered by human beings and all other live beings.
So in this way, it is the biggest joke of this age that unsettled-minded people, who have no peace in their hearts and minds, collectively try to pray to God to bring peace to this Earth. This is the biggest joke. How is it going to affect? No way. Those souls, or those leaderswho are trying to influence the public by declaring, “I am doing something good for the planet!”,“I am praying to God for world peace!”,“Oh God, save us from disaster!”, this is the biggest joke of this 20th century because it is perfect hypocrisy. Perfect. The one who is not peaceful in his heart, the one who is not devotional, the one who is not Divine, his voice is in vain.What’s the use? Why can’t you change your own destiny by praying? No, it’s not so! They all know. Many people know that it’s just fake, but they try to influence people. Such things are just jokes, nothing else.They have no effect. If the whole world starts praying to God what’s going to happen? Nothing. They have no connection with God; such things are simply casual.
Suppose a boy goes to school and comes back happily, “Mother, today is a holiday.” “What happened?” “My principal expired. So, we all went to the school, there was silence for 2 minutes, and weprayed for the peace of his soul. We stood in PE for 2 minutes and came back.” He’s chuckling happily. I mean, he was happy on the death of his principal!There was no mourning that morning! So, what happened to that 2 minutes of prayer for peace? It was just a formality.It was casual or, you can say, a show.
This kind of show is simply a ‘show business’; it’s not going to affect the deceased soul, not going to effect the destiny of the planet. It is simply a show, nothing else. What effects the destiny of the planet is something different, and as I explained many times, whatever effects your destinycan affect the destiny of the planet. What affects your destiny? Your own consciousness of Krishna love and consciousness ofDivine love. When you are united in love with Krishna, you have some unity.
When you begin to ask lots of things from Krishna, then you are not in positive unity; you are in selfish unity. Thinking of God is a kind of unity, butthere is selfish unity and unselfish unity.Selfish unity makes no difference because you are united to your own self, not to God. You may think you are praying to God but if you are selfish, you are purely selfish. Then those prayers make no difference – neither in your mind, nor in your heart, nor in your devotion.
For those wise souls who sincerely long for the vision of their beloved God, they simply long to find Him. They don’t ask Him for any worldly thing because they know whatever is right for them will be given. A child does not know what is good for them, but the mother knows. Imagine a year-old child who is crawling aroundand comes into the kitchen finding a shiny knife – glittering but very sharp! He likes it. So, the child,feeling happy, picks it up thinking it is a toy. Mother comes.She knows thathe will cut his hand.So she runs, held his hand and snatches the knife and throws it saying, “What are you doing?” The child is crying. The child thinks, “My mother is cruel! She’s not allowing me to play!” The child has a mind even at that age. Why is he crying? Because he understands that the mother is cruel by not allowing him to play with the shiny thing. But the mother knows this will damage him.This might kill him, so she protects the child.
Mother knows what is good for the child, not the child whose brain is undeveloped. When that child becomes a mother, then again, she knows for her own son or daughter. So, you have to grow. All those children have very immature brains in the sense of God realization; they are like one-year-old kids. Our Divine mother knows, Divine father knows, your master knows what is good for you, and he will give you when the time comes. So, your demand is useless.You might demand the wrong thing or the right thing. So, forget your demands; whatever you will require will be given because She is caring for you. So just forget and be in peace and trust in the Divine management, in the Divine grace.
In this way, whatever is required is given to a devotee. So, when that devotee has surrendered and then remembers Krishna Radha as a Divine beloved with a yearning heart, that is called devotion. That is called devotional unity, or the devotional channel between the soul and Godhead, Krishna, and the master. They all become one;it becomes a circuit.
So that devotee may also have some bad destiny. So bad destiny is again, to some extent, removed with this kind of devotion – not by going to palmist or showing your horoscope and doing some mantra for Saturn because Saturn has a crooked eye!They tell these things in some places. In my family, there was a person who liked me very much, and he was a very good and very sincere astrologer. He told me many times, “Please learn something.” I said, “No, I’m not going to do these things in my life. Why should I learn this biology or this health business? These are worldly things.”This was when I was in school, when I was 14 or 15. So anyway, these things don’t help your destiny.Only selfless devotion helps your destiny to a certain extent. Again, destiny cannot be completely removed. For instance, if you are going to have a loss of $100,000, just roughly, you may have a loss of $50,000, $40,000, even $30,000. But it cannot be totally removed. For example, if you are going to have an accident and have 13 fractures in your body normally. If you become a sincere and selfless devotee,you may only have five fractures in your body. But you will meet that destiny andhave that accident.
So those wrong destinies cannot be completely eliminated; to a certain extent, they can be diminished. But that also only with selfless devotion, not selfish devotion. The same thing applies to the destiny of this Earth planet. If there are more selfless devotees on this Earth and they are not asking their beloved God for any worldly thing, destiny would normally change – not with selfish, showy people, butselfless devotees. Nobody thinks like this in the present time because religion and medicine have now become a means of getting popularity.
And sometimes people use this kind of thing for politics. So, we have to be away from those things. As a selfless devotee affects his destiny and the destiny of the planet.It might be a very,very small degree, but it affects. It’s like one grain in a big heap; it is something. So, all the selfless devotees, they surely affect the destiny, but not selfish people. Again, the one who has created this world, Brahma, he knows what to do with this world.
And there are many saints; we call them kārak-mahāpurush, like Narad, Vishnu, Vishwamitra – all those great saints. They are always in celestial abode called Brahmalok,and they always maintain harmony on this Earth planet. That’s their responsibility. Furthermore, many more saints stay on this Earth, on the surface of this Earth. They stay invisible or incognito.There might be many saints in the Himalayas(in the caves and those caves are fully under glaciers).They are in trance – they are ofno use for human beings.
But they, with their own thinking and thoughts, are affecting the harmony of thewhole planet. So those masters, the kārak-purush, orcosmic masters who stay inBrahma’s abode,and those great masters who physically stay on the surface of this Earthincognito and sometimes physically invisible, are all controlling whatever is possible,although destiny cannot be fully removed.Whatever is supposed to happen will happen.It is definitely going to happen, but that can be controlled to certain degrees. Again, those masters, they cannot do a lot; they depend upon our selfless devotion. Because who caused the bad destiny of this planet? We caused it!Our own karmas caused it! So, we have to rectify it.“We”means all the souls collectively, because the collective negativity has become the bad destiny of the Earth planet.
So, if they collectively begin to enter into Divine love consciousness, only that thing may change the bad destiny of this Earth planet – nothing else.