Before I realize God's, all of a sudden sadhna ends abrupty just before death. Like Maharaj Bharat, I remember a Deer that I killed, I lose all the benefit of my sadhana and get born as a Deer. What is the use of all sadhna activities if I am going to have a miserable result for not being careful enough? Who guarantees my salvation through Sadhna or Yoga.Gita seems to say that the thoughts at the time just before death affect the nature of future birth. If I think of God at that time, I get liberated. If I happen to think of evil and sensual desire, I have to struggle again in the next birth to get salvation. This may continue birth after birth. Since there is no guarantee that I would get liberated, why should I try again and again in vain? This is a valid and legitimate question that arises in the mind? I should answer to this question.
First, I recognize that no one can guarantee fulfillment of desire even if the desire happens to be one of attaining salvation or merging with God. God says in Gita that I do not exist except in delusion. God says that Self / Atman never dies and never born. He says Self is always in the state of realization in the sense of being in God Himself. Then, why should He say that I will have problem if I happen to think of something else than God? God in Gita is obviously not a child or an ignorant person. He cannot say what I interpret as having said. The only meaning of what he has said about thoughts at the time just before death could be that he is saying that a person following and practicing Yoga can slip very easily from the path of Yoga. And that could happen even just before death. This highlights the great difficulty in remaining steady on the path of Yoga. The objective of Yoga is to remain on the path till the last moment that one can be in Yoga, i.e., the moment one leaves his breath and then dies. This is the only interpretation that is consistent with the essence of Gita;s lessons. The God in Gita could not been illogical person to say inconsistent things.
Human population or the life form has been growing all the time. There is birth of a new life form every moment. Each of the new born has God contained in that life in the body, mind, ego and the Self. It does not mean that some specific body, or specific mid/ intellect/ sense/ ego or Self has to be born again. It only refers to the continous cycle of creation, maintenance, destruction and transformation. The purpose of Yoga is to experience in the live body the complete unison of the ego, intellect, mind, thoughts, actions and senses with the Self (that is always in Realized State). When that experience of unison is in its complete state, the ego vanishes, the mind becomes still and thought-less, desires disappear and senses work without desire. It is such a state that there is no experience of pleasure or pain and no experience of action or death.
Maybe my interpretation as described above is wrong. But still I have to question the question. If I am so interested in salvation with intensity increasing over time, why should I be afraid of slipping from the path of Yoga any time at all? Yes, there is great probability of deviating from the path of Yoga due to influence of the Maya influenced Gunas. But that is exactly what I am fighting to overcome and win over. I do not go to War just thinking that I may get defeated. God has told me that I have the right only to action/ work/ performance but not the consequences of such action/ performance. My only desire is Salvation and nothing else. My only work for that is to perform Yoga and be in Yoga. If I am in Yoga continuously, even the desire for salvation will vanish and I am in bliss. I want to experience that. State. When I am in that state I have no further desire and I remain there ad infinitum. Where is the question of being in vain?
Finally, assuming that I get defeated by the Gunas and they make me fall out of the path of Yoga, what do I lose? I have already experienced the quality of living on the path of Yoga. That should encourage me to come back to the path of Yoga to fight again with the Gunas influence with greater resolve. Failures are the pillars of success.
No one can guarantee salvation. Even if one is not successful in realizing God, the progress one makes towards that goal makes the person achieve a different life. He/ She may be satisfied with this life-time achievement or he/ she may not.
If he/she is satisfied, it does not matter whether or where he/she is born in the next birth. Even for believers in rebirth, the next birth is a different try/ attempt one has to make to realize God. It is said that the Purva Samskriti (the inheritance of the Stavuic gunas that one developed in the previous birth) could help him / her to continue the progress to the realization of God. Of course, much will determine what he actually happens to do in the next birth. Whether this is true or not does not matter. If in this birth, a person has been able to attain a fair degree of equanimity, he/ she would not be at all upset by the possibility of his/ her next birth being as deer or pig or mosquito or tiger or poor beggar in a poor country: for he/she would have realized that every being in this Creation is the same and one should be indifferent to the type of next birth.
If one is not satisfied with his/ her progress towards the path of realization of the Self/ God, he could be still be happy with the progress that he/she has made in this life and would look forward to the next birth to continue to the progress towards the ultimate goal.
Those who are interested in Bhog and wants just to keep themselves fit through practicing Yogic methods of sadhana can at best achieve that goal. The goal of self-realization cannot be achieved through partial devotion to that goal while pursuing material goals in life. There could be such Sadhaks who want to develop some mystical / magical powers through Sadhana. They may achieve only that.
The possibility of any thought other than God arising in the mind of a Sadhak arises only if one is still not focused on the single goal of realization of the Self and God. Even when peopole get into accidents, they pray to God before they die. The sadhakas are likely to think of God all the time even while they are eating, discussing, bathing, reading newspaper: so they are unlikely to get into trouble of unwanted rebirth because at the time of death they were sleeping or discussing politics or property. Because at the back of their mind, the thought of God is expected to remain. For example if at the time of death, a person was reading about a criminal's life or the the beauty of a deer, the sadhak is only thinking of these as the Creation of God. If he/she is thinking about investment in property, he is thinking that God has been guiding him/ her to take a decision. If he is thinking of eating fish, he is thinking of God instructing him to eat fish. Thus, he has lost his ego to God. The thought of God remains all through. Why should he be worried about what his/ her next life could be.
If a Sadhak is serious in continuing along the path to Salvation, he shall at least be prepared to continue his/ her efforts in the next birth. That resolve is always in the back of his/ her mind. He/ she does not have to worry about what his next birth would be if he happens to think of a jackal or a thief or a murder or a rape incident. Even if he/ she happen to be angry at the moment of death, a Sadhak is aware that this is God's play. He/ she has completely submitted to God.
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