Found It! but I Didn’t Want to Do It!
I was still searching for the answer to “What promise did I make in the womb?” By this time I had almost given up thinking I would ever find an answer and so I pretty much stopped asking people who only gave me blank stares and no possible kind of conclusion to such a crazy question.
Nevertheless, I thought the Krishna farm experience was the closest thing to finding god so far in my search. I was fascinated that those people actually knew who was god and the old man exuded a charm I couldn’t explain. He was a spiritual master who cared not for his own welfare, but only wanted to spread Krishna consciousness in the western world. A selfless person was completely unknown and foreign to me.
I decided to visit the Hare Krishna temple in Atlanta, Georgia around two weeks after I returned and asked Rusty to go with me. He was not interested. My mind was loaded with questions, and as far as I knew, no one had ever professed to be God Himself as Krishna had done in Bhagavad Gita. Therefore I decided to go alone. I was going for their Sunday Feast program and Atlanta was only 3 hours away from Birmingham, so I took off.
When I arrived, the same enthusiastic, bubbly girl I met outside of the temple room in West Virginia, Gayatri, greeted me on the front porch of their temple converted from an old victorian home. She was very happy to see me and her bubbly conversation began immediately. As we talked, she quoted different passages from the books their spiritual master translated into english from hindi and sanskrit. AND THEN SHE SAID IT! Why? I can only imagine that God sent her to me because my heart was absolutely dying to know the truth.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AT THE TIME OF DEATH?” she said. I thought to myself, Yes, but nobody believes me, so i’ll just say no and see what she says. “No,” I said, “what?” She said that the temperature goes up very high, maybe up to 107 degrees and then begins to fall instantly as the soul leaves the body. Then she said, “Wait a minute. I’ll just get the book and read from it.” She ran inside the building and brought out a book and began to read. She read from the Srimad Bhagavatam, known as the 5th Veda, about experiencing 100 births and deaths at the time of leaving the body and then being put into a womb. She then read from the Third Canto, Chapter 31, describing exactly what happens while the child is in the womb. I nearly fainted! I must have gone pale as she continued:
“If you have led your life in a way that is hurtful to others, you will definitely experience a long, painful journey with severe consequences when you die. However, if you are pious, you are placed in the womb of your new mother and allowed to remember your past 100 births as you pray to love and serve Krishna.”
Then she read from the book, third canto, chapter 31, and here are the verses that blew my mind:
S.B. 3.31.9 - “The child thus remains just like a bird in a cage, without freedom of movement. At that time, if the child is fortunate, he can remember all the troubles of his past one hundred births, and he grieves wretchedly.”
S.B. 3.31.10 - “Thus endowed with the development of consciousness from the seventh month after his conception, the child is tossed downward by the airs that press the embryo during the weeks preceding delivery.”
S.B. 3.31.11 - “The living entity in this frightful condition of life, bound by seven layers of material ingredients, prays with folded hands, appealing to the Lord, who has put him in that condition.”
S.B.3.31.12 - “The human soul says: I take shelter of the lotus feet of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who appears in His various eternal forms and walks on the surface of the world. I take shelter of Him only, because He can give me relief from all fear and from Him I have received this condition of life, just befitting my impious activities.”
S.B. 3.31.17 - “Oh my Lord, when shall I, a wretched soul, be released from this confinement?”
S.B. 3.31.22 - “The tenth lunar month, while he thus extols the Lord, the wind that helps parturition propels him forth with his face turned downward so that he may be born.”
S.B. 3.31.23 - “Pushed downward all of a sudden by the wind, the child comes out with great trouble, head downward, breathless and deprived of memory due to severe agony.”
S.B. 3.31.24 - “He loses his superior knowledge and cries under the spell of maya.”
Tears filled my eyes and the hairs on my arms were standing on end. Paralyzed and struck with awe, I was finally able to speak saying, “So this is what I am supposed to be doing with my life? Do I have to join your group or move into your temple?”
I did not want to. I really did not want to! I would rather look in from the outside and let those people wear the paint on their faces, shave their heads and wear clothing from another country. Surely God did not want me to do this!
But I could not deny it. Every word she read reflected the exact experience I had under the influence of the Purple Haze. I was stunned and happy to have found what I was looking for, but very upset about the form it was in. What was I to do? I didn’t want to dress like an Indian and chant these mantras in a foreign language all day long. I did not want to be a Krishna devotee!