The ma­jor re­li­gions of the world have shown a ten­den­cy to agree to most of the moral and so­cial is­sues af­fect­ing every cor­ner of this trou­bled Plan­et Earth, in­hab­it­ed by more than eight bil­lion hu­man be­ings, who must turn to God for guid­ance. The Ten Com­mand­ments of the Chris­tians can be found in the Hin­du and oth­er scrip­tures. Our pun­dits re­fer to that as Nava­da Bhak­ti or the nine forms of de­vo­tions.

What hap­pens af­ter death is where we dif­fer from our col­leagues from oth­er re­li­gions. They hold the be­lief that there is a ‘judge­ment day.’ When we start talk­ing about life and death, we must ful­ly un­der­stand what the words kar­ma, rein­car­na­tion and trans­mi­gra­tion of souls mean.

Kar­ma is re­ferred to as cause and ef­fect. What­ev­er you throw out there, will come back to you and some peo­ple even re­fer to it as ‘you reap what­ev­er you sow’.

We do not be­lieve in a ‘judge­ment day’ and we do not be­lieve that some ce­les­tial be­ing, whether that be­ing is God, will be your judge. We be­lieve that each one of us is our own judge. We judge our­selves by our be­hav­iour—how we live our lives.

We be­lieve in an­oth­er prin­ci­ple that says when­ev­er the world is in tur­moil, God de­scends to rid the world of evil and to guide mankind. There have been ten ma­jor in­car­na­tions and 24 par­tial in­car­na­tions. That is, God or this Supreme Be­ing de­scend­ing on earth, liv­ing among us and set­ting the ex­am­ple for be­hav­iour.

Our most pop­u­lar man­i­fest­ed God is Bhag­wan Ram, who ‘came down’ to rid the world of evil-do­ers and pro­vide ex­am­ples to us how to be­have. If we be­have ac­cord­ing to the in­junc­tions and the pre­scrip­tions of the de­scend­ed God, then we could on­ly ‘rise’ as hu­man be­ings. And if we do not fol­low the prin­ci­ple laid down by these in­car­na­tions, then we de­scend the lad­der of cre­ation. So we are re­al­ly our own judges.

The kar­ma that we ac­cu­mu­late is the good or neg­a­tive deeds which we per­form and this fol­lows us through from life to life. We should not blame the Cre­ator for cre­at­ing prob­lems. Our God is a just and mer­ci­ful God, who gives us many op­por­tu­ni­ties to achieve Mok­sha.

As a Hin­du, I do not be­lieve my God is so un­mer­ci­ful that he would on­ly give us one op­por­tu­ni­ty and if we fail in this life­time, we ei­ther go to hell and damna­tion or heav­en. My God is a mer­ci­ful God, just like my par­ents are and he will give us end­less op­por­tu­ni­ties to as­cend the lad­der of cre­ation. And this brings me to the the­o­ry of the trans­mi­gra­tion of souls.

The fi­nal des­ti­na­tion of man is Mok­sha, which is the merg­ing of the in­di­vid­ual soul with the su­per soul. That is, we be­lieve that all of us have a soul which is a spark of the ‘Su­per Soul’. And if we are sparks of the su­per soul, then we are part of God.

If you do not per­form good acts and deeds in this life­time, like se­wa or ser­vice and cre­ate wor­thy in­sti­tu­tions and as­sist oth­er less for­tu­nate hu­man be­ings, then the oth­er ob­vi­ous thing is that you are go­ing to de­scend the lad­der of cre­ation.

But if man is at the top of cre­ation, it means that at some stage he as­cend­ed. There are many ex­am­ples in our scrip­tures where or­di­nary peo­ple did these good acts and deeds and they as­cend­ed the lad­der of cre­ation.

The sto­ry of Shabari is a typ­i­cal ex­am­ple. This sim­ple woman whose on­ly pas­sion was love for Shri Ra­ma, and be­cause of that di­vine pas­sion for God, she was able to en­sure that God came to her.

We be­lieve that we have the abil­i­ty to com­mand God. We can ask and plead with Him; we have many il­lus­tra­tions in our scrip­tures where peo­ple by good be­hav­iour have com­mand­ed God to ap­pear.

He ap­peared in the pres­ence of Shabari and she was saved. The man­i­fes­ta­tion of Lord Ram came about by the plead­ings of this devo­tee to save the world from the de­mon Ravaan.

While we do not wish to en­gage in any philo­soph­i­cal con­flict with oth­er re­li­gions, we need to let it be known that our be­lief in the prin­ci­ple of life af­ter death is unique. You will al­so find this in Bud­dhism and oth­er off shoots of Hin­duism be­cause it is unique to us.

Some of us who have read the Bible and some of us who have read the his­to­ry, know that be­lief in the ‘day of judge­ment’ came about at the Coun­cil of Nicea in June 325 AD, which marked the be­gin­ning of the end of the con­cepts of both pre-ex­is­tence and rein­car­na­tion.