I was sitting in an ashram that belongs, by virtue of matrimonial geography, to my legally wedded spouse. I am tolerated there in much the same way a porcupine might be tolerated in a balloon factory. The gurus are perfectly polite, but they have learnt to maintain a certain strategic distance.
On this particular day, I witnessed a familiar little drama.
An elderly woman sat before the guru. Tiny, toothless and visibly nervous. The entire arrangement resembled less a spiritual consultation and more an appearance before the school principal. She had the expression of a schoolgirl caught stealing biscuits from the staff room.
“Yeh sab kyon karti ho?” the guru asked.
She mumbled something.
“Is umar mein apna chitta saaf karo.”
She nodded.
And then came the prescription.
“Jaap karo. Bhagwan ka naam lo.”
Of course.
The universal spiritual equivalent of drinking more water.
Anxiety? Jaap.
Anger? Jaap.
Jealousy? Jaap.
Existential confusion? Jaap, preferably with a few extra repetitions for good measure.
The guru then delivered the clincher.
“The last thought before death is what you carry into your next life.”
I nearly choked.
There it was. The cosmic examination system.
After eighty or ninety years of living, loving, fighting, cooking, worrying, raising children, paying bills and generally making a mess of things, apparently the universe waits for your final answer before deciding what to do with you.
One wrong thought and you could be back as a government clerk.
I began to wonder how this would work in practice.
Suppose my last thought is, “My throat hurts.”
But the accompanying experience is one of relief. Or gratitude. Or surrender. Or even profound peace.
Which gets submitted to the celestial authorities? The thought or the state of being?
Because, if we’re being honest, thoughts are not exactly known for their intellectual discipline.
For years, we are told that thoughts are everything. Then we sit quietly for five minutes and observe the mind.
What does it produce?
Memories, arguments, grocery lists, imaginary conversations, revenge fantasies, songs from 1987, unfinished chores and, occasionally, a useful insight squeezed between two completely irrelevant thoughts.
And we are expected to trust this unreliable narrator to deliver the definitive spiritual statement of our existence in the final seconds before death.
Good luck with that.
This brings me to Swami Sivananda and his writings on thought culture.
I have always found the expression rather amusing. The only culture I instinctively associate with is microbial culture. Thoughts, meanwhile, seem to have missed the memo on civilisation.
Sivananda speaks of cultivating constructive thoughts and avoiding destructive ones. Fair enough. There is merit in learning to direct one’s thinking rather than being dragged around by it.
But I find myself asking a slightly different question.
What if thoughts are, in themselves, relatively neutral? What if it is the emotional charge we attach to them that makes all the difference?
A thought appears. A feeling follows. Then comes judgement. Then judgement about the judgement. Before long, an entire administrative department has been established around one passing mental event.
A random thought walks into the room. Within minutes there are committees, subcommittees, disciplinary hearings and appeals.
The poor thought didn’t stand a chance.
Perhaps this is where our spiritual housekeeping becomes exhausting. Every thought becomes a project. Every impulse a moral crisis. Every wandering of the mind evidence for the prosecution.
I am increasingly suspicious of this spiritual bookkeeping.
And increasingly interested in grace.
When my grandmother’s time came, I don’t imagine her negotiating with the universe over the accuracy of her final thought. I prefer to imagine something rather less complicated.
A life lived. Stories accumulated. People loved. Mistakes made. Lessons learnt. Some regrets, no doubt. A few spectacular blunders. And hopefully enough laughter to make the whole business worthwhile.
Perhaps, somewhere near the end, there was simply a quiet acknowledgement:
“I’ve had a good life.”
“Thank you.”
Now that, to me, feels infinitely more spiritual than monitoring one’s mental traffic for prohibited content.
The great irony is that we become so preoccupied with having the correct final thought that we forget to have a reasonably good life in the meantime.
As though moksha were an entrance examination. As though the Divine were sitting behind a desk with a red pen, waiting to evaluate our answer sheets.
I have enough experience with examinations, report cards and performance reviews. I would rather not have one waiting for me at the other end.
And if the Creator has watched us stumble, blunder, love, grieve, laugh, scheme, forgive and generally muddle our way through an entire lifetime, I would like to think the final conversation might be a little more generous.
Surely it won’t begin with:
“Unfortunately, your final answer was incorrect.”
And if it does, I hope I have the presence of mind to ask for a revaluation.
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