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Main Index
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First go into those desires. Unless you become tremendously frustrated, unless you see that they are all futile: that whether you succeed or fail you always fail; that whether you have money or you are poor you are always poor; that whether you are a beggar or an emperor you are always a beggar... When that insight dawns on you, then only you can really become a seeker of the beyond. Otherwise, if you pretend to be a seeker of the beyond, you will bring your whole world with you, you will bring all your desires with you.
That's why people think of God, of heaven. It is not that they are interested in God and heaven, they are only interested in power, prestige. Maybe they are afraid of death and out of fear and out of greed they start praying to God. But a prayer that arises out of fear and greed is not prayer at all.
A real prayer arises out of gratitude, never out of fear and greed. A real prayer arises out of love for truth, whatsoever it is. Otherwise your worldly desires will again be projected onto God, onto heaven.
If you look into the descriptions of paradise of different religions and different countries you will be surprised: what they desire is projected. For example, the Tibetan paradise is described as warm -- obviously, because Tibetans suffer from cold so much that they would like heaven to be full of sun and warmth so that they can at least take a bath every day. In Tibet the scriptures say that it is your duty to take one bath at least every year!
The Indian paradise is cool, in fact, air-conditioned. They did not know the word at that time so it is "air-cooled". It is bound to be so -- India has suffered so much from heat. And you know through your own experience now that all that the Indian mind wants is a little shade and coolness. So the Indian paradise is always full of cool breezes and there are big trees, so big that a thousand bullock carts can rest under a single tree. The Indian idea of shade and coolness...
The Tibetan hell is absolutely icy and the Indian hell is full of fire.
Now, there cannot be so many hells and so many paradises; these are our projections. Whatsoever we desire we project onto
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