Spiritual Pal

Let me share one interesting thing I observed recently:

My uncle’s son(1-2 year old) has been showing great interest in God, gods, spirituality, Bhajans, Kirtans, Vedic chantings, Slokas, etc. Let me narrate a few incidents:

1. Whenever any religious songs is played on TV, he watches it with rapt attention. He can barely speak, but he can remember full bhajans(Hindu devotional songs)
2. If you put on any modern/disco songs he says “eita nahi”( meaning “not this”).
3. Once he heard Gayatri mantra(a famous Hindu mantra) in a temple. Just one hearing, and when he came home he started singing parts of the mantra. He insisted my aunt to teach him the full mantra by singing parts of the mantra and ending it with a “what next” tone. There was a CD in our home in which the mantra is sung. We played that CD, and we were amazed how absorbed he was while hearing to that mantra. Next day onwards he is singing the full mantra.
4. He wakes up in the morning, and tells(by pointing directions) my aunt to carry him to all the places in the home where pictures of deities are there. He offers obeisances to all the pictures of deities in different walls in our home. That is the first thing he does every morning. If my aunt tries to avoid touring him any day, he just starts crying.
5. His play things are not balloons and guns and toys. They are the deity worship paraphernalia.
6. One day an ice cream seller came in front of our house. Many children in the colony went to buy ice cream. He started crying. My aunt took him to the ice cream seller and bought him an ice cream. But no! He didn’t want the ice cream. He wanted the bell that the ice cream seller uses. Incidentally the bell resembles the bell of a temple.
7. He asks my grand mother and grandfather to sing japas, bhajans, and kirtans. When they do so, he dances. Some times he asks my grandfather to dance and he sings bhajans.
8. Even the doctor is surprised how he has such a powerful memory. He has already memorized many rhymes, and especially many bhajans, and vedic mantras.
9. If you ask him to do namaskar(indian way of obeisanse), he lies down flat on the floor, resembling the traditional “dandavat’.
10. One day he woke up at around 5 am in the morning and started crying “where is hanuman”, “where is ganesh”, “why did they go away”. My aunt had to tour him all over the home, showing him all the deity pictures to pacify him.

No one is teaching or training him to behave this way. Why is he so different from usual children? Why does he have so much of affinity for religious/spiritual things? Is it wrong if we tend to believe that he has carried all these impressions from his past life?

There is an appropriate word in Sanskrit: “samskaras”. Samskaras are the subtle forms of sum total of our desires and habits. The Vedic philosophy is that body die and reverts back to earth, water, heat, air, and space. But the samskaras are carried forward from the previous life to this; and similarly they may be carried from this life to the next.

So, basically, its a way of justice of nature. In this life we are weaving the dress(body, parents, circumstances) that we are going to wear in the next life.