Our next birth gets decided based on the intense and predominant last thought of ours at the time of death. And our last thought generally is about that to which we are excessively attached to or feel enmity or fear the most i.e. based on attachments and aversions.
Most of the people, during their lifetime, desire to remember God at the time of their death but they remain ignorant of the fact that they cannot do so unless they had remembered him all along their life with fairly good intensity and faith. If childhood is spent in ignorance, and youth/middle age in lust, then how one can remember God during old age and at the time of death.
More importantly, since no one knows when death would strike, isn’t waiting for old age to remember God foolish?
Lord Krishna has said in the holy scripture Gita that “the last thought of a person would be based on his attitude and behaviour which he has practiced during his lifetime”. If one has lived a life fully engrossed in the world with all kinds of emotions attached to it such as pain and pleasure, hatred, jealousy and revenge then these accordingly will be his last thought. He will not be able to remember God at the end.
Once, two disciples came to Lord Buddha and one of them, while complaining about the other person, asked “Lord, don’t you think this man will be born as a dog in his next birth?” When Lord Buddha asked as to why he thinks so, the disciple replied saying that this man is extremely attached to his dog. He goes to walks with his dog, sleeps with his dog and plays with the dog. The Lord said that this man may or may not be born as a dog but you will surely be born as dog in your next birth as, more than him, it is you who thinks of his dog.
Just like a camera captures an image at the time of the click, certain images get clicked in the mind of the soul at the time of death based on the attachments and aversions during a life. These very images are caught hold of by the soul, which comes out of the body along with the life force. A suitable physical body which can take the soul to those places and people matching with these images attracts that life-force and through food and water that soul gets impregnated in that body.
If one is in the remembrance of God at all times, even while performing one’s worldly duties without fear or attachment, then whatever time death strikes, there is no worry because one will leave the body peacefully and merge with the supreme Divine Being. Secondly, remembering God at all times helps one remain relaxed and connected to the higher consciousness (as God is the highest and purest level of consciousness) thus attracting good things and happiness in life while one is still alive.
Thus, remaining established in the remembrance of God at all times is a profitable proposition, not only from the spiritual point of view but even from the worldly point of view.
God could be remembered through any name or form or formless as Divine Energy, Atman, Brahman or Pure Consciousness.
