Many people have strange and confused ideas about liberation
(moksha). They tend to believe that moksha is some kind of ticket for a journey
from a particular place (the material world) to another particular place (the
spiritual world), that can be won in a lottery, purchased or received as a
gift, or through bribery.
This idea mostly comes from the abrahamic concept of
salvation, a word that is sometimes incorrectly used to translate the Sanskrit
term ‘moksha’, in which allegiance to a particular religious affiliation gives
the immediate and automatic right to go to heaven even to the most unevolved
and gross materialist.
But such an idea is very foolish, and those who entertain it
are in the terrible danger of wasting the valuable opportunity of the human
birth, because they will refuse to make any effort in personal development,
believing that they are already ‘saved.’
The true facts are very different. As Bhagavad Gita (8.6)
clearly explains, at the time of death we will only be able to attain whatever
level of consciousness we have actually developed during this lifetime. If we
do not live the realization that we are already in the spiritual world now, in this
very body, there will be no divine airplane coming to take us to Vaikunta at
the time of death.
We cannot pay bribe, beg, trick or sneak our way to
liberation, because liberation is just about our own consciousness – our being
able to remain on the transcendental level without being deluded and confused
by material identification, attachment and conditions of life.
Source – Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 by Parama
Karuna Devi