​We know our likes and dislikes, but how can we know ourselves?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so we know our likes and dislikes but still, how do we connect with ourselves at our core yes its a very important question and firstly we need knowledge there is specific, there is generic spiritual knowledge and there is specific spiritual knowledge now suppose this room is completely dark and the door opens now when the door opens and its completely dark we will be uncertain who is coming is it a friend has come in, is it an enemy has come in, is it a thief who has come to steal something we will be uncertain we will be insecure we will always be second guessing ourselves what’s happening but if you can turn on a light then you can identify, oh this person has come as a friend, this person i don’t know its a stranger, this person is a big thief i had to call the police, i had to push this person out right away so basically before we can identify the specific people who are in their room the first thing we have to do is turn on the light without turning on the light if i try to identify the people it becomes a very big struggle so like that to understand who we are specifically in terms of our core our core self its important to have general spiritual knowledge general spiritual knowledge is like turning on the light so there are any branch of knowledge if you want, any area of enquiry, if you want to go deeper we refer to the books in that area, if i want to learn something about, say when i came to Panama i wanted to read something about Panama so i went on Wikipedia and looked at Panama so there are reasonably reliable sources of knowledge which we use for learning more about the subject so to understand the self we have to look at books that give us knowledge about the self so the Bhagavad Gita is one book which actually starts with this question who are you? now our identity is the foundation of our activity so the Bhagavad Gita begins with a very dramatic setting where a warrior is confused, what should i do? what should i not do? and then the speaker of the Gita doesn’t answer that specific question you should do this, you shouldn’t do this begins that way, before you can decide what you have to do, understand who you are and the Bhagavad Gita gives us quite an elaborate understanding of who we are so by studying spiritual books like the Bhagavad Gita we get general spiritual knowledge general spiritual knowledge is like turning on the light this light i am referring to is the light of our inner warrior so when our inner territory becomes illumined when all the doors of our senses are illumined at that time we can see clearly what is what so at that time when our inner territory is illumined we can understand ok this is my life but this is like a very this is my life this is a very strong thing which i like i feel passionate about this this is a dislike, this is a mild dislike this is like a strong aversion and like that we can move backward more deeper inwards and come to our core so what is it that defines our core our core the Gita explains is consciousness it is because we have consciousness that we have likes and dislikes it is because we have consciousness that we have desires it is because we have consciousness that we are able to feel anything be aware of anything so consciousness basically means awareness of things around us and awareness of ourselves is basically awareness so that awareness comes from a spark of spirit that spark of spirit is actually who we are at our core now what ultimately we want at our core is we have many desires, many likes, many dislikes what we want is actually to love and to be loved we want talents, we want wealth, we want power all these things we want because we hope that these things will make us more lovable in the eyes of others so you want to love and you want to be loved that is our core so now the Gita explains that this longing to love that cannot be fulfilled only at the horizontal level it needs to be fulfilled vertically also horizontally means by people around us we can have partners, we can have relatives, we can have friends and in that we get some amount of satisfaction but this longing to love it also needs to be directed vertically vertically means it has to be directed towards our source that source can be known by different names it can be called God it can be called Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita calls it by the name Krishna the important thing is that when our longing for love is directed vertically then that brings the fullest illumination in our heart inside us, that means things become the most clear when we connect ourselves with the source in a mood of loving devotion then what we are meant to do in our life becomes very clear because we understand fully who we are it’s like there can be light which illumines some things but if sunlight comes, sunlight practically illumines everything so knowledge, spiritual knowledge and that takes us to the level of knowledge of the source that becomes not just like turning on a light it becomes like getting sunlight everything becomes clear so usually now this may all seem very abstract right now but right now it’s in terms of conceptual analysis in terms of practice if we just start practicing meditation regularly that meditation itself will actually act like a small torchlight in them everyday that we meditate we are basically taking a torchlight and directing it inwards and that meditation which acts as a torchlight will make things clearer and clearer and they will understand what is truly important for me who I am and what is it that drives me in my life these things become clear when we have illumined our inner territory does it answer your question? 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