Love is in the air but where is the air? 

[Prerana talk at ISKCON, Nasik]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Please go and have it. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Hare Krishna! I welcome all of you to today evening’s Prerna festival and as I mentioned, I will be speaking the topic of love is in the air, but where is the air? So, what the topic means, I will explain in due course. I would like to start with a incident.
Last year I was giving a talk at North Carolina University and the topic was on love and spirituality. So, after that one student in the university asked the question, he says, why is it that most traditions are against love marriage? Why is it that traditions favour arranged marriages? What is wrong with love marriages? So, I explained that there is nothing wrong with love marriages. The term itself is wrong.
Why? Because when you say love marriage versus arranged marriage, the presumption is that in arranged marriage there is no love. So, the terminology is biassed. Actually speaking, when we talk about Radha Ambali Gopala Thakwaniki, when we talk about love, it is the foundation and the fuel for every relationship.
Without love, no relationship can then be formed or sustained. That’s why it’s the foundation and the fuel for every relationship. Now, when we talk about love marriages, what is being talked about is not the content of the marriage, but the start of the marriage.
Does the relationship which leads to marriage start with some arrangement by some elders or does it start with attraction among the couple? There have been many surveys done by psychologists on the psychology of love. Especially, not love, because love is a very broad term, on the psychology of romance. And, psychologists say that romance has a bench life of 12 months.
Now, what does it mean? Bench life means or a shelf life. A product is there, it’s good on the product for some time, on the shop for some time and afterwards, it is of no use. So, what do we mean by romance has a bench life of 12 months? Basically, when two people get attracted to each other, as in the movies, they fall in love with each other, when they may say that, we saw each other and we felt a current of electricity going through us or whatever.
When they say all that, actually, all that is happening is that certain hormones are being secreted in the people. And, those hormones become active in adolescence. And, they become especially stimulated sometimes in relationship with some person.
So, that hormonal stimulation seems very titillating, seems very stimulating, very revetting. And, that is what most people call as love. And, this hormonal stimulation lasts for about 12 months.
So, when a boy meets a girl or a girl meets a boy and they supposedly fall in love with each other, essentially, their hormones are being stimulated whenever they are in the presence of each other. And, that’s why they feel so good with each other. But, the stimulation of hormones is more a biological phenomenon than an emotional phenomenon.
We feel emotions, but the trigger is just the secretion of hormones. And, after 12 months, the hormonal secretion starts going down. Even when we come in the presence of that person, we don’t feel that excited.
So, people talk about love at first sight. We saw someone, I was bowled over. I fell in love.
Okay. There may be some interaction that may happen at first sight. But, the test of love is not what happens at first sight.
It is, the test of love is what happens after many sights. After many sights, when the hormonal secretion starts going down, at that time, what the nature of the relationship is, actually emerges. And, tragically, but frequently, two people who together say to the world, they say to each other, I cannot live without you.
I cannot live without you. I love you. And then, 12 months later, when the hormones go down, then those same people say, I cannot live with you.
I cannot live with you. I want out. So, actually speaking, the test of the relationship is not just the initial attraction that may be there.
Now, the initial attraction, if it transforms into a committed relationship, it can be enduring. But, if the initial attraction is the whole basis of the relationship, when the attraction subsides, because the body is made in such a way that the brain is made in such a way that when we see something new, we feel attracted to it. That’s how the whole advertising agency works, by presenting new products to us.
Something new is seen by us, we get attracted to it because it stimulates hormones. And, any new product, people say, get a new iPhone, and they have a new iPhone, they want to show it to everyone. But, after one month, after two months, after a few months, the iPhone is just another thing with you.
And especially, if after one, after a few months go off, and a new version of the iPhone comes. And others are showing a new version, and your old version feels like, it’s old fashioned. Now, Oscar Wilde said that, fashion is a form of ugliness, so unbearable, that we have to change it every six months.
That which seems irresistibly fashionable at one time, it seems cool. But, after some, the vocabulary is so strange, the same thing can be cool, and the same thing can be hot. You know, something attractive, some people call it cool, some people call it hot.
Now, what is it actually? It is neither cool nor hot. It is just object. You know, depending on the situations, certain emotions are stimulated within us, and those emotions are simply hormonal secretions.
So, the relationships we sustain, they need to go beyond this initial phase of infatuation caused by hormonal secretion. And, that’s where the question comes up, what actually is love? So, the topic is, love is in the air. Love is in the air is a phrase, which is popularised by a song.
So, when people feel romantic, then maybe there is a conducive atmosphere, there is maybe light drizzle, cloudy sky, peacocks chirping, and a very romantic setting is there. So, people say, love is in the air at that time. But, where is the air? That means, what is the foundation of everything? When we ask, okay, somebody says to someone else, I love you.
So, actually, there are three words over here, I love you. Now, if we go deeper, what is I? Who am I? What is love? What are you? Who are you? These questions, most people don’t ask. I love you, somebody says to me, I love you also.
I think we’ll be happily ever after. But, most often, it doesn’t work out like that, because love does not have a proper foundation. So, that same person who asked me the question in North Carolina University, a young, intelligent girl, she was saying that, actually, the traditional cultures are spiritual.
Whereas, the modern culture is materialistic. And the modern materialistic culture is more conducive for love than the traditional spiritual cultures. Because the spiritual cultures bring so much restrictions.
Whereas, the materialistic culture offers freedom. And therefore, it’s more conducive for love. So, I explained that.
We’ll take this apart into two things. So, first of all, what does the materialistic worldview tell us about love? And then, secondly, is the materialistic culture actually conducive for love? So, there is worldview or philosophy, which is the foundation. And culture is what is built on it.
If we look at materialism, materialism is the ideology that matter is all that exists. Matter is everything. Material things are everything.
Within this also, there are two ideologies. There is moderate materialism and there is fanatical materialism. Normally, we think of fanatical in terms of religions.
But even materialism can be fanatical. So, moderate materialism is that matter is all that matters. There may be something non-material existing, but it doesn’t matter.
Money, power, position, possessions, this is all that matters. Matter is all that matters. Whereas, fanatical materialism is matter is all that exists.
Anything which claims to be non-material, it just doesn’t exist. Now, if we consider materialism as a philosophy, as an ideology, if matter is all that exists, then what are our emotions? We feel happiness, we feel sorrow, we feel joy, we feel anxiety, tension, excitement. If we go through a panorama of emotions, what are these emotions? And of course, the deepest, the sweetest emotion is love.
What is it? If there is nothing except matter that exists, then our emotions are all reduced to simply material phenomena. Material phenomena means our emotions are simply certain secretions of certain chemicals in the brain. That means that when a mother sees her child, and she feels a flood of love in her heart on seeing her baby, but what is that love that she is feeling? Materialism tells us that it is simply some hormones secreted in her brain.
There is nothing more to it. If all our emotions, including love, is simply the secretion of hormones, then if, say, I have one glass here, one glass here, and there is some chemical in this glass, and there is some chemical in this glass, and the little chemical I pour from this glass to this glass, does that have any meaning? Does that have any significance? Is there any love? Is there any happiness? Is there any sorrow in that? So, secretion of chemicals, what does it mean? That there is one chamber in our brain, or one set of dendrites, axons, synapses, that is there in the brain, and there is another set. And the chemicals are secreted means they go from one part of the brain to another part of the brain.
So is this the shifting of chemicals from one part of the brain to another part of the brain? The generation of some electrochemical signals which brings about that shifting. Is that all that is there to our emotions? Much of modern psychiatry has tried to operate on this assumption. Since the 1950s, a particular kind of drug has become immensely popular, and that is called the tranquillizer.
Prior to 1950s, most of the medicines were for the body. Okay, you got a particular disease, you have a particular medicine for it. But then since that time, 1950s onwards, the pharmaceutical industry discovered that emotions can also be pathologised and administered medicines for.
So tranquillizer is a medicine which is supposed to treat anxiety. So tranquillizer, similarly antidepressants. These are huge insanes.
Many of the, nowadays many of the pharma companies, their budgets are bigger than the budgets of many of the national economies. And a major portion of their budget is drugs for treating emotions. And these drugs, if somebody feels anxiety, so the promise in the 1980s made by a prominent proponent of the pharmaceutical treatment of human emotions, he said that by 2010, we will have a pill for every emotion.
Whatever emotion you want to feel, you just take that pill, you will feel that emotion. You want to feel love, take a pill. If you want to feel happiness, take a pill.
If you feel bored and you want to feel excited, take another pill. And none of this has happened. Antidepressants, they, what they do is, if somebody is feeling low, the antidepressants, they help a person to feel better.
But after some time, again the person feels low. And often the person goes lower than before. And then they need a stronger dosage of antidepressants.
I am not saying that the psychiatric medicine itself is bad. In some cases, it is required. But the reduction of human emotions to simply chemical phenomena, that is wrong.
A simple example to illustrate this. Laughter. Laughter is an expression of happiness.
Some of you may have heard of a famous Hollywood actor, Hollywood comedian who committed suicide about a couple of years ago. Anyone knows his name? Sorry? Okay. So you are not so much into Hollywood, you are more into Bollywood.
Laughter. Fine. So, this person was considered to be one of the best comedians in the whole world.
And he committed suicide. Normally we think of comedians as happy people. Isn’t it? Because they make others happy.
They laugh, they create, make jokes and make others laugh. So, I wrote an article about that. It is titled After the Laughter.
So, on the scene, on the stage, when they are comedians, they are laughing. But there is a difference between humour and happiness. Just like some people may sing very well, some people may speak very well, some people may walk very elegantly.
All these are skills. Similarly, the ability to make jokes and to make others laugh, that’s also skill. Just because a person sings very nicely, doesn’t mean that that person is a happy person.
Similarly, just because a person has a skill for humour, does not mean that person is a happy person. Humour is simply a skill. So, I was talking about what is wrong with the reduction of emotions to chemical secretions.
So, consider laughter. Now, when we laugh, there is a physical expression. Our face changes in a particular facial expression, changes in a particular way, and a particular sound comes.
Now, suppose there is a small child, and sometimes relatives want to have fun with that child. So, the relatives tickle the belly of the child. And if the belly is tickled, now, the child will start laughing.
Now, is that laughter happiness? Is the laughter produced by tickling happiness? If it were happiness, and the goal of all of our lives is to be happy, then we could all have our personal tickling machines. If we had a perpetual tickling machine, then we could be perpetually happy. It doesn’t work like that.
So, there is a physical response to a physical stimulus. There is tickling and then laughter. But that is peripheral.
That does not really mean the person is happy. So, just as we understand that laughter, which is triggered by a physical stimulus, doesn’t lead to happiness. It’s not real happiness.
Similarly, the good feeling that is triggered by an antidepressant, that is also very physical. That is not happiness. It is just a chemical response in the brain to a chemical stimulus.
Just like laughter at a facial level is a physical response to the physical stimulus of tickling. It is not happiness. Happiness is something deeper.
So, when we are happy, we laugh. But just laughing itself is not happiness. If somebody was very depressed, always with a long face, we get a machine and make that face into a smile.
Will that make the person happy? No, it won’t. Actually, it is true to some extent if a person always has a long face, always depressed. But if they cheer up, smile, look at the good things in life.
Yes, to some extent, instead of having a hung face, having a smiling face, it is better. It may make us feel better. But that itself is not happiness.
So, just as having a smiling face may make us feel a little better as compared to having a hung face. Similarly, taking a little chemicals in the brain, putting some chemicals through some pills in the brain may make us feel a little better. But it is all peripheral to emotions.
It is all peripheral to happiness. It is all peripheral to love. So, basically, in the materialistic world view, there is no explanation for love.
Because love is reduced simply to a chemical phenomenon. And that chemical phenomenon is very superficial to love. And not only does materialism have no explanation for love, materialism has no explanation for lovers also.
They said, I love you. It is my dream to hear. But we say, materialistic world view, we are discussing whether the materialistic world view is actually conducive for love.
So, love itself is reduced to meaninglessness in the materialistic world. Now, what about the lovers, I and you? What about them? See, love is founded on freedom. If a boy places a gun at the head of a girl and says, Love me! That is not love.
She may even say, I love you to save her skin. But, that is not love. Love requires freedom.
And, materialism as an ideology implies that we have no freedom. Materialism as an ideology necessitates that everything that we do is simply a result of chemical secretion in our body. So, for example, why do I eat? Because certain chemicals are secreted in my body which indicate that there is a deficiency of nutrition.
And because of that I eat. So, like that materialism implies that all our actions that we do, they are simply results of chemical secretions. And we have no free will.
Whatever we do it is simply the chemical secretions in our brain making us do that. Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds in recent history. One of the greatest scientists in recent history.
And he made some remarkable breakthroughs in science. At the same time, with respect to ultimate questions, Einstein was profoundly conflicted. Conflicted.
It wasn’t conflict. There are statements of Einstein which talk about he believes in God and there are statements which talk about no, I don’t believe in God. And, there are, basically he did not believe in the God as it was conceived in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
But God as inferred from the order and intelligence of the universe, order and harmony of the universe, he believed in that. But with respect to free will also, he was very profoundly conflicted. Science as it exists today is largely materialistic.
And he said that materialism if followed logically makes free will non-existent. And this, what was the implication? Most of you know that Einstein was a German and when in Nazi Germany, the Nazis under Hitler started persecuting the Jews. He had to flee from Germany and he took shelter in America.
So, he recognised that the implication of materialism if accepted as ideology is that the Nazis who killed millions of Jews, the estimates of how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, it varies from 6 million to above. So, 6 million people were killed. And he says that this is a profoundly revolting act to systematically gas people and kill people horrendously.
But he says that if I adhere to a materialistic worldview then I cannot hold any Nazi responsible for their actions. Because the Nazis, that’s how they were programmed by their brains. That’s what the chemicals in the brain told them.
And that’s what they did. This is a very disturbing idea. Oh, suddenly they build up the clock.
I ask one of you to get up. Come here. You come here.
I slap you. Hey, why did you slap me? The chemicals in my brain told me. Nobody would accept that.
Probably you would slap me back. Why did you slap me? The chemicals in my brain told me. You know, all decent human conduct is based on the notion of responsibility.
No, we are responsible for our actions. Say now, there is so much persecution going on in the Middle East. It’s horrendous.
So, people are responsible for what we are doing. We would have no justice, no common civility and no orderliness of conduct if we did not have the notion of responsibility. So, responsibility means what? Suppose, if I slap someone, that means, you ask, why did you slap me? That means, I had the intelligence, I had the facility not to slap him.
I need to slap him. Therefore, I am responsible for my actions. So, materialism implies that we have no free will.
And if we have no free will, because we are simply nothing that exists more than matter and we are simply the results of materialistic chemicals being secreted in our brains. So, that means, I and you, and I love you, I and you are simply robots. We are simply programmed machines.
Now, there are people who cannot form relationships. We’ll talk about relationships. Relationships require commitments.
It requires responsibility. It requires sacrificing oneself. It requires putting the other person first.
When people don’t do that, when people don’t want to do that, then they try to create substitutes. So, the romantic fantasy of many people is, in future, they will have as their loving partner, a robot. So, the robot will do just what I tell her to do.
Now, if a computer, we can programme a computer, as soon as you turn on the computer, the computer will say, I love you. It will say, for a female, it will say in a masculine voice. For a male, it will say in a feminine voice.
But, we know there is no love involved over there. Because the computer is a machine. It has no emotions.
It has no intentions. It does not have freedom. So, just as we don’t take the love of a machine seriously, the love statement of a machine seriously, because we know there is no conscious emotion and intention over there.
But if somebody says, I love you, we take it seriously. There is something different between a machine and a person. Materialism tells us that there is nothing different.
So, materialism actually makes both love and lovers meaningless. Love is reduced to simply the creation of chemicals. And lovers are reduced to simply programmed machines.
So, if we consider love as based from a materialistic worldview, then what is it? So, the whole idea of love is chemical secretions in programmed machines. Is that what love and loving relationships are? Not at all. So, then what exactly is love? Where does it come from? Now, most of the romantic movies, most of the romantic novels, they all end with the idea of H-E-A.
Happily ever after. And they lived happily ever after. Now, we all know from our experience that nobody lives ever after.
Isn’t it? Isn’t it? So, at least there is a moment in Christians, when they have their marriage, they say, till death do us part, we will stay together through thick and thin. We will assist each other, support each other. So, there also is an acknowledgement.
Marriage and new relationship is formed, but there is an acknowledgement. Till death do us part. So, the idea is that at least till death you should stay together.
There should not be any divorce. But, we all aspire to have everlasting relationships. Ever after.
Now, if we look at the world around us, there is nothing that lasts ever after. There is nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Now, the tallest of buildings, the most imposing of edifices, they will all crumble in time. Just before I came here, I was talking on phone with Dr Vijay Bhatkar. He is a Padma Vibhushan Award holder.
And he has just been appointed as the Chancellor of the Nalanda University. So, he has a vision of how to implement science and spirituality in Nalanda University as a new facility. So, we had many discussions and he is saying that we will have further discussions about how to take things forward.
So, he was saying that Nalanda University at one time had 20,000 students and 3,000 teachers and they had such a huge library that when the Mughals, they came as invaders and they decided to burn the library, the library itself was burning for 7 months. They wanted to reduce it all down to ashes. So many buildings, so many libraries were there.
So, at that time when it existed, it was such a huge structure but it was all reduced to ashes. Of course, now it can be revived, resuscitated in a different way. But the point is, nothing is permanent in this world.
No matter how imposing it looks, it doesn’t last. So, if nothing is forever in this world, then why do we have the desire for ever after? Why do we have a desire for something that is not found in this world? Say you come in this temple hall and you find a golden ring falling over here. Now you say, there is no gold here.
There is gold there is gold coating, there is metal but there is no gold. So, if we see gold in a place where there is no gold around, the question comes up, where did this gold come from? It must have come from some other place. Isn’t it? So, gold in a place where there is no gold means it has to have come from some other place.
Similarly, our desire for ever after, our desire for a love that lasts forever. When we find this desire in a world where nothing lasts forever, this desire itself is like gold in a place where there is no gold. That means it has come from somewhere else.
So, our desire for lasting love does not come from our material self. Because materially everything is temporary. So, the desire for love comes from a side of ourselves which is not material, which is spiritual.
That spiritual side is the Atma, is the soul. So, emotions and ultimately the deepest of emotions, love, they all originate from the soul. So, from the soul the consciousness streams out through the mind to the brain and then it comes to the body and it expresses itself.
So, everything that exists at the visible level, where is the air? That was the question in the class. So, actually everything that exists at the material level, it is founded in spiritual reality. The body is founded.
Its existence, its consciousness, its life comes from the soul. And the soul longs for love. So, our longing for love comes from the soul.
And this longing is meant to be fulfilled by being directed to an eternal person. Our longing for love is for lasting love. And for love to be lasting, the object of love also has to be lasting.
So, the Bhagavad Gita explains that the ultimate love and relationship is between the soul and the supreme soul. That is God. God is known by many different names in different traditions.
The Bhagavad Gita remains until Krishna. Sarva-Akara-Sati-Diti-Krishna One who is all attractive, who attracts everyone. Whatever is attractive in anyone, that attractiveness is simply a spark of Krishna’s supreme all attractiveness.
In 10.41 in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, So, when somebody looks very attractive, it means he is still attractive. And yes, they are attractive. There is no denying their beauty.
But that beauty is a spark of Krishna’s beauty. In that beauty we will get some pleasure. But that is like a spark.
In darkness, even a spark gives light. But how much light can a spark give? We need the whole flame. We need the sun.
So, whatever love we are getting in any relationship with this world, that love is real. But it is just a fragment of the love that Krishna can offer us. And when we form a loving relationship with Krishna, then our longing for lasting love can be eternal.
So, the spiritual worldview actually explains what is love. Love is something that originates in the soul. Who is the lover? The lover is not the body.
The lover is not the mind. The lover is the soul. And the soul is meant to love the Supreme Soul.
And the vision of bhakti is inclusive. It is not world rejecting. It is world unfolding.
That means, it is not that when we love God, we don’t care for others. So, I was going to talk about two things. Philosophically or ideologically, materialism.
What does it talk about love? And I talked about that and I talked about spiritually how love is better explained rather than materialistic. And secondly, in practical terms, is materialism more conducive for love than spiritual worldview? Let’s look at this. So, people, since the time of Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud is considered the father of modern psychology, psychotherapy especially.
He postulated that all psychological problems that people have, they come because people are sexually repressed. And he said that the solution is just free sexual expression. So, Freud was himself a genius intellectually, but he was also a distorted person.
In his childhood, he had sexual attraction towards his mother. And he extrapolated that and he said all children, all boys have sexual attraction towards their mothers. And all girls have sexual attraction towards their father.
And it’s because society doesn’t allow us to express this sexual longings. That’s why we get psychologically disturbed. Now, he was psychologically disturbed, not that everybody is psychologically disturbed.
It’s a very distorted idea. But somehow, his solution was that if you want to become happy, if you want to be free from our mental mental pressures and mental emotions, there should be a free sexual expression. And that’s what everybody liked.
Because people thought, yes, free sexual expression. No, we can have a relationship with anyone, anywhere. No restrictions.
Now, the result of that was horrendous. A survey was done. There’s a book written by an American psychologist called David Meyer.
Last time when I had given a prayer, I had quoted about that also. So, he wrote a book called American Paradox. The American Paradox.
What is the paradox? He says that happiness is missing, although America has tremendous prosperity. And he compared not anything spiritual, not anything philosophical. He compared simple statistics about depression, about suicide, about marital breakup, about addictions.
All these material parameters, what America was in 1950s and what America is in 2010. In every one of them, America is worse. So, he found that the number of divorces have doubled.
The number of drug addicts has tripled. The number of prisoners among juveniles, teenage prisoners, that has tripled. The number of suicidal attempts has quadrupled.
The number of abortions has tripled. The number of children who are born outside marriage that are sex stupid. So, he found that in every parameter, things have gone terribly wrong.
And people, although they may have free sexual relationships with anyone and everyone, they feel profoundly lonely. They know that they are using others and others are using them. And there is no meaningful relationship, there is no commitment, there is no satisfaction.
There is profound loneliness, profound insecurity. See, the idea of free love is itself a self-contradiction. Why? Because love is a bond.
And bond means there is a restriction of freedom. Isn’t it? So, when a boy and a girl, they decide to get married. Now, they, in a sense, they voluntarily agree to curtail their freedom to relate with many people so that they can relate more intensely with one person.
So, love itself is a bond. And bond is the opposite of freedom. Not exactly opposite, I’ll talk about how.
The bond facilitates a deeper freedom. That I’ll come to a little later. But the idea of free love, it doesn’t lead to any lasting love.
Because love is not just an emotion. The essence of love has come into it. You know, when a mother has a small baby, the mother cannot say that, you know, well, I feel like it, I’ll take care of it.
Sometimes, many times when we have to wake up in the morning, we put an alarm clock. And we only set the time on the alarm clock. But when the alarm rings, we groan.
We bang the alarm clock. Shut it down. And go to sleep.
But, you know, when a mother has a small baby, that baby is like an alarm clock that goes off at any time. And no mother will shut up the baby. The mother may not feel like waking up at all.
She may have had a hard day’s work and she desperately needs to sleep. But when the baby cries, the mother wakes up and fondles and comforts the baby and puts her to sleep again. So, love means the freedom to sleep at any time, freedom to wake at any time is content.
But there is a deeper connection that comes. And that brings a higher fulfilment. So, in a sense, the mother gives up the freedom to sleep at any time, wake at any time and accepts the restriction of needing to wake up at any time.
But that is what brings about love. So, the idea that we should have no restriction, we should have complete freedom, that is not actually conducive to love. So, materialism which says reject all rules, reject all restrictions, that doesn’t lead to real love.
It may lead to more opportunity for infatuation, initial attraction. But it decreases the possibility of enduring relationships. So, the materialistic worldview is actually not conducive for loving relationships.
And we see this also in the breaking down of so many relationships, so many houses are broken up because of divorce, marital rupture. Now, divorce is a complex phenomenon and in some cases we can’t generalise. In some cases there may be abusive relationships where that may be the only solution.
But quite often when there is a divorce, what is happening is that two people who had committed to each other, they no longer committed. In fact, they want to break apart. So, it’s devastating, psychologically scarring for both partners.
Now, why is this happening more and more in a materialistic culture as compared to a traditional culture? There could be many factors, but one major factor is that relationships have no ultimate foundation. So, when the going gets tough, they say when the going gets tough, tough get going. That’s the same tradition.
But when people have no ultimate understanding, no ultimate foundation for love, when the going gets tough, then let’s go ahead going away. It becomes like that. It’s a separate, it doesn’t count.
See, spiritual relationships have something there. Ultimately, our heart longs for love and our longing for love can only be fulfilled by the all attractive supreme person, that is Krishna. So, when there is no spiritual worldview, there is only a materialistic worldview, then we, the longing for love that can be fulfilled by Krishna, we put some other person in that place.
We expect another human being to fulfil our need for love that only God can fulfil. And it’s not a problem of that person. Yes, sometimes some people may be more compatible, sometimes some people may be less compatible.
But whatever it is, nobody can fulfil our longing for love. No human being can fulfil our longing. So, in a materialistic worldview, especially with nuclear family, traditionally there are joint families.
And now we say nuclear families. Nuclear means, what happens? There is a nucleus. Nothing else is there.
And when there is divorce, there is a nuclear fission. And there are electrons and protons orbiting around endlessly. So, it’s unfortunate.
Heartbreakingly unfortunate. But the point is that when there are two people in a relationship, the mutual expectation, the pressure in that relationship is so great that it’s almost impossible to sustain it. So, in a spiritual worldview, we understand that in any relationship, there are not only two of us.
There are actually three of us. The third person is God. And we relate with each other with God at the centre.
So, we have horizontal relationship with others and we have a vertical relationship with God, with Krishna. And when we have a well-developed relationship with God, when we connect with Him through prayer, through meditation, through scriptural study, then that connection with God gives us an inner security. And then that doesn’t make us so emotionally needy or even so physically needy.
We become content. We become secure internally in our relationship with God. And then when we relate with the other person, that relationship has a greater maturity and stability to it.
When both of them, ideally, the horizontal and the vertical relationships strengthen each other. They are symbiotic. That means by relating with God and by getting security in our relationship with God, we can better tolerate the uncertainties in our relationship with others.
Now, people go through boards. If I am completely emotionally dependent on the approval of someone else, and then that person, they have their own life and they are going through various situations and because of something they are going through in their life, they are disturbed. And they don’t reciprocate.
The other person doesn’t reciprocate the way we want them to. And if I am emotionally completely dependent on that person, I feel devastated. I feel as if I am rejected.
But it’s not necessary. So, when we are connected with Krishna, when we are grounded in Krishna, then we can better tolerate the other person’s ups and downs, which everybody will go through. We will also go through that.
The other person may need us at times. And we may be having our own issues. We may not be available at that time.
So, our vertical relationship brings greater stability and maturity to our horizontal relationship. And if both the partners in the relationship, both of them are also spiritually minded, then that horizontal relationship also strengthens the vertical relationship. Sometimes, because of our moods, we may not feel like praying, we may not feel like meditating, we may not feel like studying, studying scripture, nourishing ourselves spiritually.
But we see the other person doing that. They encourage us, they inspire us and we also do it. So, in that way, many times when parents come to a temple, let’s say the parents bow down and the child looks here, looks there.
What are the parents doing? Bowing down? Just to admit it, the child also bows down. So, the child may not understand, okay, here there is God and I have to bow down to him. But what is happening? Here, the horizontal relationship is furthering the vertical relationship.
The child sees the parents and the child bows down because the parents have bowed down. And the child develops an attitude of reverence towards God. So, in this way, the horizontal relationships can also strengthen the vertical relationship.
And thus, our relationships with God and our relationships in this world, they can be symbiotic. They can both nourish each other. So, when we talk about love is in the air, yes, especially when we are young, at that time it’s just a biological phenomena that the hormones start getting secreted and we start feeling the need for a partner.
We get excited when we see somebody attractive. And all this is not to be denied or rejected. It has to be regulated, it has to be directed.
If it’s a materialistic world view, then it will not be regulated and directed. Rather, this urge, these emotions, they will be exploited. They will be exploited.
The Valentine’s Day, if you see, originally Valentine was a saint. And there are many different legends about Valentine, but whatever it is, today, Valentine’s Day has become a hugely commercialised event. It’s hugely commercialised and big money is raked out of it.
There may be our tender feelings of affection for someone, love for someone, but those are made into big money by others. So, if there is a materialistic world view, whatever adolescent or teenage or youth emotions we have, they will actually be commercialised and exploited. And they will be aggravated.
But if we have a spiritual world view, then we will know how to direct these emotions. And in the long run, we will be able to form sustainable relationships. So, sustainable relationships are what ultimately brings satisfaction in life.
The supremely sustainable relationship is the relationship with Krishna. And as we are moving in life towards developing our relationship with Krishna, through the practise of Bhakti Yoga, along with that, we also work towards stabilising and improving our relationship with this world. So, Bhakti is inclusive.
We don’t just relate with God and neglect others. Rather, we relate with God and we see others also as connected with God. And thus, we relate with them also, more maturely, more responsibly, more committedly.
And thus, both our material relationships and our spiritual relationships can become more fulfilled. We all have a longing for love. And the way to fulfil that longing for love is not just by acting on sentiments which are triggered by people who are out to make a business out of our sentiments.
The way to have those sentiments leading to fulfilling relationships is to ground our relationships in a proper understanding of life, in a spiritual world, and then act in a mature way to develop our vertical relationship and our horizontal relationships based on the strength, the security that comes from our horizontal relationship. That way, they will actually find lasting happiness. So, I’ll summarise and then you can have question and answers.
I started by talking about this terminology, love marriage versus arranged marriage. Is it that the traditional spiritual cultures are hostile to love? And is it the modern materialistic culture, is it favourable for love? That was the question. So, I talked about, when you talk about love marriages and arranged marriages, actually the terminology is wrong because love is required in any relationship, not just marriage.
Every relationship requires love. What today people call as love marriages, they are actually infatuation. It’s attraction which comes from hormonal secretions.
Romance has a bench life of 12 months. So, you know, for a relationship’s longevity, you know, whether there is love at first sight is not as important as whether there is love after many sights. So, the commitment is important.
And the same people who because of hormonal attraction say, I cannot live without you. They may say after 12 months, I cannot live with you. Other extreme in time.
Why? Because it’s just hormonal secretions. So, we discussed further. Then we talk about love and lovers.
I love you when people say. So, there is a materialistic world view, there is a spiritual world view. Which world view explains love better? The materialistic world view says, what is it love? Love is nothing but certain.
Love and all emotions are simply secretion of certain chemicals in our brain. I discussed how secretion of chemicals in the brain is a biochemical response to a biochemical stimulus. Just like tickling is a physical stimulus and that leads to laughter, a physical response.
That’s not happiness. So, similarly, putting some chemicals, secreting some chemicals in the brain, that is not really any emotion. Love or happiness or anything like that.
That’s why all the tranquillizers and antidepressants are big business. Ultimately, they don’t work. Because emotions are deeper than just chemical secretions.
And another, so, love itself, the emotion of love can’t be explained materialistically. It’s reduced to simply chemical secretions. And lovers, people who choose to love.
Materialism implies that we have no free will. Einstein was profoundly conflicted because he had seen firsthand the horror and the atrocity caused by the Jews. But the science he championed, if he adopted a materialistic world, that implied that Jews had no free will.
Jews were simply programmed to do what they did. That’s why there is nothing wrong in what they did. That idea that we are simply programmed machines, then that takes away all responsibility, all justice, all potential for relationships.
Because if we are simply programmed machines, then a robot may say, I love you, but there is no meaning to that. So materialism reduces love to just chemical simulations in programmed machines. It’s meaningless.
Then what is love? Where does love come from? We look at the spiritual worldview. We want to have lasting relationships, happily ever after. So nothing in this world lasts ever after.
So why do we have this longing for ever after? Where does it come from? Just like gold in a place, or in a wooden floor, it must come from somewhere else. So the desire for ever after in a place where nothing lasts ever after means the desire doesn’t come from the material vicinity. It comes from something non-material.
That is the core of us, that is the soul. And Bhagavad Gita explains that the soul is meant to have an eternal relationship with the Supreme Soul. And our dreams for love can be fulfilled in our relationship with God in its most attractive manifestation that is Krishna.
So whatever is attractive in anyone, that attractiveness is real, but it is a spark. The whole is found in Krishna. So whatever satisfaction we can get in the relationship with someone, we can get all that and much more in our relationship with Krishna.
So love is explained better philosophically through spiritual worldview than materialistic worldview. Then what about practising? Is a materialistic culture more conducive? We discussed how free love is a self-contradiction because love means a bond which involves curtailing of freedom. So the culture of free love started in the West because of the sexual deviations that were propagated by Sigmund Freud and it has led to people feeling unloved, lonely, insecure.
And one evidence of it is the collapsing of marriages. So love involves voluntarily accepting restriction in relating with many people so that we can relate deeper with one person. And it’s a bond, but the bond leads to greater fulfilment.
And the materialistic worldview actually makes love, the materialistic culture makes love more difficult to sustain. Because there is no motivation for commitment. The spiritual worldview not only gives us the motivation for commitment because we understand that we are meant for an eternal relationship.
So when two people are just relating with each other and all their insecurities, mood swings, they become too emotionally dependent on each other and then they can’t sustain the relationship. But when there is a third partner in the relationship and there is God in the relationship, then our basic security and self-worth comes from our relationship with God. Then we can relate with others with greater stability and maturity.
So our horizontal relationship with each other and our vertical relationship with God, both of them can be made symbiotic, mutually nourishing through the practise of bhakti yoga. And as bhakti, when we direct our love towards God and spiritualise our love towards others, that is the way to lasting spiritual relationship, lasting relationship, sustainable relationship. Otherwise, the tender emotions that we have, the materialistic worldview will exploit them, aggravate them and it will make us miserable.
But those same emotions, when we regulate and direct them with spiritual understanding, then they can lead us to lasting fulfilment. Thank you very much. So does anyone have any questions? My question is, whatever material attachments we have in this material world, how do we sublimate those attachments to love for God? So whatever material attachments we have in this world, how do we sublimate them to love for God? There are, there is attachment and there is detachment.
Bhakti is actually beyond both. There is attachment, there is detachment, but bhakti is about commitment. You have to develop a relationship with Krishna and that requires committed practise of bhakti.
It’s commitment. So, now when we talk about material attachments, we are not meant to become hard-hearted. We are not meant to become unfeeling in the name of not being attached.
There is the complete picture that has to be seen in any relationship. The classic example of attachment is say Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. So, relatively speaking, if we consider, in some movies there are villains.
There is sometimes an active villain and a passive villain. So Duryodhana was the active villain. He was doing all the bad things.
And Dhritarashtra was the consenting villain. He just allowed him to do it. So now Dhritarashtra actually was an intelligent person.
He could understand things but his attachment blinded him. So what happened to him was that he could see only his relationship with Duryodhana and because of the attachment he couldn’t tolerate Duryodhana’s displeasure. If Duryodhana felt displeased, he said, no, no, you cannot be displeased.
Whatever it takes to please you, I’ll do that. Even if that meant becoming immoral, even if that meant becoming brutal, he did that. So what happened was that one relationship blinded him to the bigger picture.
So attachment is bad when one relationship blinds us to the bigger picture. Bigger picture of our relationship with God. Bigger picture of the life’s higher priorities, life’s ethics like other things.
But otherwise relationships itself are not bad. So when we give due time for understanding the bigger picture of life, understanding the ultimate purpose of life and we pursue that purpose through our practises, then it is not that any relationship that we have, we have to minimise or reject it as material. Even if there is an attachment in that relationship, if we don’t let that attachment restrict us in our spiritual growth, then that material attachment, we should consider that also as a relationship which can be harmonised with our purpose.
Because ultimately, whoever we are attached to, that person is also part of God. And we may become that person’s link with God. So the important thing is to not let one relationship blind us to the full picture.
And as long as we keep the big picture perspective and we act in a relationship, not just acting according to the needs of that relationship alone or the desires or feelings of that person alone. We definitely are sensitive to the other person. But we don’t let everything be restricted to that one relationship.
Then that may not be considered bad out of attachment as something which you have to give up. Rather you can see it also as a service to Krishna. So we focus on developing our relationship with Krishna and acting in light of the big picture.
And based on how the other person reciprocates, we may have to choose practically a way by which we maintain that relationship also, but don’t let that relationship interfere with our spiritual growth. Ideally speaking, if we become better human beings, whatever is our relationship, if we become a better person and the other person see that we become a better person because of our spiritual practises, then they will also become spiritual. And that’s how the relationship will become more and more spiritual.
So first stage in spiritualising the relationship is that we don’t let that relationship blind us to the bigger picture. Second step is that we pursue that relationship in the light of the big picture. And third, the best is, that person sees how we are improved by our spiritual practises and they also become spiritual.
Any other questions? Yes. A love between a dog and a human being. Okay.
So if there is a love between, say, a dog and a human being or a pet and a master, is that related to the hormone secretions or is that related to the soul? Any relationship that we have, that, the consciousness for that has to come from the soul. Because the soul is the source of consciousness. And any relationship that we have, there will be chemical secretions in it.
Because the soul is acting through the body. We don’t deny. So when we laugh, so when I laugh, say, there may be certain chemicals that are secreted in the brain.
There is nothing wrong in that. But the problem is reductionism. Reductionism means to reduce it to that level.
That there is nothing more to emotions than the secretion of chemicals. Reductionism is the problem. So when we function, the soul works through the mind and the body.
So just as if somebody is happy, why do they have a very grave face? Say, somebody has cracked a joke and they keep a grave face. Say, why are you not laughing? No, my soul is laughing. No, if your soul is laughing, it’s to express at the bodily level also.
So, there is a bodily component to it. The mistake is to think that that is the whole. Now, when we come to relationship with pets, the, it’s natural for, especially when human beings live close to nature, then there are domestic animals and there is love for those domestic animals.
Now, when many people live away from nature, the human heart longs for some replica of that. And that’s why we have pets even in urban cities, urban places. In fact, in America, in many cities, the dog parks are bigger than the human parks.
You know, because they say that the dog, at least human beings, you go out for work, but the dog is cooped inside the house. The dog needs a walk more than the human beings. So, they have dog parks, basically.
So, the idea is that in any relationship that we have, the soul is involved and the biochemical elements are also involved. The point is not who all is involved. The point is what is the purpose that is served by it.
So, ultimately, we are meant to, our loving relationships can be fulfilled only when we love God. And if other relationships are conducive to that relationship with God, the assistance in the relationship with God, that is good. But, if these other relationships become a substitute for the relationship with God, then it becomes a big problem.
So, we have to evaluate. So, for example, now, in America, the fertility rate is going down. Most people prefer to have dogs than children.
Seriously, it’s a big problem. In America and Europe, people feel that, you know, if they have children, they are so messy. You purchase a dog, the dog is already trained.
You can offer your love to a dog instead of a child. So, in many, especially metropolitan cities, the population of dogs is more than the population of children. So, here, what is happening is the relationship with a pet is becoming a substitute for a relationship with a child.
Having a pet is not a problem. But if we make the pet a substitute for the child, that is a problem. Similarly, if we make any relationship in this world, whether it is another human being or with a dog, we make that into a substitute for a relationship with God.
That becomes a big problem. And unfortunately, if we don’t have a relationship with God, then we can make any relationship into a substitute. There was an American billionaire, when his pet dog passed away, he had a, what do you call it, a funeral ceremony for the dog.
And he spent more for that funeral ceremony than what was spent by the American government for Donald Trump’s inauguration. Laughter Laughter So, what has happened again? You know, one relationship has become so big, it has blinded one to the big picture. So, that is the problem.
So, if we have the big picture in mind, then whatever other relationships we have, we can see them in perspective. Does it answer your question? Any other questions? You can write and send your questions also, if you would like to do that. Any questions on the balcony? Yeah, please.
Maybe you can just speak the question, I’ll repeat it. Who has a question? Yeah, please. Mic is coming to you, yeah.
Good question, my question is like that, as our spiritual world is not permitting us to make a relationship with the women or the girls, as a when we want to make a relationship with our girls, as a taking centre as well, so how do we do that relationship? How can we make that relationship? Laughter No, it’s okay. Laughter So, I think everybody has understood the question except I. Laughter So, everybody is laughing but I am bewildered. So, I’ll try to repeat the understanding of the question.
So, you are saying by spiritual world you mean more of a spiritual culture. The spiritual culture say, so the spiritual culture does not allow us to say form relationship with girls. And so then how can we form a relationship with God in the centre? Is that your question? Okay.
By spiritual culture not allowing you to form relationships, you mean basically to say that the culture does not encourage courting and dating and culture encourages more of arranged marriage. Is that what you mean? Laughter Sorry, what? I mean Oh, okay. So, you are saying that the spiritual culture encourages people to become Brahmacharis.
Okay. That’s a very different question. See, there are there are different way, different people with different natures.
Just as the shoe that fits one leg bites another leg. Because different legs are of different sizes. Similarly, different people are of different natures.
And some people are more introspective, more solitary and they are meant more for the spiritual orientation. And many people who become monks, who become renunciates, they themselves will be happier in a single life. Not only would they be miserable if they got married, they would make their married partner also miserable.
Because they are of a different nature. And this is just the way some people are. But that does not in any way mean that everyone has to be like that.
In a spiritual culture, those who are renounced, they are respected. And that respect has a reason. But that does not mean that everybody has to become like them.
As I just said earlier, that we have a vertical relationship with God and we have horizontal relations with others. Most people focus only on the horizontal relationship. And they neglect the vertical relationship.
They come, actually most people remember the vertical relationship only when they have some problem in the horizontal relationship. But the horizontal relationship itself is everything for most people. So, in such a situation it is very easy to forget God or to reduce God to a utilitarian role.
Utilitarian role means that God is someone whose existence is to facilitate my existence. That means, when people come to Krishna temple, they ask if I go to other temple, I see that devta is giving aashirvaad. But Krishna is playing his own flute.
He seems to be lost in his own world. So, is Krishna concerned about me a lot? Yes, Krishna is concerned about us. But he is concerned at a different level.
When Krishna played the flute, you know, in the Rastula, he invited the gopis to come to him. So, like that, Krishna is playing his flute to invite us all to rise to spiritual consciousness, to be united with him once again. So, we exist at the material level of reality, Krishna exists at the spiritual level of reality.
And he, he is also blessing us. He also cares for us. But his caring and blessing is primarily in terms of inviting us to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness.
So, Krishna is saying, I am performing eternal delightful pastimes in this spiritual world. And you join me there. And you participate and assist in my pastimes.
But in a materialistic world view, even if God has a place, what is the place of God? That we tell God, God, I want to perform pastimes here. And you assist me here. So, that idea of God as just a utilitarian object for our material well-being, that is a very incomplete idea of God.
And those religions that have that idea, those religions stay largely materialistic. So, in those religious traditions, where there are people who devote themselves entirely to the vertical relationship, then, they create an example of how God is to be made a priority in our life. By seeing examples of people who have devoted themselves to God, fully devoted, means they don’t have a married relationship with anyone else in this world.
That is the primary horizontal relationship. We can have many horizontal relationships, but the primary horizontal relationship is the marriage relationship. So, those who focus on the vertical relationship with God, they become living demonstrations to society that this vertical relationship is for real.
That there is, everybody needs relationships. And somebody is living single and they are living happy. That means they must be getting emotional nourishment to some other relationship.
So, God is real, love for God is real, and happiness that comes in loving God is also real. So, those who are in the renounced order, focussing on the relationship with God, they demonstrate that to the rest of society. And because they are focussing on the vertical relationship with God, the rest of society in the spiritual culture respects them.
But that is not the way everyone is going to be. Most people need horizontal relationships. And it is not that, that need is something wrong or unhealthy or undesirable or unspiritual.
It’s also a part of our spiritual nature. So, it is not that everyone in the spiritual culture has to become a renunciate. Those who have the nature, the disposition to become renunciates, they are praised, they are respected.
But that doesn’t mean everybody has to become like that. Most people will be, there is a brahmachari sanyasi ashram, there is a grahastha ashram. So, a round shoulder, there is a high shoulder order.
And this grahastha ashram, the word ashram means, that is also a place where we get ashray, where we get a shelter of the supreme giver of ashram, of the supreme giver of shelter, that is God. So, the horizontal, so, the spiritual culture doesn’t mean that we are discouraged in our horizontal relationships. It simply means that due respect is given for those who focus exclusively on the vertical relationship.
But there is abundant room for people who want to develop both their relationships in a harmonious way. And that is going to be a standard. Even in the past, even when the Satyuga was there, or some other golden age was there, at that time also most people were grahasthas.
And we should not think that to become spiritual means that I have to renounce the world. To become spiritual means that we have to bring God into our heart and into our life. And once we start bringing God into our heart and into our life, then we will ourselves be guided and inspired about how best we can live a life of loving service to God.
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita 10.10 that He says that if you become devoted to me, I will give you the intelligence by which you can come to me. That means if we just focus on trying to practise bhakti and become devoted to Krishna, then we will find that we will be guided. A few of us may want to become brahmacharis.
And they are encouraged. But it is not that everybody has to become. And certainly it is not that to become spiritual or to become a devotee, one has to announce.
We have to find out what is the best way in which I can practise bhakti and live my life in a sustainable way. And we gravitate towards that position gradually. So, it is not that spiritual culture discourages relationships.
Relationships with the opposite sex. What it discourages is unregulated relationships, irresponsible relationships. So, grahastha ashram is a valid way in which one can connect with Krishna and get the ashram of Krishna.
And that is in a regulated, responsible way when one forms a relationship. That is actually the way most people will be able to stably practise bhakti. And both are ashrams, both are ways in which we can move towards Krishna.
It is not that this is the way to move towards Krishna and this is not the way to move towards Krishna. No. Both are ways to move towards Krishna.
And we have to find out which is the best way in which we can move closer to Krishna. Does it answer your question? Thank you very much. So, the last question.
So, thank you very much. Shri Prabhupada ki Gaura Bhakta Vrinda ki Gaura Prema Hande. So, let us thank Chetan Chandru once again to give him a round of applause.
I would like to thank Chetan Chandru for spending his valuable time and sharing his deep realisations with all of us. Chetan Chandru has written