Love is the ultimate reality that unifies all reality

[Talk for Intel employees at Phoenix, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
It’s a Saturday, please don’t miss it. Thank all of you for coming today and as is mentioned I’ll speak today on the topic of Love is the ultimate reality.
When we go through life we all are at one level or the other trying to look for the real. If somebody gives us some currency if that currency turns out to be counterfeit we know it’s useless. So, we are looking for real currency.
If we are in a mirage or in America even in the long roads we go sometimes we may see some water along the way because of the way the sun rays fall and then we go closer there’s no water. It’s simply a mirage. So, we are all looking for reality.
Although we may ourselves not think of this at a philosophical level but even in a practical sense when I’m thirsty at that time just a pitcher of water won’t work for me. I need real water. So, what exactly is real? Now, if we look at our day to day life right now, I’m sitting here if I hit my hand against this it creates a real sound.
If I hit it very hard, it will really hurt me. So, I can say this is real. Now, how am I really experiencing it? It is through the hand, through the bodily sensation.
So, we can say that the physical reality that we encounter is real because there are real emotions associated with it. There are real sensations and real emotions associated with it. Then say if I go to sleep at night sometimes in sleep we may get dreams, sometimes nightmares.
In a nightmare if I’m being chased by a tiger and I’m running desperately from it and then a more relatable experience may be many times soldiers who go in war and come back they have post traumatic stress disorder. Sometimes they wake up with nightmares. They wake up they are re-envisioning the scenes, the terrible scenes of war which they may have seen over there.
But, when they wake up they are comfortable in their bed. But, they are not comfortable. They are panting, their body is sweating.
At one level they have not experienced anything physical. They are not in the war fields where somebody was chasing them and they were fleeing. So, they experience something at the level of emotion, at the level of the mind, at the level of thoughts.
Although there was no physical experience of any danger, the emotional experience had a physical impact. So, if we decide what is reality based on the physical, at one level say, there is no danger, there is no real danger for you are safe. Just a flashback.
Don’t take it so seriously. You may say like that because it’s all just in the mind. But, then what was in the mind had real effect on the body, at the physical level also.
So, then what is the reality? Is it what we experience at the physical level or is it what we experience at the mental level? And more fundamentally when we look at reality, we may ask a question, what is the reality? But, you can also ask a question, what is it that is experiencing the reality? I may say, I am experiencing. But, who is the I who is experiencing? Who or what is the I? Normally, I may think that, okay, this is when I put my hand in fire or near fire, it burns. So, the body experiences and I experience.
So, I may normally think that the body is the experiencer and I am the body. But, when we sleep at night, the body is not experiencing anything. We can say it is experiencing the effects of an experience.
It is not experiencing say bullets whizzing by. But, I am experiencing it. I feel traumatised.
I mean, the soldier who is having that feels traumatised. So, who is it that is experiencing it? It cannot be the body because the body is not experiencing and yet I am experiencing. So, mental reality is also reality in the sense that in two senses.
One is that we really experience it. There are, we feel terrified at an emotional level, horrified, traumatised depending on whatever the experience is and it can also be called as reality in the sense that it has impact at the physical level also. But, then we may say that, okay, what I experience in a dream it stays for some time and it goes.
So, now I can take the other side of the argument and say that, oh, a dream is unreal because it is temporary. When I wake up, then I realise that there is nothing there. There is nothing at all.
It just was there and it’s gone. So, if the temporariness of the dream is the basis for deeming it unreal, then I can well apply it to the waking reality also. How do I apply it? We live for a particular period of time.
Within the lifetime, when we are awake, we experience the reality around us. When we are asleep, we no longer experience it. So, it’s almost like we as our consciousness is switching from one level of reality to another.
Researchers have done a lot of study in sleeping. Many people who suffer from insomnia, there is a particular moment of time when the consciousness switches off. Many times we may be tired and we need sleep but we are just not able to sleep.
So, we may create all the circumstances conducive to sleep. We may switch off the lights. We may have a comfortable bed, good temperature conducive to sleep and yet the sleep doesn’t come.
So, there is a particular moment when the consciousness seems to switch off. Actually, it doesn’t really switch off in the sense of going off completely. It switches from where we are to another level, to some other level which is at the level of the dreams.
But if we consider the waking reality, I switch off from it but I return back to it. So, everyday when I wake up, I come back to the reality I was yesterday. But then at the end of our life, one day we’ll sleep and we’ll not come back to this reality.
So, if temporariness is the basis for deciding what is real and what is not real, then we could well say that even what we are experiencing right now is not real. So, here the question comes up what actually is reality and more importantly what is the basis for determining what is reality. So, we can start with basics.
The first reality is that there is some observer, there is some experiencer. And secondarily we can say what is the nature of what is being experienced. Is that for real or is that not real? But if the experiencer himself or herself were not real, then no experience would be possible.
So, at a fundamental level, it will go even from empirical perspective. It is that science operates with empiricism and we observe the reality around us and we try to find out patterns in that reality. Newton saw the fruit folic and last year I have gone to Cambridge University for talk of science and spirituality.
So, along the way I went by that tree where Newton saw the fruit folic. So, somehow that tree is still alive and now when he saw the fruit folic, it was his brilliance by which he postulated the theory of gravity from that observation. At the same time when he observed that sometimes people think that science and religion or science and spirituality, they are opposites.
Science deals with facts, spirituality deals with or religion deals with faith. I will talk about the difference between the two a little later. But actually when science operates on faith, the faith that what we experience with our senses is real.
Unless Newton had the faith that there is a real apple which really fell down, how could he have postulated any theory at all? So, at one level, science which is a search for understanding the natural world around us is based on the faith that there is a reality out there and we can experience that reality. That our senses give us a reasonably accurate experience of that reality. Without going into the specifics of whether this is right or wrong, on operational level, of course it is right.
But again, with respect to science also, the premise that there is a reality out there and there is a mechanism our senses by which we can perceive that reality, both of these require the observer and require the observer to be real. So, we could say the fundamental reality is the observer, the experiencer. Without the observer and the experiencer, nothing else can be experienced.
And that observer, that experiencer is essentially consciousness. It is consciousness that observes, consciousness that experiences, consciousness that analyses, consciousness that processes. So, consciousness, we could say, is the fundamental reality.
Now, whether what that consciousness is experiencing is real or not, that is a secondary question. But consciousness is the fundamental reality. Now, what is it that we seek to be conscious of? If we look at our own life, our own experiences, normally our consciousness gravitates towards that which is pleasurable.
If, say, while we are talking right now, if in this bowl there was a delicious cake kept over there, we would all be talking, but our eyes and thoughts will keep going to that cake. When will this talk get over? When can we eat this? So, in whatever we experience, our consciousness gravitates towards the pleasurable. There can be relativity or variety in what different people consider pleasurable.
Somebody may not like a cake, but they like something else and that’s where their consciousness will go to. So, there is the variety in what the consciousness finds pleasurable. But there is universality in consciousness search for the pleasurable.
So, we could say that consciousness is a reality and the consciousness search for pleasure is also a reality. Pleasure also can be at different levels. Some people may seek the pleasure of eating a cake.
Some people may say, okay, I don’t just want to eat the cake. I want to know how it was made. Can you tell me the recipe? When Newton saw the fruit falling, millions of people before him had seen fruits falling.
Most people would have picked the fruit, eaten it and gone their way. Isn’t it? So, they would have sought the pleasure of eating over there. But Newton sought the pleasure of understanding.
What made this fruit fall? So, essentially consciousness seeks pleasure and where it seeks pleasure can vary. So, in all the fields of knowledge that we may study, there is this search for pleasure. And science at one level rises upwards in trying to understand deeper truths.
But at another level, science comes down again to grosser truths. When I studied Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, one of the disappointments for me when I came to the fourth year was that at that time, this is 1990s, they said that the most widespread application of Electronics Engineering is in making TVs. Then I thought that, okay, fine, making TVs, but most people don’t watch TVs for very intelligent purposes.
That’s why sometimes TV is called the idiot box. So here, am I using my intelligence to make idiot boxes to make people into idiots? Is that what I really want to do? Of course, knowledge can be used for many other purposes, but that’s what set me thinking. At one level, science searches for understanding.
But at another level, science, especially when it is applied in terms of technology, it comes down to very practical applications. And by practical, it may not necessarily be in a judgemental sense, but many times the practical applications are preliminary. So much of the scientific or technological research has been and is funded by the defence industry.
The aeroplane technology, especially developed after the First World War, and aeroplanes were not much of a factor in the First World War, but in the Second World War they were a decisive factor. It was all fuelled by wars, by defence. Similarly, much of other technologies triggered by the consumer industry.
And the consumer industry is again about physical sensations, physical pleasures, good food to eat, good things to watch. So now, much of the high definition streaming that has developed is primarily because people want to consume visual content. It is not just visual content.
It is often explicit, sensual visual content. So the point is that although there are a lot of intelligence may go into the development of science and even into the development of technology through that science, it is for most people not a search for reality. It is a search for sensations.
A search for pleasure at very preliminary, I mean preliminary means at very superficial levels, as the body gives us some pleasures, but that’s temporary. Since the beginning of science, there has been a debate that is the science describe the nature of reality or does science describe our experience of what is out there? Is matter really made of atoms over there? Atoms and molecules combined together? Is it just simply what we experience and the reality is something else? So, as Newtonian physics developed, the mainstream understanding was that actually science gives us an understanding of reality. But then from the 20th century onwards, when Newtonian physics gave way at a certain level to relativity and quantum physics, then there is one scientist, he said that, anybody who thinks that they have understood quantum physics has not understood it.
So, another scientist said that the universe is not only too complex for us to imagine, it is more complex than what we can even imagine. So, the point here is that even science in its study of the world around us is finding that the nature of reality is not so easy to understand. So, what current mainstream understanding of science is that science offers us not reality but models of reality.
Quantum physics offers one model of reality and relativity offers another model of reality. And this is not to say that the model is wrong or false. We just say that a model is not the reality.
Just like the map is not the territory. A map is very useful for navigating the territory but the map is not the territory. So, the reason why I am discussing all this is we are trying to understand what is real.
What is actually reality? So, we said earlier that we can say consciousness is reality. Now, of course, some people who have excessive faith in science, science as a search for knowledge is very valuable. But when science becomes an ideology then it becomes scientism.
Scientism is scientific imperialism. That’s the portmanteau of the two words. Science and imperialism become scientism.
And scientism holds that science alone can answer every question in every field. Now, this is just not true. Science cannot answer questions about intentions, about with all our scientific advancement.
The questions that really matter to us, how many of them can have scientific answers? Recently, I gave Ohio State University seminar on overcoming fear. So, one of the fear in biggest fears in youth is the fear of rejection. We may go into a relationship and somebody may reject us.
When we are trying to develop a relationship with someone, we would like to know, does this other person really love me? With all our scientific advancement, can we make a love-o-metre and place it in somebody’s heart? Do you really love me? I’ll find out. We can’t. We will have to find out what brain chemicals are secreted when one person sees another person and we may try to infer something from there.
But that’s not really a measure of love. So, Irving Schrodinger said that science gives us a majestically consistent explanation of the factual world around us. But many of the questions that are nearest to us, questions of joy and sorrow, questions of beauty and aesthetics, questions of love and life, these questions are unanswered by science.
So, the deepest questions, this is, again, as I said, this is not, my point is not criticism of science. My point is simply, we are trying to understand what is reality and how do we move forward towards understanding that reality. Science offers us models of reality and those models are very powerful for certain purposes.
But for certain other purposes those models are inadequate. So, then sometimes some people who are not scientists who are advocates of scientism, they say consciousness itself is an illusion, that consciousness does not exist. Now, this statement requires consciousness to make.
This table cannot say consciousness does not exist. So, the very refutation of consciousness is an assertion of consciousness. I refute consciousness, I say that there is consciousness.
It’s like, if I say, I can’t speak a single word of English. I’ve already spoken eight words. It’s a self-refuting statement.
Now, if we move on, what exactly then is reality? Let’s start with, consciousness is a reality and then there is an experience which consciousness has, which can also be called reality at some level. But the fundamental reality is consciousness. When we observe consciousness, T. H. Huxley was himself actually a materialist.
Even he pointed out, he said that consciousness is actually very different from everything that we experience in nature. We experience matter, we experience energy. But consciousness is neither of these.
Now, is consciousness reducible to either of these? So, what exactly is it? It is a third category of reality, something different entirely. Now, if you came into this room and you’re just looking here and there and you saw a gold ring fall on the ground. The first question would come, where did this come from? Now, we don’t see gold immediately in the vicinity.
The question comes up, where did this gold come from? So, when we similarly see consciousness in the world and you say everything around us is matter. So, where has this consciousness come from? So, consciousness is like a gold ring has to come from a reservoir of gold. It could be a gold ore, a gold shop.
Even the gold in the gold shop will come from a gold ore. Similarly, consciousness emanates from a reservoir of consciousness. That is infinite consciousness.
And that infinite consciousness is the foundation of reality. How could consciousness simply emerge from matter? Somebody may say it’s possible, but the challenge is that consciousness is categorically different. Electricity flows through a TV and say a comedy is going on the TV.
The observer laughs on watching it. But the TV doesn’t laugh. So, electricity in the TV circuit doesn’t produce consciousness.
Why would electricity in the brain produce consciousness? Consciousness is something different. So, consciousness is not reducible to matter. It is not producible by matter.
It is a different reality. And therefore, if consciousness is different from matter, then consciousness has to come from somewhere. That source cannot be matter.
That has to be consciousness. So thus, we can say that there is a foundational consciousness from which all consciousness is emanated. And just as our consciousness is a fundamental reality, we could say that that infinite consciousness is the most fundamental reality.
If we consider there are different arguments sometimes used for pointing to the existence of some source of everything. So, one argument is that if I look at the top of a 100 storey building and I look back this level is 15 feet. Below that is a 99th level.
That is also 15 feet. If I have a sequence of many many levels, one above the other which goes on and on and on, it has to end in a ground. If there is no ground, then the building itself would not exist.
So, if we observe the things around us, everything that we see is temporary. So, a temporary object has to be caused by some other temporary object. So, the 100th level has to be on the 99th level.
99th will be on the 98th. But this sequence can it go on infinitely? Now, when I say 100, that obviously means from 100 it will come down to 1 and then to ground. But we cannot have a series of temporary causes going on infinitely.
A series of temporary causes will go on, but they have to rest at a particular point in something that is non-temporary. Just as 100 levels of a building have to rest on the ground. The 100 levels of a building cannot keep resting on other levels, levels, levels going on.
There has to be a ground somewhere. So, the infinite consciousness is the ground of all being from where all being, all existence, all consciousness emanates. If we look again back, I said the consciousness is a reality and consciousness search for pleasure, search for happiness, that is also reality.
Now, how that search for happiness is directed, that will vary. If you consider that in our own lives, what is it that brings us the greatest happiness? We could turn the question around as what is it that causes the greatest sorrow? We may want many things in life. I may want to become a Nobel laureate.
An artist may want to become an Academy Award winner. Somebody, a tennis player might want to become the world number one. We all want different things in our life.
This is the driving passion of my life. This is what I want the most. That’s true.
Still we can go deeper. Why do I want this? Suppose, somebody became fabulously wealthy. Suppose, a person became the wealthiest person in the whole world.
All the wealth in the world belonged to them. But suppose, they were the only person existing in the world. What would they do with the wealth? Actually, we want things because we feel, we believe, we hope that by getting things, we will be able to attract people.
And not just attract people in the sense of flattery or adulation. We want affection. We want love.
We want to improve our looks. We want to improve our finances. We want to improve our possessions.
We want to improve our connections. We want to improve our positions. We want to improve our medals.
We want to improve our track records. All these we want to do because we want affection. We want love.
And we hope that acquiring these things will make us more lovable. So, we seek various things as a means to something deeper. That is, we want love.
So, our search for happiness is actually a search for love. We may all have particular objects we think will make me happy. But if we think, whatever is my deepest desire, if I fulfil that, but there is no one else in my world, what would I do with that? Somebody wants to become a celebrated author.
They write a book, but there is nobody to appreciate them. What would be the fulfilment in that? So, we, if we look at our longing, our longing is for pleasure. Pleasure is ultimately, we seek it through things, but not just through things.
We hope that through those things, we’ll get love. So, this love is what makes, as they say, love makes the world go round. What it means, literally, is that people go around in the search of love.
People do whatever they do, for affection, attraction, for love. If we consider that consciousness has this deep longing for love, all of us are conscious and we all have a deep longing for love, and if there is an infinite consciousness from which our consciousness is emanated, then that infinite consciousness will also have a longing for love. Otherwise, where would our longing for love come from? With this perspective, if you see, then we talked about consciousness as one level of, as the foundation of reality.
Then we talked about thoughts and emotions, which is also one level of reality. Then we talked about physical reality, which is also what we experience. So, we could call this as the physical reality, what we experience.
In the level of thoughts, it’s mental reality. Consciousness, we could call as spiritual reality. Consciousness is non-material.
It’s spiritual. So, at the spiritual level of reality, there is finite consciousness, there is infinite consciousness. And, whatever we experience at the physical and mental levels of reality is ultimately an expression of the love of infinite consciousness of infinite consciousness.
If you see what we experience at the physical level, it is quite remarkable. We often don’t think, we think of doing things, but we often don’t think of how we do those things. That means, say, when we feel hungry, we eat food.
After we eat food, what happens to that food? We eat food and we feel energetic. But where does that energy come from? Energy is not something which we ourselves manufacture. The body goes through a very complicated process of digestion, of chemical processing by which the food transforms into energy.
If we try to use machines to, say, create an artificial digestive system, we’ll find that we’ll not just need a machine, we’ll need a factory. So, we don’t do this work. Researchers say that the amount of food, the amount of work that is required to convert, say, one morsel of food into working energy for us, the body undergoes peristaltic motion as the food goes down in the alimentary canal.
So, work is forced into displacement. Then, the amount of work that is required to digest one morsel of food, one handful of food is actually more than the amount of work that an average human being does throughout the day. So, who or what is doing that work? There is a higher arrangement which is taking care of things.
We take care of some things, but there is a higher arrangement also which takes care of things. Every morning, when the birds wake up, they start chirping, and they are looking for food. They are looking for worms, they are looking for grains, they are looking for seeds.
Now, the birds do have to work in terms of needing to search for food. But the birds’ searching does not produce the food. The birds’ searching only enables them to find the food that is already been provided.
So, their endeavour is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Their endeavour is necessary, but not sufficient. Similarly, if we look at our own lives around us, our body functions for us to endeavour to get food to earn so that we can have food, it is essential.
But our earning food alone does not maintain us. There is much more that is going on which works conducively for our maintenance. Usually, the only time when we think of our digestion is when it does not work.
So, it is said that God gives and forgives, we get and forget. We don’t think about it. So, somehow, that infinite consciousness, you could refer to by different names.
One name is God. But there is this understanding, if we see now, that there is spiritual reality and the spiritual reality is finite consciousness and infinite consciousness. And we as consciousness are searching for happiness through love.
And we are looking for things so that we would become more, so that we hope we will become more lovable. And there is infinite consciousness which or who is expressing love to us at various levels. So, the arrangement of reality at the physical level, whether it is the body or the world around us, that is an expression of the infinite’s love for the finite.
For our existence in this world, there are hundreds, thousands, millions of things that need to work right. Whenever we succeed in our life, there are things that work right. We do the right things, but there are many other things which also need to work right.
Right now, when I am speaking, I may have my thoughts, but my throat has to work right. And I don’t know exactly or even vaguely or how the voice cords move and how they produce sound. I just use it.
So, if we see this arrangement around us as the infinite consciousness expression of love for the finite and we all longing for love. We don’t just long for love, we long for enduring love. Most of the movies, most of the novels, among the millions that are produced and distributed in the world, most of them are about romance.
And most romance is about H-E-A, happily ever after. Now, in real life, we know there is no ever after. In the best of relationships, relationships are going to be terminated.
We all know it and yet we want to believe it. It will be ever after. Because, why is this there? Because there is an innate longing for enduring love.
And that we are trying to, we are hoping will be actualised in our various relationships. So, the consciousness which is eternal is looking for eternal relationships. And those eternal relationships are only at the spiritual level.
With the infinite consciousness and with other finite conscious beings in spiritual knowledge. So, reality, if we see from this way, becomes redefined as an arena for reciprocating love. Through whatever is happening in our world, through our body’s existence, through the world’s existence, the infinite consciousness is expressing love for the finite.
And the finite is seeking love. Seeking love in hundreds, thousands, millions of different ways. But most of the times when we seek love, it is, we are directing it towards other temporary objects.
But we are meant to use this world and the relationships in this world and the abilities in this world as a means of channelling our love towards the infinite. When we do this, this, the process for doing this is called as Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti can be seen as just some religious, cultural sentiment that some people have when they go to the temple.
That’s one part of it. But essentially, Bhakti is the innate human longing of the heart directed towards the infinite. And when it is directed thus, then, love we see in this world there is a death which seems to be the greatest destroyer of love.
Before that love can be destroyed by misunderstandings, love can be destroyed by cold-heartedness, love can be decreased in various ways. But the greatest frustrator of love is death. But if we consider that the purpose of existence, consciousness is fundamental reality, infinite consciousness is the most fundamental reality.
And the purpose of existence is an opportunity for us to channel love from the finite to the infinite, from the soul to the supreme soul. Then, even death is seen not as a full stop, but as a comma. Not as a full stop, it’s not that life is ending, it’s not that love is ending, it’s not that relationships are ending, but that is a transition, not a termination.
That quest of this consciousness for infinite consciousness will progress in this life and it will continue to progress in a future life. And that will culminate in eventually attaining the infinite, where the longing for love is supremely fulfilled. And even there, it is not that the infinite consciousness is the supreme reality.
There also, love is the supreme reality. The infinite can be known by different names in different traditions, in different thought systems. In the bhakti tradition, as described in the Bhagavad Gita, the infinite consciousness is known by the name Krishna.
The word Krishna can be seen as referring to a particular figure, a particular deity in a particular religious tradition. But beyond that, if you look at the word Krishna etymologically, sarva-akarshati iti krishna, it refers to that absolute truth which is all attractive. It’s a universal understanding.
But in this, in the spiritual level of reality, the supreme does not delight in his supremacy. One of my friends is a judge. And he was telling me that he, when he understood the conception of God, he understood the conception of Krishna as God, he said, if God existed and if he were a judge, God’s life would be very boring.
As a judge, if all you have to do for the rest of eternity is just keep judging people. God will say, I need a break. God, yes, that is one of his functions, which is done.
But God has his own self-existence. And that self-existence, he does not delight in his Godhood. I am God, all of you bow down to me.
In his eternal abode, he delights in the reciprocation of love. And for the reciprocation of love, whatever is required, he does that. That means, if to reciprocate love, if he is to take a subordinate role, he is ready to take even that.
So after this session, we will sing a song, Damodar Ashtakam, where we will offer, we will be offering that, offering a lamp to Krishna, he is worshipped in this particular month, in his form as Damodar. Damodar means, dama is rope, udar is belly. The Lord whose rope, whose belly was bound by a rope.
What that means is there is a whole story that Krishna, his mother Yashoda saw that he was mischievous and she decided to punish him. And to punish him, she decided to bind him. And she just couldn’t bind him.
She got one rope, two ropes, three ropes, ten ropes, fifty ropes, hundred ropes, all of them were not sufficient to bind him. And she just couldn’t understand what is happening. And finally, she was trying and trying and she thought, this is my boy Krishna.
My boy is someone special. What’s happening over here? She eventually pleased Krishna by her devotional disposition. Krishna who is infinite but playing the role of a finite little boy, he allowed himself to be tied.
So God getting bound by the love of his devotee. That is what is commemorated in this Damodar Leela. So here, what we see is even in the spiritual world, in the highest level of reality, it is not God who is the supreme reality.
It is love that is the supreme reality. God is not a person who likes to boss around everyone. He is a person who loves to reciprocate love.
And that is demonstrated in this particular story. But beyond the specifics of any particular story, the important principle is that life is a reciprocation of love, both in this world and the next world. But because this world, this level of reality that you experience, because it is a temporary reality.
So, we sometimes do not perceive that love. Sometimes we want something, we don’t get it and we feel, what is going on? When a child, when the mother loves the child, mother provides so much for the child, but the child says, I want this toy. Mother says, not now, we’ll get it later, you already have enough toys.
No, I want it. No, I want it. No, not now.
I want it. No. Ah, you don’t love me.
The child reduces the love of the mother down to whether the toy is being provided or not. Mother has done so many other things to express her love, but the child reduces it down that way. So, similarly, we may sometimes feel unloved or we may feel unconnected because our consciousness is caught too much in material things and therefore, if one particular thing doesn’t work out, that particular thing may not be like a toy for us, it may be important for us.
But still, from the perspective of eternity, what seems hugely important now, will be seen as not so important in the long run. If you look back at our life 10 years ago, something we felt this is life defining for me, this has to work. We are so worked up about that thing.
Now, if you look at how worked up we were at that time, we just laugh at ourselves. So, that way we can see from that perspective that, yes, sometimes because this world is a temporary place, because this world is a limited place, therefore, the love may not be felt. But as we raise our consciousness on the material level to the spiritual level, we start experiencing love.
When a baby is fast asleep, when a baby is newborn, the baby doesn’t even know that there is someone called mother. The baby just wakes up, comes, is born, starts crying, and then eventually the mother breastfeeds her, the baby doesn’t even know that there is someone called mother. Oh, something nice is coming from somewhere, let me suckle it.
As the baby starts growing, starts perceiving that, oh, this person and she loves me, she is called my mother. Now, if it is very cold at night, and the mother sees the baby shivering, and the mother puts a blanket on the baby. Now, the baby’s eyes are closed, and she may not even open her eyes, but just at one moment she was trembling because of cold, next moment she feels comfortably warm.
That comfort, that cosy feeling, she understands, oh, my mother must have put a blanket on. She has not opened her eyes and seen the mother put the blanket, but she infers that. Similarly, at present, our eyes are closed to spiritual reality, like that infant.
We can’t perceive spiritual reality at present. Even when the mother is breastfeeding the baby, the baby may not even understand in the very early season that there is a person called mother. So, right now, the way we experience, the way the baby whose eyes are closed experiences the reality of the mother’s love is by the comforting warmth of the blanket when the discomforting cold is there.
Similarly, when we face problems in life, we feel agitated. If we just strive to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. We just now did kirtans before we started this talk.
So, kirtan is one way in which we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. The sound of the mantra acts like an elevator that raises our consciousness upwards, and we experience relief. We experience some kind of peace, some kind of strength, some kind of joy by raising our consciousness in devotional remembrance.
So, if we demand the sign of God’s love as release from our problems, I have this problem, this problem should go away. It will not work because the world we live in is a temporary place. Instead of expecting release from problems, we can experience relief amidst problems.
The problem will be there, but by raising our consciousness to the spiritual level, we can experience relief. And when we experience that relief, we will ourselves realise, hey, this is a difficult situation, I couldn’t have coped with it, but even in this difficult situation, I am calm. I am composed.
There is something deeper over here. There is some higher reality. And that realisation, that conviction will be a far more enduring gain than just a problem-free life.
So, we seek to conclude with this point that we while living, if we seek or expect a problem-free life, we will always be frustrated. But instead of seeking a problem-free life, if we seek a purposeful life, then the problems will come, the problems will grow, but the purpose will keep being pursued. And what is the purpose? If you understand love is the ultimate reality, then expressing love and experiencing love, that becomes life’s greatest purpose.
So, at this spiritual level, when we understand we are consciousness, and through our relationship with others, through our activities in this world, we try to do them in a mood of loving service towards our souls, towards the infinite consciousness, towards Krishna, then that purposefulness will enable us to overcome, to tolerate, to transcend, to tackle whatever problems come our way. And thereby, we move towards greater and greater conviction, greater and greater realisation that love is the ultimate reality. So, I will summarise this book.
I started by talking about what is reality. Let me say that physical experiences are real, because we feel pain and pleasure, but then at night, we are having no physical experiences, still we are having some experiences. So, are dreams also real? Let me discuss.
In the waking state and in the dreaming state, there is something that is common. That is, there is consciousness. Consciousness shifts from one state to another state.
The consciousness itself remains unchanging. So, science is a search for knowledge. But even the scientific search for knowledge requires the pre-existence of a scientist.
It requires the understanding that there is a physical reality out there which is real, and we can really measure that, quantify that. But beyond both these assumptions, there is a much more fundamental assumption that or much more fundamental prerequisite rather, is that there is consciousness. So, from a purely empirical perspective, we can say that the starting point of our quest for reality is accepting the reality of our consciousness.
Even those who reject consciousness, they are asserting the reality of consciousness by the rejection of consciousness. So, science, when it is a very powerful tool for analysing the physical reality around us. If it is claimed to be the source of all knowledge in all fields, then it becomes scientism.
And it can’t answer questions of issues that are very near and dear to our hearts. For example, you can’t have a love-o-metre which explains, which measures who loves me and who doesn’t love me. For that, we need another way of discerning.
Our consciousness is in search for happiness. And depending on our conceptions, we may look for happiness in different directions. But ultimately, whatever direction we are looking for to get that happiness, what we are looking for through our possessions, we are looking for love.
So, love, we could say consciousness and consciousness seeking of love. These are fundamental realities. But then, we could go backward.
Where does the consciousness come from? From an infinite consciousness. Just as a series of levels in a building, they have to exist on a ground. So, series of temporary causes has to rest in some eternal object.
Otherwise, this cannot go on forever. This building cannot go on forever. It has to have a ground.
So then, if we see the world around us, even the physical reality, we do a lot of things, but a lot of things are done for us. We labour to get the food, but the food is digested for us and converted into energy with a phenomenal amount of work. So, our effort is essential, but it is secondary.
Primary is the arrangement that is made. Birds search for food, but the food is provided for beforehand. So, the provision for even our physical needs, we can see that as the infinite consciousness expressing love for the finite.
And, the world that we exist in is an arena for the soul to redirect consciousness or love from finite worldly things to the infinite spiritual reality. And, with this understanding, even the greatest frustrator of love in the world, death, makes sense. Death is not a termination, it’s a transition.
It’s an onwards journey of spiritual evolution. Death is one step forward. So, the eternal soul longs for eternal love.
And, that is found in the eternal infinite consciousness. And, all our relationships, all our activities in the world are meant to be channels to go towards, to express love towards that infinite and to experience that love. So, even in the highest spiritual level of reality, it is not that God reigns supreme, it is love reigns supreme.
God is not just a judge. That’s one part of His role. In His self-existence, He simply delights in the reciprocation of love.
And, that’s how He gets bound by His mother’s love. Although He is infinite and can never be bound, He voluntarily chooses to be bound. And, coming back to our level of experience, when we don’t feel even God’s existence or God’s love, how do we move on? It’s like an infant who doesn’t even understand a mother’s existence.
Mother is feeding the child. Or, the infant, by inference, understands that, when in cold, I feel, get relief from my blanket by something, that means my mother has put the blanket on me. Similarly, instead of demanding, when we face problems, demanding release from problems, we look for relief from its problems.
Instead of reducing the mother’s love down to a toy, instead of reducing our expectation of God’s love to manifest through the solution of a particular problem, we strive to, by remembering God, by chanting His holy names, we raise our conscience to the spiritual level and experience relief amidst the problems. And, by so doing, we gain conviction about the reality of both the spiritual level of existence and the reality of shelter and the joy that is available at the spiritual level. And thus, we can function in our life in that mood of loving intention, with the conviction that love is the ultimate reality.
Thank you very much. Any questions or comments? Yeah, please. I missed most part of it, but the purpose of life then for everybody becomes to achieve love, right? Yeah.
The purpose of life is to figure out what the purpose of life is. Because many people, I am sure, don’t know what the purpose of life is. They just come here.
It’s a temporary life. So, I am confused that what is the actual purpose of life. So, is the purpose of life love or is the purpose of life to discover the purpose of life? It’s both.
Because life is not predetermined. We have certain, we have a body which we can say, with birth we get it. There is certain set of talents, certain set of interests, which is also you could say to some extent predetermined.
But what we do with it is up to us. So, spiritual knowledge is not a restrictor. It is a director.
It means it doesn’t restrict. You can’t do. That’s not the point.
It means directors. Now, once the direction comes, a director may be directing an actor in a movie. The actor’s creativity, actor’s talent, actor’s brilliance comes out.
The two works synergistically. So, similarly, we have to chart our own path in life. So, once we get first things clear, most often when we are looking for what should I be doing in my life, we rely a lot on social conceptions.
Many people tell us, this career is good. If you do this, you’ll become very famous. If you do this, you’ll get a lot of money.
So, then we look at ourselves through social mirrors. And we sometimes find, oh, you know what, I can’t do that. That’s too difficult for me.
If only I were like that, I would be able to do it. So, we keep looking at ourselves from social mirrors and then we get overwhelmed by negativity, by self-doubt. Now, what holds us back is not what we are.
What holds us back is what we think we are not. What we think we should be and we are not. And what we think we should be is largely determined by the social mirrors.
So, once we accept that I’m a spiritual being and we start with that foundation that I am on, I am in a world which is ultimately a manifestation of love, for the purpose of love. So, I am what I need to be. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to improve.
But it’s not that we have some fundamental deficiency which makes us useless. We are what we meant to be. And we just instead of trying to improve horizontally by becoming like someone else, we improve vertically by becoming the best we can be.
So, we will, by becoming more spiritual in terms of our understanding, in terms of our practise, in terms of our realisation, we’ll get the inner calmness to look at ourselves without being filtered by the world’s conceptions and then find out, okay, how best can I contribute? During my life journey, what is my contribution meant to be? So, rather than exploring at the horizontal level alone, should I do this, should I do that, should I do that, we can focus due amount of energy at the vertical level in raising our consciousness. And from there, we’ll be able to better perceive and then better pursue both, understand and then seek our particular purpose in life, our contribution in life. What’s the purpose of that? Because I always see that, okay, we’re good at something, so should we be doing what we’re good at or should we improve on something that we’re not good at? For example, at work, if there’s one project that I’m exceptional at, should I do that or should I look for a second project which I’m weak at and improve my skills there? So, it always puts me like, okay, what is the purpose? What should I do? Should I do this, should I do this or something else altogether? Okay.
Yeah. So, should we do, should we try to do that which we’re good at or should we work on what we are weak at and improve? Okay. Broadly speaking, it depends on what we’re talking about as strength and what we talk about as weakness.
So, in general, we all want to improve, but our strengths are our gifts and that’s where our family contribution is meant to be. If you know a little bit of the Mahabharata, there were five Pandavas in the Mahabharata. There were five brothers and each of them was unique in their own way.
Arjuna was a great archer, Yudhishthira was very virtuous, Bhima was very strong. Now, none of them tried to become like anybody else. They all contributed in their own way.
They were all very important in their particular roles. Similarly, we are meant to primarily contribute through our strengths, but while focussing on our strengths, we need to be aware of our weaknesses and some weaknesses may be so damaging that they can sabotage our strengths also. But some weaknesses will be manageable.
If we spend our whole life trying to work on our weaknesses alone, that’s very draining because we all need a sense of success. We all need some sense of accomplishment and if we work on our weaknesses, we may get a sense of accomplishment, but for how long and how much is it? I couldn’t do this at all. I started doing this a little bit.
It’s good. But how much is the contribution coming through that? A lot of energy goes when we just focus on our weaknesses. What defines us is our strengths, not our weaknesses.
They will determine what our defining contribution will be. The best is to focus on the strengths and then to manage the weaknesses so that they don’t become pitfalls for us while we are pursuing our strengths. Can I answer your question? Thank you.
Yes. So your topic of today, I always had a completely different perception about it. So I always with the experiences and whatever I learned from others, I always believe that love is not reality.
And maybe it’s the way I perceive it through the people around me or through whatever I see in the real life. Because I don’t know what eternal love is. And because it is limitless and it is infinity, so it’s hard to feel or hard to, you know, it’s beyond my level of understanding.
But when I used to see people with, you know, one love and that love will change next year and then eventually they will marry someone else. And even when they marry, within like 2-3 years, depending on time, place, circumstances, people will forget the love they got from their mother and they will just, the love which came into their life for 2-3 years, they will just go out with them and slowly they will have a, I won’t say they will stop loving their mother, but because of those circumstances, they will have a kind of separate, you know, a detachment and that. So I always felt that all this love we see is not real.
It’s not a reality. It’s, what we are seeing is more like a compromise which people you know, do so that they can live a life simply. But what makes complete sense to me now is the bounded and unbounded love.
We have to kind of understand those two things because when we say love has to be selfless, none of those cases reflect that the love is selfless. These all examples are bounded examples. I agree when there is like, you know, person to person love.
So is it that the statement or the topic of today, how much is it valid in the materialistic world? Very valid question. So we sometimes say that love is not real. And we can say that the spiritual love or unbounded love is real.
But in this world, love often misleads people and makes them just go on a chase here and there. So how much does it apply to materialistic love? Love is the driving force of the soul, of consciousness. Now depending on how it is driven or where it is driven, it can express itself through constructive ways or through destructive ways.
We have also, we have been given, we have a heart but we also have a head. That means we have an emotional faculty, we have a rational faculty. So there is a difference between being in love and loving.
When people say being in love, we often use the word fall in love. Now why do we use the word fall in love? Because falling is an involuntary action. When I fall, nobody intends to fall down.
Nobody intends to fall down. So what happens is that at a particular age, at a particular time, we are biologically and emotionally vulnerable to infatuations. Just like at certain places, the floor may be slippery.
There we tend to slip at that time. So in youth, we are both biologically and emotionally vulnerable to mistaking infatuation to be love. That’s the time when we get overwhelmingly attracted to some person and it’s not that what we experience at that time is not real.
What we, what two people who claim to be in love or feel that they are in love, what they experience is very intense at that time. They are not making it up. They are experiencing it.
But the problem is they think that this experience will be an enduring experience. But it doesn’t last for long. Why is that? That’s because love at that level or at that time is something which is more biologically or psychologically triggered rather than intentionally chosen.
Yes, sometimes there may be something called love at first sight. Two people see each other and they feel there is a physical character traits, just feel attracted. But the relationship will be sustained not by what happens at first sight.
It will be what happens after many sights. And for that at one particular point they have to choose to move from being in love to choosing to love. Love has to rise from being an emotion we experience to an intention we cultivate.
If that doesn’t happen then it will not sustain. So when we stay in that zone of equating love with emotion alone that initially when there is infatuation we see the good side of the person and we are more or less blind to the bad side. Not necessarily bad side, the limitations of the person.
But later on when that infatuation, that biological, psychological stimulation which makes us attracted to that person, that slowly starts decreasing. Then we start seeing the other side of the person also. Then we may just keep obsessing on that side and then to the extent of attraction, to that extent there will be aversion afterwards.
Same to people who say that, initially they fight with the world and they say, I can’t live without you. After few years they say, I can’t live with you. Because it was all at the level of emotion.
So, what I would say, not that love is false, just taking our decisions based on emotions alone is misleading. We are not meant to wish away our emotions or to deny our emotions. But there are emotions and there are intentions.
And there is, in between there is intelligence. So, if I am having some emotions right now, that’s okay. But I have to use my intelligence to move from the level of emotions to the level of intentions.
When I do that, that’s when the relationship will be sustained. So, with respect to there being, we can’t trust our emotions entirely. So, when what we call as love, love in double coding, it becomes an enemy when it is driven primarily by emotions and not just by emotions, but we trust those emotions entirely.
But if we go into a relationship with this understanding that love is an intention and we strive to cultivate that. So, I know this person has these limitations, but then these are the good points. And I will consciously say that love is an intention means to consciously look at the good in the person and not focus only on the bad in the person.
That’s when the relationship will be sustained. So, there are two conceptions of relationships of bounded love and unbounded love. One we could say is bounded love can become an obstacle to the unbounded love.
That is one conception. The other is that the bounded love can become an aid to the unbounded love. That depends on what is the nature of the relationship.
So, if I think, if I develop a loving relationship with someone and I think that that person is all that I need. And in that case, what are we doing? We are making that person a substitute for the infinite. And no one can ever be a substitute for the supreme.
When we do that, no matter how good that person will be, they will not be able to live up to our expectations and we will be frustrated. But if we see, so if we consider this relationship alone is going to be enough, then that becomes an obstacle to our progress towards the unbounded love, the love for the infinite. But if we see that, okay, this person is giving me some love and I also want to offer some love in return.
But we see this as a pointer to the infinite love. Pointer to the infinite love means that, okay, I am experiencing some love in this relationship, but this love is ultimately a way in which the infinite is expressing love. And the most intimate acts of love is when a mother breastfeeds her baby from her own body, she is offering milk to the baby.
That’s a very intimate act of love. At the same time, if we think more deeply, does the mother do anything special to produce the milk at that time? No. The same God who sent a child through her womb into the world also arranged for breast in her womb, for milk in her breast.
So what we see, we see the mother’s love for the child and we also see God’s love for the child in the mother’s love for the child. So that is the mood of this well-known prayer. … … … … … … … You are the mother, you are the father, you are the brother, you are the friend, you are wealth, you are knowledge, you O Lord are everything.
What this means is that yes, we do get love from our mother, love from our father, love from various sources and we acknowledge that love, but we don’t see that love as an independent love alone. We see that as a way in which the Supreme, the Lord is expressing His love to us. So when this vision is there, then even the bounded love can become a way to the unbounded love.
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … you want to develop a relationship eventually which will lead to marriage, but then when we are exploring a relationship, we look at the good, but then when some other aspects start coming up, we start holding ourselves back. And then how do we move on at that time? Yeah, this is the burden of freedom. That means that… So, no, that’s a… When… I’ll talk from a different perspective, I’ll come to this perspective.
There is a psychologist, Barry Schwartz, he has written a book called The American Paradox. No, it’s The Paradox of Choice. That’s the book he has written.
It’s Barry Schwartz or somebody else. Anyways, what he says is there are two kinds of people broadly speaking. There are optimisers and there are maximisers.
So, maximisers are the people, suppose they want to buy a new cell phone, they will want the best deal and they will want to look at all the possible cell phones that are there. And finally, what are the best specifications? What is the best value for money? What is the best guarantee? Or what is the best brand? And they will arrive at a settlement. But in this, to get one cell phone, they may spend six months just exploring, searching, searching, searching.
On the other hand, there are optimisers. Optimisers are those who decide, okay, I cannot get the best in everything in life. So, I will optimise.
See, maximise means the best in everything. Optimise means it’s more like a holistic picture. So, okay, these are the important things in my life and, okay, a cell phone is important, but I have many other important things also in my life.
So, they may decide, okay, for the next one week I will explore. I will ask people, I will read and I will take one. Now, in general, researchers have found that maximisers get a much better deal for their, they get much better worth for their money than the optimisers.
But in general, optimisers are happier with their product than the maximisers. Why is that? Three reasons. There can be many, but three broad reasons.
One is that the maximisers, they have invested so much time, energy, thought in getting that product. So, that they have a huge amount of expectation from it. And the reality, when there is a small problem in the product, they are just so frustrated.
So, there is over-expectation, even the best. So, there is, because the amount of effort that is invested, that causes over-expectation. And then, second is that even after that, so there is over-expectation, so there is disappointment, because no product can live up to that hype.
But if somehow the product gets spoiled, then there is too much frustration. And even if that doesn’t happen, even if that doesn’t happen, still there is the nagging doubt, if I had searched more, I might have got a better product. And eventually what happens because of that is, especially with products constantly being developed, always a new product comes up.
So, then that’s why they end up dissatisfied. So, we all, in our life, even with respect to products, we need to be optimisers. What to speak of a relationship with people.
See, some of us may be more emotional, some of us may be more rational. So, emotional people rush too fast into relationships. Rational people don’t enter into relationships.
So, we have to avoid both extremes. So, we may decide that, like, okay, this much time I will be spending, and this much time I will be analysing, I will be exploring, and then I will arrive at a decision. It’s never that we are going to get a perfect decision.
We don’t want to make a very bad decision. But in trying to get the perfect, which will never come. So, we need to always move on in our life.
So, to a large extent, if we make the decision too important or too unimportant, both are problems. But if we use our intelligence, maybe one way we can use our intelligence is to write things down. When the thoughts are in the head, they are always congesting the head, like this, maybe this, maybe this, maybe this.
You get the thoughts out, analyse them, then decide, okay, for a particular amount of time, one month, I will think about this, I will pray about it, I will take a decision. If you have done it that way, whatever decision we take, we will do it with conviction. And in life, we really can’t say that, in some cases we can say, but it’s not that really there are wrong decisions and right decisions.
We could say there are less good decisions and more good decisions. But in a few cases, we can say there is a radically wrong and right decision. But in many cases, life doesn’t come with such black and white.
So, if we have done a decision thoughtfully, then even if that turns out to be not a good decision, we will have grown through the decision making process and because we have understood our reasons why we made the decision, we will make the decision work. If we have not gone through our decision making process thoughtfully, even if we make a good decision, we will still be half-hearted. And even the good decision also requires work.
So, if we don’t put in that work, even the good decision may turn out to be bad. So, it’s best to be an optimiser. Get the thoughts out of the head, write them down, pray about it and set a particular finite time limit and then move on.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. So, how do we know the difference between attachment and love? Say, if my grandfather dies, I am attached to him.
That’s why I feel distressed. But then if someone or another old man dies, I am just quite nonchalant. Everybody has to die one day.
Old people die. So, there is a difference between emotional investment and the purpose for emotional investment. Because we are finite beings, we cannot be emotionally invested in infinite people or even a large number of people.
So, yes, if I hear about somebody dying somewhere, if I get emotionally invested in everything around me, I will just be in a perpetual emotional storm. So, we are not meant to be hard-hearted. If we see somebody unknown also being hurt before us or in trouble, naturally we will help.
But because we are finite beings, we have to focus. So, if I hear a news of some natural calamity in some part of the world, it will be distressing for me. But I can’t keep that thought all the time in my mind.
If someone is next to me, I will act over there. So, all of us have been by our past karma, by our destiny, given a particular Kshetra. Kshetra is our area of influence, our area of connection, our area where we can do some things.
So, I am born in a particular family. That I can see by my past karma. And that is where I can make a difference.
Now, if I can make a difference somewhere else, that’s good. But if I can’t make a difference there, my getting worried about it, my getting distressed about it doesn’t do anything constructive. So, to be concerned about our family members and to feel distressed when something bad happens to them, that’s just natural.
Because that is our Kshetra. That is where we are emotionally invested. That is where we are having some capacity to do something.
So, being emotionally invested in a finite number or in a limited number of people, that is not necessarily selfishness or attachment. It’s more of intelligent investment of our emotions where we get emotional investment where we can make a difference. Going further, if we consider why, why am I emotionally invested in that person? In every relationship, there is a reciprocation.
I do something for that person, that person does something for me. But in some relationships, the contribution is more. In some relationships, the expectation is more.
So, we call a relationship selfish when a person is ready to do very little and demands too much. So, somebody’s grandfather is dying and then they never talk about their grandfather. But when you know that they’ve got an inheritance, then they go there.
Then there is very little contribution and there is a lot of demand, not even expectation, almost like a demand. So, then that is what we call a selfish. So, a relationship involves, can we say, to be attached when that relationship makes us do something wrong or in that relationship that other person is doing something wrong and we don’t stop them because of the fear of losing them.
So, I’ll give an example. In the Mahabharata, there is a character of Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. Dhritarashtra is a father who is attached to his evil son Duryodhana and Duryodhana is vicious.
Duryodhana is like the active villain and Dhritarashtra is more like a passive villain. Now, he has some, definitely has much more understanding of dharma, of morality, of ethics than his son. But his attachment to his son makes him do three things.
First is, he doesn’t stop his son from doing anything wrong. Whatever he wants to do, he lets him do that. Sometimes he protests a little bit, but even when he wants to burn his own cousins, burn them alive, he doesn’t stop them.
Secondly, he himself starts doing wrong. Doesn’t stop him from doing wrong, he himself starts doing wrong. When Draupadi is gambled, Dhritarashtra, he tries to normally wear a mask of neutrality.
But at that time, his mask slips down and he is asking, you know, has Gandhari won? Is Panchali won? So, this is a glee which is unlimited at that time. So, he himself starts doing bad things. Third is that he becomes desensitised to the bad that is happening to others to whom also he is meant to care.
The Pandavas are his nephews and because they don’t have a father, he is like their surrogate father. So, he is meant to take care of them also. But he becomes completely desensitised to them.
So much so that not only does he not stop them from being hurt, but he himself becomes a part of the party that is hurting them. So, when does that emotional investment become an attachment? It’s when that person is doing bad, we don’t stop. That person makes us do bad and that person makes us desensitised while in our relationship with others where also we are meant to do the right thing.
So, that’s when we can say that it is attachment and it is destructive. Does that answer your question? You had something else in mind? Are those people more detached than these people? I mean maybe in both cases we equally love the person, but the detachment levels are different. I would say there are many different things in this.
First is one’s own nature. So, some people are more emotional, some people are more rational. So, those people who are more emotional, naturally they will get more emotionally affected.
Some people are rational, they will just be able to think things through. It’s not that they are happy about it happening, but they accept it and move on. So, those people who are rational, they experience less distress in relationships, but then they also experience less joy.
Because basically the rational side is so much that they are not so emotionally sensitised. So, either way they don’t experience much emotions. Those who are more emotional, they experience both too much.
That’s first thing, one’s own nature is there. Second is that a lot depends on whether that particular relationship is in isolation or it is in a vortex of relationships. That means if that relationship is a defining relationship of a person and if that breaks down, then it’s devastating.
Maybe that person has other relationships also and then this relationship somehow ends. The other relationships shelter. One of the main reasons why the marital relationship nowadays is so unsteady, there are so many marriages breaking apart, it’s many reasons, it’s complex, but one main reason is that because now the families are mostly nuclear.
So, whereas earlier different expectations of love are satisfied from different people. I have uncle, I have a grandfather, I have a cousin, I have this and all these different expectations are satisfied to some extent by different people. But now I have only one main relationship.
So, all that was satisfied through different relationships in the past now gets concentrated on this one. And then because there’s so much investment, there is so much disappointment if it doesn’t work out. So, in general for us, any disturbance in our defining relationship is devastating.
So, ultimately bhakti is not just about chanting some mantras or doing some puja. Bhakti is about making our relationship with the Supreme, with Krishna as our defining relationship. I understand first and foremost that I am a loving servant of Krishna, I am a part of Krishna and as his sevak, I am the wife of someone, I am the daughter of someone, I am the sister of someone, I am the mother of someone, all these relationships are as a service to him.
So, if our primary sense of self-identity and self-security comes from that relationship with Krishna and that relationship will never be destroyed, then even if there are disruptions in other relationships, we will not be so much affected. Of course, we will be affected, but not shattered, not devastated. So, in general, the extent which a person is shaken in a particular relationship is shaped by how much shelter they were getting in that relationship.
So, if they had no shelter other than that, then that feels like almost end of life. What am I to do in my life? So, that’s why we can’t, it’s not that we should not be invested in relationships. We want to be committed.
The current age that we live in is quite averse to commitment. And without commitment, there cannot be any sustainable relationship. We want to be committed.
But at the same time, we don’t want to be fixated. We don’t want that relationship to be our primary defining relationship. That’s why that vertical relationship with Krishna is extremely important.
And that will give us the stability to weather whatever ups and downs come in the horizontal relationships that we may have. Does that answer your question? Thank you. Thank you for your thoughtful participation and very incisive questions.
I hope my answers were not too incisive. Thank you very much.