4 principles to get past our past – PAST – Positivity, Association, Spirituality and Time
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna. I'm grateful to be here amongst all of you today and I'll speak on the topic of how to get past our past. How to get past our past.
Just about a month ago I was in the Silicon Valley so I spoke at Intel and Google and Microsoft. So I was speaking largely about the mind and one common question that came up from many people after the talks either one-to-one or in public was that many people live with pent up, choked feelings of resentment about the past. Something went wrong in their life, somebody treated them unfairly, somebody, something terrible happened in their life and that just keeps going on and on and on and on and in a sense our past can become like a trap.
It's either we could, if you want to use a little ethereal example, the past comes like a ghost which keeps haunting us again and again. Why did this happen? The haunting can be broadly in two ways. One is through memories and the other is through desires.
Memories means something bad has happened to us and we just keep, that keeps replaying in our mind or it could be nowadays lots of people are subject to addictions. So they may decide I want to give up this addiction but the desire keeps coming again and again and again. The British author Oscar Wilde, he said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.
I have done it over a hundred times. So another metaphor we could use for the past is our past is like a lasso or a shackle. Somebody is running away and somebody throws a lasso and catches them by the rope.
So like that we are sometimes pulled short and pulled down by our past. So how do we deal with this? So I'll talk about this in terms of an acronym, that P A S T. Four points. So positivity, association, spirituality and time.
When we go through life, everyone has bad things happen to them. The biggest cause of unhappiness, the reason why most people are unhappy is because they believe everyone else is happy. We all think, oh we see on the TV, we see in the media, oh everybody seems to be smiling, everybody seems to be laughing and then we think I'm all alone facing so many problems in my life.
So actually this positivity means not that we want to think everybody is suffering so I will also suffer. But the idea is the Bhagavad Gita gives a very interesting understanding of this. It explains that this world is Dukhalaya.
It's a place of misery. Now what does it mean it's a place of misery? It certainly doesn't mean that the world is a place of misery so be miserable. That is not the point of the Gita.
If we see Arjuna was in distress at the start of the Gita. He was so confused, so overwhelmed that he was in tears. अशुरु पूर्णा कु लेक्षनम् He's brimming, his eyes were with tears and he's a battle-hardened warrior who would not show any emotions even in great provocation, what to speak of tears in public.
So he must have been overwhelmed. He was in such distress and by hearing the Gita's message, what happened? He regained his composure. He became calm.
He became composed. So the Gita did lead Arjuna from distress to composure. So when the Gita tells us that this world is a place of distress, it is Dukhalaya.
What does it mean? It means that distress is a feature of the world. Distress is not a purpose of the world. So the world is like a hospital.
In a hospital, pain is inevitable. But the hospital is not designed to cause pain. However, if in a hospital, if somebody starts expecting, I want to have a 10-course feast, they are going to be frustrated.
In a hospital, although there is pain, a patient can be positive. But positivity requires understanding the purpose of the hospital and understanding the purpose why they are in the hospital. So similarly, when the Bhagavad Gita tells us that this world is a place of distress, that means that we understand.
Yes, I have had bad things happen in my life and there are so many other people in the world. Everybody has had bad things happen in their life. The specifics may vary.
Positivity means that we look not at the bad that has happened, but look at the good that is available for us. The Bhagavad Gita explains that we are spiritual beings. To explain this point, I'll talk about a three-level model of the self.
The body, mind and the soul. The Bhagavad Gita says we are not just our physical bodies. Our existence is three-dimensional, we could say.
Body, mind and soul. This is like a computer system in which there is the hardware, the software and the user. So the software is the mind, the soul is the user and the hardware is the body.
So bad things do happen in this world, but the bad things become worse when the mind keeps replaying them. So the mind is the software which is the interface between the user and the hardware, the computer, physical. So similarly for us, the mind is the interplay between the body, the soul and the body.
And when bad things happen in our life, they will happen, they will stay for some time and they will end. However, if we keep letting that replay, we could say the mind is like a screen on which images from the outer world come and also images from our memory come up. And when the past starts replaying, the negative, dark part of the past starts replaying, that's when we become frustrated, we become disheartened, we become depressed.
So positivity means here to understand that we are not alone in our suffering. There is a way to move forwards. To be positive means to understand that actually there is distress, but there is a way out of the distress.
And if we are resenting why the distress is there, that's like resenting why pain is there, hospital pain will be there. Resentment of reality often hurts much more than reality. Resentment of reality means that suppose we wanted to go for outing and the night before that we get flu and then we have to lie on bed feeling weak.
Now actually lying on bed with flu is not a very painful thing. But the mind makes it painful. And maybe if our friends have gone for the outing and they are sending photos of the beautiful places they are visiting and that anger is all the more.
So actually the reality may not be that painful. But the resentment of the reality that makes it much more painful. And that resentment happens when I as a soul am here, my mind is here, the body is here, the physical world is here.
So at a physical level in a hospital, in my home bed or wherever I am lying down, it's not very painful. But in the mind, if what is playing on, why did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did this happen? That is what hurts us the most. So positivity means that we recognize that bad things always happen.
But let me focus on the good. This may seem to be like a trite message, but let's try to understand it from this perspective of the soul, the mind and the body. That the reality is often not as bad as our resentment of the reality makes us.
As long as we are resenting something, why did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did this happen? We just keep hurting ourselves more and more. So we all have certain expectations of how things should be. And expectations are good in the sense that they help us to shape things.
If I expect the room should be clean, then I'll work to clean the room. But sometimes things turn out to be entirely different from our expectations. Now suppose somebody had learned rowing and they wanted to demonstrate how nicely they row.
They planned out in their mind, I'll move my arms elegantly and people will flash photos and they'll see how nicely I'm rowing. And as they get into the boat and they're about to row, at that time a monster wave hits the boat. And one moment, earlier they were in the boat with the oars and the next moment there is no boat and there are no oars.
And now if they keep moving their hands as if they are rowing, all that will happen is they will drown. They will drown. Now in their mind there is an image, oh I was going to do like this, I was going to do like this, I was going to do like this.
But the reality has changed. So we are here, our expectations are here and the reality is here. So when we are resenting reality, what is happening is we are actually not dealing with the reality at all.
We are only resenting why is there this gap between expectation and reality. And the greater the gap between expectation and reality, the greater is the frustration. So positivity means we understand sometimes in life expectations will get frustrated.
Let us focus on the reality. As long as we are obsessing over the distance between the expectation and the reality, we make ourselves miserable. Now the reality may also be distressing.
But the reality's distress is multiplied by the gap between how we think our life should have been and how things are. So one point in getting past the past is that focus on things as they are, not as we think they should have been. So positivity means this happens to everyone, but things are not as bad as I think they are.
Let us deal with reality as it is. And this becomes easier when we understand through this metaphor that there is the soul, there is the mind which is the inner screen and there is the outer scene. So how much am I focusing, my expectations are situated in my inner screen, the mind.
And the reality is here. So when, now this takes me to the next point, A is Association. Association means that we are often shaped by the kind of people we live with.
And our desires, our thoughts, our ambitions, basically what appears on our inner screen and what stays there. Our desires are not just linear, they are triangular. What do I mean by triangular desires? That sometimes we see something attractive, we see a nice food item, I want to eat it.
So we see the object and we get the desire. That is a linear desire. But sometimes we might see some unfamiliar object or some food item which we have never heard about.
Several years ago, first time when I had gone to Australia, the devotees there offered me a baklava. Now I had never heard of a baklava till then. And if you think about it, the name baklava is not very pleasant sounding.
So they asked, would you like to have a baklava? I said, maybe later. And then I had gone with another friend and then this friend, he took baklava. And he was eating it and he was relishing it.
And I observed him, I saw him, give me one also. So what happened, just hearing about or seeing the baklava did not create the desire. Just seeing somebody else eating and relishing it, that created the desire.
So our desires are not just linear, they are also triangular. Not just the object, but also seeing somebody connecting with that object, relishing that thing. That is what creates, kindles, strengthens our desires.
So there are some people who habitually live in the past. Oh, you know, if only this had been like this, my life would have been so nice. Oh, the past was so good.
Oh, this was like this. Now, if we live with people who live in the past, we will also live in the past. We will not be able to move forward in our lives.
So, with respect to our mind, we can't directly change what is there in the mind. But we can change the stimuli from which things get impressed on the mind. So this is what Srila Prabhupada, when he came to America about 50 years ago, this is what he did.
He offered people his own association and he was filled with love for Krishna. And at that time, many of the early devotees who came to the Krishna Consciousness Movement, they were into drugs. They initially thought of drugs as a way to spiritual growth.
In fact, LSD had a pseudo full form. They called it LSD as League of Spiritual Discovery. So anybody who takes LSD joins that league.
That was their idea. But later on, many of them became hooked to it. So when Prabhupada came, it was his association.
Devotees saw that Prabhupada was so happy just chanting Krishna's name, serving Krishna, worshipping Krishna. And that created spiritual desires within them. So changing our internal, changing the way our mind works, what flashes back in our mind, that is not that easy.
But changing our association is relatively easier. So we can look in our association, who is the source of positivity and who is the source of negativity. Now negativity is not always bad.
Sometimes negativity can lead to caution. We don't want to just be unrealistically positive. But at the same time, too much negativity can lead to pessimism, discouragement and overall passivity.
So those who help us to move forward in our life, those are the people who we need to associate. And the way people around us are, the mind inside us will become like that sooner or later. And generally for us, when we associate with someone, for example, we come for a spiritual program like this.
Association is not just physical proximity. The essence of association is the transfer of desires. When Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjun, Arjun got the association of Krishna there.
And at the end of hearing the Bhagavad Gita, what was Arjun's response? Did Arjun say? Nice lecture, Krishna. Krishna did not, Arjun did not say that. What did Arjun say? Yes, thank you.
I will do your will. That means that Krishna's desire became transferred to Arjun. So association is not just a matter of a ritual.
Association is about connecting with others in a way that we get their desires. So for all of us, whatever the past may have been in our lives, but if we can get positive spiritual desires by spiritual association, then the past, it doesn't matter. If you look at Srila Prabhupada also in his own life, he faced so many setbacks before he started the Krishna Consciousness Movement.
He tried to start a business, but twice he tried, it just didn't work out. Although he spent years and years, decades of his life in it. He tried to run a magazine, but nobody was interested in that.
At that time, he tried to publish books, he tried to write a book. And then someone just sold the manuscript off as garbage. He tried to start an organization and the place which was going to be his headquarters, a group of people evicted him from that place.
He tried to come to America alone with no money. And on that way, the only resource he had, materially speaking, was his body. And that collapsed into two devastating heart attacks.
Somehow he came to America and he started doing some programs here, but the place where he was staying, the janitor over there stole his typewriter and his dictaphone. And finally he went to another place and he was staying there with another young person who it seemed might become his first western follower. And that person went mad with drugs and came to attach to Prabhupada.
So one after another after another, he faced so many reversals. When we start off with life, we all have big ambitions. Say when somebody is a young school going student or college going student, they say, what do you want to do? I want to become the wealthiest person in the world.
I want to become the president of America. I want to become this, I want to become that. Many times we start off with big ambitions, but as life's reversals keep beating us, beating us, by the time somebody graduates, if I get a job, it will be good.
So reversals can beat us down so much that we may just become discouraged. But with the spiritual of Prabhupada, if we look at the past from a material perspective for him, he had so much negativity. But his association was with Krishna.
His association was his spiritual master. And he kept the instruction, the desire that he got from them with him always. Share Krishna's message with the world.
And that became an enduring source of purpose for him. So positivity, association. S is spirituality.
Now what do I mean by spirituality? The Bhagavad Gita explains that, as I talked about the three level reality, body, mind and soul. So at the level of spiritual reality, there is a soul and there is a supreme soul. So when we go through life, we are working at the physical level.
At the physical level, we are working. And at the same time, we are souls who are spiritual in our essence. And to the extent we realize our spirituality, to that extent, we become less affected by the things that happen to us at the material level.
Now, how does this work out? We experience life, not just based on the things that happen in our life. We experience life based on where our consciousness is invested. Last year, I come from India.
India is a cricket mad country. So last year, I think, or was it this year, India and Pakistan had a cricket match. The champions trophy, World Cup finals.
India was expected to win and India lost very badly. So after that, in Mumbai, one boy came and talked with me. He said, last three days, I've not been able to sleep.
So I just can't digest how India lost so badly. So I told him, why are you not able to sleep? Probably the cricketers went to sleep. This is you are in India.
That match happened probably in England. So why is it that you are not able to sleep? So actually what is happening is, we don't experience emotions based on where we are. We experience emotions based on where our consciousness is.
If the consciousness is caught in the cricket match, thousands of miles away, we'll experience emotions in relationship with that. So our spirituality gives us a safe shelter for our consciousness. When we talk about becoming Krishna conscious, what does it mean practically? It means just as we build a home for our body, where we can rest physically.
Similarly, Krishna is meant to be the home for our consciousness. All of us think that our needs are, we need food, we need clothing, we need shelter. Yes, we need all these things.
But often unspoken need, but a very strong need is a peaceful, satisfying shelter for our consciousness. A satisfying object of thought. We may be home comfortably, but if our thoughts are wandering here, there and everywhere, we will be miserable.
We may be home comfortably, but we will be comfortably miserable. So it's a very vital need that we need a satisfying object of thought. And in fact, if we consider today entertainment, entertainers are probably the highest paid professionals in the world today.
In India, again, we have this Indian Premier League. So the amount of money that many of these cricketers earn in 50 days is more than what most professionals earn in 50 years. The amount of money that is spent on this Indian Premier League in the 50 days, it's enough to feed all the starving people of India for one full year.
One social critic said that if you are a surgeon who can fix a broken leg, you don't even earn one tenth of if you can kick a ball with your leg. So now the point I'm driving through this is that why is it that entertainment is so highly valued? Why are people ready to pay so much for entertainment? Entertainment has always been a part of human history. But the obsession with entertainment that is there today, that is because entertainment is a way by which people are trying to find some satisfying object of thought.
The mind is so agitated. This is wrong. That is wrong.
That is wrong. Somehow forget everything and watch something entertaining. So we seek entertainment so desperately because a satisfying object of thought is a vital need.
However, entertainment satisfies only temporarily. For our consciousness, for our thoughts, entertainment is like a painkiller. For the short while when we are entertained, we feel good.
What we need is not entertainment as much as enlightenment. Enlightenment means to understand who is the ultimate object. What is it that you should think about? So Krishna is the all attractive, all powerful, supreme person.
To the extent we learn to fix our consciousness on Krishna, to that extent we will start finding our mind becoming calm, our thoughts coming to a rest. bhajahure mana shrinandanandana abhaya charanaravindare The mind will become peaceful. And this is something which anybody can experience.
If they come to a temple, they pray, they participate in the kirtan, they sit and try to meditate on Krishna, just try to remember Krishna, the mind will start becoming peaceful. So we at present do not perceive spiritual reality directly. But we can perceive the effect of spiritual reality.
The effect of spiritual reality is that the more we spiritualize our consciousness, we calm down. So the more we make it a habit of training ourselves to focus on Krishna, the more we will find that our mind will calm down. Whatever negative ideas might be coming from the past, this desire is coming, this memory is coming, that is coming.
Just let me focus on Krishna. So suppose a child, a small baby is asleep. And now when a baby is newborn, the baby doesn't even understand that, okay, this is my mother and my mother is offering me her breast milk.
The baby is crying. And then something is put in the baby's mouth and the baby starts sucking it. Something nice is coming out of it.
So as the baby starts growing, she starts becoming aware. Oh, this is my mother. This is someone.
She loves me. She cares for me. So like that right now, all of us are spiritually asleep.
So although Krishna is with us, we don't perceive his presence. So suppose the baby is asleep and suddenly it becomes freezing cold at night. At that time, the mother sees baby is trembling and the mother puts a comforter on the baby.
Now the baby's eyes are not opened. The baby doesn't know, the baby has not seen the mother. But suddenly, whereas she was feeling like shivering, now she starts feeling comfortable, cozy, warm.
And at a subconscious level, she understands. Oh, this is my mother. My mother must have put a blanket on me.
So she in the sleep can't see her mother. But she can feel the result of the mother's presence, the mother's actions. So similarly, we may not be able to perceive Krishna right now.
But if we practice bhakti, If we practice bhakti, we will experience Krishna. And that experience is pacifying. Experience is sublimating.
And thus, spirituality doesn't just mean some way sitting in some posture or doing some breathing exercises. The essence of spirituality is fixing the mind on Krishna. So when we understand this, Krishna is here, Krishna loves me and Krishna will take care of things.
No matter how many things have gone wrong in our life, we will become calm. So the way to go beyond the past is to go beyond time itself. Krishna exists in a timeless domain.
And we focus on Krishna, we experience the elevation of consciousness. And last I'll talk about is T. T is time. What does time mean over here? That our body and our mind are, we could say, creatures of habit.
So whatever we have done in the past, they'll keep replaying for some time. But even if bad things have happened physically, bad desires or bad memories are imprinted mentally, if we just keep moving forward positively in our life, with time, things will subside. So one of my friends, he was in Florida and he told me, I had given this example earlier, but he told me he had experience of this.
So suppose a leech bites us. Now some leeches are so strong that if we try to pull out the leech, the leech will pull out our whole skin. A little ghastly.
But if we just let the leech do its work, what do you mean do its work? It's sucking our blood, how can I let it suck my blood? No, the leech's capacity to suck blood is not unlimited. It is finite. It has its tubules.
Now if you just let it suck blood, once its tubules get full, it will itself let go. And then it will itself fall off or you can just flip it and it will fall off. So like that, sometimes in our life, some bad things happen, some bad memories come up and they are like leeches from the past.
The more we try to fight them, the worse they become. The more they hurt us. But just accept this is the way it is, this is the way it will stay for some time and we move on with life.
So time means that nothing in the world lasts forever. If we just accept this is the way it is right now and let me move forward. So time is ultimately not just a unit in physics.
Time, the Bhagavad Gita explains, is Krishna himself acting. And no matter how many bad things have happened in our life in the past, Krishna can bring good even out of the bad. We look at the present and we plan the future.
But Krishna looks at the future and plans the present. So from the future's perspective, we may think, why is this happening like this? But just let time pass. Now whatever we just persevere in doing the right thing, we find that Krishna has a plan, that something good works out even out of the bad.
So rather than judging why has this happened in the past, why am I like this? Just move on in life doing what we can. And we will see that Krishna in his own way will heal us and strengthen us through the passage of time. I'll conclude with one story and then we can have some questions.
So when some of you may notice when I came in, I use crutches. So when I was one, I was in India in a remote village, remote part of the country. And my parents, they knew there was a big risk of polio over there.
So they took me to a doctor and they give me polio vaccine. But somehow the doctor had messed up the polio vaccine dose and not kept it in the fridge properly. And the vaccine ended up giving me the polio.
Instead of preventing the polio, the vaccine gave me the polio. So then now I use crutches and for most people who see me, the crutches is the first thing they notice. But for me, the crutches are just like glasses.
Just a part of me, I need them. I can't function without them, but it's no big deal. So then and I talk with, I speak sometimes at forums where people have special needs.
Somebody is, somebody has physical limitations. So one thing I notice is that many people are still fighting battles that they've already lost. That if somebody has lost a limb, somebody has lost an eye, somebody has lost something.
Well, that's a battle that is lost already. If we keep fighting a battle that is lost, it's completely pointless. So but what happens in fighting battle that we have already lost? We keep losing battles that we could have won now, that we could have fought and won now.
So then when I look back at my life, I don't really remember being resentful of my physical inability. So then I look back and what I notice is that my parents were very accepting. They never, they tried very much to treat me and heal my leg, but it didn't work out.
But they never made it seem to me as if I was deficient in any way. They would often tell me that what you lack in physical ability, God has blessed you in intellectual ability. And then so I found that, OK, this is what it is.
I just moved on with life. And then as I was introduced to Krishna Bhakti, then I understood that actually I'm not the body. I am the soul.
So the body is just a tool that we have. And sometimes the tool functions well, sometimes the tool doesn't function well. So basically, now when I look back at my life, I find that what was at that time, I don't even remember it.
I was just walking one day and I fell down and I never could walk after that normally. So for my parents, it was troubling. For me, probably also it was troubling.
I don't remember it now. But as time passes, we realize that that which seems to be catastrophic at one moment, with time we realize it's not that bad. Sometimes something good may come out of it.
Sometimes something we may or may not realize what good has come out of it also. But our mind tends to catastrophize the bad things. If we just let time pass, something which seemed to be like life ending for us.
OK, sometimes if you look back at something which you had disturbed about three years ago, five years ago, you may laugh at yourself. Why was I so worked up about that? It's come and it's gone now. So for us, the more we recognize this healing power of time, that Krishna can act through time and ultimately it is the world has a lot of power, the world can hurt us in many ways.
But greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal. Greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal. So if we focus on that healing power of Krishna, we'll find that whatever wounds we may be carrying from our past, Krishna will heal us and Krishna will enable us to move forwards in our life.
I'll summarize what I spoke. I spoke on this theme of how to get past our past. Many people live resentful of their lives, bad things that have happened and as they can't function.
So the past is like a ghost haunting us or it's like a shackle or a lasso trapping us from the past. So how do we deal with it? I talked about four points. P was, does anyone remember? Positivity.
Positivity means that instead of having an unrealistic expectation, that I alone am suffering and everybody else is happy. We understand this world is like a hospital. Everybody is wounded in different ways.
Everybody is hurting and the purpose of this world is not to hurt us. It is like a hospital. It is to heal us.
So focus on the healing aspect. Focus not on the fact that we are hurt. Focus on the fact that there is a process to heal us.
And in that I talked about how the biggest source of unhappiness is the belief that everyone else has happiness. So our expectations of reality hurt our expectations. Often they limit our ability to deal with reality because if reality turns out to be different from our expectations, like we wanted to row and there is no boat and no oars and if we are still rowing we will simply drown.
So if we just have a positive attitude, let me focus on the reality, not my frustration with how reality should have been. Then we will find that reality is not that bad and A was association. So our desires are not just linear, they are triangular.
So if we may hear, I should think positive. But that is not enough. If we associate with someone who is positive, then we will ourselves become filled with positivity.
So I talked about Prabhupada, so much negativity in his life. But he is positive because he was focused on his service to Krishna. He was associating with Krishna and with his spiritual master.
And we can look at our life and see who are the sources of positivity and who are the sources of negativity. And focus on those who encourage us to move forward. S was spirituality.
Talked about how people are ready to spend millions of dollars for entertainment. Because everybody looks for a satisfying object of thought. But for that entertainment is simply like a painkiller.
Enlightenment is the real medicine. Enlightenment means to understand that Krishna, who is our eternal lord, is all-powerful, all-loving. And just fixing our mind on him gives us a satisfying object of thought.
And that itself brings calmness, that itself brings clarity. So it raises us above our situations. And lastly T was time.
It means, yes, we all are wounded from the past. But no wound lasts forever. Or at least the wounds hurting capacity may not last forever.
Some wounds are like leeches. So if we try to pull them out, then they will hurt us more. Just let them do their work, they will do it and they will go away.
So instead of resenting whatever bad things have happened in our life, we accept it. The bad effects will be present for some time, but we move on. If we keep fighting battles that we have already lost, then we can't fight the battles that we can still fight now.
So we don't see time as a physical unit. We see time as a manifestation of Krishna. And greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal.
So if we turn towards Krishna, we all can get past the negativities of our past. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Thank you. Are there any questions or comments? So what questions do you have? Yes, please. How do you find dealing with the secular human, the Cartesian-Euclidean paradigm? How do you preach to them? I'll repeat it.
So how do we share Krishna Bhakti with people who are secular humanists, who focus on the idea that there is nothing beyond matter? Yes. Thank you. This is the paradox of the materialistic view of life.
That at one level, people think that to be materialistic is to be free, to enjoy all of life's pleasures the way we want them to. No religion, no restriction, do whatever you want. But actually the materialistic world view is the most restrictive world view, philosophical.
Because materialism, literal materialism, if it is taken to its logical conclusion, it means we have no free will. In fact, there is no we at all. Because the idea of there is a conscious being, there is consciousness itself is an illusion.
So Einstein himself was very ambiguous about the consequences of the materialistic world view. He said that if reductive materialism were true, then that would mean the Nazis who killed millions of Jews, they can't be blamed. Because that's the way their biology programmed them.
So if there is no free will at all, then all systems of justice, all systems of accountability, everything collapses. So materialism is itself logically inconsistent. Because to believe materialism, to accept materialism, to propagate materialism, there has to be a conscious observer, a conscious perceiver who propagates materialism.
But within materialism, there is Arthur Schopenhauer, he said, materialism is the philosophy of the philosopher who has forgotten himself. Means the philosophy leaves out oneself out of the philosophy. One simple way to challenge materialism would be to just argue this that, okay, do you accept that you exist? Obviously, very few people will say, I don't exist.
Say, yeah, I exist. Well, then who is this I that exists? Oh, it's just some function of the brain. Okay, you say it's a function of the brain, but who is saying that it is a function of the brain? It's a function of the brain, but who is it that is saying that it is a function of the brain? If you just go backward, backward, backward, every question that we ask, it's an illusion, consciousness is an illusion.
Okay, it's an illusion, but who is perceiving that illusion? If somebody says, oh, that is not water, that is a mirage, it's an illusion. Fine, it's an illusion, but who is perceiving that illusion? Illusion needs some person who goes into illusion. So the idea of a conscious observer is vital for any philosophy.
And materialism will lead to logical incoherence because materialism does not allow any room for emotions. It does not allow any room for consciousness. It does not allow any room for free will.
And it makes all of existence basically meaningless. It makes all of us into automatons who are simply programmed beings. And even materialists don't truly live the materialistic ideology.
Nobody can live that ideology. Even if, say, a hard core materialist, they are arguing materialism alone is true. Why are they arguing like that? Well, if I am programmed to be a spiritualist and you are programmed to be a materialist, why are you arguing at all? Isn't it? So materialistic people write books about how materialism is true, but the purpose of writing this book is to make other people into materialists.
And if somebody can change from being a spiritualist to be a materialist, that means they have free will. And if they have free will, that means materialism is not true. So if materialism is true, if somebody accepts materialism to be true, then materialism is not true.
It's materialism is inherently a self-contradictory doctrine. It's a statement like somebody says, I don't know a single word of English. You already spoke 8 words.
So materialism is not at all logically coherent. Yes, please. What do we mean by enlightenment? The Bhagavad Gita explains that Enlightenment simply means that we know what is the supreme object on which we focus our consciousness.
There is an enlightened state in which somebody is in. But what is that state? That state is where the thoughts are directed towards an enlightened object, an enlightening object. So the Bhagavad Gita explains that the absolute truth, whichever name different traditions know that absolute truth by, that absolute truth is all attractive, all loving.
And we all long for eternal life. We all long for eternal love. That's why most of the movies which are about romance end with happily ever after.
So where is this longing meant to be fulfilled? That longing ultimately doesn't come from matter. It's another way to refute materialism, is that nothing around us lasts forever. And yet all of us have an innate longing to live forever.
Where does this longing come from? This longing is as out of place as a remote African child suddenly telling his mother, Mom, I want a pizza. He's never heard of a pizza. Where did you get the desire for pizza from? So our longing for love, our longing for lasting love and lasting life, that points to our spirituality, that points to an eternal spiritual object of love.
So enlightenment means understanding where our love is to be directed and then to focus our consciousness accordingly. So to become Krishna conscious is the highest state of enlightenment. Thank you.
So if you have any questions, we can talk later. Thank you. Thank you.