Understanding human nature 1 – Two levels of innateness

[Seminar at College of Vedic Studies, Bhaktivedanta Manor, London, UK ]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and the second one is clock. Hare Krishna. So, we all have probably experienced some people who are evil.
Evil means that some people like to cause suffering for the purpose of causing suffering. So, there is in the world purposeful suffering and purposeless suffering. Say, if a doctor gives an injection to a child, it’s a pain, but it is purposeful.
It serves some purpose. But we have the example of the hunter Brugari. As a hunter, he was going to kill animals.
But what was he doing? Half killing them. So, prolonging the pain. So, to cause suffering for the purpose of causing suffering.
For no other purpose beyond that. That is evil. And we ourselves might have been targeted by someone like that and it can be very alarming when we meet someone like that.
Especially if we become the target of someone like that. What did I do to trouble you? But even if that doesn’t happen, we probably have heard there can be terrorists, there can be sociopaths, there can be psychopaths. So, sometimes we may start thinking that are people innately bad? What do you think? Are people innately bad? No.
Are people innately good? Yes. Are some people innately bad? Yes. Our heart would like to say no.
Nobody is innately bad. But sometimes we do experience some people just keep doing terrible things and there is not even any remorse in them. Sometimes there is a delight in doing terrible things.
And then we may start thinking is it that some people are made differently from other people? And then we would like to, we all like to believe that people are basically good. But when we meet people who are not so good, let’s put it mildly again, then we start questioning. What’s going on? So, broadly we can have two approaches.
Say a child, and the child is new born, because the child is naive. The child does not have any capacity to doubt. And the mother offers a breast milk.
The child just suckles it and drinks. And the child starts doubting. Who is this person? What has she given me? The child couldn’t survive.
So, there is childishness and there is childlikeness. So, childish is basically naive, frivolous. So, if we have a naive approach towards people, the children, they might just naively trust anyone.
If a kidnapper comes along and offers some sweets, offers some toys, and the child might just go away with them. And if somebody is naive, they can be exploited. They can be ruined by someone who is wicked, who is exploitative.
So, in dealing with people, being naive is one extreme. And sometimes when we have bad experiences with people, from naive, we might go to the other extreme of cynicism. Naivety, naive is everybody is good.
Cynicism is nobody is good. In America, I was going for a program and I saw on the bumper of a car ahead of me, the more I get to know people, the more I love my dog. So, what has happened here, people might just feel people are terrible.
So, cynicism is the other extreme, where we just see everyone negatively, everyone suspiciously. But cynicism, we might say, keep me safe. I won’t be betrayed by anyone.
I won’t be let down by anyone. But then, cynicism will also keep us safe, but safely lonely. We want relationships.
So, in between these two extremes, naivety and cynicism, between these two is the courage to trust. So, we all need to trust. But that trust is again not uninformed.
It is not cowardly. It is not naive. It is an intelligent act of courage.
Trusting anyone requires courage. Because, of course, it doesn’t require courage if we have no experience of the real world. But especially, if we are to interact on a close basis with someone, we require the courage to trust.
So, now, how do we not be naive, at the same time not be cynical? For that, we need to understand how people work. So, this applies in every area of life. It applies in, say, in professions.
We need some level of trust. If we are professionally dealing with someone, there is no trust. There cannot be any relationship.
An online selling started, say, eBay or something like that. If there had been no basic denominator of trust, the seller is one part of the world, the purchaser is one part of the world, the seller can send a product which is flawed and the buyer can send a check which is going to bounce. And if that had happened, the whole e-commerce would have collapsed.
But there is a basic level of trust. So, although in business, in profession, we have laws and we have insurances and everything, but still without trust, we cannot function. And this applies all the more so in our personal relationships.
And similarly, if you want to practice spiritual life, those who are spiritual friends, spiritual guides, trust is required over there. And the trust requires some courage. So, that courage, how do we develop that? For that, we need to understand human nature.
And for this, broadly speaking, we could say there are two theories of human nature. Now, whenever we talk about human nature, it’s a big subject and theories are also generalizations. But there is one theory which is, you could say the leftist theory.
The left is the broadly the communist kind of narrative. The left narrative is that people are innately good. It is their situations that make them bad.
So, that’s why communism focus a lot on what they call as social engineering. Nowadays, social justice is a big thing in today’s world. The idea is, oh, if somebody is behaving badly, that’s because the social situations are bad.
Just see how poor they are. Just see how much exploited they are. What do you expect people to do if they are so much poor and exploited? They will react.
So, some people, for example, say some people become extremists, some people become terrorists. They try to ascribe the cause of this terrorism. Just see how they were exploited, how they were disrespected, how they were deprived.
And it’s an understandable reaction. So, this is the idea that people are basically good and it is the situation that makes them bad. So, if… I’m not sure that’s better, bro.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Okay. So, this is one theory.
People are innately good, but situations make them bad. And if we adjust the situations, we do social engineering, we bring about social justice, and people’s innate goodness will start manifesting. Now, to some extent, it is true that bad situations can make people do terrible things.
But sometimes we can’t ascribe everything to situations. When there was this, recently, there was an attack of terrorist Islamic extremists in Sri Lanka. So, normally the explanation is given, these people are so poor, these people are so deprived, disrespected, that they cannot do it.
But most of the people who orchestrated that terrorist attack, they were all well-educated, from wealthy families. In fact, most of them had degrees from UK and Europe. And if you see many of the leaders of terrorists, they are very well-educated people.
So, it’s not just, they are not necessarily from deprived situations. Some of them may be, but not all of them. So, we all can hear, know, we all probably know, have heard inspiring stories of some people who might have been born in very terrible situations, but they rise above those situations.
And they have grown up to be responsible, successful people. So, it’s not that, with our evidence we can say that, with our observation, our knowledge, that situations alone don’t determine people. So, sometimes bad situations can also lead to people becoming good.
And sometimes good situations can also lead to people becoming bad. And in fact, it is complex, because generally if you consider, if immigrants come to the Western world, say Indians, Chinese, this has been done in America, maybe it’s applying broadly in the UK also that, if somebody A, as an immigrant comes to the West, then they or their children, they are way above, say, Asian children, outperform their American peers, much, much, by many degrees basically. And that’s why the Ivy League University in America, if they were purely based on merit, they would be filled with Asians.
That’s why they have something called a diversity quota. That’s why, say, a very meritorious Asian student might not get in, but a much less meritorious Latino might get in. It’s not a discrimination, but they call it diversity and inclusion.
The point I’m making is, it seems that the immigrants, when they come, they outperform their American peers. But as they move on, within three generations, this difference disappears. If for three generations a particular family has lived, then those Asian kids, they’re just like the Americans.
So this indicates that a certain amount of deprivation is conducive for motivation. That when somebody has come from a different country, they have left everything and they have come, we have to make it. So that motivation is high.
So that, now what amount of deprivation is optimal for motivation? That’s something open to question. But it’s not always that a deprived social situation will lead to a poor achievement. And it doesn’t seem to that if somebody’s abandoned provisions, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will work very powerfully.
So the one theory I talked about is people are socially determined. That doesn’t seem to be true. It’s not that it’s untrue, but it’s not the complete truth.
The other theory could be that people are innately bad. Now nobody would directly say that people are innately bad. But the idea is, say for example in Christianity, we all are said to have come from the one Adam who committed the original sin.
And because of that, sin is passed down like a genetic defect among people. And so their attitude is that without the intercessionary, intercessionary means coming in between, intercessionary grace of Jesus, we are all innately sinful. And we are all hell bound.
So, and there’s so much evil in the world. We cannot deny that there are people who are evil and they do terrible things. In the 20th century itself, millions and millions of people were killed in wars and genocides.
So, their idea is that people are innately evil and unless they are spiritually saved, they will act in evil ways. Now, of course, not all Christians may equally subscribe to this belief. Even Christians also, they accept that we are we are made in the image of God.
So, you could say that we are basically good, but all the human beings, all who are here, because they are the descendants of Jesus, the descendants of Adam, so they are all innately sinful. Now, this also doesn’t, it doesn’t match with the evidence. You could say that some people might be atheists and they might be very good people.
They might be moral, they might be kind, they might be charitable. And some people might be believers, supposedly, but they might, their conduct might be such that it will shake our faith in God and religion. In fact, I saw, I was travelling in Texas, so one person had a slogan on their car, Oh God, please save me from your preachers.
Now, normally God saves us through his preachers. But if the preachers are self-righteous, holier than thou, condescending, hell and brimstone kind, I just don’t want anything to do with these people. So, we see that mere religious affiliation doesn’t determine people’s behaviour.
So, if people are innately bad, then why are people who are even atheists sometimes good? Or people who are not religious are also good? So, to retrace what I have discussed till now, first we talked about two attitudes, cynicism and naivety, and then we want to have the courage to trust so that we can move forward in life. But to have that courage, we need to understand human nature. We talked about two broad ideas, are people innately good or people are innately bad? So, now the Gita understanding is a composite.
It says that when we talk about innate, there are two levels of innateness. Because the self is three-level. There is the body, the mind and the soul.
So, when we are talking about innate, we could be talking about the soul or we could be talking about the mind. Now, at the level of the soul, mamahivamsho jeevaloke jeeva-bhutah sanatana Krishna says that all living beings are my parts. And because Krishna is God, so we can say every soul is godly.
So, at the level of the soul, we could say everybody is innately good. But there is another level of innateness, is the mind. Now, each of us has different kinds of impressions in the mind.
And the broad categorization that the Gita uses is the three modes of material nature. So, now some people based on the kind of impressions that are there in their mind, they may act virtuously and some may act viciously. If parents have many children, you can now see that each child has their own personality.
Some children from their childhood may be silent and gentle. Some babies when they cry, they cry in a way that they want to bring the whole roof down. Even in their cribs, they are looking out and thinking when will I take control of the house.
So, there are some things which are innate characteristics. These are not characteristics necessarily of the soul. They are characteristics of the mind.
So, now Krishna uses the word in the Bhagavad Gita, Jatasya. There is a 16th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. Does anyone know which is that chapter? 16th chapter.
Yeah, thank you. The divine and demoniac nature. So, there, I put it this way, there are two kinds of people.
Some are wise and some are otherwise. So, Krishna says that the wise are the godly, the unwise are the ungodly. But significantly, what Krishna says is, from 16.1 to 3, he gives the characteristics of those who are godly and 16.4, he gives the characteristics of those who are ungodly.
Agyanam cha abhijatasya. Partha sampadam asuring. So, he talks about abhijatasya.
People are born with these characteristics. Now, where are they born? What do we mean they are born with? It’s not that the soul has these characteristics. It’s rather, when the soul goes from one body to another, it goes with the subtle body.
So, I am using the mind as a shorthand for referring the subtle body. It’s to keep things simple. So, the mind goes with the soul.
So, depending on how a particular person has lived in the past, they will have a particular nature. Some people might be ungodly, some people might be godly. Of course, most of us will be somewhere on a spectrum between the two.
But, so at an innate level, in terms of the mind, we have different levels of godliness and ungodliness. And the mind, in general, gravitates downwards. It’s far easier to make people stupider than to make them smarter.
So, that’s why gravity pulls down. So, the mind, even if somebody has good impressions in the mind, the mind can very easily get degraded downwards. So, now, if you consider these two levels of innateness, innateness means you can refer to the soul, or innateness you can refer to the mind.
So, what determines our behavior? Are people innately good or innately bad? At the level of the soul, everyone is innately good. But at the level of the mind, it depends on what kind of impressions people have. These impressions can be from various factors.
It can be from their previous life actions. It can be from their this life upbringing. It can be from their association.
So, upbringing and association is what the communists would call as social determinism. That we are socially determined. And when those people say, Christians say some people are innately evil.
And we see some people are innately, they seem to be violent, they seem to be disagreeable. That innateness is from the previous life. It’s not innate to the soul.
So, basically both these ideas can be reconciled with this understanding of two levels of innateness. And in this, so, will people, if people are left to themselves, if everybody is put in a situation which is not deprived, which is reasonably, socially they are in a comfortable situation. So, will they become good human beings? It depends.
So, you could say that all of us have a potential for virtue. From the soul, because the soul is innately good. So, there is a potential for virtue.
But depending on the kind of impressions in the mind, we all have a propensity for vice. The two things. The potential for virtue comes from the soul.
The propensity for vice comes from the mind. The propensity for vice means the propensity for lust, for greed, for anger, for envy. All this comes from the mind.
Now, the potential for virtue that is there in the soul may not manifest automatically. If left to their own means, people may not necessarily be good. It depends on how well the potential for virtue fights against the propensity for vice.
And emerges forth. So, we could modify the statement based on this understanding that if you are saying everybody is innately good, everybody has the innate potential to be good. But whether they will act good, whether that potential will manifest even in this lifetime, that depends.
On whether they just go along with the propensities of the mind or they nourish and develop the potential of the soul. So, this is the basic, you could say, topography of the inner world that is, we can draw from the Gita, that people, if you want to understand how people behave, you have to understand this multi-level. Propensity for vice, potential for virtue.
And if individually and socially, so individually a person tries to develop their potential for virtue and socially, the sociocultural environment nourishes their potential for virtue, then their goodness will manifest. But otherwise, they may well gravitate towards their vice and thus they may act in ways that hurt them and hurt others. So, any comments or questions at this point? Yes, please.
Okay, good question. So, is it our responsibility to develop a society which encourages, which helps people’s virtue to manifest, potential for virtue? Yes, of course. Definitely.
See, broadly speaking, what do we mean by human culture? You might refer to the way people dress, what people eat, the language that people speak, the kind of houses they have. We may talk of all these as human culture. And that’s true at one level.
But if we use an unlikely parallel, if you say there’s a bacteria culture, now what does it mean? It means it’s a biochemical environment where bacteria will flourish. So, by analogy, we could say human culture is that culture where people’s humanity flourishes. So, it’s not just that anything that humans do, you can call it as culture in one sense.
Okay, these people live like this, these people live like that. That’s their culture. But in another sense, we could say culture is that which fosters people’s humane characteristics.
It fosters their humanity. And in many ways, we may say that many human cultures today, maybe in the past, they were not always fostering people’s humanity. If you consider, everybody has a propensity for vice.
And that needs to be checked. Now, one check, of course, is the law and order system in the world. If you do wrong, you’ll be punished.
Voltaire, a French thinker, he was quite atheistic. Bertrand Rousseau was also a prominent atheist about 200 years ago. Now, both of them, when they would talk about atheism, they would talk about it with their friends in closed doors.
And they both believed in atheism, they wanted to propagate atheism. But they didn’t want their servants to hear about atheism. They thought, if the servants believe in God, they won’t steal the silver from my house.
So, the point I’m using for this is that, using this example, that you can have law and order, which puts fear, that everybody needs some amount of deterrent. The propensity for vice, it can be dealt with or regulated in different ways. One is at the level of fear.
If I indulge in this, there’ll be problems. So, one fear could be that the police will punish me. But another, you could say, more pervasive fear is the fear of God.
In fact, the fear that God is watching all my actions and that I am accountable to him, that fear is the greatest civilizing force in humanity. The fear that God is watching me, the fear that I am accountable to God, it is not just one of them, but the greatest civilizing force. Because ultimately, how much can social law and order control? And for many people, they think that, what is that? I saw a cartoon, it says that a person was caught for speeding.
And the cop says, didn’t you see the speed limit? He says, yes, I saw the speed limit. I just didn’t see you. So, what that means is that many people think that doing wrong is not the problem.
Getting caught while doing wrong is the problem. So now, if people start living like that, I said earlier that trust is very essential for relationships. Trust is essential in every walk of life, not just in personal life, professional life, everywhere.
So now, how do you create that trust? How do you make people behave in trustworthy ways? One is, if you behave in untrustworthy ways, you will be punished by the law. But a much bigger thing is, much more pervasive effect could be that if you do wrong, you will be punished by God. And in fact, in Europe, there was a Greco-Roman Empire.
And the Roman Empire, by the 4th, 5th century started collapsing. And one reason was, there was pervasive immorality. And at that time, the Roman Emperor, he looked around and said that even for basic administration of society, for material administration of society also, people need to be honest.
So he said, who are the honest people over there? And he saw the Christians over there were honest. Till that time, Christians were quite highly persecuted. But then he adopted Christianity.
So it was the pagan Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire at that time. And then after that, the, after that, what happened was, Christianity spread in a very big way. But ironically, the way Christians were persecuted by other, by existing faiths at that time, as soon as Christians gained power, they started persecuting other faiths also.
That was unfortunate. But the point I am making over here is, that even for material administration, for material administration, a basic level of morality in society is required. And it was found by the Roman Emperor, who had no interest in Christianity per se.
For utilitarian purposes, he felt, that this fear of God is good, which people have, because of which they are honest. That is good. So, so when we say that, to answer your question, that, is it our responsibility? Yes.
But what do we do? At one level, you say, we say that, we have to have better law and order. But how much, sometimes, how many police can you have in a society? And sometimes, if the police do something corrupt, do you have police to police the police? Without basic morality, nothing can function in society. So, fostering God consciousness, at the very level, at the basic level of fear, of course, we can go higher, and we will talk about in the course as we move forward, how we can go higher.
But, at that basic level, the fear of God is required. Now, by the 18th, 19th centuries, 19th, 20th, you could say roughly, as scientific rationality started spreading, and Darwinian evolution, and other theories started getting propagated, so people started feeling that, belief in God is no longer rational. There is the German thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, he said that, God is dead.
Now, sometimes he is given as a emblem of atheism, and his propagation, God is dead. But the way he spoke it, it was not, he, in the novel, the story in which he writes this, it’s not a celebratory occasion. He says that, God is dead, who has killed him? He says, we have killed him.
And if we have killed him, then, all the water in the world, is not enough, to wash the stain of the blood, of this terrible murder that we have committed. And now that God is dead, the earth has no center. And everything is spinning apart.
So, basically, he saw that as a very dangerous thing. That the removal of that, if God is not there, then obviously the fear of God is also not there. When the fear of God is not there, then what will be the civilizing force in society? So, he said, we human beings have to evolve.
We have to become like super human beings. And then we will create our own morality. But that has not worked very well.
We have almost, just in the last century, in the 20th century, the number of people who were killed in wars, were seven times more than the number of people killed in wars from the 1st to the 19th century combined together. So, it’s been a brutal century. Although we, our historical memory often tends to be very short.
And we may not remember, but it’s been. So, what do we do? At one level, people feel that now there is a lot of moral relativism. Okay, that’s what you believe is right, that’s what I believe is right.
But we cannot live as a society like that. So, now representing God as a rational, rationally intelligible, and as a spiritually experienceable reality. That is what is required.
So, of course, fear of God is the basic level. Beyond that, we can go toward love of God also. And that’s desirable.
But yes, so we need better law enforcement. But that will only deter people from, to some extent from their propensity for vice. But it is positive.
Now, with respect to God, you can have fear of God. You can have love for God. If we consider these two things, there is a propensity for vice and there is a potential for virtue.
The propensity for vice can be curbed by the fear of God. But the potential for virtue can be manifested only by love for God. So, that’s why what we need to do is, if you look at Prabhupada’s presentations, it was not so much, he did not talk about, although there is a fifth canto, there is a description of hell.
Prabhupada hardly ever talks about that in his classes. Although some of the disciples of Prabhupada made that quite prominent by publishing a book called Laws of Nature in which they put those pictures on the cover pages. But even in the book Laws of Nature, Prabhupada’s emphasis is not so much on, Oh, you will suffer all these hellish punishments.
Oh, don’t do that. It’s a more rational presentation. Actually, worldly pleasures are not all that they are made out to be.
You are meant for something better than worldly pleasures. And therefore, pursue transcendence. So, Prabhupada’s approach was, yes, he did caution us quite often about not giving into the propensity for vice.
But his focus was on developing the potential for virtue. So, the propensity for vice can be curbed by fear of God. But the potential for virtue can be fanned, can be nourished by love for God.
So, to the extent we can foster God consciousness in both ways, fear of God and love for God, to that extent, we can have a greater civilizing effect on the individual, coming not just from the individual willpower, but also from the social influence. Does this answer your question? Any other questions or comments? Yeah. How does Varanashram come into this picture? Two, three things.
The first point is that everybody has to earn a living. To survive in the world, everybody has to work. Na karmaṇā manārambhān.
Sharir yātrā pījate na prasiddhye da karmaṇā. In 3.8 Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that you cannot even survive if you don’t work. So, now how best to engage people in a way that is two things, that is contributive to society and that is conducive for their spiritual growth.
So, we have a body, we have a body-mind mechanism and we have a soul. So, when we live in the world, we need to live harmoniously. At the same time, we also need to progress beyond the world through our consciousness.
So, if the body-mind, their nature is understood. Now, when you talk about the mind, I am talking right now, initially till now, talking about the propensities in terms of propensity for vice. But it’s not only those propensities that are there.
We all have a particular innate nature. So, some people may be more intellectual, some people may be more martial, some people may be more mercantile, some people may be more mechanical. So, that is basically the four human types.
So, the four varanas, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, they are also impressions in the mind, the subtle body. So, now if somebody can be engaged in a way that is harmonious with their nature, then they can also contribute to society. So, basically, how do we know our nature? There’s two things.
Guna is quality, Karma is activity. So, we could understand it in today’s world is, Guna is comfort, Karma is competence. That means if you are doing something and you feel comfortable doing that, and we are competent doing that, we feel good about doing it, and we are actually good doing it, and do it well.
That’s a broad indication that this activity is aligned with our nature. So, what happens by this is that there are two things. There is social contribution that will come, and there will also be personal satisfaction that will come.
Because if I am doing something which I feel good about, that will give me personal satisfaction also. And the spiritual journey itself will give us spiritual satisfaction. But often that satisfaction is not so easily available.
So, you could say that there are worldly pleasures that are anti-spiritual. And there are spiritual pleasures. So, we to some extent, the spiritual journey is we give up the worldly pleasures and go towards spiritual pleasures.
But this is a long journey. And in between, are we to live pleasureless? You can say, no, no, we can get some spiritual taste also. Yes, we can, but how much? That often is illusive.
It sometimes comes, it doesn’t come. So, if we could be engaged in a way that is according to our nature, not just according to our material nature, but also according to our spiritual purpose. That means, Brahmanas love to study.
So, if a Brahmana is told to do fundraising, they will be miserable. But if a Brahmana studies, books on atheism and propagates atheism, that’s also not good. So, you want to do something which is in harmony with our material nature, but it is also in harmony with our spiritual purpose.
So, if we do that, then what will happen? As somebody is going from this journey here to here, from giving up only anti-spiritual pleasures, to getting spiritual pleasure, which comes by purification and absorption in Krishna, along the journey, they can get material pleasure, which is higher, which is not just sensual. Material pleasure that is in harmony, that comes from living in harmony with their nature. And this pleasure would actually be a combination of the material and spiritual.
Because, for an intellectual, just to read an intellectually stimulating book is satisfying. But for an intellectual, to read a book which is intellectually stimulating, as well as this devotionally illuminating, which makes them go closer to Krishna also. Then what happens? They get some intermediate satisfaction, which is a combination of material and spiritual.
And that can help the person, persevere through this journey. So, most people who falter on that journey, from worldly pleasure, only anti-materials, anti-spiritual pleasures to spiritual pleasures, they falter because the lack of pleasure seems to be there for too long. So, Varanashram provides a structure, by which people can, three things now happen.
There is social contribution that happens, because they are doing something which they are good at. Personal satisfaction comes up, because they are doing something according to nature. And spiritual evolution also happens, because they are doing it in connection with the Supreme.
So, now, how exactly to do all this? In today’s world, the point is not so much to divide people into boxes. You are a Brahmana, you are a Kshatriya. In some parts of the world, in some of the gurukuls, we tried that.
Now, some devotee children were told, you are a Brahmana. And you do this, you are a Vaishya. But it’s not that simple.
It’s not so easy to identify people. And later on, as they grew up, they realized they are not that. And they felt quite unhappy about the way their childhood went.
So, it’s not so easy that you can identify people as Varanas. But broadly we could do is, instead of categorizing people into Varanas, we just broadly identify activities which are harmonious with us. And pursue those activities.
So, we don’t need particular categorization in terms of the label. We just need the identification of activities that we can happily do. And if we could engage devotees accordingly, and later on even people accordingly, then they are less likely to relapse towards anti-spiritual pressures.
And that’s a quickened progress. Does that answer your question? Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay.
So, what is spiritual satisfaction? Basically, as I said, there are three levels of reality. The body, the mind and the soul. The soul by nature is said to be joyful.
Sat, chit, ananda. Soul is eternal. Soul is conscious.
And the soul is joyful. However, presently, the soul’s consciousness is caught in many material things. And that’s why the soul is not able to experience one’s innate joyfulness.
It’s like a child sitting comfortably at home. The mother is nearby and home is quite comfortable. But the child is watching a horror movie.
And the consciousness is completely projected into the horror movie. Because of that, the child just, horror, fear, terror, panic, all those emotions are going through. So, similarly for us, the soul’s consciousness is caught in matter.
And based on what kind of movie is there, the child experiences emotions. So, similarly, based on what kind of events are happening for us in the material world, we experience pleasure and pain. But beyond all this, at the level of the soul itself, there is innate joyfulness.
So, to the extent our consciousness arises to the spiritual level, to the extent we connect with anything spiritual, to the extent, slowly, an awareness of our innate joyfulness starts becoming activated. So, for example, if you come to a temple and participate in some spiritual music, some kirtan, feel some joy, some peace. Or we sit and do some meditation, chant some mantras and feel some peace.
So, what is happening over there is, currently, our consciousness is projected from the soul is here, the mind is here, the body is here. So, the soul is the observer of the movie, like the child. The mind is like the screen.
And the physical reality is whatever is being depicted in the movie. So, sometimes in life, good things happen to us. It’s like the movie is going on very nicely.
There’s a lot of enjoyment, we feel happy. Sometimes the movie, horrible things happen and we feel miserable. But we are so caught in the movie that we just can’t perceive.
Anything beyond the movie. So, what happens for helping us to realize our spirituality? Because we are so caught in the movie, Krishna arranges, the whole process of Bhakti Yoga is, spiritual stimuli are provided to us at the material level. That means, say the mantra.
Now, it is a spiritual sound, but it’s arranged in such a way that it manifests through our material throat. So, the same throat which I can produce in other sounds, I produce this sound also. But because this sound is connected with God, it’s the names of God, and he has invested his personal potency in them.
So, it starts stimulating our spiritual memory. It starts stimulating our spiritual awareness. And then that’s how, whenever we expose ourselves to spiritual stimuli, we experience some peace, some joy.
And as we start awakening more and more, we start experiencing this more and more. So, spiritual satisfaction is that satisfaction which we experience, because of activation of our spiritual awareness, which usually happens through connection with some spiritual stimuli. So, it’s largely inner happiness.
Some spiritual stimulus might be there, but it’s not dependent on the worldly sources of happiness. So, if we are spiritually absorbed, say now a few days later, Janmashtami, the appearance in Krishna, it is Krishna’s birthday. So, many devotees fast at that time.
Now, fasting is, you could say, the state of physical deprivation. But, if we are absorbed in Krishna, maybe doing some service, hearing some stories of Krishna, hearing some wisdom, maybe participating in some kirtan, even in that material deprivation, because of that spiritual absorption, there is some special sublime happiness. And that indicates that, actually in this situation, I should be feeling torment, but I am not feeling torment.
That means I am experiencing something which is separate from the body, something which is at a trans-physical level, and that’s spiritual happiness. And as our contact with our own spirituality, or our contact with the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna, as it increases more and more, we start experiencing more and more spiritual happiness. Thank you.
What is spirituality? What is spirituality? Spirituality can mean broadly three things. It is a level of reality, it is a state of mind, and it is a process for attaining that level of reality and state of mind. I’ll repeat these three things.
That most people when they think something is spiritual, Oh, I went to that place, it was so spiritual. What they mean is, it made me feel so good. I felt relaxed, I felt at peace, I felt like one with the cosmos.
So, for most people, spiritual is a state of mind. I felt spiritual. Now, yes, spiritual is a state of mind, but it’s not only that.
Spiritual is also a level of reality. Level of reality means that reality itself has two broad categories. There is matter and there is spirit.
So matter, if you see from the pure physical perspective, this mic stand is made of the same essential atoms of fundamental particles as say my hand. But it is not conscious, I am conscious. So this consciousness does not come from matter.
So there is another level of reality. That level of reality is spiritual. Spiritual level of reality.
So now, our consciousness, if it is at the material level, like a person, like the child watching the movie, horror movie and getting absorbed in it. So if our consciousness is at the material level, we experience everything in terms of matter. And sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain.
Gradually as we grow older, life becomes tougher. The pain becomes much more than the pleasure. But as we move forward from the material level towards the spiritual level, that means we raise our consciousness.
Then we start experiencing our spirituality more and more. And that state of mind, which we call the spiritual, then our consciousness rises to the spiritual level of reality. If you consider a mountain, the top of the mountain is spirituality, spiritual level of consciousness, spiritual reality.
And bottom of the mountain is material level of reality, material consciousness. So if we are at the bottom of the mountain, we experience everything in terms of matter. But if we rise up to the spiritual level, then we experience the joy, the sublime experiences that we have.
So basically, that process is also called as spirituality. So now, that means three things. Spirituality is the state of mind, which is the most common understanding of people as spirituality.
Spirituality is also a level of reality, which if we attain, we get the state of mind. And spirituality is also the process that we follow, by which we attain that level of reality. One more question? Yes, ma’am.
Oh, that’s beautiful. Thank you. Yes, thank you.
Yes, any other questions or comments? Okay. So now, this was a little abstract and philosophical. But let’s try to understand this in terms of some characters from the epics.
So I’ll talk about, we’ll talk about Duryodhana, who is the main villain in the Mahabharata. And then we contrast his character with that of Yudhishthira. And then I’ll talk about Arjuna and contrast his character with Karna.
And we’ll see how it works. So basically, we can talk about a spectrum. There is good and bad, virtue and vice.
So some people are more situated towards the virtuous side. Some people are more situated towards the side of vice. So now, Duryodhana, when he was born, the Mahabharata describes that there were many inauspicious signs.
There were jackals howling at that time. There were donkeys that were braying. And a lot of natural upheavals that happened.
When Krishna appears, nature is very auspicious at that time. But here nature was inauspicious. So he was born to the blind king Dhritarashtra.
And when he was born, at that time, his wife Gandhari had the benediction that she would have hundred sons. There was Gandhari, Dhritarashtra and Pandu were brothers. And Gandhari had not had a child for a long time.
And Pandu had also not had children. But then somehow Pandu had a child first. So that child was Yudhishthira.
Then Duryodhana was born. Now when Duryodhana was born, Pandu and Dhritarashtra, they had a third friend, third brother, half brother, who was Vidura. Vidura was very wise.
So Vidura said that this child, there is so much inauspiciousness at his birth. Abandon this child. If this child gets royal privilege, gets royal power, it will become totally, it will ruin society.
It will ruin the dynasty, ruin the kingdom. Now this is quite a serious demand to make to someone. A child is born and tell them to abandon the child.
How can you do that? Now of course, sometimes some parents may be poor and they might put the child for adoption. Or sometimes if somebody has given birth to a child outside marriage or something, they might put the child for adoption. Sometimes parents do abandon their child.
It’s not normal, but it does happen. So now in this case, Dhritarashtra said, he is my son, how can I abandon him? Now his emotion was understandable entirely. But at the same time, it was not responsible.
Why? Because he was not just a father. He was also the king. And he has a responsibility to take care of his children, but he also has to be responsible to take care of the whole society.
And therefore, now when Vidura said, abandon the child, what did that mean? That child, it’s not that the child shouldn’t live. What Vidura said is that, he needn’t grow up to be the royal heir. Like earlier I said that, more comfort comes, the more people’s innate toughness goes down.
Basically, everybody has virtue and vice within them. And actually, the more outer power we get, the more inner power we need. It’s a very important principle.
The more outer power we get, the more inner power we need. Say for example, somebody is given a machine gun. Now, they need a lot of inner power, a lot of self-control, so that during just a casual dispute, casual altercation, they just don’t take out the machine gun and shoot someone.
The machine gun is an extremely dangerous weapon. So, the more outer power we get, the more inner power we need. And if there is outer power without inner power, that is a recipe for disaster.
It is a recipe for disaster. And unfortunately, in some ways, through technology, that is what is happening today. That technology is a great power.
And you could say technology is value neutral. On the internet, one can search for spirituality, one can search for obscenity also. One can search for how to do charity.
And one can do a Google search to find how to commit murder. You can search for everything over there. So, technology, you could say, is value neutral.
But basically, everybody has this, potential for goodness is there, but everybody has a propensity for vice also. And if one does not have the inner power to curb the propensity for vice, then that can come out very powerfully, very dreadfully, when there is greater outer power available. The more outer power we have, the more inner power we need.
So, here when Vidura told Dhritarashtra that abandon your son, it is not that he has to die, but from the signs itself, from the birth signs, whatever signs he got, he recognized that he has a lot of vice within him. And vice basically means lack of inner power. Vice is very strong.
If that lack of inner power is coupled with abundance of outer power, that will lead to disaster. So, he said, abandon your child. Dhritarashtra said, no, he is my son, how can I abandon him? Then Vidura said, actually, you have 99 other sons.
I am not telling you to abandon any of them. Often we put all the Kauravas together and we say the Kauravas or even Pandavas are good. While at one level it is true, not all the Kauravas were equally bad.
It was Duryodhana who was evil and all the Kauravas followed him. And that’s how they all acted in evil ways. If Duryodhana had been removed from the top, then all the other Kauravas were not that evil.
So, what he told him is, you will still have 99 sons, just abandon him. But Dhritarashtra was too attached. I cannot give up this son.
And thus Duryodhana grew up to be the heir. Now, if you see in today’s world also, many people, they want to give for their children all the benefits that they didn’t have. And that’s a natural desire.
I don’t want my child to miss out on the good things of life. But at one level, too much comfort can pamper children. So Dhritarashtra, he not only kept the son, but he also pampered him.
His first son, a natural love was there. And as he grew up, so basically, now the signs that occurred when he was born, those signs indicate that there was a strong propensity for vice within him. And with that propensity for vice, as he grew up, he grew up to be a very pampered prince.
Naturally, he was the, the Pandu at that time was living in the forest. And whether his son would come back or not was also not known. So it was expected that he will become the, Duryodhana will become the king.
So everybody paid a lot of attention to him. Everybody offered him respect. And he grew up in that way.
So as he grew up to be pampered, gradually, like I said earlier, this certain level of deprivation is helpful for the formation of character. There was a few months ago, I read an article in the New York Times, which is based on a movie that was made about parenting, parenting styles in India, Africa versus parenting in the Western world. So basically, now, of course, these are generalizations.
But that’s how these children, they have phones and they have TVs and this and that. And still, often the children are disagreeable. Children demanding, crying for this.
One thing they don’t get, they cry and they throw a big tantrum. And then the same journalist, they had travelled somewhere to Africa and they were going on a safari. And there was this maybe 7-8 year old girl.
She was also travelling with them on safari. And then when they stopped at a particular place, and nobody told that girl to do anything. But she herself naturally, she started putting the mats over there, started cleaning up the things.
And she says, why are you doing this? I have to be useful. So rather than asking anything from anyone, she was naturally doing. So now, this is not to essentialize Western civilization in a negative way or to glamorize African civilization.
The point here is that sometimes if children are pampered, they can give us a point. It’s not always that deprived children become good or pampered children become bad or comfortable children become bad. But this is what happened to Duryodhana.
In contrast, the Pandavas grew up in the forest. When they grew up, Pandu had been a very powerful king, but he had retired to the forest because he was not so interested in worldly genes. And when he retired to the forest, his wife also went with him.
And then his children were growing in the forest. And because they were in the forest, now the Pandavas were innately virtuous. They had dual births.
They were the sons of the gods also, which is a whole story I won’t go into. But they were innately virtuous in terms of the propensities within them were pious. We all have a potential for goodness, but the propensities are what shape our behavior to significant extent.
Duryodhana’s propensity was towards evil, whereas Yudhishtira and the Pandavas, their propensity was towards virtue. And not only that, as they grew up, they had no comfort, they had no facilities, they had no servants whom they could demand and give orders to. So they grew up to be self-sufficient, responsible.
And when they were living in the forest, there were many sages around them. So they would hear from the sages, talk with the sages. And by that, they also assimilated at culture.
So they became, both from their previous life’s influence, I talked about when we behave, there are three broad factors. Why do we understand human nature? So three factors shape our behavior. One is our past life karma, second is our upbringing and third is our association.
So the past life karma for the Pandavas was good. The upbringing was also good. For Duryodhana, from the past life karma itself, it was dark.
And the upbringing was also, he was pampered over there. Because Dhritarashtra was so attached to him. So then, what happened thereafter? As they grew up, both of them grew up in their own ways, but life doesn’t stay the same.
We might have planned a particular trajectory for our life, but in one moment, everything can change. So Duryodhana grew up thinking, Oh, I am going to be the prince, I am the heir apparent, I am going to become the next king. But suddenly there was an upheaval.
Pandu died, untimely. And when he died, then his widow Kunti was told by the sages that you cannot live alone in the forest here. So go back to your family.
In fact, the sages came with her to take her back to the kingdom. And when she came back, when they came back, naturally, if you have a big family, any new members come. Everybody gets excited.
So these five children were there. Now by this time, the Pandavas had grown up, and most of them were teenagers by this time. So they had grown up to cultured human beings, cultured children.
And just because they were new, everybody was attracted to them. And not only that, on top of being new, they were also very well behaved, gentle, cultured, kind, courteous. And this was in striking contrast to the way Duryodhana was.
If somebody is well behaved, naturally we are attracted to it. But suppose we go to a particular place, and then maybe somebody comes to a temple, and then maybe somebody, just the first thing, somebody comes and asks them, give some donation. What is this? Do you not like it? But then you meet somebody else, who is just very kind, very polite, maybe gives some prasad, talks nicely, and shows some concern.
So if you just meet one good or one bad person, that itself affects us. But if you meet two in contrast, then it’s highlighted even more. So what happened over here was, that they were, the citizens and the courtiers, were accustomed to Duryodhana’s spoiled nature.
And in contrast to his behavior, when they saw Yudhishthira’s behavior, it was a big difference. So naturally, everybody started getting attracted to whom? Yudhishthira. And when this happened, Duryodhana just couldn’t tolerate it.
The nature of the human mind is, that if we keep getting something regularly, we start thinking that we deserve it. If we just keep getting something regularly, now we may not deserve it. But, say, if a beggar regularly gives some alms, and doesn’t get alms, it’s not that the beggar deserves alms, the beggar is not doing anything to merit getting the alms.
If somebody doesn’t give it, hey, why not give it? So, although Duryodhana had not done anything to earn that, all that, being the center of attention, but he had developed this entitlement mentality. I deserve this. And when he lost this, when he saw it all going away from him, he saw it all going towards Yudhishthira and the Pandavas.
This is unbearable. And that’s how, till this point, his propensity for vice had not manifested in a very aggressive way. It was just that he was not a very courteous, arrogant, full of himself kind of person.
But, he’s not harmful, not malevolent. But, actually, it is provocation that introduces us to us. That means, everybody can behave very cordially in ordinary situations.
But, it is when they are provoked, how they behave. That’s what shows, not necessarily that shows, that’s not necessarily the real person, but that shows a side of them we don’t see. So, because we live in a cultured society, so what happens, even if we have a dark side, even if there’s a lot of vice within us, the propensity for vice is strong, still we don’t express it.
We curtail it, curb it. Rather, we cannot see each other’s thoughts. And that’s a great blessing.
If we started seeing each other’s thoughts, not a single relationship could be sustained. You think like this about me? You have this kind of desires? This kind of person? Horrible! No relationship could be sustained if we started seeing each other’s thoughts. So, nature has given us that protection.
Thoughts might come, desires might come, but how are your actions? So, this protector is there, and so normally, even if some dark thoughts come up, we keep them curbed within us. However, when provocation comes, that’s the time when this inner curve that are there, they’re just shaken off. When provocation comes, we feel threatened.
How dare something like this happen? So, then, the dark side within just surfaces. So, this is what happened to Duryodhana. That whatever darkness was there within him, it just burst forth.
So, in his case, although Yudhishthir was getting the attention, and in a sense, Yudhishthir was his competitor, but what happened? His anger got targeted more towards Yudhishthir’s younger brother. Who was that? Bhima. Now, Bhima was very powerful, and some people, just by their birth, they’re physically very impressive.
So, now what happened? Now, Duryodhana was the oldest among the Kauravas, and he was also the heir apparent. So, he was respected quite a bit. But when the Pandavas and the Kauravas, they were all kids, they would play.
So, Bhima, what he would do is, he was so strong. Later on, it’s described that Bhima, when the Pandavas got tired, he carried all his four brothers on his body. He was so powerful.
So, when they were playing in the water, Bhima would just pick up, other than throw them away in the water. And like that, Duryodhana was this proud puffed-up person, prince, and Bhima just nonchalantly picked him and threw him away. And nobody had dared to do this to Duryodhana.
He said, how dare? Who does he think he is? So, all his anger, already the envy was there, and he felt, Bhima is so arrogant. It’s ironic that if any of us is disrespected, we feel annoyed, we feel irritated. But different people react differently when they are disrespected.
And often, the people who respect themselves the least, they are the most agitated when others don’t respect them. That means, when I am internally insecure, and I don’t respect myself, then my sense of self-respect, self-esteem, self-worth is very insecure. It’s very shaky.
And then if somebody outside doesn’t respect me, I just can’t bear it. So, if we respect ourselves, not in an egoistic sense, not that I am so great, but that we respect ourselves, I am a part of God, I am doing the best that I can, and I have certain limitations. If we have a basic respect for ourselves, then if others don’t respect us, we will feel pain.
But we won’t overreact to it. But to the extent we don’t respect ourselves, to that extent, if somebody disrespects us, that agitates us unbearably. So, this is what happened to Duryodhana.
How dare this Bhima disrespect me like this? And then, he was a teenager, Bhima was a teenager. In fact, Duryodhana’s age was, if Yudhishthira was older, Duryodhana was in between, and Bhima was younger, in between the two. So, he was older to Bhima.
And all of them were in their teens. But while they were in their teens, Bhima, Duryodhana, made a whole conspiracy. He decided, this Bhima is intolerable, and I am going to eliminate him.
Eliminate? Children fight, children quarrel. But, the vicious streak that was there within him, he said, I am going to kill him. And he made a whole plan, that he arranged for, they said, let’s all go for a picnic, and I will arrange the food for you.
And then, he said, Bhima loved to eat. He is called Vrkodhara. So, he would eat hugely.
In fact, when the Pandavas would be in the forest, or when they would be outside, whatever food they would get, they would collect some alms, whatever food they would get, all the food would be divided into two. One half would go to Bhima. And the remaining half would be divided into five parts.
The four Pandavas, and if their mother was travelling with their mother, or if their wife Draupadi was travelling with them, Draupadi, they would take it. So, Bhima had impressive strength, and he had an impressive appetite also. So now, Duryodhana said, Oh Bhima, I have prepared a special food for you.
So, he made a special, something like a cake, just for Bhima. And he said, I will personally feed you. Now, at this point, I started by talking about how we might be naive.
One extreme is naivety. The other is what? Cynicism. So, being cynical.
So, the Pandavas were largely naive at this time. Because they had lived with sages, and sages didn’t have any malice within them. And they were just kids.
So, they didn’t suspect anything. So, Duryodhana said, I have made this cake for you. And Bhima innocently ate it.
And he ate it, ate it, and then, he started feeling sleepy. Now, he had put some poison, which is like a slow-acting poison. So, first he would put him to sleep, with that poison cake.
And then, he said to everyone, let’s go and play. And they had arranged some game, which was far away. They had eaten their meal near a river.
And then, he said, let’s arrange the game a little away from the river. So, everybody went away. And Bhima lay down and went to sleep.
And when he went to sleep, at that time, Duryodhana sneaked back. And he got a few of his brothers, who were very much under his influence. And they all tied Duryodhana, they tied Bhima.
And unconsciously, and pout, they threw Bhima into the river. The plan was, he would drown and die. And, oh, this is diabolical.
You know, for a teenager to hold, to plan something like this, in a cold-blooded way to execute it. It’s horrifying. And this is how we see what Vidura had said, that there is a strong sense of vice within him.
So, abandon him. He didn’t abandon, and then that vice started manifesting in a horrible way. And he asked, Bhima drowned in the river.
Duryodhana looked at his brothers and exulted, yes, finished. Some people, Krishna also talks about this in the Bhagavad Gita that, those who are very ungodly, they delight in eliminating their opponents. I have killed this enemy, I will kill that one also.
Just see how clever I am. I am the controller, I am the enjoyer. So, he thought this way.
And, he came back. But, in the meanwhile, something else happened. That as Bhima drowned in, he was powerful, and there were, in that river, there were snakes.
So, the snakes, water snakes were there. What is this? What is this? Bhima has come right into us. And they started biting.
Now, somehow, somebody is devoted to the Lord, so the Lord protects those. So, Bhima was protected. And, by an inconceivable arrangement, the snake’s bite, when it bit, the snake’s bite was poisonous.
Bhima had also been given poison. But, these two poisons counteracted each other. The snake bite acted as an antidote.
And then, Bhima woke up. And he woke up, and he saw the snakes around him, he saw the rope around him. What is going on? Just shook it, and all the ropes broke apart.
And the ropes broke apart, and the snakes were all around him, biting him. And normally, a human being would get paralyzed with fear. But Bhima, as a person who didn’t know, didn’t know fear only.
He had such power. So, all the snakes were biting, and the snake was vicious. He just caught the snake by the fang, and started whirling him around.
And using the snake as a rope, he started beating all the snakes around him. Now, none of the snakes had experienced anything like this. The snakes, he just caught the snake in his mouth, at the mouth itself.
The snake couldn’t move more or less. And if this mouth is tied closed, what can it do? He just, and all the snakes just fled. What kind of being is this? And finally, the snake which was there, Bhima just hurled it away also.
And when, when all the snakes went away, they went, the river had a, need to do it. It was like the abode of Varuna. So, they went to the river god, and they said that, an intruder has come over here.
In space, you have this, unidentified flying object sometimes come up. Unidentified floating object has come. And then, it became an unidentified fighting object.
So, what is this? So then, when they described, now Varuna knew about the Pandavas, Varuna knew about the god, and he knew about, he had that knowledge. So, he said, oh, that must, that sounds like Bhima. Some, some people have certain characteristics.
He says, this kind of behavior, Bhima, Bhima is a child, Bhima is capable, call him here. So, they called Bhima. And when Bhima came there, Bhima was welcomed and honored.
He said, oh, Pandu, Pandu was very dear to us, and therefore, you are dear to us. The Kuru dynasty is, has been friends with me. And he honored him, and he gave him, was good food to him.
And they said, we have some celestial nectar with us. And he said, if you drink the celestial nectar, your body will become as strong as that an elephant. And now, even the best of the gods, could, best of the celestials, could barely drink like one pot.
And in front of everyone, they said, Bhima, they said, Bhima, you can drink this, become strong. And he picked up one pot, just drank it. And he finished it, and then he picked another pot.
And he drank that also. And he picked up a third pot. Like that, he drank ten pots.
And everybody was stunned. And sometimes in a perverse way, people, sometimes they drink alcohol, and they say, how much can you drink? So, they drink, and they drink, and then they go crazy after that. But now, this was such a heavy drink.
Now, Bhima drank it all. And then, he started shaking. Then, they took him, they offered him a bed.
So, he drank ten pots, and then he slept for ten days. And then, when he woke up after ten days, all that celestial nectar had gone into his body, and his body had become as tough and strong as hundreds of elephants. So, then, now, he said, I want to go back.
And he marched back. And, now, here, all the Pandavas were panicking. Where has our brother gone? He just disappeared from the face of the earth.
And, there was panic. Ten days he had been missing, several days. So then, they were searching, searching, they couldn’t find him anywhere, and they didn’t know.
Sometimes, you know, child is lost, you don’t know what to do. You cannot even say, is the child dead, is the child alive? What do you do? They were all panicking. But, just, the Pandavas were searching in the place where he had been lost, and Bhima just emerged out of the river.
And not just emerged, he was looking stronger, more much more powerful. And then, he told everything that had happened. Now, he had suspected what had happened.
How did I end up in the water? And, where are these ropes coming from? Suspected something, but Varuna confirmed it. He said, Duryodhana had done all this. Now, Bhima was a fighter, and he said, this is outrageous.
He said, let’s go. He said, they tried to poison me, I’ll get back at him. Now, I’m strong also.
So, Yudhishthira said, no, wait. He said, we don’t want a conflict to erupt in the kingdom. The Pandavas had only recently come back from the forest.
And he said that, if there is a conflict between us and them, and it comes out in public, we don’t know who will support whom. Duryodhana will have his own story. And, they were basically like orphan children, just come over there.
And he said, let’s not take this further. Let’s not aggravate it. Let’s try to be more vigilant, and we’ll observe, and we’ll see how things go.
So, Yudhishthira, in general, was of a pacifist kind of nature. Don’t escalate conflicts. Keep it in mind.
And, Bhima was not at all in favor of that. But, because Yudhishthira was the eldest among them, Bhima reluctantly agreed. And, Duryodhana just told that, oh, actually, he said, where have you gone? So, they came up with a story that, yes, they came up with a story as close to the truth, except that they didn’t blame Duryodhana.
He said, actually, I drowned in the water, but I had gone to Varuna, and from there I came back. Now, his physical change was also undeniable, become much more powerful. So, they didn’t hide that he had gone to Varuna.
And, Duryodhana, when he saw Bhima back, he was initially very scared, will I be accused? But, when he saw that the Pandavas had no intention of accusing him, at least he felt that immediately he had gone. But then, when he heard about how much stronger Bhima had become, his envy became even more, so much, much more, it became. And, basically, he had tried a scheme, and the whole scheme had backfired on his face.
Rather than his rival dying, his rival had returned stronger than him. And, he felt thwarted, he felt frustrated, he felt infuriated. And then, his vice, sometimes when we do something wrong, and it doesn’t work, either way, we may decide I will not do the wrong, or we may do it more.
So, now, which he chose, that we will discuss after the break. So, thank you very much.