From Entangled to Enlightened – Lessons from Yayati story
Thank you for coming today.
Today I'll speak on the Srimad Bhagavatam. We'll discuss a particular chapter from the ninth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. So I'll structure this class in three parts.
First, I'll talk about spiritual knowledge and what its purpose is and how that purpose is furthered by the Srimad Bhagavatam. Then second, I'll focus on the particular story which we're going to discuss today. And then thirdly, I'll talk about how it applies practically in our lives.
So after each of these sections, I'll have a brief pause and if you have any questions or reflections, we can discuss. So we live in an age of science and we have phenomenal technological advancement in today's world. So we may sometimes even think in such an age of science, why do we need anything like spirituality? Why do we need scripture or such wisdom text at all? So broadly, we can say that there are different bodies of knowledge.
Science is the study of matter. Spirituality is the study of what matters. Science is the study of matter.
How do various material objects function? How do they interact? And this knowledge is very powerful. However, material knowledge itself doesn't tell what matters. What is really of value in life? That is a matter of values.
That is a matter of ethics. Albert Einstein pointed out that science in itself is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral.
Amoral means science itself does not contain any moral directive in it. A person with, say, the knowledge of the nervous system can tell us that if you are having some pain, you press your nerves over here and it can relieve you of pain. That same person can mislead and they can press the nerves in such a way that somebody might get a paralytic attack.
Now both kinds of knowledge come from medicine, from biology. But now what is right, what is wrong? What is of value? That is a different body of knowledge. Einstein said that we can talk about the ethical foundation of science, but we can't talk so much about the scientific foundation of ethics.
So there are two distinct things in life. There is what we live for and what we live with. So suppose you see a neighbour suddenly rushing out from their home and rushing to their car and driving fast.
Where are you going? He says, I am, I am going to put gas in my car. Okay, but after that, where will you go? Then I'll go to the next gas station and put gas in my car. Okay, but after that, where will you go? Then I'll go to the next gas station.
No, but where are you driving? Say, I'm driving to the gas station. That's strange. Now, obviously, we need gas for driving a car, but gas is what we drive with.
It's not what we drive for. So similarly, in our life, there are many things which we need for living. That is the resources.
And those resources are very important. We consider we need food, clothing, shelter. We need air, water.
We need some respectable position in society. All these things are needed. This is what we live with.
But what do we live for? Science can provide us better and better resources to live with. But what to live for? That science itself doesn't tell us. Through science, we can develop technology and through technology, we can have access to all the knowledge in the world as it happens to the internet practically.
But millions of people use this knowledge to spend their time playing video games and watching videos and basically not doing anything worthwhile. So what we live with and what we live for are two distinct bodies of knowledge. And the study of matter can give us more and more things to live with.
But what to live for? That is the study of what matters. And that is what spirituality provides us. And in the normal course of our life, we don't even think much about what is it that ultimately matters.
Because we all have certain things which matter immediately. You know, I have to get food on my table. I have to take care of my family.
I have to get this job done. I have to make this project. But sometimes, certain crisis comes in our life.
And at that time, you start asking, what is it I am working for? If the Bhagavatam is spoken at such a time when there is a great king, Parikshit, and he is cursed to die in seven days. Philosophy actually begins with looking at death in the face. Because at one level, death is the ultimate meaning destroyer.
Everything that we work for, it will be ripped away in one ruthless moment at death. So then the question comes, what will make my life meaningful? What is it that makes life worth living? So it is this question with which the Bhagavatam begins. Parikshit is about to die in seven days.
And then at that time, he hears from the great sage Shukdev Goswami that there is this world, and beyond this, there is the source of the world. All of us are souls. And as souls, we are on the journey of spiritual evolution.
So our consciousness doesn't come from our physical shell. It comes from a non-physical, non-material core within us. And that soul goes from one life to another lifetime on a journey of spiritual evolution.
Spiritual evolution essentially means that our consciousness expands to perceive bigger and bigger realities. A small child, their reality is basically, I want some games to play with. I want some toys to play with.
That's all. As we grow bigger, as we grow older, we say, okay, I have to get a career. I have to have a family.
But as we evolve further spiritually, we think, okay, this is good, but what more? And that's how when we start thinking of the ultimate reality, then that is when we evolve most spiritually. So we are parts of a whole bigger than ourselves. That whole is known by different names and different traditions.
The bhakti tradition from India knows that whole by the name Krishna. So Bhagwat, Srimad Bhagwatam or Bhagwat Purana, Bhagwat refers to Bhagwan. That is, the Bhagwatam says Vishnu, Krishna, Ram, these are various names of that absolute.
And it is to devote ourselves to the absolute, to devote ourselves to the Lord and to learn to live in harmony with Him so that ultimately we attain love for Him and attain His eternal abode. So we live in a way, broadly speaking, the Bhagwatam says there are two aspects to our life. There is connection and contribution.
We live in a way that we become connected with the ultimate reality. And then we live in a way that we contribute in this world. We contribute in a mood of service.
We all have certain talents, certain resources, certain abilities. We use them in a mood of service. So what we live with is all our possessions and possessions in the world.
But what we live for is connection and contribution. So now there is a time for both of these in a life that is spiritually progressing. And Parikshit, now he's about to die.
So what matters ultimately, it's not just winning a bigger kingdom, getting more wealth. He realises that spiritual evolution is what matters. And when he's about to die, at that time, he hears the Sumit Bhagwatam, which draws on stories from various parts of existence at various times, all for that one purpose of helping him to establish the connection, to focus his mind in devotion on Krishna.
And the Bhagwatam has 335 chapters. Out of them, the heart of the Bhagwatam is the 10th canto. The 10th canto has 90 chapters, which are about Krishna and his Leela in the world.
And the whole idea is, if you want to fix our mind on someone, you want to hear more and more about it. But at the same time, whenever we want to go on a particular path, one thing is, go on this path. The other is, don't go on this path.
You see, a doctor normally gives two things. There are prescriptions and proscriptions. Take this medicine, do this exercise, and don't eat this food.
Don't, maybe if somebody has heart problems, don't smoke, don't drink, whatever. So prescriptions and proscriptions. So in the 10th canto, the whole story of Krishna will be told, where the prescription will be facilitated, fix the mind on the divine, on Krishna.
But what are the forces that distract us from Krishna? From the things that really matter. So those forces, how they distract and how we can protect ourselves. So the 9th canto contains many stories, which illustrate this power of temptation and distraction.
So broadly, there is the force of devotion, which can take us towards the divine. And there are anti-devotional forces. Which can take us away from the divine.
And these are broadly classed into six categories. There's what we call as the six inner enemies. Lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, and losing.
Kama, krodha, lobha, moha, madhya, madhya-sadhu. So now, this particular story, which is in the 9th canto, this talks about how one may get distracted by lust. So the whole idea over here is that there are biological drives which everyone has.
So there is a biological function, there is psychological obsession, and there is spiritual distraction. So all living beings do the basic biological drives. That is, we human beings are, if you look from a biological perspective, we are designed in a way that we survive and reproduce.
So survival and reproduction. So this is explained in the scriptural sense that we, for our survival, we need to eat, we need to sleep, then we need to defend ourselves from danger. So this is all for survival.
And then there is reproduction. So this is a biological function. But we humans are designed in such a way that we seek more pleasure than what the body can naturally offer.
We seek, all living beings seek pleasure. All living beings are just driven by their biological drives. So for example, a bird or animal, when the mating season comes, the hormones within them are stimulated, they get attracted, and then they mate and they reproduce.
So when animals feel hungry, they'll hunt for some food, they search for some food and they eat it. But we human beings, we are designed in such a way that we seek more pleasure than what the body can naturally offer to us. See, one example of that is, say, eating.
With respect to food, if you consider, a cow will eat the same grass day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Generation after generation, cows will keep eating the same grass. But we humans, we don't just keep eating the same food.
We have created hundreds of cuisines and hundreds of items within each cuisine. So we want the pleasure of eating, but we want it with more and more varieties. This is an indicator that the soul is here, the body is here.
And through the body, the soul can get some pleasure. But in the human form, our consciousness is so evolved that just the bodily pleasure is not enough for us. Now, when this bodily pleasure is not enough, what do we do? Broadly, there are two options.
One is, we look for some non-body, non-physical pleasure, look for some non-material pleasure. Is there something higher in life? Or we look for material pleasure in newer and newer ways. Because whatever pleasure is naturally available, that is not enough for us.
Just not satisfied with that. The soul, the atma is said to be sat-chit-ananda. It is naturally joyful.
Joyful means it's joy-seeking constantly. When the soul realises its spirituality, the soul becomes naturally joyful. But right now, it's constantly joy-seeking.
So, the idea is, the soul is here, the body is here. Now, either we can look for more sense pleasure, or we can look for something more than sense pleasure, some higher form of pleasure. These are the two broad paths in our pursuit for pleasure.
And as long as we are captivated by the pursuit of, by the hope that we are going to get pleasure, we'll get more and more sense pleasure, then we don't look for something higher. The nature of worldly pleasures is such that the pleasure appears to, when it is not available, it appears irresistibly captivating. But when we get it, it turns out to be momentary.
The Bhagavad Gita says that, ये ही संस्पर्षिजाब होगा। दुख यो नहीं यही वतिया। That it is आदि अन्तवन्तः कौन्ते न तेशिरम तेबुद्धा। That आदि अन्तवन्तः कौन्ते, that it is temporary, this is 522 in the Bhagavad Gita, it has a beginning and it has an end. And दुख यो नहीं यही वतिया। That it is, the pleasure itself is the womb of trouble. From the pleasure, trouble will come.
Why does that happen? Because when we get attached to the pleasure, and then it is, we get obsessed with it, and then eventually it's temporary, it ends, it goes away, and then we feel, we feel disheartened by it. So now this theme of how seeking more than sense, seeking more sense pleasure can distract, that is illustrated through the story of Ayyati. Can you, you have, shall we display? From somewhere? The ninth, you have the Vedabhata somewhere? So, this is the story of a great king, Ayyati, and the Bhagavatam describes how these king, how he as a, he was a powerful king, and let me know once it is done.
You can just go to the relevant chapters, and just go to the chapter summary at this point. That's fine. Okay, chapter 18.
So broadly, I won't go into the full story here. Can you just go to the, no, go up, go up. This is IO or, vedabhata.io or vedabhata.com? So this is advanced view.
You just go to the, just show the translations. Translations and so on. Go up, go up.
This will have all translations, just from Sanskrit and the verse. Okay, good. So, can you go to around verse 20? Just go down a little bit.
Yeah, you can read the translation. Okay. So Jayati, thank you.
So Jayati is going to the forest. At that time, he sees that this lady, this lady Devyani, she's in distress. Somehow she has had a quarrel with someone, and she was pushed into a well.
So she's fallen in the well, and she is calling out for help. Now when he sees her damsel in distress, he's a chivalrous warrior, naturally wants to help her. So he extends out her hand, reaches down, and pulls her out.
And then at that time, now for her, she has been trapped over there. She did not know whether she will survive or not. So she feels overwhelmingly grateful and attracted to him.
So he says that, now that you have held my hand, that now we are bonded together. This is, we were from different places, just coincidentally we met, and it is by providence that our bond is formed. So now this is the stage where their relationship gets formed.
Can you go ahead? Can you go to 25? Yeah, 25. Can you go to next verse? Explain briefly what happened. Yeah, go ahead.
So, here what happened was that there was a, Devyani was the daughter of a, of a, of a sage, of Chukaracharya. And now she had a friend, Sharmishta, who was a princess, and she was much more well to do. She had her own maids.
So, there was a squabble between the two of them, and we will go into the full history of that. But, so what happened at this point, she felt that I had been insulted by Sharmishta, so I want to get back to her. She thinks she is wealthy and powerful, but when I marry, she should become my maid servant.
And now that is what exactly happens eventually. So, Yayati, when he marries Devyani, so Sharmishta goes along with her maids, goes as her maid servant. So, at that time, they, now Yayati is a king, he is, he is a powerful, chivalrous person, and at that time, when he is living with Devyani, somehow, a relationship develops between Sharmishta and Devyani, and Yayati.
And when this happens, Devyani becomes furious. So, in the past, at one level, the kings would have polygamy, there are multiple reasons for that. Often, the female population, the female population was more than the male population, and the kings would marry.
And the important thing was not whether there was monogamy or polygamy, the important thing was there was responsibility. Even if there was a king who had many queens, it would all be taken care of. But at this particular point, Devyani had specifically said that, he had warned that I want Sharmishta to be subordinate to me, because they had their own ego issues.
And he said that you should not associate with her. But when he found out that this is what had happened, but when somehow, the two developed a relationship, and then, at that time, when Yayati, Yayati's actions were found by Devyani, she became furious. And when she went and complained to her father, and her father became furious with him, and he said that you have no control over your senses, because of which you could not honour, you did not honour the promise that you made to me.
Therefore, I curse you that you will lose your youth, you will lose your manhood, and you will not be able to unite with anyone. Now, that curse was devastating for the king. But then he realised, the father realised, Pukhacharya realised that by this curse, what will mean, what it will mean is that my own daughter will not have any children.
So, then he said that my curse cannot be taken back, but you can exchange with someone else. You can, if some other young person is ready to give their youth to you, and they take their old age on your behalf, but then you can be saved. So, the whole event transpired, and finally, he found, finds a willing candidate, and thus he gets his youth back.
So, at this particular point, the theme is that, if you look at this, first there is a natural desire, natural male-female attraction is there, then there is a normal marriage that happens, but then there is a, the desire overgrows, it creates problems, and there is a consequence of that desire. But then again, that consequence is mitigated. And then he is restored to his normal situation.
So, this is the whole crux of this chapter, that Yati regains his youth. Then we go to the next chapter, and in the next chapter, he finds that he becomes immensely, he is completely captivated, and he forgets everything about everything else in the captivation of that attachment. And the nature of desire, the nature of attachment is that, it consumes us.
It consumes us means, whenever a desire comes in our mind, usually it's a small desire, but it grows bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Nobody is, who becomes a, either alcoholic or a drug addict, or anything like that, nobody thinks, I am going to become an addict. But, they do it once, they do it twice, they do it thrice.
So, it grows stronger and stronger. And then eventually, when we talk about attachment, attachment is nothing but psychological slavery. Now, we live mostly in a world where there is no physical slavery.
Physical slavery has more or less been made illegal and removed. But, attachment, specifically addiction, is like psychological slavery. And at that time, he realises that, that I have become immensely bound.
Can you go to the next chapter, and search for Najiriyato. You will recite that verse. Shri Ramakrishnaam Dukhnivaham Sharmakamottam Kriyate So, the command is Najiriyato, J-I-R.
Can you zoom it up? Command plus. Okay. So, can we recite this verse? Visible to everyone? Ya Dushtaja Durmati Bher Ya Dushtaja Durmati Bher Jiriyato Vaan Jiriyate Taam Trishnaam Dukhnivaham Sharmakamottam Kriyate So, Ya Dushtaja Durmati Bher So, now Yayati, he has spent a hundred years, just obsessed.
And he says, what did I do? I wasted so much time. So, then he is giving his realisations of how desires attach, become captivators. Dushtaja, tyaga is to give up.
Dushtaja means that it is very difficult to give up. Durmati Bher. Durmati Bher means that that mati is consciousness.
Durmati is that which takes the consciousness in an unwanted direction. Ya Dushtaja Durmati Bher It is very difficult to give up, and it makes our life difficult. It drags us here, there and everywhere.
And then he says, Jiriyato Vaan Jiriyate That means, the body grows old, but desire doesn't grow old. Generally, everything in this world, as it grows old, its power weakens. We have a, if we have a, nowadays of course, phones and laptops, within a few years they get old.
But homes also, cars also, after a few years they grow weak. Maybe a dozen years, maybe a decade, several decades, whatever. But eventually they grow weak.
But the nature of desire is, that desire itself doesn't weaken by the passage of time. Of course, what happens is, that as the body grows older, the body's capacity to satisfy the desire, to indulge the desire may decrease. But the desire itself doesn't decrease.
So then what happens? Taam Trushnaam Dukkha Nivaham That desire, that Trushna, that craving, Dukkha Nivaham. So that craving itself becomes like a torture. Like a Dukkha Nivaham.
Sharma Kamo Duttam Nitajit I decide that I am going to give it up now. I am writing a book on spirituality and addiction. I was talking with a friend of mine, who is now a spiritual practitioner.
But earlier he was an alcoholic. So he told me his story, that he was living in Chicago. And once he was, he at night, like 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, he had this sudden urge to drink.
Now Chicago can be freezing cold. About 5-6 months ago I was in Melbourne and my father was in Chicago. My father messaged me that on that day in Melbourne the temperature was 45 degree Celsius.
Chicago was minus 45 degree Celsius. Exact opposite. So at night it becomes incredibly cold.
So he said on such a night he had a desire. I have to drink. Then he went to his fridge and he looked.
He had no alcohol with him. So he decided to go to a bar. And he went to the nearby bar and he found that he wanted to drink a particular beer which was not there.
So he thought, I just want to drink this. So he went back to his car. And then he got into the car and drove to the other end of the city.
Several miles away. And suddenly his car broke down when he was about half a mile away. And then he got out of the car and he ran.
And finally he got to that bar. It was freezing cold. And he had been so frantic about going out that he did not even put on adequately warm clothes.
He was shivering. Finally he got there and he said, give me this. Then he put the money there.
He took it and he opened it and drank it. He took a sip and said no. I put so much effort.
I want to drink this. I want to savour this. So he carried the bottle and went back to his car.
And as he was going to the car, suddenly he slipped in the snow. And what had happened was he had not put the lid properly. So the whole beer which he had got, it just spilled all over the body.
It spilled all over. And then he fell in the snow. And it was chilling.
And he looked around. And he saw all around the city, all these big buildings, all lights closed. And that time it struck me.
What am I doing? I could be sleeping comfortably in bed. And here am I, lying in the cold, without any warm clothes, bathed in beer. What am I doing? That was the time it struck me that I am bound.
Most often for us what happens, we have desire. And most of the time our desire is not fulfilled. And that's how we feel unhappy.
So we often think frustration of desire is the cause of unhappiness. And it's possible that frustration of desire is the cause of unhappiness. But quite often it is domination by desire that is the cause of unhappiness.
Yes, I have this desire, I am unable to fulfil it, that's why I am frustrated. But having that desire in such a way that it dominates us, it drives us, it torments us. That domination by desire is the cause of far greater unhappiness.
So whenever we find ourselves dissatisfied, we all have many desires in our lives, and some desires we can fulfil, some desires it's much more difficult to fulfil, some desires it's impossible to fulfil. And we often base our satisfaction on the satisfaction of our desires. And we think, why is this not happening? Why is this person not doing things like this? Why is this not working out? Why am I not getting this? Fine, we all have desires and we will pursue them.
But domination by desires is the recipe for frustration. So here, layati realises I have been dominated by desire for so long, and I want to get rid of this domination. I want to break free from this.
So now after this, the remaining chapter is basically he becomes enlightened. Now he has already, he lives in a culture where spiritual knowledge is not unknown. He has had sages who come and speak to him.
But what happens for each one of us, that spiritual knowledge can be like light or it can be like lightning. What is the difference between light and lightning? What do you think? Yes, thank you. So lightning is one moment of illumination and darkness once again.
So light is very continuous illumination. So basically, as long as we are very materially attached, and not just attached, but we are captivated. This is what I want, this is what will make me happy in my life.
Then even if we get some realisations, we hear some illuminating knowledge, but if we hold on to that attachment, then that knowledge will come, knowledge will illuminate for a few minutes, it will go away. But if we dwell on that knowledge, if we contemplate that knowledge, we are ready to, we all have attachments. But if we are ready to evaluate those attachments, I believe this is what will make me happy, and I believe that because I don't have this, this is why I am not happy.
Is this really true? Is getting this really going to make me happy? So yes, we all want things in life, but equating the fulfilment of a particular desire with happiness, that is often a misconception. So now he had the spiritual knowledge, but in the past when he had heard it, it was all like lightning. But at this particular time, when he had indulged, and he said, I am not satisfied, I am still frustrated, the desires are still not only present, but they are growing.
When will this end? That time the spiritual knowledge came to him, and it was a moment of awakening. So the spiritual wisdom basically comes, the spiritual knowledge that is to be internalised, that is to be realised. How does this happen? So this is basically the story of the Yati getting first entangled and then enlightened.
So the third part, I'll speak and with which I'll conclude is, how does spiritual knowledge get internalised? I started by talking about how spirituality is the knowledge of what matters. So we all have certain desires which we hold as very important. And the desires themselves are not a problem.
It is domination by desire that is a problem. Like I talked earlier about that food, eating, survival, eating, mating, these are biological functions. But when they become psychological obsessions, then they consume our consciousness, they obsess us.
And that's when it becomes a problem. So when we are going through our life journey, so broadly speaking, if our consciousness is here, the world is here, and scripture is here, spiritual wisdom texts are here. So what happens is, from spiritual wisdom texts we get some knowledge.
And then from the world we get some experience. Now if there is no spiritual knowledge at all, then from the world we may get some experience. But what happens is, even if we pursue particular desires and get some frustration in that process, or, see, it's one thing to get a desire, to have a desire and to not have that desire fulfilled.
And thereafter be frustrated. But it's even more exasperating if we have a desire, we fulfil the desire, and then we find it's not fulfilling. This is what I lived for, and it's an anticlimax.
What is this? Isn't there something more in life? So actually, the frustration because of not fulfilling desire is one kind of frustration. Frustration because the fulfilling of desire is not fulfilling. That is a bigger frustration.
When this happens, at that time, if we have no spiritual knowledge at all, then that experience will frustrate us, but we'll start thinking, OK, this particular thing is going to fulfil me, let me try that out. Let me try that out. One of my friends is in the television advertisement industry, and he told me that there is a survey done that when people, nowadays there are so many TV channels, so people are most attentive when they are surfing through channels, not when they are watching a particular channel.
Because what happens, once you are watching a particular channel, we know the programme, OK, sometimes it is exciting, sometimes it is boring, OK, this is going on. But when you are surfing through channels, maybe something new will come, something good will come, something good will come, something good will come. So what happens similarly for us, if we focus only on experience from the world, then we will never get much.
That experience alone doesn't make us experienced. We can have many, many experiences, but we don't really gain wisdom through that. It is when we have spiritual knowledge, which we hear, and then we look at the world through the eyes of spiritual knowledge.
Then what happens? We start getting wisdom. See, if the world will tell us, this matters, this matters, this matters, this matters, but then through our own experience, I gave you so much importance, does it really matter this much? Does it make such a big difference? It didn't give me that much satisfaction. Then we hear scripture, and then scripture tells us, this is what matters.
That the gratification of our worldly desires doesn't matter as much as our connection with the divine. Maintaining that connection is most important. Do we have a whiteboard marker or something like that? Okay, no problem.
So, I just wanted to illustrate this point. So for all of us, when we go through our life journey, we as conscious beings are here, and the world will give us some experiences. So the world's experiences will make us experienced, will make us wise, not just by our having those experiences, but by our learning from those experiences.
And there are many things which you could learn, but the most important thing for us to learn is what really matters in life. So when we study from scripture, and then look at the world through the eyes of scripture, that is called as Shastra Chakshu. That is Chakshu is eyes, Shastra is scripture.
So the eyes of spiritual wisdom. When we look at the world through those eyes, then whatever experiences we get, we will be able to assimilate and learn more. Now, when we are children, for example, they have built a sand castle, and somebody breaks their castle, they get furious.
But adults, they know, sand castle now will last for very long. They think this doesn't matter so much. So as we grow, our understanding of what matters changes.
So when we learn spiritual knowledge, what matters to us changes. Now this doesn't mean that the worldly things, we become negligent or irresponsible. It is paradoxical, I'll conclude this point that, it is paradoxical that the more attached we are, the less responsible we can be.
Why is that? Because when we are attached to someone or something, then our only focus is, if it's a thing, I have to get this at all costs. If it's a person, I have to please this person at all costs. And sometimes in pleasing that person, we may do something which is bad for them, which is bad for us also.
So there is attachment, there is detachment, and there is commitment. Attachment is when we are emotionally locked in something. Detachment is when we are emotionally unconnected at all.
And commitment is when we are emotionally invested. Emotionally invested. It is that, say if you have some money, you have invested it somewhere, now if you find that this investment is not giving good returns, you can take it out.
But if you put a money in a fixed bond which you cannot break, then the money is there and it is just locked over there. So for doing our various roles and responsibilities in life, we need commitment. And attachment is often an enemy of commitment.
When we are attached, then we get so consumed by things that we can't be responsive. Say if we have to do some project, and then we become very attached to it, and something doesn't work out, we become angry, we yell at others, we overreact, and actually we make things worse by that. But if we are committed, yes this is important, and then this thing is not going right, I won't get too overwhelmed by it.
So we will be able to stay more equiposed. So that commitment comes when we have a higher connection. The connection with Krishna uses inner stability, inner strength.
And that is what matters the most. And other things matter, but it is not that if something doesn't work out, my whole life is going to crumble. Yes, sometimes problems come, problems stay, problems go.
I don't have to get overwhelmed by them. So we all can go on this journey of what we think matters from there to what actually matters. So this is Yayati's journey where he thinks initially that getting the sensual pleasure by his relationship with either Divyani or Sarmashtra or whoever else, that was the most important thing.
He is completely obsessed with it. But then he evolves from there and he becomes enlightened. So we all can similarly evolve from whatever we think matters to what actually matters.
So I will summarise. I spoke today on this theme of the story of Yayati. I started three parts.
First I spoke that science is the study of matter. Spirituality is the study of what matters. Science can provide us more and more resources to live with.
Spirituality can provide us the values and purposes to live for. And we drive a car not just to get to the gas station, but to go somewhere. Similarly, the body has its own needs.
The body has survival, has food, eating, sleeping, defending and reproduction. These are biological drives. But for many of us, what is a biological function can become a psychological obsession.
And then it can become a spiritual distraction. Now why does it become a psychological obsession? Because we human beings are in a position where as souls we are so evolved that whatever pleasure the body provides is not enough for us. And that's why when we eat, we are not satisfied with the natural food that comes.
We want varieties of faeces. Similarly, the biological function of mating, we try to get more and more pleasure through that in various ways. And that can entangle us.
So basically when we want more pleasure than what the body provides, either we can get more sense pleasure or we can look for something more than sense pleasure. So the story of Yayati is about how somebody can get caught and obsessed with more and more sense pleasure. So he initially rescued Devyani and he united with her.
But then he was attracted by Sarmashtra that he bore the consequences of that and he lost his youth. But again he by some arrangement got it back but again he became entangled. And then finally after indulging for a long time when he realised that this isn't giving satisfaction that's when he got that illumination and he became enlightened.
So how can we all gain spiritual knowledge? I talked about how we learn from scripture and then we experience in the world. So we all will experience frustration. We all may get some understanding by studying scripture.
But if we hold on to our attachments then that understanding will be like lightning. But if we are ready to re-examine our attachments then it can become like light. And the way we get spiritual knowledge is that we don't just focus on the world's experiences that we are getting but we learn from scripture and then evaluate our experience in the light of scripture.
Then whatever we have grown up with the idea this is what matters in my life we evaluate it. Most of the times when we feel dissatisfied it's because of frustration of our desires. But actually dissatisfaction is caused much more by domination by desire.
So to not have a desire fulfilled is frustrating but to have a desire fulfilled and to find no fulfilment thereby is even more frustrating. So by our experiences evaluated in the light of scriptural knowledge we can grow from what we think matters to what actually matters. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. So what brought the enlightenment to him and how will the enlightenment come in our lives? Yeah, it's a it's, there are two ways of looking at it. One is that sometimes wisdom it comes as a inspiration.
Like even in science, scientific study or any kind of solving some problem sometimes we have the inspiration, I should do this. The inspiration is like a sudden moment of insight or illumination it's almost as if it is readily formed it has come to us. Many prominent scientists have discovered, Hercules discovered the benzene ring or many scientists they discovered it comes as inspiration.
But however, that inspiration alone is not the cause of the breakthrough. Because even when the inspiration has come before that they have studied they have processed, they have tried to understand. And then when some insight comes, this is really great.
They realise it when they are actually applying themselves. Similarly for us, there is we could say, there is the process of regular spiritual study, which we do and then that that makes our consciousness receptive. It's like we can till the soil and we can plough the land and then whenever we are hearing the spiritual knowledge at some particular point that seed fructifies.
So now when the seed will fructify, that is mysterious. We can't really predict that or control that. But what we can do is we can try to we can plough the soil of our heart regularly we try to hear and learn and apply as much as we can and sometimes that conviction will come across.
So in his case after indulging in sensual pleasures for a long time eventually when he still felt dissatisfied he still felt an insatiable craving within him. So he could have again indulged in that pleasure but he thought, what is this? This is indulging again and again and again when is this going to end? When will I be satisfied? That thought came at a particular time it's a complex combination of what he had learned in the past what he had experienced at a particular time and it was all, you could say, fermenting in his consciousness and suddenly a bubble of wisdom came up. Okay? Thank you.
Any other questions? Yeah, so is ananda a type of sense pleasure? It's not exactly sense pleasure although it can be it can be pleasure experienced through the senses. There is a difference between the two. That is, this is the physical level of reality, this is mental level this is spiritual level, body, mind and soul.
So now when we talk about sense pleasure, normally what we refer to it is the senses interacting with the sense objects. The senses are physical and the sense objects are physical. The senses engage with the sense objects, there is some pleasure.
That is technically called a sense pleasure. Now for us the soul is here, the mind is here, the body is here. So right now the soul's consciousness is the primary channel through the mind and the body.
In principle the soul has got nothing to do with the mind and the body. So there are four states of consciousness this is a technical subject I'll just briefly mention it. They're called as jagruti, swapna, sushupti and turiya or samadhi.
So jagruti is the wakeful stage. The stage in which we are right now. Hopefully.
So it is that the consciousness comes from the soul through the mind to the body, to the physical level, that is jagruti. Then there is swapna. That the soul, the consciousness comes to the level of the mind but not to the level of the body.
That's why we have dreams when we sleep. We experience things although the body is not experiencing much. That's swapna.
And sushupti is deep sleep which is almost dreamless. The consciousness doesn't come even to the level of the mind. And in turiya is where the consciousness becomes freed from the mind and the body and goes directly to the spiritual level.
At the spiritual level, it connects with the supreme spiritual reality with Bhagawan, with Parambrahma Bhagawan and then there is Paramananda over there. So that is the stage of spiritual perfection when the soul becomes liberated from the mind and the body. At our level, the soul's consciousness is going to be rooted through the mind and the body.
So what happens is that same divine who can be experienced purely by the soul at the spiritual level, that divine becomes accessible to us at the physical level. How is that? Say we go to a temple. There are the sacred images, the deities.
Now the deity may be made of wood or marble or whatever but through some special spiritual practises which are ceremonies, the divine's presence is invoked over there. So then we are beholding the deities with our eyes but actually we are connecting with the divine through that. Similarly when we have the chanting of mantras, the mantras seem like ordinary sound vibration but because they are referring to the divine, the divine manifests through them.
So at our level, even spiritual pleasure will be accessed through the senses but however what happens, normally if we focus on, if we use our senses to engage with some sense objects then our consciousness becomes more and more locked at the physical level but when we use our senses to connect with spiritual objects like say the sacred text, the deities, the holy name then this connection actually strengthens our spiritual awareness and then by that, by experiencing spiritual happiness, even if it is experienced right now through the senses, gradually our consciousness starts expanding, becoming more and more receptive and then eventually, even if the body and mind are not functional, we can experience spiritual happiness. So right now, yes, it will be experienced through the body and mind because our consciousness is caught in the body and the mind but eventually as we become purified, we will start experiencing more and more spiritual happiness independent of the condition of the body and the mind. Does it make sense? Thank you.
Any other questions? Okay. Okay. Sometimes study of scripture can also be overwhelming or we may not… Okay.
What is the optimum way of studying scripture you might, when you find interesting you might get overwhelmed and lost in that. Yeah, I don't think it is a it is a grace. Not so much that, oh, I have read this book, I have read this book, I have read this book.
More important thing is to assimilate the values we are learning. So generally A. We are studying books and also associating with those who are trying to live according to scriptural wisdom. Then, how this is to be applied becomes clearer.
Traditionally, if you consider say 300-400 years before before the printing press was developed by Gutenberg, books were very rare. So, most of spiritual knowledge was transmitted through the oral tradition. Not so much in the written tradition.
Books were written by scholars for scholars and they had to be handwritten and replicated by hand. It is quite complex. So, it is very very important for us to not just study the books but also to avail of the oral tradition.
Say, for example, now if you decide to study the Bhagavad Gita or now you are studying the Bhagavatam. So, if you decide, instead of thinking that, oh, I have this book, I want to finish this book in the next one month or next 15 days or something like that. Yeah, we might read once quickly to get an overview of what is there in the book.
But then, it is good if you read something and then hear something on that and then combine both. Then, the reading and the hearing, when both of them are done synergistically, that's when understanding and application become much more clear for us. And the important thing in general is, there is no one right way to study scripture.
Because this is, it's a process of spiritual evolution. So, we have to find the purpose is to nourish, to be nourished. So, some of us might find that, say, even maybe memorising some Sanskrit verses and keeping those verses in our mind, reciting them, that's what nourishes us.
But some of us, it might be maybe just hearing the stories and the lessons drawn from different perspectives, noting it down, noting out some quotes, keeping them with us, that's what inspires us. Or maybe when we hear some narratives and then there are some visual images that we see them and we cherish them, and those are what inspire us. So, we have to find out what are the ways in which we can anchor our mind in Krishna.
There is no one way which is the right way. We have to find whatever works for us. And that we learn from experience and association.
Thank you. Can we stop here? Thank you very much.