How our relationship with God evolves | Gita 7.16 | Bangalore
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so I’ll be writing and drawing over here certain things so if you cannot see you might want to shift slightly so this is a verse I’ll explain the meaning and then we’ll try to recite it once chatur vidha, four kinds bhajante maam, they worship me chatur vidha bhajante maam chatur vidha bhajante maam janaha, janaha is people sukhruti no, these are good people they have done some good deeds in the past arjuna, Krishna is speaking to arjuna janaha sukhruti no arjuna artha, artha is those who are distressed jijnana, those who are curious artha, artha is wealth those who need wealth artha, artha jijnana surat adhi jnani, jnani is the wise people cha, also, bharata rishabha krishna is calling arjuna the one who comes to the dynasty of bharata jnani cha bharata rishabha jnani cha bharata rishabha yes first six chapters are about middle six chapters are about and the last six chapters are about so ultimately the point of the gita is to enable everyone to rise to a higher consciousness so in one sense if we consider krishna is the ultimate purpose the highest reality so in one sense the first six chapters are about karma yoga to dhyana yoga to bhakti yoga leading to krishna the middle six chapters are about wherever you have practised bhakti yoga and come to krishna the last six chapters are about sorry this is not dhyana yoga this is jnana yoga so jnana yoga culminating in bhakti yoga and ultimately attaining krishna so the idea is that krishna when he starts speaking it is not that he is planning that i will be getting chapters over here no it is an organic conversation arjuna asks some questions and krishna gives some answers and as the questions move forward krishna keeps elaborating various subjects so now in the seventh chapter krishna is building on the topic of bhakti and in this particular section 7.14 was a famous verse krishna says that this world is the place of maya and above him it all is krishna so now we are right now in the world of maya he says if we surrender to krishna if we surrender which is a limb of bhakti then we will go towards krishna so now if this is the pathway say if somebody understands that i am sick and this is the medicine that will cure me then why would people not take the medicine there could be various reasons some people do not realise that i am sick some people with sickness will go away automatically so even if there is a medicine that cure that is available if people don’t take it there could be various reasons for it so in the subsequent section from 7.15 so from 15th to 24th verse krishna will talk about different kinds of people if krishna is the ultimate reality then everyone is related to krishna in different ways so in the 15th verse he talks about people who don’t surrender they go away from him then 16th to 19th he will talk about those who do surrender and how those who surrender evolve in their surrender they come to him and they are kept here till then then from 20 to 23 he talks about those who go to the devatas so who the devatas are and why people go to devatas krishna will talk about that and then 24th verse he will talk about those who go to the impersonal that is the brahman krishna is the highest personal reality so in this way krishna is talking about different kinds of people who are at different levels you could put this same in a different way on the positive side are those who come to krishna those who go away from krishna so 16th to 19th are those who come to krishna 15th was those who go away from krishna and in between are those who go in different directions some go towards the devatas some go towards the brahman jyoti so in this way krishna is broadly describing the spectrum of humanity how different people function so today we will be focussing on this category of those who come to krishna now this could in one sense be reflective of our own journey all of you have come to the temple over here you could have gone for a movie, you could have gone for a party you could have just stayed home and watched the movie there are hundreds of things you could have done we have come here so krishna is saying each one of you is a sukriti you are a pious person, a good person so generally speaking if we are here if this is the world in front of us or we could say the world is around us, we are in the world so most of the time our vision stays caught in the world I want a new house I want a partner in my life, I want wealth I want a job, I want this, I want that our vision is caught in the world so while we are caught in the world now there is god above the world of course krishna doesn’t just exist above the world krishna exists everywhere but krishna you can generally say when we talk about god, he is up there so now why would someone’s vision shift upwards so what happens is there are mainly two reasons krishna offered four categories those categories fall broadly in two reasons let’s depict this another way I am here and say the world is in front of me the world is much bigger than me but the world is in front of me so there are two possibilities why instead of looking at the world somebody will start shifting their vision upward this is krishna who exists above so the first possibility is that I am not good enough for the world that means that there is this competitive exam I am passing I don’t think I am intelligent enough to pass it I don’t know whether I will pass it I have a child the child is sick, the child is not getting well so I don’t know whether I can do anything I may have money I may have a doctor I am not good enough for the world so then we look for something beyond the world the other is the world is not good enough for me that means that the world promises many things but actually these things don’t grant good luck nobody can say I have got everything that the world offers but to some extent we have got that we have a family, we have children, we have some amount of wealth and these things they don’t really satisfy me so I can go on the same path and seek more of the same thing but it’s after some time the mind is starting to say I have been there, I have done that is there something else, is there something more so the first three, if we consider this was 7-16 there were four lines, you can call them A, B, C, D so the C, the first line of the third line these people have the idea that you know, I am distressed, I have this problem I can’t solve this problem myself therefore, I will do what is called so we could and the D is the Jnani the world is not good enough for you so basically it’s that when we can consider there are many different metaphors we could use for the world but say somebody is in a school and say they are in a school or say we are working in a company and we find that you know, everybody in their company is very good at work maybe I am not good enough for this company then what we will do is we will see whether I can get some extra training maybe I need to join some coaching maybe I need to do some online courses so I am not good enough for this company then I have to get some resources so that I can become good enough or I am working in this company but there is not much challenge over there nothing stimulating, people are not really very good this is not good enough for me then we will start looking elsewhere so lordly can you just shift that a little bit away there are two reasons why we may turn away from the world toward God sorry oh you jump right from there cough cough some honey you can put in honey so sorry about that now in general we all want to improve ourselves, improve our life and maybe to some extent improve the world around us we humans naturally live on food we need food to live but food is what we live with it is not what we live for it is a resource for living but everyday when we wake up we need a reason for waking up and one reason is that today can be better than yesterday not only today can be better than yesterday but I can play a part in making today better than yesterday not only that I can become better than what I was yesterday so basically we normally all want to go up there is the hope hope that the world at least my world, I can make things better than my role in the world and myself we all want this now we may not consciously articulate it but say when somebody is depressed depression is basically the ultimate loss of hope that depression can have many different causes but essentially when there is depression what happens is one’s hope becomes lesser than one’s despair there are many things which can cause us to become desperate sometimes people ask why so many people become depressed nowadays but actually that is not the question we should be asking the question to ask is why is everyone not depressed and there are so many things going wrong everywhere in the world there are so many things going wrong in everyone’s life if you sit down and talk with anyone there is a tragedy in everyone’s history everybody has had a tough life so why is everyone not depressed that is because your hope springs into a knot and we have a hope that things may be bad bad things may have happened to me in the past but things can become better so when we are facing the world in front of us the world can be a depressing place sometimes we ourselves make mistakes sometimes others whom we trust make mistakes sometimes people mistreat us, sometimes people betray us sometimes the natural calamities come upon us and in that way often we are hearted and motivated and that is why we feel that we live for some help so we could go into these four categories of people and understand each with a historical example but I will focus here more on a principle the principle is that there are times when we feel life is too tough and all the problems that we are facing I can’t face them or at least I can’t face them at all and that is the time when we turn towards God God please help me and Krishna says those who come to Him for help in this way they are good people they are so good people now when we come to Krishna among these two people I am not good enough for the world and the world is not good enough for me so there is a difference among these two in terms of their spiritual evolution in terms of how they have understood their relationship with the world so in the first stage we feel that I need to become better at least we all need to become better but we think okay when I become better then I can get a better job I can get more respect in society maybe I can get more money there are things in this world which are called as Artha Artha can mean value wealth, meaning one meaning of Artha is meaning itself or we have Artha Mantri, the finance minister Artha also means wealth so Artha also you can say value or wealth now there are many things which are of Artha for us so for example a small child a toy may be an Artha the toy breaks, the child starts crying now when the child grows up then he understands that Artha is there are many other things of Artha so for example wealth might be one Artha wealth is important but for earning money I have to go far away from my family I just can’t be with anybody whom I love is it really worth it? we may decide that relationships is a great Artha like that as we grow our understanding of what is Artha evolves but we all have, when I said earlier hope hope is what takes us forward the hope actually pushes us towards that which we consider is Artha for somebody who is an avid cricket fan their hope is that India will win the World Cup and that’s all okay what did India do in this match? how is this player performing? they are very avidly interested in it so everybody has some conception of Artha and we seek that we all have certain things which we think of value and we pursue that now while pursuing that gradually as this ladder as this staircase moves upwards we come to what is called the Paramartha Paramartha is that which is of supreme value supreme meaning and that is Krishna that is God so now this is something which we intellectually understand but each person has to evolve towards that so initially when the world is the Artha for us so here let’s put it this way let’s consider the spiritual journey on this journey for us initially the world is very big and God is small the world is very big means the world is the Artha for us I want fame, I want power, I want wealth I want pleasure and if we at all consider God God is like the means so God is the means and the world is the ends that means I go to God to get something in the world to fix something in the world so this is the stage where I am not good enough for the world you make me good enough you help me to get these things however as a person grows spiritually the world becomes smaller for them and God becomes bigger this is the spiritually evolved person and for them it’s not only the world becomes smaller and God becomes bigger it’s also the world becomes the means and God becomes the ends so here this is the stage where we have realised that God, Krishna is the Paramahamsa so at this point the person is still functioning in the world it’s not that they have to renounce the world but they understand that whatever I get in the world it is by the blessings of God and is meant to be used in the service of God and where this consciousness comes it’s at this time that the person becomes steady in life as long as we are thinking I am not good enough for the world now that is also a good enough reason to come to God any reason to come to God is good so it’s even two examples say if a child has got some issues with the parents the child is born and the child gets into some trouble and he gets into a lot of trouble tries to fix the trouble and it doesn’t work and finally the child comes back to the parents now what are the parents going to say you forgot us all this time only when you are in trouble now you are coming to us the parents will say when you were in so much trouble why did it take so long for you to come to us you could have come much earlier I would have been there to help you so like that for us it is not that the child has come back to the parents out of love for the parents the child has come back because the child needs to fix some issues but the parents are happy that the child has come back so in this the stage where Krishna is saying the child could have decided I need to get someone else on this problem but the child didn’t do that so whenever you are in trouble you can do many things but if somebody comes to God for help that is like a child coming back to the parents that is good however generally speaking here what happens is the parent is the last alternative many people say also I tried everything oh God you are my last resort now we may be saying in the sense of despair but what does it mean sometimes you want to annoy someone you say can you do this for me they say ok I will think about it you are my 74th option I will go with 76th option oh you mean there are 74 people before me who have tried so it is not particularly flattering let’s take another example to illustrate this say a boy proposes to a girl would you please marry me and the girl asks why do you want to marry me because no other girl in town is ready to marry me now that is not the most flattering of proposals now if at that time the girl agrees to marry the boy that shows the girl’s love for the boy not the boy’s love for the girl the boy has no option that’s why he is being with her the girl may have options but still she accepts being with him so like that when God is our last alternative nothing else in the world can do and Krishna accepts us that shows Krishna’s love for us not our love for Krishna actually that boy’s love for the girl is tested when he has options and does he still stay with her or does he use her in the thrower so like that for us when things in this world become good ok now I have a lot of trouble God please help me we get help by God but after that ok you know things are fine thank you bye bye if you do like that then that is not even steady devotion there is some devotion there but that is not even steady so many of us when we come to Krishna it is because we need Krishna’s help and that is good I will talk about 3 stages in which the spiritual journey evolves and then I will have questions and answers so basically first the first stage is we need Krishna’s help and then at this stage also it is very good that we are coming to Krishna for help rather than the universe however from there gradually we start realising that what kind of help do I need so initially this person just doesn’t listen to me fix this person so that this person doesn’t listen to me so generally speaking initially when we come to God we come to God to fix external things this problem is there that problem is there please fix this but as we grow we start realising there are things outside to fix but actually I need to be fixed myself there are lot of issues with me and I need those issues to be fixed so somebody may come because I don’t have money oh God please give me some blessings give me some money and suppose they get married that issue is fixed but then tomorrow after some time some other need will come so it takes some evolution to realise that I need internal fixing now it is maybe I have such greed oh God that no matter how much I have I am always unhappy for example we may have this much and we want something this so we may say to God give me this and God gives us that but then afterwards we realise that it is an issue of the mindset we may have this much but our vision just goes here and then our happiness depends not so much on what we have as on how much we appreciate what we have because somebody may have a million dollars and they are looking at themselves they will never be satisfied so we start realising that yes oh God it is not just the external things that I need I need to be internally fixed so this is a slightly evolved stage where we turn to God and here also at this time we are not really interested in Krishna person but we are interested in Krishna not just fixing things outside there but Krishna fixing things inside so for example somebody might be an alcoholic and they become oh God I lost all my money I have called police then let me win a lottery then I can get all the money back now suppose it happens that they win a lottery what is going to happen? most likely they will squander the money again then as they grow what happens is they will realise this alcoholism that this is a big problem so this actually helps us connect with Krishna Manji we ourselves are becoming more evolved we ourselves are understanding that actually internally I need to be fixed in both of these cases still it is I am not good enough for the world still both are at that level that in the world things are wrong so you fix the things or in me things are wrong that is why I am not able to get things in the world so please help me to fix those things when we evolve further Krishna will talk about in 7.19 and the last verse in the series so here a person realises that actually Krishna Krishna is Krishna’s greatest blessing that what I need is not just that I get this much wealth or I get rid of the craving for wealth but what I ultimately need is my heart to be enriched in Krishna’s presence that if I can have Krishna in my heart then my heart will be enriched far more than by anybody else in this world so this is the stage where the person realises the world is not good enough for me that there may be many things in this world but those won’t satisfy my heart see generally we have many desires and we think fulfilment of desire ok I want wealth, I want to buy this expensive set of clothes I want to buy this new phone fulfilment of desires will lead to fulfilment of heart that when this desire is fulfilled my heart will be fulfilled but my repeated experience after sometime we start understanding this just doesn’t happen even if a desire is fulfilled still the heart doesn’t get fulfilled the heart still stays empty then we start understanding that this fulfilment of heart it comes only by Krishna in the heart and that is when Vasudeva Sarodhi so Krishna if I get wealth I will use it in your service now of course for surviving we need a certain amount of money we need a certain amount of resources but we are not chasing those resources as the primary purpose of our life yes I need these things but Krishna I need you in my heart the most and a person comes to this level this is the level where a person finds happiness even while they are in this world in this life this is what happened this happened in the story of Dhruva Maharaj Dhruva was a small 5 year old boy and he was grievously insulted by his step mother and his brother Uttar and he said I was sitting on his father’s lap the father was the king and he wanted to sit on the other lap of the father and his step mother pushed him down she said if you want to sit on your father’s lap then you have to take birth from my womb only then you can sit now small children also in person so he knew there was this woman and she was in our home only so he did not really get taken aback by her he was taken aback but not her actually it hurt him so much but it was his father’s silence that hurt him the harshest words of our critics don’t hurt us as much as the silence of our supporters critics we expect I thought you were at my side I thought you were at my back you stayed silent so that’s why this anger is not towards his step mother and it is not really towards his father also it is more that you think I am not worthy of sitting on this throne and I will get a throne bigger than yours and I will sit on that throne so his mother told him that is your desire and only person who can fulfil it is Lord Shiva and then he met Narada Muni and Narada Muni invited him to perform very severe bhakti, immense bhakti and by that finally he did immense tapasya so he was in the category of Arthaarthi actually these categories are not black and white he was Arthaarthi, he was distressed and as he was relieved from his stress he thought if I get Arthaarthi, if I get kingdom then I will be able to solve my problems so Arthaarthi, he saw the Lord and finally the Lord appeared in front of him and the Lord appeared in front of him and asked him Shiva what do you want and just beholding the beauty of the Lord basking in the presence of the Lord breathing in that extraordinary experience he realised he said the kingdom that I was seeking is just the appearance of God you oh Lord are like a red jewel it is you who I seek it is you who I want my dear Lord I don’t want anything else so for him his desire was fulfilled but actually the Lord manifested and he realised that this fulfils me much more than just getting this desire so for all of us when we practise bhakti we are getting very agitated this thing went wrong, that person mistreated me this happened that happened, come to the temple we may do this and sometimes our problem may also be solved but over a period of time we realise that when I come in the presence of Krishna that gives me greater relief that gives me greater enrichment then having this desire fulfilled having this problem solved and having this issue fixed so gradually by the practise of bhakti we get this realisation so this journey we go up from here to here we go by the practise of bhakti yoga so when we come to the satsang when we hear about Krishna when we experience Krishna when we participate in kirtans when we do some sadhana by that we start realising that actually being in the presence of Krishna gives me far more fulfilment than by having a particular desire fulfilled or not fulfilled that doesn’t mean the desire is not important for us but it is not that the world becomes false the world is real the desire may still be important my relationship with Krishna my being in Krishna’s presence that is far far more important when you understand that that is the time two things happen that is when our relationship with Krishna becomes strong and the world becomes small for us the world will always have ups and downs but when the world becomes small for us we become materially peaceful yes sometimes I’ll be honoured sometimes I’ll be dishonoured sometimes I’ll be lost we become materially peaceful and our connection with Krishna makes us spiritually joyful so we don’t depend on the world for our happiness yes I function in the world but my source of happiness comes through my relationship with Krishna and that is the stage where we all can come to that spiritual joyfulness will be constantly staying within that will constantly increase it keeps increasing so I’ll summarise what I discussed today so we discussed from 1716 to 1719 the journey of spiritual growth how does one grow spiritually so I talked about broadly 5 points the first point was chapter 7 overview how different people relate with Krishna there are some people positively they come to him, others go away from him those who worship Devata, those who worship Brahman they go in different directions so then we discussed about two reasons broadly speaking the world is here and Krishna is above so instead of looking at the world somebody starts looking above what are the two reasons I am not good enough for the world or the world is not good enough for me so in this connection that means generally speaking we are seeking things in this world and when we don’t get them, we turn towards God so the first three categories line C in this verse and line D in the verse so from this level when we start up so it’s like in the initial spiritual journey for us the world is big God is small and God is a means to the world but eventually what happens the world becomes big, God becomes big and God becomes the ends and you achieve that through the world and how do we come to this we come through a gradual evolution first I need Krishna to fix externals then I need Krishna to fix internals and then I just need Krishna because Krishna is Krishna’s greatest blessing and when we come to this at this stage you realise that fulfilment of heart, it doesn’t come by fulfilment of desire but it comes by the presence of Krishna in the heart and this presence of Krishna this manifests through the practise of Bhakti Yoga so slowly by practising Bhakti Yoga we experience Krishna the regularly coming to satsang regularly chanting Krishna’s holy names regularly praying to him, participating kirtans that gives you the experience this is so satisfying, this is what I want you to do and at this stage we can be materially peaceful and spiritually joyful thank you very much Hare Krishna does anyone have any questions or comments yes please so I said ok I don’t have money people don’t respect me, Krishna please make sure that people respect me that is changing people outside that is what we should be talking about but as we grow, we start understanding that actually I need to be respected I need to become more trustworthy I need to become more responsive but then eventually I realise actually it is Krishna who is Krishna’s greatest blessing so what I need is Krishna in my heart I don’t need anything else you mentioned that we are not that much heard by even our critics but those whom we trust they find fault with us or they don’t support us when we are telling so I want to ask, generally all of us are human beings and we have this expectation that those whom we love, whom we are working for they will help us when we are in maximum need so expectation wise there is nothing wrong in that so as a human being our desire is that we cannot go towards God we need human relationships so it is natural to expect so that means that level of trust when you put something much in someone that pain, how do we get over that pain good question see in any relationship if we are doing something for someone we expect something for others so expectation in one sense is natural but attachment to the expectation is there that is what becomes a problem so Krishna says in 1215 in the Bhagavad Gita यस्मानोद्विजिते लोको लोकानोद्विजिते चेहा see one who is not disturbed by others and one who does not disturb others so see normally what happens in our life is we disturb others and others disturb us so I have some features that I don’t like that you may not like in me and you have some features that I don’t like and in that way we disturb others and that’s how we create a disturbed world around us but Krishna is saying don’t disturb and don’t be disturbed so how do we do this it is say for example in a specific context we have some expectation from someone and that expectation is not fulfilled so in one sense this is natural but say normally like I said in any relationship there is some contribution from our side and there is some expectation from the other side I do something for you and you do something for me but sometimes this is a you could say a healthy relationship but say if in a relationship say I am doing a lot for the other person and the other person would hardly do anything for me then I start thinking what am I doing in this relationship what is the point of being here so now sometimes some relationships are responsibilities we need to do whatever is expected even that other person is not reciprocating so we need to be able to see that I am not just doing this for this person I am doing this for Krishna because this is by Krishna’s arrangement that I am in this role right now by Krishna’s arrangement that this person will be for me so when we are trying to do our duty in serving we say I am not just serving this person I am serving Krishna through this person and therefore even if we all can think of some people for whom we do a lot and they do very little for us but if we are fair in our life, if we are honest we all probably can think of in our lives there are some other people who did a lot for us and we did very little for them so ultimately life balances out so if we are just fixating my relationship with you, you are not doing too much for me why should I be doing so much for you in some cases we do a little for the other we get a little from that person but we get a lot from other persons that’s how we understand Krishna will reciprocate with us so if we have a Krishna conscious vision then we can actually sustain ourselves in the relationship now of course Krishna can directly also enrich our heart directly also bless us, that’s also a factor okay, thank you any other questions yes madam you spoke about how hope can bring us towards our goals and how it can inspire us to strive our goals but hope can also be disappointing so is hope beneficial or not if we don’t have hope we become homeless that’s not a healthy state to be in so we could say that our hope needs to be guided and guarded by our intelligence so our hope needs to be guided and guarded hope is emotion basically and emotions can be difficult emotions themselves can be unreliable these emotions are essentially part of who we are so if we are hoping that someone will change for the better and we have seen them for one year, two years, five years they are not changing if they change that’s wonderful but we can’t centre our life on that hope so basically if that hope is not guided by intelligence so hope that is not guarded by intelligence you can say hope not guarded and that is basically it can lead us on falling if somebody is no good at a particular thing and they keep doing the same thing again and again one day I will win in this and how will that happen if somebody is say four and a half feet tall and they say I want to become a basketball player unless they create a basketball special fund it’s not going to really happen so there are unrealistic hopes so hope has to be guarded by intelligence and then it needs to be guided when it’s guided then that hope becomes a plan it becomes a strategy then we can take some steps in that direction so it’s good to have hope generally at recent year last year I was here on a family in Bangalore so after I got the award my friend said I have made 108 new year resolutions so I told him that is not a new year resolution that is just a wish list nobody can work on 108 things if it’s a resolution maybe 1, 2, 3 you can seriously work on it so sometimes the hope is like a teenager oh I will win a lottery and my whole life will cheat no it has to be connected if this is the hope what is the next thing I can do what is the plan I can do and then it moves forward so hope needs to be guided and guarded then it is positive Om Namah Shivaya