Loneliness – Why, what to do?

[Talk at Mantra Lounge, San Francisco, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
very much Hare Krishna extremely sorry for the delay we got caught in the traffic and grateful to be here amongst all of you as I mentioned I will speak on the topic of loneliness and why we experience it and what we can do about it I’ll talk about it three levels circumstantial psychological and spiritual before that let me begin with a couple of experiences from my life when I was in college I just entered into college at that time I was about 14 15 just finished my school I had got a very good grade in my school as among the top students in my in my state of Maharashtra in India and then somehow on the very day on which I got that result my mother was diagnosed with advanced blood cancer leukaemia and also advanced that within one month she passed away so at that time it was I felt deeply lonely although I had a younger brother I had my father was working in a different city the younger brother was almost 12 years younger to me so that was the time I started thinking what is it that we look for when we are lonely it’s obviously that we are looking for someone whom we love someone whom we can relate with and their absence creates a sense of emptiness a sense of hollowness within us a sense of loneliness but then I started thinking that actually death is going to come to everyone some people get it younger some people get it older so is it that when we form relationships and then we have experienced loss thereafter so are we simply doomed to suffer sometimes some relationship work out for a whole lifetime sometimes they work for a shorter time but eventually they all end so what was the point of it all and that so that question was what one of the other questions that made me start looking for the purpose of life what is life meant for what are relationships meant for what is everything meant for and at that time I read I came across after a couple of years of reading various books I came across the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text which explains how we all are essentially relational creatures we are at our core spiritual beings but we are all meant to be in relationships that is our eternal nature so the Bhagavad Gita explains that we have two kinds of relationships one is horizontal relationship with others around us and there is the other is a vertical relationship with the divine the divine is known by different names in different traditions and the process of connecting with the divine is called the yoga of love or bhakti yoga yoga normally we do for physical fitness and physical health the yoga which relates not just with the body but with the heart the yoga of the heart the yoga of love is called as bhakti yoga and bhakti yoga centres on developing our vertical relationship with the divine as I said the divine is known by different names in different traditions and the Bhagavad Gita knows the divine by the name Krishna the word Krishna means one who is all attractive one who is the source of the attractiveness of everyone so the bhakti yoga text described the beauty and the glory of Krishna and in one such bhakti yoga text I found it is called the Srimad Bhagavatam as I continue my reading I found a very striking passage where there is a mother who wants to help her child who has been insulted his boy Dhruva has been severely insulted by his stepmother and his father is silent and because her father because her father this boy Dhruva’s father she’s circumstantially not able to help Dhruva so at that time she tells him pray to Vishnu Vishnu is another name of God pray to Krishna and there she says that whatever love I can offer you or whatever love millions of mothers like me can offer you this is Krishna can offer you that much and more love so this was what is striking observation for me now that means the love that we experience in our relationships is real it is some sometimes in the spiritual path some people hold the idea that actually ultimately we are all just to merge into oneness you start to become peaceful we become apathetic detached from everything so the idea is that all relationships are temporary so they’re illusory so don’t get entangled some people have that idea of spirituality just go into a state of secluded isolation and trance but what this was what this passage states is that if if the divine love is thousands of times more than the love that we experience that means that the love that we experience is also real if the love that we experience now is illusory is false if it is zero then zero multiplied by thousands is also zero only so then I came across a whole complete worldview what that worldview states is that we as I said we have a vertical relationship with the divine and we have horizontal relationship with others and for our life journey to move steadily we need both these relationships we need the vertical relationship we need the horizontal relationship now the horizontal relationships are the horizontal relationships are what we normally seek when we want relationships and in these relationships if we find that some upheaval comes up some turbulence comes up some disruption happens then it often becomes unbearable if we have defined ourselves if we have defined ourselves in terms of that relationship what do I mean by define ourselves in terms of that that relationship see we all have our own self-understanding of who we are it may be okay I’m an American I’m a I’m I’m an engineer I’m a professional lawyer I’m young I’m a we all have our self definitions and our self definitions our self understanding is based not just on the qualifications that we have or the nationality that we have we also form our self definition based on the relationships that we have so for example we may identify ourselves as the son or daughter of some so and so when we are small then as we grow up we may identify ourselves as okay I’m the husband of this person and the wife of this person then as we grow further we have kids we may identify ourselves I’m the mother of this person I’m the father of this person and each of these relationships they bring a sense of they form an important layer in our identity but if any of these relationships become our defining identity then we can face severe disturbance of the mind when that relationship gets disrupted so loneliness it happens when not just when we are alone in fact when we are alone we just all alone maybe we’re in a forest somewhere and there’s nobody around or we are caught on an island where there’s nobody around that can be circumstantial where we are circumstantially not with people but the most mortifying the most painful loneliness is when we are surrounded by people and we feel lonely actually when we feel lonely and they’re physically also alone that time you just go and meet with people connect with people and loneliness goes away but when we are with others and still we feel complete we feel lonely we feel forlorn we feel disconnected that loneliness is very very difficult to deal with so that loneliness happens when we are largely when we are defining ourselves in terms of a particular relationship say for example a child is defined in terms of the relationship with the parents so if a child has no parents when the child is defined as a orphan if somebody is married and lost their spouse and they may be defined as their widow as a widower now here what has happened in all these situations the social identity is in terms of the loss that okay this is orphan this is like this that is social identity social identification might be there but what is the way the person personally identifies themselves if they keep identifying themselves in terms of that loss that thing which is missing in their life then that is if they feel a relationship is a part of my defining identity or rather is my defining identity and then that relationship is lacking then they feel extremely lonely so somebody might be very close to their sibling and if then suddenly they get separated from their sibling they might feel lonely because of that we all have different relationships but whichever relationship becomes a part of our defining identity and then we experience disconnection in that relationship that’s when we feel the greatest loneliness I’ve been giving seminars on fear and over facing our fears across various colleges and companies so while I was studying about fear I looked at what are the various fears that people experienced throughout through history say what are the top 10 fears of people in the 18th century top 10 fears in 19th century top 10 fears in the 20th century top 10 fears in the 21st century so in the 21st century two fears have become added to the list one fear is the fear of terrorists which is understandable fear of terrorists and the second fear is interesting second fear is the fear of rejection when people want to form a relationship with someone and they are afraid that they will experience rejection in that relationship that also causes great fear now if you consider these two fears the fear of rejection is actually a fear of loneliness that I form a relationship and I get rejected then I will be left lonely and that loneliness so that it’s such a great fear it has become practically among the top 10 fears I was in UK just a four months ago and I was speaking on a similar topic of of depression and one of the causes of course is loneliness so there I read over there that actually the UK government has appointed official minister for loneliness how to deal with loneliness now that is because this is such a serious problem so I was saying that we have horizontal relationships and among the various relationships some relationships become a part of our self-definition and when that defining relationship is experiencing some turbulence that is when we become lonely so this is what is psychological loneliness psychological means circumstantially we are surrounded by people but that time we feel extremely lonely we feel isolated we feel desolate at such times at one level we may try to form another relationship okay I have a form a relationship then that might help me to move on in my life but another way of looking at it is that we form not just another relationship but we also look to understand what is it that I am looking for what is it that defines me that means if we look at our horizontal relationship and our vertical relationship then as long as we define ourselves in terms of our horizontal relationships we don’t have control over whether people will be there with us physically or emotionally we don’t know that if we define ourselves in terms of our relationships alone then a turbulence in the relationship will be unbearable for us other than how do we define ourselves broadly speaking now we will define ourselves in terms of our relationships or we may define ourselves in terms of our positions and our professions oh I am so I’m a software engineer I am an attorney and this and that now the defining ourselves in terms of our positions helps but it doesn’t help us in a significant way because that doesn’t lead to a connection of the heart let me talk about what I mean by a connection of the heart this vertical relationship which we have that is based on the understanding that God the divine Krishna as is known the Bhakti Yoga tradition that he is always with us the bhakti the Bhagavad Gita explains that the divine is always present within our hearts is with us always and if we turn towards that divine in a mood of devotion then we can experience some sublime calm some sublime joy when we do the kirtan that we’re doing right now there is one way of connecting with the divine of experiencing a presence of the divine and by connecting with the divine that relationship is this eternally stable relationship why is it generally stable because the divine never forsakes us that divine the love of the divine for love of Krishna the love of divine for us is not conditional it is not that we have to be someone special to be loved by the divine rather we are special because we are loved with the divine irrespective of who we are now we may say oh this is all just it’s nice sounding fantasy how do I really know that there’s someone and there’s someone love for us we are at a particular level of consciousness and at our level of consciousness we can perceive things according to that level only if a baby is newborn and the baby starts crying when the baby is crying the mother may pick up the baby and offer her a breast milk now in the baby is drinking the breast milk initially she may be so disoriented she doesn’t even know that there is my there is this mother and this mother is offering me her breast milk all that she feels is oh she’s some nice soft object is there I I get something nice soft out of it and as he keeps drinking that milk drinking that milk over a period of time she started becoming okay actually this is the person over here and this person loves me with this person I’m safe with this person I’m protected and then as the baby starts growing up then say if night suddenly it becomes very cold and the baby starts shivering if he’s asleep eyes are closed but start shivering sometimes we are in a semi awake and semi asleep state where we are slightly aware of the things around us but he’s not where our eyes are not fully awake so for example with night it’s very cold we may not wake up but if we feel feel like sleeping then you might look around is there a comforter nearby and you might put the comforter on us so suppose the mother sees this baby is trembling she will be shivering and the mother comes and puts the comforter on the wheel now the baby has not opened her eyes she’s not seen her mother but just by feeling the warmth of the comforter the baby understands oh my mother is here my mother cares for me mother loves me my mother has put this comforter on me so that means there there is no vision of the mother but there is the experience of comfort of warmth of cosiness from which there is an inference that this is my mother and my mother is expressing her love for me through this action similarly for us just like that baby is sleeping right now we are all in a in a spirit in a state of spiritual unconsciousness spiritual unconsciousness means that although there is a spiritual core to us which is indestructible we are not aware of that spiritual core to continue with that mother and child example which is suppose there is a child who is watching a horror movie as a child is watching the horror movie this horrified trembling scared actually more and more horrified now the child is so caught in that horror movie the mother sees the child is there the child is horrified now actually nothing has happened to the child but as long as the child is caught in the horror movie the child can’t perceive that all that is happening is simply a movie now we may watch a movie at home and it doesn’t cost that much but if you go to theatre and watch the movie and the theatre we pay much more to watch the movie what happens in the theatre the illusion is greater we want to experience it fully so when we go into the theatre there are two things that happen as soon as we enter the theatre first the lights go off so the lights go off then we can’t see much around us and then lights go on and then our consciousness gets completely caught on whatever is there on the screen so even if there is somebody around us if our consciousness is completely caught on the TV on that theatre screen we will not perceive anything else similarly for us when we are practising spiritual when we are sorry when we are in our present state of consciousness our consciousness is caught at a particular level and although spiritually we the divine Krishna is with us but we are oblivious to that presence so we are caught in the movie that is the worldly reality around us and we are not aware of the spiritual divinity that is right next to us in this situation the idea of the divine who loves us whose presence can comfort us all this can seem like just a just a illusion but just as the baby with the closed eyes can experience the warmth the comfort from which the love can be inferred similarly for us when we practise bhakti yoga for example right now what we are doing was mantra meditation using a mantra to meditate on divine sound if we do like this we experience a sublime presence we start experiencing a sublime presence later initially we start experiencing a sense of calmness a sense of serenity a sense of clarity and this itself is an indicator of some higher reality that we are contacting that we are linking with and that can contact with the higher reality can calm us down when I first came to America a few years ago several years ago at that time I had gone to a university in Midwest and I spoke there on the topic of regulating our mental health regulating regulating our mental diet it was to a vegetarian society so now just as we regulate our physical diet we can regulate what we take in mentally also so after that a boy came to me and he told me that just before this class he was contemplating suicide he had been in a relationship with a girl and that girl had broken up with him so he was so devastated by that that he had been thinking of ending his own life and he’s walking along gloomily through the campus at that time he came and he heard my class he said something within me said he saw the poster or the programme said let me come in here so he said after he heard the class I explained in that class how our mind is inside us so and the mind can often act as our enemy how does it act as our enemy the mind is like a software programme inside us and it keeps proposing certain ideas so based on our self-definition so if we are defined ourselves in terms of say no I am this person’s spouse and this person’s child and this person’s parent then if you’re facing some turbulence in that relationship and the mind starts saying you are unworthy you are useless you’re hopeless so the mind keeps speaking to us constantly and that nagging voice of the mind that is what actually creates the sense of loneliness it’s not the other person’s absence in our life it is our constant replay oh this person is not there this person is not there this person is not there and I am so lonely I am very you know I’m lost no one cares for me it is that sense of loneliness which is amplified by the mind so he said I understood but actually it was a mind which was making me feel which is the mind which it is not that I wanted to end my life as a mind which is sick and your life and your life so I told him that this is how life-saving spiritual insight that you got your mind is different from you and if you can study the bhagavad-gita regularly if you understand the process of bhakti yoga then you can better appreciate this difference between yourself and your mind I write on the bhagavad-gita daily at a blog gita daily.com I encourage you to read that on a daily basis and whenever I would come to America thereafter from India I would meet him and talk with him and during these talks I would find this slowly becoming stable well situated in his career and last year when I had come I met him he told me that he’d been in a similar situation he had been in a steady relationship with a girl and she had unilaterally unexpectedly broken up with him so he said as soon as I got the text message I said that I’m breaking up with you I don’t want to talk with you I’m blocking your number don’t try to contact me so it was a blow for him he just went straight to his room and there he shut the door pulled down the windows closed the drapes turned off the lights and in the meanwhile over the years he said started practising bhakti yoga one aspect of bhakti yoga is the kirtan that we were doing just now so he liked to play a violin and he liked to sing the Hare Krishna kirtan mantra so he told me that he picked up his violin and he started continuously doing kirtan for six hours alone in the darkness there was no one with him just singing out calling out from his heart in a mood of prayer in a mood of intense longing and he felt at that time as I kept calling although it was completely dark around me I felt as if a light was shining within me I felt I was as if I was embraced by a comforting uplifting presence what could have been a very depressing experience it became an extremely enriching experience for me and this happened because he was able to connect with the divine so that connection is a matter of experience just as the child the baby infers from the comfort of the comforter that there is my mother who loves me similarly when we practise the process of bhakti yoga when we chant mantras when we offer our heart in the mood of worship when we study the bhakti texts when you associate with spiritually minded bhakti practitioners we start experiencing a calm within us we start experiencing some depth sublime presence within us and that presence is to us at our level of consciousness a pointer to the divine and to the extent we can develop this relationship this vertical relationship that will bring stability for us and with that inner stability then the horizontal relationship that we are developing we can approach them with greater perspective and greater maturity if we are in the ocean and there are waves coming a giant wave may come and just toss us far far away but if we are in the ocean and we are connected to somebody has thrown down the rope for us from the helicopter we are still in the ocean but the helicopter will stabilise us the helicopter will enable the helicopter rope that connection will ensure that even if the waves come they won’t shake us that much we hold on to that rope and stabilise ourselves similarly for us that vertical relationship brings stability at the horizontal level there will be turbulences there will be storms to the extent that vertical relationship is there to that extent we will have inner stability our self identity comes from that vertical relationship we are eternally parts of the we are eternally loved by the divine and we are eternally graced by the divine presence within us we just have to become more aware of that and then when we have this inner security then when we form relationships we will seek and form relationships based on a foundation of inner security not on the basis of inner insecurity there are broadly three ways in which we may form relationships we could have dependent relation we could have people who are dependent people who are independent and people who are interdependent it is people who are dependent their sense of self-worth comes from someone other than themselves it is those people who are most vulnerable to feeling lonely when we are too dependent on others then we need someone to keep reassuring us that you know that you are okay you’re a good person there are different kinds of addictions there could be substance addictions to drugs or drinks or cigarettes there can be behavioural addictions where somebody can be addicted to just the screen surfing on the net screen but there can also be emotional addictions some people might have what is called approval addiction unless somebody else approves me I feel as if I’m worthless for a child it might be a parent for a for somebody it might be the spouse this constantly depend on other person to the approval and that makes them very insecure so this level of dependence is the level where we experience loneliness the bhagavanta calls such a state of mind as a state of tamas the state of ignorance and it is when we connect with Krishna through the process of bhakti yoga we realise that we are not dependent for our self-identity or anyone else on anyone else so from dependence you can come to the level of independence independence doesn’t mean that we don’t care for others it just means that we don’t depend on others for our self-worth sometimes people feel that oh if I achieve something so if I come first in my class that will increase my self-esteem yes that may help but real self-esteem is that I don’t need to come first in my class to have a sense of self-esteem that I am a part of the divine I am what I am meant to be I can improve myself but I don’t need the world’s laurels to give myself of self-worth so when that level of independence comes by our spirituality then with that spirituality and when we form relationships those relationships we form not from a platform of insecurity but from a platform of security then we can actually be interdependent where two people in a relationship come together to make each other richer not financially richer but emotionally holistically richer so that vertical relationship which we have that can help us to address the issues that come in our horizontal relationships with greater maturity when that vertical relationship is there then that itself at a spiritual level addresses our loneliness because the more we practise bhakti yoga the more that spiritual loneliness goes away because we are connected with the divine of course we need relationship at the practical level and that psychological level of loneliness that we experience that we can overcome if we move from dependence towards independence and from independence towards interdependence so generally speaking I’ll conclude with two points now that when we are trying to but we feel lonely at that time we all have certain impulsive ways by which we try to deal with that loneliness say some people when they feel lonely they start picking up their phone and start clicking on it now watch some video just go on social media do this do that there are impulsive ways of dealing with loneliness and they may make us temporary they make us temporarily feel good but you could say that these ways is watching some TV getting lost in entertainment these are like emotional painkillers the pain of loneliness we are just dealing with it by covering it up painkillers don’t cure the disease they just cover the disease they numb us to the awareness of the pain that is being caused by the disease so painkillers if somebody keeps taking the disease will keep worsening sometimes painkillers may be needed but painkillers are meant to be a supplement to the main treatment not a substitute to the treatment the main treatment is the curative disease so we all have developed over time certain painkillers to deal with our negative feelings such as loneliness within us and we have to we need to observe these okay this is the behaviour that I gravitate towards now is this really addressing my need is this actually making me better or is it simply covering up the issue and then we find out what is a healthier way to address that loneliness so that could be both at a spiritual level and a social level at a social level if in our social circle we find out that there’s some person with whom when we relate we can open our hearts to them they open their hearts to us we connect with them well if there is any one person also like that we need to invest time in that relationship so that that relationship grows and if that person happens to be a spiritual person it’s even better for us but if you can find out in every relationship there is some contribution that we make and there is some expectation that we have and sometimes some people we try to do so much for them and they just don’t seem to care for us and when it happens you know with one two two three four five six ten things we do for them and they just don’t care for us we just feel frustrated we feel rejected but then there might be some other people in our life who actually care a lot for us but we take them for granted you know this person always there this was already to help me so in the ultimate sense the universe is reciprocal if we give love we’ll get love back but we blind ourselves to that reciprocity by our expectations that means if I expect this person should reciprocate with me sometimes that person just doesn’t reciprocate and they keep trying and keep trying and keep trying and just get frustrated with that but then we look around okay who is a person who is wanting to connect with me and then we try to connect with that person so we may not we may feel oh this person what I want this is the person whose affection I want the attention I want but if you don’t get it then we need to understand that ultimately whatever love whatever affection anyone offers us that affection is ultimately offered by the divine to us through them when a mother offers her breast milk to a baby it is a very intimate act of love but at the same time the mother doesn’t do anything special to produce the breast milk when the baby is born the same divine who sends a child through her womb into the world also sends milk in her breast so that she can arrange the child so if we see it this way that whoever offers us any love yes that person may be loving us but along with that with the divine who is offering their love to us through them so sometimes some relationships some channels don’t work out but that same divine love can come to us in a few drops through some other channel so rather than reducing our relationships to our expectations we revise our expectations based on the reality of the relationships okay if this is not working out in this way I don’t have to beat my head against it let me see where the relationship works out and that way when we have openness that doesn’t mean we reject existing relationships but different relationships work at different degrees of of proximity I come from India which is a conservative culture so when we talk with people we keep a particular distance but in different countries I go different countries actually different distances are considered proper if you have too much distance people say you are so rude in some countries you go you come too close you are being so rude so in different countries people are comfortable with different levels of distances with each other so similarly when in different relationships different relationships work best at different levels of distance so it’s not that if some existing relationship we are not getting reciprocation we have to reject that relationship but we may understand this relationship may function best at this level of distance and this much reciprocation I can expect from here and accordingly I can contribute accordingly in that relationship so at a horizontal level rather than reducing our relationships to our expectations we revise our relationships based on the reality of how people respond to us and secondly if we can as I said so if that for some person who connects with us who reciprocates with us if we at a healthy level can connect with them that is a that is a more beneficial way to deal with loneliness so we can make a exercise of ourselves after this talk okay who are the people with whom I can connect with if I need it they will have time for me sometimes we may have thousands of people connect with us on Facebook but you know if we want to meet them face to face all of them are already booked so that doesn’t work so well so who are the people with whom I can connect and we make a list of that and then we can try to when we feel that loneliness we can connect with somebody who’s very reciprocated with us and secondly that is with respect to the horizontal relationship with respect to the vertical relationship we find out some activity by which we can connect with the divine and experience the presence of the divine for some people it might be a spiritual music just hear that music sing that music you feel good for some people it might be just a spiritual act of worship pray meditate and you may experience an inner enrichment for some people it might be a visual connection there’s a representation of the divine which we meditate on with our eyes and that helps us to calm our sense of loneliness for some people it might be through wisdom the way through the heart maybe for some people through that so if they read some wisdom texts and reading them contemplating those texts that we bring the calmness so at a practical level when we start feeling lonely we can find out some spiritual activity that can help us connect with the divine and when we do this we have a way to develop the vertical connection and we have a working horizontal connection then that loneliness will not trouble us that much and that loneliness even if it comes and stay for some time and it will go and over a period of time those phases when it comes and stays that will also start decreasing and then we will find that our life becomes enriched with relationships that are based not on our insecurities but based on our inner strengths we are independent another person is independent and together we form a relationship that is interdependent that enriches both of us so this is how by developing our spirituality we can not only experience the vertical connection but also develop our horizontal connections better so I’ll summarise what I spoke I spoke on the theme of overcoming loneliness I started by talking about how when my mother passed away suddenly I started exploring what is the meaning of relationships what are what are what are relationships meant for and that’s when I came across the bhakti texts which explained that there’s a vertical relationship with the divine horizontal relation to others and whatever love we experience in our horizontal relationships that is that there’s a far greater love available in the vertical relationship with the divine and when you talk about loneliness you talked about circumstantial loneliness when you’re physically alone that is easily you just go with people you can overcome it but there is psychological loneliness which comes when we are surrounded by people but we feel disconnected and that comes because inside us our mind is constantly making us feel a sense of loss our mind is defining us in terms of our loss the mind is like a software programme which keeps giving us some prompts from within keeps popping up something from within so if you had defined ourselves in terms of particular relationships say as the child of someone as the spouse of someone as the parent of someone then if that relationship is not working or that relationship is strained then that keeps lagging us from inside so the loneliness that we feel is because we have defined ourselves in terms of a relationship and that’s where we are feeling the loss so if we are an ocean waves will come we cannot stop the waves we cannot find a place where there will be no waves rather we can have a vertical connection with a rope coming from the helicopter and that will ensure that we don’t get battered by we don’t that much thrown away by the waves so similarly that vertical connection for us is that connection with the divine with Krishna the all-attractive supreme I talked about this boy who was suicidal after a breakup initially but he started practising bhakti yoga then immediate then even there was another breakup after a few years he became more spiritual what was a depressing experience what could have been a depressing experience became an enriching experience for him and so developing this vertical relationship can may help us to rise from dependence towards independence dependence means we define ourselves in terms of the approval that we earn from others that’s why any kind of disruption in that shatters us but independence means we understand the divine is always with us and we experience the presence of the divine as the calmness and the clarity that comes when we connect with the divine through the practise of bhakti yoga just as for a baby who’s asleep even if she can’t see the mother the comfort the cosiness the warmth of the comforter indicates to her yes my mother is there and she loves me similarly we are spiritually blinded right now we are materially captivated and spiritually blinded like a person watching a horror movie on a in a theatre and not being aware of the safety that they actually have so although we can’t perceive spiritual reality right now but despite our closed eyes we can experience a spiritual serenity a spiritual calmness and that can be a pointer for us towards the divine who does care for us and when we form a relation when we are risen from independent dependence to independence through our spirituality then when you form a relationship it will be based not out of our insecurity but based on our inner security and then after that if we feel lonely then we can introspect to find out what are our unhealthy responses impulsive responses to deal with loneliness it might be mass entertainment excessive entertainment brow it might be blink bingeing on entertainment bingeing on eating bingeing on sleeping whatever and identify them and try to rectify them these are these are simply emotional painkillers they don’t they don’t cure the loneliness they only cover the loneliness and to cure the loneliness I talked about how we can find a horizontal relationship where we are getting reciprocation it is not universe is a reciprocal if we give love we’ll get love but sometimes we expect the reciprocation on particular channel from particular person and then that doesn’t happen you get frustrated so different relationship work at different distances so rather than trying to create greater proximity in a relationship where proximity is not happening we can look for where we can develop we can get reciprocation and connect over there to deal with that loneliness and then at a vertical level we can find out that activity which helps us experience the presence of the divine and through that these two ways we can actually overcome the loneliness that we’re experiencing through our spirituality thank you very much are there any questions or comments yes please is it easier to connect with the divine at the time of death than in life I feel sort of isolated with the question in this room I’m probably the oldest person in this room okay like your mother I have cancer and I could not be around for a while I mean I’ve been around 45 years in the several and I noticed that except for a few high-level gurus like a few people achieve much so is it easier to connect with the divine at the time of death it’s a relationship there is no trick in that it’s it said in the Bhagavad Gita that if we remember the divine at the time of death then we can attain the divine the idea is that if we love God if we love Krishna more than the world then Krishna takes us beyond this world to him there’s no reason for us to stay with him so we when we approach death what is the disposition with which we are approaching it that will define how much we can connect with God naturally there is some fear there is some sense of disappointment there is a there is physical pain there are a whole gamut of emotions that come but along with that also if you understand that actually I’m a spiritual being I’m a soul who’s different from my body and it’s like the body is going to go towards its inevitable destruction but the soul is going to be elevated I was coming to America from in from Australia a few months ago and the person next to me was watching this action movie and there they showed this this hero had been tied up by the by the villain in a car and then that car was just charging towards the cliff however the cliff was a huge fall I was not a hero it was a friend of the hero who was doing that so then as the car the charge straight towards it I just fell off the cliff and then the car crashing down on the cliff in a big explosion he appeared to have died but then as this villain was gloating looking down at the car this person’s dad looked up and suddenly he saw above there’s a helicopter and the hero had actually thrown a lasso from the helicopter caught the friend and pulled him out and he’s reaching the helicopter now this is of course practically unrealistic it’s a movie but actually I was thinking this is very beautiful it depends how things happen in death the body will fall to its destruction but the soul remains safe the soul gets separated from the body and the soul rises to higher destination now how high the soul will go that will depend on the person’s consciousness but the divine is always there with us and at that time if rather than obsessing over what we are losing oh why did this happen to me why did I get this disease why did this why did I have to lose all this if we turn towards connect turn towards connecting with turn towards the divine wholeheartedly then it is very much possible that at that time we can deepen intensify and thicken our love for the divine so actually as you rightly pointed out it’s not easy there is Shila Prabhupada and there have been many of his disciples who have actually faced this exam and several of them have been able to face the situation of death very gracefully there’s a disciple Shila Prabhupada Giriraj Swami who has written a book called many many moons he’s written another book called life’s final exam so life’s final exam that he talks about not just many bhakti yoga practitioners who have experienced who have faced death with great serenity and spirituality but even those who are connected with bhakti yoga practitioners say somebody was a devotee but their their mother their brother their friend their spouse who were not devotees even their final exam final passing was spiritualised so the process does help us to grow spiritually rather than worrying about either what we are losing or how others have gone through if you understand we have a personal relationship with Krishna and Krishna is there with us so if we can try to connect with him then we will find his experience enriching us it’s definitely when there are no other options open for us at that time we can wholeheartedly devote ourselves to Krishna much more effectively.
I’ve come through life’s trials and errors and hardship, I wasn’t raised in my family and it’s made me a lot stronger from a child to now an adult because I’ve had to stand on my own two feet from a very young age and had to see life from a different perspective when I hadn’t had any support but instead of using that as a excuse as oh well it’s me as an adult which I find a lot of adults look at their childhood and use that as an excuse as oh well I didn’t have a father or I didn’t have a mother or this is why I haven’t reached whatever, you know, I’ve seen my past as something that had to take place in order for me to become the person I am today rather than seeing it as a hindrance I see it as something that’s made me evolve as an individual and sometimes I’ve found that I’ve had to literally disconnect from worldly things like television, social media, telephone calls through my journey of awakening just to go within and deal with as you said loneliness and questions that I had in myself that I never had a father or mother to ask I had to go within and do a lot of searching, I found that bookshops became my teacher, especially under the self-help and psychology sections like Deepak Chopra, Montebyron and the list goes on and on and on and I found that when I was looking at the book Celestine’s Prophecy, that book came to me in a dream, I didn’t actually know that it existed and I put it in Google, Celestine’s Prophecy was one of the books anyway, that came to me in a dream and said it’s the power of following one’s dreams and so I found since I started to go within a lot of questions, a lot of answers have come to my questions through my daily life and I find now I’m more in touch and in tune with synchronicity and why things happen because I find that life is like a big jigsaw puzzle, there’s loads of pieces and once you become awake you start to see that everything is connected and you become like a child to the world because every day I see it as a gift and excitement, I wake up with excitement because there’s always something amazing that’s going to happen to me that day or someone that I’m going to meet and it always connects because once I say my prayers in the morning or wherever, I pray most of the time and ask for guidance, I find the more connected that I’ve become the more I’m finding answers are coming constantly into my life where I’m no longer feeling like I used to way back in the day as alone, oh why I don’t have family, I don’t have care, everybody else has, do you know what I mean? whereas now I feel complete, I don’t feel I need to be in a relationship to feel complete, even though it would be nice when I finally meet a soulmate, but right now I’m complete in myself and really happy in my single life and as an individual who’s not like most other people who’ve had all that support so yeah I would definitely say finding the divine is when you’ve gone through a lot in your life, it connects you more so, I would say trial and tribulation connects you because you start asking questions and you go within, some people take their lives and end it and say I can’t deal with it, but with myself I would definitely say trial and tribulation is the form of the person to the divine so I guess when it comes to death, like you said, I’ll be totally at peace because death doesn’t frighten me, to me I just see it as a second chapter evolving to a higher ascension. Thank you for sharing your story. Yeah, for us adversity is often the strongest impetus for spirituality and when we look at other trials that we go through, often when we look at our life, we look at the present and plan the future.
But the divine looks at the present, at the future and plans the present. So when we are going through that fire of tribulation, of loss, of loneliness, why is this happening to me? We just may not understand that because we are looking from the present to the future. But as you pointed out, the person who you become in the future, that is a person who has gone through that and that was the purpose.
So for our growth, if we can look at our situations from a bigger perspective. The problem is there right now and when the problem is there we can’t deny it. So we may have to live with pain but we don’t have to live in pain.
With pain means there is a loss in my life, I acknowledge it. I don’t deny it, I don’t try to cover it up, but I don’t obsess over it. It’s a part of me, it’s not the whole of me and that way every single thing that we do, we are all on a journey of spiritual evolution and in this journey of spiritual evolution, everything that happens to us can be a spur for us to grow.
The universe can be like a university, but we need to be in a learning mood. If we are in a resenting mood, then we just can’t learn anything at all. And that learning mood means we are ready to put our expectations aside.
That’s what we do, it’s wonderful. Thank you for sharing once again. Yeah, you want to say something? Last death, two months ago they found something in my brain, so I had to go back to France to do a surgery.
And it’s a U.C. surgery with the doctor telling me there’s one chance I’m going to die. Sorry, what? Anyway, so it’s a spiritual journey, it’s a phase death, and I had to make a choice, but it was very hard. I was very angry on myself, maybe too much angry on myself.
Why did it happen to me? Why? So much anger arised that I felt like I faced all my demons, and I forgot to love myself, and I forgot to go back to grace. So after a long meditation for a single month, I forgot that I didn’t accept that fact. So I came to peace, I came to accept.
When you’re stuck in front of you and you face demons, love it, because you’re not going to reject. You’re nourishing anger more. And hatred, never going to come back with hatred, but with love.
So I had to learn how to love this part of me, this dark side. And then I always knew that I was a spiritual being, living on Earth, this journey. So I always knew that my soul would never die.
Soul never dies. Even if it never dies, it’s eternal. The most painful thing that I thought was the love one.
How are they going to deal with my death? I had to deal with how my parents, my sisters, my friends are going to deal with death. So I was at peace, because I knew that we all have a soul mission. We didn’t come here for nothing.
I’m 100% sure of that. So if I die, my existence on this planet will teach people about their own spiritual journey. So I was at peace.
If I die, they’re going to learn. Everyone that I love and that I touch is going to grow from my death. It’s a miracle I survived the surgery.
Everything went well. You seem to be healthy now. You’re okay? Wonderful.
Congratulations for that. Amazing. Thank you.
Yeah, actually acceptance can be very emotionally empowering. Often resentment of reality hurts more than reality. If we are supposed to go for outing somewhere with friends and just the previous night we fall sick, we get a flu.
Now flu itself is not very painful. But the resentment, oh everybody is on that outing and they’re enjoying and I’m lying on this bed. Life is so unfair to me.
That resentment of reality hurts more than reality. So if we can accept that resentment can go away by that. And how do we accept that? As I mentioned, if we just keep our expectations aside, we are here, the reality is here, our expectations are here.
And our expectations often help us to shape the reality. That means if I want to buy a new house, then I have a certain expectation. Okay, I want this kind of house.
I want this kind of house. If I want to construct a house, this is how I want to construct it. So sometimes our expectations help us to shape the reality.
But sometimes if reality itself takes a different shape, then our expectations can come in the way of our dealing with reality. So if somebody wanted to learn rowing, riding in a boat and rowing, and then they invited their friends. Let’s see how I’ve learned my rowing.
They’re going to celebrate and demonstrate. And then as they start rowing, suddenly a monster wave comes over there. And they had planned elegantly, gracefully, they’re moving their hands, their legs, and they’re going to row and everybody is going to see.
But now with the wave having come, there is no boat and there are no oars in their hands. And they still keep rowing. They’ll sink.
At that time, okay, all I have to do is recalibrate. How do I deal with it now? Now, I have to just swim, paddle and get to the coast. So sometimes the reality just changes everything in such a way that our expectations are no longer fulfillable.
So if we are here, our expectations are here, reality is here, the pain is not just caused by the reality. The pain is caused by the distance between the expectation and the reality. So if we can put the expectation aside, okay, that’s not, I can no longer swim right now, I can no longer row right now.
So why can’t I row? Why did this wave have to come? Where has my boat gone? Where has my oar gone? Okay, think about all that afterwards. Right now, get to the shore. So similarly, if we are just too caught in how life should have been, then we can’t at all connect with life as it is.
And not only can we not connect with it, life as it is may not be as bad as we think. But when we just compare life as it is with life as we wanted it to be, that distance makes it often seem worse. So by acceptance, what happens is, this middle man of expectations we put aside.
Okay, I am here, the reality is here, let’s deal with it. But as long as the middle man of expectations is coming in, that expectation sucks all our energy. And then we can’t deal with reality at all.
It’s like if you wanted to construct a house and you hired some middle man who was going to construct it for you. And that middle man keeps taking your money, but doesn’t do anything on the ground. He keeps demanding, give me more money, give me more money.
It will not work. Just put the middle man aside and get down and start working on the house yourself. So I feel that, just as you said, learn to accept.
Put aside resentment. Then reality can be navigated much more gracefully rather than painfully. Thank you.