Love is the highest reality

Talk to University of North Florida students, Jacksonville

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna So today as I mentioned I will be speaking On the topic of Love is the Highest reality So All of us At our very core Are Looking for love All of you students You are looking for a career Am I audible? You are now looking for a career Position, financial security We look for all these things Ultimately So that we can Love and be loved At the core Of our very being Is this longing for love And I’ll talk This class in three parts First is Where does this longing for love come from Second is How is it Actually to be fulfilled And third is How it gets misdirected And how it can be redirected So when we Look at the world around us The culture around us today Is largely Materialistic Materialistic means that Mostly we live In a Society which wants us to Believe that material things Will make us happy We get new gadgets We get new cars, new dresses And things like that The more we get these The happier we’ll become These things are important Underlying These is a World view That is the world view of materialism That matter Is all that exists Or at least Matter is all that matters Now with this world view Our Longing for love Is Almost inexplicable Because If we are all Simply nothing more than Stardust come alive As they say we just The results of some ancient explosion Somehow come alive And we are all driven Simply by the survival Instinct This is what materialism would have us Believe Then why do we need love Why does Where does this longing for love Come from And if we look at This longing It’s not just a Physical craving Yes there is physical attraction And from the materialistic World view, materialistic perspective If we look at love It would simply become reduced To The biological urge For copulation or reproduction But what we long for Is something much deeper We want Meaningful relationships We want Fulfilling loving reciprocations So where Does this Come from If we look at Normally when we Talk about love Beauty is an integral feature Of love Now again all of us Have an innate sense of beauty Something is beautiful Something is less beautiful Why do we have this sense of beauty Again If we are all just Creatures driven by the survival Instinct In a jungle a tiger is about to pounce on a deer And the tiger pauses To see oh this deer is so beautiful In that moment The deer will run away And the tiger will have to go hungry If When the deer sees the tiger And the deer thinks Oh this tiger is so handsome The deer will die So Again As I said Sense of beauty It has the Biological aspect to it It causes attraction Between the two genders And that leads to copulation and reproduction But our sense of beauty Goes beyond that We look at a beautiful sunset And we feel captivated We look at the magnificent sky And we see the stars And it’s like a shining blanket Over us that charms us So Where does this longing for love And where does the corresponding Sense of beauty Come from That Is Something while we live in a culture Which talks a lot about love But where does This longing for love come from That question Is hardly ever Asked It is simply Presumed to be there And we try to fulfil it In whatever way We come to know about the best So I started by talking about how We try to We long for love And within a materialistic world view We are led To believe That the more things We acquire The more Attractive we will become And then the more Lovable we will become And the more we will be loved So for example If a person is wealthy If a person has Very good looks If a person has lot of education Influential position Now that All these things Bring attention All these things They, if a person as I said is wealthy Well educated, good looking In a big position People are attracted to such a person And we often We think that If we get these things Then we will Become more lovable And then our longing for Love will be fulfilled Yes All these things, education, looks Position, wealth All these things have their Utility But if those Alone Are the Basis on which We look to fulfil Our longing for love Then We will be Disappointed Why? Because When people are attracted to somebody Wealthy They are attracted Are they attracted To the wealthy person? Or are they attracted to the wealth of the person? That is a question Which has no easy answers So when we Rest, when we found Our longing for love On the presumption That the things around us The things that we possess They will make us lovable And then we will be able to Fulfil our longing for love That sets us up for Disappointment Because even if we get attractive things Those things are not always In our hands We may get wealth And if the stock market crashes If the economy goes into recession The wealth may go away Wealth may come, wealth may go away But our longing for love still remains So a materialistic world view Neither can explain Where the longing for love Comes from Nor can It truly Help us to Fulfil that longing for love Now there is an alternative to the material world view That is the spiritual world view And in the Spiritual world view it is understood That our existence Is actually Two dimensional We have a material side And we have a spiritual side So Our material side Is Driven by the Urge for survival Our material side has The urge for say Reproduction and perpetuation Of our own existence So what materialism tells us Is not necessarily Incorrect But it is Incomplete It is not necessarily incorrect It is incomplete So for example Now if I look at something Say I take the cell phone and look at this So now there is This iPhone, there is a red mark over here I look at this red mark And I perceive it as red So who Exactly is perceiving this The signals are going In through the eyes, the optic nerves are activated From there The signals go to the Visual area of the brain And there the synapses Are triggered between the Neuronal cells And what after that There is To give a simpler example Another example, suppose a parrot flies By over here Now When the parrot flies by In front of my eyes And say the parrot Is chirping So actually I get four Different stimuli I see the shape of the parrot I see the colour Of the parrot I see the motion of the parrot And I hear the Sound of the parrot Now all these four Signals Three are visual, one is audio All these three go to Those four actually Go to four different parts of the brain Motion Colour, shape and sound Are all processed by different parts of the brain So Where does the integration Happen? There is no one part of the brain Which is connected to all Other cells in the brain So there is no Place where the integration happens And even if the integration happens Who is the perceiver? What I mean by integration is Sometimes if you have some homemade videos Which are not of a very good quality So suppose they are Shooting a Mock fight And then say two people are fighting And one punches the other And the other person falls So if the audio And the video are not synced together Then before the punch lands The person falls Before the punch lands The sound comes out So this is where the audio And the video are not properly Integrated So in our case We don’t even know this All these are coming at different places Where are they getting integrated? There was a Nobel laureate Neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield He did an experiment To try to find out which part of the brain Is a sensor Not just one experiment He actually studied the brain for almost 40 years Now scientists know Very well that different parts of the brain Are connected with Different functions in the body So if there is a part of the brain That is connected with the parietal lobe Whichever is connected with the motor nervous system So if I raise my hand A particular part of the brain is activated Which corresponds to the Raising of the hand So he had a subject Tell him Raise your hand The subject raised the hand And observed the brain He saw that there is a particular part of the brain Corresponding to the hand motion that is activated And then he asked Describe the event He said I raised my hand Put your hand down After that He had electrodes Inserted in the brain by which Different parts of the brain could be activated And he activated the same part of the brain And immediately The hand went up He said what happened He said my hand went up Did you raise your hand He said no I didn’t you raised my hand So What does this mean He did this experiment It triggered various parts of the brain And nowhere Was the doer found So I’ll take this first case and second case And I’ll explain the implication of this Yes There is a component of the brain Which causes physical activation Which is Corresponding to physical activation Of the brain But in the first case There was a Person who was saying I am activating it And in the second case He was saying I was not activating I have not raised my hand In the second case we know it was Dr. Penfield Who was doing it To give a simple example say there is a computer And it’s connected with a printer And it’s my computer In the first case I press the print command And the printing happens over here In the second case I am not touching it You come and press the print button And then the printing happens over here So the print button Is a command Which causes the hand of the printer To move Like that the Parietal lobe of the brain say Which are part of the brain is connected with motor nervous Control of the hand That is like the print button When the print button is pressed The hand of the printer moves Like that the hand gets raised Now in the second case There was In the second case it was Dr. Penfield who was Pressing the print button Who was it in the first case So that means the brain and the body Are a part of a setup But the brain and the body needs to be Activated by someone In the second case it was the external agent Who was activating it Who was the agent in the first case So after 40 years of study Dr. Penfield concluded That the source of Consciousness Is extra cerebral The source of consciousness Is not in the brain It is extra cerebral What is it? Where is it? That science has not yet come to know So the brain is an instrument Through which the consciousness functions But the brain is not the origin of the consciousness The brain is simply the medium Through which the consciousness functions And that consciousness Originally is spiritual So the Bhagavad Gita explains That the source of consciousness Is the soul So in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita In the 17th verse Krishna says that Know that to be indestructible That which pervades the whole body So what is it that pervades the whole body? That is consciousness So that Krishna says Is indestructible The body is destroyed But the consciousness is not destroyed So Our longing for love And our sense of beauty They both Come from Our consciousness They come from the soul So the soul is just like If there is a computer In the computer there is a hardware There is a software And there is a user So the body is like the hardware The mind is like the software And the soul Is like the user So we have A spiritual side And that spiritual side Is the source of our longing for love Our body Is driven by the urge for survival But we see It is the longing for love That often makes us Do things That even involve risking our very survival A mother May risk her life to save her child So The longing for love is so Deep rooted within us That it can It can Supersede, it can overrun Override Even the basic survival instinct And this is not just In the case of say a mother and a child Many of the Incidents of heroism And nobility that we admire For example when the twin towers Was collapsing At that time the firefighters rushed in Risking their lives To save those who were trapped inside Now if we consider That we are simply survival driven machines Then this is A foolish thing to do Why should you risk your life to go inside You may die But we Not only consider it right We consider it glorious We consider it noble So that is because We have our physical Side but beyond that we have Our spiritual side And the spiritual side lies at The deepest core Is our deepest core And happiness Is found not by just Taking care of our physical side Yes that is important But we get satisfaction When our spiritual side Is taken care of So the longing for love Is the soul’s Expression Of its own Individual Relationship with the supreme With the source of supreme Consciousness So consciousness Is Now what do I mean by consciousness Consciousness It has two different meanings Consciousness We sometimes say attention Are you conscious? Somebody is unconscious, somebody is sleeping Somebody is in a coma We say that person is unconscious But consciousness is not just a state Somebody is conscious Somebody is unconscious But consciousness is also a capacity Now Do all of you exist? No You may ask What kind of question is this? Obviously You exist Even if somebody wants to argue Once I was giving a class and I asked Do all of you exist? So some people They come just for Argument’s sake So one student said I don’t exist Then I asked Who is saying that I don’t exist? I am saying it I have to exist to Say that I don’t exist This computer Exists But it doesn’t Have any awareness of its existence So Consciousness means Awareness Of our existence Not just our own existence We are aware of our existence And we are aware of the things around In our existence So we all exist And This chair also exists But we are not only Existing but we are Aware of our existence Not only are we aware of our existence We actually Want our existence To be meaningful We don’t want just to exist But we want to exist Meaningfully What do I mean by exist meaningfully? Suppose A soldier Goes on a war To protect one’s own country And on the cause of In the cause of National defence soldier Becomes wounded Such a soldier becomes a hero If a person dies Such a person is treated as a patriotic martyr So There are people Whether I am from India Where we had the Indian independence struggle Here the American struggle against British Now people who laid down Their lives They were inspired by a cause Which they believed in And for that sake They were ready to accept suffering And deprivation even up to the point of death So what we Want is Meaningful existence On the other hand If somebody gets wounded or is even killed In a war That person becomes a hero And people are willing to embrace such a death But if somebody is just going on a Road and slips On some oil and falls And hits the head and gets wounded This is so pointless What is the meaning of it all? Sometimes Within the materialistic world view If we see Ultimately Nothing has meaning We live, we struggle to live And Our existence is so brittle That one Bug or one bang Finished So are we just Meant for such Casual destruction If Someone If I have a Phone and somebody just comes and Bangs the phone and breaks it We’ll get angry Why did you do this? Why did you destroy this? So if even a small Possession of ours, if it is destroyed We get angry We feel it should not be casually destroyed like this But Life can destroy our whole Existence itself casually The course of the world So are we just meant for such casual Destruction If it were so If We were just meant for We live our life Thinking that it is Valuable, thinking that it is meaningful And striving to build Add value and find meaning And suddenly at one moment Everything can be destroyed And the question comes up, what is the point Of it all? Some materialists Those who are spiritually sceptics Those who are atheists, they may say Ultimately there is no meaning There is no meaning And you should not imagine That there is some meaning You should not imagine there is a soul, there is a god And in that way you try to imagine some meaning Be courageous Accept that life is meaningless Some people argue like this Okay If it were true that life is meaningless Then accepting it might be courageous But if you look at the lives Of even such atheists Now most atheists they often use Science to Criticise spirituality, to criticise religion And what is science? Science Is essentially a search For meaning Isn’t it? Newton saw the fruit falling And most people would just have picked the fruit and eaten it Newton Asked, why did this fruit fall? The search for meaning All of science Has advanced Because scientists are searching For meaning And one of the primary Criticisms that Atheists level against religion Is that They feel that many Religious rituals don’t Make sense But If life itself doesn’t make sense Why bother if some Rituals don’t make sense Isn’t it? So if we look At our own life, it’s a search For meaning, science is a search for meaning So what happens Even with all our scientific Advancement, if ultimately Everything is meaningless Then our Search for scientific knowledge Is just like Looking for some Small islets of meaning In an ocean of meaninglessness In an Turbulent ocean of Meaninglessness, we are looking, maybe there is some Meaning over here, maybe there is an equation This meaning, this thing, but ultimately It’s all meaningless So rather than having Such a self contradictory World view Where we struggle for meaning In small patches And accept meaninglessness Overall, what the Bhagavad Gita tells us is That there is meaning underlying All of existence If we Are open to Exploring life’s spiritual side So we as souls Are eternal And the soul has Eternal longing for love And this eternal longing Is fulfilled When it is directed Towards an eternal object Most of the movies Most of the novels They deal with many subjects But one of the most popular subjects is romance And in romance One common theme is H E A, happily ever after Now If we look at real life There is No ever after in any relationship All relationships Are temporary Yet, not only Do we Long For lasting relationships But we also Want to believe When the novels, when the movies talk about happily ever after We want to believe That it is there So where Does this longing come from So that Comes from our soul So the soul has an Eternal relationship With the supreme With the supreme consciousness The soul’s consciousness And the supreme’s consciousness These have an eternal relationship That supreme is known By different traditions By different names In the bhakti traditions associated with the Bhagavad Gita The supreme is known by the name Krishna So Spiritual sound, many of you said that you Like spiritual music over here So spiritual sound Is the means By which The Individual consciousness is linked With the supreme consciousness The individual consciousness and the supreme Consciousness, they become Linked in love Through spiritual sound So the Spiritual sound is Just like if I am on the ground floor of a building And if I want to go to the 50th floor If there is an elevator I just step into that elevator And the elevator lifts me up So Like that We live in a society Which is largely, as I said Materialistic So our consciousness stays at the Material level, material level means We are looking at things How does this person look, what is this person dressed in How costly is this And we are thinking of material things And the nature of material things is They are all temporary So they do not give us Lasting satisfaction Now something may be very attractive Something may be considered very fashionable Today But there is a British thinker Who said that fashion Is a form of Ugliness So intolerable That we have to change it every 6 months It is a form of Ugliness, so intolerable That we have to change it every 6 months Today what is considered fashionable Is after 6 months It becomes out of fashion Then the very thing Which attracted everyone today People will look at it, you are so old fashioned You have to give it up So when we are at the At the material level of consciousness The constant change of things It Agitates us It takes away Our peace It takes away our happiness So We can rise to a spiritual level Of consciousness Where we become conscious of our own Spiritual side And we become conscious Of the supreme spiritual being And then we can experience Peace, we can experience Joy Just like if I am at the ground floor And if I want to go to the 50th floor By an elevator I can go up rapidly So the ground floor Is like the material level of consciousness The 50th floor Is like the spiritual level of consciousness And Spiritual sound The sound of the Hare Krishna mantra That Is like the elevator It is the Sound which takes our consciousness Upwards And by this sound As we just Immerse ourselves in spiritual music We sing it, we hear it We meditate on it We feel ourselves Uplifted, transported And this Is a non-sectarian Experience Anybody from any part of the world If they hear Sound vibrations, spiritual sound vibrations And they receive it in their hearts Then they will experience this elevation So this elevation Is, it gives us Experience Of spiritual love The love Is Expressed differently In different situations So for example Normally We may think of love in terms of Hugging, kissing, physical expressions Of love, yes that is one part of love But love can be expressed In different ways If A Child is sick Then the mother or the father They may go here and there They may get some loans Do all sorts of things to try to get medicine for the child So that Procuring of the medicine Is the parent’s expression of love At that time Or as I said If a patriot Is ready to Lay one’s life down for the country So there, fighting for the country Is the way the love is being expressed So similarly Spiritual love We are at a Spiritually At a beginning level spiritually So we often do not perceive Spiritual reality At our present state of consciousness So spiritual love means Just like if There is a small baby And the baby is shivering because of cold And a mother sees that The mother puts a blanket If the baby is very small The baby doesn’t even know There is someone called a mother This is very small But what the baby senses is Oh, I feel comfort I feel warmth That cold has gone away The baby may not even be able to Verbalise this much or even think that much But basically the baby feels comfort So That Blanket which is put on the baby That is the mother’s expression of love And as the baby will grow up She will understand Oh, this is my mother She has put a blanket on me Similarly We are At a stage of spiritual infancy So we cannot perceive Spiritual reality right now But when we Expose ourselves to spiritual sound When we chant the holy names When we chant the mantra At that time We experience relief We experience comfort, we experience joy So that is the way The supreme consciousness Is putting a comforting blanket on us That is the way We can experience Spiritual love By spiritual love I mean The love of the supreme spiritual being The love of Krishna, love of God for us And This We have Two kinds of relationships When I am right now talking about The love between us And the supreme This is our vertical relationship And along with that We have horizontal relationships We have relationship with our friends We have relationship with our spouse We have relationship with other people in life So These two relationships The vertical relationship with With God, with Krishna And the horizontal relationship with others These two are Ideally meant to be Symbiotic Symbiotic means both strengthen each other The nature Of nature The nature of nature Is such that No one Can live up to The expectations of anyone else fully Everybody No matter how wonderful a person is People will disappoint us Not only people will disappoint us We will disappoint people also It goes both ways So if Our relationship with each other Is based Only on mutual Expectations Without any higher dimension to it Then when the other person disappoints us In some way or the other That relationship will become weakened It may even get ruptured But when our Need for love Is not dependent Only on the horizontal relationship But Our need for love is fulfilled Spiritually by a relationship With God Then we have the inner substance We have the inner Satisfaction To weather storms In our horizontal relationships So yes If people disappoint us We are all finite beings And we will all commit mistakes Just as I would expect others to be understanding If I committed a mistake So I should also be understanding But if we may know this intellectually But if our Love is invested Only in one person Or only in the horizontal relationship And if we get disappointment over there We will not be able to endure it That’s why many times When people fall in love They say I cannot live Without you And the same people Maybe after a few months I can’t live with you Why the pendulum Swings from one extreme to another Because Initially There is Unrealistic expectation When there is infatuation There is unrealistic expectation And When there is unrealistic expectation And When that is frustrated Then the pendulum Goes to the other extreme And then there is Unreasonable vindictiveness We go from Unrealistic expectation To Unreasonable vindictiveness We blame others We want to Take revenge against others So this instability This oscillation Happens when We don’t have a spiritual foundation To our relationships So when I said love is the highest reality That was the topic Which I started with So to understand How love is the highest reality We need to understand Where does the Longing for love come from That longing comes from the soul The spiritual side of us And This The soul’s love for God That is the highest reality That love Our love Our innate loving nature Which is when directed towards God It attains The deepest fulfilment So on one side Our spiritual relationship Will help us To have Stabler relationships with others And at the same time If those with whom we are If they are also spiritually minded Then their Association, their friendship Their inspiration will also Enable us to connect spiritually And in that way We can have Both Sides of our relationships In a fulfilling way So the spiritual Anchors our Worldly relationships And if our worldly relationships are spiritual Spiritualised Then they propel our vertical relationship And This whole process Of spiritualising our love Is Facilitated, is accelerated Through spiritual sound So all this philosophy may seem Abstract right now, it may seem complex But it can all be Experienced Through the process Of bhakti yoga When we chant the mantras We are connecting with Higher spiritual reality And when we connect With higher spiritual reality We ourselves will experience Higher happiness And that higher happiness Will enable us To find Meaningful relationships, to establish Meaningful relationships in this World and in the world Beyond So the Bhagavad Gita Talks about love at both These levels And it explains that Our longing for love Is Fulfilled in a sustainable way When it is not just Consumed at the material level But it is Channelised spiritually So I’ll summarise and then we can have question answers I started by talking about How The We all long to love and be loved And often in order to become Lovable We think that As I am I’m not lovable enough That’s some of the fear we have That’s why we may put on makeups We may try to acquire More wealth, more looks More power More knowledge And by that I will become more lovable But Whether people are Loving us or loving the things which we have We can never be sure of that And that’s why the relationships remain Insecure So where does this longing for love Come from At the material level, in materialism There is no explanation for it So spirituality explains that We are souls And I give the example that Of how Who is integrating The perceptions that we have The brain is not the Integrator There is some Non-cerebral Centre of consciousness Which is the integrator As an example, Dr. Penfield’s experiment Who is Raising the hand There is someone inside the brain The source of consciousness is extra cerebral So that soul Is the source of consciousness That soul is the source of our Longing for love And that soul is the foundation On which we can build Spiritual, fulfilling Lasting relationships And then I’ll talk from there About how It is Without a spiritual understanding Everything Including our search for love Including our search for Meaningful life, everything becomes Meaningless Because everything can be Definished by a bug or a bag And what is the point of it all? So our search for love Our search for meaning It all gets a foundation When we base our life With spiritual understanding And we long for love There is a supreme being Who is the supreme object of our love And that Spiritual love we experience through The sound of mantras We begin to experience just as A baby experiences the mother’s love Through the comfort of the blanket around it And then I discussed About how our vertical relationship And our horizontal relationships Can be symbiotic So if Our need for love is not concentrated Only in the horizontal But it is fulfilled in the vertical It is fulfilled in our connection with God Then whatever ups and downs will be there In our horizontal relationships We can weather them And still we can continue Otherwise When people disappoint us We will just go from One extreme of I can’t live Without you to I can’t live with you This instability will be there And same way Just as the vertical can strengthen Our horizontal, similarly our horizontal Relationships can strengthen Our vertical relationships If we have spiritually minded Friends, if our relationships Are with those who are spiritually minded So thank you very much Are there any questions, comments?