Selfies and the human longing to feel special

[Talk at Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So I thank all of you for coming today. Am I audible to everyone? Audible? Okay.
So I’ll speak today on the topic of the missing self in the selfie. I recently read about a news in India where a group of students had gone for outing and they were swimming. And while they were swimming, they all wanted to take a selfie.
And they took the selfie. And after they came out and they looked in the camera at the selfie, they noticed that one of their friends was drowning in the water behind. And they looked around, he was not there.
They ran back, they couldn’t find him anywhere. And they could see from his gestures, his eyes were wide, he was panicking, he was trying to gesture. But somehow a voice came from him.
By the time they found him, he was already drowned. So in the selfie they were trying to look for, to get a good picture. But in the process, a person was missed out.
This was of course an accident where there was nothing, just a lack of attention. But there is sometimes in the infatuation with taking a selfie, there is intentional danger. There are people who sometimes, speeding truck, train coming by, they stand on the roads with the train in the background, they want to take a selfie.
Selfie and then jump off. Hoping that they’ll get off in time and they want to share these photos. So there are several areas in especially scenic but dangerous places.
Sometimes people want to they are at the top of a mountain, cliff, they want to look down and they are leaning out holding on to a branch, they want to take a selfie. And there are times when people have slipped and fallen and hurt and killed themselves. So in the infatuation to take a selfie, sometimes people end up with self-destruction.
With self-destruction. So in many tourist areas, especially in areas which are also filled with some risk, there are now designated no selfie zones. Because the infatuation with taking a selfie can blind one to the danger that is involved over there.
And at one level it seems absurd that just for the titillation of having a sensational picture that one can share on social media, that somebody may be ready to risk their life. But it’s not just one or two. Especially among the youth, teenagers and youth, there is craze for trying to take selfies in dangerous poses.
It’s not uncommon. So what is it about a selfie that is so attractive? If we look at our own lives, in our own hearts, we’ll find that all of us have a feeling or we could say more than a feeling, a need. We feel and we need to feel that I am someone special.
And that need for specialness, we try to explore and express in various ways. So the idea of trying to take a selfie in a dangerous position is just see I have a selfie which no one else has. A kind of selfie which no one else has.
And by that we try to express our need for specialness. Now, trying to take dangerous selfies is one way of looking at of expressing that need for specialness. Along with that, there are more conventional ways in which we do that also.
So for example, we may try to wear very fashionable clothes. We may try to have the latest gadgets. We may try to have a very attractive car.
And through all these, we want to, through getting all these special things, we want to feel special. So the selfie is not just about taking a picture with a camera on the phone. It is about trying to express and experience that core need for specialness.
When we enter into a room, we want to see how many people notice that I am coming. And some of us may be introverts, some of us may be extroverts. Introverts may not like to interact so much with people.
But nobody likes to feel neglected. Nobody likes to feel as if I don’t count. And we have a world around us in which the hugeness of the world around us often the hugeness of the world around us often makes us feel very insignificant.
In today’s high tech world where we are connected with almost everyone. We can be connected with everyone. Where we get news from all over the world where we can get updates through various social media from all various friends in different parts of the world.
The world’s small world at one level becomes smaller because we can connect with anyone. But at the same time, in this world which has become more accessible, still, we often feel reduced to insignificance. For most people, they tie their self-esteem and self-worth to how many followers they have on Facebook.
Or if they post an image on Instagram, how many views that image gets. So we all need the sense of that I count. And where do we get that sense of I count from? We may try to get it from various sources.
And the obsession with selfies, with trying to get selfies which are sensational, which are dangerous, is that, okay, just see, I am special, I count. However, where does our specialness come from? What makes us special? We can ask two questions. What makes us special? And what makes us want to be special? Going back to the point that we may try to get a lot of externals in order to feel special, in order to look special.
So, we try to be as fashionable as possible in order to look special. But then, Oscar Wilde, British author, he said that fashion is a form of ugliness, so intolerable that we have to change it every six months. Normally, the fashionable is considered beautiful, attractive, cool.
But the same thing that is fashionable today, after a few months, when a new fashion comes up, it becomes old-fashioned. And for a person who prides themselves on being fashionable, there is no insult as painful as being called old-fashioned. So, the same fashionable object, may be a dress, it may be a shoe, it may be a phone, it may be a watch, it just doesn’t become unattractive, it becomes intolerable, unbearable.
I just have to give it up and get something new. So here, our longing for specialness is, when we tie it to something external like a fashion, then we end up very insecure. Why insecure? Because whatever is giving us our sense of specialness, that may stop giving us the sense of specialness at any time.
The fashionable thing will stop being fashionable and then, how am I special? So, we start feeling insecure. And insecurity, anxiety, worry, these are all one of the most defining characteristics of the contemporary age. Sociologists say that we are witnessing what they call as anxiety epidemic.
There is chronic and there is acute anxiety. But there is enormous level of insecurity at a very fundamental level. There are anxieties which are circumstantial.
Say, I want to catch a flight and if I am not sure whether I will reach on time for the flight or not. I have anxiety. And that’s understandable.
We plan a little bit and we try to avoid that anxiety. So, circumstantial anxieties are unavoidable to some extent. But, the anxieties that plague us the most are not circumstantial anxieties.
The anxieties that create deep-seated insecurity are not circumstantial anxieties. They are existential anxieties. Circumstantial anxiety means as I said, will I reach in time for the flight or not? Will I pass in this exam or not? Will I be able to buy this new house or not? These are all circumstances.
And, I come from India. So, India is now moving from a third world to a first world country. But there are many places in India where the external levels of certainty are far lesser.
So, for example, in some parts of India, if you turn on the tap, there is no guarantee water will come. If you turn on a power switch, there is no guarantee the light will turn on. That kind of uncertainty is not there in most cases in the western world.
Maybe if there is a hurricane or some calamity, then some disruption might be there. So, the circumstantial anxiety or the causes for circumstantial anxiety are much more in the third world countries than in the first world countries. And yet, anxiety levels are actually higher in the first world countries.
So, why is it? And curiously, not only that, there are many people who move from a third world country to a first world country. Their levels of comfort, their levels of standards of living, they improve. Despite that, their anxiety levels also increase.
So, what is going on here? If our anxiety were circumstantial and the circumstances become a little more secure, then our anxiety levels should go down. But the anxiety levels are increasing. And that’s because we are talking here not about circumstantial anxiety.
We are talking about existential anxiety. Circumstantial anxiety means, okay, will this work out for me or not? Will I do this or not? Will this happen or not? But existential anxiety means, whether I count or not. Does my life matter? In the larger scheme of things, do I count? What is the meaning of life? Many of us may not really in a philosophical sense think of these questions or verbalise these questions in this way.
But, if we look at life itself, from a materialistic conception, then the idea is that we are simply a bag of protoplasm, a bag of biochemicals that has come alive somehow. And one bang or one bug can end it all. So, whenever we live our life, we treat it as quite serious and meaningful.
When we want to choose a career, okay, should I go to this college or that college? Should I choose this vocation or that vocation? When we want to choose a partner, we are serious, okay. Is this partner right for me or not? During our life, we take decisions, even if we sometimes take the decisions impulsively, at that time, the decisions feel right for us. The point is, we take our life quite seriously.
When we take the decisions in our life quite seriously, but life itself can be ended very casually. Just one bug, one bang, everything over. What is the point of it all? If somebody, just now we came by a car and the Google map didn’t guide us so well.
If we are taking a map, turn left, turn right, go this way, go that way, and we make all the turns and after we take the turns and we reach the destination and the destination is a free fall from a cliff. We take all the turns carefully but at the end, it’s just destruction. What is the point of it? So, we may not think about life’s ultimate purpose quite frequently but even before we think about that purpose, what does it matter? How does it all count? That is a question which counts.
It is a question which really matters. We all want our life to be meaningful and I said earlier that we all want to feel special but what to speak of being special? Our life itself is a platform which seems so casual, so almost unworthy. Nowadays with any person who I just have a gun or I have a truck, I just ram into some people and people may die.
So, what is the point of living? When we look at the self which is trying to look attractive in the selfie, that self wants to feel that I count, that self wants to feel that my life has some meaning but what will make it count? So, the yoga texts of ancient India, especially the Bhagavad Gita, explains the self as a three-dimensional entity. There are three levels to understand our self properly. The body, the mind and the soul.
The body is like the software. The body is like the hardware. The mind is like the software and the soul is the user.
So, I may have a very good phone but if that phone’s software is corrupted by viruses, the phone may look very attractive but it becomes dysfunctional because the software is infected. So, in the world today with the advancement of technology, we are getting more and more facilities at the physical level. As in 50 years ago, the idea that we could just press a few buttons on something and we could talk with anybody in any part of the world, that was unimaginable.
So, at the physical level, we are getting more and more technology and technology is increasing our reach, increasing our influence in many ways but while the hardware is improving more and more, the software in terms of the mind is not improving. At the level of the mind, people are in profound distress and that’s why we have, through technology, we have physical comfort but at the level of the mind, there is great insecurity, great distress. So, we have this paradox of what we can call as people are comfortably miserable.
Comfortable at the physical level but miserable at the mental. So, we need progress in terms of holistic progress. So, what is happening is, going back to the earlier point, why do we want to have selfies which look sensational even if they are dangerous where the life is being risked because in the normal course of our life, we at a subconscious level at least, feel that whatever I am doing, does it count? Maybe I do something eye-catching, then I’ll count.
So, at the level of the mind, the software is misfiring. The software is corrupted. Martin Luther King put his finger on this several decades ago when he said, we have guided missiles and misguided men.
We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our technological power has outrun our spiritual power. Guided missiles means at the physical level, we have more and more control.
Misguided men means at the mental level, actually there is something which sabotages us. There is something which makes us act against our best interests and that is the corrupted software. So, we are in a society where at the physical level, the facilities, the luxuries are increasing more and more.
But at the psychological level, at the mental level, there is greater and greater anxiety. Unfortunately, this anxiety is not properly diagnosed. As I said, anxiety can be circumstantial or anxiety can be existential.
So, at a circumstantial level, as more facilities come, as more gadgets come, as more technology develops, the circumstantial anxiety can be alleviated to more and more extent. If a loved one has gone somewhere, we don’t know where they are. In the past, unless they reach their destination and maybe send a letter, we would not know for days.
Now, as they are going along, they can keep sending their location. We know they are safe. So, circumstantial anxiety is decreased by the provision of technology.
But our anxiety is not primarily circumstantial. It is existential. What is the purpose of my existence? What will make my existence count? Unless we get an answer to that question, unless that insecurity is addressed, whatever external arrangements we make at the physical level, with technology or otherwise, they will not address this deep level of existential anxiety that is there.
A few years ago, one of the most prominent comedians from America, Robin Williams, he committed suicide. Many celebrities have committed suicide. But a comedian committing suicide was quite jarring.
Normally, we think of comedians as people because they make others laugh, we think they must also be happy. But not to speak of being happy, here, a comedian was so unhappy that he felt his existence itself was not enough. And he ended his life.
So, at the external level, a person may be laughing and making others laugh. That’s at the physical level, the things seem to be very cheerful. But at a psychological level, they are not.
So, laughter is good. But I wrote an article about his suicide, the article I titled as, After the Laughter. On the screens, we see them laughing.
But what after the laughter? So, humour or comedy is also a skill. Some people may have that skill and by that skill, they may be able to laugh and make other people laugh. Just as some people are good at singing, they sing nicely and they delight, make other people happy with their singing.
But just because somebody is a good singer, doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy internally. They are two separate things. Similarly, comedy is also a skill.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is themselves happy. So, the point I am making here is that at a circumstantial level, we are making better and better arrangements. But that is not going to address the fundamental issue that we are facing.
So, anxiety at the existential level has to be addressed by finding out whether our existence itself has some meaning or not. That doesn’t mean the technology that we are developing is not good. There is nothing wrong in having a phone with great selfie camera.
There is nothing wrong in having great technology. But it has its purpose and it cannot do anything more than its purpose. When a patient is sick and they are in pain, at that time, doctor may give you two kinds of medicine.
One is the pain-killing medicine and the other is the curative medicine. The pain-killing medicine may actually offer relief faster. Oh, I am in pain.
Please take the pill. I feel better. But the pain-killing medicine doesn’t cure the disease.
The pain-killing medicine is meant to be an aid to the curative medicine. It is not meant to be a substitute. So, technological progress is like a pain-killing medicine.
What it does is, Oh, I am bored. I am annoyed. I am depressed.
Just, okay, play some video game. Just go on social media. Watch some movies.
That offers some entertainment. But, what after that? After the entertainment get over, what next? That’s just like a pain-killer. We can have pain-killers to deal with pain at the level of the body, which is medicine that we take in.
But at the level of the mind, when there is pain, to deal with that, we have entertainment. And various forms, it may come in. But that is not the curative medicine.
Whatever provides us entertainment is like a pain-killer. But what we long for is not entertainment, but fulfilment. And that which will provide us fulfilment is the curative medicine.
And for that, as I said, there’s the physical, there’s the mental, and there’s the spiritual. At our core, we are spiritual beings. And we long for fulfilment of our spirit.
We want a meaningful and a purposeful life. And that meaningful and purposeful life comes when we understand the self. That at my core, I’m a spiritual being.
And as a spiritual being, we are connected with the whole. We are parts, and there’s a whole to which we are connected. And to the extent we realise this connection with the whole, that connection is what will bring us satisfaction.
The spiritual side is not something abstract. It’s like a user in a computer, not abstract. The user is a tangible being.
Similarly, the spiritual essence is the soul. And that soul is a particle of consciousness. It’s a non-material particle of consciousness present in the region of the heart from where the whole body gets activated.
The body and the mind get activated. The software and the hardware can function, but they need a user. So, the mind and the body are functional tools, but it is the self that is that is what needs, that is the self that is operating this body-mind mechanism.
And this self, the soul, is on a journey of spiritual evolution. A journey of spiritual evolution means that the soul’s consciousness is evolving in terms of wisdom and in terms of love. In terms of wisdom means understanding what life is all about.
And love means finding a truly enduring, fulfilling object of love. It’s like we see to some extent evolution of consciousness as we grow from childhood to youth. A child thinks, okay, the purpose of my life is to play.
And as the child starts growing, okay, playing is good, but there are more things to do in life. There’s some evolution of consciousness that happens over there. So, when we understand that I’m a spiritual being, then that means the spiritual side of us is actually indestructible.
The material side is destructible. Now, somebody may say, how do we really know that there’s something called the spiritual? Is it just some people’s imagination? No. If we consider that everything material around us is temporary.
Even the biggest mountains, they have a history in which they have a beginning, they will have an end. When a few years ago the twin towers fell, it was not just the fall of a structure. It was the fall of what they represented.
They represented security. They represented progress. They represented success.
So, to see that that magnificent edifice suddenly fell, it’s very jarring. So, the point I’m making is, everything around us is temporary. And yet, we all have a longing to live forever and to love forever.
Most of the movies are about romance. Most of the novels are about romance. And most romantic movies and novels, they end with the theme of happily ever after.
In real life, there is no ever after. Actually, there is termination. But we all long to live forever, to love forever.
If we were simply products of matter, then why would we have at all this longing to live forever? Because nothing around us in our experience lives forever. In our circumstantial situation, everything is temporary. If a child in Africa, in a tribal area deep in the forest, suddenly told his mother, Mummy, I want a pizza.
The first thing the mother would ask, Where did you hear about a pizza? Nobody in their environment knows anything about a pizza. So, just as if a child has a desire which is not likely to come from the circumstance, the question that will come is, where is this desire coming from? Similarly, if we look at the circumstance around us, nothing lasts forever. And yet, we have a desire to live forever.
So, where does this desire come from? This doesn’t come from our circumstance. Then, it must be coming from our core. There is at our core the spiritual side of us which is eternal, which is indestructible.
And we are trying to seek that deathlessness, that enduring existence at the material level. Woody Allen, another American comedian, he said, It’s not that I am afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Unfortunately, death doesn’t work like that. When death is going to come, it is we who are going to die. It is not that death is an event which is going to happen to someone else and we can go somewhere else.
No. The fact is that even through this humorous statement, he is expressing that innate human longing that I don’t want to die. So, where does this come from? This actually comes from our core which is beyond death.
The soul is on a journey of spiritual evolution over many lifetimes and it goes from the physical side which we are living in, just like we may use a computer and after that computer gets old, we may discard it and take another computer and take another computer. Now, if you have a project to complete, if the computer stops working, we won’t abandon the project. We find some other machine and keep working on that machine to do our project.
So, like that, we as souls are on a project of spiritual evolution and the body-mind mechanism is like the computer that we have and we have used many computers in the past and we have a particular computer right now. So, our destiny extends far beyond our biology. The body will meet a biological end, sooner or later, but our destiny extends beyond our biology.
So, we are, when we live in the world, we all want to feel special. We all want to feel that our life is meaningful. So, how do we fulfil that need for specialness? How do we find that overall meaning in our life? By understanding that a spiritual level, if we are progressing in our spiritual evolution, if we are gaining more wisdom, if we are developing a more loving nature, then we are evolving.
So, at existential level, we can address our existential anxiety in two ways. First is, understanding that our own, at our core, we are indestructible and we are on a journey that is meaningful. That, we are all meant to evolve.
The other aspect of, for addressing our existential anxiety, is understanding that there is a big picture. And there is a larger whole and there is a bigger plan of which we are a part. There is a bigger plan means that things out there, which are happening in the world, are not chaotic, are not random, disorganised.
With the materialistic world view, two things happen. If we conceive of ourselves simply as material creatures, we think of ourselves as simply bags of chemical which may just be destroyed at any moment. And we think of the world out there also as a place which is filled with random, unpredictable, dangerous forces that can attack on us at any moment and destroy us at any moment.
But, such a vision of the world is actually unscientific. It is unspiritual and it is unscientific. Why unscientific? Because, science operates on the principle that the world functions according to some orderly patterns.
Last year, when I was in the UK, I was invited to Cambridge University to give a talk on science and spirituality. So, on the way there, we went to by the tree where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling. That same tree is said to exist.
Now, when Newton saw the fruit falling, millions of people before him had seen the fruits falling. Most of them picked up the fruit, ate it and went their way. Newton asked, what made the fruit fall? Now, at one level, it is his brilliance that by something so innocuous as a fruit falling, he postulated the theory of gravity.
But, at another level, before we focus on the brilliance of the answer to the question that he found, let’s examine the question itself. When he asked, what made this fruit fall? That question itself has an assumption in it or has an understanding in it that things don’t just happen by chance. There’s a pattern.
So, if this fruit has fallen, there must be some pattern to it. Let me try to find that pattern. So, actually, science operates on the presumption that nature has ordered it.
Without that natural order being present, we would not have any science at all. Albert Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
Why, if the world were simply a product of unguided natural forces, why would it work according to laws that we could understand? That the world works according to laws, the world has an orderly behaviour, indicates that there is some higher plan, some higher purpose, which we have not yet intuited. At a physical level, we are finding out this works this way, this works this way, this works this way. So, science faces a paradox if we don’t expand our quest for knowledge to the spiritual level.
What is that? That we find, why do fruits fall? That is because of law of gravity. Why does the temperature go up? That’s by the laws of thermodynamics. Why are the planes flying? Oh, that’s because of dynamics.
We have, this can be explained this way, this can be explained, this can be explained this way. Okay, but what is the point of life? It’s meaningless. So, what we have is, if we just take, if we keep our quest for knowledge only at the materialistic level, then we end up with islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness.
We end up with islands of meaning. Oh, why do fruits fall? That’s meaningful. That’s because of gravity.
Okay, why do planets move? That’s because of this. We have islands of meaning, but overall, what is the point of life? It’s meaningless. It’s an ocean of meaninglessness.
There’s something wrong. If everything were meaningless, why would the islands themselves be there of meaning? Is it that we are missing something? E.O. Wilson is a biologist, and he found something very striking about the biosphere in which we live. He found that every species contributes in some way or the other to the overall balance of the ecology.
So, even if one species becomes extinct, that leads to some small problems. Some species, their extinction can lead to big problems. But he found there is one species, if it became extinct, it would not cause any problems for the ecology.
Can you guess which species is that? Human species. In fact, not only would the extinction of the human species not cause any problems, most ecological problems would be removed if humanity became extinct. Now, this is at one level very humbling, but at another level, it’s very puzzling.
We humans may think that, we are the strongest species, we have conquered the world, but we are only contributing destructively. It’s humiliating, we could say, but it’s puzzling because clearly we humans do have more intelligence than other species. So, if we had a class and there was one student who was the most brilliant in that class, and that student was making a disruptive contribution, it means something is missing, something is wrong.
So, actually, the human contribution to the ecology is not meant to be destructive. Rather, our contribution is at the spiritual level. In one of the ancient yoga texts from India, it is said that, after all species were created, after all species manifested, when the human species manifested, then the creation became complete, then the existence became complete.
Why? Because humans can search for the meaning of existence and humans can fulfil the purpose of existence. So, the idea that existence itself, the world out there is not chaotic, that there is a higher purpose to it, that is something which is the foundation of science, and when we incorporate the spiritual dimension to it, then that brings meaning, that provides us not just islets of meaning, but also shows us an ocean of meaning. If you understand that I am a spiritual being and whatever abilities I have, whatever gifts I have, I am meant to use them for furthering my spiritual evolution, by growing in wisdom, by growing in devotion, by making contributions in the world.
So, what we are in this journey of spiritual evolution, what we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. What we are is God’s gift to us.
So, we all have certain abilities, certain talents, some of them we know, some of them we don’t know. But, it’s not random, it’s not purposeless. In the materialistic world view, we may feel inadequate.
I am not good enough to attract someone else, I am not good enough to achieve this, I am not good enough to achieve that. But, if we see from a spiritual perspective, for our spiritual evolution, whatever we need, we have been provided. We have been provided what we need.
We just need to discover it and we need to use it. And, so, often in the whole craze to be special, we try to become like someone who is special. People try to imitate sports stars, imitate movie stars.
No, we don’t have to become like anyone else. Every one of us is special. If God had wanted us to be someone else, He would have made someone else.
You know, you have been made you, I have been made me. And, that’s all for a purpose. So, what we are is the divine’s gift for us.
And, what we become is our gift. So, we are all meant to grow and make a contribution. And, grow in our own spiritual evolution.
So, the spiritual wisdom that is available in the ancient texts of yoga, that is meant to complement whatever knowledge we get through technology. Technology can improve the hardware. But, we need spirituality to improve the software.
To calm our mind. To get our, give our mind the sense of purpose, the sense of significance that will come through spiritual wisdom. By giving us an overall orientation for our life, we can actually not just be satisfied with the painkiller of entertainment, looking for more and more titillation.
But, we can progress towards fulfilment. The more we as souls connect with the whole, with our wisdom, with our devotion. Wisdom refers to our head, devotion refers to our heart.
So, we are meant to evolve in our head and our heart. In wisdom and in devotion. The more we do that and connect with the whole, the more we will get fulfilment internally and the more we will be able to contribute externally through achievement.
Whatever it is that we are meant to contribute. When we base our self understanding in spirituality, when our existential anxiety is addressed, then we can progress with confidence towards fulfilment internally and towards achievement externally. And we can go beyond the need for titillation, for entertainment that may come from just looking, seeking attractive selfies or getting gadgets or chasing after fashions.
These things, they are painkillers. When we need it, we can take them. But, they won’t cure us.
It is spiritual evolution that will cure us and provide us both fulfilment and achievement. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke about the missing self in the selfie.
How people sometimes can in the grace for taking attractive selfie, risk and lose their lives by posing in dangerous positions. So, why would anyone do such a thing? Because we want to feel special. And, that feeling that I want to be special, I want to count, that is not fulfilled amidst today’s high-tech world.
So, our existence can end with a bug or a bang at any time. And that makes us, fills us with existential anxiety. Most of modernity’s progress is dealing with circumstantial anxiety.
We have more security, more certainty at a external level. Thank you for coming. At an external level, but at an internal level, does my existence count? That existential anxiety has to be addressed by spiritual understanding.
So, when a person is sick, they may need painkillers. But, the real thing is the curative medicine. So, technology with all its progress offers us painkillers.
It is spirituality that offers us the curative medicine. So, I talked about addressing the existential anxiety by understanding ourselves spiritually and understanding the world out there spiritually. So, there’s the hardware, software, and the user.
That’s like the body, the mind, and the soul. So, the soul is what is on a journey of spiritual evolution. And, how do we know that there’s something spiritual? I talked about how when everything around us is temporary, still we have a desire to live forever and to love forever.
That’s as out of place as an African tribal child’s desire for a pizza. That is not coming from our circumstance. That is coming from our core.
And, that core is spiritual and instructable. And, the soul is on a multi-lifetime journey of spiritual evolution. It’s as a person who is working on a major project, may go through various computers till they complete that project.
And, our existential anxiety can be addressed. Okay, what about the rest of the world? Okay, I am spiritual, but things are chaotic out there. They appear chaotic only as long as we don’t have a spiritual worldview.
So, science itself functions on the presumption that there is an orderly pattern to the functioning in nature. That’s how Newton asked the question, what made the fruit fall? That’s how science progresses, by looking for patterns. So, why should it be that science finds islands of meaning, but overall life itself is meaningless.
We end up drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness. So, to find how the ocean itself is an ocean of meaning, we need to expand our vision, to look for spiritual knowledge. And, we see that the world around us, the orderliness of nature points to a higher order, higher source of order.
And, that higher source of order has a plan and a purpose for us. What we are is the divine’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to the divine.
With this understanding, we can overcome the feelings of inadequacy. Yes, compared to others, I may be less, I may be more. But, for my purpose, for my evolution, I have been given what I need.
So, by focussing on discovering and developing the gifts that we have, we can make our contributions, we can progress towards inner satisfaction. And, thus, we can fulfil the destiny that is beckoning us in our life. Thank you very much.
Applause Are there any questions or comments? Yeah, ok. So, if you understand that we have a spiritual side, we need to develop that, the spiritual side has to evolve. What is the way to do that? It’s not that there is one way.
There is one purpose and for that purpose there are many ways. It’s like if there is a bottom of a mountain and there’s a top of a mountain. The bottom of the mountain is materialistic consciousness where we think everything is material, I am material, there’s nothing to life apart from material.
The top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness. So now to go from that bottom of the mountain to top of the mountain, there can be different paths. The point is whether the paths are taking us to the top of the mountain.
So if they are leading, if say somebody practises, goes to a temple or a church or a mosque, practises some religion, but if by practising it they are only becoming more and more materialistic, then actually they’re not climbing up the mountain. They’re nominally belonging to a particular spot, but they’re not rising up. But whichever path the person is following, if they are evolving, if they are becoming more spiritual, how do we know somebody is becoming more spiritual? That means they’re becoming more self-satisfied.
They’re being less dependent on externals for their pleasure, for their purpose. They are becoming more self-driven, self-contented. Then we can say that that is a sign that they’re becoming spiritual.
So the yoga texts of ancient India, they give us a particular path that is called the path of bhakti yoga. The Bhagavad Gita talks about a path wherein we connect with the Supreme through our innermost faculty, that is the heart. Normally we think of yoga as some physical exercises.
Yes, that is one part of it, but often we use the word yoga postures. Now postures are for a particular purpose. So in cricket, in baseball, the batter may stand in a particular posture, but the point is not the style of the posture.
The point is when the ball comes, how well you can hit the ball. So similarly, the yoga postures are meant for us to launch our consciousness to the spiritual direction. So they are the take-off point.
So the essential journey in yoga is to raise, is to climb up the top of the mountain, climb up to the top of the mountain. So bhakti yoga is a process by which we use our entire being in a mode of devotion to connect with the Supreme and that connection raises us up. So studying these yoga texts is a practical way by which we can understand the spiritual essence of life.
So the Bhagavad Gita is a paramount yoga text. Studying that is very practical and associating with spiritually minded people. That is extremely important if you want to go up spiritually.
Normally if somebody wants to hike up a mountain, it’s not advised, don’t go alone. It’s too risky. Go with others.
So having spiritually minded association is very valuable and sound vibration is one of the most powerful ways to spiritualise our consciousness. So there are spiritual sounds which are called as mantras. So when we utter those spiritual sounds in mantra meditation, then that helps us to raise our consciousness upwards.
So mantras we could say are like elevators of consciousness. They enable us, we just chant the mantras and we let our consciousness enter into the mantra. It’s like we enter into an elevator and the elevator moves up.
Just by repeatedly uttering the mantra in a meditative frame of mind, we’ll find our consciousness rising upwards. So there are different mantras in different traditions. We chant the Hare Krishna mantra.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare. So the essential point is to recognise that I am at the bottom of the mountain and I need to climb up. So whatever path is accessible for us, right now we start with that.
Start the exploration. And as we rise up, if we find that we are rising up, we find that we are changing, that our mind is becoming calmer, that we are becoming more satisfied, that means that’s the right path for us. If we find that’s not happening, then we can explore some other path.
So we don’t have to wait to go all around the mountain to find out how should I climb up. When the mountain is very big, we start climbing up from where we are. And if it doesn’t work, we can find something else.
So basically, again in our spiritual search also there is a higher plan. And if we have come to a juncture where we are exploring a particular spiritual path, that is a prompt that we can start that exploration by beginning the journey up. So through study of spiritual books, through associating with spiritually minded people, and through the recitation of spiritual sounds, we can all climb up and we can spiritualise our consciousness.