​The earth-bound are dearth-bound

​Saturday feast program at ISKCON, Brisbane

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much Om Shanti Shanti Shanti I will speak on the 9th verse of the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.
The 16th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is called as Gayu-Asura-Sampak-Nakha-Vrinda, or the demonic and demoniac natures. So Krishna talks about qualities that are godly and qualities that are ungodly. In this particular verse he is saying, एतां पिष्टें, having accepted such a vision.
So what is that vision? I have described in the previous verse. असत्यां अपरिष्ठां ते यददा हूँ रकेश्वरं अपरस्परसं भूर्तं तिनन्यक्वां हैं ते कम् In the previous verse he says, These people, they think that this world is unreal. It has no foundation.
It has no moral control. And the only purpose of this world is, it has arisen out of desire. कामाहिन्तुका, is the desire for pleasure.
The desire for sense gratification. Those who accept such a vision, एतां पिष्टें अपरिष्ठां ते यददा हूँ रकेश्वरं अपरस्परसं भूर्तं तिनन्यक्वां हैं ते कम What happens to them? नश्टात्मानों अलिपवुद्धियां Krishna says, नश्टात्मानों Their soul is destroyed. They destroy their own soul.
Why is that? अलिपवुद्धियां They are as intelligent. अलिपवुद्धियां, a bigger intelligence. वह देदु प्रम्रोयंति ऊग्यकर्मानः ऊग्यकर्मानः They do terrible work.
शलाय जगे तोड़ितः They cause the destruction, the Ujjhya. So, the topic of this talk I am going to give The earthbound are Dirtbound. The earthbound, those whose vision is not only to the earth, they are Dirtbound.
Dirt means shortage. So, as long as we have a materialistic view of life, the devil has no real purpose. Dirtbound are Dirtbound.
Now, broadly speaking, there are two ways of looking at life. Two ways of living life. One is the materialistic way and the other is the spiritual way.
Now, within this, there can be various blends and combinations, but these are the two broad ways. In materialism, the idea is that matter is all that matters. Materialism means matter is all that matters.
Actually, within materialism also we can say that there are two kinds of thoughts. Most of the world is following the first category, which is functional materialism. That means, matter is all that matters.
Whereas, there is fanatical materialism, which holds that matter is all that exists. Nothing that exists beyond matter. So, when people have that conception, that matter is all that exists, then they are pure devotees of matter.
Our goal is to be pure devotees of Krishna, but there are people who are pure devotees of matter. Matter first, matter only. Nothing beyond matter.
Now, to some extent, such a worldview, to some people seems very liberating. Oh, there is no God, there is no soul, there is no future life. Just be here, enjoy.
Do whatever you feel, whatever you like, enjoy. So, in a practical sense, it may appear that the materialistic view is very liberating. However, truly speaking, it is the opposite of liberating.
The materialistic worldview actually takes away all liberty. How is that? I’ll talk about it in three levels. First is, at the philosophical level.
Philosophically, if we see, materialism implies that we are just products of matter. There is nothing beyond matter in our body. So, as a materialist say that, you are just your neurons.
Neurons are the brain cells. You are just your neurons, or you are just your body chemicals. Now, if we are the superior body chemicals, then the result of that will be that chemicals simply behave according to the laws of physics.
Laws of nature, you see. A fruit is kept here to fall down. So, if I keep the fruit here, and say below, now outside is raining.
So, if I hold the fruit above, and then I release it, the ground is dirty, I don’t want to boil it. The fruit has no consciousness, the fruit has no premium. The fruit simply acts according to the laws of nature.
So, by gravity, it will pull down. The idea, if we take materialism philosophically, its implication is that everything happens simply according to the laws of physics. And when everything happens according to the laws of physics, then all the thoughts that we get, whatever desires we have, all the actions that we do, they are simply the results of the way our bodily chemicals are driving us.
So, we are simply, according to this view, we are simply programmed machines. And the reason we all are different is because our programming is different. You are programmed in a particular way, I am programmed in a particular way, someone else is programmed some other way.
We are simply programmed machines. And just as matter does not have any free will, we too have no free will. That is the implication of materialism.
So, Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds of the last century. And he was profoundly troubled by the rationalistic implications of materialism. Einstein was very conflicted.
As a scientist, he was a brilliant scientist, and he could sense through the ordinary science that there is something beyond what we normally observe in the world. But at the same time, the conceptions of God that he had acquired from the religions that he was familiar with, they were not very satisfactory for him. So, he oscillated between being a theist, and sometimes he made some atheistic statements.
Overall, he accepted there is some intelligence, but the idea that intelligence set off the world. And now, the world is only a void of laws. So, this idea was, he took his own thoughts, which come from materialism, for what he said.
So, Hitler killed millions of Jews. Nazi warriors under him killed millions of people. But, if we take materialism to its logical conclusion, then there was nothing wrong with Hitler.
Because his chemicals really meant that much. So, now, there is something profoundly wrong with this idea. Anybody can do anything and say that, if I go and slap someone, hey, why did you slap me? My chemicals told me that.
And he will say, yeah, they will slap you back, my chemicals told me that. So, if we take materialism strictly to its logical conclusion, the implication is that, we all are simply driven by the chemicals in our world. And if we are all driven by chemicals, then there is no meaning to any sense of responsibility or any sense of right or wrong.
Because I am the way I am. And that’s the way it is. So, the whole idea of materialism, people think I can enjoy the way I want, if there is no God, no religion, no self-interest.
But materialism, if you take it deeper, what it implies is, we have no religion at all. We are simply slaves of our feelings. And, you know, different people can have different worldviews.
And people are open to do that. But, you know, those worldviews that are not based on reality, they always fall short. When they fall short, people have to be inconsistent.
Say, Australia is this big a country. And then I make a map of Australia only this small. If I make a map of Australia only this small, then there will always be territories outside my map.
And I can’t explain, what is this territory? So, if our map is not an accurate depiction of reality, then what will happen? Then we think outside that map. And we will have to deny that, or we will have to object that, or we will just have to abandon thinking about it. So, there are atheists.
So, materialism often leads to atheism. Because materialism means matter only exists. Even God doesn’t exist.
It’s a logical implication. So, there are atheists, who write books. And they say, the purpose of their writing books is, they want, they say, people should give up this old-fashioned idea that there is God.
And they should become moral, they should become scientific, they should become atheistic. Now, in their writing books, they espouse materialism. And materialism, they also acknowledge, it implies that we have no free will.
Our conception of a notion of free will is an illusion. So, now, this is a very subtle point, but I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. That materialists, they write books, or atheistic materialists, they write books saying that we have no free will.
And they want us to read those books, and then use our free will to become atheists. So, I am supposed to believe that I have no free will, but for that, I have to use my free will to accept the philosophy that I have no free will. So, this is self-contradictory.
And any philosophy, which does not agree with reality, somewhere or other, it will become self-contradictory. Self-contradictory means, suppose, I say, I can’t speak one word of English, then I have already spoken seven words. This is self-contradictory.
So, any philosophy, apart from the truth, it ultimately comes down to self-contradictory. So, materialism, it is not something which brings liberty. Because philosophically, it implies that we have no liberty, we have no free will at all.
We are simply programmed machines. Albert Einstein himself said that, we can talk about the ethical foundations of science, but we can’t talk about the scientific foundation of ethics. The implication is that, this is science.
Science is science being used rightly, or science being used wrongly. That is the ethical foundation of science. But what is right, what is wrong? That science itself can’t be right.
That, we have to have some source of knowledge outside of science to tell us what is right, what is wrong. At the time, in the 1940s, 1911 and 1940s, because Germany was among the most scientifically advanced countries ever, and yet, they used all the scientific advancements to annihilate Soviet Union. So, this is, philosophically, materialism takes a left turn.
Then, practically, what happens, if we use materialistic freedom? People often think of freedom means, I want to do, I will do what I want to do, when I want to do. That’s the idea of freedom. And yes, that is at one level, freedom.
But quite often, freedom has two aspects. There is freedom for, and there is freedom from. Freedom for doing some things, and freedom from doing some things.
So, to explain what freedom from means, say, there are students who are living in some hostel. This is a hostel, and this is a college. And along the way, there are some bars, where students can go and drink alcohol.
Say, there are two students. One student has never drunk alcohol, and has learned from the parents, and learned with one’s own experience, that this is simply going to lead to misbehavior, and that student doesn’t even think of drinking alcohol. He just goes straight from hostel to home school, does work, comes back.
But there is another student, and he thinks, maybe I can drink. And every time, they pass by that bar, he thinks, maybe I can go there. Maybe I can go there.
And suppose they go there and drink once. Twice, thrice, they drink. Then, In 16.1, Bhagavad Gita, desire becomes like a shuttle.
Desire is a shuttle that volumes. And Krishna says, they are bound by hundreds of desires like this. So, once or twice a person has drunk, every time the person passes by the bar, the shuttle starts moving.
One feels a stronger pull, stronger pull. And as the person keeps drinking, then after some time, even before they see the bar, as soon as they come out of their room itself, all of a sudden, their mind is in the bar. Even if they go to the classroom, also their mind is still in the bar.
So, what has happened? All of a sudden, physically, there are no ropes binding them, but they are bound by their desires. And those desires warm them. Those desires cool them.
Normally, when we think of bondage, in spiritual circles, we often use the word Mukti. Bandhan and Mukti. So, this, bondage and liberation, what does it refer to? Actually, normally when we talk about bondage, normal bondage makes us motionless.
Somebody is bound, someone is shackled in a prison. It makes us motionless. But the bondage of desires makes us not motionless, it makes us restless.
It makes us unheal, unbear, unheal, So, this bondage is more like, not like a prisoner’s shackle. This bondage, the bondage of desires is like a puppeteer’s string. A puppeteer is there, puppeteer is moving, looking there, talking this way, moving his head.
A puppet is moving like that. But actually, the puppet is controlled by the strings. So, like that, once we are caught in materialistic desires, we struggle.
And we just do that and we just drag our desires. So, materialism, what it does is, it, as we engage more and more, then the desire becomes stronger and stronger and we can’t live without it. So, we become aggro with the desire.
So, we think, I am… So, we decide that all countries, I can give up drinking whenever I want. And they have given it up many times. And they are still drunkards.
Why is it? Because it is not just, we often think of desires as something which I have. Yeah, I have a desire. But, it’s not just we who have desires, desires also have us.
What that means is that the desires we take in, gradually they grow and they become so big that they take us in. Desires are not just some things which are there in our mind. Okay, I get the desire, I drive out the desire.
No, every time we act in a particular way, our mind becomes programmed in a way. So, materialism says that we are like programmed machines. That is incorrect.
We are not programmed machines, but our bodies are programmed machines. Actually, I call them programmed mental machines. So, the point is that materialism makes us bound.
So, for example, the scriptures tell us that आहारविद्राधर्माइवद्नम्चत् सामान्यमेतत्पशुधेत् नराणम् Eating, sleeping, eating independently, these four activities are common to humans and animals. And we human beings naturally long for something more than what our body offers. A cow, she will eat the same grass year after year after year after year.
A cow will not let me cook my food and make it more tasty. We human beings, we also do eating. But we have so many queries why should we try to make our food more and more delicious? So, why is that? In the soul, there is the body.
And the soul is trapped in the material body in all species. But in the human body, the soul’s consciousness is more developed. And because the consciousness is more developed, the soul in the human body cannot be satisfied by the pleasures that are offered by the body.
In the animal’s world, because the soul’s consciousness is not much developed, the soul is satisfied with whatever pleasure the body offers. And so usually, animals eat when they are hungry. Animals wait when the season comes.
Animals basically are driven more or less by their bodies. We human beings, we also seek bodily pleasures. But we want something more.
And materialism, what does it make us do? Materialism restricts the scope of our happiness to bodily efforts. And because we want more pleasure than what the body can actually offer us, so what we try to do is, we try to adjust the body, try to change the body’s circumstances in a way that we get more pleasure. So one example is, as I said, we eat, we all eat, but we try to cook, we try to make different cuisines by which we can get more pleasure out of eating.
So, there is a soul, there is a body, and there is a soul. The body can give up certain capacity of pleasure, certain quantity of pleasure. But the soul wants more pleasure.
And materialism makes the soul seek pleasure in the level of matter only. And that is the third level where we become bound. Our scope of happiness becomes limited.
Because we don’t know the other source of happiness. And this, what does it lead to? It always ends in conflict. It always ends in discord.
Because the amount of, the sources of pleasure that are there in this world, they are limited. Whatever we want to do, everybody in this world cannot have the best elements for eating, sleeping, eating, eating. And that’s why, in economics they say that there are unlimited desires and there are limited resources.
And that causes conflict. So as long as our definition of happiness is when we equate happiness with material happiness, then that is the meaning we get earthbound. We think my pleasure must come on this earth itself.
And the earth will never exist. So as long as we are earthbound, we will be dirtbound. Dirtbound because there will never be enough, not just for everyone, even for one person.
Even for us, whenever we get some desire fulfilled, we get some pleasure. But after we get that pleasure, after that whatever new object we have got, maybe a new house, a new car, a new dress, whatever it is, we get some pleasure. But after that pleasure has a lot of diminishing limits.
Suppose somebody does a feast, somebody offers a gulab jamun. First gulab jamun, delicious. Second gulab jamun, delicious.
Third gulab jamun, nice. You ate five gulab jamuns. Six gulab jamuns.
Ten gulab jamuns. And after that somebody offers again ten gulab jamuns. You also take.
We say you also take, not because we are concerned about them, but it is because we can’t take anymore. Because our capacity to enjoy is limited. If we keep eating more and more, the pleasure we get from it keeps decreasing.
And there is a law of diminishing returns which limits whatever pleasure we can get. So most of the people think that material pleasure is basically the pleasure of senses and sense objects coming in contact. So I want to be delicious.
Somebody may stand outside a five star or seven star hotel. If I had money, every day I would eat. Then I would enjoy.
So usually what we think is I don’t have a sense of objects which would give me enjoyment. And because of not having the sense of objects, I am not able to enjoy. But the fact is the sense of objects, even if we had the sense of objects, the senses capacity to enjoy is limited.
Suppose there is somebody who is the owner of a five star hotel. That person can go and eat whenever they want. But their capacity to enjoy itself is limited.
Someone can do it. In Egypt, there were in medieval times, there were emperors called pharaohs. Some of them were epicureans.
They just thought that the purpose of life is to enjoy. So they had devised a means to try to escape the body’s limitation of enjoyment. What was that? They had big plates on which they would eat food.
After they would eat food, they had their physicians make painless vomiting pills. And they would get the vomiting pill and they would vomit everything. And then the stomach would become empty and they would eat again.
And in this way, they thought they can eat and enjoy more. But the limitation to eating and enjoying is not just because our stomach has limited capacity. Even if we empty the stomach, the body has to process all that food.
It has to go down our alimentary canal, it has to come out and cause so much damage to the body that those who tried it their diet didn’t be that young and healthy. And afterwards, people are not trying that anymore. So the point is that at the material level, no matter what we do, we cannot expand the happiness that we are living with.
We can expand a little bit, but not much. We might get better sense of objects for enjoying, but still our senses capacity is limited. We might extend the senses capacity a little bit, but that capacity cannot be extended much.
So in this way, materialism actually limits our happiness. How? Firstly, by taking away our freedom itself, by implying that we have no free will. So the idea that I am doing something free to enjoy, that itself is an illusion.
Secondly, you see, it binds us to the objects that give us pleasure. Just like there are addictions. And thirdly, it binds or restricts our search for pleasure to the material level.
Where the options or the quantity of happiness is always limited. And in this way, nashtatmano goes away. Except this philosophy, they are less intelligent.
They destroy their souls. So because we bind ourselves to happiness, it is never going to fulfill us. Earthman at earthman.
Now, this is an interesting word, nashtatmano, destroy of the soul. Now actually Krishna himself has said in the Bhagavad Gita earlier that the soul will destruct them. The whole second chapter practically says the same point.
avinashita tad viddhi yena sarorita antatan dinashrama udayasya akashchit kartum arhati in 2.17 he said, nobody can destroy the indestructible soul. And here in 16.9, in the Gita, Krishna is saying nashtatmano, they are the destroyers of the soul. So if the soul is indestructible, how can somebody be the destroyer of the soul? So Krishna is using the term destroyer of the soul.
He is implying the soul’s spiritual consciousness, the soul’s capacity for spiritual happiness that is destroyed by those who accept a Buddhist view. So for example, when we try to eat, sleep, meditate, a certain amount of pleasure we get. But when we want more pleasure and we are not able to get it, what contemporary culture does is it offers us second hand pleasure.
What is second hand pleasure? Actually the whole entertainment industry. All the movies basically offer an opportunity for second hand eating, sleeping, meditating. In the movies, there is a romance scene, somebody is dancing, somebody is singing, somebody is embracing, somebody is kissing.
So what is happening? All the spectators they are watching and they are acknowledging. If I am there, it would be so nice. So what is that? That is actually second hand meeting.
Somebody else is doing it and we are trying to experience it second hand. And that’s why most often people’s conception of enjoyment is they watch TV and eat some potato chips. Why? Because everything else is imaginary, something has to be real.
So essentially, in materialism, we are promised a lot of happiness, but in the end we have to settle for very little happiness or we have to fantasize about some second hand happiness. On the other hand, spirituality explains why we have a longing for happiness. It explains what we need to do to find that happiness.
It explains how we can become truly satisfied. So the first question is why do we have a longing for happiness? When we observe the world, we see that there is so much suffering. There are accidents, there are natural calamities, there are diseases, and there is suffering always.
And ultimately, there is the suffering of death. Death, everything that we have, our own body and all our possessions will be taken away from us. And yet, despite there being so much suffering, despite there being death, we have an innate longing for happiness and we have an innate longing to live and live for it.
Suppose you came into the temple and you look at the floor and you saw a gold particle, maybe a gold necklace or a gold ring or a gold coin. You saw something with a gold line here. Actually, the machine all of it is stone, it’s tiles, it’s made of stone.
Where did gold come from? The gold would be strikingly out of place in a place where everything around it is made of stone. And when we see something out of place, naturally the question comes where did it come from? Similarly, spiritual wisdom encourages us to ask the question everything around us is temporary. Things around us are temporary things.
Yet, we have a longing to live forever. Where does this longing come from? Things around us can live so much easily around us. Yet, we have a longing for happiness.
Where does this longing come from? For us to understand, there is temporariness in our circumstances but there is a longing for everything at our core. This indicates that our core is of a virtual different from our circumstances. Our circumstances are material but because we have everything material is temporary and yet we have a longing for lasting life.
We have a longing to live forever. This indicates that this longing comes from a core which is different from our. It says, when I see gold in a place which is made of stone, I ask does this gold come from somewhere where there is gold? So like that, in a world where everything is temporary, if I have a longing for eternal life, that must be coming from somewhere else.
That longing comes from our non-material or spiritual self. The soul, the Atma is by nature Sat Chit Ananda. Sat, the word Sat has two meanings.
One is existence and there are many meanings actually. One is existence, another is reality and third is eternal life. Vishwa Prabhupada mostly used the word eternal life to explain something.
That exists forever. It exists fully and lasts forever. So why do we have a longing to exist forever? Because that is our nature as souls.
Why do we want to be happy? Because that is our nature as souls. Ananda or Sat Chit is our nature as souls. So, spirituality asks us to ask the fundamental questions.
Fundamental questions means, Newton observed a fruit falling. After he saw the fruit falling, he asked, what is this fruit falling for? Now, if a monkey had been there instead of Newton, the monkey would just have taken the fruit and gone. Even many human beings would have also done the same thing.
Just take the fruit. Why bother how the fruit fell? But, Newton was intelligent. He asked, what is the fruit for? So, the capacity to ask questions can lead to the growth of knowledge.
Because now that question for the principles of gravity were developed. Eventually, the whole foundation of classical physics came up. Scientific revolution started off because of it.
So, spirituality also encouraged us to ask questions. And the questions it encouraged us to ask are even more fundamental. Newton asked, what is the fruit for? Spirituality encouraged us to ask the question, why did the fruit exist in the first place? How did it exist? What is the purpose of existence? actually, I don’t know if I was once giving a lecture, so, in 1969, and in the early days, most of the followers, most of the people came to know about the hippies.
The hippies were a very peculiar species. What had happened was, in 1940, after the world war was won by the allies, most of the battles happened in Europe. So, America was indirectly winning.
America provided weapons for all the allies. So, America became very prosperous. And those who were parents, those who had fought in the second world war, they came back, they got a lot of money.
They became very wealthy. And their children, 20 years later, they had been born in abundance and prosperity. So, by the time they came to the teens, 15-20s, they had already experienced the pleasures of the comfortable, luxurious, wealthy life.
The pleasures that previous generations had given up their whole life for achieving. And then they felt, what more is there for me? There must be something more. And, in trying to get something more, they started exploring new things.
One of the things they started exploring was drugs. They thought that drugs wouldn’t go far. And, when they did that, most of them, many of them were addicted to drugs.
And they were dissatisfied with the solid and materialistic chart of success that was propped out for them. So, Shweta Gopal is addressing these people. She told them that, you know, hippies, you are not much appreciated in your country.
People say that you are frustrated. She says, I appreciate you. Because, human life is meant to be frustrated.
Human life is meant to be frustrated. When we are frustrated in the ordinary course of human life, then we inquire. We inquire, what is spiritual life? What exists beyond? So, of course, frustration is not necessary for inquiring about higher spiritual truth.
We can learn by using our intelligence also. The point is, spirituality answers many questions. Why do we exist? Why do we have a longing for life? Why do we have a longing for happiness? Because, life is the future of our spiritual path.
And, that soul is a part of life. And, when that part is harmonized with the whole, say, going back to the gulab jamun example, the hand decides, I want to enjoy the gulab jamun. So, I take the gulab jamun.
I can find many creative ways. I can play catch-catch with the gulab jamun. I can scratch the gulab jamun.
I can squeeze the gulab jamun. I can punch the gulab jamun. I can do all sort of things with the gulab jamun, whatever I can imagine.
That’s not going to give me pleasure. I need to stay in the gulab jamun. I need to go to my mom and go to the shrama and flourish.
So, this is not dogma. The gulab jamun, to be enjoyed, the hand has to put in the shrama. This is not some old-fashioned religious dogma.
This is a simple functional reality. Similarly, we are parts of God. The Buddha said that be a part of God.
That’s what we are. A part. Be a part of God.
But unfortunately, we are apart from God. We are a part of God, but we are apart from God right now. And when we are apart from God, then what happens? We are driven by our sins.
We are driven by our sins. Go there, eat this, enjoy this. And we struggle and suffer in this pursuit.
But when we turn towards God and try to serve Him, then there is great happiness within. Now, the Bhagavad Gita offers us a wonderful vision of how we can connect with God and how we can serve God. Sometimes people think that if you become spiritual, you have to renounce the world and then you don’t do anything in the world.
Actually, that is not the essence of spirituality. Arjuna wanted to renounce the world. Krishna wanted to love the world.
So the point is not renunciation of the world. The point is devotion to God. The Bhagavad Gita doesn’t tell us to turn away from the world.
It asks us to look beyond the world. Look beyond the world to God and use what we have in God’s service. So, Svakarmana Siddham He says, by your work, worship Him.
So, some people translate this as work is worship. Now, the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t teach work is worship. If work were worship, then the donkey would be the greatest worshipper.
So, this is not to minimize work. That is, work is worship as a moral principle is fine. There should be dignity of all work and everybody should work in a diligent, reverential way.
That is, as a moral principle, it is good to say work is worship to impart a sense of dignity to all people. But if you make work is worship into a philosophical principle, that is a mistake. Work in and of itself is not worship.
If I say work is worship, then a thief may say, when I am robbing people, that is my worship. That’s my work. A beggar may say, when I am begging, that’s my form of worship.
Obviously, all work or whatever, we cannot call that as worship. But work in and of itself is not worship. What the Bhagavad Gita tells you is something different.
So karma is not work is worship, but by your work, worshipping. By your work, worshipping means that do the work in a mood of devotion. As I have told you at one point, we can have question and answers.
Krishna, the mood of the Bhagavad Gita is summarized in that, in one thing that what we are is God’s gift to us. What we have become is our gift to God. What we are, what talents we have, what abilities we have, whatever resources we have, what we are is God’s gift to us.
We are all different and God has made all of us different. And we all have different talents, different abilities and we are going to use these abilities. What we become using this, that is our gift to God.
So Bhagavad Gita doesn’t tell us to reject our resources, reject our talents. No. Whatever we have, we use them in a mood of service.
We use them in a mood of making a positive contribution with them. And why? When we serve people, we have this devotional mood in doing what we are going to do in our life. So this idea that we can worship God through our work, what this implies is that we don’t have to reject the material side of God.
Materialism means that either the spiritual doesn’t exist or the spiritual doesn’t matter. When the Bhagavad Gita talks about spirituality, it doesn’t say spirituality means you have to reject the material. Because Bhagavad Gita’s spirituality focuses on what? God.
And God is the source of spirit, God is the source of matter. So even the material we use in ourselves. And that’s why there is a balance that comes when we understand that our material things, if we use them in God’s service, they can enable us to do God’s mission.
So we went in a family, went in a job, rather than thinking this is material, this is spiritual, we infuse a devotional mood in whatever we do and we do it in God’s service This mood is not just something which automatically comes. For having a mood of devotion, we need also to do specific devotional activities. Some people say, especially in India, people say No, the names of God, I’m chanting them constantly.
It’s always… 24 hours I’m chanting the names of God. Why? Because something is going on 24 hours in the heart. Why can’t it come out for 5 minutes on the lips? Actually, the names of God, what is to be? If something is there in our heart, it needs to be expressed.
So we need time to come to a temple, we need time to study scripture, we need time to associate scripture with God. And by that we devote to this. And by that, the mood of devotion becomes solidly founded in our heart, solidly infused in our heart.
And then, after that, when we work, then we can do that work in a mood of service. The whole idea of bhakti is that we want to place Krishna in our heart. We want Krishna to be the lord of our heart.
And that means that, how do we do that? There are already many things in our heart. Lots of money, lots of career, lots of other people. They are all there in our heart.
And how do we give Krishna place in our heart? So for that, we need to, if we can’t offer our heart to Krishna, we should offer what is in our heart to Krishna. We can’t offer our heart to Krishna. We begin by offering what is in our heart.
What is in our heart is, in today’s fast-paced life, our time is very precious. We take time out and offer time to Krishna. What are the answers? Come to temple.
Every day, I read your chanting. Regularly, I study scripture. By just offering our time like that, because our time is so important, we offer our time to something that itself will give Krishna peace.
Similar, I think there is an idea to us as well. So when we offer part of our earnings to Krishna, the point is not if Krishna gives the money, but by offering our money to Krishna, we give Krishna a place in our heart. And similarly, whatever are our other talents, whatever abilities we have, we use them in a moral service to Krishna.
By all this, Krishna gets a more and more prominent place in our heart. And once Krishna becomes installed in our heart, my whole life becomes reoriented in the mode of devotion. And once the life is oriented in the mode of devotion, then whatever situation we may be in, we will face that situation with confidence, with determination, knowing that Krishna is with us.
There was a devotee, this young man who was working in the American army, and then he was introduced to Bhakti. After he was introduced to Bhakti, he thought, oh, the American army, fighting, all this is material. Let me give it up.
Then he went to the spiritual master. The spiritual master told him, no, that is your profession, that is your duty, you should do it. And then he says, you are in the army, so the spiritual master gave him many paths to Saraswati Das.
Then after that, he was sent to Iraq, the American border. And now because the because the local insurgents, they were outnumbered, they were having lesser technology, so they were always trying to attack by ambush. And that’s why he thought, you know, he was a spiritual leader, he found that most of his his team members, they were very jittery, because anytime from anywhere he was met up.
And then several times, so he said that for many years, there was genuine friendship. But then, there on the war fields of Iraq, I realized how wonderful Krishna is. So what happened, when he was in Iraq, I understood.
So I understood, why Krishna sent me to Iraq. I had been talking about the soul, I had been talking about spirituality with his colleagues in America, but when they are comfortable in America, they are not interested. But now, I saw that, how he was talking about, he talked about his whole philosophy, how he wanted the body of Krishna, and the soul to be buried with him, and the soul to always be with Krishna.
And after that, he said, you also experience the soul. So, he, it was not that they were always fighting, it was a leisure time, so most of the people would watch movies and be together. So he started Bhajan Sandhya in the American barracks.
And normally in the Middle East, the Muslim countries, they don’t allow any performance of Yadavs. But so, he did the first Yadav in Iraq, in the American encampment. And all these Americans, they just wanted to enjoy.
Yadav dancing, singing Yadav, very nice. So, they all danced and sang. And they enjoyed it.
And after that, whenever he would have to go out on any operation, he would give a spiritual laptop to all his team members. And they would hear, life or death, let us remember. And you know, the Aurangzeb vision is very reclusive.
He is saying, God, you are my friend, may you not marry a Krishna. He is, remember Krishna. And then all the Americans, they would be in uniform, they would have guns, they would come and they would lower their head, and they would sprinkle Gandhaarja on their heads.
And then they would go out to fight. So, they wrote a series of articles about experiences and entitled them as battlefield bhajans. So, the idea is that actually whatever we are profession, if we hold on to Krishna firmly, not only we will be guided in how to survive the inevitable challenges that come in the profession, but we will be spiritual as well also.
Our professions may not be as dramatic, our spiritualization may not be as dramatic, but still the process of bhakti, the things that we do, not just come to the temple, chant the holy names, these are small, small things. So, the process of bhakti is evolutionary. But the result is revolutionary.
The result is revolutionary. So, just keep practicing bhakti one day, two days, and then you will see that bhakti is transformed. Earlier, there were so many things which I couldn’t live without, I couldn’t catch on them.
But ten years ago, this problem had come in my life, I would just come and obey it. And now, this problem has come still I don’t want it. So, the process of bhakti in its long term result is evolutionary.
And the ultimate revolution is not just how we cope with life’s problems. The ultimate revolution is that our heart becomes dynamic in satsang. In the center of Krishna, we find lasting happiness.
In this life, of course, at the end of this life, when the road passes to Krishna, then Krishna takes us back to for a life of eternal happiness. So, it’s another case. I started a course for the topic of the earthbound and the earthbound.
16.9 of the Bhagavad Gita which says, those who are materialists, they destroy their soul. So, we discussed how materialism, it seems to promise us freedom from all regulations, all rules, but actually materialism takes it away. How? Philosophically, materialism implies that we have no feelings.
So, we can’t have any feelings. Practically, materialism binds us to the objects which we try to enjoy. That’s how we become bound, we become, people become addicted and they are materialists.
And, overall, materialism restricts our arena of happiness to only matter. Wherein, we can have only limited pleasure. And thus, we remain dissatisfied.
So, the body has a limited capacity for pleasure. It is not just, because I don’t have the objects to enjoy, so I am not going to enjoy. But even if we have the best objects to enjoy, our body’s capacity to enjoy is limited.
And that can’t be changed. We discussed the Egyptian pharaoh, he tried to complete the world’s capacity. So, it didn’t work.
So, in materialism, our search for happiness is actually frustrating. And the scope of happiness is limited. In contrast, spirituality offers us, firstly, the understanding, why do we have longing for happiness? Why do we have longing for life eternal, when everything around us is temporary? That comes from our spiritual home, from the soul.
The soul is a sat-chit-ananda. And the soul is a part of God. So, serving God and finding happiness there is not just a religious dogma.
That is a functional reality. Just as the hand can find happiness when it offers a gulab jamun to the stomach and then gets nourished again. And serving God is not about renouncing the world.
It is about connecting the world with God. So, Swa-karma-nathamadhyaya. Not work is worship, but worshiping through your work.
And what we have is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. So, we don’t reject the material, but we use the material in Krishna’s sense.
For that, firstly, we need to have time directly to connect with Krishna. So, if we can’t offer our heart to Krishna, we offer what is in our heart to Krishna. We offer our time to Krishna, we offer Lakshmi to Krishna, we offer diamonds to Krishna.
And in this way, Krishna gets more and more prominent presence in our heart. And then, once we have infused that pure devotion in our heart, whatever we are possessing in this world, we can carry that pure devotion into it, and spiritualize our life. We discussed about how we would like to, what fields we can spiritualize, or what we want to speak out in other fields.
In this way, spirituality empowers us to go through life, facing life’s challenges with greater confidence. Because we know, I am spiritual, I am instructive, involved always with people. I do it to define eternal fulfillment for our life.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Any comments? So, the basic question is, how are the souls increased? Because in the past we have limited number of people, now the population is increasing. So, basically how do we explain population expansion from the perspective of the soul? Souls are developing.
But it is not that all souls are in the human species only. When I said in animals the souls are underdeveloped, in humans the souls are developed, that doesn’t mean that the animal soul and the human soul are different. The same soul’s consciousness is underdeveloped in animals.
And when the same soul is transformed into the human species, its consciousness by that time is more developed. So, the idea that human population is increasing and that is a problem from the soul’s perspective, that is based on a very limited frame of reference. Take for example, some alien came from some other planet, and that alien was sent to earth to find out the demographic trend of earth.
And suppose that alien came to see the horizon in the temple over there. And he was hovering in the diagram, between 6 o’clock to 7 o’clock. And after observing for one hour, the alien went back.
And he noted, the population of earth comprises primarily of Indians, of the age between 30 to 60. Is that true? It’s a limited space, limited time. So, what is the problem? The observation is correct, the inference is wrong.
Because the observations we make for a limited amount of time. So, if our data sample is limited, then an extra positive or an extra positive can be wrong. Similarly, what happens when scientific methods or empirical methods are applied to try to understand spiritual things.
The samples that we have are limited. Because of which, we can’t understand the complete picture. The souls, just like there are many people existing, but they come at a particular time here.
And at other times, they stay for a million years. And there are so many other people who are not here. Similarly, there are souls in every species.
So, this is the human form. From the human form, the souls get liberated and go to the spiritual world. From where they never come back.
Now, from the lower species, the animal species, the souls come to the human species. And from the human species, the souls go to the animal species also. So, this is a cycle which keeps happening round and round.
This is the way to liberation. In Kali Yuga, this is an age where the souls going up are very less. Very few souls are getting liberated.
And the souls from the lower species by the natural evolution come to the upper species, come to the human species. And that’s why, within the human species, we see that there is an increase in population. Again, when we talk about increase in population, it is something nobody has done, account of the mosquito population of the world.
Nobody has done an account of the grass population of the world. So, the souls from other species have come to the human species. And, that’s why, it may appear that the population on earth has increased, but we are talking about population of the human population.
Whereas, souls are not restricted to human bodies. The total soul count that you will see, every human is a soul. But the souls in the human body have increased.
In some other species, the souls in the human body will have decreased. So, overall the soul count remains constant. If we focus only on the human species, it may appear that the population is increasing.
But, if you look at the overall picture, the number of souls remains the same. Does that address your question? Do you have a question? Yeah. One question now that I got was given by one artist.
He talked about living beings and non-living beings. Even though plants are living beings, and we cut them, why do we ask them to cut us? So, plants also have life and we kill them, we eat them. So, what’s wrong with that? What’s the essential difference between vegetarian and non-vegetarian? They both have life.
Yeah. There are three perspectives. Firstly, from a scientific perspective, the nervous system in the plants is far less developed than in animals.
And that’s why the plants experience far lesser pain than animals. So, a natural human being, we naturally would want to, a sensitive person would want to cause as less pain as possible. So, a doctor does surgery.
The doctor cuts the body. The doctor tries to cut as less as possible. Anyway, I have to cut the body, so let me cut more.
So, we have to eat. And for eating, the nature of this world is that we have to eat something or other. So, we cause as less pain as possible to others.
That is the sensitive way of living. So, when we kill animals for eating, they suffer a lot. Whereas plants, the amount of pain they suffer is far lesser because the nervous system is less developed.
Secondly, in many cases, when plants are eaten, they are, we didn’t call it eaten, that is more or less nearly the end of their lifespan. Fruits is for the humans. When crops are harvested, at that time, they are not harvested to be used as food.
So, in contrast, when animals are slaughtered, animals are not slaughtered when they become overgrown, often they are slaughtered, they are artificially farmed, and then they are slaughtered, but they will be consumed by humans. So, when we take from nature in the form of grains or fruits, nature’s offering has bound it to us. Whereas, we cut off the lives of humans.
And intuitively also, we understand this difference. If we go to a farm, where harvesting is happening, intuitively, the mood of celebration over there, nature has richly given her gifts, and we are celebrating. In all cultures all over the world, the time of harvesting is the time of celebration.
In contrast, go to a slaughterhouse. Nobody is celebrating there. Nobody is in charge.
Homeward moving, days, evenings, and evenings. You know, it’s all the same. It’s all the same.
If tomorrow, somebody argue like a dictator, if tomorrow in your school, the teacher tells, if you want to take our children for a field experiment, the teacher says, don’t take our child to harvesting. You see harvesting. There is no option.
But they say, we are going to take our child to a slaughterhouse. Nowadays, we don’t even use the word slaughterhouse. We try to use meat packing industry.
Why? You see, this is why we should try to deny the reality. So, intuitively, we know that there is a difference between harvesting crops and eating them. One is nature’s rightful boundary and the other is life being cut short.
From the point of view of human body, if you want to live naturally, the human body is far more functionally oriented, functionally similar to a vegetarian body. Our alimentary canal is very long. It’s almost 10-13 times our body length.
And that’s the amount of time required for grains to be grown. And that’s the length of the alimentary canal that usually herbivores have. Carnivores, their alimentary canal is 3-5 times the body length.
And they take the flesh and then they pass it on. They then reuse the flesh. Because the alimentary canal is so long, the flesh stays for long and it decomposes.
And it causes a lot of diseases. That’s why more and more people are turning to vegetarianism as a healthier way of living. So, from all these three perspectives, to cause lesser pain and accept nature’s boundary as we understand from celibacy over harvesting and comparing our own body anatomy, we can understand that vegetarianism is a far more wiser alternative for humans.
So, I have a website, vegetarian-scientist.com where I have written an article called Eat to Help the World. So, help, H-E-L-P is acronym. From four perspectives, analyze how vegetarian food is better.
So, H is from the perspective of health. P is from environment. The ecological footprint of non-vegetarian food is far greater.
And then L is livestock. So many animals are killed. And P is poverty.
Just by choosing non-vegetarian food, we can free up so much of the land that is used for raising grains for feeding livestock. And that land is used for raising grains for feeding human beings. So much of the poverty in the world exists.
So, that’s why vegetarianism is a much more wiser choice. And of course, we as humans understand that vegetarianism alone is not enough. In vegetarianism, there is some amount of killing because of which there is violence and there is karma.
So, as devotees, we don’t just take vegetarian food. We take vegetarian food that is offered to Krishna. And Krishna is a full karma field.
So, we take prasad that is not just violence field but is karma field. It is spiritual field that not only nourishes our body but also, abhijeans our soul.