Uddhava Gita nectar 2 – Love explained – Comparing materialist, Abrahamic, impersonalist and bhakti worldviews

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so today morning we are discussing the remembrance by Lord Krishna of the Brajavasis when he is away so we started this series these four verses are considered to be the devotional essence of the Uddhava Gita the Uddhava Gita is the instruction that Lord Krishna gave before departing from this world to his dear most associate Uddhava and this is much bigger than Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita is spoken in an emergency with a war about to take place so Krishna gives adequate instructions but they are brief, the Uddhava Gita is much longer and the theme of this chapter is beyond renunciation and knowledge so Krishna has been evolving the discussion the Uddhava Gita starts in the sixth chapter of the eleventh canto and goes on to the thirtieth chapter and within that in this particular chapter Krishna has, in the previous chapter he has given examples of various great devotees who achieved perfection by the practice of bhakti and among such perfected souls he is talking about the gopis and while he is giving a linear narrative of the various devotees who have devoted themselves to him when he talks about the gopis there is a slight break whereas there is an analysis going on when it comes to gopis there is a recollection and Krishna remembers how the gopis loved him in the previous verse which we discussed yesterday Krishna remembered how heart breaking how utterly devastating it was for the gopis when he suddenly left Vrindavan and went away and we discussed yesterday elaborately on Krishna’s birth till Krishna leaving from Vrindavan to explain what was the reason why Krishna had to leave like that today we will discuss on how the Gaudiya Vaishnava revelation as developed from the Srimad Bhagavatam of the love that is present in the spiritual world that explains the nature of life in this world and both the frustration that is apparent over here and the fulfillment that is available in the spiritual world so I am also in the evening discussing this series and appreciating Gaudiya Vaishnavism so in the evening I will talk about the concept of rasa which I will not focus on here but here I will focus on the principle of love here at one level these expressions of so here Krishna is saying that actually when I was with the gopis they felt that it was just like a moment this is even our experience in day to day life when we like to do something at that time we get absorbed in that thing and when we get absorbed in that thing then the way time passes we don’t notice that and sometimes say we have to do something which we don’t like to do we are forced to do it, we are obliged to do it or sometimes we meet someone and that person doesn’t want to meet us then even when that person is meeting in 10 minutes that person looks 20 times at the watch so it is not that time is going to go faster or slower by our looking or not looking at the watch but when we our perception is a function of our intention our perception is a function of our intention the way what we perceive and how much we focus, how much we get lost in something depends on what our interest is, what our inclination is and ultimately what our intention is so interest, inclination and intention these three are progressive phases within our thought life Ramana Acharya explains that our thought life comprises of three phases there is thinking, there is feeling and there is willing and the process of bhakti primarily is a spiritualization of our thought life we don’t change our externals we try to have more and more spiritual stimuli around us but essentially bhakti requires not just the spiritualization of our externals the spiritualization of our externals is meant to spiritualize our internals and spiritualizing our internals means that we reorient our thinking, feeling and willing in connection with Krishna so interest, inclination and intention you have to direct all of them towards Krishna and the gopis were so completely lost in Krishna that when they were with him nothing else mattered and when they were without him then also nothing else mattered but there was a big difference shunyaitam jagat sarvam govinda virahename as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says in the shikshashtakam which we just sang a few minutes ago is that everything else becomes of no importance so in the first case when Krishna is present everything else is of no importance means that Krishna is everything and what do I need anything else bhaktivinoda thakur says amito tomara tumito amara ki kaja apardhane my dear lord, I am yours, you are mine ki kaja apardhane what do I need any other wealth for purva itihasa bhulidu sakala purva itihasa all my past history, all the good things that have happened in my life all the bad things that have happened in my life, all the bad things that others may have done to me when I am with you my lord, when I am connected with you purva itihasa bhulidu sakala I just forget it, I don’t care for it at all peye nanas, he says that I just drink the nectar of service to you so this is the state of love when in the presence of the beloved nothing else matters and in contrast when the beloved is not there then nothing else matters in the sense that nothing else can provide any meaning, any fulfillment so these sort of sentiments we often see reflected even in the material world in movies, in novels people talk about romance and romance is the most enduring theme in the popular culture and the intense attraction that comprises the substance of the romantic relationship that is physical but it goes beyond the physical that is because the soul is spiritual our current existence is three dimensional so the soul is spiritual surrounded by the mind and then the body now when we as human beings, the soul in the human body has a far more developed consciousness than in the lower bodies and that is why the soul invests bodily activities with far greater significance than do the other non-human species so we all have all living beings eat, sleep, mate and die but we human beings invest a lot of emotion lot of intention we invest ourselves in these activities unlike the animals because for us these activities are not just a matter of survival we need food for survival but we see in whichever culture we go all over the world food is not just made for survival elaborate cuisines and the purpose is that we want to enjoy the process of eating that’s because the soul in the human body wants more pleasure than what the body can offer because the soul’s consciousness is more developed than what is there in non-human species so what do we mean when we say the consciousness is more developed that means it’s not so much a matter of development as a matter of uncovering the soul by nature is sat-chit-ananda so ananda is a defining characteristic of the atma to be happy and when the soul is an animal body it seeks that ananda it seeks that pleasure through whatever bodily drives are there so eating, sleeping, mating, defending whatever pleasure is available in that the animals are more or less satisfied with that whereas we human beings our existence is split in the sense that although we are at present a soul in a body but still the soul because the consciousness is more developed we want more than what the body can offer so the soul longs for moving the body settles for pulling what that means is the soul wants something much bigger but the body settles for something smaller but despite that we are not satisfied and we try to improve material things more and more that’s why we develop cuisines we develop arrangements, big big houses we create a whole I was talking about romance we create a whole world of imagination and aspiration and fantasy around the activity of the bodily relationships so animals don’t sing love songs about broken hearts or anticipating hearts although they do the bodily activity why is that? because their consciousness is not that developed and because their consciousness is not developed it is basically a biological drive and that biological drive when it is present it is irresistible but once the biological drive is gone, it is gone in human beings we try to get the higher fulfillment through the bodily activities and then that’s why we invest the bodily activities with a lot of significance significance in terms of emotion, intelligence planning, dreaming and this what we see in the material world now where is its origin? all of us we have some mental map within us about what the world is and how we are meant to live in this world even some people say I am not interested in philosophy even people who are unphilosophical also have some kind of philosophy the default philosophy in the material world is the philosophy of materialism materialism means that matter is all that matters materialism is matter is all that matters and these people seek more and more material things and they hope by that they will get more and more pleasure now if we look at so we will compare the materialistic world view then we will compare the Abrahamic religious world view then we will compare the impersonalist world view and then we will compare the Bhagavatam world view and we will see how each of these world views explains or fails to explain the nature of life in this world and how it explains in connection with the ultimate reality so if we look at the materialistic world view actually speaking it is a world view that is inherently self-contradictory inherently self-contradictory means suppose I speak right now and I say I can’t speak one word of English well I have already spoken 7 words so if I make a statement like that I can’t speak one word of English that is a self-contradiction or if I say I don’t exist well I have to exist to say that I don’t exist without existence there will be no either acknowledgement of existence or denial of existence so self-contradiction results when the very nature of things contradicts the assertion about the nature of things I make a particular statement about things but the very nature of those things contradicts that so in materialism although many people think that materialism means freedom I can do whatever I want I can eat whatever I want I can enjoy whatever I want and they contrast this with religion which has a lot of restrictions but if we see materialism if we go deeper into it what does materialism imply at a functional level materialism may mean I want to get more and more material things and I want to enjoy life materially but at a deeper existential level materialism means that nothing exists beyond matter and my own existence is nothing but an interaction of material elements now what we have found according to science is that matter obeys certain laws and if we are simply creatures made of matter then we are all pre-programmed machines if I hold a stone and I drop it, it is going to fall the stone does not have any free will to decide whether I will fall or not the stone simply acts according to the laws of nature so the same materialistic world view which people think frees them for enjoyment actually at a philosophical level it takes away our free will materialism implies that the very notion of free will is an illusion it implies that we are simply slaves of our bodily impulses and the bodily impulses are simply products of the bodily chemical reactions now nobody not even the most dogged materialist can live like this even people who are materialistic they may tell us you are following these rules and regulations you are depriving yourself, come and enjoy they may exhort us, give up this come and enjoy materialism is like a meta category within materialism we can have various schools of thought which result from materialism so what I talked about is determinism determinism means everything is predetermined determinism is actually the opposite of determination determination means we have the capacity to choose and do particular thing determinism means that we have no capacity to do anything we are simply programmed machines running according to our bodily impulses and materialism if we examine it with critical philosophical attitude we find that materialism degenerates into determinism because matter has no free will so if we are simply functions of matter we have no free will we are simply programmed machines with this attitude there are materialists, there are skeptics there are atheists if they accept a materialistic worldview they have to deny the existence of free will because they say the free will is simply an illusion somehow we think that we have free will but we are simply acting according to our bodily impulses and yet if we consider atheist one of the most famous atheist he wrote a book and he said if you read this book you will lose your faith in god and you will become an atheist so if you are a proverbial theist don’t read this book but the point here is he believes that we are simply machines driven by our bodily impulses and yet he also believes that by reading his book people will change from being theists to becoming atheists so what does it mean? he is saying that we don’t have free will and then he is expecting us to use our free will to believe that we don’t have free will this is incoherence you claim that you don’t have any free will but you have to use your free will to understand that you don’t have any free will so where is the coherence of that thought system so not only are we actually made into puppets of our bodily impulses of our bodily chemicals so our whole existence itself becomes meaningless so there are very serious implications of the denial of free will if there is no free will then there is no moral responsibility now if a person is a murderer why did that person murder? because that’s what the bodily chemicals told so Albert Einstein himself was severely conflicted by the implications of the materialistic world view he said if I take the scientific world view to its conclusion science itself does not necessarily lead to materialism or determinism but if science is thought of as the only body of knowledge that is called scientism and he said scientism leads to conclusion that a Nazi Einstein was a Jew who had to flee from from Germany, from Europe basically and take asylum in America he said if I take the scientific world view to its conclusion then a Nazi who has killed thousands of Jews he has done nothing wrong because that’s what his impulses made him do he said I find this repugnant I can’t accept this so the point is materialistic world view it cannot explain the very existence of free will it takes away all sense of moral and legal responsibility and ultimately it makes our life devoid of any meaning he says Krishna is for argument sake they are taking this reductionistic world view and he says that Arjuna if you think you are not the soul you think you are the body then the body is simply chemicals and there are so many chemicals that are destroyed everyday there are so many that are processed and transformed and destroyed and sent into the sewage so the body is also a set of chemicals if it is destroyed why are you lamenting for that so no one can live like this so I won’t go further into the materialistic world view but suffice it to say that it cannot explain our innermost longing for love why do we love why do we want to be loved and this is the driving force for everything that we do we may seek wealth, we may seek fame, we may seek power all these things we do because we hope by getting wealth, fame, power we will become more lovable in the eyes of others so the basic longing for love materialism can’t explain that then if we go further from the materialistic world view we go to the Abrahamic religion world view this is Judaism, Christianity, Islam there are many similarities between that and the Bhakti world view but there are some significant differences also so there is an Irish gag, Irish joke about Christianity in the beginning was the word and the word was no so the idea is thou shall not do this, thou shall not do that the idea of religion that is present in the world today is mostly defined by the Abrahamic religions by the conception of Abrahamic religions and in these religions there is often perceived to be a lot of focus on religion don’t do this, don’t do that and of course within Christianity also there is the description of love of God but the positive reality is not revealed much and because of the positive reality not being revealed much the focus stays on what we have to give up don’t do this, don’t do this what are we going to get in return for that that is something which becomes very difficult to understand or very difficult to persuasively explain so once I was travelling in a train to India in South India especially there is a lot of Christian missionaries who are converting Indians to Christianity so once I was travelling in a train and next to me was a Christian preacher and then we had a discussion so I started with Srila Prabhupada’s I started with Srila Prabhupada’s standard saying that thou shall not kill, that comes from the old testament but Jesus also accepted that he just tried to dodge the question he said if you are concerned about life and killing of life, why are you only concerned about the animals, there are babies who are being aborted in the wombs, why are you not concerned about that so I said ok, so you are also opposed to abortion, he said yes of course that is one of our defining agendas so then I asked the question, so before that he had been saying that Jesus is the only way that is the standard notion so then I asked him, ok if you say that Jesus is the only way and what is the fate of the babies who are aborted they did not take birth, they did not get the opportunity to choose Jesus as their saviour so now according to anyone who does not accept Jesus as their saviour, they are going to go to hell so what about the babies who are aborted are they all going to go to hell he said no, they will not go to hell because they are innocent I said ok, and what is the purpose of life so what will happen to them, he said no because they are innocent, if they are killed they will go back to God so I asked what is the purpose of life to go back to God, he said why not abort everyone how can you do that he said no if the child takes birth, the child may or may not accept Jesus as their saviour if the child does not accept Jesus as their saviour, the child will go to hell but if you abort the child there is no chance of the child going to hell, the child will go directly to heaven so I said no, no you can’t do that so what happens is the Christianity historically I won’t go into the theopolitics that went in the first 5 generations of Christianity but essentially the notion of a previous life or after life was removed from biblical understanding and because of that Christianity finds it very difficult to intelligibly explain many of the observed realities of life so we talk about reincarnation in this there are 3 different things there is a present life, there is a after life and there is a pre-existence so when we understand the soul to be eternal we understand that it had a pre-existence it has the present existence and it has after life now in Christian theology eternal is redefined not as for all time eternal is redefined as from now till all time so the past is not included so in their idea it is that when a man and a woman unite at that time a soul is created and from that time onwards the soul is going to exist eternally and if that soul becomes a devotee then that soul will go to god otherwise that soul will go to hell so now this idea leads to this notion because there is the denial of reincarnation one standard problem comes is that god is giving only one chance to his children and for some people you could say they don’t get even one chance because if they are born in some place where no one has known about Jesus then they don’t even get one chance so this makes god very cruel but more importantly for us we are discussing this theme is of how the Bhagavatam reveals the culmination of pure love and we are trying to understand which world view explains love in the most meaningful way so now in this world view what is the context or the purpose of love we love god and god loves us but if god gives his children only one chance and sometimes for some children no chance at all what kind of love is that and there is within Christianity there is the acceptance of the soul without the acceptance of reincarnation so there is no future life there is only one life and that leads to again a lot of philosophical incoherence because say if this is the only life we have and then the body that we have is the body that we will have when we are resurrected and everyone else will be resurrected so they say that actually our world view is more life and love affirming because I will come to this later Christianity’s perception of the Indian religion was primarily shaped by Advaitha shaped by impersonalism and Advaitha holds that all relationships in this world are false this world view is very world rejecting and our world view affirms the reality of love in this world also in fact we say that the relationship that we have in this world will continue on in heaven also so often people have this belief that when we go to heaven we will meet all our long lost relatives now this notion at a sentimental level it seems very nice oh! heaven will be like a perpetual family reunion but it leads to a lot of problems say suppose suppose there are three generations and there is a grandfather, there is a father and there is a child so now the child knows the grandfather as elderly so the child goes to heaven will the grandfather be young or will the grandfather be elderly if that is how it is eternally if the grandfather is young, if the father is young if the son is also young, then how many generations everyone is young and how is the relationship going to go on if that is the case or everybody is going to stay young all the time so what if a baby dies before coming to youth what is their body going to be eaten or worse still suppose husband and wife are there and somehow one of them passes away and say the wife passes away and the husband remarries so how is there going to be polygamy in heaven so my goal here is not to make fun the goal is to point out that philosophically when we try to eternalize the relationships of this world it doesn’t work what Christianity tries to do is because the difference between the body and the soul is not clearly understood and the multiple lives are not clearly understood so in the notion of trying to establish love as an eternal reality we try to eternalize the loving relationships in this world and then that leads to incoherence so now moving onwards to the Advaitic worldview Advaitavad is the idea that there is no duality that everything is one and whatever notion of duality is there that is false so in the Upanishads three tattvas are talked about that is in Sanskrit in terms of alliterative usage they can be called as Jagdish, Jeeva and Jagat Jagdish is the Supreme Lord, Jeeva is the soul and Jagat is the world matter, so matter, spirit matter, soul and God we could say are absolute truth now Advaitavad holds that actually the Jagat, the Jeeva and Jagdish all three are Maya and beyond these three is Brahman and Brahman is the ultimate reality so Brahma Sathya, Jagan Vidya now by this what happens is that so in materialism all relationships are just they are illusory because there is a false flow of chemicals in Christianity we have a real relationship with God but then all other relationships they try to make it eternalized now in Advaitavad all relationships are made into false all relationships, our relationship with our family members our relationship with our friends, they are false that’s one level of assertion of falsity but Advaitavad also holds that our relationship with God is also false why? because God is also a mental construct their idea is God is a mental construct so sometimes people write some provocative slogans on their t-shirt so once I saw a person written on his t-shirt I was an atheist till I discovered I was God I was an atheist till I discovered I was God so the idea is if I am God then the notion of God as a being distinct from me, this is not there there is a famous Advaiti teacher he says there are many past teachers who came and they said there is God over there and I will take you there then after that many other teachers came and they said I am God he says I am neither like those old teachers nor like the modern teachers, I have not come to tell you there is God nor I have come to tell you I am God, I have come to tell you you are God so this is actually very gratifying for the human ego to think that I am God but again there are many logical fallacies, this world view dissolves into incoherence because if Brahman is the only reality so now when people say I am God or you are God this is actually an oversimplification of even Advaitavada Advaitavada was what Shankaracharya preached but what is prevalent in the world today is what is called as Neo-Advaitavada Neo is Neo that was propagated during the Bengali Renaissance in India in the 18th-19th centuries and this is a a dumbed down version of Maya Advaitavada, it is very dumbed down so actually according to Mayavada they said even God is Maya it is that only existence is Brahman but here the idea of we and God are equated together and further it is made into the idea that everyone is God so you should serve everyone and somehow it is mixed with social service so Neo-Advaitavada is a Khichdi it is a Khichdi made of grains of grains of impersonalism drawn from the Upanishads mixed with the masala of social service taken from Christianity and further with the oil of nationalism taken from the Indian National Movement and cooked with the ego of the conditioned soul so Advaitavada itself is a serious philosophical system and our Vaishnavacharyas have contested and refuted that but what is prevalent in today’s world the idea that I am God, you are God this is a dumbed down and distorted version of Advaitavada so Advaitavada is a deviation from the Vedic philosophy and modern Mayavada is a deviation even from Advaitavada so it is deviation squared so now, again I won’t go into the details of Advaitavada as a philosophy but we are talking about its inadequacy in terms of explaining our longing for love so if the idea that I am God is not an accurate representation of Advaitavada because in Advaitavada God is not there, there is only Brahman there is only existence so if there is only existence of that one absolute truth where does the longing for love itself come from whenever there is love there has to be someone, some other object whom we love or even if you say you don’t need to love someone else, you can love yourself but even if I say I want to love myself to love myself, I have to at least at a conceptual level distance myself from myself and look at myself and think whether I am lovable at a conceptual level suppose if I want to see whether I am looking good or not then I need a mirror and in that mirror I look at myself so what is happening, I am myself reflected over there so if I want to see whether I look good or not I have to split myself into a subject and object so subject is the observer, object is the observed and only when there is this subject and object then there can be evaluation or there can be affection so if there is no subject and no object so strictly according to Mayavad in any act of consciousness so for example I am looking at you so I am the subject, you are the object and in between us is the stream of consciousness the stream of consciousness flows from the subject to the object and then conscious perception takes place so according to Advaita Vada the object is an illusion the subject is also an illusion so all that exists is just a stream of consciousness just a stream of consciousness, that is all that exists so if the stream of consciousness is all that exists from there how does the notion of a subject and object come the Brahman is simply a stream of consciousness then the longing for love at least at a reflective level even if you say that normally for loving two people are required but even if you say as Brahman can love Brahman but still even for Brahman to love Brahman there has to be Brahman conceived as subject and Brahman conceived as object where will that conception come from so our longing for love is is rejected entirely in Advaita Vada it is seen as as something present in the arena of illusion and many Advaita Vadis they also accept Bhakti but their idea is Bhakti is a means to Mukti so when we love the objects of this world we become bound when we love God we become liberated but liberation itself means becoming liberated from the longing for love itself so as long as you love God you are not liberated loving God is a tool for liberation but the longing to love itself comprises bondage that is their conception and therefore their notion is we have to go beyond this longing for love entirely and then we will be liberated so then what remains what is the I just exist eternally you will be happy Brahman is Sat Chit Ananda what is the Ananda over there sometimes when we have some too much trouble by too many people we may just say leave me alone we may say like that but if people truly left us alone forever we would feel desolate when there is too much agitation too much trouble then we may want to be alone so that loneliness or that seclusion that we want that is a reaction to improper association or excessive demand excessively demanding relationship or whatever but that is not the innermost longing of our heart we want peace so that we can have more meaningful interactions and more fulfilling relationships sometimes some people may say that I just don’t want any relationships there was an existentialist philosopher do you believe in hell so he said yes hell means other people now if somebody has that idea what kind of relationships can a person have so this is a very negative conception of worldly relationships and that comes because one does not have any understanding of spiritual relationships so Advaita Vata completely rejects our longing for love whereas when we come to Vaishnavism Vaishnavism explains that our longing for love comes from our innermost being that is the soul and the soul is meant to love and serve God and God also has many manifestations and these manifestations culminate in His manifestation as Krishna at the same time when we say Krishna is the highest manifestation this is not meant to deny or downplay the supreme lovability of other manifestations also Krishna has many manifestations because He accommodates the many desires of His devotees to love Him in different ways Brahmaji in his prayers for creative energy says that out of mercy for the devotees you manifest in multiple forms by which you can reciprocate love with them so we as souls have a vertical relationship with Krishna and that relationship is eternal and it is eternally fulfilling that is the relationship that is the purpose of existence and that relationship is based on the centrality of God in the spiritual world God as Krishna or Vishnu or Ram God is the central being in the spiritual world now what happens is when people in the Abrahamic religions when they try to eternalize these relationships the worldly relationships then their conception of heaven also becomes quite materialistic so if we consider Christianity within that they have the idea that always you are very happy in heaven but their conception of heaven primarily although conceptually it is centered on God but practically you will be there with all your relatives and you will be basically doing happily the things which you could not do happily here that is the idea of life over there so recently there was a controversy because in the western world people love pets a lot so there was a theological dispute in Catholic Church you know if the masters of pet are Christians then the pet also goes to heaven with them so now this is a serious problem for them because in their philosophy animals don’t have souls or at least animals don’t have the kind of souls that we human beings have so because of that now it is the soul that is to be taken to heaven so if animals don’t have souls how will they go to heaven then the current pope he said actually Jesus is very merciful if you love your dog he will take your dog also to heaven so the point here is that the conception of now within Christian theology the heaven and the kingdom of God are often equated some devotees try to make a differentiation between them we will not go into that technicality here but suffice it to say the picture of heaven is conceptually God centered but practically it is very man centered or humanity centered now we have the Bhagavatam reveals a vision of the spiritual world which is truly God centered Krishna is the center the pivot of all relationships and the relationships that we see in this world they are not to be rejected they have their foundation in reality in that reality Krishna has various relationships Krishna has Sakhiras, Dasaras, Vatsalyaras, Madhuras all these relationships are there with Krishna in the spiritual world and those relationships are reflected in this world now with Krishna when these relationships are formed as I said they are eternal and eternally fulfilling because Krishna is the perfect object of love he is all attractive all attractive we know at one level it means he has six opulences and these six opulences are present in him in unlimited quantity which makes him unlimitedly lovable what it means essentially is that whatever we find lovable in anyone all that and more is present in Krishna 10.41 in Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that everything attractive in this world springs from a spark of Krishna’s splendor so whatever it is the love of this world what it implies is that the love of this world is not false because whenever we are attracted to someone maybe because they are very good looking or very intelligent very sweet or very caring whatever it is when there is love in this world that lovability of those people is a spark of Krishna’s lovability and because Krishna is real even a spark of his is also real the problem comes when we conceive of the spark as the alternative to the moon so if we form relationships only in this world based on the lovability of others then at a deep subconscious level the soul is constantly longing for Krishna’s love and whenever we find anyone lovable in this world at a subconscious level we expect that the love that we can get in a relationship with Krishna that what we will get in this relationship and that we will not get because nobody can act as a substitute for Krishna so when sometimes there are jokes which are made love is blind but marriage is an eye opener so what this means is this is not the sort of jokes sometimes people make they reflect reality at one level but at another level they also point to a misdirection of our longing for love so when we have a longing for love and when for whatever reasons just going back to the materialistic world the subject of relationships is endlessly studied and discussed in literature throughout history and nowadays because science and especially psychology because people have so many mental problems psychology is becoming increasingly popular so there is a version of psychology called pop psychology which tries to offer simplistic explanations for everything so they say according to pop psychology romance has a bench life of 9 months so what they mean by that is they have studied the behaviour of couples who are in love they find that when a man and a woman, when a couple conceive of themselves in love certain chemicals are secreted in the brain and when those chemicals are secreted then people start feeling something which they have not felt sometimes in movies or novels they say oh I touched her and I felt electricity going through my body so now this is not just an illusion it is an illusion in the ultimate sense but sometimes in a particular relationship the brain starts getting stimulated in a particular way and because of certain chemicals being secreted so people start feeling emotions that they do not feel with others and these chemicals they are secreted more or less their secretion lasts for we are not talking about the reproductive chemicals these last for around 9 months so that is why for 9 months people are irresistibly they feel irresistibly attracted to each other you know the same people initially they say I can’t live without you you know maybe after being together for 3-4 years they say I can’t live with you it goes to the exact opposite because the basis of that relationship was on infatuation so what pop psychology holds is that actually those enzymes are secreted that is why you feel attracted now yes that may be a physical explanation a neurochemical explanation but that neurochemical explanation is just a part of the explanation like say if I laugh I am happy and I laugh now when I laugh my face moves in a particular way similarly at that time in my brain certain chemicals will be secreted a certain part of the brain will be activated but happiness is not only that if happiness was simply laughter then you know all of us could buy machines which would make our mouths laugh and we would all be happy so just as happiness cannot be reduced to just the physical gestures at the time of laughter similarly happiness cannot be reduced to the chemical secretion that happens in the brain at the time of laughter and similarly love cannot be reduced to the chemicals that are secreted in the brain when we feel attracted to someone so the thing that happens is from a philosophical perspective that the soul is looking for Krishna and when the soul finds someone attractive at that time the soul hopes that in this person my longing for love will be fulfilled and that’s why all the longing for love that is there at the deepest core of our being that gets expressed and that’s why there are these intense feelings that come up but around 9 months is the period by which we discover this person is not Krishna laughter so then that relationship which seems so so irresistible it starts, there is a tapering down it starts becoming anticlimactic after some time so this happens not just because the chemical is secreted actually it becomes because the soul’s longing for love is misdirected now the important thing in Vaishnav philosophy is to understand, yes, if we love others in this world that is a misdirection but misdirection is not an illusion what does it mean? in the fourth canto, when Dhruva is insulted by his stepmother and he is neglected by his father he is shattered for a child, the whole sense of self identity for a baby he is wishing, it comes from the parents so to see his father neglecting him he just couldn’t bear it he went running to his mother and his mother, Dhruva was crying, the maidservant had already gone and told his mother his mother was also helpless she said, why does my father not love me so then, he says, no, your father likes the other queen more he says, no, I want to sit on his throne I want to sit on the throne bigger than his throne what should I do? so his mother tells him at that time she tells him of course to go to Lord Hari the love that I can offer you Lord Hari can offer you millions of times more love than what any mother can offer to her child here the significant point is not just that that love can be millions of times more if this love were false then zero into million times will still remain zero so this love is not false it is also real but it is temporary it is temporary because the relationships themselves are temporary and also it is temporary in the sense that it is based on fractional manifestation of Krishna’s attractiveness so whoever is attractive for us they manifest a spark of Krishna’s splendor and the spark cannot ever provide the same warmth the same illumination, the same comfort as the whole flame or the whole fire can provide so when the loving relationships are there in this world they are not false they are meant to be pointers to the reality so when we conceive of them as competitors or replacements then they put us in illusion but if we see our relationship in this world they are meant to assist us in our relationship with Krishna that means whatever relationships we have the love that we experience that love is not necessarily false when a mother loves a child, when the parents care for their children that is real love so that love is not to be rejected but that love is to be connected with our love so whatever relationships we have we have a vertical relationship with Krishna we have a horizontal relationship with people in this world the vertical relationship is the eternal reality and the horizontal relationships are meant to assist our vertical relationship to strengthen our vertical relationship so we love our family members our family members love us and if all of us can be united in loving and serving Krishna then our mutual affection and regard for each other will increase our devotion to Krishna and it doesn’t only work that way actually the vertical relationship and the horizontal relationship they are symbiotic our horizontal relationship if there are children and the parents and children are devotees and the parents teach the children to also become devotees that is the children obey their parents and then they also become devotees that means the horizontal relationship helps the children to establish their vertical relationship but along with that the vertical relationship also helps us in improving our horizontal relationships how is that? because if if we are connected with Krishna if we get inner fulfillment in our relationship with Krishna then that fulfillment gives us stability a basic stability that enables us to weather whatever storms that come in our horizontal relationships so if our whole sense of self identity and self worth is coming from a particular relationship I am the husband of so and so, I am the wife of so and so, I am the son of so and so if our whole sense of identity is coming from a particular relationship and if there is a problem in that relationship then it is like our whole world comes crumbling down but if our basic sense of identity and self worth comes from our relationship with Krishna Krishna loves me, Krishna cares for me and Krishna is always within me in my heart and super soul then once we get that basic security in that relationship then whatever ups and downs happen in other relationships we can tolerate them and we can resolve them so when we don’t have a relationship with Krishna all our longing for love becomes centered in our other relationships and then we often tend to become over demanding we expect from others what only Krishna can provide and nobody can provide that so our relationship with Krishna can make us more tolerant more understanding, more affectionate and actually it can stabilize even our horizontal relationships so in this way the bhakti philosophy it actually explains how all our relationships that are there they are real or they are pathways to reality in that sense they are not false they are meant to be conducted just as we act in our relationship with Krishna in a mood of loving service similar in all our relationships we act in a mood of loving service and the way we serve in different relationships will actually be different depending on the specifics of that relationship but this is how bhakti is not just about fulfillment of love only when we go back to Krishna when we develop Krishna centered relationships based on mutual understanding and care then we get great fulfillment even in relationships in this world paradoxically the more we expect in a relationship the more we set ourselves for frustration but when we have bhakti as our central relationship with Krishna then in our other relationships we don’t go in with such high expectations and then we get actually our satisfaction is a function of our expectation if we expect a lot if I expect there will be a feast with 10 sweets and I find there is not even one sweet then I will be dissatisfied but if I expect there will be khichdi, pakoda, paratha it is nice so one of the big problems in today’s world is that people enter into relationships with too high expectations and then that causes too much frustration but when we philosophically understand that our essential relationship with Krishna and with that shelter strong with that connection with Krishna strong then we enter into other relationships actually we find those other relationships will also be more enduring and more fulfilling now the specifics about the relationship of Krishna with his associates we will discuss in tomorrow’s class tomorrow and day after also I am going to continue this theme here we talked primarily about the longing for love but how that longing for love is fulfilled in various ways in the spiritual world that is itself explained in detail in the Bhagavatam and especially in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition that we will discuss in our future classes to summarize we talked here about how the longing for love which worldview explains it in the most meaningful and fulfilling we discussed four worldviews, the materialistic worldview it says a longing for love is just some flow of chemicals because we ourselves are flow of chemicals so that longing essentially becomes meaningless it is simply a chemical illusion and not only that for love there has to be free will people choose free will to love but free will itself is an illusion because materialism degenerates into determinism where we are simply products of our impulses which arise from the bodily chemicals which act according to laws of nature so love is made to a chemical illusion in materialistic worldview then we looked at the Abrahamic worldview primarily the Christian worldview there we discussed how they try to eternalize the love of this world by projecting it in heaven and then because they rejected reincarnation so God himself although he is claimed to be very loving doesn’t appear to be very loving, he has only one chance and then eternalizing the relationship of this world leads to a lot of incoherence now we discussed about various relationships what will be the age of people what will be the nature of people who have multiple spouses all those complications come out then we discussed the Advaitic worldview which says that all love is an illusion including the love for God and we need to transcend beyond it all so then the question comes up where does this longing for love come from if Brahman is the only reality how is the idea of a subject and object and the relationship between subject and object where does the object come from where does the longing for a connection between subject and object come from all that has no explanation and of course ultimately perfection means perfect elimination of the longing for love which is really not perfection which is not a particularly attractive existence so we may say leave me alone but we don’t want people to literally leave us alone forever so Mayavada is more a response to the frustration of material relationships and not a realization of spiritual relationships whereas in Bhakti we understand that we have a vertical relationship with Krishna which is eternal Krishna embodies everything that we find lovable in all the people with whom we have loving relationships and Krishna embodies much more so in loving him we get eternal fulfillment and the relationships which we have in this world they are also real firstly because whatever lovable we find in someone that comes from a spark of Krishna’s splendor but if we consider the spark to be the whole if we consider the relationship in this world to be a substitute to the relationship with Krishna then we set ourselves up for frustration but if we get our basic fulfillment from our relationship with Krishna by connecting with him in devotion then we go into our horizontal relationship with lesser expectation and we go in with greater tolerance with greater maturity because we are basically we are philosophically oriented about the nature of the relationships and we are also getting some satisfaction in the spiritual relationship then we can actually make our horizontal relationship also more stable and more fulfilling and that way the vertical and horizontal relationships become symbiotic so the longing for love is fulfilled in by directing it towards Krishna and by directing it to others in relationship with Krishna thank you very much are there any questions or comments I have a question that might sound obvious to some people but I just want to say to those who may be thinking how do I lower my expectation in relation to the devotees because sometimes when we come into the neophyte, the new devotees we get frustrated in relationship because we don’t know how to do it we put all our patience in relationship with the devotees but then we think well it’s just me, my guru and Krishna and of course this is a neophyte level so my question is does it mean that simply by reading carefully what’s said in the scriptures, knowing Krishna we can actually fix all our problems here in terms of maybe frustrating relationships and personalism in the community of devotees does it mean that simply by understanding more Krishna we can actually fix a lot of problems sometimes when we practice bhakti we may have excessive expectations and we may get frustrated by that and also it may happen that we may think that better let me have relationship only with Guru and Krishna but that is also a Kanishka level so is it that by becoming advanced in devotion becoming deeply understanding Bhagavatam our relationship problems in this world will also be fixed there are two different things over here first is that the mode in which we approach the relationships in this world in this world means with devotees and the second is the nature of the world the nature of the world is not going to change just because I become a devotee just as the Adi Atmic Klesh or the Adi Daivic Klesh just because I am a devotee if I live in an area where there are earthquakes, the earthquakes are not going to stop if it’s cold, the cold is not going to stop so similarly just as the Adi Daivic or the Adi Atmic Klesh I am going to go old, I am going to get sick, it’s not going to stop similarly just by becoming a devotee Adi Atmic Klesh will also not stop so there will be incompatibilities in relationships and that is just the fact of relationships in this world so it’s not that just by becoming advanced devotees everything in this world will get fixed but what happens when we become more and more absorbed in Krishna Madhashreya Kathamrishtha Shunvatnati Kathayanti Cha Tapanti Vimidhas Tapa Naitan Mangalat Chetasa when we become absorbed in Krishna Kabirdev tells Madhadevoti that then Tapanti Vimidhas Tapa the miseries still torment us but Naitan Mangalat Chetasa but because the consciousness of the devotees is absorbed in me they don’t feel afflicted. So to explain this, suppose it’s very hot and we feel the heat, but then we come into an air-conditioned room.
Immediately we feel relief. It’s not that the outside heat has stopped, but we have come to a place where there is relief. So like that, there will be anxieties, agitations, Prabhupada is a pure devotee, instead of Prabhupada, many times his godbrothers, they caused him a lot of distress.
So that can happen, but as the more advanced we become, the more we learn to quickly seek relief by absorption in Krishna. So by absorption in Krishna, we get relief, just like if it’s hot, I come in an air-conditioned room. So we learn, we train ourselves to bring our consciousness in the Krishna-conditioned atmosphere of absorption in him.
So we ourselves need to practice bhakti proactively by observing what it is that I can easily absorb myself. Some of us may find that we can easily absorb ourselves in hearing, others may be chanting, some may be kirtan, some may be different kinds of services, we all need to individually find that out. That’s the first thing.
So relationships, there will be difficulties, but we can seek relief, and as we practice bhakti, we get that relief faster when we are more and more connected with Krishna. And secondly, with respect to over-expectations in relationships, actually, Rupa Goswami in Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu states that we need not just Sangha, he says we need Sajatiya Aashaya Bhagwan Bhakti Sangha. Sajatiya Aashaya means those who are like-minded devotees.
Sajatiya Aashaya means, basically, those whose conception is Sajatiya, is similar, of the same category. That like-minded association is extremely important, because even within devotee circles, we find that different devotees consider different things important. And suppose we may spend hours and hours doing something very nicely.
So, and say, I am primarily a writer, so I spend hours and hours writing something, and then if I go to a devotee who is not interested in writing, and I wrote this article on this subject, that devotee may just say, Prabhupada has given everything in his books, there is no need for him to write anything. Yes, Prabhupada has given everything in his books, but Prabhupada told his followers also to write. But if my sense of self-worth is going to come from such a devotee, then I will have zero self-worth.
So, then I have to find out other devotees who are also into writing, who appreciate writing. Actually, if we want to do any service well, we have to go deep into that service. And every service requires a lot of effort.
So, only those devotees who are like-minded, in their association, we will feel valued, we will feel connected. And we will also understand. Okay.
The kind of problems that we face, they will understand us and we will see that, yes. Sometimes a big problem in relationship comes when we feel even if our problems are not solved, at least our problems are understood. But if we don’t have like-minded association, then our problems are not even understood.
Our efforts are not valued. So, we have to, it is our responsibility to look for like-minded association. And it is not that those devotees with whom we have less than pleasant experiences, they are not necessarily bad devotees.
No, they just have a different conception of practicing bhakti. And it is, suppose some devotees, their whole focus is on distributing books. And somebody else is focusing on building temples.
Now, both are important. Now, distributing Prabhupada books is important. Building temples is important.
Writing articles is important. Worshiping Deity is important. There are various ways in which we can serve Krishna.
In fact, bhakti is a house which has a million doors to it. There are so many ways in which we can serve Krishna. But it is because all people are limited.
So, everybody cannot be expected to appreciate everything. So, if we are not appreciated in our particular circle of devotees, that is not necessarily a deficiency in that circle. We might just have some interest, we have to find out some other devotees, some other circle, where we get an appreciation.
And we will find. By Prabhupada’s mercy, we have a big community. And by technology’s mercy, we can connect with devotees in many ways now.
So, whatever way it is, we need to connect with like-minded devotees. And it may take some time to find like-minded devotees. But if we find it, we need to put in special effort to develop that relationship.
And rather than seeing relationships as good or bad, we can put them in a set of concentric circles. So, some relationships are very fulfilling for us. Some relationships, yes, they are nice.
Some relationships, they are tolerable. So, that is how it is. It is not necessarily that it is because I am so fallen or because I am not advanced.
It is just different people are different. And we cannot change that reality. So, we need to find out.
Now, when I said we have to find out a social circle where we have like-minded devotees, that does not mean we reject our existing circle. Sometimes we may feel that, you know, yes, I want relationship with devotees. But you know, the devotees around me are very conditioned.
You know, they create so much trouble. So, I will associate with pure devotees. Yes, now I will associate with people who are perfect.
But the problem is, this is an imperfect world. So, we will not find anywhere a circle of perfect people. And even if we found a circle, you know, we would not gain entry in it.
Till we become perfect. And how will we become perfect? So, we do try as much as possible to have good relationships in our present circle. But we also can be looking for like-minded devotees with whom we can have more fulfilling relationships.
Does it address the question? Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. You mentioned there was a reason.
For many reasons, Vrindavan would have come to an end one-on-one. Right. What are the other reasons? There was a… Yeah.
Because, had the army come to Vrindavan, the supremacy of Krishna would have been known that would have affected the Raksha of the Bhajans. Okay. Yeah.
So, the question is that Krishna leave Vrindavan to go to Mathura just to avoid the… avoid Vrindavan being attacked by Kamsa. But Krishna would have defended all of Vrindavan also. Alone also.
In Vrindavan. Why did he have to go to Mathura? Was it that in defending like this, Krishna would have to manifest his divinity? And then the Bhajavasis, Rasa would be impeded if they knew Krishna’s divinity? Yes, that is true at one level. Krishna, he in Vrindavan, if we see, he does kill demons.
But, बाल क्रीड़न कनतिव उद्धवा When he is remembering Krishna, I just got a third candle. He says, Krishna’s killing of the demons is like a child playing with toys. And, sometimes when playing with toys, child doesn’t like the toy, throws away the toy, toy breaks.
So, one feature of Krishna’s pastimes in Vrindavan is, Krishna never lifts a single weapon. None of the demons that Krishna kills in Vrindavan are killed using a demon. Krishna is a small child.
You know, a horse comes to him, he just moves his fist. The horse dies. Another demon comes and carries him, he just increases his weight.
He has a free air ride. And when he says enough, he just increases his weight and he crushes Trunavarta. So, Krishna’s killing the demons is also very playful in Vrindavan.
He does not use any weapons. So, in that sense, the playfulness, it ensures that the war and battle, there is a certain ghastliness associated with that. So, that is not there when Krishna kills the demons.
It’s more of a fun-filled activity. Whereas, when Krishna is going to fight full armies and kill, deliver the world from the adharmic demons, then he has full-fledged wars. So, those wars where Krishna uses weapons and fights, Krishna in Vrindavan does not use weapons.
So, that mood even in killing demons is different. So, the mood would have been spoiled. And apart from that, of course, Krishna had to perform pastimes.
Krishna had descended for many purposes. One was, of course, to reveal the love of Vrindavan. But he also performed pastimes with other devotees.
The Pandavas were in Hastinapur, later in Indraprastha. And Krishna went around and met many other devotees, met the sages. So, Krishna, he left Vrindavan at one level to rid the world of the demons, such as Kamsa and others.
Also, he wanted to perform pastimes with other devotees. And with respect to the Vrajivasis, he wanted to intensify their love through their separation. In their separation, there is a prayer in the Padyavali, where Radharani says to Krishna, Krishna, I feel that separation from you is preferable to union with you.
Because, she says, in union with you, I can see you only at one place. But in separation from you, I can see you everywhere. You fill my world.
Of course, still Radharani wants union with Krishna. But the point is, Krishna intensified their recollection and their devotion. So, in this way, Krishna fulfilled multiple purposes by leaving Vrindavan.
Any other questions? Yes, ma’am. So, what is our fear? Okay. So, we experience fear in our relationships in this world.
So, is this fear also real? If our relationships are real, then is the fear real? And how is this fear present? How does it relate with our vertical relationship with Krishna? See, fear can come from various causes. And fear itself is not necessarily bad. We fear something when we care for something.
Isn’t it? If I have a car and somebody hits a dent, just a small dent on the car, somebody just bumps against the bumper, I get so angry or I get fearful. But suppose I have sold that car and somebody else is riding that car and somebody makes a dent against it. It doesn’t matter much to me.
So, because that is not my car now. I am not emotionally invested in that. So, fear indicates the presence of our emotional investment in something.
And that emotional investment is the essence of bhakti. So, when Dronavat took Krishna away, at that time, that blinding whirlwind came. But Yashodamayi couldn’t see Krishna anywhere.
Yashodamayi was devastated. Yashodamayi saw Krishna in the coins of Kaliya. She fainted.
But then she immediately came back. She just couldn’t tolerate the thought. So, that anxiety increases her remembrance of Krishna.
And that fear is also one of the, it is associated with secondary rasas. There are five primary rasas. And then there are seven secondary rasas.
So, there is horror, mibhatsa, bhayanaka. So, these are rasas which intensify, flavor the relationship. So, fear itself is not bad.
But there has to be the fear which is in the context of our devotional relationship with Krishna. So, if our fear, if our anxiety becomes so much that it causes us to forget Krishna, then at that time, we need to distance ourselves and try to cultivate a little bit sattva guna. So, fear itself can come from various sources.
There can be fear which is tamasic. It is a mode of ignorance. That means, say that, one time when Devotee asked me this question, sometimes we say that in order to become serious in bhakti, we should think that I may die today.
Today might be my last day in my life. So, we said that if I think that today I am going to die, then I will think why should I go to office, why should I just sit and chant Hare Krishna all day. And I cannot do that throughout my life.
So, what does it mean? See, fear there, fear itself can come from ignorance, from the mode of ignorance. It can come from the mode of passion, it can come from the mode of goodness, and it can come from transcendence. So, fear from the mode of ignorance simply makes us paranoid.
Paranoid means, sometimes if people are riding in a car and people get panic attacks. Panic attacks means, they start imagining, Oh, if I am going along a car, I am driving my car, suddenly the brake fails, and my car just sails off and hits a truck. The whole mind goes into a dystopia.
Now, utopia is a positive fantasy, dystopia is a negative fantasy. So, this is a serious problem in today’s world. There are people who get tremendous anxiety with the source practically being nothing.
And that is tamasic. Yes, there is danger in this world and we need to be aware of danger. But to imagine danger and to be constantly fearful, that is actually tamasic.
So, to be constantly fearful of everything going wrong in life, that is tamasic. That is coming from the mode of ignorance. When we are in rajoguna, at that time also fear comes, when what we are attached to, we feel I may lose that.
So, this is, as we decrease the attachment, then our fear also decreases. Say somebody is very attached to cricket, and then the person’s biggest fear is what if India loses the cricket match, or what if Australia loses the cricket match, or whatever. Now, that fear, as the attachment will decrease, that fear will also decrease.
So, here the difference between tamoguna and rajoguna is, in tamoguna we are just imagining things which may not even happen. Whereas in rajoguna, we imagine that some things which we have, which we because of our attachment consider very important, the loss of them, that shakes our world. In sattvaguna, we have what is called as healthy fear.
Now, healthy fear is important. If somebody is actually riding in a car, and driving a car, and the car is good, that person imagines, oh my brake will fail. That is a tamasic fear.
But a person, the brake of the car is spoiled, and still the person thinks nothing will happen, and rides that car also. That is recklessness. So, healthy fear is basically caution.
And that is important. So, we as devotees, if there are realistic dangers, and we need to take care of those dangers. One time some devotees, they were in Prabhupada’s tent, they were going for a good distribution, and they were going from one place to another, they were going in a van, very fast.
And the van, there was an accident, because of going very very fast, recklessly driving. And when that happened, then the devotees, they told Prabhupada, Prabhupada, we were serving Krishna. So, was it an accident, Krishna’s arrangement? So, Prabhupada inquired about the situation, and they found that they had been driving way above the speed limit and everything.
So, Prabhupada, this was not Krishna’s arrangement, it was your mismanagement. So, there has to be healthy caution, and that comes within the mode of goodness. And transcendental fear is in relationship with Krishna.
So, when we care for Krishna, at that time, so for example, once, a devotee had gone for a good distribution, and he distributed some books, collected some Lakshmi, and he lost the Lakshmi. All the Lakshmi he lost. And then he came to the temple, and he told the temple president, I lost all the Lakshmi.
What? The temple president said, you lost all the Lakshmi? He said, no, no, no. The Bhagavad Gita says, you should be equipoised and gain and loss. Now, this is the misapplication of the philosophy.
Here, you know, that same person may say, I am following Bhagavad Gita, I am being equipoised and gain and loss. But would that same person be like that if his or her own money had been lost like that? No. So, there, that is not detachment, that would be irresponsibility.
So, defining difference, I have a full seminar on detachment and irresponsibility. But the defining difference is, irresponsibility means, we do not do the activity well. Detachment means, we do not depend on the fruit for doing the activity.
So, detachment is after the activity is done. Irresponsibility is before the activity is done. So, actually, to some extent, anxiety is good, if it makes us more intense in our devotion.
So, as devotees, if we find ourselves becoming too overwhelmed by fear, then we can try to take shelter of Krishna and calm ourselves down and then evaluate. What is the nature of this anxiety? And then, if it is tamasic or rajasic, then we have to purify ourselves more and with philosophical education, we can distance ourselves. But if it is sattvic, it is good.
And if it is transcendental, it is actually very desirable. Does that address your question? Okay. Yeah.
Last question. Okay. Yeah.
So, if our fear stops us in developing horizontal relationships because of some bad experience in some relationships, then how are we ever going to develop relationships also? Yes. See, the doubt is not always bad. In the Bhagavatam, third canto, when Krishna talks about the function of intelligence, first function he says is doubt.
Samishaya. Now, a foolish person cannot doubt. Foolish person believes whatever they are told.
To be able to doubt requires intelligence. But doubt is a characteristic of intelligence. But doubt is not the only characteristic of intelligence.
If I always keep doubting, that is also a problem. So, a simple example to illustrate this. Now, suppose we are in our house and somebody knocks on the door.
Now, who knows, it might be a thief, it might be some anti-social element. Now, if we just open the door for anyone and everyone, we may be robbed, we may be injured. So, we ask who is there, we look through a security window or whatever.
So, to have some amount of doubt is good. But suppose somebody who is a relative, somebody is a loved one, and because of doubt we don’t open the door even for them. Then that doubt is not protecting us, that doubt is imprisoning us.
So, doubt is good, but we should see doubt in the overall context. We doubt and use our intelligence and then we go beyond doubt. So, if we have bad experiences, and we all have bad experiences sometimes in relationships.
So, we need to be cautious. We need not be so impetuous in our relationships. But as we take slow steps, maybe one step and see how the other person responds.
Take another step and see how the other person responds. And based on that, we can develop the relationship more gradually. If we develop hastily, we may regret.
But if we don’t develop at all, then we will sentence ourselves to loneliness. And we also undercut our potential for contribution. We can contribute when we have relationships.
So, maybe we can be more cautious and also we can try to observe and learn that what is our nature, what is other people’s nature. When we talk about self-realization, it is not just realizing ourselves as Atma. It also means realizing ourselves as the body and the mind.
That doesn’t mean I am the body and I am the mind. But I have a particular kind of body. I have a particular kind of mind.
And they will have certain needs. Just like if I have a particular kind of body, then I have to find out what kind of food is healthy for me, what kind of food is not healthy for me. Even if the menu is something else, I may have to be discreet and choose.
So, just as we do that for the body, and we learn that. Nobody else can tell us what is good and what is not good. Some doctors may tell, but different doctors have different opinions.
Ultimately, we have to decide. So, just as we learn about our own body and take care of our physical health, similarly, we need to learn about our mind and learn to take care of our mental health. So, if we find that certain kinds of people tend to become too impulsive and then we go too close and afterwards we go too far or whatever, then as we learn about our own mind and our own emotions, we can also learn how to be cautious and at the same time take steps forward.
So, learning about our mind is quite important. And journaling can help us in this. As long as the thoughts are in our head, they just consume the space and we can’t evaluate much.
So, if we sometimes put our thoughts down, if you have some very strong experience, whether positive or negative, just write them down, then the temperature of the emotion goes down. Because when thoughts come out of the head, there is distance itself, some objectivity is created. And then we can evaluate, I am feeling like this, but is it true? Maybe this is not exactly the way it was.
Maybe something else could have happened. So, basically, by getting the thoughts out of the head and then evaluating head, what we do is, we make our intelligence the counsellor of our mind. We make our intelligence, because the thoughts are there in the mind.
And if we keep them there, we can’t suppress them for long. But sometimes, if I am very angry with someone, then I write a mail, blasting that person. But then, if I don’t write that mail, I feel like there is a pressure cooker inside me, which is about to burst.
But then I write the mail, but I make a policy never to send that mail. So, at least 24 hours I keep that mail. And after that, when I evaluate, I find this is too harsh.
And sometimes I may scrap the whole mail, sometimes I may edit the mail, and then I may put the same thing in softer words. And when the emotions go down, then we can ourselves evaluate. So, bhakti is not about denying human emotions.
If we have been hurt in a relationship, that hurt is real. If we feel angry with someone, that anger is real. We can’t artificially wish away that anger.
But we have to express it in a proper way. So, generally, or it can be by discussing with other devotees also, but we live in such a fast life that often other devotees do not have the time to exactly understand what we are. So, journaling also, at least it has helped me.
And I see it as using the intelligence to counsel our mind. And usually, even when I have to consult senior devotees, if I have done some journaling and introspected adequately, then I can ask also more meaningful guidance from seniors. Because I have understood myself better, then I can present my problem also better.
And then I find that the guidance also helps me more. So, essentially, trying to come to sattva guna and then from progressing in a guarded way, thoughtful way, that is the way we can overcome the fear in relationships. Thank you very much.