Unity in diversity and diversity in unity – The Absolute’s relationship with us

[Congregation program at Princeton, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the prayers.
You can repeat after me. Om Nyanjanashalakaya Nyananjanashalakaya Nyananjanashalakaya Chakshurun Militam Yena Chakshurun Militam Yena Tasmai Shri Guruve Namaha Tasmai Shri Guruve Namaha Thank you all for coming here today evening. And I’m grateful to be here amongst all of you.
So I will speak about the Bhagavad Gita’s understanding of who we are and what the nature of reality is. When we observe the world, we say that some people are more rational, some people are more emotional and sometimes we consider rationality more important than emotionality And it is true, sometimes when we become too emotional, we may take decisions that are not very sound At the same time, for us, in the normal perception of things, for the normal functioning both the rational and the emotional aspects are important So if the rational side becomes too strong or if the emotional side becomes too strong If the emotional side becomes too strong, we get carried away by our emotions and act foolishly But if the rational side becomes too strong and one doesn’t have any emotions at all that can also be dangerous There are people who are psychopaths or sociopaths They can heartlessly hurt others and kill others and they don’t feel anything at all So to be deadened to emotions is unhealthy and to be deadened to reason is also unhealthy And the same principle applies in not just perceiving in this world but also approaching the absolute truth So when I talk about unity in diversity and the diversity in unity I’m going to talk about how when we approach the nature of reality When we look at things rationally, then we try to find the commonality underlying the diversity So for example, if we are looking at a beautiful rose Now I can look at a rose from an aesthetic perspective And I can appreciate this beautiful color, such an exquisite shape, such a charming fragrance And I can look at the same rose from an analytical perspective I can look at the rose as a botanist This is a scarpel, this is andrushium, this is the gynoceum, this is the stamen These flowers are this big, this pollination has happened, this has not happened Now both perspectives are valid Now depending on what I’m looking for If I’m offering the rose as a representation of affection or respect to someone And then they take the perspective of a botanist That will be a mismatch On the other hand, if somebody is a scientific laboratory and they have to study a rose And at that time you have to pull the rose apart and look at its petals, look at its various things Hey this rose is so beautiful, I don’t want to hurt it And then you won’t be able to study botany So in different situations, different approaches are required The same applies to the nature of reality In the Bhagavad Gita, in the 10th chapter, verses 8 to 11 are called the Chatur Shloki Gita They refer to the four verses which convey in essence the message of the Gita So the first verse there is aham sarvasya prabhavo matah sarvam pravartate iti matva bhajante mam budhābhāva samanvitah Krishna says aham sarvasya prabhavo That I am the source of everything matah sarvam pravartate By me everything is sustained iti matva, those who understand this What happens to them? bhajante mam They start worshipping me How? buddhā They have become wise The word buddhā, buddhā is cognate with the word buddha Normally we consider the word buddhā to refer to a historical personality who founded Buddhism But buddhā generically refers to an enlightened person So those who understand the absolute to be the source of everything They have become wise, buddhā And what do they do? bhāva samanvitah With the emotions of their heart They bhajante mam, they worship So here Krishna is saying in the Bhagavad Gita that When there is perfect knowledge, when there is complete knowledge There is a harmony of the head and the heart The head understands the nature of reality And the heart is in tune with that understanding In a mood of loving devotion It’s interesting that the Bhagavad Gita is spoken at a time when there is a great crisis A war is about to start And at that time the conches are blown Indicating the starting of hostilities And then at that time Arjuna says to Krishna O Krishna, please place our chariot in between the two armies I want to see who is there out there Who all are there here, I want to see that And then he sees and then he gets overwhelmed He starts crying And then they start talking And they keep talking And they keep talking And the conversation that they have is the Bhagavad Gita And to understand the unusualness of the setting Consider the event which arouses probably the maximum emotion among Indians Say a cricket match, say a world cup final between India and Pakistan And there are thousands and thousands of people in the stadium There are millions of people watching TV And say the fielders are in that position, the toss has already been done The batsmen have walked out The bowler is about to in the action to bowl At that time the striker calls the non-striker And they start talking And they keep talking And they keep talking Everybody is restless They go on talking and talking and talking Now there are some players who do gamesmanship That means if the match is going against them Then they will try to slow down the tempo Break the momentum of the opposition So that they can gain an advantage But if we know that these two players are good players They are sportsmanly, they are not going to do gamesmanship Then everybody will be curious What are they talking about So similar to the situation when both the armies are assembled Everybody has taken out their bow and arrow They are ready to fight And at that time Krishna and Arjuna start talking So at that time what has happened Arjuna has become overwhelmed by emotions He starts thinking how can I fight in this war How can I fight against my relatives, my elders And when he is overwhelmed by emotions At that time he asks a question First he says I don’t know what to do In 2.6 he says that should I fight and win But then my loved ones will die Should I just avoid the fight But then we will all be labelled as coward We will be paupers, we will have to live in the forest We will have nothing We will be disgraced as being cowardly Having fled the battle Should I stay and fight half-heartedly But then my other family members will die I will also die So he just can’t see what to do at that time Intelligence can have many conceptions or definitions One definition of intelligence is to know what to do When you don’t know what to do To know what to do when we don’t know what to do That means say if a child is trying to do something And can’t figure out what to do What does the child do? Child goes to the mother, goes to the father So if we are taking some treatment And we find that it has some side effect which is unexpected What do we do? We don’t know what to do So we go to a doctor at that time Similarly at this point Arjuna says I don’t know what to do But then he does something The next verse he surrenders to Krishna I surrender to you as your disciple Please tell me what is dharma? What is the right course of action for me? So all of us come to situations in our life Sometime or the other when we just don’t know what to do Should I do this? The prospect with this is weak Should I do that? The prospect with that also is weak So what should I do? That is the question So this question is not simply should I fight or should I not fight This question is I want to know about dharma And this universal question makes the Bhagavad Gita’s message universal If it had been simply about whether I should fight a particular war or not Then that would have been simply of some historical interest to some people But the question is universal What is the right course of action? And Krishna says the right course of action requires the right understanding of reality And then he proceeds to give the right understanding of reality So he says that beyond the physical which we see is the spiritual And spiritual is the higher or the greater level of reality And first he talks about, he shifts the vision from the body to the soul That inside the body there is the owner of the body That is the consciousness That is the energy of the soul, the atma And then after fixing the vision on the atma He moves the vision further Especially from the sixth chapter onwards to the paramatma He says there is another being inside And then most of the Gita thereafter is about understanding the relationship between the atma and the paramatma Who we are, what the nature of reality is And how are we to harmonize with that Suppose say there is a drama And there are some kids who are practicing for the drama They want to do the performance of the drama And say a kid does very good rehearsals, very good practice And they go on the stage But when they start playing their role in the drama Nothing seems to make sense to them Everybody else seems to be doing something else And although this kid is doing the drama very well Everybody else is looking strangely at them Now they keep going through the drama Then they understand actually the drama which he or she had prepared for Is different from the drama that is being enacted So that drama was rescheduled and that is later So now they just bashed it and they are playing in some other drama only So you know before we can play our part We have to know the play of which we are a part So similarly we all have our part in the world We are all meant to do something in life But what play are we a part of So that bigger picture is what the Bhagavad Gita gives And most of the Bhagavad Gita talks about How do we understand the bigger picture And what is the nature of the reality that is revealed when we see the bigger picture So there are broadly speaking two conceptions When we look at the world around us We look there is so much diversity See everyone of us is wearing a different kind of dress, different color All of us have our different looks Even in this room we can see there are so many different objects So the sheer diversity of the world can be overwhelming So when we see this overwhelming amount of sensory input that comes into us We try to process it by categorizing So categorizing may be these are males, these are females These are kids, these are adults These are Indians, these are Americans So when we are categorizing what are we trying to do There is so much diversity we are trying to bring some unity in it There are 25 people over here 15 are female, 10 are male So this is the diversity By putting some category we are bringing some unity And as we go deeper There are females, there are males, there are adults, there are kids But they are all human beings So as we go deeper and deeper into the categorization More fundamental level We try to come to unity There is oneness So in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says As our knowledge pursues higher and higher We move from diversity towards unity In the 18th chapter in the 20th text he says that sarvabhuteshu yenaikam bhavam avyayam ikshate avibhaktam vibhakteshu tad jnanam viddhi sattvikam He says sarvabhuteshu They are all different living beings and they all have their different varieties But among all of them there is one nature bhavam avyayam ikshate One imperishable nature One who sees this such a person is seen in sattva guna In the mode of goodness Their vision is advanced So we also nowadays have the idea of inclusivism There are different people, different races, different nationalities, different cultures But let’s focus on the fact that we are all human beings See the commonality So in diversity language they say see the brother in the other Don’t see the other as someone different See that they are also like us, they are related to us So by the systematic analysis of reality Systemic observation of reality We go down from diversity to unity We try to categorize and through categorizing going fundamentally down we come to unity So similarly when this vision is applied to the absolute truth At that time we look at the huge variety There are trees, there is earth, there is sky, there are planets So what is all this? How do we categorize? If we look at the various celestial objects we say some are stars, some are planets We categorize like that But as we categorize and we try to look at the unity The unity that thinkers find and which bhagavata tells is that Everything is part of one absolute truth So there can be evolution in the conception of reality So if we consider the ultimate reality there are atheists Who say there is no god So that could be problem when they look at the world around I don’t see any god anywhere Where is it? Nothing anywhere So now some of you may be managers in companies Now you know that a good management system means That everything should work well without the manager requiring constant intervention And the less the intervention of the manager is required The better is the management system So yes this world is managed so well that we don’t see the manager at all But not seeing the manager some people may start thinking there is no manager only But it’s not like that So to see that there is no god is a very preliminary level of perception From there people may say there is so much different variety Oh there is the sky, there is the earth, there are the planets So from there is no god some people may evolve to there are many gods There are so many diverse phenomena and they are all controlled by different powerful agents Then from that place one may evolve yes there may be many different But there will be chaos if there is not some cooperation If there are big companies there are many departments But there is no authority who unifies those departments There will be chaos So from there one may evolve further And we say there is only one god So there is no god, there are many gods, there is one god Now this is broadly seen as the understanding So there are polytheistic religions which say there are many gods And many of the monotheistic religions they say that they are proud We believe in only one god, this polytheism is very primitive Now the Bhagavad Gita actually acknowledges this various ideas At one level one may see no god because one may have a short sighted perspective One may perceive many gods that is also one level of perception Then one may perceive one god And then there can be, when we say one god means there is one god and there is this world But then one can have another level of perception also That level of perception is that there is only god That there is only god God is everything Now when they say god is everything This is the vision of oneness In the 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about how we can see him in everything And there when he says among the mountains I am the tallest mountain Among the oceans I am the biggest ocean So here Krishna is telling us that whatever attractive things in this world we see Where does their attractiveness come from? It comes from him So there in the 10th chapter in the last part he says Among the Pandavas I am Arjuna Initially when Krishna, Arjuna hears Among the Pandavas Yudhishthira is considered the most virtuous He says surely he is a Yudhishthira But he doesn’t say I am Yudhishthira He says I am Arjuna and Dhananjaya Because there is a very affectionate bond between the two And Arjuna has both Dharma and Bhakti But it’s interesting when Krishna tells Arjuna that among the Pandavas I am Dhananjaya So Arjuna doesn’t say oh Krishna that means we two are one And both of us are one there is no need for you to speak Bhagavad Gita Whatever you know I know we two are one So Arjuna doesn’t say that So there is oneness So as I said we move from diversity towards unity To make sense of the categorization So there is no God, many Gods, one God, only God So Vasudeva Sarvagati is accepted But that oneness is also seen in different ways The Vedantic school of thought accepts that there is the oneness of the absolute But then there are questions about what is the nature of that oneness Is it absolute non-differentiated oneness Or is it oneness with some variegatedness in it In the Ramayan when Ram is exiled to the forest At that time Lakshman is furious He feels a great injustice has been done against Ram And he protests vehemently But when Ram insists I am going to go to the forest Lakshman also goes with him When they are living in Chitrakoot Chitrakoot, Adriniket and Ram On top of Chitrakoot they are there At that time suddenly they hear some loud disturbing sound in a nearby forest It appears that some great creature or a great procession is coming Then Lakshman climbs on top of a tree and they see an army over there As he peers trying to identify what is that army And he sees actually that is the army of Ayodhya And he sees Bharat at the head And as soon as Lakshman sees this He becomes furious He says that wicked son of that wicked Kaikeyi He is not satisfied after having sent you to the forest Now he has come with the whole army to kill you But he doesn’t know that I stand between you and him Today he and all those whom he supports Will meet death at the hands of my arrows He is seething in anger Ram at that time is very calm And he says Oh Lakshman why are you so angry I know Bharat and Bharat’s love for me is no lesser than your love for me Is it that in a rush of emotion you decided to come with me to the forest But now on experiencing the austerity of the forest You are finding it unbearable And because of the austerity of the forest Being unbearable you are getting angry And you are feeling angry with Bharat If that is the case then when Bharat reaches here I will tell him to stay in the forest And you can go back and you can be the king Now when Ram is speaking all this Lakshman’s anger is going down Finally he says you can go back over there So Lakshman becomes completely deflated And then finally when he comes back When Bharat comes and he says How selfless is the love of Bharat for Ram Many times when a wealthy patriarch passes away Often their children they fight bitterly for the inheritance There are succession battles Similarly after Dashrath’s passing away There is succession battle Between Ram and Bharat But normal succession battles are I want that, I want this, I want this But here the battle was you take it, you take it Both of them are arguing, you take it Both of them are trying to give reasons Finally Bharat says please give me your paduka Please touch these sandals And then Ram seeing his devotion agrees Today if one brother gave his sandals to the other brother The other brother would take the sandals And beat his brother with it So such is the selflessness of Bharat’s love That he takes the sandals on his head And he goes back And the sandals sit on the throne And he sits in a lower seat at the feet of the throne So he wants to show to the world Through this external position The disposition of his heart That Ram is the king and I am his servant Now after seeing all this Lakshman’s heart gets profoundly remorseful And then he says When Ram and Lakshman are talking He says Ram why do I get angry so quickly So then Ram says He spats him, elder brother You are very sentimental You are very emotional Then Lakshman becomes pensive And he says are emotions bad So Ram says no emotions are not bad He says emotions are the ornaments of life It is emotions that bring joy to life But we need to choose the emotions That lift us up And avoid the emotions that drag us down We need to choose the emotions That inspire us towards dharma And we need to avoid the emotions That take us away from dharma So emotions can be a help And they can be an obstacle Based on time, place, circumstances So when a mother loves a child At that time the mother has to have some emotions In the way she interacts with the child But if a surgeon is operating a child At that time emotions may come in the way So now going in the same way When we approach the absolute I was talking about emotions And how we need to choose the emotions That lift us up and not take us down I took the story to illustrate the same point That when we approach the absolute truth also We have to approach in a way That is both intellectually appealing And emotionally fulfilling So the idea of categorizing, categorizing And reducing the category till we come to oneness The idea of absolute oneness Seems intellectually appealing Yes you know we are all one But what is the nature of this oneness You see that the nature of that oneness If it is absolutized What that would mean is Right now all of you are hearing this class So then here there is the subject of consciousness And there is the object of consciousness So say I am looking at you, you are looking at me So if you are looking at me You are the subject who is observing And you are looking at me So I am the object who is being observed And linking both of us is the stream of consciousness The subject of consciousness, the object of consciousness And the stream of consciousness Those three things are there Now absolute oneness would mean That there is no subject and there is no object There is only the stream of consciousness Now if there is stream of consciousness What will that stream be conscious of And who is it that is conscious There is nothing to be conscious of And there is no one to be conscious So in the state of non-differentiated oneness Or absolute oneness What will happen is That the only thing to think Is that there is nothing to think The only thing to do is that there is nothing to do The only thing that exists Has nothing to be aware of Now this conception is lacking in any emotional content And if you look at the world And understand the world has come from the absolute Then whatever is present here must be present in the absolute Otherwise this world would turn out to be bigger than the source So if the world is greater than God Then how is God the source of everything How is God the greatest being So whatever is present here Needs to be present in the absolute truth also So that is So if I look at fire from one perspective There is a candle over here You can see this candle You can see there is fire From one perspective there is one flame But then if I look from another perspective In the fire there is heat There is light And actually when I see the fire What is happening is the wick is burning And flames are coming So what appears to be one flame Is actually a continuous change Of the candle burning And the flame appearing and going So the same thing which appears One from one perspective From another perspective Can be seen as having many more layers Of complexity with it Similarly the Bhagavad Gita says That Vasudeva Sarvamiti Vasudev is everything Now what is illusion I will conclude with two points I don’t want to make this class too philosophical But two points Illusion as the Bhagavad Gita tells us Is different from illusion As we normally think Sometimes we say If I am in a desert And I see a mirage To see that there is only sand But I see water That is illusion So that is illusion in perception Perception means the way I am seeing things With my senses is wrong That is illusion in perception But Maya Which is illusion Which is what the Bhagavad Gita says Is the divine illusion Maya Duratya That is not illusion in perception It can be a part of it But the essence of Maya is Illusion in conception Conception means Not just how I am seeing things externally How the appearance is coming into my eyes But what is my conception What is my world view So what is Maya The Bhagavad Gita says That means To see anything disconnected from the absolute That is Maya So the absolute exists Things exist And there is an integral connection Between all of them To see anything Disconnected from the absolute Is what is Maya So Ravana He saw Sita Sita’s beauty is real Sita is real Ravana is real Ram is real What is unreal Is Ravana seeing Sita separate from Ram Ravana seeing that Sita is meant for my enjoyment That was the fatal blunder Which causes destruction So reality So illusion is The fundamental nature of illusion is Illusion in conception So when we see everything is connected with the whole Everything is meant for the service of the whole Everything meant for a loving reunion with the whole Then that is the oneness That is both intellectually and emotionally fulfilling What does this mean intellectually and emotionally fulfilling We see beyond the categories of this world To the one Beyond the diversity of this world to the oneness There is unity, there is oneness Within that oneness There is variety It’s like sometimes If the lights go off It’s extremely dark We can’t see anything There can be a darkness which causes blindness But sometimes if you are driving a car And suddenly some big truck comes along And they glare Then the brightness can also cause blindness But initially all that we see is just brightness We just see the light But then after our eyes get accustomed to the brightness There is one truck over here And there is another vehicle behind over there And there is a car over here I cannot go right now I’ll have to slow down, I’ll have to stop So blindness can be caused by darkness And blindness can be caused even by brightness In the material world Blindness is caused by darkness That means we identify ourselves with matter And we get caught in the world of matter Not perceiving higher reality When we come to the spiritual level We see the oneness of the absolute But that oneness can itself be so bright That it can be blinding The Ishopanishad said that My lord please remove, oh absolute truth Please remove your blinding effulgence So that I can see the nature of reality So that I can understand you in your true manifestation So yes, beyond the variety of this world Is the oneness of spiritual reality And in the oneness of spiritual reality There is the variety that is pure and spiritual And that variety There is god Krishna who exists in supreme reality And there are many many souls who are Lovingly connected with Krishna And that world of pure devotion Is the world where god doesn’t reign supreme That is the world where love reigns supreme Love reigns supreme means That god doesn’t act as if he is god all the time One of my friend is a high court judge And he told me once that He likes to be a judge but still being a judge is his job He said if I had to be a judge for my rest of eternity My life would be miserable He says if god is simply a judge for everyone Then god’s job would be boring God’s job would be miserable actually He says god is much more than say Observer of the world, overseer of the world God has his own life beyond this world And in that world he doesn’t delight in his godhood I am god, you go down to me There is oneness in love And that oneness of love is so great That the devotee forgets that Krishna is god And Krishna also forgets that he is god All that happens is there is simply the joy of love In the 10th canto of the Bhagwat There is the story of Many pastimes of Krishna in which There is a story of the Ras Leela In which Krishna and the Gopis meet in the forest of Vrindavan And at one time Krishna disappears from among them And when Krishna disappears All the Gopis are searching for him desperately They are searching, searching, searching Krishna wants to see the intensity of their love As he wants to see the intensity of their love At that time he, the Gopis are searching And he appears in the distance But he appears in the form of Vishnu And as he appears in the form of Vishnu At that time his four hands Shankha, Chakra, Dada, Padma are there with him And the Gopis come running Initially from the distance They see Krishna’s complexion and Vishnu’s complexion are the same Oh they have found Krishna, they come running And when they come and see it is Vishnu They are disappointed The great yogis, they are delighted to get one glimpse of Krishna Of Vishnu also And they are ready to perform Tapasya for a long long time When the Gopis see Krishna, they are disappointed And they offer their respects to Vishnu And they say, oh Vishnu, please oh lord Vishnu You are all pervading, you are all knowing Please tell us where is Krishna And when Krishna sees the love of the Gopis He is very touched by that He points to the speaker And the Gopis offer their respects And he says, run away in that direction And then finally among all the Gopis The Gopi with the greatest devotion is Radharani So she comes there As Radharani comes there, she looks at Krishna She looks at Vishnu, she offers her respects Oh lord Vishnu, please tell me where is my Krishna As she is asking with such intensity Krishna again wants to point his hand and say But what happens, the intensity of her love The desperation with which she is looking for Krishna That causes Krishna’s two hands to melt away And he wants to point out but he has no hand to point over And then Radharani sees the lord of her heart in front of her So here what has happened Krishna forgets his godhood Because of the love of Radharani And the Gopis forget Vishnu’s godhood Because of their love for Krishna Yes Vishnu is god but our lord is Krishna We want to go to Krishna So in the spiritual world, love reigns supreme Krishna doesn’t act as god He acts simply as the lover of his devotees And the devotees treat him as their eternal lord And in that reciprocation There is the highest fulfilment of the heart Because Krishna is Sarvakarsh He is all attractive And he loves every soul There is a beautiful story in the Brihad Bhagavatam Where there is a Gopakumar He is a seeker from this world Who goes through various spiritual adventures And finally he comes to the spiritual world When he finally attains the spiritual world So Krishna is going out with his Gopas To herd the cows And suddenly he sees this Gopakumar Krishna is so delighted on seeing him Krishna runs up to hug him And Krishna is so excited that Krishna fades So seeing the Gopakumar in the spiritual world Krishna loses his Krishna consciousness Krishna just loses And then all the Gopas turn to him And they say that Who is this boy? What has he done to our Krishna? And he says I didn’t do anything I don’t know what happened And then Krishna He normally fainting We can say it’s being overwhelmed by emotion Or being overwhelmed by weakness Generally when do we faint? Normally either it is because of extreme health weakness Or it is because we are experiencing emotions of such intensity That the body cannot sustain those emotions So the defense mechanism of the body is that the body switches off So Krishna he experiences such intense joy On seeing the Gopakumar that he faints And then he comes back to consciousness Krishna says oh Gopakumar oh my dear friend You know for so many lifetimes you are away from me I was longing for you to come and be with me So delighted that you are back Now never go away from me Stay with me forever And he pulls him into a tight long hug So that hug represents the pinnacle of oneness That oneness is the oneness of pure love Where God exists, the soul exists But God is not aware of his Godhood The soul is not aware of God’s Godhood All that is present is love So the oneness is not oneness where there is no one to reciprocate love The oneness is where there is no one to interrupt love There is not even the awareness of God’s Godhood to interrupt love Everything that is there in the spiritual world in Krishna’s abode Is simply meant for the reciprocation of love And this diversity that there is God and there is soul This is what enables the love to happen So all this is in the platform of ultimate reality And this diversity in unity is what brings ecstasy in eternity Eternity already exists, the ecstasy comes because There is eternal loving reciprocation between the soul and the absolute So I will summarize what I spoke today I spoke on the topic of unity in diversity and diversity in unity I started by talking about how when we in the normal functioning in life We need our rationality so that we can pursue objectively and not be carried away by our emotions But we also need our emotionality so that we don’t become heartless And we don’t perceive things holistically So in the Bhagavad Gita at the start Arjuna becomes overwhelmed by emotions And he can’t perceive, like at the start of a cricket match World Cup final, two players, two batsmen start talking with each other So what is that conversation about? It is not just about whether I should fight or not fight It is about what is my duty, what is the right course of action And for understanding the right course of action Krishna tells Arjuna that you have to understand You have to have a right understanding of reality And that right understanding of reality begins with understanding That underlying the physical is the spiritual That we are at our core souls And the soul is beyond the soul is the supreme soul And what is the nature of the soul and the super soul? Krishna says that when one knows him in truth Then that person becomes enlightened, buddha But then also bhava-svanmita-bhajante With emotions he surrenders With all the emotions of his heart he worships him So there is the head and the heart which are harmonized there So we discussed the need of the head is to look for some unity Abades the diversity of the world Now if every person is entirely different And there is no categorization to make sense of it You will get intellectually overwhelmed by the load of processing all the information So we categorize men, women, adults, kids Indians, Americans So we reduce the diversity to some manageable level of diversity And if you go deeper that diversity also reduce to humanity Similarly when you look at the world around us There is so much diversity But the diversity can all be reduced down to some unity So that could be there is no god Or it could be there are many gods All diverse phenomena are controlled by certain beings But beyond that there has to be one supreme There is one god And then there is only god Now that god is all that exists Vasudeva says But what does that mean? Does that mean that no one exists apart from god? No, what it means is that we all are parts of god Illusion means that we see ourselves as separate from god Illusion in perception means to see things wrongly Illusion in conception means to have a notion which makes us see things wrongly So to see everything connected with the absolute is the vision of reality So when we are seeing just the diversity of the world It’s like we are blinded by the darkness But when we see only the unity That’s like being blinded by the brightness But when we become accustomed to that brightness Then we can say that in that brightness also there is variety So absolute oneness doesn’t mean that there is no subject or object of consciousness There is only stream Because there is nothing to reciprocate There is nothing to bring joy to life So absolute oneness means that there is no separateness of intention There is no separate interest in anyone There is only pure love So I talked about emotions, two stories First I talked about example of the rose You can see it analytically and aesthetically So emotions are important But we should choose the emotions that lift us up and not drag us down From the story of Rama and Lakshmana And then in the realm of pure consciousness There is variegatedness within oneness There is one supreme and there are many subordinates But the oneness of love is so great That both the supreme and subordinates forget the supremacy of the supreme And it is love that reigns supreme I discussed the story of Krishna with the gopis Where the gopis’ love causes them to look for Krishna beyond Vishnu They forget Vishnu’s godhood And it causes Krishna to forget his own godhood When he reveals his own form unintentionally to Radharani So the heart’s deepest fulfillment comes The head’s fulfillment comes when we go beyond the temporary variety of this world To that which is eternal And in that eternal world the heart’s fulfillment comes When we appreciate the reciprocation of love Between the soul and the supreme And the oneness is in there having no separate interest There being united in the reciprocation of love eternally Thank you very much. Hare Krishna So are there any questions or comments? Yes please So what does Vasudeva Sarvam Iti mean? Is it pointing to love or is it pointing to anything else? See basically we can have two conceptions of God As I said one conception of God, there is one God Which is true But that is not the only understanding of God, there is only God There is also another understanding Let me explain this Sometimes we think of God as the best of all beings We have this much power, somebody has this much power, somebody has this much power And God has the supreme power But that is just one way of looking at God If you know the past time of Prahalad and Hiranyakashipu Hiranyakashipu tries to kill Prahalad in various different ways And he is not able to kill him at all And finally in exasperation Hiranyakashipu asks Prahalad What is the source of your strength? And at first glance Prahalad’s reply can simply seem cheeky Somebody is angry and you are making them angry He says the source of my strength is also the source of your strength And is also the source of the source of your strength That means you have got your strength from Brahma by worshipping Brahma So the source of my strength and your strength and Brahma, so this is one And that is the supreme So now somebody is angry and you are aggravating that person But if you see later what he says in the next verse is Oh father understand that in this world you have no enemies And Vishnu is not your enemy at all He is the well-wisher of everyone Your only enemy is your uncontrolled and misguided mind Control that and you will live happily So what is he trying to say? Hiranyakashipu over here has this conception That there is a hierarchy of beings and on top is God So like say you have a hundred tennis players Somebody is ranked hundred, somebody is ranked eighty Somebody is acting, somebody is two, somebody is one Now if the second, if the player ranked two becomes good enough And wins more tournaments than the player ranked one Then he can displace the one who is at one And then become himself one So Hiranyakashipu is thinking like that I am this much powerful, Brahma is this much powerful But if I do austerities, if I grab power Then I can become, I can kill Vishnu And basically after that I will become the supreme So he is telling him, you cannot do that God is not just the best of all beings God is the basis of all being God is the basis of all being That means nothing can exist without him यच्चापि सर्वभूतानां बीजं तदहमर्जुनान तदस्ति विनायत्स्यान् मया भूतं चराचरम् Without me nothing could exist, Krishna says in 10.39 in the Gita That means that actually whoever exists Exists by the power of Krishna And not only exists by the power of Krishna Whatever power anyone has, whatever ability anyone has That ability and power are given to them by Krishna But also they are also energies of Krishna And in that sense they are not separate from Krishna So वासुदेव सर्वमिति means At one level we understand वासुदेव to be a person So God is the best of all beings That is one understanding of God But that is not the only understanding of God God is also the basis of all being In the introduction to Nectar of Instruction, Nectar of Devotion Prabhupada says that Krishna the absolute truth Means he includes the material energy, the spiritual energy He includes all living beings So Krishna is not just one person in all of existence Krishna is all of existence also Now of course that doesn’t mean that Krishna is not a person Krishna is all of existence and within existence He also has the manifestation of the all attractive absolute So that is how when we say वासुदेव सर्वमिति At that point Krishna is telling Arjuna That if you look at the context of the verses The previous verses 7.19, 7.16 talks about how There are different categories of people who come to be Some people come for money, some people come for relief from distress Some people because they are inquisitive And some people because they want knowledge Krishna says those who get knowledge They understand that I am everything वासुदेव सर्वमिति That means that they understand that ultimately Nothing exists separate from वासुदेव And even I am not separate from वासुदेव Now if it would mean absolutely that वासुदेव सर्वमिति Then they would say the same verse If this oneness were in a sense of absolute oneness Then that same verse what it says बहुनां जन्मणां अन्ते घ्यानवान मां परपद्धिते वासुदेव सर्वमिति समात्मासुदुर्लभा So what does it mean? If वासुदेव itself is everything Is the absolute truth Then why does anyone have to surrender to anyone else? Because there is nothing existing on it What is this surrender? So another example When Prahlad tells Bhairanya Kashipu That Vishnu is existing everywhere Where is your Vishnu? Is he in this pillar? Yes He is everywhere so he is in this pillar also Then he breaks the pillar And Narasimhadev emerges from it Now after Narasimhadev emerges And Narasimhadev delivers Bhairanya Kashipu Then Prahlad comes with a garland Now Prahlad does not go and garland the pillar He goes and garland Narasimhadev If Vishnu is present everywhere Then why doesn’t Prahlad go and garland the pillar? Why doesn’t he garland Narasimhadev? Because although everything is God Although God is present in everything And in a sense everything is God But still God has a personal manifestation With which we can reciprocate love So Prabhupada says that You know God is everywhere We can say sky is everywhere But if I want to have personal relationship with the sky What will I do? I look at the sky What do I do with the sky? Oh sky I love you But what after that? We need a personal manifestation for reciprocating love So not only do we need it Supreme also is filled with love Supreme also wants to reciprocate love So there is the understanding of God As the basis of all being That is talked about in Vasudeva’s Sarvamiti And that same Vasudeva Krishna is saying I am everything Vasudeva is everything But he says still the wives surrender to me They don’t merge in me They don’t become one with me Although everything So then what does it mean? What does oneness mean? Oneness there that When we are in a pure state We understand that we are actually not different from Krishna That doesn’t mean that We and Krishna are absolutely one It simply means that Our interest is not different from Krishna’s interest Our highest interest is served by loving Krishna And that oneness is Understanding that I am one with Krishna in love And that is my eternal state Does this answer your question? Resides in the sky Similarly all living beings reside in me Yes good example Any other questions or comments? Yes So if our emotions are dragging us down At that time what do we do? There are broadly two distinct paths One is the path of Jnana or Yoga Where there is a cessation of material emotions Just become detached Just avoid all emotions Give up all emotions And then you will not be misled And then after that One can slowly come to the level of spiritual reality And discover spiritual emotions So in Yoga In Patanjali Yoga Sutra it is said that Yogas chitta vritti nirodha At the moment of consciousness that is happening at the material level When that stops That is when one has attained the stage of Yoga However That same Yoga Sutra is also talking about Ishwara Pranidhan Surrendering to Ishwara So who is that Ishwara? What is the nature of that relationship? So basically that means We could work in one ways We just detach ourselves from worldly emotions We come to neutral state And then explore if there are some positive spiritual emotions But in the path of Bhakti we understand that There are positive spiritual emotions And there are negative worldly emotions So we want to strengthen the positive spiritual emotions And the process of Bhakti Yoga Wherein we repeatedly expose ourselves to Krishna To his holy name, to his deities, to his scriptures This makes us more and more attached to Krishna When we practice Sadhana Bhakti We become more and more attached to Him And then the positive spiritual emotions Start becoming more and more forceful And then the negative emotions slowly disappear However While this is happening In the intermediate period When sometimes the negative emotions do pop up At that time we have to use our intelligence So I start feeling angry At that time This anger is unwanted emotion So let me distance myself from it And how do I do that? Not just by using my intelligence But intelligence situated in transcendence That means I use my intelligence Not just to say no to the negative emotions It is more to say yes to the positive emotions So if I connect myself with Krishna Krishna please help me Krishna please guide me And we find a channel for our consciousness To move towards Krishna Then that negative emotion can be decreased So sometimes It may be that First we take shelter of Krishna And then we get the intelligence So depending on our situation Our consciousness Our nature It may be that By intelligence we go towards transcendence Or sometimes we just take shelter of transcendence And then we get the intelligence How to deal with the emotion So it can work both ways So Is there any point of time in the history When this division started Or practice of these two religions Ok So The divisions in Sanatana Dharma history Of say One of Dvaita and Advaita Of Bhakti and Impersonalist These When did they start? How did they historically develop? The Upanishads They Talk about The absolute truth In terms which are both Personalist and Impersonalist The Isopanishad talks about Personalist point of view There are other Upanishads Which talk about Impersonalist point of view So the idea is That The Vedic texts They offer What you could call as User friendly spirituality What that means is Whatever is the level of consciousness of the reader Accordingly You make spiritual advancement So people Who are Very Fried out with worldly relationships Worldly emotions If you tell them in the spiritual world There are relationships I don’t want to go there So then For them Ok Spiritual world is a realm of oneness Of unity That’s what will attract them That is also given So historically Both of these Originate from the Vedic sculptures And both of them are meant For the spiritual elevation of different people Who are coming from different backgrounds Now At one particular time in Indian history Because there was so much casteism Discrimination against lower caste So much Other Other Some religious ideas started percolating in That because of the discrimination and other factors Many people rejected Hinduism And they became They adopted Buddhism or Jainism So in 5th century BC To around 5th century AD Many parts of India were ruled by Buddhists or Jain kings So actually speaking If you consider that area of classical Classical Let’s call classical Greek Classical age So at that time More books Propagating atheism Were written in Sanskrit Than any other world language Not in Greek Not in Persian Not in any Because Buddhists and Jains Jains and these religions ideologically Don’t accept the existence of God So At that time around 6th century Sripad Shankaracharya came And his purpose Was to unify The followers of the Sanatana Dharma And to bring back Those who had gone off So he Presented So Buddhism had the idea of There is There is what they call as Shunya Shunya is voidism Now voidism can have multiple understandings What they mean by it But their idea is that the absolute truth has Whatever exists Ultimately It has no attributes, it has no qualities They call it Shunya So then Shankaracharya Because that was the That was the pervading conception of people at that time Shankaracharya presented at that time The teachings of the Upanishads Which talks about The Brahma So he said that Buddha The Buddhistic conception of Shunya And the Conception of Brahma As drawn from the Upanishad by Shankaracharya They were intellectual Clones Practically at an intellectual level similar That’s why people This is what you want, this is there in the Vedic Dharma also, why do you want to go out And of course It’s always true that Power corrupts So Buddhism also had some issues That came up, Jainism also had some issues So many many people came back to the Vedic Dharma After Shankaracharya Ramacharya came So Shankaracharya said You want oneness, there is oneness here only But then Ramacharya Came and said yes there is oneness But within the oneness also There is variety Shankaracharya taught Advaita Ramacharya taught Vishishta Advaita There is oneness but There is some qualified oneness, Vishishta And what was that qualified oneness His example was The defining metaphor of Ramacharya was that The relationship of the body Of the soul and the body So he said the universe Is the body and Vishnu Is the soul So at one level we can say That the body and the soul are different At another level the body Acts according to the will of the soul So similarly all living beings Are meant to act According to the will of Vishnu And when they Act according to the will of Vishnu Then there is harmony and there is happiness So heat yes there is oneness But what is the nature of that oneness There is oneness of harmony And then so if you consider a pendulum Shankaracharya presented Vishishta Advaita said There is oneness but there is variety in it Then Madhavacharya came And Madhavacharya said Actually what oneness, Advaita He says where do you see oneness He says you look at one particle of matter And another particle of matter Even one leaf and another leaf there are differences If you talk about Panchamabhed There is There are basically three tattvas in nature You could say matter Consciousness And the infinite And the supreme In Sanskrit we can call it as Jagat, Jeev and Jagdish So in the Jagat There is variety among different Particles, the Jeeva Each Jeeva is different So there is difference between matter and matter There is difference between Jeeva and Jeeva There is difference between matter and Jeeva There is difference between Jeeva and Ishwar And there is difference between matter and Ishwar This is Panchamabhed So he took the pendulum to the other side And then Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came Chaitanya Mahaprabhu He said Yes There is oneness But there is also the relationship Within the one Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught what is called Achint Abhed Abhed So Bhed and Abhed There is oneness and there is difference also But how both of them are working That is Achint, that is inconceivable So he brought the pendulum back Back to the middle Balanced state So you could say that Buddha if you see is symbolized with Shunya He is showing Shunya That means Shunya, everything absolute to the Zero Shankara is symbolized with one Everything is one Madhvacharya is symbolized with Two There is duality, there is two Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is symbolized with Both hands upraised There is twoness but there is a joyful Ecstatic relationship between the two Hands upraised he symbolizes Dancing, he is depicted as dancing So that is the You could say the holistic understanding Where the oneness And the twoness are harmonized By understanding there is oneness In the nature, everyone is spiritual Oneness in Belonging because we are all Ultimately the part of the absolute truth At the same time there is twoness in the sense that There is reciprocation of love You have some comments or questions? We don’t have Good question, do we have Free will or don’t we have free will? Well to answer this question I will have to assume that I have the free will To answer this question You are answering your question I will come to that Good point So is your question That do we have Free will in the sense that If god is omniscient is god acting Through everyone The way you qualified the question is Is your question that If god is supreme How do we have free will If god is controlling everyone then how do we have free will God is the cause of all causes God is everything Then how do we have Free will Good question So if god is Everything, god is the cause of everything Then how do we have free will God is the Cause of all causes But he is not the cause of all effects What do I mean by I will explain What do I mean by this If any vegetation Grows on the earth The rain is the cause of the vegetation Without the rain No vegetation will grow But which vegetation grows where That is not determined by the rains That is determined by What kind of seeds are there Some places crops may grow Some places fruits may grow Some places weeds may grow Some places grass may grow So that the rain is the cause of The growth of all vegetation Without the rain nothing will grow But the rain is not the cause of Which specific vegetation grows where नादत्ते कसिजित्पापं नचैव सुकुलतं विभो अज्ञानेन आवरतं ज्ञानं तेन मुहियंति जन्तवः And 5.14 Bhagavad Gita Krishna says I do not accept the pious Or the sinful activities of anyone They act deluded By ignorance सभावस्तु प्रवतते ज्ञानेन तज्ञानं येशाम नाशितमात्मन तेशामादिक्तेव ज्ञानं प्रकाशेति तित्परं When that अज्ञान is removed Then they act in the light of knowledge So God is Supreme And He is the ultimate Reality as He is the cause of all causes At the same time By His Arrangement He has given all of us free will So that We can have reciprocation of Love So that there can be The bhakti If a boy goes very affectionately to a girl And he offers her a rose Please marry me She says no Immediately takes out a gun, marry me I say where is the love over here If there is a force Then there can be no love If the boy is not giving the girl a choice whether to love her or not Then that is not love at all So Krishna has He is omnipotent He is supreme but He has given All of us free will So that we can reciprocate love Now how can our free will Exist with His Omnipotence, with His supremacy For that the example is The verse 9.6 यथा आकाशे सितो नित्यम् वायु सर्वत्र गोमाहन् तथा सर्वानि भूतानि मत्स्थानि त्य उपधारय That just as The wind flows Within the sky Similarly all living beings reside Within me Now if you conceive of the sky Like an upside down bowl Then The air’s flow Is not limited by the sky The air can move up, it can move down It can move left, it can move right What is limited is the area Of movement The air’s Movement itself is not limited The air’s area of movement is limited by the sky So similarly For all of us So God’s controllership Is like the sky And within that We can move about So we have Free will, you could say We have Unlimited free will Within a limited framework The sky, the air Can move left, right North-east, south-west Any direction It is quite free But within a limited framework So for us As human beings Right now we are talking Each of us can Choose to talk, we can talk sense, we can talk nonsense We can speak good words, we can speak foul words We can choose to remain silent We have that free will But We can’t say Sing like a parrot We can’t Communicate Through sounds The way animals communicate That is a limit that we have The body that we have got By the arrangement of the Lord That body limits us So we have, we can say Unlimited freedom within a limited framework Like If a horse Is tied by a rope to a pole Now it cannot Go beyond the radius of the rope But within that radius It can run around It can stand It can move back, move forward It can do various things So we, our Free will exists by the Arrangement of the Lord And the way our free will and God’s Omniscience or omnipotence God’s supreme will Is reconciled is that By God’s will, the scope of our Free will is limited Now different people Have different scopes for their free will An ant can just move along a small ground And its tiny being If a tree comes in the way, the ant has to Find a way aside This giant elephant If the tree comes in the way, the elephant may knock down the tree also So it has been given A big enough body By which it can have greater influence The ant has a small body So similarly, even in human form also Some people They are very charismatic Very commanding presence They can influence hundreds of people Others, they may be Unassuming, they may be Withdrawn And they may influence just a few people around them That is the Sphere of influence that we have Is called in the Bhagavad Gita, Kshetra Kshetra Prakriti refers to general material nature Kshetra refers To the specific area of material nature Over which we have been given control And this Kshetra Is determined by our past karma So people who have done Punya in their past life In this life, they will have a large Kshetra They may have a lot of money They may have a lot of intelligence They may have a lot of popularity, whatever And when that karma runs out Then their Kshetra shrinks Somebody may be A famous cricketer And then millions of people Are their fans But after they retire And then they can’t play well Then the number of people who admire them go down substantially The popularity which they had one time That goes down So the Bhagavad Gita Says that Actually We have We have free will But we are not absolutely free There are two ideas One is that We have no free will Or we have absolute free will So we don’t have absolute free will We are definitely controlled But we are not absolutely controlled also At the end of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna Acknowledges Arjuna’s independence And appeals to Arjuna’s intelligence In 18.63 he says विम्रिष्यितद अशिषेन यथेच्छसि तथा कुरो Now Arjuna Deliberate deeply On what I have said And then decide What you want to do So deliberate deeply means He is appealing to the intelligence And then do as you desire That means he is acknowledging his independence And choose how you want to act And Arjuna he says With my intelligence I decide to harmonize with you Ten verses later in 18.63 he says करिष्येवच नम्तव I will do your will So the free will that we have Is scope It can get As I said decrease or increase Not just by the karma that we have done in the previous life Even in this life In this life when we form certain habits What does habit mean? See for us Say some impulse comes in front of us And then there is a response from us It is a reaction So normally if somebody offers us some food We evaluate Am I hungry? Is it fatty food? Should I eat it or not eat it? Should I eat it later? We will evaluate it But suppose somebody is An alcoholic As soon as they see an alcohol bottle They just have to pick it up and drink it For them The space between the impulse and the response Has become so little It is almost as if not there So there is a British playwright He said that giving up smoking Is the easiest thing in the world I have done it over a hundred times So I gave up smoking But smoking did not give me up Because what happened at that time I am not going to smoke But next time the impulse comes The response comes in smoke So basically from this perspective We can say that The greater the distance between the impulse and the response Greater is our freedom But the more we keep doing a particular activity The more it becomes habitual And when it becomes habitual That means The distance between impulse and response Becomes lesser and lesser Till it appears as if the two are just tied together So In this life also By the way we act We can actually decrease the scope of our free will Or we can increase the scope of our free will Does it answer your question? The seed The cause The universe being where it is Is the cause by Krishna So on this planet earth That particular seed Being at that particular place At that particular time Is the cause of Krishna Is caused by Krishna Otherwise He cannot know the future So he knows future Only by knowing The cause of all causes And the systematic Development of everything Including the thoughts Of a being Which are ruled in maya To those who are not understanding By karma As soon as you Can understand That I am in maya Thinking I have free will And then you surrender to God Saying I don’t have free will You are everything You are the cause of everything You are enlightened And you are Jeevan Mukta Till your karma finishes And then you transcend To Him Thank you So is it that If anything is in a particular place The seed being a particular place We being a particular place That is arranged by Krishna So to think that we have free will Is maya To understand that we have no free will And to surrender to Krishna That is what takes us out of maya If you see in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna does say this What you are saying He says in 18.59-60 That Arjuna you are bound to act According to your nature You have to act according to your nature And you cannot avoid that And therefore he says Surrender to me 18.59-60 Then 18.62 is Surrender to the supreme But then After telling surrender to the supreme He says Now decide what you want to do So what does this mean Let me complete this See there are There is There is a difference between Free will And freedom Sometimes you may Equate the two things Free will and freedom Even a prisoner Has free will But the prisoner does not have freedom The prisoner Is in a restricted situation Where the prisoner Does not have freedom And the prisoner In the jail starts fighting If the prisoner in the jail Imagines that I am free And tries to Go out of the jail He will be caught and punished If he tries to break through the jail He will get into bigger trouble So freedom And free will Are two distinct things So what we don’t have In the material world As long as we are in maya Is freedom Even to say to Krishna That I don’t have any free will That is an act of free will If you are saying to Krishna I have no free will And I am saying to Krishna I have free will Both cases It’s an act of free will It’s like somebody says Say I don’t know Even one word of English And you already know 7 words of English To say I don’t know Even one word of English That is what in logic It is called as self-contradictory statement That means The very statement proves That it is not true So another self-contradictory experiment Could be that I don’t exist Well I have to exist to say I don’t exist If I don’t exist I will not be able to say also I don’t exist So what you are saying is true But it applies not to free will To freedom If we imagine that we have freedom in this world We simply get ourselves Into more and more trouble If we think That we can live independent of God That will only cause us Greater and greater misery So the illusion of the freedom Is the cause Of our greater and greater bondage So we don’t have freedom In the sense that If we don’t surrender to Krishna We will be caught by Maya And will be dragged into deeper and deeper illusion At the same time It is for us To choose Whether I want to stay in Maya Or whether I want to go to Krishna So that choice To make that choice also Requires some amount of free will If I don’t have free will Then how will I even say to Krishna That I don’t have free will If I say I don’t have consciousness Well, an unconscious object cannot say I don’t have consciousness So the very denial of consciousness Is an act that Asserts the existence of consciousness Similarly The denial of free will Is an act which indicates The presence of free will So, if we understand The difference between free will and freedom Then We fully agree that We don’t have freedom We have in the material world only the illusion of freedom And those who think that they are free They are actually More and more bound I like this person I can give up smoking whenever I want But Whenever the desire strikes, that person goes back to smoking They don’t have freedom Now they have free will Whether when the next time the urge comes Should I drink or not If they are going into an association Where everybody is drinking They will drink But if they don’t go into that association There is a good chance that they will not drink So the illusion of freedom causes bondage And we need to understand that We cannot actually have freedom Without God But to understand that And to change that situation Also requires free will So Free will is what The Bhagavad Gita Guides us to use properly Ramavacharya Madhvacharya All these Vedantic commentators They make this point That Shastra Guides us Do this and don’t do this Now if we were purely programmed machines With no free will Then there is no point To tell us do this and don’t do this Because we have no choice at all A machine Is going to work the way it is programmed There is no need For a scripture at all The very presence of scripture Which tells us Do this, don’t do this That presumes That in the receiver of scripture There is some capacity to choose So Even Krishna Is speaking in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna is telling Arjuna to surrender to Krishna Of what we use would that be If Arjuna did not have The free will to surrender So yes freedom we don’t have Free will we do have And freedom The cause The cause is Krishna Everything is Krishna So now We will see that The cause of everything is Krishna Everything is operating under his rule Everything is Happening per his Rule The rule in this material World Creates the illusion Of freedom and free will Which Is maya That is what deludes everybody Who want to think I have, I am individual I can do what I want So they remain in maya And the laws of karma Now take over for that individual So for that individual He may perceive he has free will But cause is all Krishna So when Krishna has Decided Brahma Creates your Jan Which has written What will happen When he has decided That you will gain this knowledge By which you can come out of Illusion Then you will do so So Arjuna was in maya Before the Gita No matter how learned he was Because It is an example to all of us That we are in maya How to get out of maya Now only so many people are here today Some are not interested Some are interested For those that are interested He has said You now Shall ascend And transcend out of here In some lifetime This next time But not very far But others You shall remain a doer According to the program I have created for you And you shall Imagine you have freedom And you Shall not be happy Actually the moment You say I am not free I have no freedom Krishna is doing everything You are completely Devoid of any negative illusion You are happy Because What do I have to suffer What do I have to gain It is Krishna Only So I am Jeeva Mukta This is the Gita There are Three distinct factors In the way we act There is God’s will There is free will and there is evil So Now if God Has programmed Everyone to act in a particular way Then that would mean That God Is responsible for everyone’s Suffering That would make God A terrible sadist It’s People act in terrible ways in this world Then It’s like some people smoke, some people drink Some people do terribly self hurting Habits So it’s like a mother who Has a child and the mother Makes the child beat its head against a wall Beat its head against a wall Bleeding bitterly So if everything that has happened Is ordained by Krishna Then he is Responsible for all the suffering And that would make God not Merciful but Heartless, heartlessly Cruel, utterly sadistic Who gets pleasures In other’s suffering Not only that There are different people who act in different ways People act in brutal Unspeakable ways So all those actions Which are done by different people Are also done by God That would mean That God Not only does things which Make people hurt themselves God also makes people Do things that hurt others So there is no meaning to Karma because What is bad karma is also Done by God So it is God is making me do bad things And then God is making me suffer for doing those bad things So that It becomes Such a person is not God Such a person is Shaitan Such a person is the worst demon That any living being Can imagine And the world would be better off Without believing in such a God So that is not Krishna is If we consider logical Implications of seeing that God Is the doer of everything See God is the doer of everything In the sense that he is the Sanctioner of everything But he is not the impeller of everything If somebody Wants to do something If that person has the Karmic endowment to do that God allows him to do that I will give you an example from the Mahabharata That Duryodhana Wanted to fight the war And Krishna himself went As Shantinath Don’t fight the war Krishna offered him peace On the most accommodating terms Now Duryodhana refused Krishna is God Duryodhana is just one soul Krishna appealed to The intelligence, appealed to the Common sense But Duryodhana did not listen And the result was Krishna told him if you are not able to listen Krishna offered him Just give five villages But Duryodhana Did not listen to that also So here Krishna Himself is appealing to Duryodhana So Krishna Is telling Duryodhana Don’t do something So is Krishna Having a perverse Sense of drama When he tells him don’t do it Actually if you see Krishna is a Saam, daam, bhed and dand Everything to try to Persuade Duryodhana to not fight the war And yet Duryodhana fights the war So what is the point Of Krishna appealing to Duryodhana If he is only Making Duryodhana do everything Then as I said the idea That God is responsible for all The unspeakable atrocities That happen in the world That makes God into a The worst demon that a human being can Imagine So God Is the Sanctioner of what the human beings Want to do If the human beings have the karma to do that Hitler Had the karma by which He would have become extremely powerful But He used that power To kill millions of people He could have used that power To administer over a kingdom And do good to others also So God He sees He is present in our hearts And he sees our desires And based on whether We deserve He allows the desire to be fulfilled So yes You could say the seed is present in a particular place By God’s arrangement The weeds are present in another place By God’s arrangement But when we talk about God’s arrangement There are two things in it There is God’s plan And there is God’s purpose So If there is a school In that school there is an exam And Some students fail in the exam Some students pass in the exam Now the school’s Plan includes both If the student fails There is an arrangement You can appear for the exam again You can do this course again And you can move onwards So the students failing Or passing Both are included in the purview Of the school’s plan But the students Failing is not the purpose Of the school The purpose of the school Is the student’s education Student’s elevation to the next standard So We could say Students passing, students failing Everything is within the arrangement Of the school But the students failing is not the intention Of the school So there is a difference between God’s plan And God’s purpose So even when Duryodhana acts in an evil way That is within the purview Of Krishna’s plan That means Krishna’s plan is so Inclusive and dynamic That even if a person Acts in a wrong way Teachers want the student to pass The school wants the student to go to a higher grade But if the student fails The school has the plan To accommodate them and help them move on So similarly Krishna’s plan Includes Different living beings Choosing differently And getting the consequences accordingly But Krishna’s purpose Is like the school’s purpose To elevate the students to a higher and higher level So similarly Krishna’s purpose is That we all make wise choices We all renounce The illusion of freedom We all use our free will To harmonize with his will And thus we unite with him in pure love The idea of Individuality And the idea of separateness They are two different things I would say both of us are talking about the same thing But we are just coming from different frameworks The idea that we are Separate living beings Who can do whatever we want, whenever we want The idea of absolute separateness is an illusion The idea of individuality In the sense that We Have to choose to acknowledge That I don’t have freedom That is something which we have to do On our own So everything that happens Is Krishna’s arrangement But that doesn’t mean everything that happens Is what Krishna wants it to happen That way The school doesn’t want the students to fail But if the students fail The school accommodates that So when we say God knows The future That does not mean That every one of us is a programmed Being who is meant to act accordingly The whole idea Of future Let’s take it and I’ll give two examples to illustrate this You know the well known story Of When Krishna’s Appearance is forecast At that time Kamsa Is Driving the chariot of Devaki After she is just married And then here is the Akashvani Saying that Oh, the egg child Of Devaki will kill you Now that Kamsa becomes So angry, so fearful That he catches the hair of Devaki And is about to lop off her head At that time Vasudev Tries to protect his wife By using Various strategies One of the strategies at that time Is He says, Oh Kamsa, life and death are Distant And nobody can change destiny So Why are you doing this Terribly sinful activity Of killing a woman Killing your own sister Killing your own sister On her wedding day This is like you can Say sin, sin square And sin cube Terribly sinful activity Why are you doing that To avoid something Which if it is destined is going to happen Now At this point Vasudev Could have turned the reasoning around And he could have thought That if Devaki’s death is destined Then what am I doing trying to stop Kamsa Why am I Trying to stop Kamsa at all Because The Vedic culture The Vedic wisdom is not Destiny centred, it is Duty centred It is all of us have a particular Duty to do And Kamsa was As a Kshatriya, he had a duty To protect, but he was giving up his Duty, so he was told, there is destiny Don’t give up your duty To avoid something, if it is destined It is going to happen Whereas for Vasudev, his duty was I have to protect my wife So even if her death is destined That’s fine, that’s not Fine with me, that will happen But I have to do my duty to protect her So I would say that Destiny is a whole Different subject, destiny refers to that Which is ordained, but broadly Speaking, now what is Ordained, what is ordained is Certain events In our life are ordained Destiny is like a weather forecast It is forecast That today is going to be cold Today is going to rain, today is going to snow Now none of us Can change, if it is going to snow, it is going to snow But what we do That’s up to us, I can Go out into the snow and I will get frozen Without any preparation I will get frozen, I can stay at home I will be protected or I can go out with protection And I will not be so much damaged So destiny determines What happens to us Destiny doesn’t Determine how we respond Destiny doesn’t Determine our actions It determines our situations The situations that We encounter in our life journey They are determined by destiny The actions that we choose in those situations are up to us So when Krishna says He knows the future, what that Essentially means is that He knows the various trajectories The various options It’s like There is a big road map So I at right now Can only see the road here I can see the straight road I can see this fork But somebody who has the whole picture They can say, take this road You are going to meet big traffic over there If you take this road, you are not going to see The traffic will go clearly So Krishna can see the whole map Krishna can see the whole map In that sense he knows everything But when we come to a fork It is up to us to choose God’s knowledge of the future Is like our knowledge of the past I repeat God’s knowledge of the future Is like our knowledge of the past Our knowledge of the past Is knowledge without intervention I know I woke up and I did this Yesterday I did that So I know that But there is no intervention For us, we can’t do any intervention For God, He can do intervention But He chooses not to do it So God’s knowledge of the future If you want to say that If God knows the future Then there would be If God knows the future in the absolute sense In the sense that Everything, every single thing About the future He knows Then there would be a contradiction In the definition of God itself Why? Because there are two Defining attributes of God God, He can do anything And He knows everything Omnipotence and Omniscience So now If He knows the future In the sense that the whole future Is mapped out completely Then does He have the power To change the future If He has the power to change the future That means He doesn’t know the future If He knows the future And the future is completely mapped out That means He doesn’t have the power to change the future So this is This is one of the standard atheistic Arguments which they use They say that the very definition of God is self contradictory Because the two defining attributes That He knows everything and He can do anything These two are contradictory But The fundamental understanding is that God is omnipotence Omniscience These are not attributes That He is stuck with It’s like somebody is a very tall person Now They are stuck with their tallness There is a load over They are still stuck with their tallness and they have to come out And they have to go from there So God is omnipotent God is omniscient But He is not stuck with His omnipotence He is not stuck with His omniscience Ultimately Underlying all His attributes Is His loving nature That is His omnibenevolence Omnibenevolence means He wants the good For everyone And for serving For fulfilling His omnibenevolent nature Sometimes He may manifest His omnipotence And sometimes He may manifest His omniscience So When He Is fighting When He is on the Kurukshetra war field At that time He tells Arjuna That If you don’t fight this war By my arrangement The enemies are already killed But you become an instrument And then you will get the credit So He is given two options Arjuna, you have to choose If you become my instrument I will act through you And you will get the glory But if you don’t do that Even without you They will be killed So the choice His omnipotence Is that He can do Whatever He wants But He gives us the free will to choose how we act And if we use our free will Properly Then He accommodates things So that we get benefited by that So God’s omnipotence And His omniscience They are harmonized by His omnibenevolence So it is His omnibenevolence That is absolute And His omnipotence and His omniscience Are used to serve the purpose Of His omnibenevolence So God is Our greatest well-wisher And He wants us Wants the very best Happiness, the very best joy for us He doesn’t want And He certainly won’t make us Do the things which will bring Suffering upon us He wants only that which is best for us But if we make certain Choices which will bring suffering upon us He includes Those choices within His plan And He keeps A good manager has plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D So like that Krishna has many plans And He knows Which choice will take us into which plan Whichever choice we make Krishna will accommodate that choice Within His ultimate purpose Of getting us back to Him But if I take the right road I will get to the scene immediately If I take a wrong road, still My Google map is flexible enough Now turn left, now do this Even if I take another wrong turn Now you do this If I still take a wrong turn, still it will tell me Now that means However many Wrong turns I take Google map is there to guide me to the right destination But the more wrong turns I take, the longer it will take Me to get to the destination So there is a plan which includes All my wrong choices But the purpose is not that I make the wrong choices So in that sense Everything is known to Krishna That whichever path Wherever I go, Krishna will Adjust His plan and give me a way to come from there Back to Him But that doesn’t mean whichever choice I take Is determined by Him He knows the connection Between choices and consequences And if you take this choice, this will have this consequence And from there to come back You have to take this choice But if from there also you take this choice, you will go here From there to come here you will have this choice So Krishna has the whole map mapped out So that whichever choice we make Still He will be there to give us a Path to come to Him So in that sense The future is ordained That the various choices which may happen, what consequences may happen by that That’s mapped out But within that which choice we take That is up to us Can we talk We can talk one to one Because It’s taking place with Rama Yes The second aspect Is a very important God says to Arjun See here Everything Thank you very much Jai Krishna Jai Jai Jai