Why spirituality matters – scientific ethical and relational perspectives

[House program at Toronto, Canada]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. So thank all of you for coming here today evening.
I will speak today about, I will mention the role of spirituality in our life from three perspectives. From a scientific perspective, from an ethical perspective and from a relational perspective. So from a scientific perspective, recently I was at a university in America and a student asked a question.
What is the scientific proof that God exists? So I told him that before we look for scientific proof that God exists, what is the scientific proof that you exist? There is scientific proof that your body exists. There is scientific proof that your brain exists. There is scientific that your brain, your heart, all these are scientifically locatable, measurable objects.
But you as a person, do you exist? Do you exist? Yeah, of course I exist. But there is no scientific proof that you exist. You as a person, you as a source of consciousness who experiences emotions, there is no proof.
How will we prove in a scientifically measurable, verifiable sense that you exist? When I say there is no scientific proof that you exist, what it means is that we as persons, as living beings are not scientifically measurable. If, say, a man, a boy and a girl want to form a relationship. Now the boy wants to know whether the girl really loves him or the girl wants to know whether the boy really loves her.
With all our scientific advancement, can we have a love-o-meter? Like we have a thermometer or we have a barometer. Can we have a love-o-meter? We put it on the person’s heart and find out, do you really love me? No, we can’t do that. Through science, if a person is dreaming, sleeping, we can know what state the person is in.
Deep sleep or dreamy sleep, disturbed dream or whatever. But no matter how much we probe the brain, we cannot find out the exact content of the dream. The exact content of the dream is the experience.
And that experience is a first-person reality. So science can’t prove that you exist. But science can prove because you exist.
Science can prove because you exist means that all scientific knowledge, including scientific proof, is possible because you as a person, as an observer, as a conscious being, as a scientist exist. If Newton as an observer had not been there when the fruit fell, there would be no postulation of the law of gravity. So in the human quest for understanding, we need to put first things first.
And science does not come first. What comes first is the scientist and not even a scientist. The scientist is actually a human being.
And the scientist goes home and his wife is upset with him. And the scientist may be an expert in neuroscience. And he tells his wife, you know, come, let me do a brain scan to find why you are so upset.
Wife will say, you go and scan your brain first. So science is an extremely powerful form of knowledge, a tool for acquiring knowledge. At the same time, we have to know that every tool for acquiring knowledge has its scope, has its purpose.
And just as with binoculars, I can see distant objects clearly. But with the same binoculars, I cannot see the emotions of a person. I can see the expressions of a person.
But sometimes people conceal their emotions. So every tool of acquiring knowledge has certain strengths. And there is something which is left out.
So today, if you see science in the last, by the turn of the 20th century or the middle of the 20th century, science developed quantum physics, relativity as theoretical postulates. And thereafter, in the last 60, 70 years, there has been tremendous technological advancement. But there has been no major scientific breakthrough in terms of understanding of nature.
So now, what this means is science is a tool for acquiring knowledge is very powerful. At the same time, it has its limits. So suppose we take a fishing net and we go fishing.
Now, while fishing, if this fishing net has a hole, which is, say, one inch by one inch. Now, we may cast the fishing net for a hundred years. But if there are any aquatic beings which are smaller than one inch by one inch, we’ll slip out of it.
It is not a matter of patience or perseverance. It is just a matter of the fact that the tool has its purpose and it has its limitations. Similarly, science as a tool usually looks for material explanations for material phenomena.
So when Newton saw the fruit falling, Newton could have said what made this fruit fall? God made the fruit fall. He himself believed in God. But he was at that time not looking for God as the explanation.
He was looking for a material mechanism as the explanation. And that material mechanism that he postulated was gravity. So when we look for a material explanation, that’s what we will find.
If by definition itself we are not looking for a non-material explanation, and then we say that, oh, because we can’t find a non-material explanation, therefore, the non-material explanation doesn’t exist. So that is like whatever the starting assumption becomes the conclusion. For example, if by looking in this room, I decide that, okay, in this house, I’m searching for a key, but I’ll not search in the bedroom.
I decide that is the starting assumption in the room. And then I search, search, search, I don’t find the key. Therefore, I say the key doesn’t exist.
But whether the key is in the bedroom or not, I don’t know because I have not looked in the bedroom. As a starting assumption, I said I won’t look in the bedroom. So science, while studying, it starts by assuming we want to look for material explanations for material phenomena.
So whether something non-material exists or not, science cannot comment on that. So the spiritual and the scientific, they are two different domains. And even in the age of science, we see that there is an innate longing for spirituality.
Since the middle of the 18th century, since the middle of the 19th century, and increasingly by the turn of the 20th century, Atheists have been propagating, have been, have been predicting the death of God. Friedrich Nietzsche, he was a German philosopher who said God is dead. Now, he said that if he felt, based on the scientific evidence at his time, that God was no longer needed in the natural world, that God is no longer needed in the moral world.
And he predicted that, there are people who predicted that God is going to die soon. Religion is going to die soon. Now, there are researchers, social researchers have written articles.
Basically, the exact title may not be the same, but the theme is, they are asking, why hasn’t God died till now? What does that mean is, why do people still continue to believe in God? So, the reason is that, actually, God is some completely different reality, which can be pointed to by science. But science is focusing on a particular aspect of the human person. And that aspect of our needs, our need to say, control the world around us, by which we can make our life more comfortable.
That is perfectly fine, as far as it works out well. But, you see, today, people are comfortably miserable. What does comfortably miserable mean? Now, we may be in air-conditioned rooms, where the temperature is cozy for us, but there we have stress, we have anxiety, we have fear.
And, we are not sweating because of heat, but we are sweating because of anxiety. Over a million people commit suicide every year. One million every year means, it’s one suicide every 40 seconds.
That means, since the time I started this talk, around 15 people have already committed suicide. Never before in the history of the world have so many people committed suicide. Always there have been miseries, and people have been frustrated because of the miseries.
So, what has happened is that, through technology that is developed by science, we have conceived, or we have started believing, that we have control over things, far more than what we actually have. And when it turns out that we don’t have control over things, then there is unbearable frustration. See, frustration in life is a function of expectation.
If I expect praise at a particular place, and there I am insulted, then that hurts me far more than if I went to a place where I knew these people are angry with me, and they are not going to treat me well. That also hurts. But, frustration is a function of expectation.
So, what has happened in today’s world is, we have succeeded a lot in controlling nature, at least as compared to the recent past. And that has fueled within us the notion that we are the controllers. And now, when people play video games, in the video games we can have characters.
We move the characters the way we want. But, in real life, when we try to move people the way we want, it doesn’t work. And, the result of this frustration of expectation is misery.
So, people have broken relationships, broken hearts, broken lives, and some of them just end their lives. So, I am not saying that science and technology are the cause of suicide. No.
Suicide is a complicated social problem. What I am saying is that, science and technology as a tool for controlling nature is fine. But, when from there we extrapolate it into a worldview, into an all-inclusive worldview, which claims that we can control everything, then it has profound consequences, which can be very damaging.
So, for example, moving from the scientific perspective, let’s move on to the ethical perspective. In the ethical perspective, Einstein, as we know, was probably the greatest scientist of the last century. And, he was profoundly conflicted about the implications of the scientific worldview.
But, he said, if science is true, or rather, if the materialistic worldview, that some people associate with science is true, if we are nothing, just material creatures, if matter is all that is our being, now matter simply acts according to laws. If I take this phone, and if I drop it, who else’s phone it is, I am not going to drop it. Don’t worry.
But, suppose if I drop it, the phone has no free will whether to fall or not. It is going to fall. But, all of us, we have some free will.
Now, if we were simply creatures of matter, we would be governed by the laws of matter entirely. The laws of matter means the laws of physics. And, there should be no such thing as free will.
And, if there is no such thing as free will, that means, no one can be held responsible for what they do. So, we are simply programmed by our neuronal patterns, by our brain cell patterns. And, whatever way we are programmed, that’s how we will function.
So, if I just come up to you and slap you, Hey, why did you slap me? My brain program told me to slap you. So, that you will slap me back. My brain program told me to slap you.
It didn’t make any sense. Newton recognized that the Nazis, who killed millions of Jews, Einstein himself was a Jew, and he had to flee from the persecution in Germany to the refugee in America. He recognized that none of those Nazis could be considered responsible for their actions.
Why? Because, they are just material creatures and that’s how their brain was programmed. Now, all relationships, all systems of justice, everything would collapse if we did not consider, we did not take into consider the concept of free will and accountability that is associated with it. So, from the ethical perspective, all conception of right and wrong would become meaningless.
If you look at life, as far as our bodies are concerned, Darwin had theory of survival of the fittest. And we see that in nature, yes, the fittest beings do survive. But in the human species, what do we see? At one level, yes, in the competitive world today, the fitter someone is, the more likely that person is to survive.
But, what is it that inspires us? What is it that ennobles us? When the twin towers were collapsing, some firefighters rushed into that. Although they knew they might collapse, they had been hit, they went in to try to rescue the people over there. And those who went in, they succeeded in saving some people, some people died.
But we consider their act as noble. So here, if they were driven simply by the idea of survival of the fittest, no, let us get out, those who are inside, let them be trapped. But what we saw over there was not survival of the fittest.
What we saw was the sacrifice by the fittest. The fittest sacrifice themselves for those who are less fit. If a child is drowning, then even in a river, sometimes unknown strangers may just jump in and they rush over there to save that child’s life.
And we don’t say, you fool, why didn’t you work for your own survival? Why risk your life? We consider it noble. That means, at a biological level, we do have the drive for the survival of the fittest. But we are not just biological machines.
There is something higher which drives us also. And this higher is actually noblery. And most of the rich experiences, the enriching experiences of life that we cherish are not those which are driven by survival instincts.
No, when people act out of some values higher, that is what touches our hearts, that is what inspires, that is what ennobles. So yes, the body that we have is a material machine. It is a biological robot, as you could say.
But we are not biological robots. There is something more to us beyond the body. And this principle of looking for a higher value in life.
I move on from the ethical perspective to the relational perspective. Relations are what are for all of us, they give central meaning and fulfillment to life. When a man and a woman come together and have a child.
The miracle is not that the parents have a child. The parents make a child. But actually the children make the parents.
What does that mean, children make the parents? Actually, when the parents have a child, a child forces the parents to become more responsive. Just come out of their own shell and start living more selflessly. So now relationships, if we see, they are not governed simply by survival instinct.
If we are, if we have a totally utilitarian attitude towards relationships, utilitarian means that if this relationship gives me pleasure, I’ll engage in it. If it doesn’t give me pleasure, get rid of it. Then the whole fabric of society will collapse.
So actually, if we just have a purely materialistic worldview, then we are simply creatures of matter. And if another creature of matter helps me in my enjoyment, I associate with it. If it doesn’t help me in my enjoyment, I neglect it.
If it obstructs in my enjoyment, I destroy it. This is what the materialistic worldview boils down to. Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita that once one accepts the materialistic worldview, when one accepts such a worldview, in 16.9 he says, No, the soul is destroyed.
The soul is destroyed means a person’s spiritual prospects are destroyed. Such a worldview is based on scanty intelligence. Such people do bad karma.
Terribly bad karma. They act for the destruction of the whole world. So we see that a materialistic worldview, what its result is that relationships become totally reduced or removed of any inherent value.
There were some materialist philosophers, they published an article, atheistic philosophers, in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Their argument was that after a child is born, if the mother wants to abort the child, after the child is born, the mother should be given full rights to abort the child. The baby is born, the baby is in one’s hand, the mother wants to abort, I can abort it.
When this idea was first brought in, about 2-3 years ago, it created a furor. How can someone, when the child is born, how can you kill that child? It’s murder. So when these two authors, they got a huge backlash to their proposal, their response is don’t be sentimental.
From the biological perspective, what is the difference between the child, when the child is inside the womb and the child is outside the womb? If you can abort the child when the child is inside, what is wrong when the child is outside? It’s just that the child is visible to you. So from the scientific perspective, the visibility or the invisibility of the child makes no difference. So if we allow for the abortion of the child when it is inside the womb, what’s wrong with aborting it when it’s outside? So the problem here is that when we take a materialistic worldview and we neglect all other values.
In fact, this was what actually Hitler’s idea was. There was at that time the scientific branch called eugenics that was being developed. Eugenics was the idea that we can make the best human race.
And what do we need to do for that? All the unfit members of the human race were removed. So he had made a program. So he had his own idea.
See what happens is, whenever any person wants to claim power, they repaint history according to their own perspective. So Hitler reinvented history in his own way in which he said that we Germans are the most glorious race. And these Jews are anyway an unfit race.
So, actually by the law of survival of the fittest, these Jews will be eliminated. What we are doing through the holocaust is, we are helping nature along the way. What nature will do, we are doing it anyway.
And it was not only against Jews. He said, okay, all people who are mentally retarded, all people who are physically handicapped, all people who are above a particular age, all people who are infertile, all people who can’t reproduce, his plan was to eliminate all of them one by one. And he was driven by a purely scientific understanding of human life.
I am not saying that science made him like that. He had that ideology and he misappropriated science for rationalizing his ideology. See, science is neither moral nor immoral.
Science is what is called as amoral. Amoral means, science does not make any comments about the morality or immorality of people. Albert Einstein said that we can talk about the ethical foundations of science, but we cannot talk about the scientific foundation of ethics.
Ethics, what is right and what is wrong, that is something which we learn from something other than science. A young man whose grandmother has left a big inheritance for him, that young man can know through science that if I put arsenic in my grandmother’s breakfast, you know, I can get that inheritance in a couple of days. Now, whether I should put the arsenic or not, that is something science cannot tell.
Science, no, science is amoral. Amoral means, it doesn’t make any comments about the morality or immorality of people. Therefore, we need other sources of knowledge.
So, Einstein himself said that sciences, the arts, and the religions are all fruits of the same tree. They are all fruits of the same tree. What is a tree? A tree is a human quest for knowledge.
So, science offers us one fruit within that, but when we make that fruit as the only source of nourishment, we consider that fruit to be the only fruit, then other aspects of the human life become profoundly reduced. They become distorted. They become neglected.
And what happens is that all of us as human beings have an innate longing for something beyond the world of matter. What does that mean, something beyond the world of matter? Something extraordinary, something special, something unusual. Even people who say that we don’t believe anything which is not scientific.
Even those people will watch say movies involving Spiderman and Batman and this thing and that thing and many of those have characteristics which are not scientific. Jurassic Park, the whole idea that somebody gene might survive, that’s how dinosaur came back. People watch it.
And why do they watch it? Because the longing for the supernatural is natural within the human psyche. The longing for the supernatural is natural within the human psyche. So one aspect of the human psyche or the human mind looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena and that’s how science develops.
But there is also a part of the human being which looks for something supernatural. And that is what is fulfilled by life’s spiritual dimension. So life’s spiritual dimension is our understanding that we at our core are spiritual and as spiritual beings we are meant to find lasting happiness in a relationship with the supreme spiritual.
I conclude with two points and then you can have question answers. First we say if you have a child and then say not if you, say there is a small African tribe there is some child and this child suddenly tells one day, mommy I want a pizza. Now in that tribe nobody has ever heard of a pizza.
So mother where did you get a desire for pizza from? Who told you about it? Nobody had told. How did the desire come? So there is nothing in the environment that can trigger the desire for a pizza. Question will come where did the desire for pizza come from? Similarly we see that everything around us in this world is temporary.
Nothing lasts forever. Even the biggest buildings, even the tallest mountains even the biggest oceans nothing is going to last forever. And yet all of us have an innate desire to live forever.
No one wants to die. If nothing around us lasts forever, where did our desire to live forever come from? It is just like a child’s desire for a pizza. There is nothing in the circumstance that can trigger that desire.
So that desire has not come from the external material world. It has come from the inner spiritual core. We at our core are spiritual beings and as spiritual beings we are eternal.
But we have at present because we identify with the material body, so we have forgotten our eternality. This simple inference can open our minds to the possibility that there can be a non-material core to our being. That non-material core is what the Bhagavad Gita calls as the Atma.
So nowadays the word spiritual is very common. I was a spiritual person. It is nice to be spiritual but spiritual is not just some abstract amorphous anodynic, anodyne means painkiller kind of conception.
Spiritual is based on a fundamental aspect of reality. And that aspect of reality is that there is an indestructible non-material core to our being. And secondly, we all have not just a desire for life eternal, we also have a desire for love eternal.
We all want, the many movies, the many novels, they talk about romance. And in romance a common motive is happily ever after. Now if we see the reality, there is no ever after.
Everybody has to die. Bhagavad Gita says Lukkhalem Ashashvatam. So if you see happily ever after, Lukkhalem Ashashvatam.
It is exactly the opposite. Laughter So, now, although we all know nobody is going to live forever. But still that longing is there.
Why is that longing there? That comes again because the soul longs for eternal love. The soul is meant to have eternal loving relationship with the supreme eternal reality. That supreme eternal reality is God.
He is known by different names in different traditions. In the Bhagavad Gita, He is addressed by the name Krishna. So the whole purpose of human life is that we have different relationships in this world.
We perform different actions in this world. We have different aspirations in this world. All of them are meant to direct us towards our spiritual evolution.
Towards directing our love towards Krishna. And it is in that connection of love with Krishna that we can find lasting satisfaction. The spiritual aspect of life is meant to fulfill us in a way that will last forever.
The Bhagavad Gita talks about the Atma as being inherently a part of God. So I earlier talked about anxiety. There is so much anxiety in this world.
When we think that we are the controllers and we are not able to control, we are subjected to anxiety. But if we understand that I am a part of a whole, and I have to do my part, the whole will take care of the whole. So, suppose we are going to be flying up, we are going in a plane.
Now we worry whether I have got the ticket or not, whether I reached the airport in time or not, whether I have got my passport and other documents in time. Do we worry what if the airplane doesn’t have enough fuel? Or what if the pilot is drunk? We don’t worry about these things because we know we just have to do our part. And other parts will be taken care of.
Every time when we eat food, researchers have found out that actually, nowadays scientists are trying to often replace different bodily parts when they don’t work. If a hand doesn’t work, we can have a prosthetic limb. If the heart is not working, we can have a pacemaker.
If the kidney is not working, we can have dialysis. So, if our digestion doesn’t work, researchers thought, can we create an artificial digestive machine inside the stomach? Whatever food we eat, we digest it. And then they found that actually for digesting, you will not need a machine, you will need a factory.
And not just a factory, like a chain of factories which will run several miles. Such a complicated process it is. So, if you consider work is forced into displacement, W is Fs, and the amount of work that is involved in digesting one morsel of food, which is nonchalantly eaten, the amount of work that is involved for the whole body in digesting that food is actually more than the amount of work that average human being performs throughout the day.
So, who or what is doing the digestion? You know, we eat food and we forget. The only time we remember our digestion is when it doesn’t work. So, there is, just as there is a higher, there is something beyond us, bigger than us, which takes care of everything as long as we take care of our part when we board a flight.
Like that even in our body. I have to work and I have to earn my living. Yes, we have to do that.
But that’s our part. But we are a part of a whole. And the whole will take care of the whole.
So, spiritual life is not just about, say, attaining eternal life and eternal love. It is also about living harmoniously in this world. When we understand that we are parts of a whole, and we have to play our parts.
We play the part of the part, and the whole will take care of the whole. That is the conclusion of the Bhagavad Gita. And Krishna tells Arjuna, Krishna says, you just stop worrying about this.
You just surrender to me. You just harmonize with me. And everything else, I will take care of.
So, this is actually a profoundly empowering understanding of life. Because when we focus on that which is in our control, and we don’t have to worry about things which are not in our control, then we can do best what is in our control. But when we are worried about things that are not in our control, then we can’t even do the things which are in our control.
And thus, we end up simply worried, not doing anything. The spiritual worldview helps us to focus on the things which we can do. And we leave the things which are not in our control to a higher being who will take care of those things.
And thus, we can live our lives in a harmonious way, even in this world. So, I’ll summarize. I spoke today about what is the need for spirituality from a scientific, ethical, relational perspective.
So, from a scientific perspective, I explained that there is no scientific proof that you exist. We as persons, conscious beings with emotions, there is no scientific method or measuring device to quantify or prove our existence. But scientific proof, science can’t prove that we exist, but science can prove because we exist.
We have to put first things first in our quest for scientific knowledge, our quest for any kind of knowledge. We, our existence is the fundamental reality because of which we perceive other realities. Now, where does my existence come from? The scientific worldview is extremely reductionistic.
It cannot explain our freedom. You know, people are seen if scientific worldview is made into absolute. People just become biological robots and all concepts of justice, accountability, all of them will crumble to the ground.
From ethical perspective, we can have the ethical foundations of science, but not the scientific foundations of ethics. Science is amoral. It cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong.
And people, when they decide what is right or what is wrong, that is decided based on their sense of morality which they have acquired from elsewhere, not from science. If the scientific materialistic worldview were alone true, then we all would be driven simply by the instinct of the survival of the fittest. While we have that as a factor of our life, but what ennobles us is sacrifice by the fittest.
Wherein, that activity where people who are fitter, they risk their lives for others. Consider that as noble. You know, the example of the wind-tower fighters, of a drowning person, wind-tower firefighters, and a drowning person being saved by others.
And from a relational perspective, if we see ourselves simply as material creatures, then all our relationships become very utilitarian. And there cannot be any lasting commitment, there cannot be any lasting fulfillment. We try to think of ourselves as controllers because science and technology gives us control over things to some extent and we think that control can extend over people also.
And the inability to control leads to the frustration of expectations. And that can lead to, we have external controls, we are comfortable, we have no internal controls, so we are miserable, we are comfortably miserable. And the proper understanding we can get from a spiritual perspective is that, you know, science can give us material explanations for material phenomena, just like a fish, like a fishing net can catch fish of size more than one inch.
Something less than that, we need some other method for that. So the innate longing for life eternal, which is there within us, that doesn’t come from a material circumstance, that comes from a non-material core within us, that is the soul. And our longing for love eternal points to an eternal object of love.
And there is, in the spiritual understanding we understand that there is a whole of which we are a part. Just as in an airplane, we just play our part, the airplane company takes care of other things. In our body, we just play our part, put the food in, the body takes care of the digestion.
So like that in life also, if we have a spiritual understanding, we don’t try to be the whole, the controller. We play our part. And then the whole takes care of the whole.
In this way, we can not only attain love eternal eventually, but be harmoniously situated with as less anxiety as possible. And by focusing on things which are in our control, we can be as productive as possible. Thank you very much.
So are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. Is the holy name scientific, ethical or relational? Okay. So is the holy name scientific, ethical or relational? The holy name is spiritual, first of all.
So it is a spiritual sound which invokes the presence of the Supreme. Now it can act at all these levels. At a scientific level, there have been studies that have been done, which demonstrate that say the same constructive changes in the brain that happen in say people who are mentally disturbed, if certain medication is given to them.
This whole scientific research, I won’t use the technical terms over here. When people are very mentally disturbed and they are given some medicine by which their brain calms down. A similar calming of the brain brain functioning happens when people chant the mantra.
Hare Krishna Mantra. So in that sense, the holy name is spiritual. The effect of it, one aspect of the effect of it can be scientifically quantifiable, scientifically demonstrable.
There are many more effects to it which are not scientifically demonstrable but it has scientific aspects to it in terms of the consequence it has on our human consciousness. As far as ethical, yes the ethical muscles that we have they become strengthened by our chanting of the holy names. Because the holy name connects us with the Supreme Being God who is all pure.
And that contact with the all pure purifies us. So the impure desires that are there within us, they become weaker. And the pure side within us that becomes stronger.
So our moral fabric will become stronger by the chanting of the holy names. And as far as relationships are concerned there is that we all have horizontal relationship with others in this world. And we have a vertical relationship with God.
Now if we are to some extent we get our sense of emotional security and self worth from our relationship with God. No matter what happens. Krishna loves me.
Krishna will take care of things. Then we don’t become emotionally over dependent on others. One of the major reasons for relationship problems in today’s world is that because we don’t have a joint family, we have nuclear family.
So people are often emotionally over dependent on others for their own self worth. If somebody neglects me then I start feeling that I am negligible. Somebody rejects me, then I start thinking I am unworthy.
And that causes immense psychological damage. It can cause. But when we are sheltered when our sense of security and self worth comes from our vertical relationship with Krishna and that vertical relationship is developed through the chanting of the holy names.
Then the emotional over dependence on others decreases. And then our relationships can also become stabler. They can become stronger.
In that sense, the holy name although it is transcendental it has positive effects scientifically, ethically and relationally. Great. Any other questions? Yes.
I have a question regarding how can I improve relationship when we are newly married and new to Krishna Consciousness? Two are very different things. Both together at one time? Together at one time. So if you are newly married and new to Krishna Consciousness how can we improve our relationship with our marital partner, spouse? All relationships are founded on a set of mutual expectations.
Now I expect something from the other person, the other person expects something from me. And to the extent those expectations are fulfilled the relationship becomes stronger. We feel that this person cares for me.
This person cares for me. Now, the problem is that our expectations nobody can fulfill our expectations because no one is perfect. We often have expectation of perfection from the other person but we ourselves are not perfect.
So basically when we practice spirituality bhakti yoga, we understand that every relationship that I am in there is a third person. The third person is Krishna. We have a relationship with others in this world but we also have a relationship with Krishna.
And sometimes other people may not behave in the way we expect. Sometimes they may behave opposite of the way we expect. And at that time we need patience.
We need tolerance. Because all of us go through bad phases in our life. We may have bad moods.
We may have some other things going wrong in our life. And we just behave in irritable ways. And not only that, we may occasionally behave in irritable ways.
All of us have certain sides to our personality which are not so attractive for others. Some side is attractive, some side is not attractive. It’s just the way human beings are.
So now if we simply approach our relationships on the idea of quid pro quid. The way you behave, I’ll behave like that. Or there is a tit for tat.
Then the whole… If you don’t behave nicely with me, I will show you what I can do. When that aspect comes up, then the home becomes Kurukshetra. There is a cold war or a hot war that happens.
Sometimes there is an alternation between cold war and hot wars. Now when we have Krishna as the third person in our relationship, that means we understand that my eternal relationship is with Krishna. And everything that I do in whatever relationship I am in, that helps me to grow in my relationship with Krishna or that takes me closer to Krishna or that takes me away from Krishna.
So when we focus on what will please Krishna in this situation and act accordingly, we can act with much more maturity. So an example, suppose there is a person who is an attendant in a cloth shop and they show clothes to customers. Now some customers are very fuzzy.
They will look at hundred dresses and not take any dress after that. Now the attendant has to, after that, maybe iron all of the clothes, wash the clothes and put them in their all respective. It’s a big work.
So some customers who are fuzzy, who are like that, it is said that some people bring happiness where they go and some people bring happiness when they go. So some people who are like difficult customers, when the attendants see the customer, they all walk away from them. They don’t want to deal with that customer.
But so, now a particular attendant has to deal with that customer. Now the attendant may spend one hour, two hours and at the end of that, the customer doesn’t take anything. The attendant can get irritated.
But the attendant thinks, my salary is not coming from this customer. My boss is there, there are cameras everywhere and boss is watching and the boss also knows this is a difficult customer. So, although I may not make, the attendant may not make the sale, but if the attendant is courteous, the attendant is well behaved, the boss will see and the boss will appreciate.
You are a cool-headed person. You know how to deal with difficulty. And despite not making the sale, the boss may well promote the person from just an attendant to maybe a supervisor or whatever it is.
You know how to deal with tough people. So, the success of that interaction of the attendant with the customer is not just in making the sale. That is, of course, one dimension of the success.
But another is whether the boss is pleased or not. Similarly, for us as devotees, aspiring devotees, if we see every interaction, okay, this person behaving this way, I am annoyed with this. I am feeling irritated.
But what is the response that will please Krishna? It doesn’t mean that each time we just have to accept, neglect or rejection, but we don’t let our react, our react, our response be determined simply by that person’s actions. Our response is determined by our principles. Sometimes a strong response is required.
Sometimes we tolerate and neglect things. So, when this kind of tolerance comes in the relationships, then small things stay small. And then we can overlook small things and then we can focus on big things and we can move forward in the relationship.
So, having Krishna as the third person in our relationship can help us to bring a substantial amount of stability in relationships. So, one of the biggest problems in relationships is that people, especially in close relationships, are not always logical. Emotions don’t go logically.
So, that’s why something might be small but because of the emotions involved, it might become very big. Then, that’s why if we have a strong connection with Krishna, emotions can’t blow things out of perspective because we get our emotional security from Krishna. That’s why the stronger the relationship with Krishna, the stabler will be our relationship with others.
And spending due amount of time on our vertical relationship with Krishna will help us. Now, while doing this, we also have to be more understanding of each other. See, our spirituality should make us more understanding of each other, not more judgmental of each other.
That means, if we are becoming spiritual, we shouldn’t think, this is the right thing, you are doing the wrong thing. No, we have to understand that yes, for me doing this right thing might be easy but I have other right things which I am not able to do, which I am struggling to do. So, for somebody else, doing this right thing which is easy for me, that may be very difficult for me.
So, what we have to do is that sometimes if I am very cleanliness conscious and the other person is, you know, it’s like wherever they go, within moments a whole mess appears over there. Sometimes, how much mess can you create in a few minutes? Some people, you know, they are just like that. So, they may want to change but if there are years of habit like that, it will take time for change.
So, if you say, why can’t you keep things clean? It’s a simple thing but it’s not simple for me. So, what happens is, for them, what kind of struggle it is, we can understand not from our perspective, what makes keeping things clean so easy? But we can look at something else. For us, we may decide you know, I am not going to pass critical comments.
I may decide that but then just for us, not doing that is so difficult. It might just be, just naturally slips off our tongue. So, we can look at some of our conditioning, some of the things that are difficult for us and then we can become more sympathetic towards others.
So, our spirituality can actually help us to become more sympathetic for our other struggles and thus become more understanding. But if the opposite happens then we become more judgmental. Is this the right thing? Why are you doing the wrong thing? Then it can have disastrous consequences.
So, if we see our relationship with others as a service, even a marital relationship, it is service. You know, Krishna we have come together not just for our material gratification. We have come together for our spiritual evolution.
So, sometimes the other person will help us evolve by the way they behave nicely and sometimes they will help us evolve by the way they behave badly. So, both ways, if we expect that we should be together for our material gratification, it will not work out. There will be frustration and expectation.
But if we keep this purpose of spiritual evolution onwards, central in our relationship, then we will be able to find that our focusing on Krishna will bring substantial stability, maturity and eventually proximity in our relationship with our marital partner. Does this answer your question? Great. Any other questions? Yeah.
Okay. So, how do we have free will? How much can we use free will? Yes. So, suppose a cat sees a rat.
Can the cat think, today is Ekadashi. The cat is driven simply by instincts. Pounce on the rat and eat it if it is hungry.
So, now we may see some food. Now, we may also have the instinct to eat it. But, we can have other factors involved.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, if a monkey had been sitting there, the monkey would have simply eaten the fruit and gone on sleeping. Now, Newton may also have got the fruit and let me eat it. But, he also had an intelligence.
What made this fruit fall? So, we have an instinct which drives us. Instinct basically means, there is this stimulus, there is this response. It’s instinctive.
But, although our instincts push us, they don’t force us. We can resist their force. And that resistance to the force of instincts comes from our intelligence.
So, by our intelligence, we can act not impulsively, but from a long term perspective with intelligence. Now, the scope of our free will depends on how we have used our free will in the past. So, for example, if somebody has given into impulse repeatedly, say, if a person, this is the home, this is the office, and in between there is a bar.
And that person has gone to the bar and drunk liquor repeatedly, has given into the impulse. The impulsive, by repeated indulgence, becomes compulsive. And, so, when we give into the impulse, each time we give into the impulse, our free will shrinks.
We have free will. So, even an alcoholic has free will. But maybe the free will is whether to drink brandy or whiskey.
It is not whether to drink or not to drink. So, we always have free will, but the scope of the free will, it decreases or increases based on how we have acted in the past. And, bhakti, spirituality in general and bhakti in particular, what it does is, it helps us increase the distance internally between stimulus and response.
See, as long as we identify with our material side, the body is basically a machine. And it will act mechanically. This stimulus, this response.
But to the extent we rise to the spiritual level, we understand, okay, this is the bodily stimulus, and this is the bodily response that is coming. But do I want this response or should I choose some other response? So, by deeper, by our consciousness, the more we become aware of our emotions, the more we become aware of our consciousness, the more we decouple sensation from action. So, sensation from action means that, okay, I see some food item, get a sensation, oh, I want to eat it.
I get saliva on my tongue. But then I decide, oh, I am fasting. I won’t eat this.
That decoupling between sensation and action, sensation is like the stimulus, action is the response. The decoupling between the two, that is the, that is the, that is central to the spirituality. And when we become more, by spiritual practices, we become more conscious of our consciousness.
Conscious of our consciousness, that means, okay, this thought has come inside me, this desire has come in me. When we are not conscious of our consciousness, the desire comes in and immediately we act on that desire. But when the desire comes in, okay, this desire is coming.
Should I act on it? Should I not act on it? We become aware of it. And by that awareness, we can choose more wisely. So, the more we resist our impulses, or more, not necessarily, we don’t have to always resist our impulses, the more we become aware of our impulses, the more we evaluate our impulses, then the more our free will increases.
And the more we give in to our impulses, the more our free will decreases. So free will essentially is the gap, free will exists in the gap between stimulus and response. The greater the gap, the greater is our free will.
Is the answer clear? If relationships are based on expectations, then what about abusive relationships and what are the spiritual recourse? See, whenever we face a difficult situation, a difficulty, there are broadly three responses that are possible. One is we change ourselves and tolerate the situation. Second is we change the situation and make the other person or the circumstance change.
Third is we walk away from the situation. Now, whatever be the specific problem, there are these three broad patterns of responses that are possible for us. And it is not that one is right and the other is wrong.
Each of them will be appropriate at different times. We see in the lives of the Pandavas, initially when they tried to poison Bhima, they tried to burn them, burn the Pandavas at Vanavata, just change themselves and tolerate. Yudhishthira told, this is a family issue, don’t, I don’t bring it in public.
Keep it private. So they did that. But eventually, when Draupadi was dishonored, at that time a line was crossed.
And after that, the Pandavas were ready to fight a war. So they, initially they were changing themselves, but they said now such adharmic rulers cannot be allowed to be in break ever in society. They thought to change the situation.
And eventually when Krishna departed from the world, when the Pandavas also retired, he walked away. He said, now, our role in this world is over, we are leaving. So, whether to change ourselves, whether to change the other person, whether to walk away from the situation.
Now, walking away is different from running away. In running away, we are so, we that particular situation, this is so problematic. I just want to go away from it.
So where we are going is not as important at that time as where we are going away from. Whereas walking away means, they understand I have more, better things to do in my life. I don’t want to waste my life in trying to resolve this mess.
So I walk away from it. So, now, which particular response will be appropriate in our situation, we cannot decide based on impulses. So, spiritually, it is best if we, before making any major decision in our life, especially in a relationship that is important for us, you know, we try to spiritually ground ourselves.
Then, the spiritual practices bring a certain level of calmness within us. And when the calmness is there, then from that clarity emerges. So, when the emotions are very strong, we can’t think very clearly.
That doesn’t mean the emotions are wrong. Emotions can be strong and they can be right or they can be strong and they can be wrong. They need to be evaluated.
So, by chanting, by studying scriptures, by coming to temple, by these devotional practices, we bring a certain level of calmness in our consciousness. From that calmness, clarity will emerge. And we can, if we have a relationship with some senior devotees, some spiritual practitioners, whoever we practice for, we can consult them and we can take their guidance also.
Ultimately, it’s our decision to take. One thing which we can do is that we can often get our thoughts outside our head. That means when thoughts are inside, they congest, eat us up mentally.
Why is it like this? What should I do? Just get the thoughts out. You can write them in a journal. When you write them down, just the part where the thoughts come outside, it brings a certain level of objectivity.
And then, when they’re out there, you can evaluate it. You just first write them down and after that, you evaluate. This makes sense.
Not immediately. After that, let a day or two pass. Then you evaluate.
And then, instead of when perplexing or resentful situations are there in our life, we just eat up our mental image. So instead of just letting them constantly gnaw at the back, we decide, okay, every day, I’ll give you some time for thinking about this. Other times, I just go on with my life.
And then, if it’s a major decision, we may decide to write down our thoughts and revisit, maybe write some fresh insights, write some additional perspective. If you do that for one month, two months, three months, and if you overall see, okay, my overall thoughts, emotions are remaining the same. Then, this is not just an impulsive reaction to our trouble.
This is actually how I feel strongly and consistently. Then, we can choose a particular course of action. Basically, when we write down our thoughts, we are getting a snapshot of our mind.
And sometimes, the mind is full of emotions that are knee-jerk reactions. But sometimes, the mind is full of emotions that are actually the way we consistently feel. And whether it’s just a knee-jerk reaction coming from a particular circumstance or whether it’s a consistent inclination of feeling that we have, that we can evaluate when we see our consistent feeling.
And based on that evaluation, then we can make a decision. When we have done a decision after such kind of evaluation, the result is that whatever decision they will take, we will follow it through. Because otherwise, after we take a decision, maybe I could have tried this, maybe I could have tried that.
That kind of indecision or half-heartedness will eat us up also. But if we have thought deeply and we have written down, this is the pros of this, this is the cons of this, and this is what I have decided. This is why I have decided this.
Then, we can avoid the mind making us go back and second-guess ourselves. We give time for deliberation. And after that, we take a decision and we move forward wholeheartedly in that decision.
Does that answer your question? Yes. Yes, ma’am. You spoke about how we need to focus on things that we have to keep in mind, like example of pain.
Sometimes, you know, we tend to be result-oriented and we don’t like the favorable results that we get for putting in efforts. So, in that situation, how should we respond? Should we look into what better we could do or maybe focus on something entirely different instead of putting effort into that particular situation? So, if we are not getting results in a particular effort, should we just persevere in that or should we change? Now, again, I would say something similar to journaling, writing down our thoughts and evaluating. Sometimes, when we are pursuing a particular course of action, why are we pursuing it? Is it just because of social obligations, social expectations, circumstantial need or is it because of our own innate longing? This is what I want to do in my life.
So, sometimes, we may be doing something just because we are conforming to social expectations. We are not made for that particular kind of career or job or activity and we feel inspired to do something else because of that we are half-hearted in this and that’s why we are not succeeding. Then, if that is the case and that we will find out if we, as I said, write down and evaluate our thoughts and emotions, then we may decide that this is not what I want to endeavor.
I’ll just look for something where I can put my heart in. Otherwise, we may decide that although I have had failures, this is what I want to see. So, our decision to a particular course of action should not be determined by how many failures we have got in that.
It should be determined by how important is that purpose for us. And even that purpose, sometimes, things may not work out in this way. Like a river which is going towards the ocean, sometimes it may, it’s a block, sometimes it moves from the left, sometimes it moves from the right, sometimes it moves above, sometimes it moves below.
Sometimes it erodes and moves up.