O seekers of the nectar of the divine love of the lotus-eyed Shri Krishna! As is customary, let us chant the Lord’s name for a while, after which the questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who is Mine?’ will be answered.
All glories to the Lord of Vrindavan, Shri Krishna! Now, please be attentive and listen to what I have to say.
Who am I? Who is Mine? In response to this question, primarily, there are two answers that appear before us. Some say, “I am the sharir (the body)”, while others say, “I am the shariri.” Shariri means one who possesses a body. One is called a materialist, and the other is called spiritual. Those who identify themselves with the body are materialists, because this body is made of the five material elements. Those who believe and say that the soul is the ‘I’ are referred to as spiritual, as they do not accept the materialistic view regarding the ‘I’.
There are some people who say that spirituality is the only doctrine, and there is no such thing as materialism, that is to say, the world does not exist at all. There is only spirituality, only Brahm. There is just one personality. It is very dangerous to use the word ‘only’. “Materialism is the only doctrine; spirituality is the only doctrine.” Both these views are incorrect. Both these doctrines are correct in their own way. The soul has never been without a body since beginningless time, and the body has also never been without a soul since beginningless time.
We have this gross body made of the five material elements. You might say that when this body perishes, then the spiritual entity alone remains. No. I have previously explained to you that there is another body that accompanies the soul when it leaves at the time of death. That body has five organs of action, five senses of perception, five vital airs, one mind, one intellect, one ego – a total of eighteen elements. It is known as the subtle body. We receive this body first in this present body, then we leave this body. In other words, this is what you call death. The Vedas are saying this.
Scriptural Verse Kaushitaki Upanishad 3.4
Sa means the soul.
Scriptural Verse
When the soul leaves the body, it comes out. Then it leaves with the subtle body consisting of eighteen elements. And even at the time of cosmic dissolution, one body remains: the causal body. And when you are born again, it is with all three: the gross body, the subtle body and the causal body.
You are familiar with the gross body. You see it. You also experience the subtle body. When? While dreaming. You have dreams almost every night. Your gross body is lying on the bed, covered with a quilt. It is winter now. However, you come out from beneath the quilt, and also out of the gross body through the subtle body. You see, hear, smell, taste and touch everything in the world. You think, understand and experience joy and sorrow in your dreams. You go everywhere. And your body is still lying on the bed.
The causal body consists of innate desires. That is always with you. Your desires, your cravings!
And all the desires that you possess have only one aim. This is the most astonishing thing. Look, in the world there are 8.4 million types of bodies. These are created by nature or by God – believe whatever you want to. Each one is different. Some creatures live only in water; they die if they come out, like fish, for instance. Some living beings live both in water and on land like crocodiles, turtles and many other aquatic creatures. They live on land as well as in water. They do not drown. Then there are many other species which fly in the sky and also live on land, such as birds. They fly around all day then sit in the trees. They sit on the earth, and they sit on your head. Those that walk on land include all of you. And apart from these animals and birds, there are wild animals that walk on land. If they enter into water, they will drown, and they cannot fly in the sky either.
Similarly, when it comes to birth, the bodies of some creatures are born from moisture; for example, lice. Scorpions take birth from dung, while some take birth from the earth. And all of you are born from the womb. Some are born from eggs.
There is so much diversity in creation. Take humans, for instance. Today, there are six to seven billion human beings on our planet. Everyone’s face is different. You can recognise your father out of a hundred thousand people. You can recognise your mother. Even the thumbprints of any two people are not the same. Look, how amazing! Everything is different, and yet all the wants, yearnings and desires that everyone has are divided into five categories: the desire to see, to hear, to smell, to taste and to touch. That’s all. We do not have any sixth thing. God has created this vast world just for these five senses.
Wow! What a big toy for us! You know what toys are, don’t you? Parents spend money to buy toys for their little children, whether they are rich or poor. Rich people even have large rooms just for toys. Toys worth millions! Toys not only from India, but from overseas as well. Why? In order to fool the child. What do you mean? It is to keep the child engaged so that the mother can do her household duties, and the father can also go to his office. To make the child forget. Just give the child a pacifier and the child puts it in his mouth, sucks it and assumes that he is drinking milk. He is fooled.
So, we give these small toys to our children. God is so great; He is the king of infinite brahmands (vast cosmic worlds). So, He made such a large world filled with toys. “Son, enjoy them. If you are bored with one thing, you can see new things every day.”
Look, very rich people travel frequently in planes to see the whole world. Have you been to America? Have you seen New York? Have you been to Russia? Have you been to Japan? “Yes, I have been to all these places.” However, how much of America did you see? How much can you see? You cannot even see one single city, not even the one you live in. There are hundreds of thousands of houses in one city. Within these houses are millions of rooms. In these millions of rooms, there are billions of things. Have you seen everything? Even assuming you have millions of eyes and have seen them all, have you been to the moon? Have you seen the sun? Have you seen Venus? There are infinite brahmands. How much can you see? These desires to see things will never end.
These toys are all an illusory creation of the material energy, maya. They are not real. In other words, our happiness is not here. We desire happiness. We all do. This is universal. No one is ready to contradict this by saying or even thinking, “I do not want happiness. I do not want peace.”
What about the person committing suicide? Why does he do it? To attain peace. To be free from tension, to escape from suffering, to attain happiness, to be liberated. Every action is performed for the sake of one’s own happiness.
There is a very beautiful mantra in the Vedas, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
Scriptural Verse Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.5.6
If we were to understand and accept this mantra, we would be halfway to God-realisation. Half of our suffering would be gone without doing anything. What does this mean? The meaning is very simple. Whatever object we desire is not for the sake of that object, but for our own sake. For the sake of our own happiness.
“My father is no longer alive. So now I am deprived of my father’s affection. My mother is also no longer living. My husband has also died. My wife is dead too. My son is also dead.” And suppose you did not have them in the first place? “As soon as I was born, my parents died. And no one married me because I was ugly and an uneducated fool. So there is no question of having children.” Such a person remains sad. “I wish I had a father, a mother, a wife, money, a nice house, a beautiful mansion. If only I had …” Why? “I would be happy.” Happiness. Peace. “I would be over the moon. Once I have a billion dollars, there will be no end to my happiness.” Did you get the billion? “Yes sir, I won the lottery and got the billion. But now I can’t stop thinking about ways to turn it into two billion.” He again begins planning and makes efforts to turn it into two billion and he invests it in shares. The sharemarket crashes and he is ruined.
But why are you doing all this? What do you desire this for? For happiness. There is only one aim.
“I will not get happiness from this father. My rogue father has bequeathed all his wealth to another person. I will shoot him.” He is the same father on whose lap you sat, and longed to be hugged by. “Yes, but he has turned out to be a scoundrel.”
“This is my son.” From whomever we give up the hope of receiving happiness, our love ends within a second. Ten times a day, you feel love towards your wife and children which comes and goes, comes and goes. Daily! However, we are so stubborn that we do not make any decision.
If our father, mother, wife or husband agree with us, we appreciate them. Five minutes later we suggest something else and they disagree. Our love ends. If your husband or wife were to say one offensive thing, “You are in love with someone else. I know everything.” There is an immediate about turn, followed by abusive words – “I will leave her, I will shoot her.”
We do everything for our own happiness. And we fool others by saying, “I want you to be happy.”
Until we attain God-realisation – note this point – we cannot do anything for anyone else. We cannot even think about it, let alone actually doing it. If a person realises God and attains that bliss, that true happiness, then what should he do? He should either do nothing, or he should only work for others. Now he has nothing left to do for himself. He has attained bliss. That’s it; he is free.
Take butter, for example. If you heat it, it will make a sound. It makes a loud noise. Why? It has water in it. The heat vapourises the water. Water and fire have an enmity. When all the water from the butter evaporates, only the ghee (clarified butter) is left. Then? Now it will not make any sound. You may continue heating it; the ghee will burn, but it will not make a sound. However, if you put a raw chapati (flat bread) into it, then it will make a sound again. Why did it make a sound now? It made a sound to cook the chapati. It did not make the sound for its own sake.
In the same way, Saints and God Himself engage in all kinds of actions: lust, anger, greed, infatuation, jealousy, enmity and the dissolution of all the brahmands. Arjun killed millions and so did Hanuman, but they do not act for themselves. They have already attained whatever there is to attain, divine bliss.
However, we listen to this but do not accept it. If we were to accept it, we would perform our duty in the world and not become attached to it. Who is anyone’s mother, father, or son? Every individual only cares about his own happiness. Do what they ask and fulfill their desires; you will get lots of love in return. Reduce the fulfillment of their expectations by 50%, and they will also decrease their level of affection towards you by 50%. If you do not fulfill their interests at all, their love ends.
So, you were told that to attain that bliss, two kinds of doctrines have been prevalent since beginningless time. Why? It is because there are only two entities apart from this ‘I’: one is God and the other is maya. There is no third entity at all. Therefore, there can be no third doctrine. We will either search for happiness in God or we will search for happiness in maya. We will have to search for happiness, and until we attain it, we have to search for it at every moment. This is because we cannot remain inactive even for a moment, and we are an eternal entity. So, even if we leave the body countless times by taking poison, we will not die. We are eternal. We will also be punished for taking poison to commit suicide. We will not attain freedom. We thought that we would become free by taking poison. Instead of becoming free, we got into even more trouble. We violated the law of God. Even in our world, the person who attempts to commit suicide or plans to do so is punished. You have not been given this body just to destroy it.
So, what should we do to attain that bliss? We have already had plenty of experiences of this world. We remember our experiences of this present life, and we have had similar experiences in our past lives too. This world has always existed. Nothing has changed. It is the same earth, the same water, the same fire, the same air and the same space in Sat Yug, in Treta Yug and in Dwapar Yug. We have had these very same things always and everywhere; in our other births as well. And we committed the same mistake in the past too. We assumed that there is happiness in the world. “I have not attained it; that is a separate issue. My mother, father, son are all bad. My destiny is bad. But there is happiness in the world, because everyone is rushing in this direction.” Because it is perceptible. This is the second reason: we can see it. On the other hand, we cannot see God. We hear about Him from the Saints or read about Him in books. That’s all. This is in spite of us residing in Him. We live in God.
Scriptural Verse (Ramayan)
Scriptural Verse (Kabirdas)
Saint Kabirdas has written that the fish lives in water, and yet it is thirsty. “This is impossible. How can one live in water and still be thirsty?”
We also reside within Shri Krishna, the ocean of bliss.
(Subala Upanishad 7.1)
The Vedas are saying this. Subala Upanishad 7.1
I, this soul, am the body of God. Just as the soul has this body made of the five material elements, similarly, the soul is the body of God. Just as I am the soul within this body, similarly, the soul resides within God. However, we do not experience bliss.
Therefore, through the Vedas and Shastras, we contemplated upon why we are unable to experience that bliss. Even though we reside within bliss itself, we are unable to experience it.
There is an insentient power named maya which has had control over us since time immemorial. This is the reason that we have forgotten our true identity. “I am a soul.” We do have this feeling, but in our practical life we forget it. Pay attention! Pay special attention to this point. We do have this inner feeling of ‘I am.’ ‘I am.’
“The ‘I’ who was in Mumbai yesterday is the same ‘I’ who is here today. The ‘I’ who was dreaming last night is the same ‘I’ that I am now.” “Today, the ‘I’ of that person left and now they are going to cremate his body.” He died. We realise the ‘I’ all the time and everywhere; we experience it. We do not forget it even for a second. ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’.
But instead of giving it the happiness of the ‘I’, we give it the happiness of the body. The mistake is just this.
This world is made of five material elements. These senses and this mind are all made of the five material elements. So, God created the world for the body, and He Himself is for the soul. They are separate. Look, we have to see with the eyes and hear with the ears. Now, if someone is blindfolded and tries to see with his ears, even for thousands of eons, he is mad. This is exactly what we have done.
We do realise ourselves to be the ‘I’ within. Even a fool does. However, who is the ‘mine’ of this ‘I’? This is what we missed out on. We forgot. And by giving the ‘mine’ of the body to the ‘I’,
We try to acquire the ‘mine’ of the ‘I’. We want the happiness of the ‘I’, but we give it the world meant for the body.
That is why, although we have attained everything in the world through countless lives and have even been to the celestial realm countless times—not just three or four—there is no true happiness there at all; so how can we attain it?
Scriptural Verse Garud Purana
The one who is the emperor of the entire world desires to go to the celestial abodes to enjoy the pleasures there. He who has reached the celestial abodes wants to become King Indra. He does not like to be below anyone. And now that he has become Indra, he wants the position of Brahma.
Scriptural Verse
Everyone is unhappy. Everyone’s misery is the same. Just as one who has a thousand dollars is desperate to have a hundred thousand, one with a hundred thousand dollars is desperate to become a millionaire. Similarly, a millionaire wants to become a billionaire. Everyone’s misery is the same. It is the same! It only appears to be different.
“What misery would this person have? He’s the prime minister!” In fact, the prime minister has the most anxiety. He worries around the clock that someone might kill him and that he may die despite having so many security guards. What kind of a life is this? He has to be amidst so many people 24 hours a day. He cannot go anywhere alone.
Man desires independence. Look, when you were alone and unmarried, you would leisurely roam around till late at night. Once you are married, that’s it. Your wife complains, “Your office closes at five o’clock. Where did you go after that?”
“Oh, I went somewhere.”
“What do you mean, you went somewhere? You are married now. Answer me! Or else I will also go somewhere! Then you will be the one to ask, ‘Where did you go? Why did you go?'”
The poor fellow is now bound just by one person. What about the poor prime minister who is surrounded by a thousand security guards? The poor man cannot go anywhere alone except to the bathroom and toilet of his house. The poor man can never be alone. And even the security guards themselves have killed many previous prime ministers throughout the world. So how can even they be trusted? “Today they are loyal to me; tomorrow they may even shoot me.”
In addition, there are so many ministers in our democracy. He has to please each one of them. “Oh, he is offended. What will happen now? If he leaves us and goes against our party, then our government will fall.” And with the coalition governments that are being formed nowadays, imagine the misery the poor fellow has to go through. The prime minister cannot do anything according to his own will. Some people from the opposition are also on his side. They threaten to withdraw their support if he acts against their wishes. “Oh no, please don’t do that!”
Everyone is miserable. He is even more miserable than we are.
A beggar eats the two morsels of bread he has begged for and sleeps soundly on the footpath, while a billionaire sleeps only after taking sleeping pills. He can’t get to sleep.
So, it was explained to you that there is bliss only in God. In other words, God alone is bliss. We have to attain Him. However, He cannot be grasped with the senses, mind and intellect. Yes, the one upon whom He showers His grace can know God and attain Him. He attains Him very easily.
Then we reflected upon the subject of God’s grace and discovered that His grace must be based upon some condition, because some have received grace and we have not. So, this obviously means that God must not be biased, because He has no friend or enemy.
Scriptural Verse (Bhagavad Gita 9.29)
Hasn’t God said in the Gita, “I have no enemy and I have no friend”? “Why would I be unjust?”
For any judge, if neither party is related to him, acquainted with or known to him, he will deliver the verdict in a just manner according to the law. However, if one of the parties is his sister’s son, and the other is the son of his wife’s brother, then his decision will never be fair.
So, God is only a judge. In His realm, no one is small or big. He is equally kind to all.
Saba para mori barabara daya
Look, when it rains during the monsoons, it falls on the ground everywhere. However, the trees grow according to the seeds that are planted. One is an acacia tree which is full of thorns while another tree has flowers. One is a sandalwood tree. One is a wheat plant, another a rice plant. Why such differences? This is not due to God. It is due to the seeds.
Similarly, depending on the good and bad actions we have performed in infinite lifetimes, we are wandering in different species and different bodies. God does not add or subtract anything to this. He is only a judge.
In this world, if we want something from someone, there are three options. What are they?
One is to steal the item. Suppose you have a servant in your house. He has been working for you for a few years. He is honest. You trust him. And one night, he collects all your belongings and disappears. He stole because what you pay him is not enough for his family of five or six children.
The second method is armed robbery. You point a revolver at someone and say, “Give me your jewellery or else!”
“Alright, take it!”
So, these two methods will not work when it comes to God because God is all-pervading and all-knowing. How can you possibly steal? The very moment you start planning to steal, He will immediately know about it. Planning! This is because He is seated within, right next to you. You cannot rob Him either, since no one is equal to Him, let alone greater than Him. The robber should be stronger than the person being robbed, shouldn’t he? He is more powerful.
Then what is the third option left to us? Beg for it. Just beg! What do poor people do? They beg for alms, because if a poor person tries to steal bread by sneaking into a hotel and running away, he will be beaten. He cannot steal because the servants and staff are there all over the place. So the poor fellow stands there and begs.
Worldly people are selfish. Sometimes they give and sometimes they don’t. However, this is not so when it comes to God. You ask and you get it. However, in order to ask, your heart should be pure. You have to beg properly. If someone has had a full meal and he begs saying, “I am hungry”, his voice will sound a certain way. And when he is really hungry and he begs, then his voice is different.
So, when we do not have faith in God, we loudly recite verses in the temples.
Scriptural Verse (Skanda Purana)
What does this mean? Are you wrestling with God? Is this the way to beg?
We beg like this because we believe that He will not give us anything anyway. “Let’s just say it.”
Food is offered in the temples. You often make offerings in your home too, and you close your eyes for a short while. Those who remember some mantras recite them too. After a second or two, you open your eyes and start eating. Did anyone ever, upon opening his eyes, have the feeling to check whether God had eaten anything? “What did He eat? The bread hasn’t been touched. The rice is just as it was; there are no signs of the touch of His fingers. He has not eaten.” You should feel this.
If someone in your family doesn’t eat one day out of anger, say your husband or your son, you do not eat either. “He went away without eating!” And when God does not eat, you don’t even think about it. You eat immediately. Why? You believe 100% that He will not eat it. Then why are you reciting these mantras? Why are you pouring water like this? Why do you close your eyes? You are deceiving God.
This is exactly how we beg. “Oh Lord! Give us Your love. Give us Your darshan. Give us bliss.”
God says, “This is not going to work. This works in the world. You may fool someone and take away his possessions. This will not work in My realm. You must beg properly.”
So, to that end, three paths were mentioned: karm, gyan and bhakti. Among these, karm was defined and it was explained through the Vedas and the Shastras that if you do karm according to the prescribed rules, you will attain the celestial realm. However, if you commit a single error in following the rules, you will be punished.
Let alone ordinary people, Manu, our primal ancestor, because of whom we are called manushya (man), made a small mistake in performing a ritual. So, instead of a son, a daughter was born to him by the name of Ila.
The King of Kashi, Paundrak, who used to call himself Vasudev, performed a ritual with the intention of killing Shri Krishna. However, a mistake in the method resulted in his own death.
Hiranyakashipu delegated his priest to perform a tantric ritual to kill Prahlad, but the priest died instead. Prahlad did not die.
I already told you about Vritrasur yesterday. Vritrasur was killed due to a mistake in just one intonation.
Even if one performs the rituals correctly, he will attain neither God nor freedom from suffering. We are interested in only two things: to be free from suffering forever and to attain bliss forever. Neither of these two will be accomplished, because maya prevails even in the celestial realm, right up to the abode of Brahma.
The Gita also says this, but I will tell you about it tomorrow. All glories to Shri Radha Krishna!
