How To Save Ourselves🔗

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THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM kāmamāśritya duṣpūraṁ dambhamānamadānvitāḥ mohādgṛhītvā 'sadgrāhān pravartante'śucivratāḥ

Filled with insatiable desires, hypocrisy, pride, and arrogance; holding wrong views due to delusion, they act with impure motives and for impermanent objectives

Human consciousness can rise to the intuitive level, in which awareness results in high action. This is the potential of the Divine inherent in all of us cintāmaparimeyāṁ ca pralayāntāmupāśritāḥ kāmopabhogaparamā etāvaditi niścitāḥ

Obsessed with endless anxiety lasting until death, considering sense gratification their highest aim, and convinced that sense pleasure is everything

Once we know how to lead our life without fantasies with responsibility, the fear of death disappears.

āśāpāśaśatairbaddhāḥ kāmakrodhaparāyaṇāḥ īhante kāmabhogārtham anyāyenā'rthasañcayān bound by hundreds of ties of desire and enslaved and filled with anger, they strive to obtain wealth by unlawful means to fulfill sensual pleasures

If we intensely experience these events born out of desires and perceived by our senses, we find that neither the peaks thrill us nor the valleys sadden us. We don't need to suppress or ignore these emotions; we can experience them fully without differentiation and move on.

Times have changed since the days of the Vedic educational system where, from childhood, one was guided toward self-completion. Modern day education is based upon logic, science and rules, and is short on self-completion and dharma, righteousness. When we are caught in the material world, focused on 'I' and 'me', we are stuck in the mūlādhāra and svādiṣṭhāna cakras. Greed and fear rule us and we are forever in the bondage of attachment and aversion. Whatever we do is with selfish and impure motives, and results in consequences that are mostly illusionary. In the earlier verse, Kṛṣṇa explained how a person with demonic nature could destroy this world. Here, He shows how such a person can destroy himself. Out of pride, arrogance and hypocrisy, such a person moves in a path directed by purely selfish and material objectives, and derives results that produce suffering

When we focus on matter, we tend to lose sight of the energy inherent in matter. When we focus on the form, we cannot see the formless that enables the form. What is permanent in both cases is the formless energy that drives the form and matter. Science has moved a long way from the Newtonian model based on matter and form. This model is no longer relevant. From the days of Einstein, when matter and energy were linked inextricably, the concept has changed. Today all sciences accept that matter and energy not only co-exist, but also that the same object or event can be perceived or experienced by the observer as matter or energy or both.

So, we are back to the Hindu master Ādī Śaṅkarācarya's theory that the observer determines what is being observed. We may think this is fanciful. However, this is an accepted theory in the most advanced form of Quantum Physics today. Elementary subatomic particles, when observed in identical conditions with identical tools, appear differently to different observers. As yet there is no explanation for this phenomenon. Our ancient Sages, Ṛṣis explained that this happens based on our deep root cognitions, which colors our perceptions. When science is sufficiently advanced, it will accept this truth. Once we know how to lead our life without fantasies with responsibility, the fear of death disappears. Then suffering and misery dissolve automatically.

The nature of the unconscious mind is to react to the senses. We may think we respond consciously. But almost all the time our reactions are instinctive, decided by vāsanās and saṁskāras, conflicting patterns and root patterns, rather than by conscious application of our rational mind. This is what Kṛṣṇa refers to as the nature of a demonic person. Instinct is the nature of animals, and because it is their nature, it works well for them. They flow with nature. nstinct is not the nature of humans. Human consciousness can rise to the intuitive level, in which awareness results in high action. This is the potential of the Divine inherent in all of us. Instead of rising to the intuitive level, the super conscious level, most people find it easier to descend into the instinctive or unconscious level.

The problem is that we do not know how to fulfill desires. We go through peaks of emotions goaded by our desires and then slip into valleys of depression and guilt.

Our emotions are not authentic because they do not touch our inner core. If we intensely experience these events born out of desires and perceived by our senses, we find that neither the peaks thrill us nor the valleys sadden us. We don't need to suppress or ignore these emotions; we can experience them fully without differentiation and move on. We rush towards pleasure and away from pain. We are so eager to fulfill our desires that we go to any length to amass wealth and do any deed, however questionable it may seem. As Kṛṣṇa says, this goes on until we die. If we expect that we will suddenly be filled with thoughts of the Divine at death, even though our whole life we chased only pleasures, this is another foolish fantasy. If we live as a demon, focused on 'me', we cannot suddenly take the leap to 'You' at the point of death.

Inspire the Students to engage in spiritual pursuits throughout one's life and to engage in enriching others to do the same, so that humanity can raise itself to an intuitive and super consciousness level.

• 1. What is the main difference between the Vedic education system and the modern education system?
• 2. Why does pursuit of only material objects in life lead to suffering?
• 3. Why are fantasies dangerous?
• 4. What is the difference between instinct and intuition?