How To Save Ourselves
16.10 Filled with insatiable desires, hypocrisy, pride, and arrogance; holding wrong views due to delusion, they act with impure motives and for impermanent objectives.
16.11,12 Obsessed with endless anxiety lasting until death, considering sense gratification their highest aim, and convinced that sense pleasure is everything; 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.
What Krishna says here is applicable to a vast majority of people today.
Times have changed since the days of the vedic educational system where, from childhood, one was guided toward self-awareness. Modern day education is based upon logic, science and rules, and is short on self-awareness and dharma, righteousness.
When we are caught in the material world, focused on 'I' and 'me', we are stuck in the mūlādhāra and svādhiṣṭhāna 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, Krishna 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.
You And Me
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 Adi Shankaracharya'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 explained that this happens based on our deep-rooted conditioning, which colors our perceptions. When science is sufficiently advanced, it will accept this truth.
Events that happen around us, as well as objects that surround us can be viewed in different ways. Everything depends upon our conditioning, our saṃskāras.
A couple with young children was driving along the beach one warm summer evening. A young woman in the convertible ahead of them stood up and waved. She had no clothes on!
The parents pretended nothing was amiss.
A small shrill voice piped up from the backseat, 'Mom, Dad, look! The lady is not wearing a seat belt!'
Perceptions differ based on our experience bank. A child's perception is innocent and without negativity. It is totally objective. Over time, we accumulate feelings of guilt, shame, fear, arrogance, hypocrisy, greed and irritation that our responses to situations are tinged by these negative emotions.
As I have explained before, most humans live in their m¦l¢dh¢ra cakra, unable to rise beyond their survival needs. Their entire focus is on survival and their emotions are anger, greed and lust. Everything is physical, material and self-centered. It is all business.
A few are caught in their svādhiṣṭhāna cakra and stay there bound by insecurities. Fears of various kinds control them. Men are more prone to stay blocked in mūlādhāra and women in svādhiṣṭhāna. Both are unfulfilling. Both are unreal from a spiritual perspective. In mūlādhāra, we are caught in fantasies. Our entire life is based on how we wish it were, rather than enjoying it as it is. This only leads to suffering.
A step further into svādhiṣṭhāna is still unreal, because no fear is real. All fears are created by the mind. All we need to do is face the fear, and it disappears. The most serious fear is death. This fear exists because we do not know how to live. It is linked to the blocked mūlādhāra, because of which we do not live our life; we only fantasize about our life. We fantasize about our life with greed and we fantasize about our death with fear.
Once we know how to lead our life without fantasies, the fear of death disappears. Then suffering and misery dissolve automatically. We move from the demonic into the divine realm.
Here Lord Krishna explains the same concept in a deeper way, and gives a beautiful punchline.
Many take shelter in pleasures and pain that end only with their death. With some, even at that time, it doesn't end. They think of the money they paid for insurance, casket, marble gravestone, etc. They regard gratification of desires as the sole objective in life.
Many people ask me, 'Swamiji, in the Gita, Krishna says that the last thought before death determines how we are born in the next birth. Can we find a way to have good thoughts at the time of death?'
I agree that this is a practical question. Unfortunately, there is no practical answer. There is a word called vāsanā in Sanskrit that refers to our mental attitude. Vāsanā is built up over our entire life from childhood, some of it even from before birth. It is the accumulated software of our mind that drives us; it is our operational system, the Microsoft Vista equivalent in our mind-ware.
Vāsanās are the compilation of all our value systems and beliefs that define our mental attitude that in turn drives our actions. Unfortunately, vāsanās, along with their counterpart saṃskāras, memories, are part of our unconscious mind and we have no easy way to access them. Therefore, we have no means to control them and make things happen the way we want them to. It is as if we are on autopilot, with our vāsanās and saṃskāras driving us through life until we die.
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, rather than by conscious application of our rational mind. This is what Krishna 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.
Instinct 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.
Adi Shankaracharya says beautifully in Bhaja Govindam,
aṅgaṁ galitaṁ muṇḍaṁ daśanavihīnaṁ jātaṁ tuṇḍaṁ vṛddho yāti gṛhātva daṇḍaṁ tadapi na muñcati āśā piṇḍam
'The body is worn out, hair has turned grey; the mouth has become toothless and in old age a stick is needed for support; yet the person is still full of desires. There is truly no end to desires.'
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.
How many times have we found that what we see and hear turn out to be not what we understand them to be? Our senses interpret what they sense in the light of vāsanās and saṁskāras. There is nothing real about what we see. Different people perceiving the same object or event have different interpretations based upon their conditioning. So it is with pleasure and pain. What is pleasure for one person can be pain for another. What is pleasure for one person causes pain to another person.
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 Krishna 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 all our life we have been chasing money, at the point of death also, we will be obsessed with money, even if we realize that we can't take it with us. If all our life we have been obsessed with lust, we will die in lust. If we live as a demon, focused on 'me', we cannot suddenly take the leap to 'You' at the point of death. That does not happen.
Q: THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, the cow is considered sacred and divine in Hindu religion. If it is based on ahiṁsā (non-violence), then no animal should be killed. Why the cow alone? Why not other animals?
All life is sacred, whether human, animal, plant or whatever else. In vedic times, it was primarily a pastoral lifestyle and the cow was an important part of day-to-day life. It was also a measure of wealth. The cow was seen to be giving itself selflessly, leading a 'You' focused existence. Based on these factors, it was given a place of honor and considered holy and sacred.
In a sense, the cow was given a special place of protection. Such protection was not available to all animals. Even if we extended that protection to all animals, what about other living beings, plants, fish and so on?
Only a person who is aware can practice ahiṁsā, nonviolence. The same is true of satya, truth. We are not referring only to nonviolence and truth in action, but in thoughts and words as well. Such nonviolence and truth require purity of thoughts, words and action. This can only be done at a high level of conscious awareness.
We are not talking about the moral issue of whether an animal can be killed for food or whether a plant can be consumed as food. It is a conscious awareness when working with nature. For a wild animal like a tiger or lion, it is natural to hunt, kill and eat a deer. There is nothing immoral about it. That is the law of Existence. A lion or a tiger needs to kill other animals to survive.
That is not the case with humans. When a person is aware and conscious, he will not have the desire to consume meat. Nonviolence lives in that person. If one extends that logic to plants, the practice in ancient times was to use plant material only when it was ready to fall, like a fruit from a tree and so on. So, in ancient times, the concept of nonviolence was extended to plant life as well.
In our present day lifestyle, this may not be possible. We do not live nearby trees. In a few generations from now, children may ask, 'What is a tree?' In the same way, modern city children ask about a cow. They have never seen one!
This is where the concept of aparigraha or living within one's basic needs, comes into application. When we limit our consumption to real needs, minimal needs, we stay within nature's tolerance limits. However, as a rule, man is greedy. What rules him are his wants, not his needs. While nature can meet the needs of all beings, it cannot meet the wants of even a single person. We need to live with the higher consciousness that respects nature.
People ask why we insist on Nithya Spiritual Healers being vegetarians, teetotalers and so on. We insist on this only for their good. The meditation through which Nithya Healing works cannot tolerate the energy of meat, alcohol, tobacco and such substances. They act negatively on our energy.
These restrictions are not based on moral considerations. My recommendations are based purely on energy considerations. These substances such as egg, meat, alcohol, tobacco and other toxic substances act adversely on our energy system.
When we meditate and grow in awareness, our need for these substances drops. In the USA, we conducted a special program for those who wanted to pursue meditation for self-healing, yet did not want to give up meat, alcohol, etc. After following the meditation practice, many found that they no longer wanted to consume these substances! They then returned for advanced healing programs, fully prepared and committed to the conditions of no meat, no alcohol, etc.
This is what happened. With meditation, body awareness increased. They started listening to their body. Constantly our body cries out to us to stop abusing it with these toxins. The problems begin when we do not listen to its calls. Now these healers have listened and stopped consuming these toxins. Their consciousness has blossomed.
If man blossoms in his consciousness, he is God; he is bliss. He is in nityānanda.