Bhagavad Gita's Perspective on Peace & Unity | HH S.B. Keshava Swami

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[00:14:08]Har Krishna Har.

[00:14:13]>> Very warm welcome to all of you to our Sunday program. Thank you very much for coming today. A few comments on the English.

[00:14:27]No English.

[00:14:30]English is fine. Yeah.

[00:14:33]Can somebody switch on the light uh on top there? Top. Top. Top. Yes. Thank you. So, we now going to have a lecture.

[00:14:42]But before we start with the lecture anyway, waiting for the speaker. Is anyone here for the first time? I know [clears throat] ae and Ivana is here for the first time.

[00:14:51]Oh, quite a few and also here.

[00:14:55]>> Hari Hari, thank you so much for coming.

[00:14:58]The Sunday program is a very nice opportunity for newcomers to get a little bit of an insight of what we do and also what we believe. And therefore, we always have a lecture and today we have a very special guest. I think many of you know and that's why you are here.

[00:15:17]His wholeness swam bhagan swami will be giving the lecture.

[00:15:25]>> We can also welcome him again when he comes in this manner.

[00:15:29]Maraj he had an urgent phone call that's why he's a little late and he actually has to go to the bakti retreat in the Swiss mountains just right after this program. So we are a little bit tied today and therefore I will just do the introduction before he is here. I hope he will not mind also so we can actually get more time to listen from him. uh maraj he's a disciple of his holiness kadamakanana swami and he's a syasi a syasi for those of you who are not so familiar with the vic culture a syasi is a renounced monk someone who has dedicated his life to basically travel mostly and spread the teachings of the vic scriptures he has been practicing for almost three decades very good I'm getting good signs 3 minutes.

[00:16:27]He has been practicing for almost three decades pakti yoga and Marge has uh unique talent to present this knowledge of Krishna consciousness in a very relevant way. March has written over 10 books and he's also developed a number of I think over 50 educational courses in which people can learn about the Vic wisdom.

[00:16:54]In the last few years, Maraj especially got famous and popular on the social media with his program wisdom that breeds. It's a very nice uh title as well meaning wisdom that is relevant.

[00:17:09]Yeah. That's alive.

[00:17:11]Not just something that's in the book and nobody can relate to, but something that's relevant.

[00:17:16]And Maraji just completed a one-year study at the Harvard University. He was there at the so-called divinity school absorbing himself in the Vic theology.

[00:17:29]He just came out. He's again on world tour. He came from Africa. And as I mentioned, he's going to the Swiss Alps just after the lecture. We're having a retreat there as we have every year. And for those of you are interested, I think if you didn't sign up yet, it's unfortunately too late. Usually that retreat is sold out in a few days. It's very popular. But there is a opportunity for you to follow on the live stream. So let us now welcome Maharaj by loudly chanting haro.

[00:18:11]Yeah.

[00:18:17]>> So, Marge, I I hope you're okay. I just did the introduction before so we can have more time listening to you. And Marge will be speaking on the perspective of the Bhagavat Gita. The Bhagavak Gita you all know. For those who don't, the Bhagavita is the most fundamental text of the Vic scriptures.

[00:18:36]It gives really the the basic understanding of who we are and he will speak about peace and unity based on the Bhagavakita. It's a very relevant uh topic in today's world. Also yesterday's topic has been a little bit connected to that. Yeah, there is a lot of conflict in the world, a lot of disunityity and the Bhagwat Gita is having lots of wisdom and answers to that and Maraj will shed some light on it.

[00:19:06]Thank you Mar for taking the time and thank all of you for coming.

[00:19:12]Just uh wanted to tell you Marsh that we have some newcomers today and I got to know also we have a couple ante and Ivana they came today from Croatia and after the lecture they will go back to Croatia just to see you. All right.

[00:19:29]>> So harrish.

[00:19:32]>> All right. Wonderful.

[00:19:38]So, uh, good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm sorry I was a little late. I was just on an online call and, um, it wasn't my fault. [laughter] So, yeah, we are we have a little bit of time this afternoon. Uh, I'm going to show some things. I It's going to be a little bit different today. I'm going to experiment with something slightly different.

[00:20:04]We're going to try to uh look at the world that we're living in. Often times people think spiritualists are too disconnected from the world. They don't live in the real world. They don't know what's going on. Um but what we want to try to look at today is what can spirituality bring to a world which is changing very very quickly. Um so yeah, I'll share some ideas. I'm going to try not to speak too long and I'm going to try and leave more time for questions and answers. So please uh do um do be with us and um for those of you here for the first time before we begin any kind of uh spiritual uh discussion we just spend a few time uh a few moments to just um disconnect um from the madness of the world to arrive in the room. And uh we sing this beautiful song which reminds us that um each one of us are on a beautiful journey. Uh we're on a journey um in which we're trying to find beauty in our current lives through relationships through contributions but we're on a another beautiful journey which is a a beautiful journey towards our eternal spiritual home. So the vdic teachers explained that um there is a transcendent world an eternal world um that each one of us uh belong to and uh this short song helps us to focus um on that eternal realm. So, I'll sing a little bit. Um, and yeah, just use this opportunity to uh remember uh we're all on a beautiful journey.

[00:22:03]Go for Allah jana jana.

[00:23:04]>> [music] >> Yes.

[00:23:29]Yama dava. Foreign [singing] Jana [cheering] [singing] Hurry Krishna.

[00:24:55]Hurry Krishna. [singing] Krishna heartna. [singing] >> [music] [music] >> Hurry Krishna.

[00:25:42]Hurry Krishna.

[00:25:44]Krishna Krishna.

[00:25:47]Hurry hurry.

[00:25:50]Harishna Harishna.

[00:26:10]>> [music] >> H Krishna H Krishna Krishna Krishna H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H R H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H Kishna Hishna Hishna Krishna Krishna Krishna H Krishna, Kishnaishnaishna, Harrish Krishna.

[00:27:31]Shishna, [music] Hishna, Hishna, Krishna, Kishna, H.

[00:28:00]Hishnaishnaishnaishna [singing] [music] [singing] Krishna Krishna Krishna H >> [music] >> I go hurry Oh god.

[00:29:01]Hurry boy.

[00:29:07]>> [music] >> Jupai.

[00:29:36]Hurry, hurry, boy.

[00:29:44]Um, it's okay. I can do without it.

[00:29:49]I was going to spend the whole afternoon attacking technology, so it must be karma. [laughter] >> Oh, just You can leave it here. It's fine. It's okay. It's all right. I can do without.

[00:30:10]>> All right, we'll do some prayers. If it appears, it appears. If it doesn't, it's okay. We can adjust. No worries. We have to adjust.

[00:30:36]Shri got Krishna.

[00:31:04]Namaste.

[00:31:17]Shashi shatri Krishna Hurry Krishna.

[00:31:55]Hurry Krishna.

[00:31:59]Krishna.

[00:32:00]Krishna.

[00:32:02]Hurry. Hurry.

[00:32:05]Hama hurryup.

[00:32:29]No, no. Okay.

[00:32:35]I have to adjust.

[00:32:38]All right. So that's not happening. So we'll do something else. No worries. Uh so um the topic for this evening or this afternoon is peace in a broken world. So we live in a world which is uh perhaps not moving by many calculations in a in a very positive way. Let's put it that way.

[00:33:01]One young girl, she writes uh a very telling poem. It's called the paradoxes of our time. And she says, "We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers. We have wider highways, but narrower minds. We've conquered outer space, but we're struggling with inner space. We have more degrees, but less common sense. We buy more, but we enjoy it less.

[00:33:29]We lose our health to get wealth and then we spend that wealth to try and get our health back.

[00:33:39]She said perhaps we've learned to earn a living but we've failed to earn a life.

[00:33:48]So it's kind of we we look at the world and it feels like that we're technologically advancing, we're economically advancing, but have we forgot something along the way? Is there some other spiritual dimension to life that we need to really deeply contemplate and uh incorporate into our lives?

[00:34:11]So um sometimes people create a very aggressive demarcation between science and spirituality. This is the age of science. Uh we have uh there's no need for spirituality anymore.

[00:34:28]um the age of rationalism, the age of enlightenment. This was the whole kind of concept behind the renaissance. The renaissance of course it did have spiritual influence as well, but it was basically a a time of rationalist and reasoning and saying that science has replaced the need for spirituality.

[00:34:48]But what I often tell people is that science is wonderful in many ways and spirituality is equally wonderful and they don't have to be in competition but rather they just work in different domains. So I tell people science is the study of matter but spirituality is the science of what matters.

[00:35:11]Science deals with the how and the whats of life, but spirituality deals with the why.

[00:35:19]Science can improve products and processes, but sci spirituality will give you philosophy.

[00:35:28]Science will improve things, but spirituality will improve people.

[00:35:34]And therefore, there's no competition here. All we're saying is that both have to work together. But perhaps we're living in a world where the scientific advancement has become uh so proliferated that people feel as though soon we won't need God anymore or perhaps we don't need God right now. And I think that is uh that that is a major it's a major problem.

[00:36:02]Equally sometimes people who are non-spiritual complain about spiritualists and say these guys they don't do anything to make the world a better place. They sit around, they pray, they you know sing.

[00:36:19]Um but what do they do to make the world a better place? We're the ones making the world a better place. How are the spiritual people? They're not making any changes. I was once at Cambridge University a debate on this and they raised three reasons why spiritual people don't make a change in the world.

[00:36:40]Shall I tell you what their objections were? The first objection was that spiritual people don't change the world because they're too much focused on their inner life and the afterlife.

[00:36:53]Spiritualists are all about what's going on inside of them and what's going to happen after this life. And because they're so conscious about the inner life and the afterlife, they don't have any time for the real life.

[00:37:07]So that was one argument. Another argument was that spiritualists are too uh they're deterministic and they're too pessimistic about the world. In other words, like yesterday we were talking about Kaliuga in Vic scriptures. It's like we're in the epoch of Kaliuga, which is the age of darkness. So they say spiritual people can't make a change because they believe the world is just going down, down, down, and down, and nobody can do anything about it. And therefore, it's all determined. It's all fixed and it's kaliuga.

[00:37:44]So therefore, spiritual people can't really change the world because they don't believe the world can change because it's going in its direction and it's going in its direction. Good argument.

[00:37:56]The third reason they gave why spiritual people don't make a change in the world is they say spiritual people are too emotionally disconnected and disinterested in the world. In other words, they've given their heart to God.

[00:38:10]They've given their heart to paradise.

[00:38:12]They they see all of this as an illusion. And therefore, they don't they're not as emotionally affected by the things of this world. They're too detached. And because they don't emotionally involve themselves with this world, they don't feel impelled to do something to improve the world.

[00:38:31]So those were their three arguments why spiritual people don't aren't aren't the change makers who are going to make the world a better place. And the way I responded to it was I said actually the three arguments that you've given are the very reasons why spiritual people can be the most powerful change makers.

[00:38:51]Not only do your arguments uh not stand, they're actually the arguments that we'll use to explain why spiritual people are the ones who are the only ones who can make a change to the world.

[00:39:03]The first uh argument that they're too focused on their inner life and the afterlife, this is the actual reason why spiritualists can make a change in the world. You can't clean up the ecology of the world until you first clean up the ecology of our own hearts.

[00:39:20]In other words, if you trace back every environmental, economic, political pro problem, if you trace it back to its root, its root is in the human condition of greed, envy, lust, anger, animosity, and all of those good things um that create chaos in the world. And therefore the fact that spiritualists work on their inner life, the fact that they're trying to transform themselves means that they can actually u make an incredible contribution to the world.

[00:39:55]Our best gift to the world, we often think our gift to the world is the things that we achieve or the positions that we have or the power that we exert.

[00:40:04]But did you know the most powerful gift you have to give to the world is your own consciousness? your own character and your own compassionate heart.

[00:40:15]Everything will follow from that in terms of impacting the world. But it must begin with consciousness, character and compassion.

[00:40:24]And because spiritualists spend time working on their inner life, they can actually emerge in the world as real change makers because they've done the internal work.

[00:40:34]And so I told them that the fact that we do and we don't sit around praying all day. Um but we do pray every day because we realize that unless we deal with our inner world, we can't make a change in the outer world. So the second argument that they made that we think everything is predetermined is kaluga.

[00:40:56]What are you going to do to change the world? It's kaliuga. That's what your scriptures say. It's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

[00:41:04]And then when it gets so worse, then someone's going to come and kill everyone.

[00:41:10]That's like, okay, what? Like, so then why why wake up in the morning and try and change anything if that's what your scriptures say?

[00:41:19]So I said to them that when we wake up in the morning, we realize that we may not be able to change the world. But what we do also realize is that we may be able to change somebody's world. We may be able to change one person's world. Isn't that a beautiful reason to wake up in the morning to go out and do what you're doing? Because you know, even if I can't change the world, I can change one person's world. And if I change one person's world, maybe it will mean the world to them. And therefore spiritual people aren't apathetic towards the world because they realize that um we have an opportunity to serve people um and bring happiness, bring a smile to somebody's face. Um what can be more rewarding than that? And so that's why a spiritualist lives to do that.

[00:42:15]And their final point that a spiritualist is too emotionally detached, right? Like spiritual people when they learn philosophy they realize we're not this body. It's just temporary. It's just a chapter in a longer story. The material world is not really our home. So you know don't take it too seriously. So this kind of teachings they feel make us too emotionally desensitized to the world.

[00:42:40]So then we don't want to help the world because we don't feel the pain.

[00:42:45]But what I told them is the fact that we are somewhat emotionally a little bit distant from it. The that means that we have a certain stability. That means we have a certain sobriety. That means we have a certain gravity which means we can go back into the world and instead of being carried away by the emotional overwhelm that everyone's going through, we can go back into the world and provide some stability and say I know it's difficult everyone but let's let's see there's something more out there. So sometimes it's good to be a little bit emotionally detached from things because then you can actually go back and do something that other people can't do.

[00:43:28]And therefore the great potential for the world lies in spiritual people. Um did you know that if you shine a candle, light a candle in outer space, then you can see that candle 12 miles away.

[00:43:49]When the darkness gets very very dense, a little bit of light goes a long way.

[00:43:56]And therefore what Krishna is basically teaching in the Bhagavad Gita is that anyone who goes on this path of spirituality and works on their inner world um they begin to shine a light which can bring uh incredible change to a world which is uh really really chaotic.

[00:44:17]So um I was going to show you on the screen that there are different ways in which people approach the world. Um so I'm thinking whether I should just try to I'll try to explain it to you. You have to picture it in your mind.

[00:44:36]So imagine a quadrant. Okay, just stay with me a little bit. You have to just it's not so hard.

[00:44:46]feel like a teacher now. Um on this side is the spiritual world is real. The spiritual world is unreal. Okay? And on this side the material world is unreal.

[00:44:59]The material world is real. Right? So imagine a quadrant like that. So basically what you have in this quadrant, the material world is real but the spiritual world is unreal. There's no such thing as a spiritual world.

[00:45:12]That's the philosophy of materialism.

[00:45:15]We're here guys. This is it. Life begins and ends in Zurich or Croatia or wherever you are. Right?

[00:45:23]So that's the materialistic philosophy.

[00:45:26]There's no spiritual world. There's no reality. There's nothing else. This is it, guys. It's here. The material world is real. The spiritual world is unreal.

[00:45:35]Therefore, just make the best of it here. Do what you can. Eat, drink, be merry, enjoy, and then see you later, alligator. Right?

[00:45:46]But the interesting thing about that philosophy is that although the materialists don't believe in a spiritual world, what the materialists are trying to do is create a technological paradise or they're trying to create a fictional paradise.

[00:46:02]In other words, what is the purpose of technology? The purpose of technology is to remove every single conceivable problem or issue that somebody could have in their life. And by doing so, we make the material world into the spiritual world. We make it into paradise. That's their that's their project. Or what they do is they try to create a fictional paradise through entertainment, through um theme parks like Disneyland.

[00:46:33]What they try to basically do is depict what a spiritual world could be like in the material world. So it's very interesting that even materialists who say there's no spiritual world, what they're basically trying to do is create a spiritual world right here, right now.

[00:46:57]Let's go back to our diagram.

[00:47:01]The spiritual world is unreal and the material world is unreal.

[00:47:07]This is a dangerous quadrant. This is the darkest quadrant. This is the philosophy of nihilism.

[00:47:15]It's very difficult to find a real nihilist in the world. Like I was recently three weeks ago I was in New York subway and I was we were talking to people and then one lady came she's running by. She goes, "Don't speak to me. I'm a nihilist."

[00:47:32]Like that. And then she went running for her train.

[00:47:36]And I was like, "If you're a nihilist, don't worry about the train. You know, there's there's no there's no purpose to it, right? Because what a nihilist believes is that not only is there not a spiritual world, even this material world is not real.

[00:47:50]There's nothing here. There's no purpose. There's no meaning. There's no there's no there's nothing to get here.

[00:47:56]A materialist actually feels there's purpose to to our existence. Now a nihilist doesn't feel there's even any purpose and it's just suffering. It's miserable and if you try to solve the misery you're going to be more miserable. Therefore for a real nihilist the only question is when is it all going to end.

[00:48:16]So it's actually very difficult to find a true nihilist. It's a conceptual philosophy. It would be very difficult to find someone who wakes up in the morning and truly believes in nihilism.

[00:48:28]But anyway, conceptually it's a philosophy.

[00:48:32]And then you have people who believe the spiritual world is real but the material world is unreal. That's an interesting philosophy. Who do you think that is?

[00:48:43]>> Yes. Impersonalists.

[00:48:46]If any of you know about uh vdic teachings or vadic schools of philosophy then there's one school which is known as adveeta vanta and a very famous apherism and advea vanta is brahma jaganita there's only brahman there's only the universal spiritual consciousness this world this is not real this is just like a bad dream you're here it's just because of ignorance and the moment you remove your ignorance you'll realize realize you were never separate from that spiritual reality. So all of this world is is not real.

[00:49:23]Interesting philosophy.

[00:49:27]And then in the final quadrant, the top right, the best is always in the top right.

[00:49:37]That philosophy believes the world is real, the material world is real, and the spiritual world is real. And who is that? They are the theists, the personalists, uh the devotionalists, um the Har Krishnas, [laughter] the good guys. Um and they believe that um they believe that yes, this world is real. This is all very real. We're here, guys. Yes, we are in Zurich. This is real. We're here. We're having a human experience. But there's also a spiritual world. In other words, this place is just a transit place. It's just a place we're moving through. Um and so while the um materialist is trying to enjoy the world, a spiritualist says no.

[00:50:31]A nihilist is trying to eliminate the world.

[00:50:36]A a theist says no. An impersonalist is trying to escape the world. A theist says no. A theist is not trying to enjoy the world. They're not trying to eliminate the world. They're not even trying to escape the world. All they've learning the art of doing is how to engage the world and every aspect of the world in a higher purpose.

[00:51:01]And that is very very profound actually.

[00:51:05]And that's why theists are the ones who can really make a change to the world because they're not attached to the world. They're not trying to enjoy or exploit the world. They realize I'm here for a certain amount of time. And everything I have in this world and everything around me is an opportunity for me to serve.

[00:51:26]And when I use everything around me, seeing it in connection with divinity and I and I utilize it with that appropriate consciousness, then they're the ones who actually make uh a change in the world.

[00:51:40]So in the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, uh Krishna explains why there's mass chaos in the world.

[00:51:49]In two verses, Krishna says, Jagat Aurisham.

[00:51:58]Um, and I forgot the last two. Do you have a GA here?

[00:52:07]Can someone give me a GA from the back?

[00:52:09]>> Uh, 16.

[00:52:12]Terrible with numbers.

[00:52:22]Krishna says that there are certain people who believe that the world is unreal.

[00:52:28]Oh, thank you. who believe that the world is unreal.

[00:52:33]There are those people believe that there's no one in there's no foundation.

[00:52:38]There's no meaning to the world.

[00:52:43]They believe there's no God in control.

[00:52:47]In other words, people who try to take God out of the picture, right? Like Richard Dawkins, you know, no offense, but uh you know, he had this whole campaign, there is probably no god, so just have a good time, right? I was explaining in the morning how atheism doesn't even make logical sense because an atheist believes that there's no omnisient being. There's no being that knows everything.

[00:53:17]Atheists are convinced there's no one in the world who knows everything.

[00:53:22]So, how can an atheist themselves say there's definitely no God?

[00:53:29]Your philosophy is that nobody there's nobody in the world who knows everything. Yet, you're going out into the world saying out without a shadow of a doubt, there's no God.

[00:53:39]So, you're you're you it's basically an internal fallacy. It doesn't even make logical sense. The best you could say as an atheist is to say, "I'm an agnostic.

[00:53:49]I don't know. I I don't find proof for God, but there may be, but you'll have to prove it to me." That's the best you could do. You could not be 100% sure that there definitely isn't a God because your very philosophy says nobody knows everything.

[00:54:08]So Krishna says then what Krishna says in the next verse um you swipe it like that very beautiful Sanskrit Krishna says means to seeishim means literally a world view established in such a world view that basically there's nothing spiritual about this world. Um at nashta means lost and atma means the self lost to themselves unaware of their spiritual identity completely at a loss in terms of understanding that I am something more than just the material world. Alpa Buddha literally Krishna says they have meager intelligence lost to themselves and devoid of intelligence.

[00:55:16]What do they engage in? Terrible works meant to destroy the world.

[00:55:22]Sh means to destroy.

[00:55:26]Jagat means the universe. They will engage in activities meant to destroy the universe.

[00:55:32]So this it's very heavy actually.

[00:55:35]Um Krishna is basically saying as soon as someone takes God out of the picture you can understand there is going to be mass chaos because what they've done is they've removed the spiritual foundation of everything and as soon as you remove the spiritual foundation of everything you can basically then begin to justify anything.

[00:56:00]This is the moral argument for God. And of course there are um objections to this. But it is a strong argument that how can you have any sense of morals if you don't believe in a god or if you don't believe there's anything spiritual.

[00:56:18]If everything is matter nothing matters.

[00:56:22]Once I I I studied at UCL University College London. I remember once I was walking past the refactory uh the canteen and there was a stop the war coalition table. So someone jumped out to me and said we we're demonstrating so many people are dying stop the war. So I looked at the person and I said um what happens after death?

[00:56:47]So the person was like you know like you don't normally kind of get asked that kind of question. So I said what happens after death? So the person was a little bit beused. He said, "Well, well, we're just chemicals. We just go back into the earth."

[00:57:02]So I said, "You're so you're saying everything's matter. We're just matter."

[00:57:06]He said, "Yeah."

[00:57:08]So I said, "I could throw a cult can into the sea.

[00:57:12]I could throw you into the sea."

[00:57:16]And really what you're saying is it would all ultimately be the same thing because all of us are just matter.

[00:57:23]If we came from nothing, we're here and there's no meaning to our existence and at the end of this life it's game over.

[00:57:29]Seven foot under, nothing else. Relax.

[00:57:35]Chill out. It's all meaningless, right?

[00:57:41]It's like he didn't didn't know how to respond to that. And he said, "No, no, but we have morals. We have there's a meaning to exist. Where's the meaning?

[00:57:49]Where does the meaning come from?" He said, "But we create meaning." So then I said, "But you create meaning, but somebody else may create a different meaning. So what makes your meaning right and the other person's meaning wrong? Maybe their meaning to kill people is the right meaning. How do you know?" No. No. But it's not. But how do you know? So you run into very very big difficulties if you go down this course in life where you try to remove the spiritual element from the world. And that's why what I'm building up to in this whole talk, if you're wondering where is he going with this, is that the title of this talk is peace in a broken world. And what I'm basically trying to explain is that until you inject the spiritual uh understanding until you you inject again an understanding and acknowledgment of what is beyond us a supreme being a higher reality a deeper purpose to the world it becomes very very difficult to solve the problems of the world. Einstein said you can't solve the problems of the world with the same type of thinking that created them in the first place.

[00:59:05]And so um spiritualists are the real hope for the world and spiritualists can make a change and spiritualist should make a change and uh and and and that's the that's the message that Krishna is giving in the Bhagavid Gita and um yes I think let me stop there um by sharing those thoughts with you. We usually go to what five Is it is it done or we have time?

[00:59:38]>> Oh, okay.

[00:59:42]>> Okay. Sure.

[00:59:44]>> So, we have uh yeah some some minutes if anyone would like to ask any questions or clarifications or please if you want to also challenge me I'm happy. No, in a nice way. You may also not agree with um certain points that have been made. So, it's good to always uh discuss that and um perhaps express that. So, yes, I'll throw it out to you. Does anyone have anything they would like to ask or questions or comments? Yes.

[01:00:20]>> Um Har Krishna G. Um my question is where do the dreams come from? Which world they are from? our dreams.

[01:00:28][laughter] Yes. According to the um the kind of ontology of the Bhagavad Gita, uh we have three aspects to our identity. We have a physical identity which is this body and then we have a subtle identity which is like the software of our existence like the mind and the intelligence and then there's the spiritual aspect of our identity which is the soul. That's who we are.

[01:00:56]So basically we're a soul. We have a material body and we have a mind and intelligence which acts as an interface to allow us to manipulate and utilize this body.

[01:01:08]So dreams and other such things are basically manifestations of the subtle aspects of our existence. So our mind for example is like a repository of many many different things. So you go through life, you see things, you hear things.

[01:01:24]Some things you see um and perceive very consciously and some things you see and perceive and it doesn't consciously register but it remains as an impression in your mind. That's why it's often it's very interesting that you can have dreams about things that you never really seem to meditate on deeply during the day, but somehow or other in your dream it becomes like a big thing and you're just like, "Oh, I remember where that's connected to, but I never thought that was such a big thing for me." Like, but then it comes up in your dream. So basically your dreams are the reconfiguration of what you've experienced, your intelligence and your desires. So if you add your desires to what you've been experiencing in the day to like aspects of your intelligence and understanding then what the subtle body basically does when when the physical body has shut down is it continues working but it uh creates dreams which are basically amalgamation of all of those things.

[01:02:29]So sweet dreams Anyone else? Yes.

[01:02:55]Har Krishna Maharaj Maharaj when buddhianka and chitta and kmas are stick to chitta then what carries soul when soul is light and it's pure then how soul carries karma when karma is stick to the chitta I have heard from some saint that uh uh karma uh what we do uh they are stick to the chitta so I don't understand when soul leaves body what carries what she what she carries actually >> all right so um so as I mentioned there are three aspects to our identity the physical the subtle and then the spiritual we are the spiritual the physical and the subtle are just external instrumentation.

[01:03:54]So what happens when you die? Um basically the physical body is no longer useful. So the soul is carried by the subtle body into a new body. The karma is nothing to do with the soul. The karma is continuing with the subtle body in the mind. It's it's it's carried with that. That's why when you gain release from this world, you gain release not just from the physical body but from the subtle body. And once you gain release from the subtle body, then you don't have any karma. That's why you can uh fully realize your spiritual potential.

[01:04:33]So nothing sticks to the soul as such.

[01:04:36]It's just what we're carrying as impressions in our subtle body from previous lives. So we're all going through that karma and uh yeah that karma is basically like what we call praabda karma upraabda karma karma which is manifest karma which is waiting to manifest and all of these karmic reactions are basically educational experiences for us to realize that I'm not meant to be here.

[01:05:06]This is not who I am. I have something higher that I'm meant to be doing.

[01:05:11]That's the purpose of all this karma and uh suffering in life. So um anyway, that's just a quick summary. All right.

[01:05:23]Anyone else?

[01:05:29]>> How do you define purpose means individual purpose?

[01:05:33]>> Yeah. I mean if karma is the I mean it's coming from the purpose how do we define the purpose of individual like >> why are we here like that how do we define our >> exact where we heading like I if I remember correctly Gita says that you know the three purposes of a human being one is to uh give birth let the life go on and then uh give to the society uh you know so that you know you are contributing in other way and then the third is to uh also give yourself an elevation the inside elevation right those are the three dimensions now between these three these are like three different panes and how do we triangulate between these three twins with the purpose around it right >> thank you okay so how do we understand our purpose our meaning well I would say the very first thing is uh most people aren't asking the question.

[01:06:36]How many people actually deeply stop to think what is my meaning? What is my purpose?

[01:06:42]How many people really contemplate why am I here? Is there some deeper deeper meaning to this existence? If you really want to find your purpose, then first you would have to understand why does this world exist? Where did it come from? Do I have some deeper role in this purpose in this universe?

[01:07:04]If you can't answer those questions, it becomes very difficult to define purpose.

[01:07:09]So the first thing is that people have to question. We have to become curious.

[01:07:14]We have to challenge. Most people are just happy to go along with what the world is telling them meaning is, purpose is. And therefore, very few people challenge.

[01:07:25]um we tend to just accept what society has told us we should be doing. Um and therefore it it requires great bravery actually to truly find your purpose because it means you got to begin questioning everything about your life. Why did I why did I choose this path in my life? Why do I think that if I get this, I'll be happy?