The Yoga of Necessity | Swami Nishpapananda | Vedanta Society of St. Louis

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is by the way Pradeep Bose.
[SPEAKER_02]: I serve as the Secretary of the Vedanta Society of New York.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this morning, we are very happy to welcome Swami Nishpapa and the G. Not just as our guest speaker today, but we are blessed and grateful to him to have him as our guest at the center for the next 10 days.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Swami is a monk of the Ramakrishna order of India, and he is the assistant minister at the Vedanta Society of St. Louis, where he has recited since 1974.
[SPEAKER_02]: He became interested in Vedanta through college coursework,
[SPEAKER_02]: joined the Order in 1981 and received final monastic vows in India in 1995.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a graduate of Washington University and so I mean Nishpabananda currently manages the book and the multimedia publications of the centuries.
[SPEAKER_02]: Vedanta society and is very active in interfaith work in the St. Louis area.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is also well known and popular speaker at many of our Vedanta centers in the United States and at universities throughout the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: The subject of this talk today is the yoga of Necessity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome Swam.
[SPEAKER_03]: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
[SPEAKER_03]: Avir, avirma, edhi, rudra, yate, daksinam, kam, tenamam, bahinitam, oh, shanti shanti shanti.
[SPEAKER_04]: lead us from the ever-changing to the unchanging.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lead us from darkness to light, lead us from death to immortality, light us through and through, and guide us ever more with thylowing presence, peace, peace, peace.
[SPEAKER_04]: good morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: Very happy to be back here again after almost two years to your very warm and inviting center in this very busy city.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just nice to be here.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the topic this morning
[SPEAKER_04]: is the yoga of necessity, and I've ever heard of the yoga of necessity other than the title on this talk, good.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll begin with a verse from the Katha Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_04]: The self-existent one so created living creatures with senses looking outward.
[SPEAKER_04]: Rare is that wise person who desires of immortality looks inward and realizes the spiritual self and becomes free forever.
[SPEAKER_04]: In a very succinct way, this verse covers a lot of territory and spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're manufactured in such a way that we're not aware of the divine ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our senses lead us outward into an objective world, and that's where we seek fulfillment.
[SPEAKER_04]: And according to the Vedantic teachers, it's not just in this life, or just in the human life, but through all life, in a progression, the Jeeva, the embodied being, moves upward on a phylogenetic scale, finally becomes a human being.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then has many, many, many lives as a human being, seeking fulfillment externally.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're just kind of programmed that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now there's another parable, the parable of the musk deer, who spends its life running and running, except in this case it's many, many, many lives, and finally exhausted not being able to find the source of the smell that it's seeking, a very wonderful smell.
[SPEAKER_04]: It falls down in a heap, on the ground, only to find that that wonderful smell is coming
[SPEAKER_04]: and has been coming all this time for its own naval.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is the analogy.
[SPEAKER_04]: It finally happens that in search of fulfillment externally, we finally and perhaps accidentally realize that perhaps this fulfillment is something that's very close to us and we begin to look inside.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is what's called Pravriti and Nivriti in Sanskrit.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're looking for fulfillment externally, and then we look for fulfillment internally.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet juxtaposed to this, this outward tendency of the mind,
[SPEAKER_04]: is the fact that every day, we rest in that spiritual self, we rest in the divine ground every day, during deep, dreamless sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: The ego subsides in deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's an awareness
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's the first stage of sleep that rebounds after sleep deprivation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And our Vedantic teachers tell us that what's happening is that, well, let me put it in the words of someone who expresses it better than I would.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the dream experience of each of us is similarly quite different one to another.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the ego is present in both the waking and the dream experience.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the experience of profound, dreamless sleep is similar for all of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: The ego idea, the eye consciousness, is the yoke that drives us forward in this world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the economy of life is such that every day, it's ordained that once a day, we have to throw off this yoke of the ego and let it go and have complete rest in deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we withdraw in a state of ignorance.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not aware of it, but we withdraw our teachers' tell us to that spiritual center.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's joy there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we feel that joy when we come out of deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's this dichotomy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our senses are directing us outward for fulfillment in the external world.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're frantically trying to find the filament outside.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet every day, in spite of ourselves, we withdraw in deep sleep to this spiritual state and draw our sustenance from within from that divine ground, whether we like it or not.
[SPEAKER_04]: So with drawing in deep sleep to the divine ground is kind of an involuntary yoga.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yoga is union with God.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the case of the seeker of God, along the path of divine love, yoga is union with God.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in the case of the follower of the path of knowledge, yoga is identification with that divine ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: So unconsciously and involuntarily, we have this yoga every night and deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't eluminous, but it sustains us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're expanding our will, trying to find fulfillment outside, but every night when we sleep, or if we sleep during the daytime, we find fulfillment in deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is necessity?
[SPEAKER_04]: something necessary or indispensable.
[SPEAKER_04]: In other words, something we can't do without.
[SPEAKER_04]: What we can't do without is deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we can't do without the sustenance that comes from that joy that we get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a yoga of necessity.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't get away from it, but it doesn't eluminous.
[SPEAKER_04]: We come out of deep sleep the same stupid person who went in.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, on the other hand, in the waking and dream states, where the ego is active, every thought, every feeling, every experience is illumined by the light of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_04]: as a part of each and every experience in the waking state and the dream state.
[SPEAKER_04]: We would, and then we would draw from the ego and draw our sustenance directly from the Atman in deep sleep, and this goes on every day, all the time, but we're unaware of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So these are yoga's of necessity, whether we like it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, these things are happening according to our Hindu teachers.
[SPEAKER_04]: The problem is that we're not aware.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're aware of the objects of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not aware of consciousness in and of itself.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're aware of the unspecified happiness and the ignorance of deep sleep, but we're not aware of the ottoman.
[SPEAKER_04]: Although we're communing with that ottoman, by force as it were during deep sleep, we're not aware of it, per se.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in that, and that involuntary communion with ottoman in deep sleep is a source of the joy that we feel coming out of deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the rest of the time,
[SPEAKER_04]: The ottoman is present in every experience as the knower, the objectifier, as consciousness, but we don't know that we're the knower.
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, we think that we are what the knower objectifies, and this is a mistake that we
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, Nervicopa, Samadhi, is pretty much the opposite of deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's unspecified, infinite awareness.
[SPEAKER_04]: and it illumined us.
[SPEAKER_04]: Years ago, we had a brahmachari in St. Louis, not me, and, well, when you get into this monastic wife, you realize after a while that
[SPEAKER_04]: No matter what happens during the day, you have to get up the next morning, very early, every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: No matter what time you go to bed, and most of us eventually get into the habit of taking a little nap in the afternoon, and this brahmachari would sometimes say after lunchease as well, I'm feeling the need for a little negative somebody, and he'd disappear for a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we got these two things in the yoga of necessity.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got the deep sleep state where the ego, we throw off the yoga, the yoke of the ego, and communion though, commune though unconsciously with the divine ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the waking and dream sleep states where the, we're objectifying every experience is the knower,
[SPEAKER_04]: So, to summarize, we can't get away from reality with the capital R. It's what is, whether we're in deep sleep, whether we're in the waking state, whether we're in James sleep, in the dream state, it's always there.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're always in this involuntary yoga.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the problem is we're not illumined by it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've got another meaning of the yoga necessity that we're going to spend the rest of our time discussing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for that, I'll tell you a story.
[SPEAKER_04]: Years ago in the 70s, I
[SPEAKER_04]: started living at the center as a lay devotee in the 70s and 1974s was just mentioned in the introduction.
[SPEAKER_04]: And
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a job outside, and on the weekends, on Saturday mornings, I joined in and helped with what needed to be done at the center, mowing a lawn, trimming the bushes, cleaning the house, whatever needed to be done.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so a suck percussion under was there at that time.
[SPEAKER_04]: He had founded the center in 1938.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he was in his late 80s and was withdrawing from the practical aspect of the work.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was confined at some point to this second floor of the center because the physical disabilities.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I looked forward every week to going up stairs on Saturday morning and getting instructions from him on what needed to be done.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a point of contact that I could depend on.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was his total focus of attention for a short time, and it always lifted me up even though it was quite mundane.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he became less and less aware of what actually needed to be done because he couldn't get around and see what was going on.
[SPEAKER_04]: So at a certain point, it became obvious that it couldn't continue.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, well, do this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, actually, this is the state of things right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, OK, well, then do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, actually, this is what's going on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we went back and forth for a while, not too long.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was very sharp.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he says, well, he kind of scratches his head a little bit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't get around anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I really can't direct your work specifically.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought, oh, gee, what have I done to myself?
[SPEAKER_04]: I could, I should have kept my mouth shut.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he said, do what is necessary.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, on one hand, I lost contact, dependable contacts with my spiritual teacher, and I was not happy about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But those four words have served me all these years as a short hand for Carmeo, how to decide what to do and how to act.
[SPEAKER_04]: taking the ego out of the equation.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do what is necessary, doesn't say, do what you like and avoid what you dislike, is do what you need to do when you need to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's been useful, and it can be used either on the path of balkdhar on the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I tend to think, because of the practical use of that phrase, I tend to think of karma yoga as the yoga of necessity.
[SPEAKER_04]: in the chapter on Karma Yoga and the Bhagavad-gita's recrystness is, because no one ever remains for even a moment without activity, for all are made to work under compulsion by Procreatee, by Promordial Nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is the nature of existence, of this existence, to move and change.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the advice is, you perform the obligatory duties for action is superior to inaction, again, this is the key to.
[SPEAKER_04]: And without action, even the maintenance of your body will not be possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're forced to act.
[SPEAKER_04]: whether we like it or not, we're living, and we're acting.
[SPEAKER_04]: So in that sense, karma is a necessity, and karma yoga is the yoga involved in that necessity.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is karma?
[SPEAKER_04]: Karma is sometimes translated as work, but karma and work aren't quite the same.
[SPEAKER_04]: Karma has implications that work doesn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: Karma means volitional action.
[SPEAKER_04]: The work that is done deliberately, consciously, with self-determination,
[SPEAKER_04]: What we do with the body is karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: What is perceived by the senses is karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: We see and smell a flower and here a bee buzzing around the flower.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is all karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: All these sensory perceptions create lasting impressions in the mind, depending upon how much attention we give to them.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you deliberately decide to sit quietly, that sitting quietly is not work, but it is karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you lie down deliberately with the intention of avoiding work,
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not work, but it is karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's done intentionally, and it makes an impression on the mind, and that impression will have a slight tendency to push us towards similar karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: We think with the mind, or deeply feel for a person, or we will something.
[SPEAKER_04]: These functions of the mind are all considered karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the autonomic functions of the body like the gestion and blood circulation are not considered karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're involuntary.
[SPEAKER_04]: The will is not involved, and they aren't karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't decide, well, I'm going to circulate my blood this morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: That happens on its own.
[SPEAKER_04]: instinctive or reflex actions are also not karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sneezing or closing the eyes when something is brought very close to them suddenly are not karma, their reflex actions.
[SPEAKER_04]: Seeing your knee jerk in the doctor's office is a reflex, it's not your karma, it might be
[SPEAKER_04]: And the more interest that we take and the more attention that we pay to an action, the deeper is the impression on the mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this karma produces two effects.
[SPEAKER_04]: There is a tangible and immediate effect if you feed a person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her stomach is filled, and you get the immediate satisfaction
[SPEAKER_04]: but in addition to the immediate effect, karma produces an impression on the mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're constantly gathering impressions from our various activities, including our perceptions and our thoughts and our intentions.
[SPEAKER_04]: And out of those impressions, our dispositions are created out of these impressions we develop talents, like playing a musical instrument or hitting a baseball.
[SPEAKER_04]: In this way, our memories, our talents, our dispositions, our inclinations, come out of
[SPEAKER_04]: Another fact of the Karmic Impressions is more subtle.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not so obvious and we have to kind of take it a bit on faith for a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: These Karmic Impressions
[SPEAKER_04]: are stored within the mind as very subtle moral forces that become in the course of time retributive forces.
[SPEAKER_04]: We throw a pebble in a pond.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is Vivekananda's illustration.
[SPEAKER_04]: Throw a pebble in a pond.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a splash.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then these ripples in concentric circles that go out towards the periphery of the pond.
[SPEAKER_04]: And while that's going on, obviously, the pebble is slowly dropping to the bottom of the pond where it will stay.
[SPEAKER_04]: At some time in the future, these forces, these subtle moral forces, become activated and create favorable or unfavorable situations.
[SPEAKER_04]: their moral forces.
[SPEAKER_04]: If the intention motivating a particular karma is benign and loving, that comes back to us in the course of time, and it may be a very long time as a favorable situation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the opposite is true if the motive associated with karma is negative, arising from malicious feelings, anger, jealousy, pride, so forth, we're all familiar with those.
[SPEAKER_04]: Those come back to us eventually as unfavorable situations.
[SPEAKER_04]: So apart from the impressions that create our dispositions, our character, our talents, our memories, there's this set of moral forces that are created through karma, which become retributive forces eventually.
[SPEAKER_04]: The pebbles lie waiting at the bottom of the pond of the mind,
[SPEAKER_04]: When the body dies, the mind, with all its contents, with every karmic impression, goes with the departing soul.
[SPEAKER_04]: And those karmas eventually create favorable, or unfavorable situations for us, according to their nature, good, bad, or mixed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And most karma is mixed.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very rare that a motivation is completely good or completely bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: And these Karmic Impressions reach fruition in this life or future lives.
[SPEAKER_04]: Death can't nullify them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Distance can't evure them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wherever a person will go, these impressions go with him or her.
[SPEAKER_04]: Time can't erase them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Time may pass, but these Karmic Impressions won't lose their force or potency.
[SPEAKER_04]: It sounds a bit draconian, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_04]: It gets worse.
[SPEAKER_04]: These karmic impressions can be more durable than the physical universe in the daunting cosmology.
[SPEAKER_04]: The universe is created and destroyed sickly quickly.
[SPEAKER_04]: It rolls on for billions and billions of years, and then at a certain point, that's the day of Brahma.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the night of Brahma comes, and everything slows down goes into cold storage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, what happens to all the jivas that aren't illumined?
[SPEAKER_04]: They go into cold storage with the rest of the universe, and when things start up again billions and billions of years later, these under deemed souls come out to reach their destiny, which is the realization of God.
[SPEAKER_04]: So think about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We all learn, well, we don't all learn, but I think most of us here learn, that it's not a good idea to eat junk food and we avoid it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, what about the junk-sum scars that are going to stay with us through the next calpa?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got to avoid those, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: This aspect of karma makes everything we do think, feel, see, hear, or imagine, important.
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing is irrelevant, because we carry this home scarer until we're liberated.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we get to the escape hatch, you know, we made this terrible situation by going through the meaning of karma and how long some scars stay with this.
[SPEAKER_04]: So karma yoga is a spiritual discipline which converts ordinary work into a means for one's own liberation and the welfare of others.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now at what point, at what point is one step on that path of karma yoga?
[SPEAKER_04]: What's the transition point between karma and karma yoga?
[SPEAKER_04]: Between karma which binds us and karma which freezes.
[SPEAKER_04]: In order to become a karma yogi, a person has to realize the limitations of our ordinary experience.
[SPEAKER_04]: The limitations of good and evil have to be understood not as a theory, but as a fact of deepest concern.
[SPEAKER_04]: Once you feel the limitations of relative existence and strive to get free from those limitations, there has to be a consciousness of bondage.
[SPEAKER_04]: This limitation of finite existence has to become, in some way, a matter of experience, and something that's of deep personal concern.
[SPEAKER_04]: The desire for freedom, not political freedom, or all these smaller freedoms, but the desire for the infinite, the unlimited.
[SPEAKER_04]: can't come without a personal existential experience at the deepest level of bondage in some form.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this demarcates the spiritual from the secular.
[SPEAKER_04]: A karma yogi is not simply ethical, but spiritually oriented.
[SPEAKER_04]: To the karma yogi, the world appears as a massive
[SPEAKER_04]: has pairs of opposites, light and darkness, growth and decay, life and death, health and disease, are bound up together inextricably.
[SPEAKER_04]: Vivekananda's pendulum.
[SPEAKER_04]: He gave this example in the West.
[SPEAKER_04]: On one side, there's big pendulum.
[SPEAKER_04]: On one side is happiness, on one side is misery.
[SPEAKER_04]: One side is health, disease, life, and death.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we want to grab that pendulum and hold it on the happiness side.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's a big pendulum, and we're not that big, and it's going to swing.
[SPEAKER_04]: We hold on to one, we get both.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't simply stop the pendulum on the happiness side.
[SPEAKER_04]: When this becomes a fact of life, when we realize the limitations of ordinary finite happiness, that's when spiritual striving starts.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the question is, do we feel the impermanence of the world?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a latent sense of the reality that's behind all phenomena?
[SPEAKER_04]: until we feel the limitations of ordinary experience, we can't really yearn for what's beyond it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what happens at a certain stage of our moral development?
[SPEAKER_04]: And those in whom good tendencies prevail wake up to this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now as an example, in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, towards the beginning, Mahendra Nath Gupta takes Ramakrishna to meet his employer at the time, Vidya Sagar.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a whole chapter on this.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Vigisagar was a well-known, respected philanthropist in Calcutta at that time, a brilliant self-made man who went out of his way to help students who couldn't afford their college tuition and others.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was once said to have asked
[SPEAKER_04]: What good have I done to that particular person that he criticizes and derides me?
[SPEAKER_04]: From his own experience, he knew the limitations of how much good you could actually do for the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: It has its own repercussions.
[SPEAKER_04]: remember seen in Fiddler on the roof at the beginning there is a they're introducing the people in the play and and everyone in the village has a little part and the the the the beggar goes up to someone and said you know I need a little money and and then he says oh he says one copac
[SPEAKER_04]: last week you gave me two co-packs.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a bad week.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have a bad week?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why should I suffer?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the way it goes sometimes when you try to do good to the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: Andrew Carnegie said that it was harder to give away his money than it was to make it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But for all Vidya Sagar's selfless service, he was not a spiritual aspirant.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, Sri Ramakrishna,
[SPEAKER_04]: talked with him for hours, you know, and Vidya Sagar, he dismissed people.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he knew so much he was so brilliant that, you know, you'd start and try to tell him something and on a stop, I know that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he just sat kind of with his mouth open and said, no, I never heard that before with Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_04]: But Ramakrishna is talking in generalities.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when he has these long conversations with people,
[SPEAKER_04]: Almost always, towards the end, he'll change the focus and he'll direct his attention to that person.
[SPEAKER_04]: And somehow or other, he'll say, this is where you stand right now, and this is exactly what you need to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the next step.
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't neglect them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So towards the end of the conversation,
[SPEAKER_04]: There's gold hidden in you.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's covered by a little clay, but you do a little more of selfless service, and soon that clay will be removed, and you'll see the gold.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's just at that transition point between being a good ethical person who unconsciously feels the affinity with that spiritual principle, but hasn't yet become conscious of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That spiritual principle that gold in his heart is very close and it's prompting him
[SPEAKER_04]: At a certain point that experience becomes more definite, the person has some inner awakening, some realization of the divine ground of that gold in the heart.
[SPEAKER_04]: The clays, you see, the unselfish action purifies the mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the impurities, the bad-sum scars, are symbolized by the clay, and the gold is the ottoman.
[SPEAKER_04]: At that point, the transitions between the life of a good person and the life of a spiritual aspiring takes place.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a lot of experience, a lot of preparation before that shift comes between the ethical and the spiritual.
[SPEAKER_04]: and it takes similarly a long time of practice in karma yoga before we're purified enough to really practice bhakti yoga per se or gana yoga per se.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the bridge between generally thought of between the bridge between
[SPEAKER_04]: Our ordinary lives, the lives that everyone seems to lead, and this extremely spiritual life where you got the attitude of a seeker of God in a personal relationship, but God with loving qualities, and omnipotence who is personally concerned about you, or the path of knowledge where God doesn't care about you at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to talk a little bit about the practice of karma yoga, how is it practice?
[SPEAKER_04]: The Gita says with respect to the path of boxy and karma yoga, karma yoga, as it's practiced by someone following the path of divine love.
[SPEAKER_04]: The person who does actions offering them to God, abandoning attachment, is not tainted by sin, as a lotus leaf is not tainted by water.
[SPEAKER_04]: Those actions drop away.
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't bind this.
[SPEAKER_04]: St. Christian says, whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer in sacrifice, whatever you give away, whatever austerity you practice, or warjuna, do it as an offering to me, do it as an offering to God.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is the mental attitude or the mental attitudes that one should have as a seeker of the personal God on the path of divine love.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, when I first read the Gita years and years ago, I wondered, well, you know, what's that like?
[SPEAKER_04]: And because the Gita was written so long ago, there's a language translation problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's also a cultural translation problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: Certainly for a Westerner, trying to understand the Gitan in the context in which it was the cultural context in which it took place.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a cultural translation problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: But even for someone,
[SPEAKER_04]: that's from the Indian subcontinent, the culture of 3,000 years ago and culture days quite different, so there's still a cultural translation problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I kept wondering, what's it actually like to do that?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to share with you how I first got the understanding of what that might be like.
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, this was in the 70s, a little later.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was in relation to my spiritual initiation, Dixiao.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I wasn't a monk that was still had an outside job and was living at the center.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I saw other people get spiritual initiation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was told not by, so let me stop percussion on that, but by someone else, a lay devotee who ended up being his,
[SPEAKER_04]: his shabak is personal attendant as he has health decline.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was told to bring something to the initiation.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was supposed to dress and clean clothes and come early at such in such time and bring a fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got up on that morning and put on freshly laundered clothes, and as I was leaving my basement apartment, I had a kitchen down there, I paused and thought, oh yeah, I was supposed to bring a fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I reached up on the refrigerator, unfortunately I had some bananas.
[SPEAKER_04]: I grabbed a banana and went upstairs, so I got upstairs with the banana.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't know what to do with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just told, bring a fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I left it on the coat rack, went upstairs, got initiated.
[SPEAKER_04]: And afterwards, Bob, he also took care of the daily fruit offering that's still done in St. Louis.
[SPEAKER_04]: said to me, did you bring a fruit?"
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, yeah, I brought a fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, swam me, well, ask me if you brought a fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, yeah, I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, well, what did you do with it?
[SPEAKER_04]: I left it on the Co-Rack.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really didn't know what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Bob was extremely non-judgmental.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he got really quiet after a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you left it on the co-rac.
[SPEAKER_04]: For him, that was a big comment.
[SPEAKER_04]: And not too long after that, Bob said, so I'm in wants to see you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so I went upstairs and he said, well, you know, when we initiate people, we ask them to bring a fruit, it's kind of symbolic, and I knew where this was heading.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, did you bring a fruit for your initiation?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, what happened to it?
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, I left it on the co-rex.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't exactly know what happened to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he got quiet.
[SPEAKER_04]: He could have creamed me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he would be well within his purview as a spiritual teacher to have really let me have it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I guess he had pity on me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really didn't know any of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, how he could be so oblivious living there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he said, well, you know, it's kind of symbolic.
[SPEAKER_04]: In spiritual life, we offer ourselves to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a change.
[SPEAKER_04]: Your life is no longer yours.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this fruit is a symbol.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a fruit that's offered to the Lord, but it's symbolic that you're offering yourself to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he said,
[SPEAKER_04]: The devotee always offers his best to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very important, whether it's an activity, whether it's a thought, whatever it is, you offer the best to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many highs.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many hires, but there is only one hires.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many finites, but there is only one infinite.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many good.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many betters, but there is only one best.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is generally called God.
[SPEAKER_04]: and you always offer your best to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I'd like you to buy some fruit for offering to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not one fruit, or two fruits, or three fruits, but many fruits.
[SPEAKER_04]: And each fruit should be the best fruit you can find.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you can't find that fruit at one store, you should go to another store.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you can't find it there, you should go to another store.
[SPEAKER_04]: But come back with lots of fruit and make it the best fruit you can find.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I thought, OK.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm supposed to get some fruit for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I went on about my life.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, weeks went by.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't say when I needed to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I kept thinking, ever, I had a challenging job.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really did.
[SPEAKER_04]: I kept thinking, I should do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got to do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need to get some fruit for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: And weeks went by, and one day I got home from work and it was like, when are you going to get that fruit?
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to get that fruit right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I thought, hmm, where did that come from?
[SPEAKER_04]: And it came again.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, can't get some fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now!
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, okay, I'm going now.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got my car keys and I went out to get fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now this was my internal Sattva pounding on my internal letter G. You know, get needed a little bit of a push.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got my car and I went to a specialty store because they had kind of exotic fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's when all my previous training started to kick in.
[SPEAKER_04]: See, my grandfather had a grocery store and I remember sitting standing in the produce aisle with him and he asked me, do you know how to pick out oranges?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I looked at him.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, you don't know how.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, picks one up, puts it in my hand.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, feel the weight of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, okay, and put that down.
[SPEAKER_04]: He puts another one in my hand.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the same size.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he says, you feel that one?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I said, what's the difference?
[SPEAKER_04]: This weighs a lot more.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, that's because there's more juice in it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be good.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all these things that started to kick in, all these some scars started to kick in.
[SPEAKER_04]: all those things that were in the back of my mind that I hadn't thought of for years started to kick in because I was getting fruit for the Lord and I had to get the best fruit that I could find.
[SPEAKER_04]: I heard him, I just delayed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I can't buy that one.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that one's not good enough.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not symmetric.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that has a small soft spot under ripe override.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got very picky.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got some things there, then I went to another store, Snooks, then I went to National, then there was another Strabs, a specially store, another part of town I went there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went to four stores, maybe five, and I came back with a lot of fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I came back with fruit I'd never seen before.
[SPEAKER_04]: I came back with a star fruit in the 70s.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't know whether that one was right or not.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was just this huge conglomeration of stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I noticed that as this process went on, I started to feel better and better.
[SPEAKER_04]: You see it was a practical demonstration of this whole process of working for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, I wasn't buying this fruit for myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know when it would be cut, if it would be cut, and who would cut all this fruit?
[SPEAKER_04]: What would be done with it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Who would eat it?
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just getting fruit for the Lord, and the very best I could find.
[SPEAKER_04]: And longer this went on the better I felt.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so by the time, and I, so I didn't want to stop, that's why I went all the story.
[SPEAKER_04]: By the time I got back, I was in a wonderful mood.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was beside myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I got back, and Bob had gotten back from work by this time.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was the one that did the fruit offering.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I gave it to Bob, this time I didn't leave it on the coat rack.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of forgot about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's another sign that you're doing it the right way.
[SPEAKER_04]: You do it and you forget about it because the joy is in the doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's there in the doing as you do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: The joy is in the doing, so that happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, this was summer, it was August.
[SPEAKER_04]: It happens to be the best time to buy fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And at that time, the center kind of closed down in July and August, we didn't do too much.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was really thinking, what are we going to do with all this fruit?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Bob saw me come in with this load of fruit, and his face brightened up instead of thinking, oh my God, what am I going to do with all this fruit?
[SPEAKER_04]: His face brightened up, because when he got home from work, he'd gone up to do something and saw me stop percussion on to head said, oh, you know, tomorrow is St. Christian's birthday anniversary.
[SPEAKER_04]: And call the devotees we're going to celebrate it tomorrow morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Bob was sitting in the kitchen thinking I have to go out and buy fruit and I walk in with all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he was happy.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't have to go out and buy the fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so good.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we did that, and the fruit was pretty much used.
[SPEAKER_04]: I bought so much that it couldn't all be used, even though a lot of people came.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't cut the star fruit, but later on, he told me, you know, it's been three or four weeks, since you were supposed to go out and get the fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And all that time, Swami never said a word about it,
[SPEAKER_04]: after the shrine function he said did that boy in the basement buy fruit yes why how much fruit what kind of fruit well he brought you know oranges and grapes and apples and bananas and peaches and nectarines and okay okay okay very
[SPEAKER_04]: So what was the lesson?
[SPEAKER_04]: You offer the best to the Lord and not only that, but the feeling that you get was an object lesson, a demonstration, the feeling that comes from that unselfish activity of offering your very best to the Lord is its own reward.
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't need more than that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that takes the place of success and failure.
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes the place of the,
[SPEAKER_04]: the relation that comes from the result of the or depression that comes from the result.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're in that zone while you're doing it, and that joy is its own reward.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not only that, the mind is calm, you're able to activate the some scars that you need for that particular task, and you actually do it better.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now this one was harder for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Akarmiyogi inclined to self-interspection, whose ideal is to withdraw the lower to withdraw the self with the capital S from the not self, is to withdraw the ottmen from everything else.
[SPEAKER_04]: To withdraw the ottmen from the body, the mind, the senses, and maintaining an attitude of witness.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now that was tough.
[SPEAKER_04]: a witness to all activities not only in the external world, but also in one's own mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: As their constant observer, the ottoman is intrinsically conscious and eloof from all these fluctuations of nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the words of the Gita, again,
[SPEAKER_04]: The goonas of precreti in the form of the body, the sense organs, and the mind, performal action.
[SPEAKER_04]: With the understanding deluded by egoism, a man thinks, I am the doer.
[SPEAKER_04]: But one with two insight into the domain of Guna and Karma, knowing that the goonas of the senses merely rest on the goonas of objects does not become attached.
[SPEAKER_04]: This made as much sense to me as quantum physics.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a different outlook.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's hard to translate for most of us into our normal lives.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what does it mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: What's the practical example?
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, for me it came as an observation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is how it happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: This was later after I had joined and it was a probation or monk of the order.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Swami said, percussion on it passed away, Swami chained and on to was in charge.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he decided that we have two brahmachari's now.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was the junior one.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a senior brahmachari.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Bob was there of lay devotee every morning.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we take 10 verses at a time, and we chant him Monday through Friday, and with Swami Chetan and on to He'd read the Sanskrit chant through the Sanskrit, we had English Transliteration, and then on Saturday we would solo, we'd go alone, and then we'd go on to the next verses, well,
[SPEAKER_04]: This was rather difficult at first, you know, difference between aspirated continents and unaspirated continents.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then these strange configurations of vows and continents that are tongues just tumbleed over.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're supposed to do this in a particular rhythmic chant that's melodious also, and often we didn't enough time to really practice it and slow it down.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, but for Swamy Tate and I, it was probably extremely boring because he was doing the same 10 verses every day, and listening to us behind it, making all these mistakes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, for some reason, after we'd done this for some time, uh, this only just rushed the whole thing after two days, he said, uh, in a not very pleasant tone, uh, okay, you repeated independently now.
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess we were slower, there's no guessing about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we've looked at each other.
[SPEAKER_04]: The senior barman chair I looked at, the junior barman chair I looked at, the senior barman chair.
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't have to say anything, neither one of us was ready, and nothing was happening.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was complete, dumb-founded silence.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sitting next to Bob.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bob sees what's happening.
[SPEAKER_04]: I see him shrug his shoulders, and he starts chanting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he usually went last, but anyway, he started.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was so painful.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was so bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he shouldn't have been the first one to go.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was the worst chitter.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when you're last in line, at least you get the benefit of hearing a twice before you have to go there and embarrass yourself.
[SPEAKER_04]: so you're a little better or sometimes a lot better for having the benefit of seeing of hearing the previous two people stumble over it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he went first just because it needed to be done.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm just sitting next to him just dying because, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: It started off better just kept getting worse and he pauses for a moment as an enters Society says, and as a Society says, gee, this is awful and goes right on.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was dumbfounded.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's doing it and he has more detachment from his own action than I have listening to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought, wow, that's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's the witness.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's the doer, but he's only watching it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hats off to thee, brother.
[SPEAKER_04]: You may be a late devotee, but you're way ahead of me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was his attitude.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was taught the path of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I got to know him after.
[SPEAKER_04]: All of the young monks that were there eventually figured out that he was a hidden yogi.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we treated him as our senior, even though he had no formal monastic, that was kind of what training.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he didn't need it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was his attitude.
[SPEAKER_04]: He had the calm, peaceful attitude of Aguiani.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, I want to, I'm a little over here, but I want to talk about one more thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So many living cananda.
[SPEAKER_04]: In a lecture in the Carmeog, a book called Non-Attachment, is complete self-appenigation, says, although a person has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God and never has believed, although he has not even prayed once in his life.
[SPEAKER_04]: If the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious person will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge.
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you one selfish?
[SPEAKER_04]: If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book without going to a single church or temple.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's no personal God in this path.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is karma yoga.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's no personal God with loving concern for the devotee.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no ottman.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no theological precept position whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yet this will take a person to the highest realization.
[SPEAKER_04]: How does a person with this outlook practice karma yoga?
[SPEAKER_04]: Vivekananda doesn't mention how the mechanics of it, he just puts it out there as a bombshell.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I found this passage, which I think answers this question, and a book called The Universe God and God Realization.
[SPEAKER_04]: One common feature of the different forms of karma yoga is equanimity, a person of dynamic nature, who has no market tendency towards gana, meditation, or devotion, but who works with mental equipos, in spite of success or failure, in spite of joy and sorrow, can be regarded as a karma yogi.
[SPEAKER_04]: In other words, those dual play doesn't affect the calmness of that person's mind.
[SPEAKER_04]: In spite of joy and sorrow, works with mental equipose can be regarded as a karma yogi.
[SPEAKER_04]: Aquanimity is yoga, says Sri Krsna.
[SPEAKER_04]: this is recrystion of being steadfast in yoga or tananjaya, perform action, abandoning attachment, remaining unconcerned, regarding success and failure.
[SPEAKER_04]: This evenness of a mind is known as yoga.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the commentary.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is karma yoga pure and simple.
[SPEAKER_04]: It can be adopted even by a person who has no theistic belief or conception, but who has discovered that egoistic attachment is the root of all misery and tries to get rid of it completely.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is the attitude of someone practicing karma yoga from that perspective.
[SPEAKER_04]: Karma Yoga, as it's been articulated in the Ramakrishna Vivekananda tradition, reconciles the conflicting cause of the social and secluded life, and leaves us free to pursue a practical course of spiritual life, no matter where we are.
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead of having to go to a cell, or a coisture, or a temple, it installs religious practice in the home, in our cleaning chores, in the office, or ever, we happen to be.
[SPEAKER_04]: All that's necessary are the proper frame of mind and that awakening to spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a necessary yoga that we can't avoid.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't jump from our initial spiritual awakening that aha moment that there's a larger dimension of being human.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't jump from that initial spiritual awakening into the deep meditation that leads to somebody.
[SPEAKER_04]: Karma yoga is a yoga of necessity.
[SPEAKER_04]: It bridges that gap.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a practice that connects our past with our future, our ordinary life with our inner life, and makes spiritual life real and practical every day from day to day, from minute to minute.
[SPEAKER_03]: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
[SPEAKER_04]: This ever-changing, interdependent universe of things and beings is infinite.
[SPEAKER_04]: That self-existent, unchanging, spiritual reality is infinite.
[SPEAKER_04]: This ever-changing universe.
[SPEAKER_04]: Having come from that unchanging spiritual reality, that spiritual reality remains undivided, unchanged, perfect, complete, infinite, peace, peace, beyond all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Namaskar, Fongji.
[SPEAKER_01]: My question is a rather practical one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the path of Karmiyoga, like I'm a student, researcher.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you said whatever you do, you give it to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: You submit that to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: practically how to do that, like I can say that, you know, I did this work today and I give it to the God.
[SPEAKER_01]: But while I'm doing it, I'm doing it for myself, for my own sort of self-interest.
[SPEAKER_01]: So practically what can I do to submit this?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, practice is progress.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is not
[SPEAKER_04]: Realizing God is the hardest, it is the most difficult thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: If it were easy, more people would have be realized, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you start with things that are simple, if you start with things that
[SPEAKER_04]: like buying fruit for the Lord, you know, or cleaning your apartment or doing your laundry.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little easier to maintain that attitude that you're doing it for the Lord in simple things.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as you get better at it, then that bleeds into more complicated things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything is kind of builds on your effort.
[SPEAKER_04]: The good thing is that we don't have to wait for some kind of post-mortem reward.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can see the progress as you go along.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes it surprises as you don't think that you're doing anything or not much has changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there'll be a situation where you're familiar with your knee-jerk reaction, mental reaction to a particular situation, and you'll notice that your things have changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not reacting that way anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you just have to put yourself
[SPEAKER_04]: on the path and practice is whatever we can do and however imperfectly we do it and you get better at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, those examples, I gave, I was very fortunate, you know, because when you're in the presence of a great teacher and he's focusing on you, you, those things can happen, you see, but, and they, they make good examples, but mostly it's just mundane things and you don't see these tremendous differences, you just have to keep working at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's important, this kind of thing is important, to go to a place where there's a tangible spiritual atmosphere is really important.
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember when I first started coming to services or St. Louis, and I thought, well,
[SPEAKER_04]: What mood I'm in when I come over, I always leave in a better mood.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, nah, that couldn't be.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it just kept happening eventually.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, I can't explain this, but I understand it.
[SPEAKER_04]: See, that's a great help, you see.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you kind of know after a while that kind of Bobba, that kind of,
[SPEAKER_04]: inner mood that you're you're you're looking for and then you start to think well That's great, but I'm just like I'm just like the peacock and the gospel that's they're showing up Every Sunday at 11 o'clock for a little bit of opium, you know, how do I how do I do this myself?
[SPEAKER_04]: I say becoming a spiritual addict, you see, and then that's when the work starts.
[SPEAKER_04]: But being among people that are also trying is very helpful, and it helps us lift ourselves
[SPEAKER_04]: this example came into my mind and then it left, oh well, it might come back later.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, we had a couple in graduate school that came at Washington University, that came for quite a long time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they came while they were in graduate school and then they went off.
[SPEAKER_04]: to actually New York State, so there's somewhere here in the state.
[SPEAKER_04]: He stopped by on his way back from, he was in a fellow in the engineering department, and he stopped by on his way between the engineering department where he's doing his research and his apartment.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we were kind of on the way, and he stopped back, and he wanted to show me or tell me about something that he had that he was really excited about.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, by the by, he said, well, you know, all my friends are depressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was just completely open.
[SPEAKER_04]: All my friends are depressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And some of my friends are really depressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm depressed too.
[SPEAKER_04]: He says, but whenever I come here, I leave less depressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't seem depressed, you know, he was just being completely honest about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's that thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's this value to these spiritual centers.
[SPEAKER_04]: And after it, I'd accepted that this was the case with the St. Louis Vedontas Society.
[SPEAKER_04]: I noticed that it was the case of all the Vedontas societies I've ever been to, I think.
[SPEAKER_04]: They just have this atmosphere that lifts you up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm in deep renown, thanks for your talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know as a necessity, we always feel we don't, unless we get hard knocks in life, we don't feel the necessity for yoga.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously other monks and other people who know better, you know, they get inspired.
[SPEAKER_00]: They know intellectually, this is what we need to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we get inspired without getting the knocks to feel the necessity for yoga?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm going to see another little phrase that he drops in karma yoga is experiences the only teacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: Three.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, forwards there, experiences the only teacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think there's a shortcut.
[SPEAKER_04]: I really don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he said, if you understand something without experiencing it, know that you've already experienced it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So someone like Swami Satprakashananda who started practicing meditation from his early youth twice a day without instruction
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, this wasn't his first time around.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was just picking up where he left off.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's true of many of those monks of his generation that came to the direct disciples of Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they got this extraordinary boost in their lives from their association with those great souls.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but I'm not aware of a short cut for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Although it is helpful, once we get interested in spiritual life, to read and study the words of great teachers and aluminum souls, and that may be a little bit of a short cut that can
[SPEAKER_04]: Suffering that we have to have before we really wake up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for really illuminating and touching this course, which I'm sure everybody here and online enjoyed a lot and gained from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very simple, my name question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Based on your talk, you mentioned deep sleep.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: a really way to commune with God, without almost being aware of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also mentioned that involuntary karma actions don't accumulate your karma.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then in the deep sleep state is karma unhomed.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're just catching our breath, we're just filling our spiritual tanks there so we can continue the next day.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's necessary to get that contact with the Divine Ground.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, the ego is not present there, so we're not, we're not gaining any, we're not getting any karma.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not, but we're also not making much progress.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: My Tacoma carnit didn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: My carnit slept one six.
[SPEAKER_04]: Very long time we didn't wake up the lumen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he woke up hungry.
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, too much of sleep is considered to be a tamasik quality.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And these great souls, if you read their lives, they didn't need much sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes they stop sleeping entirely.
[SPEAKER_04]: So me 3 and 9 did as an experiment and then he stopped.
[SPEAKER_04]: He said,
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, no, maybe I shouldn't do this.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll have to kind of talk to my mind and convince it to sleep because it could be bad for the body.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, thank you, any other.