The bhakti journey 4 – Durga puja youth camp Newtown Kolkata

Actually, how to fight the war. So in many ways, it was the British education of India that created within Indians the idea of independence. Because prior to that there are different kings ruling at different times and the idea that there should be our own government. So that idea largely came from, now of course Shivaji Maharaj and others had tried to unite India before that. Many other kings who had tried intermittently.

But that was never like a mass movement. It was some kings who took up the rulership, who took up the responsibility, they fought, and they got some support. But in general, political struggles political struggles were largely leadership struggles. That largely it was this king being defeated and that king winning, but at one particular time it became a mass struggle. So now there were 2 steps in that.

1st is the conviction that British rule is bad for us and we have to end it. But conviction alone does not necessarily mean we have the means, isn’t it? Now nonviolence was both a moral principle as well as a political strategy, Because Indians just didn’t have weapons and getting weapons was not very easy. Because in the history of the American independence, there was a critical war battle near Luxembourg. Luxembourg was a place where Britain had stored all their gunpowder.

The British Army was trying to reach there and the American Revolutionaries were trying to reach there. Somehow the American Revolutionaries managed to reach in time. There was a storm that came across suddenly when the British were trying to cross the river. And because they got those weapons, that’s why they were able to fight and win. Otherwise, they’re just a motley group of people with some principles, but no means.

And that’s why in the history of America, they have that right to have guns. Because every American citizen should have the right to guns so that they can fight against the government, if the government becomes tyrannical. So because their experience of the British government was tyrannical. It was exploited. It was autocratic.

So the rest of the world, that idea that ordinary citizens should have weapons to fight against the government. So that idea is not there in people’s minds. It is not there in the European minds also, but America has enough course because of that. That is one factor. A lot of gun violence is there.

But my point is that one thing was, okay, you become convinced if you want, you want to fight. But second is you need the means and the 2 are not the same thing. Just because we have the conviction, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll have the means. If we don’t have the means, then it’s very difficult to win. So for us, the mind is also a part of us.

We say our mind works against us and that is all that is true, but the mind is a part of us. So when we are trying to say follow certain principles, fight against temptations, even after intelligence is convinced, that does not automatically mean that we will win the war. We have to develop the means. And that means what does developing the means means? So if I don’t have the means, then you could put in a war, to fight a war, there is the will and there is the skill.

So skill would mean that you want to fight, but the soldiers don’t know how to operate a gun. When America suddenly left Afghanistan and went away a couple of years ago, you might have seen those pictures of people trying to hang on to planes as the plane flies away. Now Americans left 1,000,000,000 of dollars of worth of weapons over there. Now the Afghans, Taliban, they have those weapons, they don’t know how to use the weapons only. So then China and Russia, both of them said we will come and we’ll send our trainers to teach you the weapons.

They were competing among each other. They said we will sell the weapons to us. Now the it is like you have weapons but you don’t know how to use them. That’s not the weapons are not really very helpful at that time for them. So for fur, to have the fighting spirit is important, but after that we need to have the fighting strength.

And that means it’s a gradual process. It’s only in movies, you know, the villain beats up the hero and then the hero goes to a gym, does some push ups and suddenly becomes huge body builder, start beating up the villain. It doesn’t work like that in real life. You know, building up on self healing physically takes a long time. So we need, in this inner war, we need patience.

It may not happen immediately. So you remember I talked about the conditionings, like in the browser example, that if somebody’s browser has bollywood.com as autocomplete, Then if they want to visit bhagwadgita.com, it is going to take time for bhagwadgita.com to become the autocomplete. Isn’t it? And till that time, the Bollywood as well as type B Bollywood makeup as autocomplete. And they need to recognize that this will happen.

So basically when we are dealing with our desires So we can talk about desire management. So this is itself an elaborate subject, and I’ll continue talking about this tomorrow also. But when we are talking about desire management there are different kinds of desires. You remember the 2 categories I had mentioned among the samskaras? Sorry.

Yes. Vrtti and vasana. So now as I said these terms can mean different things. Sanskrit is a complex language but vrtti means instincts. Like somebody has a musical instinct.

Kshatriyas, they have a protector instinct or they have a leader’s instinct. Brahmana has an intellectual instinct. So these are instincts that are there and then there are impulses. So what do we do with the vruttis? Yes.

You want to discover them first of all, and then we want to develop them. What about the vastness? Yeah. Yeah. So we want to eventually reduce and then remove.

But before that, we need to regulate. So it’s a gradual process. Now so in this sense there are 2 distinct approaches to desire management. And then even among the vasanas I talked about, there could be superficial and deep rooted. So the superficial desires, what do we do?

Just boundaries can be enough. Out of sight is out of mind. The desire is very superficial. You know, okay, if I have cable TV then I think now nowadays cable TV everybody has. But you know if I have that access to that particular program I’ll watch it.

But if not there no big deal. Not that I want to go out of my way to find and watch it. So their superficial desires, boundaries themselves are quite enough for us to be able to overcome those desires. But there are other desires which may be deep rooted and they may need another approach for dealing with it. So sometimes it may seem that this desire is so strong that I just can’t overcome it.

That when the temptation comes, I just feel as if I am overpowered. I I can’t fight against it at all. So when this happens, now, when the desire seems to be too strong, is it just a matter of feeling? Oh, it’s just too strong and I can’t give it up. If you consider alcoholism, there are broadly 2 different theories about alcoholism.

Or we could talk about what is the opposite of right? Wrong. No. Left. Yeah.

I’m talking about the political right and the political left. So on the, in general with respect to alcoholism, like, on the right the idea is it is an individual moral defect. That you are responsible. You should pull your act together. You, why are you so irresponsible?

Why are you so unregulated? Come on. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. So that is the idea from the right, political right. You know, you are responsible.

Whereas on the left, often the idea is it is a social problem. It’s an individual problem. It’s a social problem. That means if somebody is an alcoholic, you know, maybe they were abused by their parent, by their father in their childhood. Their father had an alcoholic issue, alcoholism issue, or somebody else had an alcoholism issue.

They had a very bad life, and this is their coping mechanism. And so here, often it is seen not as a moral defect, but as a medical disorder. It is like a disease. Nowadays, you see the attitude towards suicide is also changing. If you see in the media, the way they cover it, it is not that he committed suicide.

They say he died by suicide. Died by suicide is like he died by cancer. He died by heart attack. So like suicide almost is treated as if something that happens to the person rather than something that is done by the person. Now the idea may or may not be correct.

Now at one level, we can say even if it’s a medical disorder, it requires a certain level of willpower. If somebody has a disease, still they require medicine and to take the medicine requires willpower. But there’s a categorical difference in the 2. If say, if it’s just a moral defect. Say if somebody, you know, has a tendency to scratch their nose and they just keep doing that.

Now it looks initially it looks weird, but if a person keeps doing that again and again, just stop it. So you may say somebody has the urge to scratch. It’s just a behavioral defect. You just use your willpower. Stop doing it.

But if somebody is coughing, and they tell you, no. Why are you coughing so much? Just control yourself. Or somebody has loose motions. Control yourself.

You know? So now okay. Even if somebody has loose motion, you can say control yourself. But that is okay. Don’t eat heavy food now.

Don’t eat food that is going to further aggravate the disease. But there is if something is a disease, then there is some aspect of it which is beyond one’s control. So even with cough, say for example, now if somebody’s coughing, that may be beyond their control. But after the coughing stops, they start eating ice cream. Now that is in their controls, isn’t it?

So still there is something in control. No doubt, but there is an aspect which is beyond the control. So in the past, any behavioral problem say somebody’s alcoholic, somebody’s short-tempered, somebody is anyway like a lusty sexual predator or very lusty. It is generally seen as a problem in the right individual problem. But now it is being more and more seen as a as a disease.

It’s not just a willpower defect. You know, moral defect means what? You are not just strong enough. You be strong enough. So now which do you think is right over here?

Sorry. Mixture of both. That’s always the safest answer, isn’t it? Like, you can hedge the bets. So now and I was in North America.

I had gone to a university in Calgary. You know, Calgary is on the, West Coast of Canada. The East Coast of Canada is cold and the West Coast is like super cold. So it’s it’s crazy cold. So one morning, I woke up around 3, 3:15.

I thought I’ll go for a japa walk. I looked at the temperature. It was 4 degrees. I thought okay. I’ll wear some I thought I’ll wear some warm clothes and I’ll go out.

No. Actually, it was something like 11 degrees. I thought, okay. I wore some warm clothes and went out. But I went out after some time.

I just couldn’t even move the beads in my fingers. And then as I was somehow I looked at the phone and then I noticed I woke up. I had forgotten to see the minus sign over there. It was not 11, it was minus 11 degrees. So sometimes it’s freezing cold.

So anyway, on Calgary, there’s a university on top of a hill. So when we were on top of a hill as we were going down, we were going up the hill, a winding road, we saw how snowballs are formed. So at the top it is just a snow pebble. It’s a tiny pebble. At this point, if some person comes over, they just kick it, it’ll crack apart by there too.

But as it keeps moving downwards, it starts becoming bigger and bigger. And by the time it comes down, it has become a snow boulder. It’s not just a snowball, it’s like a huge rock. And that same person who could have crushed it when it is on top will be crushed by it when it comes to the bottom. So for us our Anartas are like that.

Initially at this stage it is a moral defect. Like first time a person goes to college and say, you know some friend say, let’s go, let’s take some drugs, let’s drink. At that time the person can say no And if they don’t say no, it is a moral defect. You come here not for fooling around like that. You come here to study.

They can say no at that particular time, but when they keep saying yes, they keep indulging. The conditioning starts becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. And I remember talking about in our landscape. Sometimes it’s a gentle slope, sometimes it’s a steep slope. So sometimes the conditioning becomes so strong that it’s almost impossible.

So no matter how strong the willpower of a person might be, at this point it is a medical disorder. It is beyond that person’s capacity that when the urge comes, they are going to be overcome. Now this does not mean that that person is completely helpless. When the snow boulder is rolling down, we may not be able to stop the snow boulder, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop there and be crushed by it. We can get out of the way, but getting out of the way is different from stopping it itself.

The 2 very different approaches. So that’s why sometimes some people who are recovering from alcoholism, they are taken to some d addiction centers. Where all access to that particular substance is completely cut off. They’re given some other activities to do by which they don’t feel the craving so much. But the fact is at that time they can’t trust themselves.

They can’t trust their own good intentions. I will not drink, but when the urge comes up they will succumb. So the point here is that sometimes our will power alone may not be enough. So when I say medical disorder, it is not what the will power alone. May not or not may not is not enough.

Like somebody has got cough. Will power alone is not enough to cure the cough, isn’t it? Will power is important, but it alone is not enough. So will power not be to suppress the cough. Will power is to make sure you take the medicines, make sure you take the food stuff, which will actually be conducive to healing and not aggravating the cough.

So this means that for all of us, when we are trying to deal with our urges, so sometimes there may be the idea that it’s all just in the mind. Yeah, it may be all in the mind, but the mind is also real. And the impressions within the mind are also real. And some impressions may be far more deep rooted or far stronger than others. Krishna does say that there is a whole philosophical discussion if you consider lust.

Now lust, when Krishna uses the word Karma, he’s answering Arjuna’s question. What makes us do wrong things? So Arjuna is not actually asking only about sexual desire over there. Although it can refer to sexual desire definitely, but he’s talking about any self destructive desire. What is it that urges us to act against our own best interests?

Even when we know that as Shukhdev was saying, And I know it’s not good for me. As Arjuna says, I don’t want to do it. But still, Krishna says, is it is it is lust just a desire? Oh, sometimes I is it okay, I get the desire to drink. I get the desire to take drugs.

I get this desire, that desire. Is it just a desire? Or is it a thing? A thing in the sense that, is it an impression in the mind? Or is it an impression?

What do you think? Yeah. Always the same answer. So you remember earlier we talked about how perceptions grow? That something comes in from outside and then a distortion means that thing can just completely fill our consciousness.

So when we talk about say lust, now there could be an object outside. That object is a trigger. That object is not the source of lust. It is a trigger for lust. So it’s like the same object.

Say sometimes you say that let’s ban alcohol. Now whenever they try to ban alcohol all that happened was people started taking alcohol illegally. So banning is not really a solution. You say, is the bottle of alcohol the source of is it the cause of alcoholism? Well, we may say yes, no, yes.

Isn’t it? If you see alcohol, you get the desire for alcohol. But then just like people are alcoholics, there are people who are gamblers. So if suppose somebody likes to gamble with cards. So is cards the cause are cards the cause of gambling?

Do you want to ban all cards? We could say, oh, say, hey. Shakuni got the additional to gamble with dice. So let’s ban all dice. You know?

See? Now we could say, biologically speaking, there is a slight difference. Dice is simply an object that exists out there. Whereas drugs are substances that we take inside and they affect our brain. When we take food, like any substance that we take into our system, its effect is much more.

So we can’t really entirely equate dice and drugs. They’re not the same, but still the principle is there. Just as dice is not the cause of gambling, similarly drugs themselves are not the cause of drug addiction. They are triggers. So what do I mean by trigger?

That something that is outside, when you use the word trigger, just pressing the trigger of a gun doesn’t do anything. Inside the gun there has to be a bullet. Otherwise you keep pressing the trigger and nothing happens. Isn’t it? So the sense objects are triggers.

They are not the sources. When we don’t understand this, then often it’s very easy to blame the sense objects. But it’s not that simple. So there is a trigger, but inside us there are the impressions. We discussed the samskaras, the vasanas.

So Krishna says in the senses, in the mind, and in the intelligence. All 3 of them, these are there. So it is the external trigger plus the internal impression. Both come together, and that’s how on this side the urge comes up. The vague comes up.

So in that sense, we could say lust is a desire that flares up within us. But lust is also an impression inside us. So the the process is that there is there is a stimulus from outside. Stimulus is the trigger. The stimulus, it combines with some impression from inside.

And together, there is a proposition. What we call as an urge that arises. So that means there are 2 different things over here. That something which comes from outside inside and something which comes from inside outside. So to some extent, feeling tempt feeling tempted.

To feel tempted, that may be unavoidable Because there are tempting objects in the outer world. And if we have impressions, when the 2 come together, we will feel tempted. It is like there is some inflammable substance and there’s a matchstick. There’s a flame. And the flame and the infribable substance come together, then the fire is going to rise.

But there is feeling tempted and there is falling for temptation. Now falling for temptation, that is sometimes avoidable or many times avoidable. So now internally, so what happens? There is an impression inside. There is a stimulus from outside.

And when the 2 come together that is when the desire gets inflamed. Now it is possible, so say, for deep rooted desires, what happens sometimes, in the example is given that sometimes in the process of senses, okay, there are senses and there are sense objects. So it says, how does the indulgence occur? There are 2 possibilities. 1 is the sense objects come toward the senses.

The other is the senses go toward the sense objects. So the process can start from outside to in. We see something, and then we get tempted. Tempted in the sense that we start going toward that. But it’s also possible that it starts from inside.

This is especially with respect to deep rooted desires. Like somebody, say, has a craving to eat a particular kind of food. Now that food is not available in the entire city. They may travel to a completely different city just to eat that kind of food. Isn’t it?

So the idea is sometimes the senses go toward the sense objects. Now both ways it is possible. So so so going back to the point the point which we are discussing over here is that sometimes when we say this is there, I feel I just can’t control myself. I can’t follow this standard. This is too high for me.

So is it something which is really too high or is it something we are feeling that it is too high? Is it just a moral deficiency? Is it a medical disorder? Like a medical disorder. Well it depends.

If the impression is at this stage for us, for some people, okay no I’m not going to do it and they stop it and they are able to stop it. For some people they say no and no, no, no, maybe, yes. So the no does not say no. Sometimes, you know, it’s like you should not do it. So a person speaks it with so much doubt that he asks, are you trying to convince me or are you trying to convince yourself?

So what happens for all of us is that there are times if we consider the graph of say, craving with respect to time. Now say somebody has anger issues, somebody has lust issues, somebody has greed issues, whatever. Now no no matter how strong they somebody may may have a compulsive or addictive urge, but even for that person it is not that the compulsive or addictive urge is 24 hours a day. Alcoholism. Somebody cannot nobody can have the urge to drink at the same level of intensity 24 hours a day.

Somebody will say I have no control over my anger. Okay. Maybe true, but nobody can be burning with anger 24 hours a day. Anger is too expensive an emotion. It takes too much of a toll.

So in general, anything that is self destructive, how it is is, it is at a particular level and it has a surge. It goes up, it comes down. And again it goes up, and again it comes down. So if you consider the craving to be like an urge, so often the urge has a surge. So the surge of the urge.

And when this surge is there, at that time it may well be impossible. So then that what can we do? Does that mean that we are we are helpless? We are hopeless? We can do nothing about it?

Well, it’s not so simple. There are 3 steps over here. So when the surge comes up, at that time, it is possible that, at least at that time it may be so strong that we just can’t say no to it. So then one thing that we can do is that it’s like a 3 step approach to deal with this. 1st is create boundaries, which we already discussed.

So why do we create boundaries? Because say, if the urge or the surge of the urge say it is it comes and it lasts for maybe half an hour, or it lasts for 1 hour, it lasts for 3 hours. Nothing lasts for days weeks at the same intensity. We feel like this is going to be the same for the rest of my life. No.

It’s not the rest of the life. So if, say, somebody suddenly at night has an urge, why I want to eat some gulab jamuns? Now if it is readily available, they will eat it. If it is not, okay, now at night I have to find out which shop is open now. I have to go and go to that shop and buy that, And then, okay, by that, you come out, you get on the vehicle, it’s cold, you start going.

And then slowly when the urge comes up, it’s like intelligence is, like, sidelined completely. But after some time the intelligence says, no, I could be sleeping peacefully now. Is it really necessary for me to go and eat this now? So what happens is sometimes boundaries create a distance in terms of space or time. And then if the boundary is long enough to last for the duration of the urge, then we don’t have to when there are temptations, no, we don’t have to overpower.

Maybe overpower is not possible, but we just have to outlast them. The difference between overpowering? Overpowering is that you that you are so strong, but I’m stronger than you. But outlast means what? That they are strong for a particular amount of time.

And if you can just outlast that, that urge will go away. So an example to illustrate this is, you know, you’ve heard of this arm wrestling? Now arm wrestling is quite a common game especially among males. But now when they play it there are different kinds of arm wrestling. One is that you just keep playing till one of them wins.

One person forces the other person to arm. But sometimes like a chess match, sometimes a chess match can go on for 35 days. People can just keep playing it. But there are timed chess matches. You know, in 30 minutes you have to finish.

If you don’t finish then it’s a draw or whatever. You have certain amount of time. So quite often our battle against temptation is like a timed arm wrestling match. So it’s like, say, for 3 minutes. Within 3 minutes, either you have to put the other person’s hand down or that person has to put our hand down.

Now that person may be too strong, and we can’t hold on to that person against that person for hours. But we don’t need to hold on for hours. It’s like, the arm is completely down. Just hold on. Okay.

Round over. So now when the round is over, there will be another round. But the next round is not going to start from here. The next round will start from here again. So that’s why with while fighting with temptation, we don’t have to overpower temptation.

We have to outlast temptation. So this is the meaning of tolerate. So Krishna talks about it in terms of heat and cold, pleasure and pain. But Krishna also talks about it in 5/23 about So he says if you can just tolerate it. This is he says to some extent that the desires may just come because we have a body.

It says that especially if we consider sexual desire, there’s a biological component to it. That’s how reproduction happens. In animals, there is a mating season. Even cows are considered very mild animals, but when they are in the heat, it’s very difficult to control them. Bulls, when they are in heat, they can come mad.

So now humans are not that much driven by, say, by the environmental cycles in terms of their biological urges. Much of our urges are triggered by external environments, where there is so much stimulation to agitate us. But the point is that there is a biological element to it. So it is Krishna says, yes, this urge will come, but it is not going to last forever. So tolerate means it is not overpower, it is just outlast it.

It’ll come and stay for some time. During that time it is going to be difficult, but just tolerate it. So this is one way of dealing with it. Now the other is that sometimes the urge comes and we may just not be able to tolerate it. So now again, you know, what I’m talking about here is that in one sense, willpower is required, but there is also an understanding.

What am I using my willpower for? My willpower is not that I should not feel any such desire at all. Well, yes and no. That is a if that the impression is there, the stimulation is there, certain desires may come up. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to end up feeling guilty about it.

Okay. Yes. These desires come up. We’ll stay for some time. It’ll go away.

So we use the willpower to outlast the temptation. Now sometimes that may just not be possible. So the urge may come and the urge must be so strong that we just feel I have to indulge. I just can’t do anything about it. Now if that happens, even if we can’t resist, we can still persist.

What do I mean? Sometimes we define ourselves only by what happens in this phase. And we resolve, okay, I will not succumb. I’ll never do this again. And we end up doing the same thing.

I’m such a worthless person. I’m such a useless person. I’m such a fallen soul. Well, even if we can’t resist this phase, we want to resist over here and we can’t. But what happens between the urges?

This is a different phase. And we can persist. Persist in what? Persist in doing something meaningful. Persist in doing something constructive.

That I’ll come to later when we talk about that stage we’ll try to come to today. But we can persist in doing something meaningful. So sometimes, okay, I succumb to a particular desire. I feel so bad that I just give up everything. Just give up trying only.

No. Okay. During that phase what happened? That’s not the best thing. Maybe that’s terrible also, but no, that doesn’t define me.

There is so much more to my life. I will persist in between, and by persisting what happens is we do 2 things. So the so first is just try to outlast the urge. If we can’t outlast the urge, we are overpowered, then persist between the urges. That means pick up.

Pick yourself up and then prepare. It’s like, say, somebody there is temptation. When we talk about the war against temptation, So temptation, we can say like an attacker. Like a cross border attackers there. Now the attackers can be of 2 different kinds.

Now attackers can be raiders and they can be occupiers. Now raiders means what? They come in, they plunder, and then they live. Occupiers are those who come and they rule. So there are 2 very different kind of things.

So, for example, among the Islamic invaders who came to India, I say the Mughal dynasty, the Delhi Sultanate, they became occupiers. But there was Muhammad Ghuri, Muhammad Ghazni. They came, they raided and they left. So what happens is, so is temptation like a raider or an occupier? Okay.

Raider. How many say raider? Okay. How many say occupier? Okay.

Well, you can say that the safe answer is you can say, is it more than? Well, not exactly. It is. Any metaphor. Remember I talked about metaphor?

See no metaphor, no material metaphor can completely describe a subtle philosophical spiritual concept. But we could say that there are impressions inside us. So in that sense, it’s occupier. Those impressions are always there. But in terms of the urges becoming very strong, then they almost become irresistible.

In that sense, it’s like a raider. That when the raiders come, that time they’re just going to over power and plunder. But then they leave, and then you can rebuild the city after that. So maybe after 50 years, after 100 years, another raider is going to come. So in India, there are many raiders who came, but the categorical difference between, say, the British rule and the Islamic rule I’m just using the word Islamic generally because there were many Islamic dynasties and they all not one of them were equally fanatical or equally hostile.

And not all of them were they also came from different parts. Some came from Turkey, some came from here, some came from there, many places. But anyway, the point I’m making is that when the Muslim rulers came to India, they destroyed many temples. That is true. At the same time, they did not destroy the basic economic infrastructure of India.

See while the cities were the visible centers of prosperity, it was the villages that were the sources of prosperity. The villages, there were farms and there were there was a feudal system. And yes, there were jagirdas and landlords and all those things. It was not like it was not like a democratic cabality, but everybody was reasonably taken care of. And so although the cities were plundered, but the sources of the prosperity were the villages.

And from the villages still prospering India is relatively speaking a fairly fertile land, so the agriculture would be good and the greens would come up, and again the cities would become prosperous. So it is not that because the city was plundered and the capitals were devastated people go, oh, you know, what is the use of rebuilding? No. They kept rebuilding. They tried to develop better different structures and all those things they tried to do.

The point is we could say in terms of impressions, they are occupiers. But in terms of the urges that come, they are like raiders. So the urges, they’re not always that strong. So when the urges are not that strong, what do we do? We can just keep feeling sorry for ourselves.

You know, I’m worthless. I’m useless. I’m not good for nothing. Nothing is going to ever happen for me. I’m doomed.

No. There’s no need for okay. What can I do now? You know, I can maybe so I can we can do something specifically to purify ourselves, to do some atonement. But along with that, we can try to do something constructive, something meaningful within ourselves.

So this is where when there is a relapse you know the word relapse? Lapse is a mistake. Lapse in judgment, we say. But relapse means somebody falls back to some behavior which they had said they will not do. So relapse now we may use the word fall down, but fall down is a little too strong a word.

It can just be a slip. It can be a fall. Basically, relapse means to go back to one’s past behavior. The kind of behavior which one was having, which one wanted to give up. One goes back to that behavior.

So when there’s a relapse, there are 2 extreme reactions to it. 1 is that we take it too casually. Like a attitude. Yeah. It it happens to everyone.

No big deal. Now the other is we take it too gravely. Too gravely means what? That we think, you know, if this has happened, what is the use of my practicing bhakti? Sometimes we make a resolution that I’m not going to do this.

In 30 days we succeed. We don’t do a particular thing, you know. And 31st day, we succumb again. Now we can say, what is the use? What is the use?

Again, I succumb. It’s all useless. I’m fallen. Not necessarily. The 30 days that we abstain, that has also created an impression in our mind.

That abstinence, that non doing that activity, that is also an achievement. So if we take it too casually, like, remember I talked about accountability? If the person whom we are accountable to, they can be the too soft or too hard. So like that relapse, if we take it too casually, then it will be perpetuated. It will just go on constantly.

Not only perpetuated, it will also get aggravated. We’ll do it and we’ll do it more. So it’s like a radar comes and destroy. Then what can you do? The radar then you will come and destroy.

No. Make some planning. Have some strategy. Maybe the strategy will not work, but you need to have some defensive strategy. Don’t just be passive completely, isn’t it?

But on the other hand, if you took it too gravely, then what happens is we can become just guilt ridden. We can become we can start feeling hopeless. So, now what is the problem with being guilt ridden? I think this side, if you’re too casual, that is not very helpful. That is clear enough.

We don’t want to be too casual. But at the same time, if we are taking something too gravely, Now what happens? Have any of you heard of this sentence? So now what happens? I am a fallen soul.

Now we may say this. We may say it’s a fact. It’s out of humility, whatever. But sometimes when we say it, what happens is the fallen becomes so big that we forget the soul. It’s I’m not a I’m not a I’m a fallen soul, I’m fallen.

Well, fallen is a temporary conditioned state. Soul is the eternal spiritual identity. So we know one of the characters of bhakti is. You need to give up all designations. Even fallen is a designation.

We shouldn’t over identify with that designation. Now, if you over identify with that, what is happening is that we are forgetting the soul is not fallen. The soul has conditioning around it. The conditioning is very strong because of which the soul acts in a fallen way right now. And we want to acknowledge the reality.

But just as we don’t want to identify with I’m a male, I’m a youth, I’m a middle aged person, I’m upper middle class, I’m this. Those are designations. I have IQ of 160. Okay. If you have it, it’s good to use it.

We don’t want to deny that. If you have that IQ, that’s a gift. Use it. Yeah. But don’t over identify with it.

So similarly, just as you don’t want to over identify with our positives, that will lead to ego. Similarly, we don’t want to over identify with our negatives also. So what happens is if we don’t if if, say, during the urge, going there to surge, we just fall. It like, we fall at that time, and then we just stay fallen. Like, sometimes we want to wake up at 4 o’clock, and, you know, we put the snooze button.

In a clock, generally, the snooze is the almost overused button, isn’t it? So we just go. Okay. Then we wake up at 4:30. Now part of us feels angry.

You know, you could have woken up earlier. You wasted half an hour. But then very well we could wake up at 4:30. But other part of us says, you know, anyway you overslept. You sleep more.

And then instead of waking up at 4:30, we may wake up at 7:30. Isn’t it? Now, maybe at that time we were so tired that 4 o’clock was difficult, we could have woke up at 4:30. So, like, falling may not be in our control. I’m not saying it is not, but sometimes it might just be that we are tired.

But just because we couldn’t wake at 4:30 doesn’t mean we have to sleep on till 7:30, isn’t it? Sometimes we fall, but after we have fallen, we don’t have to stay fallen, isn’t it? So when we when we over identify with a relapse, we over identify with a relapse, then what happens is we don’t just fall, we stay fallen. I’ll never be able to do this. So why even try?

We just mentally give up the whole fight. Yeah. Okay. That particular phase of the fight, I may not win. But we are not defined only by that one thing.

We are not defined only by what happens in that phase. The history of India is not defined by the raids that devastated India. The raids are dark chapters in India’s history. If that not happened, that would be wonderful. But just because they have happened, the whole of Indian history is not defined by that, isn’t it?

So similarly, we all may have dark chapters in our life story where we do things that we regret, but those don’t define us. So it’s like say if I am here and here there is anartha. Anartha means something which is, the word refers to something inside us, but inauspicious things. So basically, this is like the wrong behavior on our side. The meaningless, worthless, wrong, sinful behavior, whatever you want to visit.

Now on this side, there is means our capacity to have some healthy, constructive actions. We have that. So okay, you know, I decided I’m not going to get angry. I’m not going to come yell at anyone. I’m not going to come to Vaishnavrad.

But we yell at someone. That’s not a good thing. But just because we yell at someone that doesn’t mean that afterwards we cannot even try to behave reasonably with other people. No, yes. So when there is guilt now guilt should come here.

It should come between us and the unearth. That I will not do this again. So, you know, when there is guilt, it acts at the level of emotions. Guilt is a part of conscience. So conscience is like a bigger thing.

Within that, guilt is a smaller thing. Conscience, in many ways, it acts at the level of emotions. That means when we do something, if we are about to yell at someone, then something inside us says don’t do that. Or after we yell at someone, even before anybody chastises, we thought, you know, I shouldn’t have spoken like that. That’s a wrong thing to do.

So it’s like a at a level of emotions, we feel this is wrong. And similarly, at a level of emotions we feel it is right. Say, if somebody is blind and they’re they’re struggling with a stick and they’re trying to cross the road. And we see that and we may part of it and say, let me go and help this person. Now it’s not that somebody is going to click Instagram photo and put it on your photo and you get a 100 likes for that.

Nobody did notice it. Nobody may appreciate it. But there’s a part of us that think this is the right thing to do. Let me help this person. So we have a conscience all of us is called the viveka buddhi.

So conscience, it’s almost like a it’s a sense of right and wrong that does not require intellectual reasoning. There is a part of so conscience is not exactly the same as intelligence. Intelligence is where we do reasoning. We need to do reasoning and say, okay, this is something which I will do. This is something which I’ll not do.

But conscience is, it works at the level of emotions itself. Yeah. This is the right thing, I will do it. This is the wrong thing, I will not do it. So we have that conscience.

And a part of conscience is the sense of guilt. If I do something wrong, I myself feel bad about it. And then I try to fix things. So conscience and guilt, these are good things. Guilt itself is not a bad thing.

However, what can happen is instead of the guilt coming, guilt over here is the feeling that I did a bad thing. So and I did a bad thing, I should not do this bad thing. That is a good sense. But sometimes instead this guilt comes over here. And this actually is not guilt.

This you can call as pseudo guilt. This is what I am a bad person. So when I’m a bad person, the idea is I I will never be able to do anything worthwhile. If I’m never going to be able to do anything worthwhile, then why even try anything? So when the guilt comes at this level, then it prevents us from doing anything constructive.

It’s like, you know, I I tried so much yet I yelled at that person. And then I yelled at that person, so I get so upset with myself that afterwards with others I can be polite. But what is the use? So I’m rude with everyone. It sounds stupid when you speak like that, but we all do like that.

Sometimes we are angry with ourselves for having behaved in a particular way, and then we stop trying to behave properly with everyone. We just become irritable with everyone. Sometimes we try to fight against one temptation. We can’t we give into it. We are not able to resist it and then we just start indulging in temptation indiscriminately.

That is where what is happening is we are over identifying with that. And accept that some battles we may not win. But just because we can’t win some battles, does not mean that we have no fighting capacity. Yes, sometimes we don’t have fighting capacity, but that doesn’t mean we never have the fighting capacity. So niyamaakshama is something which has to be acknowledged as something which is, it’s a real possibility.

It will take time to be overcome. So I said I’ll talk about 3 points over here. So the first was set boundaries. 2nd is persist. Persist in between the surges of the urges.

And the third would be that when we are functioning in our lives. Now purification is what I’ll talk about and purification has many aspects to it, which we will go into in the next part of this. But at this point, when the battle is going on and the battle just does not seem winnable for us, So at that time, what do we do? We need to be able to push on, and to be able to push on, we need some amount of confidence. We need some amount of hope.

We need to feel that that we don’t want to over identify with that. Like, I am a bad person. Yes. There are con to say that I’m a bad person, that is like we are denying our spirituality. Yes, I have bad conditionings, but to say that I’m a bad person means we are almost saying that I am not a part of Krishna, that that Krishna made a mistake in creating me.

No. We are parts of Krishna. There is a core goodness to every one of us, because at the core, we are souls, and the soul is always a part of Krishna. So at this point, it is that when we okay, I’ve decided that I’ll try to outlast the temptation. If I can’t outlast, at least I’ll persist in between.

But then when I’m persisting, what do I do within that? So here we need to do something meaningful. I mentioned this point earlier. So some of these points I mentioned earlier, but I’m repeating them here. That we need some positive feeling within us.

So sometimes we may feel too positive and deny our faults. Sometimes we feel too negative and deny that there’s any goodness within us at all. So what we want is that okay, there is some potential goodness within me. There is something which I can do of value. So basically here, when we say persist, at one level it’s persist in fight persist in fighting.

But we also need to persist and see if there is it if there is a war within a war there can be many battles. You know, there can be battle 1, battle 2, battle 3, battle 4. There are many battles we are fighting. So for example, we may find that I want to chant attentively. That’s one battle I’m fighting.

But maybe, you know, some days we win that battle or some days we don’t even know we are in the battle and we lost the battle also. Isn’t it? So it happened like that. But if I decided, you know, actually, I like philosophy. So maybe, you know, every day I will read the Bhagavad Gita.

I’ll read Bhagavad Gita for 15 minutes, half an hour. And then if we do that, you can say, okay, last 1 month, I did this. You know, I completed a one kanto. That’s that’s a good job. And I could have got distracted.

I did not get distracted. So basically, we need to find a winnable battle. And there is a positive view of ourselves. Overall, we need to have a view of ourselves which is positive. Yes, I have problems, but still I have potentials also.

I am a part of Krishna. So how do we get this positive view of ourselves? Essentially it is we set a meaningful goal for ourselves. Okay. Okay.

Maybe when temptation comes, I may not be able to resist it. But you know this, I can do this service. I can read the shastra. I can follow this discipline that set a meaningful goal and take tangible steps toward that goal. So instead of saying see sometimes we set goals in which there is no success.

There’s only failure. What do I mean by that? If somebody sets a goal, I will never eat sweets for the rest of my life. Well, there is no success because we may not eat sweets for 1 year, but the rest of life is still remaining. Isn’t it?

So what happens is we will succeed in something for 1 year and after that if we relapse, all that we will think is we failed in that goal. Sometimes we set goals that are no success in that goal only, isn’t it? So instead, we need to set a meaningful goal. Okay. Okay.

For 1 month, I’m not going to do this. For 1 week, I’m not going to do this. So it could be I’m not going to do this, or it could also be I am going to do this. So when we do that, set a meaningful goal. By that, what happens?

If this is a winnable battle for us, okay, this I can do. Then when we do that, okay, whether I succumb to this see whether when I get angry, I yell at someone, I behave improperly. I’ll make sure that whenever normally I interact, you know, I will say please. I’ll say thank you. If I see somebody doing something good, I’ll appreciate them.

So there are certain things which we can do. And so we set a tangible, meaningful goal that is doable for us. Not just a meaningful goal, set a meaningful doable goal for us. There are some things which may not be doable. There’s some things we know this is doable for me.

So we set a meaningful doable goal and just take tangible steps toward that. If we do this, this will create a certain level of self confidence or I wanna use this word, hope over here. We don’t want to be hopeless. Yes, there are sometimes hopelessness can create humility, but sometimes hopelessness can just create hopelessness. Ultimately God helps those who help themselves.

If I think that I am so fallen that even God can’t help me, then God help you. Isn’t it like that? You know, who can help you then? Ultimately, we have to have that hope that we can be helped. And then therefore, setting some goal which we can take tangible steps towards.

That is very helpful. So this gradually not till now I have not really talked about how to develop the ability to follow rules. I’m just saying that while we are in a phase, we are unable to follow. So we we do these three things. So the 3 steps which I mentioned is first is outlast.

We don’t have to overpower, but we learn to outlast. Now if we can’t outlast, then persist in between. Then while we are persisting, it’s not just like we are defending. Okay. We are waiting for the attacker in which we are persisting.

Here, we also try to achieve it makes some target. We try to achieve something. So what happens by this is that each one of us, we can create this positive feeling. So I will move forward to the next part of this and then we will have some question answers. Now there is this battle that we have with the sense objects.

And by this process, I acknowledge that my mind is sometimes having impression that are too strong. I may not be able to or call overpower them. I may succumb to them at times. So it’s like bollywood.com that becomes auto complete. And if I just sometimes don’t pay attention, the b comes and I press enter and I go to bollywood.com.

I can’t that happens sometimes. But then I don’t have to stay there for hours over there. As soon as I realize, I pick myself up and I come out of that. But then we need to also that that Vairagya is there, but Abhijas is there. We want to have okay.

Bhagwadhi.com, we want to keep visiting. So the remaining three stages are they are more directly about bhakti. So I’ll talk about the 3 stages. So itself has one aspect is how do we deal with the? But the other is how do we deal with the?

How do we connect with the? So the next 3, so we can say. Is that which is meaningful. That is valuable. How do we develop the desire for that?

So in this stage of we discussed 3 of them which mainly deal with fighting. Dealing with. So now the remaining 3 are about connecting with the artha. So one is. I’ll ex and then another is there is.

And then there is. So. Means it is like oscillating moody. That sometimes we become very serious in our bhakti. Sometimes we become very casual in our bhakti.

Basically oscillating or moody, we can say. So that our connection with Krishna is moody. Tarangarangini means that there are peripheral pleasures. Peripheral pleasures means that I am not so much interested in bhakti itself. I’m interested in the fringe benefits of bhakti.

A fringe benefits of bhakti means, like say, you know, oh, in this voice they train you how to do public speaking. So you you come to study the Bhagavad Gita about your interest in public speaking. Okay. Yeah. You now we may learn public speaking, but if you’re coming for that, then we are actually undervaluing what we are getting over here.

Isn’t it? How you may learn this skill, you may learn that skill. It’s good if you learn those skills. You can use them in Krishna’s service. But if that is where we are getting the pleasure.

And is where it’s like there is a lot of show of the devotion. One is where we ourselves seeks pleasure in the peripherals, but here it is like we are interested in showing off. It’s more like, you can say I’ll talk about it in a minute, we are interested more in proving not improving. It’s like proving that my path is better than your path. Proving that I am better than you.

Not improving myself. So where there’s enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm is for showing others. It is not for purifying ourselves. So these are the three things which may go off when we are trying to develop the earth, when we are trying to connect with Krishna. So right now I’ll talk about today I’ll talk about ghanatarla, then tomorrow morning I’ll talk about the next.

Okay. So ghanatarla means sometimes we feel very enthusiastic in our devotion and sometimes we just don’t feel at all enthusiastic. Sometimes we just feel like we are chanting. Sometimes we feel, you know, I I wanna chant more rounds. Sometimes we just take out the beads.

You know, has somebody chained the beads? There are 1,008 beads. There’s a 108. This is just not getting over. What is happening?

So that moodiness comes up. So at this point, when there is that moodiness, again, see our mind is like a child. And we need to recognize that the mind and there are many ways to deal with this moodiness. I’ll just focus on 2 main ways. That if we consider the mind to be like a child.

Now sometimes, you know, parent now somebody becomes a parent. In the past, there was extended family and then the grandparents were there, uncles were there, and they would all help in taking care of the children. But now, maybe people live in nuclear families, and it’s like you have to take care of the child entirely yourself. You know, many devotees from India I mean, people from India, they go and settle abroad. And when they settle abroad, when they have children, they generally ask their in laws or their parents to come and stay with them.

During COVID nobody could come. So the COVID babies, you know, there are challenges both from the parents side and the children’s side. Children don’t get to socialize. The children, they just see people, they get scared. Where did all these people come from?

I never saw people in my life. But for the parents also, they take care of the children. There’s no support system. So it was difficult. So the point is that sometimes you may read parenting books, you may ask other parents, and that is good.

But each child is an individual. What works for one child may not work for another child. If the same parent has 2 children, it’s not that there is a parenting formula that everybody can use. Now if you are twins, the twins may have different personalities. So the point is each mind is an individual.

So your mind is different from my mind, and we cannot just use, like, a a brute force approach. This approach worked for you, and it has to work for everyone. Each mind is an individual. So what what does that mean? That we have to learn how we can help our mind to learn.

We need to learn how we can help our mind to learn. This is especially true, say, if some parents have an autistic child. Now autism is a big spectrum. There is some cognitive developmental issue. There are some behavioral issues.

There are kinesthetic issues. So now that doesn’t mean the child is dumb. The child may be very intelligent in its own way. So it is not that my child can’t learn, my child is foolish. The parents have to spend some time to learn.

How can I help my child to learn? So like that, rather than saying my mind is a fool, my mind is an enemy, yeah, that may be true. It acts like that at times. But the mind is also an individual, and we have to find out. Sometimes we just have to use force.

We have to do this, but we cannot be using force all the time. We have to learn how we can help our mind to learn. So what does this mean? It could may might exist. Somebody’s sitting for a class.

Some devotees may find that they can pay the most attention, and they just don’t make any notes. Sit and hear. I may feel, you know, I just want to immerse myself in the experience. Even though I don’t remember all the points, you know, I just want to be absorbed in the class. Someday, what do you find when I make notes?

That’s when I may miss some point. I may not make all the notes, but that’s when I am more absorbed. Some people say, I just want to make notes. I mean, I’ll draw something. I’ll have a pencil with multiple markers, multiple colors.

I’ll underline this, I’ll highlight this. And somebody say, were you attending a philosophical class or was it an art competition? There are so many things over here. So with respect to chanting, some devotees will be able to sit and chant attentively. Some devotees may find that, you know, if they walk, they might be able to chant better.

Sometimes what happens is we just use oversimplified categorization. Somebody would say, you sit and chant, it’s sathoguna. You stand and chant, it’s rajoguna. You walk and chant, it’s the muguna. Wow.

What is it? Then you sit and sleep, where is it? Is it so here you go. It’s not that simple. Yeah.

You you we could say that generally sitting and chanting, we can focus better. But it’s not that simple. Each mind is different. Now, of course, if you’re walking and going on a sightseeing tour, then that’s different. But if you’re walking and trying to focus, sometimes what happens is the mind is just running everywhere and we’re not able to focus it.

And we’re just not able to we’re not able to slow it down. And sometimes the mind is just going nowhere. It, like, got caught in inertia. Sometimes we have to shake it a little bit. It’s like it’s so lethargic.

So each mind is different. And each one of us has to find out how best can I connect with Krishna? So for some people, it may be that when they’re reading. Some devotees may be able to read I read it alone, and I can read well. Some devotees may be I I said to the group with someone else or with a group, and we read aloud.

And then different devotees speak their realizations or speak a little bit. But I like reading in a group. Now which is right? It depends. Some devotees may feel that I read in a group, you know, I can get things from so many perspectives.

And it’s so stimulating. I don’t get to think at all. You know, I need to pause and think. So each one of us has an individual mind. Now, of course, there are universal universal principles in bhakti, and there are certain standard ways in which you practice also.

But each one of us has to find out how when you say how we can get the mind to learn, that means there are like stages. This is a whole big thing. 1st, we are able to pay attention. Then we are able to trigger some attraction. And then we go towards absorption.

So for each one of us when we say remember Krishna or be Krishna conscious. So first, we are just paying attention. And then so for example, somebody may sit for a class. They’re not they’re not constantly looking at the phone. They are paying attention.

That’s the first step. But then, hey, this seems interesting. Now it’s not that everything in a class may seem interesting, but we may find one point interesting. And from that point, the attraction starts growing. And from that attraction, eventually, absorption will come.

So this journey is often an individual journey. So instead of simply saying that, you know, my mind is so uncontrolled, well, yes, there is truth through that. But learn how we can help our mind to learn That we don’t really want to treat our mind permanently like an enemy. Okay. Okay.

Maybe at this time when I study, I’m able to focus better. At this time if I study, I get too distracted. We have to observe the patterns of our mind. So that means that here, you know, we started with Shaddha means curiosity. So like that we can have when this moodiness comes up.

Rather than I’m so moody, you know, I just become lazy at times. Okay. Maybe that is true, but it’s not just I’m such a lazy person. I’m so inconsistent. I’m so unreliable.

I don’t instead of using labels you know, labels are very unhelpful. Labels often, they block understanding. I’ll explain what this means. So if you had to overcome moodiness, say for example, there is some plane which crashes and then the government appoints a committee to find out what caused the plane crash. Then some person comes along and says, why are you spending so much money and time in doing investigation?

I know what caused the plane crash. Okay. What caused it? Gravity. Now is gravity the cause of the plane crash?

Well, yes. Obviously, yes. And obviously, no. Isn’t it? It’s like, yes.

Obviously, gravity is the cause. But the point is, it’s not the relevant explanation. Planes are designed to fly in spite of gravity. So what we want to know is, what caused the mechanism by which the plane could fly? What caused that mechanism to malfunction?

So like that, if somebody says, you know, we yell at someone. You know, I’m just a short-tempered person. Or if you over eat and, you know, my my my watch over is too strong. Okay. That is one explanation.

But if suppose I am short-tempered, are we short-tempered 24 hours a day? No. Then still we can say, okay. Now what happened prior to that? What was I thinking at that time?

No. Maybe there were 5 people who made some unreasonable demands to me on that day. And when the 6th person came up, it was just unbearable for me. Now that is not a that is not a justification for that’s still what we did was wrong. But still, okay, then I get some understanding.

You know, maybe if multiple people are getting to my nerves, then maybe I should avoid meetings likely to be provocative. Maybe I can be polite, but I can be forming up, can we meet tomorrow or something like that? So we need to work with ourselves. So we need to gain better self understanding. So that’s why instead of labels instead of labeling, we need curiosity.

Learn how we can help ourselves to learn. So, okay, what are the times when I tend to which are the times when I tend to become very moody? Was there something that happened before that which triggered my negativity, which triggered my apathy? Now sometimes we may be able to find some patterns, sometimes we may not find, but have that attitude of learning, and then we’ll find that things are not as unmanageable as they seem. They’re still tough, but they are not unmanageable.

See the problem with using, like, a raw brute force approach. Brute force approach means no matter how I feel, you know, I’m gonna wake up. I’m gonna chant attentively. Well, yes, we should try to do that. But maybe if some days we find our mind was wandering way too much to see what happened.

Maybe I ate too much previous night or maybe, you know, I had when I slept, I forgot to have blanket with me, and that’s why I didn’t sleep very well. And then that’s why I was struggling with sleep all day. So okay. Then maybe when I sleep, next time I let me keep a blanket. They’re small things, but we don’t want to simply suppress our mind.

So it’s like when we say there is self transformation. There are 2 opposite ways in which self transformation can happen. Now say we have we have a higher self and we have a lower self. Now roughly we can say the lower self is the mind, the higher self is the intelligence, but that’s a little lower simplified. Higher self is that which understands.

I want to be kind. I want to have a service attitude. The lower self is, you know, I want respect. I want I want to be served. I want people to be pay attention to me.

Whatever it is. It’s like more ego. So we have a higher self and we have a lower self. So now there are 2 models of growth. One is that the higher self goes higher and the lower self goes lower.

So what happens by this is the higher self goes higher. The lower self goes lower means that the lower self is basically buried underground. That even if somebody irritates me, you know, I have such ironclad self control that not even a slight sign of displeasure will come on my face. So what happening, there are certain emotions that are inside us, there are certain desires inside us, but we are burying them underground. Now what happens by this is it’s like the self itself is getting very stretched over here.

This eventually leads to too much inner tension, And that inner tension can cause a breakdown. It’s like a rubber band. You pull it pull it pull it too much. It can pull, but eventually it’ll just break. So like that many times we think discipline means my lower self, I’ll just bury it completely.

So on the other hand so this is not a sustainable way of growing. The healthier way of growing is that when there is growth it is that it is my higher self goes up and my lower self also goes up. What does that mean? Say like the lower self also goes up. That means say I may still get angry but even when I get angry, my anger is within boundaries.

So maybe before I came to Bhakti, when I was angry, maybe I would use speak use swear words, speak obscenities. Now also I may get angry, but I’m never going to speak swear words. So my anger is still there, but that expression of anger has also come within more cultured boundaries. Is this difference clear? The lower self is also rising with me.

It’s not that the lower self has disappeared and only the higher self is there. The lower self is still there, but the lower self is also rising. So, like, somebody may, you know, when they want to eat, they have an urge to eat. It’s like they when the urge to eat comes, they will not even consider whether the food is offered to Krishna or not, or even whether the food is vegetarian or not. Just eat anything.

But when we start practicing bhakti, the lower self rises, okay. I may get the urge to eat, but then I will eat only food that is vegetarian, food that is offered to Krishna. Maybe the urge is so strong that even while I’m eating Krishna, please take this offering, and I offer it to myself. Now that is not the best way to do things. But the idea that I should offer that food and even when the urge is very strong, that is still there.

So that is what that is an indication that even the lower self is rising up. It’s still a lower self. Maybe that food is not properly cooked, maybe not properly offered, but still the lower self is there somewhere over there. So the point is this is a sustainable way of growing. That is why, again we made this point that Krishna doesn’t say the mind is an enemy, so you destroy it.

It is saying you need to elevate the mind. So elevate the lower self with the higher self. Elevate yourself with yourself. So this that’s why we need to learn how to get the mind to go along with us. Sometimes force is required, but we can’t just be using that relationship of force all the time.

Just like a parent and a child. Now parents sometimes have to force the child, but if all every single activity the parents have to force the child to do that activity, then there is something wrong. That’s not the way to parent. The child will be resentful. And once the child becomes a teenager, child starts earning money, the child just go away from the parents and say I want nothing to do with you.

You control me so much. So that’s something similar can happen to us also. So that’s why learn how our mind works, so that we can get it to work with us. And in connection with that only, I’ll make the second point. So first, so learn how we can help our mind to learn.

And then the second part is use our strengths to manage our weaknesses. What that means is that I have a particular kind of mind right now. Use, you could say, are even leverage. Leverage means use that as a lever. Leverage our strengths to manage our weaknesses.

So if we consider there are 2 circles that there are things which, are good for us and there are things that feel good for us. So for example, that if you consider food, you know, there is food that is healthy and there is food that is tasty. Now if these two circles were identical, life would be so easy. Unfortunately, they do are not identical. But that doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no overlap between these two.

Suppose there’s a parent, and they say that, you know, the child may just want to eat chocolates and cookies. The parents can’t allow the child to eat only chocolate chocolates and cookies. But the parents observe that, you know, my child likes this subject. That’s a healthy subject. Then the parents will make more of that, isn’t it?

The idea is that if something is healthy and something is also found to be tasty, then still that cannot be the only meal. But that can be made more. So each one of us can find out if we can see the activity that are good or say the activities of bhakti. The activities that feel good to us, now they can come from both. They can come from our.

They can come from our vasana. So basically feel good means the mind likes it, you can see. So now the vasanas, we need to regulate. But as far as the is concerned, say, if somebody likes to study, you know, they they like to study. Now what they study, you go there many you book give a book of philosophy.

You get a book book about, politics. You give a book about biography. You give a book about some investigative fiction. They just like to read. So if that is the case, then maybe when they have extra time or when they have some free time we all have certain prescribed duties in our bhakti in our life, but we have some spare time.

Now if at that time such a person you told him, no, don’t read extra. You chant extra. They may not find chanting nourishing because for them, reading may be nourishing. So if we can find out this is a this is a step forward. We learn how to help our mind to learn.

Then what we find is, okay, what are the things that my mind likes to do which are also good for me? So if we learn to we find those and then we do those more, then what will happen is there will be a space where we can experience happiness at our level right now. There is there is the lower taste. There is the lower material taste and then there is the higher spiritual taste. So what happens is we want to go from our lower material taste to the higher spiritualist.

Param Drishva vibarthati. But what happens is it can sometimes feel that the higher taste is too high up. And sometimes in trying to go to the higher taste we go halfway up and we end up further down only. We think, you know, that is just not attainable for me. So for many of us, we could have an intermediate higher material spiritual taste.

Now what do I mean by material spiritual taste? Is that it’s like our used for seva. That it’s our vrutti, so it’s material. But it is used for seva, so it becomes spiritual. That means that somebody has a natural interest in music, and they would have anyway been interested in music, but they come to Bhakti and say, no, I won’t like to learn musical instruments.

I would like to learn different tunes. So it is their vrutti. But along with the vrutti, they’re also doing it as a seva. They’re doing it for Krishna. So what happens that the pure higher taste in terms of just taste for chanting the holy names, the taste for worshiping the deities, that may take time to come.

So that is where we you know, I would let us say we talk about and all those things. Those take time to come. But we can this is actually the principle of Varanasram also. Varanasram is what? Basically whatever the vrutti the word vrutti can mean tendency, but that can also become our profession.

So whatever is our inclination, if it can become a profession, then that’s what people also say that I have some job satisfaction over here. This is what I find meaningful. This is what I really like to do. So we can try to find within our by our self observation, what are my strengths? Strength means what is my vrutti, and how can I dovetail my that vrutti in Krishna’s service?

So when we do this, then it can help us to connect with Krishna. So for example, you know, I I love words. So words, I have, like, a lot of taste for words. Sometimes I have read a whole book. I don’t even know what is the cover page.

It’s like I can somebody can give me a magazine. I don’t even notice the picture. I just immediately my eyes go to the caption. The caption is interesting. Then I look at the picture.

So I’m very verbal person. I’m not a very visual person. And I have, like, no I have very little taste for music. It’s a weird thing, but, whatever it is. So once I was giving a class and I said when you are taking darshan, you know, when Govinda Madhi Purushyam is going on, then, you know, we can memorize a verse and we can offer that verse to Krishna.

And then we can be absorbed in Krishna. So I said this, you know, that way, every day when we’re taking darshan, we can be offering a verse to Krishna. So after a couple of days, when devotee came to me, he said, bro, I tried to memorize verses, you know, and now darshan has become like a torture for me. I said, what happened? He said that, you know, the darshan, the music is so nice, goin Nam, adi, purusham.

That used to trigger devotion within me, but now I have so much anxiety to remember the words that whatever devotion is there goes away because of the anxiety. So what happened, for him, the music itself was bringing the absorption. For me, the music was not bringing the absorption. So for me memorization and recollection, that was bringing absorption. So like you remember attention, attraction, absorption.

So what will work for 1 may not work for another person. So each one of us is to find out how we get that taste. How we get that taste? Now is it a material? Is it spiritual?

Well, it’s both. It is coming from our particular buddhi, which is in our body mind machine. So it’s material, but it’s directed toward Krishna, so it’s spiritual. So this way what happens is that in our bhakti also, we have a range of activities that we do. And there are some activities that give strength to us.

And there are some activity that require strength. Okay. Come on. Now I have to do this. Like food.

Some food we enjoy eating. Some food okay. I should tolerate it. Okay. Finish now.

It’s like we are tall. It may be bitter. It may be not tasty, but I know it’s healthy. So I have to eat it. We will have both these categories in our life.

It’s like people also. There are some people, it is said, some people bring happiness wherever they go, and some people bring happiness whenever they go. So now now we all will have both kind of people in our life. We can’t avoid that. But if we are only constantly associating with people, with whom we feel like every word is like walking on a landmine, what will cause an explosion, we don’t know.

No. There may be some people like that, and we have to be very, very careful with them. But if that is the only kind of people we are meeting, then, you know, we will start hating all meetings only. I just can’t do it. So we have to intersperse.

You know, this person gets on my nerves. Okay. I met this person, then maybe let me call a friend who understand me. Let me talk with them. So we need to balance our emotional energy.

If some some people require strength, then we we as a duty we have to meet them. But then the people from whom we get strength, we also need to make time to talk with those people, to be associate with them, and then we get some strength by that. It’s like food. There are some activities which require energy. There are some activities which give energy to us.

So we naturally balance that at the physical level. If I had somebody who’s done, like, heavy physical activity, okay, now I need to get some I eat some nutritious food. We naturally do that, but we need to understand that principle for other activities also. So for us, in bhakti, also there are some activities which give strength to us, and some activities require strength. So maybe for many devotees, kirtan gives strength.

Maybe japa requires strength. It may vary, whatever it is. But some devotees before coming to bhakti, they might be doing solitary meditation. And, you know, maybe they were chanting mantras before or they were doing some kind of silent meditation. Those who use maybe if there are some people like that, those who do silent meditation before, though for them, japa is very immersive.

For them, kirtan is very noisy. And this is one thing which very strikingly I noticed, kirtans in India and kirtans in the west. The kirtans in the west, the kind of kirtans people like, they are more prayerful, more reflective, more meditative, gentle, soft instruments. And people want peace. You know, there are some people who don’t want peace, they want ecstasy.

And the 2 are different needs, isn’t it? So the so then there are people who there’s one kirtan here. He was a I mean, he he does some also. They’re like for him, it’s a is like a concert. And for 1 there are the ticket is $500.

And people just go and sit and hear the I feel so good about it. So if people have come from a meditative background, then what happens is that’s what gives them strength. And okay. So so japa also, they want to do it. Soft gentle japa.

Somebody’s doing loud japa. They just started glaring at that person. You know? You know, your japa is disturbing me. Okay.

Then they may want to go and sit in some corner and do some japa. So the point I’m saying is each mind is different. And for us we have to see what gives me strength. Instead of just saying I’m a moody person and my mood goes off sometimes. Okay.

It can happen to every one of us, but then what are the activities I can do when my mood is down? If my mood is down, and that time I have to do activity that requires strength, that will be too much of a demand on myself. If chanting is very difficult for me, and I don’t feel like doing anything. And somebody says, you know, okay. Don’t your mood is out.

Go chant 64 rounds. Oh, what craziness is that? I I can’t even chant 60 round. Right? I don’t feel like chanting.

How can I chant 64? I said, no. That will give you strength. Well, okay. But how will I get the strength till I till it gives me strength?

So it’s good for your future me. Yeah. But what about the present me? Isn’t it? Sometimes we feel that, you know, you are so concerned about my future me, but you’re not concerned about my present me.

I’m feeling suffocated right now. So we have to find out what gives us strength and then do those activities when we feel down. Then we start feeling like coming up. So we can’t avoid moodiness. So there is each one of us, if we can make a list of 3 activities that give strength to us.

Say for example, it could be, you know, hearing a particular devotee’s classes or say reading a particular book or say reciting a particular set of verses or singing Vaishnava bhajans. We make a list of 3 activities that gives us strength. And then maybe we make a list of 3 activities that require strength words, which in the normal course of our life we have to do those activities. Then we can draw strength from the activity that give us strength and use that to do the activity that requires strength. So some days we just don’t feel like chanting.

Then maybe pause. Maybe in the mind we can recite some shloka which we like. Maybe in our mind only we can sing some kari krishna dhun according to our key. Some favorite dhun which we like. Sing the Hariksha mantra a few times.

So now this is we don’t want to do it regularly. We don’t want to convert our japa session into kirtu session. Japa is japa. But if we’re just trying to force ourselves not working, then okay, maybe chant some forums, take a little break, do something that gives us strength, and then we do that thing which requires strength for us. So like that we can manage our own we can use like that’s why I said leverage this to manage this.

Leverage our strengths to manage our weaknesses. It’s like in a war. If there is a team, you know, that if one player is good at if one fighter is good at one thing, other fighter is good at another thing. Then the 2 come together, I manage your weaknesses, you manage my weaknesses. So like that we work with our mind.

And in that way we’ll find that those those dry phases that come in our life, when our mood goes down, when we just don’t feel like doing anything, we will be able to push through those phases. We will be able to survive. We will be able to, even strengthen ourselves to those things. And in that way, this this moodiness, we can overcome it. So sometimes we now we may also be consistent, but sometimes being consistent is very difficult.

But even if we can’t be consistent, we can be resilient. So resilient means I may be knocked down but I rise up again. Just because I’m knocked down, just because I feel down, that doesn’t mean I give up completely. You may decide that every day I’m going to read 1 hour shastra. And then maybe some days we are not able to read at all.

For whatever reason, you might just beat us. I’m a undisciplined person. I have no will power. No. Okay.

Today, they are not able to read. Now I’m feeling better. My things are better organized. Let me start reading again. Let me look back and see what could I have done something different?

Maybe I could have planned it better. I should have anticipated in this way that I won’t have this much time. So we can learn. So the way to manage this is stop expecting that we can be consistent in everything’s in everything. We can be consistent in some things, but we may not be consistent in everything.

So if we can’t be consistent, be resilient. And in that way, we will be able to even if our moods go down, we may go down, but we won’t stay down. We will rise up again. So I’ll summarize what we discussed today. Mainly I discussed 2 things.

We discussed Indanartha Naruthi. We discussed the stage of what are the first stage? Niyama akshamma. So niyama akshamma is inability to follow rules. So in that connection we discussed how if somebody is unable to follow.

So is say an anartha, it could be anger, it could be alcoholism. Is it like a medical disorder or is it a moral defect? So we discussed it can be both. When it is a state of a snow pebble, it is a moral defect. But when it becomes a snow boulder, it is a medical disorder.

So medical disorder means that not that it can’t be dealt with, but the idea is willpower alone is not enough. So there is a process required for dealing with that. And then I discuss 3 parts. 1 is outlast. And it’s like a arm wrestling match.

So the urge may have a surge, but the surge will not last. So we can try to outlast it. This is where we tolerate things. We can use boundaries to help us tolerate. The second is we persist.

Don’t let what has happened in between the when the urges have gone up to define us. Okay. I did something bad, but that does not make me a bad person. We discussed that guilt should come between us and the unearth. So guilt should be here, guilt should not be between us and the earth.

We should become so discouraged that I will not do anything at all. That does that is unhealthy. And then while we are persisting, what we can try to do is find some winnable battles. So that we try to cultivate hope. So hope comes naturally by finding a tangible goal, a meaningful goal, and steps toward that goal.

So that way, yes, it’s not that I am worthless. But okay, that battle I can’t win, but this battle I am winning. And then the second was about ghanatarla. So ghanatarla is that where our basically there’s moodiness within us. So I started that the mind is like a child.

So each child is an individual and each child needs to be dealt with individually. The 2 steps is learn how to help our mind to learn. So if you consider the child is autistic, for example, then it’s not the child is a bad child. I have to learn how to help it. I can learn.

So we discussed how when we want to grow the higher self and the lower self. It’s not the higher self goes upward and the lower self goes downwards. Rather the higher self and the lower self both go up. That’s what is sustainable. So for this, we have to take our mind along with us.

And the first principle I talked about over here is that we learn what is what is good and what feels good. We try to find the intersection. And that way this can become our strength. So this will be easier to do when we are feeling down. And then after that, then we leverage our strength to manage our weakness.

That means that when our mood is down, we do the activities that give strength first and then we are able to push on to do the activities that require strength. And that way we won’t be simply forcing ourselves through things, but we will be managing our emotional energy. The emotions are also real things and just as physical energy has to be managed, emotional energy management is also required. And that’s why we can try to be consistent. But if we can’t be, then we can try to be resilient.

Resilient means even if I go down, I’ll pick myself up and I’ll keep moving onwards. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes.

Do we have mic? Hi, Krishna. Prabhu. Is there can there be some activities which require strength, but after that, they give strength? Yeah.

Of course. See, all devotional activities will ultimately give strength to us. So when we become purified, we become connected with Krishna, and that gives strength. So sometimes we just have to go through the poison till we get there to the nectar. So, yes, there are activity like that.

But still that sometimes we can push on till we get to the strength level, but sometimes it’s just too difficult to push on. Like sometimes, say, when we wake up in the morning almost every day, we may not feel like waking up. But say after we wake up, we take a bath, we come in the association. We feel better after some time. So there’s a little bit of poison, but after that the nectar starts coming up.

You know, I get a great start to my day. I’ve been able to manage so many things, and that is good. Thank you. Yes, Bruno? Hare Krishna, Prajaji.

Prajaji, you have told that, for going from lower material test to higher spiritual test, it is it may be very far, so we will succumb we will go till higher material spiritual test. So after that stage, how we can go to higher spiritual test? We’ll talk about that when we come to the next stage after Nishtha. See there’s ruchi and there’s asakti. At the stage of ruchi we are attracted to the activities of bhakti.

By the age of asakti we are attracted to the person Krishna. And what I am doing is not important that I am doing this for Krishna is important. So that is a quite advanced stage where we’re not really like some people will say, I want to I want to paint for Krishna. I want to sing for Krishna. I had cook for Krishna, but you know, okay, fundraising for Krishna, I don’t want to do that.

So that’s okay. That’s about one stage. But then whatever Krishna wants, because Krishna is my concern. Whatever you need for Krishna, I’ll do that. Thank you.

So when the personal connection to Krishna becomes very strong, then the person becomes important and activity is not that important. Hare Krishna Puruji. I cannot understand one point that, you told the 3 steps, to, stop our, to rectify ourselves from our medical disorder, like, to set, boundaries or, outlast. And the second point was persist. So how can persistence, help us recovering from medical disorder?

Like, does that, increase the frequency of our RJs or it reduces the amplitude of our RJs? Good question. So we are not really still talking about purification directly. You know, I’m just talking about the ghanatar line that I say talk about staying on in our practice of bhakti. But bhakti creating new impressions within us.

That is what will actually transform us. So it’s like when the healthier impressions are formed inside us then they start coming as propositions from within. So that will happen with time. But what I was saying is that when we say persist, the point is there is the objective fact that we have lost a match. We have lost a fight.

But there’s a subjective feeling that I am a loser. I’m never going to win. We don’t want that. The objective fact that we have lost, we need to deal with that fact also. That means we may have to become stronger.

So how to become ourselves stronger? That’s that’s tomorrow morning session when I’ll be talking about mister Rangini and Utsa Hamay. Okay. Thank you. Yes.

Vishay Sangra is Well, from what I have seen, the Madhurikandan mini Sanskrit is not that clear. That has been translated to English by different devotees and not all the English translations are equally accurate. So I can find the exact reference for that, but, yeah. In some translations, it is given at a sequential, but in some translations, when I talk with some of the devotees, it need not be. And the lived experiences is not necessary that, you know, it also depends on one’s conditionings.

For some people, some conditioning may pop up earlier, some conditioning may pop up later, Some conditioning may stay for a longer time. So I don’t think it has to be linear. So that both from the Sanskrit precise precise Sanskrit, what are the words used and from the lived experience. It doesn’t have to be one after the other essentially. Okay.

That’s my understanding. Yes, please. Hi, Krishna. You mentioned one of the ways of, dealing with higher end, lower self, instead of completely abnegating the lower self, we raise both the lower and higher self. But sometimes, the earlier lower self, is not just acceptable to even, I mean, remain in certain cases.

For example, we happen to end up in a conflict with the devotee And, a higher lower self could mean that we also express anger to some degree, but then that could mean an I mean, I don’t know. It can mean an offense. So and it also we don’t want to commit an offense at the same time. What you said is perfectly right. We cannot bury that bury that also.

So then where do we go then? See, personally, I’m very cautious about using the word offense because it’s a very, liberally banded around term, and it is the fear of offence that keeps relationships very superficial. The fear of offence that prevents, problems from being addressed in time. So the leftist critic of this whole idea of offense is that the people in power, whether it’s the Brahmanas or the Vaishnavas or the Gurus, they created this as a structure to insulate themselves from criticism. That you know, if I am the guru, if you criticize me it’s a guru upra, then you will go to hell.

And that’s the way the guru protects oneself. It’s a system created where nobody can criticize me. I can do whatever I want and I raise myself above all else. That’s of course not true. Because any spiritual culture is a culture of respect, but it is a sad reality that this the whole idea of aparad can be manipulated.

At least in Shastra, I have not seen any devotee telling another devotee. Don’t behave like this. I have a Vaishnava. You’re coming in a prad to me. No devotee says like that.

That is not mood of a devotee. So I would say that it’s important that we have some space where we deal with our emotions. Sometimes it can be by talking with the devotee. Sometimes it can be talking with somebody else. That’s why we have some ombudsman.

We have mediation. And so is anger against devotees an aprad? It depends. It depends on what has been done and how it has been dealt with. Sometimes anger is necessary.

Like Nadaguni told, that snake, you know, don’t bite, but you have to show your fangs. Isn’t it so? Specifics will have to be dealt with. I I don’t want to give any any answer that may not apply in a specific situation, but the point is that it’s not that all emotions are necessarily wrong. If we are passing by a school and there is some big bully terrorizing some small kid, if we don’t feel anger at that time, there’s something wrong with us.

There’s something wrong with our humanity, isn’t it? So anger is not always a bad thing. There are bad things happening in the world, and if we don’t feel anger when those bad things happen, then then that is a bad thing about our conscience. Isn’t it so? Anger itself is not a bad thing.

Now, of course, just because that bully is terrorizing that small kid doesn’t mean that I go and start beating up the bully. What I do for that, I have to use my intelligence. There’s the emotion of anger and there’s the expression of anger. So expression of anger can often be counterproductive, but the emotion of anger can sometimes be indicative that there are things that are wrong. So now the emotion of anger, it can arise from 2 distinct sources.

It’s like a misperception of wrong. That means somebody has done something and we perceive it wrongly. You know, we go to a place and we greet someone and that person just doesn’t greet us. That person deliberately insulted me. That person deliberately insulted me.

But maybe they had something else on their mind and they didn’t even notice us because they were so preoccupied. So sometimes anger can arise from misperception of wrong, but sometimes anger can arise from perception of actual wrong. And if that has happened, then things have to be fixed. Now how to fix that’s a different thing. But the emotion of anger itself is not a bad thing.

It has to be appropriately addressed. How to address it? That we need to have some senior devotee with whom we can talk. Maybe that going to that devotee itself may not be the right thing. You have to go to someone else, You have to talk with that devotee and then come up with a strategy to deal with it.

Okay. Does that address the point? I was asking, like, the definition of, the higher lower self, in a situation where we might, blood out during a conversation could mean that we blood out less. So should we, allow that to happen or should we, like, work on that? You see, that’s a specific issue.

See, boundaries are required by everyone in every. Like I mentioned that even with respect to lust, we might say that there is so much free mixing and there is, sexual sexually liberal culture today. But even in such a culture, there is a boundary that is considered non negotiable. That is consent. You know that without consent, you cannot even touch someone.

That is, there is a posh act and, sexual harassment. It’s very serious. So there will always be boundaries and somebody can’t say that I do this. This is my lower self acting. No.

That we based on the particular culture, the particular law, we have to we have to regulate ourselves. So the point in time, we can’t get into specifics. So yes, sometimes we may not want to blurt out at all, but we don’t want to blurt out inappropriately in a particular conversation. Say if we are talking with our juniors or our equals who don’t know anything about the issue and then we talk about the issue, all that we do is we’re just agitating that person also. But then if you go to a senior and we talk with them, and we try to try to do something to either fix the issue or at least fix ourselves so that we get a better understanding of how could something like this have happened.

How do I make sense of it? So there is an appropriate expression. Inappropriate expression definitely need to be regulated. But when I say take the lower self also along with us, that means we don’t just suppress all expression. Appropriate expression is not considered to be a bad thing.

Now it depends on devotees also. Some devotees may just not approve that kind of thing. How can you think any like this about a senior devotee? Well, okay. Then all that it means is, you know, that not that devotee is not the right person for us to talk with about that kind of issue.

We have to find out somebody who’s a little more like minded. Yeah. Yes, please. Harish, Shnu, Prajak. We are talking of the face of Anarth and Averitti where you have given the analogy of, like, a battlefield.

Like, there there are some battles where we win and there are some battles where we lose. And there are some battles we which we continuously lose. You know, even some years pass in Bhakti and still we lose those battles. Like, if, like, if we take the statement of Srila Prapa, Prapa says that we can understand that whether we are advancing in bhakti, by understanding that how much we are losing interest in material things. That’s the only one parameter.

You cannot make it the sole parameter. The Puntari kudan is still lured in wealth. Nityan Prud you can say he’s a audud, but still he had a he used to wear dress opulently. Prabhupada, the Bhakti san sudakur would mix all the food items, and he would just eat I don’t want my tongue to taste any sense gratification. Prabhupada would not even mix dal and rice.

Prabhupada said, I want to taste the dal separately. I want to taste the rice separately. Now so is it that Paktaal Thakur is more advanced and Prabhupada less advanced? I don’t think we can be that simplistic with respect to these things. You know that Rauvara Das Goswami is one example of enunciation, where he would just drink some buttermilk once in 3 days.

But then there are devotees who would, again, Jagannath Puri would say that, you know, they’ll make up 50, 60 items, and then devotees would eat that, and devotees would feed each other. So see just because something is true does not mean that only that thing is true. Knowledge in the mode of ignorance, Krishna says, it is to make one thing into everything. So take and make it everything. So sometimes some people say, okay.

You said that you, we we lose interest in sleeping. So as we grow older, biologically speaking, different bodies work differently. Some bodies just can’t function without 8, 9 hours sleep. Some bodies may function with 4 hours sleep. Now somebody might not be a devotee and they’re sleeping 4 hours.

Does that mean that they are advanced, spiritually? No. So, yes, overall, the amount of escape way we seek through sleeping sometimes, you know, people, they just get frustrated, you know. I tried this, didn’t work. I tried that, that didn’t work.

I tried that, that didn’t work. Nothing is working. Okay. I just take a blanket, pull it over my head and go to sleep. And then you can’t even sleep.

Even sleeping is not working then. Then you get really frustrated. You have insomnia or things like that. But the point is that we can’t just take one parameter. Some people just need need a particular amount of sleep, and okay, that’s what you need.

That’s what you need. Don’t try to battle with that too much. So, renunciation is also an opulence of Krishna. It’s like beauty is an opulence, strength is an opulence, knowledge is an opulence, wealth is an opulence. So this opulence may come by past karma.

Some people just may be more good looking than others. Does that mean that they’re more spiritually advanced? No. It’s because of past karma. So some people may just by past karma have greater renunciation than others.

From Ayurvedic perspective, somebody has a Kapha body, for them fasting is relatively easier. Somebody has a Pitta body, even a few hours fasting may be very difficult for them. So is it that all people with Kapha body are more spiritually advanced, and all people with Pitta body are spiritually advanced? No. You cannot take one criteria.

Yes. Prabhupada does mention that, but there are other places where Prabhupada will mention other things. So the problem is when we take one statement and absolutize it. Okay? Prajie, when you were giving examples of Pundarika Vidyanidhi or Nithyananda Prabhu, like, they are exalted devotees and, like, where you have explained in previous classes for some people, for devotees, world is a means to attend Krishna, like and all.

So but, that that is not our consciousness. Like, like, there are some universal principles wherein those are not supposed to be done by a bhakta, or there are some principles. The details may change in some principles, but there are some principles where one should not do. Like in such a case, like you were giving the analogy of battlefields, some stats of winning battlefields and losing battlefields, Sometimes when even after some years, we see that we are there are some few battles which we are winning. But when you see the whole statistics and the whole picture, you’ll have confusion whether I’m just going through Bhakti or growing through Bhakti.

That then how can one evaluate themselves that there there are some battlefields which you are winning. But there are some battlefields like the principles there are some stringent principles which one should follow being a devotee. And one one one is Life’s complex. Like Life is complex. You know, we don’t know what conditionings we bring into our life.

And on one side, we say So it is unmotivated and uninterrupted. So now Prabhupada takes it as that we should practice bhakti without any motivation, without any interruption. Vishwanachakra Thakur says that this is a property of bhakti. That means, you know, bhakti itself cannot be interrupted by anything material. So who knows?

Somebody might be an alcoholic, and maybe they cannot give up alcohol for the rest of their life. Is it possible? Well, they may want to do some seva. They may not get they may not be able to get initiated. They may not be able to take particular responsibility in the institution.

But does that mean that they are disqualified from bhakti? No. It doesn’t mean that. Now are you going to guilt them? You know, you are just not chanting Hare Krishna attentively.

Maybe they are. Maybe still, sir. What is happening? It’s life is very complex, and, you know, it’s they cannot, reduce everyone’s, spiritual this reduce people’s spiritual stature to particular rules. So what can we do?

It’s it’s difficult. So they need to find out devotees who understand them. They need to find out like minded association. This is extremely important. So like minded association can also mean a like minded guide.

What that means is, it has 3 factors to it. 1 is that if I am here and the guide is here, Then when they speak, I understand their mind. That means sometimes we ask a question and some people give an answer. That answer only raises further questions in our mind. Like, if I have some question about scripture and I need some logical answer, but somebody has quotes another scripture, verse 2, just express they say the same thing you said over here.

That’s okay, but how do I make sense of it? Sometimes some people’s answers just don’t make sense to us. Some people’s answers make sense to us. So I understand their mind. Then they understand my mind.

That means if I make a particular statement, they don’t just immediately judge and label. You’re being too overanalytical. You are being too sentimental. You know, you are committing an aprat. They don’t just simply conveniently put us into labels.

Okay. I understand that. You know, why you’re thinking like this? Yeah. You know, I also had similar questions when I was 5 years ago in bhakti or 20 years ago in bhakti.

They understand our mind. And 3rd is they help us understand our mind. That means you’re thinking like this. Till this point it is right, but maybe you are not all consider this factor. Oh, okay.

Yeah. That makes sense. So we need empathetic devotees. So are there standards which are nonviable? Of course, there are.

But ultimately, Somebody is chanting Hare Krishna and say, they’re not able to give up some habit. What are you going to do? Are you going to say that, no, they’re a fallen person? Maybe they’re but what are they going to do then? Okay.

You know, I’m chanting, but still this condition keeps coming, and I’m not able to overcome it. What do you do at that time? So we have to acknowledge that life is very complex, and we cannot reduce people to labels. Now could it be that it’s because of insincerity? It’s possible, But could it be because it’s some conditioning from the past it’s very difficult to overcome?

That is also possible. So we need like minded devotee guides who can help us introspect, and then who can go deep into it and see, okay, what’s happening over here? Why is this battle not being won? So, you know, it’s like some devotees may practice 25, 30 years, and still they may get angry. Now if you want to be respectful and not commit uprad, they say their anger is transcendental.

But maybe it is not. Maybe their anger ends up alienating people, antagonizing people. Sincere people go away from bhakti because of their anger. So now maybe if somebody has anger issue, they may be very sincere devotees. They may be diligent in other aspects of their life.

Maybe they’re extremely honest. They’ll not even take 1 penny for themselves. But anger, they just it comes. So maybe if somebody has anger issues, then maybe maybe they should not be in devotee care, isn’t it? So sometimes we have to just help the person.

Okay. This conditioning is not going away. Then acknowledge that this is a vulnerability. This is a weakness. And then let’s not try to do a service which is going to be difficult for you.

So some devotee may be very, very diligent, but suppose, you know, they just just eat too much food, or they they can’t resist sweets or whatever. And you say, you have been practicing bhakti for 30 years. How can you not resist sweets? It’s a small thing. You know, I gave up sweets after practicing bhakti for 3 years.

Well, maybe you didn’t have that condition, that particular condition. So then maybe they need some help. If they have diabetes and they just can’t visit sweets, Then if they are a senior devotee, then whoever is cooking for them, they need to plan that, you know, we will not bring sweets in the menu at all. Now you might say, you should just be able to control. But life is complicated.

The mind is complicated. And if we just go into simple straightforward judgments or like simplistic judgments, it’s not helpful. So I know I wanted I know one devote in Florida. Florida is like a place where many elderly Prabhupada disciples stay. So in America, there’s a dual taxation system.

Like the government has a tax and the state also has a tax. And some states have no taxes. So Florida is like a no state tax place. That’s why it’s like many retired people go and stay over there. And he said, he was telling me that that, you know, that I was told that if you sleep more than 6 hours, that is tamagodha.

So he said, for the last 35 years, I never slept more than 5 and a half hours, no matter how tired I was. But he said that I had a doctor. The old doctor, only younger doctor. He said, your body is immensely sleep deprived. I said, you have to sleep 8 hours.

I said, no. You cannot sleep for more than 6 hours. I said, you know, whatever, Prabhupa said is true, but right now, you just do this. He said that I did it for 3 months and my health insurance bill has gone down by $25,000. In America, they call health care as health scare.

You know, like every small thing. I was once eating I was taking some prasad and somehow in that so that one date, the Agatha beach, seed Agatha. So that I just chewed that. My tooth broke. Like, the whole mouth became bloody.

So then I was at the airport. We went to the next station, and then we went to our doctor. They said that you have to do a root canal, and the root canal is is $1500. I said, $1500? It’s like, where are they?

India, America round trip. So I said, you just give me some pain medication. I was going 15 days. I came back to India. After that, I did the root canal.

So the point is that, you know, he’s an elderly devotee, and he actually started sleeping sleeping 8 hours. And his health insurance health cost became so much lesser. And he said, now I have so much less anxiety. Because he doesn’t have a treasure house of money. He just served Prabhupada throughout his life.

So now that whole financial anxiety has gone off, he’s sleeping more, he’s healthier, and he’s able to serve with less anxiety. So is it that he was more advanced throughout his life and he’s become less advanced now? That he’s sleeping more? No. We can’t have this kind of simplistic analysis.

So we have we have to be understanding. And are we compromising on your understanding? Maybe. That’s why we need to talk with some good friends. Talk with like minded guides.

Okay. Yes, Maybe one of the last questions. Prabhu, you introduced that, Tarangarangini and, Utsahamayi. Just a a little few words. And there it was there that, We’ll talk can we talk about that tomorrow?

Oh. That’s just a untimely subject. Yes, sir. Hi, Krishna, bro. I have 2 questions.

Like, in the morning class, you explained about a father, so absorbed in watching TV and forgetting his, to bring his child from school. So similarly in our daily lives, we also encounter some, instances like that. So we forget other activities. So how to deal with that? Or how to remind ourselves that we have other works too too?

You’re talking about because of bhakti or because of anything? Like, because of because of mostly material things. Like Okay. Because we become absorbed in some things. Yes.

Yeah. It’s a sometimes we have to create reminders. Like, you know, we can use digital things to create reminders. We have to use other people to give us reminders. Sometimes our mind just gets caught.

Like I said, we have to work with the mind we have. So if you know that, I tend to get lost in these things. Say, like somebody had the tendency, you know, if they have a whole weekend free, then we just spend the whole weekend on social media. Like, you know, I think 5 minutes and 5 minutes become 5 hours and 5 hours becomes 25 hours and the whole weekend is gone completely. So then if we have that tendency of getting carried away, then create obligatory engagements periodically.

So instead of having, okay, full weekend I’ll just read Shastra, we will end up full weekend not reading anything at all. So maybe, you know, have a have a meeting with someone, plan something, get together with someone. So have some mandatory engagements interspersed. So what happens is that that often our mind needs some structure. If there is no structure then there is more rupture.

So rupture means the mind just ruptures the entire plan and framework. That’s why now we create a structure for ourselves. Now different people may need different degrees of structure. Some people like that morning to night, my every hour, every minute is planned. And then they feel okay.

I did this, this, this, this. Some people may feel, you know, I feel suffocated. I don’t have any space for spontaneity, creativity, for taking a breath. So how much structure we need, each one of us has to decide. But we all need some structure.

Otherwise, the mind can take us, sweep us away completely and a lot of rupture. Okay? And, the second question is like that. You drew the graph of, like cravings versus time. So in here there you, drew multiple peaks at after certain intervals of time.

So what if the, the frequency of the frequency of the peaks occurring become very high and therefore we get very less persisting time. So Yeah. That’s a individual situation. We all have to deal with that. It depends on the conditionings also.

So there is always some space in between. I was in Columbus, Ohio. Ohio is a place where there are a lot of drugs now coming in. So there’s 1 Indian boy, very intelligent from IIT only, IIT Mumbai. He went to America, and he had a very promising career.

He had a full scholarship, which is quite rare. And he was caught in a car crash, unfortunately. And very bad car crash, then he was hospitalized. And what happens is that in America, there is there is there are books like written in the Empire of Pain, where basically they have designed the pain medications to be addictive. So he had multiple surgeries.

He needed pain medication. He told me that I went into the hospital with a fractured body, and I came out of the hospital with an addicted mind. He just got addicted to the pain medication. He says, I just can’t do anything. I can’t function happily into rehabilitation centers and out.

It’s horrible. So not everybody who becomes addicted to drugs is they deliberately wanted to enjoy and they foolishly got into drugs. Sometimes it’s just that prescription drugs become addictive. It’s a horrible world sometimes. So anyway, so he so then I told him, imagine if you didn’t have this addiction, what would you do?

So he said that, you know, I always had an interest in chemistry. I would like to wear a change in the course, and I will do research to develop non addictive pain medications more, so then you can replace it. I said, that’s a noble aspiration. You know, you are you have gone through pain, but you have found a purpose through that pain. I said, how far have you come in that direction?

He says, I have not taken the admission. I can’t even function. He said, just now that I have come to this temple, this is my few sober hours. After that I lose lucidity. So I told him, see, nowadays with Internet and, online education, you don’t need a degree right now.

No. You can start studying right now. Start doing something meaningful in the time that you have. And even if it’s 15 minutes of lucidity, you do something valuable in that time. And the more we are able to do something meaningful with whatever little time we have, the more we start getting the inspiration to fight against our anartas also.

So whatever time we have, we start with that. This was about 3 years ago, then recently I had gone and met him. He came to meet me and he said that now he’s already without being admitted in the university, he has published 2, 3 papers based on his based on his graduation degree itself and his papers in good journals, and he said, now I’m exploring. So he’s still coming out of that addiction. He says, sometimes I have to at least he had that much sobriety that when the urge becomes strong, he says, I have to admit myself to a rehabilitation center.

He goes there, stays for a month, then comes out, and he’s working. So we have to work with whatever space we have. And gradually, if you’re doing something meaningful over there, the the frequency will decrease, and even the intensity will also decrease with time. Okay? Last question.

Thank you. Hi, Vishnu. In the morning class, bro, you told that in order to internalizing, we should contemplate and speak, write something in our own words. And but we have contaminated intelligence and, when we try to speak or write something in our own words, so it impacts us. So my question is that in order to write or speak something, what should be our boundaries on or how should we do that?

Yes, we have contaminated intelligence, but then, you know, Krishna knows where we are at. Krishna is not a sadistic God. Krishna Krishna doesn’t say, no. You have to understand me. You can understand only with pure intelligence, and you can never have pure intelligence because you are conditioned.

So it’s not like that, you know. Krishna is not going to make demands from us that are intrinsically impossible for us. The qualification for understanding scripture is to have pure intelligence, and the only way to get pure intelligence is by studying scripture. That is basically that Krishna has trapped us in a condition from which you can never come out. Isn’t it?

It’s not like that. So whatever intelligence we have, we use it. So the step the idea of boundaries is important, but just because our intelligence is impure, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use it. And like Tukaram Maharaj’s saint in Maharashtra, he says that, you know, there are great birds. There are some birds you can fly.

Krishna’s career also use the same example. There are some birds you can fly very high in the sky. You know, I can’t fly that high, but I’ll fly according to my capacity. Just because I can’t fly high, doesn’t mean I I have no right to fly. So why apply that only to intelligence then?

Why not apply to kirtans? When we are singing, is our voice pure? Is our heart pure when we are singing? So till our heart is purified, we should not sing kirtans. Why put intelligence in us artificially it’s almost like apartheid against intelligence.

You know apartheid? There is racial segregation there in South Africa. So everything can be contaminated. Our heart is not pure when we are cooking. When we are cooking for Krishna, we are thinking, I also want to eat this.