Namaste. So, today we d like to talk a little bit about
what is the actual goal of all yoga processes. Because of a lack of understanding people
like to talk about yoga, primarily as just the Hatha Yoga system, and they like to advertise
the idea that there are different types of practices, or different application of asana,
how it s performed and they want to create some uniqueness by putting labels on it; but
in the real yoga system all forms of asana just constitute one eighth of what is the
yoga practice one part, one eighth. There are eight principal divisions within the yoga
system this is speaking about astanga yoga. But there are other forms of yoga, sometimes
referred to as Raja Yoga; Jnana yoga which is the philosophical study of yogic truth;
you have Karma yoga, which is action in the service of the Supreme and of others; you
have Kundalini yoga; you have Bhakti yoga; and many other variants. But if a person actually
has a complete understanding, they will see that the yoga system is actually one.
And we can compare this to a mountain, particularly like a volcanic mountain where there is no
mountain ranges. There is just a single mountain, and around this very large mountain there
may be different villages where people are living, and they may come to a monthly or,
marketplace that may be held in a certain area. And two people may meet and begin talking,
and one will say, Where do you live? And the other person will go, I live in such and such
a village, and it is near a mountain, at the foot of a mountain. And the other person will
go Oh yes, I also come from a village that is at the foot of a mountain. What is your
mountain? And he said My mountain, when you look, it is a giant , steep rock face, and
it is very craggy beyond that, very steep rocks everywhere. The other man goes Oh, my
mountain is covered with a bamboo forest up to a certain level and beyond that there are
great trees, and then they meet a third person that says, Oh I also live by a mountain and
there is a waterfall, beautiful waterfall and it s a very gently rolling hills at the
foot of this mountain. And they re all going Oh, I d like to visit your mountain some day
and also see it. And what they are not understanding is that a person that has ascended to the
very top of this mountain will see, on different sides, or different parts of the mountain,
there are different views with different landscapes. And the people from a lower position, when
they look up, they are thinking, Oh, this is one mountain, and somebody else is looking
from another angle, thinking Oh it is another mountain.
So, when we discuss or talk about the goal of all yoga processes, we are discussing from
a top down view.
We consider what is the actual goal of all the yoga processes. It can basically be answered
in two ways. One is that the goal is to lead a person to
a correct understanding of what is. This might sound a little deep, but it's really not.
It's quite simple and straightforward. It is an understanding of the reality of things.
The second part of this goal is to then apply that correct understanding of things to your
own life. This is actually the goal of yoga simply put, but this is an overview, and it
has a very profound meanings as we dig deeper into those questions.
So, sometimes, because we are going to be discussing spiritual things in nature and
talking about a higher power, Supreme Bhagavan, sometimes addressed as Bhagavan, the cause
of all cause, people may think that we are speaking about a religion. And so they begin
to ask, What is the difference between yoga and religion?
One of the fundamental differences is that religion quite often is reliant upon an element
of faith, in the sense of a belief. One has to adopt a belief system or certain types
of beliefs in order to be considered a follower of a particular religion. There is no real
consideration, quite often, of the individuals, and no profound questioning, quite often,
about whether something that is being believed is truth or whether it is untruth, or even
partial truth. What is required is not to delve into that area.
I can remember when I was a kid, I was raised within a particular Christian denomination
and I can remember questioning things and the things that were too hard to answer I
was told, It is a divine mystery. Simply believe. And that didn't really sit very well with
me because I could not really appreciate, and I really wanted to know, and I couldn't
appreciate that I simply had to believe. Why can't I know? Why can't I question and seek
actual answers? Why do I simply have to believe? One of the wonderful things about the yoga
system is that it is you are taught to actually question. But you are not just encouraged,
it is an integral part of the yoga system to come to experience the reality of truths
that are put forward. It is not only not encouraged, it is actively discouraged that you should
simply blindly believe something or have faith in it. One is encouraged to come to the point
of seeing with great clarity that which is truth. And so in this way it is dependent
upon direct perception. When I say direct perception we'll talk a
little bit more about it I'm not just talking about the idea of seeing is believing. I mean
you cannot really depend on what your eyes tell you. It is possible for us I mean you
watch a magic show. A really good magician, in order for him to, or her to be highly successful,
what must they do? They must convince you that something is happening when it's really
not. They must convince you that they have an ability to make something appear out of
nowhere. So I'm not talking about direct perception in that sense, because in that sense there
is there is great limitation. But we will speak a little bit more about that in as we
proceed.
This actual yoga process is more akin to science. Just as in science there is meant to be observable
reality, and it does not require any degree of faith for a person to observe a particular
reaction, or action and the result of that. Whether you believe it, or you don t believe
it is almost irrelevant. The result is there. It is plain. It is evident. It is recordable.
Part of the scientific process is that there is practically the requirement to be able
to undertake certain steps or series of activity that will produce a very defined result. And
if anybody follows the same steps, engages in the same activity or the same experiment,
they produce exactly the same results. It is, something is considered scientific, or
this is a scientific process. So, the yoga system is very much like this
also. There are [is a] very clear path that one must traverse, very clear steps that one
needs to take, and there will be a consistent result experienced by any and all individuals
who undertake it. Therefore, we can refer to the yoga process, and I am talking about
yoga process here from a bigger picture, we can speak of it as actually being scientific.
It is not faith based. It is not belief based. It is based upon experimental activity, experiential
activity where you come to directly perceive the result of specific practices.
Another difference between yoga and religion, in broad terms, is to cultivate a true understanding
of the nature of things in the yoga system, and their actual relationship. When you undertake
this, or cultivate this understanding of the real nature of things and the nature of relationship
between things in Sanskrit, this is called sambanda, sambanda jnana. Jnana means knowledge.
So it is knowledge of the nature of things and the nature of the relationship between
things. That is like, I mean if somebody has not heard of this concept before, it s like
Woo! [auhghs] Bit cosmic for me! Can't we just do a, you know, downward dog or something?
But we ll try and hopefully be able to shed a little bit of light on what we are talking
about so the importance of it can be understood. So, when we come to understand the nature
of things, and I'm using this in a broad sense: the nature of myself and yourself, the nature
of this material world, what exists beyond it, spiritual energy, the nature of the material
energy and all of its the different aspects and features, the nature of the relationship
between living beings and this material world and the spiritual dimension, how things all
fit; so when a person is able to cultivate this understanding, and then they begin to
act on the basis of that knowledge, this is actual, an actual definition of self-realization
not just self-realization but the product that comes from it, which is wisdom.
One of the greatest shortages in this world is not in natural resources, it's not in I
mean people that talk about a shortage of all kinds of things, but the greatest shortage
that exists in this world is the shortage of wisdom. Unfortunately, people think that
technological advancement and economic development are going to produce real answers, are going
to produce wisdom. The reality is, it is nowhere to be observed that the introduction of technology
or the introduction of more money has ever, or will ever, produce wisdom. If people are
ignorant, if they are unwise, then the use of finances or financial resources, the use
of technology will bring about increased suffering and difficulty for themselves and for others.
You know, if you look at the world in general, can anybody tell me a city that has actually
become a better place to live in, in the last thirty years? Are there any cities in the
world where people say, Oh my God, thirty years ago it was total crap and now it's just
like heaven. Everybody talks about Oh my God, the traffic now, the pollution, the noise,
the crime, the stress. It was just really
mellow back in the sixties or seventies, you know. It was just like and now it's just like
a gigantic mess. This is an observable reality. When I was a kid there was this pervading
idea in the world that what we needed was more technology. Technology was going to make
it you know what it was meant to do? This was the idea: It was going to make it so that
people were, number one, more productive; and they have to spend less time working to
make more money, so they could have a better quality of life. This was a common theme when
I was a kid. It really piqued my interest. It s almost been forgotten that this was an
idea that was being floated around out there. But if we look at what has actually happened
in the world, technology has accelerated in the last forty years in ways that were just
inconceivable. It was inconceivable, what's going on today, when the average (I was going
to say idiot, but I shouldn t say, idiot. Excuse me, I am a little bit rude sometimes),
but, you know, they got the cell phone, they got all the apps, they are doing all the trips
you know, but when we start and previously it was just, there were no cell phones, you
know. I existed in a time when there wasn t even answering machines. If you couldn t
get somebody at their desk, at work, or at their home, you just had to keep trying, you
know, and if you still couldn t get them then you mailed them a letter. There was no email.
You mail them a letter, saying, you know, talking about whatever you want to talk, and
a few days later it shows up. I mean this idea is mind-boggling for a lot of people
today that didn t live in these times. I don t know how old I look, but it doesn t seem
like that long ago. One of the problems that we see though with
this lack of wisdom is, the unwise application of technology is leading to more stress, to
more pollution, more crime. We are creating a world that is completely, let s be honest,
undesirable. Do we want things to be better? I think everybody would like to see things
a lot better. Are we moving towards, if we look at it objectively, are we moving towards
a better situation? Or are we moving further away from it? I think that the majority of
people will say that we are moving away from a desirable situation.
So what's the problem? How come we can't put the brakes on ? How come we can't question,
well, things are not working out the way they were meant to. I mean when I was a kid the
idea: you have more technology in the workplace, so you ll be able to do more which means you
can earn more money, and you spend less time working so you got more leisure time. Has
that transpired? People are working harder now.
And before you had a like, an accounting department, and there was maybe fifteen people in there
with pencils and pencil sharpeners and spreadsheets, you know, and they re doing all the spreadsheets
and the journal entries and everything. Now they ve crunched that load down to one person,
on a computer. And not only is that person doing the work of fifteen people, now they
are asked to apply more analysis. We want forward projections of things. We want what-if
scenarios. We want to examine how things are going, you know, the economic trends; and
now it s just like more and more load, and there s this frantic work. And in reality
people are not earning fifteen times more than they were when there were fifteen people
in the accounting department. I mean even if we re looking at forty years ago, you know,
the wage of fifteen people, forty years ago, it s going to be more than what somebody s
earning right now, you know, doing the fundamental accounting for a company.
And so what we see is that the introduction of technology and this focus of where your
labour, your work, simply has become part of an economic formula. Your work is not something
that adds value to your life, apart from the cheque that you get. The money that you get
is all that you are getting. Is it ennobling your life? Is it enriching, is your work enriching
your life? And everybody will actually say, No. All of the studies, all throughout the
world, the answer is no. I mean you try to just work in a checkout in a supermarket,
and you ve got all of this scanning technology, point of sale technology, you know where you
re monitoring; and the guy in the back office gets a print-out every day, and they may have
fifty, sixty, eighty, tellers working on the checkout, and they are analyzing how many
customers did you serve? How many items per customer? How much time did you spend per
customer? How much time were you spending per item that was checked through? And the
guys just looking at it, and the next minute you are in the office, Can you tell me what's
going on? Why are you spending so much time? You can be pleasant and greet the customer
but we gotta get this through there. I mean, come [mimes pushing people through the checkout]
You are not allowed to have a relaxed conversation or anything with the customer. It just
So we see that technology and I can give hundreds of examples technology introduced into the
workplace has not resulted in you having to work less, nor does it mean that you have
more money. nor does it mean that you have more leisure time. You are more stressed.
You are more, you know, it s just so much harder than it was, you know, forty or fifty
years ago. The work does not ennoble or enrich your life, generally speaking; and there are
all the statistics from all over the world and United Nations, International Labor Organizations,
that support this reality. So these just are like some examples of how
the wisdom we can see that wisdom is what is sorely lacking. This is actually a very
big subject, and perhaps we can try to talk a little bit more about this.
Going back to where we started here in examining the difference between the yoga process and
religion per se, that there is this requirement to cultivate an actual understanding of the
reality of things; and when you begin acting on those facts then you will automatically
be acting from a platform of actual wisdom. So, one of the famous promotors of the yoga
system, and primarily the Ashtanga Yoga system, was a very great sage. We are using sage here
in the most profound way. His name was Patanjali and he compiled what were called the Yoga
Sutras. A sutra is a short, sometimes cryptic, quite often pithy and to the point, statement
of fact; and it requires, generally, a good foundation to really appreciate what is being
stated. So, in this Yoga Sutra, which is made up of four, we ll call chapters, in the first
chapter, the eighth verse, Patanjali, he states that Incorrect knowledge formed about something
which is not based on its true nature is called false understanding or misconception.
So, I know a lot of people listening to this, it s like, What!? I ll read it one more time,
the particular verse, and then we ll discuss, so you can perhaps begin to appreciate the
relevance of this statement and how profound and how important it is in people s life.
Incorrect knowledge formed about something which is not based on its true nature is called
false understanding or misconception So, I will talk now, just briefly, about one
example of this. If you ask most people the fundamental question, Who are you? Please
write a few sentences describing yourself. Who are you? In 99.999% of the cases people
will begin something like, My name is and they ll give you a name. I am a male or female.
I am this height. I am this weight. I have this type of complexion. My hair is like this.
They will start listing physical characteristics and they will say, This is me. This is who
I am. Problem is, this is not a scientific reality;
and we see that, when a person dies, and we are suddenly confronted with a body; and there
is a common notion that people have that when a person dies, they have somehow gone somewhere.
They have gone away from the body, but if I take the list out, and I start reading it,
and I m checking it against the body: How heavy is it? We can weigh it. How tall is
it? We can measure. We can check the hair out and the eye colour and we can go through
this massive list; and you can say Ok, still here, [pointing down at the body] Jimmy boy,
this is Jimmy boy. And everybody is going like you know, This guy has gone nuts. We
all know that Jimmy has left. This is only a remnant that is left behind, a semblance
of who Jimmy was. This is not Jimmy. It does not take any unique powers of observation
to see this reality. I mean somebody has a pet, and they get locked
into their pet, they are in love with their pet, and they hear a screech of tyres, and
they freak out and swing the door open, and there it is, their dog or cat has just been
hit by a car or vehicle that was going by, and it s dead on the road. Do they go, No
problem, that s the pet. Still there, not moving now, but it s still the pet. No! There
is immediately a traumatic experience. There is this feeling that now I have been ripped
away from, I have been taken away from the object of my love, my companion. This happens
in life also, you know, parents with children, a child dies, it s so I mean if you witness
the death of a child and the reaction of a parent when it s right in front of you, it
s like especially when it is very sudden, it makes your hair stand on end.
I can remember observing a serious accident here one time in the Philippines and this,
what they have here are these jeepneys, it s kind of like this open vehicle and they
pack all the people in the back. And it was like on Christmas Eve and the driver was obviously
drunk, and they came around the corner and he went into the gravel, started swaying a
little bit, and then all of a sudden, the jeep just tumbling down the road towards us;
we were coming towards it. And there s people flying out of it everywhere, cos there s no
windows or anything on it, just all this open space. In the tropics it s a very refreshing
way to travel. But, you know, there s people all over the place.
So, you know, we started braking, and as soon as we stopped I jumped out, and I looked and
there was this old man, and he looked completely dazed but he seemed to be kind of okay. He
was about seventy. And then I suddenly heard this wailing, and I looked over and there
was this woman. She had been looking around and now threw herself on the road. She was
kind of like kneeling and then threw herself and she s beating the road, asphalt, and it
s ripping up her hands, and she s just screaming and wailing. And I didn t not even have to
speculate. I immediately knew, one of her children is dead. One of her children is probably
dead. And I looked around, and everybody s kind
of in shock and I had to just scream at people to get them to snap out of this shock. So
I knew that there was somebody trapped under the side of the jeep; so get all the guys
on it, you know, together we lift. And as soon as you lift, see these two little feet
under there, you know. There was this child, and the jeep had crushed its chest, so there
s blood pouring out of its mouth. I knew you couldn t just pick the child up, because broken
ribs will probably pierce the lungs and the other organs so I sent somebody to get a,
I went to just run to get a blanket out of the back of our vehicle, to slide the body
onto so that we could try and rush it to a hospital.
And you witness the devastation of, you know, seeing this child slowly dying, gurgling,
drowning in its own blood, and continued in the hospital. We went there and the doctor
tried to do something. It was a provincial hospital. There s nothing much that could
be done. The mother was just screaming and wailing, and they had taken her away, and
they were trying to keep her away because it was just interfering with the you know,
in the emergency ward where and the doctor had to make choices. They see the baby. They
look at the injuries, and they just don t have the equipment or the personnel. There
was nothing they could do, apart from sort of suction the blood out of its mouth; move
on to the next person, bad factures, and other types of injuries, work on those that you
can save and do something with. So, when you are exposed to this type of reality,
where someone is torn away from you, someone that you care about and you feel an intense
affection for, you know the body is still there, maybe a little bit broken and in a
lot of cases it will be intact: a bad head injury, it s not even visible externally,
and the person can die. And when somebody looks at that body there is this, it s like
your heart is being torn out of your chest, because there is a direct perception that
this body is not the person. My child has died. My child has gone, and this is what
s left, is not my child.
If we now apply that understanding, and look at it in relation to our life, if we can understand
that that body is not me There are other processes that yogis use.
In the Bhagavad Gita it talks about how the body is constantly going through a transformation.
You have an infant body, that becomes a child, becomes a young person, then a teenager, moves
into your twenties and adult life, moves into middle age, goes into old age, then becomes
approaching death; and there is something common, even though all this change is taking
place. It is the same person. The body is constantly changing but the person remains
the same person. The person who is experiencing the childhood activities, who is experiencing
the adult activities, experiencing the old age activities, it is the same person. It
s not that their identity has changed. From a scientific perspective, within a short
period of time, a few years only, every single cell, practically, within the body is replaced.
Even the cells that are not replaced, like some of the brain cells, there are types of
cells within the body that are not replaced, the fact is that, the atoms, the matter that
is making up those cells, is constantly being exchanged and transformed. So we can say,
practically speaking, within five to seven years, and closer to five years, every single
atom that made up your body is uniquely different from what it was five years earlier.
From a scientific point of view if you have a whole different arrangement of matter, is
it not a different identity? Is it not something different? And it s a hard to one to answer,
because people go, Well, no, it s the same person Okay, if it s the same person, what
is remaining the same? What is remaining the same? All the matter is changing, constantly
changing. What is remaining the same, if you can say it s the same person? Well, I don
t know, the same genes? Well, I mean, get down onto a genetic level, still you ve got
atomic particles which are being constantly changed. In one sense we can consider it like
a waterfall. When you look at a waterfall, and if there is a consistent flow of water
over the waterfall, it remains always the same form, even though it s a constant stream
of changing water the basic form remains the same. In a similar manner, the body is constantly
transforming and changing, yet there is a consistent identity.
And we know from the earlier example that we talked about, particularly with death,
and death of someone that we love, there is an instant recognition that even though that
body is exactly the same as it was five minutes earlier I am experiencing a profound sense
of separation and loss. I recognise that something is missing. Something is missing.
Yet throughout my life I have been living in this with this misunderstanding. It is
not an understanding. It is a misunderstanding, that this particular body I have on is me,
the particular body that you have on is you. And so I seek to cultivate a relationship
through this medium. I feel this is the person that I love, or the person that I care about,
or the person that I am enjoying a relationship with; and yet at death we are confronted with
this other reality. That body is still there, but I cannot have a relationship with it.
There is no longer any exchange. So if this body is not me, what is this misconception
that I have developed, and I am thinking all this time, Oh, this is me, that is you, and
our whole life is built on this idea that we can relate forever. This is not clear thinking.
And unfortunately, all living beings within this world, save and except for a very small
number, exist in this great illusion. So that is one example. Want some more?
I ll just read this verse of Patanjali again so that we can reflect on it in relation to
what he stated here and what we ve discussed. Incorrect knowledge, formed about something
which is not based on its true nature, is called false understanding or a misconception.
I mean how big is this misconception, that this body is me. There are people that outright
want to deny the existence of any spiritual reality. They want to claim that the body
is a bunch of chemicals, that life is the product of chemical reaction and electrical
impulse produced out of these chemical reactions. But a person will innately feel and experience
that when we are separated like this at the time of death let me just retrack a little
bit. There has even been attempts by certain scientists
to try to analyse what is the chemical composition of the body, and what is the volume of these
chemicals; and you can even ascribe a cost to it, and the cost is just like a few dollars.
A few dollars! If I get a few little flasks with the chemicals that constitute the body
and plus a much larger one with all the water that is in the body, which is the majority
of what the body is made of, and I am trying to carry it somewhere, and I trip and I drop
it, and it s all smashed and the chemicals are spilt all over, do I have a traumatic
reaction? I don t! It s just like Oh my God, what a bummer, you know. And I gotta clean
it up, or call a janitor, or do something about it. Go get some more chemicals. No big
deal. So, if you fervently believe that the composition
of a person is simply this arrangement of chemicals that you see in front of you, why
do you get so upset when somebody that was dear to you suddenly dies or is killed? There
is an inconsistency with people that promote these type of ideas.
Again, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of these things.
Let us consider another thing: Happiness. What makes you happy? What gives you experience
of pleasure? Most people don t want to talk about the intimate stuff. So, we will go with
the more simple stuff: Music. There s a particular piece of music, when
I listen to it, oh my God, I feel like I m in heaven, or I m just elated, just charged,
just, whatever. And every time I hear it, just like, wonderful! Ok, so let s get that
person, and we ll put them in a chair and duct tape them, so they re really stuck there.
And we ll put some headphones on, and you are going to listen to this particular piece
of music that sends you into ecstasy every time you hear it. We are going to listen to
it non-stop, for seven days. Even within about two or three hours, the person is like, Stop
it. It s driving me crazy. It s making me insane. How is it that one thing that gives
you a sense of great ecstasy or pleasure or whatever, when you are repeatedly exposed
to it can actually become a source of enormous suffering, and sends you actually crazy?
What is your favourite food? Let s just pick something simple. Pizza. Ice cream. Ok, you
re gonna be locked in a room, and this is what we are gonna do. For the next two weeks,
three times a day, you are going to get pizza not a variety of different pizzas, that one
particular one that s your favourite, that every time you go, Oh God I love this. This
is just like woooow. This is just the best pizza ever. I just love this stuff. Ok, let
s try it for seven days, three times a day and snacks in between, we will be slipping
under your door the pizza. I guarantee you within two days tops, it s
just like Oh my God, you know, when you hear somebody outside the door, and they are sliding
something on the floor. Oohh [puts head in hand grimacing] A week into it, it s like
God, guys! [Laughter] This would be considered inhumane. Right? You would be torturing someone.
How can you be torturing someone if you re just supplying an unlimited supply of something
that really turns them on? Now we can go through every single sensual
experience, whether it s to do with food, hearing things, seeing things, even the sexual
experience. Okay, let s lock em in a room. This is all that s gonna be happening, at
least 18 hours a day for the next three weeks. Let s see how you re going after two days
even. You know And you ve got somebody there with a cattle prod, or you re hooked up to
an electrode, and if you are not gonna go for it, Pzzzzzt! Ooowaaaah! [Laughter] That
probably would invalidate the experiment but !
You know, it does not matter, it does not matter what the particular object of pleasure
or happiness is, if we are consistently exposed to it, it becomes the source of anxiety, distress,
and intense unhappiness. You all agree with this? Or not? Unless... You don t agree? I
don t know, I m sure maybe you he s thinking about samosas. [Laughter] No, no, I m just,
I m teasing. This is actually something quite incredible.
And so, they ve come up with this brilliant, absolutely brilliant slogan, to make it so
that you don t get stuck in this situation. It s called, Variety is the spice of life,
which means you gotta consistently be mixing it up. You ve gotta be consistently anticipating,
longing for, hoping for and then experiencing that thing, and then jump to something else.
It cannot be the same stuff over, and over, and over again, because if it is, you will
discover one thing. What is that one important thing you will discover? That this particular
object or experience cannot consistently provide me with happiness. If there was actual happiness
contained within it, or contained within the experience then just logically, the more I
do it, the more pleased I become. If somebody gives me a dollar and I put it in my little
piggy bank, and then somebody gives me another dollar, and I put it in the... what am I doing?
I m becoming more wealthy. My wealth is growing. How come when I consistently experience, my
happiness does not grow? And it is because of this fundamental reason, that inherently
there is no real deeply pleasurable experience found within matter.
Now there is a really if you take the time to learn about and understand how the yoga
process and the great transcendentalists, the great yogis, how they see things, and
how they explain why this occurs, you will find it is truly quite amazing.
So, what we have is this situation where the average person in this world, they have adopted
so many ideas and beliefs based on a blind acceptance that these things are real the
idea that I will not die: I mean everybody says they accept the idea that you will die,
but it comes as such a gigantic shock when it actually occurs, like it s not meant to.
Like some guy goes to the doctor and he s had some tests and then the doctor sits him
down and says Um, we have your test results back, um, actually not so good. We have discovered
that, ah, you actually have cancer. It is quite advanced. It s probably, in our estimation,
Stage 4 already. We re seeing in the scans that it s metastasizing. It s moving around
the body and establishing in different places. You probably have somewhere in the area of
three to six months to live. So, my advice: we can t really treat things the way they
are; we have an excellent program where we can help you manage pain, and we have a wonderful
psychiatrist here who can advise you on how to face things and deal with stuff, but it
is definitely time to get things in order, and if there is anything that we can do for
you, please let me know. And the person is just like, you know, absolutely
in shock; and they go home, you know, and they come in the door, and they re like a
walking ghost almost. And the wife looks and goes, Oh honey you are back. What s wrong?
And he s just kind of like, quiet. He sits down.
She goes, Honey... is there something wrong? And he goes, I m going to die in about three
months. And the wife goes, Aagh aagh aagh aagh aah
[crying] You don t know that you re going to die? You
don t know that this is the only thing that you can be absolutely sure of in life? Nothing
else is sure whether you will get money, have a nice house, have children, find a partner
that you can live with for the rest of your life, you know, whether you re going to succeed
in your business, that, you know, we re not going to get hit by a thunder bolt, you know,
there s not going to be another world war there is nothing you can be sure about except
this one thing. You can absolutely guarantee that you will die.
And if you are very conscious of this reality, most of us would live a completely different
life than the life we are living now. So, we live with so many misconceptions. We
assume that we can make a home in this world, that we can find shelter where we can find
relief and be able to just snuggle up like a little baby in its mother s arms, feeling
protected, feeling shelter, feeling no anxiety, experiencing peacefulness. We aspire for this.
We hope it can happen: that we can have a home; that we are going to live forever; that
the family, the relationships that we build are going to last; that we will find happiness;
that we will be able to find love even though nobody s actually finding it, not in the way
that they desire, that they hope for. We build all of these, and I m going to call
them, I was going to say fantasies, but we will stick with the terminology here, the
misconceptions. We build our life, our entire life, on misconceptions that are not grounded
in actual truth, and then we wonder why we are miserable, in spite of all of our efforts,
all of our endeavours, all the energy we put into chasing things and trying to convince
ourself through positive thinking. You know, I knew someone, he was such a nice
person. And you ask him, How you doin ? And he is always just like, Yeah, absolutely great.
Life is fantastic. It s just great. I mean everything s going my way. It s all just happening.
And, how are things with you? I mean, I m just looking at your life, and I m just thinking
you re just doing so great, and you are such a nice person, and your family is great also,
and I m just really overjoyed to know you guys, and these other people. He just like
had this like real positive outlook on life. When he shot himself with a gun, it was shocking
for everyone. People that I knew very intimately, the family, was absolutely shocked. Why would
he do that, when he was wealthy, he was extremely good looking, he had business, his family
was a political family, he could have risen to political prominence, he had everything
going for him? Why would you shoot yourself? Why would you kill yourself?
It is because, when you build a life based on misconception, and it starts to become
evident that that which you are hoping and aspiring for and struggling for can never
come to pass, it is deeply disturbing. That is why people resort to things that take their
mind off stuff, why drugs and intoxicants are so big, mood altering substances whether
legal or illegal. A vast percentage of the developed world is just they cannot function
without mood altering substances. And I m talking about your cup of Joe that you can
t get through the morning without. I mean what the hell is that? You ve got a life where
if you can t have a cup coffee in the morning, steaming cup of coffee of a particular blend
that appeals to you, and if not, okay, we ll settle for something second class, but
I gotta have my cup of Joe in the morning; and if you can t get it, you re flipping out,
you ve become unhinged, snapping at people, just horribly bummed about things. So, I m
talking about all forms of substances. Alcohol is such a common one, prescription medication.
I mean it s just mind boggling. And people are creating this substitute reality, trying
to get through the day, trying to get through their life.
And so the yoga process is so wonderful and amazing because it looks at these things in
a very straight forward, in a very analytical way, and it provides alternatives. It provides
actual answers to how you can live. And it s not a question of Oh, just believe this,
or just accept this. No, you are asked not to just accept or believe.
What yoga, real yoga teachers, Masters of Yoga, they will want you to go down an experiential
path where you begin to live a certain type of lifestyle, so that you can actually begin
to cause the haze to evaporate, to dissipate, and you begin to see things with clarity,
and you begin to stop chasing dreams. You begin to focus on that which is real. You
begin to experience actual happiness. You experience profound love. You develop real
wisdom. The way in which you begin to look at the world and relationships, your life,
activities, everything, dramatically changes. You may appear to other people to be another
ordinary person. You cannot tell who is a truly spiritual person just by looking with
your eyes. You need to be also trained to see. But a truly spiritual person, a person
leading a life that is founded in yoga wisdom, are able to genuinely experience real shelter,
protection, love, happiness. This is profoundly different than the idea
of simple and I do not say this with any disrespect or disregard. That is not my intention, and
I ask your indulgence and forgiveness if you do take offence. It is not meant this way
but unlike somebody that may simply have a faith in something, a superficial I am going
to use the word superficial, not in a demeaning way, but we must understand that sometimes
we simply accept something or we have a faith or we have an aspiration, but it does not
provide real experience. It is not grounded in real truth.
I was visiting my sister in New Zealand recently. My father died. He left his body. I had a
wonderful experience with him before that occurred. He had a dawning realisation just
prior to his dying and his death was very wonderful as a result. And my sister is a
bit thoughtful also, because of her experiences and things we have discussed, and she said
(she is practising Christian), and she said it always blows her mind that a lot of her
Christian friends are so traumatised by a death in the family. One of her friends was
telling her that she just could not, when her father died, she just, for months and
months she could hardly function. And my sister is going like, (at least she sees things in
a deeper sort of way) Well, if you really believe that God exists and there is some
spiritual dimension and a Kingdom of God and you believe that this person has died and
has gone to be with God why would that be traumatic? Shouldn t it be something that
you celebrate? Isn t this really the objective of your faith? But, you know, I guess my sister
may be a little bit different than most because this is not practical experience of people
that are following, just what I will call is a religious faith that is not very profound
or very deep.
What we have previously been discussing about the misconceptions that people have about
life, I'm going to use an example. It's probably not such a good example. You know this movie,
Matrix? Did you ever see that? I mean what was it, you know, in a nutshell, what's the
underlying thing? That people were moving around in the world. They had these lives
and everything, but actually it was all like a dream. It was all just an illusion. The
reality was that they were all stuck in these pods, and the machines had them or something,
and were using their body as a source of, tapping into the energy that was being produced
by the body. So they had this massive source of energy; and they were kept in this almost
comatose state, and living this fantasy mental world, where people were going about doing
everything; and that was kind of like the big revelation at the end, you know, that
this world in which everybody was living was just, was all false. It was a state of mind.
It was kind of like a dream, and the reality was far more tragic.
In some ways, not like that, but there is some, I guess, certain type of similarity.
The view that is taught in the yoga process is this fact that we are not these bodies.
This world is not our home. There is no real shelter here. You will live within this body
for a certain time, and you will leave it, and all of the relationships that you built,
all of the acquisition of assets and things, will all be terminated with finality.
So we see in, you know, in these yogic teaching, that the various yoga processes, which include
amongst, you know, asana, the practice of asana, the practice of pranayama, meditation,
and the more spiritual practices, they are all meant to help remove the myriad of misconceptions
that constitute most people's lives. So, in order to come to a platform of understanding,
Patanjali, he states that the sources, the actual sources of correct understanding, not
of misconception, the opposite, correct understanding, are: direct perception; inference; and the
words, (whether written or spoken), of self-realized authorities. This is a
You know, direct perception, if it is properly guided, is extremely helpful. We can come
to understand truths; but we must accept that there are certain shortcomings that all people
have. For instance, everyone can be subject to illusion. This is what makes it so that
the guys on, with the big magic shows in Las Vegas, the illusionists, they re called illusionists,
right? I mean, who are some of the famous guys? David Copperfield, Penn & Teller before,
David Blaine, you know, all these guys. They are called illusionists because they will
produce what looks to be a real experience, but it is actually an illusion that is created,
and a common untrained person looks at it, and they buy into it.
Other forms of illusion: you know, it was common in the old days, when they would have
sailing ships, and people would be at sea for months at a time under very harsh conditions,
people would start hallucinating that they see land forms on the horizon, and if they
do not stay the course, they start heading towards these landforms, they can wander all
over the ocean and perish. In desert environments mirages actually appear, and people, (particularly
when their body and their minds are greatly stressed from lack of water, heat, lack of
food, these type of things, or even if they're perfectly healthy), just because of the way
that the waves of heat rise off the deserts, you can look and actually see bodies of water,
an oasis, and you can run towards it, wanting to dive into it, and end up with a mouthful
of sand; and that is because it is an inherent, it is built in to the nature of the body,
the mind, that we can be subject to illusion. Every person has a propensity towards cheating,
unfortunately. We can convince ourselves of things that we want to believe in that are
not actually true. We can try and convince others of things that are not true. This propensity
to cheat ourself and others exists. Our senses are all inherently imperfect. Even
when you rely on devices to magnify the power of your senses, the senses are inherently
imperfect, and so you can become mistaken. These are some of the natural characteristics
that exist in the body and mind, and so while direct perception is important, it cannot
truly be relied on, alone. But when we speak of direct perception it's
more in the case of very fundamental things, for instance, a child looks at a candle or
some fire or flame what does a little baby want to do when they see fire? They want to
touch it, it's like, Wow, and they reach out immediately and want to touch, and if what's
the best way to teach a child not to touch a flame?
Audience member: Let them touch it. Acharya das: No, that's really cruel. You
don't let them touch it. You hold their hand or their finger and you put it close, close,
close so they can start feeling the heat and the burning sensation, then they start resisting,
and they re trying to pull their hand back. When you feel them pulling their hand back,
you know, okay they've learned, and then next time they see it they know what it is. If
you actually burn yourself, then you become familiar with this idea that when you feel
an intense heat close to the skin, that there is a danger of getting seriously hurt, and
so you build a natural reaction, that when your hand, even unconsciously, you know, not
looking, but you're reaching for something and it feels something hot, immediately is,
you pull it away. You have now this ability, you see something that's glowing hot, and
you can see the heat rising off it and you know, I ain't going to touch that because
I know what's going to happen. You can infer.
So this process is actually part of the yogic process, where you can have direct perception
of things to learn the truth about them. There are limitations that go with it, but from
that knowledge you can begin to infer. But the greatest, or the easiest and best
way to acquire truth, is to learn from somebody that knows already; and a common person will
go, Whoaw, you know, What, I ve got to believe somebody else? No, it's not a question of
a belief system. It's like when you go to college.
Why do you go to college? Why do you sit in a class of some professor? Because he is going
to present to you a whole body of accumulated knowledge, of other people's direct experience,
of many people's inference, of his own experience and inference; and he is going to be able
to present to you conclusive findings in a concise, in a very direct way, very effectively,
very quickly. When people approach the learning process, or they want to acquire knowledge
through this particular means, they are able to learn in leaps and bounds.
The same principle applies to the spiritual system, where when a person approaches a competent
authority, a qualified and highly experienced authority, on the subject of the yoga sciences
and spiritual knowledge, one is able to acquire a great depth of knowledge very quickly.
Such teachers do not encourage simply mental learning. The whole yoga process is not a
mental process. It is an experiential process, where you are shown or delivered knowledge
which you try to understand and appreciate, but then you must put it to the test. You
must apply it to your life and experience the consequences, or the result of that experiment,
in your life. So this is the way in which the yoga system is presented and understood
and appreciated, and practiced, more importantly.
So, one of the distinct differences, or characteristics of the actual yogi, is that in many ways they
are like modern scientists because they employ the laws of logic. Things need to be logical.
They are very involved in observation, but they are different, in contrast to ordinary
scientists, in that they are not simply engaged in an external world, external, outside of
themselves. They also become very involved in what we call an internal world. They are
working internally as well as externally. So they do not limit, unlike conventional
scientists, they do not limit their search for truth only to that which is outside of
myself; that the yogic process involves scientific research, or inner work, observation of and
learning about the nature of my mind, my behaviours and my actions. This is what constitutes part
of the whole yoga process. And it's quite amazing how people in general,
in life, don't learn from their experience. They have this saying, what is the definition
of insanity? It's repeating the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.
Isn t that not what, kind of like, most people are doing in life? I mean, how many times
are you going to go searching for love? How many times are you going to have your heart
broken? How many times are you going to be disappointed in relationships? How many times
are you going to be frustrated in your search for peace and happiness? And yet, in spite
of all the disappointment I mean, if we look at things, I mean, the
quest for happiness: there is this drive that everyone has for happiness. Do you know anybody
that's looking for sadness? Even the masochist is looking for what? They're looking for pleasure,
but they have developed this distorted idea, if I somehow torture myself, or a sadist that
inflicts misery or pain or suffering on others, that at the end of it there's going to be
this intense pleasurable experience. So even you get twisted people, you will find that
everyone no one is seeking out unhappiness, disappointment. Everybody is searching for
pleasure. We are convinced that it exists. But if we ask the question, In my life, how
much actual pleasure do I experience every day? When is the last time I was profoundly
happy? We're talking about elation, not just a little giggle. We're talking about going
off big-time, you know, just being, just lost in a pleasurable experience. How frequently
does it happen and how long does it last? Most people, their life is actually quite
boring. There are momentary little flashes of titillation, or some excitement, but when
we're talking about actual real deep pleasure, people are probably lucky to experience about
15 minutes a day; and given that there's something like 1440 minutes in a day 15 minutes doesn't
sound like a very good experience, doesn t sound very worthwhile. If I was asked to work
for 1440 hours and get paid for 15, would I think that was a good deal? You couldn't
even force me to do it. But in the hunt for pleasure, somehow I think that that's basically
okay. When we look at our own life, when we look
at our parents, when we look at our relatives, when we look at our friends, how many people
do we actually know that are profoundly happy? If we are very honest it's, kind of like,
not that good odds. Yet, in spite of all the miserableness that
we experience, and we see around us, we have this longing, and we have this belief, that
it is something that can be acquired, that we can actually find.
In this yoga system we look at these things in a very practical, we examine these things
in order to try and ascertain, in order to come to conclusions, to discover where real
(for instance), happiness can be found, and it really involves this study (as we spoke
of), about the nature of the mind, the nature of our behaviours, the type of behaviours
that we've adopted, the type of actions that we are engaged in, and it's looking at things
in a very introspective way. It is not boring. It's not difficult. It's all very, very, practical.
So, we ve been having these discussions about the yoga system or process. Genuine and I
m using the word genuine here not in an arrogant way, or with the idea of self-promotion, or
the idea of being better. You know, sometimes people immediately think, if you are trying
to be honest and truthful, that you are engaged in self-promotion, trying to put yourself
up and put others down. We have no interest in this type of thinking, in this very unpleasant
type of consciousness. But it is a fact that the genuine schools of yoga exist to assist
individuals who want to know the truth about their spiritual identity, who they really
are? When I say assist, it with the understanding
that the desire of real spiritual teachers, real yoga teachers is not to gain money, not
to gain fame, not to be able to build followers and exploit people in any way, shape or form.
The genuine masters of yoga are motivated by a very deep level of compassion, feeling
great pain and sorrow for the suffering of people in this world and wanting to alleviate
their suffering by providing them with the knowledge and the resources, the direction
that a person can undertake to come to know the actual truth of their own spiritual identity,
to realize the actual purpose of my life. You know, I don t know how many people feel,
I ll use the word agitated, by this desire. Generally, the experience is, as people age
in life, they get older, they become more callous. They become more resistant to change.
We see it frequently, when we are much younger there is this aspiration, this desire to find
some real purpose in life. I want to know, What is it I should be doing with my life?
Why am I here? What is the real purpose, what is the meaning of all of this? And a person
that is feeling this way, the desire of a genuine yoga teacher is to offer assistance
and the tools to make it so that a person can personally realize their actual purpose
of life. The other driver for a real and genuine school
of yoga is to help people find actual happiness. So, this path is a path of actual self-discovery.
This is a big word, a big term, and is very profound. Self-discovery. I mean, I think
I know myself. I am so convinced. I know what my desires are. I know what desires exist
within my mind and I think that pursuit and the fulfillment of these desires means I am
discovering who I am; and this is truly not a fact. The path of yoga, the purpose of yoga
is genuine self-discovery, and finding, or discovering (I can use that word again), discovering
where true happiness is actually to be found. So, this undertaking is a very individual
and personal thing. It is not a team effort. You know, everybody has this strong tendency
to want to align themselves with a certain team. Within the world of religion, the compelling
drive is usually the quest for salvation, to be saved, saved from my sinful, or my suffering
condition, to find everlasting happiness, as is said, or whatever. But we also see it
as a characteristic of this world: people suffer from feelings of personal insecurity
and personal loneliness, and so we are always scanning the horizon looking for someone that
we feel has got something, and then we want to team up them. So, there is this compelling
drive to join organizations, to belong to something, to belong somewhere. And we feel
that simply by offering allegiance or aligning our self with something that appears to be
successful, or a team that appears to be successful, that we will somehow find fulfillment. But
I have to tell you the truth of the matter is that self-discovery is not a team effort.
Finding fulfillment, finding actual happiness, is not a team effort. It is a personal undertaking.
So, these genuine yoga schools as I have mentioned, they really do exist for the purpose of providing
individual seekers this opportunity. They do not exist, genuine schools of yoga do not
exist to create another team and to try and attract individual seekers who are seeking
to belong to a group or an organization. So, these yoga schools, genuine yoga schools,
they provide practices, direction for individuals who may to wish to apply them in their life
so that they can come to this point of an inner transformation, through wisdom, seeing
this world in a different way than we have become accustomed. This is the process of
self-realization and the cultivation of real spiritual wisdom.