The Holy Name is a self-extracting downloadable archive from the spiritual world with a software upgrade for the human mind. The human being can never become God; this is a fool's philosophy. All energy is ultimately spiritual, because God is the origin. Jyotish helps us to see the relationship between the material energy and various aspects of God.

 

 

Transcription

 

Babaji: ...ality, bliss, the spiritual world, the material world, all the potencies, expansions, and the love and ecstasy that come from our relationship with God, are all contained within that mantra. It's like rolled up, it's compressed. Like when you download a file from the Internet, and it's compressed, it's in a ZIP archive or something; you have to uncompress it, and then you can see what's in the file.

So the Holy Name, the mantra, is like that. It has everything in it. It's like a self-extracting downloadable archive from the spiritual world; like my friend Jeffrey [Armstrong] used to say, "from the Heavenly Host mainframe." [laughs] We're downloading this spiritual information, and it's designed to fit with our brains; it's designed to fit with our hearts and our minds. And it's designed to uncompress itself, and install an upgrade to our software. [laughs] Just like when there's an upgrade from Microsoft, it downloads and installs itself, and then fixes some problem or something like that.

So the Holy Name is like that; it's an upgrade to our software, to our mind. In conditioned consciousness, our mind has a bug; it has a problem. It cannot comprehend what is beyond this material world. That's a problem. That's like saying that your computer can access one part of the Internet, but not the whole thing. So, what's that all about? That means we have an insufficient background of information; we have insufficient education, actually, insufficient culture. And because we lack this culture, spiritual culture or transcendental culture, we don't have the background to understand the real meaning of existence, the real meaning of life.

Without spiritual life, this life is basically meaningless. Like, look at the Zen Buddhists; they say that ultimately everything is nothing, and when you leave this body, then that's the end. There's just nonexistence, emptiness, after that. What kind of philosophy is that? No wonder they commit suicide; suicide is very common in Japan. Somebody gets in trouble, or they get caught doing something wrong, they're liable to commit seppuku. Why? Because they believe there's nothing after death; that's the end, that's it, poof, you're gone, finished, no more. So, if there's nothing after death, that means there's no consequences, no karma; there's no reward of punishment after death. So why not do anything you like? Rob, steal, lie, cheat, rape, kill—because there are no consequences, there's just nothing, just nothingness [after death]. This [philosophy] is called voidism.

And closely related to voidism is another philosophy called impersonalism. Impersonalism is like, "We're all God; we're going to merge with God, we're going to become one with God." Which is basically the same thing. Oneness is very close to nothingness, because in the state of oneness there's no difference between the subject and the object; there's no distinction between the [conscious] self and what we're conscious of: not-self. The Other has to exist; there's a self, which is us, and then there's the Other, which is the object. Subject and object, and then the relationship between them is the quality of our consciousness.

So in material consciousness, the relationship between the self—the subject—and the Other—the object— is in terms of material existence: "I am this body, I see the world through these senses," and then there are all these objects which appeal to my senses, because they're beautiful or something like that. Somehow they gratify my senses; so then I want to be in association with those objects. And because of that, we become conditioned by this idea of material existence, and we can't see beyond it; it's like we have blinders [on].

So the mantra contains the information that allows us to see beyond our blinders; to see beyond our limitations, and to realize that the real subject-object relationship is not between us and the material world, it's between us and God. The prime relationship is between the soul and God, and all other relationships are experienced in terms of that relationship. Actually it's always like that; it's just that most people in the material world, their relationship with God is in a diseased state; they have a spiritual disease, spiritual pollution, a spiritual contamination of material consciousness.

And because of that, they look at their position...They actually want to imitate God, they actually want to pretend to be God. God is the controller, the Creator, the Owner, the Proprietor, the original Lover and so on and so forth. So what are they trying to do? They're trying to imitate God. This is crazy, because obviously, none of us are God. God is always God; so if we were actually God, we wouldn't be here in this material world. We wouldn't be suffering; we wouldn't have to go through birth, disease, old age, death, taxes, so many nonsense things that we have to go through in this world. We would simply be free and happy and have control over everything and own everything; and obviously, we're not in that position.

So if we're not in that position now, then how are we going to be in that position in the future? It doesn't make any sense, this philosophy [of oneness with God]. "Somehow I'm going to sit and do some mystic meditation, and become God'? Give me a break. [laughs] It's just absurd. But because it's a very pleasant idea; it's a very intoxicating idea: "Oh, someday I can become God. Oh!" It's like the ultimate fantasy. "Oh, Jeez, I'll just take this little pill or do this little meditation, and become God." Very seductive. So we become seduced by the idea of it; not that we have any proof that it's possible, or that it's true, or not that we know of anybody, or have even heard of anybody that has actually achieved it? Huh? No, it's just like an urban myth; it's a story that some people circulated.

Actually it started about 1500-1600 years ago with a man named Sankaracarya. So Sankaracarya came and started, invented this philosophy that we can become God, and he started circulating this story, and people found it so seductive, even then, that they started buying into it. But he totally misinterpreted the Vedas and the Puranas. He said that Vyasadeva, the original author of the Vedas, made a mistake. He made a mistake, and that ultimately there is no difference between God and His energy. "It's all one"; where have I heard that before? [puts on phony Indian accent] "It's all one; it is all one. Ha ha ha!"

But this is a fools' philosophy, because if there's no difference between God and His energy, then everything would be God. But we look around [and see that] everything's not God. Look, this matter is completely dull. [knocks on table] It's not even conscious; it doesn't respond, it doesn't do anything, it just sits there until we do something with it. That's God's energy; but if this were identical with God, it would be conscious, it would respond to us. We could have a relationship with it. We imagine that we have a relationship with material objects that we call 'ownership'. But actually we don't own these things, because we didn't produce them.

If I produce a work of art, then I own it. I have the copyright on it, I can do whatever I like with it; I can distribute it, I can license it to others, because it's mine. I created it. But this world is not ours. We didn't create it; it was here, and we found it, we came into it. And there's all this stuff, but it's all produced of material ingredients that we didn't create; we simply found. It's just like the Pilgrims came over, landed on Plymouth Rock, and took a big flag and stuck it in the ground, and said [saluting] "OK, now this belongs to the Queen!" [laughs] It's absurd! Did the Queen create America? No; it was there for millions of years, and the native Americans were already living there. They had a very nice society; but who are these guys who come out of this boat and put this flag and say "OK now, it belongs to us." Huh? What?

I mean, the Native Americans were flabbergasted. They were saying "Welcome. Here, if you want this land, you can start a village and everything, that's fine; we love you guys and it's great." And they were going "Yes! Now we own everything and we're in control! [laughs] And we have the right to kill all you guys!" "What? Are you crazy?" The American Indians thought the Europeans were nuts because they were saying "The land belongs to us" or "The land belongs to our Queen." The Native Americans were like, "You guys are out of your minds! The land belongs to God. God created the earth; you didn't create the earth! How can it be yours?"

This is a crazy idea; if you think about it, it really is a crazy idea. If you go up in a plane, like if you fly to Mexico like I do, when you go over the border, you don't see a line in the sand—well maybe you do now that they built a fence [laughs]—but it's not like God drew a line and went "OK this is America, and on this side is Mexico over here." No, there's no line; it's just a desert, it's just a piece of land. And it all belongs to God, because God created it. God created it. So what does He say how we should use it, utilize it? He says "Everything that is beautiful, everything that is powerful, everything that is desirable or wonderful or pure should be offered unto Me," He says in Bhagavad-gita.

So when we take God's energy, whatever that is—anything that happens to come within our control or within our jurisdiction of experience—and we offer that back to Him, what happens then is that God's energy comes into a relationship with Him, and it becomes spiritualized. So this apparently material energy can become spiritualized when we see it in relationship with God. One time Lord Brahma asked Krsna "What is this material existence?" And Krsna said "Material existence means energy that is apparently separated from Me. It's My energy; but if you see it as existing separately from Me, then you're seeing it as matter. But that's your vision; My vision is that it's My energy, it's related to Me and it's used for My purposes, therefore it's spiritual."

It's spiritual because its meaning is spiritual; and [so] when we see it, it should remind us of God. In fact, somebody asked Lord Brahma one time "Well, what is the value of this material world, if it's energy that's separate from God?" And he said "Well actually it's not separate from God because it comes from God; and it enters back into Him at the end. So the value of this material world is that it is energy in relation with Visnu."

Energy in relation with Visnu. So I'm leading up to something by this talk, by the way. We're going to talk about Jyotish today. And Jyotish is a science whose ultimate principle is to see the material world as energy in relation to Visnu, energy in relation to God. So when we look at the astrological signs and the planets, we can see them as being related to God. Not that they exist independently or separately from God. And this [view] helps us stay in the proper consciousness; helps us heal the disease of material consciousness.

It's a diseased condition; if we think that we are separate from God, or that anything is separate from God, we're not seeing it as it is. We're seeing it in a jaundiced way. Did you ever know anybody that got this disease, jaundice? It's a liver malfunction, and basically your whole body turns yellow. It's really weird; and your eyes also, everything has this yellowish tinge. You can't see anything normally; so a person with jaundice sees everything as if they had yellow tinted glasses on all the time. So they can't see things as they really are; they can only see according to this diseased vision. And the funny thing is, the specific cure for jaundice is sugar; sugar candy, refined sugar. You have to eat a lot, a lot, a lot of refined sugar. But when you're in the condition of jaundice, it tastes bitter; it doesn't taste sweet. There's something wrong with your body chemistry, and when you take sugar, which is normally very pleasant, it's so bitter it's like eating lemons.

[a new student arrives, interrupting the talk]

So when a person has jaundice, the cure is to eat sugar candy: the most intense refined sugar possible. But it tastes bitter. So somehow or other they have to eat it, and if they can eat enough sugar candy to change their body chemistry, then the yellow tint disappears and they can see everything normally. So it's a good analogy of this material disease. In this material disease, it's like we have jaundice; we don't see things as they are really, we see them with this material tint, this material cast to it, that "Oh, this thing is existing separate from God." And because of that, we think "Oh, then I can own this, I can posses this; I can use it for my pleasure."

And because of this, because we have this conception, or this misconception, that "I can use this for my pleasure," then we have to accept the karma that comes along with ripping off that object from God. If a person is a thief—they go down to the store and they put something in their pocket and try to walk out—the alarm goes off and then they get caught, either they have to pay for it or they they have to be punished, go to jail or something; there's a penalty. So it's OK to use God's energy for His purposes, but it's not OK to use it for our purposes. We can do it; but then we have to pay for it, and that's called karma.

It's just like if we are friends with the guy who owns the store, and we're using something from the store with his permission for some charitable purpose or something like that, then we can go to the store and we can take stuff out of the store without having to pay for it. Because the owner of the store agrees; he says "I have some charitable purpose or organization, and I want you to use the stuff from my store for this program. So just go down and take it, it's OK." So [if] we get his permission, then we don't get charged. But if we take it without his permission, then we have to pay for it; and if we steal it, then there's also punishment.

So actually everything is like that. Everything is actually the property of God, because God created it. We didn't create it; it belongs to God, and He has given extensive instructions in the scriptures how He wants this stuff used. He wants it used in a process of sacrifice. Sacrifice here [in the Vedic tradition] doesn't mean like taking some animal and throwing it in a fire, or something like that. Sacrifice here means that we take God's energy, and we engage that energy in His service according to His instructions to fulfill His purposes.

That's the Vedic meaning of sacrifice; yajña is the Sanskrit word. Yajña means if we have some object in the material world, before we take it—like there are so many things that we need: we need food, we need shelter, we need clothing, we need so many things—well that's alright, we're God's children; we also belong to God. So we can have those things that we need to exist; that's why He created them. But we have to offer them to Him before we take them. Why? So that we are conscious of the relationship of God's energy with God; so that we put this material energy back into its correct relationship with its source, with its Creator. Then we can take that [energy], and it's OK.

Just like food is the example. We were talking earlier that we are not really vegetarians; we're prasadarians. [laughs] Prasadam means food offered to God, or actually anything that's offered to God, and then we take the remnants. So when we prepare food, we prepare nice vegetarian food, very pure; because this is what God asks for in the scriptures. And we'll get into the requirements for that, and where it all comes from, and why it's like that, later on today. But anyway, He makes a specification; He says "Only food in the mode of goodness. Only food that's pure; only food that's produced without violence. That's the only kind of food that I accept."

So then when we offer Him that kind of food, that becomes spiritualized. It becomes transcendental because we're taking that energy and putting it back into relationship with God. Then we can take the remnants of that offering, of that sacrifice, and that nourishes us spiritually because we're always conscious that "Oh, these are remnants of food offered to God." It's very nice; very nice. So in that way we can spiritualize everything in our lives. We can offer ourselves, our family, our house, our cars—whatever we possess.

I don't think of myself as possessing anything, except maybe my beads. Everything else was given to me, specifically for the purpose of engaging it in God's service. People gave it to me, knowing that what I was going to do was take these things, and use them to propagate this Teaching, this Esoteric Teaching which comes from Krsna directly. So they knew, by giving me these things, that they would be engaged in God's service, so I don't think of them as mine. I don't think of this as "my laptop," or "my clothing," or "This is my stuff." I think that "This is Krsna's stuff, and I'm simply using it to propagate His Teaching, His purposes in this world, and to help people reduce their diseased condition, reduce their karma, and get free, get back into the spiritual world."

So that's what we're doing. The material disease, the symptoms of the material disease are that we experience karma; we experience unintended consequences to our actions. Every time we do something, we have some specific goal in mind; we go to the store and we buy something, because we're hungry and we want to eat it. But if we eat it without offering it to God, then one consequence is that we get full, we have energy we nourish our body. But the other consequence is, there's some karma that we have to accept because of that, and we don't know what the result of that is going to be. But generally speaking, it means [that] we have to take another body in this material world.

There are several different kinds of karma: one is called bija-karma, or seed karma. When we do something that creates karma, it's in the form of bija-karma. In other words, it's not instant karma; we don't get the result right away. We probably won't even get the result in this life; we'll get it in the next life. Because if we were to get the reactions of our karma all at once, it would just be overwhelming; it would be too much. It would destroy us; we wouldn't learn anything from it. That would defeat the purpose. So the kind of karma that we get in this lifetime is called prarabdha-karma, which means 'manifesting karma.'

Manifesting karma generally doesn't come from this life; and that's what the astrological chart is about. The astrological chart shows what is the prarabdha-karma; what is the manifesting karma that we bring with us from the previous life. It's like a map showing the possible karma. So if we know what that karma is, then we can engage it, we can transform it; we can offer it in sacrifice, yajña. And in that way we become free of it; you see?

So astrology, in the Vedic conception, is not a tool for getting a better job or a better relationship, or trying to find out what's going to happen next. Although it has some of those aspects, really what it's about is trying to understand what is our karma: What is the karma that's due to fructify in the present life? What is the effect of the previous causes; causes from the previous life? Now the things we do in this life are going to fructify in the next life; so the ideal of Vedic culture is that everything we do should be a sacrifice, so that it doesn't create any karma.

If we're not working for ourselves, then we're not responsible for the result [of our activities]; Krsna is. It's done on His account; it's not one on our account. Just like if I'm working for a company, and I sell something for the company, the company gets the money. I don't get the money directly; the company may pay my salary, [but] that's a different thing. The transaction that I'm negotiating on behalf of the company, as the representative of the company, means the money goes to the company and they get the result.

So when I'm working for Krsna, when I'm representing, when I'm a representative of Krsna, and I engage somebody in Krsna's service, I don't get the result; Krsna gets the result. Now Krsna is maintaining me; that's like the person [in the previous example] getting the salary from the company. But that's a different thing; that is the relationship between me and Krsna. But my relationship with my students, let's say for example, is not to get them to serve me; I may be the representative of Krsna, but that doesn't mean [that] I'm Krsna.

What I'm trying to do is engage them in Krsna's service; and if I'm successful, they will understand the process of sacrifice and be able to perform it independently. Not that we want followers or slaves or robots; no, we want people who are strong, who are independent and who understand this process, and then they can do the process independently without further guidance. That's what we want; and that's what we're working toward. Not that we want to create a cult with all kinds of dependent people; ick, who wants that?

That's for less-intelligent people; but really intelligent people want to have friends who are strong. Why should I want to make my friends weak? But ordinary religion does that; ordinary religion tries to make people weak, so they can interpose themselves between the person and God, and get the benefits of that person's service, and control them directly. No; no. We're an esoteric school; an esoteric school operates according to a whole different principle. In the beginning there might be some service relationship, just to illustrate the principle; but once a person learns that principle, then they do whatever they like.

But like I was saying yesterday, what we find in general is that there is an exchange of value based on free will. It's not based on control: "Do this, do that." But it's based on love; it's based on spontaneous appreciation for the good qualities of the other person. So if everybody is engaged in Krsna's service, and everybody is in a state of spiritual ecstasy, spiritual consciousness—because spiritual consciousness means ecstasy; if you're not feeling ecstasy, you haven't got it yet—so when you feel the chills running up and down your skin, and your hair is standing on end, and your eyes get really big and tears come spontaneously, then you know you're getting it.

Then you know you're getting it; it's not just about knowledge—although knowledge is necessary, knowledge is the foundation for this transformation of consciousness that we're talking about—what this is really about is love, the transcendental love between the soul and God, between the energy and the Source of the energy. It's just like the sunshine is coming from the Sun, and the sunshine is turning around and looking at its source, and going "Oh, you're beautiful! You created me; you emanated me. You're my origin; you're the source of all my qualities." So we should also have that same kind of relationship with God: "Oh, You created me, You emanated me, you gave birth to me; You're my Father, my Mother, Teacher, my Lover, my everything: the source of all my qualities."

So when we look at God like that, then God reciprocates from within, and we feel this wonderful spiritual ecstasy, which is called bhakti, spiritual love. So the path of bhakti, or devotional exchange of transcendental service, is the means for liberation from material existence. And all the other aspects of yoga, like hatha-yoga, jnana-yoga, raja-yoga, the different asanas and pranayama, meditation and all that stuff, and what to speak of all the different religious rituals, sacrifices and all; these are just preliminary. All these are just to give us the qualification to actually perform bhakti, or spiritual love, exchange of devotional service.

That will really satisfy our hearts; and then we don't have to be like grasping for material pleasure, trying to acquire all this stuff. We can be happy just sitting under a tree, chanting our mantra. That's like my ideal lifestyle. [laughs] Just sit under a tree, with no worries, and chant. That's where I'm going; and then I'm going back to the spiritual world. But all this other stuff I'm doing—why? It's just to benefit other people, because I want to see my friends happy; I want to see them as happy as I am. I want to see them as strong and independent and self-realized as I got the blessing to be, by good fortune.

So today we're going to talk about Jyotish; Jyotish means Vedic astrology. [In] the word Jyotish, jyo means emanate; jyoti means light; so from the Sanskrit wood root jyo, jyoti means to emanate light, to shine, to glow. And Īu347 a means the first; and this is one of the names of God, because God is the first being, the first living entity. So [Jyotish means] 'the light of God', or 'the emanation of God'; the glow, the energetic products of God: jyoti-Īu347 a.

The science of Jyotish actually means understanding God's emanations, God's energy; understanding how He's creating everything, and what that means [for us personally]. So what we're doing in Jyotish is we are analyzing God's energy to understand its relationship with Him. That's the whole point; and [therefore] Jyotish is called a Vedanga. Veda means knowledge or truth, especially spiritual truth, and anga means a limb; like my arms and legs are called angas.

The Vedas themselves are direct knowledge about God and the spiritual world; but Vedangas like astrology, logic, Sanskrit, tantras, so many other things: spiritual laws and like that, these are to help us understand Vedas. They're like limbs, like the limbs of the body; you can still live without arms or without legs, but of course, you can't live as well. So we can still understand God with only Vedas, but [in that case our understanding] is not very practical; we wouldn't have any idea how to live based on that knowledge, because it's just theoretical knowledge.

But Vedangas are practical things that we can learn to apply this knowledge: music, dance, art, architecture, temple worship; all these things are considered Vedangas, or the application of the spiritual knowledge given in the Vedas. Jyotish or astrology is considered the principal Vedanga; it is the main Vedic application. It's the main way that we see God in action in the material world; and it's to give us that vision, to see everything as God's energy and to see everything in relation to God.

So how do we do this? Well, remember yesterday we were talking about ontology, and how, when you have a material ontology, you cannot perceive spiritual things directly. Remember the example [about] the black cat in the black room? If we're in a black room at midnight and the lights [are] out, and a black cat walks through, are we going to see it? No. Impossible, right? Impossible! But if we're in a room like this, all white, and the lights are on, and the sun's shining, and a black cat walks through the room, then are we gong to see it? Of course; how can we miss it? Because the background and the foreground have enough contrast that we can distinguish them; we can become aware of them.

Consciousness is dependent upon background; and without the right background, we can't be conscious of something. So if we have only material knowledge, we can't be conscious of spiritual things directly, because we don't have the proper background. That's why yesterday we talked so much about the spiritual world, and we're going to talk more about that today; we're going to really get into some details on it. And we're going to see how the material energy emanates from God; how He creates the material world, and then we'll understand better the relationship between the material energy and God. Then when we look at an astrology chart, we can see how all those things are connected, and how our personal life is connected [with God].

So all the things in the hart will actually show us, or remind us, or reveal to us different aspects of God. And this is God consciousness; this is spiritual consciousness: everything we see should remind us of God. And how that works is, when we have the proper background knowledge [it happens automatically]. Most people have very little knowledge of spiritual things; in fact, most people don't even know the difference between matter and spirit. We went over that yesterday, remember? What was it? What's the difference between matter and spirit?

Response: Spirit is eternal.

Babaji: Spirit is eternal; matter is temporary. Simple; but if you go to the church, or you go down to the yoga center, or you go to the medicine man, and you ask, "What is the difference between matter and spirit?" they're like, "Duh, well, um, I don't know." They can't explain it, because they don't have Vedic knowledge. Vedic knowledge is the only source on this planet that has complete knowledge of spiritual life. "Complete" means, if we have that knowledge, we can realize God; that's the symptom of having complete knowledge.

It's just like if I have complete knowledge about a computer, I can build a computer. I can tear it apart, put it back together again, and it'll work better and it'll be faster. So if I have complete knowledge about spiritual life, then I can realize spiritual life; I can perceive, I can become conscious of spiritual things directly. And that's our experience in Vedic knowledge, in Vedic spiritual life: because we have that complete knowledge.

Just like last night we were chanting. We were over at Uve's house, and it was so beautiful! It's like, from the first notes, immediately, there was perception of God. How do we perceive God? This is gonna surprise you: through the tongue. We perceive God through the tongue. People always say "Can you show me God? Can I see God?" And I say, "No, you cannot see God. You cannot see God; you're not qualified to see God. Can I show you God? Yes; but will you see Him? Probably not." Why? Because you're trying to approach God with the eyes; [and] that's the wrong way to approach God. You have to approach God with your tongue.

This is a great secret; people don't understand this: that if you approach God with the tongue, then you can see God. And the next thing is the ears; you can hear God. There's a certain quality of sound vibration that if we're pure, we can recognize that God is present in that sound: Hare Krsna. It's all dependent on our purity; so how do we become pure? By controlling the tongue: by controlling our speech, and by controlling the things that we eat, and by developing a taste for purity, a taste for truth, a taste for transcendental sound vibration.

So when we hear transcendental sound vibration, when we hear something that's pure, we can recognize it, we can hear it. If we ourselves use our tongue to vibrate transcendental sound, and if we ourselves only take prasadam that made from pure, that's offered from pure foods and we learn the taste of purity, then we know when we're speaking the truth, and we know when we're speaking transcendental sound vibration or singing or chanting, and then we know when other people are speaking transcendental sound vibration; we know when other people are representing the Absolute Truth properly because its pure.

So we develop the taste for purity by chanting the pure holy name, and when we chant the pure holy name without offences then God immediately manifests on our tongue, we can taste God and hear God long before we can see him, that’s the last thing. So you want me to show you God, yeah I can show you God, you have to chant this mantra. Chant this mantra; eat pure food, avoid illicit sex life, avoid intoxication, avoid gambling, avoid meat eating, avoid all these things that are impure and then you will get a taste for truth, and when you taste the truth then you’ll be able to recognize it in others, it takes one to know one.

People ask me how can I recognize a guru I don’t know the Spiritual Truth, I need a guru to show me but how do I know how to recognize who’s a bona fide guru and who’s faking it and I tell them “well it takes one to know one”. You have to become pure and if you become pure then you can recognize that purity in others. There’s no short you have to do your homework; you have to do your chanting, you have to do your study, you have to do your austerities.

Austerities mean you give up something pleasurable for the purpose of attaining a higher goal. Just like if I want to go to college I have to save my money, I can’t spend my money on big cars or a big house or something like that I have to save my money on tuition.

If I want to become a doctor I have to go to school for twelve or fifteen years, it’s a big austerity, I don’t want to go to school I want to go out and have fun I don’t want to have to study and stay home and you know like that, but if you really want that goal, if you really what to become a doctor you have to do that, its austerity your taking some trouble to attain a higher result. No pain no gain. That’s a very trivial way to say it but really what were doing is were giving up things of lower nature, or we’re restricting our indulgence in taste of material enjoyment, so that we can enjoy a higher taste of spiritual enjoyment, that’s austerity, tapasya in Sanskrit .

Our astrology can guide us to the areas where we are weak, to the areas where we tend to fall down in the material life, it can see our weak points, it can see our habitually fall downs, and then we can restrict those areas or take additional discipline in those areas so that we can become strong. Saturn’s going to make us do this anyway, but if we’re aware of the process and we get with the program we can do it voluntarily we don’t have to be forced to do it and then again that goes to our credit.

So before I get into the whole background structure of Vedic astrology I want to ask if there are an questions on what we have gone over so far. Both here and on the web. Yes.

Student 01: When you say pure foods does that also mean preservatives or anything along that nature?

Babaji: Yeah, the best thing is organic food, which is raised by people with good consciousness but the minimal standard that we have is no meat, fish, eggs, no onions or garlic and everything is offered to God.

Student 01: What’s wrong with garlic?

Babaji: It stinks, when someone is eating onions or garlic I know when they get within ten feet. I can smell them. Because your senses become pure after a while and they become much more sensitive and you there’s a certain breath smell that people who eat onions and garlic have and its offensive, sorry, its like b.o. But the whole body smells bad the sweat smells bad when the person eats contaminated food especially animal products. Our digestive system, our colon is too long to digest animal food we don’t have an animals carnivorous physiology we have a plant eaters physiology. So the food takes too long to go through the digestive tract, so by the time the animal products get to the colon they’re already in putrefacation. So we have flatulence and rotting stuff in our guts, naturally our sweats going to smell bad our breaths going to smell bad. If we’re not pure ourselves how can we recognize purity in others.

Of course it does make it a little bit inconvenient because everybody’s eating meat, you walk down the street, we went out this morning to go to the store as soon as we walk out the door what do we smell bacon and eggs, I could smell it instantly. But we have to tolerate that to have a sensitivity to experience purity for ourselves also to recognize it in others.

There’s a question on the web. Hey slow down guys! Wait a minuet where’s that question?

Web Question: What about the common argument that I love God, why should all this diet stuff matter? What matters is that I love God deeply.

Babaji: That’s from Neville. Well if you love God, you don’t want to slaughter his creatures .If you love God you don’t want to cause pain to anyone not even an ant. He created those creatures, they’re His property we cant just take and kill them all, its horrible, maybe in an emergency, if we’re starving and maybe it’s the only thing we can do and we kill something and eat it ,that might be excused but in our present situation there’s plenty of everything, we don’t have any need for animal food. We find also that when we eat a pure diet we feel so good, my guru always used to say that “Virtue is its own reward” .In other words we’re not being good to get something else in the future, Like if you’re a good boy Santa clause will give you a nice present. No God isn’t Santa clause [laugh] but if we’re good if we live a pure life then we feel good automatically I’m sixty one years old I don’t have any major health problems, you know. I feel like a kid I feel really good, maybe I have a little extra weight but that’s because of all that Prasadam its all Neville’s fault [laughter]

 

Student 02: I have a question

 

Babaji: Yes?

Student 02: I have a question about what you were saying a little bit earlier. About how these things around us is not God. But its made up of the energy of God then it is Gods creation then how is it that it’s not God. I understand that there is a source right? God is a source but the energy and the creation of God is also God.

Babaji: It is and it isn’t, in one sense everything is God however we see that there is the emanating part of God and then there’s the energetic or emanated part of God, and there’s a distinction between them.

Student 02: But that doesn’t mean that the emanated part is not God.

Babaji: No but in other words what your saying is, if I try to apply Aristotelian materialistic knowledge to the question then it is impossible to determine what is and what is not God.

Student 02: I’m just asking a question on the statement that you made.

Babaji: Right, that’s what I’m saying. So in spiritual life. Lets start with material logic, in material logic we can have (x and y is true) or we can have (x or y is true). So either both of them are true or one of them is true, right? These are the two basic kinds of logic in the material world. These things are mutually exclusive in the material logic, they can’t both be true, both these statements can not be true in material logic. But in spiritual logic there’s no problem with both these statements being true, depending how we look at it. Do you follow me so far?

Student 02: So your saying that God and his emanation is one and it is all God and God and his emanation are separate and His emanations are not God.

Babaji: Simultaneously, Right, so it depends how we look at it. In the one sense everything is God because He is everything, that is one definition of God as the complete whole of everything that exists. In another way of looking at it there’s a difference between the cause and the effect, between the source and the emanation.

Student 02: So your making a distinction between the two.

Babaji: For this particular purpose we need to make that distinction because if we don’t we get ourselves in trouble. What happens is that we start using the energy of God for purposes that are different from Gods, this is called mental concoction.

Student 02: But you can make that distinction without saying this is not God right?

Babaji: Well we say it’s Gods energy .

Student 02: But even though you say that its still God.

Babaji: In some ultimate sense it is but its God transformed, like the table doesn’t manifest consciousness material objects do not manifest consciousness; activate, sensitivity, responsiveness to the environment.

Student 02: They serve.

Babaji: Yeah, they’re just like, use me (laugh).But if we take that service and use it for our own purposes that are different from Gods then we also have to take the karma. See? that’s the difference. If we take that energy and use it for a purpose that’s part of Gods purpose then its cool there’s no karma, yeah?

Student 01: From my own understanding is this a proper analogy, say that a cell in my body is not my me but it is a piece of me, say for example, I am God and a cell is a person or an object within that a cell does not make up God but is a piece of God.

 

Babaji: Exactly, that’s a really good analogy, Dan is saying for you guys on line he’s making the analogy that the whole I am the body that’s me, yet a cell within my body is actually different from me its actually a different living entity a different life. So similarly the individual living beings are part of God are part of Gods total existence but yet they are not Got in that they are separate independent entities. That’s a really good analogy.

Student 01: That’s a analogy that I use that every cell in the body they do not compete with each other, or try to be the most popular cell or..

Babaji: (Laughing) Voted most popular cell. (Laughing)

Student 01: But you know what I mean like they all work serving the body in a common attempt.

Babaji: Now that’s really good.. that’s very good, Prabhupada used to give the analogy that the business of the hand is not to eat, the duty of the hand s to take the food and put it in the mouth and when the hand give the food to the mouth then the hand enjoys the energy of the food, but if the hand tries to eat the food its self (laughing) then that’s not going to be successful and ultimately the hands going to starve.

Student 01: We don’t glorify the hand.

Babaji: Well we do the hand is beautiful when it performs the function of giving the food to the mouth, see? Otherwise if it tries to eat independently its diseased its not cooperating with the whole. Our business is to cooperate with the whole and to offer the energy of Krsna back to Krsna, energy of God back to God and then by doing that service according to his purpose not our purposes, not our concoction but what he expresses in the scriptures as being his purpose when we use it for that we have no Karma and that’s how we get free from the unintended consequences of our actions. Tony did you have a comment?

Student 03: Ah yes, what is the appropriate way to offer food?

Babaji: Well the most important thing is the intention, There’s information on the website there’s a little ceremony that traditional in out lineage but the most important thing is you know you just have a little picture and you put the food there, or you have a picture in your mind and the intention is here God this is your energy, please enjoy it and let us take the remnants thank you very much. Its simple, it’s very simple but that simple action takes all the karmic reaction from the food, that simple offering it doesn’t have to be a big elaborate deal although in the temples of course we offer food very elaborate ceremoniously. But for us the main thing is the concept the consciousness. The bottom line in all our teachings you’ll find again and again and again we talk about consciousness. The value of a spiritual teaching or practice is it’s effect on out consciousness, and many of the teachings that we have, that idea of oneness and separation from God is another one like this. Where the social consequences of the idea of being one with God are so terrible and so destructive and for that reason alone we should reject that mood. Because if we’re all God then we can do anything we want then there’s no laws there’s no right and wrong there’s no consequences, and yeah it gets dicey real fast (laughing) see? An intelligent person wont misuse that philosophy like that but a person of less intelligence will see it as an opportunity for mayhem.

Student 02: God to just express himself his purposes through you as an expression of God. That why we’re here as individuals. It part of being human

Babaji: Oh, Absolutely we want that. Its also a big part of being in spiritual consciousness and doing bhakti-yoga you know were always checking in, I’m always checking in with Krsna, like well ok, what do you want me to do now what do you want me to say now you know let him actually take over my body and operate my senses and mind. Its a lot easier that way (laughing) the product is better too (laughing)

Student 02: So in that way we are God.

Babaji: In that we are we’re linked with God, you see it take a certain amount of discrimination to understand a certain amount of intelligence and people who don’t have that intelligence they’ll take it in a different way. “Oh Im God, that means I can rob that bank I’ve been looking at” [puts on phony gangster accent] (laughing)

Student 02: I’ve never thought that once (laughing)

Babaji: You wouldn’t think it but there’s a certain class of people who always will miss use that philosophy in that way. Therefore we have to present theses ideas with great discretion. You see Çaìkaräcärya who originated this idea that this “We are all one” [puts on phony Indian accent] and all this. He himself was a completely renounced monk, he never had sex in his life he was completely pure. But then the people who took it up, who took that philosophy and ran with it they had many other motives okay. They wanted to be excused from the rules and regulation from spiritual life so that they could do the kind of activities that they wanted to do, they wanted to imitate God

Student 02: So clarity needed to happed more understanding needed to be given, so that they were educated and knowledgeable because anyone can take any idea any philosophical idea and make anything they want of it, it doesn’t mean that we say, no, this isn’t true you know .

Babaji: So there’s a simultaneous inconceivably oneness and difference with God. That’s our philosophy actually. Its even called that . Our philosophy in the Esoteric Teaching is called, I want to write it in Sanskrit, achintia which means inconceivable bheda which means different abheda tattvam . Achintia-bheda-abheda-tattvam means simultaneous inconceivable oneness and difference with God. This s a very sophisticated idea this is not for ideas. We present this idea very carefully and were trying to give the background.

So what today’s going to be about is the background of these ideas and practices and especially the background of Vedic Astrology. How are you guys doing online? Ok anymore questions before we go on?

Student 04: Baba, Just a comment that came to my mind that in the work that Im doing with graphy, that light laser, light for instance is the singularity, it’s the zero order, its God, it’s the source of the energy, and when light passes through a diffraction grading it separates into orders, and the orders are separate from the original zero order but they’re part and parcel of the zero order but yet they’re separate but yet they’re the same. They’re part of the diffracted orders .

Babaji: Right, you can’t get those parts of the diffracted beams and combine them together and get the original beam.

Student 04: No, you can not they’re separate but yet they’re animated from that zero order. God is the zero order, we’re the diffracted order.

Babaji: What a nice analogy.

Student 04: It’s a good word diffraction.

Babaji: Yeah, its very interesting that even if you have a beam that consists of a single electron you can put it through a diffraction grading and get all of the patterns as if the electron is everywhere.

Student 04: All the probabilities.

Babaji: Yeah, even a single electron that manifests the properties of a whole beam of electrons at that level of matter, the partials begin to have some of the properties of consciousness, they’re on the border line between pure Brahman pure spirit and the material existence. That’s what Krsna means when He say I’m within every atom. He’s there so naturally we begin to see some of those properties in the quantum world and that’s what’s freaking the scientists out, they can’t deal with it. They can make the equations work but they don’t want to know why (laughing).

Ok I’m going to need a lot of space on the white board. I’m going to give the background of Vedic Astrology. What we’re going to talk about now is Vedic Cosmo geneses. So Vedic Cosmo geneses is a much more clearer picture of creation than we find in any other spiritual tradition. I’m going to give a very schematic overview of the structure of the spiritual world and how God expands himself into other personalities.

There are two kinds of expansions of God they are called svämsa or integrated expansions and vibhinnämsa or separated expansions we are vibhinnämsa we have been through the diffraction grading (laughing) here’s the diffraction grading right here [drawing broken line on board] here on this side you have the spiritual world and on the other side the material world, ok?

So everybody that exists is an expansion of God, but some are integrated expansions meaning the same individual, and others are separated expansions meaning we’re different individuals, like each of us is an individual, we each have our own individuality, our own personality, our own different identity, our own different consciousness.

One of us has no idea what going on in another an other ones consciousness, I mean if we communicate and tell each other about it that’s one way we can know, but really we have no direct way in knowing what’s in another persons consciousness that’s called vibhinnämsa or separated we’re separated in consciousness. Everything comes down to the consciousness you remember in this system.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead is Krsna and the first expansion from Krsna is Balaram. Balaram plays the role of Kranas brother, whenever Krsna appears Balaram also appears. Like in the pastimes of Krsna five thousand years ago in India, Balaram appeared as His older brother. In the pastimes of Lord Rama one point six million years ago, Balaram appeared as his younger brother Bharata, and when Lord Caitanya appeared five hundred years ago, Balaram appeared as his brother Lord Nityänanda. He always appears along with Krsna and he serves Krsna in different ways therefore he is called The Supreme Personality of Servitor Godhead, ok?

It’s like Krsna is The served Godhead the worshiped Godhead and Balaram is the worshiping Godhead the serving Godhead, he is the original guru, because he shows by example how to serve Krsna how to please Krsna. He’s called Nityänanda because by serving Krsna he gets eternal bliss Nityä-nanda eternal-bliss. Balaram is Nityänanda he’s The Supreme Personality of Servitor Godhead and then we also have Krsna and Krsnas energy, Radha. Radha being the feminine equivalent of Krsna represents his total energies, his total expansions. She emanates from him just like the sunshine form the sun, just like if you take all the suns sunshine and gather it up into one place and personify it, that would be Radha and Krsna. She is the source of all of the other deities goddesses and saktirs potencies, Yes ?

Student 01: Is Radha like a mother?

Babaji: That’s one of her expansions.

Student 01: Is it like part and parcel or is it pretty much the same thing, Radha is one mother or is it just an emanation?

Babaji: We’ll get to that ok. That’s what were going to explain these relationships are much more complicated than that, that’s why I’m doing this whole chart to explain all that, ok.

Then Balaram his saktir (potency) is Hlädiné, Hlädiné is also known as Yogamaya. So who is Hlädiné? She is an expansion of Radha, she’s the first expansion of Radha and she is Yogamaya just like in the material world we have Mahamaya or the great illusion of material existence in the spiritual world we have Yogamaya or the illusion, remember we were talking about virtual realities. Krsna can expand a different form to be with his devotees simultaneously and each of those devotee sees that, oh Krsna is with me He’s not with those other devotees. I have a special relationship with Krsna (laughing) they all think like that so this is an illusion, its maya which means and illusion but it’s Yogamaya, it’s an illusion of being linked with God of being in a relationship with God that’s what yoga means.

Yoga means linking like hooking up a cart and a horse or two things have a relationship with one another. Yogamaya is the illusion or the virtual reality of the spiritual worlds and Mahamaya or Durga or the Divine mother is the illusion of material existence in general ok? But there’s a lot more lavers of reality in between those two it’s not quite so simple, it’s not quite so direct.

Ok, so from Balaram he expands as the Caturvyüha. Catur means four and vyüha means a formation like when troops go into battle they make a certain formation, that’s called a vyuha in Sanskrit. The Caturvyüha consists of four personalities of Godhead Väsudeva, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, and Saìkarñaëa.

Väsudeva, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, and Saìkarñaëa they are the Caturvyüha and they expand out into the Vaikuntha world or the spiritual world and they create innumerable spiritual planets and they expand themselves into innumerable forms to preside over all these spiritual plants and then there are many, many, many spiritual living entities that live on those plants and engage in eternal blissful spiritual pastimes with them. They make the spiritual world basically.

So from the Caturvyüha from Saìkarñaëa expands Mahavishnu. Mahavishnu he is the source of all the material energy, His expansion is what’s called well mahämäyä. Mahämäyä means the total material energy this is also called pradhäna, you see these terms in different places in the Vedas pridäna or mahat-tatttva. Mahamaya, these are all personalities by the way they are all different spiritual beings that have a relationship originally with Krsna and of course Mahamaya is an expansion of Yogamaya but in the case of Mahamaya she is material energy or the principal of material creation. Now notice that all these personalities are above the line they are spiritual personalities that means that they exist eternally.

The principal of material energy Mahamaya exists eternally in the spiritual world, sometimes she’s manifest and sometimes she’s not manifest. Now also from Mahavishnu expands the living entities the jéva-tattva and these are called the Sänkhya borderline energies, Sänkhya means the border between two things or what is the border between material and spiritual. The jévas or the living entities, us we can either be in the material world or the spiritual world, we can be in material consciousness or spiritual consciousness depending on the point of view that we take. If we take the point of view that we are looking outward form the material senses and we want to be separate from God that we are in material consciousness, if we take the point of view that we are looking inward with the spiritual senses and we want to be in relationship with God that’s spiritual consciousness.

The jévas they can go either way , they can go into the spiritual world or they can go into the material world, it’s our choice we have free will, we have the ability to choose, do I want to be in relation with God do I want to cooperate with God or do I want to go against God do I want to imitate God. That’s really the scope of our free will, and from that choice everything else more or less determined by our karma, you know, it’s a crap shoot. Ok, I want to go to the material world, Ok, what’s my karma, oh oh! snake eyes (laughing) but if I want to go to the spiritual world then I have more choices about how I want to relate to God, what kind of relationship do I want to enjoy, I have much more free will, I have much more choice in the matter because its not a mechanical system of cause and effect like in the material world.

You’ll see in astrology even though its very complex its actually very mechanistic so we loose a lot of our free will by going into the material energy, but any way.

From Mahä-Viñsu a second Caturvyüha expands so now we have another Väsudeva, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, these are all Visnhu forms and Saìkarñaëa. So then Saìkarñaëa goes into the material world. Mahä-Viñsu lies down in the Käran Ocean, the Causal Ocean, Käran means causal so he becomes the first cause so He lies down on the snake of Saìkarñaëa. Have you see these pictures? No? you guys haven’t looked at my site very much have you, anyway He lies down on the Causal Ocean within the spiritual world and he emanates all the jéva-tattva and he emanates the mahat-tattva, and He glances over the universes that expand from His pores millions and millions and millions of universes just like ours, and he glances over them and by His glance He impregnates the mahat-tattva with the jéva-tattva and that’s how the living beings enter into the material universes.

So then within all these material universes there’s another Ocean called the Garbhodaka Ocean and He lies down as Väsudeva he becomes Garbhodakasäyi Visnu and from His navel the lotus grows and opens up and there’s Lord Brahmä and guess who Lord Brahmä is, Aniruddha. And from Pradyumna, Lord Shiva is born, ok, so then from Garbhodakasäyi Visnu expands Ksirodakasäyi Visnu. And Ksirodakasäyi Visnu lies down on the ocean of milk and he becomes the Supersoul, and the Supersoul expands within the heart of everybody so that we’re never alone.

The Ksirodakasäyi Visnu He’s in control of the mode of goodness, Lord Brahmä the incarnation of Aniruddha is in charge of the mode of passion, and Lode Shiva is an expansion of Pradyumna is in charge of the mode of ignorance, within the material world. And then everything that happens in the material world is subject to the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance, because these are the qualities of these deities that are influenced by time. Above the line, here everything is eternal. In the spiritual world there is no beginning and no end to any of this. But in the material world all of these expansions appear at the beginning of the universe and then they are reabsorbed at the end including the living beings.

So when the material universe ends all the living beings go back into the pradhäna, the mahat-tattva and they go into a state of like suspended animation, and then there’s a long interval where’s there’s no material creation, and then again the material creation emanates from Mahä-Viñsu and so on, so they are eternialy being created and destroyed.

So the material world, being a temperory abode where the living beings who are conditioned by material consciousness come and they preform activities that are conditioned by goodness, passion and ignorance and this is the foundaton of the law of karma. The karma that we experience in this material world has three favors goodness, passion and ignorance and were going to devote some time today discussing those three qualities.

Everybody got this? (laughing) Yes?

Student 01: How many years is that you know, like when they destroy everything and then bring it back?

Babaji: The material creation exists for approximately for five hundred and eleven trillion years.

Student 01: Ah! (laughing)

Babaji: From the beginning to the end, that systen that we were talking about the yesterday of the Yugas, mahä yugas and chakras and all of that, you see the way it works is, Well we figure about five point five million years is one cycle of four yugas and twenty two of those cycles is one divya-yuga and twenty one divya yugas is one manvantara or the period of time of one maun, and twenty four manus is one day of Brahmä. And then Brahmä goes to sleep and for an equivelant amount of time he sleeps and the material manisfistation just disolves, because he not keeping it in place so it just goes back into its original elements. Then when Brahmä wakes up and recreates everything and for another equivalent period of time everything is manifest. So Brahmä lives for a hundred years, like that so each one of those so many of billions and billions of years each day of Brahmä, I think the day of Brahmä is something like sixteen billion years long and his night is about the same. So he lives for a hundred of those years, three hundred and sixty days in a year, so the whole thing comes to I don’t know something like five hundred and eleven trillion years or something like that.

So we all have to look at this again and again, this is a very complicated system and it has to be like that, we have a diagram already Conor. Its on the astrology course and we went over it a couple of weeks back when we did the last class on the introduction to the jyotisa course. It’s the ontological diagram of Vaikuntha. This is all drawen from the Srimad-Bhagavatam on the third Canto which describes the creation.

Student 01: So, under the borderline is the material world so, do they actually have material bodies?

Babaji: Yes they have material bodies but their bodies are very subtle they’re not made of gross earth, air, fire, water or atoms, you know, they’re made of energy. But its material energy. The main thing to remember for all of this is that everything that exists is Krsnas energy. And there’s different flavours of that energy for different purposes of the creation, maintenance and destruction of the material world.

So basically Krsna doesn’t do anything. Krsna is gone on vacation. He just enjoys He just parties, he just hangs out with his devotees in the spiritual world. He doesn’t have to do anything because he expands himself in different forms to actually do the work of creation and maintenance, expansion and contraction and all of the things that have to go on. He does this through his proxies through his expansions. His expansions remember are svämsa they’re integrated expansions they have the same personality the same consciousness, they’re just different forms and those forms perform different specific function in the spiritual world and the material world so it’s all a system a very complex system.

Just like if you have a very large company, you have the board of directors and the president and then you have the vice president of marketing, the vice president of technology, the vice president of this, the vice president of that. And its like the CEO basically just shows up and makes the big speeches and gets all the credit and the actual work is done by the different executives committees and the employees, right? So the CEO is basically like a figure head he doesn’t really do that much work his work is in a conceptual realm. So similarly Krsna, His work, His function is that He is worshiped. He is the object of worship, and the other personalities of Godhead worship Him and serve Him according to their various capacities. So that’s the nature of the Supreme Person, Krsna being the Supreme Personality of Godhead that’s what that means. He receives all the worship he accepts all the service that the other expansions of Godhead rendered according to their specific potencies and positions and like that.

This is the Vedic system, its very sophisticated and very nice and it creates the potential possibilities for every living soul to have exactly the kind of existence that they want, exactly the kind of flavor of activities, exactly the kind of consciousness, the kind of ascetics that they would like to have. Anything that we want to enjoy we can enjoy but we can enjoy it in the spiritual world we don’t have to come to this material world to enjoy, we can enjoy in cooperation with God and we can experience life in any way we want there‘s no limits.

Is there a question?

Web Question: Can you comment on the difference in time in different layers of material reality?

Babaji: Yes! Generally the higher we are on this chart the longer the time span were talking about. I think for example its given in the Vedas that the year of a demigod is a, a hundred years on Earth planet or one day in the planets of the demigods and of course in the spiritual world it’s even more than that, remember when Lord Brahmä came and stole the cows and calves and cow herd boys from Krsna as a trick to test Him and Brahmä went away for one moment (click of fingers) a truti. A truti in Sanskrit is the time it takes to snap your fingers, so Brahmä went away for one moment and when he came back but by Earth time that was one year, So Brahmäs time is even a longer time span because he lives for the whole duration of the universe but to him that seems what a hundred years would seem to us. So there are different time scales on different levels of the universe and then of course once you get to the spiritual world everything is eternal but the relativity of the time in the spiritual world to the material world is even greater, its even more than that. So even just a moment in the spiritual world is like thousands and thousands of years in the material world.

Student 01: Can I ask you, how can souls decide to come down into the physical world?

Babaji: Well like I said you have free will you can just, from this point of view from this very, very high the soul has a lot more powers a lot more abilities a lot more higher consciousness in the spiritual world. So from that point of view the material world looks like this insignificant little thing, it’s like oh I can go there and I can be a big fish in a small pond you know, it’s an illusion.

Student 01: Do you loose consciousness when you go into the physical world?

Babaji: Of course because then your in the covering of the material elements and your natural spiritual intelligence gets covered over by a material body and mind and then you loose all those powers you see.

Student 01: And the way to get it back is through chanting and meditation?

Babaji: Yeah that’s how we get out of this material world and get back to the spiritual world. This process is a process of elevation from the lower realms of the material world back to the spiritual world which is our real home.

We have pictures Conor on our astrology course the transontology site has that one. Maybe I should display it here so everyone can see it .

“ Om namo Bhagavate väsudeväya “

This is the same information its just a little neater and it goes into more detail as far as the material part, I put more detail on the diagram I just put on the board on the spiritual side but this one has more detail on the material side.

So everybody’s following this ok? Are we ready to go on? Oh my goodness twelve o’clock already. Time flies when your having fun.

Now were going to discuss the three modes because this is basically to astrology . Ah one more point before we leave this. So the Lord incarnates in three principal forms in the material world as Vishnu, Brahmä and Shiva and they are in charge of the mode of goodness, passion and ignorance respectively and we’re going to explain that in one minuet.

But the point I want to make before I move on is that there are many, many more incarnations in the material world, Thousands and there are ten or twelve principal incarnations and those incarnations are personalities or individuals or the spiritual force behind the planets and the signs in astrology. In other words astrology isn’t mechanical, it’s not impersonal it personal, and the personalities are different incarnations of the Lord they’re not mundane persons. So all the plants, all the signs, all the houses, all the different elements of astrology represent some aspect or expansion of the Supreme Lord. That’s the key to understanding Vedic astrology and that’s the whole reason I got into all of this was just to show.

Let’s go on and take a look at the three modes of material nature and how the laws of karma are derived from them and we’ll make another big diagram

Student 01: Baba I have a question. The entities that are in the material realm are they carbon based life forms biological life forms like us?

Babaji: It doesn’t matter what kind of body they take, they take the body according to the conditions on the world where they go to get the results of their karma what ever that is. So if their on plate Earth they might be carbon based but if their on another planet they might be based on plasma or pure energy or something like that. That why when we go to other plants we don’t often see critters running around maybe their bodies are made out of something different. The laws of nature are different on different plants.

Student 01: They’re just vessels for consciousness right, their just the bodies.

Babaji: Yeah that’s all, Containers.

Student 02: We might not be able to see them with our carbon eyes.

Babaji: Exactly, our eyes are adapted for our particular biosphere our conditions of life, that doesn’t mean they’re going to work the same on another planet. We can’t go to the moon or another planet without wearing a space suit. Our bodies aren’t adjusted to that, but creatures who are from that place can live there no problem. There are people on the sun their bodies are made of fire or plasma, you know very high temperature. There’s so much energy available on the sun they have very advanced capabilities. But any way back to the three modes of nature.

Ok, we have Vishnu, Brahmä and Shiva and they’re in charge of goodness, passion and ignorance. The cosmic function of these three modes are maintenance, creation and destruction. We were talking about yesterday every material existence comes into being at a certain point is created at a certain point in time then its maintained for a specific interval and then it’s finally destroyed or transformed into something else.

Energy is neither created or destroyed, energy is conserved in our universe, so the energy that goes up to making one object is recycled and it forms another object, remember last night we were talking about the leaves, the leaves grow on the trees in the Summer and then they fall off in the Autumn and they’re composted during the winter and by next Summer they are soil and plants can grow from that and so on and so on. That’s the way nature works.

Those three modes are in everything and they are everywhere and you’ll see them again, again and again because everything goes through maintenance, creation and destruction, those are the three phases of time in the material world.

With respect to each individual object it has a particular time and form of creation then a particular kind of maintenance and a specific type of destruction at the end so these three modes which in Sanskrit are called sattvam, rajah and tamah. We find that everything that exists has these three modes. In terms of karma, let’s see, this is cosmic function, but in terms of karma, goodness leads to elevation, passion leads to, we call mediocrity, staying the same, you don’t advance you don’t decrease and ignorance leads to degradation.

When a person performs activities in the goodness they are directly or in directly worshiping Lord Vishnu and because of that they advance in consciousness they advance in their material position, they advance in knowledge, they advance in good fortune, they advance in good luck things seem to go well for them, things seem to work out for them very easily without any effort that’s good karma, comes from actions in the mode of goodness. And we’ll get into analyzing which is in which mode as we go along here. But the important thing is the result or the karma in actions in the mode of goodness in general lead to elevation.

For example spiritually speaking the destination of one who acts in the mode of goodness is the heavenly plants or even the spiritual world. They become more intelligent more able they get more knowledge they get more opportunities people have a better reputation they have a better attitude they have a nice body in the next life. People who get born into a very rich family or who have a very beautiful body or are very talented mind or an intelligent mind or like that or who have natural spiritual abilities or naturally renounced that means that they have preformed a lot of activities in the mode of goodness in their past life.

The mode of passion means that if somebody performs activities in the mode of passion that means they’re helping Lord Brahma to create the material world, they’re serving Lord Brahma and because of serving Lord Brahma the tend to stay in the material word, ok, its like what goes around comes around. You want to help create this thing you can stay around your not going anywhere. So the people who perform activities in the mode of passion they tend to create more material results from the effect of their karma from those actions.

So basically the mode of passion its called passion because it results in increased material desire, they get more and more and more aims and desires and material plans and aspirations and wants and needs and you know greed. Greed and passion go together, a person in the mode of passion we see that they have lots and lots of material desires lots and lots of plans and needs in the material world and they increase more and more, more than they can ever do or experience in this lifetime this is called greed.

So greed is actually a mode or symptom in the mode of passion and this leads to a person staying in the material world for ever with no hope of ever getting out because they increase their needs more and more and then they have to take another body to experience those desires. Because of their consciousness they’ve entrapped themselves more and more in this material energy.

And then a person in the mode of ignorance they are directly or indirectly worshiping Lord Shiva and his function is to destroy things. He at the end of creation when its time to dissolve the material creation he does his famous dance and just devastates everything that’s Lord Shivas cosmic function. When we perform activities that worship Lord Shiva like intoxication; meat eating, gambling, speculation any kind of exploitation or war, you know any of those kind of activities that include hurting others. The person in the mode of passion just hurts themselves but a person in the mode of ignorance they also hurt others and that really evil because you know what comes around goes around. So if you give others pain then your going to experience pain too.

People in the mode of ignorance the result of their activities is that they become degraded they loose their intelligence; they loose their youth, they loose their strength, they loose their health, they loose their good discrimination or their good luck they loose their knowledge you will always find that people in the mode of ignorance are against God. They’re going down, Bye!, taking a dive (laughing).

Like the hippies living on the street eating out of garbage cans taking drugs all the time you know, that’s the mode of ignorance. No discrimination they lost their intelligence they don’t know what’s right or wrong what’s good or bad. They don’t know how to advance their life in fact they make fun of the people in the mode of passion and the mode of goodness. Hey man that guys so up tight you know he’s like working every day and getting rich and stuff, whoa how stupid huh? Yeah, pass the joint you know [ putting on phony hippy accent ] (laughing).

The slacker mentality but actually these people even though people in the mode of passion they’re very driven they have very active they have all kinds of plans and stuff their schedules very tight and they are very busy, at least they are working to produce something and actually they produce all the things the people in the mode of ignorance simply consume. So without the people in the mode of passion and the people in the mode of goodness the people in the mode of ignorance wouldn’t have a world to live in so what are they complaining about, but that’s what ignorance is right?

So everything in this world comes in three flavors goodness, passion and ignorance. Ok lets take food, food in the mode of goodness means vegetarian; organic, pure, wholesome, cooling, easily digested, healthy you know that’s food in the mode of goodness. Food in the mode of passion is very spicy; very hot, gourmet, very rich, hard to digest, allegedly if you eat too much of it makes you diseased. And food in the mode of ignorance is animal foods.

Student 01: McDonalds.

Babaji: Perfect, you know fast food, processed, lots of additives, its stale you know like in McDonalds they cook the burgers and they sit there under the hot lights, and rot. Uck!!. (laughing) Why anybody would want to eat that stuff.

Student 01: Where does alcohol and cigarettes fall ?

Babaji: Ignorance, look at it, alcohol makes you stupid, ever tried to take a couple of drinks and try to solve a quadratic equation (laughing). So know we can understand that people who diminish their intelligence by their activities are in the mode of ignorance. Cigarettes, everybody know that cigarettes give you cancer, emphysema all kinds of, and decrease your breath capacity and stuff like that. They’re terribly, terribly addictive, heroin that’s the perfect mode of ignorance drug ,Duhhhh.. People goofing on heroin it’s a perfect mode of ignorance because it detaches you from your suffering but in the process it creates more suffering then you get the withdrawal right? So you know it’s an illusion from start to finish. You temporarily feel better and then it makes you feel a lot worse, these things are ignorance because people choose those things out of a lack of knowledge of what’s good for them or they are misinformed or miss led.

People in the mode of passion are very goal orientated, so they’re trying to increase their performance, they’re taking steroids, like the ball players they want to get out . But passion causes pain though its not ignorance it doesn’t detach you from your pain but it causes pain because there’s too much activity.

Remember how we were talking about how samädhi or spiritual ecstasy is when the soul is detached from material contact and in contact with the spiritual energy which is bliss, right? Sat cit änanda so when the soul is detached from the spiritual energy and detached to the material energy, then this is a cause of pain, suffering because the qualities of the material energy are directly against the qualities of the spiritual energy. That is the definition of pain and suffering and the root cause of all suffering is the fact that we’ve taken a material body every time you have a problem, if you analyze your problem the very existence of the problem is dependant on the material body if you didn’t have a material body you wouldn’t have any problems.

Do you have a question?

Student 01: Yeah so the mode of ignorance then is not only doing something that hurts other people it includes others things that can ……

Babaji: Well sure if they diminish…. 

 

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