The tradition of Vedic Astrology is based on Parasara Muni's Brhad Parasara Hora Sastra, and this is still the best work on astrology, but unfortunately no one follows it. The essence of Vedic astrology is to help us make spiritual advancement and become detached from this material world, which is just a place of suffering. If we want real pleasure, we have to transfer our existence to the spiritual world, where we can experience eternal pleasure. This material world is just the appearance of reality, but everything here is temporary, therefore it cannot give us the unconditional spiritual love and pleasure we seek.
Transcription
Babaji: …It’s incredibly, incedibly robust.
So how did Parasara learn astrology? Well, he learned it from the same source that we learn our spiritual knowledge; it was passed down from Lord Brahma. Remember, Brahma is the demigod – the co-creator demigod in the mode of passion. So a shastra based on Brahma’s teachings is always going to be very accurate because, after all, he’s the one that determines all the planetary alignments and their orbits and the solar system and the structure of the universe and the whole thing. So basically he [Parasara] received his wisdom from Brahma by disciplic succession, which is the way that Vedic knowledge is passed down. And because of that, this Brhad Parasara Hora Shastra is amazingly accurate. If you do predictive work or analytical work according to the knowledge in BPHS, you just get incredibly great results. I’m so impressed with it.
Strangely enough, even though there are many different programs, Vedic astrology programs, on the market or even available for free, open source and like that, none of them strictly follow BPHS! This has always been something very strange to me. I don’t really understand why [they don't just follow BPHS]. Instead, they follow later authors who wrote commentaries on BPHS, and that’s not the Vedic way. It’s like if somebody else is writing and they contradict something that Parasara says, by the process of disciplic succession we would take the earlier author to be more correct. Because we know that since the time of Parasara human intelligence has decreased, not increased. The Vedic model is a model of devolution, not evolution. So we know that people in Parasara’s time were much more intelligent than we are today. Therefore, in general the principle is [that] we take their word for it. And actually I did a test on this – when I compiled my astrology course on our online site, I used BPHS exclusively and I did a case study. I took one person’s chart and I did a complete analysis according to BPHS. And the person that I picked was Lord Caitanya, who is the divine incarnation who is situated in our lineage over 500 years ago. The chart that I came up with and the analysis that was generated by following BPHS was exactly spot on! I mean there was not one reading that wasn’t perfect. It was just amazing! So I had to ask myself, “Why don’t people just follow BPHS? Why do they do all this speculating and adjusting and tweaking to try to get it to work right? It already works right. What are they talking about?”
[Responding to a comment on the chat widow] Yeah you’re right, Florian, it’s mental concoction. They’re trying to think “Well we know better!” And we’ve seen that before in ISKCON: “We know better than Prabhupada. We don’t have to follow his management instructions.” So, whenever that happens it leads to a disaster and right now the Vedic astrology scene – in the West especially, but even in India – is just a madhouse. I mean it’s just a disaster, it’s horrible because they’re not following BPHS. They’re following their own ideas. Basically their idea is that “We want to use astrology to answer people’s material questions.” You know, like who is going to win in the stock market or what is the political scene going to do, or how things are going to work out in the world on the material level. But that’s not what astrology is for! In the Vedic system, astrology is for understanding a person’s character and their karma; it’s for understanding their spiritual position and how they can adjust their material position for maximum spiritual benefit. It’s not designed for mundane astrology or predicting what’s going to happen in the material world. That is considered very very secondary to answering questions about out spiritual position.
So if that’s what the Jyotish system was designed for, if we try to apply it to something else of course we’re going to have to tweak it and adjust it and futz around with it, patch it up and try to get it to work, because we’re trying to do something it’s not designed for. It’s like using a wrench as a hammer. [Laughs] A wrench is not a hammer! And if we use it like that, sooner or later we’re going to damage the tool and this is exactly what has happened. The practice of astrology has become very much damaged and now the astrologers are fighting with each other basically trying to fix the blame , but it’s really their fault. Because when we use BPHS according to its original intentions, it’s original applications it works perfectly! So what’s the problem?
Well the problem is that people are trying to do astrology instead of as a spiritual practice, a Vedanga – a limb of the Vedas – instead they’re trying to make it into a business. They are trying to make a livelihood by being an astrologer. But what is the first thing that Parasara says about astrology? He says "You have to be a qualified brahmana." You have to be, in other words, a properly initiated Vedic priest following all the principles of Vedic life and you have to be…your consciousness has to be on the spiritual platform. That’s what a brahmana is. A brahmana is a knower of Brahman. So you have to be a brahmana to practice Vedic astrology. Well what are these guys doing? They’re not following the principles; they’re not initiated by a bona fide spiritual master. They might be initiated by some Jyotish-guru or something like that but they’re not chanting, they’re not studying the Vedas, they’re not trying to elevate their consciousness. They’re trying to make money! Basically [what's wrong with the Vedic astrology scene] is that the mode of passion has taken over.
So whenever you take something that is meant to function in the mode of goodness and instead you bring it into the mode of passion, well what’s going to happen is it’s going to generate problems. You’re going to create problems that you didn't have and that you really didn’t need, because you’re taking a tool and using it for a different purpose than it’s actually designed for. So this is what has happened to astrology. Astrology has become, you know, what is it….uh… ‘Linda Lovelace’s Love Notes’ [laughs], or the ‘Teen Astrology Page of the Day’! That’s not what this is about, people. So astrology, in short, has become perverted. Even Vedic astrology in the West, the way it’s practiced, has become like a big commercial thing. So really astrology, like yoga, has no meaning if we take it out of the context of the Vedic lifestyle and spiritual advancement and the whole process of spiritual life and like that.
To make astrology work, it has to be in relationship with God. And if people just want to use it for mundane purposes they’re going to ruin it. And Parasara warns against this! He says “This astrology science should not be taught to a person who is materially oriented, rascal, tricky, who doesn’t respect his elders, who doesn’t respect the guru or who is dishonest.” So that’s the problem. The people who are practicing astrology don’t meet that criterion. Instead, they’re trying to make it into a business; they’re trying to profit from it. But it shouldn’t be for profit, it should be as a gift – something that we give to people, wisdom that we give to people to help them perfect their lives. So, in other words, to practice astrology outside of the context of making spiritual advancement is fundamentally prohibited in the Vedas that deal with astrology. So when we see what’s going on in the astrology scene today, it’s no wonder they’re having problems. They’re not really following Parasara, the original astrology guru. They’re following some different process. They’re looking at astrology in a completely different way. And I spent hours in our astrology course in the videos, ranting about this so I’m not going to spend much more time on it.
But I just wanted to say that one of the projects that we’re working on - and hopefully will be able to finish this spring– is a piece of astrology software that we called JYOTI. JYOTI is an acronym; it stands for Jyotish Yantra for Ontological-Temporal Integration. [chuckles] It’s a mouthful, but really what it means is that we’re going to write a piece of software that analyzes a chart exactly the way Brhad Parasara Hora Sastra would analyze it. It doesn’t exist, and I don’t know why. Doesn’t make any sense to me. If I was the first person who ever wrote a piece of Jyotish software that would be the first thing I would do: take the original, oldest, most authoritative work and just write a program that implements that and see what the result is. Then I would maybe try to add other things and compare the results and see which is better, like that, because that would give you a baseline to do some meaningful research and so far we don’t have that baseline. All we have is somebody’s opinion about what works that we should use as a standard in our astrology software. So one of the handicaps that I’m dealing with every day as a Vedic astrologer is that the software that’s out there isn’t really accurate. [It] doesn’t really address the original meaning of Vedic astrology. It’s more designed for commercial applications and we don’t want to go there because we’ve seen the problems that result from it, and we don’t want those problems. We want to do astrology in the context of spiritual life: “This reading is to help you arrange your life in such a way to make the maximum spiritual advancement.” That’s the purpose of astrology as given by Parasara. So our software will be written in this mood, that we’re all spiritual living beings, our purpose is to get back to the spiritual world, we need the help that astrology can give us and it’s not about… yeah we may talk about material things but always in the context of spiritual life. That’s what astrology is really for, and that’s what we’re doing. So are there any questions up to this point?
Question: What do you use now as a platform for correct analysis?
Babaji: Well it’s not a problem to draw the chart and stuff like that. That’s just mechanics; that’s just math. Calculations, you get it out of the formulas. So there are several programs that I use. I use Goravani Jyotish, I use Jagannatha Hora, then there’s another one called…what’s it called… [thinking] who is the student of Parasara? Maitreya! There’s another program called Maitreya. They’re all open-source programs, or actually they all use the open source [planetary] positions. There’s a file that’s available that’s for free that has all the positions and planets and stuff. They all use the same ephemeris! So the results that they get are so close as to virtually indistinguishable. That’s the easy part; calculating the chart is just mechanics. Interpreting the chart requires some real intelligence because you have to go through the shastra and see how is he interpreting the chart, how is he looking at these different positions and what they mean or what they indicate. So we’ve developed basically an intermediary language specification that allows us to express the Sanskrit slokas of BPHS in a logical syntax and then we can use that in a table-lookup kind of a thing to see which conditions apply and then extract the readings that Parasara gives and format them into a table where we can actually sort them according to different criteria and stuff like that. It’s a pretty simple architecture, really. It’s just a lot of details because there’s something like twelve thousand readings involved. And that’s not even including the dashas, that’s just the basic positions in the chart [laughs]. Because the chart, let’s see, you have seven planets, twelve signs, twelve houses and then the relationships among them and then there’s something like I dunno…forty nine chapters of BPHS that all they deal with is the birth chart and the meanings of those positions in the birth chart. About 45% of BPHS just deals with that. Then another 40% deals with the dashas, and the dashas are very valuable because they allow you to make predictions based on time. But then there’s different exceptions and special cases and remedial measures and all like that, and that comprises the other 10% or so of the work. So basically the analysis is almost half done, and this is going to be one of my focuses when I get back to Mexico. I’m going to be trying to finish that, finish the course and finish the design of the software.
Did somebody else have a question?
Audience: You answered it, Babaji.
Babaji: Okay. Anybody have a question out there in Internet land? No? Okay, Florian.
Let’s see, what was I going to do next? I forget. In my original plan for today I was thinking it would be nice to actually do a reading and show how a reading is done but, you know, it’s such a nice day — it’s almost three o’clock already — that I was thinking it might be better to just break for the day and then get together online, once I’m back in Mexico and I have the time to sit down, spend a couple of hours with each of you over the web-conferencing system. Because that way I can share my application online and you can see everything that I’m seeing, and then we can talk it over. Because part of the purpose of doing this, all these readings, is our ongoing research to look into the spiritual meanings of some of the different indications in the charts, especially something called Moksha Karaka.
Questioner: What’s that?
Babaji: Well Karaka is an indicator and Moksha means liberation. So some people have – actually about 1% or 2% of people – have one of four different indications in their chart that they can – not necessarily will – but they can achieve liberation in this lifetime.
Questioner: Oh really?
Babaji: Yeah, and it’s called Moksha Karaka. Like I said, it’s about one to two percent of the population that has this. But that doesn’t mean that they’re definitely going to attain it, and we’re trying to figure out the factors. This is our specific research, is to analyze the factors that determine whether or not they are able to take advantage of this.
Questioner: Now what if they don’t have that? Even though they do a lot of chanting they’ll never get…?
Babaji: Not necessarily, no. This is another thing we found. Consciousness is the most important cause of everything, right? So even if a person has no Moksha Karaka in their chart, if they make a very strong determination that they want to achieve enlightenment, they can achieve it. They may have to work harder. It’s just like somebody who is born with a big trust fund. It’s easier for them to reach retirement. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it if you really work hard and you’re disciplined and take care of your situation.
Questioner: But you can tell us how hard we need to work to get enlightenment?
Babaji: Yeah. It’s one of the indications that lets you know what your spiritual situation is. So what we want to do is take a look at the whole chart and see if a person has Moksha Karaka, and then find out about how they’re looking at things or what the factors are preventing them, maybe from taking advantage of that.
Like we found, for example, in one case a person, a young man had Moksha Karaka in his chart but he also had his Sun and Mercury in the twelfth house. And Sun in the twelfth is always a weak position; it means they have a weak physiology. And with Mercury also there it means that he has a weak mind also. Okay, so Venus was in the first house. Venus in the first house is very strong and also has what’s called a lock on the twelfth house. And so because of Venus’ lock on the twelfth house, this guy has…he cannot resist women at all. It’s like a woman comes, and he like forgets who he is, where he is, what’s going on, what he wants to do [Laughs] he’s just like [walks around like in hypnotic trance] he just turns into a robot. He’s lost. He loses his whole sense of direction. You can see it in his chart and it’s really obvious. And this is what happens in his life. So he may have a chance to become liberated but it’s like every strong woman that comes along in his life just like completely dominates his mentality, to the point where he forgets what his business is, he forgets what he’s here to do. He loses it.
Questioner: Become a monk then!
Babaji: What’s that?
Questioner: He should become a monk.
Babaji: He should! You’re right. That would help him. Yeah, keep him out of trouble, keep him out of danger. But because it’s his weakness, you know. It is very…the way it always works though is that a person is…they themselves are the last one to understand what their weakness is. So he’s like [caricatures saintly demeanor] “Oh, women are very nice.” It would be…
Questioner 2: [Indistinct] that’s hard for him. To choose a monk’s life, because...
Babaji: Yeah, very hard! He admires women. He thinks they’re very strong. Well compared to him they are. So from his point of view that would deprive him of the whole source of strength. I mean he would have to draw a line in his life that he’s just not prepared to do. So, I mean, actually I think it’s a good idea for everybody to live as a monk for some time, just to have that experience and to gain the benefits that you can get from that kind of life. That discipline and the austerity. But of course, nobody listens to me [laughs], but if you have this experience then you can understand where your weak points are. Or another person, let me think of another example of somebody who has Moksha Karaka but can’t use it. Oh….oh God yeah; there’s a lady that we know that has two Moksha Karakas in her chart! And she understands the whole theory and everything. She’s not stupid, she’s intelligent; but every time we get around to [saying] “OK, this is what you have to do to gain liberation,” it’s like she runs into a wall. She can’t go there. It’s like her intelligence stops working, and she's just like, duh.
Questioner: She lacks the discipline?
Babaji: It’s not so much that she lacks the discipline. It’s that, well I’m not sure what it is in her case. There’s no clear indication in her chart that something is stopping her intelligen…oh yeah yeah yeah that’s right. We found out something new. We found that there’s something called temporary malefics.
Questioner: What’s that?
Babaji: Well, a planet can either be benefic or malefic depending on its nature. And there’s two kinds - there’s natural malefics and benefics, and there’s temporary malefics and benefics based on the planet’s position in the chart. There are three houses called dusthana houses, it means difficult houses: the sixth, the eighth and the twelfth. So if the planet becomes the lord of those houses, even if it’s a benefic planet it can become malefic. So I think it was that one of the planets that was supposed to be benefic, actually in her chart was a malefic, a temporary malefic and that was blocking her from accessing the spiritual intelligence that she needs to move ahead. So it’s like…she suffers from depression. This is how we got to know her because we did a program for people with depression, or Uddhava did. And so she came to the program and she was following a vegetarian diet and chanting and reading Bhagavad-Gita and all that, and she was even getting the benefits from it, and she was going “Yeah! This really works, this is great, this is…but I can’t do it!”
“Well wait a minute. You’re suffering from depression, you’re like, suicidal half the time, you can tell that these methods work, but you can’t do it?”
“No, I can’t do it. It’s not possible.”
So we said “Is it that you don’t like it? Or you don’t understand it?”
“Oh no no that’s not the problem at all. That’s just fine. I just can’t do it.”
“Well, you know, why?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t!”
[Laughs]
That’s all. The end of the conversation. And we even brought her over, we fed her prasadam until she could barely walk and then had this long, intense kirtan you know, and she’s like “Oh yeah! I feel great! But I can’t do it.” [Laughs] So I was like okay, okay, we get the message. It’s like there’s just something stopping her intelligence. It was really weird.
Questioner: Will that planet move on and so she can do it later on?
Babaji: I don’t think so. It might…or I don’t know, it might be that she’s in some funky dasha period and when the period changes then maybe that’ll change? I don’t know. I can hope because I’d really like to see her recover from her depression and make some spiritual advancement.
Questioner: [Indistinct]…in her personal life what was…was it something that you believe she wasn’t willing to do because she built her life around that act?
Babaji: I don’t know. Well, you know, why do people become addicted to depression? Our analysis indicates that depression is an addiction. It’s a behavioral addiction, right? Just like people become addicted to substances they also become addicted to behaviors. So if a person has a problem with depression, what are they getting from that? Like an alcoholic always uses their alcohol to get something that they think is desirable. It might be sympathy, it might be attention even if it’s negative attention, who knows? I don’t know what her personal life is. I don’t know what her situation is.
Questioner: Kind of like the Boli(?) syndrome in a sense? Which says that if they can’t get good attention, any attention is better than no attention?
Babaji: Right, she might be doing something like that. It’s hard to tell because I don’t know…you have to observe her in her personal life, in her normal circumstances and we’ve never seen her in her normal circumstance. We only see her at meetings or, you know, she comes over to the house or something like that. So it’s hard to say how she is using her depression. But apparently she’s so attached to her depression that even if she knows how to stop it, it’s like she can’t go there.
Questioner: Right, so it’s a lifestyle or something that she’s been doing so long she doesn’t know how to function without it?
Babaji: It might be. It might be some kind of crutch like that. Some way of not dealing with stuff that she’s uncomfortable with or something like that. Yeah it’s hard to tell. Human behavior is so complicated, you know. All we can do is give people good advice. We call it triage, you know. Triage in…I don’t know if you all know…in medical circles it’s when you have [a] limited amount of resources and a lot of victims and you have to decide who you’re going to treat. And the basic principle of triage is that the first people that you treat are the ones who can benefit the most and who will respond the best to your treatment. Like making the best use of the facilities and resources that you’ve got.
So in our case, Uddhava and I were two people and we had thirteen million people in our preaching field [laughs] in Mexico city. So obviously we can’t personally deal with all of them. We have to decide who we’re going to spend our time on. We have very limited amount of time, especially Uddhava who is working more than full time in a very responsible position. So we have to decide and basically the people who made thee cut were the people who responded to what we were giving them. The people who couldn’t respond or didn’t want to respond or didn’t want to value what we were giving them, it’s like they don’t rate it (?) , we don’t give them any time, you know. Maybe if we spend more time and pound it on them, you know, for a while then they would eventually make some progress. But it’s like we don’t have the time waste because we’ve got all these people over here that do respond, so we want to concentrate on them.
It’s just like when I came up here, why did I come to Randy? Why did I stay at Neville’s, you know? Why didn’t I…there are so many other people I could have visited. Well why did I go to those particular places? It’s because they’re responding! There’s a reciprocation there, there’s an understanding. So I felt like yeah, it won’t be a waste of my time if I go to these places. I mean I could get a place to stay in a whole bunch of different places but these particular people are responding. They’re more than just warm bodies, they’re like really engaged, really involved. And we want that! So how do we…[looking at something on the chat window] Oh really? Huh. [Returns focus to audience]. How do we determine who to work with? It’s by the people who have…we want to be able to look at somebody’s chart and determine in advance, if possible – if we work with this person are they going to be able to attain liberation in this life? That’s our goal. We want to make a core team of people who are in a liberated state of consciousness and expand from there. Even if I only have one or two people who are in that state, I will consider that a success for my whole life. Because Prabhupada, my Guru, remember when he left this planet, none of his disciples were liberated.
Questioner: Really?
Babaji: Yup, he himself said so. There is no one qualified to succeed me. He said so at the time he left. It took me another twenty five years after he left the planet, and as far as I know I’m the first one. So, you know, if we can set up this retreat and Uddhava and some other devotees, Florian and some other people come out there with us and we can apply the process very intensively so that they attain liberation in a comparatively short period of time then I will consider my work complete. And if anything else happens, well that’s the icing on the cake! [Laughs]
Questioner: Isn’t this period, 2012, suppose to be very good for being liberated?
Babaji: Well it’s good in the sense that it’s really going to light a fire under people. It’s really going to raise the necessity of attaining spiritual advancement to an unprecedented high level. Always in the time of disaster, war and general insanity, that’s the time when people get motivated. They’re like uh-oh, I’d better do it now! When things are going well, life is easy, fish are swimming, the summer is hot, you know, everybody is like kicked back, enjoying “Oh yeah, life is good man, y’know, cool!” And there’s no real impetus. The economy is going good and everything is fine. But when things get crazy, that’s when people realize uh-oh, maybe this world isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I ought to have a ‘Plan B’ here. So they start thinking about spiritual….actually, we’re all in danger all the time.
Questioner: Oh. Yeah?
Babaji: Yeah, because by virtue of being in this world we have to die!
Questioner: Yeah, that’s true.
Babaji: Yeah, I mean whether it’s in 2012 or, you know, tomorrow or a hundred years from now, we still have to die. So still the same necessity is there.
Questioner: I know, but some younger people are not thinking about dying in the next few years.
Babaji: Younger people think they’re undestructible. [Laughs] I remember. [More laughs] I use to be like that. And then I went into Saturn period, and Saturn period began with a bang. Big car wreck, wham! Smash! Boom!
Questioner: Really?
Babaji: Yeah, knocked all my front teeth out. So in half a second my life turned from, you know, total enjoyment to total suffering.
Questioner: When did that happen?
Babaji: When I was like 19. So it interrupted my college education for six months. I had to recover and oh, big mess. So unless something happens to wake us up, we think oh yeah, life is great. I have plenty of time to figure out a solution to my problems. No big deal, right? We don’t understand that at any minute we can get run over by a truck or, you know, airplane crash on our head or anything can happen. And it does! You read about it every day in the newspaper. In fact, there’s a place in the scriptures where there’s a rakshasa asking riddles of King Yudhishtir. And one of the riddle is “What is the most astonishing thing in the world?” And Yudhishtir’s answer is “That people see other people dying every day and yet they themselves think they never have to die.”
Questioner: “This happens to other people.”
Babaji: Right! That’s the most astonishing thing in the world. Or, like Einstein said, human intelligence is limited but human ignorance is infinite. [Laughs]
Questioner: So the only way we can become liberated is in the physical world?
Babaji: What other world is there?
Questioner: Well I mean after you pass on, you go to the higher spiritual world right?
Babaji: No, not necessarily.
Questioner: Well, I mean you’ll be uh... you don’t reincarnate right away
Babaji: Yeah you do. Pretty much.
Questioner: How about sometimes you might spend a hundred years up there in some…
Babaji: Well what’s that? A hundred years is nothing.
Questioner: I thought maybe while you’re up there you’ll be smarter, more disciplined, then you can go…
Babaji: [Shaking head] No. Whatever you earn, whatever state of mind you achieve when you’re in this life, that’s where you’re going to be after death you see? There’s a sloka in the Bhagavad Gita :
yam yam vapi smaran bhavam tyajaty ante kalevaram
tam tam evaiti kaunteya sada tad-bhava-bhavitah
Whatever state of mind you achieve or remember at the time of death, that’s the state you’re going to attain in your next life. Whether your next life is you immediately go into another body or for some time you’re in a between life state doesn’t matter. Whatever consciousness you have when you leave this body, that’s what you’re stuck with until you can do something to change it. That’s what scripture says.
So that means, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a near-death experience. Basically what happens is that your whole life passes before you, in your mind’s eye. So what do we think of or what do we remember at the time of death? It’s what we’re doing right now, in this life. Nobody can artificially force themselves to think of something different at the time of death because at the time of death what’s happening is that the soul is leaving the body and it’s like all the experiences that we have in that life are being like….it’s like a tape being rewound [makes whirring noise], you know, and your whole life passes before you in just a few seconds. You remember everything that happened. It’s really weird. It’s like I saw my whole life. It was like this chain of pictures. It’s hard to describe. It’s like this long thing [motions with hands signifying a film strip] you know, full of pictures of incidents of my life. And Krsna was pointing right in the middle of some place and saying “Here you are, right here. See? So you’re not done yet. You have to go back.” And I’m going [cranky voice] “Aww, do I have to?” [laughs]. He’s going “Yeah, I have stuff for you to do.” So I’m like “Okay.” Because I knew my body was a mess, you know. But anyway, you cannot think of anything other than what you have done in this life at the time of death. So in other words, we should perform activities now that have the qualities of spiritual consciousness. Then at the time of death, we’ll automatically remember that state of being and we’ll go to a higher destination.
Questioner: Well that’s more important than trying to make a lot of money.
Babaji: You bet it is! Yeah, because those kind of thoughts are in the mode of passion and they’ll bring us right back to a human birth. At best. Whereas the thoughts of spiritual life, thoughts of God, impressions of spiritual quality will change our consciousness and then at the time of death we’ll remember those and we’ll go to the spiritual world. That’s why we chant again and again and again the same mantra over and over and over, because we’re trying to create as many impressions of spiritual quality as possible to counterbalance all the material impressions that we’re absorbing through our senses. So the process of spiritual life, you chant….you know, you heard me in the morning “Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare…” [Laughs]
Questioner: You don’t need to do it anymore, do you?
Babaji: I don’t need to but I do, to show the example. And also because it feels good. [Laughs] But really, everybody needs to perform….the basic sadhana is chanting, right? It’s called naimitti…I’m sorry, it’s called Sanatana Dharma. Sanatana means eternal, universal, and Dharma means religious principles. So those religious principles which are considered eternal and applicable to everybody in every status of life, even liberated souls, that’s called Sanatana Dharma. So chanting the name of God on the beads as a regular daily morning exercise, this is recommended for everybody. Liberated or not liberated or in any condition of life, or any status of existence, any planet in any universe of any kind, that chanting process is required by the Vedas.
Questioner: Does it make any difference whether you chant by yourself or you play a recording and chant along with it.
Babaji: Either is okay. Either is okay. But if you chant by yourself, it develops your initiative more, makes you stronger. It might be easier to chant along with a recording, but it makes you stronger if you have to chant by yourself. The trick is to engage as many senses in the chanting process as you can. That’s why we use the beads.
Questioner: Oh!
Babaji: Not only to count the number of mantras, but also to engage the sense of touch.
Questioner: Where do you buy those?
Babaji: Any Indian store, any Hare Krsna temple, a lot of places carry it. Any bead store will have it.
Questioner: And should we burn incense?
Babaji: That’s nice too, yeah. [Noticing another questioner] Yeah?
Questioner: When you say about the certain amount of mantras each day….say one day, just for example, you go through three hundred mantras and the next day you do, you only have time for maybe fifty or so. And then the next day it’s three hundred and the next day is maybe just a hundred. Is tht disruptive?
Babaji: Well yeah. It’s like if you’re working out, right? You do a certain number of reps each day and if that gets interrupted it takes you a couple of days to get back into the routine again.
Questioner: Right.
Babaji: Or if you’re jogging and you’re up to like two miles and you don’t have time to jog for a couple of days, well the next time you jog you’re going to be stiff. You’re going to have to push to get to your two miles. So it’s just like any other training. Or we were talking earlier about music. If you’re developing your chops on an instrument and you don’t practice for a while, it’s like you know, you lose so much time and you have to develop those chops all over again.
Questioner: Okay, and the best possible atmosphere is to just like immerse yourself in nothing but the mantra right?
Babaji: Oh yes!
Questioner: …Not while doing something else, not washing the dishes or…
Babaji: No, no, no. Just the mantra.
Questioner: Okay.
Babaji: Now after you’ve done your regulated chanting, if you want to do other things and chant at the same time like, you know, take a walk or like you say do the dishes or driving or whatever, that’s cool. But at least for the time that you are doing your sadhana in the morning, you should exclusively focus on the Holy Name.
Questioner: …on the mantra.
Babaji: Totally, yeah. In fact, when we were in the temple…if you ever play Prabhupada’s chanting tape, there is a place where he says “Sit properly!” [laughs] Very strictly, like that you know. And what he meant was you should sit on the floor or on a pillow in some kind of yoga posture with the back straight and, you know, holding the beads before your heart at the heart chakra like that [holding his beads] and, you know, eyes closed, focused completely on the hearing and chanting.
Questioner: What is…what to visualize?
Babaji: To visualize Krsna’s form, Krsna’s pastimes. If you can’t concentrate on that you should think about your service, think about your engagement or your plans, what you are going to do in spiritual life. For example, let’s say you’re chanting and you’re thinking about your portfolio. [Gesturing to someone] He’s a stock broker, by the way. [Laughs] You manage your fund or how do you…?
Responder: Well I do research, I don’t trade.
Babaji: Oh I see, okay. But let’s, you know….because you’re using part of your income for spiritual service, you can consider that as part of your service, right? So you know, Krsna will give you advice. You’ll be amazed! You’ll be chanting, and He will tell you “Google’s a really good bet this week!” [laughter]. He will! You’ll see, when He’s right. God will start to talk with you. Gradually He will reveal Himself through the heart, through hearing.
Remember, purification begins from the tongue. So by chanting, by taking pure food, by always speaking the truth, by always speaking kindly with compassion, we gradually purify the tongue. And when God becomes ready to reveal Himself he will reveal through that taste. And so then the next thing is hearing. And so by hearing the Holy Name, by hearing the truth, reading the scriptures and hearing like that, we will gradually come to relish the taste of truth and we will start to hear [holds his ear]. And when we start to hear God’s advice through the heart, we’ll recognize that taste. And that’s how we tell God’s voice apart from all the different voices from our mind and our, you know, different influences that are there – impulses, the senses, emotions and stuff like that. Because we first relish that taste through the tongue, through the pure Holy Name. That’s the secret to yogic purification and it’s like if somebody who knew this didn’t tell you, you would never guess, you’d never figure it out. It’s an esoteric secret. It’s only available through an esoteric school.
[Looking at the chat widow] So, what are these guys talking about?? Huh? What’re you guys talking about? Oh the Prabhupada Japa tape. Uh huh. Yeah, it’s there. It’s on our esotericteaching.org/content/mp3/SP%20Classic%20Series . And there’s also a website called ‘Sit Properly’ – sitproperly.com, check it out one of these days. It’s all about chanting japa and how to do like that. Any questions from the internet guys? Any questions from anybody? Yes?
Questioner: The morning mantras, do you think it’s more beneficial to sit and do it by yourself or do it, like with a partner…
Babaji: Oh if you have other people doing the same practice it’s very beneficial!
Florian has a question [reading from the chat window] – “what does Sun in first house signify?”
Well, that’s probably one of the best placements for the Sun because the Sun is life, vitality, health, it’s also ego and like that, and when the Sun is in the first house then that means that you’re healthy, you’re confident, you shine you know. The first house is the self, the person himself - especially the physical body and mind.
[Reading something on the chat window] Oh boy! Who is asking that? Wait a minute. Steve. Yeah, Steve, we’re going to have to go over temporary benefics. I’m sorry, Parasara really threw me a curve ball and the whole first forty six chapters of BPHS he only talks about natural benefics and all of a sudden in chapter forty seven he starts talking about temporary benefics. Threw me for a loop, man, I tell ya. But you know what? It really helps to explain those people who seem to have Moksha Karaka but aren’t able to do anything about it. So I’ve been, you know…that’s why I kind of held up work on ‘Liberated Souls’ was because all this new information I had to integrate it. You know, I had to look at some charts and see if it really explains some of the phenomenon that we’ve observed and it does. You know, like in some of these cases where people have Moksha Karaka but they can’t do anything about it, it’s explained by the fact that a planet becomes a temporary malefic.
Okay, so Uddhava is asking “What happens when in the scripture it is said ‘I give you spiritual vision’ by a great yogi or by Krsna to Arjuna?”
Well, every spiritual master wants to give their disciple spiritual vision. They want their disciple to be able to see according to scripture or according to God’s vision. Well what does that mean? It means that we have the same values. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we can look through walls. [Laughs] Spiritual vision means we still see the same things with out eyes, but in our heart or in our mind we have different values. We have spiritual values instead of material values. So spiritual vision means to see through the eyes of the scriptures or to see through the eyes of God; to see things or interpret things or value things the way God would value them. There’s a phrase in Sanskrit, sastra caksus. Sastra caksus means to see with the eyes of the scripture. So when we see everything that happens through the philosophy of the esoteric teaching, then we evaluate it according to that ontology and we come to the same conclusions that the scripture would come to in that particular situation. That’s seeing with spiritual vision, and every Guru wants to give that to their disciple. Every teacher wants his students to get that.
Okay, now who’s this asking? Florian. “Does Kundalini Yoga help attain self-realization? Because you once mentioned that we need a lot of prana to make the jump to self realization.”
Well Kundalini Yoga can help us attain Brahman realization and even to a certain extent Paramatma realization. But Kundalini Yoga, just like any kind of yoga based on the body, tends to make us hard hearted because it’s focused on one’s self. Only Bhakti-Yoga which is based on love is based on service to others. So Bhakti-Yoga softens the heart and it develops compassion and qualities of loving kindness. All the other different kinds of yoga are basically about me, me, me! Me, I, mine! Like that. But Bhakti-Yoga is about service to God, service to others. So in that way we …[laughs at something in the chat widow]
Uddhava….yeah Krsna wants…[bursts into more laughter at something in the chat window]…he’s so funny.
[Returning to the topic] But Krsna wants that, especially at the stage when you become determined to attain realization. It’s like all the service that you’ve done for the past year has given you a desire to attain. Isn’t that a fact, Uddhava? Uddhava? Right. So that’s stated in the Nectar of Devotion. [Reading Uddhava’s comment]Yeah, extreme desire! He can hardly wait…he’s like jumping out of his skin, you should see!
[Laughs at something on the chat window] Yeah there’s a madman down the street [in Mexico] that like screams “Oxygen! Hydrogen!” [bursts into laughter again at something in the chat window] Oh we’re gonna…this is all….I can tell this is going to be a joke now in our school.
But anyway, it’s stated in the Nectar of Devotion, Bhakti-Rasamrta Sindhu that the purpose of practicing devotional service according to regulative principles is to develop the desire for pure love of God. That’s stated in the Nectar of Devotion. And we see, that if a person practices regulative devotional service under the instruction of the spiritual master for some time, basically they become a madman after pure love of Godhead. That’s all they want. They have this burning desire to go out and just chant.
I can remember when I retired from business, it was like throw everything in the truck, drive out to the west coast, ship it all to Hawaii, camp out in the woods, just leave me alone, I want to sit under a tree and chant. That’s all I wanted to do. I had this, you know, huge desire. And it’s like right before…it was really funny; Maya tested me right before I left. [Laughs] Right before I left Florida. It’s like, you know, all these women wanted to sleep with me, and like all these people wanted to be my friend all of a sudden and all this stuff and I’m like “I’m outta here man. Bye!!” [laughs]. I just escaped and drove out to the coast, went out to Hawaii. Even 9/11 couldn’t stop me! I was supposed to fly on 9/12/2001. Needless to say, I didn’t go anywhere because there was a ban on flights after the 9/11 incident. So, I had already shipped my truck out, and I had to find a place to stay. Luckily some devotees in LA put me up and then it’s like the first flight after they started flying again to Hawaii, I was out of there. I was just so anxious. I just went straight to the place where I was suppose to camp out. I didn’t even go sight-seeing, I didn’t see anything, I just went right to that spot away from everybody, stocked up on food, you know, hid my truck in the woods and just started chanting and that was it.
Okay, hey hey slow down [referring to a burst of comments on the chat window]. What was that question? “Can all souls go back to the spiritual world? If all go to the spiritual world there is no need for the…”
57:30
Well they did! They did. There was a pastime in Lord Caitanya’s lila where one of his disciples said to him “Lord Caitanya, please give me the karma of all the conditioned souls and liberate them and let them go back to the spiritual world. I don’t care about me but I can’t stand to see them suffering. So you give me all their karma and you liberate everybody.” And Lord Caitanya was so struck by this. He was, like, floored by the immense compassion of his devotee and He said “By your request I will liberate all the living entities in this universe, but you don’t have to take the karma. That’s alright. I’ll just cancel it. So you get your wish.” So, in other words, Lord Caitanya liberated all the living entities in this material universe five hundred years ago. That means that everybody that’s here now has either come here from another material universe or fallen down from the spiritual sky within the last five hundred years. That’s our theology. So yes, that conversation is correct. There’s always new people coming to the material world or there’s always people in other material universes who can transfer to this universe. If this universe is emptied out because everyone is liberated….so that’s not a problem. There are so many living entities in all states of material conditions and like that.
Marjan, jeez, what is this question? “If the soul is eternal individual that means there are no new souls that are created. That means that there is one exact number of souls and if the soul can’t go back to the material world if it’s in the spiritual world, that means that also sooner or later the…” oh come on [sighing]. This isn’t material! You’re using material logic to try to understand spiritual things. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It’s just like the people, you know, who try to understand [exaggerated dilemma poses]“Well are we the same as God or are we different from God?? Which is it?? I can’t resolve this question! ” Well that’s because you can’t use the same kind of logic. You can’t use arithmetic to understand the condition of the souls because it’s not subject to that kind of logic, okay? If Krsna wants to create more souls He can, you know? Or if He wants to liberate everybody He can. He can do anything. He’s not subject to even His own laws. He can change His mind! He can change His mind. So if there’s some shortage of souls [laughs] he can always make more.
But actually he doesn’t like to create this material world. It’s just like the government. The government doesn’t really want to maintain prison houses, but they have to because there are self-destructive individuals who create all kinds of problems for others if there’s no deterrent or no punishment. One of the most important aspects of jails is that the people who are a disturbance in society can be put there so that they don’t harm others. So the government doesn’t like that. That’s not what they want to do. They want to…they want everybody to be free, but to be a good citizen. So they make jails because they have to.
So similarly, Krsna doesn’t want to create this material world but because some of us desire to live separate from Him, in order to satisfy our desire He creates this material world. So Krsna does that but He does it to satisfy us, not because He wants to but because he loves us and He wants to give us what we want so that we can experience and understand why it’s a bad idea. “You really want that? Are you sure you want that?? Hmm? Okay, here you go!” [Makes sound of something falling and landing with a thud] In the material world! So yeah, Krsna is unlimited and He’s beyond our understanding and He can do anything, you know. So if all the souls in the material world finally gave it up and said “Okay, let’s go back to the spiritual world. We’re done. We’re outta here.” That would be great. Then Krsna wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble to create and maintain the material world and he could just relax in Goloka Vrndavana. He wouldn’t have to incarnate, you know, and disturb everybody’s day [laughs]. He would just be able to…you know everybody could jus sit back and enjoy eternally in the spiritual world. That would be great, everybody would live that! But there’s always somebody who has to misuse their free will. Just like in the material world there’s always some guy who has to go out and commit a crime. So Krsna is pretty much forced to create the material world to give us what we want. So….I get on these rants…
What do you think? Is everybody pretty much satisfied? Do we have more questions, or…
Questioner: One last question. How long do you…
Babaji: Oh it doesn’t have to be the last question. When everybody’s happy…
Questioner: How long do you chant basic chanting before you switch to the mahamantra (?)
Babaji: Ah. We advise everybody to chant Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya in the beginning because that mantra doesn’t accept offences as easily. The mood of the Dvadasaksara mantra is Krsna in Dwaraka as a great King and, you know, a King has to deal with all kinds of people and He’s a public figure so anybody can show up and He has to be able to deal with that gracefully. So the scope of chanting that mantra is much broader that the mahamantra - Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. In the chanting of the mahamantra there are ten offences. Yeah, we’ve described all those offences on our website. There’s many conversations about that on our forums and so on.
Audience member: I think I remember you mentioning (?) them.
Babaji: A little bit, yeah. I mentioned a few of them I think it was in the car, wasn’t it? On the way to kirtan. Anyways, the offences are there because the mahamantra is about Krsna and the Gopis in Vrndavana. That’s a very confidential pastime. That’s not a public pastime, you see? Just like you don’t talk to anybody and everybody about what goes on between you and your girlfriend. It’s none of their business! Or, if you do talk to them, it would be someone who is a very intimate friend and had some need to know…because somehow or the other it was important. So, similarly, those who chant the mahamantra are people who have that similar mood or same mood of dancing with Krsna in the forest of Vrndavana in a conjugal mood. Okay? It’s not for the broad public. It’s not something you want to put on the evening news [laughs] for public consumption. It’s only for those intimate devotees who want to enter into that particular pastime. So we don’t recommend that for wide consumption but only for initiates really. Those who are willing to follow our principles strictly and who want to develop a discipleship relationship with our disciplic lineage and who are really working towards initiation.
[Responding to a comment on the chat window] Well Florian, the reason why ISKCON spread the mantra all over was that ISKCON was running according to a different set of standards and priorities. ISKCON had, for example, a whole bunch of residential temples and if someone comes and lives in one of those residential temples they pretty much have to follow all the rules and regulations and they pretty much have to accept the authority of the spiritual master because they’re eating, sleeping, living in his properties, in the ashrams. But in our preaching mission, hardly anybody lives in the ashram and so far it has just been me and Uddhava. And if you’re going to join us that’ll make three of us, but still most of the people that we’re preaching to are not living in the ashram. So it’s much more difficult for them to follow the rules and regulations or to avoid the offences in the chanting of the mantra and out of a desire to do good for them we don’t want them to chant with offences because in that case the benefit of chanting the mantra is not lost, but it’s delayed until the offences are cleared. You know that shloka:
harer nama harer nama
harer namaiva kevalam
kalau nasty eva nasty eva
nasty eva gatir anyatha
That means...harer nama means chant the holy name. So it’s repeated three times…[responds to new comment on the chat window] I’m getting to that. [Puts on exaggerated drawl] Hold your horses there, young whipper-snapper! [Turns to audience] These young fellers, I’m tellin’ ya. [Laughter] Y’know kids these days, just …anyway, so why is it repeated three times: harer nama harer nama harer nama? It means harer nama—chanting the Holy Name in the offensive stage; harer nama—chanting the Holy Name in the clearing stage; harer nama—chanting the Holy Name in the perfect stage, the offenceless stage; eva kevalam – is the only way to attain liberation. Kalau, in the age of Kali, nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva—again three times. Nasty eva means there is no other way; by karma or material activities; nasty eva—there is no other way by yoga or mystic powers, stuff like that: nasty eva—there is no other way by jnana or impersonal liberation based on speculative knowledge and empiricism. Nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyatha—to attain the highest destination of life.
So, in other words, we have to clear the offences against the Holy Name and the only way to do that is to live in a very disciplined way under the direction of a spiritual master and that is best done in an ashram. So there are three…four different kinds of ashrams – the brahmacari ashram, the grhastha ashram, the vanaprastha ashram and the sannyas ashram. In the brahmacari ashram, the student lives in the house of the spiritual master like a menial servant and has nothing and just serves the spiritual master twenty four hours a day. In grhastha ashram, the student gets married, lives independently, manages his own affairs but still dedicates the bulk of his time, resources and energy to the service of the spiritual master. In vanaprastha ashram, someone retires from active occupational duties and they dedicate all their time to sadhana and spiritual advancement, but they’re not like a formal renunciant or something like that. But in the sannyas ashram, they become a formal renunciant and usually also a guru, and they travel around and teach people and stuff like that.
So the point is that ISKCON became stuck in that model of recruiting people off the street and bringing them directly into the ashram. So because of that ashram environment they could say to people “Well just chant the mahamantra, and because we’re basically forcing you to follow all these rules and regulation then hopefully you won’t commit too many offences.” Of course the offences are actually not gross, they’re more subtle but still, at least they’ll be following the four regulative principles – no meat eating, no intoxication, no illicit sex and no gambling. Because of that they can chant the mahamantra safely.
Well we’re dealing with public that is not under our control, not living in an ashram, they’re completely independent, they can do whatever they like, so because most people don’t have a background in yogic discipline and spiritual principles, it’s better that they chant a mantra that is more forgiving of offenses, that the requirements are not so high. It doesn’t necessarily….their lifestyle doesn’t necessarily qualify them for initiation. So unless they’re extremely determined like you are, they’re not really going to be following all the principles or getting ready for that initiatory stage of life.
Yeah…[laughs at comment on chat window] Who was that saying that today? Yeah…we’ve heard that. Yeah yeah yeah that guy…what’s his name, yeah Mauricio who is it, from Slovenia? That guy? Before we started the meeting today? Yeah.
[Returning to the topic] So nobody can force you to break the principles, it’s true. But you know how people are affected by their association; and wherever you go in today’s world, people are breaking these principles. I mean even if you just go down the road there’s a casino where they’re breaking all four at once! [Laughs] And this is a legitimate business in this material world. So we can understand how degraded this society is that they don’t even understand that religion stands on four legs. That’s why the bull is the symbol of dharma because the bull stands on four legs. Those four legs are truthfulness, cleanliness, austerity and mercy. So gambling destroys truthfulness because when you gamble you have to bluff; and meat eating destroys mercy because when you’re eating meat you have to kill animals and that’s merciless; illicit sex destroys cleanliness because, well anybody can understand that, you know AIDS and all that stuff; and intoxication destroys austerity because when a person is intoxicated they don’t feel like doing any austerity. They can’t understand, they lose their intelligence and they can’t understand the concept of taking some trouble now to get some benefit in the future. They’re thinking “Oh I want release from all my troubles right now.”
Questioner: Is illicit sex that sex which is outside of marriage?
Babaji: [Nodding] Outside of marriage or not for the purpose of creating children.
Questioner: Oh, so even if you’re married?
Babaji: [Nodding] Mmm hmm.
Questioner: Wow.
Babaji: Mmm hmm. That’s the standard. You have to understand how far down the slippery slope we have come, OK? Society is in an extremely degenerate condition right now. So there are spiritual principles about everything, including sex life.
Questioner: Well what about like, you know, [indistinguishable] just [indistinguishable] showing that love in the sense, you know like…
Babaji: [Shaking his head in tired dismay and laughs]
Questioner: …well not…I’m not necessarily saying just sex but I’m saying you know, like being close to somebody and, you know…
Babaji: Well, the family members are natural objects of affection. Nobody is saying that we should become hard-hearted and not love our family members. But when sex life or the quality of sex life becomes a make-it or break-it factor in a relationship, it’s being given far too much importance. I mean it’s just an animal function, it’s not the be-all and end-all of existence. Although you would think it was, the way some people’s attitudes are. But really, sex is…compared to spiritual life it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be you know. The only reason sex has become so important is because people have no spiritual pleasure. In the absence of spiritual pleasure sex might seem like a big deal, but once you taste spiritual pleasure it’s like….this tickle that lasts about, you know, thirty seconds? Why should I be interested in that? Why would I want to invest a lot of energy in that? It’s like a sneeze. Maybe you need to do it once in a while just to clear out, you know, clear out some energy. You know, move some energy or something. But it’s not something that you obsess about and …
Questioner: Baba?
Babaji: Yeah?
Questioner: Krsna and Radha are engaged in a conjugal relationship.
Babaji: Ah! Yes!
Questioner: And so they’re making love!
Babaji: Uh huh!
Questioner: And they’re generating love or they’re emanating love through the process of making beautiful love!
Babaji: Yeah.
Questioner: So….how…does that translate…I mean…does Krsna get to have…make love to Radha and we…we’re out of luck? [Laughter from audience member]
Babaji: Well because Radha and Krsna are…they’re perfect God and Goddess. They’re in spiritual forms. They’re not like rotting bags of meat and bones. If you start thinking about what this material body is, half of our weight is just in stool. The body is full of mucus and all blood and all kinds of nasty stuff, bile and you know there’s more microorganisms, more bacteria in our digestive system than there are cells in our body.
Questioner: [Impatiently] Then why don’t we just purify our consciousness and kill ourselves and be done with it?
Babaji: [Laughs heartily] The body’s going to fall off anyway! The body’s going to fall off naturally in time. It’s going to happen. If you ever…if you tasted what making love with Krsna is like, you would never want to make love with another…with a material body. If you ever tasted spiritual lovemaking, it’s like….that’s it! That’s the end of any attraction to this material body!
Questioner: Well, you know, it’s what we’ve got here you know. I’ve got to make the best of… the best of …
Babaji: Well that’s why I said earlier, if a person had never tasted spiritual ecstasy they might think that sex was something worthwhile.
Questioner: When you say sex. But I mean sex is it just…I mean…reproductive function…[indistinguishable] you refer to it as a purely biological function, as a primitive perpetuation of the species, an animalistic act…
Babaji: Ooga booga!
Questioner: Er…yeah…then…but, but…making love! If you love somebody and you…
Babaji: Well you get these two things confused all the time because we’re in material conditioned consciousness. [With emphasis on each word] There is no love in this material world, because everything here is temporary! Love first of all has to be spiritual, and if it’s spiritual it has to be eternal. If it’s eternal, it cannot be based on the material body or on a material relationship because those relationships have a beginning and an end. First of all we’re confused about what spiritual really is. If we understood what spiritual really is, we would understand that love means a total intimate sharing of consciousness and that is only possible between the soul and God. It’s not possible between two human beings.
What we have is an imitation of love. It’s a counterfeit! It’s just a phony kind of love. It’s conditional. Real love is unconditional and it’s essential…it’s an energy that springs forth from the very root of consciousness. It’s not something that we can buy and sell in the marketplace, like some kind of material thing. So we don’t know in this material world what love is because we have never tasted our relationship with Krsna. We have forgotten what that’s like. Once a person has tasted that, it’s like they lose all interest in the so-called love in the material world.
Questioner: But…but…we are in the material world right now…
Babaji: You are in the material world.
Questioner: Well yes! And so…you’re sitting there. You’re in the material world as well.
Babaji: I am?
Questioner: I’m not going to make love to you, by the way, but [laughter from audience member] the point is, well…
Babaji: [Gravely] This body, this piece of meat that I use to communicate with you is in the material world.
Questioner: Yes.
Babaji: But I am not in the material world.
[Silent pause all around]
I am the soul, I am the consciousness that speaks through this body and I am not in the material world. I’ve never been in the material world. Self-realization means that we understand the transcendental nature of the soul. Second chapter in Bhagavad Gita. It’s like the most elementary thing in spiritual life.
Questioner: Is your consciousness wiggling your meat around right now? I mean your meat bag? Your…
Babaji: Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. Right now I’m manipulating this body to make sounds that you can hear so we can communicate. But that doesn’t mean I have that much invested in it, you know. I really don’t; I used to. I remember what that was like; it was horrible! You’re always in fear, “Oh am I going to say something that she doesn’t like and then it’s all going to be over?” [rolls eyes and sighs heavily]
You know, Krsna’s love is not like that. Krsna, first of all knows all about us and still loves us – completely, uninhibitedly, unconditionally, eternally, perfectly, with exactly the flavor of love that we most crave, most desire…that fulfills our soul. And the unlimited quantity of that love. I mean nobody can love us like Krsna! Compared to the relationship with Krsna, you can’t really call anything else love. It’s just a counterfeit; it’s just a pale reflection. It’s like, if you have one moon, you don’t need all these stars. They’re just like a pale reflection of the light of the moon or the light of the sun. The sun is so bright that it drowns out all the light of the stars!
So similarly the love of Krsna is so magnificent, it’s so…so incredibly fulfilling that one who tastes it never, never desires to love an ordinary material person again. Of course we love people in the sense that we want to help them advance spiritually and we want to help them attain enlightenment so that they can get the same benefit that we have. But the nature of that benefit is that they also discover their eternal love affair with Krsna and they lose their taste…the symptom of a person who has attained self-realization is that they lose their taste for material enjoyment. It’s right there in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. It’s like so elementary. It’s like the first step, kindergarten in spiritual life! If a person actually tastes spiritual life, they lose their taste for enjoying material life. It becomes irrelevant to them. It’s like… what do I need that for? What do I need with ten dollars if I have a million dollars in the bank? That’s the way it is. You look at this material world, it’s like an old, worn, frayed ten-dollar bill lying on the ground. And I have a million dollars in the bank. Here, I’ve got my platinum Visa card in my pocket. What do I need to bend down and pick up this dirty, torn ten dollar bill? Let somebody else pick it up, maybe they’ll value it. I won’t value it; it’s not important to me. I have something better! Much better! A thousand, million times better! Because it’s eternal, it’s indestructible! It’s unconditional! It’s on twenty-four hours a day! What do I need with this on-again, off-again material love? This is like…it’s insignificant! It’s like…[makes pooh sound]. We don’t need this.
Questioner: I…it’s my personal experience that lovemaking can transcend the physicality…
Babaji: No it can’t! It can’t. Anything that’s based on the body is going to give results in the physical. So you may be tripping on endorphins or something…
Questioner: Well it’s an articulation! Look…if I’m going to articulate some visual aspect like this VLP (?) projector or this video, they’re an articulation that we use for our ocular senses. So is that sense gratification or is that…
Babaji: Of course!
Questioner: Then it’s inadequate.
Babaji: It is.
Questioner: Then it’s dismissed (?)
Babaji: It’s only a tool for achieving something spiritual. If we can engage that tool in some spiritual purpose it becomes spiritualized. Like we can use sex life to create nice children that we can bring up and educate spiritually and bring them into the process of spiritual life. That’s the one engage-able aspect of sex life in this material world, otherwise it only is a distraction.
Questioner: Replication?
Babaji: Yeah.
Questioner: Just replication?
Babaji: Mmm hmm. Reproduction. Yeah, make more bodies for the souls to come, so that we can educate them and help them.
Questioner: We would even be able to do that in-vitro and not have sex. [Laughter from audience member]
Babaji: Well, that wouldn’t give very high-class progeny. There is an authorized Vedic process for doing everything, including creating children. There is a ceremony called Garbhadhana Samskra for creating first-class, enlightened children. There is a way, there’s a ceremony that allows you to bring in an enlightened soul into this world and then give them a body that has the attributes that will enable them to be very effective to help others attain spiritual enlightenment. But since nobody knows that science, all we’re doing is creating rascals—more and more rascals. Because the quality of the act of procreation determines the quality of the child that results from it. And if our mood is in the mode of passion – remember mode of passion is all about selfish personal enjoyment and goal-oriented activity – so if we create a child in that mood, then the personality that can come through that is also going to be in the same mood.
Questioner: So you can have sex in the mode of goodness?
Babaji: You can have sex in the mode of goodness. Right! You can. But that art has been largely lost.
Questioner: That would presumably be love, based ….
Babaji: No, it’s not love. There is no love in this material world! Let’s get this straight, people! There is no love in this material world, because love has to be eternal and nothing in this world is eternal. It’s all temporary, it’s all conditional. You say the wrong thing to your so-called love and they’re out, they’re hittin’ the highway, they’re gone, they leave you in the dust.
Questioner: Then can you not connect this material world with transcendental love?
Babaji: No! But we can open the door and allow people to leave, to go out into the real world, into the transcendental world where there’s real love. This world is forever condemned because it’s under the influence of time. Time means it has a beginning and an end. Time means it’s conditional. It’s limited. It’s always going to be under the material modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. It’s always going to be contaminated. It’s always going to be faulty. Therefore the only real help that we can give people is to open up this pathway to transcendental knowledge and give people the tools that they need to walk it. And of course we can have love in that context, that we’re helping people to get out of the material world, but part of that means that we show people the futility of trying to enjoy or trying to do anything worthwhile in the material context. It has to be in the spiritual context; it has to lead to a transcendental destination, and you can’t show any material activity that leads to a transcendental destination. The only activities that do, are transcendental activities.
Questioner: Transcendental material activities.
Babaji: Huh?
Questioner: Transcendental material activities.
Babaji: No, transcenden….no, no. Anytime you take the material energy and you engage it in transcendental service, it becomes transcendentalized by means of its relationship to the Supreme.
Questioner: Is this now a transcendental VLP projector?
Babaji: Right now, because we’re using it for some transcendental purpose.
Questioner: But then after I turn it off is it going to pull (?) back into some material artifact?
Babaji: Well if you start using it to project porn or something like that then yeah…[Laughter]
Questioner: Well then it becomes an ignorant projector.
Babaji: Yeah!
Questioner: Right now it’s operating in the mode of goodness.
Babaji: Uh huh…or transcendental.
Questioner: Transcendental?
Babaji: Yeah, because it’s engaged directly in devotional service. Krsna’s energy is Krsna’s energy, right? But when we see it as material and belonging to us, then we engage it in a material way. But when we see it as Krsna’s energy and we engage it according to Krsna’s instructions, then it becomes transcendentalized because it’s connected. Prabhupada used to use the example of when you have something connected to the electric mains it becomes electrified. The power plant could be miles and miles and miles away, but because it’s connected it also becomes electrified by means of conductance. So similarly, when we connect something with Krsna, it becomes transcendentalized even though Krsna may not be apparently present in this world, the fact that we’re using it in Krsna’s service connects it with Him and then it becomes spiritualized.
Questioner: If I’m feeling a love-connection with you, suppose…it’s not…I’m not in love with your body, I’m in love with your consciousness right? Or we’re in love and we’re experiencing…the common denominator of transcendental love. It’s…it’s our merging of consciousness?
Babaji: Merging?
Questioner: Er…merging, dance of consciousness?
Babaji: So it’s a relationship that’s based on transcendental truth, on spiritual truth.
Questioner: So do we have a direct relationship or is it a triad relationship?
Babaji: It’s a triad through Krsna…
Questioner: Oh! So…
Babaji: So I’m in a relation to Krsna and if I help you get yourself in relation to Krsna then we can have real love.
Questioner: Am I moderating my love through Krsna to you?
Babaji: Mmm hmm.
Questioner: Oh so not directly to you.
Babaji: No, everybody goes through Krsna, everything and everyone goes through Krsna because Krsna is the ground of being and the absolute reference point towards which, or in relation to which everything is measured. The value of everything is determined according to how much it satisfies Krsna or how closely in relation to Krsna it is.
Questioner: So Krsna is the hub, the nucleus.
Babaji: Yeah. He’s the origin, He’s the zero-point. [Pause] Yeah it’s tough to hear that…[looking at the chat window] come on Conor, give him a break! [Returning attention to questioner] It’s tough to hear that we have been cheated. It’s hard to understand that we have been duped or sold a phony knockoff of the real thing, because in material consciousness if we don’t know the way out, it’s really all we have; it’s the only hope we have. Even though it’s a false hope, it’s better than no hope at all. So we don’t want to hear that material love or material lovemaking isn’t something real. But nothing in this material world is fully real. It’s all just a perverted reflection of the spiritual reality that’s its source, that’s its origin.
So all this talk that we’ve been doing over the last couple of days, in a way is just sales talk. I’m just trying to convince you to do the practices. If you do the practice then you will taste these things directly and then you come to the same conclusion. OK? I’m speaking from experience. It’s not like I read this in a book somewhere. Well actually I did read it in a book somewhere, but then I put it into practice in my life and I found that yeah, what it says in the book is true! Imagine that! So now I’m speaking from experience and I’m trying to convince you to have a similar experience.
So in essence like what I said that, what I’m doing is like sales talk. It’s like, you know [puts on carnival salesman demeanor] “Yada-yada, try this mantra! You’ll love it! You’ll like it! It’s the best thing since sliced bread!”, you know [laughter]. I’m a pitch-man, right? But all of what I’m saying is meaningless unless you actually take up the practice and do it for yourself and then… Just like last night we were chanting, and then we were sitting in a circle and we were feeling this delightful mood, you know, this wonderful mood that was coming. And you can interpret it as we’re feeling love among…with each other, you know? But really what’s happening is we’re all in a positive relationship with Krsna, permeated by the Holy Name. And so Krsna is revealing Himself to all of us and so we’re becoming attached to the association in which that’s possible.
Questioner: Well what about our relationship with one another?
Babaji: Okay, that is also through our service to God, service to Krsna.
Questioner: I love my friend Uwe and I love my friend Kathy and I love…I love these people. I don’t….I love them!
Babaji: That’s great!
Questioner: Yeah.
Babaji: So then we want our friends, we want the people that we love to have the highest thing or the best thing or the greatest value in life then we’ll engage them in this spiritual process and we’ll encourage them to make progress until they realize these things too.
Questioner: So the bottom line of the day – life in meat-space sucks!
Babaji: Yeah it does! We’ve got to die. Remember being born?
Questioner: No.
Babaji: I do. I went back through depth psychology, Primal Scream therapy. Three years of it. I went all the way back…I went back before my birth; I went back to my conception. And it’s like I don’t ever want to go through that again.
Questioner 2: Why? What happened?
Babaji: Oh well being in the womb, and all that, is horrible! Oh it’s just horrible! It’s described in the scriptures too. That the child is in the womb like upside down, curled up in this little tiny space, and there’s skin irritations and there’s worms biting his skin in different places; there’s all kinds of bacteria and parasites in the womb, you know. It’s not a nice place at all. Every time the mother eats something the digestive juices, gastric juices burn the child in the womb by going through the amniotic fluid and through the umbilical. If she eats anything spicy or really sour like vinegar or lemon or something like that, or if she gets a stomachache the child suffers, or if she lies the wrong way on her belly of if she has sex the child gets beat up in the womb…
Questioner 2: Is that why the baby kicks a lot?
Babaji: Oh yeah, it’s horrible! Stuck in there in the dark and you can hear muffled conversations and people fighting with each other and arguing about stuff and you know, you feel insecure because you’re completely dependent on them and oh jeez. It’s just horrible. I don’t ever want to go through that again.
Questioner 2: That’s why most people forget about it.
Babaji: Yeah, they want to forget about it because it’s like “Oh man I’m sure glad that’s over. Phew.” But actually we don’t realize that what’s in our past is also in our future. If we have to come back into this world again we have to go through that all over again.
Questioner 2: Yeah. That’s not good.
Babaji: That’s horrible! It’s unnatural. The soul is naturally full of pleasure and light and consciousness and knowledge and love. Why should we have to go through this terrible process that squeezes us into this little meat-bag? And then we’re pushed out through the womb, through this narrow little opening. It’s such a traumatic experience, both for the mother and for the child. Very painful.
Questioner 2: Why did Krsna design it that way?
Babaji: [Exaggerated sigh] I think it’s a message huh? Maybe you don’t want to be here. [Laughter] Maybe this isn’t our real home. Maybe this is like a jail; maybe it’s like a punishment. Maybe we’re going the wrong way, maybe we should think about going a different way. This is all designed by Krsna, it’s exactly the way it is because He’s trying to encourage us to get out. It’s just like jail! I mean they could make jail really nice, with comfortable chairs and really good food and everything like that [laughter] …
Questioner 2: And then you wouldn’t want to leave!
Babaji: Yeah. Why should I leave? The government’s taking care of me, you know, I don’t have to work for a living, I just hang out here and watch TV, yeah great! [Laughs] People would want to stay in jail the rest of their lives. But they make…so they make it difficult, they make it painful on purpose because it’s a punishment. It’s supposed to be a punishment for something bad that you did. So you shouldn’t want to come back there, you shouldn’t enjoy it. Of course, there’s crazy people that do, but that’s their business. The point is that we should want to get out of here.
Questioner 2: Right.
Babaji: We should want to go back to our real life in the spiritual world. We should want to be in our normal condition of love with the Personality of Godhead, not with these other meat-bags in this phony reflection of reality that, you know… we can be in denial, and we can say “Oh yeah this world is great! Oh yeah, life is wonderful! Oh yeah, I’m enjoying so much!” But we see even people who have a lot of money or have a lot of fame or have a lot of beauty…I mean look at Britney Spears! Look at what she’s going through. Who was that other star that died recently from drug overdose and all that? It’s like they have all this money, all this fame, all this beauty, all these friends, all these lovers and everything, and they’re still miserable.
So the point is, this world is not our real home. We want to get out of here. We would like to go to our original home in the spiritual world and not have to accept this suffering any more. So we have the chance now. Right now we’re not suffering too much. We’re in a pretty good situation. We have the freedom, we have the ability to address the problems of human life. We have the guidance, we have the energy, we have the time, we have the intelligence. So we should perform the process now, we should have to go… instead of having to go into another womb and not knowing what kind of situation we’re going to come out in – are we going to be born in a good family, a poor family, a violent family, an alcoholic family, a Muslim family in Bosnia…
Questioner 2: Or some place in Africa!
Babaji: Oh my God yeah, who knows where we’re going to be born in the next life? The point is right now, in this life, we have an opportunity to get free. So we should take that opportunity; we should take it very seriously. We should take it as a great blessing, as a great opportunity to end all of our problems now.
Questioner 2: It’s much more important than becoming a millionaire.
Babaji: Heck yeah! I mean if we happen to become a millionaire, that’s okay too you know. But the point is that we shouldn’t let that distract us from the process of spiritual life. That’s always got to be our first priority. We may have other priorities, of course; that’s natural. But let’s put everything in perspective; let’s assign the values as they really are. Spiritual life comes first. It has to come first, because that’s the solution to all the other problems. We can’t really solve those problems unless we solve the spiritual problem. Once we solve that, then every other problem is automatically solved because we go to a world where there aren’t any problems.
Problem means suffering; problem means unnatural situation. Problem means we’re forced to do something we don’t want to do. Problem means fear, problem means ignorance; it all boils down to ignorance. So because we accept the Big Lie, we’re trying to make…we’re really trying to make this place something that it isn’t. So we accept the Big Lie – “Oh this is a very nice world. Oh, you know, all the things here are meant for my enjoyment and I’m having such a good time. Everything’s great.” Ever seen that cartoon? There’s a guy in the hospital and he’s in traction, you know, and his legs and arms are in casts and stuff and he’s lying there on the bed and the doctor says “And how are we today, Mr. Smith?” “Oh just fine, doctor, thank you!” [Laughs] He’s got his head swathed in bandages, he’s got a patch over his eye…”I’m just fine!” Well that’s our condition in the material world; we’re walking wounded. Everybody is. If we have some intelligence, if we have some good fortune, maybe we’re less wounded than some others. But we’re still suffering. I mean you were talking about your early life earlier today, Randy, and my early life was like that too. In this society, or most societies, of you happen to be intelligent or sensitive then you suffer as a child because kids are really nasty and competitive. They can be really severe and harsh on other kids. If you’re a little bit different it’s even more so.
Randy: I’m over it.
Babaji: Well, yeah. But you don’t want to go back there again, do you?
Randy: No, no I don’t.
Babaji: Yeah. So I don’t want to go back there again either. I don’t want to go into the womb again, I don’t want to go through being divorced again, I don’t want to go through having children again and watch all the stuff that they have to go through. I’m done with it. I’m just so done with it!
Randy: These are the trenches, aren’t they?
Babaji: It’s the front lines! So if we have a temporary respite, if we have a little relief, [if] due to our past pious activities we have some fortunate conditions in this life we should take advantage of that to make as much spiritual progress as we can right now while we still can. Once we’re old it’s going to be too late. Once we get to the point where we can’t change anymore, we can’t grow anymore, I mean really a person by the time they hit forty or fifty they’re pretty much set in their ways, you know, they’re comfortable, there’s no real impetus or no real scope for them to change. It’s very very difficult for them to make spiritual progress. It really, really is tough.
Somebody in their twenties, while they’re still young, they’re still flexible, they can learn, that’s the best time to make spiritual advancement because you’re grown up, you’re an adult, you have freedom, you have autonomy but you’re still not too old to grow and change and adapt to different circumstances, different understandings. So the Indians have a saying, “A saint in truth is a saint in youth.” We find this true. The people who join this teaching or start to cultivate this knowledge at an early age make far faster progress than those of us who start later in life. I remember I joined the temple when I was twenty-seven. Twenty-eight? Yeah, actually twenty-eight, almost twenty-eight years old is when I joined the ISKCON temple and I had a heck of a time adjusting to the temple schedule and the discipline and the routine and like that, but most of the kids were about twenty or twenty-two. Just five years or so younger than me but still it made a tremendous difference in their ability to adjust and adapt to a completely different schedule, a completely different routine and way of life.
Randy: I’m a little…still a little unclear about…for instance, when we’re eating food, [indistinct], it tastes good, there’s a…we have direct indications of these symptoms…
Babaji: Through the senses.
Randy: But that…is that sense gratification?
Babaji: Yes, of course.
Randy: …and…
Babaji: We have to have a certain amount of sense gratification. It’s necessary for health. Psychological as well as physical health.
Randy: You’d go insane if you didn’t…if you were just bereft of all of your senses, you’d go insane.
Babaji: Oh yeah. Well people do, when they’re put into…what’s that called, samadhi tank? Yeah when they’re put in sense-deprivation situations, I mean within hours they start to hallucinate and within a few days, if they’re not taken out of there, you know, they just like go bonkers.
Randy: So, in the field of sense gratification, would you go to Disneyland?
Babaji: No.
Randy: Oh you wouldn’t?
Babaji: No. Waste of time. I wouldn’t bother to…I mean what does it cost? About fifty to sixty dollars or something now?
Randy: Yeah.
Babaji: Yeah, it’s a waste of fifty or sixty dollars to get a ticket to go into Disneyland and then if you want to go on the rides you have to pay more…
Randy: No, the rides are included.
Babaji: They’re included…
Questioner 2: But why don’t you take along a kid? (indistinct, best approximation)
Babaji: Well because…because what good am I going to get out of that? What good are they going to get out of it? They go to this complete…it’s a Maya, it’s an illusion within an illusion.
Questioner 2: Right.
Babaji: To go to Disneyland, the whole thing is a fantasy…
Randy: But there’s virtual reality in the spiritual realms…it’s a virtual reality.
Babaji: But it’s in relation with Krsna! That’s the difference. You see, Krsna is the central point. Or God, the Personality of Godhead is the central point. Whatever fantasies are in Walt Disney’s mind is not the central point of the universe. It’s like the Matrix. It’s like an illusion within the illusion.
Randy: Right, right…
Babaji: So why would I want to spend my time and money doing that when I could be chanting, I could be reading, I could be talking with other people about spiritual life, I could be doing so many things.
Randy: So the key to this whole thing is keeping Krsna as the centerpiece.
Babaji: Exactly! That’s what Krsna Consciousness means. And everything is seen and evaluated in relation to Krsna and His priorities.
Randy: So if I’m having sex with my wife, I should be thinking about Krsna??
Babaji: [Bursts into laughter]
Randy: No…I don’t know…I mean or do what? Just abstain?? And not have…
Babaji: Why not just have sex with Krsna? [Exaggerated finger-on-chin puzzled look]
Randy: I…well I…He’s blue! I…I don’t…
Babaji: “He’s blue!” [Laughs]
Randy: [Laughing] I mean…I haven’t even met the guy, you know.
Babaji: That’s real Tantra! You know, people make a big noise about Tantra this and Tantra that? They don’t know beans about Tantra! Tantra, real Tantra or sexual yoga means having sex with God. In love with God!
Randy: Spiritual love.
Babaji: Spiritual love!
Randy: Not physical love.
Babaji: Right. Spiritual love means love of God. Yeah. That’s real sex life. Man, you ain’t had sex until you’ve had sex with God! Phew!
Randy: Hmm.
Babaji: [Looking at the chat window] The guys are going crazy huh? Look at that. Rascals. [Laughs]
Randy: They go right for the jugular, don’t they?
Babaji: Well they’ve been around, you see. Most of these students have been with me for quite some time now. Six months to a year, or even more. And we’ve seen a lot of people come and go. In the beginning they came with big fanfare, you know. Like “Here I am! The Great Disciple!” and then two weeks later they find one little thing that they don’t like and they’re gone. We’ve seen that happen over and over and over…even people who are really intelligent. Because they don’t understand what really…this nitty-gritty of what is spiritual life. And it’s right there in the second chapter of Bhagavad-Gita, but very few people get it.
Randy: Yeah.
Babaji: Or if they get it, they don’t really want to consider all the ramifications.
Randy: Tell the boys to put their swords away.
Babaji: It’s a little shocking sometimes how…well we’re in a desperate situation. We need that knowledge. The sword means discrimination. It means being able to tell what is truly spiritual and what is actually material. It means being able to see how we’re fooling ourselves, how we’re in denial, how we lie to ourselves and we try to convince ourselves “Oh yes we’re really quite spiritual! ” when actually we’re just at a very very neophyte, very very beginner, almost preliminary stage of spiritual life.
Questioner: But six months to a year. That’s still pretty…you know…brand new where like, when you read something and you may save yourself [indistinct] intoxicants, illicit sex life, that’s all not good and I’m not going to do it, and you may restrain yourself physically from doing it and you may show everybody that you are restraining yourself physically, but then maybe in your mind there is like a tug-of-war going on…
Babaji: Oh yeah! [Laughs]. Yeah, let’s see you do it for thirty years. Do it for thirty years and then we’ll see who’s really sincere, who is really dedicated.
Questioner: So it takes a while once you find out about it to be able to ingrain it into your mind, rather than just physically stop doing it so that other people don’t see that…
Babaji: Well it’s actually impossible. You can pretend to follow the principles from an external point of view, but what…Prabhupada used to use the example of “You can take a dog and dress him up as a king and sit him on the throne, but as soon as somebody throws a bone he’s going to be after it!” [Laughs] Right? So you can take somebody and dress him up in nice robes and sit him on a nice seat and put flowers all around and he looks very nice. But then as soon as a pretty woman walks by, he’s like boing![makes head-turning action] So you can really tell who is serious by how deeply or how effortlessly they follow the principles. Like I said, if someone really understands spiritual existence, they lose their taste for material enjoyment automatically. Doesn’t require an effort of will. It’s just like if you…I don’t know what your particular interest in life is, but if you see something that is exactly up your alley and is your thing, your mind is automatically drawn to that. You don’t have to focus your attention. The mind is automatically drawn to the object of interest. So our real object of interest or our real object of attention is pleasure. Everybody wants pleasure. So people think “Oh this material world is very nice!” because you can get a little bit of pleasure, a little bit of temporary enjoyment from the material senses. But this is not only false, it’s really dangerous because in becoming all enamored of the material senses we forget our spiritual identity, and we forget that we can actually experience spiritual pleasure which is far, far more attractive than this material pleasure. So once we taste a little spiritual pleasure, the mind becomes drawn to spiritual pleasure rather than to material pleasure because of its insignificance. Why would I want to have material pleasure, which is temporary and means that I have to forget the spiritual pleasure, when I can have the spiritual pleasure without any effort and without any cost, and it’s permanent, unconditional and eternal? Why would I want to trade my million dollars in the bank for a ten-dollar bill lying in the gutter? I’m not going to do that. My mind is on my million dollars in the bank. I don’t even see that ten dollars in the gutter. Somebody else might think “Oh hey man, ten bucks! Wow”, you know? But I’m like “Hey man, I got ten thousand shares of Google man, you know. Screw that!” [Laughs]
You got to go, Ben?
Ben: Yeah I hate to interrupt but we do have to leave. So I was wondering if you needed that information from us, like the birth date and all that before we left…?
Babaji: You have my email, don’t you?
Ben: Do you want us to just email that to you?
Babaji: Yeah, email it to me and then when I get back to Mexico we’ll get together online by the WebEx and then we’ll sit down and take our time and just…
Audience member: [Walking up to Babaji with cash in hand] This is from our side [indistinct]
Babaji: Oh you’re very kind!
Audience member: Absolutely. It was very, very nice meeting you.
Babaji: Likewise. Thanks for coming.
Audience member: And we’ll be in touch.
Babaji: Please stay in touch.
Audience member: Absolutely.
[Voices of several people bidding farewell to Babaji and other people in the room]
Babaji: You too. You’ve got to drive! At least I’m flying. [Laughter]
Woman’s voice: Yeah, ours is probably more fun though. [Laughter]
Man’s voice: I’ll see you guys later. Bye!
Babaji: I’ve taken the scenic route before, I know where that’s at. [Laughs]
So we find that when people study this knowledge, at first they think they know what it means and then when they find out what it really means it’s usually a shock. Because what it really means is that the material sources of pleasure that we’re used to having aren’t going to give us satisfaction and the real truth comes out. And it’s always freak-out time. That’s why they [pointing to the chat window] call me the ‘Freak-out Acarya’ [laughs].
Randy: I can completely understand what you’re saying as being Truth. I can grasp that truth, that there is no love in this material world…because it’s objects bouncing off other objects. That’s what the objectified world is. It’s object rubbing…molecules rubbing against molecules. And it’s not transcendental, it’s not a transcendental thing, it’s not a fine, ethereal, spiritual aspect. And it’s just a…being in the material world so long, it’s so hard to just switch…
Babaji: [Nodding] That’s a fact.
Randy: It’s a difficult thing. It takes some time.
Babaji: Like when I joined the temple, I was still smoking cigarettes, and God, it took me six months to get to the point where I didn’t have to sneak out of the temple and go around the corner and light one up. I had a pack stashed in two or three different trees. And I’d like make sure nobody was watching me [looks around furtively], grab one, light up …”Aaaaahhh, Nicotine!!!” It took me six months to get to the point where I could go through the whole day and not have to smoke. And I knew smoking was bad. No question about it. I was real clear on that.
Randy: You were captured.
Babaji: But I was addicted. And so the momentum of the physical needs and conditioning that we get from having to cope with a situation where we don’t have access to spiritual pleasure…like I was saying, if we don’t have self-realization or if we don’t have access to Krsna directly – or if we don’t think we do…actually we do – but if we think we don’t, then it’s like we have to make the best of what we have available here in the world. And so we mock up this whole story, this whole rationalization that “Oh yeah, this love, this sex, this pleasure, this food, this stuff, this money, this power, all that stuff…oh yeah this is great. This is what I need, yeah; yeah this is gonna do it!” It’s like we have to have that false hope, because it’s better than having no hope at all. That would be terrible. That would be like suicide time. So what we do is we make up this whole story, which is called the material ontology, and we convince ourselves that the illusion is the reality and that there’s nothing else. We go into denial about our actual identity and our actual nature. So when we finally come into contact with the truth, it’s like “Oh, wait a minute!” [laughs]
People give me the funniest reactions. One guy was saying…what was it…he was saying “Oh does this mean that I have to like completely give up all my relationships with everybody and just go off by myself and only chant??” [Bursts out laughing] And I was saying no, no…come on, there has to be a balance. Especially in the beginning, it’s a gradual process. It’s not like you just jump into some ideal state where all of a sudden you don’t need anybody. It means that we gradually purify ourselves to the point where we can concentrate on the Holy Name for long enough to actually realize it. And then after that we may go out into the world and do various things. It took me thirty years to get to the point where I could sit down and chant for six months straight and realize the Holy Name. And then after that I went here and there, I did this and that, I talked to all kinds of people and had all kinds of activities to try to share that knowledge, but there was no question that the center of my existence shifted at that point from the material world to the spiritual world. Everything up to that point was just developing the preconditions so that that could happen. After that experience, after seeing Krsna; after Krsna revealed Himself to me, it was like there was no going back. There’s no way I’m ever going to forget that. No way that I could ever change – or would even want to change – the shift in the point of view from the material world to the spiritual world. The thing is I know now, for a fact, that all of us are capable of making that shift.
So when I speak about my view of the material world, being like a bunch of worthless crap [laughs], it’s because I have something better. It’s not because I’m trying to sell you something; it’s because I’m trying to give you something. The thing that I’m trying to give you is so wonderful, is so valuable, is so pure, is so beautiful that there’s nothing in this world that can compare to it. So when I talk about these things it sounds shocking in the beginning because it’s like “Wait a minute! What is he saying?? Does this mean that everything I think is important or valuable or beautiful or pleasurable is just…nothing??” In the beginning it’s like a shock. It’s like you lose your havingness, you lose your sense that “I’ve got enough to make me satisfied.” Because that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves; that’s the story we’ve been making up about this material existence that “Yeah, somehow I’m going to make it. I’m gonna make that million bucks, I’m gonna get that perfect relationship, somehow or the other I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna find fulfillment, pleasure…” because, like I said, it’s better to have false hope than to have no hope at all. But then when the real hope comes: “Oh, just by changing my point of view from the material world to the spiritual world, I can know unlimited spiritual pleasure? Eternal, spiritual, unconditional love? That could be mine? That could be my life? That could be my consciousness? ” When that first comes up, what it looks like is “Oh shit! I’m going to have to give up everything?” But why does a spiritual-minded person give up everything in the material world? It’s because they’ve discovered something better. They wouldn’t be able to, otherwise.
There’s a nice shloka in Srimad Bhagavatam that talks about how the soul, when it’s time to leave this body and go to the next body…have you ever seen a plant-worm? Those little green worms, they have feet in the back and feet in the front and they’ll stand on a leaf and kind of poke around, find a new leaf and then they’ll fix their legs on the new leaf and once they’re established there then they’ll bring the other end over, like that? [Shows motion with finger] Well that’s described…that’s how the soul changes bodies. It’s like we don’t leave one body until we already have our next body; we already have a connection with our next body.
Randy: Oh! Oh really?
Babaji: Yeah it’s described like that. Well that’s the real meaning of that ‘yam yam vapi smaran bhavam…’ shloka in Bhagavad Gita. That at the time of death or near the time of death, we make a summation of where we are at, what are our experiences, what are our values, what are our desires, what are our qualifications, where are we going from here? Where have I been and where am I going? We make this big evaluation. It’s a watershed moment in our lives. And then we say well, “I know I’m going to have to give up this body soon so where am I going in the next life?” Really it boils down to “What is the sum total of impressions that I’ve managed to glean from this life?”
Randy: Yeah. The average, isn’t it? The RMS value of the impressions?
Babaji: Like the RMS value, exactly. So what we look at, at that time is “How good of a deal can I get?” You know, I know I’ve got to sell my car and get a new one. So what about the payments and the insurance and my income and my credit, take all those factors into account. What’s the best deal that I can get? So it’s like we’re negotiating with God, almost, at that point. So when we look at our life and we see “What do I really want, where have I been, where I am going, what can I get and what can I do?” Once we have that connection with Krsna, it’s like you can talk with Krsna about “What do I want to do for the rest of my eternity?” And we can get a situation from Krsna that we could actually stand to have for an eternity! So let’s say that we had the ability to negotiate with Krsna any kind of situation, any kind of conditions for our existence in the future but the caveat is we would have to be in that condition for eternity. What would we ask for? And I want to tell you that you can have that. Krsna has the resources, Krsna has the ability to give you that, and the only catch is that it has to be in relationship with Him. It has to serve His purposes somehow. Other than that there’s no limitations. Anything you want.
Questioner 2: How would it serve His purpose?
Babaji: Well you have to understand Krsna. You have to know Krsna. It’s just like if I wanted to know how could I make a business, or how could I make an offer that would serve your purposes, I’d have to get to know you, wouldn’t I?
Questioner 2: Yeah.
Babaji: You’d have to reveal yourself to me, somehow or the other. So Krsna has revealed Himself already in the scriptures, and if we engage in a personal dialog with Him through the medium of the mantra, He will reveal Himself to us personally. We enter into a dialog with Him. This is Paramatma realization. See there’s three stages.
tad viddhi pranipatena
pariprasnena sevaya
upadeksyanti te jnanam
jnaninas tattva-darsinah
Now the person who knows the truth can show us the truth if we approach him with inquiries and service. So the spiritual master does that; he gives you the tools to approach Krsna. Krsna is realized in three phases. The phases are Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan. Brahman realization is when we realize “I’m not a material being, I’m a spiritual entity.” Paramatma is when we realize the presence of God within our heart and we open up this dialog with Him. And then between reading the scriptures and by this personal dialog with Krsna, we come to know Him as a person. Just like if we sat here and talked, not just for a couple of days but for a couple of years, we would get to know each other really well. So I would get to know you so well that I would know what you would think of something, right? If something happened I would say “Oh I know what Ken would say if he saw this! He would say blah blah blah…” Right? I would know you so well. So we can get to know Krsna that well. We can become so familiar with Him that He could reveal Himself to us so nicely that we know what He would think or what He would do in any particular circumstance. We come to know His character, His preferences, His likes and dislikes, His purposes. And so once we understand that then we can say “Well look, Krsna, I’d really like to have such-and-such a situation where I had this kind of a relationship with you in this particular form, and that would really satisfy me. I’d be really happy to do that and knowing that what you want is da-da-da-da-da-da-da, then I can supply such-and-such a service to you in that context, and that would be perfectly agreeable for me to do for all eternity. So let’s do that.” And Krsna would say [childlike] “Okay!” [laughs].
Questioner 2: Or could you tell Krsna “You know, I’m not sure. You would know better than I do …”
Babaji: Then you know what He’s going to say?
Questioner 2: Yeah?
Babaji: “Well I’m not sure either!”
Questioner 2: Oh really?? [laughs].
Babaji: [Laughing] See, I know Him! We have to take the initiative to open up this dialog and to start this negotiation and to make the commitment. As soon as we make a commitment to Him then He makes a commitment to us. But the thing about His commitments is [that] they’re eternal, and they’re always more than we ask for. This is my experience with Krsna. Krsna is so far out, His character is so wonderful that His reciprocation is always more than we expect, or more than we could ever ask for.
Our needs are really relatively simple. All we really need is a secure place to live with adequate resources and a relationship that makes us happy. And if we have that, then everything else is negotiable. So when we get into a dialog with Krsna, if we know ourselves then we know what to ask Him for. And I’ll tell you the truth, it took me about twenty years to get to know Krsna. But it took me thirty years to get to know myself, and to be able to ask him for what I really wanted. That was the hard part.
One time when I was working with my therapist, she said something that had a really profound impact on me. She said the main symptom of neurosis is that the person doesn’t know what’s going to make them happy. If you ask…you could have anything you want, what would make you happy? And they go “Well…I don’t know. I think…maybe I’d like this and that…” they’re not sure. That’s the main symptom of neurosis. The person doesn’t know what to ask the world for; doesn’t know what to ask Krsna for either. So we just take anything we can get. And that’s neurosis; and so a person wanders from one situation to another to another to another, but none of them are really satisfactory.
That’s like the story of our life here in the material world. We take what we think we can get, instead of what we really want because we don’t really know what we really want or we’re afraid to ask for what we really want, because of what we think other people might think about us. Or something like that. That’s neurotic! That’s messed up. So what happens when we get to higher levels of devotional service, is that we enter into this dialog with Krsna where we present Him with what we really want, what would really make us happy. Like my ideal scene, my ideal lifestyle or relationship with Krsna is something that’s very far out. It’s very unusual. I have unusual tastes. So for me it was very hard to me to break free of the…what is that called…not the expectations….break the mold. It’s like Krsna is presented in a certain way of being, or liking certain things and stuff like that, but actually His tastes are much broader than that. I didn’t know that, though. So I was afraid to ask Krsna for what I really wanted. He basically forced me to do it.
Questioner 2: Oh really?
Babaji: Yeah yeah…He forced His way into this area of my life that I really didn’t want to allow Him into because I was afraid that He would be upset with me. And it turns out He really…He’s totally cool with it! Duh! So I didn’t know that Krsna is so broadminded, so open-minded, so tolerant and so understanding and so compassionate and so loving. I had been painted this picture of Krsna as being very judgmental and very closed-minded and very old-fashioned in a lot of ways. And He has that side but he also has this completely open-minded, adventurous, wild…this other side that’s open to anything. So whatever we want, whatever it is, whatever would make us happy for all of eternity, we can approach Krsna and ask Him for it. He’s not going to reject us.
Look, we’ve been in this world for how many millions of lifetimes, we don’t even know, and He hasn’t rejected us yet! Even with all the nonsense that we’ve done, all the time we’ve wasted and all those crazy ideas we’ve had, this and that…He still hasn’t rejected us. So do you think He’s going to reject…and He knows everything we’ve done, everything we think, everything... and He still hasn’t rejected us. Well is He going to reject us if we approach Him and say “Hey Krsna, what do you think about this?” [laughs]. Of course not. He loves us unconditionally, eternally, unlimitedly. His own idea of His role in our lives is to give us whatever we want. So if we ask Him for what we really want, something that we would be happy with for all of eternity, He’s going to consider it His role to give it to us. And he will give it to us, you see? But if we want something that’s impermanent, unsatisfying, conditional, temporary, He’ll give us that too. But he won’t give both. One or the other.
Questioner 2: So that’s why we’re here!
Babaji: That’s exactly why we’re here. We’re afraid to ask him for what we really want.
[Peering at the chat window] What are these guys talking about? I dunno…did you have any questions there, old web folks? Huh? I don’t know what these guys are talking about. No you’re fine…you’re just chatting away there, huh? [Laughs]. Poor Baba is pouring out his heart and you guys are just chatting away about something completely different [laughs]. I know you’re listening, I’m just giving you a hard time. What was the last thing I just said? [Laughs]
So, well we were going to stop early, but then we got into this subject somehow or the other and that was about an hour and a half ago…no, almost two hours ago and we’re still here. People are making moves like they’re headed towards the door. [Laughs] Freak-out Acarya strikes again!
Uddhava says “Jaya!!”
[Responding to a question on the chat about whether the chat widow is visible to the audience in San Diego]
Yes, they can see it. It’s projected on the wall, ten feet wide!
[Bursts into fits of laughter, looking at the responses] Freak out!!
Oh it’s quite readable. Look! [Adjusts the projector so that the projection comes into view of the camera]
Audience member: Well regardless about whether it can be seen or not, nothing should be said that…[indistinct]
Randy: No. [indistinct]
Babaji: Well they’re speaking from their perspective as being established students and here are all these newbies asking the same questions that they asked six months or a year ago when they first got involved with our teaching. So it’s the old boys’ club routine.
Randy: Yeah that’s kind of a typical human algorithm. Everybody just sort of coalesces and therein lies the separativeness… “us versus them”, you know, “we’re better than they are”, old boys’ club…
Babaji: Yeah, this is one of the things we’re going to have to watch as the mission grows.
Randy: Well it’s a turnoff. It’s a huge turnoff.
Babaji: Yeah.
Randy: Yeah.
Babaji: So this is something we’re going to have to watch as the mission grows. That we don’t develop this insider kind of attitude.
[Responding to comments in the chat window] Yup, wet behind the ears. Greenhorn. Young whipper-snappers.
[Sounds of people moving around in the room]
Audience member: [Walking up shake Babaji’s hand] It’s been a pleasure to meet you.
Babaji: I’m glad you could make it!
Audience member: Oh it was an honor! I hope you come back and see us.
Babaji: Well we’re already talking about having a bigger event like this along the same lines, similar subject matters.
Audience member: I have all your contact information so I’ll be in touch.
Babaji: For sure. And I already gave you a little bit of a reading but…
Audience member: yeah I didn’t have the exact…
Babaji: Was it the time? Did you contact your mom?
Audience member: It’s impossible…but it’ll arrive. I need to put so much pressure you know, I’ve reminded [indistinct] over and over [indistinct] pressure, you know. I’ve reminded her once or twice and to say it over and over again is just...[indistinct] But don’t worry. It’ll arrive in good time.
Babaji: Okay. Yeah and then we can do the reading online on WebEx.
Audience member: Okay well have a safe flight back to Washington.
Babaji: Actually I’m going direct to Mexico.
Audience member: Oh are you? Even better so it’s not a longer flight. Four hours, right?
Babaji: Neville’s a bit disappointed but, you know, it’s less wear and tear on old Baba.
Audience member: Definitely. We’d want you to stay with us for a while!
Babaji: I just want to find that tree where I can sit down and chant. Ken, you’re headed out too?
Ken (Questioner 2): Yes, thank you so much! I’m really glad I came this weekend. Feel like I made a giant step!
Babaji: Well I tried to drag everybody as far as I could. [Laughs]
[Looking at the projection of the chat window] Those rascals are still going…[responding to a question on the chat] Yeah they’re all leaving. They’re tired of listening to me.
Woman: [Comes forward to bid farewell and folds arms] Thank you!
Babaji: It was good to meet you. Namaste!
Woman: [Indistinct]
Babaji: I hope so. You can always get my contact info from Randy and we can stay in touch.
Woman: Okay. [Leaving] Look there’s still daylight out there!
Babaji: Yeah!
Actually I was trying to end about two hours ago but somehow we got into this subject and…oh wait a minute I’m still hooked up to the computer here. [Turning to the chat window] Okay…yup, take the red pill guys, see you later!
[Small girl comes up to Babaji and asks for a hug]
A hug! Okay, I got a hug for you! [Bends down to hug the smiling child]
[indistinct comments from nearby people]
Ken: So is there a picture of Krsna on your website?
Babaji: Oh, many of them. We have a whole gallery, like a collection.
[Looking at the projection of the chat window again] These rascals. [Laughs]
Randy: I got to go see my mama.
Babaji: Okay.
- End of tape -
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