A Spiritual Awakening with Kirtan Meditation

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So, just check the topic again: A Spiritual Awakening with Kirtan Meditation. Why awakening? (You know we have some background music on? Whose…? There we go. Not that there was anything wrong with it, it was wonderful.)

“A spiritual awakening.” That indicates that we are possibly asleep.

The perspective of the great self-realized yoga masters is a feeling of great broken-heartedness when observing humanity at large. What they see is the purposelessness of material life. People try to live fulfilling some of the essential needs that we have for happiness and for love, for security and permanence, and actually not finding it. If we are brutally honest with ourself, we seek happiness, our parents sought happiness, our grandparents sought happiness, everybody was seeking, but do we actually find it?

And so we go through life with all its struggles and its ups and downs—and the saying, “all roads lead to Rome” is actually incorrect. All roads lead to the cemetery. Doesn’t go anywhere else. You spend some time, develop relationships, try to acquire assets, freaking out when kids come along and watch them go through the pain of growing up and trying to transition responsibly from kids to adults without becoming too damaged. Your body, after going through youth and middle age, begins to decline, and it all just comes to a grinding halt. Not much fun.

We try to stay busy. We try to engage in things that titillate us and excite us. We do this to fill up the empty space, but we don’t factually find what it is that we desire within our heart of hearts. We show up in this particular lifetime in a brand-new little body with nothing, apart from a massive amount of karmic baggage that you bring with you and will unpack during your life, sometimes tasting sweet fruits, sometimes tasting bitter fruits. And we leave with nothing, to go who knows where. Actually, I do know where, but… We won’t get into that one.

And it’s just like we’re on repeat. It’s like Groundhog Day. Really, seriously. Except that it goes over a little bit of an extended period of time. But if we could step back, and we knew what our previous life was like, and perhaps the one before that, and we became aware, intensely aware of the relationships and the attachments that we cultivated that all were terminated with finality at the moment of death, then we just relocate and start all over again… And it’s like, for what? Why? Why are we doing this? What is this?

And the whole time we’re going through this experience practically no one really endeavours to discover who they are apart from this body that you have on and intensely identifying with. The particular body, male or female, old, young, whatever, tall, fat, thin, short, whatever racial extraction, it’s all false and temporary identities, but we cling to those identities hoping to find what it is that we seek. And all the while we’re unaware, we’re unaware of our own true identity.

Who are we? This person, and I stress person, the living being, the spiritual being residing within the body and covered by the mind, you are a spiritual being. You are an eternal being. You have real spiritual need, and hardly anyone looks for it. We just become utterly caught up in the very temporary reality, the temporary and passing reality of material existence, totally committed to whatever it is that we’re identifying with, until that falls over. And then what? It’s kind of like…

So, when we speak of spiritual awakening, it’s just like, this is huge! This is huge, and this is real. The understanding that we are given from the Vedas is that—([Looking at his phone] Just checking. Oh, remember, we’ve got a clock there. Try and keep an eye on the time. I tend to get a bit carried away.) Is this okay speaking like this? Yeah? Hope it’s fine with everybody.

This is not meant to be scary or—It’s just like, it’s time to really try to open our eyes. We get caught up in what we call our life. We call the time between the birth of the body and the death of the body “our life,” but actually, that’s not our life. That’s just a period of time. Our life is our spiritual being.

The extraordinary things that are spoken of, and that you can realize, is that in this world, there are only two types of energy, fundamentally. You have material energy with all its infinite varieties of manifestation, and that has a characteristic. Its characteristic is that it is constantly changing, it’s constantly changing. And then there is the spiritual, the spiritual energy. The spiritual energy is the living being, it is the living being. And you know that this spiritual energy is present when you can witness consciousness and life.

Life does not arise from a combination of atoms. It doesn’t arise from the material energy. The living being has the characteristic of life, and when the living being is embodied, and has lost the plot utterly, like living a dream—for a yogi’s living the dream is not a good thing. It’s more like living the nightmare for them. Why the nightmare? Because they’re not hung up with a temporary flash of excitement or thrill or whatever, something that comes and goes, and doesn’t sustain and doesn’t offer us like nutrition. It doesn’t fill us up.

The living being lends consciousness to the body and to the mind, and so the symptom of life manifests in the body as long as the living being is present. The instant the living being leaves, there is just this extraordinary change.

I was speaking with somebody about a month and a half ago, and they were telling me about how they were with their father and helping him through that period called death when there is a transition from this state of existence, and the living being leaves. And he was holding his father’s body in his arms and chanting to his father and reassuring him, “It’s okay. Don’t have to hang on. It’s fine. You will continue to live. You can just… It’s time to leave. This body is worn out.” And he said it just like, it blew his mind just to experience the reality of that final breath. “Haaaa…” And then there’s this instant transformation of this body. You know, it’s only a body, and it looks like the person that you thought that you knew, but now you will become aware that it’s not even a person. It’s just a body.

It is the living being, the spiritual being that is the person. The Sanskrit word for this is purusa. This word purusa is used in different ways, but one way it refers to the living being who is literally a person, and it actually has a really deep meaning: it’s that being who seeks enjoyment, who seeks happiness. This is the deeper meaning of purusa.

And so, the living being, trapped in this body and completely unaware of itself, I mean, like my real spiritual identity, deeply absorbed in this body and living out this lifetime thinking this is me, but then in the end when it’s time to vacate the premises and move on, this is left behind. And the living being had spent that whole lifetime absorbed in the outer garment and in the mind, seeking permanence in a world that is impermanent, looking for perpetual happiness, looking for real love, to love and to be loved, through the agency of the body and not finding what it is that we look for.

And so, it’s kind of like, when we use this word “awakening,” this is a really heavy word, this is a really important word, and it should be in an encouraging word, that we are encouraged, we are encouraged to seek self-realization and God-realization. This is the purpose of this life. This is the actual purpose of human life. And this is what awakening means, to become awakened to your actual spiritual identity.

And when I say awakened, it’s not just awakened to your spiritual existence, but to understand where you fit in the big picture, and what is your purpose, where you find deep and real purpose, and where you can begin to, not just sometimes, but to become completely absorbed in what is our natural function, which is to love and to serve. This is what it means to be awakened.

“A Spiritual Awakening with Kirtan Meditation,” So firstly, the word meditation, there are different ways of—I’m not going to say there’s only one way of understanding meditation. There are different ways of understanding it. And what I will suggest is a superior way of understanding what meditation is—it’s actually not an activity of the mind—meditation means to become immersed in that which is spiritual or transcendental, to be immersed in transcendence.

And a way of understanding that, used the example, on Friday, like you’ve been doing some yard work or working out or some sports activity, and you’re all sweaty, and it’s a hot summer’s day, and you—the river’s pretty crappy around here, right? And so you go to the beach, and you wade out into the balmy summer waters that are still refreshing. And you immerse yourself in that ocean, and you become enlivened. Your body, just like it wakes up, and it feels so good.

If you can apply that analogy to what meditation is, to become immersed in that which is spiritual, that which will purify the heart and the mind, it will clear the fog and give us spiritual vision to see the reality of who we truly are. We will see all others differently than we look at them now. We will look at the world differently. This is the effect of meditation.

The meditation that we engage in is we are using spiritual sound—

I’ll just mention—I had said that meditation, in a very mature understanding, is not a mental activity. The mind is material energy. The mind is not spiritual. The mind is material energy, and so engaging with the mind or being absorbed in the mind is not truly meditation. But what the ancient yogis used to do was engage in practices that are actually characterized as pre-meditation. In some different spiritual paths, they would say these activities are meditation, and I don’t want to get into a debate. I’m just giving you a perspective that you can take on board and consider.

So, in the Ashtanga Yoga process, the Eightfold Path of Yoga, it began with yama and niyama. This is the adoption of principles to live by and to be guided by in life, things that you should do and things that you definitely should not do. And this was the first undertaking, because the adoption of principles that are transformative, that guide your conduct and how you live and how you engage with a thinking process, what you are engaged in thinking about, deeply influences your consciousness, and we’re talking about a transformation of consciousness, the consciousness of being lost in the clouds, of looking upon the body as the self—

Oh my God, you can’t imagine how pissed I am with this word “selfie” and how it’s embraced. Your body is not the self, and taking a picture of it, you call that a selfie, that’s actually really corrupting to be embracing that.

And of course, social media and the way they manipulate people through algorithms, and now with AI, personal algorithms, you are actually targeted, they know your weaknesses, they see it in how you react to everything, in how you respond. Even you try to enter—we’re almost past Google searching, right? Google just now gives you AI results, which is—okay, that’s a whole ‘nother subject. But you begin typing in a search, and then you decide midway through, you want to change it, and you erase something of what you’ve written, and you write it again, that fact goes into your folder. It shows something about your mentality, and what you are attracted to, and what affects or influences you. And even that action now becomes part of a bigger manipulation. It’s just like so mind-blowing.

So, we are very much absorbed in something that is even called illusory, not that it doesn’t exist, but it has no permanence.

Meditation—The process that was applied after yama-niyama, asana, to strengthen the body, to become free from disease and be able to sit comfortably, asana literally means to be able to sit very comfortably for long periods of time in that particular system.

And then they would practice what was called, after, pranayama, which was—it has the effect of completely stilling the mind, because their understanding was a hyperactive mind is a danger zone. In the Bhagavad-gita it says that the mind can be the greatest friend or the greatest enemy, and specifically an unbridled mind is considered—unbridled, meaning not “not yet married,” but bridle, like on a horse for controlling. So an unbridled mind means when you are actually not in control of everything that’s going on there.

So, the yogis understood I should not be just allowing my mind to go on a rampage, do whatever it wishes, desire, contemplate, go through all kinds of emotional experience and just be constantly reacting to it. They understood our responsibility was to actually determine what the content of our mind was going to be. We were meant to be in charge of what we’re thinking about and how we’re processing things. It’s not that we just surrender to our emotions and whatever else is going on. And so, in pranayama it would bring the mind into a state of stillness. This was one of the prime, primary reasons for engaging it.

Then they had a process that was called pratyahara. Pratyahara was to withdraw the senses from the sense objects, and they say it’s like a turtle withdrawing its limbs into its shell. They would begin to disengage from the world, not paying any attention to things that you smell, see, hear, touch, taste, just to really begin to, forcibly almost, begin an inward journey to find who you are in the heart of hearts. This process, we’re not recommending it. This is a process that is thousands of years old, and when people were very heroic and very focused, they used to use this.

Then they engage in what’s called dharana. Dharana was to bring the mind into a single focus where it doesn’t even flicker a little, like a candle in the wind. If you could understand actually what that means, it’s just like, oh my God, mission impossible. And this was all done prior to dhyana, or meditation. You had to still the mind, so you’re not being affected and influenced by it. It’s just like, oh, good luck.

So, it was recommended that in this time and age, and when I say this time and age, we’re talking about a time that began approximately 5,000 years ago. It is a vast period of time called Kali Yuga. And the characteristics of this age, when looking at people, it is said to be the age of chaos, quarrel, and confusion. When’s the last time you saw a really peaceful married couple? I mean, quarrelling is the norm. Is it not? Or no? You guys are really different? It’s like the norm. It’s like, what the hell? And all of these competing ideas, all founded on ignorance rather than actual transcendental truth.

It’s recommended that the principal way to engage in meditation is through the use of spiritual sound, transcendental sound, that by immersion in transcendental sound, you don’t have to worry about all that other stuff. You can just check out and just immerse yourself. You can have an experience in meditation upon spiritual sound, where even for five minutes of a time of in chanting, active chanting, where you’re not thinking about your problems, you’re not thinking about where the car is and what’s going on, you’re just completely absorbed in that sound. And in that experience, you feel peacefulness. You may not—It’s not like you’re actively aware of that, but later you realize, “Oh my God, that was uplifting. That was joyful. That was a very pleasant experience.” Even for those who have no real qualification from the perspective of the way the mystic yogis used to operate, one can actually experience, even momentarily, what is the beginning of what’s called transcendence.

The use of spiritual sound is principally done in perhaps three ways. One way is like engaging breath and sound together, like when they were doing the Gauranga chant. We also, like in my life, I engage—these is my little, tiny ones that I walk around with, [holding up beads] I’ve got some bigger ones that I usually don’t bring out of the house, that are very special to me. And I engage the sense of touch, speaking, but just very softly, so engaging the sense of speech and being able to hear the spiritual sound as I say it, engaging three of the senses and the mind in a practice of what’s called japa, where they chant a mantra on each bead.

But the simplest and the most powerful form of meditation is what is called kirtan, in this day and age. This is spoken of in the Vedas, that even the most fallen of persons who engages even momentarily in this form of meditation can become gradually spiritually enlightened, what to speak of someone who in a focused way participates.

The father of modern kirtan,His name was Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He appeared in this world 500 years ago, and he actively promoted that this is the system of spiritual deliverance in this time and age. And he described how it has a unique potency: because people were considered actually not very qualified from a spiritual perspective, at least from the standard of the old yogis, and when you engage in this process and this activity, it is said that it awakens in us something that is very special, and it gives us a taste for that happiness that we are actually seeking. It is like a form of spiritual nutrition.

They actually use this example in the Vedas, it’s like a bird in a golden cage. The cage is so beautiful, and it’s bejewelled, and it’s decorated, and the owner is so proud of it, and they’re just spending all their time polishing the cage and taking care of it and are so obsessed with it, but the bird within is wasting away from the lack of attention and spiritual nutrition.

Our quest for happiness, our seeking happiness, exists because it is the nature of the soul itself to perpetually exist in a state of limitless happiness. This is called ananda. That is the natural condition for the spiritual being. But when we are in the embodied state, we feel this urge to find happiness, but everything that we do, it may titillate us, it may excite us, it may be a monumental rush momentarily, but as soon as it passes it’s gone big time, and you’re left all alone again, wanting that experience but wanting it to last. You know in children’s books they used to always say, “and they lived happily ever after.” It’s a desirable condition, but we associate it with a fairy tale. But actually, it’s a spiritual reality. We have that desire to taste not just a sweetness, but a profound nectar.

And Caitanya Mahaprabhu said that when one actually commits themself, they become engaged and surrender their heart into the chanting of these spiritual sounds, these holy names, it actually awakens, it gives us a little taste for which we are always anxious for. It allows us to begin to taste and experience that.

It is not possible for me to sufficiently glorify—I don’t have the capability of actually presenting to you the absolute extraordinary magnificence of the spiritual process. I can talk a bit about it, but you need to—you know they have a saying, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” right?

So, one of the wonderful things about the whole yoga system, it’s not a belief system. It’s got nothing to do with belief. You can believe or not believe, it’s irrelevant. But you are asked to engage with it in an appropriate and guided way, so that you can discover for yourself whether it has value or not, and what is the nature of that value.

These spiritual sounds that we engage with, they are not just syllables or letters. They actually have a unique spiritual potency. They are actually, if I can put it this way, windows to a spiritual world, windows in the sense of being able to look in, and then maybe climbing in and entering a spiritual world, engaging in a spiritual experience.

Since time immemorial, these spiritual sounds, it was understood that they should be received in a specific way, and this, what I’m about to share, for some people may be like, “Wow, that’s amazing!” Other people might not like it so much, but I must speak the truth because that is what I must do. There is one verse in the Upanisads that says if one receives spiritual sound, or mantra, and it is not through an empowered lineage (it’s called sampradaya), then the mantra that you chant will not bear fruit. And there is a reason for that. It is because this, the principle we—

I was talking with some people yesterday, and it’s like, imagine a really hot, sunny day in Adelaide, and you have an electric fan by the window, and you’ve turned it on, because you want to get a bit of air circulation. And if the sun is shining through that window, you will see a representation of the fan as a shadow on the floor, and it has the same proportions as the fan that’s up here moving. And you look at the shadow, and you can see it, it moves the same way as the real thing. But if I put my hand in front of the shadow, do I feel anything? And the answer is no, because it is shadow; whereas the real one is called substance. It is the distinction between shadow and substance. When I put my hand before the real fan, I feel the air blowing. There is a potency to substance, but that potency doesn’t exist with shadow.

Similarly, mantra or spiritual sound, when it is delivered in a proper way, it contains potency. And some people think, well, you can just kind of like, grab anything, or take it from any source, and the reality is, that’s not the case; that you may engage in chanting a mantra that has not been delivered in this way, and it’s not going to transform you. You are not going to become self-realized. You are not going to become God-realized. It may be uplifting, it may make you feel peaceful, it may make the mind relax and you feel something like that, but it doesn’t go any deeper than that, so there is a need—

I yesterday used another example: It’s kind of like if we decide that, right here, we need a power outlet. And so I shoot over to Bunnings and I buy a, what do they call it? You know the—Huh? Oh, getting all technical on me, eh? Okay, thank you, okay. And I bring it back and screw it to the wall. And you can look at it, and it’s got the right brand name on it, it looks like the real thing, may seem like the real thing, but if I plug any appliance into it, my famous fan, it’s not going to work. Because that needs to be connected through electrical wiring back to the generating source of power.

And so, this system of delivery of transcendental sound, the transmission of transcendental sound, is the equivalent of like the wires going back to the generating source. So, this is a big subject, I’m just going to drop that one on you, and we’ll move on. But it’s actually really important and beneficial. One needs to be discerning with their heart. One should not be just embracing anything and everything. We should learn to question, “Why?” and to be fearless in questioning. It’s appropriate and it’s good.

So, by this system, that which is purely spiritual and transcendental, the spiritual realm itself becomes available to us. And when we drink from this ocean of spiritual sound, it touches us, it becomes like spiritual nutrition. It purifies the heart and the mind. It gives us a little taste for what it is that we are always anxious, and it will bring us to the experience of self-realization and God-realization.

So, I’m not going to talk much longer. What I’m going to do is we’ll have a little kirtan. And after that, we’ll open up for a Q&A.

The mantra that I’m going to chant, I’ll probably use this, the Mahamantra, or the Hare Krishna Mantra, as it’s called. This mantra was presented in one of the very ancient Upanisads, the Kali-Santarana Upanisad. And sometimes people ask, so what are the words mean? And there’s sometimes kind of like simple answers to that, but there’s also very wonderful and deep answers.

In this mantra, there are three words. The word Krishna references the supremely attractive, ultimate spiritual reality. You know how moths are drawn to light? All souls seek their soulmate. All souls seek—you know, when you look at a newborn infant, do they look delightful? Like, sleeping snuggled up in their mother’s or father’s arms, just like completely at rest? Of course, that doesn’t last. It’s a material condition so it undergoes rapid transformation. Soon it becomes all hairy-legged and aggro, and keeps fighting with you. But that snapshot of just like utterly feeling protected, in want of nothing, and just completely at ease, this is the state that we desire in a more wonderful sort of way. And the word Krishna encapsulates that experience, that which draws or attracts the heart of all to that which is supremely lovable, supreme sweetness. This is what Krishna encapsulates.

The transcendental name Rama references transcendental delight. It references joyfulness. Supreme joyfulness, transcendental enjoyment, is the deeper understanding of what this name references.

The word Hare is a little bit more complicated. Sanskrit grammar, like Latin and Greek, they have nominal cases, or noun cases, and they have what’s called a vocative case, meaning a name, when it is spoken to call someone, has a particular form. And the word Hare actually references the feminine energy of the Supreme that is being—We are asking, please, draw me close by your mercy, by your spiritual blessing, that I may be drawn into this wonderful spiritual dimension and experience the reality of my own spiritual existence and of the actual Lord of my heart.

So, this mantra is actually deeply prayerful. We are begging, we are begging to again feel the loving embrace of that supremely attractive, most joyful, transcendent Lord.

There are two pathways—I’ll just mention this—in spiritual life. One is called the aroha-pantha, which means the ascending path, and it’s like the mentality of trying to conquer Everest, and you have to be extraordinarily capable and qualified. You need to learn how to use crampons on snow, worse, ice and rock, which is treacherously dangerous. You have to learn all the rope techniques. You need to be conditioned to high altitude, because once you get up to the final camp, your body is eating itself, even your brain is eating itself, your body is consuming itself because it’s such horrific conditions. And so one needs to be extraordinarily qualified to so-called attain the peak.

So, in this approach to spiritual life, I seek my greatness. I want to become great. I want to become the hero. I want to mount the peak by my endeavour, by my righteousness, by my goodness.

The other spiritual path is called the avaroha-pantha, which means the descending path. In this descending path, I realize that I am extraordinarily unqualified. My mind is a mess. My life is a mess. But I take shelter, and I ask, “Please grace me with spiritual experience. Grace me with understanding.” This is also referred to as the path of revelation, where spiritual truth and reality is revealed to you. It’s not like you have knocked down the door and barged in to check it out, because you can’t do that anyway.

A lot of people don’t know, even in the ashtanga yoga process, Patanjali, he describes the highest experience of samadhi, asamprajnata samadhi, and what one must undertake to experience it—and it’s just like, oh my God, this is mission impossible. These guys would go and sit in a cave for 30 or 40 years, hardly eating anything, just so dedicated to the practice. And even then, they may not be successful. And after talking about the process, then Patanjali says, he throws out this verse that’s just really simple

“īśvara-praṇidhānād-vā” [Yoga Sutra 1:23]

which means that one can be awarded the highest spiritual realization by complete supplication and surrender to Isvara, the Supreme Purusa, the Supreme Being, the Supreme Soul, that one can be graced with spiritual experience. And that is really what kirtan is about. It’s about absorption.

So, I ask you to just, perhaps at least initially, just close your eyes, and let’s enter that internal world and just become absorbed in these transcendental sounds, immerse ourselves as we would in the ocean.