Humility: A spiritual superpower?

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So, I was asked to speak on a topic that is interesting. Part of the title—I’m not sure what you think: Humility – A spiritual superpower? Well…

So, I think one of the things that you’ll come to discover tonight, or you will be reminded of if you’ve already discovered it, that spiritual consciousness and spiritual thinking is actually the opposite of material consciousness and material thinking, and we’re not talking about just a little bit different, we’re talking about opposite. And, I mean, a really good and clear example of this is, material consciousness has people accepting and believing that the body is the self, that whatever body you have on now, that is who you are; even though every single person that has ever occupied a body in this world has left it and moved on.

Some people think nothing moves on, that at what’s called death, that’s it. The spiritual understanding is the body is not the self, and the labels attached to the body are not the self. So you may have a man’s body, a woman’s body, a child’s body, an old person’s body; the body can be tall, short, fat, thin, attractive, unattractive (what people consider) so many different things. And we have a tendency in material consciousness to cling to those temporary identities as being true and eternal: “That’s who I am.”

Spiritual consciousness dictates that we instead try to awaken our understanding, appreciation, and experience of the fact that we are eternal spiritual beings temporarily inhabiting a gross physical body and covered by another form of material energy called the mind, but that’s not who we are.

So this is a really major example of how material consciousness and spiritual consciousness are opposite.

This subject of opposites is addressed in the Bhagavad-gita. There is a famous verse from the second chapter, the 69th verse or sloka, where it says,

“What is night for all beings is the time of awakening for the self-controlled; and the time of awakening for all beings is night for the introspective sage.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.69]

So that’s a rather poetic way of putting it. It’s like the difference between night and day; and one who lives in spiritual consciousness is having a uniquely different experience than one who lives in material consciousness.

And the understanding is that material consciousness means unhappiness. It means difficulties and sadness. That’s where things generally go. Whereas spiritual consciousness means that I am living in a state of actual great spiritual blissfulness, doesn’t matter what’s going on with the body. Even if the body is subjected to what’s considered suffering things, I don’t suffer. I understand this is just something happening to the body. It’s not a big deal, and I am experiencing something else.

So the previous talk that we had was on the topic of self-love. And as you know, I’m not only not a big fan of self-love, I think it is actually very harmful for people to be diving into that realm. And we’ve talked about it, but we’ll understand it here also.

When we spoke about it in the last time I was here, we mentioned about how people are into self-talk, either saying positive things or negative things. And there is a general idea in this world, that if you are having positive self-talk, that that is a good thing, and if you are having negative self-talk, that is a bad thing.

The problem with that idea is, both are harmful from a spiritual perspective, because they are based on a false conception of self. And that—even if you are totally trying to be so positive about everything and pump your so-called “self” up, the problem is that you’re reinforcing the false conception of self. And so you may be in a state of positive experience right now, but it won’t last because there’s two sides to every coin, and what goes up must come down. This is the nature of living in the world of dualities. You cannot have one side of things without the other. And spiritual life is the process by which one is able to transcend, to rise above both of these things.

The foundation of spiritual life is the discovering of the true self, as opposed to embracing the false self.

So, in relation to the topic tonight, there is a series of verses, five verses altogether, that delineate or list what are considered the qualities of a transcendentalist, one who’s situated in a transcendental position, a spiritual position. And I’m going to read part of this list. It’s not even the whole thing, but we’ll—And we’re not gonna address all of the things, but I’m reading from a good number of these qualities, just to give us a pretty reasonable idea of what it is that is being put forward as being desirable. If one cultivates these qualities and can live experiencing these qualities, one will become happy.

And of course, the first one on the list is humility, which is the reason I’m reading this list, but the other ones you may find of interest.

“Humility, pridelessness, nonviolence, tolerance…”

Tolerance is an interesting and important spiritual quality, and it’s defined in the Vedas as “to patiently endure unhappiness.” That is how tolerance is defined, which I think is absolutely wonderful definition.

Next quality is simplicity. It’s unfortunate the way the world is moving now. People are becoming more complicated and getting more caught up in things that are actually not helpful, all of the technology and some of the social philosophies and ideas that are being promoted which are meant to be making everybody’s life better, and yet the amount of unhappiness and mental health issues and depression and so, it’s just growing exponentially, which indicates there is something wrong with what people are doing, with what the proposition is, what is being practiced.

So, something that’s really important is developing the quality of simplicity.

“To approach a bonafide spiritual teacher,” which means to seek spiritual guidance and a direction forward.

Another quality is cleanliness. Of course, in the Western world everybody has the—they know the saying, hopefully, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” So, we’re actually talking about here the cultivation of what are probably classified as godly qualities, and cleanliness is one of them.

“Steadiness,” to be not wavering, just because your mind is wavering, to not feel that you have to abandon, follow that.

“Steadiness and self-control.” And of course, we live in a time when we are not just urged, it is demanded of us to not exercise self-control, to give in to impulse and desire. And of course, that messaging comes through with all advertising simply because you have people that simply want to exploit you for your money, and so they want you to impulsively follow desire, to cultivate constantly desire, and to follow it no matter what.

So, “steadiness and self-control; renunciation of the objects of sense gratification, the absence of false ego…”

So, in our lineage we often use a term, “false ego,” because there is considered such a thing as the real ego which is related to our spiritual identity, and the false ego is the false concepts of self.

“…the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age, and disease…” These things were considered not good. Since we are eternal spiritual beings, this is not natural for us.

That there should be a “…non-attachment to children, wife, husband, home, and the rest, and even-mindedness, even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events;” And that’s as far as the, I’ll go with the list. But that last one is of enormous importance or significance, that even in the midst of great unpleasantness, and even pleasantness, that one should be even-minded. They should remain on a steady keel, not lose the plot.

So, the first quality that was listed here as, we read, was the quality of humility. People have, I think, often not a proper understanding and appreciation of humility, what genuine humility means. People are often relating humility with accepting abuse from others or something along those lines, and so when you advertise that one should cultivate humility, especially somebody that’s been in an abusive relationship or something, then they really have a strong reaction. But that’s because there is not a proper understanding of what it means to be humble and what humility is from a spiritual perspective.

In that list we had humility and then pridelessness. So that second word that was translated as pridelessness, in Sanskrit can also be understood as being free from hypocrisy or pretence.

So, oftentimes people think that humility and pride are opposites. You have that saying in English, “Pride comes before the fall.” Have you heard that one? When people become intoxicated with position or wealth or whatever, and they become very prideful and don’t want to listen to anybody, and they go off on this tangent, and then they end up making really bad choices and decisions and there is a fall that follows it.

These old sayings are time-tested and wise, these sayings that are found in all cultures, and we need to pay attention to them.

So, in this list  of qualities, the pride, though, is not seen necessarily as the opposite of humility, which many people think it is. And we’ll get into what it means, what humility means from a spiritual perspective. So what does it mean?

I’m just going to read a short, paragraph from one of my teachers on—a commentary on this verse in the Bhagavad-gita where he describes what is actual humility.

“Humility means that one should not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honoured by others.”

And of course, the opposite of that is true. If we are hungry to be honoured, then we become increasingly sensitive to being what we call dishonoured. You cannot have one without the other. If you are going to be chasing what other people say about you and wanting positive things, then the more you are into that, the more sensitive you will be to then negative so-called feedback. That will go hand-in-hand. So reading again,

“Humility means that one should not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honored by others. The material conception of life makes us very eager to receive honor from others, but from the point of view of a man in perfect knowledge—who knows that he is not his body—anything, honor or dishonor, pertaining to the body is useless. One should not be hankering after this material deception.”  – ACBSP Purport Bhagavad-gītā 13.8-12

Why useless? Because the body will only be here for a limited period of time, and we will have to leave it, like it or not, and we will move on. And if we are now determining how we live and the decisions that we make based upon whether somebody heaps praise upon so-called us, which is actually praise upon the body and mind, then we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness. It is part of a deception. It is something that makes it very difficult for us to experience self-realization.

If we are caught up in, if we are addicted to the idea of being praised and accepted and everything by others, then we are living in a deception, a spiritual deception, because that body is not you. The state of your mind is not you. And even if you are—people heap praise upon you, then the body begins to age. As the body ages, even the mind becomes more feeble. That automatically happens. It’s part of the process. And then what are you left with? You’re—toothless old man: “I can remember when I was about 45, and everybody thought I was an incredible person.” And it’s sad. It’s sad because the state of things, the current state of things is that where is all the praise now? Where is all the support now? People may even avoid you. Even family members may avoid you, and it’s kind of like, wow, this is not a good outcome.

I looked online, and I saw a definition within Christianity that I thought was actually really, really nice, and it’s in support of the same idea. So it, in relation to defining humility, they had defined it,

“The quality of having a modest, honest view of your own importance.”

So the idea of your own importance should be both modest and it should be honest.

“It means you do not think that you are better than other people. The writer C.S. Lewis noted, ‘True humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.'”

Yeah? That’s actually extremely profound. So of course, we completely agree with that and support that.

So that’s humility.

And I wouldn’t have chose this title, but it was interesting. James proposed it, and I thought it is interesting.

When we use the word superpower—well, of course, there’s a couple of few different ways that people use that one. In relation to countries and political and military influence, a country that’s very powerful and a lot of military force is called a superpower. But these days with all the Marvel stories being put into movies the focus on superpower has more to do with “a power or an ability, such as the ability to become invisible or fly, of the kind possessed by superheroes, a superhuman power.” When we think of this word superpower, people think of it in terms of being given an advantage over others (right?), to be able to fly, to stop a bullet, to be able to do all these kind of things.

And it’s interesting, within the world of yogic teaching, they—actually one of the aspirations of certain yogis was to acquire what they referred to as the ashta siddhi. The siddhis means the perfections of which there were eight yogic powers that one could develop by certain types of yogic processes, by becoming very accomplished. Levitation is one, to be able to become so small that you could fit underneath a door and go anywhere that you wish to. They—anyway, they were eight in number.

And what we see in the ancient Vedic texts, one was advised that any accomplished yogi who is offered the opportunity to gain these opulences, or powers, they should reject it. Because if you actually accept it, it binds you to this world, because it comes with the conception of the body as self and of having power or dominion over the world and over others, over natural forces. And this was considered a huge, what was called a trap of maya or illusion that will bind someone who is, may have been on a genuine spiritual path, but they become allured and intoxicated by the idea or the attraction towards power.

So, this idea of superpowers is that they give some form of advantage over others or over material nature.

So if we ask the question, does humility bestow a spiritual advantage? And that’s an interesting philosophical idea; and the answer is both yes and no. Yes, because it means one is acting on a platform of spiritual understanding. If I cultivate this quality, it will advance my spiritual understanding of myself, of this world, and of any higher spiritual reality.

But at the same time, I can say no, it won’t give you a spiritual advantage. And this may be a fine point. I don’t know if everybody will get it. But I say no because it is not that you act humbly and as a result of that you become self-realized. No, becoming self-realized is not a pretence. It is not about faking it till you make it, as they say in the modern world. But rather, as you gradually become self-realized, humility increasingly manifests. The more that you grow in an understanding and appreciation of your spiritual identity, the less and less you are attached to or influenced by the false conception that the body is the self or the mind is the self.

And so you can’t—real spiritual life is not about dishonesty and pretentiousness. You can’t just go through the motions. There has to be a revolution of the heart, a transformation of the mind, of consciousness, of the heart. There has to be a real growth in spiritual understanding. And what naturally comes from that understanding is self-realization. And it influences how you interact with the world, how you manage your relationships, how you deal with others and what becomes the focus of your life; because the foundation of humility is the understanding that the material body and the labels attached to it, including the idea of honour and dishonour, they are useless. They are fleeting or passing experiences. They do not actually pertain to the spirit soul itself. So that is really important to understand.

Some of the things that we hear, like in the Western world because of the long association of Christianity with Western culture, we may be familiar with ideas such as to love your enemy, which sounds like an impossibility. Someone that actually wants to harm you, who actively may be seeking to harm you, how could you possibly love them? Someone that has so-called hurt you, spoken ill of you, or caused you difficulty or pain, how could you love them? It seems like a paradox.

But when one grows in spiritual understanding, when one steps back, they’re not caught up in this, the vortex of all the emotions and material conceptions that follow the material condition of life. When one begins to think and see things from a spiritual perspective, to think of things more clearly, when one learns not to be drawn into a rise in emotions—

You’ll hear me many, many times say that wherever you find yourself in life, it is the result of choices that you have made and actions that you have taken. And learning to make brilliantly good choices and to act wisely will make it so your life becomes happy. And an important part of that is not, not, to act on a heightened state of emotions. In a heightened state of emotions, positive or negative, one makes terrible choices and gets themself into trouble.

You agree with that or not?

When we’re angry or envious or jealous or fearful, we will behave in ways that don’t help us, that don’t make our life better. And on the other hand, we can be swept away by things. We may fall for a certain person—and fall is a good word. It’s like fall in a hole. We fall for someone, and we think, “Ah, this person is just gonna be amazing and perfect.” And in a heightened state of emotion, positive emotion, I commit myself to someone, and then they turn out to be the bane of my existence. They cause me great pain and suffering.

So, to learn not to make decisions and choices just on the basis of heightened emotional state is really important. And so that messaging is coming through here, which is part of what humility is about as well, is to not be overly influenced and make decisions when we are subjected to the dualities of life, happiness and distress, for example, honour and dishonour.

So, in the Bhagavad-gita, it states,

“For one who has conquered the mind, the Supreme Soul is already reached, for he has attained tranquility. To such a man happiness and distress, heat and cold, honour and dishonour are all the same.”  [Bhagavad-gītā 6.7]

Just like, wow! Imagine being in a state where somebody could be heaping praise on “you,” which is of course not the real you, or they are heaping abuse upon you, and in either case, you are not emotionally touched by that. It’s just like, wow, what is that condition? And is that desirable?

Yeah, I think that’s desirable big time. I mean, so much of the suffering and unhappiness that we read about and we know about through experience in family or friends or others, and things we see on social media, is just this reaction to positive and negative statements, what people say, how they say it. We become so deeply affected.

Whereas we are great promoters of the Serenity Prayer.

“Grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change.”

You cannot change how somebody’s going to think about “you” or feel about “you.” But what you have control of is whether you will allow it to affect you, and how, what will be the nature of that effect. That’s where we need to be focused.

That second line in the prayer,

“Grant me the courage to change those things that I can.”

So, you can’t change another person. Stop trying to. Stop trying to impose your will. People are going do what they’re going to do. It doesn’t mean you have to just sit down and accept everything. But become focused on what it is that you have the power to change, and that’s how you will allow it to affect you, how you will think about it, how you will process it. This is the way that one can gain equilibrium.

And with this cultivation of the understanding of our spiritual nature, then we can actually come to that very calm place where it doesn’t matter what’s going on around us, we are not on an emotional rollercoaster. All kinds of emotions may be arising in the mind, but I’m not chasing it. I’m not following it. I’m not hanging onto it. I just see it as, “Okay, my mind is reacting in that way, but I’m not gonna follow it. I’m not gonna chase it. I have a better understanding, and I don’t have to react in that particular way.”

Is this interesting? Practical and helpful? Yeah. Good.

So, when we circle back to the title of the talk, is humility a superpower? And as I stated earlier, in this world, most people think of having a superpower, or a superpower as being that which gives you the ability to dominate this world and other people. That is a materialistic idea and the antithesis of real spirituality. So if people are embracing the word superpower to mean that, then no, it’s not a superpower.

But if we think of superpower as giving an advantage, not over others, but over the lower self, the body and the mind, then yes, humility could be a superpower.

So in the Bhagavad-gita, one of the things we’re advised is a crucial part of the yoga process, regardless of what yoga path or system, is that one learns and they come to control the mind. Your job is to determine the contents of your mind. Your job is to decide how you are going to think about things, what you are going to think about, and how you are going to process things. That doesn’t just happen by itself. And if you don’t exercise your independence as a spiritual being, you simply surrender to the flow of the mind and all the emotions, then you will be in a deplorable state, an unhappy state, a non-spiritual state.

So, they speak about, one should try to strengthen and cultivate what is categorized as the higher self, which is the spiritual being, and exercise control of the lower self, which is the body, the mind, the emotions, and all of those things. And if we’re thinking of superpower as being bestowed the ability to exercise more control over the mind, the desires, the emotions, then we could say that, yes, humility is a superpower.

What do you think, James? Yeah? Little bit of a different angle than what we’ve dealt with before.

So, I hope that has been beneficial, and I’ve tried to keep it reasonably short so that we don’t get lost, tried to keep it focused and down to a few points.

The things that you’ve heard, I strongly suggest you attempt to reflect on them, not just in the week ahead, but in, even in the months ahead. And we will post the talk online, and I would even suggest that, make a little note on your phone or somewhere, set a reminder, maybe in a week or two, or even tomorrow to begin with, go back and listen to this once again and consider it; because this information, this wisdom, is life-changing. If you want to be happy, if you want to become free from fear, if you want to find true spiritual joy, then this wisdom is key to that.

But hearing it is not enough.

I was speaking last night at—was that last night? No, night before last, at Mantra Night up in Auckland, and just mentioning that your state of consciousness affects how you see things. And I was talking about some—maybe a big piece of wound-up rope on the floor, and you just look at it and like, “Yeah, piece of rope.” But for a person who may have fallen off a boat or their boat sank and they’re lost at sea and in a desperate state, and they are dying, if a helicopter comes and lowers that same piece of rope, or a large boat comes by and they throw the line over, that same piece of rope, that’s no longer, to that person in the water, that is no longer just a piece of rope. It is a lifeline. It is something that will make it so I could save my body. I’m not going to face the experience of death here in the water, that my aspirations, my attachments, my relationships, everything that I value is actually invested in this rope, and I see it truly as a lifeline, something that can save me.

So depending on my state, I can look—my consciousness, I can look at something and it can be like nothing or it can be everything, depending on my situation. And so when we think of these questions, “Who am I? Why am I here? What is this life for? What is my real purpose? Where can I find true and eternal happiness?” then what we are sharing is a lifeline. And you can hear it and go, “Yeah, I kinda like that,” and then that’s the end of it, never think about it again. That’s okay. You don’t have to do anything else.

But if you are truly interested in your wellbeing, then sometimes remembering, reflecting upon what is truly spiritual wisdom is actually really important and, and really helpful. A person can be drowning in the water, and somebody shows up in the helicopter or the boat and they throw the lifeline, and a person go “Ah, hallelujah. A lifeline. Ah, wonderful.” But then they never grab it. It’s kind of like, what good does that do? Doesn’t do any good.

So same thing applies. This wisdom, it’s got nothing to do with me and I haven’t invented or made up any of this. This is ancient, wonderful spiritual wisdom that I am humbly trying to share and pass on. But for it to be of enormous benefit, you have to reach out for the lifeline, and you have to grasp it and hold it tightly for it to have the benefit.

And so it is important to think of things in—with that perspective. So, to reach this state of being able to live in the world but not be part of the world, one must cultivate both the appreciation that we are not the gross physical bodies that we occupy, or the minds. And we must rekindle our lost relationship with the Supreme Soul. Those two things are necessary and important.

And of course, the most effective way to be able to do that is through this meditation upon spiritual sound. It is like so important, it’s like so critically important that you actually develop your own personal habit, meditation habit, where you allocate some time every day, every day. If once a week is what you can manage, that’s okay, but do it once a week. Do it at the same time if you can, and make sure that you do it. Don’t do it one week and not another week, and let another one go by, then do a bunch of it, and then drop off again. It’s the consistency that really brings change. But to be able to allocate even five minutes, 10 minutes even, even something like that, every day to engage in this process of meditation upon spiritual sound, I promise you will be utterly transformative. But you need patience, and you also need determination, a commitment that I’m doing this no matter what. I’m doing it. This is what I’m going to do.

So, we will chant since that’s what we promote as being the main process. And after we finish, when they distribute the supper that they have prepared, if you have questions, we can try to answer.

I’ll chant the Mahamantra.