Part 2 – Q&A – Everyone Dies but not Everyone Lives

It’s such a bummer that we’ve been through a few decades of all kinds of crappy stuff, and people have become very opinionated—although you probably think I’m really opinionated. The only thing is none of this is my opinion. And people don’t like talking about higher spiritual reality, or truth, or God. And it’s partly because what people have been told, in many cases, is seriously deficient and sometimes gravely incorrect. There is an extraordinary transcendental reality. You feel it in your own heart. You know this to be true. You must come to discover it and reconnect. Okay? Thank you. [responding to a thumbs up from the audience]  Not two, just one?

Anybody else? We’re gonna end up sitting here looking at each other. I have the better view. Okay.

Audience member: You said at the start, you used the plane example, and talked about how we’ve become aware of [Acd: Our mortality] Yeah. And then you talked about how that’s ultimately not actually a thing. What is the relevance of becoming aware of mortality?

Acharya das: It is a reminder of the temporary nature of this world and my body. But when I come to cultivate an appreciation of my spiritual identity and who I am as a spiritual being within the body, you can come to the point of being utterly fearless. You don’t get disturbed. You may have physiological reactions, that’s part of the way the body is designed and the mind is constructed, that you will have certain types of reactions physiologically, but you can be in the most horrible situation and be utterly at peace, not feel fear, to feel constantly the warm embrace of my beloved, the transcendent Lord. So, in those kind of situations, we become aware, people become aware.

But one of the points I was associating with that, then people forget about it. They let it go. And they go back to their life, which can become mean and miserable. We don’t—if we were constantly aware of the mortality of the body, my eternal being, and the fact that the time I am in this body is very limited and temporary, it’s passing, and that I need to be doing something significant with my life; and when I live that way, I will have a wonderful effect on those I come into contact with. The way I will deal with them, the way I will see the world, the way I see others, will all change. Far out or what? Yeah.

This is the ultimate [mimes mind blown.] It doesn’t get more awesome. And like I say, we’re just dealing with the fundamentals.

We had a lady in the back, there you are.

Audience member: Hi, I’ve got lots and lots of questions, but I’ll only asked two—give other people a chance.

Acharya das: Give it a blast, see how we go.

Audience member: Firstly, how would I find a birth to be present at?

Acharya das: How will you find?

Audience member: A birth to be present at. I’ve been present at plenty of deaths.

Acharya das: I don’t know, that’s—I can’t answer that one for you. I delivered three of my own kids, and a couple of my friends’ kids. That made it easy. And showing up at people’s houses at the right time and stumbling upon, oh, wow…People that are into home births. In the hospital’s they won’t let you near it, but…

Audience member: When you were talking about our purpose or how to find it, you said something about what makes us cry, upset, sad, angry. [Acd: Yeah] But I sort of lost track of how those would help us indicate our purpose.

Acharya das: Okay, this will be a little bit of an indirect route. My point—and please excuse me if I sometimes fail in, to explain things nicely, my shortcomings.

In talking about what are the things that upset you, basically, that should point you in a direction where you understand currently what is really important to you. And you may find that that which is really important to you now, in the big picture is actually not really important. It may be somewhere where we’re taking shelter, where we’re hiding, so we don’t have to face the bigger realities; but to be aware of what those things are kind of can help us understand what is our current purpose. And when we understand what is our current purpose in life, we have to evaluate, was this the best choice? Is this the highest purpose I can take on board? Is this the best direction I can direct my life toward?

Is that okay?

If nobody else is putting their hand up, if you’ve got some more, just grab that guy with the mic. Oh, we’ve got another hand up.

Audience member: Thank you for your talk. In a world of seven or eight billion people, that’s embodied, or were in bodies, how do we find a place where more people might desire more spiritual sense of purpose?

Acharya das: Well, showing up tonight is a really good way to get going. We will find our place when we do two things. One is to cultivate what we broadly call yoga wisdom, which gives you a clearer perspective and spiritual truth that you then need to take on board and look at that in your life.

And then the second thing is to engage in this process of utilizing spiritual sound, transcendental sound, as part of a daily meditation that begins to—it gets rid of all the cobwebs and blows the dust away. It purifies the heart and mind, and makes it so that we can actually, when we hear spiritual knowledge, it doesn’t sound, you know what I mean, unachievable or very distant or difficult to fully grasp. We start to see the reality of things.

So the development of a personal, spiritual practice of meditation is like a really important part of making it so that you increasingly will—it’ll become clearer where you fit and how to live a life of deep meaning and purpose.

Is that okay?

Huh? What’s that? Getting hungry? Well, get the gentleman a plate. Would you like them to serve the meal now, and we can just sort of talk, or is it too distracting? Well we can do it this way. We can just see if there’s another one or two, and then we could do the meal thing, then they’re going to have a bit of a chant, and then after that for the really keen ones, if you want to hang around, then I’ll stay as long as needed. Does that sound like a deal or what? That way everybody gets…

You like this stuff? This is what I live for. When I was a kid, I was going like, what the hell is this for? You just go to school, and then get a job, and get a girlfriend, and maybe get married and have some kids, and then you just grow old and die? That’s it?

Audience member: After the last breath, do we turn blue? [Acd: Huh?] After our last breath, do we turn blue?

Acharya das: After our last breath, do we turn blue? Is that what the question was?

Audience member: Yes, like the symbols behind you.

Acharya das: No, we don’t turn blue. The body goes a horrible grey color, but you move on. You have a spiritual identity. You have a spiritual form. The body is not a person. This is an extraordinary discovery. When you leave, that’s not a person. That’s just a hunk of flesh and bones and blood and mucus and bile. It’s not at all attractive. When the person leaves, and if you examine it, you know that it’s not a person. In your heart, you experience that reality. It’s not a person—which tells you that whatever has left, it’s not just an energy, although it is a form of spiritual energy, but it is also personal. When the living being resides within the body, it lends personhood to the body.

So part—I mean, we’re just, as I said, kind of scratching the surface.

The discovery of my actual identity means to answer three questions. Self-realization means, I must come to realize and know my essence, fundamentally, what am I made of? to put it very simply. What is my essence?

What is my position? Meaning, where do I fit in the big picture, amongst all the other living beings? And if there is one that is superior to the others, or greater than the others, where do I fit in relation to that? Where do I fit in relation to the world? So I have to answer the question, what is my position?

And the third is, what is my natural function? So, if I took a spiritual being and the covering is removed, the body and the mind and the false, all the false identities, in the pure state, what is the natural expression, what is the natural activity of the spiritual being? This is what this discovery is of self-realization.

I should come to realize all of those things to have the highest experience of self-realization, not just one or two of them or—all of them.

Yes. We have another question. Oh okay.

Audience member: Please. Thank you so much.

Acharya das:  You have to talk a bit louder. [Audience member: Okay.] I’m an old guy, you know [Audience member: and I’m nervous], my hearing is slipping.

Audience member: You spoke about keeping company to people close to their death and about how they would usually reminisce about their past. If we were close to death what would you recommend us for a good passing.

Acharya das:  You want to answer that one? [directed to someone in audience] He has had a very wonderful experience of what it is like to assist somebody through the experience of death, what’s called death, which is actually a transition. It’s important that we cultivate understanding. And one of the earliest and important things to share with someone who is approaching death is to tell them, don’t be scared, don’t be afraid, it’s okay. This is normal and natural for everyone, that you, you are actually not going to die.

I had this experience once where I was doing business, and I had a guy I was working with in Bombay, now Mumbai, and he was a Muslim, and we became very close. He became a vegetarian, and I used to go to his house and have kirtan and stuff. His wife and kids loved it. And we had to go somewhere to a meeting, but we were like really early, so he asked, “Can we go by the hospital?” We went and saw his dad. Turns out his dad was dying of cancer, he was stage four.

His dad was utterly afraid of dying and afraid of the word cancer, he didn’t want to hear it. So his wife was kind of protecting him. She was a university professor, she was a very smart lady, and he had two sons. And so, I saw them talking to the doctor. He’d come to the room, I went out and listened. They said, “There’s nothing we can do. He has stage four cancer. We can try to make him comfortable, a little bit of pain management. You’re better off bringing him home into surroundings that he’s familiar with and try to make him as comfortable as you can.”

And the wife and one of this guy’s brother, they said, yeah, they’re not going to tell their dad what’s going on. And I told my friend, you absolutely can’t do that. You’re treating him like an animal. Are you so stupid that you think that people don’t know when they’re dying? Even when people are dying, and everybody’s telling them, “No, you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” They know it’s not. But then, because all the relatives are doing that, so they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be okay.” But inside, they know. And so I told him, you cannot do that to your father. That is criminal issue. You’re treating him like an animal. You need to let him know what is the situation, and make it so that if he wants to address anyone, if he wants to seek forgiveness, or to offer forgiveness to others for things that have happened in life, then he needs the opportunity to do that.

So they had a conversation and agreed, “Yeah, okay, we’ll do it, we’ll do it.” So I asked, “So who’s gonna be the one talking to him?” Because I was gonna offer to help, you know, give them… And then they all look at each other, and they go, “Can you do it?” I say, “I just met this guy like 20 minutes ago. It’s the first time I ever met him.” And it’s like, you know… but they felt so helpless. They didn’t know what to do. So I, because I care so much about this guy, my friend, I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

So I went and sat at the bed and held his hand. And mum and the sons were, you know, right there. And I said, “You probably noticed that the doctor had just come in.” And I said “They’ve conducted all the tests and the prognosis is not good.” Then I told him, “But don’t worry, you’re not going to die.” And the wife looked at me like— I said, “You know, there is nothing to worry about. You’re not going to die. Your body is, but you’re going to be okay. You’ll be moving on from here.”

And he held my hand very tightly, and a tear came from his eyes. And I said, “You need to take—” because he is Muslim, I said, “You need to take shelter in prayerfulness to God, as you know Him, Allah. You should hear suitable passages from Quran.” They have 99 names of God, the Muslim. I said, “You should be absorbed in reciting these names, and have people recite them to you. Seek forgiveness for those you have wronged and forgive those who approach you to be forgiven. And become absorbed in just hearing these beautiful sounds. And the time will come for you to pass, and you’ll be okay, you will be protected. There’s nothing to worry about.” He thanked me very much for that.

And it’s just like a huge relief for the family because people don’t know how to deal with this kind of stuff, and it’s really sad because it’s so fundamental. Everybody’s going to do it. And we don’t know how to help people, because we’re so screwed up.

Okay? That’s a little insight into how to do it. If you want more detail, talk to the guys here. They can help you. They’re very well equipped. Take advantage of the resources that these people are, and what they can offer.

Audience member: Acharya das

Acharya das: Yeah?

Audience member: Can you speak a little more around the nature and the process regarding prasadam. Now vegetable foodstuffs that maybe you just normally consumed and accumulating karma, however when it has been offered to Krishna it then is karma neutral and even has benefits both spiritually? That would be my limited understanding.

Acharya das:  You kind of answered it. Yeah. I mean, this path, this process, people will come to learn how to integrate every aspect and all things in their life as part of their spiritual journey. So my, one of my spiritual teachers, he would use the example of like a rod of iron. It’s heavy, it’s dull, it’s cold by nature, but if I insert it into fire, particularly very hot fire, it will become red hot, then become white hot. And when I lift it out, it’s now emitting light. If I touch it to anything flammable, it’ll burst into flames. It has taken on the characteristic of fire.

So in a similar manner, when we live a spiritually directed life, we learn to integrate everything that we’re doing. We make an offering of our life to God, seeking to be pleasing. And when we do that, that which is mundane can become spiritual. Just like this, [indicating the mic] this is material energy. It’s mundane. There’s nothing spiritual about it. But now, because I am speaking spiritual truth, it is being used in the most perfect way, and it becomes spiritualized but—

So we are told in Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, all that you do including all that you eat do it as an offering unto Me.

So we cannot live in this world without causing pain and suffering to others. That’s going to happen. Every time you walk on the grass you’re crushing little insects. Whenever you breathe you’re inhaling microbes, and your body’s killing them, unless they kill you or your body. So it’s kind of like it’s just part of existence. You cannot avoid it. But what we are attempting to do on a personal level, is to create as little pain as possible. We have a choice to do that. But beyond that, where like when you take food stuff, then it’s always going to involve killing—unless you buy the bread or something which is all synthetic and [laughs] but more or less it’s killing.

So when one takes that the daily activity of preparing or gathering food, and whether it’s formally, externally before some form, for instance, of Krishna, where you make an offering and ask that He accept it, or you do it even just within your mind, you make an offering of what you are about to eat, if you are sincere, then that offering will be accepted. And once it is accepted, it actually takes on a unique spiritual quality. The spiritual quality is that we can say, it is like God has touched it, and it has become transformed. And so when we eat it, the act of eating something that is considered holy, or sacred, like this, it has the effect of purifying us, in a similar way that listening to spiritual sound purifies us. So that mundane act can become a spiritual activity.

Similarly, even with our work, we talked about that on the weekend. I gave some example. You can make an offering of anything and everything, but it should be things that are fundamentally not displeasing. You can’t slaughter animals and think that the offering will be as acceptable, it’s not. Okay?

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. You may not have a specific question about a detailed thing, but there might be something that you would want addressed, just in general.

Ten… Nine….

Audience member: Earlier, you mentioned that we’re looking for love, and the love that we seek for mostly, or most of the time, is external love, looking for temporary love. So what does this mean when it came to love, where you can feel [kind of–words hard to hear] [Acd: Yeah] [few morewords hard to hear]?

Acharya das: People mistake the physiological and mental response that they have in meeting a person that they find attractive, they equate that with love, and it actually has nothing to do with love. They’ve done a lot of studies (in the UK they’ve done the most comprehensive ones), and they have shown that young people and teenagers should be really discouraged from developing romantic relationships, because it will have such a deep effect on them. The excitement when you meet somebody that you find attractive, and you want to get closer to them and know them, and there’s all this headiness and heart beating fast and excitement and everything; but then after six months or a year, maybe even after three months, that is no longer there. Right? Or wrong?

So, the problem becomes, with young people, when they equate that physiological and mental reaction with being love, and then people—it supports the idea of “falling in love” and “falling out of love.” And so you set up these situations where people may become romantically and sexually involved, and there’s this intense relationship; and then one person tires of it, and looks for something else, or both agree, but usually it’s one. And then the other person feels devastated and heartbroken, because they weren’t perhaps looking only for that. They wanted some stable committed relationship where there’s affection and people caring for each other.

And when young people have these experiences, the massive dopamine rush of so-called falling in love, and they equate that with love, then when they’re not feeling that anymore, they think, “Now I’m not in love with this person, and I need to look somewhere else for another person to give me that feeling.” But that feeling doesn’t last. So then what? Then they move on to someone else.

And so what they’re teaching children by that is you become a serial relationship seeker. Your life is going from one partner to another, to another. You have children with one partner, and children with another partner, and then people come together, and they’re sharing children, and then they split up and they’re—it’s chaos. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s like we don’t learn.

I saw a very nice definition of love that I think is highly applicable from a spiritual perspective also. Love means to seek the greatest good for the other. If you love someone, you seek their greatest good. And if they love you, they seek your greatest good. That’s noble, and that’s wonderful. And you have to have more going on than simply sexual arousal. There has to be way more going on.

So when a person begins to cultivate spiritual understanding then the idea of what is in the greatest good of the other person that you care about really grows and expands, and you can genuinely seek to be of great help, to be very affectionate and caring for that person, by helping them to grow spiritually as well.

This is a big idea. You’ll probably have to think about it for a while.

Audience member: Thank you.

Acharya das: Silence. It’s okay. Sometimes people feel shy, and they struggle to… They don’t want to be noticed and things. They’re afraid of saying something other people might think is silly or whatever. You shouldn’t feel like that in these situations. We are dealing with what is most important for everyone. And anything that is troubling you, or you want to seek some answer to, everybody benefits from hearing the answer. And it just increasingly makes everything a little bit more clear.

Audience member: On a daily basis, we come across people who are more unaware, or a bit narcissistic or whatever.

Acharya das: Really!? [Audience member: hard to hear?] The whole world is an ocean of ignorance.

Audience member: How do you navigate your way?

Acharya das: How do you navigate your way? I find Apple Maps is probably better than Google Maps. How do you navigate your way? No, I’m joking.

This is part of learning. You’ll see that there are some foundational understandings that can really shape and guide your interactions with others. There’s no quick and easy answer, it’s a gradual process.

In the beginning, a lot of people, when they take to—they discover a spiritual path like this, they become overly enthusiastic, and they want to share it with everyone. And everybody’s going to be like, what the hell happened to you? And then you can’t understand why they’re so bummed, and so you’re on to the next person. You know what? And you’re all excited, and you’re going to tell them about. You’ve—in that situation, we’re not actually considering them. I’m more concerned about me wanting to share than whether they’re ready to hear, and if they are ready to hear, how should I present things in a way that they can appreciate or understand, even a little? So the big shift comes when I become more thoughtful about them than about my own excitement and wanting to share, for instance.

But similarly, when you’re trying to lead a more spiritually directed life, and you just run into people that are just massive dicks, just, Yaah! And it’s kind of like you’ve just got to deal with it the best way that you can. It’s good to feel sorry for people rather than getting angry at them or letting them upset you, or be disturbed. And we should see that they are very much struggling.

They are very empty, they are feeling alone, they’re looking for happiness to be fulfilled just like you are, but they have no idea where to look. And they’ve bought into all these ideas that just doing what everybody else does, maybe somewhere I will find something of value, and it’s not true. And sometimes people, you just have to be patient with them and they may come to learn. People will appreciate your patience and being caring for them.

Audience member: Thank you.

Acharya das: Welcome. You have another one? Sure.

Anybody don’t want him to ask, or it’s okay?

Audience member: It’s a mixed bag!

There are certain members of my family who, they really connect with, taking pictures of members who have passed away, with their parents or—really thinking that they can truly communicate with them, or sometimes believing maybe, there might be an animal or something in there, that they believe they’re truly giving a sign… To my understanding of what I’ve learned so far, that, obviously the spirit soul, it moves on, it’s gone, and there’s no way—But sometimes they seem very adamant that they are receiving something, and that there is somehow still some—even if it’s just a tiny hold of communication that they can receive [hard to hear].Do you have anything to add?

Acharya das: Number one, we don’t want to disturb people. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that those who are of lower understanding or even false understanding, one should not disturb them, but one can–I mean, what’s the single upside to that situation that you’re describing?

Audience member: They think they’re still in contact. They think…

Acharya das: It’s more than that. They’re thinking that that person is still existing, which means they weren’t their body, that they are actually a spiritual being. That’s the part that you need to latch on to, not all the time, but sometimes. And sometimes it’s just about plantings seeds.

It’s great that people don’t just accept that the body that was left behind was them, that they have moved on, but they’re perceiving them somehow, or thinking they perceive them as being around. That’s not the important part. But the fact that at least you can help them to, you know, just a few words here and there sometimes to understand that we are all eternal spiritual beings, that the time in this body, in this family and stuff, it’s a short period of time. And the fact that we are eternal, we continue to exist beyond death is actually a very wonderful thing. So that’s big time, because if people could really embrace that, it’s the doorway to all spiritual understanding.

So don’t get put off by anything that you perceive to be weird or incorrect or whatever. You don’t have to deal with that. But reinforce this, and help them to make it clearer to themself. Yeah?

Yes? I might need a mic back there. Yeah, thank you very much.

Audience member: You’ve said a few times you shouldn’t feel scared. You mentioned you said that to the person in the hospital. [Acd: Yeah.] And you’ve said just before, you shouldn’t feel shy to speak, to ask a question. And I’m just interested, like this world, we’re in this earthly world, is a physical form. And as physical, feeling beings, we have feelings, which I’ve kind of been encouraged to believe are not right or wrong, they just are, it’s about how I react or respond to them. And just a couple of times, and maybe I’m getting picky, but I just feel like a couple of times I’ve heard you say, like, it’s not right to feel scared, or you shouldn’t feel scared, or you shouldn’t feel shy. And I’m just wondering where you sit with that. Are you just speaking shorthand and it’s not—?

Acharya das: Am I what?

Audience member: Speaking shorthand when you say that?

Acharya das: Short hand?

Audience member: Yeah. Am I being picky by thinking that it’s okay to feel those things? It’s what you do about them that’s important.

Acharya das: Yeah.

So, you know, there are two things that are required in the spiritual journey. One is determination, because it’s easy to get jacked up and excited and think, yeah I’m gonna go for it and everything, but then you go out there, and you’re back where you were and everything, and you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed but—so you do need determination that—and what we encourage people, like for instance in developing a meditation habit.

So the two main forms of meditation I use, one is like the singing kirtan, and especially when it’s in a group it has a unique spiritual potency. The other one is I use these beads, japa beads, and I in using them, I roll the bead back and forth while I’m chanting the mantra, then I go to the next one. And so what it does, it helps me to keep track of, I try to make a commitment to how much time I will spend doing it. And that can be in terms of 20 minutes or 15 minutes or what 30, whatever you’re committed to, or it can be, you know, in counting on these beads. The beads help in this practice called japa. I’m engaging three of my five tactile senses. I’m—the sense of touch I’m using, and I’m muttering softly, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, and I’m also hearing that. And so what that does is, it really assists the mind in becoming focused on things. So when we engage in the practice, and we’re trying to cultivate understanding, we will gradually come to a deeper appreciation of what spirituality really means.

We absolutely accept and embrace the reality of being embodied. We’re here in this world in this body, and we’ve become deeply conditioned, we respond mentally, psychologically, physically to different types of things, and that’s just a natural part of our condition and things. When we become committed to a spiritual practice every day, then what that does is it brings clarity to the things that we are experiencing and how we are perceiving things, how we are thinking about things, there will be an increased clarity which will make us, as I said, a better person, and that we will generally start becoming more patient and more thoughtful.

But when we try to build a spiritual practice, we are still very conditioned. Our mind’s going to distract us. Our mind’s going to tell us, Oh don’t worry about it now. Just do it later. Just do something else that—you know. And so it’s kind of like you find yourself challenged. If you make a commitment every day to do 15 solid minutes of really absorbed meditation, this chanting, over time, whether it’s a few days or a few weeks, your mind will start telling you, oh, I’ll just do it later. It’s fine. And your tendency will be to do it. Or you’ll just kind of think, ah, take a break for a while. That type of thing.

Determination means I can make a commitment to myself that I will do this no matter what. And that level of commitment, even to something small but very regular, is powerful and transformative.

The other quality, apart from determination, is patience. We should understand that we’ve been deeply conditioned by so many ideas. Our consciousness has become very polluted from a material or from a spiritual perspective with material conditioning and ideas. And my mind will bother me. My different desires and senses will bother me, and I must learn to be patient with that. That is not going to be an overnight change.

So if we are patient and determined, the process will have a wonderful effect. Yes, we accept the condition that we are in, but we understand and we know and we will see it from associating with other people on the path that over time we all will become transformed or changed.

Does that answer things for you, or you want to go a little bit further? That’s okay?

We’re dealing with things—this is like meditation and spiritual life just boiled down to the simplest things, but actually it’s deeply profound.

Like, in the Vedic teachings we will come to understand that we actually have two bodies. You have the gross physical body, but there is also a subtle body. It’s called the linga sarira. The subtle body is comprised of the mind and what’s called the intelligence, or buddhi. And intelligence here, I don’t mean capability to perform mathematics mentally, or, you know what I mean, anything like that. It’s more—it has a somewhat different meaning. And the third component is called the ahankara, the false ego, the false concepts of self that we are deeply conditioned by. And that subtle body is something that really affects us and influences us.

So for instance, sometimes you can have thoughts that you don’t want, and you’re going, “God, I wish I wasn’t being disturbed by this.” Or you’re trying to concentrate on something, and you can’t get your mind to concentrate, “Come on, come on,” you need to finish something, or there’s something critical. The fact that you can attempt to control your mind, indicates that the mind is not you, that you are separate from it somehow, and you are seeking to exercise control over it.

In this world, one of the great conditioning that we have is we don’t distinguish the mind from ourself, and so whatever the mind’s going through, fear, excitement, anticipation, happiness, depression, we totally identify with what’s going on in our mind. And we say that this is us. And that’s not a good thing. And this spiritual process will help you to actually come to understand that, and to learn to make better choices in life, to take good directions.

So we’re just dealing with some of the simple stuff, and you don’t need more than the simple stuff. That’s important to understand. But if you want to dig deeper, it’s profound. It’s amazing the way in which the ancient yogis and the ancient spiritual texts, the Vedas, dealt with a lot of these subjects. Truly amazing.

Audience member: Just before the break you spoke about three aspects of self, now I’ve forgotten what they are already… function…

Acharya das: Well, yeah, I’ll just repeat for you, and then you see if you’ve got something to add on to it. You have a gross physical body, but there is also a subtle body. That subtle body is comprised of the mind, the intelligence and what’s called the false ego, the false concepts of self. That is like a separate subtle body which covers the soul.

The living being perceives everything through the subtle and gross body and becomes—oh man, this is going too deep, don’t worry about it. But those are the three items that comprise the subtle body. Like when you see somebody, if you look at them by looking at their face and their body and everything, you may think that they’re enormously attractive. You may think, “Wow, that seems like such a nice person.” But then when you start hanging out with them, it’s like, oh my God! So it’s kind of like the idea of somebody giving you a gift wrapped box, and just because it’s nicely gift wrapped and there’s a ribbon and everything, you think, “Wow, this is amazing, this is beautiful, this is wonderful, something really nice.” But then you unwrap it, and there’s a dog turd inside. You don’t know. But we are taught, especially now, the whole selfie culture and everything, but since way before, to be absorbed in superficiality. And if things look good, we expect them to be good. But no, they may look good. But, phew! So that is the subtle body that you’re experiencing, how someone thinks, how they behave, how they react to difficulty, how they deal with conflict, all of those things are not physical, they’re happening in the mental sphere.

Assistant: I’m not sure, Acharya, he was asking about essence, position and function…

Audience member: Thank you, that was it, yeah.

Acharya das: Oh my gods, my apologies. Yeah, thank you very much. I didn’t catch some of it. I should wear a hearing aid.

So, when you want to discover the truth about anything, you actually need to know its essence, position, and function. So, what is it constructed of? Where does it fit in relation to everything else? And how does it function naturally? When you understand that, then you understand the thing, whether it’s a car, whether it’s a garden hose, you know what I mean? whatever. Those three things give you a complete picture. And those three things can also be applied to discovering what is the soul, what is the spirit soul, the spiritual being.

So we understand that the body is just constitutive of atoms. It’s amazing, but that’s all it’s constituted of, is atomic particles. So, what is the spiritual being, the spiritual person, constituted of? What is its essence? And the essence is—

In this world, there are fundamentally only two kinds of energy. One is the material energy and the other one is spiritual in nature. Material energy can be adjusted in so many different ways and take on so many different forms, that come with different aromas and qualities, but it’s fundamentally the same stuff. The spiritual energy is called Brahman, and it literally means like spiritual energy, and it has characteristics: It’s eternal. It’s unchangeable. It’s immutable. That’s its characteristic of its essence.

When we talk about position (and I’ll try to just do this as simply as I can), we, in a corrupted state, see ourself at the centre of everything. Right? We see everything– myself at the centre. But in reality, I am not the centre of the universe. I am insignificant. I try to feel myself as the central enjoying agent. I’m always looking at things in terms of, “Ooh, I don’t like that because it doesn’t give me enjoyment. Ooh, I like that because it gives me enjoyment.” I’m perceiving and looking at everything, relationship, situations, work, everything in relation to my capacity to enjoy it. So I see myself at the centre of things, and I’m always really controlled by ideas of my enjoying everything.

The reality is that I am not the centre of things, nor am I the supreme independent enjoyer of everything. That makes me, if I manifest that mentality overtly, everybody goes, “Ooh, that person’s such a dick. All they think about is themself. They’re just trying to exploit everyone for their own happiness,” Right? Isn’t it? But yet, we’re also doing that. We’re just not very open about it.

The position of the soul, the living entity, is that we are eternally subservient to some higher spiritual reality or truth. In this world, I want to be the lord of all I purvey. I want to be the king of my castle. I want to be the dude, as much as I can. Yet, I am always controlled. I’m controlled by my emotions. I’m controlled by hunger. I might be controlled by my husband or wife. I can’t drive through a red light—I can if I want, but I’m not gonna be able to drive for very long if I keep doing that. My license will be taken away, and then eventually my car will be confiscated. I am always controlled. I’m controlled by the material elements, like the weather, the weather controls me. There’s so many things that control me all the time.

So I am not fully independent, supremely the person who enjoys everything, that I am in control of everything, although this is what I am trying to do. And in doing that, in effect, I am trying to be like a mini God without even realizing it. I’m trying to be like a mini God. And because I have this mentality, it doesn’t matter how much, how successful I become, I will always feel emptiness in my heart. I will always feel a lack of satisfaction, a lack of fulfillment.

My position is that I am subservient to God. I am small. I am not supreme, and I am not the centre of everything.

When we speak of natural function, when I talked about removing all forms of material covering or contamination, in its pure state, all spiritual beings, all souls, will seek two things. One is to love, and that love will be directed at the highest object of love, which is God. And in that experience of overwhelming love, I will seek to render service.

Just like in this world, in relationships, if you feel very affectionate or you feel love for someone, are you not seeking to please them? Don’t you want to give them gifts and do nice things for them? This is a tiny reflection of another higher spiritual reality that is tied to our eternal nature.

Did I get it right that time? Yeah. Is that okay?

Okay. Countdown. Yeah. Can we get a mic? I want to make sure I hear them clearly.

Audience member: I just want to get your take on something. For a period of years I worked in aged care, and a lot of those years were at night, and generally when people pass away in aged care facilities it’s, for some reason—

Acharya das: When people pass?

Audience member: Pass away [Acd: Yeah]—it’s generally at night time. So, I guess I was fortunate to be there for many people’s passings. One thing I had noticed, and I don’t know why, but some people were ready and very accepting that it’s time, and not long before they passed away, they seem very calm, very happy, very chilled, even to the point that a lot of people in aged care facilities have things like mobility problems and pain, say 24 hours before that, the pain’s not there, they’re able to move a bit freer and their passing’s really calm. Yet others [Acd: struggle] really resistive, [Acd: yeah, resist] Yeah. I just want your take on that.

Acharya das: So just as a general thing, and I’m not going to limit it to that, you will find that people that have some religious or spiritual background, even if they are not practicing, you know what I mean, at that time, but people that have had that kind of exposure and association, they have a clear idea that it’s not all about me, that there is something bigger and God in whatever form. And they feel that they can actually take shelter, and taking shelter means letting go, I don’t have to resist, and there is actually nothing to fear, it’s going to be okay. And if you talk to them in that kind of language, you’ll find most people will say those types of things, and it will often be founded either in some religious upbringing or something, or that there is, something has happened in their life, where they’ve had experiences that show them that. Whereas others, you’ll find—and others can also have some religious background and everything, that doesn’t insulate you, but you’ll find that people that are more, and I’m going to use a term that some people might object to, but people that are more selfish and self-centred, who feel that I should have had this in my life, why couldn’t it be like that? I was done wrong by this person, and that person did so much wrong. And it’s all this me, me, me stuff, you know, and this is not fair, why can’t—you’ll see that that’s the overriding thing that’s influencing them, whereas the other person.  has felt very surrendered.

I had a nice experience with my dad. I had lived most of my life in Asia, about 35 years, and then about six years in Hawaii before moving back to New Zealand. And just before I moved back, I was coming back sometimes for some work that I was doing, and I would visit with my father. And he was put into an aged care home. He fell over and broke his hip—oh,  shoulder, and he was lying on the ground for like six hours before somebody, you know what I mean—he could get somebody’s attention. He was living in an RSA village. They’re just small little units, and they’re together, but he couldn’t quite get anybody’s attention. It was getting to the point where he was a danger living on his own, even though he was fiercely independent. So my brother and sister put him in an aged care place, and he didn’t like it.

I used to visit him, and I did talk to him, and he expressed some nice things to me at times. He had said that he really admires what I am doing, and the nature of my faith, and things, and clarity. And he said, “I wish I was like you.” So it’s a very nice—he converted to Catholicism because my mom was a Catholic, and her parents were fanatical Catholics, and so he did it to do the marri—and he was Okay with it, but it didn’t last that long. After a few years, him and my mom didn’t go to church or anything anymore.

My mum had a near-death experience from a heart attack, and she was like out for some time, and the guys came in with a defibrillator, and shocked her body back again, and she wouldn’t tell my dad what happened, but she told him that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and she wouldn’t talk about it. She said, just, when it—time comes for you, don’t be afraid, there’s nothing to be afraid of. So she’d had some sort of positive experience.

So I’d talk to my dad a little bit about things sometimes, fundamental spiritual things, and he was on board with it all and stuff, and he liked it, but he didn’t want to go too deep, and he didn’t want to spend too long talking. He’d rather watch the footy. And he was a good guy, but he had this attitude—he couldn’t tolerate people being done wrong. He was a tough guy, and he would stand up for people. He wasn’t afraid to fight or anything like that, which is good. And he sort of told me that he sort of prayed at night and every morning as just a daily practice that he used to do. And so in talking about things—he told me, “Look, I’m fine, I’m not afraid, it’s all going to be okay.”

So, I had come back to New Zealand, and I went to see him, and started talking with him, and thought I’d take him for a spin around the block in the wheelchair. And he’s kind of big, like my size, and I’ve got to lift him up and put him in a wheelchair. It was a bit of a struggle. Then as soon as I put him in the chair, he says to me, “You know what I told you before about not being afraid?” He said, “Actually, now that it is very close, I’m actually beginning to feel afraid,” which was quite extraordinary that he would be so open.

So I took him for a bit of a spin and I told him something. I told him that there are two paths to God or to a higher spiritual experience. One is called the ascending path and the other one is called the descending path. The ascending path (or the aroha-pantha it is called in Sanskrit), it means I am depending upon my strength, on my righteousness, on my austerities, on my meditation.

It’s kind of like the idea of trying to conquer a mountain by my efforts. So it’s like somebody training to climb Mount Everest, and they do all the—they’ve got all the conditioning, they got the team together, they got all the gear, they’re expert in everything, and they go to the foot of Everest, and they’re gonna sleep for the night, and then they’re gonna set off for camp one the next morning. And you go to bed, and you sleep. You wake up and open your tent, and Mount Everest has moved 40 kilometers. It’s like, what the hell! And now I got to pack up my tent, and move all the way there, and then set up again for the night, and okay, let’s do it in the morning. You open the tent now it’s moved 38 kilometers in another direction.

The point I’m making, the mountain is just rock and impersonal, but everything that is spiritual is personal and conscious, and you can’t, just by your will and effort, think that you can summit the peak. It’s not a one-way street. It requires relationship and connection, which is the meaning of yoga.

So, I knew that he felt that he always had to be righteous in his actions and thinking, and that was going to kind of like, you buy your way into heaven by righteous acts, you know the concept. So I told him there is another path that’s called the avaroha-pantha, the descending path.

And I said, this is an extreme example: a person could have utterly wasted their life and caused chaos and havoc. They may have a massive drug or alcohol addiction. They may be living on the street. They’ve burned all their bridges, destroyed everything. There is nothing good that they have ever done. They have just created chaos. And they could be lying in the gutter, dying, and in a moment of clarity, earnestly pray in their heart that, “I am utterly unworthy. There is nothing good about me, nothing, and I am undeserving and unworthy, yet I have no other shelter. Please give me shelter.” If a person prayed with such earnestness, that was their meditation focus, and they left their body, they would not remain in the material world. They would be transported to a spiritual dimension just by praying in such a way, such lowliness and submissiveness of heart and feeling unqualified.

And so I said—I told him that. We ended up going around two blocks, so I could finish the story. And I got him back to his room and helped him out of the chair onto the bed. And he looked at me and he said, “You know, what you just told me has absolutely blown my mind.” He said, “I realize now that my whole life I’ve been doing it wrong.” So I asked him, “Would you like me to chant for you?” And he said, “Yes, please.”

So I had a guitar, and so we’d just sit there and chant for maybe about three hours, and do the Elvis Presley. [Sings] Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare…just singing, and my God you’d look at out in his hallway when the doors open, and you got all these old people packing in the room, and you got nurses and the doctor, and everybody’s just there like—they’re feeling there’s just this power here, there’s something really different going on.

So I asked him, told him I had to leave in a couple of days. I asked him, if I gave him a little CD of some chanting and bought him a CD player (and he hated us buying anything for him, he wanted to be the dad) he said he would happily accept that. So I said, “Just take shelter in this spiritual sound. This is the only thing that you will be able to bring with you when it is time to leave, that this will be like a boat to carry you across the ocean of material existence.” And he thanked me very much for that, and said he would do it, that I should not worry, and maybe about two and a half weeks later he left. And I know that he was taking shelter, he’s—it’s all good.

So that’s a little bit of an extended version to—when you when you can add a little bit more spiritual support for people, people crave to know, what should I be doing? And even family members crave, tell—what do we do? How should this be done? I’ve had the enormous privilege of assisting a number of people through that experience. And it’s always been extraordinary when a person does it in a very conscious and a humble way. It’s deeply moving. Okay, I think we’re done.

Applause

So I’ll—because it takes a while to get through the mantra, I’ll sing the first one, and then we’ll just sing all together.