Q&A – Building a Meditation Habit – Your Key to a Spiritual Awakening

Audience:  Well, I guess what I think, for some people—because I’ve been hearing this information for a long time, and then I hear—then someone might, you might say, spiritual, I’m a spiritual being. And then I just sort of think that, what is, someone might go, “What is that?” like, I’m a spiritual being? And they might think I’m like this, I don’t know, esoteric thing that sort of is not this body, but what is that thing? [Acd: Yeah.] And so, I’d love to hear you say—I know how nicely you speak about that stuff. So, I’d like to hear that.

Acharya das: We’re not going to get too deeply into it, but you should know that you are a person. In Sanskrit, the term is purusha. The living being is actually a person.

Have you heard of near-death experiences? I was just reading one today. It’s probably the most scientifically studied, and it was controlled and everything. There was a woman that was having, she had a brain aneurysm, and it could break and then flood her brain and she’ll die. So, it was like, the problem was it was in such a delicate place that it was almost impossible for surgeons to be able to operate on it. And they came up with this idea that what they would have to do is to sedate her, then they are going to cool her body down to really cold, and they were going to drain the blood from the body in order to do this operation, and they had to know that the brain was not active. The brain wasn’t allowed to function. It was such a delicate thing.

So they had these earplugs in, and they’re making these really loud clicking sounds, click, click, click. And so—and what they’re doing is monitoring brain reaction. When you’re conscious and that sound goes off, the brain is going to react. There’s going to be, and they can monitor the brain waves, the reaction of the brain. So they knew that she was literally dead. There’s zero brain activity, none. And the blood has been drained out of much of her body, a big percentage of it, and she’s been really cooled. And then they did the operation. And then when they were finished, she went into recovery room.

And later, when she woke up, the surgeon came in to see how she was. And she described what happened to her, how she actually left the body, and she was watching. And she described that they brought in a trolley with a cloth over it, and it had these tools, and she described what they looked like—the tools. And she hadn’t seen these. The doctor was like amazed, because they don’t want the patient to see any of the stuff they’re going to use, because it’s like it’s brutal. Got to cut open, brrrrrr, cut open the cranium and take it off, and it’s a really messy scene. And she described this whole event that she witnessed.

And the thing I’m going to say now is, if she had have left that body, how was she able to see? How was she able to hear the conversations and describe to the doctor the conversations that were going on? The reason I’m bringing this up is to give you an indication. Most people think of what they call the soul, the spiritual being, the soul, as being just like an energy or something that’s fundamentally impersonal. But the most important thing that you have to understand is the spiritual being is a spiritual person. When the living being occupies the body, it lends consciousness to the body. It lends life to the body. Because it has spiritual senses, can hear, see, therefore these organs can work.

I know this is not completely satisfactory. It’s a big subject. There is more. But that’s probably enough for now.

It’s—you know, the way the great yogis, what they went through to try and have—usually through—and I’m talking about with mechanical processes, the Ashtanga Yoga process, for instance, where they would live alone, sometimes they’d spend 30 years in a cave trying to come to shut everything off and to go within to discover who they really were. But they came to recognize certain things which modern science has sort of helped a little bit.

When somebody—just the example of somebody sitting in a movie house, when you look at a movie on a screen, and if I ask, “How are you seeing that? How do you see?” most people say, “I see with my eyes.” And you absolutely don’t see with your eyes. These eyes are just globules, gushy stuff. They’re really disgusting.

Actually, when I was a kid, was playing cricket, one of the guys, the bowler was a bit wild and it came off his bat. It hit him on the side of the head, and his eye came out. It’s like, it’s pretty disgusting hanging there by the optic nerve. It’s like, it’s really gross. And it’s sort of like, okay, this is [miming holding an eyeball] what’s making you see? The answer is, no.

The light reflecting off the screen in the movie house enters the eyeball, and what it does is it hits photosensitive cells at the back of the eye. And those photosensitive cells, when they’re hit by light, they create an electrochemical, there is an electrochemical reaction, and it fires off a form of nerve stimulation or energy. And then that series of ksshh kshhh kssshh ksssh [gesturing impulses] goes all the way along the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain. And there it just explodes. And the brain is just like bbbb bbbb  [showing nerve impulses], there’s all this electrochemical interface. So, it’s not actually the eye that’s seeing.

My question now is, where is the picture that you see? Where is that picture? And who is seeing it? This is yogi territory. This is the kind of thing… And so when they became really deeply absorbed in this, they’re just looking—they got the Albert Einstein look, [mimes hairdo and expression] just like, whoa, this is crazy how everything is happening. And they would have this experience of how the body is just a machine. It’s actually described like this in Bhagavad-gita, that you have the living being as if sitting on a machine made of the material energy. And they would want to discover, how is this all happening? And who is the one seeing? How am I experiencing this? And who am I?

So, for now, you are an eternal spiritual being. You are meant to exist naturally in a state of happiness. That’s your constitutional right, as it were. You have a desire to love and to be loved. You are eternal. That’s why death freaks you out. That gives you some insight. When you begin this actual journey, you engage in the process, then you will increasingly experience who you truly are. And that can become incredibly profound.

Is that good enough for now? Anybody else? Is it overwhelming? No, it’s kind of cool though, right? It’s kind of amazing.

Audience: Haribol Acharya das [Acd: Haribol] How do I tell my children about eating vegetarian, not eating meat? So, they are Catholic background and all their lives—sometimes they will eat like vegetarian meal with me, but…

Acharya das: How old are they?

Audience: 21, 19, and 16. So a few days ago, I make a meal, and then my son was like, “Where’s the fish?” And I told him, like, “Oh, I forgot to buy fish.” And then the last few days, I didn’t buy anything.

Acharya das: Yeah, you have to be—it’s easier when they’re young, and they’re hearing these ideas and considering them as they grow. When they start getting to this kind of age, especially the older ones, they can resist because in some ways it’s spoiling their fun. Like they’re ready to rock, right?

When you’re young, you’re so unintelligent, it’s mind-blowing. You think the world is this amazing place, and you’re just going to rip it and have this extraordinary time, and it just—Party! Yah! but we don’t see the futility in it. We’re not experienced enough. And so, when people get kind of like geared up to really go out there and rock the world, sometimes they have difficulty listening.

So, you have to use your intelligence of how much to give, and you should look how to give something in a way that it helps them in their life. Sometimes people have been through a bad experience or a broken relationship or a betrayal or something, and you can talk to them about the nature of the world and why you’re experiencing thig, and in a practical way, you can give them. It’s hard for me to, I cannot tell you what to do. I don’t know them. And therefore, I don’t know what is a really good way to approach them.

So, you can, in your meditation, you can ask for guidance. You can ask, “Please help me to know how to deal with them in a compassionate and kind way.” That makes a difference. That you can—this is part of the process, the meditation makes it so that there will come to you sometimes, “Oh,” something, a way to approach a situation or a problem, to deal with things. But I can’t give you anything more than that. You’re going to have to find the way.

And always be result-focused. Even if you have what is true, and you’re trying to push it to someone, and they’re reacting very badly, and it’s like, “Well, why can’t you accept it?” That’s not a way to compassionately deal with someone. You have to find where there is a good opening, where you can say something, and it will somehow touch them, and they will think about it. And sometimes it has to be in small doses. Okay? You’re welcome.

Audience: Hi, good evening. So, I heard a lot about meditation, how good it is, to calm you down, to maintain focus. But also I hear a lot about how it can help with manifesting as well. Like manifestation. So, how do you view meditation as a means to manifest? And how true is that?

Acharya das:  Firstly, when we say manifesting, it depends on what you want to manifest. Right? You could be wanting to manifest something that’s actually not good for you. We’re not—we’ve grown in a time, the last hundred years, unlike since ancient history, we’ve never seen a time like this, where people are so incredibly manipulated. The use of psychology since the 1920s to craft messaging, to create value systems in people, what you’re going to value, what you’re going to want, what you’re going to desire; and much of it is not good for you. It doesn’t make you happy. A lot of it is just people trying to exploit you, people that are trying to sell you stuff. And so they create urges and desires and focus on things.

When people—these machines [showing mobile phone], I always tell people, we think they’re just—we’re in control. This thing here, what you can’t see is what’s on the other side. There’s a vast array of computing power that’s watching everything that you do. It’s watching everything that you do, and it’s constantly gaining information how to manipulate you, and how to take advantage of you. What you get fed—apps are all designed on principles of addiction. They study addictive mentality, addiction psychology, and it’s all applied to everything, even the way the buttons work and everything, it’s all done with this kind of intent to exploit you.

And so, a lot of the stuff that people want to manifest is actually not in their interest. It won’t make you happier. It will make you more unhappy. You look at what’s going on in the world. In the last 15 years, there is an exponential rise in mental health issues, in very serious depression, in suicidation.

My God, a couple of days ago, a report was released by OpenAI that on chat GPT, in any given week, there’s 1.2 million people talking about suicide and how to do it. And nobody’s relating that perhaps the direction that we’re heading and what we’re doing is actually really bad for us. All we have to do is look at the symptoms. People can’t even, they can’t—there’s a new study out where young people, like late teens, early 20s, there’s a huge amount of them that can’t even sit and watch a movie—because normally you’d have the phone on and you’d be playing a game or something while watching the movie and everything. And you take the phone away, and you just have to sit and watch the movie, there’s this growing percentage of people that can’t even watch a movie any longer. Whereas, when people that are maybe over 30 or 40 years of age, they remember, you go to the movies, and it’s just like really absorbing. Everybody gets really into it. (Not that that’s a good thing. I’m not promoting that at all. It’s living in a fantasy.)

So, number one, I really don’t like this crap about manifesting. Sorry, that’s probably going to offend some people. I don’t care. I’m telling you, it’s not good for you. This idea to want to become godlike, to be—we already have a major problem that we think we’re the centre of everything. I see everything in relation to me: my parents, my brothers and sisters, my children, my husband, my wife, my community, my family, my country, my racial group, my language group. And I see the world, everything in relation to me.

I am not the centre of the universe, yet that’s how I’m living. People didn’t used to live this way. They didn’t have these kind of ideas. People were more focused on supporting family and community, and they were dealing with stuff. And now we actually live in a time of excess. And we’ve been totally conditioned to just consume so that we’re easily exploited. And these ideas of manifesting really appealed to that psychology, that I’m the centre of the universe, it’s all about me, and I want to make all my dreams and wishes come true.

I promise you that if you adopt this way of thinking, you will be unhappy. You will not become happy. Even if you can get everything that you desire and more, times 10, you will become actually increasingly unhappy, because you will have the experience. Before I just dreamed about stuff, “Oh, if I could have that, it’d be amazing.” If I’ve got the money or I actually could manifest, and I could do anything I want, I would experience how utterly futile that is and how incredibly disappointing it is, because it’s not doing anything for you, and you’ve just become addicted to this cycle of stuff.

So, number one, it’s not really that possible, the way people are talking about it. There’s this whole thing that grew out of the 60s when all the hippies got used to go and get wasted and hallucinate and taking drugs and everything. Then they kind of got over that, and a lot of those people went back to school, and now they became professors, and they began to buy into all kinds of broadly new age-y ideas and everything without any understanding where all these philosophies are actually coming from. Well, I tell you what, this kind of stuff appeals to people because we’ve been very much trained to try and be like small gods, the centre of everything. It’s all about me. That is a formula for unhappiness.

When you do something very kind for someone, somebody is in need, even a simple thing, like a woman with groceries, and she’s got the kids and trying to open the boot of the car to put the groceries in, just to step in and say, “Let me help you,” and just open it for her; even something simple, a little kid fell over, picked them up, “You know, you’ll be okay;” whenever you do show kindness, you feel something good inside. And the bigger the kindness, the more wonderful is that feeling. That is because we’re actually doing something that’s closer to our actual spiritual nature. Our spiritual nature is not that we are the centre of everything, it’s all about me and I’m just taking, I’m sucking stuff. Yeah, I’ll give as long as I can get. It’s merchant relationships and everything. That doesn’t fulfill us. That is alien to what our spiritual nature is.

So, people promoting “manifesting,” I have no time for them. I think it’s really bad, because you’re pushing people on a course that cannot end in happiness. It will absolutely end in disappointment, alienation, feeling alone, feeling empty, then start taking shelter in alcohol and drugs or gaming or pornography or whatever to try and fill up that emptiness. And that just further destroys you and alienates you from your actual spiritual identity. Okay? I hope that’s not too shocking.

Audience: Thank you. I’d like to follow up on the question regarding parenting and kind of a few things that you alluded to. How do we best support the kids on this spiritual path? I mean, in the olden days they basically grew up in a community. They saw the example of the parents. They were brought up by the tribe, the village. Now they’ve got the cheap dopamine, it’s designed… [Acharya das: They got an online tribe.] Right, yeah. And so, it’s this kind of very addictive, very material, very superficial sort of environment. And the impact that you can have as a parent is quite limited, so—

Acharya das: Not necessarily. You have to be really smart, and you have to be on a journey yourself. Kids—I mean, I used to watch my parents when I was a kid. They’re always telling me not to do things that they would do. “Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” and they’re doing it. And it’s kind of like, isn’t that what a hypocrite is? So don’t think children are dumb. They’re very alert, and they watch.

If in your life—your life is going through change, and your value system is changing, you’re living a more spiritually directed life, they will observe that, and that will have more effect on them than anything that you could say to them.

A big part of the problem is when they’re already in that territory, where they’re becoming addicted to the screen and to the new types of engagement and everything. People are only starting to wake up. There’s these reports out of the UK now where they’re saying no child should be touching or dealing with any screens in the first five years of their life. And if there is anything after that, it’s in a very controlled way, very limited exposure. But the problem is that parents give them to the kids so that they don’t have to deal with them. It’s a cop-out.

They’re your children. You are obligated to raise them as best as you can.

So, I figured with my children, the first thing they have to learn really quickly is, you are not the centre of the universe. I’m sorry. You may have what you think is a crisis, and it’s overwhelming you, and you need attention right now. And sometimes, because we live in a family, you’re going to have to take a number and stand in line. We will get to you, but it will be on when it’s proper for me to do it. I can’t drop everything just because you’re having a flip out over something.

For children to learn that they’re not the centre of the universe, it’s not all about you, I think is really valuable on at least two things, way more but—One is you’re teaching them delayed gratification. Just because I think I have this need, I don’t have to deal with it immediately. I don’t have to just react always to whatever’s going on in my mind. And there are things in life that are worthwhile waiting for.

They’ve done this enormous study out of Dunedin in New Zealand. It’s been going on for 50 years, more, 60 years, where they took young kids, 1,600 children, and they interview them, they look at the family, and then they report back in, and they do different kinds of testing, and then as they grew older, 1,400 and plus of them are still reporting in every year. And they showed that the greatest indicator that somebody would be considered successful in life, be able to hold a good job, be able to focus, raise, work with a family, not get involved in addiction, not be always going into debt cycles, and all this kind of stuff, was the capacity for children to have delayed gratification.

They would do these little tests. They’d put up a little plate with some cookies or some sweets on it. And they’d say, “I got to go out now. You have to wait until I come back and then we can eat it. But while I’m out, you’re not allowed to touch it. You’re not allowed to eat it, okay?” And the kid, “Yeah.” And then they go out and they got cameras on them and it’s just like amazing. The kids are just like touching it and they’re just getting like, just flipping out. And some of them could actually just sit there. And others, as soon as the doors shut [miming as kids grabbing cookies], and these are bad indicators of where somebody’s life is going to head.

Delayed gratification is really important. And also, like what I’m talking about, where you’re not the centre of everything all the time, highly socializes people. They learn how to function in society and with others, where I can’t just be so demanding, everything is always about me. You become such a dick that nobody wants to be around you.

And so, they’ve got all these styles of parenting where they give the kids whatever they want and all this kind of stuff, supporting them in their—and it’s just like, yeah, then they get to be teenagers, and nobody wants to have anything to do with them. And then they’re really isolated.

The way people used to grow up—I mean, for me, it was really transformative: when I was 18 years old, I left New Zealand, I came here, went on from here to India. I lived there as a monk for two and a half years. I went out to the Philippines to open an ashram with another friend of mine. I spent 35 years based—I spent 35 years based—or, I’ve spent 40 years of my life in that part of the world. And it blew my mind how everybody was not totally self-centred. The idea of being self-sacrificing, of parents trying to do what they could for the children, but the children learn at an early age, as soon as I’ve got it together a little bit, I need to be helping with my brothers and sisters. I need to be helping my parents around the house. The idea of having duty and responsibility, the idea of duty is just gone. And that turns people into just unstable, greedy little monsters that have enormous mental health issues and no resilience. And it’s really bad.

There was a famous personality in India. His name was Chanakya Pandit. His formula was fundamentally, for the first five years, you can fondle a child, meaning you protect it, you nurture, you give a lot of support and everything. Then he said from age five to 15, he used a term that’s like the equivalent of English, “To rule with the rod,” but what it means, you don’t beat, but what it means is you implement discipline, that they have to learn how to function within boundaries and what responsibilities were and everything. So they grew up for 10 years with this kind of training.

Then he advised that beyond that, one should become the actual friend of your child. Becoming a friend when they’re really small, not a good idea. You’re meant to be guiding and leading them. That will come later because now you have to help them transition from being a teenager and having spent all that early part of their life, hopefully, following mum and dad and knowing what the rules were and following everything, to becoming a person that can make independent decisions and choices that actually make your life better, that don’t wreck your life. And so helping them through that transition from being a child to a really strong, independent adult was really important. And to make it so they feel so confident in dealing with you, that they can come to you with their deepest secrets rather than their dumb friends who don’t know anything, that they can come and open their heart, and tell you what’s going on, and seek direction.

I think that’s extraordinarily good advice, and he gave that hundreds of years ago, more than a thousand years ago. What do you think? Pretty full on, yeah?

Audience: I agree with everything.

Acharya das: Yeah. So sometimes in life we find ourselves in different situations, and sometimes we haven’t made good choices, good decisions. And what it’s all about is not living in the past, it’s where to from here? What can I begin to do that’s going to make my life and people that I have some responsibility for, their lives, better? To learn to make good choices produces good outcomes. You make bad choices, you suffer the consequence. It’s inescapable. Absolutely inescapable. So for people to learn that,if I make bad decisions—

I was talking to some kids up in Brisbane at a retreat. I told them they should be smart and not like a little rat or a mouse. You’ve got a rat or a mouse in the house, and you get a trap, and you put a big juicy piece of cheese on it (of course, this is just an example) and the rat kind of comes and starts scoping it out, and they’re really careful, and then they keep looking at the cheese. And it’s just like, yeah [longingly]—just like what we do. We contemplate on the objects of the senses.

It describes this in Bhagavad-gita. “By contemplation of the objects of the senses, one develops attachment. From attachment comes lust. From lust will come anger and disappointment.” So, it’s scoping out the cheese, and all it can think of is, “This is going to be amazing. This is going to be fantastic.” It jumps on the cheese and sinks the teeth in and there’s just like a millisecond of just wow, heaven, and then, Bam!

We don’t think consequentially. We just get fixated with that thing, and if I just have that, my life’s going to be amazing. And I don’t think, well, once I’ve already got it, what’s going to be the roll-on effect? Where is this all going to go? Where does it go down the road a little bit further?

We’ve been trained by all of the advertising and everything to just be impulsive. And when desires arise, and they’re often placed there by others, when desire, to without hesitation, just, you know, Nike, “Just do it.” Don’t think about it. Don’t consider the consequence. Just do it. And it’s just like, well, sometimes what you do produces some instant flash of some what you think is desirable experience, but then it doesn’t last, and there will be a consequence. And that consequence may make it that that really wasn’t worth it.

How to teach kids that?

I think what’s really important—something that blew my mind with the Vedic culture, that children, but everybody, but children were taught how to question things, to question everything. When you learn how to question, you start the process of thinking about stuff and analyzing it and thinking, is it worth it? Somebody can become strong enough that they’re not sucked in with their peers into crazy and harmful activity that makes their life worse. They go, “Why do I want to do that? What are you going to get out of it?” “Yeah, but have you thought about that?” They’ll learn how to speak to their peers. It’s kind of like, “Well, that’s nuts.” Rather than feeling I have to go along with everything, especially girls, so that they don’t become taken advantage of. Learning how to question is important.

Okay, I think I’m done.

Audience: Thank you.

Acharya das: This knowledge, I’ll just say, has far-reaching application in all aspects of your life. It’s foundational and it’s important. Okay. Thank you so very much.