Self-Love – Is it even possible?

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Haribol.

So, interesting topic I was asked to speak on. Well, is it interesting? Possibly. It’s a big subject that’s been around for a while: Self-love. I added one more word to James’s suggestion: Self-love – is it even possible? I added “even”. You probably get where I’m coming at, from that.

So why am I agreeing to speak on this subject? Why will I talk about this? Well, it’s because my personal desire is to see you happy and fulfilled and to be free from fearfulness and loneliness. That is my motivation for speaking.

This term, “self-love,” is actually a rather modern construct. So, human beings have been around for thousands of years, and they have engaged in philosophical and spiritual pursuit for a very, very long time, and there are many very profound and deep things being proposed, but this actual term and concept is rather modern. So, I just want to say that.

It has risen with the development of psychology, which is also in the form that we know of it in the Western world, is also a relatively modern development. And while the field of psychology has grown incredibly over the last hundred years, and people are utilizing that knowledge to try and help people live happier, more fulfilled lives, when we look at the actual data, the statistics, we are seeing a rise in loneliness, in depression, in a lack of purpose, in what’s described as self-harm, that is like off the charts, particularly in the last 15 years. And so just stepping back and looking at that for a moment, it’s like, well, on one hand, we’ve developed all this what’s called understanding and tools to help people become happier and healthier and more grounded, but when we look at society, that’s not what’s happening. Things are actually getting way worse.

And so that has to give some pause for thought. A person that’s intelligent and have an inquiring mind, they would go, “Something is a little bit out of kilter here. Something is a little bit out of balance.” And of course, the question is why, with all the study of psychology and the application of all this counselling and everything, why is it not having the desired effect? I’m not going to attempt to answer that question, but that question is a very serious question that needs to be explored. We can’t just brush that off.

So, the word “self-love” is of course made of two words. One is the “self” and the other one is “love.” And so we’ll just explore this word, the “self,” for a moment or two. And the question is, who or what is the self? This is a massive question. It is probably the most important question that faces all human beings, because our concept or understanding of self will really determine what we think or what we embrace as being important, and what we should be doing with our life, and how we prioritize and develop a hierarchy of desire.

A fundamental reality is desire can be good or it can be bad. But there seems to be a little bit of a very strong idea or notion that if I desire something, it must be good and I should pursue it simply because I desire it and I am convinced that it will bring me happiness, even though the evidence may not be there to support that.

So, the question of who is the self is something that has been asked by great sages and philosophers for thousands of years. The yogic view is that you are an eternal spiritual being temporarily residing within a gross physical body and covered by another subtle physical body. This subtle body or astral body, one of the main components is the mind. And the understanding is very clearly that these things are not you. You have, for whatever reason, you find yourself in this embodied state.

But if you are totally focused on the body and the desires that arise from the body and the mind, this could be a grave mistake. Because the amount of time that you will spend in this body is finite. It comes to an end. And if your entire time in this period that we call our life was spent simply preoccupied with the body and the mind, and then you leave it all behind, we have to question whether that was actually a good choice; or should we have allocated more time to discovering who we truly are beyond this body and beyond the mind?

The yogic understanding was also that not some or most, all suffering and all unhappiness arise from falsely identifying the body and the mind as the self. This is a profound and deep philosophical idea—and many people may disagree with that and that’s fine. I’m not insisting on anything, I’m just giving you an alternative perspective that might be well worth looking into very closely.

Because if we want to actually become happy, if we want to become free from suffering and from unhappiness, then if this idea is true, that being absorbed in the thought or the idea of the body as being the self and the mind, that if that is the seat of all unhappiness, then whoa, I’ve got a serious problem, because I’m there, big time. I’m totally engrossed in the notion that the body is the self. I identify as male or female or anything else that I want to identify as. You can identify as anything that you want. I see the pursuit of happiness intimately tied to the experiences of the body and the mind and this world in which it resides.

This idea is broadly described as materialism. It’s described as materialism because that idea is that there is no such thing as spiritual existence. The only thing that exists is the body, and the mind is simply a function of the brain (which many very, very highly learned neurologists absolutely reject, the idea that the mind is a function of the brain. They identify that it’s something actually uniquely different. It may be interconnected, but it’s different). But materialism rejects all notion of any alternative energy that exists in this world other than material energy, material—Everything’s constructed of atoms and the interaction of atoms, the electrical impulses generated from interactions of atoms.

So feelings of love, feelings of compassion, of fear, of joy are simply the result of atoms interacting with each other. Anybody that is a little sensitive and open would gravely doubt that that is true, that it’s simply all just material energy interacting.

So, materialism is the notion, or idea, that there is only one form of energy that we’re experiencing, that is the material energy, fundamentally, that atoms and subatomic particles is the sum total of it. We, of course, reject that idea.

My being an eternal spiritual being, as I’ve laid out, it is actually not just an idea. It’s not a philosophical idea that you either accept or you don’t accept. The great transcendentalists and yogis have described that it is something to be experienced. It is called self-realization, that someone can embark on a pathway, a process to actually discover their true spiritual identity. This is called self-realization.

So I’m just going to give you a few quotes. There are literally hundreds and thousands of different quotes in these ancient Vedic or yogic texts, which describe what they say is the reality of the situation. The first one is from the Bhagavad-gita. And speaking to the great warrior Prince Arjuna, Lord Krishna states,

“O son of Bharata, as the sun alone illuminates all the universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness.” [Bhagavad-gītā 13.34]

So is that nice? It’s a very, for me, this is very like, wow, this is so plainly put. And it’s quite extraordinary.

So, the fundamental proposition is that you have two energies in the material world in which we live and contact with. One is the material energy, which by nature is inert and dull, and you have another, spiritual energy. The spiritual energy manifests the symptom of life. Atoms do not create life. It is—life is a symptom of the presence of this spiritual energy. And the reason, the reason that life is a symptom of its presence, because the fundamental nature of this energy is consciousness, awareness. This table is not aware. My water bottle here is not aware. The microphone is not aware. It doesn’t have awareness.

If I look at the atomic particles of my body, they are the same fundamental particles as the microphone here. There are atoms made up of electrons, protons, neutrons. It’s not like you have different protons and different electrons necessarily, but in different configurations, they manifest as different types of material. So why is my body conscious? It is conscious not because it is intrinsically aware, but because of my presence within the body, I am lending awareness or consciousness to the body and to the mind.

And that is what this verse is stating. And it’s so extraordinary because all life is understood to be there because of the presence of the spiritual energy. It is known as the jiva, the jiva atma. Whether you have the body of a whale, which is monumentally large, or the body of a mosquito, because they manifest life symptoms, they demonstrate consciousness, or awareness, it is due to the presence of the spiritual energy, the spirit soul, the spiritual being. And it doesn’t matter what type of body that occupies, it lends consciousness to the entirety of that body.

So, I’ll just read the verse again.

“O son of Bharata, as the sun alone illuminates all this universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness.” [Bhagavad-gītā 13.34]

And then I’ll read another verse from the Bhagavata Purana.

“Just as fire, which burns and illuminates, is different from firewood, which is to be burned to give illumination, similarly…”

—well, before we read on, just I don’t know if that’s a struggle for anybody or not. They speak about—if I’m holding a piece of wood and I set it on fire with a match, and I ask, “Where is the fire coming from?” most people say the fire is coming from the match. But no, that may have ignited the fire, but where is the fire coming from? In the wood. And the Vedic understanding is, that element of fire resides in potential within the wood. And when I do—when certain situations arise, like you put something flammable to it, it releases that fire and that fire now comes out. And that fire has a characteristic of light and of heat. And it is different than the characteristics of the wood. It may be residing within the wood, but it is different from the wood. So:

“Just as fire, which burns and illuminates, is different from firewood, which is to be burned to give illumination, similarly the seer within the body, the self-enlightened spirit soul, is different from the material body, which is to be illuminated by consciousness. Thus the spiritual soul and the body possess different characteristics and are separate things.” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.10.8]

I’ll read one more verse from the Bhagavata Purana.

“One who is enlightened in self-realization, although living within the material body, sees himself as transcendental to the body, just as one who has arisen from a dream gives up identification with the dream body…” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.11.8]

So just in case anybody needs clarification, it’s like when somebody has a horrible nightmare and something absolutely horrific is happening, being attacked by a wild animal, falling and falling through space, being chased by something horrific or frightening and wanting to get away and not being able to. A lot of people have common sorts of dreams, slightly different details, but for many common sorts of things. Some person may feel that they’ve been attacked by a wild animal and it’s biting them, and they’re [mimes thrashing] “Noo, noo…” And then somebody wakes them up, “Wake up, wake up.” And then they, “Gaaah—” and it’s the instant that they awaken, the dream is broken, and they realize that that body that I was visualizing and experiencing these things was created in a dream state, and now I’ve given up that and my heart can calm down and my breathing is okay. So this example is what has been used.

“… just as one who has arisen from a dream gives up identification with the dream body. A foolish person, however, although not identical with the material body but transcendental to it, thinks himself to be situated in the body, just as one who is dreaming sees himself as situated in an imaginary body.” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.11.8]

So, some interesting words that give some understanding that when a person awakens from a dream, it’s like, oh, “Oh my God, that was just a dream. Phew. Thank you, thank you.” Instantly it’s all over. But while in that state of dreaming, one sees themselves with a particular body and feels that this is me, and whatever is happening to the body, I feel that is happening to me. But the instant I awake, I give up that dream body and I realize, “Oh, that wasn’t happening to me, really, not to my body and stuff. It was something that I was dreaming in a state of illusion.”

And this example is used to actually describe the material condition, how we are so deeply conditioned by the false idea that the body is the self. We identify with it so thoroughly and so deeply.

So, we’ve discussed the “self.” Self-love or loving myself, so somebody is thinking there in terms of “I love myself.” Okay, we’ve got two things there, the I and the self. So if I am loving myself, who is the I? And who is the self that the I is loving? And if we ask that question, it becomes immediately challenging to anybody that has dabbled with the idea, or embraced the philosophy, that it is possible to love oneself. We become a little disturbed, a little bit upset—

And I’m sorry if I’m making anybody upset with that. But just because the mind may be disturbed and feeling a little upset, then it doesn’t mean we should reject it. When we are confronted with challenges, it’s actually a good idea to go, “Well, what’s going on there?” to look at things a little bit more deeply.

(Maybe we can close a little bit more. Yeah. Maybe a bit more. Yeah.)

So I am putting forward that when someone becomes caught in this proposition, in this idea, they are not clearly understanding. They are mistaking the mind for the self. And we are absolutely unaccustomed to distinguishing the difference between my mind and me. I mean, I use the word my mind, right?

And sometimes I want to control my mind. “Stop thinking about that. I don’t want to think about that.” Or trying to talk positively. “You can do it. You can do it.” Whatever. We try to remember. “What the hell was that? Oh, come on. What was that? What was that?” I’m trying to think. The fact that I am—or my mind is full of chatter and I’m trying to, “No, stop thinking about it. I’m not going to think about it,”—the fact that I can attempt to try and control my mind is only possible if I’m separate from my mind. If I’m not separate, I can’t even have the thought of controlling my mind. I would be thinking of controlling me. But I couldn’t have that thought. But we all know that we have those thoughts, we have those experiences where we see the mind as being something that we can exercise some control over or at least attempt to.

Now, the area that becomes a little bit problematic when we talk about this subject (and I’ll explain in the end why I think this idea is highly problematic, the idea of self-love), but one of the reasons that people have a very bad reaction to it is because they may have experienced what is often called self-sabotage.

Are we familiar with the term? The idea where somebody has, you know, exerted a very negative influence on me, told me how crap I am and how worthless I am, and I’ve become deeply affected by those kind of words, or I may have adopted that kind of thinking because of what others have said and done to me. And then I have this tendency to what I call “beat myself up.” It’s actually not myself. It’s beat up my mind and my emotional body. And I engage in what’s called self-sabotage. And when a person becomes affected by this type of activity or thinking, then it’s really hard for them to be productive and to live a balanced life and to find peace and happiness. One goes through enormous amounts of struggles.

So I recognize that, and I know that that is real and that is true.

But if we talk about self-sabotage, then we have to ask, “Well, who is sabotaging who?” I am sabotaging myself. But what? I am being assertive and strong and saying, “You’re absolutely useless.” And then the other me is going, “Oh, yeah, I’m useless.” It’s kind of like, okay, well, which one is you? The strong, assertive one? Or you are the one that’s being beat up? And if you start going down that alleyway of thinking about it in those terms, then it kind of like, what am I talking about? I become confused, I become addled, and it’s kind of like, well, what’s actually going on there?

I will put forward a proposition based on ancient yogic teaching. When I ask “What is the difference between talking to myself negatively or talking to myself positively, what is the difference? Is there any difference?” And fundamentally, I’m going to say, “No, if I’m saying, talking to myself, but I’m not actually meaning my true self, but referencing my mind or my body.” I hope that that is understandable.

Is that a struggle or? A little bit of a struggle? Yeah.

If I want to so-called talk to myself and pump myself up with positive affirmation, am I pumping up the eternal spiritual being or am I pumping up my mind? [Audience: My mind] My mind. And yet I’ve called it the self. And if I call it the self, I’m digging a deeper hole for myself. Because spiritual realization, self-realization, is the experiencing of discovering my identity, who I am, the one that is actually the living being residing within this body, and being able to experience the distinction between myself and the body that’s covering me and the mind that’s covering me. And when I identify with the mind as being me, this contributes to my problem.

In reality, positive self-talk and negative self-talk are opposite sides of the same coin, and that coin is the wrong understanding or conception of the self. So when you go down the route of positive affirmation that, “Oh, you are wonderful, you are beautiful, you are everything that you need to be,” and all of this kind of stuff, all you’re doing is making yourself more susceptible to negative influences. If you are deeply influenced by that, to the same degree you will be deeply influenced by the negative.

Whereas in the yoga system you are taught to learn to tolerate, to not buy into, whether it is praise or whether it is (what’s the other word?) [Audience: criticism] criticism, adulation or putting you down. Both are considered to actually be just the opposite side of the same coin, the same problem. I should learn to become immune to that influence. And I will become immune to that influence by discovering my actual identity as an eternal spiritual being.

The idea of positive affirmation, where I’m taking the mind and body to be the self, I mean, it’s gone on for so long and it’s become ridiculous. It’s become ridiculous, that everybody has to be accepted as—if you’re choosing bad lifestyle and bad ways of living and it’s resulting in certain—your body getting out of shape and everything, it’s sort of like, no, you should be accepted for who you are. No, that’s not you. You are the spiritual being inside. That is not you. And you are adopting some wrong thinking that will really contribute to your unhappiness.

That is evident by the fact that in spite of all of the affirmation, in spite of all the new counseling and psychological stuff that’s being fed to everybody, society is more unhappy, is more desperately lonely, is more depressed than it’s ever been as long as they’re keeping records, and more so in the last 15 years. This is evidence, this is hard data.

If we adopt the incorrect ideas, then it will lead to a continued cycle of unhappiness and suffering.

So I’m not saying that positive reinforcement is not good. I’m not saying that at all. Positive reinforcement can be really good, but it has to be grounded in reality and truth. And what would be an example of that? Look, don’t get overwhelmed by what all these people are saying. Take charge of your life. I’ll help you do that. I’ll help you develop more healthier thinking and healthier ways of living that free you from that kind of influence, where you can learn to live better.

But my positive reinforcement is not going to be on the basis that your body is perfect and there’s nothing wrong with it, and you should totally embrace it as being you. No, it’s not you. If you embrace that body as being you, that is the key to unhappiness.

I mean, it’s tragic what has happened on the internet, the whole selfie culture. I mean, the word selfie says it all. I take a picture of this body and I call it myself. Not good. You want to have a picture of your body or whatever? We can say self just as a way of communicating, but we shouldn’t be lost in that idea that the body is who I am. Because if you adopt the idea that the body is who you are, you are fighting a battle, trying to be worthy on the basis of how your body looks, trying to be worthy and lovable on what your body is looking like and how—what other people are thinking of you, and how many likes you’re getting. And it’s just like, oh my gods, don’t you understand that this is the pathway to enormous unhappiness, enormous unhappiness.

Positive reinforcement is good and should be done, but it should be truthful and it should be on the basis of what is real, on reality, not on false ideas and trying to make false things, just by repeating them, become true.

So the yogic perspective of the mind is that the mind, you are not the mind, and the mind can be a great friend or it can be your greatest enemy. That idea is stunning. That idea is like frightening almost. But this is the reality that is proposed. In the Bhagavad-gita, there is a verse, a sloka, that states,

“A man must elevate himself by his own mind, not degrade himself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well.” [Bhagavad-gītā 6.5]

In another place, it’s referred to as potentially a great friend or the greatest enemy.

And so the yoga system is really—one of the fundamental things, it has—for a person to grow in spiritual understanding—is to learn how to increasingly exercise control of the mind and how to direct the mind. Their understanding was we should not be just surrendered to the mind, and wherever it wants to go and whatever it wants to do, we follow it and we identify with it and we buy into it. No, you should be determining the content of your mind. That is your job, to decide what you will let in and how you will process things, how you will look at things, how you will understand things. That is your job. As a dignified human being, that is your job.

Audience member: Who is that you? [Acd: Huh?] Who is that you?

Acharaya das: Who is that you? You is the spiritual being, you, the living being within. You don’t have to just surrender to the mind. You are meant to be—

We accept the reality that we are embodied. We have this gross physical body and we are totally interacting with the mind. But there is a higher faculty that is described, it is called buddhi or intelligence. Intelligence is a faculty that the yogis, the spiritualists, would try and cultivate. What is this? This intelligence is higher than the mind. What do I mean by that?

In a state of great emotion, when somebody is really angry or really upset and the mind is just raging, “Raaaaah!!” and we perhaps are engaged in a fight with someone and the idea pops into our mind to say something really, really hurtful because we want to hurt them. We’re going to say something really, we’re going to dredge up something from our memory and say something. Then there’s almost like, I’m using example, like a little voice that says, “Don’t say it, don’t do it, don’t do it.” But we do it anyway “Yaaaah!” because we’ve lost control. We’re surrendering to the mind and all of the emotions that rise up in the mind. We’re just following it.

Whereas our job is to actually strengthen this faculty, to use this faculty, discernment and discrimination. Don’t just accept something because it’s in your mind. And if an emotion arises, positive or negative, don’t just react to it and follow it.

You have to ask the question, “If I follow this, will it make my life better? Will my life become happier?” And if the answer is, “No,” don’t do it. So usually I advise people when we do mindfulness courses: In a state of heightened emotions, don’t speak, don’t act, don’t make a promise. Stop. Take a time out. Go and calm down. Not a little bit, way down. You might have to walk and maybe do some breathing or some chanting, get your japa beads and chant a bit.

And when everything is calm, then think, “How should I respond to this situation, to this person? How should I respond to make my life better and that person’s life better?” That’s what I should do. And then I come back and I say, “I’d like to finish. Sorry, I walked away. I lost control of my mind and my emotions. But I feel that we need to talk about this. Could you please—let’s engage in a conversation. At least, how can we make things a little bit better? Even if we have a disagreement, how can we still make things even a little bit better?”

This is living a life that is a conscious life, a life of awareness, where we’re not just following the mind and the desires and the emotions all the time, but we become the driver of the bus, rather than being sitting back there and just dragged along by whatever happens.

So many people live their life, and as they age and get older, become filled with different regrets: “If only I hadn’t have done that. If only I hadn’t have said that. If only I hadn’t behaved that way.” Not good to have regrets.

And so our responsibility as human beings on a path for spiritual understanding is to be in charge of our life and to make really good decisions. And this is a practice, a practical way of practicing spiritual life, to live a more spiritual life, where I, the spiritual being, am directing things. It’s not just my mind, it’s not just my emotions that are reacting.

So, the yoga system, control of the mind and becoming the one in charge was of critical importance.

Moving on to the second term (that was just to do with the self. This will be shorter.) Love, and the term self-love.

We can already see that the idea of self-love, if it is devoid of an understanding of what is the self and who we truly are, it is very problematic. And if you engage in activity that strengthens a false idea of who or what is the self, it just means your life will be more unhappy and more difficult. That is a practical reality.

So in terms of love, this is from dictionary.com definition: “A strong feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, such as for a parent, a child, a friend, or a pet.” They didn’t include the self there. Hmm? Wonder what that’s about? Maybe they need to update, get with the modern thinking, the modern thinking that’s producing so much unhappiness. Another definition: “A profoundly tender, passionate, affectionate, often mingled with sexual desire for another person.” Another definition: “Act of self-giving concern for the well-being of others.” Another one: “A person towards whom love is felt; beloved person, a sweetheart.”

And of course, you look through all the dictionary definitions, particularly any definition that was there prior to about 1990, and you will see every single definition of love speaks of relationship of two personalities and relationship between two personalities. Relationships that have to do with self-giving, concern for the well-being of others or feeling of tenderness or affection for another. So we hold that, even from the material perspective, that love is inseparable from relationship.

So the idea of self-love would be like, well, who exactly is loving whom? And again, I feel that it is an unfortunate reaction to many people suffering from different forms of psychological abuse and relationship issues and everything—I mean, there was a fad that came up, you don’t see it so much now, but it became prominent about five, six years ago, where people started marrying themself, they’re there on the beach exchanging vows with a mirror. There is something deeply disturbing about that. But it was considered healthy and was considered good. When I see it, I think this is highly problematic because it is not… Anyway, we’ve done enough of that.

From the yogic perspective, love, as experienced within this world between what we will call material personalities is considered a (and I will use the word “dim”) dim reflection of something more perfect and something more wonderful. In all of the spiritual literature, they recognize that the experience of love, of spiritual love, it is called prema, is considered the most extraordinary and wonderful and perfect experience. And we are all seeking this, but until we actually connect with our true soulmate, who is actually the Supreme Soul, the Lord of our heart, until we reconnect, we will always be hungry for love.

And I promise you, just as another person in this world cannot fulfill that great limitless need for perfect spiritual love, you yourself cannot fulfill yourself either, if you decide to try and love yourself. I’m sorry, it’s just from a spiritual perspective is not real and it’s not tenable.

So, I know this may be very challenging for many people now because this idea has become so prominent and it’s so widely embraced. 20 years ago, if you spoke of self-love, the majority, the majority of psychologists would have said it is a form of narcissism. Now they have changed. Many embrace it as something very healthy. And of course, the question is, were they wrong before or are they wrong now? That’s a serious question that should be asked.

And one way to judge is, okay, what is the fruit of this tree? And if we look at the fruit of the other tree, it may not have been perfect. It can’t be perfect because it wasn’t perfectly spiritual. But either that fruit was perhaps more acceptable, or we have a situation now where the fruit is obviously, it’s challenging, with the depression, the unhappiness, the loneliness that’s so monumentally large, and growing in an extraordinary way.

So the modern philosophy of self-love is often viewed as being an antidote to harmful patterns of thinking. And that view is of course understandable, but in reality, it is simply the other side of the same coin, the same coin being the false conception of self.

When I—we seek validation, we seek to experience worthiness, acceptance. We want to feel that we are lovable. And there’s nothing wrong with those feelings because they actually come from a spiritual place. The problem is when I incorrectly identify the body as the self, then I will struggle to fulfill those things.

There is a foundational spiritual principle, one of many, and it is: I, and when I say I, I’m talking about the eternal spiritual being—I am of infinite value. So your worth, your worth, and when I say your, I’m talking about you as the spiritual being residing within that body, your worth is intrinsic. Intrinsic means it is part of you. You are worthy. It is also limitless. Your value is limitless. It is not something to be earned through achievement or through appearance.

The problem is because we are disconnected from our deep spiritual identity, we have a yearning for worthiness, for lovableness, to be of value. That’s because it is part of our eternal spiritual nature. And the discovery of our true self and our true identity, we will experience the reality of those things. I mentioned the term love because it’s such a big thing.

We desire to be eternal because by nature we are, the spiritual being, the spirit soul is eternal. But when we identify with the body and we experience what’s called death, death of the body, it freaks us out. We get really upset. It’s really unsettling because it runs counter to our actual spiritual nature. We desire happiness because by nature we should be existing in a state of perfect blissfulness. We also desire love, to both love and to be loved, because this is part of the nature of the soul itself, to be in this union, in this connection with something perfect and wonderful, where we can experience true spiritual love. And that is actually the greatest of experiences.

When one engages in a process where the reward is both self-realization and God-realization, it opens the opportunity, opens to us the opportunity of experiencing true spiritual love. If one experiences even a drop of this love, one will be lost in the most profound and ecstatic experience, to taste true spiritual love. And that is something sacred, that is of limitless value, and it is all our rightful inheritance, if I can use those words.

But we need to learn to step away from this situation where we have become overly absorbed in this temporary body as being myself, and it is not.

Many years ago, Whitney Houston did that song, which I dislike intently. Her voice is wonderful. Whoever wrote the lyrics, and it wasn’t her, was promoting an idea, “the greatest love of all.” And the chorus to the song, “Because the greatest love of all is happening to me, I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.” And I am just heartbroken to hear those words, because if somebody buys into that, they are buying into a continuation of unhappiness, of material existence.

Self-realization and God-realization will move one in a whole ‘nother direction, way beyond that, and open the door to the possibility of experiencing what is truly the greatest love of all. This is known as prema, Krishna prema.

That’s it, folks. Was that challenging? Disturbing? Please, you know, be patient. The reason I speak of this is because, from the perspective of the great saintly yogis, the (I’ll use a term and I don’t mean it too harshly or anything,) the enemy, the enemy of mankind is the false concept that the body is the self and that the mind by extension is the self. And they say this is the underpinning for all suffering and all unhappiness.

When a person learns that the mind is something I should be using, not being used by, when I understand this body has enormous value because I can utilize it in the process of self-realization, it is therefore sacred and holy, and I should use it very wonderfully, and I should engage it in spiritual pursuit and in the service of others and in the service of God and live a life of enlightenment, and I will come to experience the greatest form of happiness and true spiritual love.

So when this term is passed around, it’s kind of like, oh my gods, I get upset, because it’s pushing people away from the greatest potential that exists for you, to have that experience, because when you start going in that other way, it makes it so that you will not engage in this. You won’t come to experience this. So I consider that to be problematic.

If this has disturbed anyone, it is not my intention to disturb or to cause pain, it’s meant to be the opposite. So I may be very flawed in my presentation. Sometimes people find me to be a little harsh and perceived as therefore being cruel; and I am very sorry if it comes across that way. It is because of my huge imperfection. But I promise you, the message is of infinite value. Do not throw out the message if the messenger is not such a good messenger. Okay?

Thank you so very much. We’ll chant a little and then they’ll have a little bit to eat, and if you have questions you would like to ask, then you are very free and welcome to do that. So as mentioned in this process, just relax and give up all of your anxiety, your pressure. Just bathe in these spiritual sounds because they will directly grant us the experience of self-realization and God-realization. They will begin to deliver to us the experience of the awakening of spiritual love.