The Driving Emptiness – filling the void

Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So we’ve been doing a series on wellness, and this is the—or well-being rather—and this is the fourth talk in this series.

When we speak of well-being, in this world mostly people are focused on what I would describe as a two-dimensional paradigm. They are focused on, of course, physical well-being and then what’s categorized as mental well-being.

But in the ancient spiritual traditions, it’s more like a three-dimensional paradigm. It involves, of course, the well-being of the body and the well-being of the mind, but the foundational and principal consideration is the foundation of myself, the eternal spiritual being residing within the body and utilizing the body and the mind.

And so that sort of opens up a whole other perspective. It truly has to do with the well-being of body, mind, and spirit, as they say, or soul. One of the problems that people have in using that phrase, or that terminology, is a lack of clarity as to what their understanding is of the word spirit, or soul. And this is the area that is actually, in—there is the greatest need for focus and understanding.

So, we previously mentioned a number of times in the talk that the underlying foundational principle of all advertising and promotion is the understanding by those who are professionals in that field that everyone is empty. Every single person is experiencing emptiness. And what they are doing is offering a product, a service, an experience, or it could be a relationship, with—and the offer is that this will fill up the emptiness. It’s that simple. It’s not complicated at all.

And when we understand things in that framework, it’s kind of a little bit, Wow! Or not? Or we’re immune to that? It’s kind of shocking a little bit. It’s highly manipulative, this idea that what I’m going to offer you will take away that emptiness, what I’m going to offer will fill up that empty space and make you complete. It’s highly deceptive. But it’s incredibly effective because everybody has this experience.

And so, it’s kind of, this is what we’re going to be dealing with, this sort of driving and persistent emptiness.

Somebody approached me over the weekend asking for a little guidance and some input. I have a massive aversion to telling people what to do. That’s your business to figure out. But if you want a perspective, perhaps I can lend an alternate perspective for you to consider.

And this person was struggling with a relationship—I mean, an area that I really don’t like being involved in. Your life is none of my business whatsoever. That’s your—what you have to figure out.

And so this, one of the things that was really influencing her thinking, was that she wasn’t happy with the current situation, but she didn’t want to be alone. And I’m going like, “Oh my God, what a terrible foundation for considering whether you should be involved in a relationship — the fear of being alone.” That one is going to create massive problems for you, and copious amounts of unhappiness will come out of that. They’re not connected really.

This idea of this emptiness, like—we’ll probably cover a few different things. We’ve talked about being alone, and the lack of happiness or fulfillment that people strive for, or the idea of purpose. Each one of these things we could address and speak about independent of each other. But the—I’m going to basically deal with them all together, that there is this bigger underlying problem that people are seeking to address.

People really hate being alone. People want clutter in their life. They want busy, busy, happy, happy, engagement, activity, action, party, all trying to cover up this sort of emptiness. People hate coming into what they call their home, and there’s nobody there. As soon as the door closes, it’s like, “Now what?”

And people find themselves often gravitating to the fridge and just opening it and standing there looking into the fridge like there’s something in there is going to fill up that empty space. Or, you know, in previous times, you pick up the remote and flip on the TV and start channel surfing to find something to grab your attention so you don’t have to feel what you’re feeling. These days it’s everybody whips out these deadly devices here, destructive things, and just start scrolling, just going for it with the scroll.

And it’s all the same stuff. You just don’t want to face the reality of the predicament and actually seek a solution.

Many people will live their whole life filled with clutter. I’m not saying that as a negative thing or anything, but it’s clutter. People have children, they’ll have a spouse or a partner in life, they’ll have friends or relatives, and there’s like all this stuff going on.

And so, in the noise, we are not addressing some real fundamental and underlying issues. And it may not be until the children grow up and leave home, and then our spouse either leaves or we leave or they die. And the immediate, immediate experience is this flooding in of massive loneliness.

And it’s horrible, and it’s haunting. And it’s not like it’s just suddenly happened. It’s actually been there all along, but we haven’t paid attention to it, because it was “party time” or “busy time” or activity, and so much going on. My life was so busy, and I was striving for things. But then, as soon as it’s removed, bam, we’re confronted with this reality.

People have the experience of what they call being alone in a crowd. You can be at a party. You can be out with a bunch of friends, or you can be walking down a main street in a city, and all around you, there are people, and all this stuff’s going on. And you can go through an experience of feeling utterly alone, even in a crowd.

This is not bad. This is not bad. It’s kind of like the way nerves work.

I mean, if I was sitting next to the stove, and I reached out without looking and touched a pot or something, then instantly there’s a sensation of searing heat. It’s like, “Ow!” and I react. You know getting burned is good—not the experience of being burned, but it’s telling you, “Get your hand away quick, otherwise this is going to be really bad.” It is a form of protection.

In a similar manner, this feeling of emptiness is an indication of two things. One is, “I don’t like this, and this is not what I want.” And the reason I can feel like that is because part of my spiritual nature is not to be having that experience. But now I’m deprived of a full and complete spiritual experience, and so I’m just trying to fill myself up with all the stuff in this world, and it’s not going anywhere.

So, this feeling of emptiness, it’s not related to your financial situation. People that don’t have money, they just crave to have money because it’s so hard trying to manage without money, and the thought is, “Wow, if I had money, everything would be okay. I’d be happy. I’d be fulfilled. I could spoil myself and treat myself to all kinds of things, and stuff.” It’s not true. Even people that have vast amounts of wealth are experiencing exactly the same emptiness as those without wealth, so it’s not dependent on someone’s financial situation.

It’s also not dependent on your relationship status. Some people think, “Oh, I’m feeling this because I don’t have a significant person in my life to love.” But the reality is you can have very significant relationships and still be confronted with this feeling of emptiness, being incomplete.

So relationship status, different patterns of consumption, family situation, or any other type of material thing that’s related to this world, does not change the fact that a person at any time can experience this emptiness. It is common to all of us. Because what is actually happening is we are being offered an insight into the reality that this world is not enough. It is absolutely not enough. We are desirous of more, something infinitely more profound.

And it is our actual, I don’t like to use the word, but I will, birthright, meaning you have a natural spiritual condition, and you have become separated from that. You have turned away from that and become absorbed in that which is temporary and passing, and it’s not fulfilling, and it can’t be fulfilling.

So I’m going to read you a little blog. I’ve done this a few times in different situations. I absolutely love this. This was written by a woman who was so brutally honest. It was so engaging, and I felt really, really important.

You know, we have this strong tendency to not be honest. Everybody wants to pretend. You know: “How are you doing?” “Oh, great.” “Life’s fantastic.” No, it’s not. It’s okay, but come on, you’ve got to get over that exaggeration. Really, because that is dangerous, to overly exaggerate what this world has to offer.

So, this woman in her complete honesty, she wrote this on the blog. This was a few years ago I read this, and I immediately copied it, because this will touch you. This will affect you.

If you like, when I read this, I invite you, if you want, you can close your eyes just to avoid other distractions and listen to her plea. Listen to her voice, what it is that she is saying.

“I have almost everything people talk about when it comes to happiness. A good husband, a great job that I enjoy and pays me well.

But here I am, feeling all confused, blank and painful. I feel numb, suffocated, lifeless.

For all the reasons I could think of, I should be grateful for the life I have and be happy about it.

Yes, I am grateful. But I am not happy. I feel guilty for not being happy. I cannot talk to anyone. No one can understand. Even I can’t understand.

Everything is so quiet. All I can hear is my husband’s breath and the sound of my wall clock. I feel so lonely. I feel like I am the only person in the world to have this feeling. This feeling overwhelms me, eats me alive and I find myself lost in it, piece by piece.

I find myself pushing people away because I think they don’t truly understand me. I try to build a thick wall around me to protect myself and my loneliness. Behind the wall, I have the whole world of my own. Except there is nothing in it.

I know it is not healthy for me to stay in my world forever.

I know it is time for me to break the wall. But I just don’t know how.”

Relatable?

You know, one feels sympathy for her situation, but this is also relatable to most of us. At different times, we have this experience. It actually very clearly states what everybody feels to different degrees and at different times.

So, what is it? What is this emptiness?

We are told that it is this world and things of this world that will fill up the emptiness, will take it away. But I can honestly tell you that that is not reality.

And there is a reason for it, which we will explore in a moment or two.

But looking at the nature of this world, the material energy, or atoms, do not contain the characteristic or quality of blissfulness, or joy, or happiness. They don’t. It’s just material energy.

The idea that somehow I can rearrange these atoms, I can rearrange the material energy, and somehow or other this rearrangement of things is going to bring fulfillment—and that is not true. It doesn’t, and it can’t.

It can entertain me for a little while, can distract me, but it doesn’t actually provide what it is that I am seeking.

The idea of taking atoms, material energy, and stuffing it in my mouth, up my nose, in my ears, in all the orifices of my body, of rubbing it all over me, it just, it doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t take away the emptiness, and it does not provide me with permanent happiness. I can stimulate my body into a frenzy for a little while and be just like, “Aaaahaaah” and then it passes. And then what? I’m back to where I was.

We are attracted to things like beauty. We are attracted to the idea of happiness. We are deeply attracted to some wonderful concept that we may have of love, the experience of actual love.

And the way that we then seek to fill up that space, we go out and try to acquire things that we find attractive. Whether it’s another person, whether it’s some experience, some object, some status, some recognition, we seek to acquire it, to bring it in close and to cuddle up to it and think that somehow then that’s going to rub off on us.

The thing that we’re attracted to that we see, we think if I can possess it and bring it in close and own it and have it, that somehow that will make the difference. And it doesn’t. We seek things that attract us, thinking that it will actually make a difference, hoping that it will make a difference.

It’s always fascinated me how people that become fabulously wealthy (and I’ve known a number of people in this category) they just live in a different world. And they see something that attracts them, and they’re driven to possess it. They have to acquire it. And then once they’ve acquired it, all they can do with it is try to show it off to others, somehow thinking that will do the trick.

The reality is, we seek happiness because it is part of our eternal spiritual nature. It is part—it is the nature of the spirit soul to be experiencing not just happiness, but unlimited joy and happiness.

We seek love because that is also a spiritual desire. It is not a desire connected to this world or this body or the mind. It is a profound spiritual desire.

But we are sort of left with the idea of just trying to acquire experiences and stuff.

It’d be like me—and this is a bit of a dumb example, but it’s an example, nonetheless. I order up an amazing ice cream sundae with all the stuff on it and the cream and all the—everything, and I’m just looking at it and going like, “This is going to be awesome. This is going to be awesome.” And I take a spoon, and I dig into it, and I lift it up, and then I turn and feed it to the person next to me. And then I retrieve the spoon, and I’m going like, “It’s not doing anything for me.” And I go in for another one, and I just repeat the same thing.

We have this problem and this issue because of the lack of clarity about who we truly are as eternal spiritual beings temporarily residing within this body. Because we are utterly bewildered by that truth we have come to embrace the idea that this body is me and the mind I am using is me.

And it doesn’t matter what I stuff into it. It can excite me physically and mentally, but it can never excite me in the deepest recesses of my being. My feeling is, “I am malnourished. I am lacking spiritual nutrition. I am wasting away.” And I’m madly engaged in activity to try and get rid of that feeling by just creating more and more opportunity for the body and mind to experience things.

In that situation, I’m very much like a fish out of water. You know, a fish has a nature. Its nature is to be in the ocean or a river or a pond or a lake, to be swimming in the water. You can take a fish out of water, and you can put it in a Mercedes-Benz, give it a Rolex, and give it a FansOnly account, and introduce it to all kinds of cool people, but at the end of the day, it’s [mimes gasping fish], it’s a fish out of water. And it has a nature of that particular body, and when it returns to its natural environment, it becomes relieved. That is an example of, or a metaphor for, our situation, our condition.

The reality is, we feel this stirring, we feel this emptiness, because there is a need for us to undertake, not an outward journey, but an inward journey, a journey to actually fully discover who I am, to reconnect with my spiritual being, to discover my true spiritual nature, to occupy myself with food for the soul, things that will actually make a difference.

This is the process. This is the process of what is called yoga. This is what it is for. It is for the purpose of self-discovery, the actual purpose of human life.

And the reason we all have the same experience, a common experience, is because human life provides us an opportunity for self-realization and God-realization.

And if we do not take that opportunity, if we choose to turn away from it and simply become completely engaged with the world, then I’m sorry, you will waste your entire life seeking to fill up the emptiness, looking for the perfect happiness and love. Your body will age, and you will be confronted at the end of the journey with the question, “What the hell was that all about? What was that for? I gained nothing.” That’s for an intelligent person.

A person who doesn’t use their intelligence will simply be constantly changing channels or scrolling, trying to fill up that space until the time comes that the body is not inhabitable anymore, and you will leave, and it will be fearful. It will be tremendously upsetting.

To take this inward journey to connect with the true self, our true self, and with the Supreme is, as I said, the purpose of life. And as one progresses gradually in that journey, one will increasingly experience some wonderful things.

In the Bhagavad-gita, I will read three verses connected to this inward journey.

“In this world, there is nothing so sublime and pure as transcendental knowledge. Such knowledge is the mature fruit of all mysticism. And one who has achieved this enjoys the self within himself in due course of time.” [Bhagavad-gītā 4.38]

I mean, how are things for you right now? (I’m not asking for a response.)—compared to a couple of hours ago, when you were doing whatever you were doing, getting off work or whatever, and you’d been through your day, and you have all these experiences that you’re caught up in, and it’s completely occupying you. And now, suddenly, you find yourself here, and we’re considering some extremely serious subject matter. And it is spiritual knowledge. And everybody instinctively feels, “There is some great truth here. There is something that touches me and resonates with me.” Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. You feel that, you experience that. And that is what this verse is all about.

The thing is that we need to engage in cultivating spiritual understanding to help us develop a real, wonderful spiritual perspective of our life and everything that we’re encountering and everything that we’re doing. It’s necessary. And when one does it, it is also liberating. It is absolutely liberating.

I have relayed a number of times my great fortune to have been able to help some people at the time when they were approaching this, what is called death, to leave the body, and to be able to share with people at that time, this knowledge.

I mean, the understanding that you are not going to die, you don’t die, you cannot die! You will leave. You’re going to leave that body. That’s for sure. The body is going to die, but you never die. And your business now is to take shelter in that spiritual understanding and to take shelter in these spiritual sounds, which act as like a boat to carry you across the ocean of material existence and bring you to safe harbor. When people just understand that (and many people will, if they are given the opportunity), it is such a relief. It is so liberating to have that understanding at that critical juncture.

Another verse from the Bhagavad-gita, speaking about a person who has acquired—become mature in spiritual, not just understanding, but experience also:

“Such a liberated person is not attracted to material sense pleasure or external objects but is always in trance, enjoying the pleasure within. In this way the self-realized person enjoys unlimited happiness, for he concentrates on the Supreme.” [Bhagavad-gītā 5.21]

This is a little insight into an extraordinary experience.

And can I just say, self-realization and God-realization is not for special people or only some people. What self-realization is and God-realization is, it is the uncovering of your eternal spiritual nature. It is revealing what is already there, what we have become disconnected from, what—we’re preoccupied with in this world, and things of this world. But it is for everyone. It is the process of uncovering your eternal spiritual nature and experiencing that.

And the final verse I will read:

“One whose happiness is within, who is active within, who rejoices within and is illuminated within, is actually the perfect mystic. He is liberated in the Supreme, and ultimately, he attains the Supreme.” [Bhagavad-gītā 5.24]

So, a little couple of minutes ago, I mentioned the idea, the phrase, “food for the soul.”

I have stated that everyone, if we are not connected to spiritual reality, if we are just constantly and always absorbed in that which is temporary, which is changing, which is passing, in that condition one is not going to experience what it means to be enlightened, to be attuned to my actual spiritual nature. I will be in a condition of feeling that I am malnourished spiritually. I am lacking spiritual nutrition.

There’s two things that we are promoting, and it’s quite simple.

One is the cultivation of this, what we broadly call yoga wisdom, spiritual truth, and taking it on board and contemplating on it in relation to my life and how I’m living. And the more that you are able to do that, the better your life will become, the clearer you will see things. Your relationships and connections with others will actually become more spiritually grounded and meaningful. Your life will take on a deeper sense of purpose.

The thing that will transform understanding into actual experience, spiritual experience, is the process of meditation, to be connected to spiritual sound.

Spiritual sound is unlike material sound. It has nothing in common with material sound. Spiritual sound is liberating. Material sound pushes us into illusion. It covers us. It brings darkness and unhappiness.

When you engage with spiritual sound, it will have the effect of purifying the heart and the mind. It will bring clarity. It will, as I often say, begin to lift the fog and change the way that you begin to look at yourself, others around you, and this world.

So, last Sunday, up in Auckland at Mantra Night, the theme they had was “Kirtan, Food for the Soul,” and I was asked to speak on it. But I’m just going to read the little promotional blurb that they had because it’s very connected to the subject tonight:

“At our core, we are spiritual beings. Because of this, material things alone can never fully satisfy us. And just as our body needs nourishment to stay healthy and strong, we, the soul, the spiritual being, also need our own form of sustenance to feel truly happy and fulfilled.

The deep sense of longing that we all experience isn’t a flaw. It is a signal, a signal that we need something else. It is our inner need for something deeper, something lasting, a reconnection with our true spiritual nature and with the Supreme Soul.”

And so engagement with this process of meditation upon spiritual sound, and more specifically with kirtan, this group meditation using spiritual sound and music, which helps people to come into focus, is a very simple and yet powerful way to actually nourish this inner need.

This subject that I’m addressing is a massive subject. And when you look at how the great yogis and saints and sages, the rshis, actually dealt with these things in great detail, it’s quite mind-blowing, the understanding that they had.

It becomes more amazing how we’ve lost the plot, how we dedicate our entire, what we call our life, we dedicate our entire life trying to fulfill the urges and desires of the body and mind. We commit our whole life to this pursuit, and then at the end, we leave it all behind. It’s like, that’s not very smart.

If I asked you to open a bank account for some person you didn’t know and every payday to be putting a reasonable sum of money in there, you’d ask, “Why should I do that?” And after 20 years of doing it, and you calculated how much money you’d invested into that account, and it’s like, “I’m getting nothing out of this. Why am I doing this?”

But that’s what we’re doing with what’s called life. We become utterly invested in something that doesn’t produce what it is that we truly need and what we truly are looking for.

So I’d like to invite you to engage in the practice of kirtan with me, and in light of what we have been discussing, to not be focused on that but to be a little aware of it, and just let yourself go in terms of not being overly preoccupied with anything. Just let everything go. Everything’s going to be there in 30 minutes or 20 minutes when we’re done. Just let it go and just engage in the process. Drink deeply of spiritual sound. Bathe in spiritual sound. Immerse yourself, and you will experience some of what it is that I was discussing.

So I will chant the Maha Mantra.