IS GOD PLAYING GAME WITH US

Why is God playing cruel games with us? – is an attempt at explaining what is essentially inexplicable. For, God is playing a game is the allegation that God is light-hearted, not serious, in His dealings with us. Thus, the asking of the question is not a very satisfactory approach to understanding.
We can give explanations, but explanations need not be answers.
Let me add a few more words on life and death as these are terms you have employed in framing your question. You are looking at death as an opposite of life. In fact all of us perceive the phenomenon of death as opposing to the phenomenon of life. So, our encounter with death is conditioned by our definition of death as opposed to life. Change this definition, and death is no longer what we have felt it to be. In fact, death is one of the forms of expression of life. Life scientists declare that death is the most critical defining feature of life. Please understand that all and only living things die. When you die, you are making the ultimate undeniable assertion that you have been alive. In fact, at a certain level of analysis, death is even a precondition to life. The Holy Bible says, “Unless a seed falls into earth and dies, it cannot produce any grains”. That is, a seed has to cease to be itself in order to be a source of life to several others like it.
Rabindranath Tagore gives another beautiful example of the inseparability of life and death. You were in your mother’s womb. The most comfortable place for you is to be in your mother’s womb. In fact, when you were born you search for that experience which you had when you were in your mother’s womb. You search for that comfort. That is why in Hindu temple, the sanctum sanctorum is called garbhagudi – representing a mother’s womb. It is not foolish to speculate that our pursuit of wordly comforts is an attempt to recreate the prenatal pleasantness of the womb. At the time of delivery, the body of the mother pushes the child out. When it is pushed out, every child goes through what is called birth trauma. When we are pushed out, we experience a form of death. Tagore asks, “Is it death or is it life?” What do we experience? Birth – exit from the womb where life originated and was sustained for about nine months into the world outside – is a form of death that leads to life although in different environments. Similarly, death – exit from the world – can be a door to some other form of life or life at yet another plane.
The way an old dress is removed and a new one is worn, so, as the body becomes old, it is given up, and a new one is born. Death is only a change of the perishable. Much of our post-traumatic stress, of which grief over someone’s death is psychological. Probably only about 5% of what we consider suffering is purely physiological. Once a 45-year old man asked me how he could manage old age. He said he was mortally afraid of old age. And he was only halfway to real old age! Now this man offers a good example of purely psychological suffering.
With the great dotcom bust of the post-millennium years, a lot of people went through depression all over the world, but especially in California. Let us think of what really happened. Nothing more than the fact that what had been hyped sky-high was brought down to earth. The same thing had happened in Bangalore real estate. It happens cyclically in stock markets across the globe. You build the bubble, and, when the bubble breaks, you feel depressed. Those who know that the rise is artificial make all the profit while gullible believers in the longevity of the bubble lose everything.
The value we attach to objects of speculation like stocks, shares, land, and commodities is purely psychological, i.e., illusory or insubstantial. Likewise all sorrows are chiefly mind-made. You invest 10 million rupees on a piece of land expecting to make a profit of 10 million, but the profit is only notional in the sense that it is based on your expectation that the value of your purchase will double within the time frame of your expectation. It your expectations are defeated, you start suffering, naturally isn’t it your mind?
Therefore the trauma that you feel at events like accident or death is also mainly psychological, and thus something you can overcome through spiritual discipline.
 

DEVELOP ENTHUSIASM IN LIFE

It is a very important aspect in life. Study the life history of successful people and you would find that one of the ingredients was tremendous enthusiasm or the passion to live life. One should have passion to live life. It is said, Edmond Hilary who climbed Mount Everest, failed thrice earlier. Later at a party hosted in his honour in New Zealand, he looked at the portrait of Mount Everest and humorously remarked, ‘Mt. Everest has a problem. The problem is, it cannot grow more than about 29,000 feet, whereas I have the ability to grow in my ability to climb Mt. Everest.’ What he meant was that he has the ability to grow whereas Mount Everest stood at the height of about 29,000 feet. Look at his passion. In the very next attempt, he scaled Mt. Everest successfully.
In us there is a ‘lower-self’ called Jeevatma and a ‘higher-self’ called Paramatma. One can either operate from the ‘lower self’ or from the ‘higher self.’ When one operates from the ‘lower self,’ one finds his life is not powerful whereas operating from the ‘higher self’ results in the opposite. This is the choice before us.
If one operates from the ‘lower self,’ life opens up as a threat. While operating from the ‘higher self,’ the life opens up as opportunity. Operating from the ‘higher self’ consistently generates enthusiasm.
Any situation viewed as threat is an example of one involving the ‘lower self.’ The ‘lower self’ operates as an interfering thought or an obstructing thought. The ‘higher self’ operates as a supporting thought, not as an obstruction. In any situation in life, if seen as opportunity, it is supportive. If seen as an obstruction, it is like a danger or a threat…. it is a function of the ‘lower self.’
Our bodies have an immune system; if it is weak, the body is prone to disease. So too, we have a psychological immune system. If our psychological immune system is weak … we are upset, hurt, frustrated. Like genes in our bodies, our minds are also products of evolution of many years. When our psychological immune system is weak, we are prone to perceive external situations as dangerous or as obstruction. It only calls for strengthening the psychological immune system so as to be powerful individuals.
How do you make it powerful? Like how we make the physical body powerful by right exercising and dieting, so too, the psychological immune system can be made powerful by not allowing the ‘lower self’ in us to operate... instead we should encourage the higher centre to operate in our daily lives.
In our lives we operate from acquired knowledge, rather than the cosmic intelligence of the cell. Where do we draw our identify from? Most of us draw our identify from our acquired knowledge. Don’t we? Why is it so? Because through acquired knowledge, our ego is established, our identity is established, our address is established. Whereas in cell intelligence that we have not created, but are gifted with, our uniqueness is not established. Ego is established in the ‘I.’ The acquired knowledge is the ‘lower self.’ The knowledge from which we are born – the cell evolution is the ‘higher self.’
Let us draw our identity from this growing cell that is the ‘higher self.’ But alas, we don’t trust this. Instead we trust our acquired knowledge. In life we should eliminate our ‘lower self’ and operate from cosmic intelligence. The acquired knowledge will be supportive in our growth and not obstructive. Understand this distinction.
Acquired knowledge should support the ‘higher self,’ not obstruct it. For example, in a game of tennis, when you see a ball coming from an opponent, your thought should not interfere with it and obstruct your spontaneous effort to hit a ball. But if you think, ‘Oh, I am going to miss it because my history of missed stroke last time’; then acquired knowledge is obstructing. As a player, you cannot succeed.
Suppose, the ‘higher self’ looks at a ball in a different way - “With a focused awareness I allow my being that has evolved to guide me in hitting a ball. In case I miss it, the ‘higher self’ being a learning and evolving being, makes required corrections the next time I face a ball... but whereas acquired self or the ‘lower self’ creates an image that I am not good and I am not lucky. This image makes me look at a ball next time as a threat and acts as an obstruction. The ‘lower self’ is rigid, while the ‘higher self’ is flexible in learning and growing. I will not allow my static conclusions to decide my action instead allow my flow to decide a response.”

EGO AND PATIENCE - SILENT KILLER'S

Waiting for others to live up to our expectation is a waste of time.
Reflect on this story.
A family of tortoise went on a picnic. They packed food and set out to a place they had selected… behind the hills. When they reached the spot, they unpacked their picnic basket. They realized they had forgotten to bring salt. Food without salt is tasteless.
They had a conference to decide who should go back and get salt. After a lot of discussion, the youngest tortoise was chosen, as he was faster than the others.
The youngest objected on the ground that before he could come back the others might eat the snacks. But they assured him they would wait for him to come back with salt. Six months passed, but the youngest tortoise did not turn up. So the rest of the family decided to open the basket and eat the snacks. When they opened the snack basket, the little tortoise jumped out of the bushes and screamed,
“Look, I knew you would not wait till I came back. For six months I have been hiding in these bushes to make sure you would not eat without me. Now my suspicion has been confirmed, and I am not going to get the salt.”
Some of us are exactly like our suspicious tortoise: we waste our own time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. Instead of doing the right thing ourselves, we wait for others to act in ways we expect them to. We waste our time waiting for others to live according to our expectations. We have not learned to enjoy doing what our intuitive judgement tells us is the right thing.
Is stress related to egoism?
Yes, very much. Egoism implies our conviction that we are more important than others, and our beliefs are the truth. Ego means our point of view is more important than that of others, more important than even truth. So we are trapped within our point of view. Not only are we arrogant about our point of view, we believe in our infallibility. This arrogance creates stress. Being stuck to our point of view creates stress.
Reflect on this.
A husband and wife were quarrelling. Each kept screaming at the other. The house was a living hell. Then the husband walked out of the house. The couple’s teenager son, seeing his father walk out, asked his mother, “Is Daddy going to be back?”
“Yes, he will be back in half an hour,” replied the mother.
“Damn,” said the youngster in obvious disappointment, “I thought of eating his dessert.”
When self-interest or ego prevails in our mind, we begin to compete with everyone for everything, no matter what the cost. We do not see beyond our self gratification.
Be playful and flexible. If you need to work long hours in the office, enjoy it, play with it. Convert the work place into a fun place with commitment.
Then you don’t work for joy, work itself becomes joy.
Drop the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ and live in the ‘We’. The universe is one. It is, and has, a unity. Don’t live in the division of the ego. Without the ego, we experience a beautiful connectedness with everything else in the great chain of being: with the birds, the stars, the sky and the trees. You can envision them to be different parts of your body, or yourself to be part of one or more of them. It is this connectedness that is known as ‘Nirvana’. Reality is unity and illusion is division.
What lies at the root of impatience?
One has to cultivate the state of being patient. We have to trust the universe with its own ways of opening and closing windows of opportunity and doors to happiness and prosperity. We have to learn to be patient. A boy loved mangoes. He bought the best of seeds and planted the mango seed. Every morning he would dig the earth to see if it had sprouted. In this process he never allowed the seed to sprout. Our impatience works in the same stupid way.
Impatience is a result of lack of trust. We trust our ego and not the miracle of life. Since we depend on our ego, we take for granted the way nature reveals her mysteries. Our imagination projects a reality and we don’t recognize anything else as real. We are lost in our subjective reality.
Patience is a spiritual quality and discipline. Patience is predicated on the faith that God knows better than we ever can hope to know what is good for us. Impatience, on the other hand, asserts, “God should be clever enough to let me have things my own way because, after all, what I want is paramount.” Patience accepts that God’s will is greater than my will.

MAYA - DELUSION

Q: You have been talking of knowledge and ignorance. What faculties are these, and what shall we attribute these to? Shall we say these are properties of the body, mind, or some other intellectual centre? Sometimes you also say one has to go beyond the state of body mind - intelligence and be a sakshi - witness. When you speak of non-duality, it means there is no difference between the observer and the observed. Then, what is this witnessing?

A: The way you have framed the question shows that you have got into an inescapable logical loop, like the proverbial chicken and egg problem or the seed and sprout problem. In keeping with our vegetarian traditions, we prefer the second, called “beejaankura nyaya” in Sanskrit. Vedanta uses the expression anirvachaniya Kyathi. Anirvachaniya means indefinable. Maya, by its very nature defies definition and description. Why do they consider it inexplicable? Vedanta says the Lord created the world. Who is the creator? The Lord! What is the object that was created? Jeevatma! Now comes your question. What has this property of maya? Is it the Lord the creator, or jeeva the object created that has the property of maya? If jeeva has got the maya, then jeeva has come from maya. If God has the maya, God is jeeva. These matters are discussed at length in Vedanta. What is maya? Maya means ya ma sa maya. Ya means that, ma means not, sa means that which is maya. From that which is not, he created the world.

Let me give a modern example.

There was a King who owned seventeen elephants. Then the King died. He had three sons. According to his will, the first son was entitled to one half of the number of elephants, the second one to one third, and the third one to one ninth. The size of the share couldn’t be changed. As 17 is an odd number, and difficult to share among the three, they were unable to find a solution to the challenge. Since all of them were vegetarians they wouldn’t think of cutting the elephants to divide them according to the complicated arithmetic laid down by their dear departed father. Fortunately for them, a wise man was passing through their country. The wise man was an old friend of their father’s as well. The young men described their situation to the wise man and requested him to help them. The wise man asked them not to worry and set about solving the problem immediately. He added his elephant to the other 17 elephants and now the number came to 18. He separated 9 elephants, i.e., one half of 18, and handed them over to the first son. The young man was very happy. The second son was given 6 elephants, i.e., one third of 18. He too was happy. Lastly, the third son was given 2 elephants, 2 being one ninth of 18. The total number of elephants given away was 17 (9+6+2). There was still one elephant left, that of the wise man. The wise man took his elephant back and went away, leaving everybody happy and satisfied. The last elephant is like maya: it came to solve a problem, and having solved it, it removes itself from the scene, leaving no trace of its previous presence.

Let me narrate this with another example…

You are sleeping, and you dream that you are a beggar. Actually you are a King, but in your dream you are a beggar. Your guru appears in the dream and tells you that you are not a beggar, but a King. Similarly, you may be under the delusion that you are paramatma, not jeevatma. You are like the King who dreams he is a beggar. Then the Guru reveals that it is your delusion, and that it is maya that makes you think you are a beggar. Which identity is maya, the King’s or the beggar’s? The King has only to wake up to realize that his higher consciousness and knowledge, so that delusions will disappear.

“When and where can I experience enlightenment?”, asked the student.

The master replied, “Right here, and right now”.

“Then why don’t I experience it?”, the student persisted.

“Because you do not see”, said the master.

“Not seeing what?”, asked the student.

“You don’t see the flower, the tree, or the sun” the teacher said patiently.

“Yes”, the student said, “I do see the flower, the tree, and the sun, but is there a special way of seeing them?”

The master said, “No, there is no special way, you can look at them from a very ordinary perspective”. Then with a tone of finality, the master added, “In order to see, you must be awake, but you are asleep.”

Stop enquiring. Wake up. Open your eyes.

LANGUAGE OF MYSTICISM-A CALM MIND

Lord Shiva has a trishula - trident in His hands which represents the three gunas - Satwa guna, Rajo guna and Tamo guna meaning that all the three gunas are in His hands. He is the master of the gunas and the gunas are not the master of Him.
It is a very big topic that we would be dealing as we go further. Sattva is the one pure quality, Rajo is the quality of activity where ego plays a role, Tamo is darkness, laziness. All three qualities have roles to play but you should not be a victim to any one of them. Whenever you go to sleep, it is reflection of tamo guna; sleep must be part of your routine, but not right now while you are listening to me… therefore you should have control over tamo guna.
Rajo guna is sign of activity, so actively you have to sit for meditation. There is no activity in meditation, so someone goes on scratching his head, there is nothing inside and outside, but he scratches. Again rajo guna has been misplaced here. All these three gunas have roles to play, if you only know how to become the master and not the victim. For that to happen those roles have to be played in the respective places. For some people Sattva guna - purity becomes addiction.
I will narrate an example from the life of Buddha so that you can understand better.
Four people were in a boat. On reaching the shore, they were holding the boat on their heads and started walking. A monk who saw this asked, “Why are you keeping the boat on your heads”? They said, “The boat has helped us to cross the river and we are so grateful to the boat that we are carrying the boat wherever we go”.
After the boat is used, it should be anchored on the shore. These people out of gratitude carried the boat on their heads.
Have you seen some people expressing their gratitude? For them their gratitude itself is a form of bondage. Similarly, the very gratitude became bondage for those four people.
If you have yagnopavitha - sacred thread on you, and when you take sanyas – monk hood, as per the tradition, you have to tear them down. It is very difficult as you have been wearing the yagonopavitha all through your life and chanting the Gayatri Mantra. It is treated as very sacred throughout the life and when you take sanyasa the yagnopavitha has to be torn by our own hands… even that attachment has to be renounced. Even the attachment to good, along the line, should go away.
Buddha said that gratitude is beautiful, but don’t be foolish like the boatmen carrying the boat in the name of gratitude. Then the boat becomes a burden instead of a means of navigation.
Therefore one should be a master of all the three gunas - qualities. You should be able to leave off, that is the meaning of trishula or trident.
What is there on the trishula? A Damaru - a drum tied to it. The whole system of Sanskrit grammar seems to have emerged from the damaru, discovered by the great Saint called Panini. It is said that he wanted to write grammar sutras. He was meditating calmly for this purpose. At that time the intuitive quadrant of his brain opened up very well. He seemed to have tuned to the celestial dance of Lord Shiva during the sandhya - evening time. It is said that Lord Shiva was dancing with his damaru and thus Panini sutras were created.
Panini was a great saint. He was meditating. Why am I naratting this? The fine vibration is there in this world. Akashvani waves is right here, BBC waves, CNN waves, Doordarshan waves are here, but your radio or TV with antenna alone can pick it up. I am giving you a modern example. They will help you to understand an ancient concept, because you are all westernised.
How did Panini get the idea when Lord Shiva was dancing? How is it that you type www.swamisukhabodhananda.org and you get my site? You say, “Oh, It is like that. Isn’t it?” Right here we have BBC, CNN, and Doordarshan waves and if you have the right receiver, you can log on to it, isn’t it?
A study has shown that whatever the great Kishore Kumar has sung, or for that matter whatever great singers have sung, it can never disappear; it is always in existence. And we create an apparatus, and we can log on to it. Energy cannot be destroyed. It exists in some form or the other. We don’t have the apparatus right now to discover them. That is all. Therefore, meditation is an apparatus and in the apparatus are your receptors of intuition, which modern science refers as the “D” quadrant of your brain.
There are four quadrants of brain – “A” quadrant is of logic, “B” quadrant is of planning, “C” quadrant is of kinesthetic and playful while “D” quadrant is of intuition. “D” quadrant of the brain represents intuition.
When you meditate, research has shown that the intuition brain cells opens up, and then you see more than what others can see. That is why Walt Disney looked at the rat and created Mickey Mouse. Somebody looks at waste and creates wealth.