And the next part is this. Say we accept the first part of the message, let’s just say we do. Most people never get this far, they never even start. But anyway, let’s say we are excellent students, so we get this far. You say, “Ok, I am spirit soul. I want spiritual happiness. So how do I achieve this?”
That is contained in the next part of the message: you need a perfect relationship. Just like in our material lives, basically everybody knows in their heart: no matter how much money I have and how much fame, and so on, and so on, if I don’t have that loving relationship with somebody, it’s basically empty.
A friend of mine is involved in painting and fashion design, this kind of thing. She was in London and she met this famous designer. He’s got magazines, he’s had so much fame and awards, and etc. He’s ‘somebody’. Of course, along the way he’s accumulated a lot of money. When she was talking to him for the last time, he had just won some great award. He said, “Look, I have got this thing,” whatever it was, some trophy. “It means nothing to me because I’m so lonely. There is nobody really in my life. Of course, there are a lot of people around me. But there is no real special person in my life. It’s empty.”
And, of course, this is again the soul’s experience of reality. We need a relationship that fulfills us, one that nourishes us, one that warms our heart. And that’s what we’re looking for, looking for this place and that place, “Where is that person? Where is that perfect person for me?” Maybe we’ve had so many relationships, but they didn’t produce that result.
And again, in the message: yes, you need that loving relationship, but you’re looking in the wrong place. The soul sends the message, “This is what I need.” But where to find it? So the truth of this message is: you need that relationship with the Supreme Lord. Until you establish that, until you have that, you will never be satisfied. You can have millions of relationships with the most beautiful people and the most wonderful people or whatever, you still will not have what you really want. Because the soul has a specific need. You can’t substitute something for it, it has a specific need. And that need is to come back to our original loving relationship with the Supreme. So that’s the message of truth. That’s the message of life.
But we spend our whole life in all these other areas trying to find our needed happiness. We never have that. You’re only going to have that when you recognize what you need and pursue that, cultivate that.
And the message of the world today is exactly the opposite. So you can’t follow the influence of the world and hope to be happy, it’s impossible.
But again, let’s say we’re excellent students and we’ve accepted these things along the way: Ok, that is what I want. How am I going to find it? How am I going to reestablish that relationship? God? What God? I don’t even know if there is God. Some people say there is, some people say there isn’t. And there are so many Gods. There is the Christian God, there is the Buddhist God, the Muslim God, the Hindu God and then all kinds of other ones in between. And every day there’s a new one, like one has just moved in down the block, “Oh, new God has just moved in.” This guy’s walking around, “I’m God.” So which one? It’s very confusing at this point.
We go back to the original message because in that message there is no confusion. There is only one God, there is only one Supreme Person who has many names: Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, Rama, etc., many, many names; All the same person. So it’s not about which God. There’s only one God.
So how do we establish again some relationship? How do we know about this Person? God has contained all of that confidential information in the Vedic scriptures, especially Bhagavad-gita, Shrimad-Bhagavatam. That information is there. And God’s representatives, our great masters, they have full knowledge that they will pass on free. Maybe you don’t know a person, but if you meet someone who’s very close friend of that person, you can begin to know that person.
Let’s say there is a famous movie actor. You know about this person because you’ve seen him in some movie; you don’t personally know him. But you meet his close friend and this close friend begins to tell you about the person, not the movie character but the real person. And you begin to get to know him by hearing about him. And ultimately this friend can introduce you to this person. Why? Because there is a connection there, now you are connected.
So the Supreme Lord is represented by His pure devotees who know Him, who bring His message to us and who ultimately can introduce us to Him.
You can understand. This is very practical. Spiritual life is very practical. And along the way the more you are hearing and following the guidance of these perfect masters, the relationship begins to develop.
Now, in this message that we are following, it will be very clearly stated that if you really want to be successful here, you should chant these mantras. These are names of the Supreme Lord. They are fully endowed with spiritual potency. You come in contact with this sound vibration – you will be spiritually purified. These mantras put us directly in contact with the Supreme Person.
There are all kinds of spiritual practices, activities, meditations, philosophies, etc. But we have a special time period now. It’s called Kali yuga. There are different time periods in the material creation. They are not all equal. The conditions are not always the same, they are very different.
Just like in our material world there are different seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall. The conditions are different in each one. They influence us in certain ways. When it’s winter and it’s cold, we wear very big, warm clothes. When it’s summer and it’s very hot, you wear very cool clothes because we’re influenced to act in that way.
So now we’re in this Kali yuga, which is the most degraded of the four yugas which are rotating. There are four yugas rotating like the seasons rotate. They go from an exalted, basically perfect, time – the Satya yuga, where people live very, very long lives; that yuga lasts a very, very long time, people are very spiritually advanced, and opulence is present everywhere – to the Kali yuga, which is the lowest, or the bottom, of the four, the most imperfect, and all of those things are opposite. It’s the age of quarrel, chaos and confusion, the age of non-harmony, everybody’s in conflict. We’re in conflict within ourselves, we don’t even know who we are, we don’t know what we’re supposed to do with our life. We are confused. And it extends from there to everywhere.
Right now on the planet there are so many big open conflicts going on. Every day there’s a new one. Kali yuga: a tough, tough time. But we have the same need. The same spirit soul needs the same happiness. But now it’s harder than ever to find it; spiritual life doesn’t exist basically. If it does, it’s just in some «religiosity.» Real spiritual life is very rare.
So in our message that we’re following to find the solution, we get the idea. So, here is the message. This is Kali yuga. You’re living in Kali yuga. You have many handicaps just because you’re born in Kali yuga. Number one, you don’t live very long. Your life is very short. In Kali yuga the average «designated» life span is 100 years. Basically, nobody lives 100 years, a few people here and there, and if they do, they are not in a very good shape, “Yes, I’m 100 today. I made it.” Most people say, “God, I hope I don’t live to be a 100. I can’t stand it as it is.” Now it’s basically half of that for many people. So we don’t have much time. This is the point. To achieve our spiritual realization, we don’t have much time.
And we have many handicaps. Diseases everywhere, we suffer from so many diseases: the cancers, the heart attacks, the liver problems, on and on it goes; so many diseases that we’re dealing with. Everybody’s on some kind of pills. Right downstairs there is a pharmacy. You go there any time, there is a line of people buying something, «I need this, I need that. I got some stronger ones. I’ve tried these, they were not strong enough.» Disease is a big problem.
And we are very physically weak. We’re not very strong, we’re frail, fragile. That is a handicap. It takes so much of our attention; we are dealing with this handicap.
Even worse than that, we are very weak psychically. Psychic weakness is everywhere. Even the sane people are very, very fragile, dealing with some psychic stuff: impressions, anxieties, fear. I remember speaking with this one lady and she said:
– Oh, I am so afraid.
– What are you afraid of?
– I don’t know! I’m just afraid.
It’s like that, “I do not know.” So we’ve got so much psychic stuff going on. You go to talk to somebody and he’s looking at you like this, “What? Nothing’s wrong with me! I’m all right.” And it’s not making fun of people who have these problems; it’s the sad thing but it’s reality. This is what we’re dealing with.
So we have so many handicaps. Our memory is so short, we cannot remember anything. I fly to a lot of countries and when I arrive at the airport (there are famous ones in Canada, in London), I go up and meet Mr. Customs man, Mr. Immigration. He looks at me, “Look at this camera.” Then he says, “Where did you just come from?” And I can’t remember, “Umm… Oh, I remember! I came from Moscow.” It doesn’t look very good for the customs men! So I’ve memorized it, I got a little card here:
– Where did you come from?
– Moscow!
– Ok.
Very quick.
Memory’s very short. So we’re dealing with a lot of handicaps. So what does it mean? We need a spiritual process that is very unique for this yuga. We need a process that’s very easy. We’re not spiritually capable at all. It has to be very easy. It has to be very strong because the influences, the material influences, the material disease, if you will, are very powerful.
We need something very strong. Big disease – big medicine. We need big medicine. We need something that works very quickly (we don’t have much time), very strong, very easy, and it has to be something that we can remember. We can’t memorize the whole bunch of stuff.
That means the process of spiritual realization in this age is very age-specific. In each of the four yugas there is a specific process designed by and given by God. Man does not create any of this stuff. Some guy says, “Oh, I’ve created a new religion.” Run away from that guy, he is crazy.
No, God designs everything perfectly. So He knows the Kali yuga, He knows us, He knows our needs, He knows our problems, He knows we want to be happy, He knows what will make us happy and He knows how to achieve it.
So what did He give us? Mantra meditation. Very, very simple. Mantra meditation is the process for the Kali yuga. Yes, there is all kind of other stuff you can do. Absolutely, you can do it. But it doesn’t have that potency, it’s not for this time.
500 years ago the Supreme Lord appeared to confirm this, to take away all doubt and speculation. He appeared in Nabadwip, India. That Personality, that incarnation is Lord GAURANGA, also known as Lord Chaitanya.
And when we chant GAURANGA, this is what we’re doing: we’re repeating the name of the latest incarnation of the Supreme Lord who appeared on our planet. He came to bring us this technique. The technique was present before He appeared, but nobody paid attention.
He came and He said, “Look, this is what you should do.” And He did it Himself. He came as the perfect example. God Himself came to show us what to do, just like the perfect teacher will show the student how to do something. He knows how to do it Himself but he shows the student how to do it.
So Lord GAURANGA came and spent the whole time He was on this planet teaching people this truth: chant these mantras, chant the Holy Names – Hare nama. Nama means name, Hare means God. Hare nama – chant the Names of God.
For this age this is what we are instructed to do if we want to be successful. This is God’s gift. He said, “Look, it is so simple but so potent.” It’s so potent and so wonderful that He Himself did it and experienced wonderful ecstasy. He did it for Himself to experience that wonder, and He did it to convince us that this is the method, this is the secret.
If you want to solve the problem of life which is how to be happy, this is how. You establish that loving relationship with the Supreme Lord. When you leave your body, that relationship is there, that loving connection is there, and you go back to the spiritual world. That’s the goal. You’ve achieved it, now you’re successful, now your life has been successful. You’ve got the answer right, you corrected the mistake. You solved the problem under the guidance of the Teacher. Now you have it all correct and this Supreme Teacher says, “Passed. Excellent. ‘A’ Number one. Come back. Now you are qualified.”
So that’s the message we should receive, read and apply to our life.
Thank you very much.
_____________________________________________________
Next post – 1. PLAYING AN OPOSSUM