Question 1. Why is our spiritual personality, the spirit soul, subordinate to God though it should be equal to Him?
Answer: Yes, that’s what keeps us in this world. That’s why we are here, that’s why we stay here. We want to be God. We refuse to accept the reality of our position. So we come here and want to play God. There is a perfect arrangement that the Supreme Lord has, but we don’t like that arrangement. So therefore we have branched out on our own and that creates our problem.
We are equal in quality, but not in quantity. We have the same quality as God, but in minute quantity. His position is the Supreme; my position is the servant of the Supreme, but loving servant, not servitude.
As you become more purified, you will begin to appreciate your position.
Question 2. What investment in developing of yoga, at least material, can we do?
Answer: Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure I know what you want to know, but I will answer something.
The process of yoga actually includes hatha yoga for the body, so certainly it’s good to do that, and then these mantras. They purify the heart and the mind. As I said, they connect us with God. Study this philosophy, understand these teachings. There’s a lot incorporated in the yoga lifestyle. I don’t have time to go into it now.
Question 3. What is the right attitude towards everything that happens to a person: the manifestations of maya (the illusory energy), distress and happiness, people’s actions, etc.?
Answer: Well, everything is a result of our previous actions. So our karma is unfolding all the time and as we engage in material activities we are creating future results. That is the whole idea: you have to transcend this world of karmic reactions, maya (illusion). And by studying, learning and practicing the process of Bhakti yoga you can do it.
Question 4. I’ve heard in one lecture that a woman should create a spiritual atmosphere at home: music, incense, icons of saints, altar, consecrated food. I feel it’s right. The problem is that I live with my husband and his family of six people; they are all atheists who don’t need any middleman. How to behave and how to help them?
Answer: Oh, yes, you are right; this is the ideal for a woman to create such an atmosphere in the home but in your case you can’t do that, you know it. So you do the best you can. If you can make it somehow so they hear these transcendental sounds that will help them. Don’t try to force them, don’t try to preach to them or convert them. Just go about your practice quietly and as you see an opportunity to bring transcendental sound into their life or food that has been offered to God which they can eat, this will help them and you’ll be doing your duty. So just do the best you can in the situation you are in.
Question 5. How does your teaching stand towards the Christianity?
Answer: You know, there’s a real big misunderstanding everywhere that somehow this teaching is different than the teaching of Lord Jesus Christ.
When I talk about Christianity I’m not talking about the church and the rituals, and the differences in the different Christian faith and all that. True Christianity is the teaching of Jesus, he taught Bhakti yoga. Bhakti yoga means loving devotion to God, uniting our will with God’s will. What did Lord Jesus Christ say? “Not my will but Thy will be done.” He was a pure example of one who has surrendered to God, lived for God, was a messenger for God and eternal servant of God who taught love for God. That is Bhakti yoga, so where is the difference here?
Lord Jesus Christ said the name of God is hallowed, spiritual, sacred. We say the same. The name of God is pure, sacred, purifies you; chant the names of God. That is how you praise the Lord: you praise the Lord by singing His names.
So I don’t know what all these arguments are, “Oh, you guys are doing something different.” We are not doing anything different, we are following Bhakti yoga. Lord Jesus Christ taught Bhakti yoga. Union with God in love is the message.
Question 6. What religion do you preach? What language does the preacher speak?
Answer: This is Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion of the soul.
There is only one religion. We think there are all these religions but there is only one religion. There are a lot of faiths and philosophies but religion means doing the will of God, that is religion. ‘Religion’ means ‘loving God,’ that is the meaning of the word.
Sanatana Dharma is the eternal religion of the soul. All these temporary religions, you can change them all the time. The Hindu can become a Muslim, the Muslim can become a Christian, the Christian can become a Buddhist. This lifetime you are born in Russia, Ukraine, you are Orthodox; next lifetime you are born in Palestine, you are Muslim. This is not religion in its truest sense.
Religion is the eternal occupational duty of the soul. The eternal occupational duty of the soul is loving service to God. That never changes. You can call yourself a Muslim, a Christian, an atheist, a Satanist, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself, you still have the same occupational duty, you are just not fulfilling it. So what we are teaching is Sanatana Dharma.
I don’t know what you mean by “what language do I speak?” I am speaking in English. I would think people know that.
Question 7. How to get rid of epileptic seizures: to chant mantras or practice physical yoga?
Answer: Well, I would suggest you do both. But I’m not going to tell you it’s going to make it so that you will never have another epileptic seizure. Certainly, it will help. It will help in many ways. The mantras will help far beyond the body; they will help you, the spirit soul. But I’m not going to sit here and tell you that if you do this, you will never have another epileptic seizure. That is probably not true, if it works like that – fantastic.
Question 8. How intuition is connected with God? How to use it in practice?
Answer: Let’s say there are different levels of intuition. One would be the intuition of just common sense; it would to be on the material level. But another could be, hopefully would be, the Lord in your heart is speaking to you, He is giving you that feeling so you act according to that. But when the heart is contaminated, we can always think that what we feel in our heart is God’s message because it’s all kind of contamination. If our feeling coincides with or agrees with the teachings of the Supreme Lord and His representative, then yes, that is good. So do not just operate solely on intuition. That’s why we have scripture, that’s why we have a spiritual master.
Question 9. There are more and more drugstores in the city. If the body is sick, where the strength of the spirit would come from?
Answer: Again, I’m not sure exactly what you are asking. But when we have a weak body and a weak mind, it is hard for us to function. That is why the yoga system keeps the body and the mind healthy. On Friday night I gave a lecture in Yalta on yoga food. I talked a lot about diet: physical diet and mental diet.
The society we live in now makes it so we are very unhealthy and, like you said, more and more drugstores, drugs are chosen as the solution, “This is the solution,” because we don’t harmonize with God’s plan for us. So we play God, we create junk food, determine what we want to eat, what we want to think, we pollute ourselves by our lifestyle choices because we don’t know who we are. Remember? Back to the lecture, we are lost, we are completely lost, we have no idea what to do in any category, really. The scientists have created all these solutions: more pills, live a completely wrong lifestyle, get sick and take a lot of pills. But the yoga philosophy is: change your life so you can be healthy physically, mentally and spiritually. Then you don’t even know what a drugstore looks like inside and if you do, it’s very rare.
Question 10. Is there meaning in person’s life?
Answer: That depends on what you do with your life. If you are just living a life of material pleasure, sense enjoyment, trying to find material pleasure and avoid pain, then there’s no sense. That’s why people commit suicide. What’s the point? But if you have listened to what I’ve said today, you can see that the meaning of the human form of life is to reestablish your lost relationship with God, enter into His loving service. Then your life has real meaning.
Question 11. How can I repay you?
Answer: Thank you very much. You can repay me by applying these teachings to your life. This is the highest payment, if you will. If you just take this sincerely into your life, that is real payment.
Question 12. Why can’t a person eat animal-based food: meat, eggs, butter, etc.?
Answer: You can do whatever you want because God gives you eternal free will. Nobody says you can’t eat meat, but you should understand that if you do, there will be certain repercussions from that.
God has designed our bodies in a certain way, to have a certain food. For humans it’s a vegetarian diet. Butter is ok, but in great moderation, not a lot. But you choose. If you want all the karma and all the health problems, etc., from eating meat, it’s your choice. Nobody is going to stop you. But if you want to avoid that, then you will follow God’s instruction and He says, “Do not do that.” He also says when you do eat vegetables, fruits, etc., offer it to Me. He will not accept meat, He will not accept fish, He will not accept eggs.
So you choose. Do you want to do what God wants you to do? He said, “This is the diet for you. This is what you should do. This is how you should offer it.” You can choose, “Ok, I will do that” or “I will not do that.” It is your choice.
Question 13. What is the function of male and female in the Universe?
Answer: Yes, souls in male bodies have certain functions and souls in female bodies have other functions. We talk about humans now. In a male-female relationship the male’s function is to protect the wife, provide for the wife, guide the wife. And in the correct relationship and correct consciousness the man is the spiritual guide for the wife and the children. He provides, he protects, he takes care of and he leads spiritually. And the woman has her duties: to take care of the home, the kids, to follow and help the husband.
But they both have to be on a qualified level, I’m talking ideal scenario. Alcoholic husband is not qualified for anything. That is the problem in the world today: people don’t even know who they are, how are they going to perform their duties? Everybody is seeing the other one as an object of pleasure. All this conflict and fighting and divorcing comes with false identification. The ideal and the reality today are quite far apart and, of course, now in modern society the women don’t like that role that I have just described, etc., etc.
Everything is completely what we want to do. God has a perfect plan, “Ok, this is how it should be.” We throw it away, it’s old-fashioned, it’s restrictive, that’s not what we want to do, we’re not going to do that. So we don’t and we have more divorces and more unwed mothers, problems we’ve never had before. You can see the fruit of trying to play God: I make my own rules, I know what I want to do, don’t tell me. So God just keeps quiet, “Ok, you don’t want to listen – fine. But you will pay the price.” So we are, all over the world.
Question 14. If the material body is not so important, then why do we go to the cemetery?
Answer: Not everybody goes to the cemetery. That is a tradition that people have and it’s usually based on the idea: I am the body, in that grave is my mum or my dad, or whoever may be there. So we will go there and we will bring flowers and it’s respect, of course. But really a person in full knowledge knows that a person I loved has gone to another life somewhere and if I do anything, I actually pray in my heart for their well-being wherever they are now because they are not here. But if a person wants to go to the cemetery and to take care of the graves, bring flowers, remember their loved ones, it’s all right. But the more you realize the truth, then you might change your view on this subject. But we respect everybody. If that is what people want to do – we respect this.
Question 15. How to find the philosophy itself? Does it exist in the real world, in the world where we exist?
Answer: It exists in the world where we live now if you practice it, if you do it. You are not going to find it everywhere because very few people are doing this – but you can do it. It’s not like you go and join some group, “Oh, it is here.” People who follow this may gather together on a very regular basis and chant the mantras, study the philosophy, organize gatherings like this. But it doesn’t mean you join somewhere; people of like mind always find each other.
Question 16. What would you recommend to a person who has no purpose in life?
Answer: Learn what I have been saying, actually accept this, understand this. Your purpose in life is to reestablish your relationship with God, that’s your purpose in life. If you start to do this, you’ll have a reason to get up in the morning. If you love someone, you have a reason to live.
People may get in some earthquake or some war, or they are down under some rubble in the earthquake and their reason to live is because they have got a wife and children, and they want to see them. So they hang on, they do amazing things to survive because they are living for the ones they love. If not, they give up long ago.
When God is the person that you are living for, you have a real purpose in life, eternally. But all this material stuff is like… for what? That is the only solution. I mean that is the only real purpose in life.
Question 17. How to move from the material body into the mental body? Does ‘the red pill’ exist?
Answer: I think you are referring to astral travel, something of this nature. Really, there is no value here. But you can do it; there are different yoga techniques that make it so that you can leave your body. You can even do it through different drugs. But there is no value here. For you, the soul, it’s actually negative, it distracts you. It can be very dangerous, you can get stuck in that mental realm, most people are stuck there anyway. We live in our minds; our minds just control us completely. Even when we go to sleep at night: the body lies down, it goes to sleep; the mind goes on. No, what we have to do is move into the realm of spirit. Again, back to the truth: the mantras, they will take us into these levels of spiritual existence. So don’t set some goal that you are trying to achieve – there is no value. You work, you do it and … why?
Our teachers, our scriptures like Bhagavad-gita, they don’t teach this. You have to decide who and what you are going to follow, what you are going to try to achieve. I’m just trying to make you aware of some things, you have to decide. You read a book or go to another lecture and some person says, “You should do astral travelling.” Then you have to decide, “Ok, I’m going to do this.” And you can, of course, but that is not going to make you happy. I can tell you, that’s not going to help you at the time of death.
_____________________________________________________
Next post – RIGHT CONSCIOUSNESS (VIDEO)