HH KKS: …It says if you follow that system of yoga then in due course of time there will be a change of consciousness ,a change of perception and then one will able to directly perceive God face to face ….not as a philosophical idea …but directly, directly experience. Now you might like say yeah well ok interesting ..interesting but, you know, there are ermmm…there are homes for people who are seeing all kinds of things…right?! ….. and, you know, when they start seeing too many things then you usually call that number ( crowd laughs)… and there is a vehicle coming to …take them away! Like that, so….It’s all good and well, surely there are many people who have realised they are Napoleon and there are many that have realised that they are Jesus Christ ….whenever you go into some insane asylum there’s always a few Jesus Christs there at any time ( crowd laughs)…right, Simon says may the real Jesus stand up , it gets confusing it is like a TV programme …who is the real one?…None of them …we are afraid. It is all imaginary , it is a side of madness… so if through a process followed in the Bhagavad Gita, a process of Yoga, one can directly perceive God …ok then how do we know it is not a halluctionation? How do we know it is not just an artificial state of mind? How do we know it is not just some sort of madness ?…It is a good question to ask …well….. Let us compare the state of consciousness that is described of the person who has followed the yoga system and then get the direct experience of God and his symptoms and let us compare those with the symptoms of one who is in a psychosis and see if it resembles a psychosis.
Any psychosis is subjected to both manic and depressive periods, right, there is a moment when the psychotic person, he is all powerful….. He has now just realised that he is the one who has been sent and empowered to save the world from an invasion of the martians and the martians are here and he is the only one who knows and he will now save the earth and the martians have just landed in a space ship which is very sinister and disguised like this piece of furniture …you may think, right, it is an ordinary piece of furniture but I am telling you it is a space ship from mars …bring the matches, act casual..bring the matches….we have to burn it, ….quickly…act normal act normal …. bring some matches, a little carousine and we will fix up these fellows with antennas …So generally speaking we see in the manic period the person is very powerful in his psychosis but then he goes into another state , into a stage of depression , stage of paranoia , a stage of fear , he is getting totally overwhelmed now the martians are still not gone although the thing is burnt they appear through the walls and the martians are now manifesting on his hands and he is very tense and he smokes cigarettes and he burns that martian face..stsshhh…and he does it again…stshhhh…. …..
I actually saw someone like that who was burning the devil out of his body and then on the burns on his hand he then said “That’s the face of the devil” and then he burned it again..Oh my God …………….So psychosis is not a funny thing ….psychosis is a very sad state of consciousness where there is intense suffering ..oh yes sometimes they laugh like anything, the crazies, but other times it is not just fun but there are times when it is just deep deep suffering: so up and down ..very extreme in pychosis..very extreme …So what is the consciousness of one who is perfecting the yoga………..( inaudible recording for a minute)………………..look at them,some people burn candles in a church or saintly personalities…and what is the descriptions of these saintly personalities ? That they are always peaceful and always inspired and so on………..same here…we see some similarities with different traditions in the world , describing a certain type of consciousness in those that are self realised ……….. So if it an artificial state of consciousness it doesn’t resemble the symptoms of pychosis at all …so that makes it a little difficult , if it was artificial, fellowships should snap out of it every once in a while and just lose it…but that is not the case …
.so in this way we are seeing circumstantial evidence which is supportive of the knowledge of Bhagavada Gita and which may not be sufficient to completely convince the toughest agnostic that we may encounter but for a person who is open minded may say “ Well, well an indication , that might be worth an experiment “…………After all is that not modern science…you have an idea , you have a theory and then well I’ll take it to the laboratory and start mixing things, then start…get some cultures there and see what grows in the laboratory and then do a few tests and see what happens and when the tests seem to indicate that the theory is correct .Ah Ha!...Then we can present a paper or even possibly get a grant for the further research …Ooh hoo hoo! And..the whole academic world functions on that …Grants, big grants…Grants grants!s Give me a couple of grants! Like that…………..so isn’t that the way we operate…therefore Bhagavad Gita is a very interesting scripture, it is indeed worth an investigation and we became impressed by it …obviously or otherwise why would we sit here today…in oriental robes right, or in Vedic robes rather, traditional Vedic robes…………..
We became at one point so impressed by it that we decided “Yes we will stand for this”…..of course nowadays , the Hare Krishna movement …not everyone walks around like me …Sometimes people say …we never see you guys anymore ….No no wonder, because once there was a time when every Hare Krishna was twenty years old and walking around in the pink dress because everyone was unmarried and pink robes for celibates …but then most got married and sometimes on a friday programme they dress up in a costume but most of the time they really don’t and most of them have jobs and kids as we are having here and a family father here….how many kids do you have ? Three kids and how old are they? Fifteen, twelve and nine hey …and what do you do for a living?... Works in a bank.(The devotee speaks and explains to the university crowd about his Krishna conscious life)
So he has followed the Bhagavad gita in his life for many years and finds that yeah following the process gives the change of consciousness, he may not have gone to the highest levels of perfection but who gets great inspiration following knowledge of spiritual depth ….so what do we want actually? Why are we here? Let me just end with that.
The thing that we really want is to …two things…one is we want to get out of the image of being extra terrestrials…… oddballs , we like to be accepted as people who are genuine who are following a certain culture with values , who have their convictions, their beliefs..etc who are ready to accept that others have other beliefs but at the same time that feel that they have a positive contribution to make to the world, and this is what we want to offer…a positive contribution to the world …we think that if everyone would find a little more satisfaction internally instead of looking so much for satisfaction outside himself by getting the latest of the latest state of the art at a high price ….instead of looking outside ourselves…if we look within and find some satisfaction there, that will improve life a lot ….for the rest life goes on……..He told me that a couple of days ago in the bank he pushed by mistake the alarm button and the metal shutters within just seconds …Whooosh …flew up….I wish I could have seen it because I always wanted to, it’s interesting to hear about that….I always wondered what happens in a bank when they push the alarm button….now I know there are metal shutters that …Whoosh…. fly up in front of the counters ….So it is not that life becomes very dry but one no longer needs to get zonked, as they say in Australia I think …because one finds another type of satisfaction ….so spirituality has a place in life and without there is emptiness …we has to be filled with something else …If there is no spirituality in our life then we must fill it with material things and if there is spirituality we can easily without so much materialism …..
So that way I think that…sometimes it is said that the east is the lame and the west is the blind and when the lame and the blind combine then we get the perfect situation . so lame in the sense the east materially speaking is just not happening and in the west there is just no time to think in life, we are too busy , too caught up from morning to night and then when you come home, no more energy left …just push on that button and look at that thing ….because there is no energy after a whole days work so in this way we are seeing that if we want to actually conquer stress and anxiety…the secret of how to conquer stress and anxiety and the true secret is by following a process of yoga and reconnecting with our spiritual origin, the Supreme Lord and understanding our eternal nature…..then we get peace within ….and when there is peace within then one has a natural strength to deal with all the anxieties of the world….. ….. the more one becomes elevated spiritually the less one becomes effected …(More in part6(last part))
