E2 - The Gita- The Basics You Need To Know

Good morning, friends. Hello, everybody. Hello, Lou. Hello, Dr. I'm looking forward to today's session. I think we spoke last week about how many people across the world have benefited from the teachings of the Gita and the Vedanta and Upanishads and I promised you today that we were going to continue with some of the basics that we must know before we can actually get into a study of the Gita. I told you that this is not a religious text. Many people get scared when they think of anybody talking about religion and this is more of a way of living life and dealing with other human beings ourselves, our emotions and the world around us. I can tell you myself that I myself have benefited tremendously from it. Others, my patients, my friends, my family members have also benefited from it from whatever I could tell them. I am yet a kindergartener in these studies. The person who actually introduced me to this was Shri Gautam Jain who is a student of Swami Parthasarthi and it was my wife Lalita who introduced me to Gautam Jain because she had gone to a temple as I said, heard him the first time, came back, told me about it and said for my sake go at least once if you don't like it, don't go again and I said all right I'll go and I went and it's changed my life and I'm hoping that I can transfer some of that to the rest of you whoever listens. So the first thing today of this session is to entitled the basics that you must know about. Most of you might know this already but I think that before we go any further the Gita is very careful about telling us how to lead our lives and in order to lead our life we must know what we are. So you buy a car, you buy a VCR, you buy a anything TV, it comes with a manual, an instruction manual. Yet when you are born, your children are born doesn't come with a manual. So you have no idea what you're doing. Learn as you go. It's learned as you go and most of us don't know. So the ancients used to say that when you're born you're born basically like an animal. It's only when you get to be about 10, 11, 12 whatever time your intellect starts to be properly trained is when you become a real human being and that point was celebrated in cultures across the world as a turning point where you become a real human being. It was known in India, the Hindus celebrated by wearing then a thread and it's known as a genoa ceremony. It's known also celebrated as bar mitzvah or the born again phenomenon or bot mitzvah or various other things and various religions and cultures. Now what has happened at that time? What happens? So we understand and most of you might know this but there's at least two things that I'm going to tell you right now that many of you, most of you don't know. So the Gita basically teaches us that we are composed of body and matter. Sorry, body and spirit or spirit and matter. So we as a body have a few things inside the body which is our five senses. We all know about those five senses, right? Eyes for sight, nose for smell, ears, taste and touch, skin for touch. Correspondingly nature has made sense objects on the outside which when the sense objects come in contact with there's pleasure or displeasure. So those are the five sense objects and we're going to talk a little bit more about that to say what exactly they do but understand that when a sense object comes in contact with a sense organ there is immediate pleasure. The tongue comes across something sweet. Right. It says wow. That's amazing. The smell, nose, you smell something that's really nice and you say it's great. You listen to some great music, you love it. The more sense organs that are titillated at the same time, the more the pleasure. Interesting. So if I'm to listen to some nice music with my eyes closed, you get a pleasure from it. This is great. Right. When I'm looking at something without any sound, this is great. But if you combine the two together, if you're listening to a song, excuse me, if you're listening to some music on the radio, it gives you one kind of pleasure. Same music on a TV screen where it's a music video. Right. Because you double the pleasure because you're seeing something and you're listening. So the more sense organs and sense or objects that come together at any given time, the more the pleasure, the body and the mind gets. Makes sense. In the scriptures, the Gita Vedanta, don't forget these were written thousands of years ago. They said that they symbolized woman as the maximum number of senses that are being titillated, stimulated at the same time. They said that all five senses are stimulated at the same time, including one's mind. Right. And that starts at a very young age when the child is a baby. The mother is a woman, true. And so the child has the sense of taste, which is the milk that he gets from his mother, the sense of smell. He smells his mother. Here's his mother going to him, talking gently to him. He touches his mother's skin. All of these senses plus the thought that as the mother is caressing him, her, the baby is just in heaven. Right. So all five senses are being affected by woman. And this continues throughout one's life where a woman, in case of a woman, a man, represents all five senses being stimulated at the same time. Plus the mind, if you're really interested in what this person has. So all six senses, those are the sense objects. I think sense organs and sense objects that I think most of us already know. What I didn't know is that the ancients in the scriptures talked about five organs of action that we did. I didn't know organs of action. Yeah, most people don't know this. Right. So you say, what are the organs of action that our body has in this very, very important in as we go forward with our life? This is why these basics are very important to know. Five organs of action are hands and arms to reach out and hold something. Sure. Legs to emulate to walk. Right. Um, organs of excretion, urination and defecation. The voice box to speak. Yes. That's an organ of action because you're acting by talking, shouting, saying something to somebody. And the last one, the fifth one is organs of reproduction. Okay. So imagine that one is a baby, a child. You have a child. You look at the child. Initially, all it does is when it is, um, hungry or cold or the diapers wet, it uses its voice box to just scream. Right. And shout. And the mother comes and says, what's wrong? What's wrong? It opens the diaper, changes it. When the child is able to be a little bit older, first action is his hands, reaches out, touches anything to his mouth. Yeah. It puts it to his mouth. Everything goes in the mouth. Because that is the sense, right? Organ that he knows off at the time, or she knows off, says everything he looks to taste it. He doesn't know that a block of wood doesn't taste good, but puts it to his mouth. So the first organ of action, second of organ action, which is the voice box, calling for his mother, second is his arms, third is his legs. And he starts to crawl. Right. He says, well, listen, if my mother won't come to me, if that wooden block won't come to me, I'm going to go to it. Right. So he starts crawling towards anything that looks attractive, picks it up, puts it in his mouth. And so it's the legs that carry him to someplace else. So that's the third organ of action. Then his voice box starts to learn how to speak. Right. Mom, milk, water, you know, pacifier, whatever it is that he starts asking for. Now he learns to train his voice box to ask for things that his sense organs are looking for. And it's communicative, as opposed to stimulus. Right. Yeah. So and the fourth one is organs of excretion. Now he starts, you know, he's urinating in his diaper. He's defecating in his diaper. Mom comes and changes it. But after a certain point, the mom says, listen, we got to train you can't do this here. You got to go to the bathroom. So he learns to control that. So he's now learned to control his fourth organ of action. Organs of reproduction are not yet mature at this stage. He cannot do anything. Neither can the little baby girl. Those come after adolescence and puberty. So those are connected very much with the mind and the intellect. And I'll get to that. Right. So the next thing after the body, the body, now we spoke about the five organs of action, five organs of sensory organs. After that comes the mind. Now the mind is really the villain in this story. Really? The mind is the villain. Yeah. The mind all it does is ask for things. It asks all it does is I want. I want. I want. I want. It says, I'm afraid of this. I love this. I dislike this. I don't like this. I want or I don't want. I don't want this. I want this. Right. And in Sanskrit, that's known as Raga and Dwaycha. I want and this one. Raga and Dwaycha. Those words come up a lot. The emotions, desires constantly demanding. It is the mind is insatiable. So the mind is compared. All of these things are symbolically represented by the ancient Sanskrit scriptures. So the mind is represented as fire. Because fire is insatiable. Okay. Yes. You just imagine that there's a fire. You say, okay, listen, you must be hungry. Here's some wood. Right. The wood gets burned. Fire says, I'm still burning. Give me more. Right. And as long as you keep feeding it, it keeps asking for more. It's only when you stop feeding it, anything to burn, it's the fire dies away. Right. Same thing with the mind. It is oblivious. The mind is oblivious to consequences. It doesn't think twice. It says, I want this. I want to do it and the heck with you. Right. Above that really is the intellect. Right. Now the intellect is not something that we have when we are born. It is trained over the first five, ten years of one's life. And that's when when the intellect gets to be in complete command of the mind and the body is when one is thought to be a human being, the second birth, the janeo. Right. The varmits were the batmits were an in Christianity. It is something else where the person becomes a person. Now he's okay. Now I'm celebrating that you're now your intellect has completely grown. How does that intellect gets born stimulated throughout the child's life. One is hoping and assuming that he has elders, mother, father, grandparents, school, church, temple, mosque. Right. Where he is trained to say, this is good. This is not good. You should do this. You shouldn't do this. This is right. This is not right. And as that right and wrong develops the intellect of the human being says, okay, now I know what I should be doing, what I shouldn't be doing. And we hope that it becomes a solid fixture in his mind. Right. And that that intellect then controls the mind and the body. That's the important part. When the intellect takes over control of the instinctual body. Right. Yeah. So the intellect is really the most powerful part of these three organs, the intellect, the mind and the brain. The intellect should be saying to the mind, you can't do that. Intellect saying to the body, don't listen to the mind. I know it says do this, but you're not going to do it. Right. Not going to do it. That's an important part. Most of us have never been taught that we have a certain feature within us, which is the intellect that should be saying, don't do it. Do it. This is right. This is wrong. We just go along with whatever the mind wants. So we're not taught that it's separate from the mind. We're taught, we think it's the same thing. Yes. We're often taught that it's the same thing. You know, in medical school, there's no explanation of this whole concept. So I was taught by Gautam Jain, Swami Parthasarti. This is what they were taught by their studies of the scriptures that human being is the only species that has a fully formed intellect. Some other species might have some remnants or small episodes of an intellect, but it's not really a fully developed intellect. So what does that mean? All other animals are programmed to do what they have to do. If a tiger sees a small little deer, mother and child, and the tiger jumps out from behind the jungle, the mother runs away looking at the baby to say, come on, follow, but the tiger jumps on the baby, mother runs away, the tiger kills and eats the little doe. It says, I'm hungry, I'm programmed to eat it, to feed my own children. The fact that it's somebody else's baby that you're eating right in front of the mother doesn't concern the tiger. There's no moral stuff. But a human being has a gun, lifts it to goes deer hunting, aims it, looks and sees the mother and the child, the human being says, I can shoot somebody else. Let the deer go, let the baby go, I'm going to shoot some other deer, or not shoot the deer at all. It's not my culture kind of thing. That intellectual right or wrong should be developed in all human beings. And the whole one of the main purposes of the Kitah, Vedanta, Upanishads is to strengthen the intellect to get to that point. Right. So we talked about that, oh, reproduction. So then just around the time that we think the intellect is going to be developed, which is around 10, 11, 12, it is when the curve gets thrown, the curveball gets thrown. Yeah. And just at that time is when the reproductive organs start to, I know, the girls going to minarkay, the boys start to get erections and start to find, now comes the intellect where it says the mind is saying, wow, this I'm going to go this way, the body is saying I'm going to go this way. And internally, this is like the master's thesis of developing your intellect. Right. So there are inside us vastness, which is a Sanskrit word for desires, drives. And those vastness come to us and want us to do certain things. The intellect and the mind combines with the vastness and says, I know you're my old partner. Come on, let's do this. The vastness may be for food, for sex, for money, for power, for beauty, all the ones that we already know of that all of us, the world around have. And each one has a separate one. Sure. Many have more than one vastness. Somebody like Medov may just have a desire to accumulate lots and lots and lots of money. And others have a vastness for this beauty and others have a desire for fame or for whatever. Which is why I made up, I'll never say I have enough money because it's not about the amount of money it's about the desire for for it's the vastness and the fulfillment and never gets fulfilled. It's again, the mind and the vastness together is like fire insatiable. The openness should basically use the analogy of a chariot. Now in today's day and age, we could use the analogy of a car. But in those days, there were no cars. Right. They use the analogy of a chariot. And if I had a picture to draw, what I would draw is the chariot with a body. Inside it is the passenger. Right. In the Gita, it's Krishna. And the person driving the chariot is Krishna, who is the God in the Gita. And Krishna is holding the reins of five horses of the chariot. So there's five horses. Interesting number. Five reins. The intellect, which is Krishna, the chariot passenger, which is us. And the chariot itself, which is the body. Right. So the analogy is that it's the five horses that are running forward. The senses always going around the world looking for sense organs. Right. That they can combine with hungry for it. The reins is technically the mind. That when the mind, the reins are tight, the five organs are held tightly in check and said we can't go. But when the reins are loose, the horses can go anywhere. But who keeps the reins tight or lacks? It's the intellect. Krishna. Krishna, which is the intellect. Yes. So the intellect basically keeps the reins the mind in check, holding the five organs in check. Or the intellect is basically asleep at the wheel. The reins are loose. And the sense organs go wherever they want to and the mind goes wherever it wants to. And the poor passenger, us, basically at the whims of the five horses, with the five sense organs. Yes. Very important analogy that we spoke about over here. So what else did I just made some notes for myself? So the intellect we talked about. Now intellect is very different from intelligence. Very, very different. Intelligence is merely an accumulation of information. We go to school, we get information. That's very different from intellect. Right. We get an external source telling us about mathematics, physics, chemistry. Now in Sanskrit, there are its gross intellect and subtle intellect. And the subtle intellect is also known in Sanskrit as Sukshmabuddhi. The subtle, the gross intellect is concerned with things terrestrial, physics, mathematics, money, business, how to negotiate that kind of stuff. If I go off the cliff and then get hurt. Right. Yeah. The subtle intellect, intellect, the Sukshmabuddhi is concerned with things extra terrestrial, beyond spiritual. What we're talking about now. This is the development of the Sukshmabuddhi. Most of us don't stimulate it. We only think about the terrestrial things, business, money matters, negotiating. We don't really haven't given much thought. Even religions basically says, go to a church, light a temple, pray. I hope I get this job. If I get this job, I'll come and give so much money to the church. That's like going in front of the ocean and saying, if you let me swim inside you ocean and I don't drown, this bucket of seawater that I have, I'm going to give it back to you. Makes no sense. Yeah. If there were a God that is like an all-powerful human being to say, I'm going to give you five bananas or fruit or a bucket full of money or gold or silver, it makes no difference. It all belongs to that power. So the Sukshmabuddhi is the one that we have to train to get to that point where it learns more than just what's terrestrial. And the Sukshmabuddhi is what we also know as the conscience. So many times-- So I was going to say, can we attach morality to this? Yes. So it is the Sukshmabuddhi that basically says, I'm the one that's telling you, you do something wrong, even though the intellect, the gross intellect says, yeah, you did fine, you did fine. It's okay. It justifies it. The Sukshmabuddhi says, you didn't do it right. You shouldn't have done that. That's not right. And that keeps pricking away at what we call the conscience. And that's the Sukshmabuddhi. And the more developed your intellect is, the more developed your Sukshmabuddhi is, the subtle intellect, the more it's going to keep bothering oneself. The gross intellect is a consequence of the subtle intellect. Even if there are no consequences to you, they're still right or wrong. Yes. That's right. It's not concerned with the consequences of the world, it's more concerned about the ultimate consequence. The gross intellect will say, nothing's going to bother if you do that. But the subtle intellect says, but it's not right. Or the gross intellect is going to come with justification as to why this was okay to do. Right. So, all right. Now most humans are caught up in the matter. There's a matter, which is what we talked about. And there's a spirit. Because after all, what runs this body? What runs this mind? What runs this intellect? Right now, I have a heart attack and I drop dead. All of this is for naught. What happened when I drop dead? So, going back to the analogy of an instruction manual, imagine that this little toy that I just got from Radio Shack has not working. It says, needs two AA batteries. I take the AA batteries, I put them in, I turn it on and it starts working. What happened? It got started getting some kind of power, electricity, energy, whatever you call it from those two AA batteries. What gives us that power, energy, electricity. What gives it to us is what over the century, since the beginning of mind, is called a different name by different cultures, religions and other things. Many of us recognize that what we have inside us, those AA batteries, that gives us energy, is called, you call it divinity. So, spirit, electricity, so life is used a lot, divinity is used a lot, spirit is used a lot, in Sanskrit and in the Gita and Upanishads, it is called Atma. ATMA or ATMA, Atma or Atman. And that Atma is basically the energy. Now, the battery, the AA batteries in my toy after a while die. What do I do? If it's a rechargeable battery, I take it out, I plug into a larger source of electricity or energy, a battery charger or electricity to plug it into the wall, gets recharge, I put it back in the thing. So, there's a larger source of energy and a smaller source in the AA battery. Same thing with us. Our Atma is a small part of divinity when the larger part is elsewhere. Because after all you say to yourself, well, this is a small piece of energy within this small individual here. Right. What about that elephant there? What about that big, you know, whatever, that has life in it, tree, oak tree, whatever. Everything that moves has life is what we are taught. Right. Everything. So, that means that there is energy, the same energy that is in us, is elsewhere too, a larger source. And that's really where we would be charging it. So, we all. Is this larger source distributed among living beings or is there a separate source somewhere? So, there is an unending supply of this larger force. It's not just, you know, it's not like a pie that you cut it into say, okay, this much for this mosquito, which has life in it, this much for this elephant, bigger life. It's unending. It's everywhere. It's immovable. The thing about it is that when we've all seen that various cultures and religions say that when we die, we go to meet our maker. Right. So, essentially, that atman then joins up with this larger field, which is known as Brahman. Now, Brahman, with the M-A-N at the end, is the term that in Sanskrit and Gita Vedanta is used for the force outside. It is different from Brahmin, which is M-I-N, which is the term that I talked about, I talked about Blake and the Boston Brahmins. Brahmin is a person that is serene, equitable, etc. And Brahman is a name of a god that is concerned with birth and generation. So, the source of it is different. Brahman is life, conscience, consciousness and source of our spirit. Sorry. No. It's funny to bring up consciousness because my personal pet theory is collective consciousness. I believe in collective consciousness. Right. So, we will be talking about that. So, the other thing that we have to know is that we can source and we can pursue two different aspects of our life. Basically, one is to say, you know what? I don't want to pursue this. I'd rather be going where my five horses, my five sense organs and my mind takes me. Because after all, if I just keep eating donuts, which I love, if I keep eating food, which I love, if I keep drinking, I love it. This is great. I can pursue that. The consequences as one goes on through life are very negative and poor. Yes. Because the more you indulge, we've seen this, right? Epstein that just committed suicide. He indulged in whatever his vastness and his mind was telling him to do it. And where did he end up? Big trouble. He may have made a lot of money, but he ruined a lot of lives and in the end his life was ruined. We can give you countless examples of when you pursue that, it ends up in trouble most of the time, all the time. And we can include this as once and not once because if you avoid things that you need because you don't want to indulge in them, that can lead that leads to consequences as well. So, you have the desire to do something and you say, no, it's not the right thing. I'm going to pull back. I'm going to do what is right. My intellect tells me this is not right. You pursue what is right. And the immediate effect is this pleasure, right? But the long term effect is pleasure. So, as Gotam Jen or Swami Parthasarti would say, if you're given a choice of two roads and you can see the two roads from here to the next 15 feet and it says one is rough and all filled with stones and gravel and the other is smooth and nice. Which one would you pick? The most people would say, well, I'll pick the one that's smooth and paved. But what they should be saying is, well, what happens after the 15 feet that I can't see? Yes. Well, after 15 feet that you can't see, good question. The one that is rocky and pebbly turns into a nice smooth paved road and this one has all thorns and stones on it for the rest of eternity. So, basically what you're saying is, if you lead a life that says, I've got to take care of my body because my body is my chariot, I need to take care of it. I need to exercise. I need to eat good food. I need to have nutritious food, no junk or garbage. And I need to lead my life in the proper way. Because that donut is the first 15 feet of the road. That's right. But you have to see beyond the donut. Correct. So, if I do that, it may be displeasurable in the beginning. But as I continue it, my body actually says, hey, you know what? I love that exercise. I miss it when I don't do it. Right. I feel good when I'm eating healthy and I feel good that I'm not doing things that are against my Sukshmubuddi or my conscience. Right. So, you tend to, if it's difficult path to follow, but if you continue that, it actually becomes a habit and you lead that and it becomes the end of the ultimate goal, which is a good one. So, I'm going to pause here and see, Luke, do you have any questions about this so far? No, it's funny as I learn about all these things and we're talking about the Gita now, it's all the principles and a lot of these modalities are very similar and some matter of phrasing and it's matter of expanding on that. What do you mean they're similar, similar to what? They all have the same principles. For example, I've been on a mindfulness journey for a while and one of the things about that is understanding that you consciousness in your brain are two different things that your emotions are not who you are that you can step back from. There's a separate piece there and about just also all the principles are the same. We just phrase it differently. Gita obviously has has names for desires and dislikes, but all the principles seem to be the same. It's about understanding that there's a you beyond your body's desires. So, that's what I would like people to recognize and then go back to the session that we had last time, talk about, listen to, all the famous people that whose life these things changed and because this is just what I'm talking to today. That was session 10. Yes. Okay, thanks. I also find it's interesting one point you brought up about when you were comparing like when we go to a church to pray or light a candle or something like that for what it is that we're trying to see come to be. That's kind of giving up control and these principles are taking control. It's in you. It's in your mind. It's in your intellect. And it's also teaching us that really not only will it not work if you just light a candle, and you have join your hands together and say, please God do this for me. There is nobody that says the chariot here is you. You're the one that has to do it. If you want something done, you've got to make the efforts to get it done. Do it in the right way and you have better chances of it getting done than just standing there and holding your hands together and asking for God to do it for you. I love the chariot analogy with the five horses. I like that a lot. All right, so that's it and we'll follow up next time with some more of this. Hope you join us and thank you so much for being there.