Ep. 286 – The Pull of God Versus the Pull of Humanity

If you've ever thought about teaching meditation, but weren't sure where to begin, join long time Buddhist teacher David Nickdern for a free online event on Tuesday, September 23 at 6 p.m. Eastern. We'll explore what it actually takes to become a confident, effective teacher, from developing your voice, to creating the structure for sharing these profound transformative practices with others. We'll also learn about Dharma Moon's comprehensive meditation teacher training, beginning this October, including our renowned 100-hour mindfulness meditation teacher training and a new, advanced certification program for those who want to go further. Visit DharmaMoon.com/path to learn more and reserve your spot for the free event on September 23. The predicament is that when you start this journey, you get a little bit of clarity and you want to rush and use it for other people to help your family, your friends, others who are suffering, but that desire is not one that is without attachment. It is an attached desire. It has to do with the guilt that maybe you got something special, it has to do with your attachment to their suffering. And the motivation for why you're doing that does not liberate those people. Welcome to the Ramdhas here and now podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Debrinska, and you are the Ramdhas community. This growing circle of seekers and truth lovers walking this path together. This is episode 286, The Pull of God versus The Pull of Humanity. And today we are traveling back to the very early years, 1975, where Ramdhas is fresh back from India and he was lit up with yoga philosophy and he sort of teaches in this like raw crystalline intensity, which you know is different from the later years where he was much more gentle. And you hear him sort of bridging East and West God in humanity, transcendence and daily life, almost like working it out in real time. So a lot of this is based on classical yoga philosophy, which is the spiritual path framed by going up and out, it's transcending the world. And then you also hear him bring in a little bit of that tantric approach, which views form and formless as the same. You hear him say this in later talks that form and formless are the same thing, that God is both transcended and imminent, two sides of one coin. And in this talk, you hear him right on the edge of both of those discovering these truths for himself. And what's really striking is how the questions he's wrestling with are still so alive today, specifically how do we live in this world, this messy heart breaking, beautiful world without bypassing it and without collapsing under the weight of the suffering. And these days it feels like the suffering is huge. We sort of stare mesmerized into the false flames of our phones where cats and comedy and spiritual inspirations sit right next to war footage and heartbreak and terror and violence in dizzying succession. Numbness can feel like protection, an outrage can feel like meaning. Rondas asks us what would it take to keep our hearts open and clear, to not collapse and not bypass. He also talks about power. Many of us are trained in the power over under dynamic, the power over being control and domination, power under being appeasement and collapse. Both are fear-based and transactional. Power with is a different paradigm. Power with is a strength that comes from being rooted in the heart, rooted in mutual regard, rooted in responsibility. You don't need to shrink, you don't need to conquer, you just meet. And from that place our boundaries are clearer. Our listening is truer and our service doesn't become sacrifice or control. It's an offering and it's a practice. This is an offering to you and the beloved, whatever it is you call it. And when he mentions it, immediately the mother Teresa poem that she had on the wall in the orphanage in Calcutta came to mind and you probably know it. I won't do the whole thing, but it's, she says, people may be unreasonable, love them anyway. If you succeed, you'll make enemies succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Because in the final analysis, it's between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. So as you listen, let this be both a time capsule and a mirror. Notice how this fierce early Ramdas is still pointing us towards the same mystery he always pointed us to and he doesn't give us neat answers. He just opens doors and so we get to step through it together. And if you want to keep moving and walking with this path together, you're warmly invited to join the General Fellowship. We gather regularly to reflect on these teachings. Just go to grommdas.org/fellowship. As always, we give thanks for the privilege we have to be here together. And we dedicate the good that comes from this to all beings everywhere. Namaste and blessings. This morning, when we were out of the lawn, doing the breathing, we went up over our heads and came back down into our heart, up over the head, back down into the heart. You wish we went close into the quiet, impersonal presence of God? We came back into our emotional involvement with humanity. Now, that is a pattern of this lineage. And that's why Hanuman is characterized and has kneeling and is represented as a servant of Ram, a servant of God. For once a being has worked out their individual karma, his or her individual karma. By surrendering into God. You come to a point where you, now not how about your body, your body is merely your package, but you. The wires that attach you to this plane are so subtle that with one snip you go into God, you merge back into that which is without form, you, you do. And what is left behind is the residue of the package, your body is left behind. And your astral body is sold as all, and you are slowly your physical body to disintegrate, it goes back into dust and to earth. You leave to end. Most beings, when they get to that point, recognize a choice. The choice is, at that point, of going into, not the samadhi's that you go into prior to that, where your breath stops, your body becomes stiff and you go out of your body. That was a different level of samadhi. There are even samadhi's where your body doesn't stiffen. But there is a choice of going into what's called maha samadhi, which is where you indeed leave your body behind and merge back into God. Now you understand, most people that die don't have this option because they still have a lot of personal karma. And that personal karma, it's like you are a, say, this flower or the soul, it has connected with it a lot of what would be called, I don't know what you want to call them. There are names and Buddhism, Hinduism, everything for it, sun scars, there are predisposing tendencies you might call it. It's like a DNA code. It's clingy stuff, clingy stuff. It's a set of desires that are still lurking in you. And this soul demands a form again to keep working out these desires. The desires keep projecting out a form, they keep creating form. The form may not be on the physical plane like this. You may end up in heaven, that would be nice. But after so many hundred years or thousand years, because time is different on each of these planes, it's still time, but it's different units of time. You use up that karma and you leave that plane, you may just discorporate, you may not die because you don't die on those planes. And then you are still on entity with certain karma and you might come back then and take another human birth. But at some point in your evolution, you come to the point where the veil is very thin because the desires, the personal desires are pretty well gone, there's nothing much you want. You're not attached to being in any particular form, in heaven or earth. Everything is what it is, and you can acknowledge it. Ah, so, yes, you're right here. The only pole that is there now is the pole to merge back into God, which is like the pole in sex after a long foreplay, the pole for the orgasm. And as you approach that moment, your third eye is wide open, your eye be single, your being be full of light, you see the entire scene, you understand karma, you understand the laws, you understand the divine law of the universe, you understand all the Buddha fields, you understand the whole way of sanskara. You are wisdom at that moment, you see that all form is suffering, you see that anything in time has suffering in it, you see just what Buddha saw before he enunciated the four noble truths. At that moment you have choice. Choice to give up the form, go into the formless, or choice to play in the formless but come back into the form. Why would you come back into the form? It's what in Tibetan Buddhism is called the bodhisattva vow. Why would you come back into the form? Not because of your personal karma anymore, that's all over, there's nothing in you pulling, you don't want anything. You even see the perfection of the universe, you see the perfection of God's work, you even see that the suffering itself, because you began to see that the suffering was what awakened you, you begin to see that the suffering is grace even though most people don't see it, because they're too deep in the illusion. And you're not about to where there are no need for the suffering, there would be no need for this world and none of us would be on this plane at all, wouldn't exist. This exists because of the karmic needs of the people on it. What you experience is collective karma, you identify with the suffering of all sentient beings and that identification can keep you in form. At that point, your form is no longer personal, you are at that moment an instrument of God, you are at that moment, just as Buddha was when he returned from his enlightenment, you are an instrument of the Dharma, you are a statement which will enlighten those that are ready to be enlightened, that is your only function, it's the only reason you're on earth, the only reason you're here at all. For you're not going to get your rushes here, since your rushes come from orgasm with the infinite and when you've had a lover like that, there's nothing in the world that has much pull. You can enjoy it all but you have the choice to go into God, you have the choice to have it all, why take little bits of it. See at this point, you come here, the setting is beautiful, you will have some deep meditations but then the pull of the world will be strong and it will pull you back and you'll have to make an effort to meditate. When those feet shift, when the weight shifts, you just sit in meditation and then you think, "Oh, now I have to leave this to go into form." And the weight has shifted. It's like getting up out of a bed where you're all cuddly on a cold morning to go and light the fire or let the dog out or the cat in or change the baby or go to work. Then this balance of feet shifts. When you start to awaken and it dawns on you that the whole game is perfect, the whole game is perfect, including all the shit you've been through, it's all perfect. Even the way man's will screws it all up, it's still all this perfection in it. There's a tendency to get enamored of the impersonal, the cold impersonal, the beauty of it all, the beauty of the lila and you keep saying, "But it's all illusion anyway, what are we getting so upset about?" Nothing to do, it's all an illusion. You're so fascinated with God, with enlightenment, with the wisdom of the ages. And in your zeal to do that, it's very easy to forget humanity, to forget politics, to forget human concerns, to forget human suffering, to overlook the daily stuff around you. The image I've used in lectures that I got from my teacher, you get so busy looking at the snow, the pure white snow and the peaks of the Himalayas, because for so many incarnations you've been looking out and down and you finally look up and it's so beautiful. You've never been identified with so much beauty in your life. But you'd rather not have to look back down and see that right beneath your feet is blood on the snow, which is the blood from the heart of Jesus. It's the blood of the suffering of form. It's the pull of humanity, it's the pull of humanity. Now does it seem premature that I'm talking about this to you? After all, most of you are much more pulled by humanity than you are by God. You are much more concerned with the crying of your child, or the hurt of the puppy dog, or the inequality in politics, or the religious struggles of peoples. Why am I talking to you about the pull of humanity? That's your problem. See, some of you have the disquieting feeling, I've got to be careful because all these people that go to God, they forget about the world. And what about politics and what about economics and what about social responsibility? I mean, am I really playing my part in the dance? As you go up, if you're going up in perfection, as you go up, you keep looking down as well as up. You have one eye going up and one eye going down. One eye is in the world and one eye is in God. If both eyes are in the world, you have nothing to offer mankind except more suffering because you are lost in the illusion. If both eyes are on God, you've forgotten about the world and you couldn't care less so you don't offer them anything anyway. The predicament is that when you start this journey, you get a little bit of clarity and you want to rush and use it for other people to help your family, your friends, others who are suffering. But that desire is not one that is without attachment. It is an attached desire. It has to do with the guilt that maybe you got something special. It has to do with your attachment to their suffering. And the motivation for why you're doing that does not liberate those people. What most of you will do to help other human beings will help them on one level, on the physical level, if you feed somebody and fill their belly, you help them. If you give them clothing, if you help them raise food, if you help them with medical things, if you help them because they're hurt, if you help them because they're lost, you will help them on the physical plane, but your motivation for helping them may well have been such that though you help them on one plane, you perpetuated the illusion of their separateness and thus their suffering. To know that does not drive you to not serve, but it drives you to remember and serve humanity as an exercise and a vehicle for becoming enlightened. For ultimately, the only thing that frees another being is a free being. As Ramakrishna said, "If you are in quicksand, you cannot free another from quicksand." I'm an example of that. I'm not a fully realized being. And quite honestly, it's very difficult for me to leave my meditations with God to come and do this. This is my work. This is humanity. This is the pole. I have to do this. This is part of my being. This is my route to God. I've got to do this. But as I do it, I am only doing it as an exercise for my own liberation because if I am doing it motivated to helping you as my motivation, I am attached to me being a helper and you being that which is helped and I am actually pushing you away in the way I'm helping you as somebody who needs to be helped. In the long run, I am perpetuating your illusion of separateness. That's a very subtle point and it may be just too much photograph. Do any of you hear what I'm talking about? And what I just said is part of the way in words that you are protected from that illusion that I still retain because I'm telling you there it exists, but more directly what's doing it is that in my heart and my being, my work is with God and you are the instruments and the vehicles of my coming to God and because of that you are protected. I can't explain to you the subtlety of the way this works because it's an astral type subtlety, but you are totally protected from being hurt in the spiritual sense by my being because of the purity of my commitment to God. Maraji in India once said, "I said, 'Maraji, you can't send me back to America because I'm so impure and I don't mind my own car but I can't stand laying karma on other people.'" And Maraji said, "Ramdas could not hurt anybody in America. And the not hurting anybody comes not because everything I say is totally the statement of God, but because of my motivation in being with you. For I don't in truth want power over you, I don't want to control you, I don't want you to worship me, I don't want to collect you, I don't need you. There is no rush that you give me that is anywhere near one billionth what I can get from sitting down in front of my puja table and being in love with God. Not one billionth of it. It is that preoccupation with God in me that is what liberates you through whatever it is that I do with you. It's because I don't want you and I don't need you. For if there was the least vibration in me of wanting you or needing you, that would feed your paranoia. It would feed the place in you that is looking because of your long history of being had, walking for the way in which you are being conned or exploited this round. Most of you, since you were a little children, closed off from trusting other human beings because everybody wanted something. They wanted your body, they wanted your soul, they wanted your mind, they wanted your money, they wanted your power, they wanted something, they wanted your adoration, your adulation, they wanted something. And that closed offness closes you off not only from your fellow men, it closes you off from the flow of the universe, it closes you off from God. You can't afford the paranoia that most of you have lived with most of your life. The funny thing is you don't need it either because you aren't as vulnerable as you thought you were. As you begin to recognize who you are, as I'm trying to show you who you are, who you are, is not vulnerable to the human foibles, nobody can do anything to your soul that way. They can screw out with your body and your mind, but your art is vulnerable as you think you are. And before you will know God, you will be able to stand naked and wide open with hard wide open as all of the possible horror shows of humanity surround you and pour on you and through you. You will be able to look at disaster, at starvation, at flood, at horror, at death, of beloveds. You will be able to look at violence, at ugliness, whether it's done to you or another, with your heart wide open, with blood pouring out of it upon the snow. And at the same moment that other eye is looking up and sees the total perfection of the dance. And you will have perfect equanimity. Most of you now, when it gets ugly, you turn your heart off. You get cold, you go into your mind in order to protect yourself because you feel so vulnerable. And most marriages are battles of who's hurting who. When you understand what this dance is, nobody can hurt anyone else. If you come on to me and you're ugly and angry and violent, that's your karma. If I react to it, that's my karma. This is very heavy stuff. I really have to give it in very small doses, because this is like baklava. You know, it's very thick and rich and you get nauseous if you eat too much. This podcast is brought to you by the Love, Serve, Remember Foundation, and Ramdas.org. We appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us. Please continue that support and donate at Ramdas.org. We can then continue to share what Ramdas has been sharing for all of these years. Thank you.