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Bhakti Yoga - The Path of Devotion · Inspiration and Transformation

0:04
Welcome to inspiration and transformation from the banks of the Gunga with Sadvi Bagwati Saraswati,
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an American Sanyasi living at the parmarth Nikitan Ashram in Rishikesh, India.
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Sadvi is President of the Divine Shakti Foundation, a charitable organization bringing education,
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vocational training, upliftment and empowerment programs to women and children. Sadvi is also
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Secretary General of the global interfaith Wasash Alliance and director of the world famous International
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Yoga Festival. Joined the musings of an American Sanyasi as Sadvi shares the wisdom
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and teachings of her Guru, His Holiness Pujiaswami Chintenant Saraswatiji, Welcome everyone to
0:51
inspiration and transformation from the holy banks of the Sacred Gunga River in the land
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of Rishikesh, India. This is an affliction of not only youth in college,
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this is an affliction of everyone. So many people say, oh,
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I didn't mean that. Right, you say something, somebody takes offense,
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You say the kaya mud lovetaford. So many of us constantly are saying,
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oh, I didn't mean this. I didn't mean that our words are a
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very precious power. This varney, this power of speech is a great power,
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and it's not something to take lightly. We have become just habitual talkers,
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meaning we don't pay any attention to what we say at all. We
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just keep talking because it's just become a habit. We just talk and we
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talk and we talk, and when we don't actually have something to say,
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we talk about nothing. That's when we end up saying things we don't mean,
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hurting people, hurting ourselves, and developing habits that, as you say
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later on, we've come into this habit. It's also a huge dissipation of
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energy, that ogious in the body, that prawn, that sacred life force,
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these energies of the body. We're not supposed to just throw them away.
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And this habitual just talking is actually a great waste of the energy of
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the being. In the Bug of Adita, Baguan Krishna says, tupus of
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speech right speech is that which is true kind and beneficial, true kind and
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beneficial. And I've also in recent years heard some other teachers add a fourth
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criterion. Does it improve upon the silence that when you're going to speak something,
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you actually have to ask yourself, is it true, is it kind?
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Is it beneficial? And does it improve upon the silence? And if
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any of those four answers is no, well then we have this great gift
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of being silent. Silence is not a weakness. Silence does not mean kika.
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Silence is a strength like fasting. Fasting is not a weakness. Fasting
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doesn't mean that I can't figure out what to eat. Fasting is a strength.
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That means that even with the call of my body saying eat, I've
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made a decision. I'm fasting. In the same way when from inside it's
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saying say this, say that, say this, and we are choosing silence
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because we know that what we're saying isn't true, kind, beneficial. That's
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a great strength now in college, but also amidst any kind of social situation.
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There's as you say, vocabularies, there's words that get used, slang
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words, colloquial words, profanity, and as you say, you don't mean
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it in that way, but what you'll find is, sadly, it does
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become a habit. It's an impression, an impression upon us because when you
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say something, you're listening to it as well. You're hearing yourself say it,
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which means that you now, on a very subtle level, identify as
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yeah, yeah, I'm someone who talks like that, and that becomes a
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very detrimental self identification. You mentioned you know, when I'm with my friends,
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we don't have any control over what we say. So you're a spiritual
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young man. I've had the wonderful joy of seeing you here for the last
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world days. You're a really beautiful spiritual young man. Don't let yourself off
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the hook quite so easily of just what though it wasn't in my control,
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I have no control. That's a really detrimental pattern to set up for your
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life, because if you tell yourself now, while I'm around, when I'm
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around my friends, I don't have control over my vocabulary, well then what's
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to say you don't have control over what you drink or what you smoke,
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or what you eat or what you do. I mean, then these become
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excuses throughout our lives of yeah, yeah, I did it because I was
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with those people and they were doing with the sub paing peanut thea And it
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just ends up becoming these ways of thinking that who I am is just part
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of this group. Groups are wonderful. A SONGA is wonderful, it's very
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important, but you need to maintain your own values in that SONGA. And
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in the same way that if you're a bucca vegetarian and they're eating meat,
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you're not going to say, what o'cona what I had to eat it I
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had no control everybody was eating hamburgers, you would say, I'm a vegetarian.
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In the same way, let your speech become vegetarian. And if anybody
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likes you less because you're not using those vocabulary, they're not really friends to
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begin with. You don't have to become the groove of the group. I'm
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not saying you should start telling everybody else what to say. Don't say anything.
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They're not looking for a guru. Don't become theirs. Don't worry about
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it, be their friend. But at least you use words that are in
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alignment with your own values. And if anybody says to you, why did
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you use that nice vegetarian word instead of this profanity, well then you should
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feel strong enough to say to them, I've decided that I like my speech
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to be vegetarian also, And if if they give you a hard time about
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it, then as difficult as it is, that really becomes the time to
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reevaluate the friendships in the same way that if they're drinking alcohol and you don't
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want to drink alcohol, and they pressure you and they make you feel badly
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for not drinking, well that's not the right so much. You want to
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be with friends who of and respect you for who you are. And so
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if it's troubling you in such a way that you bring it in here because
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you know it's there, it's in your heart, it's troubling, you speak
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from your heart. Use the words you want to use. There's plenty of
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words. I mean, the English language has plenty of words. The Hindi
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language has god knows how many more possible permutations. You've got fifty two letters
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compared to our twenty six. Make up your own word. Invent a new
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word if you want, for something that could be used instead of that profanity.
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But don't allow yourself to get into a lifelong habit of I have no
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control when I'm around my friends. Learn how to carry yourself. Otherwise those
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habits become your character, and your character becomes your destiny. So you're literally
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starting to create a destiny. Words are things. Words are not just words.
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Words are an energy put out into the universe. There's a power to
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them, says the power. When we talk about the power of Manthada,
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well, it's not just what the Monthada means. And if you look at
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actually the meanings of most of the month that as we chant, most of
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them is basically just oh divine in this form with this name, I bow
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to you. That's pretty much the translation of almost all of the month.
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That is are different forms of the divine, but oh divine in this form
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fill in the blank, I bow to you. It's powerful about them,
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is that alchemic power of the sound, the power of the word. That
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power of the word is huge. Grab it, use it. Don't find
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yourself out of control. So if you're finding yourself in a situation where you
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have to keep speaking just to keep the other person from speaking, I would
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reevaluate the friendship. If you're in a situation where you're looking for a way
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to make the other person essentially stop talking, that might be a really good
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moment to ask yourself, why am I even in this relationship if I have
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to essentially overshow of them? Take back the control of this conversation. Why
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are you wasting your time anyway? And by the way, just because someone's
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saying something doesn't mean that we have to respond or react. Let them speak.
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If you've got to be there when they're done, you respond in your
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way of peace, love, truth, whatever. You're anchored in your values.
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But don't get yourself in situations where because of some sense of responsibility or
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out of controllness of the relationship. These are not relationships you want to hold
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on to. You want to be in relationships with people you want to listen
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to, not people you want to shut up. Okay, yeah, find
13:07
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nt O RG brought to you by Rain and this station. Welcome back to
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inspiration and transformation. I'm so glad to have you all back here with me.
14:39
When I meet spiritually elevated souls, people, gurus, tears flow down
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my face and I am tongue tied. I am not able to ask questions
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in my mind. Why does this happen? Is the rishti too powerful?
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Please explain why questions are of the mind. The mind is the only part
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of us that's troubled. Sometimes we say, my heart feels this, but
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the truth is it's in the brain. It's in the mind. Now.
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Yes, we also have these beautiful energy centers. I won't go into all
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about it now, we'll talk more about the different chakras as the navati begins,
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and each day as we celebrate a different form of the Mother Goddess,
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we'll talk about the chakra that she's associated with. So yes, we do.
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We do, feel, of course, in our heart chakra and that
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energy center. But ultimately all of the thinking takes place in the mind.
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The heart experiences love for sure, oneness for sure. On a deep level.
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The mind is the calculated one. The mind that's the fifty fifty.
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What I've done for you? What am I getting? Give and take?
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That's games of the mind. Now, the mind also functions only in separation.
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The mind sees everything as separate from itself. The heart knows oneness.
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And I mentioned this because when we are in a moment in which our hearts
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open, in the presence of a master, a guru on the banks of
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Gunga, in so many deep, spiritually elevating experiences, our minds just shut
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down. And that's a good thing. By the way, that's not problematic.
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It allows us to drop fully into the heart. And in many of
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those cases we don't make any kind of conscious choice. It just happens.
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The heart explodes, tears pour down our eyes, and lo and behold the
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thinking mind that is troubled, it's quiet. I remember when I first came
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to the banks of Gunga and first had this incredible experience. For days,
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I was pretty much nonverbal. And I mean I was a straight A student.
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I was an academic. I was the one who ended up teaching classes
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when the teacher didn't show up or was outsick. So for me, nonverbal
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was not a state that unless I was sleeping, I pretty much ever found
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myself in and I was nonverbal. I mean all I could say for days
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as tears poured down my eyes was oh my god, it's so beautiful.
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Oh my god, it's so beautiful. Oh my god, it's so beautiful.
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So to find yourself at a loss for words, especially a loss for
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words that center around something that is troubling your mind, is neither surprising nor
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problematic. It's very natural. As you've dropped into an open heart, the
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mind quiets, and then of course there's there's also that grace that happened sometimes
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where our questions just disappear. I remember when I first met Pujaswamiji first at
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his dirton. He would meet people for an hour at a time, two
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hours a day, ten thirty to eleven thirty in the morning, and it's
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either four to five or four thirty to five thirty in the afternoons. And
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on the rare occasions that the hour ended before the people ended, he would
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turn to me because I would just come and sit and just be there and
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absorb his presence. And I of course found myself, if not completely nonverbal,
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at least not very articulate, not nearly as articulate as I would like
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to be. And I found it embarrassing because I always had questions. I
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always had things to ask, but when he would turn to me and say
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yes, I couldn't think of anything. And then, of course afterwards,
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later on things would come to me, and so I would kind of make
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these mental lists of next time he asks me, here's going to be my
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very intelligent question, I'm going to ask it. And then he would turn
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to me and say yes, and my brain was yeah, like oatmeal,
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just nothing, and I finally decided, all right, this is really embarrassing,
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I'm going to write them down. So I made a list in my
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room one night of questions. And I used to have a little purse that
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was just one of these little cloth embroidered ones that I had brought here in
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the market that small All I had to carry around were my room keys and
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some chapstick and maybe, you know, some rupees to get a cup of
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tea or something. And I put my questions in my purse and come in
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for the arson, and he turns to me and says yes. And I'm
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ecstatic because I've got my list of questions and I opened my purse and they're
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gone. Now, my purse had no pockets. It wasn't like a proper
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handbag of a busy woman, you know, with all kinds of things in
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it. It was a tiny little cloth bag. My keys were there,
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my chapstick was there, my root pies were there. No list, no
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secret compartments, no nothing in the purse. And so then I decide,
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well, I must have lost it along the way. And I go back
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out and I'm retracing my steps back to my room. It's not there.
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I knew it was there. I had just put it in my purse.
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I then, and of course I say it to who just saw me,
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to you before I go, Can you just give me two minutes, I'll
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be right back. And I get into my room and I start literally tossing
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my room, like as though somehow, without me remembering it, my list
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had ended up under my mattress or in my pillow case or you know,
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in my it's nowhere. And I finally realized, oh, okay, I
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get it, Universe, this is not going to be about what you do
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well, which is intellectual mind stuff. This is a whole new ballgame,
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a whole new situation. And now you don't get to rely on that thinking
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mind, on your powers of intellect, on that in this new situation.
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That this is now a situation of an open heart hurt, not an overactive
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mind. So that's another thing that sometimes happens to questions, and when it
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does, we let them go. I mean, questions are beautiful. It's
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why we have set song. It's what enables us to go deeper. But
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this is why I say so frequently, there's no such thing as a silly
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question. There's no such thing as a wrong question, as long as it's
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deeply meaningful for you and it's something that is in some way blocking you on
24:45
your path. But what a lot of us tend to do is we we
24:53
like to kind of show how philosophically smart we are and use question times as
25:03
a way to just allow our minds to play games. And those are the
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questions that tend to disappear in in that divine presence. So don't worry when
25:21
it happens to you. It's it's a beautiful thing. This is OTRFM,
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part of the IOM Radio Network. Home Times Magazine is one of the leading
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Through their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content, they aspire to uplift
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humanity on a global scale. Home Times co creating a more conscious lifestyle.
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Do you have time to read that inspiring book or that blog post you've been
26:03
meaning to get to in your busy world? How do you improve yourself and
26:07
keep your life going. I'm Lisa Kay and my Between Heaven and Earth Radio
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show can transform your life just by listening. Be uplifted with inspiring topics,
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positive stories and ideas that really work. Between Heaven and Earth Radio is conscious
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living for your soul. Every Wednesday at four pm Eastern Time. Like Baldwin
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with people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I grew up loving circuses and
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like for the animals. Training wild animals to do things they don't understand takes.
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Force routine discipline with a hook or whip with a heel of a boot
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shows the animal exactly who's the boss. Don't patronize animal acts. Please contact
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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Six two two pe ta. Welcome
27:00
back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation. What if a
27:11
person does not even realize that he is an angry person? How can he
27:19
work on his anger when he thinks he is not an angry man? So
27:29
the very first step in working on anything is awareness. I can't quit smoking
27:38
if I deny that I smoke. I can't quit drinking if I deny that
27:45
I drink. I can't quit lying if I deny that I lie. And
27:53
if I deny that I am impacted by driven by different emotions, whether it's
28:06
anger, greed, lust, jealousy, ego, all of the stuff that
28:12
most of us inside say, Ah, I'm not that I'm not that well
28:19
then we can't actually become free of that. And this is why it's really
28:23
important to realize there's no shame in any of this. This is part of
28:29
the human condition. And if you believe in a perfect God, a God
28:37
who certainly could have created us without any anger or greed or lust or jealousy,
28:44
but didn't. I mean to me, God is perfect and if God
28:51
wanted me to be born without any struggle, God would have waived God's magic
29:00
gwand and that's exactly how I would have been born. But because I believe
29:04
in a perfect God, a perfect creator, I believe in a perfect creation.
29:12
Now that doesn't mean that there isn't work to do, but doing the
29:15
work is part of the perfection because it's bringing us back into awareness with the
29:25
perfection of who we really are, which is these spiritual beings having a human
29:33
experience in a human body, which is perfect. If God didn't want us
29:40
to have a human body, we would not have a human body. But
29:47
the key is awareness, and this is why removing the whole shame element around
29:57
spirituality is so important, because we can't grow. If I'm denying and repressing
30:03
and suppressing, then I can't grow, and so This is why a practice
30:14
of awareness and mindfulness is so important, because I may be able to say
30:21
to you, oh, I'm not angry. I mean, how many times
30:26
have we ever said to someone calm down and they say, I'm calm?
30:30
What do you mean? You think, oh, that was helpful? Okay,
30:40
people say it all the time. Or you say, you know,
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don't be angry, I'm not angry. Okay. Now it may be apparent
30:51
to the person you're talking to that you are not calm, that you're angry.
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But if it's not apparent to you, then you're just going to keep
31:03
repeating the same cycles over and over and over again. And that's why we
31:11
practice mindfulness. That's why we watch first the breath, the easiest place to
31:18
start. But as we watch the breath, we also watch emotions arise.
31:26
You can see anger arising. It doesn't arise out of the blue. If
31:33
you're really aware, you see it start to build, you feel it.
31:37
The heart starts to beat a little faster, the face starts to get a
31:41
little flushed, the vision starts to get a little narrow. So we have
31:48
to acknowledge these aspects of ourselves without shame, recognizing that we're all here doing
31:56
the work to come back to the truth, to know the truth. But
32:04
simply denying something does not actually make it go away. If you are as
32:15
it sounds from the question, like the friend, the loved one, the
32:21
companion of someone, because of course the question was in the third person,
32:27
not the first, so it sounds like they're asking about another person in their
32:30
life. The challenge is that the more you say you are an angry man,
32:39
the more angry they're going to get, and the less likely they are
32:44
to admit it and acknowledging. And this is where maybe simply dropping the idea
32:52
of trying to convince them they're angry, but instead bring in some spiritual actices
33:00
that you could do together. Start a daily meditation, and if he doesn't
33:05
want to do it, no problem, you do it. You do it.
33:08
Invite him each day, travel together to holy places, listen to sat
33:15
song, have diversion of saints, go to kut that and slowly, slowly,
33:23
slowly bring him into more and more spiritual places and help him understand.
33:35
But until and unless someone acknowledges it, unfortunately, there's not much you can
33:39
do. And the last piece, though, is to realize, you know
33:44
everybody's on their own karmic journey, and not to judge someone else's. The
33:51
universe is infinitely patient. You don't learn it this life, you'll learn it
33:57
next life. You don't learn it next life, if you'll learn of the
34:00
life after that, and so not. Everyone may be necessarily on your timeline.
34:09
And if someone really can't see something, no matter how much you try
34:14
to show them, whether it's about their emotions, whether it's about God,
34:20
divinity, spirituality, consciousness, don't judge, because that just makes you fall
34:30
back on your path, That just creates separation in your mind. Give yourself
34:37
the beautiful spiritual challenge of can you love someone who may be at a different
34:45
stage of a karmic journey without any judgment of what's better or worse, higher
34:51
or lower, No spiritual arrogance here, just just a love for wherever that
35:01
person may be in the truth is that a loving, accepting, spacious presence
35:10
is the very best environment for someone actually to start doing their work. You
35:20
can't do it with that agenda, though, but just so that you know,
35:25
unconditional love, tender spaciousness is the place in which people blossom and open
35:36
and unfold. But you need to be prepared to love them anyway, because
35:43
that's your journey, your work is because remember they've been sent to you,
35:49
You've been sent to them, You've been charmically drawn to each other. And
35:53
maybe the lesson for you and this is not how can I make him less
35:57
angry? How can I teach him? But how can I learn to love
36:06
in the face of anger? How can I learn not to make my self
36:14
identity based on what he says? Because these are important lessons. This is
36:27
OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio Network. Home Times Magazine is one of
36:32
the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness, and personal empowerment of philanthropic
36:38
organization. Their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide charity initiatives via Humanity Healing
36:45
International. Through their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content, they aspire
36:51
to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times co creating a more conscious
36:55
lifestyle. Do you time to read that inspiring book or that blog post you've
37:02
been meaning to get to in your busy world? How do you improve yourself
37:07
and keep your life going. I'm Lisa Kay and my Between Heaven and Earth
37:12
radio show can transform your life just by listening be uplifted with inspiring topics,
37:17
positive stories and ideas that really work between Heaven and Earth. Radio is conscious
37:23
Living for your soul every Wednesday at four pm Eastern Time, like Baldwin,
37:31
with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I grew up loving circuses and
37:36
other traveling animals shows, but it never occurred to me what life might be
37:39
like for the animals. Training wild animals to do things they don't understand takes.
37:45
Force routine discipline with a hook or whip with a heel of a boot
37:50
shows the animal exactly who's the boss. Don't patronize animal acts. Please contact
37:54
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals six two two et A welcome back.
38:02
This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation buck the yoke path of devotion.
38:19
So for me, it really happened very spontaneously. I was raised in
38:36
a reformed Jewish community. We were not religious. We went to synagogue because
38:46
it mattered to my grandparents. First Friday evening of every month was family night.
38:53
Grandma wanted to go to synagogue. We all went to synagogue. The
39:00
holidays and observances that we celebrated were ones that were focused much more on the
39:10
history, the culture, the ancestors, and actually on God. But as
39:21
a twenty five year old academic, it never occurred to me that I was
39:27
missing anything. It never occurred to me that I should be loving God.
39:32
God was a nameless, formless being whom I feared occasionally, not much.
39:43
I mean, I didn't move through my life afraid of God, but you
39:45
know, occasionally on holidays where God was making important decisions, I I was
39:54
afraid. When I came to India and had this powerful experience of awakening,
40:07
my heart just burst open in love. That's why the only thing I could
40:14
say was, oh my God, it's so beautiful. Oh my God,
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it's so beautiful. Now there wasn't the time an object of my love.
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I mean, it didn't matter what I was looking at. A telephone pole,
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literally telephone poles, pillars. There used to be these marble pillars on
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the God that have since been removed to make more room for seating. But
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we had these marble pillars and I used to look at them. The steps,
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people, random people, didn't matter. Whatever I saw was so beautiful
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because I was seeing God everywhere. But as as time went on, I
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developed love experiences for different forms, different forms of God. I remember my
41:14
my love for Krishna began on a trip that Swamid took me on. He
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was going down to Rindhaven. I had been here maybe maybe three four weeks.
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I had never heard of rindavenment. I didn't I didn't know anything.
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I'm sure I had heard of Krishna, but I didn't. I didn't really
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know anything. And he was going on this this trip that was part of
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a huge beautiful yata called the Reggiata that was being led by these other two
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beautiful saints. And we went down. He said to me, do you
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want to go? And again I didn't know where we were going, but
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it didn't matter where we were going. I mean, if he had said,
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you know, I'm on my way to Hell, would you like to
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join me, I would have been like, yeah, yeah, you're going
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to be there, right. So I said, yes, yes, of
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course I want to go. And we got there and we were there for
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the day of doing the perichroma on foot, walking around the mountain of gover
42:32
Then, which is a very sacred mountain in the stories of Bagwan Krishna and
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people do a pilgrimage around it, and it's twenty one kilometers and you go
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barefoot. And we did it in this huge, huge group of people,
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this huge yatta, and everybody kept asking me. I was the only the
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only foreigner there, and everybody kept asking me, are your feet okay?
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Are your feet okay? And I remember being so perplexed because I had no
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idea I had feet when I felt like I was floating, that I was
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being carried feet, like what are feet? Why are you asking me this
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question? And I was so full of love of God. And we went
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shortly thereafter to the ashram of one of the saints who had been running the
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pilgrimage, in a place called Ramanithee now Roman Reithe literally means the rate the
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sand of Bagwan Krishna, and the ashram is built on that sand. And
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I remember lying and rolling around in the sand with just tears pouring down my
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eyes, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I hadn't
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read the Shimad bag of Atam, I hadn't read the Mahabadhad, I hadn't
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even read the bag of a Gita. By that point, I didn't know
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anything. I didn't have any framework in which to put this, but the
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experiences of love were so powerful that suddenly I started loving Krishna. In fact,
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when I learned about mantras and I decided I wanted one, and I
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went to Prujaswamage and I asked him to give me a mantra and he made
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me wait. He didn't tell me why, He just said not yet.
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And I would keep going and he would say not yet. And I decided
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will I wasn't going to deprive myself of the benefit of amanthra just because my
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grew wouldn't give me one. And so I made up amanthra and my manthra
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was I love you Krishna. And I used to do my juppa with I
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love you Krishna for two years until Pugswamiji finally granted me an actual sanscritmanthra,
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so for me that that devotion just blossomed in that way. And then my
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love for Hanumanji blossomed one night as funny as it sounds, in Pittsburgh,
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Pennsylvania, where I had gone to see Poujuswamiji. It was after he had
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sent me back to America to finished studies and I had finished them, and
45:58
he was in Pittsburgh where he had built the Hindu Jain Temple and was spearheading
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the Encyclopedia of Hinduism project. And I went to meet him there and he
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said to me one evening there, he said, you are going to do
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great things. You're going to touch millions. And I remember thinking that it
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sounded the way that my mother would say you're the prettiest girl in the class.
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You know, like, you know it's not true, but you appreciate
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the love of the one who's saying it to you to make you feel happy,
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but you don't actually suddenly start thinking you're the prettiest girl in the class
46:44
just because your mother told you you were. And in the same way,
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I remember when Poojuswamaj said that, thinking, oh, that's so sweet.
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You know, he's trying to make me feel good. And I said to
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him, you know, I know that I'm intelligent. I know that I'm
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going to be able to do something, but i know that I'm not at
47:14
that level as you say, And that's okay, Like you don't have to,
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you know, say these nice things that so obviously are not true.
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And he was quiet, and the next morning when I got up and went
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up to do pronom to him sitting on the table where he was sitting.
47:37
It was a book about the thick of the Ramayan. And it was an
47:45
English translation, not a verse by verse translation, but it was more of
47:51
a story of the Ramayan, not quite for kids, but nonetheless a really
47:58
easy version. It was the barth Tavi version of Ramayan, and he gave
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it to me to read. I read it during the day. I ended
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up staying awake all night reading it, and by the next morning I had
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finished it. And I went to him the next morning with just tears pouring
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down my face, and I said, I get it. I get it
48:28
if Hanumanji could accomplish and achieve all of these miraculous feats just out of devotion
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to God, because that's what Hanumanji says when he gets asked at the end
48:45
of the war, how did you do it? How did you fly across
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the ocean? How did you carry the himalia is in your hand? How
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did you put the sun under your armpit? Like? How did you do
49:00
these things? He didn't say, well, don't you know who I am?
49:09
He didn't say, you know I've been working out at the gym and
49:16
I've got this special trainer and he's teaching me the carry the Mountain's pose.
49:23
He didn't say, I've got some very special vitamin tonic. Nothing. He
49:30
just said, I take Baguan Ram's name, I take God's name, I
49:37
think of God, I invoke God, and it happens. It happens.
49:46
And so I said to Poujas want me to, I said, I get
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it. It's not about him and what he can do. It's about the
49:55
grace of God. It's about the miracle call of God. And so if
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through taking God's name, this essentially monkey could accomplish all that, well then
50:15
maybe I really can do something with my life. Maybe I really can accomplish
50:22
something beautiful. And so from then on, my devotion for Hannumanji kept blossoming
50:31
of just just make me, make me that devotee like you are, Make
50:40
me that devoted, that humble, that's surrendered, that I know that A
50:49
I can do anything, and B it's not about me. It's you.
50:58
You can do anything, and if you want to, you can do it
51:05
through me. But it's all about you. And so Bagwan Krishna Hanumanji Ganga
51:19
it's been a a beautiful experience of bakti. And you know, it's interesting
51:27
because in the teaching of vedantavit Vedanta, it's a teaching of non duality.
51:37
There's nothing but God, and so a lot of times these questions arise of
51:45
well, how hatti you worship God as somehow this form or that form when
51:59
there's no thing but God like? Isn't that kind of a lower form of
52:06
spirituality than this non dual form? And the truth is that if you look
52:15
throughout history at the the bukts, the devotees, the enlightened saints, who
52:28
were steeped in devotion, not only in India, not only in the Hindu
52:31
tradition, you can find them in every tradition. Those lovers of God.
52:42
Well, it's not that they don't know that they're one with God. It's
52:49
not that they don't know that it's all God. It's not that somehow they
52:53
haven't had that experience yet. It's that they choose to temporarily forget that because
53:08
being in love is so beautiful. It's like, I remember when I was
53:15
learning fiction writing at Stanford, my professor said something that's always stuck with me.
53:23
He said, the world of fiction requires a willing suspension of disbelief.
53:31
You have to willingly suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy fiction. If every
53:39
time you read fiction you say that couldn't happen, well that's impossible. Well
53:43
I don't believe that you'll never enjoy a good novel. It requires a willing
53:51
suspension of disbelief. And I think that the practice of devotion requires a willing
53:59
suspect men of knowledge that I'm willingly suspending temporarily that which I know on the
54:09
deepest level to be true, because being in love feels so beautiful in the
54:17
same way that I willingly suspend disbelief because I enjoy a good science fiction level,
54:28
and so on a much deeper level, I am convinced him, and
54:32
I haven't interviewed them, but I'm deeply convinced that all of the mystics,
54:42
the sages, the saints, the lovers of God throughout history have made this
54:47
very conscious, willing suspension of the fact that I know God is in me,
54:55
is me, is everywhere, and yet to love God is so beautiful
55:04
that I am willing to forget that I know God is me so that I
55:09
can experience this joy of loving God in a particular form, in a particular
55:17
name, in a particular way. This brings to a close this hour of
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inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for joining me. I am so
55:35
glad to be together with you all each week, and I look forward to
55:39
being together again next Thursday, same time on Home Time's radio HM. But
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it can't be, because beking lokon to be. But we can awake the will be