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Is the Ultimate Reality Form or Formlessness? · Inspiration and Transformation

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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. Sadby is also
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Secretary General of the Global Interfaithwash Alliance and director of the world famous International Yoga
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Festival. Joined the musings of an American Sanyasi as Sadvi shares the wisdom and
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teachings of her Guru, His Holiness Pujiaswami Chinnant Saraswatiji, Welcome everyone to inspiration
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and transformation from the holy banks of the Sacred Gunga, a river in the
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land of Rishikesh, India. You only have to live in India or study
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Indian spiritual lineages and traditions for a short while before you find that there seemed
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to be too really distinct camps. There's a camp that we call a right
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of Adanta, a lineage a teaching that says God is formless, there's nothing
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but God. Any form is illusion, and then you've got your buck.
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The traditions like Krishna Kansas. But not only that, the whole, the
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whole tradition of Bukhti is rooted in this idea that we worship God, we
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love God. People in the Bukhti tradition will very frequently have not only deities
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of the Divine in their home where they'll do puja, but many of them
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will even carry a small image of the Divine with them wherever they go,
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feed the image of Divine, feeding God, putting God to sleep. I
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mean all really just this incredible love for the Divine in form. And then
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of course you have the Buddhist tradition, which is a tradition of about awakening
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the self. Now, within the two Hindu traditions, we'll start with just
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those two what you could call the non dualists, as in there are no
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two, it's all one. The path of advice of Adanta, the path
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frequently of what we would call yan yoga. And then you have the path
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of what you could call the duellists or the bots, the devotees. Now
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there's a lot of enlightened masters in both traditions obviously, but if you look
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at the enlightened masters of the Bukti tradition on a very deep level, I
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haven't had the great blessing of you know, talking to and interviewing a lot
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of them. But this is my intuition from the ones I have had the
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blessing of being in their presence. They know that God is everywhere. They
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know that God is in them. They know that they're not separate from God.
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True devotees of Bagwan Krishna where God in any name or form, but
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just the question asked about Krishna consciousness, they know on a core level,
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I'm not separate from God. I mean, you just have to read the
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bug of Radgita to listen to Krishna essentially say I live in all your hearts.
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I will appear to you in whatever form you worship me, meaning essentially,
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I'm I'm in you. You are essentially creating the form that I'm appearing
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to you, and in we're not separate. Your love is creating the form
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that you see me in. I'm in you. And they know that I
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haven't ever met a a deeply awake, enlightened being in the buck the tradition,
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who would insist that now God is separate, Chrishna is separate. God
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lives just in this deity. No, they know that they're not separate from
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God. They know that God is in everything, including themselves. They know
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there's nothing but God. But being in love feels really good. There is
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something really beautiful about being in love, and it could be a romantic love,
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but it doesn't have to be. Again, there's beautiful teachings from Baguan
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Chrishna's own mouth in which he describes all of the different relationships that people may
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have with him. People worship Chrishna as supreme reality. People worship Chrishna as
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their pal, their friend. They're seeing him the way that you know our
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June saw him or Sudama saw him as a friend. People worship him as
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their child. Those tend to be the ones who carry carry the deity around
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with them and take care of him like you what a child. People have
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all kinds of relationships with him, and the teaching is they're all fine,
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because I am everything. Worship me however you want, it doesn't matter.
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Just connect with me. You want to connect with me in a you know,
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in a romantic love sort of way you want to channel you're inner Radha
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beautiful, no problem. You want to connect with me as a friend,
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wonderful. You want to connect with me as your child, wonderful. You
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want to connect with me as a supreme formless reality, no problem. He
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gives us all these options because it doesn't matter. What matters is to connect.
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And so those who have chosen the path of devotion, I have done
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so very consciously. It's not that they are not aware that there is an
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infinite characteristic of God and that God, in their minds only lives in one
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form. I've never met anyone who thought that, and I've met so many
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great devotees of God. But they've made this beautiful conscious choice, which is
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I love to love God. And the truth is it's a lot easier to
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love something that isn't yourself. I mean, we can practice self love.
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It's a beautiful practice. I recommend it, but on on a deep spiritual
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level to move through your day just in oh, oh, it's much more
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difficult than to move through the day constantly thinking of this form, this name,
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this expression of God that you love. And so people choose a path
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of devotion because being in love feels really good. It's a lot easier for
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most of us to love in a direction like I love you, or I
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love this, or I love him or I love her. Rather I love
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an infinite, formless reality. I mean, that's hard to hook your love
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hooks into. And so we choose knowing that God is infinite, whatever name
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we may give, but knowing that God is infinite, knowing that God can
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take any form. Therefore, by nature is formless. Like water will take
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any form you put it into any sort of container, it'll take that form,
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because in and of itself it's formless. But we choose. We choose
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to love a particular aspect or image or manifestation of God because it feels really
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good, and it's such an easy way to connect. And if for you
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the path of connecting to a nameless, formless, infinite reality works, beautiful,
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go there. Nobody's going to force you to love God inform. Both
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of them both are true because in being infinite, God can take any form.
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And again, Baguan Krishna tells us in the Gita, I incarnate on
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earth. When darkness is winning out over light, when unrighteousness a dharma is
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winning out over dharma, I incarnate inform. So God has told us I
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take form as and when needed. But we've also been told I mean everything,
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I am everything. And our scriptures, the Vadeas the Aponishats give us
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so many months and teachings about the pervasiveness of the divine. One of my
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favorite is the teaching that says Isha Vasiamidam sard of him, yet can judge
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Agathianja. And it means everything in the universe is pervaded by the divine.
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There is nothing not pervaded by the divine. It means you want to worship
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God in the form of Buguan Krishna or Berguan Ram or Schanka Baguan or Jesus
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Christ or the Buddha art, however, no problem. Or in the form
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of the tree in your backyard, or in your form of your grandmother,
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no problem, because everything is divine. And if you want to worship God
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as that infinite energy that pervades all, no problem. So it's up to
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us. It's really up to us. And just a quick note on Buddhism,
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since the question asked about it, Remember that the Buddha actually was born
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in hindu but was born at a top time when I won't go into too
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much of Indian history at the moment, but it was a time in which
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the priestly casts classes were, it said, really getting a little bit full
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of themselves ego wise, and feeling very much like the gatekeepers between people and
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God. And I had started to insist upon all sorts of elaborate rituals that
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of course only they were qualified to conduct in order for people to connect to
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God. And so, in a response to people essentially being really kind of
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tired of constantly being told I'm the only one who can connect you to God,
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and You've got to do this whole ritual and then you have to buy
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me a thousand cows, and then you have to do this for me.
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In response to that, a beautiful young prince Gotham Sadarth went out into the
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jungles, into the forest. He sat beneath the tree and he meditated.
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It's a long story, I'm not going to go into all of it,
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but eventually he ended up under the tree and he basically said to the universe,
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I'm going to sit here until I get enlightened or I'm going to die
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trying. But I'm not going to budge till it happens, and it happened,
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and so he went back with a message that is very beautiful and that
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of course is deeply, deeply applicable even today. But it helps to understand
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the context in which it arose, which was, you don't need these guys,
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You don't need to do all of these ceremonies. Inside each of you
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is the ability to wake up. You can do what I did and wake
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up. And so he was neither you could say and advite the vedantist nor
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a duellist. He was the one teaching the path that just said, just
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meditate, just go with him, understand the self, detach yourself from that
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which is not real, that which is not self. So that was the
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teachings of the Buddha. And of course remember that ultimately all of these paths,
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the three we've talked about, in all of the other options out there,
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if practiced really sincerely and deeply with a love for God, whatever name
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we use, even if we just say a love for truth or a love
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for the awakening self, are going to take us to the same place.
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They're not like different freeways with different destinations. They're like different freeways with the
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same destination. So just whatever works, whatever touches you, whatever makes you
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feel like, ah yeah, use that, You'll get there. You're listening
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So share information to both enlighten and nurse your soul. Hi, this
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you by RAIN and this station. Welcome back to inspiration and transformation. I'm
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so glad to have you all back here with me. A spiritual relationship with
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money. Money is an energy. Ultimately, money is paper. You know,
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in India, several years ago, our honorable Prime Minister one night announced
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that as of midnight that night or something, I don't remember exactly the timing
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he gave, but people had essentially a few hours, as of some point,
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a few hours from now, the five hundred rupee bill and the thousand
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rupee bill would no longer be worth anything unless as cash they were worthless literally
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within like three hours from now. But for a period of maybe it was
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a month, maybe it was six weeks, you were able to deposit that
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money into the bank, into your account, if you could prove where it
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came from. It was a way of eliminating as much black money as possible,
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as much sort of not clean money as possible, you know, people
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doing cash business, people keeping cash in their homes. If you couldn't prove
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where you got the money, you couldn't deposit it into the bank. Now,
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it's interesting because you've got something that an hour ago made you rich.
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Maybe you had stacks and stacks and stacks of thousand rupie bills. You were
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rich. Maybe you had a closet full of them. Evidently a lot of
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people did, and you were rich. Now suddenly that money is not worth
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anymore than the paper of your notepad. So it's a very interesting thing from
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a perspective of just understanding our relationship to money, because it is really paper.
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It's only worth something as long as our governments or our economic system agree
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with each other that we're going to say this paper, right, I mean
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this paper, I could put it up for auction, I probably wouldn't get
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much. But a different piece of paper is worth one hundred dollars just because
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it's got a hundred on it, a picture of a US president on it.
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One piece of paper worth nothing, another piece worth a hundred dollars,
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simply because we've all agreed, okay, we will call. We will all
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agree to give you one hundred dollars worth of things for that piece of paper,
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but not for this piece of paper. Ultimately, though, it's all
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just paper, but it's the energy that that paper has, and it's an
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energy that enables us to get what we want, to get what we need
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to take care of ourselves, to trade that money for other things. So
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it's just it's an energy. You know, before we had money, we
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had a barter system. I've got potatoes, you've got rice. I need
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rice. You need potatoes. Or I've got potatoes, but I don't have
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anybody to till my field because my son, unfortunately, or my husband who
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used to do it, dyed or is sick, or is injured or has
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left. I'll give you my potatoes, you till my field. It's an
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energy exchange. Everybody got what they needed. You're strong and macho to till
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my field, but you need potatoes. I've got all the potatoes. Now
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I've got somebody to till my field. It's great. It's just an exchange.
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And ultimately, that's really what our relationship with money should be is.
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It's just it's an energy that enables us to move through the world, exchanging
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something we have for something we need, therefore enabling someone else to exchange something
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they have for something they need. So if I've got a paper in my
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hand that says a hundred on it, and we agree it's going to be
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a hundred dollars, and you've got a bunch of vegetables and fruit doll and
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rice, bread, well what I need is food. I give you my
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hundred dollars. What you need is money. Now I've gotten what I need,
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You've gotten what you need. We're all good. It really shouldn't be
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more than that. But of course, as you mentioned, it's become this
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massive, massive source of fear, of greed, of discrimination based on who
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has how many piece of papers and what's written on them. My papers say
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a hundred, your papers say one. So I'm better than you are.
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I've got ten piece of papers. You've got two pieces of papers. I'm
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better than you are. It's absurd, and this is what leads to the
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anxiety, the fear, the hoarding, and as you say, this whole
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scarcity. What's happened with money is along with our economic systems, is that
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we've got all of this marketing and advertising. Right If what I want is
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money, and what i've got our pillows. Let's say, and I want
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you to give me your money for my pillow, Well, I'm going to
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have to convince you that your life is really lacking without this pillow. Otherwise
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it's out a need a pillow. I'd rather keep my money, but I
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want your money, so I'm gonna I'm gonna try to convince you that you
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are lacking in some very deep and profound way without this pillow. Now,
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you may or may not actually buy my pillow. But if you've got everyone
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who's trying to sell you something telling you that you are lacking in some way
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without what they're trying to sell you, you're going to buy that message that
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we are lacking in some profound way, and that in order no longer to
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be lacking, I have to buy this, which means I need a lot
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of those pieces of paper. And then that creates anxiety, because now I
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need the paper, not just for something. I need to fill my stomach.
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Or it's winter time. I need a sweater. My roof is leaking,
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I need someone to fix it. I want to send my kid to
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school. I need tuition, But now I need that money to buy things
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to take care of my internal lack. Now I've become convinced that not only
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do I need potatoes, but I need new types of clothing. Knew of
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this, knew that new shoes, new handbag, this type of car,
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this type of mobile, or otherwise I am profoundly lacking inside. Now,
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as we sit in set song, we think, well, of course I'm
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not lacking inside without the newest model of mobile. But the truth is,
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if that advertisement didn't work, people would not rush to get every brand new
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model of phone every minute that it came out. But we do because we've
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bought the message that somehow there is something lacking in us without the newest,
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the best, and so we scramble for more and more, but we can
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never actually have enough because as long as there's advertising and marketing and commercials,
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we're constantly going to feel that we don't have enough. As long as there's
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people who have more than we do, we're going to feel like we don't
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have enough. And this is where this idea of scarcity comes in, because
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in order to sell something, not only do I have to convince you that
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this is the best and it's going to fill your holes all the ways you're
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lacking. This pillow is going to take care of it, because of course,
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in my commercial, it's going to be me super happy, surrounded by
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all these people who love me and everything is perfect because of this pillow.
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So you're gonna want it. But then I'm going to tell you there's only
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one left, or I'm only selling this pillow today. If you don't get
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it today, I'm keeping it. So we create these marketing strategies. It's
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brilliant as far as a strategy to separate people from their money as quickly as
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you can. But what it does is it creates this pervasive sense in all
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of us of not only do I need it more, but that there is
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an inherent lack of that which I need in the universe. And then it
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starts to extend out. Not only is there going to be a lack of
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the pillows that you know are magic wands for my life, but we then
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also start to feel like there's a lack of happiness because on an unconscious level,
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if this pillow is what's going to bring me happiness and there's a lack
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of pillows or I missed the day it was available, then it means there's
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not enough happiness for me. I've lost I've lost an opportunity for happiness.
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And so we live in this myth, this myth of scarcity, not just
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of items, but of happiness. And what that does is not only does
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it make us miserable, but it actually pits us against each other. Think
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for a moment, just do a little experiment with me. Let's say that
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your friend or your colleague get at work, or your neighbor comes and tells
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you, guess what. Guess what I just bought this brand new car,
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Or guess what my son's getting married and he's getting married to the most wonderful
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girl in the world. Or guess what my son just got or my daughter
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just got admitted to I or to m I. Now, just imagine that
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moment for just a second. Most of us want to feel very, very
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happy for that person. We want to be able to con ratulate them,
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to just have joy for them. But if you're really honest with yourself,
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what you'll notice is there's a tiny bit inside you that just kind of resents
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that person that just kind of wishes somebody would key that car so it wasn't
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quite so nice tomorrow as it is today. That's just kind of waiting for
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uin on the wedding of this perfect couple. Now you think why it makes
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no sense. Why wouldn't we be able to fully hun just give our love
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to somebody. Why wouldn't we be able to feel just full joy for someone
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else's joy. Because on some deep level, we've brought into this myth of
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scarcity, and we believe even though it makes no conscious or logical sense,
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that their happiness has just taken a very large piece out of the finite happiness
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pie in the universe. And what that means is there's less for me.
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And this is why we need to look at this consciously so that we're not
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operating unconsciously and come back into alignment. You know, next week is Devali.
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It's the holiday of Maha Lakshmi, the Bestower of prosperity. Too many
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people think that she's the goddess of cash. You know that it's oh mahal
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Ah, please, you know, give me money. But she's the bestower
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of spiritual prosperity, which is that experience of fullness, of wholeness, of
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abundance whatever you have. And so it's a perfect time to come into good
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dharmic relationship with money is to recognize, as we pray to my Lakshmi,
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that ultimately the highest prosperity isn't about what we have, but it's about how
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we feel about what we have. I could have millions, but if I
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feel like I don't have enough, I'm poor and I could have almost nothing.
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But if what I want to do is share that with others. I'm
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much and that's the wealth we need to pray to mah Lakhmi for next week.
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So it's a perfect time to get ourselves back into that that alignment with
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money, otherwise we lose our entire lives running after it. This is OTRFM,
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for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seven six two two peta Welcome back. This
38:00
is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation. So in the Ramayan, Lord
38:12
ram essentially subjects himself willingly to a fourteen year exile to uphold his father's promise
38:28
vow to one of his wives, and in the Mahabadhat, Lord Krishna's essentially
38:37
telling the Pandavas to fight their own family. So which model do we follow?
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He's asking, Well, truth is not a cookie cutter approach. I
38:53
mean, if I say to you is taking a knife and stabbing it into
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someone's asked good or bad? What are you gonna say? What if I'm
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a surgeon? What if I'm a heart surgeon? You've had a heart attack,
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you show up on my operating table. M. Yeah, that's good.
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Right. So you can't cookie cutter the truth. It's all about context,
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it's all about the need of the hour, it's all about intention.
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Now, without going into very long stories, let's just leave it with this.
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In the Ramayan King Dashat Baguan Rahm's father was a man of dharma.
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He was a good man, a righteous man, an honest man. At
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one point earlier in his life, a mishap had happened mistakingly, unknowingly accidentally
40:19
due to the karmic threads of which he was destined from that time, from
40:27
before Buguanam was even born. He was destined to die from a broken heart
40:36
at the loss of his son, which he did when against his own heart,
40:45
against his wishes, against his will, he had no choice but to
40:52
send his son into the jungle due to the fulfillment of this other vow promise
40:58
that he had made to another wife, and he did actually die of a
41:02
broken heart. On the other hand, the Cartoffs, Dourya Dun and family
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were the exact antithesis of dharma. They were cunning and wicked, greedy.
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They had done every single thing possible to deprive their own brothers of their rights.
41:39
They had even tried to kill their own brothers. They had used every
41:47
tool, every trick of trickery, of manipulation, of lies, of cheating
41:57
in order to deprive their brothers of their rights and their life. And remember
42:07
that before Bajuan Krishna agreed to this war, he personally had gone to them.
42:13
He had personally done everything he could do to prevent this war. But
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sometimes when we are mired in ego, we become blind. I remember Pooja
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Swamiji telling me years and years and years ago, and I didn't understand it
42:36
much at the time, but I've seen it since then that you can almost
42:42
tell when someone is on the brink of a really bad downfall because their vision
42:51
gets so narrow. They become so blinded by their own ego that they absolutely
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just don't listen to anything anymore. And he said, you just can watch
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it happen leading up to someone's downfall. Their vision becomes very, very narrow,
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and they block out all sources of light and truth to the point where
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there is no other option but for them to fall. And this is exactly
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what had happened. They had so many opportunities to see the light to prevent
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the war, including Buguan Krishna going and trying to get them to let it
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go, but they wouldn't and so there was no choice. In the Ramayan
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Baguan ram going to the jungle was in service of dharma. In the Mahabadhat,
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fighting them was in the service of dharma. So it's not about do
44:14
we obey our family or kill them, That's not really the question. The
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question is how do we anchor ourselves in dharma so that we know as we
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move, where we move, what we listen to, that we are abiding
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by one thing and one thing only, which is righteousness, truth da.
44:49
This is OTRFM, part of the Iom Radio Network. Home Times Magazine is
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Eastern Time. Like Baldwin, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
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I grew up loving circuses and other traveling animal shows, but it never occurred
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to me what life might be like for the animals. Training wild animals to
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do things they don't understand takes force routine discipline with a hook or whip with
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the heel of a boot shows the animal exactly who's the boss. Don't patronize
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animal acts. Please contact People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seven five seven
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six two two peta welcome back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and
46:31
transformation. So when fear arises, it's a signal, that's all fear is.
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Fear is a signal inside of us to be careful. We don't have
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to act on it. It's a very, very very basic signal. It's
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one of the most basics. I mean, if you go back to our
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evolutionary history, back hundreds of millions of years ago, all of our ancestors
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back not necessarily to the amiba, but go back to life in the ocean.
47:16
Even even before we got on land, there was fear. All animals
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have a sense of fear. That's it actually keeps them alive. Now it's
47:31
better developed in the higher developed animals, but that sense of fear. Tried
47:37
to try to kill a mosquito as it flies around your room. What does
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it do? The moment it realizes you're trying to kill, it flies away,
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doesn't want to be killed. Try to kill an aunt. The tiniest,
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tiniest little creatures have a sense of fear. It's just a very very
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very basic central nervous system response. We were talking the other night about Sometimes
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it arises in response to a wild animal. Sometimes it arises in response to
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fear of being embarrassed, fear of humiliation, fear of failure. But fear
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itself is just an internal signal. Now, this is where our intellect comes
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in. This is where our Buddhi comes in, This is where our gyon
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comes in our wisdom. This is where our vivac comes in power of discrimination,
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and that's when we decide, Okay, this is a fear the it's
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worth listening to. I can't swim. They've invited me to go out in
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this boat ride looks like a really stormy day. They don't have life jackets.
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The guy who's steering the boat appears very drunk, and something inside you
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just signals maybe not to get on the boat, and that's when you stop
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and you just listen. Is this an internal intuitive instinct speaking to protect yourself.
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But then there's other times where you have, as you say, a
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sense that something really is your dharma and you know you're supposed to do it,
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or you feel you're supposed to do it. But what if it doesn't
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work, what if you fail? What if you are made a fool?
50:10
What if everyone laughs? Well, those are the sorts of risks that I'm
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always in favor of taking. No one ever said that fulfilling your dharma was
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going to be easy for me. I always go back to the bag of
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rad Ghita. It's this very precious, very short seven a hundred short verses
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of answers to literally every question that ever arises, and you think about the
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teachings in the Ghita from Baguan Krishna to Arjune. Arjune was afraid. The
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Ghita begins in the middle of the war of the Mahabadhi. Arjune is saying,
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essentially, the hair is standing up on end. I am so afraid.
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Literally my hair is standing up on end. I don't want to do
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this. And Buguan Krishna goes into the next seven hundred verses about why,
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even in the face of fear, this is our June's dharma, he must
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do it. He has no idea what the outcome is. Baguan Krishna does
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not give him a you know, spoiler alert, don't worry, You'll be
51:45
fine. What he does instead as he helps him understand that yeah, you
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might fail, you might die, you might lose everything, but ultimately,
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to not fulfil your dharma is the greatest loss of them all. And so
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when that fear arises, typically it's a fear we're supposed to either work through
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or simply create enough space in us that says, Okay, I get it,
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You're here to stay. No affirmations, no anything I tell myself is
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going to make this fear go away, all right, you're here to stay,
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But so am I. So is my dharma, so is my courage.
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So instead of working to necessarily try to push away the fear, just
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work on the other way, build up your courage. The word courage comes
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from the same route as the French word cur which means heart. Courage is
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about being open hearted, open your heart to that flow of the Divine through
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you, to that which you know you are supposed to be doing, and
53:28
then do it. And if there are ways to do it that are more
53:32
skillful than other ways, by all means, choose them. Courage doesn't mean
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recklessness. Fearlessness and recklessness are two totally different things. A lot of times
53:47
we think that to be fearless means that we should be reckless, be stupid,
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take all your money invested in one stock, jump off a roof shop
54:01
while you chant a month about having wings and flying right. That's not what
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courage means. Courage means my heart is open to the presence of the Divine
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in me, and therefore I move forward in my dharma, not knowing what's
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going to happen, but knowing that I will be okay because I am moving
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in my dharma. And that's the only thing you can be assured of,
54:44
is it. At least at the end of the day you don't find yourself
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having been very safe, but not having fulfilled your dharma. This brings to
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a close this hour of inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for joining
55:07
me. I'm so glad to be together with you all each week, and
55:13
I look forward to being together again next Thursday, same time on home Time's
55:21
radio. But it can't be, don't because beak looking then? Okind of
56:32
get the I can't be I becabying. Oh my god, can you beat me?