Healing the Soul

The Essence of Ayurveda

Session 2 Part 2 Transcription

Question: They don't understand the concept of Supersoul. They're asking that "When you talk with God, you're talking to the Spirit?"

Babaji: No; God is personally present as the Supersoul. That's a different thing; just like the difference between the Sun and the sunshine. God is the Sun; Spirit is the sunshine. God is a person, but Spirit is not a person; it's like, a material. Not material material, but spiritual material; a substance, spiritual substance. [laughs] Let's finish this, OK?

So God can be present as His energy; for example, [knocks wall] this is material energy in the form of earth. It originally comes from God; but right now, it's apparently separate from God, and it's impersonal. But God can be present anywhere and everywhere at any time; personally present. How does God know everything if He is not present everywhere? God is omnipresent, omniscient [and] omnipotent; how is it possible? He must be present everywhere; He must have His eyes and ears in every body. In the Vedas it is said that the individual soul is the knower of his own body, but God is the Knower in all bodies. It's common sense; otherwise how is it possible for God to know everything?

But something that's more difficult to understand, but just as important, is that God is the Doer in all bodies; we're just along for the ride. It's just like when we drive in a car; we might be steering, but the engine is actually doing the work. So similarly in this body, we may be making requests, but God is actually doing the actions, operating the body. This explains so many things, if you think about it. It explains why sometimes our plans just don't work out; or we try to do something, and we wind up doing something else. 

I mean, there's just so many things... My point here is, you're not going to understand all of this [information] tonight; this is something you should think about for a long time. It'll give you more and more insight, the more you think about it. It's a model that I have drawn out of the scriptures in many years of research. So my suggestion is to make a copy of this, and then think about it. Actually, you'll find that this model explains human consciousness and the experience of human life far better than any other model.

Question: How should I understand the concept of the soul?

Babaji: The soul is made in God's image, right? It's just like we were explaining this morning: why does my shirt have two arms? Because my body has two arms. My pants have two legs because my body has two legs. So now, why does the body have two legs, two arms, one nose, two eyes, two ears, one head? Why not three eyes? Why not four ears? Because that's God's form; and because the soul is made in the image of God, the body is made in the image of the soul. So the body has two arms, on head, two legs, [et cetera] because the soul has that [form]. The soul has that form because God has that form. 

[These] things are basically simple; but because we don't know, we make so many silly theories about it. If we don't accept this Vedic knowledge, then we have to make up some theory or guess, and we'll always be changing our opinions, or you know, going from school to school or from teacher to teacher, or just speculating. But Vedic knowledge is different; [it's eternal and perfect].

Question: Is this the only life we have, or do we have many opportunities?

Babaji: How old are you?

Response: 50.

Babaji: What happened to the body you had when you were five years old?

Response: It grew, the same as everybody.

Babaji: No; every seven years, every cell in the body is replaced by new cells. It's a medical fact. So try to understand: the body that we had when we were young is gone; it disappeared. The body that we had when we were teenagers? That's also gone. The body that we had when we were thirty? That's gone. Now we have [a] 50, 60-year-old body; in a few years that'll be gone. And one day this body will become useless because of age, and we'll move on to another body. 

The body is always changing; everything material is always changing. Nothing in this material world stays the same; that's the nature of this world, because in this world there's time. Everything in this world is subject to time. So just like this body is changing within this life, it's also changing from life to life; and there's no guarantee that the future body will be like this body. 

The soul is eternal; the body is temporary. Eternal means no beginning, no end; temporary means always changing. Material means temporary, changing and conditional; eternal means unconditional, perfect and always existing. So the soul has taken many, many bodies, according to our desire. We can take many different forms according to our state of consciousness and karma. 

Note: I remember thinking at this point, "Good grief, we did all that work making a nice presentation about consciousness, and they haven't understood anything." I felt sad and compassionate that they were so dull. After discussing this with Uddhava, we decided not to complete the planned seminar because it would be a waste of effort to present so much transcendental knowledge to such dull people. We had similar experiences in other courses.

Response: Why [do you say that we take the body] according to our desire?

Babaji: Because our desire determines our state of consciousness. If our desire is for material things, our consciousness will be identified with a material form. If we're rebelling against God, we're put into this material world because we want to enjoy the results of our own work. We can reverse this [diseased] condition by deciding to serve God instead. That's the treatment for material existence. 

Question: How can I dedicate my life to spiritual if I forcefully need material things: money, work and like that?

Babaji: We're going to discuss that in the third session of this course.

Question: When I make mistakes God suffers, and when I make good things, God takes pleasure?

Babaji: God never suffers! How could God suffer because of us? We're insignificant; if an ant in your kitchen makes a mistake, do you suffer? Compared to God, we're less significant than an ant. How could we make God suffer? That's a ridiculous idea; that comes from very, very envious people, who want to see God suffer: [they are] demons, actually. 

Sometimes demons teach in the name of religion, and they like to see, like, Jesus on the cross and stuff like that; they enjoy it, so they make this the symbol of their religion. But actually their purpose is to hide spiritual knowledge, so that the people are ignorant and weak. 

Question: I don't understand the concept of algorithms.

Babaji: Oh. An algorithm is similar to a formula, but it's more like a set of instructions. For example, you might tell your mind, "When I wake up in the morning, if I'm too hungry, then I have to get up early; otherwise, I can roll over and go back to sleep." Then your mind will follow that instruction; that's an algorithm. 

Response: That we handle ourselves?

Babaji: Yes. We program our own minds, just like a computer. We give it instructions, and it faithfully carries out those instructions. It's similar to a robot; we tell it what to do, and it does whatever [we told it].  You'll find [that] if you ask your mind a question, then you can just go off and do whatever you like, and when it has the answer, it will come back and say, "Here is the answer." It's a very good computer; much more reliable than these. 

So every genius... I've read books about geniuses, and they all report the same thing: that the most important part of being a genius is knowing how to ask questions. You ask your mind the questions, and then you leave it alone and it comes up with the answer. For example, Einstein kept asking himself the question, "How does God create the universe?" And he knew [that] the key was light. And one day he was getting on the bus, and he was just lifting up his foot to get on he bus, and the answer hit him! It was like, he just froze; and the bus driver had to say, "Hey, come on, what's wrong with you?" He's going like, "I just realized what's on the mind of God; [and] you want me to hurry up?" [laughter] That's from his autobiography. 

So if you really want to be a genius, learn how to ask your mind a question, and wait for the answer. If you sit and think and think and think and think and think, you'll find yourself going far away from the real truth. Intuition is much more powerful than reason, because God is involved; remember our diagram? God is hearing your requests; He knows everything. So really, there's no knowledge that we cannot have if we really want it.  

The Vedic Literature

Let's talk a little bit about the Vedic literature. That's the source of the teaching that we're sharing with you. Remember last time we talked about the Vedic literatures; if we had them here, they would fill up this whole space: solid books, wall to wall, floor to ceiling; nobody could come in the door, because it would be full of books. God is unlimited; so knowledge about God is also unlimited. One book can never hold all the knowledge of God. So all the scriptures of the world talk about God, just from different points of view. So if there's a difference in the details, that's natural because they're looking from different points of view. [But] they're looking at the same subject.

The root of the word Veda is ved; that means knowledge, to know. And Veda means, not any knowledge, but Absolute Truth. The Vedas were written down about 5,000 years ago. Before that time, people were more intelligent, and they could remember things better. They didn't need writing, because just by hearing [something] one time, they could remember [it for] their whole life. But now people are less intelligent; we require writing so that we don't forget. 

I'm not making this up; if I were making it up, it would be much more popular. [laughs] So although the Vedas were written down 5,000 years ago, they contain histories more than 100,000 years old. And the proof of this is that archeological investigations have proven that many things in the Vedas are actually correct. For example, the Vedas talk about the Sarasvati River. But if you go to India today, you won't see any Sarasvati River. So some people say, "Oh! This proves it's mythology." But when NASA made a satellite for geological surveys, they found by radar the old river bed of the Sarasvati River, exactly in the place where the Vedas say it is. You can't see anything from the ground; it just looks like a desert. But from the satellite you can see. 

Similarly, in one of the Vedic scriptures, the Ramayana, is described a bridge between India and Sri Lanka; and according to the Vedic histories, this bridge was constructed 1,600,000 years ago. "Mythology, mythology." But when the Space Shuttle took pictures of that area, you could see clearly the bridge going from India to Sri Lanka, under the water. So they sent ships here and they did surveys, tested everything, and they came up with two conclusions. One is [that] this is not a natural feature; it's artificial, it was made by people. And two, it's about 1,600,000 years old. 

Another example is the city of Dvaraka. Dvaraka is the capital city of Lord Krsna. But when Krsna left this world, and went back to His planet, the city sank into the sea. "Oh! Mythology, mythology; there's no city there now." But now we have technology of underwater radar; so when they used this technology, what did they find? Ruins on the ocean floor, right where Dvaraka is said to be in the Vedas. They're covered by mud, so if you dive [there] you can't see anything; but the radar shows it clearly. 

And there are many, many, many more examples; for example, the speed of light. The speed of light was discovered [measured] in 1850 or something like that. But the value given in the Vedas is within one-half percent of the modern standard [value]. The dimensions of the solar system, the sizes and masses of the planets and the Sun, were all given in the Vedas. The fact that the earth is round, or spherical is also given in the Vedas. Whereas here in the West, people thought that the earth was flat; which I can't figure out, because if you go in a boat in the middle of the ocean, you can clearly see that the earth is curved. 

But anyway, the Vedas had this information thousands of years before the West. So how did people that lived in grass huts have so much advanced knowledge and technology? They had smart weapons; they had all kinds of technology. How did these people get this technology if it's not coming from a higher source of knowledge? And in fact, the history of the Vedas themselves says that the knowledge in the Vedas comes from God. And we see much evidence of that in the Vedas themselves. 

For example, the Sanskrit language--by the way, you see this background, the background of the slide here? This is Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a very sophisticated language. It's the most logical and regular language on earth. It is a consciously-created language. It's written in poetry, and there are many, many rules for this poetry--more than any human being can understand. It's based on a transcendental ontology; in other words, the categories of things that exist written in Sanskrit include everything that exists in the spiritual world as well as the material world. The Sanskrit language is also the ancestor of all our major modern languages. Ask any linguist or philologist; they'll tell you that Sanskrit is the mother language of Greek, Latin, German and so many languages in Asia: Farsi, Persian, many, many, languages: Arabic etc.

So the way, or the alphabet that Sanskrit is written in, these characters... First of all, they're completely phonetic; so the language is pronounced exactly as it's written. It's not like English, where you can't tell from looking at the spelling how the word is pronounced; English is a crazy language. And the alphabet of Sanskrit is called Devanagari, which means 'city of the gods.' So that tells you that the origin of this language is not from this earth; it's from higher beings, higher knowledge. 

And there's more evidence of that, too. First of all, the Sanskrit is written in poetry; and each line of poetry has to have a certain number of syllables. There are two kinds of syllables in Sanskrit: long and short; and they all have to add up to a certain checksum. And this is used to prevent errors in copying and interpretation. 

Just like when you download a file on the Internet; there's a mathematical algorithm used to add up the number of bits. Each file has a unique checksum, which is used to make sure that the copy is the same as the original. If there's any difference in the checksum, it means there's been some error. Similarly in Sanskrit, each verse has a checksum; and the checksum has to remain the same for different versions of the scripture. Especially in the old days, when scriptures were copied by hand, this was very important. Someone could make a copying mistake, and change the whole meaning. So to prevent that, they used checksums, just like modern computers, but thousands of years prior. 

Not only that, there are many rules on the interpretation of the Sanskrit text, and these all depend on the context. In other words, you cannot establish the meaning of a sentence in Sanskrit without reference to the context. This prevents taking things out of context and then interpreting them differently according to your own understanding. It means that there's a standard meaning, a standard interpretation, and this interpretation had to be written into the whole context. 

Now this brings up the fact that knowledge created by human beings can never be perfect, because human beings have four defects. Huh? You like that picture? Human beings commit mistakes. Have you noticed this? Human beings are imperfect? Yeah? I get no argument on that one, eh? And we're always in illusion because we have a tendency to identify the body as the self. This is our main error. 

We have imperfect senses; [did] you ever see an optical illusion? Or, did you ever see a stage magician pull a rabbit out of a hat? This is illusion. You know it's impossible for the rabbit really to be in the hat; he's got it in a pocket someplace, or in his sleeve or something. Right? But it looks just like he's pulling the rabbit out of the hat, or sawing the girl in half. But because our senses are imperfect, they can be fooled. Therefore there are many optical illusions; there are even auditory illusions, like that. Or sometime, have your eyes closed, and have somebody touch you with a feather or an ice cube. See if you can tell the difference. It's very hard to tell the difference between cold and heat, unless you're looking. So our senses are so imperfect. 

And finally, we have the cheating tendency. Everybody reads the newspapers; the politicians make so many promises: "If you elect me, I'll do this, I'll do that." Then give them your vote, and what do they do? Whatever they like. So this is the cheating tendency. These four things are common to all human beings; therefore, human beings cannot give perfect knowledge. Even so-called scientists are not able to give perfect knowledge, because their knowledge is restricted to the domain of the material world; they cannot look into the spiritual world, because their senses are limited. Therefore we require a higher source of knowledge that does not come from human beings. 

The teachings that we're giving are not something that we've made up; we're simply repeating what we received from our teacher, who received it from his teacher, and so on, all the way back to the original speaker of the Vedas. Like I said, the Vedas were written down about 5,000 years ago. Since then they have not changed. This is different from Western religious knowledge, which, if you know the history of Western religion, has gone through many different changes. 

I mean, Jesus Christ certainly knew everything, and we respect him as our original guru; but since then there have been so many changes due to politics, wars and so many crazy things that the Vedas are a much better source of spiritual knowledge. For one thing, they are much bigger than the Western scriptures. How can we say that everything about God can fit in one book? Even in the Bible, at the end of John it says, "And Jesus did so many things that if we wrote them all in a book, even this whole world wouldn't be big enough to hold all the books [that would be written]." You know that passage?

So, what are the other books? Where are they? They're the Vedas! So the Vedas cover every subject under the Sun; but most important, they cover spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is the thing that we're missing the most; because each of us is a spiritual being. Yet, we don't even know what we ourselves really are. So this is the education that's missing. You can go to [the] university--here there's such a big university, so many learned professors--but there's no course you can take there that will teach you what we've been talking about tonight. Even these learned professors, they don't know these things; because in our culture, we have said that spiritual knowledge is less important. 

But unless we know who we really are, how can we understand anything? If I knock you on the head, and you're unconscious, then what can you do? Without consciousness there's no thinking, no will, no activity, no desire, nothing; we're completely helpless. So consciousness is actually the most important thing in life, because without consciousness, there's nothing. 

Consciousness is so important that it gives everything else its importance; and the quality of our consciousness determines, directly determines the quality of our experience [in life]. If our consciousness is good and clean, and properly aligned with God, then we experience ecstasy at every moment. But if we're rebelling against God, fighting against God or just in ignorance, then every step of life is so difficult; [there will be] so many problems. 

But remember our diagram; if we allow God to operate our mind and our body, then He'll always give us the knowledge we need, just at the moment when we need it. He'll always move our body in just the right way so that we avoid all kinds of difficulties and problems. He'll put the words in our mouth so that we always say the appropriate thing at the right time. 

Do you think I'm making all this up? No, I'm talking from my experience. That's my policy: I don't talk about my own ideas, I talk about the ideas of the Vedas. And I only speak from my own experience: what I have tested; what I have found to be true. That's the difference between religion and spiritual knowledge: religion says "You must believe this," or "This is a sin, and this is good." And if you ask a question, it's like "Shut up; just believe it." But we say, no; we want you to ask questions, because we want you to understand. 

We don't want to come between you and God; we want to help you get a direct relationship with God. We don't want to just shove some theory down your throat; we want to give you knowledge that you can test in your own life. You can verify that knowledge scientifically, and find out for yourself if it's true. And my personal promise is that everything that I share with you is something that I have tested and found to be true in my own experience, in the laboratory of life, over more than forty years of investigation. 

In that way, we try to avoid these human defects, because the knowledge that we received through the chain of Vedic disciplic succession is perfect, because it comes from higher than a human source. Actually, it comes from God. The question is, how do we receive this knowledge? It's not like an ordinary course in school or university; I mean, we have these courses to meet people and to introduce you to this knowledge, but this is not really the way that we receive this knowledge. 

Approaching an Authentic Guru

It's not like an ordinary course. What is necessary is to study with a spiritual master. But first we have to know who is a guru; what is a guru. How do we recognize a genuine spiritual master? Because there are many people who pretend to be a spiritual master because they want the name and the fame and all the other benefits that come along with being a spiritual teacher. But how do we tell the real from the fake? 

Well first of all, the spiritual master will be a representative of God in disciplic succession. In other words, a real guru himself has a guru; and that guru also has a guru, going back, back, back, back to the beginning of time. Our lineage goes back much farther than recorded history. I'm not going to say how far [back] it goes, because you probably wouldn't believe me; but it goes a long way back. We trace back our lineage more than 5,000 years. So, I have a guru; my guru has... This is a picture of my guru, by the way. My guru has a guru; his guru has a guru; that guru has his guru, and so on. That is one symptom of a real spiritual master. 

In a minute we'll talk about more symptoms. So how do we approach a spiritual master? Like I said, it's not an ordinary academic subject. So we can't just read a book, or just attend a class and expect to get it. It's not that easy, because this is not material knowledge; it's not ordinary information. We're talking about changing your consciousness; we're talking about a different state of being: actually, changing your whole existence from material to spiritual, curing the disease of material existence. 

So the answer is given: we have to render service and put relevant questions to the spiritual master. That's why we encourage questions; we like questions, and we're not afraid of questions, because we can explain everything based on our experience. A person who only knows the theory... Did you ever have a teacher in school who was like, reading through the book a few pages ahead of you? And if you ask him a question, it's like "Uh well, uh, let me get back to you on that. I have to go to the library and look it up." [laughs] But someone who really knows their subject can answer a question immediately, because they have experienced the answer, or they know someone who has: their own guru, and so they can answer based on their experience, or from what they have heard. Experience is better, though.

And also we should accept initiation. What is this initiation? It's like marriage; you make a commitment to follow a particular teacher, a particular teaching, a particular method. And the difference between marriage and the initiation is that there's no divorce court [for initiation]. Anything that's really spiritual is eternal; and the relationship with the spiritual master is the beginning of that eternal existence. It's the first relationship that we have in our lives that is completely based on spiritual principles; therefore it's eternal. And even when we get to the spiritual world, our spiritual master will be there, and we'll be serving our spiritual master even in the spiritual world. 

So this relationship is permanent, and it's based on spiritual principles, not material; so it's not about exploitation, it's not some kind of a power struggle, like so many marriages fall into, you know: "I'm in charge," "No, I'm in charge," "I'm the leader," "No, I'm the leader." No, nonono; no. No. Because the spiritual master is always going to be more superior than you, because he started long before you on the same path; and it may take you 30-40-50 years, or 30-40-50 lifetimes, to come up to where the spiritual master is. So my guru said, "One should always feel like a fool in the presence of his guru." This is discipleship. 

Finally, one should accept the teaching of the spiritual master as his life and soul. What does that mean? It means, we actually perceive reality in terms of the teaching of the spiritual master. We look at life through the teaching; because, remember, it's not our teaching. It's not my teaching, it's not his teaching; it's coming from God. Because it's coming from God, it's perfect. 

Still, our attitude is [that] you should not accept it simply on faith; you should test everything. Most people are lazy; they want somebody to tell them what's true and false. They're willing to pay the price of their faith to get easy knowledge, and most religions are structure for that kind of a deal: "You give me your faith, and I'll give you something to believe in. Here: this, this, this, this... Questions? No: we don't allow questions." Our field is not like that; we say, "Test this knowledge. Ask your questions." 

For example on our website we have a forum where people can ask questions. And we have people from Turkey, where's that guy from, Morocco? We have several people from India, Australia, Europe, South America, North America... There are people from everywhere. They just put their questions; then we will research in the scriptures, and we'll write back with the answer. We encourage this, because we want people to know that there's a source for this teaching that contains answers to every question that you can think up--and more. The Vedas are huge; we have them all on our computers at home, so we can search for those answers. If we don't know personally, we'll find out. 

So this is a teaching that you can really dedicate your life to. By serving this teaching, the quality of our consciousness changes completely; that's the real point. 

[end of tape]