Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
Namaste, and welcome to the conclusion of the introduction to the Esoteric Teaching.
Jump up, fall down. This is going on, as my ādi-guru, Śrīla Prabhupāda would say, “chālega, this is going on.”
We see it everywhere, in every field, but especially in the spiritual field. People want to jump directly from kāmya-karma, meaning selfish activity for material gain. They want to go right into the higher stages of meditation.
It doesn’t work, people. They jump up, and they fall down. Jump up, fall down. After a while, it gets to be a regular rhythm.
I told you about that friend of mine, a psychiatrist, who went to Thailand every year for the rains meditation for 25 years. And what is he doing sitting there in the rain? Working on his childhood emotional traumas.
You know what it means? He’s misusing meditation. He’s misusing meditation as an enabler for his neurosis. So of course he falls down. It’s offensive. It’s not only stupid and wrong and counterproductive and frustrating and all the rest; it’s downright offensive. Offensive to the teacher, to the saṅgha, and to the dharma.
And so many are doing this. We see them in Tiru, coming from Europe for Christmas vacation for two weeks. And for two weeks, they try to give up smoking and drinking and taking drugs and having sex. Not very successfully. But at the same time, they think they can go to Ramanashramam and become enlightened.
Or they’re spending thousands of dollars chasing this guru and that teacher and going to this seminar and that retreat and this other monastery and this other community and whatnot. And hoping that somebody is going to zap them and make them enlightened. No, it’s not happening, folks.
It’s not happening.
The reason it’s not happening is, enlightenment is like a building. It has a foundation, a first floor, a second floor, and so on. All the way to the top and beyond. So how do you get to the top? You have to go in the ground floor, the main door.
First you have to get away from selfish action. If you’re only working for your own selfish interest, either personal or extended, in the form of family, community, cooperation, country, religion, philosophy, or any other cause in this world, it’s still self-interest.
How do we know this? Because every scripture, every bona fide śāstra in the world says the same thing. From the Bible to the Bhagavad-gītā to the Buddha-suttas to the Vedānta. And going all the way back to the Upaniṣads, the earliest scriptures known.
They’re all saying the same thing: give up selfish action. Give up acting out of desire. Desire is ignorance. It’s the cause of suffering. Give it up.
Well, then what am I going to do? Selfless service, karma-yoga. You can even do the same thing you were doing selfishly. But give up the result. Give it to charity. Give it to the poor. Or better, use it to worship God.
That way, you can elevate yourself to the next platform, which is bhakti. Bhakti begins from selfless karma-yoga, seva, bhagavat-seva. And then it goes through three levels: from rituals, rules and regulations, and instructions given by the spiritual master; through spontaneous love and ecstasy of a specific devotional flavor that is your spiritual choice; to the highest level, ananya-bhakti, which is when you see God and the Self as non-different.
And of course, that leads right into meditation, rāja-yoga. And the aim of rāja-yoga is to dissolve the mind.
So when one attains the Path realizations, the four paths of the Buddha, or the equivalent in the Vedic scheme of rāja-yoga, or Vedānta, the mind is finished. The mind is gone. You can’t find it anyplace. That’s because it never existed. It never existed in the first place.
So along with the mind, of course, goes the ego. Then there’s no possibility of working for selfish gain. And then finally, that leads to jñāna. Jñāna means direct knowledge, Veda-prakāśa.
Direct knowledge of what? The Self, Brahman, pure, objectless, undivided consciousness or awareness, “I-I”. Not even “I am”. And certainly not “I am that.” That’s still duality.
But “I-I”. That’s it. No more.
So can you jump from selfish action in the world, working a job, supporting a family, bringing up kids, doing all this stuff for your corporation, or whatever? Can you jump from there to rāja-yoga, to jñāna-yoga?
No.
So what about all the teachers who go around mouthing these platitudes: “There is no mind, there is no self, there is no path, no teaching, no guru, no realization, no nothing?”
Well that’s very nice for the people who are ready for it. For the people who are prepared and qualified. Yes, the instruction’s for them.
But what about the ordinary guy on the street? What’s he going to do? Can he simply jump from where he is to that level?
No, no.
And if he tries, what’s going to happen? He’s going to fall down. Jump up, fall down. Jump up, fall down. And these teachers encourage it.
Poor Krishnamurti. J. Krishnamurti. Well the other one too. They both suffer from the same disease. Teaching that there’s no mind, no teaching, no method, no meditation, no realization, no this no that, no nothing. Can anybody become enlightened?
No.
But what did happen was a lot of jump up and fall down. So other teachers like Osho are better. They give methods. But they don’t put the methods in any coherent system or path. And so a few people maybe get enlightened. But it’s hard to tell because there’s no standard either.
But then there’s the highest teachers like Rāmaṇa Mahārṣi. Rāmaṇa in his Ulladu Narpadu is giving that highest level of teaching, yes. But in Upadeṣa Undiyār, he’s also giving a step-by-step way to attain it from the level where most people are at today, all the way up to the highest stage.
That’s the superiority of a teacher like Rāmaṇa. He does not deny the lower stages. He treats them as if they’re real, even if in the ultimate sense they’re not. And that gives the sādhakas a way up, step-by-step, level-by-level, until they reach the top.
So many people, down to the girls working in the kitchen, became enlightened. Down to the cows in the cow shed, became enlightened because that was his approach.
There was only one question that Ramana didn’t like to talk about. That is, how did we get into this mess? How did we get into this in the first place? That teaching is given by the Buddha in his paṭicca-samuppāda.
Paṭicca-samuppāda means Dependent Arising, or Dependent Origination. And what it means is that when we find ourselves disembodied after death, or even before death, as soon as we realize, “Uh-oh, death is coming,” we start to create a new body. We start to create a new embodiment, a new process of becoming.
And normally people go through this whole process of becoming, from conception all the way down to decay and death, and then they just jump right back to the beginning and start all over again and create another body and another body and so on and so on.
This is saṃsāra. This is the round of birth and death. So how do we get out of that?
The Path is also a process of becoming. And it goes through exactly the same stages as the Fall, but with knowledge, with a goal of enlightenment. That’s why the Buddha taught how we fall into this life, because it gives the process of becoming.
And just like in, for example, in the stage of gestation, there is desire or ignorance, then there’s fabrication, then there’s name-and-form, then there’s consciousness, and so on. Similarly, in the beginning stage of the path, gaining Right View, same thing is going on.
There’s a fabrication, there’s a desire for enlightenment, there’s a name-and-form connected with enlightenment. Even at initiation, the disciple gets a new name, see?
And this creates a different kind of consciousness, consciousness in relation with the Absolute, in relation with God and the guru, who’s God’s representative.
So this process of becoming, although it uses exactly the same steps and techniques, because of its content, leads to liberation, mokṣa, freedom from saṁsāra.
But to get there, we have to go through the process step-by-step, with understanding, with knowledge, and with the guidance of someone who is realized, who understands it, who can show you.
That’s the difference.
That’s why it is—how can I say—useful or beneficial to know the stages of the Fall. Unfortunately, it’s kind of intellectual and abstract, which might be another reason why Rāmaṇa didn’t teach it.
If you can just have faith, now it’s easy to have faith in someone like Rāmaṇa. He’s so qualified, more qualified even than Buddha. I mean, he became spontaneously enlightened at age 16.
Can anybody match that? I don’t know of anybody else in all of history. So Rāmaṇa is the Mahā-Guru. It’s easy to have faith in him, if you can just follow his instructions. But then you have to know which instruction is for you at a given stage.
You see, there’s no way out of it. Somehow or other, you have to understand where you are on the process, what stage you’re at, and which instructions are valid for you.
Not try to follow instructions that are from a higher stage, otherwise you’ll fall down. Jump up, fall down. Boing, boing, boing. That’s what’s going on.
That’s why we researched and practiced this Esoteric Teaching until we got it, until we got the result. That’s why we’re sharing it with you. So that you can stop this saṁsāra, you can stop this falling down business, stop this phony jumping up.
So the first thing you have to do is get past your selfishness, your desire, and the cure for that is selfless service. The old ways really are best. There really is no shortcut. You can’t just read a book and go ĀŪṀ, and the whole material world disappears and that’s it, you’re enlightened.
No, I’m sorry, you’re gonna fall down. It’s happened to so many. Maybe even they reached First Path. It happened to me. I reached First Path. And First Path is, like, so dramatic and amazing and intense.
You think, “O my God, this is it. This has got to be it. Wow.”
But it’s not. And if you go off thinking, “Okay, now I’m enlightened, now I’m the guru, now I can do whatever I want, and I won’t fall down.”
Guess what? You’ll fall down. Jump up, fall down.
So you need to have a guru. You need to have someone who can keep you humble so you don’t make some offense and fall down.
Try to understand. The Path is sentient. The Self is alive and conscious. And through his various expansions and avatārs, such as Īśvara, Śiva, Viṣṇu, and so on, all the many gods, He regulates all of this.
He won’t let you get out of this material world by cheating. You have to follow the process. And it’s there in the scriptures. It’s been there for thousands of years. Where have you been that you think there’s some way to game the system?
Huh? Get out of it. It’s not going to do you any good. Give it up. Go back to the beginning and do it the right way. That’s the only way that works.
Now we’re going to go and finish Ulladu Narpadu, which is about the reality. And then we’re going to start a series that shows the holographic multidimensionality of the Esoteric Teaching, because not only is it the description of the Fall and the Path, it’s also the key to the secret teaching of all religions.