FIND THE PEACE WHICH IS ALWAYS WITHIN YOU FREE VEDANTA ONLINE COURSE TUESDAYS, 7PM BRAZILIAN TIME AT satsangaonline. com. br Class 1 - Part 1 Jonas Masetti I'd like to welcome you all to this Vedanta course.
This is an introductory course: it will discuss the fundamentals of Vedanta knowledge, of the Vedic tradition, little by little. When we hear the word "tradition", well, tradition does not quite match. .
. haste. Tradition matches patience, serenity, peace, right?
When you join a study program such as this one, even though it is a free online course that you're taking just so as to get the hang of it, in order to truly learn, you must really experience the proposed teachings. And the proposed teaching is a way to deal with oneself. This is comprised in the very way we designed this course: it will last for about two months and we'll meet every Tuesday from 7 to 8 PM for a one-hour class.
This hour will be divided in two 30-minute segments, and we'll take questions and talk to people on different subjects. While the class is taking place, like now, all you'll do is listen. When the break comes up, go ahead and ask your questions.
When we study Vedanta, the Vedas, Yoga, the whole package, seeing things from a western a newcomer perspective, we often hear about many types of yoga and masters, sites and ashrams in India and a whole bunch of things, and we often get a bit lost: "what is what? " But, when you spend some time in India living and talking with such teachers, they don't see things as separately as we westerners do, as if you had to pick the best type of yoga for you out of a menu: "What is the best choice for me? " This type of attitude and approach is a western one, for you assume that: "I'm the one who knows best what I need, so I'll see what I like the most and I'll go for it.
" But think again: what if Yoga and this tradition are like a doctor and a medicine, a doctor prescribing a medicine, will you chose the medicine based on your taste? "I prefer to take this medicine because it is orange-flavored": this doesn't make any sense! Does it make sense to say: "I'm a rather emotional person, so I need some sort of dancing yoga.
" Or: "I'm an introvert, so I need to practice yoga on my own, so that I don't have to deal with my shyness. " Maybe it's indeed more comfortable to be by myself if I'm shy or to dance if I like dancing, but what if you need to tackle your shyness? Shouldn't you go the other way as in: "I'm shy, so maybe my yoga should help me to gradually open up, and not one which isolates me further from society"?
This idea that I'm the master of my own spiritual path and chose based on what I know about myself is not usually what is traditionally followed. From the tradition's perspective, yoga is something integral. And this is a good topic for us to start with.
A 100 years ago, there was no Iyengar, ashtanga, none of such names. Those names are from our era, they are styles of physical postures, and all of them have defects. All of them.
If you take ashtanga and see how people practice it, some people get along with it very well: their bodies become great and they practice it meditatively. Other people practice it as if they were in the gym and get hurt: people have broken their backs with ashtanga! Isn't ashtanga good?
It's not about being good: categorically, none of such yogas are good or bad: any of them may be good or bad, it depends. On what? On the student, on the teacher who's teaching and on the point on which one finds itself in life.
So, the earlier we are able to drop this concept regarding the wide variety of types of yoga and grasp that, fundamentally, everyone is after the same thing, the better. And it's not only about physical health. We do look for physical health, and yoga, the asanas, will for sure bring it, since it's an exercise.
You're putting body energy in motion, like in good Tai-chi or other Eastern techniques for circulating body energy. Will it make the body look nice? Sure!
Exercising brings beauty to one's body. Will it calm the mind? It may.
Practicing the poses isn't always followed by cognitive change. This is where yoga starts to deepen. Sometimes, for example, and I always joke about this since it's my experience when I started yoga.
The teacher used to say: how was it, again? "at the end of the class, once you're done with shavasana, you sit and say: Om". And people would compete to see who could chant the longest Om.
"I won! ", you say at the end. But you lost, you dumb!
The teacher should say it, "You lost, sucker! " The goal of the class is to do away with a competitive mindset, so those who are competing may win in chanting a longer Om, but in terms of peace of mind, they lost. How can I drop such a competitive way of being, since it hurts people when I'm around them?
Yoga can also be a technique for you to deal with your mind, understand how your emotions are structured and overcome it. Some people call that yogatherapy. There are yoga teachers who use yoga practices for an entirely dedicated therapeutic work.
They'll talk about emotions before class, discuss things. Is it right or wrong? We no longer need such categories.
It's a possibility, and if there's benefit, where's the problem? What's wrong in helping people dealing with their emotions in a yoga setting? Perfect!
Maybe, for someone else, there would be no appeal, there. We need to open our mind, grant it some flexibility so as to be able to realize the dimension of this word "yoga". Ok.
Moving on from the physical standpoint and entering the energetic one, and also from a mental standpoint, yoga as a therapy may help us dealing with our fears, anxieties and so on. What goes beyond that? Beyond the emotional, physical and energetic work?
Interestingly, there is not much of an answer to this question. Since, without the Vedic tradition underpinning things, all we can say in terms of spirituality will comprise those three levels of the individual plus transcendental experiences, which are also available in yoga, as in many other paths. So, the person may think: "I'll do yoga", and she has physical, mental and spiritual health.
What now? "Now, I'm attempting this meditation that makes me see a light materializing itself before me". Is it possible?
It is. Others will say: "By doing it, I'm becoming more sensitive. The other day, before my daughter opened her mouth, I already knew what she'd tell me".
That happens. There are psychophysical exercises, whatever they are called, aimed only at developing such abilities. They are traditionally called "siddhis", and such abilities do exist.
When we talk about spirituality, then, one of those four items will be available in the listener's mind. The person may also devise a set of physical practices such as kung fu. A person who fights kung fu will call it a spiritual practice.
-"It is spiritual", one will say. -What is your pathway? "The body.
It starts with the body. By practicing it, I become healthier, more balanced, etc. " Right.
It is valid. Other people will say: "No, my path is energetic". What do you do?
"Tai-Chi. , for instance. The body may be the vehicle, but it's not the main thing.
I'm looking at the body's energy. There's also Reiki and many other energy-focused practices". That's Ok.
A bit further, one says: "My yoga, my spiritual practice, aims at dealing with my emotional issues. " Ok, interesting, it's like a therapy. And many groups do that, even mixing things up: drinking some sort of tea, for instance, tea that makes you feel more relaxed than usual, and then things that happened during one's childhood pop up, giving you an opportunity to deal with them with a new mindset.
It's Ok. Is it spiritual? Yes!
It is dealing with emotional aspects, our emotional individuality, so to speak. If you make more progress, all you'll have are esoteric practices, transcendental things. I'll then be dealing with practices and exercises that grant me things other people don't have.
I met many people in India who had such siddhis. I have friends over there that, if something bad is about to happen to them, they hear a bell ringing. Think: it must be terrible!
It's good to know that something bad will happen, but once you're used to it, it must be like a horror movie: "the enemy is coming". What can you do? It is bound to happen.
Ask them: "If you know something bad will happen, what can you do? " "Well, I can't do anything other than preparing myself for the fact that something will happen. " Do you understand it?
That's Ok. If I could know in advance that Brazil would lose 7 to 1 and there was nothing I could do, I'd rather not know, honestly! There are two sides to spiritual practices, even the transcendental ones.
You find out about things, yes. But there is a reason behind each one thinking by oneself and us not being able to read minds. There's a reason for that.
Once a woman did an exercise associated to tantra. She switched on the ability to know what people think. It's like having an extremely sharp intuition.
She became able to see what people were thinking. Now, this is no joke: maybe you'll think it's a lie, but it took her one month for her to go nearly crazy and ask her master to no longer see anything. When relating to one another, people usually have this shell to which we are used to.
You ask: "How are things? " and people answer: "Fine", even if it's not fine. They're going on with life and maybe things aren't fine but they'd like you to think so.
Generally speaking, our minds are extremely crazy. Mine is, at least, maybe yours aren't! But, usually, they are crazy: we think things we disapprove of, we imagine things we'd rather not imagine, say silly things to ourselves.
Imagine having someone hearing to all this in our minds. Handling ourselves is crazy enough, what to say of others! One loses grasp on sanity.
There's then a reason for us not to see each other's thoughts. And if you ask my master: "I'd like to learn a meditation to see into another person's mind. " I'm sure he'll say the following: "The first step is to know why you want to read his mind.
" The first step! Because, without a shadow of a doubt, when one craves for a power that others don't have, one necessarily wants to become special. Right?
That's what I'll become: if no one can read minds and I can read everyone's minds, I have become special. If everybody could read minds, I wouldn't want this power. So, deep down, such extra abilities, when they become goals in terms of spirituality, are associated with a wish to be special which hinders such abilities from unfolding.
Every teacher I met who had such abilities, their lives didn't revolve around having such skills. No, quite the opposite: they even hide special skills since they don't want their lives to be about that. Imagine your own life if you had the ability to cure anyone by touching him: your life would be over.
Of course it would mean the world to other people and it would be great to do that, but your social and family lives would be over, and you wouldn't be living so as to cure people, no: what would live would be your blessing, your ability to cure people. You'd be a supporting character to all this: in the breaks between imposing your blessed hands, you'd eat a sandwich, watch a movie. So, there is a reason why our physical, energetic and psychological orders are the way they are.
It is very important for us not to use yoga and other tools as an attempt to change this order. Because this order doesn't need to change for me to be happy. This is the whole point.
When I get to this point of standing in a checkmate against those four pursuits by saying that: "Well, I want physical health, sure, but this isn't my goal", and why isn't it my goal? Because the body is just my vehicle! Could one's life goal be brushing one's teeth?
No, brushing is something desirable: I won't stop brushing my teeth, doing asanas, going to the doctor. Those are good things, but they can't be my life goals, because my body will be over! How can the goal be my body?
Ok, next. "No, my goal is to perform energetic practices and gain all physiological capacities available in the body. " There is a TV show called "Superhuman".
Have you seen it? No? Superhuman casts people with amazing abilities, beyond the ordinary.
One of them is a runner. He has won many marathons. It's already something that one guy once said: "Let's have a meeting in San Diego", and the runner is in San Antonio, another city in the US, so he runs from one city to another.
No cars, no buses, he runs there. They follow him by helicopter, typical TV sensationalism, and his ability is such that he doesn't stop running. His physiology has adapted so much that, when he starts running, his heart rate drop instead of rising, and he relaxes as if he were walking in a forest, and they monitor him with all those sensors: he's a superhuman, the runner, he runs as if he were walking, which is impressive.
It's impressive! What is your life goal? "To become the super runner!
" Where do you want to go? If your purpose is to run, where are you running to? What are you running from?
How can one's goal be a mere mean? Running is a mean. My energetic capabilities are a mean for accomplishing things.
I can't call that a goal, even if I become a superhuman, you see? If the goal is to become the superhuman, then it's the fourth pursuit: I'm reaching for my spirituality, my practices, as a way to become special and benefit internally from it. Rejoicing in being a special person.
But, no: if it is physiological, it will take me nowhere. It will die with the body. Emotionally?
Well, emotionally, it is very useful, since having therapy and dealing with our emotions is like taking a shower, not physically, but mentally. We get rid of anger and tensions which stop us from living the lives we'd like to live. It's quite satisfactory.
But I'll let you in on a secret that my master told me: emotional change is never-ending. "What? Never-ending?
" Indeed. If you are lucky enough to manage, and I never met anyone who did, and you don't need that to be happy, but if you manage to solve all the emotional problems of this childhood, you'll get back to even previous ones. Imagine that: it's even harder to know what happened, and those situations influence your life at present.
It has an subtle influence in your present life. There are many therapists who work with regression achieving great results, indeed helping people. Sometimes, we do need help, since our emotional being can be apart from its normal state in which I can live with people without victimizing them, without them getting hurt for being near me, because that is being well.
Once this boundary is crossed, I need to get help. While the emotional being can't handle living in society and living with oneself, I need to do this work. But, once a certain emotional balance is achieved, when I look at my therapist and say: "He and I are basically the same: I solve my problems with him and he solves his with his therapist", there's nothing else to be done.
You can go on digging, and many do, I myself have done so for many years, but nothing changes anymore: I know my problems, I know what kind of situation makes me angry, I acknowledge the source of my anger, and that's it. There's nothing extra. The third pursuit, spirituality as a way to deal with trauma and emotions, is important, indeed, but, like the others, it is limited.
At this boundary, I need to be ready to take the next step. And there lies the great trap, which is today's subject while discussing the four steps in spirituality: And what's this great trap? Someone who is physically and energetically healthy and is also emotionally healthy, has the world in its hands.
Think about it. When you go to work at a place, even as a yoga teacher, what often establishes you is being more balanced than the others. You teach, and people come to you for advice.
Those three initial steps, when carried out successfully, there is material and worldly gain associated to it. And if we don't realize it, it's as if spirituality would set us a trap. It prepares us for something higher.
But this preparation also blesses me in this material world. If I think I'm the best for having a healthy body and so on, my spiritual life does not flow. It gets stuck.
Masters usually say: "Before completing your studies, do not become a master. Do not put yourself in this position, because, once you do it, your study stops. " The ego won't allow you to become a student again.
Drpping all groups, like a small child: you just listen to what is said, instead of saying: "for 10 years I've meditated on the blue light, so, now, when I'm taught about meditation. . .
" No! This type of baggage hinders me from analyzing objectively what is presented to me. I need to be prepared: as our friend Bruce Lee would say, the cup has to be empty.
Whenever I'm studying, the cup has to be empty. If I see myself as someone very capable who owns the truth, the cup fills no further. This is why many Brazilians and westerners who go and visit ashrams and masters get frustrated.
They can't understand what is going on. Sometimes they just bluntly tell the masters: "Look, I've done this and that meditation, visited those sites, this and that teacher, blabla, and, now, I came here to get a mantra from you so as to solve this specific problem I have. " "Well, if you have done all that much and you've got such an understanding and satisfaction, why are you even looking for my help?
You don't need it! You don't need it! Weren't you able to go so far?
So, you don't need it. " When the student hears this, they feel annihilated: "How come he said I don't need it? " It can be different, too: when a foreigner comes in too full of himself, the master spills out: "Foreigners will never get it.
" Everybody asks: "How can he say that? ! " He isn't hurting people, on the contrary: he needs to create, within the minds of those who come, space to hear, like in a child, a space decluttered from the baggage that took you there.
Then, he'll say that this fourth step, this drive that says "I will become special", is the hardest one to overcome. And it's the last step to be taken before you connect to a tradition. Once you join a tradition, no one is special, anymore.
"Who is special? " Well, Swami Dayananda. And he'll say, in his turn: "My teacher".
Who'll say: "Shankara". "Shiva". Gone.
The special person is gone. "Who chants the longest Om? " Omkarananda, maybe!
A swami with Om in his name! Not me, for sure! People will say: "What a great class you taught!
" Sheer blessing from the Rshis. They brought this knowledge here. I'm merely repeating it, and I try not to add anything, my only merit in it: not adding anything to what I'm repeating.
That's a different approach. And our hearts have to be willing to enter spirituality openly. Without thinking too much of the future or the past, just contemplating objectively what I'm told to see whether it makes sense, whether it creates doubts, and if it makes me a better person.
If it doesn't, if it doesn't click with my heart, toss it. A spiritual quest that makes you sulky? I wouldn't want that!
Feel free to do it, I won't! Nobody wants it. All those indicators, those steps describing the pursuit, and the indicator which is my satisfaction and wholeness as a person is the base of an spiritual quest.
Vedanta has to start from this understanding. Studying the Vedas, Vedanta, must begin with clarity on what will be given: not another meditation through which you'll float in padmasana, the lotus posture. It's not about that.
You won't be given a mantra to hold your breath for 10 minutes. Or your body will stop aging and you'll be forever young. No, that's not the point!
There's one only and simple goal: I'd like to drop this person inside me who pretends to be a ninja, trying to be special, trying to show the world that I'm someone and who is unhappy. I'd like to drop this internal person and laugh as I'd laugh of a joke which were always available. Get home, look at my spouse, my children and rejoice at being their spouse and parent, instead of bearing an internal weight which is built from all those mental questions: "What do I want from life, what will I become, I'm not seen", all this chaos.
I want to become an average, free person, not a special person who needs to be special to be happy. I want to discover this happiness that has always been there for me and which is always available. If that is clear, this course will flow quickly and easily.
This is always the first step. Om. My apologies for, sometimes, while teaching a Vedanta class without being with the people and seeing them, it can be tricky, and we can say things that may hurt: but it is the role.
We may need to say tough things, but it comes with the job. I have no intention of hurting anyone, on the contrary: I'd like you all to feel good about what I'm saying. Sorry if it's not the case.
Here, we'll go for a break. If you have any questions or wish to comment on anything, use the chat room or hangouts. Would anyone like to say anything?
-Pollyana? -I'd like to ask something. -Can you hear me?
-Yes, very well, go ahead. This fourth step you mentioned. .
. Physical, energetic, mental, would the fourth be spirituality? Look, spirituality itself has four steps for one to begin connecting with the Vedic tradition: physical, the asanas and other non-yoga-related exercises, basically anything that renders you physically healthy, energetic, emotional, meaning that therapy, psychoanalysis and so, all this is part of a life of yoga.
It happens between teacher and student, but we don't get the chance to do it nowadays. Thank God there is internet and we're able to communicate, but, in India, you live with your teacher. You talk to him about your issues and he becomes your therapist.
This third item is key, emotions. The fourth item is a break in this quest for becoming special, which is a trap and hinders spirituality from flourishing. So, I'll find many great things in myself with the first three steps.
I'll become a more capable and objective person, and this will trap me in thinking that "I'm the guy". This blocks me. Got it?
Yes. In the eyes of others, you mean? Exactly.
Many seekers. . .
-As if it were a blind spot? -Exactly, a crafted one. Many of those studying worry constantly about other people: "Oh, but the world doesn't see it this way".
"My neighbor is just like that". Hey, we're not here to discuss your neighbor! We're here to talk about me and you!
I'll share my experience so that you can live yours, see? It's as if the ego would stop the magic from happening. It lies in your way.
See? FIND THE PEACE WHICH IS ALWAYS WITHIN YOU FREE VEDANTA ONLINE COURSE TUESDAYS, 7PM BRAZILIAN TIME AT satsangaonline. com.
