Who are the various gods? || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2020)

1 year ago

Video Information: 26.12.2020, Shastra Kaumudi, Rishikesh, Uttarakand

Context:
~ Who are the various gods?
~ Where do the Gods reside?
~ What should be done before asking help from others?
~ What is the God for our own potential for wisdom?
~ Where does our teacher reside & can we be taught without our concent?

Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00Who is Indra? A power within me. I'm asking myself please bestow well-being on

00:16yourself. What am I telling myself? Kindly be good to yourself. Too much to

00:21ask for? Too much? We keep wanting others to be good to us but very rarely do we

00:34want ourselves to be good to us. The Upanishads are filling in that small

00:43little gap. Before you want others to help you, come on, be responsible and

00:53help yourself. Therefore, Brihaspati is neither a planet nor a faraway God.

01:04Who is Brihaspati? Your own potential for wisdom is Brihaspati. Isn't Brihaspati

01:14the God of learning? Who would learn for you? Is some deity going to come

01:20and learn on your behalf? Tell me please. When you really want to learn, when

01:28you're devoted to learning, you are Brihaspati. Or you can be one of the demons who fights

01:36Brihaspati. Brihaspati is a great teacher. The teacher does exist within you.

01:44Isn't that what the scriptures repeatedly say? We fail to comprehend

01:48what do they mean when they say the teacher exists within you. Can you be

01:52taught without your consent? Tell me. That's Brihaspati within you. The

01:59faculty to say yes to learning. The ability to exercise the option to

02:10learn. To learn from a book, from life, from person, from yourself, your own

02:19life experiences, from anything and everything. That's Brihaspati.

02:28And then there is Tarksh who is called Arishniyami, who doesn't allow bad things to

02:36happen to you. Who can prevent bad things from happening to you when all

02:42the badness is inside. Obviously Tarksh cannot prevent a truck from

02:54moving you down. That can happen if you are not careful or if the truck driver

03:00is special. Here the gods are all being referred to in the internal and subtle

03:10sense. There are things and events and people outside who can harm you in an

03:19outer way. They do have the power to for example fetter you. They can chain your

03:27hands. Can't they? What's being said here is that nobody can chain your spirit, your

03:36inner self without your consent. Nobody can bring inner harm to you without your

03:44consent. Externally they can do a lot of things and externally you do not require

03:50somebody to be vicious to you to bring harm to you. Externally well you know

03:57even coincidences can harm you.

04:02You can take the road to Gangotri and meet a landslide. Nobody planned it for

04:08you. Nobody was conspiring to kill you. You just die. And even if there is

04:14no such landslide, time will kill you. You will get old and simply die. So

04:23your external self which is the bodily thing is always at the mercy of the

04:30universe to a great extent. One new virus strain and we might all find

04:38ourselves helpless. We are at the mercy of situations, coincidences. We do not

04:45know. Somebody may now decide to eat a horse. You know one progresses. Yesterday

04:56they ate a bat. Tomorrow they might eat something even fancier. How do we know?

05:05But internally you are your own Lord. All the gods reside within. Pray to them to

05:18awaken them. Getting it? So no never fall to the kind of nonsense that says

05:33you know Indra or Shani is not pleased with you and therefore bad things are

05:41happening. So how do you please Shani? On that particular day you bring oil in

05:49an iron vessel and offers this kind of money and then Shani will be pleased.

06:00There is nothing but money for Shani kind of fraud. There are all the gods. No

06:17Shani. No Shukr. No nonsense. Getting it? You may as well say I pray to my own

06:34potential fearlessness and you can get give that fearlessness a new name. A name

06:40of your choice and that name becomes the God of your choice. That's the kind of

06:46process that has gone into these verses. You take a God and let that God

06:52represents fearlessness. For example, first of all you decide that fearlessness

06:59is something worthy of worship. That value system has to be there. I decide

07:05that it's great to be fearless and then I want to give fearlessness a face and I

07:14worship that face. I call that face the face of a deity. Do you see how the

07:19gods came up? Have you seen the entire process? Similarly, I find that strength

07:29is very important. My value system says no to weakness and yes to strength. So

07:37what I do? I give strength a face. As poets do. As artists do. Don't they? As

07:44painters do. If you go to a painter and say paint depression for me, would he

07:53refuse? He will paint it. How have you managed to paint depression on the

07:58wall? Because that can be done. You can give a face to something very subtle.

08:09That's the function of the artist. So these poets are at work here. In fact, you

08:23know the Upanishads several times call the Rishis as Kavis, poets. Not without

08:35reason. They are bringing towards that which is very abstract and that's what a

08:44poet does. They are giving a face to that which is very conceptual. That's what a

08:51painter does. And then when you give it a face, obviously you also give it a name

08:58and that becomes the name of a God. Right? So those gods don't really exist. They

09:07are names of something virtuous within. Getting it?

09:14Namaskar Acharyaji. What could I get from Saman and Daman? Daman, what could I get?

09:26That may be the suppression of emotions or our unnecessary actions. But what do

09:33you mean by Saman? Daman and Shaman, these are classic words. Shaman simply means

09:46that you are not encouraging the inner tendencies to take hold of you or

10:05consume you further once they have arisen. What do you call the

10:28firemen in Hindi? Now you know what they do. You see what is Shaman then? Once the

10:49thing has caught fire, you do not support the fire. You do not feed it

10:58fuel. That is Shaman. You rather douse the fire. The fire could be of fear, lust,

11:12anger, jealousy, possessiveness, attachment, anything. Shaman comes into

11:27the picture only if Daman has not succeeded. First of all, you don't want

11:38it to be initiated at all. You don't want the fire to happen. But if the inner

11:50thing does catch fire, then you want to put out the fire. That's Shaman.

12:00Often the fire and the inner temperature becomes quite pleasurable.

12:07There is a heat within and we like it. Don't we, in today's metaphor, like things

12:15hot? Now if the fire is there and you started liking its hotness, why will you

12:29put it out? First of all, you have to see that hot things will reduce you to

12:42ashes as well as turn into ash themselves. We don't see that in the

12:51movement of passion, do we? When that hot thing is there in front of you, do you

13:00ever see ashes? A few hundred meters from here, you have the crematorium. Some of

13:13you might have already walked past it, Badaganga. It's spectacular at night, the lit pyres.

13:42You must be able to see your own body there and you must be able to see all hot things

13:50there. Why can't you outsmart time? Time will show you those things, right? But time

14:03will take 10-20 years. Why can't you outrun time, outpace time? What time would anyway

14:12show you 20 years later, see it today and you will be saved. Or do you want to keep

14:29fooling yourself for 20 years only to come to ashes then?

14:57We know that external fire consumes us. Most of us are already internally charred, destroyed by the inner fire.

15:09Shaman is about putting out the inner fire and the scriptures tell us that if

15:20you have put out the inner fire, then you are immortal irrespective of what

15:25happens to your body. Your body will indeed burn but you will be immortal. But

15:34you are already dead if there is a fire within. Shaman is about dealing with that

15:47inner fire properly. It's adjacent to dispassion.

16:06Acharyaji, what does the internal fire that is a deterrent mean? Is it the desires

16:14and the human tendencies? To burn. It gets life.

16:44When you put food into it, what happens to the fire? Does it get satisfied? All of its demands?

16:51Its demands only increase when you feed it food. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.

17:01It uses everything that you give it to further itself. You know one of the quotes and posters,

17:20they read, what you collect for your security makes you all the more insecure. It's like this.

17:30What do you collect it for? To feel secure. But what does it make you? More insecure. That's the nature of fire. You give

17:41something to it with the hope that it would be satisfied and placated. Instead

17:49of getting placated or appeased, its demands only magnify like that of a

17:57blackmailer. The blackmailer arm twists you for something. The moment you concede

18:08his demands, does he go away happy and contented? What does he do? Next time he

18:15wants, even more. That's the nature of the inner animal. There you go. Never try to come to a negotiated

18:31settlement with it. Never try to meet it halfway. It won't work. This is a battle

18:42in absolute terms. This is a battle in binaries. You will either win or lose. There can be nothing midway.

Who are the various gods? || Acharya Prashant, on Vedanta (2020)

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