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Are we free?

(HH Kadamba Kanana Swami, Cape Town, 30th June 2012) Lecture: BG Chapter 5

Our mind is daily connecting and disconnecting with so many things in the world, and that is the nature of the mind…accepting, rejecting. So the question is, what are we connecting with?

Sometimes we connect with material things – name, fame and glory in this world.  ' I want to be famous.'

Okay, but are you sure?  Sometimes you read stories about celebrities and what they have to go through, big sunglasses, hiding, running and racing.  Like the story of Princess Diana in England who was followed by reporters and was racing to try and stay ahead.  Stories about George Harrison diving into a laundry chute, in a hotel, when finally the press kicked in the door.  They were coming in!  He dove into a hole in the wall, landed on a pile of laundry and then ran out of the back door!

To be a celebrity…. well I don't know, is it really that much fun to be famous?  It's like: 'Well, I want to be the president of the United States,' (if you are a American Citizen) 'The number one man of the world.'

Okay, but do you know that the head of states gets one-sixth of the karma of all the people in the Country? Would you want to be the head of the States?'

'What do you mean by do you want to get the karma?'

It means that everything that the citizens have done which is not okay, you get one-sixth of the karma for it.  And if they do something right, then you also get one-sixth of that karma.  You want to gamble if the citizens are doing the right things or the wrong things?

There are laws that govern this world.  Don't we experience the law of gravity?  So we may say that we want to be free but can we be?  No, I can only jump so high because I am limited by the laws of nature.  I can only see so far.  I can only hear certain tones and so on.

This law of karma is also there.  So, in this way it's not so easy to be free.  Externally, I don't know if we can make ourselves free.  Everyday you have to eat.  Just think about it, if we didn't have to eat, then maybe we wouldn't have to work.  Every morning people go to work.  One concern is:

'You got to eat, you know. You'll get hungry.'

So the first problem is that we have to eat, so we are not free.  We can't just do as we like.  We are always thinking:

'Do I have to do these things?'

We have so many needs, so we are not free and that is the first point on a physical plane. On  a mental plane we are also not free because as some band used to sing:

'You can't always get what you want.'

And that is true.  If I was free then I would get everything I want, and if I don't get everything that I want (or none at all), then I would not feel very free.  So freedom on the level of the body or mind is very difficult to achieve.

But we can be free – we can be like a lotus on water, but first we have to understand the purpose of the whole universe, and we have to also understand the purpose of what our role is in the whole blueprint of the universe.  So that basically is what the Bhagavad-Gita is saying, which is:

'The world has a divine purpose.  It has a purpose that all living beings become uplifted – uplift their consciousness – grow and become greater and reach a divine state of consciousness.  And in that divine state of consciousness they themselves are always situated in happiness and all their actions are aiming to include the happiness of all others.'

So just think about that. That is something profound!

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Love and hate

(HH Kadamba Kanana Swami, Pretoria Arts Campus, Pretoria, South Africa, 14th September 2012) Lecture: The perfect soul mate – Where to look

Love and hate are kind of natural sentiments in this world -  everyone has it.  I hate Mondays, for example.  I don't know what you think about Mondays, but I hate them!  Like that, everyone has got something they hate and something they love and it's quite obvious.  So that's the first principle -  love is everywhere.  People – they love things, they love places, but more than that, they love people, and they love people the most.  People get all sentimental when it's about mum and dad and things like that.

Love is here in this world, but is this love free from hatred?  Does it even exist?  Is there any relationship where there is some love but which is also free from hatred?  That's not so easy,  no: ' Oh God, I just hate the way he leaves his socks lying around!.'  Or,  'I hate the way she does this and that.'

So in the world love and hate come together and that's a point to consider in the light of the perfect soul mate.  If you think that somewhere around the corner there is a Cinderella or something …. I never met Cinderella yet, I'm sorry.  Or some prince on a white horse – who has a horse these days? Who can even afford it?  So these things all exist on the level of our desire, since we desire it like that.  We desire the fairytale, a perfection, but where is it in real life?  In real life you have got to make do with the best there is, and that's more or less how it is.

So whenever I see something like, the perfect soul mate, and exploding hearts, then I think, 'Yeah, today it's  going to be all rosy and so on, and tomorrow it's going to be something else!'

It is said that when falling in love, you meet a new person and this person looks full of amazing qualities, entirely like an ocean.  After a while you walk around that ocean and find out that it's only a pond, and you don't bother seeing that person again!  What can be said?  A lot happens in the mind.  We dream in the mind of what we want and then we project our dreams into reality.  But reality has nothing to do with that dream.  Sometimes it looks like it's happening, and at other times it doesn't.

So, where to look for the perfect soul mate? And with love, it is possible.   Surely that's the best quality we have.  But can we develop it? Before we talk about relationships, what about us? It begins with ourselves.  If we are not full of love, then how can we expect a relationship which is full of love?  It won't work, it's not possible.  Only those who are themselves full of love and free from hate, only they can become perfect soul mates, and no one else.

So you can look at the world and you may think : 'Every pot has it's lid, everyone has his perfect counterpart.  There is one person in the world, just somewhere around there and that's the one for me.'   That's rubbish!  It doesn't exist.  It's not like that at all.  It's give and take.  On a material plane, as the paper blows away, so does love  – it flies away in the wind! What to do?

Only when you are spiritually realized, can you have pure love.  Only when you see that there is another world other than this world -  an eternal world where we belong and where everybody belongs, then you can develop loving relationships together. Then you can have a world free of hatred.  Otherwise, what do you do in this world?  Everybody has seen enough hatred.

So that's what we have to get rid of.  Not,  'I love my dog, and I love my little turf, and what is in between my wall, and the rest of the world I hate.'  That's not love.  We are sitting here like, ' Luvvy duvvy, baby baby, coochee-coo, and you horrible monster of a neighbour go away, out!'  No, love means all inclusive -  it means we have to be all inclusive.  When love goes together with hate then it's not love.

Today you can have a relationship with someone and it will be all love and the hate is for the neighbours, but that will change.  One day the love will be for the neighbours and the hate will be in your relationship, and that's when furniture starts flying… So true relationships begin when we ourselves become pure, free from hate!

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