Subtitles
[Music] 00:00:00
all life goes grinding around this wheel 00:00:05
and if you go up and you succeed and you get to the top 00:00:12
you have to come down 00:00:14
they don't see success in other words in the world as a method of liberation 00:00:20
because it implies failure 00:00:23
so the idea of liberation which is called 00:00:29
moksha is the ideal of hindu life 00:00:35
wake up it's a dream 00:00:35
and in time there is no hope in time everything is going to get worse in time 00:00:44
because as you know it does we all fall 00:00:48
apart in the end 00:00:51
everything falls apart institutions 00:00:53
buildings nations 00:00:55
it all crumbles and people 00:00:58
say well that's an awfully pessimistic 00:01:00
philosophy 00:01:00
well is it i would rather say that the people who have hope in the future are 00:01:06
the miserable people 00:01:09
because they're like donkeys chasing 00:01:11
carrots that are dangled before their 00:01:13
noses 00:01:14
from sticks attached to their collars 00:01:17
and they pursue and they pursue in vain 00:01:20
always hoping 00:01:21
that tomorrow will be the great thing 00:01:24
and therefore incapable of enjoying 00:01:25
themselves today 00:01:25
[Music] people who live for the future never get 00:01:30
there 00:01:34
they're the sort of people who spend 00:01:36
their lives saving for their old age 00:01:39
trying to teach their children to do the 00:01:41
same thing 00:01:42
so that when they retire at 65 00:01:42
you know they have false teeth and wrinkles and prostate trouble and all 00:01:48
that sort of thing 00:01:51
where were you going what did you think 00:01:53
it was all about 00:01:53
furthermore the fact that life is transient 00:01:58
is part of its liveliness 00:02:01
[Music] 00:02:04
the poets in speaking of the transients 00:02:06
of the world always utter their best 00:02:07
poetry our revels now are ended 00:02:12
these are actors as i foretold you are 00:02:14
all spirits and are melted into air into 00:02:16
thin air and like the baseless fabric of 00:02:20
this vision 00:02:22
the cloud-capped towers the gorgeous 00:02:24
palaces the solemn temples 00:02:26
the great earth itself i all which 00:02:27
should inherit shall dissolve 00:02:30
and like this insubstantial pageant 00:02:32
faded leave not a wrath behind we are 00:02:36
such stuff as dreams are made of 00:02:38
and our little life is rounded with 00:02:40
asleep 00:02:40
and said so well it doesn't seem so bad after all does it 00:02:45
[Laughter] 00:02:49
you see there's always in 00:02:52
the poetry of evanescence a kind of 00:02:54
funny nostalgia 00:02:54
moralists will say those lovely lips which you so delight to kiss today 00:03:01
will in a few years rot and disclose the 00:03:06
grinning teeth of the skull 00:03:08
so what 00:03:08
the skull says lying in the grass [Music] 00:03:16
and waterfly are not merrier than i hear 00:03:20
among the flowers i lie 00:03:21
laughing everlastingly no 00:03:25
i may not tell the best surely friends i 00:03:28
could have guessed 00:03:29
death was but the good king's jest it 00:03:31
was hid so careful 00:03:33
[Music] 00:03:35
and monks used to keep skulls on their 00:03:37
desks 00:03:38
[Music] 00:03:39
people nowadays think that was very 00:03:41
morbid 00:03:41
i went and visited a chapel in the villa veneto in rome 00:03:46
where there's a crypt where all the 00:03:51
altar furnishings are made out of human 00:03:53
bones 00:03:55
the altars are piles of skulls there are 00:03:59
rib bones arranged across the ceiling 00:04:01
like floral patterns 00:04:03
with vertebrae representing flowers 00:04:03
and they're all dead capuchin monks and there's a funny little monk 00:04:11
collecting the admissions up at the top 00:04:16
and he has one of the funniest grins on 00:04:18
his face i've seen a long time 00:04:18
i said to him you know on the day of resurrection there's going to be an 00:04:24
awful lot of scuttling up this narrow 00:04:27
staircase 00:04:27
people trying to reassemble their bones oh dear father isn't that my fifth 00:04:34
metatarsal 00:04:36
so the whole idea you see is that everything's falling apart 00:04:43
i said don't try and stop it when you're 00:04:51
falling off a precipice it doesn't do 00:04:52
you any good to hang on and hang on to a 00:04:53
rock that's falling with you see 00:04:56
but everything is doing that and so 00:04:58
again this is another case of our 00:04:59
completely wasting our energy 00:05:02
in trying to prevent the world from 00:05:03
falling apart don't do it 00:05:03
then you'll be able to do something interesting 00:05:09
with the free energy so that's maksha 00:05:15
because when the hindu says everything 00:05:17
is unreal 00:05:20
the westerner reacts and says no no you 00:05:22
can't treat life as a dream 00:05:24
it's serious it's real it's for real 00:05:27
what do you mean how real do you want it 00:05:30
to be 00:05:30
this is in other words everything insofar as it's falling apart everything 00:05:36
is changing 00:05:40
it is like smoke and we all feel that 00:05:43
smoke has a lesser degree of reality 00:05:44
than wood 00:05:44
it's an image of the evanescent of the ghostly so 00:05:50
this idea the whole world is this mirage 00:05:55
that doesn't mean it's a bad thing 00:05:56
it's only bad if you cling to it if you 00:05:59
try to lean on it 00:06:00
but if you don't lean on it it's a grand 00:06:02
illusion so the word maya 00:06:04
that means not only illusion but it 00:06:07
means art 00:06:09
it means magic and it means creative 00:06:11
power 00:06:11
so this is the big act 00:06:14
it's perhaps easier to feel the world in that way 00:06:21
in a tropical country 00:06:22
where death is very common and where you just watch things dissolve 00:06:29
before your eyes 00:06:34
and yet burst out and grow again the 00:06:36
whole world is 00:06:37
changing maybe easier to think that way 00:06:40
than in our environment 00:06:42
although when you're out in california 00:06:44
the human landscape changes so fast 00:06:47
that no no town is the same for two 00:06:50
years 00:06:51
[Music] 00:06:53
any mailing list that you have changes 00:06:56
one third addresses per annum 00:07:02
nothing stays put the hills are shadows 00:07:05
and they flow from form to form and 00:07:07
nothing stands 00:07:07
now this you see is not a pessimistic attitude therefore at all 00:07:13
to be able to realize that this world is 00:07:16
simply a dream 00:07:17
[Music] 00:07:18
a dancing play of smoke fascinating yes 00:07:22
but don't lean on it 00:07:24
life is a bridge says one of the hindu 00:07:26
sayings pass over it but build no house 00:07:28
upon them 00:07:28
and so immediately you see that [Music] 00:07:35
this is a thing that often puzzles 00:07:38
westerners 00:07:40
they expected anybody who's an ascetic 00:07:42
or a sage or something 00:07:44
be rather miserable with a glum face 00:07:48
but on the contrary you take this 00:07:52
character who's going around these days 00:07:54
mahashi mahesh 00:07:55
he's always laughing because 00:07:59
you see through it he looks on every 00:08:01
side and there is the face of the 00:08:03
beloved 00:08:04
of the divinity in everybody in every 00:08:06
direction and everything 00:08:07
playing it being you 00:08:08
[Music] 00:08:11
and you can look down into a person's 00:08:13
eyes way way in 00:08:16
and you see the self the eternal divine 00:08:19
and what is so funny when it puts on an 00:08:21
expression 00:08:22
saying what me 00:08:22
and the guru the teacher 00:08:28
when people go to a guru they get all sorts of funny ideas 00:08:34
they think oh he's looking right through 00:08:39
he sees 00:08:39
me through and through he knows how 00:08:41
awful i am 00:08:43
reads my most secret thoughts because he 00:08:45
has a funny look 00:08:45
he isn't even interested in your secret thoughts 00:08:51
he is looking straight at the godhead in 00:08:54
you with a funny expression on his face 00:08:57
which is saying 00:08:58
why are you trying to kid me 00:08:58
come off it shiva i know who you are and therefore you see his role is to 00:09:09
gently humor you 00:09:17
into waking up as to your true nature 00:09:21
now of course as i intimated earlier 00:09:26
the hindu is therefore saying everybody 00:09:29
is god 00:09:31
and this is why when a hindu greets you 00:09:34
he does this that is the act of puja 00:09:38
or worship to the godhead in you 00:09:38
and our theologians get rather worried about that 00:09:46
because you see the two conceptions of 00:09:51
god are different 00:09:53
our conception is of the boss man the 00:09:56
king 00:09:58
theirs is of the cosmic centipede with 00:10:00
the many arms 00:10:02
who does not have to think how to make 00:10:05
the world 00:10:06
or rather to act the world 00:10:09
that would be an insufferable nuisance 00:10:13
you may think it rather wonderful when 00:10:15
saint thomas tries to explain that god 00:10:18
is fully aware of everything that 00:10:19
happens 00:10:21
and in every detail is willing each 00:10:23
single vibration of any mosquito's wing 00:10:23
but when you really begin to think about it 00:10:30
that approaches intellectual 00:10:33
elephantiasis 00:10:33
imagine the law being aware of all the prayers 00:10:39
and having to listen to the sort of 00:10:43
prayers that go on every night 00:10:47
[Laughter] 00:10:47
god heard the embattled nation shout got strapped for england and god save the 00:10:54
king 00:10:57
god this god that and god the other 00:10:58
thing good god said god i've got my work 00:11:00
cut out 00:11:01
[Laughter] 00:11:01
so therefore when somebody in india suddenly announces that he's gone 00:11:10
nobody accuses him of blasphemy or being 00:11:15
insane 00:11:16
they say simply congratulations that 00:11:18
last you found out 00:11:18
and uh they don't immediately request a miracle 00:11:26
as you see if we get across someone who 00:11:29
says i'm god or i'm jesus christ 00:11:32
they say what they said to jesus christ 00:11:33
in the first place command that the 00:11:35
stones be made bread 00:11:35
there is not this idea of god the technician 00:11:40
but rather power of omnipotence 00:11:46
is not to be able to do anything but to 00:11:49
be doing all things 00:11:51
whatever it is that's going on 00:11:51
and spontaneously without having to think about it 00:11:56
and the holy man is of course called a shaman 00:12:03
a shaman is a 00:12:09
a realized man a man who knows 00:12:12
the inner secret is seen through the 00:12:16
game 00:12:17
and he finds it by going away alone into 00:12:20
the forest 00:12:24
and cutting himself off from the tribe 00:12:27
that is to say from social conditioning 00:12:31
and he goes maybe for a long period into 00:12:32
the forest he comes back 00:12:34
he's found out who he is and he sure 00:12:37
isn't who he was 00:12:37
told he was 00:12:38
when you are born you are born into a cast 00:12:43
and your duty as a gree huster or householder 00:12:48
is to fulfill your caste function and to 00:12:51
bring up a family 00:12:53
when you've done that you go back to the 00:12:56
forest 00:12:56
back to the hunting culture and you drop your role 00:13:02
and you become nobody 00:13:04
a shaman again so a hindu calls one who does this a sramana which is of 00:13:11
course the same word 00:13:15
as shaman a shaman is an immortal 00:13:21
why immortal because it's only the role 00:13:23
that's modeled 00:13:24
the big front the persona the one who 00:13:27
you really are 00:13:29
the common man that is to say the man 00:13:31
who is common to us all 00:13:33
which you could call the son of man 00:13:37
that's the real self that's the guy 00:13:39
who's putting on the big act 00:13:39
and of course he has no name nobody can put the finger on him 00:13:47
because you can't touch the tip of the 00:13:51
finger with the tip of the finger 00:13:51
so that means in practice then that when you hand over your vocation in 00:14:00
life which is called 00:14:04
yo that means that's the same as the 00:14:08
latin 00:14:09
one's own means function 00:14:13
your own function or we would call your 00:14:15
vocation 00:14:16
when you've completed it you drop out 00:14:22
and become nobody because you're going 00:14:24
to find out now who you really are 00:14:26
[Music] 00:14:28
and you take on one of the names of god 00:14:31
swami brahmananda 00:14:32
swamy bliss of brahman 00:14:32
you may go quite naked like the shiva holy man no clothes 00:14:39
and they just go out and wander and 00:14:46
don't make any provision for anything 00:14:47
they 00:14:48
literally take no thought for tomorrow 00:14:50
what you shall eat what you shall drink 00:14:52
for where with all they shall be clothed 00:14:55
but you see people respect them 00:14:59
they say yeah we got to have those 00:15:00
people up there because they 00:15:02
are doing what human being is ultimately 00:15:03
supposed to do and we shall do it in our 00:15:05
turn 00:15:06
and so give them some food 00:15:12
but we can look at it all and say 00:15:12
what a mess why don't you do something for yourself 00:15:20
why don't you kill the sacred cows 00:15:24
why don't you clean up why do you permit 00:15:26
all this disease 00:15:28
[Music] 00:15:30
just try and see something from another 00:15:32
point of view for a change 00:15:34
just look at it from another point of 00:15:36
view 00:15:38
and they would smile at us and say 00:15:41
you really think it's as real as all 00:15:43
that 00:15:43
have you never experienced what's on the inside of this game 00:15:48
the trouble with you westerners is 00:15:52
you've never experienced this 00:15:55
you never got down to the root of 00:15:56
reality you don't know that 00:15:59
state of practices and so you're 00:16:02
frantically 00:16:03
trying to patch everything up and pin it 00:16:04
all together and screw the universe up 00:16:06
so it's fixed you can never do it 00:16:10
all it is again wildly rushing around 00:16:12
and creating trouble 00:16:12
you 00:16:25