DIVINE SOULS:

 

1) One of the greatest challenges of our times is to keep one's mind in control, to steer clear of the dangerous mental diseases like anger, greed, lust, grief, envy. We can overcome all of these.

 

2) All mental diseases are rooted in the Disease of Desire. In other words, DESIRE is the root cause of all mental diseases. (That is, attachment to expected outcome of one's actions is the root cause. You could also say that lack of awareness of, or inability to use, skills of dealing with situations where outcomes are not what one had expected, desired or hoped-for, is the root cause.)

 

3) Someone who can give up all his desires (or attachment to expected results) can become God-like.

 

4) Our Scriptures have emphasized the need to overcome and give up desires.

 

5) Desires harm in this way: if one desire is fulfilled, it leads to greed; you want more and more of it endlessly. If the desire is not fulfilled, it leads to anger, frustration, etc. Either way, there is peril: if you have desires, you get caught between greed and anger.

 

6) Why does Desire arise in the first place?

 

7) Whenever one's mind is attached to an object or person or situation or a particular kind of result, Desire arises.

 

8) What is attachment? By repeatedly contemplating that happiness is in certain person or object or situation or some kind of result, attachment develops. In other words, repeated thinking leads to attachment, constantly reinforcing the belief that happiness is indeed in that person or object or hoped-for situation or result.

 

9) Why do we repeatedly contemplate that happiness is where we imagine it to be? Because we are all parts of God. And God is an ocean of bliss, of which we are all parts. So naturally we will continually seek happiness somewhere or the other.

 

It's the inherent nature of the soul to desire. God has made us that way. There's no point in blaming oneself for having desires. The wisdom lies in understanding that it's very natural, that desire is an inherent part of the soul.

 

10) The right thing to do, therefore, is to recognize this fact of nature, and to try to understand how the soul and mind work, and use such understanding and knowledge to our benefit, so that we could attain God. This can be done. It's very simple.

 

11) It's this simple: just recognize the fact that the real happiness is in God.

 

12) Once you accept this fact, drill this into your mind that only God is the embodiment of real happiness. Since you now know how the mind tends to work (repeated thinking, chasing of happiness, etc), use the same process to put it on the path to God.

 

13) Instruct the mind this way: you want happiness, right? So go try to attain God, that's where the real happiness is. Once the mind recognizes this fact, it will start functioning in the only way it knows -- its natural way, which is to think again and again, repeated contemplation, as it were, that happiness is in God.

 

14) Thus the mind begins to seek happiness in God repeatedly. In due course, it develops attachment to God. It does so because that is its nature. From that attachment to God develops Desire: the Desire to seek happiness in God. Once the desire sprouts, you seek to fulfil it. Thus the attachment to God intensifies.

 

15) Without this realization, we would continue to seek happiness elsewhere.

 

16) But the test of happiness is that it should be perceived by everyone, all the time, and in the same manner or intensity. But this is seldom the case.

 

17) The pleasure or happiness that we derive from, say, a rasogollah or alcohol, varies from person to person, and tends to span the extremes. One person may like rasogollahs very much; another person, say a diabetic, may see in it sweet poison, and consciously try to avoid it. Even the person who likes sweets, may not eat more than, say, five rasogollahs. The first piece gives a lot of joy. The second piece also gives joy, but to a lesser degree. So forth. The level of happiness keeps on reducing with more and more consumption. This shows rasogollah fails the test of happiness. So does alcohol. So does everything else in this world.

 

18) We mistakenly believe that the various objects or people in this world give us happiness. We get caught in this world. Or so we believe. But this again is an erroneous impression.

 

19) It's like the monkey whose hand gets trapped in the bottle, when it falls into the trap set by the person seeking to capture it. The monkey tries to grab the peanuts inside the bottle. So it slips in its palm into the bottle, and grabs the peanuts alright. Upon realizing it's unable to pull its closed palm full of peanuts out of the narrow bottleneck, it creates a ruckus, alerting its capturer. The monkey believes the bottle has caught its hand. It tries desperately to shake the bottle off, little realizing it's not the bottle that has caught it, but rather it has caught the bottle. If only the monkey were to realize that all it has to do is let go of the peanuts in its palm, it would regain freedom. But it doesn't let go of the peanuts, thus dragging itself to peril.

 

20) Likewise, we ought to realize that we have caught the world with all its objects and people. The world has not caught us. Let go of the objects and people, you are free. Hold on to them, and you are at risk. In other words, become detached from the world to be a free soul. You will realize then that only God stands the test of true happiness.

 

Click here for the salient points of the discourse on Day Two