Gunas - The Potent Illusion Of The Genetic Mind

How do you see through the potent illusion of the genetic mind? Join Kosi as she delves into the complexity of suffering happening on an individual level aswell as the global stage and what it takes to make real progress on the spirtual path.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

This is a live broadcast of KOSHI Radio Fresh,

Which is an ongoing program of live podcasts that you can participate in on Facebook if you're so inclined.

So when we look out at the world and we look at our lives there is a very strong tendency in the human psyche to fight,

To fight,

To be right.

And this plays out inside,

We have a war going on inside of ourselves and that war is reflected on the outside as well,

As we can see through recent events in Afghanistan,

Just trying to end a war creates more conflict,

More suffering,

Huge suffering,

Death and destruction and despair and a sense of hopelessness can arise from that.

So what is it about the human psyche that leads to violence?

What is it that is actually at the root of violence,

The war inside,

Right?

And how do you realize peace in the midst of conflict,

In the midst of the chaos that is constantly unfolding around the world,

Whether it's chaos caused by a natural disaster like a hurricane or a fire or it's caused by politics,

Politics of nations,

The politics of war,

Getting what you want,

Proving you're right,

Proving the other person is wrong,

Seeking revenge,

Seeking to avenge,

Right?

So the natural impulse when somebody hurts you or does something that you don't approve of is to seek revenge,

To fight,

To prove your point of view is right and it's this very powerful genetic movement of mind that is really challenging to overcome and it's deeply rooted in the biological tendencies of what Ramana described as Gunas,

Gunas,

G-U-N-A-S and understanding the tendency of the genetic mind to fight and understanding the biology of the fight that lives in the human body in the form of a Guna or a Kosha,

Layers of consciousness,

Is the first step in breaking free of this very powerful tendency.

So you can look at your own life when something happens in your life,

You know,

Somebody does something that hurts you,

Breaks up with you,

Lies about you,

The natural tendency is of mind,

Is to prove that your point of view is right and the other person is wrong and this can escalate into a fight within your family,

A fight with a friend or a neighbor,

It can lead to judgment and condemnation and this is just on the personal level.

Personally in your life there is a tendency to fight to prove your perspective is right and it's deeply ingrained in your genetics and this on the that's on the micro scale and then on the macro scale,

Right,

On a global scale,

This is what leads to war,

Right,

To avenge.

Afghanistan was the attempt by the United States to avenge,

To seek revenge for 9-11 and everybody agrees that 9-11 was a horrific day 20 years ago and many of you listening to this don't remember the events of 9-11 because you were just a little baby and the soldiers that lost their lives were just little babies when 9-11 happened so it's very sobering to step back from this and really examine what is going on in the human psyche,

Why is there so much violence unfolding around the world and in our cities,

Terrorism,

What is the root cause and the very root cause is ego,

It's the sense that we are separate from one another,

That I'm different from you based on religion,

Based on nationality,

Based on a number of things that the mind makes up,

Right,

The mind makes up.

Nations are a concept of mind that everyone in that nation agrees to,

There's certain rules and laws that govern a nation and there is karmic law,

Right,

So for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,

This is the nature of karma and what's unfolding in your life is the karmic reaction to whatever happened in your previous incarnation,

Right,

So the complexity of suffering is intense because you have the movements of your mind,

Your mind and ego in agreement with one another is what generates your emotional reactions to whatever is going on in your life or going on on the global stage,

Right,

And all of it is constantly changing,

Your thoughts are changing,

Your emotions are changing,

Your circumstances are changing and one of the big mistakes that people make is thinking well if I just change my life then I will finally be happy,

But it's a fallacy or a trick of the mind to fix or change your life because your life is in a constant state of change,

So the movement to fix your life to get things moving in the right direction always fails,

Always,

Because of all the underlying tendencies,

The karma,

Your karma,

Other people's karma,

The complexity of human relationships,

All of this is in a constant state of flux,

A constant state of change,

And so trying to fix something that is always changing is like trying to make a rope out of sand,

Right,

It's a exercise in futility and when you realize this for yourself,

When you realize that everything you've done to try to fix your life and make yourself happy only produced maybe moments of happiness and the rest of the time you were suffering and struggling and trying to get things going in the right direction,

Right,

Once you realize that it hasn't worked then you're ready for a deeper understanding about yourself in relationship to the world and other people,

You're ready for the spiritual path,

So there's a certain readiness to really receive the teaching of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi,

He really is the end of the road,

The end of suffering,

That's what Ramana represents,

And he was a man but he was also so much more than a mere man,

Right,

Because he really had completely and totally transcended ego which is the root cause of all suffering and sores,

Right,

The soreness of suffering which hurts you inside,

So you might be fine physically but on the inside you're not fine at all because you have a war going on with yourself and that war is a great fog of the mind,

It's a great fog,

You can't really be present,

You can't really live from a place of peace if you are a slave to your mind,

It's just simply not possible,

It's not possible to experience consistent peace and happiness if you're a slave to your mind.

So gunas are these biological tendencies that are deeply ingrained in your physiology,

Deeply ingrained in your reactions to your life circumstances,

To the world's circumstances,

So then the question arises,

Well is it even possible to break free of this?

And the answer is yes,

Yes you can see through the illusion of the genetics but it is dependent on your commitment to seeing through it.

If spirituality is really casual for you then it's unrealistic to expect results,

Right,

If it's just something you do once in a while,

You go to a few satsangs,

You listen to a few YouTube videos,

It's not realistic to think that you're going to be making any noticeable progress,

So commitment is an essential piece of the spiritual path,

You must commit to a teaching,

A teacher,

Not teachers,

But a teacher so you can deepen in your understanding,

Your direct realization and it's through direct realization that that power,

That energy which is what direct realization represents is what sets you free from patterns of suffering,

But you must commit,

Right.

We're kind of leery of this word commitment,

Right.

It's one thing to be casual about spirituality,

It's a whole other thing to say you know I'm really sick of suffering,

I'm really tired of being sad all the time or angry,

I'm tired of the fight,

I'm tired of the mess of my life and once you hit that wall then it's easy to commit,

Right,

It's easy to say okay I'm done,

What is it that I need to do to be free of patterns of suffering that continually happen again and again and again.

And the first step is making that commitment,

I'm done with this,

I want freedom,

I want moksha,

I want to end lifetimes of suffering,

That's what moksha represents,

That's what enlightenment is,

It is the permanent end of suffering,

That's what it represents and that's why we long for it.

If you're on the spiritual path you long for moksha,

For liberation,

The ultimate liberation from the great wandering of samsara,

Right.

You long for that and with Ramana you dive into the longing itself to see what is this longing for happiness,

This longing for peace and freedom and this is a deep inquiry that enables you to see through the root cause which is the deep feeling,

I am this body,

This is me,

This is my past,

This is my future and it's an imagined future because today might be your last day on earth,

Your last breath might come today and that can evoke a huge fear,

Right.

We're afraid of death not because we're afraid of the unknown,

Because we're afraid of losing what we know and losing our sense of control.

So when you dive in,

When you really dive in,

When you really commit it can be very fearful at least initially because you lose control and you start to recognize that you never had any control.

Destiny,

Parabdha karma was in charge of your life for your entire life,

Right.

And even this conversation if you're listening to it was predestined and Ramana was very very adamant that everything was predestined,

Even the question how do I overcome my destiny was predestined to occur.

So if you're listening to this you were destined to listen,

You were destined to receive the transmission that this represents.

Ramana's teaching is not words,

It's energy.

It's a transmission of that energy from the heart,

From the space of the heart,

The presence of the heart which is transcendent of mind and transcendent of ego.

And it's this discovery deeper and deeper and more intimately that ultimately sets you free.

So the first step is commitment and then the next step is surrender.

It's learning to trust the vast intelligence of the presence which Ramana described as the self and other people describe as God,

The presence,

The vast silent intelligence of the entire universe.

And when you trust that,

When you surrender yourself to the invisible presence,

That intelligence,

The power of that intelligence which is the power of the entire universe,

It is that power that sets you free.

But it's not instant and it's not effortless.

It's not instant and it's not effortless.

You can awaken to the presence which is pure conscious awareness.

That's the easy part,

That's the instant part.

But the other part requires your commitment,

Requires your surrender and it requires practice,

Right?

Because you've been a slave your whole life to your mind and most people on the planet,

I would say 99.

9% of the people on the planet right now are a slave to their own mind,

To their own ego,

Right?

So you can't look outward to the world and expect to be free of the war that's going on inside of you.

And one of the great keys to breaking free is understanding these things called Gunas which are biological genetic tendencies and one is the tamasic tendency.

This is the very,

Very strong impulse to fight,

To fight to be right.

And when you're losing that fight you go to war.

You go to war inside with yourself and outside with whoever you're fighting with.

This is why we have thousands of people going to court every day because the fight to be right is an ongoing battle.

If you trace human history,

The fight to be right,

Wars have been unfolding for centuries,

Right?

We've been fighting,

Fighting for land,

Fighting for power,

For money,

For prestige,

For freedom,

Fighting for freedom.

So when you fight to be right you ultimately become what you're fighting against.

When you're coming at it from the place of mind and ego.

So a tamasic tendency is this deeply ingrained tendency to fight to be right.

And then the rajasic tendencies,

This is another Guna,

The rajasic tendency is the pursuit of pleasure.

We think that pleasure is going to make us happy.

So we pursue sex,

We pursue money,

Power,

Fame,

Relationship,

All in the hope that pleasure will lead to some sense of well-being,

Some sense of safety,

Some sense of lasting happiness.

Only it fails,

Right?

Because pleasure is very short lived.

Once you have an orgasm,

Right,

The glow of sex can last for maybe a few hours or a few minutes but then it disappears,

Right?

And the old patterns of suffering return.

And this is why we continually pursue pleasure because it's so short-lived.

So to regain the euphoria of an orgasm or the high of a drug,

Right,

To regain that we have to keep taking the drug.

We have to keep having sex to free ourselves from the mind,

Right?

That's really what happens in orgasm.

The mind goes offline just like when you fall asleep.

It's a state of consciousness and it's euphoric,

Right?

It feels great.

And there's nothing wrong with pleasure but if you're pursuing pleasure in the hope or you're pursuing bliss in the hope of achieving enlightenment or moksha,

This is no different than trying to change the circumstances of your life,

Right?

Because states of consciousness are always in a state of flux.

So you can achieve a very high state of consciousness,

A bliss state,

But it does nothing to address these very powerful genetic tendencies.

And Ramana warned against this because it's a great trick of the mind.

Bliss can be a great trick of your mind.

So you can generate a bliss state right now by just not giving your attention at all to your past or your future and focus all of your attention on your heart right now.

And you can generate a euphoric experience of bliss,

Right?

You can even fall into a deep meditative blissful state by doing that.

But this is a self-reflective loop of consciousness that keeps you mental,

Right?

It feels good but it is a state generated by your mind.

Bliss that is generated by mind is a state that comes and goes.

But what Ramana demonstrated and what his teaching directs your attention to is a stateless state of euphoria,

A stateless state of bliss.

It is a stateless state which means it does not change.

It is the changeless presence.

So the permanent realization of that means that you're making progress on the path of moksha,

Which is the ultimate release,

The ultimate release from eons upon eons of suffering.

So rajasic tendencies are the pursuit of pleasure and these are deeply ingrained in the biology and the genetics of your body.

The tamasic tendencies are the fight to be right.

And the sattvic tendencies are these longing for moksha,

The longing for freedom is sattvic.

And that's often seen as kind of what you want to align with.

But even that is a trick of mind and the genetics and the prabhakarma.

So ultimately these three tendencies,

The sattvic,

The rajasic,

The tamasic,

These three gunas keep you,

It's like a veil of consciousness,

The biological fog of war that keeps you caught in an internal dialogue that will never set you free.

If you are pursuing enlightenment on the outside you've missed the point.

If you think moksha is a goal or an attainment then you've missed the point of it,

Right?

It's not a goal that you race towards to get.

It's not a bliss state that you generate by your effort,

By your doing,

By your thought process,

Right?

It has nothing to do with that.

So the practices,

The teaching removes the veils of consciousness over many years,

Right?

So it takes commitment,

It takes surrender,

And it takes a certain amount of time and dedication.

So you have to actually integrate the teaching into your life.

You actually have to sit down and meditate.

You have to be quiet in order to notice what's going on inside.

You have to notice the impulse to fight and then stop and burn in that impulse.

You have to master your mind,

Right?

You have to stop agreeing with your story,

Whatever that story is.

And the instant you really stop agreeing then peace arises naturally.

The very second you stop agreeing with your own thought process it sets you free to fall into the heart.

So the heart is the gateway,

Ego is actually the gateway to freedom.

And it lives in the heart center just to the right of your physical heart,

Which Ramana so beautifully explained,

Right?

So when you give your attention to the heart center then you can discover peace instantly right here and right now.

And this is the immediacy of his teaching.

But then there is this burning,

The sacred fire must be ignited within you through the power of the mantra,

Through the power of silence,

And the power of inquiry.

So the power of silence,

The power of self-inquiry,

And the power of the silence in the mantra,

The vibration.

It's a powerful vibration and you can think of these layers of consciousness,

Right,

As like a bell.

It's like your body is a bell and when you actually apply the teaching you're ringing the bell.

You're creating a vibration like when you hit a bell.

The reason it makes a sound,

Right,

Is it's vibrating.

So you want to increase the Shakti energy in your body by ringing the bell of layers of consciousness,

Ringing the bell of your genetics,

By making a commitment,

By stopping the inner dialogue,

Stop agreeing with your mind.

So stop is truly a holy sacred word because you must stop with all your strength,

All your mind,

All your power to stop.

Stop fighting,

Stop running,

Stop hiding,

And dive into the bliss of your own heart.

And when you dive in through meditation,

You dive in through the mantra,

And you really question this ego.

This is the nature of self-inquiry.

Who is this me that I think I am?

Who is angry?

Who is seeking happiness?

Who is seeking enlightenment?

Who is meditating?

Who is the meditator?

Who's the doubter,

Right?

And it's this questioning of the me that opens the gateway because then you can see for yourself the reflective nature of ego.

So the ego is a great illusion.

This feeling of you is an illusion that's infused with your five senses,

Right?

So this is no small thing to see through.

It feels very real,

The me.

And the me is the primary or the root barrier to the direct experience of Turiya and beyond that which is Turiya Tita.

So when you have the courage to stop,

When you have the courage to dive into your heart,

Then you can discover directly,

Intimately,

The peace that surpasses all understanding.

And when you fall all the way into that,

Then it's possible for all of the veils that hide your true nature vanish,

Evaporate in the fire of love that you are and always will be.

You are love and nothing else.

Om Shanti,

Shanti,

Shanti Om.

You

Reviews

As Always … excellent interpretation of Sri Ramana’s teachings