Dichotomy

Today people tend to go by the letter of the scriptures. The words of the scriptures should be interpreted and understood in the context of the prevailing time and circumstances. Then their real meaning will be clear. Also no one adheres to what one says or preaches.

More than listening to spiritual discourses, one must try to practice at least a part of what one learns. Vedanta is being expounded at many places, not to speak of the discourses on the Gita. But how many understand the real spirit of the Gita and act up to its message? It is because of this dichotomy between preaching and practice that spiritual teachings are being treated with little regard. Only when the feelings emanating from the heart, the words coming out of the mouth and the actions one performs are all in perfect harmony will one's life be based on truth. 

Baba (thought for the day)      

As he is telling us that the word of the scriptures should be interpreted and understood in the context of the prevailing time and circumstances, we should find out how we are able to do that. If we see it in our life, only then the real meaning will be understood. How do we see it in our life? We have to enquire about it.

Baba and the scriptures are not different from each other, he is a living principle and the scriptures describe the principle, but it is the same. He is Veda and he even tells us to interpret it to be able to understand it in our time and in our circumstances.

How do I get closer to the meaning in his words?

The words of the scriptures should be interpreted and understood in the context of the prevailing time and circumstances. Then their real meaning will be clear. Also no one adheres to what one says or preaches.

If we do not understand it, we cannot put it into practice and if we write about it, there all kinds of things coming in my mind and in writing it down we get closer to it. 
Not long ago I met someone who said that it should not interpreted and I wondered where he got that from and like this if we listen to Baba's words he is even telling us that the scriptures should be interpreted and understood. 

We cannot possibly see it in our own life if we do not find our own words and our own situation to explain it. If we see it in our own life the real meaning will get clear and we begin to understand it. It is not so much that we should try to find examples of divinity, but it is more about 'insights' and that can be anything, it can be shocking and it can be just thinking over our life to get the insight. He said he is the 'insight' and he is the following step, in following the insight we get to the next step. 

 

Also no one adheres to what one says or preaches.

Why we do not adhere to what he says and preaches? Why nobody seems to listen?

If we think we should not interpret it, there is already an obstacle created by the mind, because we think we are not allowed to do it and that leads into misunderstanding and misinterpretation of his words. If we listen to a spiritual discourse, after listening how do we put it into practice? In being afraid to not interpret it, that is certainly not what he is telling us here and it depends the discourse. But we should practice at least one part of it, how do we do that?

In the beginning in the ashram after a speech was a lot of new wisdom and I didn't know where to begin with to think it over. I was often translating his speeches to be able to absorb it better, but it took time and it didn't really help it was too much text, but the focus on the thought for the day is great. It still bring up a lot about my own life and it makes me that way thinking it over and it opens up into a new feeling of it. 

Vedanta is being expounded at many places, not to speak of the discourses on the Gita.

Here we will have difficulties to find a place where Vedanta is expounded, but if we go to TM, they talk about Vedanta, but for that reason we have to start to meditate first to be able to listen to it and if we do that, we are hooked. The discourses on the Gita we find if we visit the Hare Krishnas that is more open. Usually a discourse is before the Sunday meals everybody can join or after, I don’t remember.

They believe if a monk knows three verses of the Gita by heart, he is able to preach. And if you listen to such a discourse, you find some inspiring thoughts in the beginning and afterwards you can feel that they turn around in the mind because they do not understand it anymore. I remember the time I was in their temple when a guest came there was always a special discourse.

But how many understand the real spirit of the Gita and act up to its message?

It is not easy to understand it and to act up to its message. I didn’t like that they made that difference between Krishna devotees and Mayavadis, all the rest of the world living in Maya. Maybe I just didn’t understand it yet that I didn’t like it. But I didn’t like that it divided it in two and there was no unity and only love like we learned it with Baba. That is also dichotomy, isn’t it?

It is because of this dichotomy between preaching and practice that spiritual teachings are being treated with little regard.

How can we see that dichotomy in our own life? First I have to get a bit more familiar with that word dichotomy. It feels like a difference between cause and effect, we have a certain cause and we have a different effect, not as it should be.

And it can be between the ‘insight’ and the following step, because there is a gap between the two and that is time and space created and in that we can change it or it can get lost. 

If Baba tells in the dream that he is the ‘insight’ and he is also the following step, he makes aware of it to see that one leads to the other and that we connect one with the other and just because of that reason, there is dichotomy possible. We can forget it or we don't see it right and we get to a wrong conclusion or we do not get it at all that there is a relationship between the first ‘insight’ and the following step. 
We can ignore it, we can even avoid it, we can change it. We can get to a false conclusion or we can not get aware of it. Only if we see the connection between the ‘insight’ and the following step we will understand it and get to a conclusion. The preaching can also be seen as ‘insight’ and the following step would be to put it into practice.

For me it is always an example to see my experience in the US in my own relationship. 
He had a Baba dream and Baba said to him that I had to come to him and make peace with him and it changed our life. 
With Baba is always peace and therefore, reflecting back on him that dream said that there was no peace in the relationship and with him. And there was not peace and I hated it when he began to argue and he made fun of everything and he was telling me that he thinks that it was very stupid if we had to go to Baba to and make peace with him. And I didn't answer, because if I did I went into his arguing and that was just the point. It was not a very happy relationship. 

He was able to see his dream like the conflict would have been with Baba, when in reality it was with him. With Baba is always peace, he lives in the abode of highest peace, in other words, it said that there was no peace with him.

It was a false dilemma in his head. 

The dream was for him and it told him indirectly that there was no peace with him and therefore, I had to go back to Baba, because with Baba is always peace.

But he lived the dream accordingly to his nature and he liked to aruge and therefore, he began to argue about a Baba dream and it was like Baba had called him on the phone and told him privately of course, for a very special devotee, that she is not in peace with Baba anymore, and that he and I have to make peace and therefore, he should send me to him to make peace with him. 

That is how it felt. It means he lived it on the mind level. After all we can see it with a bit humor, but it was not funny at all. He blamed everybody else only not himself and it is not a good experience to live that teaching trying to get aware of it and being together with someone who doesn't care about it. Baba had said to him that he lived a dream and that it was his and not Baba's problem and never questioned is 'insights' or dreams, he said it to me, I was the one who didn't forget it while he never talked about it anymore. 

That was not a way we could put it into practice and it didn't work. But when I tried to tell him, he began again to argue and that was a vicious circle. 
The dichotomy is between the teaching and what was projected in it. The practice was arguing instead of love and by that he managed to even put the interviews in question and what Baba had said. It was like he wanted to know better and while I still tried to understand how that was possible, it had more a touch of cruelty than spirituatliy, he just took advantage of it. 

So for me it was the question if Baba didn't tell him about that peace, because he had put often with his inclination to argue about everthing Baba's words in question. It was for sure no peace and it was even destroying the peace which had been created with Baba. 
As I didn't want to argue I was just telling, 'he will find a way. 
In my very first interview I had asked Baba a question and I had to get an answer. I just had to go on because I didn't know what experience we needed to get finally the right answer, even if he took only advantage of it as Baba said in the insight later on. 
But it is an example of dichotomy. The preaching had nothing to do with his practice. 

After we left there was an insight, he standing in the ruin. 
Baba said once in my dream, 'I wanted a big house', if that was the rest of the big house, it was not exactly what he wanted, it was a ruin. It felt like the house of self-realization. There was no roof, the walls had crumbled and the floor had big holes. If that was the house of self-realization there was not much left of it. The foundation or the floor is self-confidence, the walls is self-contentment, the roof is self-sacrifice and living in the house is self-realization and there was only a ruin left. It was for me a shock to get aware of it and how bad it felt in the 'insight'. It had nothing to do with just everything was fine and good and miracoulus, it was the opposite, it was not at all okay. And he was standing in that ruin and said, 'that is all what I could get in garage sales'.

He looked kind of ridiculous, not funny, it was too serious to be funny and he was wearing a red short woman skirt above the knees and a black fur jacket, what he could get in garage sales. It was like a hobby of his to go for garage sales in Portland and I had to drive him, without me driving it was not fun I guess. 

In the beginning it made sense we got too much toys for the child etc. but in the end it had changed and it was embarrassing to constantly go to garage sales to find a Lacoste jacket he could tell everybody that he got it for a dollar.

After I told him about the ‘insight’, not yet aware how tragic it was that inside of ruin, I was not even aware that it had been on the level of 'insight', I thought at that time that it was a nightmare, he wrote that he was sorry.

There was no way to be sorry about it, it was too serious to be sorry, it had ruined our life that was the insight. He didn't get it. He was sorry for ruining our life. 

That house was destroyed and we could see that there was a big dichotomy between the preaching and the practice. 
It was hard to get aware how bad it really was, because we all liked to see good only and that was not possible anymore. 

It felt like fog in the air, it was not possible to see clear anymore, too tired and ony day Baba was in my dream and said that I had a nervous breakdown and that didn't feel good at all. I had to get answers and to go on. And it was difficult to understand that Tamas is turning things upside down. 

It is difficult to understand Tamas. 
I don’t remember it, it is all like a bit stange how I booked the flight in Seattle and how I worried that he would not let us go, there was no more notion about a relationship, it was just like fog. It was not much focused on the outside anymore, only on feeling better, because it didn't feel good.

Baba was for him the good buddy helping him to get her in peace again that he could go on arguing as before, that is how it felt. I was too tired to think, somehow it sounded not right that Baba call, it was strange, something was wrong about it, because it should have been joy. There was joy that we could go to Baba but we could not express it, because we were to afraid he would find a reason to not let us go if we would have shown that we were happy to go. It was like he couldn't take it if there was  and joy, that is how it felt in reality he destroyed it, it felt like he was jalouse on the relationship to Baba, but only because he destroyed it. Once I came back and felt good and I noticed he didn't stop to talk until I felt bad again. He took care of that there was no peace with Baba, he disturbed it, only he misunderstood it, he couldn't disturb Baba's peace, he was only not the nice guy he would have like to be seen as and he had another dream when Baba said that I should go back to the lovely husband, but he was in no way lovely as he couldn't even take it if someone was happy and he not.  

We kept the joy back until we were in the air in the airplane on the way to India. 
Afterwards in that time with Baba in the ashram there is again every detail, in his presence the feeling changed, but it was still overshadowed with that relationship and I wondered how I could do that to myself. 
How could I be that stupid to get into such a relationship, later I never understood anymore how it had happened.  
There was such a difference between preaching and practice, that is was nearly shocking. 

When Baba left the body he said in the insight, ‘no more husband, nothing left but an empty Western shoe’. I thought that it was finished, but it seemed it was not and the worst thing about it was that it became such a long time never ending thing. 

So the reality of it was much worse than I thought it was, it was in the insight as a mud hole and I was not aware of it, I noticed it only when the rain came in and the child was at the wall and couldn't get out of it and behind was Baba's voice asking, and what now? 

Just the fact that we do not show 'joy', because we are afraid that it would not be possible to go, that is alarming. But it seems if we live for too long in such a situation, we don't even notice it anymore, it just felt like no way out. 

Only when the feelings emanating from the heart, the words coming out of the mouth and the actions one performs are all in perfect harmony will one's life be based on truth.

So how do we get there that feelings emanate from the heart? 
We have to cultivate the heart and watch every feeling and thought to be able that such words coming from our mouth and actions are in perfect harmony so that our life will be based on truth.

In perfect harmony … that is the preaching and what was the practice, it ruined the house? I guess there was no practice at all, even if I tried to go on with meditation and I never stopped, it was still creating the opposite and not Sathva, but Tamas. 

Truth is the divine principle, it is ‘I am that’ and it is a transcendental reality, it is ‘that’ only and beyond the form and beyond the mind. Truth is God and if we make a difference between ‘that’ and our worldly life or job, it is also dichotomy, because in reality there is no difference.

It is different if we live in a dream or if we live in illusion and we think that there is a difference, but that makes the result different.

Dust we think, dust we are. God we think, God we are.