Being and Doing

[Olesya]

As you can see, the title of today’s lecture is ‘Being and Doing’. We have already discussed this, so what we are really doing is we are revisiting the topic. We are revisiting a topic, which is practically at the very basis of importance for anybody engaged in spiritual life. Generally, when we are engaged in spiritual practices, we somehow or another become very much absorbed in doing things. Doing becomes an end in itself; or rather it becomes a practice, a discipline, the way in which success is achieved. It becomes very active, it becomes lively, it involves many kinds of different ways in which we can do things. That itself is neither good nor bad, but when it creates a situation which is not advantageous for our spirituality, than we should try to understand why. Spirituality is a multi-faceted affair; it’s a multi-dimensional affair which will work on many different levels of our consciousness. The way in which spirituality manifests, sometimes people think it’s a process or it’s a symptom of a very specific form of consciousness, mainly the soul, the spirit within the heart and only that energy is what counts. That seems to me to be actually a misconception, because the same persons will also be absorbed in disciplines and actions, which are recommended as advantageous for the performance of spiritual practices. That makes things complex. What shall we believe? Shall we believe that spirituality is a form of activity? Or shall we believe that spirituality is something else as many other traditions speak about peace within, quiet, meditational placidity like on a lake of peace?

I personally don’t think that ‘being’ and ‘doing’ are contradictory concepts or contradictory forms of engagement in spirituality. And as far as I know, most others don’t think so either, but somehow in our minds or in our consciousness or in our understanding of spirituality these conceptions can develop. We are very aware of what it means to be active, to do things, to engage, and we are also quite aware of what it means to simply be, we’ve been practicing this in our meditations, in our exercise together. The problem is, combining the two. How do we combine the two into a cohesive system that works, that gives us what we want in our daily life, in our spiritual life? If you really wish to attain harmony in life, if you really wish to attain a compatible form of spiritual harmony, it would be very advantageous to understand ‘being’ in a very specific way. Because between the two, ‘being’ and ‘doing’, ‘being’ is the foundation upon which all ‘doing’ will manifest. ‘Doing’ is a symptom, ‘being’ is the cause of that symptom. And I feel that this definition is fundamental to correcting various mistakes that we make in our spirituality.
When you think of Bhakti-yoga, as an example, Bhakti-yoga is an art of action performed out of love. Love is the basis of Bhakti, but love is a state of ‘being’. It is not something you do, you never say, ‘I do love.’ Love is the fundamental root state of being of all beings, all living entities everywhere. And that state is the fundamental characteristic of spirit. If you think about Radha and Krishna, if you think about Lord Chaitanya, if you think about any spiritual personality who deeply effects people, the fundamental quality and characteristic is their love. It is that love which sets these personalities apart from everyone else. For example, during the days of reverence worship of the Supreme, God was that being far away who was all love and we were these struggling personalities who didn’t really have that love and were trying to attain it. And there is a lot of truth in that. For example, God is unconditional love, God, the Supreme, or any spiritual divine beings are so unconditional, that their love doesn’t depend on us being in any way or acting in any way or speaking in any way. Their unconditional love doesn’t depend on the way we act, what we say or even what we know. In fact, it doesn’t depend on anything, it’s causeless, which means it’s not based on any dependencies, there is no strings attached. This is a very unique and special situation because, after all, to find out such personalities who have such intense love and concern for all living beings, that they do not require anything of us to love us is just so magnificent. Would one love divinity because of what they do or is it because of what they are? Now we have new deities in St. Petersburg, we have new deities in other places, and when these deities are before us, are we receiving from them and reciprocating with them because of what they do or is it because of what they are, because of their being? Deities don’t really do anything, they don’t dance around the room, at least not before the usual eyes, they are not doing any particular kind of activity, they stand there and emanate their energy of love. They communicate with us on the level of heart-to-heart connection, soul to spirit connection. And we love them for that. We don’t love them for their doing-ness; we love them for their being-ness, that pure love that they are. People all over the world come before the divine, because they know they will feel that love, they will feel wanted, they will feel appreciated, they will feel needed, they will feel connected. I am not saying that people have no motives for coming to God or to divine personalities, I am not saying that. But I am saying that the basic fundamental reason that people do approach the Supreme is they know the Supreme loves them and cares, that’s the point, otherwise, why ask. We see in the Supreme a personality or personalities whose very being is everything we want.
Now let’s relate this to us, all of us, regular people of the world. You might say, and of course, to a certain degree you would be right, you might say, ‘I love what you do.’ Let’s analyze this a little more. Let’s say that person is somebody who was from, for example, a music group, or a theater actor, or a movie performer. You would love their manifestation, you would love the entertainment, you would love what they are giving you. So, they are offering you something that you like, it satisfies you in some way, so you love what they do. But you don’t exactly love the mood or rather the emotion in which they do it. After all, they may be doing it purely for money, they may be doing it purely to cheat you. For ex., you may love a car salesman who cheats you when he sells you a car. When a person is just a very loving person, a person who works for the sake of others, who cares for others, you love what they do, but there is a reason why they do it. A person who cares about others, a person who renders service or wishes to do things for others, out of a selfless kind of way, is somebody whose love-within is the basis upon which that desire to be of service manifests. And that basic love-within is something which is of their spiritual essence; it’s a very basic quality, that quality of care, that quality of feeling that there is oneness between us that can not be ignored. Let’s take the example of a small child who comes up to you and just gives you a drawing or maybe a small piece of plastic as a gift in love. You are so overwhelmed by that simple expression of love, you don’t care that it’s a simple piece of plastic, you don’t care it’s a simple drawing with no meaning, you care because it’s something so pure and so beautiful, that you just love it.
I know there are examples in the Bhakti tradition of the fact, that the Supreme doesn’t look so much at the ‘what you are doing’ as much as ‘the love with which you are doing it.’ It’s easy to understand that as a concept, it’s easy to understand that philosophically, but somehow that basis of Bhakti gets lost in the translation. What gets lost in the translation is the essence of what the whole affair is about. And examining why that happened is the point of re-examining the concepts of ‘being’ and ‘doing’. Someone might think that ultimately you have to do things to get to the destination; you have to do things to be able to experience love. Hard work, action, discipline, continuous engagement, this will solve everything, this will bring us to the point we want to be, of pure love. Now think of that for a second. There seems to be something essentially wrong with the idea, yet it’s very hard to pin the point, pin the reason for it, because it makes sense: you do this effort, you get this result, like you go to school, you get a degree. Work is rewarded. That sounds very fruitive to me - you do some work, you get some result.

Just consider how love manifests around us in this world. I know some people will say there is no love in this world, they think there is only lust. I feel sorry for such people. Because they have no connection with that which is the essence of life, that which is the life of life. But for those of us, who don’t have this philosophy, how does love actually manifests? Did you work to fall in love? Did you perform some discipline to fall in love? Did you do some specific formulated activity to fall in love? How does one fall in love? Why are there no books with the title ‘How to fall in love’? I would say that would be one of the most difficult books in the world to write because you would just have to battle with some idea which has no connection to reality. You don’t need great intelligence to fall in love; you don’t even need to have the physical capacity to move to fall in love. You don’t even have to be born yet, to be in love with your mother. It’s just the natural state of being, two people - their energy come in proximity, it doesn’t have to be physical proximity and there is a compatibility there, there is a connection there, there is a loving bond that develops. If you just think about it, when men and women are trying to make a connection with each other, they are desperately trying not to do something wrong, to say something wrong, do something wrong. They are trying to keep up the amount of time and the amount of good energy between them as hard as possible, until they can really connect. And all the actions they do, like to go on a date, those things are just excuses, more or less, to come closer together. And when they do succeed in coming together, they do actually develop that love, for some period of time there is no need for them to do anything, because they are in love, they don’t need to do anything. They can just sit and look at each other for hours. They can just walk somewhere, down the streets together, or just eat together, not even being hungry. They are just very satisfied in their love. Than another stage appears, the stage, at which they want to start doing things, because life is also based upon practicalities. I mean, no matter how much in love you are, after a while you get hungry, and you have to have a place to live and you have to have some income. You can’t be living in the clouds all the time, you have to come back down to earth and make some steps. So, there was this feeling to be together, there was this connection, there was this love, and than there were activities, because you’ve got to maintain this structure within which this relationship can continue. So, the ‘being’ entered into ‘doing’, with ‘being’ as a fundamental foundation upon which the ‘doing’ will manifest. Now, how do people get divorced? How does it break up? The ‘being’ changes its connection, it doesn’t want to be with the other ‘being’ and therefore ‘doing’ transforms. Usually that happens, of course, I would be very presumptuous to make this generalization on all cases, but I am really just trying to give an example, but this happens when those who are busily engaged in ‘doing’, do not nurture their ‘being’ and especially their ‘being together’. ‘Doing’ becomes such a priority that ‘being’ is set aside. So, here is a rule which is universal, never take ‘being’ for granted. Because ‘being’ is so powerful, as soon as that state is transformed, all of the ‘doing’ is irrevocably affected.

Now let’s discuss again how love of divine beings might manifest from this example we’ve just gone through. Let’s start backwards. How would one who has great love for the divinity, lose it? People have said it’s because of enviousness, people have said it’s because of lust. Perhaps, these words do define to some extent the difficulty, but let’s take that example at the end of our last discussion and apply it directly to how it might be in relationship with the divine. Let’s say we are given a field within which we may act, we become so absorbed in our actions, we become absorbed in ‘doing’ and we neglect our ‘being’. Which way do we connect with the divine, through ‘doing’ or through ‘being’? Again, ‘being’ is the basis of everything, so when we are absorbed in ‘doing’, our ‘being’ becomes disconnected, we disconnect from the divine, because our ‘being’ no longer feels that harmonious resonance. Let’s go deeper into the causes of why this happens, why would someone who is engaged in this ‘doing’, who has connection with the divine, why would that resonance transform? What would be the cause? It seems inconceivable that it would happen and, in fact, this very question is discussed in all religions in one point or another. And because this disconnection is taking place, it’s assumed that it is because the living being is fallen, sinful, basically evil, basically bad, an envious and lustful person. I would suggest that this is a human creation, this is the creation of human being and it is at the fundamental core of all religions which are based upon that negativity, that negative creation. I would suggest that the reason for this is that people just aren’t aware enough or honest enough to understand the way they work. So, I would like to suggest an alternative understanding based totally on what we’ve just discussed.

We are acting, we are doing. Even in the state of ‘being’ where we are fundamentally in harmony with the divine, because ‘doing’ is there at all times. When one is doing like that, you’ll see that there is always a possibility of fault, because it’s impossible for anybody to do everything perfectly at all times, unless, of course, you have a very universal understanding of things. Of course, you could see things from the other way and say that everything is working perfectly according to the divine plan all the time, that’s not the point I am trying to make. I suppose I am quoting from the Bhagavat-Gita, ‘Every endeavor is covered by fault as fire is covered by smoke.’ You can say, ‘Every ‘doing’ is covered by fault.’ It’s an axiomatic truth of existence that every act of doing will have within it by its very nature some kind of defect; there will always be something that’s not perfect about it. Especially when you consider human relations, there always will be some kind of friction, some kind of distrust or some kind of competition. Just consider, for example, the Goswamis have discussed about actions in the spiritual world. Think about the discussions, think about the relationships there, you will hear that it will be based upon - to a very large extent - talking, talking which is filled with various forms of friction, and even if there isn’t envy, it’s created, even the creation of rivals that shouldn’t even be there. I am talking about, for example, Radharani and Chandravali. You’ll have this rivalry created, you’ll have the left-wing, the right-wing gopis, you’ll have Krishna being the bad person in a certain pastime with Radha, you’ll have separation and connection. All of this will be created because it’s the nature of existence. So, within this ‘being’ when it manifests in ‘doing’ there is always something which is like a friction, or is like an obstacle, or is like a problem, or is like endeavor, or is like a challenge. You can define that as a defect. You can also accept it as the nature of existence. There is a big distance between the two and it’s totally related to the main point of this discussion, which is how the harmonious connection becomes a divorce. I am doing, I am engaged into so much doing and in my doing there are defects. And as these defects accumulate, they start to effect me in a very deep way. We have this idea of ourselves as perfect, that we have to fulfill a certain form of perfection. And when these defects accumulate, when these faults accumulate, they start to rock the very foundation of our self-understanding, our self-imaging. And as this series or sequence of defects accumulate, we start to develop this idea of ourselves being not only imperfect, not only making mistakes, but being bad because of it. So, our self-conception of a beautiful spiritual soul starts to become replaces by a self-conception of this fallen, defective, imperfect and not good person. And as we develop this conception, the resonance between ourselves and the divine starts to change, because the divine resonance is in peace, in acceptance and love for the self. And when we lose the love for the self because we start thinking of the self or us as bad, we are no longer in harmony. So, when we feel bad about ourselves, we do things which we ordinarily wouldn’t do. Some people eat a lot, some people drink a lot of alcohol, some people take intoxication, some people just go insane trying to drown their worries in sex, some people just work like mad and accumulate money, thinking that will give them back their self-prestige and esteem. And to drown our personal defects, we have to divorce ourselves to a certain extent or even a very great extent from the divine. Because it’s such a disharmonious kind of activity, it’s a totally different kind of frequency. This divorce was not initiated by the divine energy, it was initiated by ourselves because we became entangled in what we were doing and we forgot our being. Because we took ‘doing’ as predominant and not ‘being’. It is not enviousness, it is not trying to imitate the supreme, it is not this very simplistic understanding, it is the very deepest, basic, fundamental self-conception that transforms, that creates this separation. And this is based on the misconception of ‘doing’ as being significantly important as a defining factor in my existence. Whereas in reality it is the ‘being’ which is the fundamentally significant factor in my existence. Why is it that there is never a total disconnection between the divine and the living entity? It’s because the divine energy knows that you are just being silly and does not give you up because of that. And the divine is continually trying to support us, to have us have a good feeling about ourselves, so that we can connect again.

When we engage in ‘being’, in other words, when we go into a deep meditative state, when we just accept ourselves as we are, when we just accept ourselves as the spiritual energy we are, there is no room for ‘bad’, there is no room for ‘fallen’. It is not that in that state where you are in contact with your spiritual energy, you can even conceive of all of this which is born of ‘doing’. You immediately see the difference between that which is created by the ‘doing’ aspect of existence and that which is actually there all the time in our ‘being’. I’ve heard again and again, ‘I’ve done so much, I’ve worked so hard, I’ve done everything right, still it’s not working in my spiritual life. Why? What am I doing wrong?’ In the context of what I have just said, it’s because we have neglected the ‘being’ for the sake of the ‘doing’ for some reason that we are thinking, ‘doing’ is the way to be. Whereas in reality ‘being’ is the key to ‘doing’. What’s the cure? What to do? Actually, there is a cure: to come to the state of connection with ‘being’, to just be. The more you can just be, the more you can just feel connection to your spiritual energy in that meditative state, that’s why I’ve been emphasizing that meditative state, the easier it will be to infiltrate all ‘doing’ with that energy. This is not a big work, this is not a big endeavor, this doesn’t need any tools, this doesn’t need any places, this doesn’t need anything that will assist you, it’s just a meditative state in which you come to feel your spiritual being. The more you expand that spiritual being through every aspect of your life, through your relationships, through your work, through your house, through your community, even throughout your country, your world, it’s just an expansion of your being everywhere. Instead of trying to go from the outside in, ‘work’ to ‘being’ - go from the inside out, ‘being’ to ‘doing’. In reality this is the definition of Bhakti, this is actually Bhakti-yoga, but somehow it got lost. And all of this ‘doing’ became so entangled up with our very existence, that the coming in contact with our ‘being’ became such a monumental endeavor, it exhausted us. Because in reality coming in contact with our being is, by definition, the easiest thing is existence, because it takes no effort at all. There is no work involved in it. What could be easier than this? I remember, when I was doing meditations for one society in Sweden, and some people were there, who were very expert meditators, and we were doing the I AM meditation, their comments were very, very funny. They were saying, ‘We’ve been meditating for years and we’ve been doing all kinds of fancy meditations but this one was the absolute hardest one we’ve ever done because there was nothing to do.’ Therefore, it all bases upon total complete relaxation, relaxation is the first and foremost key because you have to relax all of this tension to do, tension to accomplish, tension to work right down to the core where you let it all go. You just let it go and you come in contact with your being. Nothing to do, nothing to think, nothing to gain, nothing to lose, pure being. You can’t do that all the time. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. But when you are able to come in contact, when you are able to experience that being for some period of time, and you let it permeate your whole existence, everything will come into relevance, it’ll all make sense. You’ll be able to focus on anything properly. This is the key. ‘Being’ is the key to everything, just remember that. Being is the key, being is the key to Bhakti, being is the key to devotion, being is the key to success in all life. And ‘doing’ is a symptom of our ‘being’. The meditation we are going to do after this break is going to be about ‘being’ and expanding that ‘being’ into every aspect of our lives

Here is an interesting thought that I’d like to leave you with at this point. I once had a discussion with one person and also this question arises often, ‘What is friendship?’ What does it mean to have friends, what does it mean to be friends, how does it manifest what you do? I always give this definition, because it is my realized understanding of what is friendship. Friends are those who you can just hang out with doing nothing and feeling really good about it. That is a very rare quality. I know when I was managing and being a kind of big shot in ISCON, I very rarely had that kind of experience, but there was one person I had that experience with. I remember Sridaswami used to just come in my room and he’d lie down on one couch and I’d lie down on the other couch and we just simply hang out, with actually nothing to do, didn’t even have to talk, didn’t even have to do anything and we had a marvelous time. It was just a unique experience. So, what is that born of? That’s born of your being. You just are satisfied being together, you don’t need to do anything. And when you have to entertain your friends, you have to do things together, otherwise there is no friendship, this is not really friendship. OK, you can call them friends, they are friends. But I am talking about this deepest level of friends, which is just to be happy together. What’s friendship with the divine? To just be, and be connected with the divine, and just be happy in that connection. You don’t have to do anything. But you can’t stay in that meditative state forever, unless you are yogi doing that, of course. So, you have to act. Just bring that energy with you everywhere. And people will love you for what you are, not for what you can give them. Of course, that’s a controversial point and maybe even I don’t agree with it all the time. The point is that ‘being’ is the basis, ‘doing’ is the manifestation, yet they are both connected as source and emanation.

I have several questions here. Here is an interesting question, I suppose, one could consider the answer obvious, yet perhaps, it needs to be stated. The question relates to difference between divine love, for ex., the Supreme and the living entity or the divinity and the living entity, and human love. We all have in our minds, we all have in our hearts the idea that divine love is extremely unique, extremely special, it’s never ending, it’s eternal, it can not be diminished in any way, it’s unconditional. Let’s say, there is this living entity who loves another living entity. That is in a context of two being who have a physical relationship within this world of activity, within this world of action. Actually, I just realized my answer is not at all obvious, so I take back what I said in the beginning. Because there is a very subtle point going on here, which needs to be stated clearly. Let’s say in your natural state you are intimately connected with the supreme or the divine, because that’s your nature, the connection is your nature. It’s the axiomatic fundamental state of all spirituality. So, that means, because we are not now in that state, because we have divorces ourselves to some extent from that state, that the connection seems to be modifiable, it’s possible to modify this connection. So, naturally, it would follow, the connections between individual living entities are modifiable. We’ve already discussed how the relationship of love between that living being and the divine is modified, we gave some suggestion how that is possible to be modified. So, we already understand that. In the similar manner, the relationships between living entities themselves, no matter what their status, are modifiable. Some feel so well together, they don’t modify it, they stay in that loving relationship through this lifetime and even lifetime after lifetime. Real loving connection doesn’t die, it can be modified, but it doesn’t die. So, you can have this connections between living entities lifetime after lifetime, you can have people coming together lifetime after lifetime, reconnecting, reestablishing their connection in love. And if fact, this is exactly what is happening, lifetime after lifetime you are meeting again and again. People that you have this connection with, you come in contact, your energies connect, you immediately know ‘I love you’, it’s a long term connection of energy which has nothing to do with the physical body. It may manifest through the physical body in this plain, but the connections are not dependant on the physical body, because they are energetic connections. Our essence, our beings are connected and that connection continues. Those connections of love are always there. They just rise and go beneath the surface periodically, according to how we modify it by the circumstances or by our own personal self-image or self-conceptions. Usually people in individual relationships modify their relationships because either they have changed their conceptions of themselves or you have changed your conception of yourself, or both have done it, causing the resonance between the two to be modified, which causes the connection to be disrupted. But if there is a real loving connection, if it had been established a real loving connection, you may go for some time and than connect again, perhaps, in another lifetime, perhaps, in this lifetime. Perhaps, in between lifetimes. We all have our family of souls, where we have these continuously appearing and disappearing relationships life after life. So, sometimes in this life you have the loving connections, sometimes they modify, they may appear later, they may not appear, it depends on whether you are actually had a connection or not. Ultimately, the connection we have with the supreme or with the divine, the balance of all things is so fundamental and so part of our nature, so part of our essence, we may disrupt it by modifying it due to our bad image of ourselves, but it’s always there. The universality of love is a complicated question to think about, because there is a universal kind of love, yet at the same time we may tend to prefer to manifest it in individual cases. Our connection to universality of love can be in a very general way. We can feel love for all beings, yes, but when those individual being come before us, into our field of consciousness, we may not prefer to have more than just that universal connection of love. The divine balance is connected to all beings everywhere, so there is always that connection, that relationship, that love. But we are not necessarily connected to far-away pieces in this puzzle of the balance of existence. It doesn’t mean you can’t create new connections, it doesn’t mean you can’t expand your connections, of course, you can. But you may not have had the opportunity to do so or you may not have preferred to do so. Although it may have seem like an obvious answer to give, in reality, it’s a complex question, this way in which universal love and individual love may be understood. One needs to understand the individuals in terms which the individuals can appreciate. That is the difference between us, living beings, and the divine, in a nutshell. I think that question had been answered.

Here is a very interesting question, it’s about recycling of the consequences of those errors, those defects, those imperfections, which are continuously going on, whenever we are trying to act. And I can give an answer in a very short statement. So long as you continue with these consequences on the platform of ‘doing’, it’ll just get worse and worse and worse. And when one gets to the level of ‘being’, and deals with these consequences on the level of ‘being’, all of this recycling, all of this huge construction of misconception will be dissolved away. This is the real knowledge that burns to ashes all the fire of accumulated reactions. I feel it’s a mistake to use the word ‘knowledge’ in this sense, but I was using a familiar phrase. I would say, ‘This is the Being that burns to ashes all accumulated junk that we’ve assembled in our consciousness for so long.’ Words have meaning and these meanings point us towards certain philosophical constructions of concepts and ideas that we accept. And by modifying the word that you use to describe a particular concept, you sometimes are able to clarify the concept because the misconceptions we clog this words with, are not available to us.