The Ring of Gyges by Swami Medhananda

5:09 which uses more. which [clears throat] is [singing] what keeps us straight [music] from the divine. The A lot of pains

6:02 by [singing] deceiving. yourself [singing] in prayer.

6:48 full of fear. Omataya tamasaya shant shanty. Shanti

7:36 Om lead us from the transient to the eternal. Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality. Om peace. Peace. Peace. Good morning everyone. >> [clears throat] >> Uh I'll begin with a bracing remark of Swami Vikan on this that I bet some of you are not familiar with. It's a a deep cut from the complete works. He says let us be true. Net10en of our life's energy is spent in trying to make people think

8:21 us that which we are not. That energy would be more rightly spent in becoming that which we would like to be. It's a very subtle psychological observation, a deep insight into human nature. Net10en of our life's energy is spent in trying to make people think us that which we are not. That energy would be more rightly spent in becoming that which we would like to be. How relevant is this now? It's extraordinary. I mean he's very preient in this age of social media internet. One of my favorite poets is TS Elliott and one of my favorite poems is the love song of JFit Proof 1910 I think. Um and

9:09 he's sketching a scene uh where there there's a kind of cocktail party with a lot of superficial conversation people all dressed up and he has this great line where he says all these people are preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet. Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. It's all it is. It's just all masks. And social media is incentivizing us to continue to do that as much because what? We get more likes. The more beautiful we look, the more filters we use, the happier we look. Look at how amazing my I am. I'm on this vacation in Maui and you guys are stuck in your office, in your cubicles. It's an arms race now to prepare the best looking face to impress other people. Right?

9:55 We've all become very image conscious basically in one word and Swami Van says we should move away from this kind of image consciousness to actually becoming what we want to be what what we aspire to be. Now you might be thinking well why are we sitting here today? because we don't we're not like those other people, right? We're spiritual aspirants and we're not no that's not us. But no and in fact you look if you look at the teachings of all the great saints so many of them warn specifically they warn spiritual aspirants about this danger of image consciousness. Let's go back to Jesus. Christmas is coming up right Jesus what does he say? Matthew 6, be careful not to practice your

10:41 righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If [snorts] you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And one more paragraph, Matthew 6:5. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to

11:27 be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Very interesting. He was speaking specifically to spiritual aspirants. And way back then, this was a problem then as much as it is now. Image consciousness and spiritual life. This is a big problem. How much of our lives are spent in impressing others, trying to get recognition or praise from others, trying to convince others that we're very holy, very spiritual, very good people

12:14 versus how much energy do we really spend in trying to become better people. That's what Swami Vikananda is pointing to. That's what Jesus is also saying. Sham Krishna, his teachings, they map on very very neatly to what Jesus is saying. First of all, with regard to what Jesus says about giving, when you when you engage in charity, you have [snorts] to inspect your inner motive behind it. Are you doing it with a subtle desire for name and fame or are you doing it with completely unselfish motives? Sham Krishna says the same thing. He says, Shumbu said to me, it's my desire to build a large number of hospitals and dispensaries. Thus, I can do much good to the poor. And then Sharon Krishna says, I said to him, yes, that is not bad if you can do it in a detached spirit. But to be detached is very difficult unless you sincerely love God.

13:01 And further, if you entangle yourself in many activities, you will be attached to them in a way unknown to yourself. You may think you have no motive behind your work. But perhaps there is already grown a desire for fame and the advertising of your name. That's the danger in all karma yoga especially the more objectively good works that we can do working in a soup kitchen or this or that giving in charity you have to be we have to be very careful about the ego creeping in very subtle ways that usually escape our own detection Bhagat Gita talks about the same thing I'm not going to go into details if you want to look it up it's 1720 to 21 where Krishna explain distinguishes between satika giving and Rajika giving Okay,

13:47 Swami Vearandanda says this about monks. So don't I'm not I'm not uh you know picking on householders here. We're all in the same boat. He says 99% of monks even after renouncing lust and wealth get bound at the last by the desire for name and fame. And then he quotes Milton John Milton's poem Lysidus fame that last infirmity of noble mind. He asks haven't you read we we shall have to work giving up altogether all desire for results. So don't think that this every all spiritual aspirants are in the same boat here. Image consciousness is and desire for name and fame is a problem for monks householders

14:34 everybody across the board. When I was in training center in Bumat a long time ago 2013 um one of my monastic acharas he warned us we're these young brahmacharadis right we're nishits training to be syasi and he said be careful about two things lecturing and singing so I've got one strike against me already but it's a good thing I'm not a singer but what's the idea behind lecturing and singing both of them are very public facing Right? Or they can be. Well, lecturing has to be and and singing may or may not be. But because it's public facing, there's always this danger that you might say you're doing this for God and for your own spiritual purification, this and that, but there might be some

15:21 subtle desire for recognition, right? When you sing a really nice song, there'll be so many people, oh Maharaj, you're so amazing. Oh, that's so nice. Even it could be anything. It's not just singing and lecturing, but even puja. Oh, you did such a nice puja. So, we always have to be on our guard about praise and how we process it, how we take it. It's very difficult. And then remember what Jesus says about prayer. How should we pray? What's his main point? Don't pray in a showy way to attract attention. Call on God in private in your own room. Do it in the privacy of your own room. What does Sharam Krishna say? Exactly the same thing. He says there are many kinds of spiritual aspirants. Those endowed with satwa. So he's bringing in the three gonas here. So satvic spiritual

16:07 aspirants. They perform their spiritual practices secretly. They look like ordinary people, but they meditate inside the mosquito net. Aspirants endowed with rajas exhibit outward pump. A string of beads around the neck, a mark on the forehead, an ochre robe like this, a silk cloth, a rosary with a gold bead, and so on. They are like stallke keepers advertising their wares with signboards. Look at me. Look at how spiritual I am. Right. So Krishna again and again would strike this note of caution bon. This is him at his word smithy best. He's so good at rhyming in these

16:52 little monoselabic words. So monet. One should meditate in one of three places. either monet in your own mind, bonet deep in a secluded forest away from other people or in the corner of a room. If you're meditating in a group, be somewhere far away so that you're not at under the spotlight. There's another thing is a common thing. Senior monks talk about this in Bumma because we get lots of young men joining to be brahmachadis and especially initially when it's an amazing thing if you wake if you go to the main temple in Bumat 4 in the morning or 4:30 in the morning depending on what time of year it is you see hundreds of monks in brahmachari sitting

17:37 together meditating in in total silence during brahma mhutta in at this very auspicious time it's it's really amazing at the same time there's a danger even hair and this is it's quite common actually. One bumachari while meditating will kind of keep his eye open and look at how long the other branches are meditating for and it becomes a contest of how long you can sit there because in a very subtle way what you're hoping for is that the senior monks will praise you. Look boy that bromach did you see how long he sat from 4 to 6 a.m. Oh my goodness. It can happen to any of us in in any occasion and we don't know half the time when we're falling into this trap. So another one of his teachings moro

18:23 muk aoro make what you're thinking what's in your mind align with moo with what you're saying. So make your outer life perfectly aligned with perfectly in harmony with your inner life. There shouldn't be a discord or a disharmony between inner and outer. Have integrity. That's what he's saying in short in spiritual life. And it's very it's very difficult to catch us. Some of us, we might not be conscious hypocrites, but in a very subtle unconscious way, we're still deceiving ourselves in different ways. That's why I gave a whole talk called selfdeception in spiritual life. There's so many ways that spiritual aspirants can deceive themselves. So now if that's true, how do we catch ourselves in the act of becoming image

19:09 conscious, desiring recognition, these subtle forms of ego? And this brings me to the title of our talk, which I hope was a heads head scratcher for most of you. Some of you might have How many of you actually knew the reference? I'm curious. Almost nobody. Wow. Okay. You haven't studied your ancient Greek philosophy. The ring of Gajis. You'll find this story in book two of Plato's Republic, his philosophical masterpiece, the Republic. Glalcon, a character in this dialogue. Um, he's a brother of Socrates, I believe. He's debating with Socrates himself about the nature of justice. the

19:57 nature of justice of of being good, doing good in the world. And what he says is he tells a story about a shepherd. And anybody who knows Lord of the Rings might think, wait a minute, this sounds eerily familiar. JR Tokian's Lord of the Rings and this whole story of the ring which makes Gollum invisible and whatever and corrupts him. That may very well have been influenced by Plato's story of the ring of Gajis. It's not he never explicitly said so, but many scholars think that he was very learned. He he was familiar with it. So he probably was influenced by it. Okay. But anyway, what's the story? There is this young shepherd named Gajis and he discovers a magical ring. It was actually on the finger of a corpse. It's gets kind of morbid, but

20:43 anyway, he he takes the ring from the finger of this corpse, puts it on, and when he twists it, he suddenly realized, "Oh my goodness, this ring makes me invisible." So what does he do as a result? How does he use this ring, this ring, this magical ring? Well, he has a desire for power. He's envious of the king who rules over the kingdom. So what does he do? He uses this ring to seduce the queen, the wife of the king. How exactly that works, I don't know. But anyway, uh don't ask. Um, and then after seducing the queen, he kills in in in conspiracy with the queen whom he's now seduced, he kills the king, overthrows the king, and then seizes the throne.

21:31 What's the point of the story? Glalcon said, "Oh, by the way, before we get to the point of the story, for those of you who are interested and curious, are there any Indian equivalents to this ring of Gaji story?" Um, and some of you might think, but I'll just mention a couple things. First of all from Walmiki's Ramayana the story of Rama Rahana the demon the king of all the demons Rahana his son his name is Indrajit we have an Indrajit here already anyway there he is there's Ind right there talking about you Meanada he had this power of invisibility and then in the story what happens as a result of this power of invisibility he is able to he's fighting with the other side and so he kills a bunch of people using this ring of invisibility Right? And it's obviously unethical. There are certain codes of combat which

22:17 he violates by using this ring and and killing these people as an invisible person. Right? I mean, how can you defend yourself if you don't even know who's who's the person attacking you? So, that's one reference. So, this is a kind of Indian story about how um becoming invisible is a test to see how truly good and pure we are. Uh another reference I'll give you although I'm sure there are many others you can think of, yoga sutra. I'm teaching Patanja's yoga sutras in 3.21. One of the siddhis, one of the supernormal powers that one can cultivate through a certain practice is the power of invisibility. It's called antadhanam antar dhanam 3.21 if you want to look it up. And at the same time in the same

23:02 breath that Pat is saying here's the technique for getting this power invisibility he says but be careful any of these supernormal powers including this power invisibility it can easily harm your spiritual life it can make you more egoistic that's the danger you do your spiritual practices you get this power and then you can easily slip into this trap of using it for your egoistic ends abusing that power okay so Don't try this at home folks. Don't try to become invisible. It's [snorts] a thought experiment. That's the point of today's. So for the rest of class, I want to kind of explore this this this ring of gaises. Imagine that we had the ring of gaises. We were that shepherd. What would we do with it? What would we

23:49 do with this ring? How would we use it? How might it change our behavior? These are deep questions and each of us has to ask that to ourselves. Just run through the course of your day starting from waking up to going to bed and ask yourself how if I had the ring when if at all would I use it and to what end? For what purpose? And if we're honest, I think most of us will admit that we'll fail this ring of Gai's test. This Gajis test in some ways we'll succeed in some respects. We'll fail in other respects. We're spiritual aspirants. We haven't we're not perfected yet, right? But the use why is this test useful? because it can help us to pinpoint our growth areas. Where do we go wrong when we when we use this ring of Gajis?

24:37 Now, if you use the ring of Gajis to to practice meditation in solitude, that's a great thing, right? So, there are positive ways to use the ring of Gajis, but how many of us would eventually if that ring is always there as a possibility and all you have to do is twist it. It's on your finger and you have to twist it. How many of us wouldn't take recourse to using it for more egoistic or selfish reasons or to do immoral things? Honestly, we might be able to resist it when we have when we're feeling like we have a lot of strong willpower and this and that, but we all of us have our moments of weakness. Then what might we do? Ask ourselves. We have to ask each of us, you know, what would we do? Where does the shoe pinch for us? And then we know that that's a growth area. That's something we have to work on. Right now, why does Glalcon tell this story? He's making an argument. He's telling

25:23 Socrates, look, this is the technical term in philosophy. What the story shows is that justice is merely an instrumental value. It's just a means to an end. People are much more invested in looking good, in seeming good to other people than in actually being good. What we care about is our reputation. I'm not good for its own sake. Us. All of us. He's making an empirical claim about human beings. Human beings when given the chance to do bad things while escaping detection will do them. Which means what? They're none of us really care about being good for its own sake. We only care about avoiding doing bad things. Why? To avoid punishment and

26:08 social consequences, being put in jail, other people criticizing us. But if we knew we could get away with something, doing something bad or selfish or egoistic, immoral, we would do it. We would pounce at the opportunity. [snorts] This is the claim. This is the challenge thrown down to Socrates. And then the rest of the republic, Socrates's answer comes not in any one place, but in the course of the book, it unfolds in the course of many books. And he gives a brilliant answer. What he's out to show, what he's out to prove is that justice being good is not just an instrumental value. It's also an intrinsic value. It's good to be good just for its own sake, regardless of external consequences. How does he prove it?

26:57 He says, okay, I have the ring of Gajis. I twist it. I'm now invisible and I do bad things. I do immoral things which means nobody knows that I'm doing these bad things. There are no social consequences but there are consequences for my soul. I harm my own soul by doing these things even if there are no external consequences. Now how does he catch this out? He introduces his famous doctrine of the tripartite soul. Now this is ancient Greek metaphysics here. Socrates says our soul has three main parts. The first is reason. The highest part of the soul, logisticon. This is a very positive aspect of our soul. It's us at our best. When we seek truth, we seek wisdom, we seek guidance

27:43 and goodness. The second part of the soul is spirit. Tumos. This gives us courage, honor, righteous indignation. It gives us energy to pursue what's good and what's right and what's rational. And then the third and the lowest part of the soul is is appetite epitheia bodily desires, cravings, sense pleasures, desire for sense pleasures and so on. The stuff that the lower impulses when we identify with the physical body. So Socrates says keeping in mind this tripartite soul, we are just when there's a harmony among the three parts of our soul and we are unjust. What happens when we commit an injustice? We introduce disharmony into

28:29 the soul. So when we do good things, reason is ruling over the other two parts. Spirit and appetite. This is not spirit in the vantic sense. Don't get it. Don't get that confused. Reason rules. Spirit supports reason. So that gives us the energy to follow what's right and rational. And appetite is a kind of slave of reason. It obeys even though its tendency is toward unruliness into being disobedient. And the more injustice we commit, the more wrong we we engage in, what happens? Our soul becomes disharmon disharmonious from within. Okay? And what happens? Appetite, the lowest of the lowest part of the soul overthrows reason. It seizes the throne exactly like the peasant the

29:16 the the um this gajis the shepherd seizes the king's throne right and the king is captured reason is overthrown spirit sides with appetite now appetite is king and so spirit all our energy is going into gratifying the senses and gratifying the body and our lower impulses and so there's a kind of civil war going on within the soul and Socrates's claim is that very internal disharmony harmony of the soul itself is unhappiness. It makes us miserable regardless of if we can get away with it or not. It makes us miserable to the point Yeah. Well, anyway, and we all we all we can all relate to that. I think we have a conscience, right?

30:03 So, injustice is self-destructive. That's what makes justice an intrinsic value and not just an instrumental value. Okay. Um, so a truly good person according to Socrates would resist the ring's temptations, would resist that temptation to use the ring for nefarious purposes because that truly good person values the condition of his or her soul more than external rewards. The truly good person, this is a real test. This is the test that distinguishes the truly good person from the person who does good things. quote unquote good things but more for external reasons for recognition for avoiding social consequences. Okay,

30:49 again we can think of Jesus Mark 8:36 for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul. I think this in in one sentence captures in a nutshell Socrates's response to Glalcon's challenge. Interestingly for you Vantans out there which is most of us in Fedrris if you want the references 246A to 254E Socrates in explaining the tripartite soul uses the metaphor of a chariot what does this remind us of the the famous chariot metaphor from the katoish right so I'm going to do a little comparative analysis here let's start with so the way that Socrates uses this metaphor of

31:34 a chariot he says Imagine a chariot. The charioteer is reason. Remember the three parts of the soul. Reason, logisticon or noose. This is a charioteer, the one operating the chariot and holding the reins of the horses. Okay. So, it's the job of of reason to control the horses. What are the two horses? There are two horses here. The first is the noble horse spirit thumos. I already explained what that is. Courage, honor, righteous indignation. It's obedient and it helps the charioteer to rise to uh the realm of forms, to beauty. But then there's a bad or unruly horse. That is appetite. He

32:22 likens appetite to the unruly horse. Epitheia, bodily desires, lusts, cravings, pleasure seeeking. This is the naturally disobedient horse. And so you really have to keep it under control. And it pulls the chariot downward toward physical gratification. Okay? So anybody who knows the chariot metaphor from the kopanish will recognize immediately that there are parallels here. But they're not identical. And I'm not going to go into all the details, but let me read you the two verses and then we'll talk about a little bit. This is from

33:11 Okay. So what do we have? The chariot is the physical body. The roads are the sense objects. The horses the senses. The indrias. The reigns are the mind manus program. The charioteer is buddhi the rational intellect. Now notice there are significant parallels here because remember who's the charioteer in Socrates's chariot metaphor? Reason. So it's more or less the same thing. But where's the key difference? This uponyad says there's somebody in the chariot besides the chariot here. The lord of the chariot atmani

33:57 the eternal divine soul the the charioteer the buddy is actually at the service of in the service of the soul the the divine soul you don't find any equivalent of the eternal divine soul in Plato's chariot metaphor here reason is where it tops out and what vanta says is reason itself buddhi it's just part of the insensient body mind complex that also needs to be guided by something higher by a spiritual principle, the atman, the eternal divine soul. This is the crucial missing element from Socrates's chariot metaphor and his vision or his picture of the tripartite soul. Why does it matter? Well, I've written an entire article. It's an

34:44 academic article. If you're interested, you can look at it. It's called from good to God. Swami Vanandanda's vantic virtue ethics. You can find it online. Um and I talk about Swami G's uh Vantic ethics. Okay. And in the first part of that I talk about how remember he's writing in the late 19th century. He studied western philosophy as an undergraduate at Scottish church college. He was familiar with John Stewart Mill and Kant and others. So with all that in mind at the time utilitarianism was all the rage. That was the big philosophy. John Stewart Mill Bentham and others. And what he says is he's challenging one of the dominant views of his time which is see one of the big philosophical questions was questions is why should we be good

35:31 okay why should we be good it's in in philosophy it's technically called it's in the field of metaeththics you take a step back from ethics and you say well okay even if I know what doing good is why should I be good in the first place this is a serious problem and it's very difficult to answer the question so different philosophers ers have given different answers to this question and so the the answer that utilitarians give is well because doing good increases utility. Swami Vikanandan challenges that answer and he says it as follows and I'm just quoting from a lecture called the claims of religion 1896. He says there are attempts at producing a system of ethics from mere grounds of utility. I challenge any man to produce such a rational system of ethics. Do good to others. Why? Because it is the highest utility. That's the utilitarian answer.

36:16 Suppose a man says,"I do not care for utility. I want to cut the throats of others and make myself rich." What will you answer? It is outheriting Herod. But where is the utility of my doing good to the world? Am I a fool to work my life out that others may be happy? Why shall I myself not be happy if there's no other sensiency beyond society, no other power in the universe beyond the five senses? What prevents me from cutting the throats of my brothers so long as I can make myself safe from the police and make myself happy? Notice this is Glacon's ring of Gaji's argument except for the Vidantic twist. What will you answer? Um continuing the passage, you are bound to show some utility when you are pushed from your ground. You you

37:03 answer my friend, it is good to be good. What is the power in the human mind which says it is good to do good? which unfolds before us in glorious view. The grandeur of the soul, the beauty of goodness, the allattractive power of goodness, the infinite power of goodness. That is what we call God, is it not? So that's the Vantic twist. He's supporting Glacon up to a point and he says short of postulating a transcendental reality call that the higher self or call it God you will never be able to justify being good in this world there's no good reason even rationality is not good enough if you

37:48 treat reason as the highest as Plato and Socrates do it's not good enough because then some people will say I'm being rational and doing anything I want as long as I can get away with it no matter how immoral the thing is so there has to be something beyond ethics and beyond rationality. Ethics has to be a means to the end of something else. So Swami G says in another lecture the necessity of religion, ethics itself is not the end but the means to the end. If the end is not there, why should we be ethical? Why should I do good to other men and not injure them? If happiness is the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me? And his answer is the vidantic answer is because we are in our deepest essence eternal divine souls.

38:33 And true happiness consists in realizing our higher spiritual nature. And the more we engage in injustice and immoral things, no matter if we're wearing the ring of gajis or not, even if we can get away with it in a certain sense, getting away with it in quotes, which means nobody finds out about it, we still harm our souls. So he agrees with Socrates but then his picture of the soul ultimately has this spiritual being at the end of it which you call the higher self or God. He [snorts] says unless you posit a higher self or God you cannot give a proper justification for doing good in the world. You'll never be able to answer the question why should I do good? Why should I be good? Okay. And then you might ask well how are we harming ourselves by doing immoral things? And Bhagavat

39:21 Gita gives a very simple explanation. You'll find this in chapter 18. Krishna distinguishes two kinds of happiness. Three kinds really. I'm going to focus on two of them based on the threeas happiness. Any happiness that stems from the contact of the sense organs with sense objects. Any form of instant gratification is a rajasika happiness and it has they all have the same structure. In the beginning it's like oh this is the best thing in the world. It's like ama it's like nectar and in the end it becomes like poison visham. Why?

40:06 Two main reasons. Number one because desire is insatiable. This is something that we all realize through the school of experience through the school of hard knocks. Go ahead and try to gratify your desires. What's going to happen? The desires will only grow fatter. The desire will become insatiable. Mahasha Mahaapma Bhagavan Krishna says about desire GMA in chapter 3 of the Gita. [snorts] It's all devouring. It's never satisfied. No matter how much you feed it and mahapma and as a result what happens? We lose our our discrimination and we end up doing all sorts of stupid immoral things. As a result, it [snorts] completely hijacks our mind. That buddhi the charioteer loses control over the reinss and the horses of the senses and then we go to spiritual ruin right so by

40:53 contrast Krishna says what is satika happiness true happiness it's like poison in the beginning not very pleasant when you first start engaging in some kind of satika form of joy or happiness but eventually it becomes like the greatest nectar amit. So it has the exact opposite structure of radika happiness. And then Krishna says this is satika happiness and a very important phrase atma. So notice how neatly this connects up with the chariot metaphor atma buddhi prasadam. What does that mean? It means satika joy, satika happiness stems from

41:38 the gratification not of the body, not even of the mind but of the higher intellect. This rational intellect that Plato and Socrates are talking about the noose reason buddhi that's but also and even more deeply it gratifies the soul atma the eternal divine soul within each of us in which we don't realize out of ignorance. So the more we engage in good actions, the more we erode our false identification with the body mind complex which is the root of all of our misery and suffering and the more we're able to identify with our deeper eternal divine nature as atmas as souls and this gives I think I would suggest humbly a deeper vantic response to glalcon's

42:24 challenge in the ring of gaji's story. You have to posit a spiritual entity either the higher self or God at the basis of everything which you have to realize in order to really respond to Glacon's challenge. Just positing reason as the highest is not going to get you far enough. Okay. So now with all that said, how do we apply these insights to our spiritual life? Well, I want to suggest that from this ring of Gaises, we can derive not one but two very practical tests for us as spiritual aspirants. The first is let's call it the Gajis test. Imagine you had this ring of Gajis and I've already talked about this but and if you twist it, it can make you invisible. What would you do with it?

43:11 And so, as I said, this is very helpful. Run that test on yourself and ask yourself, ask ourselves. I have to do it myself. What would I do differently? Run through the course of your day. What might I do differently if I had that power of invisibility? And then you know that's a growth area. That's a place where I can improve in my spiritual life. Um I want to mention in this regard that there are two recent studies done in empirical psychology that arguably support Glalcon's thesis in a way. Okay, it's really interesting work. Um there's a Yale professor named I can't remember Gendler I think Gendler um she's got this great lecture you can find it online um through Yale and it's on the ring of GIS so she talks about

43:56 these studies or at least yeah both the studies I think so one of them is called cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real world setting biology letters 2006 Melissa Bateson Daniel Nettle and Gilbert Roberts it's a really interesting experiment experiment that they ran so they're at University of Newcastle and There's coffee in the in one of the rooms for everybody, but they also have what's called an honesty box. And there's a sign saying it's basic it's the honor system. And so they say, "Please pay for the coffee if you drink coffee." And then the experiment is above that box either there are pictures of like flowers kind of like wallpaper flower sort of things or there's a

44:43 picture of a pair of eyes. [laughter] It gets kind of creepy. Okay. And what do they find? It's remarkable. And they run this multiple times with different pairs of eyes. Not just one set of eyes, but multiple woman's eyes, man's eyes, right? But all looking at you. And then the flowers are different kinds of generic wallpapery kinds of flowers. What do they find? People in general are far more likely to donate to the honesty box when they are faced with that pair of eyes. Isn't that interesting? They're not literally being watched, but the they feel like they're being watched and that makes them better, makes them more honest. What a This is a remarkable insight and it seems to support Glalcon, right? Another example, and I'm not going to go into the details

45:28 here, but I'll cite the study so you can look it up. It's a fascinating study. C. Daniel Batson. Don't get him confused with Bateson. That's their two different there's a Bateson and a Batson. Anyway, this is Batson. The article is called moral masquerades, experimental exploration of the nature of moral motivation. And he runs this very interesting series of variations on on similar kinds of experiments. But I'm just going to mention one small part of it. when he makes a variation where he introduces a mirror which is facing the person just the presence of that mirror and the person being able to see themselves in the mirror will make them more honest. So see this is very similar the the wait is it Batson or Bateson now okay the Batson study is the one with the pairs of eyes looking at you making you more honest and then there's a mirror in the Bateson study which makes you more

46:15 honest what's the common denominator here when we feel that we're being observed we tend to be better right this is very and this is a hard truth to admit nobody wants to admit that I'm only being good because uh other people are watching me because I'll be punished if I do something bad. Right? We want to say that we're good for good sake but most of us aren't. That's the sad fact. Now coming to our spiritual tradition I want to talk about some Gajis tests that you'll find in our tradition. Let's start with Shriram Krishna. Another deep cut because this is not found in the gospel. You find this in Swami Brahman on this compilation of Shriram Krishna's teachings. It's called Sri Sriram Krishna.

47:00 I'll read it quickly in Bengali because the translation we have is quite poor and thankfully Swami is re-ransating it. Rough translation in a secluded place where nobody's watching. And now he's thinking of I have to add this these days a heterosexual male spiritual aspirant. Okay. If [snorts] a man sees a beautiful young woman and instead of approaching her with a feeling of lust sees her as a manifestation of divine mother and goes

47:47 away, that person can be called a true renunciate. By contrast, the person who dresses outwardly like a renunciate in public, that person cannot be called a natural or a true renunciate. Prototagi, a really natural renunciate. So he's running a gaji. I think he's telling each of us to run this gajis test on ourselves. We might be dressed up as a spiritual aspirin, as a monk or whatever, but when push comes to shove, when if we can get away with doing something bad, do we do it or not? And we all have to ask ourselves that difficult question. That's why repeatedly in the gospel shar talks about eight fetterss oshtopash. One of them is goonadicha.

48:33 The desire to do things in secret secretiveness. This is a striking thing. when I first moved to India way back right after my PhD I moved 2009 and I joined at uh Vivican University and I'm staying with monks now and it just felt like such a contrast I was born and raised in Boston I I lived here for so long and here it's like everybody has their doors closed and there I just I was walking around the halls and everybody's doors were open there's nothing to hide and this whole obsession with privacy seems to be very western in a certain way and that's striking to Why why this desire for privacy so much? So that's something to think about. Um and Shamram Krishna what is the one of the greatest spiritual virtues that he

49:19 talks about all the time and that he praises in people like Niranjanand Niranjan and others being sh that means and it's very hard to translate because it has these multiple beautiful connotations. The moment you say simple, it sounds like a like a critic. Like in English has negative connotations. Being simple, it means you're dumb. It's not that. Being simple, having simplicity in a spiritual sense means you have perfect integrity. You are what you appear to be. There's a perfect harmony or alignment between inner and outer. That's what it means to be shul guilous. So that's a kind of a better translation in a way, but it doesn't quite capture all the connotations. There's no deception within you. There's no hypocrisy. What you project to others is exactly what you are. What you see is

50:06 what you get. Alfred North Whitehead, the great philosopher, he once proposed a version of the Gajis test where I would suggest that that's one way of interpreting this very famous statement. He defines religion in a really interesting way. He says religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. It's very interesting. And it's kind of surprising, right? Religion, you might say, is going to church on Sundays and this and that, doing your japa. No, what do you do in your free time when you're alone when nobody's watching? Then you'll understand how truly religious that person is, how truly spiritual that person is. This is exactly like what Sham Krishna is saying, right? And what Jesus is saying. And so yoga gi one of

50:53 the great direct disciples of Sharam Krishna when he first started meeting Sham Krishna he was a little puzzled because Shram Krishna is a great renunciate seems to be a great renunciate always talking about renunciation of lust and greed but he's got this wife sitting not that far away from him and like what what do I there's cognitive dissonance there and he's a little skeptical and he's stays the night with Shriram Krishna and he wakes up in the middle of the night for whatever reason and he sees uh oh Shriram Krishna is not there. So he thinks wait a minute has he gone over to hang out with his wife in the middle of the night. So he goes out of the room kind of looks around trying to see and then looks up to see whether Sham Krishna is visiting holy mother shara the dvi and then sham krishna comes back from a

51:39 different part of from the woods because he had to answer the call of nature that was the reason he left from the punchi and sha sees him yogan become completely embarrassed and flumxed [laughter] and shamrishna immediately he becomes I mean yogand becomes ashamed right and sham krishna knows immediately what's going on and sharam krishna says encouraging him he Well, you're quite right. You must examine a sadu by day and by night before believing in him. Before believing in him, put him through all the tests. My goodness, Nadin, what kind of swami vicar put through so many tests. Putting coins under his mattress to see whether he'd recognize them there and feel pain and so on. A million things, right? So, do that. Make sure that this is not just an extra somebody who's posing to be holy or spiritual on

52:25 the outside. You have to test them. and Sham Krishna encouraged that. Okay. So, Yogaandanda kind of ran a Gai's test on Sham Krishna there and he passed of course. Another I a very moving incident which is another kind of Gai's test but not deliberate but inadvertent Gai's test and I'll just read it out to you. Um one day Swami Turyanandanda came to see Swami Vikananda at the residence of Bolaram Bushu where he had been staying and Turanha found Swami G walking alone on the veranda. So Swami G doesn't know that Turyanji is there. Swami Vikanda was so lost in thought that he didn't notice that his brother monk had come to meet him. After a little while Swami G began to hum [snorts] a well-known song of midabay with tears rolling down his

53:12 cheeks. Then Swami G covered his face with both hands, leaned on the railings and continued to sing, "Oh, nobody understands my sorrow. He who does not bleed does not feel the pain." Narrating this incident, Swami Turyandanda later said, "His voice pierced my heart like an arrow, moving me to tears. Not knowing the cause of Swami G's sorrow, I was very uneasy. But it soon flashed upon me that it was a tremendous universal sympathy with the suffering and oppressed that was the cause of his mood. It's a good example of these great saints. Look at what they do when they're not being observed. That's our inspiration. That's our ideal. Another example, this is a more

53:57 fun one. Sarah Ellen Waldo when he she's spending some time with Swami G she notices something funny that when there's a mirror there's a mirror there like a full I think a full body mirror she kept looking into it and she got a little suspicious so I'll read out the story it took place in the front drawing room of a long narrow room with two tall windows facing the street between which hung a mirror reaching from floor to ceiling so it's a huge mirror this mirror seemed to fascinate the swami he stood before again and again gazing at himself intently. In between he walked up and down the room lost in thought. Miss Waldo's eyes followed him anxiously. Now she gets it's like yoga

54:42 with Shirram Krishna. She says she thinks to herself. Now the bubble is going to burst. He is full of personal vanity. He's a good-looking guy. So he's he's admiring his beauty. Right? That's what she thought. Suddenly Swami G turned to her and said, "Ellen, it is the strangest thing. I can't remember how I look. I look and look at myself in the glass, but the moment I turn away, I forget completely what I look like." Amazing. [laughter] He's looking at the mirror to remind himself of what he actually looks like. All right. So, that's the first kind of test that I think all these great saints encourage us to run on ourselves. this Gajis test. Okay. Now, there's a second test. We can reverse the thought experiment. So, we can either call this

55:28 the reverse GI's test or we can call it the Truman Show test. I just re-watched the Truman Show just to prepare for this talk. I hope you're proud of me. The last time I watched it was I think in high school. It's a great movie though. So, The Truman Show test. Imagine that you're like Truman when he starts realizing after some point in the movie when he starts noticing like the the the cracks in the seams of the set in a way and he's like wait a minute I'm being watched. So just imagine that we're in this situation like Truman and we know that someone's watching us at all times. How would we behave? Would we behave differently? Would we sit longer for meditation if somebody's watching? That's what I was saying earlier about these brahmacheris and in bivvan.

56:13 Would we interact differently with others? Would we have those blowout fights with our spouses or our children if if we knew somebody else was watching and we can get away with it and so on and so forth, right? How would we behave differently? And again, so this reverse gajis test, this Truman Show test also can help us to pinpoint areas of our life that need to be worked on. We don't need to feel bad about it. But the point is as spiritual aspirants, we should be it should be like a burning furnace inside and we should be striving to be better and better, right? So some practical tips. Number one, let's run these two tests on ourselves. We can do it during the Q&A. That'll be fun. So let's run the Gajis test. Let's run the reverse GIS test or andor the I mean or aka Truman Show test. run them

56:59 on ourselves and find out where the shoe pinch is and what aspects of our spiritual life we need to work on. Okay, that's number one. Number two, just a general point. I hope this is a general takeaway that we learned from Jesus, from the Gita, from Sham Krishna, from Swami G, from all these great saints. What do they say? When you do your spiritual practices, as much as possible, try to do them in private and be very careful. Sometimes there are some scenarios where you can't be completely in private. You know us monks we're we're expected to be doing group meditation and centers but so you have to be very careful about your motives and you have to be very careful where ego might creep in there as well. Okay. So instead of trying to appear spiritual to others let's focus more of our energy on trying to actually be spiritual. Okay.

57:45 Another thing this has to do with the three gunas. Notice Sharam Krishna says again and again it's satika spiritual aspirants who just naturally have no outward show. They are just completely devoid of image consciousness. The more satvic we are the less image conscious we're going to be. And the more rajas we have the more image conscious we're going to be. So now a very practical tip for all of us. If we can try to make every aspect of our lives as satic as possible we'll automatically become less image conscious and we're going to automatically pass the gajis test and the reverse gajis test far better. We're going to have this perfect harmony between inner and outer the more satic we become. And so how do we become more satic? You've got to watch a separate lecture I gave called the three gonas in spiritual life or practical life. That's a whole another can of worms. But you'll find in the gospel again and again Shir

58:32 Krishna talking about classifying different kinds of human behavior and activities in terms of the three gonas. Bhagavan Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita again and again classifying different activities and behavior in chapter 17 and 18 especially in in the in terms of these three. Why? So that we can exactly the same thing. We can pinpoint areas of our life that we need to work on. Maybe we're very satic as parents. We're very enlightened. We, you know, we we [snorts] let them grow in their own way. We encourage them without being overbearing. We're not helicopter parents. Great. But the moment we turn to our spouse, oh my goodness, become extremely logistic. And we shout with them and there's emotional drama and there are highs and there are lows and there's tremendous emotional attachment and lovehate, unhealthy codependence. So these three gonas, this paradigas

59:18 really helps us to identify what aspects of our lives we have to work on, right? How do we become more satic when we're stuck in rush hour traffic, how do we behave? And I've seen too many people in LA with road rage and flipping the bird and we could do that. That's very rajasic. Or listen to some nice bajons, do your japa, think of God. It's the same outward activity, but internally there's a world of difference. you're being satic even while you're in rush hour traffic. And the more satic we we become, the less image conscious we're going to be. Okay, so that's another practical tip. And then finally, and this is a little bit subtle from a vidantic standpoint, and here's another difference actually between the whole Socratic Platonic paradigm and the

1:00:03 vidantic paradigm. Even when nobody is watching us, we're never alone. Even when nobody is watching us, meaning other human beings, animals, whatever, we're never alone. Why? Because at all times we are confronted with even if we don't know it, there's always there the mirror of the soul and the eyes of God. The mirror of the soul and the eyes of God. God is watching everything. When I uh when I first moved to India, I did this six-month pilgrimage. One of my stops was I spent three weeks in Rishies. The divine life society generously allowed me to stay there for three weeks and I met a sadhu there one day and he he looked at me and he just said, "Always remember that God is there in

1:00:50 your heart watching everything you do and everything you're even thinking." Which sounded kind of scary to me at the time like it's going to but it's true. Even if not a there's not a person in the world who knows what you're doing, God knows and your conscience knows and your higher self knows. So this this should remind us again of the that experiment, right? The mirror. The moment that the the scientists put a mirror in the room, people became more honest because they could see themselves in the mirror and they became self-conscious and like whoa, I better not be doing that. So let me recite to you two beautiful verses that I found in Manuspriti. This again is a I'm giving all these deep cuts. This is another deep cut. 8.84 to 85 about this mirror of the soul.

1:01:44 Okay, this I'll I'll expl I'll translate this and then give the next one. The soul itself, the atman is the witness to everything we do and think. And the soul itself is our refuge. Disregard not your soul which is the supreme witness within all human beings. And then the next verse which means sinners bad people indeed think nobody sees us. This is like the the glon what he's saying. No one sees us. Sinners think no one sees us but God sees them. as also their own higher self. There two

1:02:29 things that we can never escape detection from the eyes of God and the mirror of the soul. So in the mundakish we have this beautiful metaphor of the two birds and there's a lower bird and a higher bird. The lower bird is us and we have positive experiences, we have negative experiences, we do some really great things, we do some pretty bad things, shameful things. That upper bird is always watching. That's the higher self. That's the mirror of the soul. and then the eyes of God. If we really have faith in God, we should feel God's presence with us right now, no matter what we're doing. And if we really feel that presence, we'll probably be less likely to do bad things. Now, you might say,

1:03:17 you might say, "Well, aren't there exceptions? Aren't there people who have faith in God, who believe that there is God, but they still do bad things? And in our tradition, you can come up with some examples. One of my favorites is Girish Goos. Girish Kosh had tremendous burning faith in God. Did that prevent him from doing bad things? No. He was doing all so he would come to Sharam Krishna drunk sometimes. Totally drunk. And one time crying he told Sharam Krishna what do I do? How do I get better? I want to be a better person. I have faith. And Shamrishna knew that. So what did he say? He said good don't worry next time you have a desire to drink offer the bottle to mother first to divine mother. So this is the second paradigm. Even if you believe in God okay then what you should what what should you do? What you're about to do whether good bad

1:04:04 neutral or otherwise offer it to God first. And he did it. And lo and behold eventually what happened? He felt guilty about offering these things to God. when you love somebody, you only want to offer what's best, right? And so he kicked his habit eventually. [snorts] So I would I would distinguish these two paradise. One is most people we don't have the burning faith. We might talk about God, but when push comes to shove, we forget all about God flies out the window when we do bad things. But there's a there's a smaller minority of spiritual aspirants like Girish Gosh who still in the midst of doing something immoral really believe in God. It reminds me of some of you might have read St. Augustine's beautiful autobiography called Confessions. One of his most famous lines, this is before he became a saint. Every every saint has a past, right? So

1:04:50 he says, he says, "Make me chasteed, O Lord, but not yet." Make me chased, oh Lord, but not yet. A lot of us feel that way. But you have some faith. He's addressing God. He believes in God. But give me a little bit more time, God. So remember what are the takeaways? Remember that we're never really alone. Well, there's also a whole, you know, I just wrote a book called Karma and Rebirth in Hinduism. And so that's another difference between the ancient Greek paradigm and the vidantic one is even if nobody's watching and even if these terrible people seem to get away scot-free, karma won't let you. The law of karma is always there to say sorry, but eventually you're going to have to reap what you sow. So that's another side of it which I didn't mention, but

1:05:35 anyway. But remember, we're never really alone because at all times we've got this mirror of the soul and we've got the eyes of God. Thank you. [music]

1:07:12 Thank you everyone. So, as usual, we've got refreshments outside. I'll be greeting you out that door first. And in terms of upcoming events, I'm probably going to need some prompting on this, but next week we've got next Sunday Sarva Devaandi will be giving the Sunday talk here at 11:00 a.m. The topic will be unconditional love of Jesus and Ma Shara. I think >> Ramn is on Saturday the 6th at 6:30 p.m. So please join us for that. It's always a a wonderful event once a month. So, this Saturday, uh there's also I'm giving you a longer heads up on

1:07:57 Sunday, December 14th, Holy Mother's Puja. It's her birthday and we're celebrating that in a big way as usual, which starts at 10:00 a.m. And uh the home of fire in in the living room will be at 12:30 p.m. about and then prasad lunch will be at 1:30. And then there's going to be uh a special program starting at 3. So roughly from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. which I'm organizing as usual. And it's a special program where I ask devotees to uh sing devotional songs for holy mother and give five minute speeches on holy mother. So please join us for that afternoon program as well. Um is that it? >> Sunday. >> Thank you. Next Sunday, the 7th of

1:08:44 December, there's a a retreat with Swami Sarvanandha in our Pasadena house at 4 p.m. >> And also next Saturday, there's a retreat. >> Oh, okay. >> There's a what? >> 10 to 1. >> Okay. And then on Saturday, December 6, sorry for jumping around, there is a retreat conducted by Daam Mati. Uh, >> this is >> Oops. Okay, that's okay. Sorry. Okay. This is a retreat conducted by Swami Arupes Shananda from what? 10 to 1 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Pinion Hills. Okay. Thank you everyone. Om shanty shanty shantrishna.

1:09:55 >> [music] >> I'm sorry. [music] Sorry. >> [music]

1:10:41 [music] >> Thank you. [music] >> [music] >> Please get her. [music]