Bhagavad Gita is very relevant to modern times when you see things like global warming, climate chaos, changing weather patterns, natural disasters like hurricane Katrina, extreme poverty, economic disparities, social injustice, war, and terrorism - these are the projection of a collective consciousness that's in disarray.
The word yoga is the same as the English word "yoke". So in the New Testament when Jesus Christ says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," my interpretation is that he's referring to yoga. It means "union" - Union of the body, mind and the spirit as one continuum of consciousness.
I think the Bhagavad Gita is about both the forces of light and the forces of darkness that exist within our own self, within our own soul; that our deepest nature is one of ambiguity. We have evolutionary forces there - forces of creativity, and love, and compassion, and understanding. But we also have darkness inside us - the diabolical forces of separation, fear and delusion. And in most of our lives, there is a battle going on within ourselves.
The "Bhagavad Gita" is actually a very good text for yoga - the yoga of love, the yoga of action or karma, the yoga of understanding of intellect, and the yoga of reflection and meditation. I think it's a very important map for understanding the nature of consciousness.
I was influenced by the political environment of our country that has just gained freedom from British colonialism. And the seminal figures in that environment were Mahatma Gandhi, who had been assassinated shortly after I was born, but nevertheless dominated the collective psyche of the country. And of course there were other statesmen who were very much part of the culture we knew as well as looked upon by society as leaders, and mentors, and people that inspires us to have a vision for idealism.
I heard about Bhagavad Gita very early in my childhood, from the age of five onwards. It was one of the earliest things I started to read when I started to read. And it was very much a part of my consciousness. In the beginning, I saw the "Bhagavad Gita" as a text that was very classical, much like the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" - a mythical saga that showed the eternal conflict between good and evil. But much later, as I grew up, I realized that it was much more than that.
"Bhagavad Gita" is an examination of consciousness and the desire of human beings and the quest that we have as human beings to understand ourselves; that it was a map, you might say, for exploring the territory that leads us to find out things about ourselves.
It shapes my reality, where I was born, in two ways. One, I was burdened by the culture I was born in. And secondly, it gave me a context with which to actually see with wise eyes as well. So culture is both a burden as well as an opportunity for us to look at the world through eyes of wisdom.
I think where you're born brings a history with it - a cultural history, a mythical history, an ancestral history, a religious context - and certainly influences your perception of the world and how you interpret everyday reality.
The themes that run through all my work are that consciousness is the ultimate reality; and that by understanding consciousness, you understand everything about yourself, about perception, about creativity, about behavior, about relationships. By understanding consciousness, you have the ability to create anything in your world. And you have the ability to influence also the collective consciousness to not only bring about personal healing, but social transformation, and ultimately healing our planet, which happens to be extremely wounded.
The joy in what I do is mostly creativity. I think creativity is an ecstatic impulse that we all have. And there's nothing more joyful than having a moment of creative insight and actually creating, or rather manifesting or incarnating your creative insight into actual, physical reality.
The struggle is part of the creative process, and it's very enjoyable to have the struggle. Without the struggle, there would be no joy in creativity. The one thing that is not enjoyable is if you get attached to the outcome. And if you're constantly looking for approval and you are not immune to criticism, then you are in trouble, and you will continue to be struggling and never find the creative impulse.
I think everybody plays a role in their own aging. Some people accelerate it. Some people slow it down. Some people manage to reverse it. It all depends on how much you are invested in the hypnosis of our social condition. So if you believe that at a certain age you have to die and you become dysfunctional, then you will.
There is more and more data that the biological molecules of aging are more under the influence of psychological factors than the chronological age that we usually associate with. Of course there are other things that influence our aging process, including how we perceive time. If you're constantly running out of time, then your biological clock speeds up, and you do run out of time with a heart attack or something like that. The quality of our self-esteem determines how we age. Our perception of our bodies as fields of energy or fields of matter influence how our body ages.
The fastest growing segment of the population in the world right now is over the age of 90, and in some cases over the age of 100 in some countries. So people are living longer. And even though much of it is attributed to modern medicine, it's not. It's lifestyle. It's nutrition. It's the quality of exercise, the ability to manage stress.
Your body, which is very physical, is under the influence of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your dreams, your fantasies, your desires, your instincts, your drives, your imagination. All these things orchestrate themselves - all these internal activities that are in the invisible domain that we call consciousness actually have very precise physical effects both in our biology, but they also influence our perception of the world.
Many quantum physics are realizing or hypothesizing that consciousness is not a byproduct of evolution as has been suggested. Or for that matter, an expression of our brains, although it expresses itself through our brains. But consciousness is the common ground of existence that ultimately differentiates into space, time, energy, information and matter. And the same consciousness is responsible for our thoughts, for our emotions and feelings, for our behaviors, for our personal relationships, for our social interactions, for the environments that we find ourselves in, and for our biology.
We're not in the physical world. The physical world is in us. We create the physical world when we perceive it, when we observe it. And also we create this experience in our imagination. And when I say "we," I don't mean the physical body or the brain, but a deeper domain of consciousness which conceives, governs, constructs and actually becomes everything that we call physical reality.
Transcendental meditation is one particular form of mantra meditation that allows your mind to experience progressively abstract fields of awareness. And ultimately you settle down in the space between your thoughts. The space between your thoughts is pure consciousness, and it's a field of possibilities. It's a field of creativity. It's a field of correlation. It's also a field of uncertainty. It's also a field where intention actualizes its own fulfillment. So that meditation allows you to contact this field, which is very primordial - the ground state of our existence.
I sing my song for a living, and I don't really worry about who listens or what they think. But it seems to make a living.
The jihadists ideology cannot be wiped out with force much less killed. You know, unless we understand the root causes of this, we're going to perpetuate this violence over and over again.
I used to respond to people who are dismissive of my work, but as I grow older, I think it's best to ignore your critics. For one thing, they can't stand it, and secondly, you're never going to change them.
As a physician who was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, getting drunk on weekends, stressed out about having 35 patients in the hospital, and not being able to help either them or myself, I had my existential crisis way before I met Maharishi. I did meet him and he was an influence, but I met many other people as well.
Meditation is a good starting point, or even a little bit of contemplative reflection, asking questions like: Who am I without my name or form? What is my purpose if there is one? What do I want out of my life? What am I grateful for? Just a little bit of reflection like that starts you on the journey.
The universe is in the experience. It's not just out there. What's out there, we don't know. But for humans it's an experience just like the universe for a dolphin or an insect with 100 eyes is a different experience. Our universe is a human universe experienced in human consciousness and, unless we understand how consciousness operates, we will never actually be able to participate in the creation of our personal and collective reality.
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