#28. What If You Would Live A 1,000,000,000 Years | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

Namaste and a very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,

Dhyansi.

The times that we are living in,

Spirituality is even more important.

If we look at the cycle of time,

Good times,

Bad times,

And the overall journey of humans along time,

We see there are moments where we rise,

There are moments where we go deep in darkness.

And in those moments of deep darkness,

Spirituality rises again.

It rises again for us to rise again.

What is being spiritual?

Does this mean to believe something?

Does this mean to follow somebody?

Does this mean to practice some sort of daily routine or some practice?

What is being spiritual?

Being spiritual is just to know the nature of life.

It's very simple.

It doesn't matter how you come to this knowing of the nature of life,

It can be through a practice,

It can be through somebody telling you,

Somebody opening up your consciousness,

Or you yourself setting some sort of practice to allow your consciousness to open.

The goal,

The meaning of being spiritual is to understand the nature of life,

Is to fully recognize the nature of life.

It is of utmost importance that we understand what this life is.

We are given this life and we are just flowing along with it without knowing what it is.

And if we were just flowing along without doing any harm to it,

It would have been still okay.

To remain ignorant would have been still okay,

But it doesn't stop there.

Since we don't understand the nature of life,

We try to give random meanings to it.

We try to find meanings in going to the moon,

Going to the Mars,

In developing the latest technology.

We try to give meaning to life in all sorts of mundane things,

In all sorts of insignificant things.

And in that process,

We start creating misery.

Unknowingly being ignorant,

Or at times out of madness,

We start creating misery for ourselves and we start creating misery for everyone else.

That is simply because we do not understand the nature of life.

And that is why we keep on creating this torture to our life,

Torture to everyone else's life.

If you just look at the status of things right now,

You may recognize that we are somewhat at that stage once again,

Where all our ignorance,

All our stupidity,

All our madness,

All our misunderstanding of what life is,

Has come to a point where we are creating that situation again,

Where we destroy life.

Out of this not understanding what life is,

Out of being disconnected from the true nature of life,

One way that it manifests is that we start destroying life.

The other way is that we start clinging to life.

We start holding on to life through possessions,

Through concepts,

Through our mind,

Ideas,

Through the pursuit of eternal life.

We start clinging,

Holding on to life in fear of death,

In wanting more life,

Simply because we don't understand who we are.

We don't understand the nature of life.

So this creates the situation where either we are about to destroy life,

We try our best to destroy life,

But nature,

Life,

Consciousness,

This existence has its own ways to remain the way it is,

No matter what we try,

No matter the child in us,

The ignorant child in us tries to destroy life,

Tries to destroy consciousness or anything that is significant,

That is fundamental to this existence.

To an extent it goes on trying and it eventually destroys itself and then the cycle once again starts and everything has to be recreated again.

And the second is that it starts to cling to life,

It starts to have fear of death and so on.

The sutra that Patanjali would like to share with you today from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,

196 Sutras,

The sutra for today is exactly about this clinging to life.

Patanjali says that there are five causes of misery,

One of them is clinging to life and in this sutra he elaborates what is this clinging to life.

Let us take a look.

Patanjali says,

Flowing through its own nature and established even in the learned is the clinging to life.

Again these sutras are very packed formulas,

You will have to unpack them,

You will have to meditate over them to unfold what they really mean.

But here Patanjali in one sentence about clinging to life he says,

Flowing through its own nature and established even in the learned,

He is saying not only in the stupid but also in the learned and when he says learned he means the scholars,

The pandits,

The priests,

The ones that are on the highest realm of education,

Of leadership,

Even they do not understand the nature of life,

That is why they are clinging to life,

That is why they are having the fear of death and not only they themselves have the fear of death,

They are using that fear of death for everyone to also have that fear of death and move here or there,

Fulfill certain ambitions of certain people because of the fear of death.

Just reflect on the things that you come across in your life in these times in the name of protection,

What all we are doing to ourselves,

In the name of protecting ourselves from the enemy,

What are we doing to ourselves,

If you can even reflect on that you see that how fear of death is being utilized,

Is being used to trigger this or that.

I am not suggesting that is good or that is bad,

Just see that the fear of death,

That our intent to cling to life,

Our ignorance to cling to life is being used for many different things and that is causing nothing but misery.

If you see the end result from the point where you start acting on clinging to life,

You see where it takes you is never a better place to be,

It is always more miserable than you earlier were.

In this entire sutra,

In this entire wisdom,

What must not be misunderstood is that Patanjali is not antagonistic to life,

He is not saying do not appreciate life,

He is not saying don't live,

Rather when you actually understand the nature of life,

When you understand your own nature,

Your own true nature,

You will celebrate life,

Only then you will live life,

Only then you will really truly live the full potential of life,

Otherwise you are living the ideas of life and the ideas of life lead to concepts of life,

Lead to clinging to life or destroying life or giving meaning to life,

Giving purpose to life,

All that starts to happen which is always on the periphery,

You never actually are living life,

You are living the idea of life in an attempt to live life but those attempts you can reflect on them how much are they actually making you live life.

In every moment there is this search for life,

In every moment there is this dissatisfaction because there is a disconnect from the true nature of life,

We are not living life,

We are living the idea of life,

The thought of life,

We are living in the realm of thought,

Just observe yourself,

Just come out of that realm of thought and see that you are just continually in the realm of thought and that realm of thought is the idea of life,

Life is somehow happening,

Not happening to you,

Not happening to me,

Not happening to us,

It is happening and we are living in the realm of thought,

We are living in the ideas of this and that.

Then what is life,

What does it mean to live life if it is not the idea of life,

If it is not the realm of thought,

It is to step down from the realm of thought and realizing that we are consciousness,

We are pure awareness,

We pure awareness are eternal,

Life is not eternal as an individual,

As a life form it is not eternal but we are eternal,

You are eternal,

You have a continuity,

You have a flow,

A continuity of consciousness which is endless,

In that flow there is an opening,

There is a connect to some another realm which we call as life,

There is an opening to that realm called life for a very short period of time when we come in,

We have the chance to experience it but we still hang in with the ideas of experiencing it and unfortunately we have to go back to the pure consciousness,

The realm which is eternal and then another chance is given to us and so on this happens,

If only we realize the true nature of ourselves,

Of consciousness and of what life is,

It will be easier to be just be,

It will be easier to just live ourselves and allowing everyone else around us to live as well.

With that contemplation let us move into silence and reflect and go within,

Please close your eyes.

We will do a short imagination just to shake up our relationship,

Relationship of the mind,

The idea of the mind for life.

Right now your assumption is that you will live for 70,

80,

90,

100 years,

Just stretch your imagination as if you will live 500 years.

Take this moment to realize,

To let this imagination become clearer,

You feel it as if it is real,

That you are going to live for 500 years,

Not 100 years,

500 years.

Whichever stage of life you are,

You will live until 500 years.

Now let's stretch this further,

Imagine that you are going to live a 1000 years,

You will live for 100 years,

How would your moment right now be?

With this imagination that you would live for 1000 years.

Now take it further,

5000 years.

Your relationship to life,

To this moment,

Pay attention to that,

Rest in it.

10,

000 years,

If your life would be for 10,

000 years,

What would be your relationship in this moment?

100,

000 years,

What would be your relationship in this moment?

A million years,

Your life span,

What does this mean for this moment?

What does this mean for your relationship to life?

100 million years.

What is the experience of this moment?

Of your relationship to life,

If your life would be for 100 million years,

Billion years,

Infinite number of years,

As if you would never die,

What would be your relationship to life,

To this moment?

Rest in it.

Rest in this moment,

As if you are going to live forever.

At the same time,

What if you would die in the next moment?

Be in this moment,

As if you are going to die in the next moment,

And your life has infinite time,

Both lead to the same experience.

Focus on this state,

On this experience,

On this presence in the moment,

When you imagine your life span to be infinite,

Or just this moment.

See that the nature of your life is independent of time.

Whether you die in the next moment,

Or the next moment,

You will be able to live forever.

The nature of life is the same.

Your experience of the moment is the same.

You will be able to live forever.

The taste of this moment,

The presence in this moment,

Is eternal.

It is always there in you.

See in this taste,

In this connection to your true nature,

Not just in meditation,

But in every moment of your life.

In this moment,

You will be able to live forever.

In this moment,

There is peace,

Liveness,

Bliss,

And happiness.

The true taste of life,

The true taste of pure awareness.

See in this moment,

You will be able to live forever.

Maintain this silence,

This awareness,

And presence in this moment,

As long as you like,

And open your eyes afterwards.

I will see you tomorrow at 7 am Central European Time.

Namaste.