Episode Details

Watch video at: https://www.radhakrishnaprem.com/p/q-and-a-with-swami-nikhilanand-ji-1

A devotee’s question: Because we talk about spirituality in general…spirituality is one way where we think that being thankful for what we have, does it actually help us to make our stress go down? Is that part of spirituality? I mean, having the ability, because as humans, we all have desires, so being thankful for what we have in life, does it actually make us more or less stressed?

Swami Nikhilanan Ji’s answer: I would say that's part of having a positive outlook. Being thankful for what we have is part of several things that we could keep in mind to maintain a positive outlook. But, what we want to do is go even beyond that. We want to create a real connection with God that goes even deeper than just being thankful for the material things we have, but where we actually start feeling Divine God's presence with us. So that's a much deeper goal.

A devotee’s question: When I close my eyes and so sometimes I feel okay, “I am a soul. I'm not a body,” but the problem starts when I interact with the world. When I go to the job, when I meet my friends, meet my enemies, and meet my wife even. So, how can the practice help me to remember in that situation that I'm a soul and not the body and so what kind of practice can I do to detach from that world?

Swami Nikhilanand Ji’s answer: The path to God includes the practice of meditation which we do here, By practicing meditation every day, what ends up happening is that that spiritual consciousness which you referred to where you have some awareness of your Divinity, that spiritual consciousness has to be integrated into our material active life and initially the two don't integrate but the more we practice the more that spiritual awareness becomes almost like our baseline. It becomes our regular waking consciousness. But that takes time. It takes practice, and it actually happens naturally.

So the more we call the meditation we do here is a very specific meditation called roop dhyan where we meditate on God Himself. So, by doing this, we create and deepen a connection with God. So while you're doing the meditation, eventually you start experiencing something in a very deep way. And in the beginning, again, you get the disconnect. As soon as you stop your meditation, the world just takes over. But eventually, over the weeks or months or years, if you keep practicing, that actually spills over into your (life) like a rising tide. It starts spilling over into your material activities or your material consciousness, you can say. But, it's a process. It takes time. There's no easy way. There's no shortcut or trick. You just have to keep practicing until that enters your daily waking consciousness.

A devotee’s question: I wonder if you can tell us how to stop getting happiness from the wrong things, be it eating, sleeping, laziness, drinking, what have you?

Swami Nikhilanand Ji’s answer: Recognizing that those are temporary pleasures is part of it, but the real effect comes when we start… Remember, I was saying we have to get some experience of God and it starts small and grows. So, the more experience we get by following the path to God and the bigger that experience becomes, the more space in our heart it takes up and the less interest our mind has in those types of pleasures that you were describing.

It's not wrong for the mind to want happiness or pleasure. It's our nature, because God Himself is happiness and we're a part of Him. So we naturally desire happiness and pleasure, but the thing is we're seeking it from the world instead of seeking the Divine happiness from God. So, until the mind starts experiencing that happiness, it's never going