The Depression of Success🔗

We act like a wind-up toy when we are steeped in rajas, and like a battery-operated toy with a dead battery when we are in tamas. Krishna uses powerful words to drive home how desperate that state is: ignorance, madness, illusion, inertia and darkness.

It is surprising how quickly one can slip from rajas to tamas. To slip from restless activity into inactivity and inertia is simple. Activity without meaning, activity with tension and stress and activity totally focused on sensual satisfaction quickly leads

to deep fatigue. The activity without any meaning that we find in tamas is not the same as activity without a purpose and goal that we experience in satva. Please do not confuse the two.

I mentioned earlier that the real danger of rajas is that we are constantly focused on a goal and we forget to enjoy the path as we pursue a meaningless purpose. Life has no purpose. It only has meaning. The meaning of life is to be aware, to be conscious, and to realize our inner divinity. That is why I say that I am here not to prove my divinity, but to prove your divinity.

To be divine and to realize that inner divinity is our true meaning in life. Anything less than that is meaningless. Being aggressive, being restlessly active, or being constantly on the move does not help us understand or realize this meaning. We will be running after one thing or another. We are just plain greedy. Ramana Maharshi says that a mustard seed looks like a mountain when we want it desperately; however, even a mountain becomes insignificant like a mustard seed once we achieve it.

If we are driven by mere possessive obsession, we are bound to become tired sooner or later. Aggression results in deep depression. This is what I call the ‘depression of success’. I see this often in countries like the USA. People struggle to increase their material wealth, disregarding everything else. People change cars every year, houses every third year and their spouses every fifth year!

People run after material possessions and trophies without knowing why. One day when they have acquired and reacquired so many things and still feel unhappy, uneasy and listless, they wonder why they acquired the things that they struggled for. They go into deep depression, what we call tamas.

In poor countries like India, people have little and are desperate to acquire minimal comforts. Just to have three meals a day, wear footwear or go to school is a great luxury for many. For those who miss out on essentials, their suffering arises out of the depression of failure. That is relatively easy to cure. All they need is some success and they are happy.

The depression of success is more difficult to address. To experience failure when we have been always successful and we have worked so hard is difficult to accept. What results then is depression, tamas.

Tamas is generally born out of the ignorance of our true self. This is the original sin. The original sin of Adam and Eve was not listening to the snake or having sex, rather, it was the lack of understanding of their own inner divinity.

Sometimes tamas can arise out of an effort to move out of that ignorance. A highly rajasic person, one who has been aggressively pursuing material gains, when moving into a spiritual path can easily move into tamas for a while. I see this in our ashram. When a person accustomed to restless and meaningless activity is becoming centered, the body-mind system initially rejects activity and sinks deep into inactivity, into tamas.

People literally sleep day and night, not wanting to do anything. However, this does not last long. The negativities get worked out and they settle into a satvic mode of meaningful activity, which does not pursue goals.

I talked about corporate and business people exemplifying rajas earlier. There are corporate and political leaders who can get into deep tamas. They get into dangerously mad and deluded behavior. All dictators who caused suffering on this planet, from Genghis Khan and Aurangazeb to Hitler, were not merely rajasic, they were dangerously tamasic as well. They were filled with ignorance, delusion, madness and darkness even though they may not have been inactive.

Many corporate and professional people tell me how they are driven by fear. In discussing rajas, I talked about being driven by greed and motivation. The stick drives many donkeys. Either they do not respond to carrots or the drivers believe that the stick works better. So many corporate leaders drive people through fear. They find it the ideal weapon because they themselves are filled with fear. They are insecure people. They are driven by tamas. Tamas creates tamas.

The only way to deal with such people is to face them. Fear disappears when faced. It is like our shadow. When we turn around, we do not see the shadow. Insecure leaders derive their energy from our fear. When we stand up and face them, they have no energy to face us. It is the same with the fear of spirit and ghosts. Our fear and belief that they can harm us gives them power to hurt and harm us. Once we face them, they run away.

Tamas is darkness. It is negative. We can only remove darkness by bringing in light. In the same way, we dispel ignorance by bringing in awareness. The Upaniṣad says tamaso mā jyotirgamaya meaning, let my darkness be removed by light.

Let the light and wisdom of Krishna, the Jagatguru, dispel your darkness and tamas.

In these verses, Krishna tells us where the person goes after death when steeped in these attributes of satva, rajas and tamas. A satvic person becomes divine. A tamasic person chooses a lower life. A rajasic person continues to suffer due to greed.

In another verse in the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that a person is reborn based on the last thought before death. Here Krishna explains how that last thought is not an accident. It is based on one's guṇa, nature.

People tell me, ‘Oh Swamiji, why should we worry about spiritual stuff now? This is the time to enjoy. When we get old, we can think about spirituality. After all, Krishna declared that our last thought redeems us. All we have to say is Ram or Krishna as we take our last breath.’

If only it were that easy, then all of us would never be reborn! If throughout life you run after money and material possessions, do you think your last thought will be about anything other than money? If throughout life you were obsessed with wine, women and song, only those thoughts fill your mind when you die.

The saṁskāras that have driven us throughout our lives have etched deep grooves into our mind space. The attitude with which we have lived not only follows us at death, it follows us after death as well. This is the mental setup, the conditioning, the vāsana with which we led life and with which we leave our life as well. When we are reborn, our spirit finds another body to occupy. This same mindset, same vāsana, reappears in the form of prārabdha karma, unfulfilled desires of our past life. These become the basis of our conditioning in this life. They are our seed saṁskāras.

In our second level program, the Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP), the LBP 2, we study saṁskāras in great detail. In one sense, the NSP takes us through a death experience. This program, now conducted by teachers personally trained and ordained by me, deals with the seven energy layers surrounding the body. The spirit passes through these seven layers at death and relives the experiences that you went through in life.

In another sense, LBP 2 is about dissolution of our conditioning. Many superficial and deep saṁskāras will be burnt out during the meditations participants go through in this program. Therefore, symbolically, I gave them the option to take a new spiritual name at the end of LBP 2, signifying a rebirth. This program allows everyone to glimpse the ultimate Truth. What keeps us separated from this truth is our conditioning, our saṁskāras.

People who complete the LBP 2 don’t harbor enmity against others who have wronged them in the past. They become less judgmental and their approach is no longer negative. Their entire attitude towards others changes as a result of the inner experience of de-conditioning and the dissolution of saṁskāras.

How we live life now determines how we will be reborn. There is enough scientifically validated evidence to prove that we are reborn. Whether we are a Christian or Muslim, whether or not our religion allows us to believe in reincarnation, a trained psychologist or psychiatrist can take us into past life regression. While I don't fully agree with how this process is carried out, there is no doubt it is real. People benefit if it is carried out properly.

When our belief system allows us the option of rebirth, life is less stressful. We do not live or die once. We live and die, again and again. Therefore, Eastern religions that allow us the luxury of belief in rebirth are more tolerant of our own self and others. We are allowed to enjoy our path. We may wander here and there. Eventually we hope that we will arrive at the truth.

Heaven and hell are not as stark in Eastern religions that believe in rebirth. They are flexible concepts, not rigid. On the contrary, in religions that deny rebirth, hell and heaven are eternal. We burn forever in hell if we don't do well this life. So life becomes driven by fear and greed.

In reality, there is no hell or heaven. These are just in our mind. They have been force-fed into our mind, conditioned into our system by our religious beliefs for the purpose of controlling us.

We live in hell when we live a totally material life, focused upon ourselves, to the exclusion of everyone else. We constantly fear others, feel jealous of others, express anger towards others and are never happy. No matter how much wealth we accumulate, we suffer. We may be rich, but we are in hell. Heaven and hell are mind spaces that we occupy in this life, not locations we visit when we die.

Krishna says that a person living in satva goes to higher spaces, the abodes of the realized sages. He becomes divine. When we are steeped in satva, we live in awareness. We live in the present moment. We are no longer attached. We are no longer obsessed with the results of our action and we are no longer controlled by fear and greed. We stop thinking about ourselves and we start living for others. It is no longer me and me alone, but me and you, and eventually just you that includes me as well. All transactions become unconditional.

The present state is eternal. That is the state of the higher planets, of the heaven that one talks about. We can be in heaven even when we are alive. When our spirit moves beyond the body, it has the potential to move beyond its saṁskāras, the conditioning, into its true potential of self-realization.

When one is in tamas, in deep ignorance and darkness, one sinks lower in rebirth. Krishna says such a person is reborn as an animal. The lowest energy center of a human being is the mūlādhāra cakra, the root center at the base of the spine which is the sex center. And this is the highest center at which animal energy operates. All animals operate out of pure survival instinct. Their nature is conditioned for that. There is nothing wrong or inferior about that. That is their nature.

Human beings are provided with intelligence to move upward in consciousness. We have the freedom to make mistakes and we do make mistakes. When Krishna talks about being reborn in ignorance and as animals, it is not to denigrate animals. He means, a human being who behaves instinctively, out of a blocked mūlādhāra cakra, and out of an animalistic nature, is ignorant of his potential as a human.

We are not human beings striving for a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings enjoying a human experience. That is the truth.

We can be in this state only when we are in satva. When we are in tamas, we forget our spiritual nature. When we are in rajas, we have a vague idea; however, even that spiritual experience becomes an attachment, another goal and desire. We become attached to something that is beyond attachment. Krishna says that we are reborn into this human form, back into this cycle of life and death, this cycle of samsara, with all its suffering.

It is our choice to be instinctive and unconscious, in deep tamas, like an animal, or to be logical and chasing objects out of rajas. The third choice is to be beyond attachments, in a superconscious state, in an intuitive state, in tune with our sublime satva nature. This choice determines our next birth. In fact, it determines whether we will even be born again.

Krishna, the master psychologist is right on the mark: Purification and knowledge from satva, distress and greed from rajas, and foolishness, madness and illusion from tamas!

Let us start with madness, illusion and delusion. That is where most people are. The great philosopher and poet saint from India, Adi Shankaracharya says that life as we lead it is māyā, illusion. Māyā is that which is not real, yet appears real. We cannot argue with someone and prove that life as we experience it is not real as it seems. We act in all possible ways that give us the feeling that this life is real, permanent. We talk, walk, cry, laugh, and do everything else to prove this. So how can all this not be permanent?

With modern technology, we can create dolls that do all this. We can put on goggles, headphones, sit on a wired chair and experience 4D reality. They can release smells to add to our mood. If we open our mouth, they will pop something in our mouth also. We can have a virtual experience that excites our five senses.

Virtual life including virtual sex is not in the realm of science fiction any more. It is an illusion. We argue that it is for frustrated individuals who have no access to the 'real' stuff, whatever that means.

What is ‘normal’ and what is not? To Shankara, the life that we lead is not normal. To us, virtual life may not be normal. To someone who is fully satisfied with virtual life, that is normal. What is fantasy to one is reality to another.

In the 1970s, when the hippy culture ruled, a few well-known teachers advocated hallucinatory drugs to induce spiritual experiences. Marijuana, LSD, exotic cacti, multicolored mushrooms and other substances were recommended to make people experience the ‘bliss’ that one could not experience through meditation. Instant nirvāṇa, it was called. The problem was that even if those drugs simulated the pineal gland functionalities and released dopamine, they were in no way spiritual. It is true that in some spiritual experiences, dopamine release has been documented. Yet the logic does not work in reverse. Dopamine release does not prove a spiritual experience. It is an imitation.

That which we experience in the present is real. The present moment is the only real moment. The present moment is eternal. Neither the past nor the future can be eternal. They are not real since neither exists in the now. They don’t have a positive existence in the present moment. We can’t reach out and hold the past or future in our hands. They are just thoughts that occupy us in the present moment. If we feel that we are happy now, but we become depressed one hour later, we cannot be in bliss or eternal happiness. That is not bliss. That is temporary pleasure.

Many drugs, simulated experiences and fantasies can put us into that the realm of temporary pleasure. The simple scale of measure to know that this is no good is: We will need more and more of those inputs to stay happy. We will feel less and less happy even with more and more of what we think gives us happiness. This is how dangerously drugs work. That is how people become addicted. The heroin or cocaine user needs more and more of it to make them feel ‘happy’. Finally they stop working. The user overdoses and dies. That is the vicious cycle of tamas.

We can daydream and feel happy while we daydream. What happens when we stop daydreaming? Life is as bleak as it was before. If life were interesting, we would have been immersed in it. Then why would we daydream? Our fantasies are like that. We look at the picture of a movie star and we want to have that movie star or be like that movie star.

The first impulse, the first fantasy, arises out of lust. People know for sure that it is a fantasy, but it feels good while they have that fantasy. They wallow in it like a buffalo in mud. At least the buffalo is in the present; it is not in fantasy. Once people realize that they are wasting time, that they are degrading themselves with such fantasies, they must regain awareness and regain control of their life. Otherwise their whole life will be a madhouse.

The second impulse, wanting to be like the movie star, is probably more dangerous. It is born out of envy, comparison and is a pure waste of energies. This is rajas. It is no longer tamas. These people aren't satisfied with themselves, with their body or their mind and want to be someone else. Today they imitate this actor or actress. What happens when that actor or actress becomes less popular or old? Worse still, what happens when they meet that person in real life and find that they themselves are better looking than the actor or actress? After all, movies are the ultimate in fantasy. Everything and everybody is made-up.

This is what Krishna means by greed, envy and jealousy that ends in anger, fear, guilt and a hundred other negative emotions. We are either in attachment or aversion. We are either driven towards or away from something or some condition. We are goaded by greed or tortured by fear. Whichever it is, we suffer. This suffering results in distress, depression and loss of self-esteem. We have lost our center.

Our center is our true nature. Our true nature is divine. We are one with the universal energy, God, Parāśakti or whatever we want to call it. We cannot describe it. We can just experience it. We experience bliss when our focus is in that central core and not out at the edges of our personality.

Throughout life we run away from that center, that core of bliss. Our senses lead us towards the periphery where material objects are. Our inner core is empty: it is śūnya. But it is also pūrṇa, complete by itself with nothing else needed to top off the bliss. However, the outer periphery is forever changing. Nothing is eternal about it. Even when objects are the same, our perceptions keep changing. This periphery is māyā, illusion and tamas, ignorance.

Our rajasic nature, the restless activity that strives to introduce purpose into something that is essentially without purpose, keeps driving us away from the center into this peripheral darkness of tamas and māyā. Rajas always drives us into tamas. Aggression, passion, attachment and aversion eventually take us into delusion and ignorance.

But from time to time we get that spark of intelligence that says life does not need to be this way. There is more meaning to life than fantasies. We start searching. When we seek our true nature, we move towards our center, the core of bliss. Then something in the external space attracts us and we move out to the periphery. We keep moving in and out, from center to periphery, from periphery back to center.

That is why I call human beings eccentric! They can neither be in the center nor in the periphery. They settle in between and keep oscillating. They are eccentric. They are neither in complete madness nor centered in their divine consciousness.

The movement towards our core, our true self, is driven by satva. The movement outwards is driven by rajas. When we are fully settled in the periphery, we are caught in tamas. We are no longer human. When we settle into the center, we go beyond the three guṇas. We become the triguṇa rahita, the divine one who is beyond the three attributes.

Q: What Krishna says can be accepted if one believes in rebirth. What about those whose religious beliefs do not allow them to believe in rebirth?

In the Gita, Krishna does not speak to Hindus alone. This universal master, does not exclude other religious believers. He speaks spiritual truth, universal truth.

First of all, we should be careful not to reduce these truths to facts. Satva means I will be reborn as God, rajas means I will be reborn a human and tamas means I will be reborn an animal. These are metaphorical truths, not scientific facts. Krishna says that the tendency, the vāsana, which is an outcome of your guṇa, your nature, gets carried forward. You can be divine or animal in the human body. You do not have to sprout wings or become a pig.

Secondly, religions that deny rebirth do not follow the teachings of their founding masters. They reinterpret the spiritual teachings of the founders to exercise control.

All religious organizations promote hell and heaven so that they can earn money. When I lead devotees to the Himalayan Mountains every year, we visit sacred shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. They allow me into the inner sanctum. The priests do not like it because it spoils their income. I tell the people, 'Please give money to the poor who line the streets; most of these priests only grab money in the name of God.'

These priests charge people 10,000 rupees (200 USD), not a small sum in India, to offer a cow to the temple in order to redeem the person’s ancestors. They start the worship process and then ask you to pay. If you don’t pay, they curse you. They tell you that your ancestors will go to hell, you will go to hell and your children will go to hell. You can stop this by paying 200 USD. The main thing here is that it is a virtual cow, not even a real cow! Even if they show you a cow, be assured that the same cow is offered a thousand times behind your back! These people understand corporate accounting better than Wall Street specialists!

Religions exercise control because people fear death. Some are afraid of the pain, but mostly they fear what lies beyond. They are afraid because they do not know what lies ahead. They feel comforted when someone tells them that if you do this, you will go to a happy place, and if you do that, you will go to an unhappy place. They have no clue as to where they will finally go. However, they have this deep-rooted need to believe. And their religion becomes the only way.