The Ultimate Illusion

Relationship and the Self

Satsang with Premananda, Tiruvannamalai, India, 2004

Prem: Welcome to Satsang! Satsang is an invitation to relate with the Eternal Self, to relate with God, to relate intimately with the whole Existence. And actually, there is no relationship because you are this Eternal Self, you are this Existence and you are God. You are not separate from God. You are not separate from the Eternal Self. In that sense there's no relationship. When we believe that we're somebody, then there's a relationship. There's a relationship between me and you, between me and the world, between me an my girlfriend, my boyfriend, but when we understand that I am the Self and you are the Self, then there's no relationship because for relationship there must be two. So in one way, you can say that relationship is the ultimate illusion and the most powerful form of this illusion is 'my boyfriend, my girlfriend' because I have my story and she has her story and then we have a third story, it's our relationship. Things get a little complicated. We all are experts about this. We spend a lot of our life in this game of relationship. When we're little we relate with mummy and daddy and maybe our brother and sister and auntie and uncle and then we get a little bigger and we relate with our schoolteachers and our school friends. Then we get even bigger and we have a boss, or university teachers, some colleagues at work and then, of course, we get a girlfriend or boyfriend. Then this boyfriend or girlfriend becomes central to our life and we have most of our energy caught up in this relationship. If things get really serious then we make a contract because we don't want to risk losing this investment. 'Till death do us part', sign here.

Satsang has a different contract, actually, no contract, but the whole point is to understand that there is this invitation, there is this possibility that you simply find out who you are. And actually, you are everything. We could call it the Beloved. In today's context it's a good word, the Beloved. Then you can simply relate with the Beloved, but never forget that you are the Beloved. So it's not really a relationship. Naturally when you relate with the Beloved you're relating with all the Beloveds because all the Beloveds are one. Then there's not so much a question of 'my boyfriend and my girlfriend' because we don't see the other as 'my girlfriend or my boyfriend'. We see them as the Beloved and then the whole play is different and it makes no sense to make a contract. I call this ordinary kind of relating the ultimate illusion because we get so lost in this game. We get a girlfriend or a boyfriend, we fall in love. What is this falling in love? We like their story. We feel that their story goes very well with our story. 'I feel good with their story and their story makes me feel good. I found my soul mate.' So we fall in love and we live happily ever after. This all begins with our bedtime stories. When we were little our mummy or daddy reads us stories at bedtime. These stories are often about the prince and the princess. You know, the prince rescues the princess from the tower. They ride off into the night, together, in love, forever. Naturally we believe these stories and we have our parents who are apparently living this kind of story and all our parents friends. They're all playing this happy family, lovey-dovey story, living happily ever after. So when we become a teenager our whole effort is to find ourselves a boyfriend or a girlfriend and then we can perpetuate this love story and then we too can live happily ever after.

Its' very important to really understand about this falling in love. It is only possible if you believe in me and you. It's always in duality. What happens if your girlfriend or boyfriend goes away? And even worse what if they go away with somebody else? Terrible suffering because I've lost this love.

When I'm the Self I know that I'm whole and complete. I don't need something. I don't need my boyfriend to give me something and anyway, I'm love. Nothing is missing. I'm absolutely whole. When you become really established in this love, in this Beloved and then you meet another Beloved there's the possibility of play, divine leela, that you can simply rejoice in this love.

Almost every time we have a Satsang weekend and now beginning in this retreat, in the way that boys and girls are, there's some kind of attraction. Then the one who's not part of that gets very upset. Somebody came to me this morning very upset because his girlfriend was hugging somebody else. Then some big story happened and actually, he did very well with this whole situation. I'm sure he'd like to share that directly, himself, in a minute.

Somehow, there is an opportunity, because this boyfriend and girlfriend story goes so deep inside us, there's a great possibility to really see things that you can never see otherwise. In Satsang I often talk about the mind and stories. You can listen and you can nod your head, but when suddenly, your girlfriend is with another man then you feel it deep inside. Then there's a real opportunity to understand. So these moments when strong stories happen are a great opportunity because these are the moments when you can really take a distance and see what is going on. Actually, it's going on all the time, but the stories are fairly minor. They don't touch so deeply, but when it's our girlfriend or boyfriend, then it goes very, very deep and without even a moment we go into tremendous depths of suffering. For most people the greatest suffering is from the person they love the most. When your best friend comes and says, 'Oh! My girlfriend has gone off with the team captain', you can easily console him and you can understand his pain and suffering. But when your own girlfriend goes, then it goes so deep. It's as if your whole existence is threatened. Worse than death because it's a kind of living death. So it's very important to understand why it goes so deep. It goes so deep because you believe you are somebody and this somebody is needing something. Something is missing and this other person, the girlfriend or the boyfriend, is giving me this thing that I'm missing. We call it love and I need a certain amount of love everyday and then I feel complete. When this love suddenly goes away, I experience my whole existence as being in jeopardy, being threatened.

When you look in the traditional cultures you can find, for centuries, the men have a way of keeping the women. For example, you see here in India the Muslim women. When they go out they wear a black cloak over their dress and they wear something over their heads. Sometimes just their eyes are visible. Everything is covered and most of the time they stay at home. In the Muslim countries, in the Muslim areas the houses even have special windows where the women can sit looking out, but you can't look in. In many other cultures there is a similar way of keeping the women. 'She's mine.' In Los Angeles we do it in a slightly different way. In Los Angeles we build a big house for our woman, we give her a swimming pool and fine clothes. So she lives in a golden cage, but it's not really so different because inside is the same thought pattern. 'She's mine.'

Then one more step. You add in sex because sex makes everything much more powerful. If you get upset when your boyfriend or girlfriend is hugging somebody, then you get much more upset if sex is there. Goes even deeper. It's like an atomic response. The whole core explodes and so again in the society there's actually a lot of sexuality happening, but it all happens underneath. In the front window it's all happy families living happily ever after, but underneath it's some other game. I remember thirty years ago, I was part of Osho's community. In those days there were not so many people around Osho and every evening he would have this kind of Satsang meeting where you could directly ask him something. People started to ask him about their relationships and there came a day when he suddenly said that if your girlfriend or boyfriend is attracted to somebody else's girlfriend and boyfriend he would really encourage you to go there. Everybody was very shocked because he was a spiritual teacher and he was, apparently, encouraging kind of rampant sexuality. People were not really understanding. 'How can this spiritual Master be encouraging us to be happy when our girlfriend goes with some other man? Where is the morality in that?' We were all a little bit Christian. And you see, from his point of view he could never really understand the Western people being so interested in sex and relationship. For him the Self was enough. His whole interest was to bring the people to God, to bring everybody to their True Nature. That was his interest and all the time he saw how the people were getting, somehow, disturbed by the game of relationship. So he just opened up the box and said, 'play as much as you like. I would encourage it' and then, of course, people started to play and everybody was staying the night with somebody else's girlfriend. Things got a little hot because, of course, some people got very upset. This behaviour didn't fit in with this sweet love story, living happily ever after and people were feeling rejected, abandoned, feeling very threatened.

These are all very strong things and God set it up that there are boys and girls. There are different polarities and the boys and the girls feel very attracted. Even the girls and the girls feel attracted and sometimes the boys and the boys. So there is a great attraction and there can be a great understanding from that because if you can bring to this meeting the clarity that, 'I am the Self, I am Love, I am whole and complete', then this meeting is very beautiful, maybe the most beautiful. If you've ever seen some of the old Buddhist statues from Tibet you will find there's often a Buddha sitting and there's a beautiful naked woman sitting in his lap with her legs entwined around him. So what is this?

When we think that I am somebody and the other is somebody, then this whole boy and girl relationship becomes very painful. The other never does what you want. This love never comes in the right moment and so there's a constant feeling of dissatisfaction. Of course, this is not always true. There's always exceptions and some people live together for many years happily and there is somehow, a compatibility. But in the advanced Western countries as we become more open and free from our Christian morality there is more and more divorce. People have several wives or several husbands because it doesn't work out and in countries like India, very few people divorce, but it doesn't mean that they're living happily together. It probably means that the morality is still very strong and, in the society here in India, it's very difficulty for a woman to be divorced and so it happens very rarely. But here in India, for example, it's very common for wives to suddenly get burned to death. Their husband gets dissatisfied and he just pours cooking oil on her sari and burns his wife to death in the kitchen. It happens all the time and you see it in the newspapers. It looks like an accident.

I'd like to invite Ganesha to tell his story because it's a very beautiful story. So this story began two days ago and we talked about it yesterday in Satsang. The night before last he was alone in his room and he told us how there was this beautiful nothing and he had this experience of his True Nature. So now he'll take the story from this point.

PREM: So you can easily thank Michael, yes?

PREM: It's all my fault.

PREM: It's very beautiful when you can see how this is all happening inside of you. It's got nothing to do with Leela, nothing to do with Michael and certainly not Premananda and it's just your story. It's all going on inside of you. It's a very beautiful two days because first it started with this glimpse of your True Nature and it took you to the peaks of the Himalayas, the snow in the sunshine. So beautiful. Maybe never so beautiful. Twenty-four hours later you slid all the way down the mountain to the deep valley. Down there there's no light, just pain and misery.

Before we move on we'll give Leela an opportunity to respond to this story a little bit. This is not her story. This is Ganesha's story, but somehow...

PREM: These stories met in the particular situation of Satsang. When these kind of stories meet in a chai shop, probably Ganesh is in the Himalayas the next day and Leela is in the south of India. Maybe Leela has a new boyfriend and Ganesha has two or three weeks of pain. For Premananda it's a nice story because a month ago they sent me an email to say, 'we will absolutely not come to the retreat and we will not any more be part of the inner sangha. The Lord has taken us in another direction and anyway, Premananda you're a terrible person'. Now here they are and this is very beautiful you see, because not only they can understand something, but everybody can understand something. This story is everybody's story, slightly different stories, but basically, the same story. That's the beauty of this kind of Satsang community because there's enough basic love here that you feel, that you can share these terrible stories. Anyway, we're all going to laugh because we can always laugh at other people's stories, but if we're really honest we know this is also our story.

QU 3: Isn't it amazing that this can happen between both of them because they are not a couple.

PREM: This is another aspect of this story. I think this story is also telling them both something. I don't know exactly the situation, but I think they both told me some months ago that they live together, but they're not in relationship and they sleep close together, but they never touch. They have a kind of sannyasi relationship, but you see that may not be totally honest because when you have such deep feelings it may be that there was some kind of intellectual, spiritual idea there. It's not against spirituality to, for example, have sex.

I remember Papaji was once asked about sex and enlightenment and he said, 'Well, then all the eunuchs would be enlightened'.

In the ancient Indian wisdom of Vedanta you go in a certain programme as a spiritual seeker and at a certain point you become celibate. From this idea of celibacy a lot of wrong ideas have come. Thirty years ago Osho opened up the box. Quickly he become the sex Guru because around him there was somehow open sexuality happening. But I'm sure his intention was that if he opened up the box everybody would quickly get tired of this game. For him, this meeting with your own True Nature is so beautiful that who cares about a girlfriend or a boyfriend. But he was wrong because, in fact, everybody stayed in the game and so the big attraction to go to that commune is not to go and meet God. It's a good place to meet a girlfriend or a boyfriend. We have taken his intention and we've changed it.

QU 4: I was really astonished about Ganesha's reaction. Actually this is the topic for many people and specially for myself. Not to run away from the pain or what or who I think is causing the pain.

PREM: Yes, this is so important. We've been running away our whole lives. The first thing that happens when it gets painful, we leave our boyfriend or girlfriend. We know we're all in the same sea together and when it's not my story I can understand that there is just a small understanding needed. It's always the same story actually because whatever the external story is, it's always because I believe I'm somebody. It's one thing to hear Premananda talking about it and it's a completely different thing when something happens to you. This is the whole point of this retreat. We have enough time that we can come to a clear understanding. In a two hour meeting in an evening there's not really time. There isn't really enough support and so in this kind of retreat we have enough time and enough support that we can help each other. It's not a great idea when you just leave. So, for example, Lalith was only here three or four days and she didn't know Premananda, she didn't know Advaita and she didn't really know what's going on in Satsang. She noticed Premananda coming ten minutes late. This was very upsetting and then very quickly she left. She's gone off carrying her story because it was quite clear that she's got a big story around authority. When you meet her at the airport to fly home, you'll find that she had a wonderful time here, but she will still have that story. That's the beauty of this retreat. There's an opportunity that when you fly back, something is changed inside. There's a profound understanding and with that profound understanding you can deal with all the stories that happen because this understanding is fundamental to the whole thing. Everything we call life we can understand through this one understanding and that's what is means when we say Freedom. We're free of all these stories and we also become then, free from the pain and suffering. So don't just leave. It's exactly the time to stay and if this is a good retreat then everybody will come to some kind of difficult moment because, as I've said before, this is Premananda's job to, kind of, create situations that put you into your story. So do you have a story?

QU 4: Oh yes, certainly! Who doesn't have a story?

PREM: Shakti is rather popular. It's hard not to cuddle and kiss her and maybe then you feel something. Is that possible?

QU 4: Yes. In the beginning there was this pain, as Ganesha described, and now there's no pain. There's a kind of acceptance.

SOMEONE: I only kiss her because she's so popular. She doesn't turn me on at all. (Laughter)

PREM: Isn't it nice to have such a popular girlfriend?

QU 4: Well, it's also nice if she's not popular. She doesn't have to be popular to be nice or beautiful for me.

PREM: But maybe the reasons you find her nice are the same reasons other people find her nice.

QU 4: Yes, certainly. I'm interested in what you said about Osho, about love and sex. What's your opinion about this? This play to hold on to one person and the game of changing partners, does it have to do with love or is it only having sex?

PREM: My own opinion is that the only relationship which is worth such a big energy is the relationship with God because all the other relationships give you some pleasure and some pain and if they give you a lot of pleasure they will give you, probably, a lot of pain. Loving God is a much better deal because it's always good. So my own opinion is that it's much better to put all the energy to this relationship with God, but this is not really a relationship. It's to understand that 'I am God'. Once you really know that, then the play of life goes on and you can come to be with one woman or you may come to be with many women or no women. In a way it's not really important. The important thing is this understanding that, 'I am God, I am love'.

QU 4: When I was a school boy I would probably have thought, 'Oh, this is a pretty cool guy who can just walk around everywhere and love everyone and not feel about it'.

PREM: But it's not everyone. It's also everything because you know that you're the tree, you know you're the flower, you know that you're the river. For example, I'm very happy to see that the little black bird is still sitting on the wire after three years. I feel some beauty, when I come for the silent sitting in the morning and see him there, he's always sitting on the wire. So he welcomed me three years ago, and two years ago and now this year. When you really come to know 'I am the Self, I am Love, I am God', there isn't such a big difference between the little black bird and my girlfriend. Of course, there is some difference, but what happens is happening inside. When I meet this beautiful bird something happens inside and when I met that Japanese woman the other night something happened inside. It's not so different.

QU 5: So I could say it doesn't matter for you to spend the night with a woman or with a bird? From the inner feeling?

PREM: Naturally, I have more fun with a woman than a bird. (Laughter) I guess if I was a bird I'd probably prefer to spend the night with the bird.

QU 5: And if there's, all of a sudden, a different bird sitting on that wire down there and a cat comes and eats it...

PREM: Then I can't spend the night with the bird anymore. Then I have to spend the night with the cat. (Laughter)

QU 5: But then in the morning there won't be the bird and you're going to miss the bird. There's only the wire left.

PREM: Right, but maybe the cat can walk on the wire. It might be a circus cat. Anyway, the point of bringing Shiva here is that most of the people have the feeling that Ganesha's story is Shiva's story. When we have these Satsang weekends or now this retreat, many people love Shakti. You've chosen a girlfriend who many people love and so this is a strong situation for you in the same way it is for Ganesha. Also there's a strong possibility for you. When you talk about some kind of acceptance, it has to be a real acceptance. The only real acceptance is when you know that you're not the story because otherwise, it's just a mental game. You don't really accept it. But when you really understand that you're not the story because there is nobody and that you're whole and complete, then you're not threatened by Krishna cuddling Shakti. While you are threatened by that, then you can thank Krishna because every time he hugs Shakti he's giving you an opportunity to see something.

QU 5: Yes, yes.

PREM: You see, you set yourself up for this lesson. When you arrived here you said, 'The reason I've come here is because I can't live without Shakti for seven weeks'. You didn't say, 'I love to be in a Satsang retreat because I want to be silent for three weeks. You said, 'I can't manage without Shakti for seven weeks'. So that was the beginning of this lesson. You set yourself up for this lesson. You understand?

QU 5: Yes.

PREM: The sad thing about life in the Western countries, almost every country now, is that people are so focussed on sexuality and they're almost not interested in spirituality. The churches are empty and the red light districts are full. What is really going on?

QU 5: I think there's more kind of spirituality in sexuality than in churches. Through sexuality there is more between the people. Maybe there is just too little going on between the people in the churches.

PREM: On some level, everybody is seeking for Truth because this is seeking for me, my True Nature. They're not seeking for that in the churches and maybe they're seeking it for in the red light district because at least there, there is some kind of meeting.

QU 5: I don't know. I'm not really on expert for that. Basically, there are, people are understanding things, like everywhere. Many things are going on wherever and I wouldn't want to fix that to a point like a church.

QU 6: What it looks like on the outside in the red light district may not be what's happening on the inside.

PREM: One attraction to the red light district is that in this sexual meeting, even when you're paying for it, there's some kind of pleasure. There's some kind of small human warmth. There's some kind of release from the pain and suffering. Actually, the sad thing is that the world is really suffering because people have become so divided against themselves that most people actually suffer a lot, day by day. Along with sex comes money. Sex and money go together. They're to do with the first and second chakras. It's really like the lowest vibration. Most of humanity is vibrating at the first and second chakra frequency and what is being offered here with Arunachala is the possibility of living in a much higher frequency. It's much more sensitive. It's the six and seventh chakra frequency.

For example, a rock concert is in the first and second chakra and if you go to a string quartet or the ballet, then you're in the six and seventh chakra. It's a completely different vibration. The world is living in materialism - money and sex. This is the first and second chakra frequency and the energy of Satsang, the energy of Freedom, of Truth is faraway from that. I remember about twelve years ago I this moment of realisation. At that time I was sharing a small house with a young Italian woman. She was very beautiful and it was very hot. So we didn't wear many clothes. In fact we were quite often naked. We liked each other and often we would cuddle and sleep together completely naked, but we never made love and we never had sex because at that time, for Premananda, it simply didn't work. From this moment of realisation, the energy was so much up in the seventh chakra that it wouldn't even come down to the first chakra. Basically, I couldn't have sex. So actually, I became naturally celibate. I didn't make any decision, but for about three and a half years I never had sex. I had many girlfriends and the whole community had many judgements about Premananda because I always seemed to have beautiful young women around. Naturally, they thought lots of sex was happening. But actually, the young girls liked me because I wasn't having sex. They felt safe and friendly with me. It was just like that. Then after three and a half years I met a very hot Brazilian woman and the whole sexual thing started again. I know this is a rather uninteresting subject!

I would just like to say something about Clara. She's fourteen and naturally in the society she'd be out there looking for a boyfriend or maybe not quite yet. I find it very beautiful that she chose to come to this Satsang retreat. She knows she doesn't have to come to these meetings and she chooses to come here. This is somehow her nature, she's actually attracted to this high frequency, this subtle frequency. When she comes back to Germany, then there's all the pressure of society which makes her feel she has to find a boyfriend. There was one particular weekend when she was going to come to the Satsang weekend and her girlfriend invited her to go to a special movie weekend. There would be a boy, she hoped, whom she'd met, but didn't have his phone number. What to do? Somehow this is always a choice. Would you like to say something?

QU 7: It's like that in Germany and especially in my school class. There are three friends, girls, and they're wearing the nicest clothes. Every week they have a new boyfriend and all the boys are just chasing them, like running after them. I was always very jealous, not at the moment, but maybe when I come back to Germany I will be. I thought 'I need this too. I need these things and I need boys'. It was always very difficult and it is still difficult. Also I notice how it changes inside me, how love and peace become more and more beautiful. I notice this everyday in the silent sitting and also in Satsang. I wanted to say thank you.

PREM: This is a very important story. She understands the beauty of what's happening here and yet, at the same time, the society creates a strong pressure. Everybody seems to get so much fun from boyfriends and girlfriends and hardly anybody goes to Satsang. For somebody who is young, how can you stand against this power of society? It's not so easy.

QU 7: So this, I think, is a good opportunity to ask Premananda for a new name. Mummy knows a nice one.

PREM: (Laughing) Do you know what this name is?

QU 7: Parvati.

PREM: Parvati. Actually your mother asked me for a name for you. We came up with this name, Bhakti, because Bhakti and Shakti go nicely together! Bhakti is devotion and somehow, you're very much a devotional person. Personally I like this Bhakti, but if you like Parvati, it's also OK. Parvati is a goddess, so this is also good for you. You can choose which you like or we can also find another name.

QU 7: I like Parvati.