If Only… Living Life Without Regrets. Part One

If Only… Living Life Without Regrets. Part One

[00:45] Unfulfilled Desires

Jai Guru Deva!

Thank you for listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knowles. Today I’d like to talk to you about unfulfilled desires. The idea is, “If only… If only this had happened. If only that had happened.”

We can put this under the heading of regrets. In the Vedic language, instead of referring to it as regrets, we refer to it as unfulfilled desires, desires that didn’t get fulfilled.

Some people would call it, “Let’s be sure we have a bucket list, the list of things I want to do before I kick the bucket.” What’s the idea of that? “I want at the end of my life to have said, ‘I did everything I wanted to do’.” 

I can guarantee you that such a state of consciousness is not attainable because every time we fulfill a desire, another desire will pop up, which we also have to fulfill.

Let’s look at the pattern of our lives so far. There you were, a little child, It’s the, right now as I’m recording this, we’re in the approach to Christmas, though you might be listening to it after that. But we’ll use Christmas as a very good example.

“If only… if only… if only…” Whatever it might have been, some particular toy, or a doll, or a slingshot, or a bicycle. And, “If only… if only…,” and just the mind just thinking about it day and night, and then it comes, bicycle.

And, you see the bicycle, you go out and you learn how to ride the bicycle. It’s magical. You’re riding it all around everywhere. And probably before the following Christmas, it’s lying on its side out in the yard with the autumn leaves covering it up and already beginning to accumulate some rust, and the tires beginning to deflate. Whatever happened to that thing? Well, what happened to it was, what came next? “If only… if only… if only…”

[03:11] Reincarnation – Unfinished Business

And this is a very interesting conundrum in which to find ourselves because, according to the Vedic worldview, we live our evolutionary destiny, our spiritual life, through many lifetimes, many bodies over a period of lifetimes. This is the understanding of reincarnation.

The reason for reincarnation from the Vedic perspective is in fact exactly this, unfulfilled desires. It’s based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of a desire. Not just the purpose, but who is it that owns the desire? Where does the desire come from? And what is the value of fulfilling it?

Once upon a time, I had a long conversation with the abbot of the Thailand Buddhist community, the senior-most person in the Buddhism form that’s practiced in Thailand. And by now, you my listeners must know that Buddhism, as it’s become, is not the same everywhere that it’s practiced.

There is Tibetan Buddhism, who find their leader in Dalai Lama. Then there is Sri Lankan Buddhism, who do not find their leadership in Dalai Lama. They have their own head of the Buddhist church in Sri Lanka. Then we have Myanmar, Burma as it was once called, who have their own version of Buddhism. Thailand is an enormous Buddhist, culture. They have an abbot.

China has its own form of Buddhism with a very big, fat bellied Buddha who has that kind of ho ho ho look on his face. And I’m sure there’s more to it than just that, but the iconography of Buddha from China’s perspective is very different. Japan has its own form of Buddhism.

There was a time once when there was also a dominant Buddhist culture in Afghanistan. Some of the world’s largest statues and sculptures of Buddha.

Amongst all of these, some of the most recognized scholarly approaches to Buddhism and all of these different cultures of Buddhism is that of Thailand. And I had wanted to rent a facility in Thailand to hold a retreat. And the facility was under the aegis of the Buddhist. We’ll call it church, the Buddhist religion.

[06:18] Liberation from the Wheel of Death and Rebirth

So I met with the Abbot, and he surprised me in the first instance, walking into the room, a very ancient old man with shaved head and saffron robes, that part not surprising, wearing, very simple sandals, sat down with me in a very glorious room that looked like a mixture of a dining room and a library.

And he wanted to test me to see what it was I had learned from my master that was either resonant with or discordant with the beliefs of his philosophy, because he didn’t want people using his facility whose beliefs might be discordant.

And a conversation began about the teachings of Buddha. Buddha was not known as Buddha in his lifetime. That came a hundred years after his death. During his lifetime he was known as Shakya Muni. Shakya, the family name. Muni, a sage or a saint. The Shakya Muni. The Muni, the saint or sage of the royal family of Shakya in far north India, and reaching into what is now modern day Nepal, some 2,700 or so years ago, was the time of the historic Buddha.

And as we read some of the various texts and we were making comment, we came up against one particular snag, and that was the role of desire. The abbot held that the Buddha taught that desire is the source of all frustration, and defeating desire was the key to bringing an end to the constant wheel of death and rebirth known as reincarnation.

It was considered desirable to bring an end to that constant wheel of death and rebirth, death and rebirth, and to become liberated from that, one had, at least in his view, to defeat desire.

[09:00] Authorship of Desire: The Cause of Suffering

And I held forth on the Vedic worldview, which I had learned in India, interestingly enough, only two, three hundred miles away from the place where Buddha had gained his nirvana, his liberation, his enlightenment.

My place of learning in India was also the place of learning of Buddha, who was actually Indian. Most people in the West don’t realize this, that Buddha actually was an Indian person.

And I said that in the Vedic worldview, desire is the means by which the Unified Field consciousness, Universal Consciousness, also known as big Self, the big Self, that layer within each of us, which is transcendent, beyond our individuality, but is universal and the source of all beings, the source of the entire story of evolution. Big Self. Atman. And that Atman was the source of desire. That individual’s gratifying desires, was not the purpose of desire.

And he said, “Oh, well, we really have some difference here.”

And I said, “When did Buddha teach that the defeat of desire, the elimination of desire would be the means whereby people would step out of suffering?” And, regret is a form of suffering.

And, he said, “Well, it’s in the Shastras.”

I said, “Could we read it together?” He immediately ordered for a group of scholarly monks to bring some dusty old manuscripts that were written in Pali.

Pali, P-A-L-I, Pali, is one of the first children of the language of Sanskrit, of which I am a nascent scholar. And though I can’t read Pali, I certainly know Sanskrit well enough and Pali has a lot of Sanskrit in it.

So we began reading this particular text where it was alleged that Buddha, 2,700 years before, had spoken the words about the necessity to defeat desire.

And the sloka, verse, went something like this, “that authorship of desire is the cause of all suffering.” And we both looked at that, and then I pointed out very respectfully that perhaps the word authorship was an important noun in the sentence.

And he looked at me quizzically, and I said, “We teach the same thing in the Vedic worldview. The, attributing of authorship to oneself. as the source of a desire is the cause of suffering, because here in the text it says that Buddha had said authorship of desire is the cause of suffering.” And it wasn’t having a desire that was the problem being pointed out in the text. It was authorship of it. “I am the author of my desire,” is the cause of suffering.

[12:54] Percival from Arkansas Goes to the Cinema

The source of desire, and we’re making a distinction here between source and cause, the source of desire is the Absolute field of Being, the big Self. When we attribute a desire to me, “I had a desire,” I’m casting myself in the role of being the needy little small self.

“I’m the small self. That’s all I am.” Whoever I am, Percival from Arkansas. “And, if I, Percy, have a desire to get in an Uber and go and watch Gladiator 2, with a super-sized popcorn, that’s my desire, and I am fulfilling the desire, and when I fulfill the desire, I will arrive into some kind of, even if it’s only fleeting or momentary, some beatific state where desire’s gone for a moment, or maybe for quite some time.

“If only I could go watch Gladiator 2. Let me order that Uber and get over there. I’ve got this desire.”

The idea that I’ll get fulfillment from fulfilling a desire is illusory because desire is not based in the small self. The Vedic worldview is that, and I was explaining all this to the abbot there in Bangkok, the Vedic worldview is that desire bubbles up as a motivator to get us to move from where we are to where we are not. To nivar tattvam.

Nivar tattvam is an instruction, a baseline instruction that we have in the Vedic philosophy. Go where you are not. Transcend where you are. Nivar tattvam. How do you nivar tattvam? How do you go where you are not?

Well, you have to have a desire. And when you have that desire, it might be in your mind, it might be, “I’ll go and watch a particular movie at the cinema.” You’re getting up from where you are, getting your body up from where it is, and you’re moving it somewhere.

[15:31] Why am I having a desire?

The purpose of having a desire from the Vedic perspective is not for you individually to gain fulfillment. It’s for you to play your role in the evolution of things. This is what we call dharma, D-H-A-R-M-A, dharma. Your personal role in the evolution of things.

It may not be your personal role to continue sitting where you’re sitting. Or standing where you’re standing. Maybe something is going to happen in that place which will not be life supporting. Could be life damaging to continue to be where you’re sitting.

And on that basis the desire to stand up and get into the Uber and go and watch, some movie is the basis that’s getting you out of point A. Or it may be that during the Uber drive, you’ll be fascinating because you’re such a radiant meditator, you’ll be fascinating to the driver who will ask you a question while looking at you in the rearview mirror and saying, “What is it about you? You have something that I’m, I’m interested in,” that’s in transition from A to B.

Or it may be that at B, when you go to buy the popcorn before watching Gladiator 2, the person behind the counter looks at you and says, “I know you. You’re a friend of my sister.” And they’ll describe their sister to you, and it turns out it’s a long-lost friend of yours, and you’d always wondered where they were.

Or it may simply be that you’re going to learn something about the gladiatorial arts of ancient Rome as depicted by Ridley Scott on the big screen. Who knows what it is?

From the Vedic perspective, we kind of don’t care. Why am I having a desire? I’m having it because Unified Field is causing a particular proposition to action to be charming. A proposition to action. Get up from where you are and order the Uber and ride over to Gladiator 2.

There’s lots of pretext in it. Standing up from where you are? Oh, pleasant. Getting into the car? Oh, pleasant. Riding to the cinema? Pleasant. Ordering the popcorn? Oh, pleasant.

[18:18] Nature’s Business

In other words, when the proposition to action is gold dusted with charm, Nature is guiding you in a particular direction. It is Nature’s business. It’s not the small self desperately trying to get fulfilled, because as people who are subscribers to the Vedic concept, we know that you’re not going to get fulfilled by moving from A to B and watching a movie.

It doesn’t need to be unpleasant. It’s not that it’s unpleasant, but you’re obediently doing a thing which we refer to as following charm. I’m not trying to get fulfilled through an action or through taking in an experience. And why is that?

Because as a Vedic meditator, I am one with the fulfillment field. This is exactly what we experience when we practice Vedic Meditation. We close our eyes, we practice a very specific technique.

And for those of you who haven’t yet had the opportunity to learn it, you must avail yourself of that opportunity and go to my website and seek out a qualified instructor of Vedic Meditation who can show you the methodology whereby you sit comfortably in a chair, and the mind is able to move beyond just the everyday thinking area and to touch upon, experience oneness with a deep supreme inner contentedness, which is your mind unifying with the fulfillment field itself, the Unified Field of consciousness, which is that universal field.

This is what happens during Vedic Meditation. We step beyond our individuality and experience oneness with Totality. And we don’t do this by just thinking about it. One is not sitting around thinking, “Oh, I’m stepping beyond my individuality and I am one with Totality.” That’s just an individual having thoughts.

This is an actual direct experience of the cessation of thinking and the experience of unbounded fulfillment. Fulfillment that is so great that all thoughts stop. The cause of thoughts stopping, in the transcendent field, is not that you try to make the thought stop.

The cause of the thought stopping is that the saturation of fulfillment is so great, mind cannot conceive in that state of anything which, if you were to experience it, would be greater than where you are already. And so it doesn’t bother thinking. Just lets go of thinking entirely.

[21:22] Filled with Fulfillment

So this oneness with the fulfillment field saturates our individuality and when we come out of our 20 minutes, which is the average time for which we practice, when we come out of our 20 minutes session of Vedic Meditation, we are filled with fulfillment.

Fulfillment doesn’t have to seek fulfillment through the fulfilling of desires. If you fulfill a desire, the Vedic meditator knows, it doesn’t bring you fulfillment to fulfill a desire. You are the fulfillment. You are the fulfillment field itself. And what are you seeking? Whatever your role is in the need of the time, with regard to the needs of evolution. How do you find that?

You look for whatever it is that Nature is making charming. There’s a charm path. the yellow brick road of the meditator, the path of charm. The mind knows this and is trained in it, and then one is able to follow the charm, not for the purpose of fulfillment, one’s already fulfilled. Meditation ensures that.

But one follows the charm in order to bring oneself and one’s capabilities, one’s inner resources, creative intelligence and energy and staying power, all those things, bring all of those capabilities into interaction with the field of need. What’s the field of need? The evolutionary need of the time.

And if it involves riding in an Uber and going to a movie and having some handfuls of popcorn while you’re watching some depiction of ancient Rome, then just fine, but one’s not trying to get fulfilled by doing this thing.

And so then the idea that, “If only I had done this… If only I had done this, then I would have gained fulfillment.” No, you wouldn’t have.

“If only I had the bicycle, I’d have gained fulfillment.” The bicycle didn’t bring you anything more than transitory quietude for a few moments. Maybe some glee as you’re riding the bicycle around, “Oh, this is the best. This is the best. This is the best.” Until it’s not the best anymore. Something else is the best.

Maybe you want to go to the playground and wink at Johnny or wink at Susie or something. The dawning of the idea of having a relationship. You get older and you get older and it’s, “I want to get a job and earn money,” and you get a job and you earn money and it didn’t make that much difference. You’re still unfulfilled.

And then, “Maybe I need a house,” and you get a house and you’ve got the house and you think you own it, but then there’s property tax. It turns out that the authorities to whom you pay the tax on it.

And you keep on thinking, “If only I had this particular kind of a car.” So you get the car, whatever it is, and you drive it around for a while, but you’re driving around in the car that you thought was going to fulfill you, driving around in the car looking for fulfillment in this moving platform of neediness.

[24:56] Asteya and Vairagya

So we know as Vedic meditators, fulfilling a desire only fulfills a desire. The desire isn’t ours, it’s not our property. The desire to go to an action belongs to the Unified Field. 

And so what is it Buddha was referring to? It’s theft. Theft. Steya, in Sanskrit. Steya, S-T-E-Y-A. Asteya is non-theft. In order to practice non-theft, one has to stop thieving desires from the Unified Field.

“Oh, I had a thought that going to a movie was going to fulfill me. It’s my thought, my desire, and I’m gonna get my fulfillment.” None of it’s yours actually.

We let go of that. We use vairagya. Vairagya. V-A-I-R-A-G-Y-A. Vairagya. Vairagya non-attachment. “I experience the charming thing. I am non-attached. I know that actions and experiences don’t bring fulfillment, but I’m following the charm because evidently I need to move away from point A and move toward point B in order to be a relevant agent of evolutionary change. And so, I’m finding it charming rather than I need to go to the movie.”

So then when we look at a life of regrets, it’s a life of the hallucination that if you had done a thing or not done a thing or said something better or said something or not got involved when you know you did get involved in all of that nonsense.

That, all of this I, me, mine is theft. You are co-opting the property of the Unified Field. Desires aren’t your property. They’re the means whereby Unified Field moves you around.

And so, explaining all this to the Abbott, I said, “Buddha said here in this particular verse, authorship of desire is the cause of all suffering. It’s not desire is the cause of all suffering, sir,” I said to him very respectfully, “it is authorship of desire. When we steal the authorship, that’s the cause of suffering.”

Deciding that you are the author because you’re the needy one, not being the fulfillment field, is the cause of suffering. Deciding I am the author of my desires, this is the cause of suffering.

[28:02] The Pollution of Unfulfilled Desires

And so the suffering born of regret; “If only, if only… if only…” this does cause reincarnation. It’s considered to be, in the Vedic worldview, when we are, on our deathbed, let’s hope it’s a nice comfortable bed somewhere where you’re about to drop the body.

Or maybe you fell out of a helicopter and you’re flying through the air having your final thoughts. Or maybe you’re surrounded by enemy fire and you’re a soldier on a battlefield and you’re thinking, “If only… if only…” wherever the scenario is where you’re going to drop your body.

And dropping body, by the way, is all inclusive. 100 percent of everyone living on earth right now will be doing it, will be dropping their body. The death rate on earth is a hundred percent in case you hadn’t contemplated that.

If you are laden with having taken ownership of desire, and you’re thinking to yourself, “If only I’d done this, if only I’d done that, if only I’d done that,” then when you drop your body, the seed for coming back into diapers and high school and all the rest of it, the seed of returning to this earth and having to have another body, and live through another human life.

The seed of it is the unfulfilled desires to which we’ve become attached at the time of death. At the time of death, time of body death, we’re going to call it body death because consciousness can’t die. Consciousness is not caused by the body. It’s the other way around.

Our consciousness conceives the body. Our consciousness constructs the body, our consciousness governs the body, our consciousness prints itself out as a body. Body is a product of consciousness. Consciousness is not a body product.

So when body drops away, consciousness continues to be conscious. And if that consciousness, which continues to be, is laden with the pollution of unfulfilled desires, then this is the seed for returning to the Earth and into the next body and trying to fulfill those desires.

“I didn’t have a special carton of extra special organic milk with strawberry flavoring.” When you’re having that thought at the time of death, If only I’d had that special strawberry milk,” you’re going to come back and get into another body so you can have as much strawberry milk as you want.

“If only I had said this thing to George,” and then you die, well, you’ll be coming back to say that thing to George.

What is the thing that guarantees no reincarnation? No unfulfilled desires. What does that mean? “I am not the desirer anyway.”

[31:31] What Are You?

When Lord Krishna, 5,000 years ago, Krishna existed, and when he was asked on the battlefield by his cousin and student, Arjuna by name, “What are the characteristics of an enlightened person?”

Krishna gave a multifarious answer. One of the facets of it was that having gone beyond desire, he finds himself desiring. What does that mean? He’s gone beyond desire, yet he finds himself desiring.

One discovers desires occurring even though one is beyond desire. “I am the fulfillment field. I am the fulfillment field, I’m totally identified with it, and yet, desires are bubbling up in this consciousness. They are not of me, individuality, they’re not born of my individuality. They are the representation of what this body is meant to be doing right now.”

At the time of death, when there’s an assessment of not just who you are, but what you are. What are you? After all, here you are listening to me. You are a consciousness field hearing these words. You have a body. Whatever, whether you still have all your appendages or not, you still have a body. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be listening to my podcast.

What is this thing that you are? What is it? Not who is it. I don’t want to know where you were born or what you did and what you didn’t do and all the stuff that happened to your body and all of that. That’s all superfluous. What are you? What is your essence? What’s the essence of this experiencing machinery?

You are an experiencing machinery. What is it? What explains it? How does it exist? What’s it about? If these questions haven’t been answered by direct experience of what absolutely you are, and beyond all the relativity.

Not, you know, “Oh, I’m a boy scout, and I’m a a graduate of 12th grade at school and…” or “I’m a, real Don Juan, a lover,” or “I’m a, business person,” or, “I’m a loving mother,” or “I’m a sister,” or “I’m a…,” that’s all the who, who we’re not interested in.

[34:22] Human Doings

Time of death. We’re not interested in who. We’re interested in what. Have you arrived conclusively, through direct experience, that you are Unified Field? Aham Brahmasmi is the Sanskrit phrase for this. I am Totality. I’m the Totality Field.

If at the time of body death, I am not the Totality Field by direct experience, if I am nothing but a collection of unfulfilled desires, a big bag of unfulfilled desires, starting from one and moving to, you know, 1,008 unfulfilled desires. If that’s what I am, a bag of unfulfilled desires, I’m getting another body to work out those desires. 

People in the West are always fascinated by karma. I go and get a cup of coffee at my favorite coffee shop and there’s a jar, and there’s a piece of paper stuck onto it with sticky tape that has in handwriting, evidently from one of the baristas, The Karma Jar.

And in the karma jar are some one dollar notes and some coins and things. This is a way of asking for tips. Karma jar. Karma. “You’re going to get good karma if you put money in this jar, baby.” and maybe you’ll get bad karma if you’ve seen the little sign and you’ve decided to do nothing. Good karma, bad karma.

This has entered the common parlance of the West. Karma has nothing to do with that, with tips and things. Karma, perhaps that’s not surprising to you.

Karma has to do with the degree to which you have assigned authorship to yourself. “I’m the author of my desires.” This is bondage. You’re bound. Now, you are inescapably fettered and shackled to desires, whether or not they get, as desires get fulfilled.

You are not one with the source of desire. You’ve identified with activity and with doings. You haven’t identified with Being. You are a human doing, not a human being.

And so it’s incumbent upon us to become human beings. It’s incumbent upon us in our lifetime to be The Universe having a human experience, not merely to be a human who occasionally gets glimpses of having universal experiences. We want to reverse the tables on that.

“From direct experience I can see I am The Universe, and I’m having this human experience of carrying out that which is charming, that which is desirable.”

And then I turned to the Abbot and I said, “After all, if it were true that desire is the cause of all suffering, are we also not saying that it is desirable to be desire free? If we acknowledge that in the wrong interpretation of this line, that it is desirable to be desire free, then we haven’t defeated desires. Because we’re interpreting the line in this way, not that authorship of desire is the cause of suffering, but desire itself is the cause of suffering, and therefore defeating desire then becomes desirable. Is that not also a desire?”

The Abbot looked at me and he said, “You can have the place.”

So, we had our conversation. He said, “You’ve raised something today with me I never thought about.”

[38:48] Empirical Evidence Through Direct Experience

So we have supreme knowledge in our tradition. Our tradition, the Guru Parampara, guru means teacher, parampara means the succession of teachers coming down through the ages that is the fountainhead of supreme knowledge.

And it’s pivotal to everything I’ve just said, that we learn the practice of Vedic Meditation ourselves.

Let me make the proposition to action charming for you. You need to go on to my website, T-H-O-M-K-N-O-L-E-S.com, thomknoles.com, and just ask any question there and an email will be sent to you by my team. Make arrangements to meet your closest or local qualified teacher of Vedic Meditation and learn the technique so that you can make this into a practical experience in your life.

Every science has two aspects to it. Conceptual delineation. This is what we call theory. You think things out and you have a theory that explains observations. And then there’s empiricism. Empiricism means lab work. It means through experimentation and through direct experience, you’re able to verify and validate the conceptual delineation.

Theory alone is not enough. We need to have direct experience. The lab work of the science of the Vedic worldview, the lab work is the direct experience that occurs when you step beyond thought, practicing Vedic Meditation.

And you experience for yourself that underlying all of this thinking that you’re doing, there is a silent, unbounded consciousness field, and you are it.

That is your baseline. It’s everyone’s baseline. So it’s important for us to have that direct experience, and not merely talk about it. But to actually have it, so that’s your next step.

And if already you’re a practitioner of Vedic Meditation, congratulations on that. Make your practice non-negotiable and make it non-negotiable that you’ll stay in contact with the live human teachers who are the ones who have dedicated their lives to making your practice smooth, frictionless, and effective.

And make your own twice-a-day practice non-negotiable. That’s what brings about this whole thing of the eradication of the authorizing. 

Authorizing means, “I have made myself the author of all of my thoughts. My individuality is the author of my desires. My individuality identifies my needs. I’m a big bag of neediness. A big bag of unfulfilled desires, and I have to try to get these desires fulfilled, otherwise at the end of my life I won’t have gone through my bucket list.”

And this is all kind of ugly thinking and it has no reality to it. It’s not based on experience.

So let’s step out of all of that desperation, and have a direct experience of being the Unified Field itself, the field of fulfillment. 

Jai Guru Deva.