The Great Puruṣārtha – Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha

The Great Puruṣārtha – Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha

[00:45] The Four Goals

One of my students who is studying Vedic literature, asked me to hold forth on the subject of the great Puruṣhārtha Puruṣhārtha, P-U-R-U-Ṣ-H-A, Puruṣha, Artha, Ā-R-T-H-A, all one word. And what is that?

It’s the abundance. Artha means abundance, and Puruṣha is a reference to the personification that occurs when the unmanifest Absolute moves into manifestation.

The Puruṣhārtha, the four so-called goals that could be experienced by a dedicated seeker who’s on the path to realization.

These four “goals” actually shouldn’t be interpreted that way. , these are not goals at all. These are the four outcomes of advancing your consciousness.

And the first quality that comes out of this is dharma, D-H-A-R-M-A. Satisfaction in a sense of that which doing will be your highest and best use at any time in your evolutionary process. Dharma.

Dharma also has Cosmic Dharma. What is it the Cosmos is up to and it’s self-evident bio-friendly behavior? What is the bio-friendly universe trying to do? Dharma. Dharma of the universe, and then my individuation that comes out of that. What is my personal role in the evolution of things? Dharma.

The second of the aspects of outcome that are attributed to the Shiva consciousness in the Puruṣārtha is that of Artha itself, A-R-T-H-A. Artha means the experience of abundance. The experience of abundance in every conceivable way. Not just money, which is the way most of us in the Western world think, but abundance. How about an infinite supply of pure, clear water? What about an infinite supply of pure, clear air to breathe? What about infinite access to all the products of the earth that can feed oneself and feed one’s body?

What about an abundance of creativity, the capacity to innovate, to improvise, to invent? What about an abundance of equanimity, the capacity for maintaining evenness in the face of losses and gains? All these forms of abundance, Artha, Artha.

And there are some scholars, who have traced the name of the mythological king of England of the 5th century, King Arthur, to the word Artha. A-R-T-H-A, Artha, Arthur, not too far distant there, right? So, that’s an interesting side story for some later date. Ārtha.

Next, Kama. Not Karma, not K-A-R-M-A. Don’t make a mistake with that. Karma, Kama. K-A-M-A. Kama. Kama is sometimes denigrated, but actually is a very, very important part of life.

Sensory satiety, to have satisfaction when the objects of the senses make contact with the senses in a way that brings about pleasure. The pleasure of the contact between senses and their objects. Kama, Kama.

And then the fourth one, Moksha. M-O-K-S-H-A, Moksha. Complete liberation. Complete liberation. Now, let’s examine these one at a time.

[05:30] Your True Dharma

Dharma: if I don’t really know what I’m about, if I don’t really have a clear sense of my personal role in the evolution of everything around me, I’m in trouble. Because I’m going to engage in a tremendous amount of shoddy guesswork about what is the actual meaning of my existence.

To what extent do I have relevance with reference to an ever-changing world around me? What is my role? What is my highest and best use? Without a degree of satisfaction in that concept, a real understanding of identity, a real understanding of capability cannot ever be had. And without that, one’s life is kicked around like a football.

By all of the potentials for, “You gotta be one of these.” “You should be one of those.” “You should be one of them.” “You should be one of those.” “Maybe you missed your calling.” “Maybe you are living your calling.”

Maybe you’re a brilliant neurosurgeon, and though you are the most sought-out neurosurgeon on Earth, you still feel as though you missed your calling, because you’re really fascinated with medieval mythology, and all you want to do is get all those surgeries over with so you can get home and go into your books and get a deeper understanding of what Chaucer was referring to obliquely in his Canterbury Tales.

And so what is your dharma? Is your dharma simply the thing that you do for a living, even if all others around you consider you to be the best at your profession, maybe even the best in the world?

But do you consider it to be so? Or do you feel as though something’s missing, and that there’s a big distinction between your funding mechanism, whatever that may be, and your true desire to experience and understand your relevance, your social relevance, and your personal relevance to the existence of all things? Dharma. Dharma.

[08:00] Tat Wale Baba – Abundant in All Things

Artha, abundance. Abundance in all things. One of the most abundant people, I think probably the most abundant person I ever met, I’ve spoken about under other occasions in other podcasts: Tat Wale Baba, T-A-T, new word, W-A-L-E, last name, B-A-B-A, Baba.

Tat Wale Baba, a master of some enormous stature, six feet and a half, who lived in Rishikesh, India for about 80 of his 130 years. He is reputed to have been 130 years old at the time he dropped his body, never looking older than about 40, perhaps 45 on a bad day.

Someone whose physique was enviable, and it was on full display because Tat Wale Baba never felt any requirement on him to wear clothing. On odd occasions, if he knew that it would have a disrupting effect, communally, for him to appear in a public setting utterly naked, which was his favorite way of getting around, then he’d wear a little loincloth, but never was he seen with anything more than that.

Tat Wale Baba lived in a cave just up the mountainside from my master’s ashram, Rishikesh, and one could go up to that cave and see him. His hair, evidently he was happy with his hairdo. It was comprised of about 12 feet of dreadlocks, as we call them in the West. In India, the kind of matted hair like that is referred to as jata, J-A-T-A.

And, what did he live on? Well, there was no electricity; that was his preference. There was no cooked food; that was his preference. He knew how to find the leaves and the roots and things that surrounded him in the forest that he could munch on to keep that magnificent body of his in the greatest possible shape.

[10:27] No Abundance: What a Terrible Life

His face perpetually had, at the very least, an inscrutable smile on the lips, and very frequently, a very broad grin, showing fabulous dentition. He had every tooth in place, even though evidently he had no toothbrush. He rubbed his teeth with a little neem stick every day. You could see him rubbing his teeth after munching on his turnips and things that he pulled up out of the ground around him in the forest.

He was barefooted, everywhere he went. He bathed in the 48 Fahrenheit cold frigid waters of Ganga daily. He was frequently seen floating down that mighty river just for fun. He led a completely single life, alone in his cave on the side of the mountain. A happier human being you could never hope to have met, nor a wiser one. His wisdom was expressed in every utterance of his.

Now, if any one of us was required to live the lifestyle of Tat Wale Baba, we would say, “Oh, this is a person in need of government help. This is a person who is unsheltered. This is a person who has no family. This is a person with no money, life without any money whatsoever.

“This is a person who digs things up out of the ground to eat. Terrible. This is a person with no electricity in his dwelling. This is a person with no special organic, high-quality rubber mattress with a special foamy pillow top on it.

“No clean linen, no pillow in fact. He doesn’t ever seem to lie down, except occasionally he goes and finds some snowy patch and lies down in the shade on the snowy patch, smiling away as usual. What a terrible life. Terrible. No abundance whatsoever.”

[12:41] What True Abundance Looks Like

And yet, from my perspective, when I think of the most abundant person that I personally know, many billionaires, when I think of the most abundant person I’ve ever met in my life, Tat Wale Baba. He had artha. And why did he have artha? Artha means abundance in every respect.

He was not wanting for anything. No thought ever occurred to him, “Oh, it would be great if I had this, that, or the other.” Whatever it was that he wanted, Nature would provide him with that thing prior to his desiring it. He didn’t even have to bother desiring.

Now, I’m not advocating that we should all race off into the forest, and disrobe, or find a cave, or try to emulate the life of Tat Wale Baba because it was not his behaviors that yielded the artha.

It was not his actions or his non-wardrobe choices that yielded his consciousness state. It’s the other way around. He got himself into a consciousness state, which he lived for more than a hundred years, in which state he was living his highest and best purpose by being a forest yogi living in a cave.

That may not be your dharma, and therefore you may not find your artha in the same way as Tat Wale Baba did. But if you want to know your dharma, if you want to know your artha, we’re saving it for the end of this little talk, you have to do a particular thing.

[14:26] The Ability to Extract Maximum Pleasure

Let’s move on to the next one: Kama, the ability to extract maximum pleasure from the contact of the senses with their objects.

I remember somebody saying once to Tat Wale Baba in my presence, “Oh, you appear to be, because you’re living a life with, by choice, nobody else in it, evidently a celibate.”

Not that he thought of himself as a celibate, but there just didn’t seem to be any use in having anybody else around.

” And you seem to live such an abstemious life.”

To which he replied smilingly, “Oh no, you’re living the abstemious life.”

And this person who was a regular upper-middle-class American, relatively privileged person, so-called privileged, responded, “What? I’m living the abstemious life? I don’t think I am.”

And Tat Wale Baba said, “Oh, yes, you are. By comparison to you, I’m a hedonist.” You know what a hedonist is, right? Someone who just lives for sensory pleasure. “I’m a hedonist.”

And this American chap said, “A hedonist, you? I consider myself to be more of a hedonist,” he goes.

“No, no, you’re living the abstemious life,” said Tat Wale Baba, ” because there are so many riches of sensory experience surrounding you, divine phenomena, all around you all the time, divine touch, divine smell, divine taste, divine sight, divine sound. And you’re not engaging in any of it. And I’m engaging in all of it.”

He said, “I’m enjoying kama. And you’re not.” Kama: how to extract maximum pleasure from contact of the senses with their objects. Kama

The word kama, , is frequently misinterpreted as the word love, when in fact what it means is sustainable pleasure. The pleasure, the sustainable pleasure that can be gained from contact of the five senses with their many objects, kama. So love has a different word that goes for it, which is prema, P-R-E-M-A, prema. And in another episode, we’ll dive into the distinction between kama and prema.

[17:11] Living in a Dual Awareness

Moksha: liberation. To be able to live in a dual awareness. I am the one indivisible, whole Totality Consciousness Field at the same time as living within a body, living heaven on earth, living a life with individual characteristics, living a life of individual storyline. This is Moksha.

Moksha does not mean what you read in the books, oh somebody who has renounced everything because they’re liberated from all their desires. That’s not moksha. That’s nonsense.

Moksha means the liberty to experience total cosmic life and full individual life simultaneously. The simultaneity of cosmic life and individual life, not bound by individual life only. Not bound. And interestingly, not bound to a completely abstemious life, but living one’s awareness, liberated to experience one’s full cosmic potential, while simultaneously experiencing life as a human, to be The Universe having a human experience. This is moksha.

Moksha is not, “Oh, you get rid of your body, and you get rid of all of the desires, and you get rid of all and you’re liberated.” Liberated for what? A boring life, if you ask me. Moksha is not about living a boring life. Moksha is about living a life of complete fullness of Cosmic funneling into the narrow neck of individuality. The Cosmic living itself through the individuality. This is Moksha.

[19:15] Attaining Puruṣārtha Through Vedic Meditation

So how do we gain Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha as discoursed by Shiva in his Puruṣārtha discourse? All of them simultaneously appear as percentages of how realized you are. What does that mean?

You practice Vedic Meditation, and occasionally in your meditation practice, your mind will settle down into that least-excited state, transcending which, it will experience oneness with The Absolute.

In oneness with The Absolute, one can’t think, “Here I am, one with The Absolute.” That’s a thought. But coming out of that oneness with The Absolute, one might have the thought, I was just now one with The Absolute.”

You may have moments where the medium of experience that you’re using in Vedic Meditation, those of you who practice it, you know this to be your special personalized Bija Mantra, that the mantra becomes so faint, so charming, so subtle, and then it just evaporates, and the mind is left for a moment in a state, conscious, but with no mantra and no thought replacing it, for a moment, pure transcendence.

Now, with regular practice, that which lies beyond thought, that transcendental experience, begins to awaken in the individual more and more, and one’s inner sense of identity begins more and more to become defined by That, that unbounded consciousness that you are, in addition to all the levels of boundaries that are life in the body.

Life in a body that has a social relevance and a use for individuated behavior. The backdrop of Being begins to imprint itself more and more on a daily basis as your true inner identity. And as this occurs on a greater and greater basis, that kind of stickiness of the unbounded consciousness manages to stay with you, even at the end of your meditation session, when you open your eyes and come out of your meditation.

[21:45] Self-Realization by Numbers

One can sense one’s unboundedness even while engaging in boundaries. ” I’m the unboundedness and I’m also the boundaries. I’m living both of them.”

As this grows and grows and grows in percentages in the direction of full-time experience of individuality and universality, we are going to see all four of these characteristic outcomes, I’m not calling them goals, I’m calling them outcomes. We’re going to see the characteristics of all these four, let’s go over them again. It starts with dharma. artha, kama, and moksha.

If I have 15% unboundedness, along with boundaries, then I’m going to experience 15% full value of dharma, my sense of my role in the evolution of the world; of artha, my abundance, 15%; kama, capacity to engage in the senses engaging in their objects with maximum pleasure; moksha, the capacity to be liberated from boundaries and to liberate my full potential, goes both ways, liberation from a thing and liberation of a thing, 15%.

50% established in Being. 50% the long -term benefit of regular practice of Vedic Meditation has now established itself, my inner state of “I am evidently not just individuality, but I’m also The Cosmos,” to the extent that that is a 50% realization, then 50% of dharma, artha, kama, moksha and so on. 90%, 90%. 100% realization of Self, a hundred percent the outcomes of the practice.

[23:57] The Process is the Outcome

So these so-called goals actually are the outcomes that are predicted by Lord Shiva in a particular discourse that a Shiva-cognizing person remembered and wrote down as, “These are the outcomes that will come from regular practice of Vedic Meditation.”

Not goals, outcomes. Engage the process, and the process is the outcome. To whatever extent the process is matured, that is the outcome in these four. 10% matured process, 50% matured process, 100% matured process, exact proportion of the fulfillment of the predicted outcomes described by Shiva.

So then, these outcomes, the extent to which you have them, are more a measuring rod of the state of consciousness you’re in. Do you have only a percentage of your sense of what you are and what your role is in the evolution of things, dharma? If it’s only a percentage of that, if you still have some uncertainty in that area, then it’s a sign that more twice-daily practice of meditation is required.

Likewise with artha, do you feel abundance in any situation, or not? To the extent that you do, then to that extent, you’re enlightened. What about kama? Are you able to exact and extract maximum pleasure from contact of the senses with their objects? If the answer is, “Well, 40%,” well then you have 40% realization, 40% enlightenment.” “Oh, the answer is 60%,” then you have 60% enlightenment, and so on.

[26:03] Measuring Rods of Enlightenment

What about moksha? To what extent are you experiencing, “I am The Universe having a human experience,” versus, “I’m a human who’s occasionally having universal experiences?” If I’m merely a human who occasionally has transcendental experiences, then I need to continue meditating twice a day.

There’s a turning point where my critical mass of sense of Self is, “I am Universe, and I’m having a human experience.” When critical mass of Self is 100% “I am Universe primarily, having a human experience secondarily,” this is enlightenment, 100% moksha. So like that, this is how we understand these things.

These are not steps to enlightenment. They are not goals to try to attain to. They’re measuring rods, whereby we can measure the extent of how far we’ve come, what’s been achieved so far, and the extent of what more is yet to be achieved.

Jai Guru Deva.