Baba Sri Siva Speaks:

Restlessness, Longing and Frustration

"There is no human being from a king or a sage and all the way down to a blue collar laborer who does not undergo restlessness, longing and frustration in their lives. The king may worry about his political problems, the sage about his enlightenment and the laborer about his wages. Everyone, everywhere, is restless. Longing never stops, but it surely and certainly leads to frustration. Every one cries: 'Things don't simply happen, no matter what I do. Life goes on based on the hope that it will happen, if not tomorrow, in the near future. But, the near future becomes the distant future leading into more intense frustration'.

I want to give two remedies as coping skills for restlessness, one from Buddhism and another from Vedanta. In Buddhism there is what is called Valley Experience. You situate yourself in the valley and not on the mountaintop. From the mountain crest there is a possibility for fall, but from the valley you can't fall because you are already there. This is a metaphor for a way of life without any expectations. There is only acceptance. If there is more money, you accept it, and if there is less money, you accept it. In this way one can control restlessness.

Vedanta gives another approach. The world is unreal. The problem is that you take the unreal world as real. The notion 'I am happy or I am unhappy' is simply a mental delusion. The fact is that as pure consciousness you are neither happy nor unhappy. You are without any experience. The problem is that your ego consciousness is rooted in the concepts of 'I' and 'Mine.' Ramana Maharishi (whom Carl Jung described as the whitest spot in the white sky) during his lifetime was a great advocate of Vedanta. He taught a powerful meditation in which you go on inquiring, 'Who am I?' One day you will realize that you are neither the body nor the mind, but consciousness itself.

I have very deep respect for the mystics in both Buddhism and Vedanta. Nevertheless, I have a more pragmatic approach. Longing and restlessness are due to the non-fulfillment of particular sense experiences. You can create this experience either in the real world or imaginatively. Instead of suppressing or ignoring the longing, try to experience those desires through fantasies. In your mind it is possible to live in a mansion and drive the car you want to drive etc. In this way you can gratify your desires. The fact that these things are not happening in real life - in time and space- might frustrate you. In that situation you will apply the Vedantic and Buddhist methods discussed above: the world is unreal.

The advantage in my method is that it is not merely a coping skill, because the fantasy one day might create these things in physical reality- which is not an undesirable option. Vedantic and Buddhist idealisms do not allow this option since they are totally otherworldly."

Karma and Astrology

Karma is your destiny through time. Time is controlled by the revolution of the sun and the moon. If these heavenly bodies don't revolve, you will have no calendar (solar/lunar). More minutely, the other planets like Mars, Mercury, etc. also create time and destiny. Unlike Western astrology, Vedic astrology has a unique method to determine the influence of the planets on your life on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This system is called the Dasa -Bukti system. Also, Vedic astrology suggests remedies for bad influences.