We start our exi… we don’t actually, it is hard even talk about it, because we don’t even start our existence. We have existed eternally. But just for conversation sake (laughs), maybe understanding sake… We originally were in the spiritual world.
We learn from our Vedic knowledge and from our masters there are two worlds, distinct worlds.
There is a material world. The material world is composed of enumerable universes. And in each universe there are enumerable planets. We are in one small universe. All universes are not the same size. We are in a small universe on this small planet called Earth. And what is always amusing to me is that we look up at night and see the Milky way with unlimited stars, we see the moon, we see all these different planets in the sky, but our conclusion is we are the only life, there is nobody else there, just us, we are the only ones in this vast, vast creation (laughs), we are the only people. You could actually conclude that is arrogance, “Yes, we are the only guys. Aliens? Ahh, that’s not true!”
But according to the Vedas there is life on every planet, there are people on every planet, there are people everywhere in the material world.
But the material world is only a reflection of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is much, much more vast and it’s also composed of planets, people on the planets and relationships, just like in this world, there are enumerable relationships.
All of us here in this room have so many relationships. Even our coming together right now creates a relationship, we have a relationship at this moment. And we will always have relationships with other people, with the Earth itself, the planet, the universe, and on and on it goes.
So in the spiritual world it’s the same; whatever we have here, is there. You can’t have something in the reflection that is not present in the object that’s being reflected. So everything is here, that is there. But the difference is it’s the perverted reflection, it’s the upside-down reflection, like in a mirror, things are reversed. That is just the nature of reflection. So everything here is the reversed, perverted reflection of the real thing. And that’s the problem.
So the love that we have here is the reflection, the perverted reflection of true love. So love is actually a completely spiritual emotion, relationship, etc., completely spiritual, void of all material qualities.
Now what happens? How did it happen that, number one, we are here? How did we get here? There are many theories and actually so-called spiritual philosophies that say we started here. That’s not true, we did not start here. We started in the spiritual world. And we came into the material world. Why did this take place? Because we made a mistake.
As I have mentioned, we have all the qualities of the Supreme Lord. The Supreme Lord is Number One. We have that quality, too: I want to be number one. He is the Controller, we want to be the controller. He is the Master, we want to be the master. He is the Lord, we want to be the lord. He is the Supreme Enjoyer, we want to be the supreme enjoyer. We have all those qualities, you see.
Two more qualities are very important to understand. We have been given an eternal free will, everybody has a free will. It will never be taken away, no one can take it away. We have an eternal free will and we have minute independence to execute that will. If you don’t have the ability to exercise your will, what’s the point? So we have free will and eternal minute amount of freedom to exercise it, to execute it. This is how it is.
At some point… And don’t try to figure this out because logically it doesn’t make any sense… But reality is it happened. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we became envious of God: I want to be god, I want to be number one, I want to be the master, the controller, the enjoyer, etc., etc., etc., I don’t want to play this role of being the enjoyed which is our eternal true position. I don’t want to be enjoyed, I want to be the enjoyer. So little envy appears. This is our misuse of our free will.
The Supreme Lord is certainly All-knowing, He knows exactly that desire we have. But it’s also a fact that we can’t exercise, we can’t try to fulfill that desire in the spiritual world because that position is already full. There is already Number One there, Controller, Enjoyer, etc., etc. I can’t even play the game there.
So the Lord creates the material world for us to come and try to fulfill this fantasy. That’s why the material world was created. So really we created the material world, because we desired these things. If we didn’t have those desires, there will no need for the material creation. But we do have those desires so the material world is here.
We come into the material world, but there are rules here, there are regulations. There are certain forces and plays, there are laws of nature, etc., etc., that control us because I’m not the controller. I can only play the controller, but I can’t be the controller.