Getting The Universe To Work The Way You Want It To | Dr. Srikumar Rao

Another of the things that we do which contributes greatly to our not being well is we identify with the character and not the actor. And if you've seen Death of a Salesman, do you know the story of Death of the Salesman? There's the salesman, there's Willy Lohman. And one time he was reasonably successful, and then he was not so successful, and things started going down in a hand basket. And his marriage was breaking off, his relationships, his family were deteriorating. He actually tried to commit suicide. Now, imagine that you are playing Willy Lohman. Do you really want to get into it? You know, you'll be the most miserable Willy Loman that there could be. And as you're doing that, in the back of your mind, there is the notion, hey, you know, if I am a sufficiently miserable Willy Loman, maybe there might be an Academy Award nomination for me, maybe even an Oscar. So you get into it with Wimmen Wiggle. Correct. Or you're a father playing with his kid, and the kid wants to be a cop, and he beats up on the robber. And you, being the father, are the robbers. So he pushes you and kicks you and pummels you. And you really look scared, and you get into it as much as you can. That's fine, right? You're a father playing with his son. The reason that this works is because you are identifying with the actor, not the character. What happens in your real life is you think, oh, he here is me, and all of these things are happening to me. And, oh, woe is me. And you are identifying with the character and not the actor because you're not the person to whom all of this stuff is happening. Let me explain. Now, we're going to some really heavy stuff. You ready for that? Okay, going back to Aristotelian philosophy. Everything that happens, there's an efficient cause and a material cause. And the efficient cause is the person who actually makes it. And the material cause is, what did he make it with? So you have the statue of David, and the efficient cause is Michelangelo, and the material cause is marble. You have a gold ornament, and the efficient cause is the goldsmith. The material cause is gold and works across the board. You know, you have an automobile, and the efficient cause is General Motors, and the material cause is rubber, steel, glass, and so on. All clear. Now, you have this wonderful thing called the universe. You know, there's the earth, there's the sun, the solar system. There are galaxies floating all around. Who made it? God made it. Right. Now we have the interesting question, what did God make the universe out of, well, you know, he kind of made it out of some quantum soup which consisted of subatomic particles, quarks, bosons, gauge bosons, leptons. Who made the quantum soup? Do you see that? This takes you into an infinite regress. Now, this is where I got to tell you what happens is we're going to use your intellect to get you a great deal of the way. But the problem with the intellect is it cannot get you all the way. The intellect is like a car. You know, you want to go visit your friend, and you get in the car and you drive up to his house. And the car will get you up to the house. It might even get you into the driveway. But after you get into the driveway, you've got to leave the car to enter the house and meet your friend, right? The intellect is like that. It's the car. It'll get you halfway through, but not all the way. You have to transcend the intellect if you're going to go all the way. So we use the intellect, right? Now, do you understand that you get caught into an infinite regress if you ask who made the quantum soup? Correct. There is only one way out of the regress. God made the universe out of himself, herself, itself. Which means that each one of you is God's stuff. You, me, the chair in which you're sitting, the projector up there, the microphone, Everything is God stuff. The evildoers of history, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the great figures of history, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela, all got stuff. Everything's got stuff. Think about that for a. Have you heard about. In every tradition, we have this feeling of mystical unity, the feeling of wholeness. That feeling of wholeness is the recognition that that is all there is in the world. There has never been. There is not now, and there will not be ever anything which is not God's stuff. And you are a part of that, an intrinsic part of that. Now, this is very easy to understand intellectually, as I've just pointed it out to you. It requires a leap beyond intuition to make that a part of who you actually are. But if that is what you're anchored in, then the way in which you relate to others changes, and it changes quite dramatically. Because what happens, and this is something that I've noticed with senior executives, with entrepreneurs, is we tend to relate to people as mechanisms. You have an entrepreneur, strong to your employee, and he's looking at the employee from here is what I want this person to do. And why isn't he doing it in the manner I would have done it? And not come bothering me with all of these petty concerns. You tend to be, and especially when life is hectic, which is a lot of the time, you become more granular. You tend to look at people as mechanisms for accomplishing something that you, with your ego, want to have happen. But if instead you are anchored in, there is God stuff in me, there is God stuff in this person. And your attitude is, what is it that I can do to raise the level of consciousness of this person? Think about that. Every time you're in a company, you're up here, you do run into people. Some of Those meetings are 30 seconds. Some of them could be two minutes. Some of them could be extended associations. Happens all the time, right? What is the underlying intention in you when you go into an interaction? If the underlying interaction is you treat people as mechanisms because they can give you or get you something that you want, you're demeaning the transaction. But if your underlying attitude is, yes, let me be of service, what is it that I can do to get this person to a higher level of consciousness? And the way you get a person to a higher level of consciousness is in being at that level yourself, then it completely changes the nature of the interaction and what you, you know, what both of you get out of it. And I'm inviting you to think of the, Think about what is it that you anchor yourself in. And if you anchor yourself in the knowledge that you are part of this incredible, you know, God is a loaded term. So I don't want to use that you are part of the fabric of universe. That is what I mean when I say that there is nothing in the world you cannot achieve, quite literally at the third level. And let me explain what I mean by third level. Supposing you say, and you know, I've been challenged enough time, Professor Rao, you say, there's nothing in the world I can, I can't achieve. And you know, I want to be Wimbledon champion. And this guy next to me also wants to be Wimbledon champion. Tell me how we can both be Wimbledon champions. Well, first of all, neither of you is going to be Wimbledon champion. The only way you're going to get to Wimbledon is you buy a ticket early. But that aside, why do you want. That's the first level, by the way. I want to be Wimbledon champion. The next level down is why do you want to be a Wimbledon champion? What does it mean to you? Does it mean money? Does it mean fame? What is it that you are looking for to be Wimbledon champion? And then the third level is what is the lack in me that leads me to want that? It is at the third level that you can have anything you want. Because all of us are going under the impression that we are incomplete. We are not full. We need something to make us full. Whether it is a relationship, whether it is more money, whether it is success as we define it. We need that to become full. And I'm saying you don't need that to become full. You are a part, an integral part of the universe. There's God stuff in you. With everyone else, you are intrinsically full. So whatever action you take, take it from that fullness. Even if you had the experience, you're taking a long, warm shower and you know life feels good, and all of a sudden you're feeling so good, you burst out spontaneously in song happened. Do you sing because you want to be happy now? You sing because you are happy. It is a spontaneous outburst in exactly the same way. All of the stuff you do, the businesses that you run, the causes that you undertake, the relationships that you go in, can be a spontaneous outburst of the fullness that you already are. And that is what I want to leave you with. That is how life can be and should be. And it doesn't matter whether you get there. Don't obsess on. Am I there yet? Just obsess on. This is a vision. I'm going to move towards that. And am I closer there today than I was yesterday? And when you do that, you know, you'll get to the awesomeness that Vishen talked about. Thank you.