September 13th 2021 | Notes by Dwija Ramesh

Discourse:

We started with an activity where Sumanji showed us a long piece of rock with notches in it and put us into breakout rooms to talk about what the object could possibly be and how we could use it.

Our guesses:

• Instrument – play music by hitting it
• Piece from a rock climbing wall 
• Shoe tree – insert in a shoe
• Shoe horn – used to put your foot into the show(mostly in shoe stores)
• Tooth of a prehistoric animal – study of prehistoric times
• Like a stake in the ground – to keep something connected to the ground

Answer:

• It is a rock from Trinidad that is from a river. It is kind of a souvenir that Sumanji has and he is now inclined to use it in all of the different ways we came up with.

Part 2: Consider yourself as the object. What is the purpose of your body/mind; what is your purpose and how is it achieved.

We see that so many people pursue worldly success yet, we see that they are not equally happy. The happiness is fleeting no matter how seemingly great it is in the initial moments. Then what? The purpose of all the objects we have is only able to be accessed because they come with a manual; a guide. For life, for us as an object, our manual is our scriptures. These scriptures have been shared by scientists who share the subjective science – the science of our inner world. How each one of us can use our equipment in the world for us to realize where happiness is and the nature of that happiness.

The manual for this subjective science is the Bhagavad Gita. The three parts are 

1. Karma
   1. Action
   2. Purifying the mind by decreasing the number of thoughts and improving the quality of thoughts – rising above our likes and dislikes by doing our responsibilities
2. Bhakti
   1. Devotion
   2. Harness the mind by unifying the direction of our thoughts
   3. By thinking clearly about something we love, our thoughts will naturally flow there and when it does, our mind is extremely potent 
3. Jnana Yoga
   1. Knowledge
   2. Know your true nature and realize your true nature – until you make this your experience, the knowledge is only academic

RAW

We are about to spend 30+ hours together. What do you want from these 30+ hours? How do you hope to achieve what you want?