How we choose comfort over consciousness, and decorate delusion instead of escaping it.
We light incense, rearrange furniture,
and hang wind chimes…
but the walls don’t fall.
The door is still locked.
And the soul still aches.
There’s a strange tragedy in the way we live. We are taught to optimize our lives and our environment to extract the best of the nature’s bounties and its energies. We love manipulations, exploitations, and anything else that adds to our desire to enjoy. We like to fix the vaastu – sometimes even feng shui – and to decorate, curate and accumulate the best of material paraphernalia, which let us ‘become’ happy. But what if all that we are trying to do is ‘optimizing’ the stench, gloominess, and damp darkness of a prison cell?
We make structural corrections or alternative remedies and symbols of prosperity. We paint our walls in colors that are supposed to be “right” for us, for invoking more auspiciousness. We place yantras, and other remedies like adding water elements, keeping chakras, growing specific plants and what not – all in the hope that favorable, material energies will flow better. And yet – like the adage “man proposes, God disposes” goes, our irritants and anxieties remain. They don’t leave us alone. The frustration and grief lingers on. The unspecified restlessness increases and we go on to search for more – the more that never ends.
Because no amount of vaastu can realign a lost soul that has forgotten its true nature and position.
The Illusion of Progress
We often mistake choice for freedom. These are two entirely different principles. Just because we have a bouquet of choices, it doesn’t mean we are free, because the matrix of choice-consequence is already predetermined. So, what freedom are we talking of? Each choice comes with a corresponding barrage of consequences – good and bad. But it doesn’t free us. In today’s world, we change jobs, partners, cities, and loyalties, just like we change clothes – thinking that it is OUR choice and that WE are in control. In a three dimensional world (our system is not designed to perceive anything more than that. And even there, we can think only in two dimensions), a pawn can move only on three axes. Also, a pawn moving diagonally is still a pawn, irrespective of the angle or trajectory.
Prahlāda Mahārāja, the five-year-old young devotee from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, saw through this rut even as a small child. He said:
matir na kṛṣṇe parataḥ svato vā
mitho ’bhipadyeta gṛha-vratānām
adānta-gobhir viśatāṁ tamisraṁ
punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānāmBecause of their uncontrolled senses, persons too addicted to materialistic life make progress toward the darkest region of hell. Such people cannot understand the value of Krishna consciousness, either by their own efforts, by instruction from others, or by joining with like-minded friends. Repeatedly chewing the chewed, their intelligence is lost.”
– Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 7.5.30
Even in a beautifully decorated, luxurious palace, the mind becomes a dungeon if it is untamed.
Decorating the Cage
Our obsession with managing energy flows – and our fortunes thereafter – in our homes, routines, even diets – is often an elaborate drama in life’s theatre. We are not even changing the plot. We are just dimming the lights and repainting the set and thinking it is a new stage or a new story.
yat saṁsparśa-jā bhogā duḥkha-yonaya eva te
ādya-antavantaḥ kaunteya na teṣu ramate budhaḥAn intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to contact with the material senses. O son of Kuntī, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise do not delight in them.
– Bhagavad-gītā 5.22
Still, we light the ‘expensive’ lavender-scented candles in a locked room, hoping it will drive away our karma. Still, we do our best to rearrange our sufferings, as if that futile endeavor would set us free.
The Real Misalignment
Often, we talk of alignment – very loosely used word for varieties of idiosyncracies. We talk about the alignment of chakras alignment of minds, alignment of goals, and of even relationships. But true misalignment starts on the spiritual level. When the soul is turned away from Krishna – from its original nature and object of love and service – all other alignments are superficial and temporary…and they for sure, will take us on a tangential journey.
Even the five elements that vaastu is supposed to help manipulate – earth, water, fire, air, ether – the panchabhutas – belong to Him.
apareyam itas tv anyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parām
jīva-bhūtāṁ mahā-bāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagatBesides this inferior nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living entities who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature.
– Bhagavad-gītā 7.5
When we exploit without remembrance and acknowledgement, and when we lay claim without reverence or respect for the origins, we create imbalance not in our homes, but in our hearts and our very existence. This, no vaastu can fix!
Suffering Is the Soul’s GPS
We don’t suffer because the world is broken. We suffer because we are misplaced – living in dissonance with who we are.
mamaivāṁśo jīva-loke jīva-bhūtaḥ sanātanaḥ
manaḥ-ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛti-sthāni karṣatiThe living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.
– Bhagavad-gītā 15.7
Struggle is not a punishment. It is a symptom of something misplaced. It points us back to the Source.
What Prahlāda Maharaj Taught the World
In the seventh canto of the Bhāgavatam, Prahlāda says:
na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇuṁ
durāśayā ye bahir-artha-māninaḥ
andhā yathāndhair upanīyamānās
te ’pīśa-tantryām uru-dāmni baddhāḥPersons who are strongly entrapped by the consciousness of enjoying material life, and who have therefore accepted as their leader or guru a similar blind man, cannot understand that the goal of life is to return to Viṣṇu. Such people follow their blind leaders and remain bound by the ropes of strong material desires.
– Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 7.5.31
This is our real ‘vaastu problem.’ We keep taking advice from the blind – from media, materialist influencers, mindless success coaches, even foolish friends and relatives who have no sense of belonging or direction themselves. Vaastu Shastra technically means the science of how to design the place of dwelling, for creating harmonious living that aligns with natural elements and energies. And yet, the soul completely forgets the body inside which it is dwelling – the precious temporary home for it, in this material world. And this realization, distinction, and discernment is possible only in the human body. Instead of aligning ourselves with the science of this bio-home of the soul and with the help of Sri Guru, anchoring it in the one true goal – use this body to get out of this body permanently – we are lost in meaningless manipulation of everything else. We are not designing or architecting our lives to help us reach the heart’s longing for its real home.
What True Alignment Looks Like
Real vaastu is not about where you place your bed. It’s about where you place your faith and dependence. It’s not about opening your home’s northeast corner – it’s about opening the soul’s remembrance and finding the corner where He stands – quietly. As a witness. The soul is not meant to be cozy inside an incompatible body. It can never be. It is meant to be conscious. It is not meant to fit in – it is meant to fly back home.
We were not meant to decorate a delusion. We were meant to walk out of it.
A Lemon – sliced or juiced – is still sour. Rearranging suffering is still suffering. But reinstating the ourselves in our original divine identity, in our relationship with Krishna — that is freedom. Real Freedom. That is the only vaastu worth pursuing.
FOOTNOTE: Lot of people use vaastu principles to build temples, places of auspicious activities, even beautiful homes. It is not wrong – but like Prahlada says, we should not become bahir artah maninah
Dedicated to His DIvine grace AC Brahtivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada for teaching us the REAL alignment techniques.
REAL FREEDOM! 