"I have some disciples who are pilots or engineers of this big airline, Boeing 747 and so on. And they tell me that to a get license you had to learn how to fly without seeing!
You had to fly only by instruments, because your senses will mislead you. At those altitudes and the varying pressures you may think you are going left, and you are going right. You may think you are going up but you are going down. Senses are adjusted for walking on the earth, not for 39,000 feet above sea level or 8,000 or whatever. So therefore you had to depend not on your senses but on the instruments. If the instrument says 'you are going up', you are going up. Whatever your ears are telling you, whatever your sense of balance is telling you, you have to watch the instrument.
So, like that, even in spiritual life, we have to follow the shastra. Even if our sentiment tells us something else, or 'this is a very good thing', we have to follow the shastra, we have to learn to fly by the instrument. Fly by the guidance given to us by the Sadhu, Shastra and Guru.
In this material world everything is relative and so is the material senses. So it will work only in certain situations.
HH Jayapataka Swami
Lecture in Potomac, USA
September 30th, 2005