text
stringlengths 108
133k
|
|---|
# Bhagavad Gita Decoded
**satsanghs delivered to Swamis, Ananda Samajis, Satsanghis and members of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Sangha all over the world.**
*Bhagavad Gita*
Decoded
by
# His Holiness THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM
with the original Sanskrit texts, transliteration, English translation
*All meditation techniques, practices and procedures described or recommended in this book, are suitable for practice only under the direct supervision of an instructor, trained and ordained by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Further, you should consult with your personal physician to determine whether those techniques, practices and procedures are suitable for you in relation to your own health, fitness and ability.*
*This publication is not intended to be a substitute for a personal medical attention, examination,diagnosis or treatment. Should any person engage in any of the techniques, practices or procedures described or recommended in this book, he would be doing so at his own risk, unless he has received a personal recommendation from his own physician and from an instructor trained and ordained by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.*
#### **Bhagavad Gita Decoded (English)**
#### **Published by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM University Press Copyright Table of Contents
| I. | Bhagavad Gītā: A Background |
| :--- | :-------------------------------------- |
| | Mahābhārat Is The Story Of Your Life |
| | Amidst The Warfield Appears The Song Of God |
| | Introduction To Bhagavad Gītā Decoded |
| | Gītā Belongs To The Whole Universe |
| II. | Foreword: Bhagavad Gītā And The Four Tattvas |
| | Mahābhārat, The Personification Of Gītā |
## **chapter 1**
| Śastras, Stotras, Sūtras | | | |
| :----------------------- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ | | | |
| Beyond Scriptures | | | |
| Planet Earth Is A Battlefield | | | |
| Ego Needs Support | | | |
| The War Begins | | | |
| Arjuna Falters | | | |
| Intelligence Questions | | | |
| Arjuna's Dilemma | | | |
| Rigors Of Incompletions | | | |
| Good Men Do Not Kill | | | |
| The Breakdown Into Powerlessness | | | |
| :------------------------------- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| | | | |
#### **You Are God**
| Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ | |
| :--------------------------------- | :-- |
| Drop The Powerlessness And Stand Up | |
| Surrender Is Not Based On Powerlessness | |
| We Never Cease To Exist | |
| The Only Reality Is Impermanence | |
| You Are Immortal | |
| Death Is But A Passage | |
| Responsibility Of The Kṣatriya | |
| Experience Matters, Not Knowledge | |
| Act Without Worry About Result | |
| Be Steady With Authenticity In Action |
| Follow That Complete Man! |
| Monkeys In Your Mind |
| Wake Up! |
## **chapter 3**
#### **Beauty Of Purposelessness**
| Karma Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| To Act Or Not To Act | |
| To Act Is Human Nature | |
| Selfless Enriching Liberates | |
| Enriching Sacrifice Or Sin | |
| Acting Without Attachment | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Responsibility, The Space Of Leadership |
| Role Of The Wise | |
| Do As I Teach With Authenticity | |
| Do Your Responsibility | |
| Control Your Senses | |
## **The Path Of Knowledge**
| Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| I Taught This Science To Sun | |
| I Myself Appear, Age After Age | |
| To Know Me Is To Be Liberated | |
| Understand And Be Unaffected By Action |
| Action In Inaction And Inaction In Action |
| Equanimity in Success and Failure |
| Know Sacrifice And Be Purified | |
| You Are No Sinner | |
| Self-Doubt Destroys | |
## **chapter 5**
### **Live All Your Possibilities**
| Sannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| :------------------------ | :-- |
| Action Or Renunciation | |
| Devotion Above Action | |
| Controlling The Mind | |
| Cleansing Ignorance With Knowledge | |
| :------------------------------- | :-- |
| The Dog And The Dog-Eater | |
| The Path To Self Realization | |
| Know Me And Be In Bliss | |
#### **Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion**
| Dhyāna Yogaḥ | |
| :--------------------------------- | :-- |
| Attain The State Of Yoga | |
| Are You Your Friend Or Your Enemy? | |
| Bring Integrity To Control The Senses |
| Neither Too Much Nor Too Little | |
| Self Is Satisfied In The Self By The Self |
| Be In The Self And See The Supreme | |
| Controlling The Wavering Mind | |
| Where Do I Go Without Yoga? | |
| Rare Birth Of A Yogi | |
| Become A Yogi | |
## **chapter 7**
#### **Listen, Cognize And Radiate**
| Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------- | :-- |
| One In A Billion Reaches Me |
| I Am The Thread! | |
| I Am Eternal | |
| Four Pious Men | |
| I Am In Your Heart | |
| :----------------- | :-- |
| No One Knows Me | |
| No Sin, No Virtue | |
#### **The Art Of Leaving**
| Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Knowing Him At The Time Of Death | |
| Your Last Memory Follows You In Next Birth |
| Be Sure To Reach Me | |
| Remember Me Constantly | |
| Brahma's Day And Night | |
| My Supreme Abode | |
| Passing In Light | |
| Be Fixed In Devotion | |
## **chapter 9**
### **Secret Of All Secrets**
| Rājavidyā Rājaguhya Yogaḥ | |
| :--------------------------------- | :-- |
| Eternal, Easy And Joyfully Done | |
| All Rest In Me | |
| How To Be Unattached | |
| Worship Me In Any Form But With Devotion |
| I Am Immortality And Death! | |
| Reside In Me, I Give And Preserve | |
| Life After Life | |
#### L Bhagavad Gita Decoded
| Anyone Can Reach Me | | | | | |
| :------------------ | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- | :-- |
| | | | | | |
## **chapter 10**
#### **You Are The Ultimate**
| Vibhūti Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Because You Are My Dear Friend | |
| I Am The Source | |
| I Create You | |
| Experience The Light Of Knowledge |
| Know Yourself By Yourself | |
| I Am The Beginning, Middle And End |
| I Am Banyan Tree, I Am Time | |
| I Am Rāma | |
| There Is No End To My Glories | |
## **chapter 11**
#### **Kṛṣṇa: The Cosmic Window**
| Viśvarūpa Darśan Yogaḥ | |
| :---------------------- | :-- |
| I Wish To See Your Divine Form |
| Let Me Give You The Divine Eye |
| A Thousand Blazing Suns | |
| Worlds Tremble with Fear | |
| Tell Me Who You Are | |
| Get Up And Gain Glory, Be Not Afraid |
| You Are Everything and Everywhere |
| Kṛṣṇa, Yādava, My Friend | |
| Your Familiar Form | |
| :-------------------------- | :-- |
| Only You Have Seen This Form | |
| Only In This Way Can You Reach Me |
| Bhakti Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Who is Perfect? | |
| Fix Your Mind On Me | |
| They Too Attain Me | |
| Formless Is Difficult | |
| Freedom From Birth And Death | |
| Live In Me Always | |
| Practice To Perfection | |
| Work For Me | |
| Attain Peace | |
| He Is Very Dear To Me | |
| Be Unaffected | |
| Selfless In Action | |
| Beyond Love And Hate | |
| This Is Whom I Love | |
| Kṣetra Kṣetrajña Vibhāga Yogaḥ | What You Know Is Not You |
| :----------------------------- | :------------------------- |
| | |
| Consciousness And Conscience | |
| :-------------------------- | :-- |
| Inner Science Technology | |
| Consciousness Is Eternal | |
| Understanding The Energy | |
| Many People, Many Paths | |
| We Are Brahman | |
| Soul Situated In Body Does Nothing |
#### **Find Your Root Pattern And Complete**
| Guṇatraya Vibhāga Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------- | :--- |
| Why Kṛṣṇa Repeats | |
| Natural Attributes, Guṇas | |
| Guarding The Senses | |
| The Depression Of Success | |
| Where Do We Go From Here | |
| Going Beyond The Guṇas | |
| Expression Of The Divine | |
## **chapter 15**
#### **No Questions, Only Doubts**
| Puruṣottama Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Journey Into The Causal Body | |
| Cutting Down The Tree | |
| Completion And Creation Techniques |
| Mind Is The Conditioning | |
| You Are Your Saṁskāras | |
| :---------------------- | :-- |
| Awareness Not Achievement | |
| From Me Comes Memory And Knowledge |
| Collective Consciousness | |
### **You And Me**
| Daivāsura Saṁpad Vibhāga Yogaḥ | |
| :----------------------------- | :-- |
| Qualifications Of Divinity | |
| You Are A Demon If | |
| How To Save Our Planet? | |
| How To Save Ourselves? | |
| Sensory Traps | |
| Cast Into Suffering | |
| Of Gold And Women | |
## **chapter 17**
### **Authenticity: Straight Way To Liberation**
| Śraddhatraya Vibhāga Yogaḥ | | |
| :-------------------------- | :-- | :-- |
| Way To Worship | | |
| Don't Torture Me | | |
| Trust And Practice Authenticity |
| We Are What We Eat | | |
| Enriching Without Expectation | | |
| Austerity Of Deeds, Words And Thoughts |
| How To Give? | | |
#### **Drop Everything And Surrender**
| | Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| :-- | :----------------------------- | :-- |
| | The Act And The Actor | |
| | Never Give Up Selfless Enriching |
| | Duty Without Delusion | |
| | Technology Of Surrender | |
| | Extreme Statement | |
| | Components Of Action | |
| | Meanings Of Life | |
| | Delusion Of Senses | |
| | Rightful Conduct, Not To Perfection |
| | Instructions For Enlightenment | |
| | Work Always Under My Protection | |
| | Root Patterns Will Drive You | |
| | Surrender To Him Completely | |
| | Surrender To Me, I Will Liberate You |
| | Without A Doubt, He Comes Back To Me |
| | Kṛṣṇa Is Present | |
| II. | Bhagavad Gītā Verses | |
| | Invocation Verses | |
| :-------- | :------------------ | :-- |
| Chapter 1: | Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ | |
| Chapter 2: | Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 3: | Karma Yogaḥ | |
| :-------- | :---------------------- | :----------------------- | :-- |
| | Chapter 4: | Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 5: | Sannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 6: | Dhyāna Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 7: | Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 8: | Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 9: | Rājavidyā Rājaguhya Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 10: | Vibhūti Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 11: | Viśvarūpa Darśan Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 12: | Bhakti Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 13: | Kṣetra Kṣetrajña Vibhāga Yogaḥ |
| | Chapter 14: | Guṇatraya Vibhāga Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 15: | Puruṣottama Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 16: | Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ |
| | Chapter 17: | Śraddhatraya Vibhāga Yogaḥ | |
| | Chapter 18: | Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ | |
| | | | |
| II. | Appendix | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | Glossary | | |
| | About His Holiness THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM |
# Bhagavad Gita: A Background - -
*vasudeva sutaṁ devaṁ kamsa cānūra mardanam I devakī paramānandaṁ kṛṣṇam vande jagad gurum II*
> 'I salute unto you Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa, Guru (master) of the world, son of Vasudeva, supreme bliss of Devakī, destroyer of Kamsa and Cāṇūra'
Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā is the ultimate sacred scripture of yoga, *Yogaśastra* and the pristine glory of the Vedic culture, the eternal living tradition called *sanātana-dharma*. It belongs to the whole Universe for it is delivered to the Universe by the source and embodiment of Universe. We salute and bow down to Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who spoke the Bhagavad Gītā out of His infinite love and compassion for all beings.
Whenever unrighteousness, *adharma* becomes predominant and *dharma*, righteous living declines and the Yoga of Enlightenment is lost, *Parabrahma* Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Consciousness appears again and again to revive this sacred yoga, to protect and to enrich the devoted beings; and destroys *adharma* to re-establish the pure and everlasting *dharma*—the Science of Enlightenment. *dharma saṁsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge*—this is Śrī Kṛṣṇa's promise and the essence and spirit of the Gītā.
Gītā is also called *Brahmavidyā*—the Knowledge of Brahman, the supreme absolute truth; it is *Jīvan Mukti Vijñāna*—the Science of Living Enlightenment. As with all scriptures, it is the knowledge and experience that is transmitted verbally as *Śri Krṣṇārjuna Saṁvād*, an intimate dialogue between Master of the world, *Jagadguru* Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa and His dear devotee and disciple, Arjuna. It is called *śruti* in Saṃskṛit, meaning something that is heard.
Gītā, as Bhagavad Gītā is generally called, translates literally from Saṃskṛit as *'Sacred Song of God'.* Unlike the *Vedas* and *Upaniṣads*, which are stand alone expressions of Truth, the Gītā is written into the greatest Hindu epic, the Mahābhārat, called a *purāṇa*, an ancient historical happening. It is part of the recorded history of the greatest tradition, the paramount civilization in all its Divine grandeur and its human complexity, so to speak. |
The Mahābharāt war is a representation of life as it was lived in that age. Vyāsa, its author is an unbiased historian who recorded the whole history as it happened without trying to apply any makeup. People ask whether the Mahābharāt war happened at all!
Let me tell you this: If the Mahābharāt was a story and not history, Vyāsa should receive multiple Pulitzer prizes for his highly creative work! The Mahābharāt is the longest literary work in the whole world with hundred thousand Saṃskṛit verses—the longest poem ever written with such delicate harmony of unmatched poetic perfection. It is larger than the Greek epics. Vyāsa had no computer, no tape recorder with speech-to-text capabilities. He dictated and Lord Ganeṣa wrote it down!
The Mahābharāt is like an ocean. It has at least 10,000 stories woven into it. All of these are seamlessly woven into the main text even though each is an independent event. Just imagine the effort required to create hundreds of thousands of characters and maintain the integrity of these characters throughout the epic without the help of editors. Do you think anyone could do it today?
Because it is impossible to create such a work of fiction, one needs to accept this as a compilation of true incidents that reflect the lifestyle in what is referred to as Tretā yuga, third quarter of Time, in our scriptures. This is how people behaved then and how people behave now. What happened then repeats itself now, again and again!
The Great War of Mahābhārat is the fight between the positive and negative thought patterns of the mind called the *saṁskāras* or the root thought patterns—meaning the deep identity or the earliest memory you carry and create about you and others. Please understand, don't think you carry only the identity about you, you also carry an identity of the world inside you and look at the world only through that. That is what I call root thought pattern—the identity through which you see you and the world.
The positive thought patterns are the Pānḍava princes and the negative thought patterns are the Kaurava princes. Kurukṣetra or the battlefield is the body. Arjuna is the individual consciousness and Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the enlightened Master, the supreme consciousness driving and guiding the individual consciousness.
The various commanders who led the Kaurava army represent the major incompletions of root patterns and conflicting patterns that the individual consciousness faces in its journey to Enlightenment or liberation, *mokṣa*. Bhīṣma, the grand patriarch of the Kuru clan who embodies *dharma*, represents the pattern of parental and societal conditioning. Droṇa, the teacher of both the Kauravas and the Pānḍavas, represents the conditioning from teachers who provide knowledge including spiritual guidance.
Śakuni, the maternal uncle of Duryodhana embodies the pattern of self-hatred, which is cunningness personified. Karṇa represents the restrictive influence of good deeds such as charity and compassion done out of incompletion from the pattern of feeling deprived. Finally Duryodhana represents the ego or the self-denial pattern, which is root of the root patterns and is the last to fall.
Parental and societal conditioning has to be overcome by rebelling
against conventions. This is why, traditionally, those seeking the path of enlightenment are required to renounce the world as Sannyāsi and move away from civilization. This conditioning does not die as long as the body lives, but its influence drops.
Droṇa represents all the best knowledge one imbibes and the teachers one encounters, who guide us but are unable to take us through to the ultimate flowering of enlightenment. It is difficult to give them up since one feels grateful to them. This is where the Enlightened Master, the incarnation steps in and guides us.
Karṇa is the repository of all good deeds and it is his good deeds that stand in the way of his own Enlightenment. Śrī Kṛṣṇa has to take the load of Karṇa's *puṇya,* his meritorious deeds, before he could be liberated. The Enlightened Master guides one to drop one's attachment to good deeds arising out of what are perceived to be charitable and compassionate intentions. He also shows us that the quest for and the experience of enlightenment is the ultimate act of compassion that one can offer to the world.
Finally one reaches Duryodhana, one's ego or root-pattern, the most difficult to conquer as it leads one to self-destruction. One needs the full help of the Master here. It is subtle work and even the Master's help may not be obvious, since at this point, sometimes the ego makes us deny and disconnect from the Master as well.
The Great War was between 180 million (18 crore) people—110 million on the Kaurava side representing our negative root patterns and conflicting patterns (saṁskāras) and 70 million on the Pānḍava side representing our positive patterns. The War lasted 18 days and nights. The number eighteen (18) has a great mystical significance. It essentially signifies our ten (10) senses that are made up of five *jñānendriya*—the senses of perception like taste, sight, smell, hearing and touch, and five *karmendriya*—the senses initiating action like speech, bodily movements, etc., added to our eight (8) kinds of thoughts like lust, greed, etc. All eighteen need to be dropped for self-realization, completion or liberation, *mokṣa*!
Mahābhārat is not just an epic history. It is not merely the fight between good and evil. It is the dissolution of both positive and negative *saṁskāras* (root patterns) that reside in our bio-memory or body-mind system, which must happen for the ultimate liberation. It is a tale of the path of living advaita, the process of powerfully living, radiating enlightenment and causing enlightenment for humanity.
#### **Gītā Belongs To The Whole Universe**
#### **Mahābhārat is the living legend. Bhagavad Gītā is the manual for Enlightenment.**
Understand, the Gītā is not just for the people who worship Kṛṣṇa or who worship Śiva or who worship Arjuna or who worship Buddha or Mahāvira. Gītā is spoken by the Cosmos through Kṛṣṇa. That is why Vyāsa is using the word *Bhagavān* for Śrī Kṛṣṇa throughout the Gītā. So, it is universal. Nobody can claim it or own it as it is given by the Universe to the human society, to the whole civilization. It is not a personal property of anybody; not even the personal property of Hindus. Once it is delivered, it belongs to the whole world!
The essence of the whole Bhagavad Gītā is the Master awakening responsibility in the disciple. That is why everywhere the Gītā talks only about responsibility!
Through '*karmaṇy ev'ādhikāraste mā phaleṣu kadācana* (2.47)—you have the right to work, but never to the outcome of the work', through '*tvakvottiṣṭha parantapa* (2.3)—Giving up your powerlessness, arise, O Parantapa' and through '*uddhared ātmanā'tmānaṁ* (6.5)—raise yourself by yourself ', Śrī Kṛṣṇa is awakening the responsibility in Arjuna—Guru is awakening the responsibility in all of us through the awakening of Arjuna, the hero of Gītā.
When you study the Gītā, you will find that Arjuna's logic seems to be very intelligent. He does not want to fight. But Kṛṣṇa emphasizes the intelligent ones need to enter into the fight from the space of *advaita* (non-duality), with the power and joy of feeling responsibility.
Only to a close friend with whom you can open your heart can your struggles be opened. Only when you are able to respect somebody more and more by knowing his struggles and conflicts, by knowing the success he achieved, you become a friend to him. But, by knowing somebody's struggles and conflicts, if you start judging him, there is no friendliness. It is an envious relationship waiting to vomit enmity. It is a seed sown with poison.
Here, Kṛṣṇa shares Gītā to His own closest dearmost friend, Arjuna, who is beyond any envy or incompletion, to whom He can really show *viśvarūpa* (cosmic form) and reveal all His dimensions, with whom He has a freedom to just say, 'Do not yield to this degrading impotence of powerlessness,' 'Do it Kaunteya! O son of Kuntī, just do it,' '*nānuśocitum arhasi* (2.25)—Do not grieve for the body,' and '*mat-karma-kṛn mat-paramo mad-bhakaḥ* (11.55)—Do My work! Be My devotee! Always undividedly think of Me, you shall enter into Me.'
Finally Kṛṣṇa goes to the extreme of saying, '*sarva dharmān parityaja mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja* (18.66)—Give up all your concepts and ideas about *dharma*, about right and wrong. Just surrender to Me. I will liberate you.'
To say these words of surrender what an intimate understanding, what a feeling connection, what a space of completion between Master-disciple, beloved-friend should have been there between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa summarizes His Gītā saying drop your life at My feet. I will not cheat you, I will think for you. I will see to it you achieve the ultimate—*mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucah*—I will liberate you, do not fear or worry!
Like Arjuna many thousand years ago, you are here on the warfield of your life in a dialogue with the living Enlightened Master, the rare living Incarnation in this book.
This is a tremendous opportunity to resolve all life questions, to complete with root thought patterns and to clear all self-doubts by listening into the Master's words and allowing His energy to rewrite your future! This is an extraordinary possibility to awaken your true nature, to arise with your inner powers, and to cause your highest reality—with the Master driving your Self into the absolute victory of life—Living Enlightenment, Living Advaita.
> *yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanurdharaḥ I tatra śrīrvijaya bhūtir dhrūvā nītir matirmama II 18.78*
'Wherever there is Yogeśvara Kṛṣṇa, the Master of all mystics, and wherever there is Pārtha (Arjuna), the supreme carrier of bow and arrow, there will certainly be opulence, victory, extraordinary powers, and morality. That is my opinion.'
# Foreword: Bhagavad Gita And The Four Tattvas
### **The Great 'Why'**
The *Bhagavad Gītā* opens with the great 'WHY', reflecting the personal crisis that we all face at some point of our lives.
We are drawn into the protagonist Arjuna's life at a crucial moment, when the renowned young prince is getting ready for a bloody battle against a huge army consisting of his own family, cousin and teachers. Struggling with fears, a misconstrued sense of duty and an awakening consciousness, the young prince is caught in the dilemma of his life.
Even after five thousand years, Arjuna's dilemma is still alive in humanity's experience of life. Our questions are hardly different from Arjuna's...
- Why are we here?
- Why do we do what we do in our lives?
- Why don't we find fulfillment, even after years of working for success in the world?
- Why do more and more challenges await us, even after we solve and overcome numerous challenges?
- How can we become spiritually mature and integrated individuals? Why is this path even required?
This '*Why*?' can be answered in a very simple way—You are here to manifest your ultimate Possibility!
But each one of you has to discover your own answer to this '*Why*'. Any other answer can only be an inspiration for you to discover your *own* answer. We can only move when we have the ability to handle this great '*Why*'. Whether you know it or not, only your deepest conviction about your '*Why'*, only your deepest clarity about your purpose, can give you the inspiration, energy and courage to face life.
This great 'Why' is the seed of God himself! This seed is put inside you when you are sent to planet Earth, so that you do not rest until you become a tree and bear fruit. Please understand, every seed has an energy called *vīrya*, which does not rest till it produces more seeds. Even if you eat the seed, you cannot destroy it, because that *vīrya* still goes into your body and does its job in some other way! The question 'Why' is the *vīrya* put into your very DNA structure to help you realize yourself.
This is the journey that Arjuna undertakes through the Gītā. Under the compassionate guidance of the enlightened master Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna faces and realizes the meaning of the great 'Why', to become a realized soul.
Just like Arjuna, you too will not be able to rest until you realize the meaning of the great 'Why' for you.
Just as Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna's questions, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM addresses the readers' questions and doubts, guiding us on the path of transformation, refusing to give up on us until we discover our full potential and live like Gods on earth. As you read this book, you will find the presence of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM guiding you to discover your own unique yet universal path to realization.
## **Life Is Expansion**
#### **The Art of Listening**
Through the entire opening chapter of the Gītā, it is Arjuna who continuously speaks, while Kṛṣṇa listens, listens and listens!
Only an intelligent man will allow the other person to speak. We all continuously speak to each other, but a 'real' conversation does not happen. We simply carry out simultaneous monologues with each other. We are polite enough to pretend that we are listening, so that we will, in turn, be heard. You need intelligence to allow the other person to speak. You need intelligence to listen!
When you listen to others, you listen to yourself. And when you don't listen to others, you also don't listen to yourself. Are you getting it? Only when you listen to you, you will be able to listen to others. When you listen to others, you will also listen to YOU! Because any listening that happens, happens from the space of completion. Please understand, you can only listen when you are complete. If there is any incompletion in you, you will not be able to listen.
What is incompletion? For example, you are sitting here right now, hearing me speak, but you are not listening to me, you are thinking—'I have not done this, I have not done that, this has not happened, that has not happened, I am restless'–that is incompletion. If you have such incompletions inside, be very clear, you will not be listening to me. You may be sitting here out of compulsion or some other reason, but you will not be listening to me. And when you don't listen, more and more incompletions happen. It is a vicious circle.
If you *listen*, especially to the words that come out of the space of completion of an enlightened being, you will suddenly see that the energy of those very words goes and changes your inner space.
See, when you come to me and tell me about your problems, I give you my authentic listening. That is why you suddenly feel light; you suddenly feel that all your problems are not big anymore. It is the power of listening. Listening awakens your intuition. Listening awakens your innermost intelligence. Listening is GOD! |
At the root of *mamakāra* is your *jīva*—your soul, in which all of us are one. If you suppress it in one body, it simply comes out in another body. When you are suppressing your expectations (*mamakāra)* about you in your own body, it simply comes out as *anyakāra* in another's body. Nobody else is forcing you. It is your own expectation about you, giving you one more chance! Now, it is no more somebody else's *anyakāra*. You are simply expanding to fulfill your own *mamakāra* and *ahaṁkāra*.
Others' expectation about you is nothing but a reminder, another chance that Bhagavān (Divine) gives you to realize yourself. When you realize that this is also your own expectation about you, you will have fulfillment!
The *Bhagavad Gītā* is the manifestation of Arjuna's suppressed longing to realize his own divine self. With authenticity, Arjuna discovers his power of thinking. He is now able to dive deeper into his suppressed thoughts and allows them to surface in Kṛṣṇa's Divine presence!
In the early chapters, Kṛṣṇa shares His *anyakāra* for Arjuna. He urges Arjuna to realize his eternal blissful *self*. He gives him an intellectual understanding of this truth. Through the chapters of *Jñana-karmasannyāsa Yogaḥ* and *Sannyāsa Yogaḥ,* Kṛṣṇa guides Arjuna on the ways to achieve this.
Kṛṣṇa gives the ultimate winning strategy of life to Arjuna—to stand up with the courage of authenticity in all his actions—*yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam.* He urges Arjuna to devote himself to yoga to expand himself to his peak energy. Kṛṣṇa then deepens Arjuna's understanding by revealing to him the deeper truths of death, renunciation and *sannyāsa*.
Once this understanding has settled in Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa leads him to the next *tattva*, Responsibility, the power of feeling.
#### **Responsibility—Waking Up To Your Highest Possibility**
Kṛṣṇa's teachings in the next chapter, *Dhyāna Yoga*, can be summarized in these words—'Look in' and 'Take responsibility to raise yourself '.
*Listen! Responsibility is the key that awakens the power of feeling.* The power of feeling is unlocked when you recognize yourself as a leader and take responsibility for everything in and around you!
Here, Kṛṣṇa teaches Arjuna the techniques to go beyond the mind and senses and become liberated. He guides Arjuna to rise to the level of *Īśvaratva*, leadership consciousness and become like Himself.
That is why Kṛṣṇa says,
*uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānaṁ avasāyadet I ātmaiva hy ātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ II 6.5*
'You are your own friend; you are your own enemy. Evolve yourself through the Self and do not degrade yourself.'
By this Kṛṣṇa means—if you know the technique of how to raise yourself by yourself, you are the friend of your Self. If you let yourself down, you are the enemy of your Self!
> Listen: Responsibility means thinking, feeling, acting and cognizing life from the truth that YOU are the source of everything; therefore, you are responsible for all happenings inside you and around you.
I know the big question you will all have now! You must be thinking, 'How can I be responsible for everything happening around me? I can be held responsible for what is happening inside me. How can I be held responsible for what is happening outside me? For example, if an accident happens in my life, how can I be responsible?'
Everybody asks this question. Let me answer you.
- A person who does not feel responsible even for his own actions is an animal. He lives at a very low level of consciousness!
- A person who feels responsible for his own actions is a human being. He lives at the middle level of consciousness.
- A person who takes responsibility even for others' actions is Divine. He lives in leadership consciousness, *Īśvaratva*.
Please understand, only when you feel that you are responsible for everything happening in and around you, you will start looking into the truth and start seeing the possibility for a solution. Only when you take responsibility will you even find the solution!
Listen. When you take responsibility, the higher energies express through you. Even if you take one step towards responsibility, the Cosmos takes a thousand steps towards you, taking responsibility for you. When you are in the space of responsibility, both your inner space and your outer space support you. The whole Universe supports you, because the Universe experiences its fulfillment through the cognition of those who feel responsible.
Take responsibility in every situation. When you don't feel responsible, you are a drop in the ocean. When you feel responsible, you are the ocean in a drop! When you take responsibility, *Īśvaratva,* leadership consciousness starts happening in you.
*The power of feeling is nothing but your ability to realize yourself as the source of all the happenings in your life.* This understanding gives you tremendous control over your own life and gives you the power to be a positive influence in the life of others.
With responsibility, life happens to you. But life always demands
your expansion, because expansion is the natural flow of life. The more you engage with life, the greater the expansion that will be demanded of you. When you take responsibility for whatever is seen and experienced by you, that which is unseen and un-experienced by you takes responsibility for you! If you take responsibility for the known part of God and the world, the unknown part of God and the world takes responsibility for you. When God takes responsibility for you, you are God. You are an Incarnation!
Kṛṣṇa guides Arjuna to realize Kṛṣṇa consciousness through the *tattva* of responsibility. Kṛṣṇa's teaching of responsibility culminates in *Viśvarūpa Darśan,* where He blesses Arjuna with a glimpse of His Cosmic dimension, His infinite expansion—a foretaste of Arjuna's own Enlightenment.
Listen.
Your expansion frightens you. Whenever bigness is demanded of you, whenever you feel you are being 'forced' to expand, you shrink even further into your comfort zone. Your tiredness, your weakness, your powerlessness all these are nothing but the resistance you have to seeing your own bigness!
That is what becomes of Arjuna after *Viśvarūpa Darśan*, the fear of expansion overtakes him. But being devoted to Kṛṣṇa, the embodiment of Cosmos, Arjuna responsibly expands and awakens his Enlightenment with the next *tattva* of enriching, the power of living. Kṛṣṇa assures him after the *darśan* that only by taking the responsibility to enrich others—by doing His work, by being undividedly devoted onto Him, can Arjuna expand himself into his highest possibility—*madkarma-kṛn mad-paramo mad-bhaktaḥ* (11.55)!
#### **Enriching With Enlightenment**
We now come to the fourth *tattva*—enriching. Enriching means infusing all these three *tattvas* continuously, in your life and others' lives!
## Bhagavad Gita Decoded
that he was a thief and had burgled the palace the previous night. The master was aghast.
He started weeping loudly, 'What a great sin I have committed by allowing a thief to spend a night in my monastery! I gave him food too. What can I do to make up for my sin?'
At that time, he heard a voice from the sky, weeping even louder than him, 'You are upset and weeping because you have looked after him for one night. What about me? I have been looking after him everyday for all these years!'
The master had actually become egoistic. He started feeling holier than others because of which he looked down upon the thief as a less holy person. God never differentiates between a sinner and a saint. These are all societal.
Every atom on Earth is divine. When we just realize this very life is a divine gift to us, our attitude changes from taking life for granted to one of gratitude to Existence for everything! Have you worked hard to earn this life? With every breath that you take every moment, the life energy flows into you and keeps you alive. We take for granted the life energy that converts bread into blood. The mind continuously runs behind 'more and more.'
If we make two lists: one list of what we have, what Existence has showered upon us and a second list of what we really want to have to feel happier, we will quickly realize how much longer the first list is. Have we ever strongly considered what our life would be like if we did not have even a small limb? Can you imagine the limitations we would have without a toe or thumb, not to speak of our eyes or ears? We take so much for granted. We assume that what we have been given is our rightful due and so we only crave for more. We are here as gifts of Nature. Instead of being grateful to Existence for what we have been showered with, we complain about what we do not have.
Remember that when God does not grant us what we seek, He is
doing it out of deep compassion and wisdom. He does not grant many of our prayers because He knows that far better than us. We have no wisdom when it comes to asking.
The Divine is far wiser and knows what we really need. There is a huge difference between what we want and what we need. For the next couple of days, just try living with the attitude of gratitude, with love for everyone and everything around you, with a deep completion. Automatically, you will begin to experience every person and every happening as a unique creation of Existence, as a reflection of the Divine. Just decide consciously that you will respond with love, whatever may be the situation. Just the very attitude change will bring tremendous peace and relaxation into you.
Kṛṣṇa says, when you look every single thing without differentiation, without fear or favoritism, without attachment, then you are a true renunciate, a true *Sannyāsi.*
## **Death, Only A Passage**
Can you look at death and birth in the same manner? We celebrate birth, we condole death. Why? Both are passages. Neither is a beginning nor an end. The cycle of life is continuous. We move seamlessly from birth through living into death and again into birth. It is just that in this life, we do not remember what happened in the period between our death in our previous birth and our birth this time. That loss of memory is for our own safety. We are perturbed by that loss of memory.
What we do not know frightens us. If we understand that death is no different from birth and that life after death may be no different from our current life, there will be no fear. This can happen when we have the experience of death while we are still alive. This is what we teach in our programs. An important thing: How we look at death reflects a lot of the way we look at life. I can say our perception of death changes our way of life.
Death is feared by most of us because it is considered a discontinuity. When we realize that death is just a continuation in some other form, we will not fear death. Then the joy of birth and the sadness at death will both be seen as the same. Our idea of birth and death is direct evidence of how we look at various situations in life. That is why understanding about birth and death is actually fundamental to leading a life of realization.
Understand, one who knows that what he sees is illusion, just a play of mind, he will not fear death. As long as we hold on to this illusion created by the mind that we call reality, we have a feeling of losing it when we think of death. When we see pain and pleasure as the same and are not affected by either of them, we will be free from the fear of death. Because then we realize that nothing is taken away from us when death comes.
Enlightened Masters' experience about death teaches us a lot. Bhagavān Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi got his enlightenment through a conscious experience of death. When Bhagavān was a young boy, one day he was just lying on his bed at his Uncle's house in Madurai, South Bharat. Suddenly he got the feeling that he was going to die! He had two choices: to resist the feeling or to go through it. He chose the second, to go through death as it is, consciously. He became enlightened after he experienced the process of death.
Usually people resist, so they pass into a coma and leave the body in a state of unconsciousness. In our second level program, the *Nithya Kriya Yoga* or Life Bliss Program Level 2, we go into the complete understanding of death, what happens exactly when we die. We enrich you to experience the process of death and to understand how and what happens, so that there is no mystery and, therefore, there is no fear. At least once if we go through death with deep consciousness, we will lose our fear for death automatically.
Bhagavān was courageous enough to choose the second path. He allowed death to happen without any resistance. He saw clearly one by one, the parts of his body dying. Slowly, his whole body was dead, turning into ashes. Suddenly, he realized that something remained even after that, which cannot be destroyed. At that moment, it hit him that he was pure consciousness, beyond the body and mind! He was simply a witness to the whole thing! That knowledge was tremendous and it never left him. When he came back into his body, he was *Bhagavān Ramaṇa Maharṣi*, the Enlightened Master! When we conquer the fear of death, we conquer death itself, because death is just one more imagination! When we get over the cycle of greed and fear, we can be in equanimity in all situations in life; then we are situated in the supreme consciousness. It is then we have touched our core, our real Being.
## **Steady Your Intelligence, Go Beyond Opposites**
Kṛṣṇa goes on to explain the characteristics of one who is Supreme. He says that one who is of steady intelligence, *sthira buddhir asammūḍho;* one who does not get caught in the play of opposing emotions or patterns like pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, is truly not deluded and is established in the truth, and in the Supreme, *brahma-vid brahmaṇi sthitaḥ* (5.20). He is Supreme himself.
What do we need to know to get out of the whirlpool of emotions? If we look deeply, we will see that all our emotional incompletions like fear, greed or worry, at the root, are born of an expectation for a certain situation to happen in a certain way. We live in a virtual world of fantasy and when there is a gap between reality and imagination, the trouble starts. The greater the gap, the more tension and disappointment we experience. We start to like or dislike something based on this gap. The likes and dislikes are a product of the mind, not of the being which is just bliss.
Beautifully, Kṛṣṇa says, 'An object of enjoyment that comes of itself is neither painful nor pleasurable for someone who has eliminated attachment and who is free from the dualism of self and the other and therefore, from desire.' |
Why do we feel tired? We feel tired when we are not integrated within ourselves. One half of our being that wants to express itself but we have suppressed it for various societal reasons. The other half of our being is what is expressing itself in the manner that we are forcing it to. Because we constantly have to put in an inauthentic effort to be what we naturally are not, we become tired at some point. When we become tired, the suppressed, unconscious half of us becomes more powerful than the conscious, pretentious half, and it starts dominating.
Just integrate yourself. Be with completion rather than suppressing yourself, and there will be no unconscious half to fight with. Then where is the question of feeling tired? We feel tired only when we are not completely involved in what we are doing. Become complete, integrated, and whole. Then you can never feel tired, whatever you may do.
See how is it that you don't feel tired after sitting with me for so many hours? It is because when I speak, I speak from my being, with a totality. When I speak with totality, you automatically receive me and my energy. This is the state from which enlightened Masters operate. That is why there is no sense of tiredness in them even though they are intensely involved in what they do.
We feel tired only when there is a gap between what we are doing and what we want to do. When we are driven by greed for something, we are caught up in the goal and the goal is something we want to achieve. What we are doing is not yet the goal and hence, we feel we are running towards the goal. Or we are driven by fear of something; we want to escape from the object of fear and hence we are not completely involved in what we are doing.
Honestly, I can't understand how a man cannot sit with himself. It is our body, our mind after all. Just sit! You are not able to sit because you continuously pour the wrong fuel into your system.
We are continuously chasing power. The hunger for power is so high in us that we are always running behind something to get control over it. First, let us get our body and mind under our control. As of now, it is under the control of fear or greed. Let that be controlled by us. Then, automatically, we can get anything under our control. If our body and mind are not under our control, whatever we wish to bring under our control will never come under our control.
One thought from greed is enough: our body just runs. One thought from fear is enough: our body just runs. Let it be completely under you. May you be complete with your body and mind!
### Just Be Happy From Within
Here is a beautiful *sūtra,* a beautiful technique from Kṛṣṇa to enter into the supreme consciousness: 'Just be happy, restful and complete from within', says Kṛṣṇa, '*yo'ntaḥ sukho antar-ārāmas tathāntar-jyotir eva yaḥ* (5.24).'
Just be happy from within. Let your smile be a deep expression of the love in your being. All of us are so used to living an artificial life that we have forgotten our being. Every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by greed or fear. This means we are not actually experiencing the moment of completion. We can enjoy something totally only when we are completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment, enjoying what we are doing here and now.
When you are in the space of completion in the present moment with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy that has no reason and which is not affected by the past or future. Naturally, the present blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. We enter a virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious cycle of fear and greed that we are now caught in.
Why do we run behind our desires or why are we afraid of something? It is because we think life has some goal to be achieved and we continuously run towards the goals. Understand, life in itself has no goal. The very life itself is the goal. The path itself is the goal. If we think the goal and the path are different, we will run towards the goal; we will run towards the horizon. Can we ever touch the horizon? The more we run towards it, we will find it receding from us, because the horizon is imaginary, it is an illusion.
If we are running behind a goal in life, we will be disappointed at the end of life. But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every moment is blissful! The goal is achieved every moment of our life. So every moment when we live with full completion, with full enthusiasm, with powerfulness, we actually enjoy that moment. When we are completely immersed in the present moment, we enjoy the path. When the path itself becomes the goal, we enjoy the goal also every moment.
The self-realized one is complete, powerful, active and happy because he is completely in the present moment, living in reality. The Divine energy blissfully flows through him and he no longer needs to derive energy for his activities from desire or fear.
Here, Kṛṣṇa refers to the state in which we are in the peak of activity yet in the ultimate relaxation. Such a state is indeed possible and is the only state in which we can really be involved in what we are doing, and completely satisfied, complete and blissful in what we are doing.
### Why To Feel Responsible?
This is what Kṛṣṇa says: When we are tuned fully inwards, we no longer have any attachment to what happens outside; we are one with the All, the Existence, and we have transcended all *karma.* We are then in *brahma nirvāṇa*—the ultimate liberation, one with Existence, and we are in *nityānanda,* eternal bliss. When we feel genuine love for others, we feel responsible for everyone, and we take up more and more responsibility. We want to enrich others and share that love with as many as people as possible.
When we are tuned inwards, we live in the present; the past and future do not exist for us. When we are in the present, we are one with Existence. I call this All-one-ness. We are All-in-One. We are in the space of Advaita, non-duality. We encompass everything. In this state, we are at the height of spontaneity; we are at the peak of our possibility. Spontaneity does not mean creativity. Creativity is a byproduct. Spontaneity is being in the present, being responsible for everything. Nothing is excluded. We flow out, we expand and cover.
The more responsibility we take up, the more we expand. Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. But if we don't shrug it and keep on shouldering it with the right reason, we will expand and the divine energy will automatically flow in us. And we can take up more and more responsibility only when we feel overflowing energy in us.
**With responsibility, we harness the power of feeling**. When we feel the space of responsibility, we take it up without any doubts. Usually whenever we are asked to do something, the mind comes in between and the responsibility feels like a load. Without the right context of responsibility, our mind creates dilemma. We start analyzing intellectually and logically. So at the end of it, we act out of greed or fear. As long as we intellectually weigh the situation for good and bad, the mind exists. We have to cross this barrier by completing with our greed and fear patterns. We have to cut across the wall of incompletions and enter the space of feeling the responsibility. The dilemma of wanting or not wanting to do something should not come at all. Many times when people come to me and I ask them to do something, just by the way they say, 'Yes, I will do it,' I can tell whether they really want to do it or not!
Our response to take up a responsibility is shaky and inauthentic when we are in a dilemma, when our mind operates. We should take up responsibility spontaneously. Then the mind will not have its say. We just know, that's all. We operate from an extreme relaxation and spontaneity. The ability to respond spontaneously out of the space of completion is what I call responsibility.
**Please listen! Responsibility can happen to you only after completion.** If you take responsibility because you have to be a performer, or a leader, or be productive, you will feel responsibility as a weight on you! If responsibility is taken out of wrong reason, you are not going to feel responsible!
Listen! Understand, only when you complete, you will know the right reason for taking responsibility. Only then, you taking responsibility will be really useful to you. So understand, responsibility can happen in you only after completion!
**I'll now tell you** *why* **you need to feel responsibility, why you should take responsibility. Listen. Whatever happens in and around you—you ARE the source!** That is why you need to take responsibility for whatever is happening in and around you. You need to take responsibility because you are responsible, and not for any other reason.
Whether you believe it or not, you ARE the source. With this
clarity, out of this context, if you take responsibility, every action, whether it is taking your children to the school, attending to your calls or your business meeting, everything will become a spiritual practice leading you to *jīvan mukti,* living enlightenment.
When you learn responsibility, you may naturally perform well in your office, in your business, in your family. You will become responsible, no doubt. I am not against it. I am not against you performing in your office or you taking responsibility for your family. But all that should be the side effect! The main effect of you feeling responsibility should be you becoming *jīvan mukta*, living enlightenment!
Live this principle of responsibility. Then you will understand that all your decisions will be out of the experience—'I am the Source.' Listen! If you function with this truth, '*I am the source, so I am responsible*'; everything you do will become a spiritual practice for you to become a *jīvan mukta.*
Only when we go beyond the incompletions of the mind, beyond duality, we see the absolute oneness and synchronicity of the entire Existence and we start living in the state of Advaita. When we reach this state, there is no mind that is acting. We are in a state of deep relaxation, completion and bliss. And this awakens the power of feeling in us to spontaneously respond to everything with responsibility.
When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up responsibility because we want to share that blissful love with others around us. Only when we work out of bliss, we will do things to enrich others and ourselves. Taking responsibility and enriching makes life happen to you! When we take up responsibility spontaneously, we do not act out of fear or greed. We will always be giving.
# Know Me And Be In Bliss
*5.27, 5.28 Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, Suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence, The transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear and the byproduct of desire, fear and anger, all three. One who is always in this state is certainly liberated.*
*5.29 One who knowing Me as the purpose of sacrifice and penance, As the Lord of all the worlds and the benefactor of all the living beings, achieves peace.*
Here, 'Me' refers to the supreme witnessing consciousness, the Kṛṣṇa consciousness; it is not the six-feet Kṛṣṇa frame. I always tell people, the outer Guru, the Master is needed only to awaken the inner Guru. Once the inner Guru, the consciousness is awakened, the outer Guru needs to be dropped. Just like after burning the dead body, the very stick that is used to stoke the wood is dropped into the same pyre, so also the outer Guru needs to be dropped.
For the first time, Kṛṣṇa gives a beautiful technique to move your energy from fear and greed to divine consciousness, eternal consciousness. Your fear is rooted in the *svādiṣṭhāna cakra*, the energy center situated two inches below the navel. Your greed is rooted in the *mūlādhāra cakra*, the energy center that is in the root of your spinal cord.
Kṛṣṇa gives us the technique to elevate ourselves from these two cakras to the eternal consciousness, the *ājñā cakra* at the brow center, where the eternal consciousness resides. When we have elevated our self to *ājñā*, we go beyond our ego or mind. We are all caught in the *mūlādhāra* and *svādiṣṭhāna*, fear and greed.
That is why, continuously, we can watch and see that we have a sort of a tensed feeling. We will be continuously holding our *mūlādhāra* and *svādiṣṭhāna* tightly. Now, just feel yourself in your *mūlādhāra* area. You will see that you are tightly holding yourself in tension.
Kṛṣṇa explains how to relax that area, how to stop the fuel coming from greed and fear, and get the *amṛta-dhāra* (flow of nectar) from the eternal consciousness. Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence, the transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear, and the byproduct of desire, fear and anger—all three. One who is always in this state is certainly liberated.
First, He gives the technique to enter that state. Then He says if you can stay in that state, you are liberated. Now, at least let us try to have a glimpse of this state that Kṛṣṇa explains in this verse. I will guide you step by step through this meditation. Please try to enter that state.
### Meditation
Please sit straight and close your eyes. Let your head, neck and backbone be in a straight line. Intensely pray to that ultimate energy, *Parabrahma* Kṛṣṇa, to give us the experience of this meditation.
First, visualize all your senses completely shut; your eyes are completely closed. Don't allow any visualization to happen inside your being. You should close the eyes too, because we continue to see things from behind our eyelids even though we shut our eyelids. Visualize that your eyeballs have become completely dark. You are seeing only darkness in front of you.
Visualize your ears are shut. Visualize your sense of touch is shut. Visualize your smelling capacity is shut. Visualize your face to be shut. Feel deeply that all the five senses have been shut down.
Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. Slowly, let your nostrils blow the air. Let your consciousness reside between the two eyebrows. In a very relaxed way, be aware of the space between your two eyebrows. Don't concentrate; don't tense yourself. Just be very relaxed, have a deeply relaxed awareness. |
Let your *mūlādhāra cakra,* located at the base of your spine, be relaxed. Let your *svādiṣṭhāna cakra*, located just below the navel center, be relaxed. Let your whole consciousness come up to the *ājñā cakra,* which is between the eyebrows.
Concentrate on the space between the eyebrows.
Visualize cool, soothing light in the *ājñā cakra*, in the space between the eyebrows. Relax in the *ājñā cakra*. Forget all other parts of your body. Forget about the body, mind and the world; remember only the *ājñā cakra*, the space between the two eyebrows.
Go deeply into the *ājñā cakra*, in the space between the two eyebrows. Visualize a beautiful, cooling, soothing light in the *ājñā cakra*. Let you experience beautiful, blissful light in the *ājñā cakra.* Don't tense yourself; let your awareness be in the *ājñā cakra* in a very relaxed way; let your consciousness rest in the space between the two eyebrows.
Relax in the same space of eternal consciousness. Let you be beyond the body and mind. May your intelligence be awakened. Let you work from your eternal consciousness. Let you have the pleasant awareness of the *ājñā cakra*. Let you all have the grace of the divine consciousness. Let you be established in the eternal consciousness. Let you all be in, with and radiate eternal bliss, *nityānanda.*
*Om śānti, śānti, śāntihi...*
*Om tat sat.*
Relax. Slowly, very slowly, you can open your eyes.
Try to remain in this mood at least for the next ten days.
Understand: Don't concentrate by force. Have a pleasant awareness. When you keep the pleasant awareness around your *ājñā cakra*, your whole energy will be directed towards the Eternal Consciousness. You will receive energy from Eternal Consciousness, from immortality, *amṛtatva.* You will be driven from above by the Eternal Consciousness. If you are driven from below by fear or greed, you are man. If you are driven from above, you are God.
Let you learn the science of how to connect yourself with the Divine energy, how to be driven by the Divine Consciousness. Let you live all your possibilities. Let you function through the Eternal Consciousness.
> *Thus ends the fifth chapter named Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, 'The Yoga of Renunciation,' of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṃvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.*
# Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion
You are your best friend and you are your worst enemy. Whether you wish to degrade yourself or raise yourself by yourself is in your hands. Krsna gives the technique to unite with Him in yoga, the Supreme Consciousness by becoming a Yogi. ...
# Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion
We will start with a beautiful history from Mahābhārat: Once the elders of Kuru royal family wanted to test the intelligence of their new generation of princes, the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas as to—who is more intelligent and wise—Kaurava kids, the hundred sons of King Dhritarāṣṭra or Pāṇḍava kids, the five sons of King Pāṇḍu. So, they devised a competition.
They said to all the Kaurava and Pāṇḍava young princes, 'You will be given one gold coin. With that one gold coin, you will have to fill your palace house!' This was the test laid out for them.
The Kauravas took the gold coin and sat together. Naturally, hundred brains will mess-up any plan, any program. See, you can have hundred hands but not hundred brains. Be very clear, all great things are done by hundred hands and hundred legs, but not by hundred brains. Brain should be only one. In life, unfortunately, we have thousands of brains, but not a single hand!
So, these hundred Kaurava brains all sit together, intensely discuss, argue, and even fight among themselves, 'How can we fill the whole house with one gold coin?' they speculated. Each brain came up with its own strategy, just to be pulled down by the other. Then, finally after enough squabble and confusion, they came to the conclusion, 'The elders are all cheats, they are abusing us, trying to exploit us, and making us feel we are failures!'
After this whole drama of blaming others, of feeling deprived and cheated, finally they decided that for one gold coin they could get only hay grass, which is the left over chaff of grains and paddy after crop harvesting.
Here, the Pāṇḍavas sat together into the listening of *dharma*. Even though each Pāṇḍava is a peerless specialist with unmatched expertise in some field, they all were always aligned under Dharmarāja, *dharma*! Understand, Yudhiṣṭra, the eldest of the Pāṇḍava brothers is Dharmarāja, the king and embodiment of *dharma*!
Listen! All the five Pāṇḍavas are sons of Nature born as immaculate conceptions of Divine powers. Yudhiṣṭra is *dharma* incarnate, who along with the four Pāṇḍava brothers, embodies all the four *tattvas* of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching, empowered with the powers of words, thinking, feeling and living.
Bhīma, the son of Vāyu (wind god), represents the physical valor, the strength of integrity and authenticity. Arjuna, the son of Indra (the king of gods), is Nara incarnate, the highest evolved human energy of Nārāyaṇa, Lord Kṛṣṇa. Arjuna is physiological power, the power of feeling awakened by responsibility! Both Bhīma and Arjuna are totally different expressions of unique divine powers. The ability to thrash is different, the ability to aim is different! Arjuna, the embodiment of physiological power, has the ability to aim and shoot, which needs mastery over the body, mind and senses. Nakula embodies the sense of intelligence and the space of possibility that is awakened by authenticity, the power of thinking. Nakula is one of the most intelligent strategy planners, who plans all the war strategies. Sahadeva is the aligner of time, he is a great astrologer expressing integrity, the power of words. All of them are always aligned under *Dharmarāja* Yudhiṣṭra. Because they are aligned to *dharma,* Pāṇḍavas are like one brain having ten hands, all together united to express enriching, the power of living.
**Listen! I am defining Dharma. The power of your words, the power of your thinking, the power of your feeling, and the power of your living, this is Dharma. Dharma is aligning yourself to the flow of the Cosmos.**
So, they all sit together aligning to Dharmarāja and discuss, 'What
will fill the whole house with one gold coin? When our elders say then *it is possible*.'
Please understand, you can look at this test of intelligence from two possibilities. One group *looks out* and wails, 'I think these elders are all fools. They don't know what they are asking us to do. They are just trying to prove we are all small fellows.' This is the thought trend of Kauravas. Then come the sons of immortality, Pāṇḍavas, who *look in* and wonder, 'When elders say, then there must be way. They are trying to teach us, educate us, and enrich us through this. When elders say, *it is possible*.' So finally, Pāṇḍavas also decide to fill the house with one gold coin! How they did it, let us see!
At the time of supervision, all the Kuru elders—Grandsire Bhīśma, Droṇa, Vidura, and Dhritarāṣṭra assembled; they first went to Duryodhana's palace house. On reaching, they saw the whole house full of hay and all these Kauravas were standing outside! They could not even get into the house!
Bhīśma asks them, 'What happened? Why are all of you standing outside?' Kauravas reply, 'What can be done? You only told us that we have to fill the whole house with one gold coin; what else can we get with just one gold coin? So we filled it with hay grass. Here you see! We won the competition!'And all these Kauravas are now standing outside! Neither these hundred brains nor the Kuru elders are able to get into the house.
Dhṛitarāṣṭra, the father of Kauravas becomes very happy! He hurriedly concludes, 'See my sons and their intelligence! They filled the whole palace house. They should be declared victorious!' Droṇa, the teacher of Kurus and Pāṇḍava princes, once a poor Brāhmaṇa, was supported by King Dhritarāṣṭra. So, whatever Dhṛitaraṣṭra says becomes the *conclusion* for Droṇa; and so, he simply agrees to the blind king's conclusion. But, Bhīṣma stops Droṇa, saying, 'Wait! Let us go to the other house also to see, and then decide who won the game.'
On entering the Pāṇḍava palace home, they see the whole house is
filled with light and perfumed with fragrant incense. Understand, for that one gold coin, they bought earthen lamps and lighted them up along with pleasing, special perfumed incense. The moment the elders entered, the Pāṇḍavas washed their feet, gave them seat and fruits. Enriching them thus, Pāṇḍavas tell them humbly, 'Please see, the whole house is filled! Filled with light and perfume, pleasant smell!'
Of course, the blind King Dhṛitarāṣṭra is not ready to accept this! So, he goes to every corner, puts his sharp nose and smells to investigate if every corner is filled with pleasant perfume. He finds that all corners have the pleasant fragrance. Finally, the Kuru elders come to the right conclusion and declare that Pāṇḍavas won the game. Pāṇḍavas stand victorious!
Please understand, listen!
**Completion is creating a space which is full where you can Live! As the space of Pāṇḍavas is full with light and filled with pleasant fragrance, so is the inner space of completion full with power and filled with the fragrance of bliss—***ānanda gandha,* **where you can live.**
Both palace houses are full. You also always keep yourself full; but the question is do you keep the house full like Kauravas or Pāṇḍavas? Find out that! Is your inner space like Kauravas or Pāṇḍavas? That's all! Have you brought the hay and filled it all around your house, or have you brought the pleasant smell and the light within?
Please understand, completion keeps you full and gives you the fulfilled space to live! Incompletion keeps you full but never fulfilled; you will never be able to live there. Because of their deep incompletions, Kaurava brains fight violently. Finally when they get tired of fighting with their incompletions, they get utterly confused, and jump to the wrong conclusion of filling their house with hay! The Pāṇḍavas who are full with the space of completion and filled with the power of living, beautifully enrich the elders and enrich themselves, enjoying the light and fragrance!
Please understand, the modern day CEOs, leaders are filled with stress. What is stress actually? It is nothing but filling yourself with hay! You are filled not fulfilled. You are occupied but not useful. Before making one decision, when you think about it two hundred times, you are tired just like the Kaurava brains! Usually, when there are so many incompletions fighting in your brain, either your projects die down, or they take a totally opposite turn!
Reduce the incompletions you infuse on yourself; reduce the abusal you do to yourself. Reduce the mental setup of Duryodhanas' on you. Duryodhanas' are nothing but bunch of incompletions, no power! Actually, they took the decision of buying the hay and filling the house because they were not able to handle the whole confusion and fight among themselves. So, they just jumped to the wrong conclusion, '*let's do something*!' Listen! Any decision made out of incompletion in the mood of '*let's do something*' is suicide! So understand, '*let's do something*' out of incompletion, restlessness generated by incompletion, is the pesticide! If you do it just for yourself, it is suicide; if you do it for the family, it is homicide; if you do it for many people, it is genocide.
What Pāṇḍavas did is out of the pure space of completion. I tell you, when you create the space of completion, every moment you create a new way of thinking, new way of feeling, new way of knowledge, new way of being, and a new way of making yourself available to society and to humanity.
#### **Look in, create the space of completion before coming to any conclusion! This is the message of this chapter.**
The sixth chapter of the *Bhagavad Gītā, Dhyāna Yogaḥ* starts with Kṛṣṇa's words. In this chapter Arjuna is not asking any questions to Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa continues His answers from the previous chapter.
# Attain The State Of Yoga
6.1 *Bhagavān says:*
*One who performs his actions without being attached to their fruit (outcome) of his work is a Sannyāsi, and he is truly an ascetic; a Yogi also.; not the one who renounces to light the fire and performs no action.*
- *6.2 O Pāṇḍava, what is called renunciation, or sannyāsa, you must know to be the same as yoga, or uniting oneself with the Supreme., for never can anyone become a yogī, until he renounces the desire for self-gratification [saṅkalpa].*
- *6.3 A one desirious of achieving the state of yoga or no-mind state, action is said to be the means and for the one who is already elevated in yoga, cessation from all actions is said to be the means.*
- *6.4 Any one is said to have attained the state of yoga when, having renounced all material desires, he neither acts for sense gratification nor engages in result-focused activities.*
Kṛṣṇa continues with what He said earlier in a little more detailed way. He says, the person who is not attached to the fruits of his action is an ascetic and a *karma yogi*, one who continuously does authentic work without being attached to the results.
Please understand, *karma—*the state of action, or *sannyāsa*—the state of renunciation, is not related to your doing. It is directly related to your being. Being a sannyasi, a renunciate monk, is not a status, it is a state of mind. Whether you are doing *karma yoga* or you remain a *Sannyāsi* is in no way going to affect you. If one is a *karma yogī,* one goes about doing the work that is allotted to him without attachment and without expectations. This is done even in the middle of one's life as a householder, a businessperson or an employee. The status is not of any consequence.
In the same manner, it is immaterial whether one dons saffron robes to be a renunciate or an ascetic. One can wear all the outer trappings of a monk and still be fully attached to the *saṁsāra māyā*, the illusion of life. In the verses of *Bhaja Govindam*, Ādī Śaṅkarācārya, the Enlightened Master of ancient Bharat, says this beautifully about the ascetic who cheats the world and himself. He says, the ascetic has his hair knotted, or he shaves his head bald, or he pulls out his hair one by one in penance, he wears saffron robes, but he does not see, even though he has eyes. He does all this only to fill his belly!
One's attitude, one's inner space, one's *being* alone matters. Here Kṛṣṇa gives the gist of the previous chapter.
People repeatedly ask me, *'Swamiji,* should we renounce everything to achieve Enlightenment? How can we lead our day-to-day life and yet hope to achieve spiritual progress?' |
I tell them, 'No! Just renounce what you don't have. That is enough. You don't have to renounce what you have.' I tell them to live with completion with whatever they have, and to just renounce what they don't have. We fantasize about all that we do not have, that is the problem. There are thousands of things that we don't have, but we live with all those things mentally. The problem is not what we have, we have got used to those things anyway. That is our reality. It is what we don't have that creates problems. Just renounce what you don't have. That is enough to solve all the problems. Then you will start living intensely with what you have.
One of the major problems we bring upon ourselves is that we chase desires and possessions. And once we have achieved what we want, we don't enjoy it. It is as if the enjoyment is only in the chase and not in the possession itself. The present has no meaning to many of us. Because of this, we miss reality, we miss true enjoyment. It is the illusion of the speculative future that draws our interest and causes misery to us.
### Live with Reality, Live like God
There is a beautiful word in Saṃskṛit: *brahmacarya.* Just like many other Saṃskṛit words, this word has no equivalent word in English. The word has often been wrongly translated as celibacy. *Brahma* means Existence, reality, divinity. *Carya* means 'living like'. Brahmacarya refers to a person who lives like the gods, who lives with Existence, who lives with reality. Brahmacarya does not mean one who is unmarried. Brahmacarya refers to one who lives with reality, one who lives unattached. One of the four stages of life as defined by the scriptures is brahmacarya. This period of brahmacarya at Gurukul, under the Master's guidance in one's early years, provides the background to shed fantasies and live life in reality.
In today's world most of us live with fantasy. We don't live with the reality of our existence. From our childhood, we are exposed to so many different forms of media that flood us with fantasies. On physical maturity, everyone searches for an ideal person who can match their fantasy with great vigour and determination! Even if you find someone who matches your so-called ideal, when you start living with the person, life will slowly reveal that the ideal image so carefully built over many years is different from the person with whom you are living. There is always a screen of fantasy between your spouse and you, just like between life and you. You are continuously developing on life but you are not ready to look into life as it is.
A person who is mature enough to live with reality in the space of completion has achieved the state of brahmacarya. He is living with the real person or situation. He is complete in the present moment for what it is; he does not dream of how it should be. So just drop your fantasies. Live with reality. That is what I call brahmacarya. Brahmacarya is nothing but high energy, that's all.
**I am defining brahmacarya. It is nothing but being authentic with high energy happening in you.** Only when you have low energy, you need other person's presence in your life. Brahmacarya is nothing but being authentic with your high energy.
Here, Kṛṣṇa says, 'Just renouncing the sacred fire and not performing one's duty does not mean one is an ascetic or *sannyāsi.*' In those days, fire was the basis for everything, whether it was cooking or spiritual practice. For everything one needed fire. I can replace the word 'fire' with 'cell phone' for today's world! In this age, we can say, 'Don't think that by sacrificing the cell phone and laptop you become a *sannyāsi* or a great *karma yogi.*' Just like how the cell phone and laptop have become a basic necessity today, in those days *agnī* (fire) was a basic need in life. Just like how we are able to relate with people through the cell phone, our ancient *ṛṣis* (mystics) knew the techniques of relating with the higher energy through fire.
Understand, the Vedic Masters knew how to use fire to communicate with the higher energy, just like how we use the cell phone to communicate. All of science is based on using light particles, whether it is electricity, atomic energy, or other forms of energy, but with different formulae. Whether it is our fan or a microscope or a laptop or atomic bomb, everything can be reduced to that one single thing, the technique of handling light or electro-magnetic particles. Scientists worked on light energy and created all these objects. Our eastern sages worked with sound energy and created all these products. We really had the *pushpak vimāna* (flying chariot) and we did really have the *brahmāstra* (nuclear weapon). Everything is true.
But in the course of time we lost the technology, that's all. As the technology for handling sound waves was lost, the existence of these things is being questioned today. People now believe that all these things are just mythology, just epic stories. No! I tell you, Purāṇās are histories not stories; they are 'His-stories'. Just because we have lost the key and are not able to open the lock, don't think that there is no treasure.
The entire collection of scriptures, the *Vedas* is nothing but learning the techniques of tuning oneself to work with sound particles. Just as scientists work with light particles, the sages have worked with sound particles. They were able to relate with higher energies and were able to communicate just with the vibrations through fire. Whether it was Sañjaya, the minister of the Kaurava king Dhritarāṣṭra, who saw the Mahābhārat war through telepathy with his third eye, or the *puśpak vimāna*, the flying chariot, or *brahmāstra*, the ultimate fire weapon, these were all true. When the cultural invasion of Bharat happened, these techniques were lost.
I have seen a *Sannyāsi* create fire by just uttering a few words. Even now, if we go to the *Kumbha Melā* (the holy river Gangā festival, planet's largest spiritual gathering in Bharat), we can see hundreds of people like this. I have seen many Sannyāsis—some bury their heads inside the Earth for more than twenty-four hours; many can play with sound energy. I have seen a sannyasi floating in the air and another sitting on a board full of sharp nails, with people watching them in awe.
### Be Complete and Renounce your Thoughts
So here, Kṛṣṇa says that just by renouncing fire, a person cannot become a Sannyāsi. Similarly, here I can say that just by renouncing our cell phone in life, we cannot become a sannyasi. The space needs to be transformed. To truly renounce, the mind has to renounce thoughts. Usually, wherever our body is, our mind is not. When we are at home, our thoughts are at the office. When we are at the office, we worry about what is happening elsewhere. When we are on vacation, we worry about work. To bring the mind to where the body is to renounce the inner chatter by completing with thoughts patterns. This is the starting point of renunciation.
Thoughts cannot be suppressed. The more we suppress them the more they erupt. We need to let go. We need to constantly bring ourselves back to where our body is, to the present space of completion, to the here and now, away from the dead past and the unborn future.
**Renunciation of the past and the future, by bringing our mind to focus on the present space of completion, is true renunciation.**
This renunciation does not happen by giving up objects of material welfare such as the fire and the cell phone. It also does not happen by giving up what we think is superficial to spiritual progress, such as rituals. Giving these up without bringing in the true completion of consciousness is not renunciation.
In the first verse Kṛṣṇa gives the essence of the previous chapter. Now He continues. Kṛṣṇa has already said that renunciation for the sake of renunciation, renunciation of material things without renouncing desires, is of no value.
Please listen. You have to renounce fantasies. These fantasies are the creation of the ego, mind, identity, root patterns—whatever name you wish to call it. This self creates up all these unreal fantasy visions, to keep you occupied and under control.
We may think that we are in control of our mind. But actually, our mind controls us. This is what Kṛṣṇa means by *sañkalpa*, self-interest, because the mind wishes to satisfy the senses that it operates and controls. By visualizing, by hearing, by smelling, by tasting, by touching, through the sense organs, our mind wants us to experience pleasures that will keep us under its hold. Only when we renounce the mind's control by going beyond the senses can we become a true renunciate. 'Control your senses and still your mind so that you can reach Me,' Kṛṣṇa says in earlier chapters.
When Kṛṣṇa talks about 'self ', it is the small 'self ', the external identity that we confuse with our Self, the real inner core, the Truth. Only when we do renounce this so-called identity, which is not the true Self, then we will perceive our self as the supreme Self that is our true identity. An ordinary person sees his own self as being the body, mind, memories, senses and the identities that he creates for himself. These are the channels through which we can project ourselves onto the outer world. Normally we create two identities. One identity called *ahaṁkāra,* the identity that we project to the outer world. This identity is usually based on our achievements in society, our profession, our possessions, etc. The second identity is called mamākara, the identity we project to our inner self. This identity is usually based on our ideas about our attitudes, our beliefs, and our self-esteem. Through a combination of these two identities we create an image about ourselves that we hold on to with deep conviction and belief. Our true Self is beyond all these inner and outer images.
Please listen. If we don't want to be controlled by the mind, any activity that we perform to satisfy this false identity or ego should be renounced. As long as we allow our senses to feed us, we will be nurtured and controlled by sensory pleasures that satisfy our ego. Our mind will then keep us in its control.
Listen. I am defining Yoga.
**Renunciation of these fantasies that we feel we need for self-satisfaction is Yoga. Yoga is the state when our desires, expressed through sensual pleasures, dissolve. We unite with our true Self in this state. In this state, there is no gap between the Divine and us.**
Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, want it or not, we are God. We are divine. All we can do is accept it, experience it, live and powerfully express it or we can just continue to struggle and fight with it. This is the truth.
A small story:
A man was informed that his wife had just fallen into the river. He ran to the river to save her. To everyone's surprise, he jumped into the river and started swimming in the opposite direction, against the current.
People who watched the scene shouted to him and called him a fool. They asked him, 'Why are you swimming against the current? Your wife has been carried with the current, downstream.'
The man said, 'You don't know my wife. Even in the river, she would go only against the current!'
We can be like a rock in the water, forever resisting the flow of the water. The river pounds the rock, eventually reducing it to sand that settles at the bottom. Or we can be like the reed that bends and flows in whichever direction the water flows. By giving in to the water flow, the reed rests in the water.
In Saṃskṛit there are two terms, '*dṛṣti sṛṣti*' and '*sṛṣti dṛṣti'*. *Dṛṣti sṛṣti* means to look at the world as it is and take life as it comes. *Sṛṣti dṛṣti* is just the opposite, when we want to create the world as we would like it to be, as we want to see it. We want the world running according to our fantasies, instead of coming to terms with the reality of the world. This is a sure recipe for disaster, much like the woman swimming against the current and meeting with disaster.
We have a choice. We can either move against the current, believing that we control our destiny, and struggle all the time. Or we can flow with the current, surrender to the Divine of which we are an integral part, and be in bliss. Whether we go against the current or go with it, we are in the water. Whether we realize it or not, we are Divine. When our desires for external sensual pleasures are controlled, we experience the divinity within.
#### Yoga—Uniting the Body and Mind
This is the state of yoga that Kṛṣṇa talks about—*yogārūḍhasya tasyaiva śamaḥ kāraṇam ucyate* (6.3), the state of true renunciation where there is no suppression. Instead, there is transformation into completion. The path is no longer towards self or sensory satisfaction. In fact, there is no 'towards' or 'goal.' The goal is the path itself. When we lead our life with no expectations, the mind cannot speculate or control us.
Kṛṣṇa says next, 'A person who initially wants to start practicing a yoga system laid down by the sages should carry out all activities in line with that system. Activities for all other reasons will then cease.'
This is such a beautiful instruction for anyone doing yoga. Today, the true meaning of yoga is completely lost. Yoga is not about physical exercise or sweating in high temperatures. Its purpose is not bodily fitness. Yoga integrates body, mind and spirit. It is a journey into the inner Self, towards the Self.
Patañjali, the great sage and the father of Yoga, who authored Yoga Sūtras, laid down an eight-limbed system called *Aṣtāṅga Yoga*. Today this is being misinterpreted as 'eight steps of yoga'. Patañjali laid down eight limbs or parts that needed to be practiced simultaneously, not separately or sequentially. There is no meaning in practicing yoga through only two of the eight parts: *āsana,* physical postures, and *prāṇāyāma*, breath control. But these are the only two parts taught by most yoga teachers today. What is the point? Nothing of real value will come out of it.
In Patañjali's Aṣtāṅga Yoga, bliss is the goal, the path, and the end result. Have you seen even one yoga practitioner enjoying what he or she is doing? They are grimacing all the time, forcing their body, controlling their breath, torturing themselves. What for? Patañjali never asked them to torture themselves or their students. Yoga as it is practiced now only breeds ego. They have added many components to yoga: Deluxe yoga, Super deluxe kuṇḍalini yoga! Yoga should be done as *bhoga*, not as *roga*. Yoga should be done as an enjoyment, excitement, bhoga and not as a roga, disease. The excitement you radiate in your body, the whole bio-memory should be alive. Whole intelligence should be alive, up! |
A small story:
There was a great enlightened Master. He was always in ecstasy, always in joy.
One of his disciples asked him, 'Master, how are you so blissful? I have never seen you suffering. You are always joyful. How is this possible?'
Master replied, 'Every morning when I get up from bed I ask myself, what do you want today? Do you want to be blissful or do you want suffering today?
Naturally what will the mind choose? It will choose to be blissful. Then, immediately, I tell the mind: alright, be blissful. That's all!'
We may think, 'How can it be so simple?' Be very clear, we know our twenty-four hour routine. Just try this tomorrow morning. Just decide whether you want to face your normal routine with bliss or with suffering, with joy or with the usual long face. Decide for yourself. You have the choice. And whether you go with a long face or with a smiling face, the routine is going to be the same.
I always tell people, 'Pain is inevitable; suffering is a choice.' We have one thing that we can choose—and that is our inner space. Do we want our inner space to be incomplete like the Kauravas filled with hay or do we want our inner space to be fulfilled with completion like the Pāṇḍavas, radiating the light and fragrance of bliss? We have complete freedom to create our inner space. That is purely our own decision with no one to blame. Pain is independent of suffering. Pain is an external thing, suffering is an internal choice.
Hell or heaven is our conscious choice. People always have another question, 'What do I do if my mind says, I want to suffer?' Then suffer, that's all. What is there in it? When our mind wants to enjoy suffering, then even suffering becomes an enjoyment for us.
So when you get up every morning, ask your mind, 'What do you want today?' If your mind chooses bliss, just tell your mind, 'Be blissful. That's all!' This single conscious decision can change the quality of your life. But don't make a commitment to do this for three days or one week. You will forget. Decide every day for just that 24 hours. People will immediately think, 'Let me decide for my whole life today itself.' No! You will forget. You will be back with the same face again tomorrow. No, don't decide for your whole life. Decide only for one day. Only then will you be able to maintain it.
A small story about this natural face:
The head of a monastery, was teaching the young novices to preach. He was giving them tips on how to speak in public.
He said, 'When we speak, our whole body should express what we are saying. Our face should express the idea that we are talking about. When we speak about heaven our eyes should sparkle and our whole body should show the bliss, we should express the joys of heaven clearly. Our face should shine.'
He continued, 'When we speak about hell, we can just remain as we are. People will understand!' At least in our life, let us not maintain the long face as our natural face.
When we conquer the mind, happiness and distress are both one and the same and we are not touched by it. Now, Kṛṣṇa has an important point here. He says, 'For one who has conquered his Self, has already attained the supreme bliss, *jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ*, for him happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same, *śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu tathā mānāpamānayoḥ* (6.7).'
#### **Throughout this chapter Kṛṣṇa emphasizes this one idea—senses. Kṛṣṇa speaks about the senses. How can happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor be the same for a man? How is it possible?**
The first thing is that when our senses do the work, we decide *'yes*' or *'no'* only based on our past experiences, the experiences with which we have grown or the words with which we have conditioned our mind and memory. Our intelligence decides based on our root thought patterns which are the incompletions of our mind and memory. Please be very clear: something that is tasty for us may be like poison to our neighbour. Why even go as far as our neighbour... Take your spouses for instance. You might like something, but she or he might hate it.
Whenever our mind is caught in dualities, again and again we fall back to our dilemma, to our nature, to our suffering, to our instinct level. Here Kṛṣṇa says the person who has achieved bliss is not affected by heat or cold and joy or sorrow—*śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu*. How do we reach that state? First, understand that when I say conquering the senses, I don't mean controlling the senses or destroying the senses. If we try to control or destroy the senses, we will only struggle and suffer more and more. If we try to control our body, that is not going to work either.
**Kṛṣṇa says beautifully, 'For one who has conquered the self,** *jitātmanaḥ.***'** When He says self, He means the whole cognition where the decision-making happens. Mind-Intelligence-Ego is the spot where the decision-making is happening. When we just try to conquer the senses, we will fail again and again. If we fail two or three times we will lose the confidence to try again. If we fail in a fight with our senses, we will automatically start thinking that it is impossible, and we will lose confidence. We need intelligence to progress in this path.
We need to learn the science of creating the space of completion to conquer the senses. If we try to work from the wrong side out of incompletion, from the side of the senses, we will never be able to succeed. If we try to create more pressure on the cooker we will not be able to open the cooker lid. First, we need to put out the fire, the energy supply. Putting out the fire is doing completion with our root patterns. The ego or root patterns or the intelligence, the place from where we make decisions, is continuously supplying energy to our senses. So all we need to do is to work at the level of the mind and not at the level of the senses to become *jitātmanaḥ*. If we try to work at the level of the senses, we will create only more and more perverted desires, leading to more and more incompletions.
For example, normally, if we fast for one day, that night in our dreams we will be feasting! Our body has got its own balance, its own intelligence. If we avoid something, it has to supply and rejuvenate itself. If we are hungry, we can't sleep. In order to sleep, our bio-memory itself should be made to believe that we are not hungry. For this, we need to do completion with our patterns of food not suppression of the desire of food. So, the unconscious energy creates a dream as if we are feasting. Whenever we deprive ourselves, our unconscious energy will satisfy itself in the dream state. This is because in the dream state, there is noone to control us; all our incompletions simply come out in the dream. We just project our world and enjoy it.
See, I initiate thousands of people into a powerful spiritual process called *Nirāhara Saṁyama*, liberating them from their food patterns. Listen. It is awakening, rekindling the power of your bio-memory to produce energy and food directly from air, water and space. It is not fasting. An important rule in this process is the moment one feels hungry or tired, one has to start eating. One cannot use his or her willpower. Understand, if you fast, in the dream you will be dreaming as if you are feasting, eating! But, not a single one of my *Nirāhara Saṁyama* participants has a dream of eating food and feasting! Why? Because they are initiated into the most practical method of completing with all the root patterns. They don't suppress their hunger, they just go beyond it, they go beyond their senses!
Understand, if we suppress something, it will automatically express itself in our dreams. Dreams are nothing but expressions of our suppressed desires and fears. Not only that, it expresses itself in a perverted way. If we do completion with our root patterns and out of completion when we enjoy with the senses, we will never become tired. But when we suppress our senses, our being suffers in our dreams.
Now there is a new concept called 'fear stroke'. These are imaginary fears, such as imagining ghosts lurking in dark corners, or the sudden ringing of the telephone, etc. We also get these fear strokes in dreams. Please listen. If we are suffering with incompletions at the dream level, there is something seriously wrong at the mind-intelligence level. We are trying to control the senses instead of conquering the mind. Instead of removing the fire, we are trying to create more pressure in the cooker. All we need to do is to work on the mind, do completion to remove the fire, to stop the supply of fuel to the senses.
**Completion! Again and again complete!** Understand, if you have
dreams, whatever type of dreams they may be, whether they are good or bad, you are not worthy of *sannyās yoga* or *karma yoga*. Sannyāsi is a person who should be in that level of completion where no dreams happen in him. The day you start sleeping without dreams, you have become a real sannyāsi, a real *karma yogi.*
**Dreams are nothing but the incompletions expressing in your inner space when you are unconscious.** Understand, I am defining what is dreaming and thinking.
**Incompletions expressing when you are unconscious are dreams. Incompletions expressing when you are conscious is thinking. Incompletions expressing when you are unconscious is dreaming.**
Arjuna is called *Gudākeśa* by Kṛṣṇa, the one who has not just conquered dreams but who has conquered sleep itself. While addressing Arjuna as *Gudākeśa*, one who is in the light, having conquered sleep, Kṛṣṇa readies Arjuna for liberation.
Here Kṛṣṇa says, 'For one who has conquered the mind, *jitātmanaḥ*.' He means that this applies to one whose mind has learned the right cognition of completion. If our intelligence and memory are filled with past incomplete memories, we cannot make correct decisions. Don't think the mind makes decisions in a logical manner. For example: when you see me, if you have had any problems with any other person who was wearing this same color robe in the past, suddenly that memory will be awakened. Then, the intelligence is not even ready to sit and listen. Immediately, our ego gives the order to leave. This is what we call prejudice.
A man whose senses are complete, meaning one who is not driven by his senses, has the ability to make decisions with clarity from the pure space of completion. Such a being is *jitātmanaḥ*—the conqueror of the mind and the self.
#### **Fountain of Bliss is within you**
We can never achieve bliss by controlling the senses. We can only
achieve bliss by controlling the mind by completing with our root thought patterns, which give birth to the mind. By changing the servants, we can't change the leader. But by changing the leader we can change the servants. The mind is the leader or the master who is making decisions and leading the senses. So all we need to do is work on completing with the mind, not the senses.
Kṛṣṇa says, 'One who has conquered the mind achieves the *Paramātman* (divine Self), *jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ* (6.7).' We don't need to achieve bliss. It is always there within us. If it has to be achieved, there is every possibility it can be lost. If it can be lost, what is the guarantee it will be there forever? Anything, if it has to be specially achieved, is not worth achieving. But if it is our very nature, then it becomes easy. Kṛṣṇa says that all we need to do is conquer our mind. We don't need to achieve anything.
The fountain of bliss is continuously happening in us. Our very life energy is bliss. Unless we have the bliss energy in us, we cannot inhale and exhale. But we are stopping the bliss fountain again and again. All we need to do is stop the stopping process. That's all. We don't even need to create anything or achieve anything. Kṛṣṇa says that we just have to conquer the mind because the Self has been already achieved and we are with it. All we need is completion with our Self.
Here is a small story to explain how happiness and sorrow are in no way related to the outer world but to the inner world.
> An old man went to a nearby city for some work. When he was coming back to his village, from a distance he suddenly noticed that his house was on fire. He started shouting, screaming and rolling on the ground and weeping.
> His son came to him and said, 'Dad, don't worry. Don't you remember, we sold that house just yesterday?'
> Immediately, the old man sat up and wiped his tears. The sorrow just disappeared. In ten minutes, his other son came
## Bhagavad Gita Decoded
to him and said, 'Dad, yes, we have sold it, but we are yet to get the money.'
Again the man started rolling on the ground and weeping, 'Oh, I don't know what I will do now. I don't know how to save myself.'
Some ten minutes later, his wife came on the scene and said, 'Don't worry, just this morning I saw that the money was deposited in our bank account.'
Again the man got up and wiped his tears and became perfectly normal!
If you notice, it is the same situation and the same person. But when he thinks the house is his, he is suffering, and when he thinks it is not his, he is liberated. So what gives us suffering? It is just this single thing: thinking that something is 'mine'. The habit of thinking, 'mine', 'mine'.
In the same way, there are people who can't enjoy something unless it is theirs.
One day I was going for a walk on the beach.
One of our devotees started saying, '*Swamiji*, I think we should have a cottage here. It would be very nice. We can come out and enjoy the breeze.'
I asked him, 'Are we not enjoying ourselves now? Why do you need a cottage here to enjoy? Just enjoy yourself now!'
But the mind never enjoys unless we are sure it is ours. Unless we possess something, we don't enjoy it. By the time we own the cottage we start worrying, 'I think I should have this kind of furniture, that type of arrangement.' Or we have already started thinking about another cottage in some other place.
> Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi was a great devotee of Arunachala, the sacred hillock in Tiruvannamalai, Śiva's own form, my birthplace. Someone who visited Him for the first time said, '*Master,* what a beautiful place this is! The Arunachala
hill is so beautiful!'
Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi said, 'Just be here for three days, all these ideas will disappear!' In three days, we take things for granted. |
# 6.10-6.14 Instructions for the Yogi
- *6.10 A Yogī should always try to concentrate his mind on the Supreme Self; situated in a secluded place, he should carefully control his mind without being attracted by anything and should be free from the feeling of possessiveness.*
- *6.11 In a clean and pure place, one should establish his seat by laying kuśa grass, a deerskin and a cloth one over another, neither too high nor too low.*
- *6.12 Sitting firmly on that pure seat, the yogi should practice the purification of the self by controlling the activities of the mind and the senses.*
- *6.13 Holding the body, head and neck steady, looking at the tip of his nose without looking in any other direction.*
- *6.14 Let him sit with an unagitated mind, free from fear and in tune with Existence, controlling the mind, focusing it on Me and making Me the Supreme goal.*
In these verses Kṛṣṇa gives directions for the practitioner of Yoga, the Yogī. There are instructions about both the state of the mind and the state of the body.
These verses are often quoted and misused with a literal understanding and without grasping the inner meaning and significance. We can sit with closed or half closed eyes, with spine erect, in a sound-proofed dark room, and still be far away from enlightenment. Understand, these are general and practical guidelines given to help us with how we should sit and meditate. These are not essential qualifications for Enlightenment.
Kṛṣṇa repeats the importance of controlling our senses again and again. Why?
Senses are our doors to the external world. As long as they are open and uncontrolled, we are immersed only in the external world. It is impossible to understand our true reality when we are studying the external world. We may become a great scientist or a wealthy businessman by observing the outer world, but never an enlightened person. For this path, looking inwards is the only way.
### Unclutch and Become Liberated
Controlling the senses requires controlling the mind. Controlling the mind requires control of thoughts. Controlling the thoughts requires integrity. When we continuously live integrity, we will become aware of the thoughts and processes happening in our inner space.
And constantly listening to our own inner space is the beginning of integrity. If our inner space says that there is nothing more to listen, if only silence is there, then that is the end of integrity. We have achieved integrity. When we start listening to our inner space, we start integrity and when we listen to only silence from our inner space, we have achieved integrity. As long as we are hearing something from our inner space, it is lack of integrity.
Go on listening. Even while you are sitting, driving, talking or walking, listen to you. Also listen to you, when you are talking! It is listening to you that is going to bring integrity to you! Listen! Listen! Untiringly listen! Intensely bring integrity to your life. If we sit for a few minutes and intensely listen and analyze our thoughts, we will find that there is no connection between one thought and another. There is no logic in our thinking process. By their very nature our thoughts are illogical, unconnected and irrational. Thoughts keep swinging from past to future and back to the past.
We need to do two things to control our thoughts. First, we need to stay in the present moment by refusing to move to the past and future and second, we need to disconnect thoughts. I call this Unclutching. We need to be aware that thoughts are not inherently connected. We connect them into a shaft of joy or sorrow. These shafts do not exist at all. So I say to you, unclutch and become liberated. I am not saying to stay without thoughts. That is not possible; just witness thoughts. Understand that thoughts are unconnected. Detach yourself from the emotional baggage of the thoughts. If we detach ourselves from the regrets of the past and the speculations about the future we will automatically rise into the present.
People again and again ask me, 'The moment I sit for meditation or Unclutching, I have more thoughts! I have more confusion, I have more problems. Next time, I don't want to sit for meditation or Unclutching. *Swamiji,* what should I do?'
How will you not have thoughts or confusion? Unclutching is not like switching off the electricity to your house. It is like cleaning, sweeping and wiping your house. It is not like electricity that you will just switch off and be unclutched. No! It is like cleaning, sweeping and wiping. First, listen to your inner space! That is the first step to meditation, to life. Listen!!
We cannot live without desires. If anyone tells us that we can reach Enlightenment through elimination of desires, it is incorrect. First of all, we are already enlightened. Our inner Self knows it is connected to the Divine. We are just not aware of it, that's all. If we are already there, how can we achieve it? Second, desires are energy. We cannot inhale and exhale without the desire to live. Simply dying will not give us the experience!
That is what Kṛṣṇa talks about here—dropping the attachment and possessiveness to desires, not the desire itself. It is the feeling of 'mine,' the desire to possess, that creates the feeling of 'I,' not the other way around. Our identity is made up of all the things that we want, that we desire, that we are attached to. These constitute our mental make-up. The seeds of desire and embedded memories are the stuff our package of 'I' is made of. Once the feeling of possession, the feeling of 'mine' disappears, it is possible to shed our identity as well. When we are free of the feeling of 'mine' and 'I', when we are not attached or attracted to external objects, when we are not led by our senses, we have steadied the mind and senses. To facilitate this, Kṛṣṇa stipulates the conditions.
We should go to a secluded place. Why? Whatever said and done, in the house, the phone may ring, somebody may knock or some salesperson may call. A secluded place is really just a means to move us away from these disturbances. Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa continuously recommends in his books that every person should retire from the regular activities at least for two or three days a month, or at least once in six months, and re-align himself towards the higher ideals. I also recommend this for all my followers and disciples, at least once in six months, take three or four days off. Come and spend your time in the Bidadi ashram campus, realigning yourself to integrity. Here, you will see and hear the miracles happening just by integrity and authenticity. Only when you see all these miracles with your eyes, you will understand the power of integrity, the power of authenticity. Whatever is happening is the power of *dharma.*
**Buddha means a person who has aligned with** *dharma.* **Sangha means a group of people who are aligning with dharma. But** *dharma* **is the center. It is the power of** *dharma***.** Once in a while, you have to retreat from the regular activities and align yourself to integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching.
The *kuśa* (a grass ideal to sit on and meditate), deerskin and all those things are like insulation, so that the earth will not absorb the energy we create. But now we don't have to bother about that, since we usually sit in a chair, raised a little from the ground. The seat should neither be too high nor too low and it should be comfortable. That's all. The most important thing to be aware of in any meditation is to be relaxed. We cannot meditate in discomfort. *Sthira* (stable) and *sukha* (pleasurable) are the basic essentials of any meditation posture.
Here Kṛṣṇa updates the technique that He gave earlier. Here He gives three more instructions:
- 1. Head, spine and neck should be in a straight line.
2. We should fix our eyes on the tip of the nose. If we look at the tip of the nose, naturally, our awareness will settle on the third eye. Our concentration will settle on the *ājña cakra* (the brow energy center).
3. We should meditate on 'Me' as the supreme goal.
These are simple, commonsense instructions. Keeping the head, neck and spine, all in one line, helps in two ways. Firstly, it prevents us from dropping off to sleep. If we doze, our neck will drop, and we will no longer be steady. Secondly, as long as the head, neck and spine remain steady and vertical, the flow of pranic energy, the life-giving energy, through the energy pathways will be unblocked and smooth.
Whether we close our eyes fully or half close them, it is important that we disconnect from the external world. When the eyes are focused on the tip of the nose, they are not looking at external objects and ninety percent of sensory inputs are cut off. In addition, the focus is on the third eye between the brows, which, when energized, dissolves the ego block.
Finally, Kṛṣṇa says, 'Focus on Me—*manaḥ saṁyamya mac-chitto*. Make Me the Supreme goal—*yukta āsīta mat-paraḥ* (6.14).' He means our true Self. If we like, we can meditate on the form of Kṛṣṇa, with a flute and peacock feather. But I always prescribe going beyond the form. Go into your being. Of course, when we enter into our third eye, automatically we will go beyond the form. We will start meditating on the formless energy that is beyond the form.
# Neither Too Much Nor Too Little
- *6.15 Always practicing control over the mind and established in the Self, the yogi attains peace, the supreme liberation and My kingdom.*
- *6.16 Yoga is neither eating too much nor eating too little; It is neither sleeping too much nor sleeping too little, O Arjuna.*
- *6.17 One who is regulated in food, rest, recreation and work, sleep and wakefulness can reduce misery.*
- *6.18 When the mind is disciplined and one is established in the Self, free from all desires, then one is said to be established in yoga.*
- *6.19 As a lamp in a place without wind does not waver, so also the yogi whose mind is controlled remains steady, engaged in yoga, in the Self.*
Kṛṣṇa talks here about control of the mind and being established in the Self. He talks about the path and the goal of yoga. The first line of *Yoga Sūtras* starts with '*yogaḥ citta vṛtti nirodaḥ.'* It means: Yoga is cessation of the mind. The very first line gives the path and the goal of yoga. The word yoga means uniting with the Divine. To reach the Ultimate, the goal and the path is the practice of Yoga.
**We have two lives in us. One is the life we want to live–the dream. The other is the life in reality–the life we are living. The meeting of these two lives is what I call Yoga**.
You can unite the two either by reducing the depth of fantasies or by increasing the expression of your energy so that reality can come closer to the dream. If you reduce the depth of the fantasy, your expectation, the dream plane and the reality plane will come closer together. On the other hand, if you increase the energy expressed through reality, the reality plane will come closer to the dream plane. The meeting and merging of these two planes is what I call Yoga.
The goal is uniting with the Ultimate or experiencing the ultimate spiritual energy, or the Divine and realizing our inherent nature. The path is dropping the mind, which means going beyond thoughts. We are spiritual beings having a human experience; we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. This is the truth. Bliss is our very nature. All that we need to do is go back to the source and realize our true nature.
The mind pulls us towards the temporary happiness that we experienced by pursuing sense pleasures. For example, we may like a particular sweet. We are attracted to its taste. When we sit down to eat it, for a few minutes our mind seems to stop thinking about it. There is a sense of peace when we are eating the sweet. Actually, we are at peace because the number of thoughts has come down for those few minutes. But we think the peace we experience is due to the sweet itself.
Understand that there is nothing wrong with liking the taste of the sweet. But if we think that the sweet is the cause of our fulfillment, then the problem starts, because the next time the same sweet may not give us the same experience of fulfillment. The experience of fulfillment has nothing to do with the object of experience.
In the same way, if we hold on to an object that we think gives us bliss, we will create an attachment to that object. But the experience of bliss is different from the object. Bliss is beyond attachment to any object, material or spiritual. Bliss is beyond the pairs of opposites. When we are happy due to some pleasurable event or person, the momentary joy comes because the number of our thoughts comes down when we meet the person. When the number of our thoughts comes down, bliss happens in us. But the bliss itself comes only from our own being, not from the person who we met. In fact, it continuously happens within us, irrespective of anything that goes on outside. Then why do we not feel the bliss continuously? It is because we are under the control of the mind, which needs the pairs of opposites to survive. We can go beyond the mind.
When we are completely in reality, in the present, we are complete with Existence and we are in bliss. This is eternal bliss. '*Nitya'* or 'eternal' means the past, present and future all put together, because it is beyond time. Being in the present is what eternity is. The present blissful moment gives birth to the next moment, which will be blissful. But if we try to look for bliss in the future, thinking that we can do various things to create a blissful future, it will never happen. When we are not in reality now, we are creating the blissful future from our fantasies. So come to terms with reality here and now and be blissful; automatically the future will also be blissful.
Bliss is like the water in a river. We can keep our hands open in it and enjoy it. But if we try to hold the water with closed hands, it will simply flow away from us leaving our hands empty. If we want to be in eternal bliss, we need to be blissful this very moment. We should not bother about whether we had bliss in the past or whether we will have it in the future. Just be blissful now.
When Kṛṣṇa talks about the mind and the senses being controlled, He is not talking about suppressing the mind and the senses. That is impossible to do. People who claim to renounce the world and its material aspects still cling to desires. Their efforts result in misery. Instead of directing our senses towards external objects and the pleasure derived from these objects, it is possible to turn our focus inwards and experience inner joy. Once the senses and the mind discover this inner joy, they will give up their attachment to external pleasures. Suppression never works; what works is completion. |
Take fear for example. What do we do when we feel afraid of something, whether it is fear of insects or fear of heights? The moment we are faced with the object of fear, we try to escape. Have we tried facing the fear? The next time you are afraid, try this. Instead of running away, just try looking at the fear consciously, go through it fully and declare completion with it. Do not identify with it by trying to suppress it or run away from it. I tell you, when you look at fear with completion, you will see that the fear does not exist as you thought it existed. It simply does not exist because fear is born out of ignorance, when something is unknown to you.
When we bring the light of knowledge upon fear, ignorance is removed and we get the courage to see the object as it is. Because now there is nothing hidden, our mind cannot fantasize about the unknown.
So understand, our fears are nothing but negative fantasies and we can complete with them. The same also applies to greed. Why do we always feel that we need more? We start running after the next desire before one desire is even fulfilled. We are so tuned to running after things. 'What next? What next?' becomes our chant. Have we ever stopped to think what we are running for? After fulfilling a desire, have we stopped to think whether we have achieved what we wanted? Have we stopped to enjoy what we just fulfilled? If we sit and contemplate sincerely over one desire after fulfilling it, by now, we would have gotten out of the vicious cycle of desires.
Can we ever drink water from a mirage? Running after the fantasies created by the mind is just like running after a mirage or running after the horizon. We can never achieve bliss by running behind these fantasies because these fantasies have no existence in reality.
# Be In The Self And See The Supreme
6.25 Gradually, step-by-step, one should become established in the Self, held by the conviction of intelligence, with the mind not thinking of anything else.
6.26 From wherever the mind becomes agitated due to its wandering and unsteady nature, from there, one must certainly bring it under the control of the Self.
6.27 The yogi whose mind is peaceful attains the highest happiness; His passion is pacified and he is free from sins as he is liberated by the Supreme.
6.28 The yogi always engaged in the Self and free from material contamination is in touch with the Supreme and attains the highest happiness.
6.29 The yogi sees the Supreme established in all beings and also all beings situated in the Supreme. One established in the Self sees the Supreme everywhere.
Here Kṛṣṇa says that we need conviction and intelligence to be established in the Self. Why does He talk about conviction? Understand that intelligence cannot happen without a strong conviction, a strong intellectual base
Our Vedic seers, Ṛṣis have created *śāstras,* the foundations of knowledge that give the intellectual understanding, conviction and commitment to this process. Logically, we will be clear about the questions that naturally arise. 'What is the path? What is the goal? Why do we need spirituality?' All these questions are answered logically in the *śāstras.* The conclusions are given to us. *Śāstras* are the scriptures that take away all our doubts completely.
Saṁśaya rākśasa nāshana astraṁ—it means saṁśaya is a rākśasa—'doubt is a devil'. Once a doubt enters our mind, until we clear it, we can't rest. The śāstras help us get rid of these doubts intellectually. Unless we have complete intellectual clarity, even if we believe, our belief will be a pseudo belief.
There are different ways to learn and develop clarity and conviction. We can learn from our experiences as well as from others' experiences. For example, when we touch the flame of a candle, we learn that it burns. When we touch a burning gas stove, we learn again that fire burns. One by one, we can experience and learn that all fires burn. Or, when we touch the first form of fire, immediately we can learn that all fires will burn! Coming to a conclusion and a clear understanding that all fires burn, after just one experience, is intelligence!
We need a strong conviction for spirituality to flower in our lives. Only then can we stay on the path without faltering. If we do anything with knowledge about the science of the whole action, then the activity becomes a meditation. When the science is lost and only the activity remains, it becomes a ritual. When the juice of wisdom is not in the activity, it becomes a ritual, and we become religious nuts. When we add the juice of wisdom, we become spiritual fruits! We need to add 'spirit' to the 'ritual'. Then it becomes 'spirituality'!
We can start with simple things. We can try to infuse completion into simple actions in our everyday life like eating, having a bath, driving. Gradually, when the completion extends to more actions of our life, we can see that such awareness of completion results in bliss. Completion is bliss. We need to bring the light of awareness and completion into everything we do. It is a conviction arising out of our innate intelligence and understanding that we must return to our true nature, that is Divinity.
#### **Persevere and See Me In Everything**
Now, Kṛṣṇa is emphasizing an important spiritual quality—
perseverance. In the previous verse, He spoke about conviction. Now, he talks about persevering with that conviction. What happens most of the time to most of us is that when we realize we need to transform, we try a few times and then we give up on ourselves thinking we cannot do it. We expect the mental setup that we have created and solidified, to be broken and restructured in a few attempts, almost instantly. How is this possible? We need to be more patient and persevere in our efforts for the real change to happen.
So what if we fail sometimes? Why don't we look at the positive side and see that we succeeded a few times? Why do we want to count the failures and feel depressed? We can also look at the successes and feel inspired. Once the conviction is there, nothing can stop us except our own mind. The mind is like a faithful servant. It reproduces whatever it has been fed. All along, we have been feeding the mind negative memories of failure and we have been storing all the past memories related to failure. What will the mind reproduce? It will recollect and present the same instances of only failure. When we want to measure the strength of a chain, we measure the strength of the weakest link in that chain. But we cannot apply the same logic to measure ourselves.
When we measure our lives based on our weakest moments, our failures and our incompletions, we take a wrong reading of ourselves. We cannot do with our lives what we do with the chain. Why can't we give credit to ourselves for the strong, successful moments of our lives? We have been conditioned by society to consider ourselves weak beings, that we are not powerful. We have been taught to feel guilty. Does that help us in any way? No! It only creates low energy and powerlessness.
**Listen. Strength is Life.** We should just decide that we will not be trapped in this cycle of guilt and desire. We need to measure ourselves by our strongest moments, our greatest moments of powerfulness, when we have displayed extraordinary awareness, courage, compassion, love and such other divine qualities. A human being is the sum of his greatest moments of completion. He is not a mechanical device that fails based on its faults. He is a spiritual being who thrives on his strengths.
Understand that you attract 'like' incidents in your life. 'Like attracts like.' The energy of one frequency attracts the similar frequency. When we are angry, the low energy attracts similar low energy. Pain attracts pain. Joy attracts joy. Bliss attracts fortune. If we are joyful, we will create a beautiful community of joyful people around us. It is for us to decide what we want to attract.
We must persevere in our efforts to change our space and we will see the results in front of our very eyes. Failures are merely tests to verify our mettle. Irrespective of how many times we may fail, with complete faith, with integrity and authenticity, we can trust in that inner strength that we all possess. Then we shall succeed. This is what is meant when Kṛṣṇa says the true yogi reaches the state of ultimate happiness, the state of eternal bliss and divine consciousness by his identification with the Absolute.
In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa talks about passion and sins.
**Passion is nothing but a deep attachment to something for the pleasure that it gives.** Usually we associate passion, sin and such terms with deeds that we classify as right or wrong. But here, Kṛṣṇa does not talk about sin in the way society teaches us. It is not morality that He is talking about. I tell you, there is no sin except the sin of connecting thoughts and thinking that we are logical beings.
So, the key is to be in the space of completion every moment. The solution is not to condemn ourselves as sinners and expect some external force to bring completion to us. It is we who choose everything in our lives and how we want to live. But since we do not participate in this process consciously, we call it 'fate'. We are the ones who do the actions, but we don't want to accept that fact when we get the results. Somehow we choose to do whatever we want to do and then blame everyone else for the consequences! When we infuse completion into our actions, automatically the very completion will ensure that we have the integrity to do the right things. Listen! When you are integrated, so many resources which are present in you as a potential, suddenly becomes a reality in you! When we are integrated, we don't need to depend on society and morality to teach us the right things to do.
I tell you, live according to your intelligence and awareness. If you depend on others, even after becoming an adult, it means you are not mature. Anything done out of conscience does not have the conviction of experience to back it. That is why it is never done whole-heartedly, because your energy, your intelligence is not behind the action. Have you seen a child doing anything, like looking at a flower? A child will look at a flower not just with its eyes, but also with its entire body. A child does anything and everything completely. We should try to look at life in a similar way. Many of us have not experienced the joy of enriching someone whole-heartedly. On the other hand, if we are smokers, do we need somebody to convince us to smoke? No! Smoking has become our experience.
When we are in bliss or the highest happiness, we can never commit any sin because we are aware and conscious and we cannot be caught in passion or lethargy. When we are in a 'no-mind' state, we are in bliss and we are not caught in the passion or sin that are products of the mind. When the mind drops, the Divine hand that is orchestrating every single event will guide every one of our actions.
What does it mean to be freed from all past sinful reactions? Our past reactions are nothing but our root patterns, the past memories along with the associated emotions, deeply inscribed in our unconscious space. Whenever we hold on to any past incidents or emotions as root patterns, our actions are bound to be impacted by them. But, if our action is not based on the past but arises from a spontaneous decision based on the present situation, then we are 'responding' to the event or incident or person. When we are in bliss, our actions will be only a response not a reaction, which is based on these past memories that Kṛṣṇa calls past sinful reactions.
Have the courage to complete with your root patterns, to make decisions without referring to these past incidents, because every single incident and moment is a brand new one. How can we compare what is happening now with what happened before? The situation is different, the person is different and so are we. Every moment, each one of us is dying and being born again; we are changing. Our intelligence is being constantly updated. Then how can we analyze the present situation through the lens of the past? We must complete with all regrets and guilt that we might have about the past, and immerse ourselves in the present moment. We don't need the past to live beautifully in present space of completion. In fact, we can't live blissfully in the present if we continue to use the past as a reference point for how to manage our lives.
#### **Realized One Sees the Supreme Everywhere**
Kṛṣṇa says that the realized person, *yoga-yuktātmā*, sees the Supreme in everyone and everything. He sees everything situated in the Supreme and all beings situated in the Supreme. The yogi is in touch with the higher Self and is in bliss.
> *sarva-bhūta-stham ātmānaṁ sarva-bhūtāni cātmani I īkṣate yoga-yuktātmā sarvatra sama-darśarsanaḥ II 6.29*
When we experience the Truth, we see everything in ourselves and ourselves in everything. In fact, in my first spiritual experience at the age of twelve, this is what I clearly saw.
> When I was twelve, I was playing with this technique of just watching where thoughts came from, the source of my thoughts. At that age, I didn't even realize it was meditation. One day, at the foothills of Arunachala, in my hometown of Tiruvannamalai in South Bharat, I was sitting on a rock, just playing with this technique that I had been practicing for two years.
> Suddenly, something happened; something opened within me. I felt as if I was being pulled inside. Suddenly, I could see 360 degrees in all directions. My eyes were closed but I could see everything in front of me and behind me.
*Not just that, I felt that whatever I was seeing, was all me. I could see myself in everything—in the trees, in the rocks, in the ground, in the hills, everything!*
An Enlightened person sees no difference between Himself and the rest of the Universe. He is one with the Universe. His boundary does not end where his physical body ends. In fact, now with Kirlian photography, we can even check the auric body. For ordinary people, the aura just surrounds the physical body but when you are one with the universe, the aura extends infinitely. The *Viśvarūpa Darśan*, vision of the cosmic form, that Kṛṣṇa gives Arjuna is the glimpse of the same Truth, where Arjuna sees that Kṛṣṇa is one with the Universe.
In the ultimate sense, the moment we understand that we are deeply, totally and intensely connected to the whole Universe, not only do we start experiencing bliss, we really start living in the space of completion. Many dimensions of our being start opening. Right now we are stressed out and disturbed continuously because we think of ourselves as individual egos. If we disappear into this collective consciousness, we will experience so many dimensions and so many possibilities that we simply cannot imagine right now! |
*6.45 And when the Yogī engages himself with sincere endevour in progressing fruther, being cleansed of all incompletions, then ultimately, achieving perfection \[saṁsiddhi] after many births of practice, he attains the highest state \[parām-gati].*
*6.46 A Yogī is greater than the ascetic \[tapasvi], greater than the wise \[jñāni] and greater than the fruitive worker. Therefore, Arjuna, do become a Yogī.*
*6.47 Of all Yogīs, one who always lives in Me, thinking of Me within himself, who worships Me in full faith, he is the most intimately united with Me in Yoga and is the highest of all Yogīs; that is My opinion.*
Kṛṣṇa is describing the process of the human experience. Why do we assume the body? We think that we can experience bliss through the body and mind; that is why we assume the body. When we realize that bliss cannot be experienced through the body or mind, we know that going beyond the body is the only way to experience it. Then we will not assume the body. Assuming the human body is simply our choice.
People ask me, 'Why do we choose to have the human experience?' That we should find out for ourselves. Why did we assume this body? I asked the question and I got the answer. I know why I chose the human experience. Ask the question yourself and pursue it as a quest and you will get the answer. You will be enlightened.
We claim that we want to experience the ultimate and that we want to be enlightened. But I tell you, if we really want to be enlightened, there is nothing that can stop us. There is no hindrance to our being enlightened except our own self. As of now, actually, Enlightenment is last on our laundry list of items that we want to do in life! When the urge becomes urgent, when the question becomes a burning quest, then we get the answer. There is no other way.
In these verses, Kṛṣṇa promises a few things. He says that whatever we have learned in one life does not get wasted. We do not start from ground zero in the next birth. We start from where we left off. Our *vāsanās*, our mindset in one birth, continues into another. He also promises that if we keep practicing, if we keep trying, we will be cleansed of all sins and reach the highest state. Such a person, Kṛṣṇa promises, will reach Him.
At the end of the day, what Kṛṣṇa implies is this: We need to do our bit. We need to practice yoga, the path that leads to self-awareness, to self-completion, the path that leads to Kṛṣṇa, with dedication, perseverance, with integrity and authenticity. There is no other way. There is no short cut. Once you do your bit, the Master promises deliverance. He promises that you will be one with Him. We will enter into a technique given by Śrī Kṛṣṇa to go beyond the mind, to awaken our senses, to *look in.*
### **MEDITATION**
Now it is time to look in. Now it is time to tune ourselves to that highest teaching given by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in this *Dhyāna Yoga*. Now we will enter into the meditation. If we are ready to sit for the next ten minutes, we will start the meditation.
Please sit straight and close your eyes. Keep your head, neck and spine, all three in a straight line. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible and as deeply as possible.
Slowly, in a relaxed way, bring your awareness to your *ājña cakra*. Concentrate between the two eyebrows. Bring your awareness between the two eyebrows.
Remember and pray to that Energy that came as Kṛṣṇa, that is guiding us and helping us in our life. Pray to that Energy that gave us the *Bhagavad Gītā.*
Meditate on the pure light energy. If your mind wanders here and there, don't worry. When you remember, bring it back again and relax in your *ājña cakra*, between your eyebrows. Don't concentrate. In a very relaxed way, be aware of the *ājña cakra*, the space in between the two eyebrows.
(a few minutes pass)
Slowly, very slowly bring your mind to your heart and meditate on your heart center. If you want, you can touch your heart center with the hand and feel it. Try to bring your awareness to the heart center. Try to remember the heart center. Forget all other parts of your body; forget your mind. Just become the heart center. Just be in the heart center. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible.
May you experience your pure inner space. May you experience the eternal bliss, *Nityānanda.*
(a few minutes pass)
Om śānti, śānti, śāntihi...
Relax. Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes.
We may wonder how a simple technique like this one can lead us into our Self.
Please understand that we always live in the head. Start living from the heart. We will then start acting from intelligence. We will start acting, not from our head but from our heart. When we start acting from the heart, we don't calculate. The very calculation disappears, the 'I, I, I' disappears. And naturally our senses become sensitive. We don't abuse our senses. We don't destroy our senses. Too much of the energy that is supplied to the heart is taken away by the mind. The fuel supply to the mind will be reduced and the fuel supply to the heart will be increased.
So try to continuously remember this heart region, *anāhata cakra*.
Naturally, we will have awareness in the *ājña* also. In the last session, Kṛṣṇa gave the technique to be in the *ājña*. Today, He says start with the *ājña* and come down to *anāhata*. This is because in the heart, there is a possibility of much more happening. The possibility of reaching is easier and greater in the heart. **Kṛṣṇa says, 'Let you be in the heart.'**
Look in! You will realize 'You are That.' Just look in, you will experience the eternal bliss, *Nitya-ānanda*. Let us pray to that Ultimate Energy, *Parabrahma* Kṛṣṇa to give us all the Eternal Bliss, *Nityānanda.*
> *Thus ends the sixth chapter named Dhyāna Yogaḥ, 'The Yoga of Path of Meditation,' of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṃvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.*
# Listen, Cognize And Radiate
All living beings are caught in the duality of attachment and aversion. the greatest Master, Krsna explains how to move out of this bondage. He reveals the knowledge of associating with the Divine to radiate the Divine. ...
# Listen, Cognize And Radiate
Listen! To begin with, let us see why Kṛṣṇa has given us this chapter. Again and again Kṛṣṇa speaks the same Truth. Nothing else is spoken, only the same Truth. Then what is the need for so many chapters?
People can say that Kṛṣṇa is repeating Himself. They may ask, 'How many times must He say that the spirit is indestructible, or that all work must be done with authenticity without expecting returns or that one must surrender to Him to reach completion?'
Understand, if you have already listened even once, Kṛṣṇa will not repeat it again. Anything you listen from Kṛṣṇa, understand you are listening *now*, for the first time! If you had already listened, I will make sure the words do not fall in your ears the second time, because I won't waste your time or my time. I am Kāla (time)!
For a person who wants to begin the life, the first thing he needs to learn is listening! Understand, by 'hearing' you won't understand the Master. Only by 'listening to yourself ' you can understand the Master. I tell you, people who listen to themselves can understand what I am saying, even without any introduction to any spiritual philosophy. People who don't listen to themselves, they do not understand. Listening! Listening to yourself and speaking into the listening of yourself and others, makes our inner space cognize the right declarations.
Many times people come and tell me, 'I am not able to convince myself to drop my incompletions.' This means that they are not able to speak into their listening!
Speak into your listening! There is no shortcut, there is no cross cut. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So, the shortest route for anything is a straight line, a straight path.
**Listen! Please understand, I am defining Completion.**
**Ability to speak into the listening of yourself is Completion. Ability to speak into the listening of yourself is ability to complete. That is the ability to complete.**
It is all about developing your ability to speak into your listening, developing your ability to speak into others' listening, developing your ability to give authentic listening to yourself, and developing the ability to provide authentic listening to others, that's all!
How many ever new words Kṛṣṇa may use, how many ever new words Arjuna may use, it is all about the ability to provide authentic listening to yourself and to to others, the ability to speak into your listening and the ability to speak into the listening of others, that's all!
Kṛṣṇa shows the power of authentic listening and teaches Arjuna the ability to provide authentic listening to himself and to others, and to speak into the listening of himself and others! In the first chapter of Gītā—*Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ*, Kṛṣṇa provides authentic listening to Arjuna's dilemma. So complete is Kṛṣṇa's listening that Arjuna is able to listen to himself, his dilemmas and is able to pour out the depth of his root patterns into Kṛṣṇa's listening. Just by His pure, authentic listening, Kṛṣṇa transforms Arjuna's questions into quest, incompletions into completion, and his patterns into possibilities.
Please listen from the space of listening!
If you have authentically listened, if you have done *śravana* listening authentically and *manana*—intranalyzing authentically, you *will* be radiating authentically. Nothing can be done about it! Intranalyzing and radiating! Please listen, your life needs to be constantly powerful. You should be living to do what you want. You should be talking to get the result of what you want. You should be talking to move the other person the way you want. And you should not be talking by fighting with the patterns of the listener. You should be talking into the listening of the listener! When will that happen? If you are established into your listening, you will talk into the other person's listening.
Listen! When Arjuna listens to himself, he becomes a *disciple;* when Kṛṣṇa speaks into the listening of Arjuna, Arjuna becomes enlightened— *Radiating Enlightenment*!
If I have to simply translate the word *'radiating*' or *nididhyāsana* in a very colloquial way, it means: Minding your business! Not wasting your life! Laziness, boredom, diversion, and postponing do not have a place in your life when you are radiating. Radiating means RADIATING! It is straightforward! Live your life authentically. Live your life with strength. Live your life intensely with clarity and powerfulness.
First thing you need to learn to *radiate*, the first thing for *nididhyāsana* is: Learn to think and speak with the same cognition you arrive at by intranalyzing.
Please understand, I am explaining step-by-step:
First, you authentically listen to the great Truths. Whenever you authentically listen, whatever you listen will be converted as great Truths by your inner space. Your inner space has the capability; it has the power to separate the right from wrong.
There is a very beautiful example of Paramahamsa in *Vedic t*radition! Paramahamsa is the supreme swan. If you mix milk and water and leave it, this great bird Hamsa (swan) will separate the milk from the water and suck only the milk and leave the water! The Hamsa bird has that power. The Hamsa bird is said to be the only creature that has the rare capability of separating milk from water.
In the same way, a person who takes the right things inside and leaves the unnecessary things outside is *'Paramahamsa*'. If you bring authentic listening in you, you will become *Paramahamsa*! Anything you listen, you know what to internalize and what to reject. Paramahamsas are actually enlightened Masters who take the bird body. Soaring high in the skies, they express their freedom and enjoy their bliss! They are metaphysical birds, seen only through enlightened eyes or by people who live in the higher consciousness. If you see the emblem of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Dhyanapeetam, you will see this Paramahamsa bird is our emblem. I had a beautiful vision or experience, from which I created this emblem.
Authentic listening brings tremendous clarity. See, this clarity is really lacking in the seeker's life. Especially when somebody is interested to be enlightened, to live the life of a *jīvan mukta (*one who lives enlightenment), clarity is a very predominantly important quality. Please listen! Clarity is *Viveka*. Ādī Śaṅkara has written a separate book on clarity called *Viveka Chūḍāmaṇi*.
**Authentic listening,** *śravana* **leads to clarity. And intranalyzing,** *manana* **leads to cognitive shift. If you don't live that cognitive shift powerfully, you will lose it. Please listen! Powerfully living the cognitive shift is what I call radiating,** *nididhyāsana.*
I will tell you, how to find out whether you are radiating or not? Simply life around you will constantly be getting enriched, that is the signal! If the constant enriching is happening, then you are radiating! Around me, whether you are six or sixty, eight or eighty, you cannot go without getting enriched!
#### **Radiating,** *nididhyāsana* **means such powerful body language, such powerful words, such powerful thinking that you go on enriching, constantly winning the game of life!**
Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the personification of all these three—*śravana, manana, nididhyāsana,* powerfully enriching Arjuna to learn authentic listening, authentic intranalyzing and radiating. First, Arjuna learns *śravana* to give his authentic listening to himself and to Kṛṣṇa; getting to the root of his root patterns in the chapters of *Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ, Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ, Karma Yogaḥ* and *Jñāna-karma-sannyāsa Yogaḥ*. Once he gets the tremendous clarity through authentic listening, he learns to do *manana,* intranalyzing the great truths in chapters such as *Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, Dhyāna Yogaḥ* and *Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ*.
Understand, because Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the complete Incarnation, He directly transmits the space of radiating, *nididhyāsana* to Arjuna without the need for *manana,* intranalyzing*.* When you are in the space of authentic listening to an Incarnation, who is also your Master, He can directly transmit the energy and experience of Enlightenment into you. *Parabrahma* Kṛṣṇa does this transmission in *Vibhūti Yogaḥ* and *Viśvarūpa Darśana Yogaḥ* to Arjuna. It is only for enriching the humanity that He continues to take Arjuna step-by-step into deeper levels of completion through the eighteen chapters. |
Ultimately, when the cognitive shift happens in Arjuna, he experiences *nididhyāsana*, radiating the same cognition he arrives at by intranalyzing. When Kṛṣṇa enriches him to powerfully live and radiate His very body language and experience Enlightenment, dropping everything and surrendering to Him in *Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ*, Arjuna wins the game of life called Mahābhārat war!
People ask me, '*Swamiji*, how many days will it take for us to learn meditation?'
I tell them, 'To learn meditation, two minutes are enough. To learn what meditation is not, you need ten days!' Kṛṣṇa knows that Arjuna is just like us. He represents the sum total of humanity. To explain to a man or woman what needs to be done, and why it is right is not enough. The human mind will find a hundred reasons why ninety-nine other things are just as good. So the Master must also tell why the other ninety-nine things are not the straight path, and why we must stick to what the Master prescribes.
That is exactly what Śrī Kṛṣṇa does. Again and again, the great Master explains patiently why the ninety-nine other options are not really options at all. He does this to prove that the *one* option He outlines sinks deeply into Arjuna's consciousness. As a result, this truth also sinks into the consciousness of every individual who reads the *Bhagavad Gītā*.
When we express the truth logically, our mind always goes to the other end of the logic. So, we need to understand and cognize the truth from both ends. There is a beautiful philosophy in Bharat, *Nyāya Śāstra*, or the scripture of logic. According to this, any statement has two lines of logic. The first line of logic is regular logic; *nyāya* means regular. For example, if I make the statements, 'All men have one head. Sundar is a man,' we can easily conclude that the third statement will be: Sundar has one head. This is simple logic.
There is another kind of logic, a higher-level logic. For example, the first statement says, 'There are two doors.' The second statement says, 'One door is open.' An average person immediately jumps to the conclusion that the other door is closed. However, in this kind of logic we cannot jump to this conclusion. The second door may also be open.
In order that the listener, reader and disciple do not make mistakes in the understanding, the Master ensures that we know which door is open and which door is closed. It is not left to assumption on the basis of the disciple's intelligence. But the Master does not explain for this reason alone. When the truth sinks into us, it should sink in without a trace or resistance. However, when something is not fully explained, our mind moves away from what is being explained. When this happens, instead of being integrated to what is said, the mind gets constantly distracted and becomes tired. A tired mind makes mistakes and falls from integrity.
Usually, in life, we go out of integrity and make mistakes when we jump to incomplete conclusions using the first kind of logic when we should have made those decisions using the second kind of logic. The moment somebody makes a statement, 'You don't have compassion,' we immediately become defensive and say, 'Do you mean to say I am cruel? You mean I am violent?'
We don't have to jump to such an inauthentic conclusion. When we jump to conclusions, we create trouble not only for ourselves but also for others. Many times we make this mistake of lacking integrity in our listening. Don't be in a hurry to cognize what is spoken, because your cognition is so much filled with judgments, opinions, attitudes, personal beliefs, and attributes.
**Listening is life. Non-listening is death**. When we handle our mind without integrity and authenticity, we make this mistake. The totality of words that we repeat inside our system creates our whole life. If our mind jumps to illogical conclusions like this, naturally we create trouble for ourselves and others.
Ordinary Masters express their philosophy or their experience with the second kind of logic, which is why there is so much misunderstanding. There is a possibility of missing listening to their message and concluding with the wrong cognition. However, Kṛṣṇa is a *Jagat Guru*. He is not an ordinary Master. He is the Master of the whole Universe and He knows the minds of all possible types of human beings. He knows the problems of non-listening, non-integrity, and inadequate logic.
Kṛṣṇa is delivering this message in such a way that we cannot miss giving our authentic listening to Him and jump to any inauthentic conclusions, or wrongly cognize any statement in the flow of incomplete logic. He makes all the three statements. He is clear and complete. He says, 'There are two doors, the first door is open, the second door is closed.' He allows no space for us to lack listening because He speaks into our listening. He protects us from ourselves.
That is why He repeats the same truth in each chapter from a different level of logic each time to take us to higher and deeper levels of completion. He takes the complete responsibility for all three *śravana, manana,* and *nididhyāsana*.
In this whole chapter of *Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ*, Kṛṣṇa speaks about the same message from a different view so that we now learn to listen from the space of authentic listening—*śravana*, we understand and intranalyze to have the cognitive shift—*manana*, and we powerfully radiate the space of completion—*nididhyāsana*.
# One In A Billion Reaches Me
*7.1 Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, Pārtha (Arjuna), now listen to Me, you can know Me completely, without doubt, by practicing yoga in true consciousness of Me, With your mind attached to Me.*
*7.2 Let Me explain to you in full this phenomenal knowledge [jñāna] of the Absolute along with its conscious realization [vijñāna]; by knowing which, there shall remain nothing further to be known.*
*7.3 Out of many thousands of men, hardly one endeavors to achieve the perfection of self-realization; of those so endeavoring, hardly one achieves the perfection of self-realization, and of those, hardly one knows Me in truth or reaches that state of oneness with Me.*
*7.4 Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego, all together these constitute My external eightfold energies.*
*7.5 Besides these external energies, which are inferior or material in nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine. This comprises all the embodied souls of all the living entities [jīvabhūta] by which this material world is being utilized.*
Again and again people ask me, '*Swamiji*, why did you choose to speak on the Bhagavad Gītā? Why didn't you choose books like *Aṣṭavakra Gītā, Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra, Brahmasutra* or the *Upaniṣads*?' I tell them that the *Gītā* expresses the truth in totality. Kṛṣṇa has created keys for all kinds of human beings. Kṛṣṇa fulfills every need of every human being.
He says, '*Listen,* Arjuna, by practicing yoga in full consciousness of Me, with mind attached to Me, you can know Me in full, without doubt.' In this statement, Kṛṣṇa uses the word '*Me*' three times. Having read that, a psychologist will conclude that Kṛṣṇa is egoistic. According to psychology, if we use the word 'I' or 'Me' three or more times in a statement, we are egoistic. A person might hate Kṛṣṇa because he feels Kṛṣṇa is egoistic. Again and again, He declares, 'Surrender to Me. I am everything.'
We should understand here that He is expressing His glory. The person who hates Kṛṣṇa thinking He is egoistic, misses the truth or spirit expressed by the *Gītā*. In the same way, a person who loves Kṛṣṇa gets caught in His form and misses the juice of the *Gītā*! Whenever people are caught in the form, when they worship the form, they slowly start saying, '*Gītā* is great. Kṛṣṇa is God. He can express all these things, but surely it is not for us. It is not practical.' In this way, they slowly create a distance between themselves and Kṛṣṇa. They worship the *Gītā* instead of practicing it. If we have a pot full of milk and we worship it but never drink it, will we get the benefit of the milk? Understand, unless we drink the milk, we will never get the benefit of the milk. Unless we imbibe Kṛṣṇa, we cannot get the benefit of the *Gītā*. When we don't imbibe Kṛṣṇa's teachings in our lives, when we don't work towards experiencing Kṛṣṇa, worshipping Kṛṣṇa is nothing but inauthenticity. It's a cunning method of escaping from the truth. Worshipping without intranalyzing and living is the worst form of inauthenticity.
People who hate Kṛṣṇa think He is egoistic. And people who love Kṛṣṇa are caught in His form and think they should surrender to the personality called Kṛṣṇa who came down in human form. Only a person who experiences Kṛṣṇa realizes the *Gītā.*
#### **Approach Divine the Right Way**
This chapter is about how human beings approach the Divine, why they approach the Divine, and at what level they approach the Divine. We approach the Divine in the way we want It. According to our maturity, we approach the Divine.
At what level do we approach the Divine? What do we receive in
return? How do we grow in maturity? Kṛṣṇa gives the answers to these questions in this chapter. Here He says, 'Out of many thousands among men, *one* may endeavor for perfection, and out of those who have achieved perfection, hardly *one* knows Me in truth.'
Beautiful! Here He says, 'out of thousands'. In those days, the population must have been less, which is why He makes the statement 'out of thousands'. Now we should say, 'Out of billions, one may endeavor for perfection.'
> *manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye I yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ II 7.3*
'Among millions of men, *one* man may endeavor for perfection, and out of those who achieve perfection, hardly *one* knows Me in truth.'
There are millions of people out there, but only a few hundred are present today to listen to this *Gītā* discourse. And out of these few hundred, only a few will listen authentically, as it is expressed. We may sit here. We may even hear, but never think that we really listen.
I request people to never repeat what I have said to others. If you do repeat it, then please don't say, '*Swamiji* told me these things.' Be very clear, you heard those things. Tell them, 'I heard these things.' Never say, '*Swamiji* said'. Many times we miss much of what is said. Modern scientists say that we observe hardly two percent of the things that happen around us. If a hundred things happen around us, we observe and intranalyze only two!
It is as if you have a hundred-page storybook, and somehow you lose the whole book except for two random pages. If you try to reconstruct the whole novel with only those two pages, how true will it be to the original? In the same way, you remember hardly two percent of what I say. With that two percent, if you try to reconstruct this whole discourse, naturally it will be your discourse, not mine. If you want to tell people what I spoke, please always say, 'I heard THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM say this.' Never say, '*Nithyananda* said…' Because you jump to conclusions, and because of your inner chatter, you miss authentic listening.
The Master is always ready to share and enrich with his experiences. That is his mission in life. The infinite compassion that fills an enlightened being is forever bursting to be let out to share, to teach, to guide, and to enrich. He is available continuously to the whole humanity, enriching with Enlightenment. That is why Kṛṣṇa says that He is now ready to explain.
Listen! You will see miraculous transformations happening in your body and mind. Listening is God! Just by listening, you experience God! The question is whether or not Arjuna is ready to listen. Even if Arjuna was ready to listen and he became enlightened, are we ready to listen today, now?
Why does Kṛṣṇa say that a few even try, and of those who try, very few succeed? Remember that He is talking about Self-realization, about understanding who we are. Why is it so difficult even to try?
We do not want to try because we are afraid. We are restless in any form of silence. If I am silent for a few minutes after I sit down before an audience, the entire audience becomes restless; they start fidgeting. Why do we find it difficult to meditate? After all, all we do in meditation is close our eyes and remain silent. Why is it difficult? We give appointments to everyone else every day of our lives, willingly and unwillingly. Why is it so difficult to give half an hour a day to ourselves?
Why would we rather watch television, knowing fully well that nothing of value will come from it? Why would we rather read the same old newspaper or social media pages again and again? Understand, all these are because we are afraid of being with ourselves. Why are we afraid of being with ourselves? We must ask and answer these questions ourselves. If Self-realization means going back to where we came from, and where we came from is a state of bliss and divinity, then why are we afraid to be with ourselves?
The truth is that we have forgotten where we came from. Nothing in the way we are brought up and 'educated' tells us that we come from Bliss and we can regain that bliss. If we realize how easy it is to be blissful and return to our original state, no one can control us. That is what liberation means. But society, religion, and political and family structures operates on the principle of control.
The moment we realize who we are and we are liberated, these institutions cannot make us do what they want us to do. From childhood we are conditioned to avoid looking too deeply into ourselves because if we do, we may find the truth and be liberated. Most of society doesn't know these deeper truths. This is how society puts generation after generation of people in deep illusion.
The only true love is that of the Divine and that of the Master. Such love comes out of infinite compassion. It expects nothing in return. What can we offer God and our Master? So, if we need to follow the Truth, we must enrich ourselves to enrich others. We must be selfish; selfish to enter into this path of Self-realization. However it is not a selfishness born out of the usual material nature. It is selfishness born out of the desperate need to be *selfless*. When we reach our center or our core, we become *one* with humanity. Then there are no differences among us. That is why even our spouses will be unhappy if we realize ourselves, because they cannot possess us anymore. At that point they must share us with humanity. But they won't understand that the love of Self-realization is infinite, that there is no reduction in sharing, there is only growth in sharing. |
The *Vedic Ṛṣis* at least created the community and caste system based upon intelligence and wisdom. In other cultures, the community system was created based upon money and power. The countries where the rulers are *kṣatriyas* (warrior class), are the ones who create the community system based upon power. The more powerful a person is, the more respected he is. In other countries, people who do business, the business class people, control the whole system. There the the wealthy people are respected more.
Bharat is the only country where people who respected intelligence and wisdom created the whole system. The system was created based upon intelligence, based upon wisdom. So that is why, in Bharat, the more wisdom a person carries, the more spiritual he is, the more he is respected.
The whole social system was created based upon sharing from an enriching consciousness. Understand, you can create anything only when you see it and experience it from the state of enriching consciousness. Man must contribute something to enrich the community by doing actions in the enriching state.
Let me describe the spirit with which the whole system was created, and how we abused it. First, the whole system is not based upon our birth. It is based upon our character.
Kṛṣṇa says again and again that it is based upon our *guṇas* (nature), based upon our attitude towards life. A person who works driven by fear, one who works out of fear, belongs to the working class called *śūdra.* A person who works out of greed, belongs to the merchant or business class called *vaiśya*. A person who works to get attention or to prove that he is superior, belongs to the *kṣatriya* community. A person who works out of gratitude from the enriching consciousness, expressing his bliss, is a *brāhmaṇa*. This was how people were categorized in those days.
Everybody must contribute something to enrich the society. A person may enrich by sharing his time if he has nothing else. A person who shares his time is a worker, a *śūdra*. He belongs to the working class. A person who enriches by sharing products, has time and a little bit of intelligence to create products, is a *vaiśya*, a merchant. A person who enriches by sharing confidence, who gives courage to the whole community, is a *kṣatriya,* a warrior! He unites the whole group as a community in a solid way by giving confidence, by sharing his confidence. A person who enriches by sharing his knowledge, bliss or spiritual wisdom, is a *brāhmaṇa*.
This type of division is completely based upon our role, the role we play in the community, which is based on our character. In no way is it related to our birth. This is the spirit with which the whole system was created by the *Ṛṣis*. Here nobody is higher and nobody is lower. In the course of time, one or two mistakes happened. But because of that we can't say that the whole system is wrong.
*caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino'rjuna I
ārto jijñasurartharthī jñānī ca bharataṛṣabha II 7.16*
'O best among the Bhārata, four kinds of pious men begin to render devotional service unto Me: the distressed, the desirer of wealth, the inquisitive, and he who searches for knowledge of the Absolute.'
Here Kṛṣṇa talks about those who approach the Divine and the ways in which they approach the Divine. Man is centered on seven basic emotions. Basically we live and work based on these seven emotions: greed, fear, worry, attention-need (name and fame), comparison and jealousy, ego and the last one, the seventh emotion, deep discontentment.
These are the qualities with which man lives and he works. Man is centered on these seven different emotions. These seven emotions are seven energy centers that supply energy to us, fuel for us. Everything that we do in life is rooted in one of these seven emotions.
If we are centered on greed, we approach God in the same way. Goddess Lakṣmi (goddess of wealth) appeals to us. Or we continuously run behind Kubera (Lord of wealth) and perform Kubera pūjā (worship of Kubera); we continuously repeat the concept of Kubera. When we feel we are missing something, we try to get fulfillment by creating our own God and approaching Him in that mold. We approach the Divine with the same emotion, the same feeling that we miss in our being.
One more thing: When we become mature, we approach the same Lakṣmi as *Jñāna Lakṣmi* (goddess of wisdom as wealth)! We pray to the same goddess to give us wisdom, to give us knowledge. According to our maturity we project and see the Divine. Understand, there's nothing wrong in approaching the Lord from greed. There's nothing wrong in starting our life with prayers for boons. However, we should not end our life also with prayers. Then there is something wrong. It's a good start, but a bad end!
Vivekananda beautifully says, 'It's good to be born in the church, but not to die there.' Before we die, we should grow out of it. We must become mature; we must realize the other dimensions of the Divine within us.
In prayer, we pray to God; in meditation, we become God! Prayers give us immediate results. Praying to that higher principle or to the Divine is not wrong, yet it is not enough. Whereas in meditation, we become that higher principle or the Divine to which we constantly pour out our prayers. This is permanent.
The Divine is nothing but a mirror; we see our own reflection. And whatever we do to the Divine comes back to us. The more we understand, the more we grow and relate with the Divine in a more mature way. Otherwise we are confused and caught like a drunkard.
A small story:
A man returns home very late, completely drunk. Unable to walk, he somehow makes his way into the house, stumbles over a table and breaks a piece of glass. Not only does he break a piece of glass, the glass cuts him badly. He goes to the bathroom and tries to bandage himself, looking in the mirror. Then slowly, without making a sound, he enters the bedroom and falls asleep.
The next morning, his wife starts her enquiry, 'What happened? What did you do last night?'
He replies, 'I didn't do anything. I am ok.' The wife says, 'No, tell me why you were late.'
He says, 'I went and had a few drinks.' She says, 'That's ok, but did you hurt yourself?'
He replies, 'No, I did not hurt myself.' She asks, 'Then why did you put so many bandages on the mirror?'
Instead of putting the bandages on himself, he put the bandages on the mirror!
If we are drunk, if we are unaware, we land up doing the same thing! We would do everything to the mirror. Catching the mirror and catching the form is one and the same. If we put the bandage on the mirror, we can never be healed. The mirror should be used to find out where to put the bandage on us. In the same way, we should use God or the Divine like a mirror to find out where we have a problem. Don't miss and try to do the healing work on the mirror. If we do that we will miss the whole thing. So be very clear: Starting life with prayers is a good start, but it is not the right place to end.
### We choose God based on our Emotions
At the next level, the person is centered on fear and so he worships gods who will protect him. He does the *Sudarśana homa* (homa refers to making offerings into a consecrated fire; Sudarśana homa refers to the fire ritual done for general protection), or he continuously does *Mṛtyuñjaya homa* (fire ritual done to avoid untimely death, improve longevity) for protection. He continuously goes about worshipping some planet or god. That's why tribal gods have big swords. In many Hindu villages also, you see gods with swords and big weapons. People who are fear-centered worship gods with weapons. All this is ok, nothing wrong, but it is not the place to stop.
The third level is, approaching the Divine because of worry. Again, worry is nothing but mixture of fear and greed. With worry, we approach the Divine in the same way. We pray to the Divine, 'Please help me stop worrying. Please help me come out of these worries.' At this point, we may do yoga or meditation for the sake of peace—not for spiritual Enlightenment, but to calm our mind, to get a little peace.
The next level is based on attention-need. We approach the Divine for the sake of name and fame, for the sake of capturing the attention of people. Not only do we pray to the Divine, we gradually start representing the Divine also. If you go to Bharat, you will see that the people who run temples behave almost like God. It's a big problem.
I tell people: Unless you are mature, never take up the task of running a temple. One person asked me, 'I don't believe in spirituality. But, I want to run a temple as a social service. Shall I do it?' I told him, 'Never make that mistake! If you are not spiritually mature and you enter this work, surely you will trouble yourself and others. By and by, it will become a pure name-and-fame game! And naturally you will not only hurt yourself, you will hurt others too.'
There's a beautiful ritual performed during the installation of a deity in a temple, called *prāṇa pratiṣṭha*. The scriptural instruction is that the person who installs the deity must be enlightened. Otherwise, the person who installs the deity receives the collective negativity of the people who pray in that temple. It may be a frightening idea, but don't think it's a lie. It has meaning. The person who takes up this job without spiritual maturity will naturally end up with name and fame problems. He creates problems for himself and others. He starts representing the Divine and acts on behalf of the Divine.
The people who stand and pray in front of God, the deity, are gullible because they are caught in fear and greed. You can easily exploit them. They are waiting for a solution. That is the reason why repeatedly, it is emphasized that only an enlightened person should run a spiritual organization.
If we give a spiritual project to a person who has only the attitude of a businessman, he turns the whole thing into a business. The Divine cannot be brought under accounts and mathematical calculations! The whole thing loses its spirit. That is why Masters emphasize that we need spiritual maturity before we enter into these activities.
The next is comparison and jealousy. This is an extreme step. People always compare with others, and they feel jealous of the others' position, their status or their wealth. A person who compares and feels jealous can never rest. Look into what makes us run in our lives. Why are we in a hurry? Listen, don't be in a hurry! We don't need to run. If we are centered on jealousy and comparison, again we approach the Divine from that angle and only for that purpose.
#### Expressing the Divine
It is hard to imagine the extent of foolishness people go to if they are caught in jealousy and comparison. One is constantly caught in: this is *mine*; that is *mine*; this is the way I do it, etc. We need to realize that each of us is unique. God is not an engineer; He is an artist. He sculpts each of us with His hands, lovingly and uniquely. Therefore, each one of us is different.
When we approach the Divine with the mentality of jealousy and comparison, we are caught again. People ask me, *'Swamiji,* in our epics, we read about gods and goddesses fighting out of jealousy, greed, and anger. What do you say about that?' Listen, those epics were written for people caught in jealousy, so that they could relate with them. Don't think that the Divine makes those mistakes! But if people think so, it means that they are relating with Him in their own mold!
Even rituals are done only so that people feel comfortable with God and they start coming closer to Him. When people witness the ceremony of Gods getting married, they feel comfortable and safe. To make people feel relaxed, these stories are told and expressed. You see, unless the Divine is expressed in our language, we will not be able to relate with It. That is why these stories are written.
Next is the person who is centered on ego. This is slightly more difficult to deal with! The person who is centered on ego tries to get name and fame for himself. He starts claiming that he is divine without expressing the qualities of the Divine. That is why there's a beautiful Upaniṣad verse that says: If you are divine, express it by your quality. Let people recognize it by your quality, not by your words.
What you do speaks for you; what you speak will not do anything for you. What you do, the way in which you work, speaks for you. Your words will not work for you. There's a short, beautiful *Upaniṣad* called *Paramahamsa Upaniṣad*. It says, a Paramahamsa should not wear the saffron robe. Actually, technically speaking, I am not supposed to wear this saffron robe. They say we are not respected the way we have to be if we wear this saffron robe. By our very quality, because of our Divinity, we should be respected. The divine qualities expressed in our life, that alone should be respected, and not this robe or tradition. It should come because of the enlightened qualities expressed through us.
Yesterday there was a question: How do we know if a person is
egoistic or he is a real spiritual Master? Please listen. A person who is egoistic can only play with words. Only a person who has achieved Enlightenment can radiate the energy to reproduce the same experience in you. If you get the experience, then be very clear your Master is enlightened. He is divine. He is the embodiment of spiritual experience and knowledge. If you get the words but not the experience, be very clear, the person or the path you are following is not the Ultimate.
Words are like the menu card. Experience is like the food. If you go to a restaurant and they give you a menu card and say, 'Here is the menu card, but the food is not available here,' can you call that a restaurant? No! The menu card is not enough to satisfy your hunger. In spiritual life we cannot stop with just the menu card.
The person who has approached the Divine with ego always tries to represent the Divine without having the solid experience himself. That is why the *Upaniṣads* again and again emphasize experience. If we don't experience, there's something seriously wrong with the person whom we are following.
I always tell people, if you have not experienced anything with me, please follow some other person. It is easy to put the responsibility on the disciples and continuously blame them by saying: 'You are not qualified, you are not practicing perfectly, you have not tried, and that is why you have not had any experience.'
This is a cunning way of cheating the disciple and evading the truth. The disciple comes to a Guru because the disciple has not yet experienced. And the Guru says, 'You are imperfect and that is why you do not have spiritual experiences.' To learn this, one doesn't need a Guru: a spouse is sufficient! Anyway, this is what the spouses tell each other continuously. |
A true Master will reproduce in you the same experience that happened in him, no matter what your condition is. I am enlightened only if you can experience my enlightenment, not otherwise. Aim directly at the Divine.
The person who approaches the Divine with ego gets everything and boosts his own ego. He never surrenders to the Divine. His ego becomes stronger by getting all the knowledge. Be very clear, these are the most dangerous people. Instead of surrendering their ego to the Divine, they strengthen their ego with their knowledge. Listen. Knowledge can be used in two ways. With this knowledge, you can surrender to the Divine; or with this knowledge, you can make others surrender to you! It is up to you how you use it. When we approach the Divine with ego, instead of surrendering our ego, we strengthen our ego with knowledge.
### Approach Me with Gratitude
The next level is the ultimate level. In this level, we go to the Divine with the attitude of gratitude, with the ultimate gratitude. Here, the whole relationship takes a different turn. We feel so grateful, so deeply connected to the Divine, that our whole life changes.
We move from the first level of greed, where we pray to boon-giving gods, to the next level of fear where the gods who can protect us appeal to us. The next is worry. Buddha appeals to us if we are centered on worry because he appears to be so peaceful and calm. To the person who is centered on name and fame, gods who give name and fame appeal the most. In the same way as with gods, people also approach Masters from all these various levels.
I have seven kinds of people who approach me: *One*, people who approach me out of greed; *two*, people who approach me out of fear; *three*, people who approach me out of worry; *four*, people who approach me for name and fame; *five*, people who approach me out of jealousy and comparison; *six*, people who approach me out of ego, to strengthen their ego by saying, 'I am a disciple of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. I am close to him. He knows my name.' Just to have ego satisfaction they come to me; finally, *seven*—there are a few, very few who approach me out of gratitude.
There's one more problem with people who approach me out of greed. Not only do they have greed, they also have their own ideas and fantasies about a Master. They come with a frame and see whether I fit into that frame or not. Also, I face a big problem because of my young age. Let me narrate to you an incident that happened in our Bharat ashram:
> One day I was sitting alone at outdoors in the ashram, without my turban. I was sitting there on a small rock, enjoying the cool breeze. One well-read, elderly scholar came to me and asked, 'I want to meet Swamiji. Where is he?' I told him, 'Please go and sit in the Ananda Sabha (meditation hall). He will come in half an hour's time.' He went and sat in the meditation hall.
> He went and sat in the hall. After half an hour, I wore my turban and went there and was about to take my seat. This man said, 'No! I want to meet the big *Swamiji*. I want to meet Guruji (master).'
> I said, 'Please forgive me. In this ashram I am the Swami. Whom do you want to meet?'
> He said, 'I have heard about THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. He healed my cousin. I want to see him.' Then I told him his cousin's name and the disease he had and that I had healed him. I told him, 'I am THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.' You will be surprised; he was not ready to believe me. He just stared at me.
> Then I said, 'Usually, Swamis don't carry any identity card in Bharat. Still, if you don't believe me, look at that photograph (on ashram signboard). See the name, and see that face. I am that Swami!'
> You will be surprised! I tell you, this is the truth. He said, 'I am not ready to learn from you.' He did not speak to me, and also went away. Because of his strong fantasies and imagination about what a Guru should be like, he was not able to even relate with me!
When we have such strong fantasy or imagination about things, we will not be able to relate with reality. It is the same with fear; people who come with fear will never be able to get rid of that fear. They will be stuck with that because fear itself is a fantasy.
At different levels, people approach the Master or God. The more mature we are, the more we will feel connected to that person who will give us fulfillment. When we become mature, when we are above fear and greed, we will approach the same Master, the same God, with more maturity, with more intimacy. We will feel deeply connected to him.
In Bhāgavatam (Hindu epic glorifying devotion onto incarnations), we learn about five different attitudes with which we normally relate with a Master or God:
1) *Dāsa Bhāva*—seeing God as a lord or master and oneself as a servant, as with Hanumān who saw Rāma as his master and served Him as a path for liberation.
2) *Vātsalya Bhāva*—seeing God as a divine child, as with Yaśodā who saw Kṛṣṇa as her son.
3) *Sakha Bhāva*—seeing God or the master as a friend, the way Arjuna related with Kṛṣṇa.
4) *Mātṛ Bhāva*—seeing God or the master as a father or mother, the way Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa related with goddess Kāli (representation of the divine mother).
5) Finally, the fifth attitude is *madhura bhāva*—seeing God as a beloved, the way Radhā saw Kṛṣṇa. This attitude needs a tremendous amount of maturity. Only if we experience the consciousness which is beyond the body, can we relate with the Divine with the attitude of a beloved, *madhura bhāva*.
These are the five different *bhāvas* (attitudes or feeling connection) with which people relate with the Divine. With different maturity levels, different attitudes suit our minds. The more mature we are, the more the gratitude happens. The less the maturity, the more we fill our life with prayers. Prayer is greed; confession is fear!
That is why I say, 'Gratitude is the greatest prayer, and thank you, the greatest mantra.' When we go beyond prayer and confession, we experience gratitude. We experience the Divine. Kṛṣṇa explains how we can grow step-by-step, how we can reach the ultimate maturity, how we can create and experience the Divine at the ultimate level.
Let us see how Kṛṣṇa explains the process step-by-step. What is the technique Kṛṣṇa offers us to grow in maturity and experience eternal consciousness?
Based on how we approach the Divine, only based on how mature we are, the whole community system has been created. How much we enrich and share with society depends on how mature we are. With the same maturity, we approach God also.
If we feel money is missing in our lives, we go to the God who gives money. If we miss knowledge, we go to Sarasvatī (the goddess of knowledge), who gives knowledge. If we feel insecure, we go to the god who protects us; we go to Mother Durgā or Kāli. If we miss spiritual experience, the ultimate experience, then we go to the divine incarnations, the ultimate expressions of the Divine.
Kṛṣṇa says, 'Four types of people come to Me—*caturvidhā bhajante māṁ* ' He explains the four types as four communities. The first are the people who are distressed, i.e., the working class or *śūdra*. The second are the people who desire wealth, i.e., the business people or *vaiśya*. The third are inquisitive people who continuously enquire, continuously ask, '*Tataḥ kim? Tataḥ kim? Tataḥ kim?'* (What next?) A *kṣatriya*, for example, never rests because he constantly asks, 'What next? What next? What next?' The fourth is the person who searches for knowledge of the Absolute: He is a *brāhmaṇa.*
'All four come to Me, all four reach Me, but from different levels.' From different levels all four go to the same God, but they will not experience Him in the same way. They experience Him in different ways, according to their maturity. As long as you are caught in fear or greed, you will be attracted and go only to those types of gods. It is easy to go to a temple and pray, but difficult to go to a living Master and meditate. It is for mature people, not for everyone In the temple we see thousands; but in spiritual places, we see a few hundred. It is not for all; it's a luxury!
### Spirituality is a Luxury
Spirituality is a luxury; only a few intelligent people can afford it! The price of spirituality is the limit of our suffering! Only if we have had enough suffering can we afford to get into spirituality. It is only for people who have understood that they have suffered. There are two things: It is not only the suffering, but the understanding that we suffer. This understanding is what I call intelligence. This intelligence happens even beyond age and experience. Just a glimpse of life is enough if this intelligence is there; we will understand how suffering happens and we will not get caught in it! Both—the suffering and the understanding—are needed to enter into spiritual life.
'The person who approaches Me out of love and gratitude, is the best person, for I am dear to him and he is dear to Me.' By this one verse, Kṛṣṇa ends the whole conversation, the whole concept.
> *teṣāṁ jñānī nitya yukta eka-bhaktir viśiṣyate I
> priyo hi jñānino 'tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ II 7.17*
Kṛṣṇa says, 'Starting at different levels is ok, but don't stop there.' We can start or take off from any level. However we should not stop and stagnate there. It is like failing to proceed to the second standard from the first. It is as if we want to stay in the same cozy, familiar level. It takes many lifetimes to understand and achieve this maturity. When I say it takes many lives, some think, 'Let me take some more lives and become mature.' Now, that's a big problem. Whenever we speak, we must make things very clear, otherwise you can't imagine how many different ways people will interpret it!
A small story:
Once, a great scholar recounted the story of Hariścandra. Most people in Bharat know the story of Hariścandra, a king who lived to uphold the truth with integrity and authenticity, and sold his wife for the sake of the truth. Just to keep his promise, he sold his wife. Such was his greatness.
The scholar narrated the whole story. After narrating the story, he asked one person, 'What did you understand from this story?'
The person said, 'Master, I understood that truth is the most important thing in life. We should give up everything for the sake of the truth. Truth is the ultimate.'
The scholar was pleased. He asked the next person, 'What did you understand?' The man said, 'Master, I understood that in an emergency, it is ok to sell your wife.'
From the same story, two people have two different understandings! So be very clear, don't miss the understanding. A common saying is, 'As many Masters, so many paths.' However I say, 'As many disciples, so many paths!' The Master may utter the same truth to his disciples, yet each understands and interprets in his or her own way. They all approach the Divine, but from different planes. Hence the attitude, the context with which one approaches matters how one experiences the Divine.
Here Kṛṣṇa says, 'Out of these, the wise is always devoted to Me. He is the best person.' To start with, you can start at any level, yet you must strive to reach the Ultimate. And please don't think, 'Oh! Kṛṣṇa says it will take many lives; let me take some more lives and become mature.'
No! If you can enter into the knowledge this moment, the experience can happen to you this very moment. You don't need to postpone. Every moment is a new birth for you and every moment is death. The outgoing breath is death, and the incoming breath is birth. So be very clear, every moment you die and take birth. This moment can be a new birth for you. The person who understands this truth takes a new birth. He is called *dvijā*. A person who is initiated is called *dvijā* in Saṃskrit, which means twice-born or reborn. All *Sannyāsis* are twice-born or *dvijā.* 'Reborn' does not refer to being reborn physically, but at the being level. They give birth to themselves. So understand that in this moment, a new birth can happen to you.
### He Is Very Dear To Me
Kṛṣṇa says: *ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ*—He is dear to Me, and I am dear to him. He is in Me and I am in him. Kṛṣṇa says beautifully that He is in you and you are in Him. The moment you understand this ultimate Truth, the moment you approach the Divine with the right attitude, you become the Divine. All you need to do is change your attitude. Over! Change your inner space and the whole thing is done.
Please listen, one important thing. The Master or the Divine is in you only when you engage yourself in enriching service to Him. Sitting in front of the Master or the Divine, just enjoying the form, is not the enriching service Kṛṣṇa talks about. Then you are only chasing Him from a purely selfish motive.
When you devote yourself to the divine mission, you become a devotee. That is when you become dear to Him. Your worship is no longer selfish. It is towards the mission of the Divine, in whatever form. I tell my followers: Stop sitting in front of me, gazing and waiting for words to drop. Work for my mission. Enrich yourself and others by helping me to transform people. As long as you sit and gaze, you chase me. When you work for my mission, I chase you. I shall always be with you.
Here Kṛṣṇa says clearly, 'one who knows Me, dwells in Me. Being engaged in My mission, he attains Me, *āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim* (7.18).'
When the scriptures say, 'Follow the Master,' they do not mean to follow the form. They advise you to follow the teachings of the Master, so that you can be the master too. They tell you to follow the institution of the Master, his community, his *sanga*. When we follow these three, the Master, his teachings and his mission, we are on the path to liberation. Only after many births and deaths can we relate to an enlightened person. We will not be able to relate to an Enlightened Master unless we undergo many births and deaths.
I told you about the seven steps in spiritual progress—1) go around many temples, perform many rituals, pilgrimages, etc. 2) do rituals by yourself 3) concentrate and pray to one God 4) instead of rituals, chant verses in praise of God 5) instead of chanting, visualize His form and meditate upon it 6) instead of meditating on any form, fall into that same consciousness, realize that the form and your soul are one and the same, that God and the soul are one and the same 7) experience reality! Don't think these seven steps will be done in one lifetime. People take hundreds of lives to achieve this maturity. It is rare to achieve this maturity. |
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 59