The following series of six talks given at the Australian Yoga Convention, conducted by the International Yoga Teachers Association, Australia, and held at Vision Valley, Arcadia N.S.W., on November 1975, commemorates the visit of Swami Venkatesananda as the guest speaker, and is offered at the Feet of the Lord.
Sincere thanks to Mrs. Margaret Halliday of New Zealand and Miss Avril Winshaw of South Africa for their assistance with the original transcription.
Edited and produced by Maitreyi Potter, Sydney
I
The purpose of discussing or studying the text known as the Bhagavad Gita is not to make converts. It is only because someone is a bit more familiar with some classic he deals with that; just as some of you are more familiar with The Bible or something else and may more freely deal with the same Truth through the channel of that particular Scriptural Text.
The fact that we are here and Acharya lends us in chants , or we listen to something in Sanskrit or some other language , that does not need to worry us. "Oh , am I being converted?" "Is my religion being threatened?” “I eat butter and cheese that come from New Zealand; I do not become New Zealander.” I still need an entry permit to go there. So, just because I pick up a book called Bhagavad Gita, I do not become a Hindu.
It is extremely difficult to convert somebody. It is not possible. If I see some advantage in becoming a Muslim or a Christian, then I may; but then I am not becoming a Christian or a Muslim because I want to, but because I see some advantage. It is a risky business. So, first of all, I am neither frightened nor tempted by all this talk of, "Can I touch this book?" Of course you can. You can even use it as a pillow, nothing will happen to you; you will probably sleep better.
I wonder if you see a difficulty here? Talking to one another or exchanging ideas is possible, but someone sitting here and talking to you about the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, or Yoga, or this or that, should not even for one brief moment imagine that thereby he can effect a change in you. It is not possible. Transformation is possible only for each one, for himself or herself, and by himself or herself. It is possible for me to speak, it is possible for the microphone to pick up the sound-waves, perhaps magnify them, perhaps distort them, even so this microphone sitting here on this chair, can also magnify or distort. But nothing is of any use to you, except what you hear , and what you allow to filter through your mind and into your heart.
“Filter" - that is the next problem. Do I hear any words at all? Do I hear words or sounds? Sounds. These sounds are somehow interpreted as words by you; whereas the tape recorder or microphone do not interpret the sound into words, they merely transmit and convey the sound as sound. There seems to be something in you and me, or that is you and me, which is capable of interpreting the sound and converting it into words. What is that? What is it? I shall still use the expression "in me". We will come to that later. What is it in me that picks up this sound, and converts it into a word?
Audience: The mind.
Swami: Your breakfast also.
Audience: Consciousness.
Swami: Anything, tape recorder ... What is consciousness? What is ... Never mind, and what is no-mind? "Mind” is a word. Who makes that word called "mind"? Does the mind also make its own breakfast? Next time you sit in front of a piece or toast, look at it and see, "Do you make your own toast , or do I make the toast? So, who makes the word called "mind" intelligible? All other sounds are interpreted, transformed into words by the mind. Who transforms the sound "mind" into mind?' We do not know. We do not know anything.
Let us proceed cautiously, watching our step. This much is clear. What is spoken is sound and the sound is filtered. The filter can let the sound pass through, or accept, reject, decipher, distort, understand, or misunderstand. All these are possible. What is it? It is better for the present to know that it is the responsibility of the listeners to listen. It is up to the listeners to receive, to accept or to reject, to perceive or distort. Therefore, immediately, I am free from fear. I can listen to the most atrocious speeches. Nobody can pollute my brain; definitely not those areas which are beyond the polluters reach. The filter is there, acting both constructively and destructively. Destructively - it keeps away knowledge which may be useful to me, and constructively - it exposes itself to healthy understanding. It is up to me.
We are dealing with the Bhagavad Gita because I happen to be a bit more familiar with it than some other scriptural texts. As we proceed, I may entertain you with some quotations , and we may discover that this is what all the other scriptural texts that you are familiar with also deal with. The message is the same, exactly the same, but it is presented in different languages, or idioms, to suit the idiosyncrasy of the listeners. To a German audience you speak German, not because you are speaking a different truth entirely, but so that communication becomes easy, nothing more. There is nothing to be afraid of in the first place, and nothing to be complacent about in the second place. We are not here to convert each other; so there is no need to fear; and what is heard does not immediately produce inner transformation, and therefore there is need to be vigilant and not complacent. Just because we are all using the English language and seem to understand the words, we should not imagine that therefore I have understood what the message is.
I will tell you a story and see if the story, though it is considered a legend or a myth, has some relevance to our own life. The reason that tempts me to use this Scripture is that my Guru Swami Sivananda often insisted that this Bhagavad Gita has an immediate relevance to you and me, because it deals with this fundamental problem that faces each one of us in our own life: the problem of human relationship, the problem of action, and the problem of living itself. Why have we made it a problem? Instead of solving the problem, is there a possibility we can dissolve it?
Having created a problem, by trying to solve it, you only create two more. I often refer to young boys and girls; they seem to be all right until suddenly they find that they are lonely. Loneliness is a problem? Loneliness is not a problem! I am alone! Anyhow, loneliness is seen as a problem. Then they go and get married. They think that they have solved the problem, but the problem has been multiplied into two. I have got only one problem, I wash my clothes and shave myself. If I bring a wife along, I have to wash her clothes too; so the problem multiplies. Then the two of us get bored, so we bring in a third problem called a child. It offers a sort of a solution for a little while because we do not quarrel anymore; we are too busy fighting with the child. So instead of solving a problem, can we dissolve it? That is the basis of the scripture. Can we free life from conflict? We have somehow made it a problem, and we see that solving the problem of life aggravates it. Can I somehow dissolve it; or allow it to dissolve itself.
This theme is dramatized in the Bhagavad Gita. In the story there were two princes, who were brothers. One was blind and the other was anemic. I will only merely hint at the possible allegory, though the orthodox pandits of India insist that all this is historically factual. The blind man had a hundred vicious and wicked sons, and he leaned heavily on the side of wickedness. A blind man naturally leans towards wickedness. This is the basic reason for studying the Scriptures, for meditating and for practicing yoga. We see that it is not because man wants to be wicked that he is vicious; but he is blind and he is ignorant. How often have we told ourselves, ”If only I had known the consequences , I would never have done this.” That’s it. It is not so much the silly little devil sitting inside me, prompting me towards evil that I commit evil, but because I am ignorant. Remove this ignorance, and evil also goes away. Blindness, spiritual blindness, is the cause of all our evil actions. It gives birth to evil actions. The wicked blind king gave birth to a hundred wicked sons, and once this blind ignorance has given rise to a hundred evils, it leans heavily on them. It is not very difficult to see, though whether we would admit it to ourselves, is open to question.
Let’s say we have committed a grave blunder in ignorance. Am I prepared to admit it, drop it and get out? Hardly. You see this in politics - I make a jolly good mistake; I was stupid, foolish. This needs tremendous, super-human suicidal courage to get out of it. But I try to patch it up and rationalize it, seek some way to overcome it; and so this wickedness multiplies. When you have made a mess of your life, why don't you get out of it? “Oh no! It is so difficult”, and I do not see any alternative. I lean heavily on my excuses - my children, my property, my business, etc. If I get out, the whole thing might collapse , so somehow I have to go on. Perhaps if I go to church on Sunday and pray, or give some donation to charity, it may buy some indulgences. It does not work. I cannot see any other way out of this evil I have created. If I have encouraged my children to rob or steal, what should I do? Abandon them? Is it not cruelty or violence? And so we go on making excuses.
On the other hand, the other brother was anemic. He had five children, What is anemic? A good man, but one who is so weak he is worse than wicked. Our society is full of them. It is strange; the wicked ones seem to be strong and vocal, while the good ones - oh, they go and hide under the bed. “I do not want to do anything evil." But they do not do anything good either. This is another very serious problem in our life. I see someone doing something vicious. If I fight with that person, I also become vicious. Two wrongs do not make a right. If I do not want to fight with that evil, what do I do? I hide under the bed. "Oh, I do not quarrel. God is there.” What is God? God is there in you too. Why don’t you let that God wake-up and do what he wants to do?
We have learned only these two: either I resist evil, fight with it, or I withdraw. Isn't there a third alternative - Neither this, nor chat? What is there in the middle? I do not know if you like a simple formula. He is doing his job, let me do mine without hating him, without resisting him or getting in his way at all. I do not care whether you call him evil or holy , I am not interested in destroying what is evil because then I become the destroyer - again evil. Can I not go my own way? That's it, and its very rare. Either you fight and get involved in the fight, become evil, or like this man in the story, our goodness becomes so anemic, so weak that it is useless, worse than evil.
Good and evil are cousins. Do not let us think that good people are all in heaven and the evil ones are all locked away in a thing called hell. We mingle freely at all cocktail parties and everywhere. They live in tremendous harmony. It is the good that becomes evil in certain circumstances and it is the evil that seems to become good when it seeks the light; because these two are not completely different and totally anti-ethical beings, but the same thing that seems to undergo a certain inner change or transformation. The two are cousins and they fight and fight. The whole history is contained in the Mahabharata. There is a popular and most beautiful translation by C. Raja Gopalachari.
These two families go on and on fighting and fighting. One thing the reader cannot fail to notice is that whenever the wicked cousins plot against the good ones, there is perpetual unanimity, no arguments at all. But when the five good brothers get together to decide upon the next step there is a difference of opinion. One says he must kill them, the other says not. We notice this in our own society. Gangsters are united, they appoint someone as the leader, and all implicitly obey him. But put three good people together, yogis, priests or swamis or whatever, they go on endlessly bickering amongst themselves, never coming to a decision. The good people seem to be so fond of argument, so fond of being heard, each thinking he has seen the truth, the light. I have also seen the light, from the back-side. What does it matter from which side the light is seen? Light is light. No! It must be done my way, not your way. Put half a dozen hooligans together. One says, "Let's rob the bank", and they all say "Yeah". Why can we not learn some unity from these people.
Eventually the good ones are exiled. It is a long story and on the advice of Krishna, the friend of the good ones, war is declared. I would very humbly refer you to Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3. “There is a time for everything - a time for peace and a time for war. There is a time to be born and a time to die. There is a time to love and a time not to love.” There is a beautiful parallel in one of the scriptures, saying "What does man do? Nothing. Time does everything.” When you are twenty-five and your hair is black, try to turn that hair white now. It is not possible; leave it alone. In time, time changes even the color of your hair, time changes the texture of your skin. Time brings things into being, time wipes them out. Whatever there is, is done by time.
Says Krishna in the Gita: kalo ‘smi lokasayakrt pravrddho ... lokan samahartum iha pravrttrah
When Arjuna, the disciple, asks Him, “Who are You, O Mighty Being”, He says: “I am Time, I am the Perpetual, Eternal Destroyer. No-one destroys here except Me - Time.”
Can you think or all those hundred and thousands of people who are killed and who killed during the wars. “Aah, we must fight and kill them. They are our enemies!” The man who killed and the man who get killed, both have been killed by time. First one was killed; and then a little later, the other. There is no power in this universe except time. It is time that gives rise to all things and time, and wipes them out in the course of time.
So Krishna says, “It is time to fight, you have been brothers too long.” The leaders of both groups go round canvassing and there follows a rather interesting situation. Krishna was having an afternoon nap and both the contesters went to Him, asking for His support. The wicked king Duryodhana arrived first and stood at the head of the bed. He did not want to stand at the foot of the bed - I am King, it is not that I am proud, but as King I do not stand at anybody's feet. Then came the good man. He thought - there is God Almighty. Krishna was considered an incarnation of God. It is good to stand at His Feet. Right. If you have been sleeping on your back, and open your eyes, who do you see first? The man who stands at your feet. You have a saying in the Bible, “He who comes last, is chosen first.” So, Krishna saw Arjuna first. "Hello , how are you, and what’s the matter?" Arjuna who was standing at the feet of the bed said, “I want your blessings and your help." The mighty king, at the head of the bed, coughed loudly and, "Oh, so you are also here". "Yes, I also want your help". As a king, Governor-general or God Almighty, Krishna had to be impartial, above party politics. So he said, "Of course I will support both of you". How do you support two people who are fighting and wanting to kill each other? Then Krishna gave a proposition - “I have an army, and there is myself. Choose one or the other."
Krishna was considered a very delightful companion and a lover and he said, "I only know how to love , not how to kill. So you can have me , but I will not fight. I will smile at you and play my flute." This king laughed at this. “No! I will have your army.” And the good man said, "Thank you very much. I will have you." An other biblical quotation - "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all else will be added unto you.” Take God into your heart, let Him be unveiled and there is no need to fight or quarrel, no need to be excited about anything, and everything seeks you. In the course of time and because He is Lord of Time, what has to happen will happen. So let me be on the side of God, comfortable, peaceful and happy right now.
So now the battle started. And now the time had come to make a disciple of this warier called Arjuna. The armies were all assembled and Krishna, the Incarnate Godhead, offered this warrior, who had chosen Him in preference to His army, to be his chauffeur. He said, “I am not going to fight, but instead of being totally useless , I will drive your chariot. I will just take you wherever you want to go. I may also tell you what to do and what not to do.” This is a marvelous thing. Already the first lesson of the Gita is there. Even if you are God Almighty, it is just as well to do something with your life. And do it without any pretensions, as time determines, whether it be driving a car, serving someone or any kind of work, menial work or non-menial work. Do whatever is needed, with a smile, a cheerful face, a cheerful heart, not grumbling and downcast. I have to do it; do it cheerfully. Arjuna, the warrior says, "Krishna, I take my chariot and put it right in the middle of the battlefield. I want to have a look at the two armies and assess the relative strengths.”
Then comes the crucial moment. The hero looks at that army and then looks at his own army and says, “My God, I thought these were my friends and they are my enemies, but it is not true. These are my relations, my kith and kin and even the ones ready to fight with me, they too are my own relatives.”
That suggests the beginning of the problem of our life. I would like to get rid of my evil qualities - my vanity, my arrogance, my hate, my hostility, my jealousy, anxiety and fear, but how? They are all mine. How do you want to get rid of mine? Would I want to get rid of my wife and children? No! Then why should I get rid of y hostility, my arrogance, my fear? Keep them. That is our problem. The moment I see I am afraid of something, or jealous of somebody, I see it is destroying my life, I want to get rid of it. The very next moment , I see all of them as my own, and I do not want to overcome them at all. At this point the hero collapses and the teacher - Sri Krishna, commences His teaching.
Om Tat Sat
II
The hero on the battlefield - which is you and me - suddenly undergoes a change for the worse. We are not talking of an ancient historical evil, but about you and me. This happens to us if we are awake psychologically and spiritually, a thousand times a day. If it does not seem to happen to us, it is simply because we are asleep. The clock strikes every hour. During daytime we notice it, but during the night we do not. However, that does not mean that the clock has stopped striking.
This kind of challenge occurs a thousand times a day in our life, especially if we are awake. Incidentally; it may be mentioned in passing, that this is one of the complaints which you usually hear from people who have started to practice yoga, and to meditate. Suddenly they come up to you and say they seem to be worse off than before. “Since I took up meditation I feel terribly confused and worried and vexed.” You can tell them - "It is nice that you are awake now. Whereas before you were fast asleep and so nothing bothered you." That is also transition which must take place before enlightenment. First there is ignorance, then there is awakening plus a little confusion, then there is total resolution or enlightenment.
Again, we could probably get our definitions clear at this stage. Enlightenment as far as I am concerned is not what it may mean to some of you. To me enlightenment means a feeling of lightness - not light in the sense of luminosity, but light in the sense of being featherweight, so that we cannot float through life without making ourselves a burden on others and on the world, nor allowing others to be a burden upon our shoulders, our mind and or heart.
To begin with, am ignorant, in the dark, and there is no confusion - there is nothing. As we wake up and become aware of what goes in life, then we are also awake to the endless and ceaseless conflict in our life, in our relationships , in our emotions. In everything we have to face that conflict, we cannot avoid it. Then comes the resolution - which is enlightenment.
The hero on the battlefield collapses. The battlefield here is our own life. I am sure those of you who meditate regularly feel a kind of wonderful bliss and joy during meditation. Then you are in a different state of mind or consciousness, in a different world. As you return to this everyday consciousness, you tell yourself, "I will not bother about all these things. I do not want to be jealous or to hate anyone - I want to be free from all this. I am not going to get into this rat race anymore. This is not for me. The family can look after themselves., They are all God's. Then you come out of your little shell - called meditation, and face the first person, and you are on the battlefield. You find that your husband is picking up your yoga books and throwing them in the rubbish bin. What happens to the feeling "I am not going to be bothered by all this"? That is where the battlefield is. You have decided that your children are grown up and can look after themselves, and then you find your son or your daughter doing something of which you disapprove. All your resolutions disappear into thin air because you do not look at the person as a person any more, but as My son, My daughter, My husband, My wife, My reputation, My business, My religion, and My God. My God - everything My - which has to he defended from something else. So the world is immediately divided into My and the other. This has to be protected and, That has to be destroyed. My - whatever it may be is right, and the Other - whatever it may be is wrong.
You have heard people say, "My son smokes; it is bad, but poor child.” Whereas others who smoke or take lsd are spoken of as horrible creatures. “Do not join with them." If my son smokes marijuana, "Poor thing, he had a difficult childhood.” If the other person does it, “He is horrible.”
It is extraordinary. I have often wondered about English grammar. "You" is nominative and “your” is possessive. "He" is nominative and “his" is possessive. But "my” has no relationship nor is there a similarity in the spelling to “I”. The founders of the English grammar were philosophers and realised that "I" cannot possess anything. So there is no possessive case "I” . "My" is not the possessive case for “I" because "I" can possess nothing. The word "my" is word by itself, independent, and has nothing whatever to do with the word "I". In looking at the word "my", it seems to be an abbreviation - like “Mister", which is abbreviated to "Mr." by taking out some letters. Even so - with the word "my" we can fill up the blank space between M and Y with something - e.g. "misery”. Instead of writing "misery", you take the first and last letter and put them together, and this gives you an abbreviation. It is not a word at all and has nothing to do with the possessiveness of "I”. I can possess nothing. The moment I use the word "my", I walk into misery. It is crazy.
When you read of a child who is drowned in a swimming pool, you become a little mad at the parents and say, "Why don’t they look after their children properly.” If it is my child, it is different. Do I really love life? Do I reverence life as such? No. All the people in the world can go to hell, as long as you and I are all right. My family, My little yoga school - these must be save by a special efforts of God. That is the monstrous thing that this My is capable of doing - it brings endless misery. Examine your own anxiety. It is not concerned with the world ,or life as such, but Mine - my property, my health, my body.
So the hero goes on to the battlefield and discovers “my" interests are threatened. My people are about to be destroyed, killed, and the student or the future disciple, the hero, quakes and shivers and says, “I should not fight at all because I may be killing my own people. This war involves the destruction of all that is mine.”
This might be allegorical of what happens in my own life. Here I am embarking on a spiritual adventure, a search for truth, and I want to battle against and destroy all that is untrue or false. I want to face the fact, the truth, that there is no such relationship as “my”. It is an assumed relationship - My property, My son, My husband, My house - its an assumption, a notion in my own mind and not a true relationship.
Suddenly I turn round and wonder, ''How can one live without all these relationships? I love her, I love him, I love this and that. How can I face this and destroy the relationship which has been so painstakingly built up over the years?” (Ears) - Do you know what this means? (Swamiji then touches his ears with his hands) This means all these relationships are literally in the head, and I do not want to face the fact that a thing called "my” does not exist. So I bring in all kinds of theories, all kinds of lovely lies, and call them philosophies. That is what Arjuna is saying in the Bhagavad Gita. He says "Krishna, these are all My brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. How can I engage in this war which brings 'about their destruction." We are all capable of that. Confronted with a delicate situation which demands that I should look you in the face and say, "Brother, I am afraid this situation cannot last long. We shall no longer be involved in a false relationship, no longer comrades." So I invent a philosophy and call it a social philosophy, religious ethics, moral code or whatever it is, and conveniently hide under the "quilt". We are capable of doing it.
If someone is asked "Why are you smoking?", he says, "I know it is bad, but I have had the habit for a long time, and if I give up smoking I am afraid I will put on weight." More often than not in our lives we are tempted to rationalize what we know to be defective conduct. I have over simplified the problem by saying that anything you are tempted to justify is already wrong. Why do you want to rationalize something? Why do you want to explain something? It may be wrong; and so to cover it up, you bring in a lovely philosophy. Here is another example; you want to dominate your wife, your husband, your employees or your employer, customer or whatever. You want to dominate another person - perhaps your students. If someone suggests, "Why don’t you stop this spirit of domination?" “Oh no Swami, I do not want to dominate; it is solely a matter of discipline and I have to maintain discipline in my school." Can I see that is a mask to cover up my own viciousness which I do not want to face because it is My viciousness and therefore not .
Quote:
asocyan envasocas tvam prajnavadams ca bhasase gatasun agatasums ca na 'nusocanti penditah - Ch2/11
This is the first teaching verse and it contains the very cream of the Bhagavad Gita. "You are worried about something which need not concern you at all, yet you are talking as though you are a wise man." It is not that we should not be concerned at all. We need to be concerned, but with what? Not about getting rid of a migraine headache; let it come - let it go. Whatever has a beginning must have an end. Whatever has been put together or constructed, must be destructed; whatever is made of component parts must be disintegrated. It is nothing to worry about. So your concern need not be in regard to these things. If you want to worry, please worry; if you want to be concerned, be concerned, but be concerned about something which deserves your concern. If you must worry, then worry about the root of worry itself, worry about this problem. If I am afraid, that is not serious. Why should I not be afraid? But is it possible for me to direct the searchlight of observation or inquiry at this fear itself - become aware of that fear? There is no need to fear ; it is there. If I am worried, I am worried. Why should I run away from it? Face it. Worry! Not about the situation, but look into worrying itself.
If I am attached to you, I do not have to detach myself. But inquire into the nature of the attachment itself; inquire into the truth concerning the attachment. In other words, what Krishna is telling us here is - do not waste your time running after the shadow. If you run after the shadow, it is impossible to catch it, for it runs faster and faster. I can get rid of my migraine headache today, but later on I will probably get something else - a heart attack. But if I get at the root of the problem of life which includes death, it takes me away from the migraine headaches - they can come and they can go.
Have you had headaches? Don't you remember when the headache passes, isn't that a beautiful thing. You would never have experienced that beauty if the headache had not been there before, so that is not important. So become conscious of that state which remains, which was there before the headache came and which remains after the headache goes. That is marvelous. Why must I concern myself with this passing phenomenon, and why not my attention on that which was there before the headache came on, and which is there after the headache has left, and which therefore must also have been there while the headache was on. That is terribly important.
Quote:
avyaktadini bhutani vyaktamadhyani bharata avyaktanidhanany eva tatra ka paridevana - Ch 2/28
You are worried about people being killed, destroyed in the war. That is a mistake. That is a rationalization. Take it away. How do I take away this fear of death? By facing it. I was there before and I will be there after. There is something in the middle also. That which was there before and which will be there after is there now too, not subject to this change. This body has come into being now. Before this body came into being, I was there, and after this body has gone, I will still be there, just like in sleep. Before I went to sleep I was there; after I wake up I am still there; in between there is a state of ignorance.
What is that which is permanent", unchanging, in and through all of this? Merely by focusing one's attention on that, the changing situation ... how do you complete that sentence? You do not "overcome” that, you do not “get rid of” that. Why must I get rid of something which is in any case going away? What do I do here? I understand it. I come to terms with it. I know that it is changing. That is all that is necessary in self knowledge. It is not that when you become enlightened, or when you attain self realisation, you won’t have a headache any more. When you are enlightened, you will still have a headache, but your attention will not be concerned with the headache, but with that which is permanent. Take the mind and attention away from that which is changing; that which is changing will continue to change; it came into being and it will go away without telling you.
I do not think any of us here can truthfully or honestly say that we wanted to be born here as a man, a woman, a blonde or a brunette. In the same way we will all leave this place whether we want to or not. The ego or the "me" is not involved in birth, and it is not involved in death. I did not want to be here, I am here. I do not want to go, I will go. But in the meantime I am full of worries and anxieties concerning how I am going to be here. Why does it get involved in between? You have every right to inquire into, to know, to be concerned about the reality. Please go into that as much as you want, and as deeply as you want, but to worry about life is a silly concern.
It is not that Krishna sanctions violence on earth, or is callus or indifferent. It is a ridiculous thing for we seem to be greatly concerned about the baby who is drowned in a swimming pool, but we do not mind thousands of children being starved to death elsewhere.
Some years ago, when I was in California, l opened a newspaper and found the whole front page and most of another page was taken up with photographs and a report of the death of some famous person. I am sure she was a marvelous person. In page 67 or so there was one column about 250 people killed in Vietnam. Then on about page 150, column 8, there was one inch about 25,000 people killed on the road last year. Have you no sense of proportion at all? 25,000 people die - one inch; 250 people die, one column; one girl is drowned - 1.5 pages.
We are not concerned about life. We are not concerned about people, but something else. So do not bring in any of those lovely arguments. Face the fact that everything that is born must die. That does not mean that we should go on killing people and helping them to die, and therefore there is no concern about life or death. What I am concerned about is the truth. What is it that comes into being, exists in all this, and continues to exist when the form which has been put together has disintegrated? We are not talking about whether to kill or not to kill, whether to wage a war or not. That is not important at all. Do not let the mind dwell on these things, says Krishna. There is something else worth considering, worth exercising your mind, worth looking into. Attend to that.
Take for instance the simplest act of murder. If someone threatens me with a gun, is he going to do something which will not happen, which is not part of nature, which is unnatural? What is unnatural in him getting up and shooting me? I would have died in any case. He is wasting a bullet. What is unnatural in this? When a bullet enters this piece of flesh called the body, that body's life comes to an end. It is absolutely natural, and nothing that would not otherwise have happened, happens now.
In the Bible you are told that even a sparrow would not fall except by the Will of God. That is what all this Bhagavad Gita and other marvelous scriptures are about. They say, "Examine yourself , face yourself and see the hatred welling in your own heart". Look at yourself and see the hatred welling in your own heart. Look at your self and see the notion arising: “I hate him and I am going to kill him." This is false and that is sinful. He is not doing it; it is a bullet which is doing it. You cannot kill “me” at all. It is only the body which is killed.
Quote:
denhino 'smin yatha dehe keamaram yauvanam jara tatha dehantarapraptir dhiras tartra na muhyati - Ch2/13
I see most of us belong to my age group. If we pick up a photograph taken when we were two months old, would we recognize ourselves? According to science, every 7 years the entire body undergoes a complete change; all the cells of the body are renewed. This means that today there is not a single cell in the body that was there 10 years ago. Where is that body? It has gone. Bit by bit it was renewed, a little each day. When someone gets up and points a gun at me I say, ''You are not satisfied with this - you want to give me a new body." Neither the fact that this body is destroyed, nor that the gun is pointed at this body is unnatural. What is unnatural or false is the notion that arises in the man's head that I am killing this person. That is the only falsehood.
So instead of concerning yourself about all these false ideas, let us turn the gaze of inquiry within and see what it is what does hate mean, what does fear mean, what is this “I” which says "I hate" another person; what is it that says, "I want to destroy them", or "I am doing this.” Even without this ego jumping up and down, life goes on. Beings are born without the ego wishing it, and beings leave this stage without the ego willing. Is the ego involved in enlightenment at all? Is it involved in lifting at all, or is it merely an imposter? If I know the truth concerning this I am instantly free from ignorance. That is all the Bhagavad Gita demands.
Krishna merely suggests that the ego is not doing anything at all. Whatever is happening, is happening. When the eyes are open, they see. There is no ego required to see. It is natural for your eyes to see, for the ears to hear, for the mind to think. But why does one entertain the notion "I am doing this.” Inquire into the nature of the ego and realize that it is a shadow and not the substance, and then you are instantly free.
Om Tat Sat
III
We saw how the hero entering the battlefield, suddenly changes his mind, is confused, and does not know what to do, but unwilling to face that he pretends to know what is right and what is wrong. This is our problem, and in order to rationalize what "I" wants to do, I bring in some philosophy or other.
Most of these philosophies are human inventions. It is not to say that they have no validity. They are often necessitated by some circumstances, and these circumstances are always changing. Therefore, whereas these philosophies maybe valid for the time being, or in a certain situation, they do not represent the truth. Truth cannot be represented. Truth has to be seen to be realised. I do not think there is any difficulty at all in seeing the truth. The very definition of truth is “what is self evident”. There is no problem at all in seeing it, but I am unwilling to see it. And unwilling to accept that unwillingness, I bring in some kind of philosophy to cover up my unwillingness, to seek for the truth - to say “it is not right", or "no, this is right". This applies to all of us.
There was a public meeting in Perth in 1961 and someone had found out that in order to become a swami you had to abandon your home, family etc,. and she had come to that meeting eager to challenge. It was about 10.30 pm and question time. She stood up and said "Swami, I understand you have to renounce your family and go away in order to become a swami". I said "Yes, Madam." "Don’t you think that that is running away from your duty?" A flawless question, which was a bit difficult to answer in detail. So I looked at her and said, "Only when a spiritual quest or a life of yoga comes knocking at your door, do you ask that question, "What about my wife, and children; what about my business; what about my students"? Somebody else can also come and knock at the door. Yes! You know him. He is universal, ever present, everywhere - death. If death comes and knocks at the door, can I tell, "Death? Oh! Wait a moment, I have got my wife and children to look after. As soon as my third daughter is married off, I will surrender myself to you." No! You do not ask any questions; just pack up and go. That is the thing.
I am seeking the truth, and even if it hurts, knowing that it hurts where it should hurt; and in that quest for truth I am not deflected by unwillingness, that’s all. Inability does not come into the picture because the truth being self-evident, there is no inability to see it. Is it difficult for you and me to see that we are all doomed to die? It is self evident, isn't it? Everything that is born must die. It is terribly simple, obvious - self evident and yet we are unwilling to face that truth; not that we are unable to face the truth, but unwilling to face the truth, and unwilling to face our own unwillingness, we cover that up with some kind of nice philosophy.
Krishna knocks these things down. He says "Do not be silly, we re all bound to die. Do not bring in your arguments that in all these battles we might kill each other. That is rubbish - right or wrong we will discuss later, but see that this is inevitable - everything that is born, must die. So a sloppy rationalization is disposed of.
There is another extraordinary and beautiful approach to our unwillingness to face the truth and that is what is called a tradition - a traditional belief or doctrine. We are told that we should suffer here and lead an ascetic life and should sacrifice our life for king and country and what you have. If you do all that, you will go the other place called heaven and there ... Oh, beautiful. You will have all the opposite of all this. You will enjoy yourself, never get hurt or injured, etc. I have a rather crude way of responding. If I live for 70 or 80 years and all this time I am suffering continuously, suffering for my family, suffering for my country and suffering for God, for my church and for my religion, all this, I would have gotten so used to this suffering, that if you send me to heaven, I would suffer there again. Whether that makes sense or not, it does not make sense that I must go on suffering now, in the hope of something happening later on. It may not; then what? If I suffer my whole life because the Swami says that afterwards I will go to heaven, when I die, I cannot see him and cannot even check. What if I am duped, cheated by this man? In heaven I look around and he is not there obviously.
There is a dramatic and beautiful statement in the Gita:
ihai 'va tair jitah sargo yesam samye sthitam manah nindosam hi samam brahma tasmad brahmari te stitah - Ch V/19
God or Truth is here and now, If God and Truth is there, it is here and now, not only later. So, if I am devoted to God, I must experience the Bliss or the Peace and the Glory of this God realisation, or realisation of the Truth here and now. It is not as though God or Truth is not here now, or Self-Realisation is not here now, and I must torture myself and go and get self realisation in the Himalayas or Nepal. It is Here and Now.
Krishna introduces a subtle hint here: yesam sanya sthitam manah
When your mind is established in extreme tranquility, here and now, you are in the Truth already, because God is Supreme Peace. So instead of looking for it here and now, why do you want to go around it - which is another sign of immaturity. What we all say of course is, "I would love to meditate and find the inner peace, but I have got a family and a nagging wife, or a brutal husband, and you know, my friends and my office and my work, the whole thing is disturbing". It is extremely rare to find someone who says, "Sorry, my fault.” We always look for, and find, a scape goat. Why can't you meditate at the airport? Because it is noisy. Alright! Use earplugs. I personally cannot complain. I live in all sorts of places with all kinds of people. Sometimes, like here, it is blissful and peaceful. Sometimes I go to New York; I cannot ask the whole city to come to a stand still because the Swami is here. He doesn't' share your sins and is not even interested in your being virtuous. That is your problem - face it. What is it that stops me from facing this problem?
ajanea 'vrtam jnanam tena muhyanti jantavah - ChV/15
There is a veil of ignorance within me, that that prevents me from seeing the truth. What is the veil? The veil is the “me” itself. I am living, I am functioning here. Am I living, am I doing anything here at all? What an extraordinary statement. "I am seeing you". Is this right? As you have the feeling that you are seeing me, as your face is turned towards me, tell yourself, "I do not like this man, I do not want to see him". 'Keep the eyes - can you stop seeing me?
Audience: I can look through you.
Swami: Yes, that is a different story, it means you look at me and through. So it is the eyes that see; it is the mouth that speaks; it is the brain that thinks.
Quote:
prakrteh kriyamanan, gunaih karmani sarvasah ahamkaravimudhatma karta 'ham iti manyate - ChIII/27
Nature works here. Wind blows and it does not prattle or boast; and yet if some one can do some bhastrika, he says, "Look what I am doing". You have never heard this wind boast about how well it breathes; and when the wind is still, does it come and tell you, "I can hold my breath for three days." And yet when we are indulging in these silly little acts, what is it that suggests, “I am doing this?” So Krishna insists in the Gita that without ever wishing to change your life-style, without wishing to do or not to do - there is a catch in this, can you still watch and see who does it? Am I speaking, or where is the "I" that says, “I am speaking?” If the vocal chords are paralysed, would the Swami still be able to say, "I am speaking?" If the optic nerve is paralysed, would the Swami still be able to see your face through the eyes? If one little nerve in the auditory system goes wrong, what would music sound like? Could I enjoy music? Who is it? When the whole nature functions without any egotistic notion, where does this ego arise in me? It is that which says, "I am doing this". It is that which gets hurt. Fair enough.
If that is removed, there is no hurt at all. You are neither interested in hurting others nor in being hurt by others. The sun shines - the sun shines; it is not at all interested in people glorifying, "Ah, how lovely it is", nor is the sun hurt by people saying, "Hah, scorching sun, it is terrible, dreadfully hot." It goes on. It IS. It functions without intending to do so. That is what nature and also your body does. If you observe what goes on in the body, all that happens involuntarily, is blissful and peaceful. The moment we bring something under our control, we mess it up. There are only a few things we can really do. We can eat, we cannot digest; assimilation is involuntary. We can eat, or not eat, and this we have always messed up. We deliberately try to do something which nature does not want, and it rejects this quickly. The more natural the system is, the more readily it reacts. Those of you who have babies have seen this. Give it a spoon of nice curry that you love, and the baby does not seem to bother about it, it all dribbles out - whereas you and I have been trained to enjoy all that; and so it comes out of some other channel: it burns. The more natural person is, the more naturally life goes on - without a hitch, without a problem, neither without mental disturbance or psychological distress.
But the moment there is a feeling “I am doing this", trouble starts, because it is almost impossible to treat the sentence “I am doing this” as a complete expression in itself. It may not be such a terrible thing for me to say, "I am talking to you", but that sentence does not sound complete, it needs a "because" and this has infiltrated our life so totally that even when I say "I love you” the sentence does not seem to be complete. It needs a ”Because ... I love you because you are good, because you are so kind and generous, or because you are such a marvelous yoga teacher ..." The mind seems to rebel against the simplicity of "I love you".
It can also be framed another way. "I love you as long as you love me, or as long as you do what I tell you". That is rubbish. So "I do this" is immediately followed by "because I want to get that". There is a desire, a motivation, and as long as this motivation exists, it is bound to be hurt.
What happens if your desire is not fulfilled, or even if it is fulfilled? When I entertain a desire, or when my action is motivated by a selfish desire, it either becomes boring and therefore I keep on entertaining greater and greater ambition, or I get frustrated. Your husband says, ‘I love you" - you say, "I also love you - because you bring me a nice fur coat." He gives it to you and so the desire is satisfied. But it is not satisfied. Now you up-grade the desire; now you want something more. The value has doubled. One day he is bound to say, "Enough". So here we are caught between boredom and escalating ambition, and frustration and nervous breakdown. Nerves do not break down, we are pulling them in different directions.
God’s nature is there. The tree grows, giving you fruits. It does not say, "How much will you pay me?" In the biography of the Srimad Bhagavatam or "The Book of God", Krishna, it is said, was roaming one day in the forest with a few friends.They were hungry and there were plenty of fruit trees. Krishna looks at them and turns to his companions, saying "Look at those trees laden with fruit. The more fruits they have, the more humble they are. They bend down to give it to you so that you do not even have to climb the tree. They ask you, "Please take some lovely fruits." The fruits do not belong to me but to you. No tree is ever known to eat its own fruit. Beautiful imagery. If I am a scholar, I wear a collar to protect my stiff neck, so that even by mistake, I do not bend. If I have some talent (the word talent in the Bible refers to a monetary system - perhaps it may have been worth 50 cents) I am so proud and haughty that you must crawl on your knees before I will teach you.
Can I whilst living this life, function here realising that "I' is part of nature and therefore in functioning is doing what has to be done, I am not doing anything at all. I am neither interested in blocking what has to be done, nor do I entertain an idea that I am doing this.
Quote:
pasyan srnvan sprsan jighrann asan gacchan svapan svasan indriyani 'ndriyarthesu vartant iti dharayan - ChV- 8/9
The yogi sees a correlation between the body and the rest of tho world - the body is also part of the world and this body and the rest of the world react on each other. There is a faculty of sight and vision, and there is the phenomenon of sight in the world, so they react upon each other. If both the sight and the light is good, there is seeing. As long as the vocal chords are healthy and as long as space is able to transmit sound, speaking takes place. It is quite simple. These sound waves are picked up by the eardrums, which are also part of the same mechanism. What is missing here? "I am doing this" is missing. When this notion is dropped, along with it goes the further clause, because I want to achieve something. When these two are not there, you are never hurt. This is the beauty, here end now. It is not a heaven you will go to hereafter. No, here and now. There is no ambition to achieve anything, knowing that all that is needed is already provided . I am reminded of the parallels between the teachings of Krishna and Christ. Who has, by taking thought, added one cubit to his measure? You grow - you grow, that's it. Not ... because you want to or do not want to. There is growth built into this body. She and I drink the same milk, and yet out of that milk a brown skin is manufactured here and a blond skin there. How this happens I do not know - that's nature. Without my entertaining the ambition, desire or craving, that this should happen, it happens. Why must I waste my time craving for what is already predestined?
An other beautiful story in the Book of God is about a young saint who teaches his own comrades. One day he tells them, "Friends, I understand all of you are learning arts and crafts so that you may become wealthy and prosperous. I have a question. Does anyone of you want to get sick? ... No. Do you ever get sick? Yes. Do you want to become poor? ... No. Do you lose your wealth? Yes. Do you want to die?" ... No. Do you die?. Yes. When all these things can come to you without their being sought (we are not interested in discussing how or who brings all this to me), why do you think that similarly health, happiness, prosperity, will also seek you unsought. If sickness can come to me without my working for it, health can also come to me without my working for it. If unhappiness can come to me without my working for it, happiness can also come to me without my working for it. So, better find out who you are. Acquire self knowledge.
Quote:
prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvasah ahamkaravimudhatma karta 'ham iti manyate - Ch3/27
When it is God's nature that is functioning in and through all, why does stupid man entertain the idea "I am doing this?" Can this idea be dropped? "All right. God is doing everything. Om. Let us see who is going to make the lunch." Oh no, I am not nothing; I am suppressing an urge to function, and therefore this is not a gospel of laziness.
Quote:
karmany eva dhikaras te rna phalesu kadacana - Ch2/47
Some amount of energy has been built into this body: let it function, do not stop it, do not restrain, do not push. Do not suppress yourself, let actions take place. Let the body, the mind, and the whole of nature function. There is no need to suppress even desire. Desire has no place and does not even arise with the understanding or realisation that we are part of the one nature. S0 there is no suppression.
This is very important. It is not as though the yogi suppresses his desire. No. When he sees that it is God’s nature that functions here, desire becomes irrelevant, ambition becomes irrelevant. Only when it becomes irrelevant are we able to live an active fruitful and dynamic life, without entertaining a selfish motive, knowing that as long as there is life in this body, it will continue to function. Let it function. You have the right to function, the right to work. Let it go on, do not suppress it.
You are not here to determine what might happen or what might not happen. That is not in your hands. That is extremely simple and it is Truth - basic fundamental truth, direct and self evident and obvious truth - and that is called Karma Yoga, an extremely simple thing ... directly facing truth. Karma Yoga is to let the body, which is part of this created universe, be part of it, without pulling itself away and without motivated action. Motivated action is poisonous, and pulling oneself away is also poisonous. Let it be. There is peace instantly, here and now.
Om Tat Sat
IV
We hear this expression "Karma Yoga" very often, and it is an expression also used by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: snyasah karmayogas ca nihsreyaskarac ubhau tayos tu karma samnyasat karmayoga visisyate ChV/2
Self realisation can be attained by abandoning action completely, or by the practice of Karma Yoga, and he says, of these two, Karma Yoga is to be preferred. Why is it so?
One simple and straightforward reason given by Krishna in the Gita is that, not for a single moment can you remain inactive. When you are lying asleep, you are sleeping - that is an other activity. "I am sitting doing nothing" is a defective expression. "Sitting doing nothing" is only a figure of speech; it is not true. So, as long as life is there, and as long as life animates this body, it is impossible to do nothing. Therefore, while keeping active, is it possible to attain the same freedom that was indicated by the total renunciation of action, which is impossible physically, externally?
What is Karma Yoga? Karma yoga is not a kind of action or service which is certified to be unselfish by someone else. How do you know I am unselfish? If I come to your house to stay with you, and wash your clothes and tell you "I do not want any wages for what I am doing," that is supposed to be Karma Yoga. It is only honorary work; and why is it called work? Because there is an honor attached to it. By doing it free, I am earning your admiration, your approval, honor and prestige: a deadly word. People go to no end of trouble gaining a little more prestige.
I know a very nice man in South India who nearly killed himself in order to get a knighthood. What do these three letters "Sir" mean? Nothing. Yet if that prefix was attained, I do not know what he gained out of it. Even a banana is more beautiful than all that; at least it tastes nice and it appeases the hunger.
I may do something which may superficially appear to be unselfish, in the sense that all others are doing it for sake of money or something, and here I am doing it not according to that patten, but with some other motive. I may even do it very quietly. The Bible says, "Let your right hand not know what the left hand does". I can do that - perhaps slip a basket of fruit beside the door of a very poor man and walk away without wanting any return and without mentioning it to anybody. The word "body" is important. Then I lock my door and I look in the mirror, or at a picture of some deity and say, "God, I did exactly what you said. I pushed that fruit behind the poor man's door and did not take any money for it, or tell anyone about it. Please send me to heaven. Is it not selfishness? Yes.
It seems to be extremely difficult to detect selfishness, until we come face to face with this thing called "self". It does not take long for us to realise that it is the self that divides this from that. 'That' is made of the same stuff as ' This'. What is the difference? I think I am different. I think I am S0-and-so and that he is So-and-so. It is the self that divides. If there is no division in sleep, there is no division; the self is asleep - temporarily suspended.
Yoga means union or non-division. There is a risk in using the expression "union", because union immediately suggests two things coming together. Yoga is non-division and Karma Yoga is the state of non-division being sustained while engaged in active life. It is a state of non-division at all levels; at the level of personal relationship; that where there is a need you rush ... "You" is who? "You" is the same as "he". If he needs something, you fulfill that need without asking questions. Just as the fingers will scratch the neck without even telling themselves that they will go to heaven for rendering this wonderful service to the neck. Why is it so? Because the hand and the neck belong to the same body, the question does not arise. That's the point. The question "why" follows a sense of division; then come rationalisation and philosophy and so on.
In human relationship, can this division be totally avoided? Can there be action without division? Must action always be motivated? Can life not go on without motivation? You must now watch yourself, watch what is happening. When we do something, it is either because we think this is right and the other is wrong. Why must I do the right thing and not do what is wrong? There is some motivation there: I want to be approved, admired, I want to go to heaven, I want God to be pleased or my neighbors to be pleased. If that is not there, I like this, it is beautiful, it gives me pleasure. So I avoid what is painful and do what is pleasurable. What is right, I do; what is wrong I avoid. Therefore all my actions are motive tainted - not just motivated, but motive tainted.
If, when I am walking along the road and a tree or branch breaks and falls on me it breaks my leg, who is responsible? Does the tree commit a sin by breaking my leg? Is somebody responsible for it? Even the insurance companies call it nicely "an act of God." (Sometimes insurance companies speak the truth without meaning to.) Take another example, for instance if, while I am walking along a balcony, I slip and fall off and you happen to be sunbathing down below and I land on your ankle and crush it, you would not really blame me, I have not committed any crime. Who so? The argument is that there is no will in it - I did not intend to do so.
Action without intention therefore is an act of God. Action which does not spring from will is an act of God. It is extremely important to bear this in mind. We often use the expression "It is God that does all this through me, I am only an instrument in the hands of God." That is a very slippery expression; it is a double edged sword, and one has to use it very carefully. An act of God is totally free of self volition, self will. The tree did not intend to fall on my leg, I did not intend to slip from the balcony and crush your foot, and therefore there is no sin involved. In an act of God there is no sin.
When this was said, Arjuna, the student, turned to Krishna and said:
atha kena prayukto 'yam papam carati purusah anicchann api varsneya balad iva niyoyitah ChIII/36
If we are all instruments in the hands of God and if as the Bible says even a sparrow does not fall unless 'it is the will of God', and therefore whatever happens in the world is the will of God, why do we say that "he" did something wrong and "he" did something wonderful?
Krishna gives a dramatic and beautiful reply: kama esa krodha esa rajoguna samudbhavah mahaseno mahapapma viddhy enam ihi vairinam - ChIII/37
It is desire, it is craving, it is self-will which is the mischief maker and that itself is sin. That self-will, desire, is what comes between the pure action into this good action, creating a division. The self-will enters into pure action, casts a shadow on pure action, and creates an apparent division between the actor and the action. If you watch very carefully, you can detect it. When the eyes are open and turned in a certain direction, seeing takes place. But you think "Ah, I see". The moment "I see" enters into this, it creates a Me and a You, and that is mere action, pure action that is pure experiencing. In pure action there is no sin, that is act of God - there is no sin at all, nor is there a division between you and me. There is no division between the tree end the foot; it has no hostility towards me, there is no intention at all. In pure action there is no division, there is no volition, no intention; in an 'act of God' there is no division, and in the same way in pure experiencing there is no division.
I once read an intriguing and interesting statement in a book on forensic medicine, to the effect that the last experience of a drowning person is one of great joy. This was later confirmed by a doctor. I believe they conducted autopsies on drowned people, and examining the state of the nerves decided that the drowned person must have experienced joy, delight, before actually passing out. I was discussing this with some medical people, and a nurse who was also interested in yoga came up with a beautiful answer. She said, “If you fall into the sea and fight and resist, as long as you continue fighting it, you are in misery. Then when you realise that it is too much and surrender yourself to the sea, at that moment you become one with the sea - the resistance is gone and therefore there is no pain and no suffering". Total surrender of the personal will of the individual will immediately lead us to peace.
Krishna specifically points this out in the Gita:
tyagac chantir anantaram - ChXII/12
Abandon yourself and next moment you are at peace within your self. It is only this fighting, "I want this, I do not want that", or the resistance born of wanting something else. These are two sides of the same coin - I want something and therefore I do not want something else. If I do not desire something, I do not reject anything in this world.
Therefore Karma Yoga is inexplicably connected with what you and I call meditation. One must become aware of the springs of action. The "T" or the ego sense which has ruled so far, has determined that this I shall do and that I shall not do, and this I shall do in order to gain so and so, and this I shall not d0 in order to avoid so and so, and therefore gain something else. That is the ego sense, the "I", and the intelligence must be able to look within and question the fundamental and simple truths concerning ourselves which we have never challenged.
I have continued to entertain the idea that I am sitting here and speaking to you, and you feel that you are listening. I have never asked myself, "Who is it that is sitting and talking? Is it me? If it is me, who is "I"? Is it God speaking through me, or the devil speaking through me, or my own previous conditioning speaking through me, my education or my conscience?. Where does this discrimination between right and wrong spring from? What is conscience? Did I bring it from somewhere else, or did I put it together now? Is it made up of the teaching I received from my parents, my teachers, my religious leaders? What is conscience? I have never bothered to inquire into this or to look into myself and see exactly where the motives arise. I still do not know if it is possible for me to catch myself acting selfishly or unselfishly, but I may be able to see selfishness tainting everyone of those actions. If all my actions are motive tainted, there is a desire, open or hidden, and it is not difficult to see for oneself what the motivation is. One uses the word "subconscious mind" as a very sophisticated excuse for not looking where one should look - it is hidden away. It is not hidden; I put the blinkers on because I do not want to look that way and I do not want to accept the responsibility for this. So I put on blinkers and say ‘I am not consciously doing this, but subconsciously doing it.'
If I commit an offense in which someone is injured, and my lawyer can prove I waS under the influence of alcohol at that time, I am excused. Nonsense. If I am under the influence of alcohol I have done two wrongs and should be punished twice - once for hitting and the other for being under the influence of alcohol. One does not exclude the other, only complices it. So if someone says, "I did not consciously do it, I must have been motivated unconsciously, punish him twice. Acting foolishly or stupidly is not right action.
I saw a man who was drunk trying to make up to a girl, and later on when some of my friends were talking about this they said, "He did not know what he was doing - he was drunk." If that is so, why doesn't he do some of those other things. Why doesn't he go and jump off a bridge? Why doesn't he - if you will forgive me - go and molest his own mother? His conscience. The alcohol is merely brought in as a sort of white washing, knowing that society excuses him if he does it when under the influence of drink. Punish him twice and he will not do it again - once for molesting and once for drinking. Then the whole thing will stop.
Even so, in yoga, craving is the root of all sin. Craving itself is sin. Action tainted by motive is sin, whether the motivation appears superficially to be holy or unholy. It is craving that veils knowledge.
Quote: indriyani mana buddhir asya 'dhisthanam acyate etair vimohayaty esa jnanam avrtya dehinam - ChIII/40
Craving seems to throw a veil of ignorance on self knowledge, and this veil casts a shadow on that knowledge. In that shadow a division takes place between you and me - I and you is the first division. The second division is between I and the action - I do this. There is a division between action and its own source which are non different. The wave which appears on the surface of the ocean is non different from the ocean, the wave being part of the ocean - the wave is the ocean. We all use silly expressions like "the waves dancing on the surface of the ocean". It is like saying your face is covered by skin. The skin is part of the face. What is it that creates a division here - the division between I and the action - the intelligence from which the action springs and the action itself? That is the motivation. If the motivation is not there, if the will is not there, if the desire is not there, if the craving is not there, there is no division between the action and the source of the action and the action becomes pure - an act of God.
In order to re-discover the fact of the act of God , one has to see where the division takes place. The division is the self. The divider is the self and that is selfishness. When that divider comes in, whatever be the action, it is selfishness and therefore tainted. The self however is not a solid reality but merely a shadow cast by the veil. It is not even a veil; it is a shadow cast by the veil. When does the shadow disappear? The shadow cannot be cut, cannot be burnt or vacuumed, and absolutely no detergent, or anything manufactured so far can clear that shadow. Yet that shadow goes the moment the light is turned on. That turning on of the inner searchlight is called meditation.
In the Gita we have a rather interesting definition of meditation. Why does one meditate at all?
Quote: yogam atmavisuddhaye - ChVI/12
We practice meditation in order to purify ourselves. What is this shadow which is cast round the intelligence, which brings a division between action and its source, which brings about a division between experience and the experiencer? The moment that division goes, you are blissful, even when you are drowning. The moment when the division between the experience and the experience is taken away, we are blissful. Like in sleep - you may have an ulcer, rheumatism or something else which causes you to suffer; you go to sleep and as soon as the self is put to sleep, the pain is lost. What happens during sleep? You have become one with the pain, the division has gone, the feeling 'I am suffering' has gone. It is not a substance which has to be burned or dried out; it is only a shadow. So turn the light on and the shadow is gone. Turning the light on itself on the psychological phenomenon is called meditation.
Krishna does not beat about the bush but goes straight into it in the 6th chapter. He gives a few nice explanations, instructions for meditation. Select a clean, pure place and there establish a nice sent for yourself. Some of the instructions are very down to earth and full of common sense. Do not hoist yourself high above the ground. Sometimes we feel very happy sitting perched on a rock to meditate, but sometimes during meditation we can become sleepy. Once you transcend the level of the conscious mind, you are not in control of what might happen afterwards. One day during meditation it may so happen that the moment you cross that boundary line you may fall asleep, and fall and break your neck. So do not sit too high up.
If you sit in the bush to meditate, and you are seated on the ground, it is possible that insects may crawl over you and one day a scorpion will come along. After that you will never be able to meditate there. What beautiful common sense and practical instructions of how to sit and how to arrange the seat. Blades of grass, which are plentiful in the forest, and on it a nice skin which prevents the condition of the earth affecting your body. It may be damp, cold or hot. A tiger skin or deer skin which at the same time prevents the body electricity or psychic energy from being lost. Then there is an interesting suggestion. On top of that skin spread a piece of cloth. Why is that so? We usually sit for meditation with not too many cloths on, and if you sit on a skin without clothes on, it is not very comfortable, so sit on a cloth.
Keep the back and the neck in a straight line. This you can experience, if you gently rock your body back and forth, you will find that at one place the body feels weightless. What is your own center of gravity, and at that point it is easy to sit for a long time without any stress or strain. It is all extremely simple. Let the gaze be directed in front of the nose. In Hatha yoga this is called Shambhavi Mudra. Gently let the vision rest on the space in front of the nose and let your attention not be diverted. From there on you will focus the attention of the mind upon itself.
Quote:
tatas tato niyamyai 'tad atmany eve vasam nayet - ChVI/26
I am not interested in what goes on outside, but in what goes on inside. I hear the crickets but the hearing is within me. There are no distractions outside, but only distractions in my own system. If I stop resisting, they cease to distract. Krishna does not give us any elaborate technique beyond this, except to drop a lovely little bombshell.
Consider:
atma samstham manah kritva na kincid api cintayet - ChVI/25
After doing all this, calm yourself, turn the attention upon yourself and do not think. That is extremely beautiful. Immediately you realise two things. You realise 'I do not think' - that is a thought; secondly, it is only when you tell yourself "I will not think" that you become aware of thoughts arising. Thoughts have been there all the time, the mind has been thinking all the time. But I was unaware of it because I did not pay any attention to it. Now that I am telling myself "I will not think", I realise I am thinking.
There are two realisations - "I will not think" is itself a thought, and strangely enough I am not able to confine myself even to this thought that I really want to think, that thought being "I will not think", without being pestered by so many thoughts around. Those of you who meditate seriously, please try this. Is it possible for me to distinguish between the thought that I want to think and the thought that merely occurs to me? Can I distinguish one from the other?
When you become aware of the distinction, you have got the key and you can turn it when you like. You will notice that the thoughts which occur to your mind are pedestrian thoughts. There are thousands of people walking along the other side of the road, and they do not distract your attention at all until one of your friends appears and then - Ha, now you are no longer Here but There. As long as these pedestrian thoughts cross the field of your inner vision, you are not really distracted because you are thinking the thought 'I will not think', or if you do not want to do that, you can repeat a mantra which is 'A thought I want to think'. I can hear people moving chairs and other sounds, but they are not distracting at all. As I go on, that which I am thinking, the mantra or the image or whatever it is - is absolutely clear. Then next thing - "I have forgotten to answer that letter from New Zealand, whatever will they think? I had better send a cable." This thought is something I am interested in and as it appears on the consciousness, the attention seems to jump on that band wagon and is carried away. So the distraction is not outside, but inside. I want to see you, or I can look at the most wonderful thing and keep looking and not see because I am not interested, or because I do not want to see. So it is good to learn to distinguish one from the other.
Then one learns another interesting feature which is part of the training suggested in Patanjali's Raja Yoga. I learn to recognize the exact moment when a thought arises in the mind, and when the thought subsides. When does a thought subside and the next one arise? That moment is very important. If I know that, and know that mechanism, I can make any thoughts subside at will, and the next one comes up and there again I have no business to blame others.
This is the yoga of meditation as taught by Krishna in the Gita. But he does not end there. When the mind is completely freed of the shadow of ignorance - which is the self, there is self knowledge. Where there was self ignorance before, there is now self knowledge. The moment the shadow of self is discarded, instantly the division between You and Me goes, the division between action and actor goes, the division between experiencer and experiencing goes. You can see that that is an act of God. From there on the yogi is an act of God, and whatever he does is an act of God - absolutely non-volitional, without motive tainting. There is peace and pure experience of bliss.
Om Tat Sat
V
Meditation, when it is seriously practiced, discovers the self, not in the sense perhaps in which most of us have used the word discover, but in the strictest literal sense of taking the lid off. The self being the lid, the cover or the veil or shadow. Meditation, the light, discovers the self. When the light shines, the shadow is gone - all stupid silly words. Does the shadow go away at any time? No. Please remember this, it is rather serious. Watch next time. Cast a shadow and then flash a light on it. See what happens to it. Does it go away?
Audience: It does not exist.
Swami: It is rather strange. Do you see something in my hands? (Holds up a spectacle case) You cannot stop seeing it unless it is taken and put somewhere else. Now you do not see it. It is in that context that you say the spectacle case has been taken away. When you tum a flashlight on the shadow, what happens to that?
Audience: When there is light, there is no shadow.
Swami: I am asking about the shadow, what happened to it? Where did it go? That is inexpressible and the mind boggles. You cannot think of it. What can a thing which I saw till a moment ago ... what happened to it? That is precisely what happens when the light of meditation is turned on to this thing that we have been calling the self: I am, Me, My. When the light of meditation is turned on to that ... the rest is inexpressible. The sentence can never be completed.
The only thing that can be said, is that a unity that was there is revealed. So, meditation literally discovers the self, and you have to discover what that means. It is not that the self has gone. It is not that the self is still there, or that the self is seen as cosmic. You first look at the ocean and think it is one, and then suddenly see there are many waves on it. It is not the waves that are dancing upon something called the ocean, the waves are part of the ocean. You cannot take the waves away and put it somewhere else - it is still there. And even after all your enlightenment, your self realization, you blink and there arc still the waves, there is still the ocean - but it is all the ocean. What happened in the meantime? Nothing happened.
An assumed separateness is dispelled, or rather an assumed separateness is seen as an assumption of separateness, not a reality. The reality is that it is an assumption of separateness. It is very important to remember because we read about all these - the ego being dispelled and the self being eradicated, and then the yogi becomes so and so and he is a cosmic being, and therefore, if a piece of bread is placed in front of him, he takes it and puts it into the mouth of a rabbit. That may not happen at all, he may still keep on eating. The only thing that can be said, which was said twice in The Bhagavad Gita by Arjuna, the student, is:
nasto mohah smrtir labdha tvatprasadan maya 'cyuta sthito 'ami gatasamdehah karisye vacenam tava - ChXVIII/73
By your Grace, my delusion has gone and I have regained an awareness. In that awareness, shadow is seen as shadow, substance is seen as substance. That is all. It is also seen that those two are not totally disparate entities; they are somehow one. You and your shadow are somehow one. Your shadow does not exist apart from you. One, yet two - two, yet one.
When this happens, the entire life undergoes a transformation. Action becomes spontaneous, free from the taint of motivation. The removal of this taint is the purpose - if there is a purpose - of meditation, not self realization, or God realisation
Quote:
yunjyad yogam atmavisuddhayo - ChVI/12
Again and again this expression occurs in the Gita. All that you do is merely to purify yourself, your vision. When the vision is purified, in that vision there is no division, that is all - then you are free. The division between the action and the actor, the experience and the experiencer, that is not there. You become one with the experience, and with the action. Please, I hope by now you realise all these expressions are terribly inadequate.
When this division disappears and pure experience alone remains, all experiences immediately shine as pure experiencing, and therefore the distinctions drop away. That is what is meant by Krishna in the Gita, insisting that the yogi should treat honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, heat and cold, alike. It does not mean that he becomes aware that this is pain and this is pleasure, and I, being a yogi, treat them alike. That is a fairly crude way of putting it, but if you enter into the spirit of it, it becomes beautiful, subtle but very beautiful.
A pinch on the cheek is painful. Is it? Painful is a word, an interpretation by the mind. It is a pure neurological phenomenon and as such it is neither pain nor pleasure - and as an experience, it is also neither pain nor pleasure. How can I treat this as pleasure? It is painful. But then, if your very dear friend pinches you, you feel delighted. This is merely in the words of raja yoga - pratipaksha bhavanam Where there is a perverted roasoning, you stop that perverted reasoning with an other perverted reasoning . If someone who loves you does this, you are delighted; so it is neutral, neither painful nor pleasant. If I do not know these words "pain" and "pleasure" or their corresponding concepts - concepts being mental activity - what is the nature of that pure experience? It is only the self, the ego that comes in and chooses - this is pleasure, this is pain. When the shadow has been (dash dash dash) by the light of meditation, there is pure experiencing in which there is neither pleasure or pain - but experiencing is still there. As long as there is life and consciousness, the movement of life in consciousness will throw up millions of experiences. There is no problem at all.
It is good to remind ourselves again and again that yoga does not stop our life or interfere with our life. It does not make you an inanimate being. Life goes on - and as long as there is life, and as long as there is movement of that life in consciousness, these experiences come floating along; but something that kept dividing everything in life into pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor, praise and censure, these have gone. Have gone! They did not go away. They were never there. They were but notions, ideas.
In the same way, as you go on living your life in this world, fully and fruitfully, you watch your own thoughts. Meditation is this constant self watchfulness. In that light of self-watchfulness you are often amused to see how the mind undergoes various diverse emotions. This is common knowledge, especially to those who are working and those who have a family. You get up in the morning and are in a very nice mood, and your child runs up to you. You hug the child, and if at moment you are also watchful of your self, you cannot fail to notice the joy, the delight. "Ah, lovely, marvelous". I am full of love, there is nothing else in me. Then you turn round and go into the kitchen, switch something on and something else explodes, and if your meditation has been serious and you are still watching yourself, you suddenly see a change. That love seems to have gone away somewhere. It does not go away, we do not know what it is. Then some kind of irritation sets in. Something is disturbed. Just at that time, your child or your partner or someone else does something and provokes you. Aaha ... provokes you ... but that is not important, this is important. As that other person says something that which was love and that which was irritation suddenly becomes venom anger. Then you walk out of the house with all these. The original state of this mind has been totally forgotten. It has undergone so many changes that you do not know which one was closer to the truth or reality. So we jump from frying pan to fire and back into the frying pan, and so it goes on - we never get out of that. We know only these: either - or, and the truth seems to be neither - nor.
If you have been seriously meditating, you could come to grips with the arising thoughts or emotions, and directly see that whether the thought is of God or of the devil, the truth is that it is a thought, nothing more. That in which the thought arises is the truth. You go back to the ocean and look at it. Whether the wave is big and beautiful, or small and filthy, or insignificant, in essence it is nothing but seawater. When the absence of that distinction during meditation is realised, when you come out of that meditation room and you see all these are play of your own thoughts and emotions in your own mind, you suddenly realise that - never mind what these things are called - in essence they are all the same. They are a complete and crazy mixture of consciousness which is the substance, the essence of the whole thing. In that consciousness there is a movement called life or energy which is indistinguishably one with that consciousness and from somewhere something jumps up and gives it a name - Old Adam. Adam was told to give all these things names.
What I called love, in essence or substance is non-different from what I call dislike or anger. When this is seen, then one does not want to become angry. Because the movement of life in consciousness continues, thinking continues, and naturally there is a taste of the joy that was felt in love and the non-joy that is felt when there is no love. When these two are seen to be identical in essence, the mind naturally
flows along the channel of love. If one is more valuable than the other, or if it is more profitable to you to hate me than to love me, you can jolly well hate me. When both are the same in essence, why don't you love? That is an extremely simplistic argument which the yogi adopts. In essence it is the same, there is no difference at all. It is the limited consciousness called mind that undergoes these changes from moment to moment, so that when I love you, it is the consciousness that seems to have undergone this change; the mind has put on the mask of love. A little later I am mad at you, angry nothing whatsoever has happened. Nobody is interested in my loving you or hating you. The same mind has put on another mask, a devilish dance, and I, the dancer, am still the same; but behind the mask the substance is the same. When that is realised there is no need to be nasty, vicious. In that light the virtue that arises is pure - that is beautiful. When actions spring from that consciousness, they are Karma Yoga. You love - not because you are afraid to be angry. If you want to be angry, why not, what is wrong with that? There may not be a revolutionary external change.
Krishna even specifically mentions this:
saktah karmany avidsamso yatha kurvanti bharata kurad vidvams tatha saktas cikursur lokasmreham - ChIII/25
Do not pretend to be something different from others. You may be the greatest yogi on earth; your flesh is also made of the same tomatoes which I ate - no distinction at all; that is unnecessarily giving this piece of flesh a glory and a prestige it does not inherently possess. The ignorant, when they live and function here, their light is darkness.
In the words of Jesus in the Bible: If your light be darkness, what a great loss it is.
Audience: If thy eye be single, thy body will be full of light.
Swami: Right. The ignorant function here, but their light is darkness; whereas the enlightened live, in their case, in the light of their understanding or inner awareness, and there is no darkness of ignorance, although outwardly there may not be a change or a difference. When thus, in the inner light, all experiences, and all expressions are seen to be homogeneous, of the same substance, of the same essence, it is then that true unselfishness 'happens'. You cannot walk out of this place and say, I "l am going to be unselfish hereafter." "I am going to be, etc." is already selfish. There is a motivation behind it. "I spent a lot of money coming here, and when I go home, I must show my students or my husband or wife, that all that money has been worth spending; so I am going to show them that I have undergone a complete change. Previously I was vicious, now I am going to be non-vicious." It will last for three days. It does not work that way. I cannot jump about and declare myself to be unselfish. The unselfishness happens only when the self is discovered - dis-covered, seen to be non-existent.
In meditation, the truth of the oneness in the essence of all concepts, all thoughts, is seen. Thoughts go about playing, but in essence they are all one, the mind. When that inner light is kept bright, while being involved in the assumed relationships in our daily life, it is seen that all experiences and all expressions are similarly one in essence.
Then we go what is called sight-seeing, a beautiful expression, I love it. You suddenly realise that it is the sight that sees. There is no "I see the sight". Sight-seeing tours are tours in which the sight sees. The eye is completely absent, and in the case of American tourists, the sight is guided or helped by the camera. I saw a number of such tourists being herded like sheep in Israel, all the cameras were clicking. They came back in the evening to the hotel and asked, "What do you see?" "Oh, I don't know, we'll have to wait until the films are developed." It is pure sight-seeing, ears are hearing and the mind which has the imprint of past experiences or memory that goes on thinking.
Life lives. That life is blissful, that life is divine. One can say nothing concerning that life. It is totally unpredictable. I saw this in the case of my Guru Swami Sivananda, He was totally unpredictable. You might have been in trouble, or starving and might have walked into the Ashram and He might have lavished milk and honey etc., but no-one could take it for granted that if hungry people came to Him, He would go on doing that all His life. No. Someone else walks in and says "I'm so hungry'" and He might say, "Go and wash that man's clothes and he'll pay you some money." How come the other man came and you did so and so. That's it. No questions asked, He was totally unpredictable.
Pattened behavior is usually selfish behavior. When the self is seen to non-exist, then that life becomes a continuous unbroken act of God. Such a person, since the body is still there, life is still there, and therefore in a manner of speaking the personality is still there - persona means mask - and, that mask is still there, that spark of consciousness, animated by that much of life still wears the musk of this lady. In the heart of that person there is the realisation of Cosmic Oneness - these two are w0rds, the truth is indescribable.
Quote:
sarvabhutasthitam yo mam bhajaty ekatvam asthitah sarvatha vartamano 'pi sa yogi mayi vartate - ChVI/31
He, the yogi, sees God and God alone in all, in everything, not merely in human things, but in all things. His consciousness is perfectly rooted in oneness - in oneness that is not the opposite of diversity, but which is a synthesis of oneness and diversity. Neither just the ocean, nor just the waves, but the ocean as the ocean plus the waves. It is not that you will instantly be free of all diversity so that you go and embrace a tree and kick at your husband; that is madness. That oneness that transcends unity and diversity. Such a person's life is itself a blessing. The golden rule is also given in the same chapter of the Gita. In order to dispel any doubt that meditation is an exercise one does, sitting bolt upright, Krishna introduces those ideas into the same chapter.
Quote:
atmaupamyena sarvatra samam pasyati yo 'rjuna sukham va yadi va duhkham sa yogi paramo matah - ChVI/32
That yogi is supreme, who (there are translation pr0blemsbhere) it does not say treat your neighbor as yourself, but everything, everywhere that the yogi looks upon as his own self, whether it is pleasure or pain, it is all the same in essence - the experiencing is the same. His life is one c0ntinuous unbroken adoration of God. I will leave you with this last beautiful thought or imagery perhaps. Such a yogi's life is one continuous adoration of God.
One of the most inspiring verses in the Bhagavad Gita describes it as follows:
yatah pravrttir bhutanam yena sarvam idam tatam svakarmana tam abhyareya siddhim vindati manavah - ChXVIII/46.
Man attains perfection, fulfillment. How? By worshiping God with ones own actions. There is no distinction here at all between what you call right action and wrong action, virtue or vice. Treating everyone of your actions as a flower offered at the Feet of God. And who is that God? God is the source of all beings. In order that we may not consider that as the sun or the moon from which the stream of life flows down. The verse says: By Him is all this pervaded, and therefore the Upanishads consider God as supreme consciousness, which is all pervading, omnipresent, eternal, infinite. It is all beings, all things, not merely human beings or living beings; all things are pervaded and filled by this consciousness, and the yogi’s actions are the flowers with which he worships this cosmic being. As long as there is individuality, or personality, as long as this yogi wears the mask of an individual, he adopts this attitude of worship. The yogi himself is an act of God and all his actions are acts of God. They c0uld be called acts of creation, sustenance and even acts of destruction, but whatever be the external semblance, in truth and essence they are all acts of God.
Om Tat Sat
VI
The whole teaching of the Bhagavad Gita naturally hinges around a nice little word - God, in the English language. In Sanskrit you do not have the word God. We have countless words which signify more or less what you mean by God, one of the most popular being Isa or Ishwara. But this Isa or Ishwara is not a bald headed, flowing bearded person somewhere behind the clouds. 'Isa' is precisely "what is" - That which Is is Isa.
A gentleman who came here a few days ago was a bit non plussed when he asked me "What is God?" I replied, "What is God." - instead of putting a question mark put a full stop - "What is God." You better figure out what Ii. If you are quite sure that this Is, then take it for certain that that is God, that is Isa. This raises a lot of questions; more questions than are answered.
What is God? Then what changes is not God. In what is subject to change, there is something which is not changing. When you refer to the universal phenomena as being constantly changing, you have introduced a paradox. What is constantly changing? It is changing, it is not constant. If it is constant, it is not changing. This is a problem of your language, not mine. It is constantly changing. If it is, it is constant, it does not change; yet, unfortunately the statement is true. So there is constancy in change, and the change is non-different, inseparable from the constant. The constant is not a static dead thing. There is nothing at all in the universe that is totally dead and inert; everything is ... (you could just as well put a full stop there) ... constantly changing.
If you contemplate that, you have understood vaguely what the yogi means by Isa or Isvara. It is only when one has this attitude - in the words of the Yoga Vasista: etam drstim avastabhya - that established in this vision your life becomes divine. When your vision becomes this, then the division outside disappears. It does not mean that therefore everything becomes uniform, or uni-substance; but somehow what appeared earlier on to be a confusing and perplexing diversity, becomes what it has always been.
You see the nose and the eyes, you see the forehead, the lips and the chin, and then suddenly you see the face. When you see the face, it does not mean that the nose and eyes have disappeared or that the eyes look like a nose or the nose looks like the eyes. No. You can all play this game as often as you like, Take note of each little thing, the hair, a single lock coming up crooked, etc ... but that is a face. When you say, "That is a face," the different elements that compose this face do not disappear, they are still there - but they are no longer perplexing and confusing; they are no longer diverse. They constitute a oneness which is not a contradiction of diversity. That is the vision in which there is no division.
The prefix di in english means duality, e.g. dichotomy. So, division is a vision which contains a dichotomy. When the dichotomy is dropped, there is pure vision, and that vision includes the valley and the mountains, not just the Vision Valley, but the vision mountains, the whole thing, the totality. That is Isvara and that is Isa. Isa is that which exists and that which is constantly changing.
Metaphysically, or philosophically however, the expression Isa is made to imply the constancy in this change. A Lady can keep changing her hairstyle, but underneath it all there is a scalp that does not change. Water, H20, keeps on changing. At one state it is called water, at another stage, ice, and at another, vapor. It is also called cloud. The molecules may be very close together, or very far apart, but the H20-ness of these does not change - only the form changes. When you have said that “the form undergoes a change", it is not a change, in fact. You have the same problem. Do not think that I am trying to confuse you with some kind of crazy idea. Unfortunately you never thought about it before. When you read in the Bible, Genesis again that God made man in his own image. You have seen an image of yourself in the mirror. Next time you stand in front of a mirror, ask yourself: "What do I see"? I see my face. Hah! True? Yes. ls it there in the mirror? No. Is it not there in the mirror? What do you see there?
Audience: An image, a reflection.
Swami: Did you see a reflection of your face in the mirror or not? The reflection of your face is in the mirror. Yes?
Audience: (some) No. Yes. No. Yes.
Swami: Please, make up your mind. That's it. It is the same problem. It is not some exotic oriental thing. It is there in all philosophical doctrine. Next time you stand in front of the mirror, please watch again.
When the Gita talks about Isa, it talks about the mirror. When it talks about the universe of diversity, it talks about the reflection in the mirror; concerning which you can neither say “It is", nor, "It is not". The only problem in this is that this mirror is cosmic; the reflection is cosmic, and the observer and the observed are all caught up in the same mirror. It is a cosmic mirror, which is at once everywhere, at once reflecting everything ... within itself.
Only if that is understood as clearly as possible ... It is not possible to say that, "I know this", because "I" am still "I" and the knowledge is somewhere outside. Unless this is directly realised - realised in the sense that you know you are real, you know you are alive, you know you are a man or a woman without having to examine yourself. How do you know? If someone asked you this question, "How do you know you are alive?", you would think that the fellow is mad, crazy. Do you know why? Because you do not know how you know that you are alive, and therefore you think that the other man is crazy.
What is it that sees without eyes, without even what one might call a sensation? That is direct realization, and only who has reached that point is it possible to suggest that "he knows" without a division in his consciousness between "I" and the knowledge. He knows that this is the Truth. This is the Reality. This cosmic being Is, and the cosmic being alone Is. The cosmic being is consciousness. That is the Truth.
All your yoga is based on this, and if one may suggest that the practice of yoga has a goal, or an aim, it is to realise this directly. Again the word "realise" is defective. To "realise" is to make something real. Here it is real already. But since the mirror is misted, we commit mistakes in perception. When that mist is removed, the mistake is also removed. It is quite simple: ''mistake'' is making the mist to be the real. You see a misted mirror and then you see your face has gone. You swipe that mirror clean, mistake that the face has gone. The face has not gone, the face is there , it has always been there. That is what is called a mistake. The practice of yoga is meant merely to remove this mist, so that there may be no mistake, no error in perception.
Why must one practice yoga? - "atma' suddhaye" - for self purification. And in the course of this purification, it is the self that is removed. That is one reason why people resist any attempt at the practice of yoga, whether it is called western yoga, eastern yoga, christian yoga, hindu yoga or buddhist yoga. They all aim at this one thing - can the self be purified? Which means: the self itself, being the veil, the shadow, the dirt, the filth - purification removes itself. "Oh will I go away? Will I be dissolved? Will I be annihilated?" What is truth cannot be annihilated. What is constant cannot cease to be and what is changing is changing in any case. Why are you worried about it? Isa is that which is constant. Meditation seeks to realise it and meditation becomes effective only if the self ceases by seeing itself to cease, by seeing itself as non existent. That is what ceases. It does not come to an end as though it were a reality, which has attained destruction. When the light is turned on, something happens to the shadow; that is precisely what happens to the thing called the self. When that shadow disappears, the substance continues to be.
The yogi in meditation may focus his attention upon the heart, the mind, or upon some psychic centers - you can do what you like. Luckily for you, the self is right up to the tips of your toes, so you can meditate on your toes if you want; anything there needs to be a focal point for the attention, so they suggest the heart. You can visualize a glorious temple in the heart (listen to this carefully) and there the Lord is seated and there you bow down to him and worship him with lotuses and other flowers. Ah! beautiful. You open your eyes all that I saw was merely an imagination. Image-in - the image was inside. Am I now quite sure that this is somebody sitting in front of me? But I saw something like this inside before. Do you see the problem? That is why it is said that sometimes these great yogis behaved like madman, not that they are mad nor that madmen are yogis. Suddenly there is a serious problem. Here is a young lady sitting in front of me. Sure? But then a few minutes ago when I was sitting with closed eyes I saw a big temple and a deity and beautiful things happening in my heart. When I opened my eyes and looked down, there was nothing but the shirt - no temple, no deity. During that experience that appeared to be real, and during this experience this appears to be real. Is it not then right to say that this as real as that? " ,
I suddenly realised while meditating that what appeared to be solid meat - this body - is radiant with light. This appears to be solid meat normally, and carcasses you have seen do not appear to have any light shining in them. Yet when I meditate, the whole body seems to be full of some glowing and glorious light. Then you look around the ceiling, the pillars, or floor, all of them similarly have the same light. If I cannot see them, it is because of faulty vision? We are merely passing through a series of challenges. That is when meditation becomes more meaningful, more purposeful, more effective. It does not solve any problem. It gives me the key with which I can dissolve all problems. It presents me with that acid in which all problems can be dissolved. No solution is sought because the creator of the problem, being the unreal shadow, any attempt at solving the problem created by this unreality is only going to lead to greater problems. So I must find the alchemical solution in which the problem maker can be dissolved. Therefore meditation does not really solve a problem, but puts you in direct contact with that which creates the problem. Dissolve it and everything is gone.
Why fight a shadow? Why must I struggle to remove a shadow? How can I wipe the shadow out? I must see it as a shadow. And when this shadow is seen, which means light, the shadow is gone. Hah! Gone? Not g0ne, disappeared? 'When did it appear? It appears only to a defective vision.
Hence the Bhagavad Gita says: isvarah sarvabhutanam hrrdese arjuna tisthati bhramayan sarvabhutani yantrarudhani mayaya - ChXVIII/61
This Isa or God, which is the constant, is constantly changing phenomena. This God is seated in the hearts of all beings. The word ''bhuta'' can mean ''beings'' as also elements - earth, water, fire and air. In the very core of all that there is this consciousness, this life-force, this prana, this vitality or energy, which is conscious-shit-shakti. The whole universe is pervaded by it. This consciousness - energy is there in the heart of every cell of this body. Even in what is mistakenly regarded as inert substance. Look at your own hair; there is nothing inert there. It seems to be inert, you can trim it very nicely; but it is not inert; it knows how to grow. How can an inert substance grow. Your nails - if such inert substance comes out of you, are also inert. How can a conscious sentient being produce such inert substances? It is not inert. There is energy it. There is vitality in it. From horses and cows hooves they make gelatin and we eat it. A doctor would probably say there is a lot 0f Vitamin A23 and that without it your hair and nails would not grow. There is something in everything. There is this energy and this consciousness hidden in the core of all things.
There is another interesting and extraordinary statement, not in the Gita but in another text, called Guru Gita: isvara guruatmeti murti bheda vibagine vyomavad vyaptadehaya 'sri daksinamurtaya namah
Singing the praise of a Guru. The one truth or reality assumes the aspect of a trinity. What is the trinity here? Isa or Isvara - the omnipresent consciousness which is eternally and constantly existing, Guru and the self. The three in fact constitute one reality. This trinity which is in fact one, is like space. When you look at this space, you think that there is infinite space outside these walls. Inside this hall is a much smaller space and inside this glass there is a tiny space. But this is rubbish. Space cannot be divided at all. Space is space. Even when you put that wall up, the space is not destroyed, the space is not occupied. That is a silly expression, as all expressions are silly. This building does not occupy space. Before this building was put up there was space, and after this building is pulled down, that space will continue to be. And that space is there even now, completely and totally unattached, unaffected at all by the building that seems to exist there and ceases to exist. It has nothing whatsoever to do with it. In the same way, this infinite space which is consciousness, which is energy, undergoes no change whatsoever. It is there constantly. And whatever changes take place, take place within it - apparently, not in reality. That infinite consciousness, though it is one, is said to assume the aspect of a trinity - one calling itself the self, "I am so and so." In order to remove this mistake or misunderstanding of individuality of finiteness, of littleness, of smallness, the same God, the same infinity, the same space, appears in front of me as the Guru. The three are non-different - God, Guru and Self.
God as the infinite consciousness, assumes the form of the Guru. I hope you see the snag here - assumes the form - in relation to whom? In relation to the perceiver. I am the one that perceives the form. Why does the guru appear in this form? Because I need it. I am caught up in this dream or hallucination, of finitude, smallness. Rigidly I am clinging to this little image of myself. I am hanging on to this mirror and I do not want to drop it to the extent that "Oh, my face may be broken" and so on. It is possible in the case of a child, or some demented person. He picks up a mirror and, seeing his face in it, he says "My face has gone into the mirror, so I should not drop it because my face will also get broken. I should not leave it for then I will be without face." Such a thing is possible, yes. You think it is far fetched, but that is precisely what you and I are doing now. We are afraid to loose face. Loose face - an English expression. Next time you are afraid to loose face, remember this - it is a mirror. I am seeing my face in that mirror; break the mirror and my face is still there. How do I loose face? I am afraid to loose this body, afraid to loose this life, because I have imagined, when I look at the face in the mirror, that my face has somehow gone into the mirror. It is no longer here. It is there that is the mistake we are committing.
In this inner agony, in what St. John of the Cross describes as the Dark Night of the Soul, there is an intense anguish. In Bhakti literature it is called "verah" and this is likened to the anguish that the beloved feels in the absence of her lover - that restless deepless anguish. "I have lost something. I am confused and anxious."
That is one of the expressions that Arjuna uses in the Gita: karpanya dosophata svabhava prcchami tvam dharma sammudhacetah - yac chreyah syan niscitam bruhi tan me sisyas te'ham sadhi mam tvam prapannam - ChII/7
I do not know what to do. I do not know what not to do. Everything seems to be right, everything seems to be wrong. Which ever way I turn, I find only challenges. Wherever I turn, I see only problems, no solutions. Every solution seems to have a couple of problems on its own shoulders. Every advantage seems to have a disadvantage and a half. I do not know what to do. When this spiritual anguish possesses me, I have tried all my tricks, all my gimmicks. I have tried to satisfy myself and the satisfaction has only brought on more dissatisfaction, more craving. Then, completely bewildered, you look to somewhere, something, anything, saying, "God, I do not know what to do now.'" Then that infinite consciousness, which is everywhere and therefore in you, this is something the yogi never allows you to forget. It is not as though this God is somewhere else and you have to go and look for him there. That God is here, in you, being infinite and omnipresent. There is this intelligence, this knowledge, this understanding that "I" is unable to dive deeper within and to contact
this indwelling divinity, and that indwelling divinity, in its struggle to manifest itself, appears as the guru" What does the guru do? He may merely knock this mirror from your hand and give you a slap ... "Ha, ha, yes! That's the face." "Sorry, you thought it was in the mirror. I knocked that mirror down, and to make it even more clear, I give you a slap." "Ouch." But you are still here. That's it. You are enlightened. It is silly but that is all that enlightenment is. In 0rder to reveal the indwelling divinity, the infinite consciousness seems to appear in frond of you, in your eyes, in your vision. The guru outside is necessitated by your own inadequacy, and that guru is only relevant to your inner vision. All this talk about 'who is that guru and what is this guru' is nonsense The guru exists only in relation to me, my vision. If this gentleman worships someone as his guru, I have absolutely no right ever to entertain an opinion about it. It is rubbish , because it is real to him.
This guru may be human, superhuman, divine, sub-human, animals, plants, trees, stones, statues, images, visions, psychic experiences, hallucinatory experiences - anything you want. Provided this happens, the mirror is smashed, and the face is slapped. That is the guru.
The Bhagavad Gita however also transmits the tradition of incarnation etc., and one of the most interesting features of the Gita is the recognition that even after this guru has appeared in your life and brought about an experience of the truth, Krishna being a very practical philosopher and teacher seems to realise that even after this awakening, one can go back to sleep - as we all do. You have a shattering, and mind opening, mind expanding and heart opening experience; and for possibly something related to my relationship with my guru; then immediately the mind deifies that form, that personality, and the truth is lost. Once again there is a limitation, a confinement, and the truth is lost. In order to avoid this, Krishna suggests a beautiful exercise which my Guru also was very fond of. This comprises the whole 10-th chapter of the Gita in which we are given what are known as special manifestations of divinity.
God is omnipresent, but it is possible to see this omnipresence in and through some extraordinary phenomenon. For instance: God is the light and God is the energy that enables even this lamp to glow. The energy or whatever it is in it , is divine. But then, looking at it, I may or may not be reminded of God. However, when you look at the sun - Hah, that is an extraordinary light. There I see the divine. When you see the moon that again is extraordinary, its light, without heat, and you bow down to that as a special manifestation of God. In this way the 10-th chapter gives a catalog of the special manifestations. The purpose? Whenever I look at these phenomenon, the mind dwells on or entertains thoughts of God. Significantly, in that chapter are mentioned the names of animals, plants, trees, and other such natural phenomena, s0 that we may not cling to the idea that God must be some kind of nice good looking and handsome man or woman, or superman or superwoman. When it is said that God is omnipresent, that word is meant one hundred percent and more. Even the chairs that you are sitting on are divine. My Guru was very fond of that chapter. He used it in His own life. Even though He was an enlightened sage, every morning when He came out, He would look at the Ganges and bow down because it is mentioned there. The Ganges amongst rivers am I". He would look at the Himalayas and say, "This is what Krishna said in the Gita: I am the Himalayas among mountains." All this is divine. Look at the sun, the sky. Look at the images of God. Once you get into that spirit, you are not terribly bothered about idolatry or anti-idolatry; it does not matter at all. That's nonsense. You look at any picture, Krishna, Christ, the Budha, and it does not matter what it is, it is what happens to your mind, what happens to you that is important. When I look at that, I think of God. When you look at a beautiful face, again you are admiring the Presence of God in that, otherwise it would not be beautiful. When you look at a very strong man, how marvelous; that also is God.
tejasvinam aham balam balavatam ca 'ham kamaragavivarjitam dharmeviruddho bhutesu kamo 'smi bharatarsabha - ChVII/11
I am the strength of the strong. I am the radiance of the radiant. I am the intelligence in the intelligent and I am even the cunning of the crook. Once this gets hold of you, then the whole life becomes divine, and there is nothing from there on that could be regarded as secular or worldly life, or something set apart as yoga, something set apart as religious life. The entire life becomes divine.
manmana bhave madbhakto madyaji mam namaskuru mam evai syasi satyam te pratijane priyo 'si me - ChXVIII/65
Let the whole mind be saturated with the Divine. It is then that the heart loves the divine in all. There is love and love only. You may act appropriately, we are not suggesting that your acts are uniform but even if you spank your child, it is with supreme love. There is nothing but love in your heart and that love flows towards all beings in various appropriate ways, but without a tinge of hate or evil in it, and all actions take place without motivation, without a goal, or ambition for some achievement. Action takes place because action is part of this total consciousness energy which is God. Therefore every action becomes an act of God. Your life becomes divine, cosmic. Such a life is what is indicated in the Bhagavad Gita.
Om Tat Sat