nithyananda - life bliss...

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L O O K I N B E F O R E C O M I N G T O A N Y C O N C L U S I O N

Published by Nithyananda Foundation, Bangalore, India

Copyright© 2006

First Edition: July 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in

the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored

in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for

public or private use without permission in writing from

Nithyananda Publishers. In the event that you use any of the

information in this book for yourself, the author and the

publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

All proceeds from the sales of this book go towards

supporting Nithyananda Foundation’s charitable activities.

Printed in India by W Q Judge Press, Bangalore, India

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BHAGAVAD GITA – The Song of God : Chapter 6

NithyanandaTalks given in USA on The Bhagavad Gita – Chapter 6

Whatever good we do in this life passes on to the next. Step by

step we can cleanse our negativity and reach Self awareness.

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CONTENT

Bhagavad Gita: A Background ................................................ 8

Introduction ............................................................................... 13

Look in Before Coming to any Conclusion .......................... 15

Appendix

Science and spirituality ................................................ 242

Offerings from Nithyananda Foundation ................... 250

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! Paaqaa-ya p/itbaaioQataM Baagavata naaraayaNaona svayaMvyaasaona ga/iqataM puraNamauinanaa maQyao mahaBaartMAWOtamaRtvaiYa-NaIM BagavatIM AYTadSaaQyaaiyanaIMAmba %vaamanausandQaaima Bagavad\gaIto BavaWooiYaNaIM

Om paarthaaya pratibodhitam bhagavataa naaraayanena svayam

Vyaasena grathitaam puraanamuninaa madhye mahaabhaaratam

Advaitaamrutavarshineem bhagavateem ashtaadsaadhyaayineem

Amba tvaamanusadadhaami bhagavadgite bhavadveshineem

Om Bhagavad Gita, I meditate upon you, the affectionate

Mother, the divine mother showering the nectar of non

duality and destroying rebirth, incorporated into the

Mahabharata in eighteen chapters by sage Vyasa, with which

Lord Narayana, the Supreme Consciousness Himself,

enlightened Arjuna.

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vasaudovasautM dovaM kmsacaaNaUrmad-nama\dovakIprmaanandM kRYNaM vando jagad\gauruM

Vasudeva Sutam Devam Kamsa Chanura Mardanam

Devaki Paramaanandam Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum

I salute you Lord Krishna, Teacher to the World, son of

Vasudeva and supreme bliss of Devaki, destroyer of Kamsa

and Chanura.

8


Bhagavad Gita: A Background

Bhagavad Gita, or Gita, as it is often called, is considered a

sacred scripture, a sruti, that which was transmitted by

hearing. As a sruti Gita is clubbed along with the ancient

scriptures of Veda and Upanishad which are the expressions

of the great sages, the maharishi.

Veda and Upanishad, the sruti, were not God given as some

people believe. They arose through the insight and awareness

of the great sages when they went into a no mind state.

Gita is a part of the purana, the epics; it forms part of the

Hindu epic Mahabharata. Unlike the Veda, which were

internalized by the great sages, the maharishi, or the

Upanishad, which were the teachings of these great sages,

Gita is part of a story narrated by Vyasa, a great sage.

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No other purana, or part of a purana, has this special status

as the Gita. Gita arose from the super consciousness of

Parabrahma Krishna, the Cosmic Cobsciousness and is

therefore considered a scripture.

Mahabharata, literally the Great Bharata, refers to the nation

and civilization developed by the descendants of Bharata, a

great King who ruled a region, what today is known as India.

The story of this epic is about two warring clans, Kaurava

and Pandava, closely related to one another. Dhritharashtra,

the blind King of Hastinapura and father of the 100 Kaurava

men was the brother of Pandu, whose children were the five

Pandava princes.

Pandu, originally the King of Hastinapura, was afflicted by a

curse of a sage and he handed over the kingdom and his

children to his blind brother Dhritharashtra. Vyasa, the sage

who tells this story, says that all the five Pandava children

were born to their mother Kunti through her union with

divine beings by immaculate conception, since Pandu himself

was incapable of siring children as a result of his curse. Kunti

received a blessing when she was still a young unmarried

adolescent that she could at will summon any divine power.

Duryodhana, the Kaurava Prince, had no love lost for his five

Pandava cousins. Along with his even more wicked brother

Dushassana, he made many attempts to kill the Pandava

brothers off without success. Karna, Kunti’s eldest son whom

she had cast away at birth, since he was born before she was

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married through her union with the Sun God, by a strange

twist of fate joined hands with Duryodhana.

On his coming of age, the Pandava Prince Yudhishtra being

the rightful heir to the throne that his father Pandu had

vacated, was given by his uncle Dhritharashtra half the

kingdom. Yudhishtra ruled from his new capital Indraprastha

with his brothers Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva.

Arjuna, won the hand of Princess Draupadi, daughter of the

King of Panchal in a swayamwara, a marital contest in which

princes fought for the hand of a fair damsel. To obey the

promise that the five Pandava brothers made to their mother

Kunti that they would share everything equally, Draupadi

became the wife of all five Pandava brothers.

Duryodhana persuaded Yudhishtra into a gambling session,

where the evil Sakuni as Duryodhana’s representative

defeated the Pandava King. One by one, Yudhishtra was

made to lose all that he owned, his kingdom, his brothers,

his wife and himself to Duryodhana. Draupadi was shamed in

public by Dushassana who disrobed her. Pandava brothers and

Draupadi were forced to go into exile for 14 years, with the

condition that in the last year they should live incognito.

At the end of the 14 years, Pandava brothers tried to reclaim

their kingdom. In this effort they were helped by Krishna, the

divine reincarnation of Vishnu in the form of the King of

Yadava clan. However, they were rebuffed by Duryodhana.

Finally, war resulted, the Great War, the War of

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Mahabharata. Various rulers of the entire nation, that is

today India, aligned with one or the other of these two

clans, the Kaurava or the Pandava.

Krishna offered to join either of the two clans. He said: ‘One

of you may have me unarmed, not taking any part in the

battle. The other may have my entire Yadava army’. The first

offer was made to Duryodhana, who predictably chose the

vast Yadava army, in preference to the unarmed Krishna.

Arjuna chose Krishna as his unarmed charioteer.

The armies assembled in the vast field of Kurukshetra, now

in the state of Haryana in modern day India. All the Kings

and Princes were related to one another, often on opposite

sides. Arjuna was charioted by Krishna himself. Facing the

Kaurava army and his friends, relatives and teachers, Arjuna

was overcome by remorse and guilt and wanted to walk away

from the battle.

Krishna’s dialogue with Arjuna on the battle field of

Kurukshetra is the content of Bhagavad Gita, which literally

means Song of the Divine. Krishna persuaded Arjuna to take

up arms and vanquish his enemies. ‘They are already dead’,

says Krishna, ‘all those who are facing you are dead. Go

ahead and do what you have to do. That is your duty’.

Bhagavad Gita has eighteen chapters and is presented as the

narration of Sanjaya, Dhritharashtra’s charioteer to the blind

king.

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The Great War of Mahabharata lasted 18 days. All the

Kaurava Princes as well all their commanders such as

Bhishma, Drona and Karna were killed in battle. The five

Pandava brothers survived as winners and became the rulers

of the combined kingdom.

In this dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, the dialogue is

between man and God; nara and Narayana as they are

termed in Sanskrit. Arjuna’s questions and doubts are those

of each one of us. The answers of the Divine, Krishna,

transcend time and space. Krishna’s message is as valid today

as it was on that fateful battlefield some thousands of years

ago.

Like Arjuna many thousand years ago, you are here in a

dialogue with a Master. May the Master’s words resolve your

questions and clear your doubts.

Nithyanandam!

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Introduction

In this series, a young enlightened Master, Nithyananda

comments on the Gita. Thousands of commentaries of the

Gita have been written over the years.

Amongst the earliest were by the great spiritual Masters such

as Sankara, some thousand over years ago.

In recent times, great Masters such as Ramakrishna

Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi have spoken from the

Gita extensively. Many others have written volumes on this

great scripture.

Nithyananda’s commentary of the Bhagavad Gita is not a

literary translation and an explanation of that translation. We

have added here, for the sake of the curious reader, all the

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verses in Sanskrit or Devanagari script along with the Roman

or English script transliteration, word by word meaning and a

summary of that verse’s meaning. Here the comparison with

other commentaries stops.

Nithyananda takes the reader through a world tour while

talking about each verse. It is believed that each verse of the

Gita has seven levels of meaning. What is commonly

rendered is the first level meaning. Here, an enlightened

Master takes us beyond the common into the uncommon,

with equal ease and simplicity.

To read Nithyananda’s commentary on the Gita is to obtain

an insight that is rare. It is not mere reading; it is an

experience; it is a meditation.

Sankara, the great Master philosopher said:

‘Bhagavad gita kinchita dheeta, ganga jala lava kanika pita,

sakrutapi ena murari samarcha, kriyate tasya yame na charcha’

‘A little reading of the Gita, a drop of Ganga water to drink,

remembering Krishna once in a while, all this will ensure

that you have no problems with the God of Death.’

The original discourse delivered by Nithyananda has been

further expanded with His inputs into this book version.

May this reading help you in your endeavor to attain Truth.

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Look in before coming to any

conclusions

We will start with a small story.

A Hollywood director was shooting his big budget movie in a

deserted area. We know how these films are made. They

spend a lot of money building sets and dream sequences,

because the whole film is to fulfill our dreams only. They

spend enormous amounts of money on the actors and

actresses and they cannot afford to waste any time, because

time is really big dollars.

In the middle of a day’s shooting, when the sun was shining

bright, an old native American Indian appeared on the sets,

whispered hoarsely to the director ‘tomorrow rain’ and went

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away. The director took no notice of this guy till it happened

that the next day it just poured and no shooting at all was

possible. Still, the director did not really link the Indian’s

words to the rain.

After one week, the same Indian appeared again and said

‘tomorrow storm’ and disappeared. This time too, the director

and others took no heed of what this strange guy said.

Exactly as he predicted, it happened that there was a big

storm the next day. The director had to cancel the shooting.

The Indian appeared a couple of times more with his

predictions. After noticing that his predictions came true

each time, three or four times, the director was really

impressed. He told his assistant, ‘We can save a lot of money

with that guy. No matter what it costs, get that old Indian,

we will pay him and keep him with us’.

After three weeks, suddenly, the Indian disappeared and he

didn’t come back for more than a month. The director was

very upset and sent out search teams who finally located the

Indian and got him back to the sets. The director asked him

sincerely, ‘Please tell me about tomorrow, I have to shoot an

important scene, it is a costly set. I totally rely on you to tell

me about tomorrow.’

The old man just shrugged and said, ‘Don’t know about

tomorrow; my radio, he is broken.’

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Look in before coming to any conclusion. This is the message

for today.

The sixth chapter of Bhagavad Gita starts with Krishna’s

sloka first. In this chapter Arjuna is not asking any questions

of Krishna. Krishna continues His answers from the previous

chapter.

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¸ÉÒ ¦ÉMÉ´ÉÉxÉÖ ÉÉSÉ+xÉÉÊ¸ÉiÉ& Eò¨ÉÇ¡ò±ÉÆ EòÉªÉÈ Eò¨ÉÇ Eò®úÉäÊiÉ ªÉ&*

ºÉ ºÉÆxªÉÉºÉÒ SÉ ªÉÉäMÉÒ SÉ xÉ ÊxÉ®úÎMxÉxÉÇ SÉÉÊGòªÉ&**6.1**

Shri Bhagavan uvacha

anashritaha karma phalam karyam karma karoti yaha

sa sannyasi cha yogi cha na niragnir na chakriyaha (6.1)

Shri bhagavan uvacha: the Lord said; anashritaha: without

shelter; karma: action; phalam: fruit; karyam: obligated;

karma: work; karoti: performs; yaha: who; sa: he; sannyasi:

ascetic; cha: and; yogi: one engaged in yoga; cha: and; na:

not; nih: without; agnih: fire; na: not; cha: and; akriyaha:

without work

Bhagavan says: One who performs actions without being

attached to its fruits is an ascetic. He is a religious performer

of purification of mind. One who has stopped performing any

actions, one who doesn’t accept the sacred fire and doesn’t

perform his rituals is neither an ascetic nor a karma yogi, a

sage immersed in action.

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Krishna continues with what he said earlier in a little more

detailed way. He says the person who is not attached to the

fruits of his action is an ascetic and he is a karma yogi.

Please understand, karma, the state of action or sannyasa, the

state of renunciation, is no way related to your doing, it is

directly related to your being. Being a sannyasin, a renunciate

or a monk, is not a status, it is a state, it is a state of mind.

Whether you are doing karma yoga or you remain as a

sannyasi is in no way going to affect you. If one is a karma

yogi, one goes about doing the work that is allotted to one

with non attachment and lack of expectations. This is done

even in the middle of one’s life as a householder or a

businessperson or an employee. The status is not of any

consequence.

In the same manner, it is immaterial whether one dons

saffron robes to be a renunciate or an ascetic. One can wear

all the outer trappings of a monk and still be fully clutched

in the samsara maya, the illusion of life.

Sankara says beautifully in Bhaja Govindam about the ascetic

who is cheating the world and himself:

The ascetic has his hair knotted, he shaves his head bald, he

pulls out his hair one by one in penance, he wears saffron

robes, but he does not see even though he has eyes. The

fool, he does all this only to fill his belly.

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What is one’s attitude, what ever is one’s being, that alone

really matters. That ensures the state of one’s being. Here

Krishna gives the gist of the last chapter.

Again and again people ask me ‘Master, should we renounce

everything to achieve enlightenment? How can we lead our

day to day life and yet hope to achieve spiritual progress?’

I tell them ‘No! Just renounce what you don’t have. That is

enough, you don’t have to renounce what you have.’

I tell them to live with whatever they have and to just

renounce what they don’t have. We fantasize about all that

we do not have and seek to have. We have thousands of

things that we don’t have but we mentally live with them.

The problem is not what we have; we have got used to

them; they are reality. It is what we do not have that

creates problems.

Just renounce what you don’t have; that is enough to solve

your problems. Then you will start living intensely with what

you have; you will enjoy being with what you have so far

acquired.

One of the major problems we bring upon ourselves is that

we chase desires and acquisitions and once we have

achieved what we wish, we have no time to enjoy what we

have acquired. It is as if the enjoyment is only in the chase

and not in the acquisition itself. We then move on to the

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next chase and so on. We spend no time in enjoying what we

have, but waste our time in chasing what we think we

should have. The present has no meaning to many of us,

which is where true reality is, true enjoyment is. It is the

illusion of the speculative future that draws our interest.

There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit: brahmacharya. Just like

so many other Sanskrit words, this word has no equivalent

word in English. The word has been translated very wrongly

as celibacy. But no, celibacy is not the right word for

brahmacharya. The word has such a wonderful meaning. In

English you don’t have equivalent word because the very idea

never existed. The very idea of brahmacharya never existed.

Brahma means existence, reality, divine; charya means living

like; it is to walk the talk; to move with. Bramhacharya

refers to a person who lives like the gods, who lives with

existence, who lives with reality.

Please be very clear, bramhacharya word does not mean one

who is unmarried. In course of time when it was translated

as celibacy, we started using that word to denote a person

who is unmarried. No! Bramhacharya means one who lives

with existence; one who lives with reality.

One of the four stages of life as defined in the scriptures is

brahmacharya. It is the stage at which as a young student

one learns at the feet of the Master; the days that a person

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spends in the gurukul, the Vedic school system. This training

starts as early as the age of seven, when the parents hand

the child over to a Master and the child stays with the

Master till early adulthood. By the very nature of this system,

the child stays celibate till his or her stay at the gurukul. At

the end of this period, depending on the child’s aptitude and

skills, he or she moves on into life as a grihastha, a

householder, or a sannyasin, an ascetic.

This period of brahmacharya, under the Master in one’s early

years provides the background to shed one’s fantasies and

live life in reality.

In today’s world most of us live with fantasy. Look in! Look in

and you will understand. How much of fantasies are there

inside? Our whole life is running behind fantasies because we

don’t live with the reality of our existence.

From the time we start interacting with the external world,

even from our childhood, we are exposed to so many

different forms of media. Unlike even fifty years ago, today

TV and the internet flood us with information, equally they

flood us with fantasies.

A young girl of ten came with her parents to my ashram. In

fun, I asked her who she would marry when she grew up.

She named a popular film actor, who is already married with

children. Her innocence had been robbed by fantasies. If

Rama and Sita had lived in today’s world, with all the

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fantasies being thrown at them, even they would have been

tempted!

In our lives the search for a life partner is a very serious

issue. We search for the ideal life partner with great vigor

and determination. Nature has intended us to pursue this

relationship actively in the interest of the survival of the

human race. We spend a lot of time in this activity.

A small story:

An old man used to sit on the beach and watch all the

women who passed by. A young man who saw him doing this

for many days became curious and asked the old man, ‘Sir, I

see you sitting here everyday looking at the women. That is

quite strange at your age. Why are you doing this?’

The old man said, ‘Oh, I have been doing this for many

years now. I am searching for my life mate, my soul mate.’

The young man was surprised; he asked, ‘You mean to tell

me in all these years you never found one who matched your

requirements?’

The old man replied sadly, ‘Well, actually many years ago I

did find my ideal mate; but then she was looking for her

ideal mate as well!’

Even when we find someone who matches that ideal, soon

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reality sets in. The template so carefully built over many

years does not match reality.

Another small story:

A man presented a couple with a small pup, as he knew

that both bride and groom were fond of animals.

After six months, he happened to meet the husband and

asked him how his married life was. ‘Well’, said the husband,

‘when we first got married, my wife used to bring me the

newspaper everyday with my coffee in the mornings and the

pup used to bark. Now the pup brings in the newspaper and

my wife barks at me!’

You neither live with the real husband nor do you relate with

the real wife.

If you look into your life deeply, you will see that you may live

in the same house but count how many times you look into

each other’s eyes. How many times does the eye contact

happen? You don’t need two hands to count. The reason is

that there is always the screen of fantasy between you and

your spouse. Just like between you and the life, as well. You

don’t want to see the life as it is. We are not ready to accept

the life as it is. Continuously we are working and developing

the life but we are not ready to look into the life as it is.

Recently, I read a beautiful book, ‘Men are from Mars and

women are from Venus’. There are so many things that the

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author has expressed which we can see in reality, in our life.

If you look around and see what is happening, I feel we should

find out some other title for the book: Venus and Mars are too

close, they are from the same galaxy! We should find out some

thing else.

Our life is filled with fantasies; fantasies about how our would-

be should be and what we should do if reality does not match

fantasy.

Continuously, we are chiseling the other person and continuously

the other person is chiseling us. You have some imagination and

according to your imagination, you chisel the real person. All

the sounds heard in your house are that of the chisel and the

hammer. Continuously we go on chiseling. We can chisel a stone

and make a beautiful sculpture and keep it in the house. You

can chisel wood and make beautiful furniture and have it in the

house. But can you chisel a living being?

In Siva Sutra, Devi Parvati asks her husband Siva, ‘Lord, in

the bed of a married couple how many are there?’

Siva says, ‘Four’. Seeing Devi’s surprised look, he explains,

‘There is the couple, husband and wife; along with them there

are the fantasies of the husband about his wife and of the wife

about the husband.’

Such a marriage is not marriage. When husband and wife

carry fantasies about how the other should be, can the

marriage prosper?

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When you start chiseling a living being, you create more and

more trouble for yourself and for the other person. A person

who is matured enough to live with reality has achieved the

state of bramhacharya. He is living with the real person or

situation. He accepts the present moment for what it is; he

does not look for how it should be.

Just drop the fantasies. Living with the reality is what I call

bramhacharya.

Here, again and again Krishna says, just renouncing the

sacred fire, not performing his duty does not mean you are

an ascetic or sannyasi. In those days fire was the base for

everything: whether cooking or doing spiritual practice, for

every thing you needed fire. I can replace the word ‘fire’ with

‘cell phone’ for today’s world. In this modern day, we can say:

don’t think by sacrificing the cell phone and laptop you

become a sannyasi or a great karma yogi.

Just like how the cell phone and laptop have become the

basic necessity today, in those days, the agni (fire) was the

basic need for life. Please be very clear: Just like how you are

able to relate with people through the cell phone, our

ancient rishis (mystics) knew the techniques of relating with

higher energy through fire.

We should understand an important thing: Just like how we

are using the cell phone and communicating, the same way

Vedic Masters knew how to use fire to communicate with

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the higher energy. The whole science is nothing but using

the light particles. The whole science can be reduced to

using the light particles whether it is electricity, or atomic

energy, or anything. Everything is nothing but handling light

particles with different formulae.

Whether it is your fan or iron box or a microscope or video

camera, laptop, atom bomb, everything can be reduced to

that one single thing: the technique of handling light

particles. The scientists worked on light energy and created

all these objects. Our eastern rishi worked on sound energy

and created all these products. We really had the pushpaka

vimana (flying chariot) and we did really have the brahmastra

(nuclear weapon). Everything was true.

But, in course of time we lost the technology, that’s all. The

technology of handling the sound waves is lost. But just

because the technology is lost, the whole thing is being

questioned today. People have started thinking all these

things are just mythology; all these things are just purana,

epic stories. No, we lost the key and because of that we are

not able to open the lock. Just because we are not able to

open the lock, don’t think there is no treasure.

The entire collection of scriptures, the Veda is nothing but

learning the techniques of tuning yourself to work with the

sound particles. Just like how scientists work with light

particles, the rishi have worked with the sound particles. They

were able to relate with higher energies and were able to

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communicate, through fire just with the vibrations. Whether

it was Sanjaya, the charioteer of the Kaurava king

Dhritarashtra, seeing the Mahabharata war through telepathy,

or the pushpaka vimana, the flying chariot concept or

Brahmastra, the ultimate fire weapon, these are all true. Only

thing is when the cultural invasion of India happened, the

techniques were lost.

I myself have seen a sannyasi, who could create fire just by a

few words. Out of nothing, with few words, he was able to

create fire. Even now, if you go to Kumbhamela, the river

festival that occurs once in 12 years in India, you can see

hundreds of people like these.

They would bury their heads inside the earth for more than

24 hours. There are so many people who can play with sound

energy. I myself have seen this in Kumbhamela.

Ten years ago, in Haridwar Kumbhamela, I saw with my own

eyes, a sannyasi was floating in air and the public was

watching this with awe. And I have seen a sannyasi who

would sit on a board full of sharp nails. We even have a

video recording of that in the ashram on how they sit on

nails and how they float. Just with sound energy they are able

to do whatever science is able to do with the light energy.

So here, Krishna says just by renouncing a fire, a person

cannot become a sannyasi. Same way, here I can say just by

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renouncing your cell phone in life, you cannot become

sannyasi. The attitude needs to be changed.

To renounce, the mind has to renounce thoughts. Usually,

wherever our body is, our mind is not. When we are at

home, our thoughts are in the office. When we are in the

office, we worry about what happens elsewhere. When we are

on vacation, we worry about work and cannot enjoy

ourselves. To bring the mind to within where the body is, to

renounce the inner chatter is the starting point of

renunciation.

Thoughts cannot be suppressed. More we suppress thoughts

more they erupt. We cannot control the mind in a traditional

manner. We need to let go; we need to constantly bring

ourselves back to where our body is, to the present, to the

here and now, away from the dead past and the unborn

future. Renunciation of the past and future, by bringing our

mind to focus on the present is renunciation.

This renunciation does not happen by giving up what we

believe is essential to material welfare such as the fire and

the cell phone. It also does not happen by giving up what we

think are superficial to spiritual progress, such as rituals.

Giving these up, without bringing in the true awareness of

consciousness is not renunciation.

In the first sloka, Krishna gave the gist of the last chapter,

like a follow up. Then He continues:

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ªÉÆ ºÉÆxªÉÉºÉÊ¨ÉÊiÉ |ÉÉ½ÖþªÉÉæMÉÆ iÉÆ Ê´ÉÊrù {ÉÉhb÷´É*

xÉ ÁºÉÆxªÉºiÉºÉRÂóEò±{ÉÉä ªÉÉäMÉÒ ¦É´ÉÊiÉ Eò¶SÉxÉ**6.2**

yam sannyasam iti prahur yogam tam viddhi pandava

na hy asannyasta sankalpo yogi bhavati kashchana (6.2)

yam: what; sannyasam: renunciation; iti: thus; prahuh: they

say; yogam: linking with the Supreme; tam: that; viddhi: you

should know; pandava: O son of Pandu; na: never; hi:

certainly; asannyasta: without renouncing; sankalpah: self

interest; yogi: one engaged in yoga; bhavati: becomes;

kashchana: anyone

O Pandava, renunciation leads to the state of yoga where

one is linking oneself with the Supreme. This union with the

Divine can happen only when you renounce self interest.

31


Renunciation for the sake of renunciation, renunciation of

material things without renouncing desires is of no value,

Krishna has already said.

They say that all the great sages used to go deep into

meditation. Gods above would get terrified. Especially Indra,

who forever was getting into trouble with these sages by

running after their wives! You see, in those days, sages, the

great rishi, were all householders. So, Indra would try and

disturb them by tempting them. Even great tapasvi, men with

experience of long meditative penance behind them were not

immune to these temptations.

There is a very famous painting that was published in many

calendars. Ravivarma, King of Travancore, had painted the

great sage Vishwamitra being tempted by the celestial nymph,

apsara, Menaka. In the painting Vishwamitra is holding his

hands up shielding his eyes to prevent them seeing Menaka.

But the fingers are wide spread so that he can peep!

All these are stories and metaphorical stories. There are no

celestial nymphs because there is no heaven and no Indra. If

Indra were to send down apsara each time someone

meditated, all you guys will immediately take up meditation,

won’t you! It is your inner fantasies that come out as

Menaka. You sit and meditate, and you will see! All the

women you have not even seen will come in front of you.

You have to renounce the fantasies. These fantasies are

creation of your ego, mind, identity and self, whatever be the

32


name you wish to call it. This self conjures up all these

visions, unreal fantasy visions so that it can keep you

occupied, so that it can keep you in control.

You may think you are in control of your mind. That is a

fantasy and an illusion. Your mind controls you. This is what

Krishna means by sankalpa, self interest; because the mind

wishes to satisfy the senses, which it operates and controls.

By visualizing, by hearing, by smelling, by tasting, by touching

through the sense organs, your mind wants you to experience

pleasures that will keep you under its hold.

Only when you renounce that mind control by going beyond

the senses can you become a true renunciate, this is what

Krishna said in earlier chapters. Control your senses and still

your mind so that you can reach Me, He says.

When Krishna talks about ‘self ’, this is the small ‘self ’, the

external identity, which you confuse with your Self, the real

inner core, the Truth. If you can and only when you do

renounce this so-called self identity, which is not the true

Self, then you perceive yourself as the Supreme Self which is

your true identity.

An ordinary person sees his own self as being the body, mind,

memories, senses and the identities that he creates for

himself. These are the antennae through which you can

project yourself onto the outer world.

33


You normally create two identities. One identity, called

ahankar, is the identity that you project to the outer world.

This identity is usually based on your achievements in the

society, your professions, possessions, etc. The second identity

is called mamakar, which is the identity we project to our

inner self. This identity is usually based on our ideas about

our attitudes, our beliefs, and self esteem.

Through a combination of these two identities, we create an

image about ourselves, which we hold on to with deep

conviction and belief. Our true Self is beyond this image.

Any activity, which the person performs to satisfy this false

identity or ego should be renounced, if we wish to not be

controlled by the mind. As long as we allow our senses to

feed us, we shall be nurtured and controlled by sensory

pleasures that satisfy our ego. Our mind will then keep us in

its control.

Renunciation of these fantasies that we need for self

satisfaction is Yoga. Yoga is the state when our desires

expressed through sensual pleasures dissolve. We unite with

our true Self at this state. In this state, there is no gap

between us and the Divine. Whether we believe it or not,

accept it or not, want it or not, we are God. We are Divine.

All we can do is to accept it, experience it and express it or

we can just continue to struggle and fight. That is the truth.

34


A small story:

A man is informed that his wife fell into the river. He runs

to the river to save her. To everyone’s surprise, this man runs

and jumps into the river and starts swimming in the opposite

direction, against the current. People watching the scene

start screaming and start calling him a fool. They ask him

why he is going against the current. They shout at him

saying his wife would have been carried with the current

downstream.

The man in the river says, ‘You don’t know my wife, she is

always fighting; even in the river she can only flow against

the current!’

You can be like a rock in water, forever resisting the water

flow. The river pounds on it and eventually reduces it to

sand that settles at the bottom. Or you can be like the reed

that bends and flows in whichever direction the water flows.

There is nothing that the water can do to the reed. By

giving into the water flow, the reed defeats the water.

When Christ says ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’, this is

what he refers to. He is not saying, be a coward, be scared

of your own shadow, I shall deliver the world to you.

Meekness here is not cowardice, it is not fear. Meekness is a

virtue that allows you to flow with the current. Meekness

allows you to flourish. Meekness is your ability to know that

you are not in control but the universe is. Meekness is

wisdom. The wise shall inherit the earth.

35


In Sanskrit there are two terms ‘drishti srishti’ and ‘srishti

drishti’. Drishti srishti means to look at the world as it is and

take life as it comes. Srishti drishti is just the opposite. You

want to mould the world to how you see it, how you want it

to be. You want the world running according to your

fantasies, instead of accepting the reality of the world. This is

a sure recipe for disaster, the same way that the woman

swimming against the current would meet disaster.

We have a choice: either we go against the current believing

that we shall control our destiny and keep struggling all the

time, or we go with the current surrendering to the divine,

of which we are an integral part and to be in bliss. Whether

we go against or go with the current we are in the water, so

whether we realize it or not, we are divine. When our

desires for external sensual pleasures are in control, we

experience the divinity, which is inside us.

This is the state of Yoga that Krishna talks about, the state

of true renunciation, where there is no suppression. Instead,

there is transformation. The path is no longer towards self or

sensory satisfaction. In fact, there is no towards, there is no

goal, the goal is the path itself, nothing more. When one

leads one’s life with no expectations, mind cannot speculate.

It cannot control you through its play with the senses.

36


+É¯û¯ûIÉÉä ÉÖÇxÉäªÉÉæMÉÆ Eò¨ÉÇ EòÉ®úhÉ¨ÉÖSªÉiÉä*

ªÉÉäMÉÉ°üføºªÉ iÉºªÉè É ¶É¨É& EòÉ®úhÉ¨ÉÖSªÉiÉä**6.3**

arurukshor muner yogam karma karanam uchyate

yoga arudhasya tasyaiva shamaha karanam uchyate (6.3)

aruruksoh: of one who has just begun yoga; muneh: of the

sage; yogam: yoga system; karma: work; karanam: cause;

uchyate: is said to be; yoga: yoga; arudhasya: of one who has

attained; tasya: his; eva: certainly; shamaha: cessation of all

activities; karanam: cause; uchyate: is said to be

A person who initially wants to start practicing yoga system

laid down by the sages, should carry out all activities in line

with that system. Activities for all other reasons will cease.

37


This is such a beautiful instruction for anyone doing Yoga.

In the present day, especially in the West, the true meaning

of yoga is lost; it is lost completely. Yoga is not about physical

exercises and sweating out in high temperatures. It is not

about breath control. Its purpose is not body fitness. Yoga

integrates body, mind and spirit. It is a journey into the inner

self, towards the Self.

Patanjali, the great sage, who laid down the system for Yoga

practice in his Yoga Sutra, laid down an eight-part system

called Ashtanga Yoga. Today this is being misinterpreted as

eight steps of Yoga. You will not reach anywhere if you

practice each step separately and sequentially. That was not

Patanjali’s purpose.

Patanjali laid down eight limbs or parts that needed to be

practiced simultaneously. Not one after another; or piece

meal. There is no purpose to practicing Yoga through two

parts of asana, physical postures and pranayama, breath

control, which are the only two taught by most Yoga teachers

today. What is the purpose? Nothing will come out of it.

Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga had bliss as its culmination. It is

not only the destination but the path itself is bliss, when

practiced properly. Have you seen even one Yoga practitioner

enjoying what he or she is doing? They are grimacing all the

time, forcing their body, controlling their breath, torturing

themselves. What for? Patanjali never asked them to torture

themselves or their students.

38


Yoga as it is practiced now only breeds one’s ego. Just look at

the Yoga masters, how full of pride they are. They have

added many components to Yoga: Deluxe yoga, Super deluxe

Kundalini Yoga, instant enlightenment Kriya Yoga! There are

so many desperate people out there not knowing what to do

that these masters have no shortage of students.

Patanjali laid down a system, which is a way of life. Starting

with inner and outer regulation, yama and niyama, these

cleanse your body, mind and spirit. They raise your

awareness. Just one part of yama, which is one of the eight

limbs, has five parts, one of which is satya or truth; if you

practice this sincerely it will lead you into enlightenment.

Another part is brahmacharya, which is enlightenment; it is

walking in tune with reality. In fact, you need to be in the

eight state of samadhi to be really able to practice even one

of the yama principles with awareness.

The Yoga system is a parallel system, not a sequential

system. When each of its parts is acted upon with awareness,

every single thing that you do will be in tune with nature.

You will automatically surrender to nature. You will attain

the true yoga state of samadhi.

Ahimsa or non-violence is another part of yama, the first

limb. Religion teaches non-violence as a moral injunction: if

you are non-violent, you will reach heaven and if you are

violent you will reach hell.

39


No morality can be practiced. Advice is one thing everyone

is ready to give but no one wants to take. It is very difficult

to practice any morality. If we are successful, then we will be

schizophrenic.

If we master any morality we will be suppressed and

eventually depressed. If we can understand and practice, it

can never be a discipline. It will be just falling in tune. We

will be tuning ourselves.

There is no reality to hell or heaven. If we are supposed to

follow morality just for fear of hell or heaven then I don’t

think we have grown at all. Ahimsa or non-violence can be

practiced out of deep understanding, then we will start

radiating it in our very walk and talk. Even animals will be

attracted to us. Our very being will be a blessing to the

planet earth.

One of the other rules in yama is truthfulness. Only after

you have experienced samadhi which is step number eight

can truthfulness happen in you. You can neither understand

truth, nor feel the truth, nor live the truth until you

experience samadhi, or enlightenment.

Until we attain enlightenment, whatever we think as truth is

nothing but a fact, a perception, not reality. It is the truth as

perceived by our five senses. We all perceive the world with

our 120 degree vision and our gathered societal knowledge,

conditioning, etc. It is only when we reach enlightenment

40


that we will be able to see 360 degrees in all directions and

perceive the Truth as it is.

The rules of yama and niyama (moral discipline) will only be

established firmly after you have experienced samadhi.

Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not we are

Divine. To realize our divine nature, our mystics have

created this wonderful formula of the yoga system. Yoga in

modern days is practiced just for health reasons. Good health

is just a by-product of practicing yoga, but it is not the end.

The actual reason for our wonderful rishi to create this

formula is for the purpose of creating the divine experience

in everyone who uses the formula.

Yoga is a straight technique for achieving the state of the

divine experience. This formula cannot be modified or altered

or practiced in parts and pieces. This formula has to be

practiced as prescribed for one to realize the divine nature of

one’s self.

Yoga is a formula in which there are steps that can be

practiced to reach the Divine. Once a person intensely gets

in tune with the eight-fold formula, it will become such an

integral part of his being that it will become difficult to

forget it even for a minute during his day.

A person who takes up Yoga to meet with the Divine will

not treat yoga as an activity to be performed on a schedule

41


during a particular time of day only. He will live and

breathe yoga. Any activity that he performs will be influenced

by these eight steps. For example, if he is speaking to

someone, he will be constantly aware of speaking the truth. If

he is performing an activity, his awareness will be completely

on that activity.

Yoga cannot be treated as a set of principles and exercises to

be practiced only for a certain number of hours in a day. It

will infiltrate one’s life and will become the way of life and

life-style. Even a modern man can become a yogi by applying

these principles to every single activity he performs and when

this happens, all material activities will automatically cease.

I was taught Ashtanga Yoga by a great Master. He picked

me up for training when I was barely three, and he was then

already nearing hundred. I truly believe he was a descendent

of Patanjali, he was so much in tune with the Yoga Sutra of

Patanjali. I hated a lot of what he made me do then. He

made me climb pillars in the Arunachala temple in

Thiruvannamalai, that too with one hand kept behind my

back! It was this training that allowed my body withstand

the rigors of my parivrajaka, the wandering through the

country and the Himalayan mountains, when I went in

search of enlightenment.

Now, I teach the Ashtanga Yoga, as it was taught to me,

with the additional insight of Patanjali’s vision that I have

42


gained since then. I call it Nithya Yoga. The path and

purpose of Nithya Yoga is bliss. It is bliss arising out of the

merger of body, mind and spirit, when the glimpse of what

you truly are is experienced by you.

43


ªÉnùÉ Ê½þ xÉäÎxpùªÉÉlÉæ¹ÉÖ xÉ Eò¨ÉÇº´ÉxÉÖ¹ÉVVÉiÉä*

ºÉ´ÉÇºÉRÂóEò±{ÉºÉÆxªÉÉºÉÒ ªÉÉäMÉÉ°üføºiÉnùÉäSªÉiÉä**6.4**

yada hi nendriya artheshu na karmasv anushajjate

sarva sankalpa sannyasi yoga arudhas tadochyate (6.4)

yada: when; hi: certainly; na: not; indriya artheshu: in sense

gratification; na: never; karmasu: in fruitful activities;

anushajjate: does necessarily engage; sarva sankalpa: all

material desires; sannyasi: renouncer; yoga arudhah: elevated

in yoga; tada: at that time; uchyate: is said to be

Any one is said to be have attained the state of yoga when,

having renounced all material desires, he neither acts for

sense gratification nor engages in fruitful activities.

44


The word Yoga in Sanskrit means to unite or to become one

with.

You should understand one important thing about yoga: for

whatever purpose, with whatever intention you move your

body, you bend your body, that idea, that intention will be

completely inserted or recorded into your body and mind.

This may appear shocking to you but it is the truth; I can

say it is the truth from my experience.

With whatever thought you move your body in any way, that

samskara gets inserted into you and that samskara will start

expressing in your body.

For example, if you move your body with the intention, with

the strong belief that you will have health, if you move the

body in any way with that intention, health will simply

happen.

Any physical movement, even just sitting, if you strongly

believe that you have health, simply health happens in you.

This leads us to another important conclusion: the method in

which you do asana in yoga is not important. The thought,

the idea with which you move the body in the asana is what

matters.

Understand that the body itself is made out of memories.

Whether you believe it or not, you are an expression of your

45


own self-hypnosis. Your memories are recorded in your

muscles as well.

A simple technique to experience this: In the morning, just

for ten minutes, visualize your whole body as a bliss bag in

which bliss is filled and move the body in whatever way you

want. The body will start working, experiencing and

expressing the bliss.

When we reach the state of yoga we are in a meditative

state of bliss. In this state all the sense gratification desires

and activities will cease. It will just be an outpouring of

bliss. There will be so much of bliss bubbling from inside that

there will be no need to look for an outer object, person or

location to influence this bliss.

The desire for sense gratification and running behind the

goals of the action will automatically drop when you

experience this state of bliss which is independent of the

external world, which is beyond the body and the mind. The

state of bliss can radiate and flow out to touch the external

objects but the outer objects will not influence the inner

bliss.

46


=rù®äúnùÉi¨ÉxÉÉ%%i¨ÉÉxÉÆ xÉÉi¨ÉÉxÉ¨É´ÉºÉÉnùªÉäiÉÂ*

+Éi¨Éè É ÁÉi¨ÉxÉÉä ù¤ÉxvÉÖ®úÉi¨Éè É Ê®ú{ÉÖ®úÉi¨ÉxÉ&**6.5**

uddhared atmanatmanam natmanam avasadayet

atmaiva hy atmano bandhur atmaiva ripur atmanaha (6.5)

uddharet: one must deliver; atmana: by the Self; atmanam:

the conditioned soul; na: never; atmanam: the conditioned

soul; avasadayet: put into degradation; atma: soul; eva:

certainly; hi: surely; atmanah: of the conditioned soul;

bandhuh: friend; atma: mind; eva: certainly; ripuh: enemy;

atmanaha: of the conditioned soul

You are your own friend; you are your own enemy. Evolve

yourself through the Self and do not degrade yourself.

47


You are your own friend; you are your own enemy. Evolve

yourself through the Self and do not degrade yourself.

In my discourses if I have quoted any Gita sloka more than

twice, it is this sloka. I can say this is the gist of the whole

Gita. This single sloka is the gist of the whole Gita.

In the last session, we saw how to move from doing and

having to being. We are stuck in having. We are constantly

focused on our possessions. We are always conscious of our

status. It is always ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Loss of possessions affects

our ego and identity deeply.

A little more intelligent person moves from having to doing;

from passivity to activity. Then, from doing you are supposed

to move to being, from activity to active passivity. This shift

to ‘sattva’, active passivity helps us evolve spiritually, as we

move deeper into awareness. We learnt in the last chapter

from Krishna the technique for moving from fear and greed

into Divine Consciousness and bliss.

In this verse, Krishna says:

One must deliver himself with the help of his own being and

not degrade himself. The being is the friend of the

conditioned soul and his enemy as well.

You are your own friend and you are your own enemy. If you

know the technique of how to lift yourself by yourself, you

48


will become friend of your self. If you let yourself down, you

will become enemy of yourself.

In our last session (Chapter 5) I had asked you all to

practice the technique for 10 days. How many of you were

able to follow? When you practice, naturally again and again

you will fall. If you have not fallen, then please be very clear,

you have not practiced it right. When you practice anything,

naturally, you will fall. Suddenly, you will forget and then

realize: ‘Oh, I started working out of fear’, ‘I started working

out of greed.’ When you start working, naturally, you will see

there will be few problems.

A small story:

There was a big spiritual organization. One monk was sent to

a remote tribal area for doing service. Suddenly the

headquarters received a lot of complaint letters about that

monk. After reading the complaint letters, the president said,

‘We have posted the right person. Don’t worry.’

The secretary was puzzled and asked him why he thought so

in spite of the complaints received about the monk. The

president replied, ‘If we are getting complaints, it means that

he has already started working. At least something is

happening.’

Always when you start anything new, you will have three

phases: First is resistance. Second is avoidance. You will just

49


avoid, you will neither care nor resist. The third is

acceptance. This is the way anything will start. Similarly,

when you start doing anything inside your system, the same

way you will start growing.

First, resistance: again and again, you will fall, you will

forget. Your system will resist. It will try to create all

complications, all complaints and all possible arguments.

Sometimes, if you can’t follow the teachings of Krishna, you

will start blaming Krishna. I have seen many people, when

they are not able to follow the teachings of Krishna, they

will go ahead and start blaming Krishna: ‘What Krishna? He

was always flirting. He was always running behind women.

What type of man is he?’ Easily, you can escape from Krishna

by criticizing Krishna.

When you can’t practice these teachings, you have to justify

yourself. And naturally, inside your being, your conscience

will hurt you. So some way, you have to make your

conscience believe you are doing the right thing. You have to

find out some argument. So, since you are not able to follow,

you start criticizing Krishna. This is the best way to escape

and avoid the teachings of Krishna.

When your being resists, if you allow the resistance to grow,

you are the worst enemy for yourself. This is what Krishna

means by saying: ‘May you lift yourself by yourself ’. If you

don’t, you will be your worst enemy. It is up to you to help

50


yourself as the best friend or to hurt yourself as the worst

enemy.

Please be very clear: Nobody can hurt you unless you allow

them to. Nobody can help you unless you allow them to.

May you lift yourself by yourself. Again and again, these

Masters stress the same point. If you have fallen, if you have

failed, practicing these words, the teachings or the

meditation techniques, if you have forgotten, don’t worry.

Again and again, lift yourself. Don’t feel depressed, don’t

have guilt. Don’t get dejected thinking you will not be able

to do. Again and again, lift yourself.

The last teaching of Buddha is: Atma deepo bhava. When

Buddha was about to leave his body all his disciples asked

him, ‘Master, please give us your ultimate message in one

word’. Buddha says: Let you be light, guide unto yourself.

Let you be guided by yourself. Let your being guide you.

Here Krishna says the same thing. May you lift yourself by

yourself. Nobody can do anything unless you lift yourself.

Just the other day, in the Internet, I came across an

advertisement called super deluxe kundalini yoga for $240. It

says, you don’t need to do anything; they have a by-pass

circuit by which your kundalini will be raised to sahasrara

automatically. All you need to do is to allow them to do the

by-pass connection. Then your kundalini will stay in the

sahasrara forever.

51


I was just shocked! How can someone else awaken your

kundalini? Of course, enlightened Masters can awaken your

latent energy but only you can stay in that same state. They

can give you a glimpse, satori, but staying in that

consciousness and achieving samadhi can be done only by

you. Only you can help yourself.

Someone goes to Buddha and asks: ‘Master, you know

enlightenment is the ultimate thing, why don’t you give that

to all of us? Why don’t you make us all enlightened?’

Buddha says: ‘Oh, you want enlightenment? Do you think I

should give enlightenment to everybody? Please go around

and take a survey on how many really want enlightenment?’

By that evening this guy comes back after taking an

extensive survey in that whole city and he says ‘Master, only

two people want enlightenment.’ Buddha says, ‘Please bring

them, let me give.’

The man says ‘No, they are not ready to come from their

house all the way here. If you can send by courier, they are

ready to receive.’

Nobody really wants it! Even if you want, you want it as one

more item in your showcase.

You are not ready to risk anything for enlightenment. You

want it as one more item in the showcase. Whenever people

52


come to our house, we can say, ‘This is from Delhi, this is

from New York, this statue is from Japan.’

Just like that, you can say, ‘Oh, this enlightenment, you

know that Nithyananda Swami? He gave enlightenment. He

was giving Gita discourse that I attended and he gave it.

How does it look?’ Just as one more showpiece, we are ready

to accept but we are not ready to commit or risk anything for

it. We are not ready to take the responsibility.

Buddha says, Existence is so great it gives you even the

freedom to be in bondage. It is your freedom, whether to be

in bondage or to be liberated. Even liberation should not be

forced. If it is forced, even liberation is not liberation. So,

you have 100% choice to be liberated or to be in bondage. It

is completely up to you. God is so great that He gives you

the freedom even to be in bondage or to be liberated.

Here, Krishna says: May you liberate yourself by yourself.

Unless you liberate yourself, nobody else can liberate yourself.

If you help yourself, you will be the greatest friend for

yourself. If you don’t, you will be the worst enemy for

yourself.

Next Krishna explains the same concept a little more in

detail:

53


£ÉxvÉÖ®úÉi¨ÉÉ%%i¨ÉxÉºiÉºªÉ ªÉäxÉÉi¨Éè ÉÉi¨ÉxÉÉ ÊVÉiÉ&*

+xÉÉi¨ÉxÉºiÉÖ ¶ÉjÉÖi´Éä ´ÉiÉæiÉÉi¨Éè É ¶ÉjÉÖ ÉiÉÂ**6.6**

bandhur atma atmanas tasya yenatmaiva atmana jitaha

anatmanas tu shatrutve varteta atmaiva shatruvat (6.6)

bandhuh: friend; atma: the Self; atmanah: of the living

entity; tasya: of him; yena: by whom; atma: the Self; eva:

certainly; atmana: by the living entity; jitaha: conquered;

anatmanah: of one who has failed to control the Self; tu: but;

shatrutve: because of enmity; varteta: remains; atma eva: the

very mind; shatruvat: as an enemy

For him who has conquered the self, the Self is the best of

friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his self will

remain the greatest enemy.

54


This is an important sloka. This has to be understood well.

Let us see the next two sloka to get the complete context

and then we will enter into the meaning of the sloka.

A small story:

One Sufi master named Abdullah was a great enlightened

master. He was always in ecstasy, always in joy. One of his

disciples asked him, ‘Master, how are you so blissful? I have

never seen you suffering; always you are joyful. How?’

Abdullah replies, ‘Early morning when I get up from bed I

ask myself, ‘Abdullah, Abdullah, Abdullah, what do you want

today? Today you want to be blissful or do you want

suffering?’

Naturally what will the mind choose? It will choose to be

blissful. Then, immediately, I tell the mind, ‘Then, be blissful.

That’s all!’

We may think, ‘How can it be so simple, Master?’ Be very

clear: you know your 24-hour routine. Just try tomorrow

morning: you know the next 24-hours what is going to

happen. Accidents or lottery winning are very rare. In a

normal routine, you exactly know what is going to happen.

Just decide whether to face that routine with bliss or with

suffering, whether to face the routine with joy or the usual

long face. Decide for yourself. When extraordinary things

happen, that is different. But in ordinary regular life, you

55


know the routine. You have the choice. And whether you go

with the long face or smiling face, the routine is going to be

the same.

I always tell people: Pain is inevitable; suffering is a choice.

You have one thing that you can choose and that is your

attitude. You can choose your inner space. That is your

decision only.

Abdullah says, ‘When my mind says in the morning ‘I will

choose to be happy’, I tell the mind, ‘Then just be blissful.

That’s all.’ It is purely your choice. Hell or heaven is your

conscious choice.

Always, you will have another question, ‘If my mind says, ‘I

want to suffer’, what to do?’ Then let you suffer, that’s all.

What is there? When your mind wants to enjoy suffering,

then even suffering becomes enjoyment for you. That is why

you want to enjoy suffering. In a way, suffering becomes

enjoyment for you.

So, when you get up early in the morning, ask your mind,

‘What do you want today?’ If your mind chooses bliss, just tell

your mind, ‘Be blissful. That’s all!’ This single conscious

decision can change the quality of your life.

Don’t decide for three days or one week. You will forget.

Decide every day. People will immediately think, ‘Let me

decide for my whole life today itself.’ No! You will forget. You

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will be back to the same point; you will have the same face

again tomorrow when you come back. No, don’t decide for

your whole life.

Decide only for one day. Only then you will be able to

maintain it. Otherwise you will have the same old natural

face.

A small story about this natural face:

The president of a monastery, a Father was teaching the

young novices to preach and giving them tips on how to

speak in public. He was taking classes about how to preach

to the public.

He said, ‘When you speak, your whole body should express

what you say. You face should express the idea that you are

talking about. When you speak about heaven, your eyes

should sparkle and your whole body should show the bliss,

you should express the joy clearly, the joy of heaven. Your

face should shine.

The Father continued, ‘When you speak about hell, just be

as you are. And people will understand!’

At least in our life, let us not maintain the long face as our

natural face.

Vivekananda says: ‘If you are depressed, don’t come out of

the room. There is enough of suffering in the world. Don’t go

around and spread a little more suffering.’

57


ÊVÉiÉÉi¨ÉxÉ& |É¶ÉÉxiÉºªÉ {É®ú ÉÉi¨ÉÉ ºÉ¨ÉÉÊ½þiÉ&*¶ÉÒiÉÉä¹hÉºÉÖJÉnÖù&JÉä¹ÉÖ iÉlÉÉ ¨ÉÉxÉÉ{É¨ÉÉxÉªÉÉä&**6.7**

jitatmanaha prashantasya paramatma samahitaha

shitoshna sukkha dukkheshu tatha mana apmanayoha (6.7)

jitatmanaha: of one who has conquered his self; prashantasya:

who has attained tranquility; paramatma: Supreme;

samahitaha: approached completely; shita: in cold; ushna:

heat; sukkha: happiness; dukkheshu: and distress; tatha: also;

mana: in honor; apmanayoha: dishonor

For one who has conquered the self, who has attained

tranquility, the Supreme is already reached. Such a person

remains in this state in happiness or distress, heat or cold,

honor or dishonor.

58


YÉÉxÉÊ´ÉYÉÉxÉiÉÞ{iÉÉi¨ÉÉ EÚò]õºlÉÉä Ê´ÉÊVÉiÉäÎxpùªÉ&*

ªÉÖCiÉ <iªÉÖSªÉiÉä ªÉÉäMÉÒ ºÉ¨É±ÉÉä¹]õÉ¶¨ÉEòÉ\SÉxÉ&**6.8**

jnana vijnana trupta atma kutastho vijitendriyaha

yukta ityuchyate yogi sama loshta ashma kanchana (6.8)

jnana: acquired knowledge; vijnana: realized knowledge; trupta:

contented; atma: self; kuta sthah: established in Self-

realization; vijita indriyaha: one who has subdued his senses;

yukta: competent for self-realization; iti: thus; uchyate: is said;

yogi: one established in yoga; sama: equipoised; loshta:

pebbles; ashma: stone; kanchana: gold

A person whose mind is contented, because of spiritual

knowledge, who has subdued his senses and to whom stone

and gold are same and who is satisfied with what he is

having, is said to be established in Self-Realization and is

called an enlightened being.

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When you conquer the mind, the happiness and distress are

both one and the same and you are not touched by it.

Through out this chapter, Krishna speaks about senses. How

our senses are functioning and what we are supposed to do.

Let me give you a small diagram on how our mind functions

and how our senses work. Then we will be able to

understand the Gita in a much better way.

Eye

Conscious

Unconscious

DSP

“Chakshu”

Ego

Memory

“Chitta”

Mind

“Manas”

“This is it” Identification

“This is not” Elimination

“Do This” Decision

“Buddhi”

Now, we will see how our mind works, how we process

information, how we perceive information and how we take

decisions.

First, for example, you are seeing something through the eyes.

Here I am giving the example of the sense of sight through

eyes, but you can replace it with any of the other senses like

taste, smell, etc.

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Let us take the example that you are seeing me at this

moment. First your eyes will catch the picture or the scene.

This will be taken to chakshu. Chakshu is the energy, which

is inside the eyes and is called indriya.

Please understand, the eyes are not seeing. Through eyes, the

energy is seeing. Sometimes, your eyes will be wide open and

if you are intensely listening to some music; even if someone

walks in front of you, you will not know.

Let’s say you are intensely reading something; you will not

hear any sound sometimes. It means you are not hearing

through the ears; something else is hearing through the ears

or seeing through the eyes. That something else is called

chakshu. The whole file goes to chakshu.

The picture or the scene that you are seeing will go to

chakshu. In chakshu an important process happens and that is

the conversion of the whole file into digital file. It is almost

like a DSP: Digital Signal Processor. Inside the computer if

you have to process any information, it has to become digital.

Whether it is a picture or whether it is sound, it has to be

converted into digital file.

Similarly, inside the mind, for any process to happen, the

whole thing has to be converted into bio-signal file or digital

file. The file processing happens in chakshu. Whatever scene

you are seeing now, that picture will be converted into

digital file in chakshu.

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That file will now go to chitta or memory. In memory the

process of negation starts happening. You will start analyzing

and negating things. Na iti, na iti: not this, not this. First,

your mind will say, ‘This is not a tree’, ‘This is not an

animal’, ‘This is not a rock’. This process of negation will

happen in chitta.

Once the ‘this is not’ happens, the file goes to the manas,

the mind. Here the mind starts identifying as, ‘this is it’, ‘this

is it’. In mind, the identification process happens. Your mind

says ‘I am seeing a man standing with a kavi (saffron) cloth.

He is teaching Gita’. This kind of identification of ‘This is it’

will start happening in the mind.

Then the file goes to buddhi, the intelligence. The

intelligence does the process of ‘What is there between me

and this scene?’ ‘What is the connection between this scene

and me? In what way am I related to him or this scene?’

Your buddhi will start analyzing with all your earlier

experiences.

You may think, ‘The last four or five times that I attended

these talks it was really useful.’ Or you can think ‘This is

not worth it.’ Your buddhi takes some decision. Your buddhi

will respond in someway whether it is right or wrong,

whether you like it or not. Someway your buddhi will respond

and will write in the file ‘yes’ or ‘no’ according to the past

experience.

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The whole file will go to the ego and the ego will give the

command. If buddhi says ‘Yes, I enjoyed yesterday’, the ego

will say, ‘Sit here and continue to listen intensely.’ If buddhi

says ‘No, no, yesterday itself I wasted my time. It was boring.

This is not for me.’ Then immediately the ego gives the

command, ‘Come on, let us move. There is so much of work

to be done in the house’.

The moment the ego gives the command, automatically your

whole being starts executing it. This is the way we receive

information, we process and we respond. The information

comes through the senses, the processing is done and the

response is given. This is the way our senses work.

Now, Krishna says an important point: ‘For one who has

achieved the supreme bliss, for him happiness and distress,

heat and cold, honor and dishonor are both the same.’

Through out this chapter Krishna emphasizes on this one

idea: senses. How can happiness and distress, how can heat

and cold, how can honor and dishonor be the same for a

man? How is it possible?

First thing, when these senses do this work, you decide ‘yes’

or ‘no’ only based on your past experiences, the experiences

with which you have grown or the words with which you

have conditioned your chitta and manas. Based on how your

mind and memory has been conditioned, your buddhi decides.

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Please be very clear: Something that is so tasty for you is

poison for your neighbor. Why go for the neighbor, take your

wife: you may like something, but she may hate it.

There are three ways to do anything. First, hire someone to

do it. Second, do it by yourself. If you can’t, just tell your

wife not to do that. When you don’t want something to be

done, just tell her to do it and when you want something to

be done, just tell her not to do!

Whenever your mind is caught in dualities, again and again

you fall back to your dilemma, to your nature, to your

suffering, to your instinct level.

Here, Krishna says the person who has achieved the bliss is

not affected by heat or cold. How to reach that state?

Through out this chapter He speaks about conquering the

senses.

First thing we need to understand this: When I say

conquering the senses, I don’t mean controlling the senses or

destroying the senses. If you try to control or destroy the

senses, you will only struggle more and more and suffer more

and more.

Ramana Maharshi says beautifully: ‘Instead of killing the

person, you try to destroy the chair’. Destroying the chair will

not kill the person. Here, your senses are just chairs. Your

ego is the person who is sitting there. So, if you try to

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control your senses, it is not going to work. If you try to

control your body, that is not going to work.

Krishna says beautifully, ‘For one who has conquered the self’.

When He says self, He means the whole setup where the

decision making happens. Mind-Buddhi-Ego is the spot where

the decision making is happening.

When you just try to conquer the senses, again and again

you will fail. And one more thing, if you fail two or three

times, you will lose the confidence to try again. If you fail

fighting with your senses, automatically you will start

thinking, it is never possible and you will lose confidence.

You need intelligence to progress in this path.

A small story:

One guy wanted to go on a vacation to Juhu beach. He

started to travel, he kept going and after one week, he came

back. His friend asked, ‘Did you go to Juhu beach?’ He said

‘No, I was not able to find it’. His friend asked ‘Did you not

see any board on the highway?’

The man replied, ‘Yes, there was a board but it said Juhu

beach left. I thought the beach had left and I came back’

You need intelligence to travel in the path.

If you try to work from the wrong side, from the side of the

senses, you will never be able to succeed. If you try to create

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more pressure on the cooker, you will not be able open the

cooker lid. First, you need to put out the fire. First, you need

to remove the energy supply.

From the ego or the buddhi, the place from where you take

the decisions, from there continuously the ego is supplying the

energy to your senses. So, all you need to do is to work on

the level of mind and not in the level of senses. If you try to

work on the level of senses, you will create only more and

more perverted desires.

For example, a man who tries to control his eating, he will

dream about having a feast. If you just fast for four days, that

is enough. On the fifth day in your dream, you will be

feasting. Your body has got its own balance.

Your body has its own intelligence. If you avoid something, it

has to supply and rejuvenate itself. If you are hungry, you

can’t sleep. If you have to continue to be in the state of

sleep, you should be made to believe that you are not

hungry. So, unconscious energy creates a dream as if you are

feasting.

Whenever you deprive, your unconscious energy will satisfy

itself in the dream state. This is because in the dream state,

there is no police and there is nobody to control you. You

just project your world and enjoy it. You can just do

whatever you want.

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An important thing to note is: If you are suppressing

anything, be very clear, in the dream it will automatically

express itself. Dream is nothing but the expression of your

suppressed desire and fear. Your fear or desire when

suppressed gets expression in your dreams. Not only that, it

expresses in a very perverted way.

With senses, if you enjoy, you will never become tired. But

when you suppress your senses, your being will suffer in the

dream. You can see very clearly, if you had a nightmare,

even after waking up, for hours together you will continue in

that same mood and your whole being will be shaken.

Now, they are coming up with the new concept called ‘fear

stroke’. We do get fear stroke in dreams. If you are suffering

in the dream level, please be very clear, there is something

seriously wrong with the mind-buddhi level.

You are trying to control the senses instead of controlling the

mind. Instead of removing the fire, you are trying to create

more pressure in the cooker. All we need to do is to work on

the mind to remove the fire, to stop the supply of fuel, to

stop the supply of energy.

Here Krishna says, ‘For one who has conquered the mind’,

means for the one whose mind has learnt the right processing.

If your mind and chitta are filled with past memories, you

cannot take right decisions.

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Please be very clear, don’t think the mind takes decisions in

a logical way. Sometimes, your buddhi takes decisions in a

very funny way. For example, as I was explaining earlier on

how you take the decision whether to sit here or not.

Sometimes your buddhi does not even think that much. If you

had any problems with any other swami or any other person

who was wearing this cloth, suddenly that memory will be

awakened. And your buddhi is not even ready to sit and

listen. Your buddhi is not even ready to give a chance. It is

not even ready to think. Immediately, your ego gives the

order. This is what we call prejudice.

Sometimes, you hear the argument and pass judgment. Many

times, your judgment is ready, and you collect arguments to

support the judgment. Look into your life. Whenever your

judgment is ready and you collect arguments to support your

judgment, you are caught in this network and you are

creating suffering. A man whose senses are clear, means one

who is not driven, who is not suffering because of the senses

has the ability to take decisions with clarity.

If your mind, especially the area of chitta, is clear, if that is

intelligent enough, then automatically your senses work

properly. You take right decisions.

Please be very clear, you can never achieve bliss by

controlling the senses. You can only achieve it by controlling

the mind. By changing the servants, you can’t change the

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leader. But by changing the leader you can change the

servants. Mind is the leader or the master who is taking

decisions and leading the senses. So, all we need to do is

work on the mind and not on the senses.

Krishna says, ‘For the one who has conquered the mind, the

paramatman (Divine Self) is achieved.’ You don’t need to

achieve bliss. It is always there with you. If it has to be

achieved, there is every possibility it can be lost. If it can be

lost, what is the guarantee it will be there forever?

Be very clear, anything, if it has to be achieved, is not worth

achieving. But if it is your nature, then realize it. If it has to

be achieved, there is every possibility that after ten days it

may be lost. Suddenly it may disappear.

So, here Krishna says that all you need to do is conquer to

your mind. You don’t need to achieve anything.

I always tell people Ananda Spurana is continuously

happening. The Bliss Flowering is continuously happening.

Spurana means life energy being expressed. Your very life

energy is bliss. Unless you have the bliss energy in you, you

cannot inhale and exhale. The inhaling and exhaling itself

happens because of the bliss energy or the eternal

consciousness in you. But you are stopping the bliss fountain

again and again. All you need to do is to stop the stopping

process. That’s all. You don’t even need to create anything.

Just stop the stopping process.

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Here, Krishna says, you just have to conquer the mind, the

paramatman is already achieved. jitatmanaha prashantasya

paramatma samahitaha. The paramatman is already achieved

and you are with it. There is nothing to be strived for.

Here’s a small story to explain how happiness and sorrow are

in no way related to the outer world but to the inner world.

An old man went to a nearby city for some work. When he

was coming back to his village, from a little distance he

suddenly noticed that his house was on fire. He started

shouting, screaming and rolling on the ground and weeping.

His son came to him and said, ‘Dad, don’t worry. Don’t you

remember, just yesterday we sold that house?’ Immediately,

the old man sat up and wiped the tears and the sorrow just

disappeared.

In ten minutes, his other son came to him and said, ‘Dad,

yes, we have sold it, but we are yet to get the money’. Again

this man started rolling on the ground and weeping ‘Oh, I

don’t know what I will do now. I don’t know who will care

for me. I don’t know how to save myself.’

In the next ten minutes, his wife came to him and said

‘Don’t worry, just this morning I checked that the money has

been deposited in our bank account’. Again he got up and

wiped his tears and was perfectly back to normal!

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If you notice, it is the same situation, the same person. But

when he thinks it is his, he is suffering and when he thinks

it is not his, he is liberated. So, what gives you suffering? Just

this single thing: thinking that it is yours. The habit of

thinking ‘mine’, ‘mine’.

The same way, there are people who can’t enjoy unless it is

theirs. One day I was going for a walk in the beach. One of

our devotees started saying: ‘Master, I think we should have

a cottage here. It will be very nice. We can come out and

enjoy the breeze.’

I asked him ‘Are we not enjoying now? Why do you need a

cottage here to enjoy? Just enjoy now itself!’

But the mind never enjoys unless you are sure it is yours.

Unless you possess it, you don’t enjoy.

Please be very clear, the man who possesses and tries to enjoy

will never be able to enjoy. By the time you own the cottage,

you will start worrying, ‘I think I should have this kind of

furniture. I should have that type of arrangement.’ Or

already you have started thinking about another cottage in

some other place.

Ramana Maharshi was a great devotee of Arunachala.

Someone goes to Ramana Maharishi on visiting him the first

time and says: ‘Master, what a beautiful place this is! How

nice it is to be here! The Arunachala hills are so beautiful!’

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Ramana Maharshi says ‘Just be here for three days, all these

ideas will disappear!’

In three days, you will take the things for granted. It will be

beautiful only for three days. Not more than that. The person

who enjoys only by possessing will never enjoy. The person

who enjoys will never bother about possessing.

It is just your mind. Sometimes, the mind will not allow you

to enjoy unless you know for sure that it is yours. And at

other times when you know it is yours, it creates suffering.

Suffering or enjoying is created only by that one link: mind.

If that link is disconnected, the whole process will happen

beautifully.

The only difference between you and an enlightened man is

that one missing link! Don’t think an enlightened man will

have two big horns. There is no other difference between

you and an enlightened man other than this one link, mind,

which continuously decides: ‘What is there for me?’, ‘In what

way am I connected?’ That ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’. That link is missing.

If you can cut this link, if you can cross that ‘I’, you will

become Christ. Don’t start from the senses; instead start from

the ego, the mind.

We always complain about the senses. Again and again, we

say that our senses are spoiling us. No, you are spoiling them.

Don’t put the responsibility on the senses. You are spoiling

them. You destroy them. You abuse them.

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Look into your life. It will be late in the night and at 2am

you will sit and watch baseball. Your eyes will be begging for

some rest. When some advertisement comes, your eyes will

automatically close by themselves. But you continue to sit

and watch the rest of the game. Because you want to enjoy,

you abuse your eyes.

Same is the case with the gongura chutney (spicy chutney that

is very chilly- hot). Your tongue burns and your eyes pour with

tears and not even with finger tip but with your whole hand

you put it in your mouth! And now just the mention of it is

enough, I can see how many mouths are feeling the taste! We

abuse our senses and disrespect our senses.

Please be very clear: Senses are not disturbing us. It is we

who are abusing the senses. It is this link: ‘What is there for

me?’ that destroys the whole thing. This is where the whole

trouble starts. This ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’ is where we start abusing the

senses. All we need to do is not to control the senses but to

control the mind, make it understand what is really

happening in your system.

One another simple thing: Hot and sweet tastes are just one

and the same. Today just try out this simple experiment:

Stretch your tongue and concentrate on the tongue. Visualize

as if your tongue is a highway and you are walking on your

tongue. Then take a chili and a sugar candy. Touch one

corner of your tongue with chili and the other corner with

sugar candy. And deeply witness what is happening.

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Suddenly you will realize, the process, which happens when

you touch chili and the process which happens when you

touch sugar candy will be one and the same. When you do

this experiment, you will understand that if you go a little

deeper into your system, the experience of hot and sweet,

both are one and the same.

Only when you put a rubber stamp as ‘This is hot, this is not

good for me’, or ‘This is sweet, I like this,’ etc., the problem

arises. Only when you label it, the trouble starts. As a

process, in nature, both are one and the same. You label

them based on your belief. Based on your earlier belief system,

you dove-hole your experiences. Based on your recorded

memory, suddenly you start thinking that this is not good for

you. And really you start feeling that it is not good for you.

And you need to understand one more thing: Your thoughts

create your senses. Your mind creates your senses. Don’t

think you are living with what you have. You create what

you want to have.

Your thoughts are so powerful and your mind is so powerful,

it can just change the whole body. For example: Just think of

one thought that creates disturbance in you. Or just think of

your enemy. Or think of a person who took money from you

and is not giving it back. Or a person who gave you money

and is asking for it.

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Immediately, you will see the change happening in your

system. The whole chemistry is changing. Your blood is

boiling, blood pressure is rising, heartbeat is rising and pulse

rate is increasing. Just one thought and your whole system is

changing. A single thought can change the whole chemistry.

Or one thought that creates lust, one advertisement hoarding

and immediately your body chemistry changes. Your whole

body is now ready.

Please be very clear: a single thought can change the

chemistry of your body. Your body is again and again created

only by your thoughts. It is your thoughts that create the

body. In India there is a great science called samudrika

lakshana. Just by seeing your face, your body, your way of

standing, sitting and walking, they can tell the quality of your

mind. They can tell everything about your mind. This is

because the rishi know the secret that the mind creates the

body.

Body is the outer expression of your mind. Mind is the inner

experience of the body. So, if your mind changes, your body

can be changed, your whole system can be changed.

A man whose mind is clearly reprogrammed according to the

spiritual ideas can completely change his senses. As of now,

your mind is programmed for misery, towards dukkha. It is

looking outward. If you can reprogram your mind to look in,

towards bliss, your whole senses can be changed.

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Please be very clear: All we need to do is to reprogram your

mind to look in. This is the gist of this whole chapter.

And Krishna says one more important thing about heat and

cold. I don’t know how you will be able to believe this: I

have seen people living in the Himalayas with just two

pieces of cloth. Let me tell you very clearly, I lived in the

Himalayas and I used to sleep on the snow with the same

cotton dress. It may be very difficult to believe but you can

do it. All you need to do is stop resisting, that’s all.

Just try this experiment: the moment you feel the cool

breeze, don’t create an idea, ‘It is cold, I may catch cold, I

may have wheezing, I may have sinus, I may have asthma.’

Just don’t create big words. Especially in the West the big

problem is, you learnt all these big negative words. The more

words you know about diseases, the more is the possibility of

getting those diseases in you. Whenever you repeat

something, you create that quality in you.

Just a simple experiment you can do: Just close your eyes and

repeat ten times: ‘Shanti, Shanti, Shanti’, you will have peace

inside you. The only thing is your wife’s name should not be

Shanti! If you just repeat the word ‘shanti’, you will start

experiencing the word ‘shanti’ in you. The quality of peace

will start happening in you. The same way, if you repeat the

names of diseases, you will start creating the same diseases in

you.

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There is a recent research study that I want to let you know.

I went to the AAPI (Association of American Physicians of

Indian Origin) convention. There they showed me a book on

their research works. One research says that in medical

colleges, if the lessons are being taught about a particular

disease, more than 40% of the students start showing

symptoms of that disease.

I don’t know how you will understand this. The reason is

that they are continuously thinking about that symptom. And

one more big problem is that whenever you hear about a

disease, the first thing you will do is to check with yourself

to see if you have those symptoms: ‘Do I have that?’ You will

check if you have that symptom.

Since the students are continuously meditating on the

symptoms, 40% of them express the same symptoms in their

life. If the next lesson is about some other disease, they

express that symptom. Whatever you think, you express. If

you are continuously thinking about the wrong things, your

senses will be created in the same way.

Only one thing we need to do is to just work on the mind,

just liberate the mind. Then your whole system will be

purified. Your senses will be reconstructed. Krishna gives a

beautiful technique to work on the mind.

He says one more important thing: Honor and dishonor will

also be the same. This is very difficult to believe. Cold and

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heat can be the same. Hot and sweet can be the same. You

can even accept that. But honor and dishonor, how can

those two be the same? One word is enough to make us

mad. One word thrown on us is enough to make us mad.

Someone asked me the other day, ‘Master, why do we bother

so much about others’ opinion?’ You bother about others’

opinion so much because you don’t know about yourself. You

know about yourself only through others’ words and their

opinions. You understand about yourself only from others. If

everybody says, ‘You are beautiful’, you get that certificate. If

everybody says ‘You are intelligent’, you get that certificate. If

everybody says ‘You are great’, you get that certificate. You

collect all these certificates and with those certificates, you

build your personality.

In our Life Bliss Program, the first session is about this. The

first session is about why we get depressed, why again and

again we fall into the low energy. It is because the energy

source for you is other’s certificates. You don’t have any self-

respect. You respect yourself only based on other’s opinions. If

others’ opinions about you are good, you think you are great.

If others’ opinions about you are not good, immediately you

fall down in self esteem.

Have you seen kids build castles with playing cards? The

same way, you build castles with others’ certificates. Your

personality is nothing but a castle built with others’

certificates. If one card is removed in that castle, what will

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happen to that castle? It just collapses. The same way, if a

single person takes away his certificate, what happens to your

personality? It just collapses. Again and again, you fall into

depression.

Pease be very clear, whenever you fall into depression, either

somebody would have taken your certificate away, or you are

afraid that somebody may take away your certificate. We

know about ourselves only based on others’ opinions. We

build our personality only based on others’ opinions. That is

why we care so much for others’ opinions.

Christ says, ‘Love thy neighbor as you love thyself.’ But, you

don’t even love yourself. That is why there is so much of

hatred. You don’t love yourself. You don’t have any self-

respect. That is the reason for the wars all around us.

The first session of Life Bliss program is about this. I tell

people, if you want to live, then learn how to stand on your

own feet, learn how to be with yourself. As of now, your

source of energy is others’ opinions. If somebody tells you,

‘You are really great’, you will try your best to say, ‘No, no, I

am not’ but what happens inside you? ‘Please tell me a little

more’. Outside you feel shy but inside your mind you want

them to go on and on.

Continuously we are fueled by others’ opinions and we work

to get others’ opinions. Just meditate on this one thought.

This is a great sutra, which can liberate you. Don’t worry

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about others’ opinions. Don’t worry about what others are

thinking about you. Because they are also busy worrying what

you are thinking about them. If you meditate on this one

statement, it will completely liberate you from this problem of

honor or dishonor.

Look into your life. Whoever is standing in your

consciousness, about whose opinions you are bothered about,

all of them are bothered about your opinion. Be very clear, if

you are bothered about somebody’s opinion, directly or

indirectly, he is also bothered about your opinion. It is just a

give and take game.

Don’t bother about others’ opinions, because they are also

bothered about your opinions. Meditate on this one statement

and you will be liberated.

Krishna says, ‘A person whose mind is contended, because of

spiritual knowledge, who has subdued his senses and to

whom stone and gold are same and who is satisfied with

what he is having, is said to be established in Self-

Realization and is called an enlightened being.’

First we should understand why Krishna is speaking all these

qualities of the Master, why He is explaining all these

qualities.

These qualities are techniques; if you practice them you will

reach the same state.

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Please be very clear:

Enlightened man’s words are mantra. His life is tantra and His

form is yantra to be meditated upon.

His actions, if they are replicated in your life, they will

create the same quality of consciousness in your being.

For example, if you listen to the music which comes from

heart, the traditional music like Carnatic music, you will

have that same experience. If you listen to the music that

comes from muladhara (sex center), you will have that same

mood.

If you meditate on some expression, you will have that same

experience. Experience leads to expression and expression

leads to experience.

There is a beautiful research report; now, it is popularly

known as ‘Art Therapy’. All these mad people are asked to

paint. They are given canvas cloth and the paint. And you

know how they will paint! They will just roll on the ground

and do whatever they want.

But the surprising thing is that if they are asked to paint

everyday, within six months they come out of the madness.

Because the catharsis happens, they throw everything out.

When catharsis happens, naturally they get healed.

And the next beautiful thing is: there was a doctor who was

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doing research on this art therapy. He says people who have

become mad because of money, they all paint and draw in

the same way. People who have become mad because of

women, they all paint in the same way and people who have

become mad because of name and fame, they all paint in the

same way. There are so many reasons why you can become

mad.

A small story:

One guy went to the mental hospital, just to see what was

happening in there. The doctor took him to show him

around the hospital.

In the first room, he saw one person had written all over the

walls the name: ‘Latha’, ‘Latha’, ‘Latha’ in blood and he was

sitting and chanting the word ‘Latha, Latha, Latha’. This

person asked the doctor what had happened to this guy.

The doctor replied that he had wanted to marry some girl

called Latha, but he was not able to. That is why he had

become mad. That is why he was continuously repeating her

name. The doctor went around and showed different kinds of

people in different rooms.

One person was just swimming on the floor and another one

was hanging from the ceiling, another one was walking with

his hands. The guy saw all kinds of people. In the end, he

came to another room, where another person was sitting and

chanting ‘Latha, Latha, Latha’.

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In his room, all over the walls the word ‘Latha’ was written.

The guy asked as to what had happened to him, whether he

also was in love with some Latha.

The doctor replied, ‘No, he married the same Latha!’

So, there are so many reasons why someone can become mad.

All men who have become mad because of money paint and

draw in the same way. The reason is: what is inside only,

comes out. In the process of painting, which is really a form

of catharsis, they throw on to the canvas what is there inside

their unconsciousness.

And another important thing we should understand is that

the doctor who was doing research on all these things, he

too, became mad.

There are three things we need to understand here:

First, only experience comes out as expression.

Second, the quality of experience and the quality of

expression, both are very closely related or associated.

Third, a very important thing is: if you concentrate on the

expression, you will reach the experience.

Here, again and again, Krishna is speaking about how an

enlightened man lives, the quality of an enlightened person,

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so that you will meditate on these ideas, so that you will

start imbibing these ideas in your life, so that you will reach

the consciousness of an enlightened man.

When you contemplate on these ideas, naturally you will

start expressing it and it will sink in your very being.

Again and again he says: vijitendriyaha, one who has subdued

his senses. This whole chapter is just about the senses. If you

can understand this one diagram (chakshu-chitta-manas

diagram) and understand where the problem is, Krishna

gives a beautiful technique for how to heal the problem.

He gives a beautiful method for how to go beyond and how

to solve the problem. All you have to do is to understand

the problem: where we are caught and where our problems

are. Our whole trouble is in the mind, buddhi and ego.

Please refer to the revised diagram below:

Eye DSP

“Chakshu”

Memory

“Chitta”

Mind

“Manas”

“This is it” Identification

“This is not” Elimination

Conscious

Atman

Super conscious

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Beyond ego we have the atman, the Self. Just the presence of

the atman or the light of the atman radiates and makes your

ego work.

The whole trouble is where you identify yourself, where you

start thinking, ‘What is there for me?’, ‘How am I related?’,

‘How am I going to gain from this?’, or ‘What am I going to

lose?’ Here is where the whole trouble starts.

If the ego and buddhi are removed from the system, the

atman directly starts radiating its energy through the senses.

That is the why enlightened people will have sharp senses.

Their senses are not contaminated. Whether it is their vision

or their hearing, it will be sharp and deep because it is not

corrupted by buddhi and ego. They have not lost their

sensitivity.

Please be very clear: Only a man, whose being is clear, will

have pure senses. His senses will be sharp and alive. A man,

who continuously uses his senses, abuses it. He will not have

the energy or tejas in his senses.

The first thing which will happen to a man who has used and

abused his senses is: he will lose his sense of smell. If you

have lost your sense of smell, please be very clear that you

need immediate emergency treatment. You need to get

admitted in the ICU of spirituality. You need meditation

immediately. Meditation is the basic need for you.

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ºÉÖ¾þÎx¨ÉjÉÉªÉÖÇnùÉºÉÒxÉ¨ÉvªÉºlÉuäù¹ªÉù¤ÉxvÉÖ¹ÉÖ*

ºÉÉvÉÖ¹´ÉÊ{É SÉ {ÉÉ{Éä¹ÉÖ ºÉ¨Éù¤ÉÖÊrùÌ´ÉÊ¶É¹ªÉiÉä**6.9**

suhrn mitra aryudasina madhyastha dveshya bandhushu

sadhushv api cha papeshu sama buddhir vishishyate (6.9)

suhrt: to well-wishers by nature; mitra: affectionate

benefactors; ari: enemies; udasina: neutral; madhyastha:

mediators; dveshya: envious; bandhushu: friends; sadhushu:

pious; api: also ; cha: and; papeshu: sinners; sama: equal

buddhih: with equal mind; vishishyate: is further advanced

A person is considered still further advanced when he

regards honest well-wishers, affectionate benefactors, the

neutral, mediators, the envious, friends and enemies, the

pious and the sinners all with an equal mind.

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This really happens when one reaches enlightenment. When

one becomes enlightened, there is nothing to be achieved,

there is nothing to be gained. Automatically, our being will

start respecting everyone.

Please be very clear: Here they use the word ‘equal’, but the

exact translation should be ‘unique’. We will not treat

everybody as an equal; instead we will respect everybody as

unique beings. Treating someone as an equal is different,

treating them as unique is different. When we understand

everyone is unique, we respect them. Sometimes when we say

we treat everyone equally, we start disrespecting everybody

equally. Instead of raising others to a higher level, we bring

ourselves down.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was such a humble soul. If

anybody came to see him, he would first do the namaskar

(bowing down with hands folded to show respect for the

other person) even before they paid their respects to him.

One egoistic guy came to see Ramakrishna. Education and

ego, especially this spiritual education, a man who has read

all the scriptures and not become enlightened, he is the

person who is already in hell. Because he will have so much

of ego, he knows the tricks of the trade, but he does not

have the capital or courage to do the business. He will be a

difficult person.

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Like this well-read pundit who came to meet him.

Ramakrishna, as usual, bowed down. The pundit said: ‘After

all, he is younger than me; he can bow down to me’.

Then Ramakrishna said, ‘By doing namaskar, I try to bring

you to my level. But accepting it in an egoistic way, you try

to bring me down to your level.’

So, be very clear: when we treat people equally, we may

bring them to our level. Let us not do that. Understand that

every being is unique. There is no equality. When we

understand every being is unique, we will start respecting

every being. We will understand every being has its own

unique place.

We are not same; we are all unique. God is an artist: that is

why he painted each one of us so differently, so uniquely. He

is not an engineer. If he was an engineer, he would have just

ordered ten thousand pieces of Mr. India; one million pieces

of Miss Universe; so, all of us would be looking the same. He

is not an engineer to do mass production.

He is an artist; he carves every one of us. He paints every

one of us. That is why we are all so unique because God is

a painter. When we understand each one of us is unique,

everybody is unique, we will start respecting every being.

One more thing we need to understand, even our enemy is

needed for our life. We would have learnt thousands of

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things from our enemies. Without enemies we wouldn’t have

achieved what we achieved. Even enemies contribute to our

life.

Please be very clear: when we are in depression we will

remember our enemy. We will come out of our depression

and start fighting again. We don’t know in what all ways

people contribute to our life.

There was a great sannyasi, a very famous sannyasi, who was

highly respected all over the world. Suddenly, one day, his

close disciple somehow found an important secret about him.

In his room, he had got his ex-wife’s photograph.

And he asked, ‘Master, I thought you are such a great

person, I never expected this from you, why are you still

having her photo in your room?’

The sannyasi says, ‘Whenever I want to leave the sannyas

life, I just see her photo and immediately I get my

perseverance!’

So, we don’t know who are all playing what role in our life!

Be very clear, even our enemy might be playing a role in our

being, in our personality, in our growth. We can’t say,

somebody is needed in our life and somebody is not necessary.

So, just like our friends our enemies also may be playing a

role in our life.

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When we understand each and every being is unique, we

will see everybody with the same mind or in the same way.

One more thing here: Krishna says, ‘the pious and the

sinners’. Please be very clear, there is no such thing as sin,

except calling human beings as sinners. There is no other sin

on the planet Earth.

A small story:

Once a monk was sitting in a forest and meditating. He had

a small hut or ashram. One night, a man came to the hut

and begged, ‘Swami, can you give me little food? And can

you allow me to stay here till tomorrow morning?’

The monk said, ‘Why not?’ So, he gave food and shelter for

that night to the man. Next morning, when the man was

about to leave, the monk asked, ‘Who are you?’

The man replied: ‘I am a thief; just last night I robbed the

palace. I tried to escape from the police and came here. You

gave me food and shelter. I thank you.’ So saying, he went

away.

Immediately, this monk started weeping, ‘Oh God! What a

big sin I have committed! I gave food and shelter for a thief.

Oh God, save me from this sin!’

Within a few minutes, he heard a voice from the heaven

weeping loudly. The monk was startled and asked, ‘Oh God,

why are you weeping?’

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God said, ‘You gave food and shelter for one day and you are

weeping. I give food and shelter for him 365 days a year.

Where will I go and wash my sins?’

Be very clear: God accepts each and every one of us as we

are. The people who created the society created the idea of

sin and merit.

Immediately, the next question will rise: ‘Then can we do

whatever we want?’ Man who understands this spiritual

science will never disturb others. Again and again, I tell

people, our sin and merit should not be based on fear or

greed. If it is just based on heaven or hell, I don’t think we

have become a matured being.

Our sin or merit should be out of our understanding, not out

of heaven or hell. Be very clear: don’t live a disciplined life

thinking of heaven or hell. Let the discipline happen to us as

an understanding.

If we are afraid of a cop and so are following the rules for

speed limits, then whenever we don’t see a police car, there is

a small temptation, ‘Why not raise the accelerator a little

bit?’ And especially in Los Angeles, when there is no traffic,

we always try to speed for at least a few miles like a ten-

mile race!

Actually putting one foot wrong is a deep temptation. Trying

to escape from rules has its own taste. Especially when

something is forbidden it becomes really tasty.

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The forbidden fruit is always tasty. I don’t think Adam would

have eaten the fruit if God had not forbidden it. He ate it

just because God said, ‘Don’t eat’. He was living in that

garden for how many years we don’t know but he didn’t taste

a single fruit. He was living happily. It is actually God who

tempted Adam to eat the fruit by saying, ‘Don’t eat’, it was

not the snake that tempted! The story is wrong! The story

says, God said, ‘Don’t eat’ and the snake tempted Adam. But

it is actually God who tempted Adam by saying ‘Don’t eat’.

So, whenever we listen to a rule, automatically we try to go

beyond it, we try to break it.

Let our morality be not based on fear and greed. That is

why in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras or aphorisms, there is a

beautiful word yama. Yama means discipline. It also means

death.

If we understand, our life is going to end in death and if we

understand, death is the result of our life, if our

consciousness imbibes, starts thinking, meditating about

death, automatically we will be disciplined. If we start

thinking about death, we will completely restructure our

whole thinking and our life. Our whole life will be

restructured.

If we start thinking about yama (death), yama (discipline)

will happen in our life. In Sanskrit, for both discipline and

death, we use the same word.

92


If we imbibe that death is going to happen to us,

automatically we will imbibe discipline in our life. Discipline

happens to us when we realize death, when we realize that

life is going to end.

Let our discipline happen only out of understanding of death

and not out of fear or greed.

93


ªÉÉäMÉÒ ªÉÖ\VÉÒiÉ ºÉiÉiÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉÉxÉÆ ®ú½þÊºÉ ÎºlÉiÉ&*

BEòÉEòÒ ªÉiÉÊSÉkÉÉi¨ÉÉ ÊxÉ®úÉ¶ÉÒ®ú{ÉÊ®úOÉ½þ&**6.10**

yogi yunjita satatam atmanam rahasi sthitaha

ekaki yata chitta atma nirashir aparigrahaha (6.10)

yogi: yogi; yunjita: concentrate; satatam: always; atmanam:

himself; rahasi: in a secluded place; sthitaha: situated; ekaki:

alone; yata chitta atma: careful in mind and Self; nirashih:

without being attracted by anything else; aparigrahaha: free

from the feeling of possessiveness

A yogi should always try to concentrate his mind on the

Supreme Self; situated in a secluded place, he should

carefully control his mind without being attracted by anything

and free from the feeling of possessiveness.

94


¶ÉÖSÉÉè näù¶Éä |ÉÊiÉ¹ öÉ{ªÉ ÎºlÉ®ú ÉÉºÉxÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉxÉ&*

xÉÉiªÉÖÎSUÅôiÉÆ xÉÉÊiÉxÉÒSÉÆ SÉè±ÉÉÊVÉxÉEÖò¶ÉÉäkÉ®ú ÉÂ**6.11**

shuchau deshe pratishthapya sthiram asanam atmanaha

nati ucchritam nati neecham chailajina kushottaram (6.11)

shuchau: in a clean state; deshe: land; pratishthapya: placing;

sthiram: stable; asanam: seat; atmanaha: own; na: not; iti: thus;

ucchritam: high; na: not; neecham: low; chailajina: of soft cloth

and deerskin; kusha: kusha grass; uttaram: covering

On a clean and pure place, one should establish his seat by

laying kusha grass, a deer skin and a cloth one over another,

neither too high nor too low.

95


iÉjÉèEòÉOÉÆ ¨ÉxÉ& EÞòi´ÉÉ ªÉiÉÊSÉkÉäÎxpùªÉÊGòªÉ&*={ÉÊ´É¶ªÉÉºÉxÉä ªÉÖ\VªÉÉtÉäMÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉÊ´É¶ÉÖrùªÉä**6.12**

tatrai ekagram manaha krutva yat chittendriya kriyaha

upavishya asane yunjyad yogam atma vishuddhaye (6.12)

tatra: then; ekagram: with one focus; manaha: mind; krutva:

making; yat: by chitta: mind; indriya: senses; kriyaha:

activities; upavishya: sitting; asane: on the seat; yunjyat: should

execute; yogam: yoga; atma: oneself; vishuddhaye: to purify

Sitting firmly on that pure seat, the yogi should practice the

purification of the self by controlling the activities of mind

and the senses.

96


ºÉ¨ÉÆ EòÉªÉÊ¶É®úÉäOÉÒ´ÉÆ vÉÉ®úªÉzÉSÉ±ÉÆ ÎºlÉ®ú&*

ºÉÆ|ÉäIªÉ xÉÉÊºÉEòÉOÉÆ º´ÉÆ Ênù¶É¶SÉÉxÉ´É±ÉÉäEòªÉxÉÂ**6.13**

samam kaya shiro grivam dharayan achalam sthiraha

samprekshya nasika agram svam dishashcha anavalokayan(6.13)

samam: straight; kaya: body; shirah: head; grivam: neck;

dharayan: holding; achalam: steady; sthiraha: still; samprekshya:

looking; nasika: nose; agram: at the tip; svam: own; disha:

directions; cha: and; anavalokayan: not looking

Holding the body, head and neck steady, look at the tip of

your nose without looking in any other direction.

97


|É¶ÉÉxiÉÉi¨ÉÉ Ê´ÉMÉiÉ¦ÉÒ¥ÉÇÀSÉÉÊ®´ÉÞiÉä ÎºlÉiÉ&*

¨ÉxÉ& ºÉÆªÉ¨ªÉ ¨ÉÎSSÉkÉÉä ªÉÖCiÉ +ÉºÉÒiÉ ¨Éi{É®ú&**6.14**

prashanta atma vigata bhir brahmachari vrate sthitaha

manaha samyamya macchito yukta asita mat paraha (6.14)

prashanta: unagitated; atma: mind; vigata bhih: free from fear;

brahmachari vrate: in the vow of living with Existence;

sthitaha: situated; manaha: mind; samyamya: controlling; mat:

on Me; chittah: mind; yukta: yogi; asita: sit; mat: Me; paraha:

supreme goal

Sit with an unagitated mind, free from fear and in tune with

Existence, controlling the mind, focusing it on Me and make

Me the supreme goal.

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In these verses Krishna gives directions for the practitioner of

yoga, the yogi. There are instructions about the state of mind,

and there are instructions about the state of the body. These

verses are often quoted and misused with a literal

understanding and without understanding the inner meaning

and significance.

One can sit with closed or half closed eyes, with spine erect,

in a sound proofed dark room, suspended in mid air like a

space traveler, for the rest of one’s life and still be no nearer

to enlightenment. These are general and practical guidelines

given to help with how one should sit and meditate. These

are not essential qualifications for enlightenment.

Krishna repeats again and again the importance of controlling

one’s senses. Why? Senses are our doors to the external

world. As long as they are open and uncontrolled, all we are

immersed in is the external world. It is impossible to

understand the true reality of oneself through a study of the

external world. You may become a great scientist or you may

become a wealthy businessman by observing the outer world,

but never an enlightened person. For this path, looking

inwards is the only way.

Controlling the senses requires controlling what we term the

mind. Controlling the mind requires control of thoughts. If we

sit for a few minutes to analyze our thoughts, we would find

that there is no connection between one thought and

another. There is no logic, as we so blithely assume in our

thinking process. Our thoughts, by nature are illogical,

99


unconnected and irrational. Thoughts keep swinging from

past to future and back to past.

We need to do two things to control our thoughts; first, to

stay in the present moment, refusing to move to the past and

future; second, to disconnect thoughts. I call this

unclutching. You need to be aware that thoughts are not

inherently connected. We connect them into a shaft, shafts

of joy and shafts of sorrow. These shafts do not exist at all.

So, I say to you, unclutch and be liberated.

I am not saying stay without thoughts. That is not possible.

Just witness thoughts. Understand that thoughts are

unconnected. Detach yourself from the emotional baggage of

thoughts. Detach yourself from the regrets of the past and

the speculations of the future. You will automatically rise into

the present.

You cannot live without desires. If anyone tells you that you

can reach enlightenment through elimination of desires, it is

incorrect. First of all, you are already enlightened. Your inner

Self knows its connectivity to the divine. You are just not

aware of it. If you are already there, how can you achieve it?

Secondly, desires are energy. You cannot inhale and exhale

without the desire to live. Do you want to die to be

enlightened?

When Buddha talks of desires being sorrow, what he means

is that the attachment to desires brings in sorrow. That is

what Krishna talks about here, the lack of attachment and

possessiveness.

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It is the feeling of mine, the desire to possess that creates

the feeling of I, not the other way around. Our identity is

made of all the things that we want, that we desire. These

constitute our mental make up. The vasana, the samskara,

these embedded memories and seeds of desire are the stuff

our package of I is made of. Once the feeling of possession,

the feeling of mine, disappears it is possible to shed one’s

identity as well.

When one is free of the feeling of mine and I, when one is

not attached or attracted to external objects, when one is

not led by one’s senses, one has steadied one’s mind and the

senses. To facilitate this, Krishna stipulates physical

conditions.

Few things to note here: you should go to a secluded place.

Why? Whatever you say, in the house the phone may ring,

cell phone may ring, somebody may knock and some ad

agencies may call. The secluded place is to really just move

away from these disturbances.

The kusha, deerskin all those things are like insulation, so

that the energy created by you will not be taken away by the

earth. But now you don’t have to bother about that, since

you usually sit in a chair, a little raised from the ground.

The seat should neither be too high nor too low and it

should be comfortable. That’s all. The most important thing

to be aware of in any meditation is to be relaxed. You cannot

meditate in discomfort. Sthira and suka are the basic

essentials of any meditation posture, stable and comfortable.

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Here Krishna updates the technique that He gave before.

Here He gives 3 more instructions:

1. Head, backbone and neck should be in straight line.

2. We should fix our eyes on the tip of the nose. If we look

at the tip of the nose, naturally, our awareness will settle

down on the third eye. Our concentration will settle on

the ajna chakra (the brow energy center.)

3. We should meditate on Me as the supreme goal.

These are simple common sensical instructions. Keeping the

head, neck and backbone, all in one line, helps in two ways.

Firstly, it prevents you from dropping off to sleep. If you doze,

your neck will drop, and will no longer be steady. Secondly,

as long as the head, neck and backbone remain steady and

vertical, flow of pranic energy through the energy pathways,

nadis, will be unblocked and smooth.

A small story:

In Chennai, there was a famous preacher. He was famous but

boring. People used to go to sleep listening to him. On the

day he died, a bus driver from Chennai also died. In

Chennai, bus drivers are like Yama, God of death. They

drive the buses to terrorize people. People both inside and

outside the buses pray for safety.

When they both arrived at the gates of Vaikunta, the pearly

gates, the driver was speedily ushered into heaven, first class

suites. The preacher found himself escorted to a hot and

102


humid space, very similar to Chennai climate. The preacher

started screaming, ‘There is no justice in the land of Yama. I

a great preacher am being led to hell, while this driver goes

to heaven. Will someone give me justice?’

Yama said: here we go by performance. We have also learned

from corporate coaches. The driver made many people pray

to God, fearing for their lives. You, on the other hand, put

people to sleep.

That is why I am always afraid with you people. When I talk

you, teach you meditation, you doze off. At least think about

my fate. Yama may say the same thing to me!

Whether you close your eyes fully or half close them, it is

important that you disconnect from the external world.

When the eyes are focused on the tip of the nose, they are

not looking at external objects and 90% of sensory inputs are

cut off. In addition, the focus is on the ajna chakra, which

when energized dissolves the ego block.

Finally, Krishna says focus on Me. He means our atman, the

true Self. If we like, we can meditate on the form of

Krishna, with a flute, peacock feather and all those things.

But I always prescribe to go beyond the form. Go into your

being. Of course, when we enter into our ajna chakra,

automatically we will go beyond the form. We will start

meditating on the formless energy that is beyond the form.

103


ªÉÖ\VÉzÉä ÉÆ ºÉnùÉ%%i¨ÉÉxÉÆ ªÉÉäMÉÒ ÊxÉªÉiÉ¨ÉÉxÉºÉ&*¶ÉÉÏxiÉ ÊxÉ´ÉÉÇhÉ{É®ú ÉÉÆ ¨ÉiºÉÆºlÉÉ¨ÉÊvÉMÉSUôÊiÉ**6.15**

yunjan evam sada atmanam yogi niyata manasaha

shantim nirvana paramam mat samstham adhigachhati (6.15)

yunjan: practicing; evam: and; sada: always; atmanam: Self;

yogi: yogi; niyata: controlled; manasaha: mind; shantim: peace;

nirvana: liberation; paramam: supreme; mat samstham: My

kingdom; adhigacchati: attain

Always practicing control over the mind and situated in the

Self, the yogi attains peace, the supreme liberation and My

kingdom.

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Krishna talks here about control of the mind and being

situated in the Self. He talks about the path and the goal of

yoga. The first line of Yoga Sutras starts with, ‘yogaha chitta

vritti nirodhaha’, Yoga is cessation of the mind. The very first

line gives the path and the goal of yoga. The word yoga

means union with the Divine. So, the goal is yoga, to reach

the Ultimate and the path is also yoga, the practice of yoga,

dropping the mind.

The goal is union with the Ultimate or experiencing the

ultimate spiritual energy, universal energy, cosmic energy or

experiencing the cosmic intelligence. The path is dropping

the mind which means going beyond the thoughts. The

ultimate goal of yoga is the union with Existence or Divine

and to realize our true inherent nature.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience; we are

not human beings having a spiritual experience.

That is the truth. If you consider yourself as a human being

striving for a spiritual experience, you will be striving to

achieve something that is not your true nature. But, I tell

you, bliss is your very nature. You are spiritual beings having

a human experience. So, all you need to do is go back to

the source, realize your true nature.

The mind pulls us towards the temporary happiness

experienced by performing various sense activities. For

example, there might be some particular sweet that you

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might like. You are attracted to this sweet taste. When you

sit down to eat it, then for a few minutes your mind seems to

stop thinking about it. There seems to appear a sense of

peace when you are eating the sweet. Actually, you are at

peace because the number of thoughts has come down for

those few minutes. But, without realizing this, you think the

peace experience is due to the food itself.

Understand that there is nothing wrong with liking the

sweetness; you feel fulfilled with the sweetness. But, if you

are attracted to the sweet thinking that it is the cause of

your fulfillment, the problem starts. Because, the next time,

the same sweet may not give you the same experience of

fulfillment. The experience is different and the object of

experience is different.

In the same way, if you hold onto an object that you think

gives you bliss, you will create an attachment to that object.

But, the experience of bliss is different from the object. Bliss

is beyond attachment to any object, material or spiritual.

Bliss is beyond the pairs of opposites. When you are happy

due to some pleasurable event or person, the joy is coming

due to external objects, due to the sense perceptions.

But, bliss happens from your being. It continuously happens

from within you, irrespective of anything that goes on

outside. Then, why do we not feel the bliss? Because we are

under the control of the mind which needs the pairs of

opposites to survive. We can, however, go beyond the mind.

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We can stop the stopping of the fountain of bliss that is

happening every moment in us. Our first level program,

Ananda Spurana Program or the Life Bliss Program, is all

about how to unlock and energize the seven major energy

centers, the seven chakra, how to bring forth the fountain of

bliss, the Ananda Spurana which is happening every moment,

which is eternal.

When I say ‘eternal bliss’, what do I mean? ‘Nithya’ or

‘eternal’ means the past, present and future all put together

because it is beyond time. It cannot be called new or old

because it always existed, it is beyond time. But, the eternal

can be touched only in the present. Being in the present is

what eternity is. Bliss cannot be experienced in the past or

present because these are not reality. The only reality is the

present. So, bliss can be experienced only in the present.

When you are not completely in tune with the present, you

have an idea in your mind as to how the present moment

should have been, how it could have been better, different.

Be very clear: this itself indicates you are not completely in

the present because how can you completely experience the

present when you have fantasies in that moment about how

that moment should be?

When you are completely in reality, in the present, you are

completely in tune with Existence, you are in bliss. This is

eternal bliss. The present blissful moment gives birth to the

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next moment which will be blissful. It will automatically give

rise to the next blissful moment.

But, if you try to look for bliss in the future thinking you

can do various things to create a blissful future, it will never

happen. When you are not in reality now, you are creating

the blissful future from your fantasies in your fantasy world.

Accept reality here and now and be blissful and

automatically, the future will also be blissful.

Bliss is like the river. You can put your open hands in it and

enjoy it but if you try to hold it with closed hands, it will

simply flow away from your hands leaving you empty-handed.

If you want to be in eternal bliss, be blissful in this very

moment. Do not bother about whether you had bliss in the

past or whether you will have it in the future. Just be blissful

now!

108


xÉÉiªÉ¶xÉiÉºiÉÖ ªÉÉäMÉÉä%ÎºiÉ xÉ SÉèEòÉxiÉ¨ÉxÉ¶xÉiÉ&*

xÉ SÉÉÊiÉº´É{xÉ¶ÉÒ±ÉºªÉ VÉÉOÉiÉÉä xÉè É SÉÉVÉÖÇxÉ**6.16**

natya ashnatastu yogo asti na cha ekantam anashnataha

na cha ati swapna shilasya jagrato naiva cha arjuna (6.16)

na: never; ati: too much; ashnatah: eats; tu: but; yoga: yoga;

asti: is; na: not; cha: and; ekantam: only; anashnataha: not eat;

na: not; cha: and; ati: too much; swapna shilasya: sleep;

jagrato: awake; na: not; eva: also; cha: and; arjuna: Oh Arjuna

Yoga is neither eating too much nor eating too little; it is

neither sleeping too much nor sleeping too little, Oh Arjuna.

109


ªÉÖCiÉÉ½þÉ®úÊ´É½þÉ®úºªÉ ªÉÖCiÉSÉä¹]õºªÉ Eò¨ÉÇºÉÖ*

ªÉÖCiÉº´É{xÉÉ´Éù¤ÉÉävÉºªÉ ªÉÉäMÉÉä ¦É´ÉÊiÉ nÖù&JÉ½þÉ**6.17**

yukta ahara viharasya yukta cheshtasya karmasu

yukta swapna avabodhasya yogo bhavati dukkhaha (6.17)

yukta: regulated; ahara: food; viharasya: rest; yukta: regulated;

cheshtasya: exertion; karmasu: work; yukta: regulated; swapna

avabodhasya: sleep and wakefulness; yogah: yoga; bhavati:

becomes; dukkhaha: reduced misery

One who is regulated in food, rest, recreation and work,

sleep and wakefulness can reduce misery.

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When Krishna talks about the mind being controlled and about

the senses being controlled, He is not talking about suppressing

the mind and senses. In fact, this is impossible to do. People

who claim to renounce the world and its material aspects still

cling to desires. Their efforts to suppress these desires do not

work and results in misery and unacceptable action.

All one can do is to transform those desires. Instead of

directing ones senses to external objects and pleasure being

derived from them it is possible to focus inwards and

experience inner joy. Once the senses and the mind discover

this inner joy, on their own they will give up their

attachment to external pleasures. Suppression never works;

what works is transformation.

To be balanced in what one does and to do without

attachment is the path of a yogi. For any activity, moderation

is needed. This is what Buddha meant by the ‘Middle Way’

as well. Whether it is eating or sleeping or working, we

should be sensitive to the body intelligence. Understand:

when we are aware in whatever action we do, we will be

sensitive. The awareness will show what is conducive to your

system. Only when you are not completely aware, conscious,

you will be caught in the confusion.

What Krishna tells Arjuna here you will not find in Yoga

manuals. Guidelines on sleeping too much or too little or

eating too much or too little is in no way a prescribed

method for yoga.

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Controlling or regulating the senses does not mean one

should suppress the senses. Eating too much will only make

you lethargic or ‘tamasic’. Eating too little will make you

crave fore more food. If you sleep too much, it will lead to

laziness and lethargy, tamas. If you sleep too little, you will

end up feeling tired because the body-mind is not

rejuvenated enough.

Here, how do we know what is too much or too little? Here,

Krishna actually refers to our body intelligence.

The body has an intelligence to maintain itself. But, we do

not trust our inherent body intelligence. We run our body

according to the mind or according to our desires and to

satisfy the senses.

Otherwise, why would you stay up in the night watching a

football match when your eyes are already tired and your

body is begging for some sleep?

Why would you overeat? Have you seen any animal ever

overeat? Have you seen an obese animal in the wild? Maybe

the pets and animals in zoos become obese because we feed

them the way we eat. Have you seen any free animal obese?

They eat according to their body intelligence. When the

body signals that it needs food, they eat. When the body

signals that it needs sleep, they sleep.

The problem is we have forgotten how to relate with our

body intelligence.

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After eating, after giving energy to the body, we should be

feeling energetic. But, do we feel energetic after lunch? Why

do we feel lazy and sleepy after eating? Because we do not

eat the right type and amount of food. Most often, we eat

much more than what we need. We don’t need to eat the

amount we do for our body to run.

Just try this for a few days: when you eat, eat just enough

till you are about full but not completely full. So, when you

feel you can eat one more handful of rice or food, stop. Try

this for a few days and you can see the difference.

Similarly, we do not need to sleep for as long as eight hours

as most of us do. Even science has established that there are

periods in our sleep, the dream state and the deep sleep

state. The deep sleep state is what rejuvenates us. Actually,

it is in the deep sleep state that we access the causal body,

the karana sareera. This is where we derive the energy from,

where we touch the source of our energy.

Touching this layer of energy is what gives the energy. This

state can be achieved through meditation as well. In the

eight hours of sleep, it is only for a couple of hours that we

are in the deep sleep state. That is why even few minutes of

meditation can actually refresh as much as a few hours of

sleep because we access the same energy of the causal body

layer through meditation.

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Once the mind comes in between and forces either too much

sleep or too little sleep or too much eating or fasting or too

much, then we are ignoring the body intelligence and we are

going with the mind.

Trust your body intelligence and just try living being sensitive

to the body rather than being driven by the mind, senses and

your routine.

Krishna talks about ahara in these verses. Ahara in Sanskrit

means food, not merely what is consumed through the mouth.

It is the food that is taken in by our five senses. It is not just

the food we eat through the mouth, it includes all that we

take in through all the senses, the sights we see through the

eyes, the sounds that we hear through our ears, the smells

that we smell, the sensation of touch and even the memories

that we store and bring up.

Pratyahara, one of the eight parts of yoga is the control of

sensory inputs. It means getting beyond these ahara, beyond

the sense objects so that the higher level consciousness can

be awakened. When you move away from the senses and

experience bliss, you will automatically realize that what you

experience through the external sense objects is not bliss.

What you experience through the senses can be called

pleasure or joy, some external object that gives you joy. That

is why, the opposite of joy, pain, is bound to follow this

temporary pleasure. Bliss is beyond the pairs of opposites,

pleasure and pain; it is not related to external incidents or

people; it is internally generated.

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ªÉnùÉ Ê´ÉÊxÉªÉiÉÆ ÊSÉkÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉxªÉä ÉÉ´ÉÊiÉ¹`öiÉä*ÊxÉ&º{ÉÞ½þ& ºÉ´ÉÇEòÉ¨Éä¦ªÉÉä ªÉÖCiÉ <iªÉÖSªÉiÉä iÉnùÉ**6.18**

yada viniyatam chittam atmany eva avatishthate

nispruhaha sarva kamebhyo yukta iti uchyate tada (6.18)

yada: when; viniyatam: disciplined; chittam: mind; atmani:

situated in the Self; eva: certainly; avatishthate: situated;

nispruhaha: free of desire; sarva: all; kamebhyah: material

desires; yukta: situated; iti: thus; uchyate: said to be; tada:

then

When the mind is disciplined and one is situated in the Self,

free from all desires, then one is said to be situated in yoga.

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The main aim of all our yoga or meditation techniques is to

reach the level of our being. When we reach the being, we

are in ‘Nithya Ananda’ or ‘Eternal Bliss’ or in union with the

Divine.

As on now, we are running behind something in the outer

world because we think they can give us what we are

ultimately looking for, bliss. Bliss is actually what we are

running after; but we think it can be got through money,

comforts, relations and what not.

We do not realize that any of these objects will only give us

temporary states of pleasure and happiness. Our inherent

nature is bliss and that is the reason why we are constantly

searching for this state of bliss. When we realize that the

bliss is happening inside us all the time, automatically, the

desires will drop.

You cannot drop desires, you cannot suppress them because

they will surface again and with even more intensity. The

desire has to drop you.

When you are aware of your action, you can never be

addicted. Be very clear: all addictions, whether smoking or

drinking, drugs or anything, it cannot exist if you are aware

during the action. You try to suppress the desire instead of

being aware and that is where the problem starts. Because

you repeat the words, ‘I want to quit smoking’, you are

actually giving power to the word ‘smoking’ without even

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being aware of it. Words are energy. What you speak, what

your mind thinks, gets inscribed in your body; your body gets

prepared for executing the action.

A beautiful incident from Ramakrishna’s life:

Once a devotee came to Ramakrishna saying that he was

addicted to drinking and did not know how to give it up.

Ramakrishna gave him a simple though surprising remedy: he

told him to surrender the drinking habit to Kali.

The man was obviously shocked but he started offering the

drink to Kali and then drank intensely. You will be surprised

but the devotee came back in just three days to

Ramakrishna saying that he had given up drinking. Not only

had he given up his drinking habit but he could not drink

any more! The drinking habit had dropped him.

An addiction has power over you because of a guilt feeling, or a

feeling of regret, or a feeling of unfulfillment. Through the

addiction one is trying to close a gap, to rectify an error. As long

as one is not ware of the fact that we need not carry guilt for

anything that we have done, the addiction will persist.

I say that guilt is the greatest sin you can commit and carry.

Whatever you did in the past was with the wisdom you then

had. You now realize it is an error based on your updated

wisdom. Great, do not commit that error again; but, then

drop that guilt. When you drop that guilt that you have been

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shouldering, you will find that many of your repetitive

negative behavior would stop on their own.

Moreover, you cannot consciously send in something harmful

to your system inside your system. You cannot consciously

inhale harmful smoke consciously into your system. As long

as you drink or smoke as a ritual, it becomes an addiction.

So, I say to those who come to me for help, smoke as much

as you want, drink as much as you want, but do it with

awareness, do it with enjoyment.

In a few days, they will come back and say they cannot

smoke or drink anymore. That is because the innate body

intelligence would refuse to cooperate in this disastrous

activity.

Awareness is the key to bring the mind under control

because you will be the master of your mind, instead of the

mind being your master.

118


ªÉlÉÉ nùÒ{ÉÉä ÊxÉ´ÉÉiÉºlÉÉä xÉäRÂóMÉiÉä ºÉÉä{É¨ÉÉ º¨ÉÞiÉÉ*

ªÉÉäÊMÉxÉÉä ªÉiÉÊSÉkÉºªÉ ªÉÖ\VÉiÉÉä ªÉÉäMÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉxÉ&**6.19**

yatha deepo nivatastho nengate sopama smrita

yogino yata chittasaya yunjato yogam atmanaha (6.19)

yatha: as; deepah: lamp; nivatastho: in a place without wind;

na: not; ingate: waver; sa: this; upama: comparison; smrita: is

considered; yoginah: of the yogi; yata chittasya: whose mind is

controlled; yunjatah: engaged; yogam: in yoga; atmanaha: in

the Self

As a lamp in a place without wind does not waver, so also

the yogi whose mind is controlled remains steady, engaged in

yoga, in the Self.

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Normally, our mind oscillates between the past and future

just like the flame of the lamp wavering in the wind. When

the same lamp is placed in a windless place, it will stop

flickering.

By nature, the mind is in dilemma. You cannot suppress it

and you cannot control it by just allowing it to wander

either. All you can do to still the mind is to stop bothering

about it and just witness it. Just relax.

If you look deeply, every thought that occurs in you occurs as

an independent thought. Each and every thought is

completely unrelated, illogical and unconnected to any other

thought. Thoughts appear in us just like the individual

bubbles in a fish tank. The mind holds on to these thoughts

and starts connecting them and comes to conclusions and

opinions.

One more thing, whatever you believe, you expand it. If you

believe something, you will again and again see that in your

life.

Once you start believing your life is pain, you are waiting

unconsciously for painful incidents to strengthen that belief,

to strengthen that judgment. Whenever you are adding the

painful incidents unconsciously, constantly, consciously, you

will be trying to break that shaft.

120


If you believe your whole life is a shaft of joyful experiences,

which anyways we do rarely, constantly you are in fear, will it

continue?

But, the important thing that we forget is that you can

neither break the shaft nor elongate it, because the shaft

itself does not exist.

The problem starts with our fantasies, whether it is driven by

greed or fear. If we can accept reality, not just accept but

welcome it, only then we start living life.

All our desires and fears arise because at the root, we feel

that life has some goal, some purpose. Understand that life

has no purpose, it has meaning. Life has no goal; the path

itself is the goal. Enjoy the path; enjoy life as it comes.

We think we are living life as we are living now. Understand

that the way we are living life in our world of fantasies, we

are actually living in our dream world. Each of us has

created a cocoon for ourselves, a web of desires and we try

to protect our false identity, our ego in this web. Only when

we break out of the web, when we drop the ego can we

even see what life is really. Otherwise, we will be only

projecting our imaginations.

When we realize the purposelessness of life, we can drop our

desires and fears, we can plunge into reality, into the present

and we can just watch thoughts in a completely detached

manner without connecting them.

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The moment we decide to stay in the present, without the

need to connect any thoughts with the past, then the mind

stops oscillating or flickering back and forth. When the mind

does not flicker and stands still in the present moment, then

we reach the state of no-mind.

In this state of no-mind, you don’t create a thought, you

don’t try to sustain any thought and you don’t try to destroy

the thought. If we relax from all these three things, then we

will see that there will be no mind.

Our mind is like a lake; when we throw a stone in a lake,

there will be many ripples created. If we want to silence or

stop these ripples, then we cannot put our hand in the lake

and try to smooth out the ripples. This will only cause more

ripples. This is what we end up doing when we try to still

our minds.

We try to control or still our minds by trying to destroy and

suppress thoughts. We can never be successful in this way. If

we just sit and watch the lake and ensure that there are no

more pebbles being thrown, then we have a chance at

stilling the ripples in the lake. If we just relax and watch

our mind with complete awareness, then no new thoughts

will be created.

In India we say that God has three roles. The three roles

are that of a creator, sustainer and destroyer. Brahma is

called as the creator or God of creation. Vishnu is known as

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the sustainer or the God of maintenance. Siva is called as

the destroyer or the God of destruction.

When we stop performing these three roles of creation,

sustenance and destruction, with respect to our thoughts,

when we transcend all these three, we become Parabrahma.

When there are no new thoughts being created, sustained or

destroyed, then the mind is absolutely still.

There is a beautiful story described in the Bhagavatam:

The deva (demigods) oppressed by the asura (demons),

appealed to Lord Vishnu for help. According to his

directions, the deva were to churn the ocean of milk with

MahaMeru mountain as the staff and using Vasuki the

serpent as the rope.

During the churning, many products emerged out of the

ocean of milk: an elephant, a horse, a divine chariot and

many such wonderful things. Then, a deadly poison emerged

that threatened to take the lives of everyone. Siva came to

the rescue of everyone and took the poison. He drank the

poison but He did not completely take it in; He just held it

in His throat. That is why He is referred to as neelakanta,

the one with a blue throat.

This is actually a metaphysical representation. Life is like the

churning of the ocean of milk where we are churned, pulled

by desires and fear. We are pulled towards the desires and

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away from fear. There are various products that emerge out

of the churning, out of the decisions and choices we make

in life.

Some of these products appear pleasing while some others

appear dangerous like the poison. When you can be without

taking in the poison nor throwing it out, means without

running towards the desires nor running away from the fear,

you become Siva, you can live life blissfully, irrespective of

what comes your way.

124


ªÉjÉÉä{É®ú ÉiÉä ÊSÉkÉÆ ÊxÉ¯ûrÆù ªÉÉäMÉºÉä ÉªÉÉ*

ªÉjÉ SÉè ÉÉi¨ÉxÉÉ%%i¨ÉÉxÉÆ {É¶ªÉzÉÉi¨ÉÊxÉ iÉÖ¹ªÉÊiÉ**6.20**

yatro uparamate chittam niruddham yoga sevaya

yatra cha eva atmana atmanam pashyan atmani tushyati (6.20)

yatra: there; uparamate: quietened; chittam: mind; niruddham:

stop; yoga: yoga; sevaya: work; yatra: there; cha: and; eva:

certainly; atmana: Self; atmanam: by the Self; pashyan: see;

atmani: in the Self; tushyati: satisfied

In yoga, the mind becomes quiet and the Self is satisfied by

the Self in the Self.

125


ºÉÖJÉ¨ÉÉiªÉÎxiÉEÆò ªÉkÉnÂùù¤ÉÖÊrùOÉÉÁ¨ÉiÉÒÎxpùªÉ¨ÉÂ*

´ÉäÊkÉ ªÉjÉ xÉ SÉè ÉÉªÉÆ ÎºlÉiÉ¶SÉ±ÉÊiÉ iÉk´ÉiÉ&**6.21**

sukkham atyantikam yat tad buddhi grahyam atindriyam

vetti yatra na cha eva ayam sthitash chalati tattvataha (6.21)

sukkham: happiness; atyantikam: supreme; yat: which; tad:

that; buddhi: intelligence; grahyam: grasped; atindriyam: beyond

the senses; vetti: know; yatra: where; na: not; cha: and; eva:

certainly; ayam: he; sthitah: situated; chalati: moves; tattvataha:

truth

Supreme bliss is grasped by intelligence transcending the

senses. The person who knows this is based in reality.

126


ªÉÆ ±Éù¤Év´ÉÉ SÉÉ{É®Æú ±ÉÉ¦ÉÆ ¨ÉxªÉiÉä xÉÉÊvÉEÆò iÉiÉ&*

ªÉÎº¨ÉÎxºlÉiÉÉä xÉ nÖù&JÉäxÉ MÉÖ ûhÉÉÊ{É Ê´ÉSÉÉ±ªÉiÉä**6.22**

yam labdhva cha aparam labham manyate na adhikam tataha

yasmin sthito na dukkhen guruna api vichalyate (6.22)

yam: that which; labdhva: by attaining; cha: and; aparam: any

other; labham: gain; manyate: considers; na: not; adhikam:

more; tataha: than that; yasmin: in which; sthitah: situated;

na: not; dukkhen: by misery; guruna api: though difficult;

vichalyate: becomes shaken

By attaining that Supreme, one does not consider any other

gain as being greater. By being situated in the Supreme, one

is not shaken by the greatest of misery.

127


iÉÆ Ê´ÉtÉnÂù nÖù&JÉºÉÆªÉÉäMÉÊ´ÉªÉÉäMÉÆ ªÉÉäMÉºÉÆÊYÉiÉ¨ÉÂ*

ºÉ ÊxÉ¶SÉªÉäxÉ ªÉÉäCiÉ´ªÉÉä ªÉÉäMÉÉä%ÊxÉÌ´ÉhhÉSÉäiÉºÉÉ**6.23**

tam vidyad dukkha sanyoga viyogam yoga sanyitam

sa nishchayen yoktavyo yogo anirvinna chetasa (6.23)

tam: that; vidyad: know; dukkha: misery; samyoga: contact;

viyogam: removal; yoga: yoga; sanyitam: situated; sa: he;

nishchayen: with determination; yoktavyah: practiced; yogah;

yoga; anirvinna chetasa: without deviating

When yoga is practiced with determination without

deviating, the misery by contact with material senses is

removed.

128


Here, Krishna talks about two important things: practice with

determination and practice without deviating from the

prescribed way. Both are key elements to experience yoga.

It is easy to fall into inertia, into tamas after a few days of

practice and give up. You fall back to your old ways and give

up. Your mind has been programmed since years with your

old routine. Naturally, your mind will draw you to the old

ways. This is where the determination is needed. The

determination driven by the curiosity and the quest to see

and experience the Truth is what will give you the energy to

practice yoga.

The other important element is practice without deviating

from the prescribed way. We are re-introducing, re-presenting

yoga in the form of Nithya Yoga, the yoga of eternity. I can

say re-presenting because it is a new expression or teaching

method. The method has evolved but the system, the Truth

itself is the same.

The original system is by the great Master Patanjali; it is so

complete we can’t add even a single word to the sutra, the

techniques. It is the experience of the truth; so that cannot

evolve, that cannot be developed. Truth cannot be

developed; only lies can be developed. The teaching method

can be evolved to suit the current minds but the system itself

cannot.

129


Krishna emphasizes here that yoga should be practiced as in

the prescribed system. All the eight parts of yoga need to be

practiced and not as eight steps as is being interpreted today.

I often say that even one part of one part of Ashtanga Yoga

will take many life times to achieve. Satya, truth, is a part of

Yama, the first of the eight steps. If you consistently practice

satya alone, you will reach samadhi, the state of liberation or

enlightenment.

The problem is that it is only at the enlightened state that

one truly becomes truthful. One’s thoughts, words and

actions become pure and truthful only when one is

enlightened. This is what Krishna means when He says, ‘Self

is satisfied by the Self in the Self.’ All of this has to happen

together, not part by part. When one aspect is fulfilled, all

others too become fulfilled.

This is the state of purna, complete fulfillment. Nothing can

be taken from it, nothing can be added to it which would

make any difference to that state of completeness. No joy

can make it more blissful, no sorrow or misery can detract

from its bliss. One becomes centered in bliss When one is

centered in bliss, it is forever.

These days, yoga is no longer a spiritual quest; it is merely

commercial exploitation. It is a fashion statement, a fashion

accessory. You need to be able to say, I too do yoga. I believe

in many parts of USA, cosmetic surgery is a must to be

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socially accepted and recognized. Similarly, in some other

parts being a student of yoga possibly becomes a necessary

prequalification to social acceptability.

So, you have hot yoga, very hot yoga, temperate yoga, cold

yoga, very cold yoga and so on. I saw sometime ago a

documentary by some professors from Harvard on Tibetan

Buddhist monks being able to raise their body temperatures

so much that the wet clothes they were wearing dried by

increased body temperatures. These monks were sitting in

the open, in the harsh Tibetan winter of minus zero

temperatures!

Based on this, some one might develop a very cold, sub zero,

Tibetan yoga!

But all these do not lead you anywhere to the truth of what

Krishna says. It is good business for those who conduct these

programs; that is all. Very little can be gained by physical

postures and breathing exercises that would help you

spiritually. In the short term and if done carefully, these may

provide some physical health improvement. Unregulated

breathing exercises and physical contortions can actually do

more harm than good.

Krishna talks about moving into reality, transcending the

senses and the mind. The way yoga is taught and practiced

in many places, one is moved away from reality into a fantasy

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world, to fulfill one’s speculative needs. The senses and mind

wander unbridled. Emotionally one gets disturbed. I do not

know what all these teachings should be called, but they

certainly are not Yoga.

132


ºÉRÂóEò±{É|É¦É´ÉÉxEòÉ¨ÉÉÆºiªÉCi´ÉÉ ºÉ´ÉÉÇxÉ¶Éä¹ÉiÉ&*

¨ÉxÉºÉè ÉäÎxpùªÉOÉÉ¨ÉÆ Ê´ÉÊxÉªÉ¨ªÉ ºÉ¨ÉxiÉiÉ&**6.24**

sankalpa prabhavan kamams tyaktva sarvan ashetaha

manas eva indriya gramam viniyamya samantataha (6.24)

sankalpa: thought; prabhavan: born of; kama: desires; tvaktva:

give up; sarvan: all; ashetaha: completely; manas: mind; eva:

certainly; indriya gramam: all senses; viniyamya: regulating;

samantataha: from all sides

Giving up completely all the fantasies born of the mind, one

can regulate all the senses from all the sides by the mind.

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We cannot suppress desires because they will surface with

more intensity. Expression of the desires is not the solution

either because as you must have experienced in your own

lives, the desire may be satisfied momentarily by expressing or

fulfilling it but soon after, the desire rises again.

We need to instead understand what is happening and how

it is happening.

A small story:

Buddha had ten thousand disciples whom he used to address

every morning. One day, he brought a tightly knotted rope

with him and placed it before them and asked, ‘Can

someone untie this rope?’

Many disciples came and they tried pushing and pulling at

the rope but the knot became tighter.

One disciple then came up, he looked at the knot for a

while and then undid the knot.

You need to look at the knot and see how it has been

created, how the knot has happened. Once you do that, you

just have to simply reverse the process of creating the knot

and you have untied it.

Instead of doing this, if you simply pull and push, you will

never be able to untie the knot, it will only become tighter.

The way out of the mind is also through the mind and not

by avoiding it.

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Awareness is the key through which all our emotions, which

basically originate from greed and fear, can be handled.

Take fear for example. What do we do when we feel afraid

of something? It could be anything like fear of insects or fear

of darkness or fear of heights, anything. The moment we are

faced with the object of fear, we try to escape.

Have you tried facing the fear? The next time you are

afraid, try this. Instead of running away, just try looking at

the fear consciously with full awareness. Do not try to

suppress it or run away from it. I tell you, when you look at

the fear with awareness, you will see that the fear does not

exist as you thought it existed.

It simply does not exist because fear is born out of ignorance,

because something is not known to you. Some aspect of the

object of fear you have not seen completely and you have

fantasized, imagined about how that could be and how it

could affect you.

When you bring the light of knowledge on the fear, the

ignorance is simply removed and you simply get the courage

to see the object as it is because there is nothing hidden

and hence, your mind cannot fantasize about the unknown.

A real incident:

In one of our discussions, one day, a girl jumped up when

she saw a spider. I asked her why she was afraid of the

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spider. She replied she didn’t know exactly why but she was

always afraid of spiders since childhood.

I told her to meditate on the spider every time she saw one.

She followed this and every time she saw one, she looked at

it with awareness and concentration. Slowly, she started

wondering why she was scared of it after all and simply her

fear of spiders dropped on its own.

The same applies to greed as well. Why do we feel always

that we need more? Hardly has one desire been fulfilled

than we start running behind the next. We are so tuned to

running behind ‘What next?’, ‘What next?’ Have you stopped

to think what for you are running? After a desire that you

were running behind is fulfilled, have you stopped to think

whether you have achieved what for you were running

behind the desire? Have you stopped to enjoy what you just

fulfilled?

Even if you had done this after fulfilling one desire, if you

had just contemplated in sincerity, by now, you would have

got out of the control of this vicious cycle of desires.

Existence can fulfill all your needs, but it cannot fulfill even

a single want. Because your wants are nothing but the

desires you have borrowed from others looking at them or the

desires which you want to fulfill because society makes you

feel that way.

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There is no end to this greed because the origin of this

greed is from the fantasies created by your mind and they are

just that, fantasies! When one fantasy gets fulfilled, the mind

creates one more and you start running behind that.

Can you ever drink water from a mirage? Running behind

the fantasies created by the mind is just like running behind

the mirage or running behind the horizon. You can never

achieve bliss by running behind these fantasies because these

fantasies have no existence in reality.

137


¶ÉxÉè& ¶ÉxÉè û{É®ú ÉänÂù ù¤ÉÖnÂùvªÉÉ vÉÞÊiÉMÉÞ½þÒiÉªÉÉ*

+Éi¨ÉºÉÆºlÉÆ ¨ÉxÉ& EÞòi´ÉÉ xÉ ÊEòÎ\SÉnùÊ{É ÊSÉxiÉªÉäiÉÂ**6.25**

shanaiha shanair uparamed buddhya dhriti grihitaya

atma samstham manaha krutva na kinchid api chintayet (6.25)

shanaiha: gradually; shanaih: step by step; uparamed: hold;

buddhya: by intelligence; dhriti grihitaya: held by conviction;

atma: Self; samstham: established; manaha: mind; krutva:

doing; na: not; kinchit: other; api: also; chintayet: thinking of

Gradually, step by step, one should become established in the

Self, held by the conviction of intelligence, with the mind

not thinking of anything else.

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Here Krishna says that we need conviction and intelligence

to be established in the Self. Why does He talk about

conviction? Understand that intelligence cannot happen

without a strong conviction, a strong intellectual base.

That is why our Eastern rishi have given us the treasure of

the Sastra, the knowledge base. Our Vedic seers, rishi have

created sastra, scriptures which will give the intellectual

understanding. Logically, you will be clear of what is the

path, what is the goal, what for we need spirituality. All

these questions are answered logically.

All these major questions are answered intellectually in the

sastra. The conclusions are given to you. We need to

understand a few things about the sastra. Sastra is a scripture

which completely takes away all your doubts.

‘Samsaya rakshasa nasana hastram’. Samsaya is a rakshasa;

please understand samsaya is a rakshasa, doubt is a devil.

Once a doubt enters your mind, till you clear it, you can’t

sleep, you can’t rest.

Sastra help you get rid of these doubts intellectually. One

thing you should understand about intellectual clarity is that

unless you have a complete intellectual clarity, even if you

believe, your belief will be pseudo. Please be very clear: your

belief will be pseudo belief.

Anybody can shake your faith. Your faith will not have a

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strong base. Your faith is almost like a building without

foundation. If you build without a foundation, what will

happen to the building? The same thing will happen to you if

you don’t have the base of sastra.

Somebody asked Vivekananda, ‘What is the importance of

Veda and why should we study the sastra?’ Vivekananda says,

‘If you study the sastra, all your faith, all your sincerity will

become so strong nobody can shake your faith and sincerity.’

Otherwise, any fool can tell you that what you are doing is

superstitious and you will start thinking about it, you will

start questioning yourself, ‘Am I really doing superstitious

things? What am I doing?’ You will start having doubts about

yourself. You don’t believe your faith.

Please be very clear, you don’t believe your belief. Understand

that you don’t believe your belief. You may think you believe

something. You may think you have faith, but your faith or

belief is not deep enough. It will not take you anywhere

unless you have the foundation of intellectual conviction.

Unless you have the deep foundation of sastra, you will not

be able to believe anything.

Our emotions are not deep; our faith is not deep because we

don’t have the intellectual conviction. A man who doesn’t

have the intellectual conviction and has just faith, his faith

can be shaken by anybody.

140


Sastra, the intellectual understanding, gives a base so that all

your convictions, all your faith, all your belief can enter into

your being and start working. Sastra, the scriptures, give you

that intellectual clarity, that intellectual understanding.

If you see all the great devotees, all the great bhakta:

Chaitanya, Ramanuja, Madhva, all these great bhakta had a

very strong intellectual base. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a

great nayaika philosopher; he was a great philosopher of logic.

Once you reach the height, the peaks of logic, only then you

fall in the valley of love. Only then you are qualified to fall

in love. Unless you reach the heights of logic, you are not

qualified to fall in the valley of love, the valley of bhakti.

One more thing: there are different ways to learn, to develop

the conviction. We can learn from our experiences as well as

from others’ experiences.

For example, when you touch the flame of a candle, you

learn that it burns. When you touch a gas stove, you learn

again that fire burns. One by one, you can experience and

learn that all fires burn. Or when you touch one fire,

immediately you can learn that all fires will burn. Coming to

a conclusion and a clear understanding that all fires will

burn is intelligence.

We need a strong conviction; only then we can stay on the

path without faltering. When we don’t understand we don’t

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carry a strong conviction in us to do anything. If we do

anything with the knowledge, wisdom, with the science of

the whole action, then the activity becomes a meditation

supported by a strong conviction.

When the science is lost and only the activity remains, it

becomes a ritual. When the juice of wisdom is not in the

activity, then it becomes a ritual. You become a religious nut

when the juice of the wisdom is not there. When we add

the juice of wisdom, you become a spiritual fruit. When we

do the act without knowing the science we make that as a

ritual. We need to add ‘spirit’ to the ‘ritual’ and it becomes

spirituality.

We can start with simple things. Try to infuse awareness into

simple actions in your everyday life like eating, having bath,

driving. Gradually, when the awareness increases into more

and more actions, into more and more moments of your life,

you can see that the awareness results in bliss because that is

your true nature. All your other emotions exist only because

of your ignorance. Bring in the light of awareness into

everything that you do.

This state of complete awareness which can be practiced in

every one of our daily activities comes out a deep internal

conviction. It is a conviction arising out of our innate

internal intelligence that we must return to our true nature;

our true nature which is one of divinity.

142


ªÉiÉÉä ªÉiÉÉä ÊxÉ¶SÉ®úÊiÉ ¨ÉxÉ¶SÉ\SÉ±É¨ÉÎºlÉ®ú ÉÂ*

iÉiÉºiÉiÉÉä ÊxÉªÉ¨ªÉèiÉnùÉi¨ÉxªÉä É ´É¶ÉÆ xÉªÉäiÉÂ**6.26**

yato yato nischarati manash chanchalam asthiram

tatastato niyamya etad atmanyeva vasham nayet (6.26)

yatah yatah: wherever; nishcharati: becomes agitated; manah:

mind; chanchalam: moving; asthiram: not steady; tatah tatah:

there; niyamya: control; etad: this; atmani: in the Self; eva:

certainly; vasham: under control; nayet: must bring under

From wherever the mind becomes agitated due to its

wandering and unsteady nature, from there, one must

certainly bring it under the control of the Self.

143


Here, Krishna emphasizes on an important spiritual quality,

perseverance. In the previous sloka, He spoke about

conviction. Now, He talks about persevering with that

conviction.

What happens most of the time to most of us is that when

we realize we need to change, we try a couple of times and

then give up thinking we cannot do it. Naturally, when we

have been living for years together in a certain way that

habit becomes embedded in our mind. We expect to change

a mental setup that we have created and solidified over years

to be broken and restructured in a few attempts, if not

instantly. How is this possible? We need to be more patient

and persevere in our efforts.

What is the problem if you fail at times? Why don’t you look

at the positive side that you succeeded a few times?

Naturally, when you start trying, you will be aware and

successful a few times and you will be unaware a few other

times. Why do you want to count the failures and feel

depressed? You can also look at the successes and feel

inspired, right?

Once the conviction is there, what can stop us from breaking

free of the old mental setup? Nothing except our own mind.

The mind is like a faithful servant; it reproduces whatever

has been fed to it. All along, you have been feeding it

negative memories of failure and you have been storing all

144


the past memories related to failure. What will the mind

reproduce? It will recollect and present the same instances of

failure.

When we want to measure the strength of a chain, we

measure the strength of the weakest link in that chain.

Based on the strength of that link, we know the strength of

the entire chain. But, we cannot apply the same logic to

measure ourselves.

We measure our lives based on our weakest moments. We

cannot do what we did with the chain. When we measure

the strength of our life, we use the same logic and measure

it based on our weakest moments and make a big mistake.

When we measure ourselves we do so based on our failures,

our low energy moments, our low energy moods and all the

wrong steps that we have taken. Why can’t we give credit to

ourselves for the strong moments, for the successful moments?

This is because we have been conditioned by society to

consider ourselves as weak beings. We have been taught to

feel we are not complete, we have been taught to feel guilty

of ourselves. The more we remember the negative decisions

or mistakes, the more guilt we create for ourselves. Does that

help us in any way? No! It only creates low energy. Just

decide you will not be trapped in this cycle of guilt and

desires.

145


Measure yourself against your strongest moments, greatest

moments; moments when you had displayed extraordinary

awareness, courage, compassion, love and such other divine

qualities in you. These are the moments when you had truly

come into your own. You had shown to yourself what you

could achieve, if you tried. This you can do each and every

time.

A human being is the sum of his greatest moments. He is not

a mechanical device that fails based on its faults. He is a

spiritual being who thrives on his strengths.

One more thing you should understand: you attract like

incidents in your life. Like attracts like, the energy of one

frequency attracts the similar frequency. When you are in

anger, the low energy attracts similar low energy. Pain attracts

pain, joy attracts joy.

Bliss attracts fortune. If we are joyful, we will create joyful

people around us. We will create a beautiful community

around us. We will create a blissful group around us. If we

are in suffering and if we have some depression, then

naturally we will attract only that type of people around us.

It is for us to decide.

For example, when we tune our television to the CNN

channel we see the programs on that channel. When we

tune the television to some other channel, then we see some

146


other programs. In the same way, if we tune our mind to the

positive attitude and to the positive things we will start

attracting positive situations and incidents and people. We

will start meeting blissful friends and start creating blissful

situations. We will start creating a blissful life.

Persevere in your efforts to change the attitude and you can

see the results in front of your very eyes. Failures are merely

tests to verify your mettle. Irrespective of however many times

you may fail, believe with complete faith in that inner

strength that you possess and you shall succeed.

147


|É¶ÉÉxiÉ¨ÉxÉºÉÆ ÁäxÉÆ ªÉÉäÊMÉxÉÆ ºÉÖJÉ¨ÉÖkÉ¨É¨ÉÂ*

={ÉèÊiÉ ¶ÉÉxiÉ®úVÉºÉÆ ¥ÉÀ¦ÉÚiÉ¨ÉEò±¨É¹É¨ÉÂ**6.27**

prashanta manasam hyonam yoginam sukkham uttamam

upaiti shanta rajasam brahma bhutam akalmasham (6.27)

prashanta: peaceful; manasam: mind; hi: certainly; enam: this;

yoginam: yogi; sukkham: happiness; uttamam: highest; upaiti:

attains; shanta rajasam: passion pacified; brahma bhutam:

liberated by the Supreme; akalmasham: free from sins

The yogi whose mind is peaceful attains the highest

happiness; his passion is pacified and he is free from sins as

he is liberated by the Supreme.

148


Krishna says that the true yogi reaches the state of ultimate

happiness which is the state of eternal bliss or divine

consciousness by his identification with the Absolute.

In this sloka, Krishna is talking about passion and sins.

Passion is nothing but a deep attachment to something for

the pleasure that it gives. Usually, we associate passion, sin

and all these terms to deeds we classify as right and wrong.

But, here, Krishna does not talk about sin in the way society

teaches us. It is not morality that He is talking about.

I tell you, there is no sin except the sin of connecting

thoughts and thinking that we are logical. That is the

original sin. Not understanding that thoughts are

independent and disconnected is the original sin.

You don’t commit sin and go to hell. You commit sin because

you are in hell! When you are in ignorance, when you are

unaware, you commit sin because you are not even aware of

what you are doing. So, the key is to be aware every

moment. The solution is not to condemn ourselves as sinners

and expect to be redeemed by some external force.

It is you who choose everything in your life, how you want to

live. But, since you are not aware in this process, you call it

as fate. You are the one who does the actions, but you don’t

want to accept that when you get the results.

149


A small story:

A man went to a restaurant and ordered various items. He

had a hearty meal and was ready to walk out. The waiter

came rushing to his table to hand him the bill.

The man was surprised and asked the waiter, ‘But I didn’t

order for the bill!’

Can you expect to eat at the restaurant and not pay the bill?

Naturally, when you eat, the bill will also come. But, you

want only the food and not the bill. Just like that, you

choose to do what you want but do not want to take the

results.

Infuse awareness into your actions and automatically, the very

awareness will take care that you do the right things. You

don’t need to depend on society and morality to teach you

what to do.

I tell you, conscience is a very poor substitute for

consciousness. Live according to your intelligence and

awareness and you don’t have to depend on others to figure

out what to do and how to do. If you depend on others even

after becoming an adult, it only means you have not matured.

Anything done out of conscience can only be superficial; it

does not have the conviction of experience to back it. That

is why it is never done whole-heartedly because your energy,

150


your intelligence is not behind the action. It may have been

somebody else’s experience but you have not experienced it

fully.

Once a man came and asked me, ‘Master, I know I should

do certain things but I am not able to do them when I need

to. For example, the other day, I was traveling in a bus and

an old man got into the bus. I know I should get up and

offer my seat to him. But, I started thinking that I myself

have such a long way to go and if I get up, I will feel tired

after some time. I was just thinking like this and couldn’t get

up and give the seat to the old man and later felt guilty

about it.’

I told the man, it is because you have not had the deep

experience of joy when you give your seat to another person.

The joy has not become your experience. If you had given

your seat before, you gave half-heartedly. Now, try doing the

same act with the attitude of experimentation, ‘Let me try

this; let us see how it feels.’ Try doing as an experiment,

with the whole involvement, not with the greed of earning a

good name or feeling good about yourself. Just do the action

with the same curiosity as a child.

Have you seen a child doing anything, say looking at a

flower? It will look at it not just with the eyes, but its whole

body will be involved. The eyes will look at the flower with

awe and curiosity. Its hands will feel the flower, the nose will

enjoy the smell of the flower. How a child does anything

151


completely, how it is curious about life, how its whole body is

completely involved in any action, same way try to look at

life and all that you do in life.

You have not experienced the joy of serving someone whole-

heartedly. On the other hand, if you are a smoker, do you

need somebody to convince you to smoke? No! The smoking

has become your experience. That is why you don’t need to

depend on somebody else to convince you about it.

All these things follow each other: when you are in bliss or

the highest happiness, you can never commit any sin because

you are aware and conscious and you cannot be caught in

passion or rajas. When you are in no-mind state, you are in

bliss and you are not caught in passion or sin which are

products of the mind.

When the mind subsides, every action will be guided by the

Divine hand which is orchestrating every single event in the

whole universe.

What does it mean to be freed from all past sinful reactions?

Our past reactions are nothing but our past memories along

with the associated emotions deeply inscribed in our

unconscious zone.

One thing to understand: reaction is different from response.

A reaction to anything is always due to our past memories. If

our action is based on any past events, concepts, notions and

152


memories then we are reacting to an event or incident or a

person.

You see, there are two things: collecting arguments and

forming a judgment and the second is already making a

judgment and then collecting arguments to support it. The

second is what we do most of the time.

You can see in your own life how many times this has

happened and you may not even have noticed. Your son

comes late from college one day and you have already formed

a judgment as to why he could be late, maybe he is in bad

company or he has gone to some movie, whatever. When he

comes back, you are ready with your judgment based on some

incident in the past and you are not even open mentally to

listen to his reason. Maybe, he stayed back to study in the

library but you are not ready to accept this. You have

already formed your judgment.

Whenever we hold to any of the past incidents or emotions,

then our actions are bound to be impacted by these

engraved memories or samskara.

If our action is not based on the past but from a spontaneous

decision seeing the present situation, then we are responding

to the event or incident or person. When are in bliss, our

actions will be only a response and not based on these past

samskara which Krishna calls as past sinful reactions.

153


Have the courage to make decisions without referring to

these past incidents because every single incident and every

single moment is a brand new one. How can you compare

what is happening now with what happened before? The

situation is different, the person as well as you are different.

Every moment, each one of us is dying and being born again;

we are changing. Our intelligence is being constantly

updated. How can you analyze the present situation through

the lens of the past then? Give up all regrets and guilt you

may have about the past and immerse yourself in the present

moment.

154


ªÉÖ\VÉzÉä ÉÆ ºÉnùÉ%%i¨ÉÉxÉÆ ªÉÉäMÉÒ Ê´ÉMÉiÉEò±¨É¹É&*

ºÉÖJÉäxÉ ¥ÉÀºÉÆº{É¶ÉÇ ÉiªÉxiÉÆ ºÉÖJÉ¨É¶xÉÖiÉä**6.28**

yunjan evam sada atmanam yogi vigata kalmashaha

sukkhena brahma sansparsham atyantam sukkham ashnute(6.28)

yunjan: being engaged; evam: and; sada: always; atmanam:

Self; yogi: yogi; vigata: free from; kalmashaha: material

contamination; sukkhena: in happiness; brahma samsparsham:

in touch with the Supreme; atyantam: highest; sukkham:

happiness; ashnute: attains

The yogi, always engaged in the Self and free from material

contamination, is in touch with the Supreme and attains the

highest happiness.

155


ºÉ´ÉÇ¦ÉÚiÉºlÉ¨ÉÉi¨ÉÉxÉÆ ºÉ´ÉÇ¦ÉÚiÉÉÊxÉ SÉÉi¨ÉÊxÉ*

<ÇIÉiÉä ªÉÉäMÉªÉÖCiÉÉi¨ÉÉ ºÉ´ÉÇjÉ ºÉ¨Énù¶ÉÇxÉ&**6.29**

sarva bhutastham atmanam sarva bhutani cha atmani

ikshate yoga yukta atma sarvatra sama darshanaha (6.29)

sarva: all; bhuta: living beings; stham: situated; atmanam:

Supreme; sarva: all; bhutani: living beings; cha: and; atmani: in

the Supreme; ikshate: sees; yoga: yoga; yukta: engaged; atma:

Self; sarvatra: everywhere; sama: equal; darshanaha: seeing

The yogi sees the Supreme situated in all beings and also all

beings situated in the Supreme. One engaged in the Self sees

the Supreme everywhere.

156


Here, Krishna says that the realized person sees the Supreme

in everyone and everything. He sees everything situated in

the Supreme and all beings situated in the Supreme. The

yogi is in touch with the Higher Self and is in bliss.

When you experience the Truth, you see everything in you

and you in everything. In fact, in my first spiritual experience

at the age of twelve, this is what I saw clearly.

When I was twelve, I was playing with this technique of just

watching where thoughts came from. I didn’t even realize it

was a meditation back then.

One day, on the foothills of Arunachala hills, in my home

town of Tiruvannamalai in South India, I was sitting on this

one rock, just repeating this technique that I had been

practicing for two years.

Suddenly, something happened; something opened. I felt as if

I was being pulled inside. Suddenly, I could see 360 degrees

in all directions. My eyes were closed but I could see

everything in front of me and behind me.

Not just that, I felt that whatever I was seeing was all me. I

could see myself in everything, in the trees, in the rocks, in

the ground, in the hills, everything. I could see clearly

everything was a part of me and I was a part of everything.

An enlightened person sees no difference between himself

and the rest of the universe. He is one with the universe.

157


His boundary does not end where his physical body ends. In

fact, now with Kirlian photography, we can even check the

auric body. For ordinary people, the aura would be just

surrounding the physical body but when you are one with the

universe, the aura extends infinitely.

The Vishwarupa darshan that Krishna gives Arjuna is the

same glimpse of the Truth where Arjuna sees that he is one

with the universe.

Through quantum physics studies, the scientific community

has come to the conclusion that everything in the universe is

energy. In fact, this is the first line in the Upanishads which

were given by our Vedic seers thousands of years ago. The

very first line of the Isa vasya Upanishad says, ‘Isa vasyam

idam sarvam’, all that exists is energy.

All our minds are not individually separated pieces of the

universe. They are all one and the same. All our minds are

interlinked. Not only interlinked, they directly affect each

other. This is what I call Collective Consciousness.

In the ultimate way, at the spiritual level, the moment you

understand that you are deeply connected, totally connected,

intensely connected to the whole group, to the whole

universe, not

only do you start experiencing the bliss, but you really start

living, you start opening many dimensions of your being.

158


Right now you are stressed out and disturbed continuously

because you think of yourself as an individual ego. If you

disappear into this Collective Consciousness, you will

experience so many dimensions, so many possibilities, you

cannot imagine!

When you see a Master, you can understand how

encompassing he is. He never excludes anything or anyone.

He sees no imperfections in anyone. He is just pure love,

that’s all. And pure love sees no imperfections.

When you see every human being as a part of God, that is

real worship. It is easy to worship God in the temple. The

real worship is seeing everything as God, seeing your

neighbor as God. Existence is pure love.

One more thing: society is always against pure love. Deep

inside, society is actually against Existence or God. The best

way not to follow anything is to start worshipping it. Society

escapes in the name of worship.

Society will never approve of you if you were to let go and

love every plant and animal with endless love. It will tell you

that you are mad. It will approve only of societal love, love

that is governed by give and take, love that comes in with a

reason. But, I tell you, keep on loving with all your heart,

see Existence in everything.

159


The root of God is love. The root of God lies in seeing Him

in everything. People are afraid to go to the roots and so they

delude themselves in superficial layers. They don’t have the

courage to explore beyond a certain point in anything in life.

Have the courage to go deep inside and love. We will start

feeling the common thread of Existence in all that we see.

We will understand that all that we see are illusory

happenings held together by the real thread that is Existence.

Automatically we will start loving everything in the same way

without any trouble because we will see only Existence in

everyone and everything. Each and every atom on this earth

is unique, is divine, is a part of Existence.

160


ªÉÉä ¨ÉÉÆ {É¶ªÉÊiÉ ºÉ´ÉÇjÉ ºÉ´ÉÈ SÉ ¨ÉÊªÉ {É¶ªÉÊiÉ*

iÉºªÉÉ½Æþ xÉ |ÉhÉ¶ªÉÉÊ¨É ºÉ SÉ ¨Éä xÉ |ÉhÉ¶ªÉÊiÉ**6.30**

yo mam pashyati sarvatra sarvam cha mayi pashyati

tasya aham na pranashyami sa cha me na pranashyati (6.30)

yah: who; mam: Me; pashyati: sees; sarvatra: everywhere;

sarvam: everything; cha: and; mayi: in Me; pashyati: sees;

tasya: for him; aham: I; na: not; pranashyami: lost; sa: he; cha:

and; me: Me; na: not; pranashyati: lost

For one who sees Me everywhere and who sees everything in

Me, for him I am never lost nor is he lost to Me.

161


Here, Krishna gives a promise. He says that for one who sees

Him in everything and who sees everything in Him, He is

always available.

What He means here is not that you should see the form of

Krishna with the flute and two peacock feathers in everyone.

Of course, the form is beautiful but do not get caught in the

form. The form is there one day and not there the next; it is

ephemeral. It is like this: if my finger is pointing in the

direction of the moon, look in the direction of the moon and

enjoy the beauty. Instead, if you catch my finger, you will

miss the moon!

What Krishna means by ‘Me’ is the Krishna energy, the

divine consciousness. See the Divine in everybody and

everything and automatically, you will relax. You will no

longer fight because you will see everything around you as a

part of the Divine, including yourself. What is there to fight

with and what for should you fight? Simply, you will relax.

Existence is waiting with open arms to engulf us, to dissolve

us into itself, but only if we are ready to let go. Just have the

courage to let go with an open heart. We will meet and

merge with it.

When we are ready to feel the embrace of Existence, we

rise into a higher plane, a plane of higher consciousness. We

enter into a space we never even knew existed. With

Existence we always fall in to rise.

162


My devotees ask me, how call we tell that you are the right

Master for us? I tell them simply: forget about any analysis,

any intellectual reasoning. If I am truly your Master, you can

never forget me. I shall be even in your dreams!

The relationship between a Master and a disciple is one of

pure love. When you are truly in love, you see the object of

love in everything you see around you. You are consumed by

that feeling. The Master fills every pore of your being.

You never need to ask, ‘Are you my Master?’ You just know!

163


ºÉ´ÉÇ¦ÉÚiÉÎºlÉiÉÆ ªÉÉä ¨ÉÉÆ ¦ÉVÉiªÉäEòi´É¨ÉÉÎºlÉiÉ&*ºÉ´ÉÇlÉÉ ´ÉiÉÇ ÉÉxÉÉä%Ê{É ºÉ ªÉÉäMÉÒ ¨ÉÊªÉ ´ÉiÉÇiÉä**6.31**

sarva bhuta sthitam yo mam bhajatye ekatvam asthitaha

sarvatha vartamano api sa yogi mayi vartate (6.31)

sarva: all; bhuta: beings; sthitam: situated; yah: who; mam:

Me; bhajati: worship; ekatvam: in oneness; asthitaha: situated;

sarvatha: in all respects; vartamanah: present; api: though; sa:

he; yogi: yogi; mayi: in Me; vartate: remains

He who is in oneness with Me in all respects, worships Me

situated in all beings and remains present in Me.

164


Here, Krishna is describing the state of the enlightened

person. An enlightened person can empathize with everyone.

A small story from the life of Vivekananda:

One night, Vivekananda woke up at 2am and awakened his

disciples. His disciples were anxious and wanted to know

what was happening. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a

lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a

natural calamity that was happening which was causing him

the pain.

The next day morning, the newspapers carried the news of a

terrible earthquake in Cuba that consumed many lives.

Vivekananda was sensitive to a calamity that happened in

some corner of the world, thousands of miles away. What

happened in Vivekananda is what we call empathy. It is not

sympathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all

capable of sympathy. When someone tells us their suffering,

we just confirm their suffering for them; this is sympathy.

When we sympathize, we affirm to them that their worries

are big; so we give them a subtle ego boost actually.

What an enlightened person or a Master feels is never

sympathy, it is empathy. Empathy is when we feel another’s

suffering in our own being. It is when a person does not have

to tell us his suffering, but we simply know because the

existential energy in us feels it. Masters are one with us

165


because they are one with Existence and we are a part of

Existence; only we see them as separate.

When we realize the oneness with the entire universe, we

experience a tremendous overflowing of love and compassion

for every being without discrimination because we realize that

everyone is a part of the same Whole.

That is why we can see that Masters are such an ocean of

infinite love and know only to give. They are Existence itself.

They shower without asking a question because they feel a

constant devotion towards the entire universe or life force or

Parabrahma Krishna. They are one with Existence and cannot

see anyone as a separate entity because there is no separateness.

It is only our senses, mind and logic which perceive

information and categorize them and analyze them to create

the separateness. As long as we use our logic, our collected

information, words and our little dictionaries to analyze the

information received through our senses, we will only be

excluding and judging bases on our limited opinions and pre-

conceived notions.

Existence or the universe is a living energy with infinite

potential and is simply beyond our logic. Only when we drop

our logic, mind and ego we can merge with Existence and

become whole and start seeing that everyone and everything

is an extension of the same life force with just different

expressions.

166


Just as the fingers on the hand and toes on the feet belong

to the same body, we will be able to see that everyone is a

part of the same Universal Energy. This is when the true

compassion and empathy and service towards everyone can

happen. Until then we will only be using our logic, mind, ego

and conditioning to serve others.

When we realize the oneness, we will express our

unconditional love and compassion towards everyone without

discrimination, because we know that all discrimination is

baseless and false. Our very walk and talk will start

radiating so much bliss that our very presence will start

healing others. We will become a blessing for planet earth.

We will become a blessing for the people who experience our

presence.

There are a few disciples who have internalized me so much,

imbibed me in them so much that they express me in

everything that they do. People who come to the ashram are

amazed to see these people who walk like me and talk like

me. Some people think that these disciples are doing it to

show off. No, they are so much in tune with me that they

reflect my body language in them. My presence is in them.

167


+Éi¨ÉÉè{É¨ªÉäxÉ ºÉ´ÉÇjÉ ºÉ¨ÉÆ {É¶ªÉÊiÉ ªÉÉä%VÉÖÇxÉ*ºÉÖJÉÆ ´ÉÉ ªÉÊnù ´ÉÉ nÖù&JÉÆ ºÉ& ªÉÉäMÉÒ {É®ú¨ÉÉä ¨ÉiÉ&**6.32**

atma aupamyena sarvatra samam pashyati yo arjuna

sukkham va yadi va dukkham saha yogi paramo mataha (6.32)

atma: self; aupamyena: by comparison; sarvatra: everywhere;

samam: equal; pashyati: see; yah: who; arjuna: Oh Arjuna;

sukkham: happiness; va: or yadi: if; va: or; dukkham: misery;

saha: such; yogi: yogi; paramah: supreme; mataha: opinion

One who can feel the happiness or misery of others equally

as he can feel his own happiness and misery is the supreme

yogi in My opinion, Oh Arjuna.

168


Krishna goes further to explain the state of an enlightened

person or a person who is one with divine consciousness. He

says that the enlightened person will feel equally the

happiness and pain of another person as he feels his own.

Such a person feels one with the whole world. For him,

everything is a part of him, so there is nothing else other

than his own self. His boundary does not end with the

boundary of his own physical body.

What does Krishna mean when He says that the enlightened

person feels happiness and distress equally in him and in

others? First, He said that the enlightened person is beyond

the opposites, the dualities, beyond the opposing emotions of

happiness and distress.

It is like this: say there are two trees in a forest. Now, if one

tree falls on the other, you can say that the tree on which

the other tree has fallen feels the impact, the weight or the

pain of a tree falling on it. Now, say the tree actually feels

the entire forest as a part of its own self. Can you say that it

will feel ‘another’ tree falling on it? When everything is a

part of its own self, where is the idea of ‘other’? When the

idea of ‘other’ itself disappears, then where is the pain? The

idea of pain is relative, in relation with the ‘other’.

The enlightened person is just immersed in enjoying the

Existence. There exist no separate identities or judgment

about right or wrong, happiness or misery. These terms and

concepts exist only as long as you operate from the mind.

169


A yogi in the state of super-consciousness will just watch

everything in Existence without judging or labeling. He will

be in a state of complete celebration of life. Existence is love.

It is only love and nothing else.

Yet, the compassion of the yogi, the Master, is such that he

feels the experiences that others undergo and he empathizes

with them, as we saw in the example of Vivekananda earlier.

The Master’s state of equanimity is not disturbed and yet he

feels the pain and joy of others.

This expression of Collective Consciousness is what Krishna

has described elsewhere as Vasudeva Kutumbaha. It means

that the world is your family and you should feel for the rest

of the world as you would for your immediate family. When

one exists in this state of consciousness, one is a true yogi.

170


+VÉÖÇxÉ =´ÉÉSÉªÉÉä%ªÉÆ ªÉÉäMÉºi´ÉªÉÉ |ÉÉäCiÉ& ºÉÉ¨ªÉäxÉ ¨ÉvÉÖºÉÚnùxÉ*

BiÉºªÉÉ½Æþ xÉ {É¶ªÉÉÊ¨É SÉ\SÉ±Éi´ÉÉiÉÂ ÎºlÉËiÉ ÎºlÉ®úÉ¨ÉÂ**6.33**

Arjuna uvacha

yo ayam yogas tvaya proktaha samyena madhusudana

etasya aham na pashyami chanchalatvat sthitim sthiram (6.33)

Arjuna uvacha: Arjuna said; yah: this; ayam: system; yogah:

yoga; tvaya: by You;. proktaha: said; samyena: generally;

madhusudana: O killer of Madhu; etasya: of this; aham: I; na:

not; pashyami: see; chanchalatvat: due to being restless; sthitim:

situation; sthiram: steady

Arjuna said: O Madhusudana, I am not able to see this

system of yoga as told by You in the situation of the mind

being restless and not steady.

171


SÉ\SÉ±ÉÆ Ê½þ ¨ÉxÉ& EÞò¹hÉ |É¨ÉÉÊlÉ ù¤É±É´ÉnÂùoùfø¨ÉÂ*

iÉºªÉÉ½Æþ ÊxÉOÉ½Æþ ¨ÉxªÉä ´ÉÉªÉÉäÊ®ú É ºÉÖnÖù¹Eò®ú ÉÂ**6.34**

chanchalam hi manaha krishna pramathi balavad drudham

tasya aham nigraham manye vayor iva sudushkaram (6.34)

chanchalam: wavering; hi: certainly; manaha: mind; krishna: O

Krishna; pramathi: agitating; balavad: strong; drudham: firm;

tasya: is; aham: I; nigraham: controlling; manye: think; vayoh:

of the wind; iva: like; sudushkaram: difficult

O Krishna, the wavering mind is agitating, strong and firm. I

think it is difficult to control the mind like it is difficult to

control the wind.

172


Arjuna introduces the word ‘difficult’ here. Be very clear: The

moment you categorize something as easy or difficult, you

have made it that way. People ask me, ‘Master, is

brahmacharya difficult?’ I tell you, it is neither easy nor

difficult. It is just a way of life. If you say it is easy, it

becomes little difficult!

For example, now I am sitting here. Can you say that this

sitting is easy or difficult? If I had arthritis, sitting would be

difficult. On the other hand, if I was standing for a long

time, sitting would be easy. This is just comparative reality.

In the same way, stilling the mind, yoga, is also a way of

being. When you complicate things by using words, you make

it difficult for yourself just for ego fulfillment. Understand

that the ego can be fulfilled only through difficult things.

Simple things cannot satisfy the ego.

After listening to Krishna about controlling the mind, Arjuna

expresses his doubts about being able to still the mind. We

have to understand here, he is talking for not only the other

people during his time, he is actually asking about problems

that will be faced by future generations. We all have this

question in our minds, this doubt in our minds.

Arjuna’s question is not just an individual’s question. His

question is the question faced by each and every one of us,

irrespective of our age, gender, social structure, culture.

173


People ask me, ‘Why is the Gita relevant even today?’

Because the questions faced by Arjuna are the same

questions that we face and the answers of Krishna are

relevant even today. The questions are the fundamental

quest of the individual and the answers are the eternal

Truth. The Truth is neither old nor new; it is eternal.

Krishna, the energy and His teachings are the timeless

Truths.

The doubt that Arjuna has raised is applicable even more to

the modern man. In the present age, there is so much of

competition, materialism and so much of exposure to fantasies

through the media. We have become more complex than our

forefathers because of this cerebral layer that has formed with

all the fantasies bombarding us from all directions.

The problem is we are not even ready to spend some time or

do simple, practical techniques in the inner world because

we are so caught up in the outer world driven by fear and

greed. We are in a constant rat race.

Arjuna cannot understand how to practice yoga given the

unsteady and wavering nature of the mind. Five thousand

years ago, even though there was no infiltration by the

television, magazines and media in terms of material pleasures

in the scale that we have now, Arjuna asks this doubt about

how to handle the mind.

174


Here, Arjuna is addressing Krishna with his concerns about

the mind being so strong and obstinate that it sometimes

overcomes the intelligence. We saw in the beginning of this

chapter how we make illogical decisions based on our

samskara or engraved memories. It is our unconscious zone

and our lack of awareness about this that causes the mind to

implement illogical decisions.

It is only when we understand why we make illogical

decisions that we can find ways to stop making these kind of

decisions. First and foremost thing is to accept that we have

a problem, the next is to understand how the problem is

created. That is what Arjuna does here. It is only then that

we can overcome the problem. If we ignore or run away from

the problem we can never resolve the problem.

So the first thing to accept is that our mind does flicker and

oscillate. Accepting and being aware is different from judging

whether it is easy or difficult to control the mind. We need to

then understand how it flickers or oscillates. For this we need

to watch the mind. This is meditation. The very act of

watching and being aware of the mind will take us beyond

the mind.

175


¸ÉÒ ¦ÉMÉ´ÉÉxÉÖ ÉÉSÉ

+ºÉÆ¶ÉªÉÆ ¨É½þÉù¤ÉÉ½þÉä ¨ÉxÉÉä nÖùÌxÉOÉ½Æþ SÉ±ÉÆ*

+¦ªÉÉºÉäxÉ iÉÖ EòÉèxiÉäªÉ ´Éè®úÉMªÉähÉ SÉ MÉÞÁiÉä**6.35**


asanshayam mahabaho mano durnigraham chalam

abhyasena tu kaunteya vairagyena cha guhyate (6.35)

Shri Bhagavan uvacha: the Lord said; asanshayam: without

doubt; mahabaho: O mighty-armed one; manah: mind;

durnigraham: difficult to control; chalam: wavering; abhyasena:

by practice; tu: but; kaunteya: O son of Kunti; vairagyena: by

detachment; cha: and; guhyate: can be controlled

The Lord said: O mighty-armed son of Kunti, it is

undoubtedly difficult to control the wavering mind but by

practice and detachment, it can be controlled.

176


Here, Krishna has to answer in the same plane that Arjuna

asks the question from. Arjuna says that the mind is

wavering and difficult to control, what to do? Just like a

thorn is used to remove a thorn, Krishna has to give a

technique here to Arjuna, he has to give something to the

mind which has created the problem, the idea that it is

difficult to control the mind.

So, Krishna has to give some techniques here: practice and

detachment. Now, if He tells Arjuna that this problem is not

a problem at all but a creation of his mind, Arjuna will not

understand. So, Krishna has to give a technique here for the

mind to play with.

Masters give meditation techniques so that you try all these

and ultimately simply realize you are bliss, meditation is a

natural state; there is nothing to be achieved. But, if I tell

you that right away, you will not believe; the mind cannot

believe something so simple. You will create all kinds of

contradictions why it cannot be so simple.

So, Krishna has to give the solution for the questioning

mind: He emphasizes on perseverance, practice, tapas. Don’t

think tapas is going away from home, going to Himalayas and

doing penance, fasting and all those things. Tapas is

persevering in the conviction till you experience the Truth.

Krishna also gives the root of the problem of controlling the

mind and the technique to solve it: detachment. Here we

177


need to understand the word ‘detachment’. Whether we say

ego or mind, it is just the collection of thoughts and

thoughts can exist only in relation to our identity and about

the past or the future.

In the present, you cannot have thoughts because the

moment you think, that very moment, the present has slipped

into the past. The present is constantly slipping into the

past. The mind moves only because it is attached to the past

or the future.

The mind is constantly driven by fear and greed of our

identity. We fear either losing the carefully constructed

image or identity we have created for ourselves in our eyes

or the image we have created of ourselves in the eyes of

society. We have greed for constructing and developing a

better image or identity of ourselves in our eyes and in the

eyes of society. We create two identities, one which we

project to ourselves and one which we project to the outer

world. The mind is in constant fear and greed of maintaining

and developing these identities.

The mind becomes so attached to these identities that it is

constantly reviewing the past incidents which helped and

hurt these identities or it is constantly planning the future to

either protect or develop these identities. This constant pre-

occupation of the mind in the past and future is the root

cause of the oscillation and movement of the mind. The

178


mind is in such a constant preparation that it never rests and

never lets us stay in the present moment.

If you look deeply, staying in the present moment means total

insecurity. It needs us to be ready to embrace the present

without planning for the future and without reviewing the

past. There is no security for our identity. This seems like a

great danger for our ego which is nothing but the identities.

This is something that the mind is not prepared for.

If we look carefully and deeply, we will realize that our

identities are nothing but a collection of opinions and ideas

of the society and people around us. All that we are trying

to do in maintaining this ego is trying to carefully run our

lives according to these opinions and ideas.

It is as if we are walking a tight rope constantly; the pole in

our hands is our ego and the rope is the path and frame

work laid out by the society. We are constantly trying to get

the applause of the audience which is society.

This false image that we have constructed about ourselves is

the root cause of all misery. I tell you: any identity which

you create about yourself less than you being God is a false

identity. You considering yourself anything less than God is an

inferiority complex.

If we have the courage to detach ourselves from the

certificates of society and if we have the courage to drop

179


these false identities about ourselves, then we can embrace

the Divine.

The direct technique that Krishna is suggesting is

detachment. Detachment at the root level will lead to the

detachment of everything else. Detachment from the ego or

the identities will lead to the detachment from desires. This

is detachment from the past and future. This is being

‘unclutched’.

180


+ºÉÆªÉiÉÉi¨ÉxÉÉ ªÉÉäMÉÉä nÖù¹|ÉÉ{É <ÊiÉ ¨Éä ¨ÉÊiÉ&*

´É¶ªÉÉi¨ÉxÉÉ iÉÖ ªÉiÉiÉÉ ¶ÉCªÉÉä%´ÉÉ{iÉÖ ÉÖ{ÉÉªÉiÉ&**6.36**

asamyata atmana yogo dushprapa iti me matiha

vashya atmana tu yatata shakyo avaptum upayataha (6.36)

asamyata: uncontrolled; atmana: by the mind; yogah: yoga;

dushprapah: difficult to attain; iti: thus; me: My; matiha:

opinion; vashya: controlled; atmana: by the mind; tu: but;

yatata: while; shakyah: practical; avaptum: to achieve;

upayataha: by appropriate means

For one whose mind is uncontrolled, it is difficult to attain

yoga in My opinion. But, it is practical to achieve control

over the mind by appropriate means.

181


Krishna continues in this sloka also to declare that it is

possible to achieve self-realization by stilling the mind if one

intensely practices the appropriate techniques.

Here, Krishna explains that it is possible to achieve control

over the mind. He says that it is possible to stay in that state

where you are in control of the mind.

Actually, having an experience of satori or the first glimpse of

bliss is not a big thing. It is easy to get a taste of

enlightenment. But, to stay in that same state, the same

space, the same consciousness needs preparation of the body

and the mind. To express that high energy through the body

and to radiate that experience of bliss needs your body and

mind to be prepared. Preparing the body and mind for

enlightenment is what yoga is all about.

This is what Patanjali created yoga for. The problem is only

the verbal language of Patanjali remains; the body language

is not there. What Patanjali wanted to convey is not there;

only the words are there.

How much can words convey? Only a person in the same

space, in the same consciousness as Patanjali can convey

what he wanted to convey. This is what Nithya Yoga will be

all about, yoga taught by a Master who can convey the body

language of Patanjali because he is the same consciousness as

Patanjali.

182


The whole purpose of Nithya Yoga is to prepare the body to

experience, stay in and radiate eternal bliss. Its purpose is to

‘unclutch’ and enlighten. I can say it is a direct means to

enlightenment.

183


+VÉÖÇxÉ =´ÉÉSÉ+ªÉÊiÉ& ¸ÉrùªÉÉä{ÉäiÉÉä ªÉÉäMÉÉSSÉÊ±ÉiÉ¨ÉÉxÉºÉ&*

+|ÉÉ{ªÉ ªÉÉäMÉºÉÆÊºÉËrù EòÉÆ MÉËiÉ EÞò¹hÉ MÉSUôÊiÉ**6.37**

Arjuna uvacha

ayatiha shraddhyo upeto yogoch chalita manasaha

aprapya yoga samsiddhim kam gatim krishna gacchati (6.37)

Arjuna uvacha: Arjuna said; ayatiha: the unsuccessful person;

shraddhyo: with faith; upetah: engaged; yogat: from yoga;

chalita: wavered; manasaha: mind; aprapya: not getting; yoga:

yoga; samsiddhim: achieve; kam: which; gatim: destination;

krishna: O Krishna; gacchati: achieve

Arjuna said: O Krishna, if a person is engaged in yoga with

faith but does not attain yoga because of the wavering mind,

what destination does he achieve?

184


EòÎSSÉzÉÉä¦ÉªÉÊ´É§É¹]õÎ¶UôzÉÉ§ÉÊ¨É´É xÉ¶ªÉÊiÉ*+|ÉÊiÉ¹öÉä ¨É½þÉù¤ÉÉ½þÉä Ê´É¨ÉÚføÉä ¥ÉÀhÉ& {ÉÊlÉ**6.38**

kacchin no ubhaya vibhrashtash chinna abhram iva nashyati

apratishtho mahabaho vimudho brahmanaha pathi (6.38)

kacchit: whether; na: not; ubhaya: both; vibhrashtah: deviated

from; chinna: torn; abhram: cloud; iva: like; nashyati: perish;

apratishtho: without any position; mahabaho: O mighty-armed

one; vimudhah: confused; brahmanaha: Supreme; pathi: on the

path

O mighty-armed Krishna, does the person who deviated from

the path perish, torn like a cloud without any position?

185


BiÉx¨Éä ºÉÆ¶ÉªÉÆ EÞò¹hÉ UäôkÉÖ É½ÇþºªÉ¶Éä¹ÉiÉ&*i´ÉnùxªÉ& ºÉÆ¶ÉªÉºªÉÉºªÉ UäôkÉÉ xÉ ÁÖ{É{ÉtiÉä**6.39**

etanme samshayam krishna chhetum arhasya asheshataha

tvad anyaha samshayasya asya chheta na hy upapadyate (6.39)

etad: this; me: My; samshayam: doubt; krishna: O Krishna;

chhetam: dispel; arhasya: request; asheshataha: completely;

tvad: than You; anyaha: without; samshayasya: of the doubt;

asya: of this; chheta: remover; na: not; hi: certainly;

upapadyate: to be found

This is my doubt, O Krishna and I request You to dispel it

completely. Certainly, there is no one to be found other than

You who can remove this doubt.

186


Here, Arjuna again asks the questions we all will have in

our minds. We are so used to wanting to reach a particular

goal that we are always concerned about what will happen if

the goal is not reached. What happens if you start with faith

but somewhere, you fail in controlling the mind?

Be very clear: this situation will happen. When you start off,

you will face failure to control the mind. If you don’t

experience this; check yourself; you may be fooling yourself!

Arjuna wants Krishna to give an assurance that

enlightenment is possible for all kinds of people. He wants

Krishna to give an assurance that even if the person started

practicing intensely but failed due to the wavering mind, it is

still possible to attain the divine consciousness.

Actually, the very root of Arjuna’s question is the mind

which is generating the fear and making him believe that it

is hard to find the no-mind state. The mind does not want

to lose its existence. Mind always looks for a reason to

convince us that we cannot carry on our lives without it.

In our day to day life we face the situation that Arjuna faces

here. Even with activities that we have carried out

successfully many times in the past, we feel nervous when we

start again. Will we succeed? What will happen if we fail?

Even before we start we start imagining the worst.

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Actually, it is very good to imagine the worst, if you are

prepared to face the worst situation. I tell people that to

overcome fear and face fear, it is best to imagine the worst

case scenario. Visualize it fully, relive such an experience

fully and the fear will disappear. However, if all we can do is

to think of an undesirable future possibility and we are afraid

to face up to it and yet would like to be comforted that it

would not happen, we will be in the same situation as

Arjuna is; totally confused.

The future is not ours to see. The goal as we imagine it does

not exist. There is no purpose to life. The meaning of life is

to live. That is all. If only Arjuna was comfortable with just

practicing the techniques that Krishna has outlined for him,

trusting Krishna and enjoying the path shown to him, he

would not be asking such questions.

Arjuna still does not believe Krishna. He does not believe

what the Master has so far told him. He has heard Krishna,

he has intellectually understood the meaning of what has

been said, that is all. He has not internalized the Master, he

has not imbibed the Master’s words. Arjuna is yet to learn.

188


¸ÉÒ ¦ÉMÉ´ÉÉxÉÖ ÉÉSÉ{ÉÉlÉÇ xÉè Éä½þ xÉÉ¨ÉÖjÉ Ê´ÉxÉÉ¶ÉºiÉºªÉ Ê´ÉtiÉä*

xÉÊ½þ Eò±ªÉÉhÉEÞòiEòÎ¶SÉnÂùnÖùMÉÇËiÉ iÉÉiÉ MÉSUôÊiÉ**6.40**


partha naiveha na amutra vinashas tasya vidyate

na hi kalyana krut kashchid durgatim tat gacchati (6.40)

Shri Bhagavan uvacha: the Lord said; partha: O son of Pritha;

na: not; eva: thus; iha: in this; na: not; amutra: in the next

life; vinashah: destruction; tasya: his; vidyate: exists; na: not; hi:

certainly; kalyana krut: doing activities for the good; kashchit:

anyone; durgatim: degradation; tat: then; gacchati: goes

The Lord said: O son of Pritha, the person engaged in

activities for good does not meet with destruction either in

this world or the next life; he never faces degradation.

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Krishna assures Arjuna by saying that there is no destruction

either in this life or the next life for one who is on the right

path, the path of yoga. He provides the assurance that

Arjuna is looking for, since He knows how frail Arjuna’s state

of mind is.

Krishna is giving a wonderful assurance for all of us that any

amount of practice of this yoga will save us from the cycle of

birth and death. Any amount of yoga practiced will give us

tremendous benefit. The very intent to practice yoga itself

means that we have gained knowledge about the problem of

the mind. The very intent that we want to try yoga means

that we know about the nature of the mind.

One important thing you should know: Any movement of the

body with a strong intention will cause the intention to get

deeply inscribed in our bodies and muscles. If the intention is

wanting to become one with our true identity and wanting to

drop our false identity, it will get deeply inscribed or

recorded in our body and will remain there and

automatically the body will start moving towards that one

goal.

Any emotion with which we move the body becomes strongly

ingrained in our system. This is a very important thing to

understand. If you move your body with the thought of bliss,

the bliss emotion gets ingrained in your system. If it is anger

that moves your body, the anger emotion gets ingrained.

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There is a beautiful movie, ‘What the Bleep do we Know?’

They explain this truth from Vedanta very nicely visually.

They say that whenever some emotions happen to your

system, it is like rain. The emotion is poured; like rain, it

happens inside your system, in your Being. There are

particular cells which catch those emotions. For example, if

you think about anger, there are particular cells which catch

that anger emotion. Not only they just catch and stay, they

start reproducing. This cell will create at least four or five

more cells.

One thing, important thing you should know: the basic

quality of life is reproduction and expansion. The basic

quality of life is reproduction and expansion. This is the

survival instinct. The survival instinct is governed by the

swadishtana chakra. Reproduction is governed by the

muladhara chakra. Both these are closely associated. The fear

is associated with swadishtana chakra and reproduction is

associated with muladhara chakra; both the chakras are very

near. Both the centers are closely connected.

These cells that caught the anger emotion start reproducing

and each creates some five or six more cells. Next time,

when the anger shower happens, when the anger rain

happens, all these cells will also catch the same emotion.

They become the size of the original cells. Now, these cells

also start reproducing. The third time, when the shower

happens, all these cells catch the emotion and start growing.

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That is why, every time when you are showered with the

same emotion, it becomes more and more strong. First time, if

the anger affects you for 10 minutes, the next time, it will

surely become 20 minutes. Third time, it will become

naturally half an hour. That is how the emotion becomes

more and more strong.

It is up to us to choose what type of emotion we want to

allow to move our body, what emotion we want to be

ingrained in our system.

It is therefore possible for us to replicate happiness, joy and

bliss as well. All that we need to do is to intend that we are

joyful and joyful cells will keep reproducing. This process

cannot stop. You will be full of joy.

Try this when you meet someone you do not particularly like.

Just smile at that person. However embarrassed you may feel,

just smile at that person. Not the plastic smile that you see

in civilized countries that only cover the lips, but smile from

your heart with warmth, so that the smile spreads to your

eyes. See what happens. All your negativity will disappear.

Not only that, any negativity that you have created in the

other person also will disappear and he will respond with the

same smile.

In our programs on energization of chakra, I advise people to

respond always from the anahata chakra, the heart center, to

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every one in all situations. When your anahata is unblocked,

you are capable of pouring out unconditional love. Spread

that love around and you will find that the negative

emotions of people who approach you with anger, fear or

jealousy will be consumed by the energy of love that you

unleash.

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|ÉÉ{ªÉ {ÉÖhªÉEÞòiÉÉÆ ±ÉÉäEòÉxÉÖÊ¹Éi´ÉÉ ¶ÉÉ¶´ÉiÉÒ& ºÉ¨ÉÉ&*

¶ÉÖSÉÒxÉÉÆ ¸ÉÒ¨ÉiÉÉÆ MÉä½äþ ªÉÉäMÉ§É¹]õÉä%Ê¦ÉVÉÉªÉiÉä**6.41**

prapya punya krutam lokan ushitva shashvatiha samaha

shuchinam shrimatam gehe yoga bhrashto abhijayate (6.41)

prapya: after achieving; punya krutam: one who has done

virtuous deeds; lokan: worlds; ushitva: after living; shashvatiha:

many; samaha: years; shuchinam: of the virtuous; shrimatam: of

the prosperous; gehe: in the house; yoga bhrashtah: one who

has fallen from yoga; abhijayate: takes birth

The person who has fallen from yoga after many years of

living in the world and doing virtuous deeds, takes birth in

the house of the virtuous and prosperous.

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+lÉ´ÉÉ ªÉÉäÊMÉxÉÉ¨Éä É EÖò±Éä ¦É´ÉÊiÉ vÉÒ¨ÉiÉÉ¨ÉÂ*BiÉÊrù nÖù±ÉÇ¦ÉiÉ®Æú ±ÉÉäEäò VÉx¨É ªÉnùÒoù¶É¨ÉÂ**6.42**

athva yoginam eva kule bhavati dhimatam

etad hi durlabhataram loke janma yad idrusham (6.42)

athva: or; yoginam: yogi; eva: certainly; kule: in the family;

bhavati: becomes; dhimatam: wise; etad: this; hi: certainly;

durlabha taram: rare; loke: world; janma: birth; yad: which;

idrusham: like this

Or the yogi certainly takes birth in a family of wise people.

Certainly, such a birth is rare in this world.

195


iÉjÉ iÉÆ ù¤ÉÖÊrùºÉÆªÉÉäMÉÆ ±É¦ÉiÉä {ÉÉè ÉÇnäùÊ½þEò¨ÉÂ*

ªÉiÉiÉä SÉ iÉiÉÉä ¦ÉÚªÉ& ºÉÆÊºÉrùÉè EÖò¯ûxÉxnùxÉ**6.43**

tatra tam buddhi sanyogam labhate paurva dehikam

yatate cha tato bhuyaha samsiddhau kuru nandan (6.43)

tatra: then; tam: that; buddhi: intelligence; sanyogam: with;

labhate: gains; paurva: previous; dehikam: body; yatate: try; cha:

and; tatah: then; bhuyaha: again; samsiddhau: for attaining;

kuru nandana: O son of Kuru

O son of Kuru, on taking such a birth, the person gains the

intelligence of the previous body and tries again to attain

yoga.

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Krishna talks about the Truth that we choose everything in

our life, including our birth, when and where we are born

and whom we choose as our parents.

This may seem difficult to believe for most of us. Our birth is

not just an accident; it is an incident and we are the ones

who choose all the details about this incident.

You must understand that it is only you who programs and

designs everybody in your life including your parents and

environment. Your choice of the next body is based on the

way you have lived your life in this body.

For example, if you live to eat rather than eat to live, at the

time of death, you will still have the desire to continue

eating. So, you will design your next body to fulfill this

desire. You will naturally choose the body of a pig.

If you have lived your life only for sleeping and doing no

creative work, you will choose the body of a buffalo. So,

based on the attitude you have lived with, you choose the

next body. This is the basic idea on which your janma-marana

chakra (cycle of life and death) revolves.

You go into janma samskara chakra, a birth life cycle. You go

and come back again taking a new body. This phenomenon

happens again and again.

Whatever you choose at the moment of death, that will

become reality in the next birth; you will be that. Some

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people think that they can manage if they remind themselves

to think of the Almighty, the divine Existence at the last

second of their lives.

That will never happen unless you make that a habit all your

life. If you repeat for your whole life ‘coca-cola’ you cannot

and will not think of Rama or Krishna at your last moment!

How you lived your life will decide the quality of your death

as well.

Here, Krishna gives the assurance to Arjuna and the whole

of humanity that a person who has performed virtuous

activities takes birth in a family of wise people or into a

prosperous family. His pious activities will earn him a place

among the higher planets. After dwelling there for a while he

will take birth in the family of righteous people to once

again enable his spiritual seeking.

You can choose your body and when to be born. When you

live your life running behind your greed and desires, running

behind ‘What next? What next?’, naturally, at the time of

your death also, you will not be ready to leave the body. The

body will be tired running behind desires continuously, but the

mind will not be ready to leave. So, you leave the body in the

pain and suffering of this push and pull of desires and fear.

If you can just relax into the present and take life moment by

moment, you will leave the body in a relaxed state

peacefully.

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Once we leave the body, in 3 kshana, we get into a new

body when we are reborn. Kshana in Sanskrit does not mean

seconds. It means the gap between two thoughts. If you have

been constantly running behind desires, the gap between two

thoughts will be really small. When you learn to relax into

the present, the gap between two thoughts increases and the

3 kshanas can be a long time.

In 3 kshanas, you take on the new body to fulfill whatever

desires were unfulfilled when you left the previous body.

Here, Krishna says that on taking birth, you gain the

intelligence of the previous body and continue on the

journey where you left off.

One thing you should understand here is that when we say

death, it is not just the death that happens at the end of our

lives, it is what happens every day and night. Every night,

you go from the physical body to the dream body and causal

body. In the morning, you enter the physical body again; you

die and take birth again.

People tell me, ‘No, no, everyday when we enter into the

dream we are not entering in to the same dream, but

everyday when we come to the reality we are entering into

the same reality. So with this scale we can say this is reality

and that is dream.’

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Please be very clear, in one night’s dream you live even 20

years life, am I right? In one night’s dream don’t you live

even 20 years life? In that 20 year span, completely the 20

years is consistent, you have the same dream. Be very clear,

this whole life, this whole time which you think as reality

may be part of one dream! This whole span which you are

thinking as real can be part of one dream.

Every day, you leave the body. When you go to the karana

sareera (causal body), when you fall asleep, every day you

die. When you come back, every day you come back to life.

As on now, every day morning how do we come back to life?

How do we take this body? Just look deeply. What happens

at that time when you get up from the bed?

First thing, usually, the moment you get the awareness, either

a thought based on greed or fear will hit you. Thought based

on greed, ‘I need to get this today’ or thought based on fear,

‘I have to finish this work today in office; will I be able to

do?’ some thought based on fear or greed will hit you.

Immediately, you will jump out of your bed. The moment of

your assuming this body, that moment is taking birth. Please

be very clear, that moment you take the body.

Early morning, with which thought you enter into the body,

which thought makes you assume the body, is going to play a

major role in your consciousness. The first thought is going to

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play a major role in your consciousness. Just as the thought

with which you leave the body on dying decides the kind of

body you will assume in your next birth, exactly same way,

every day the thought with which you get up in the morning

and assume this body decides the quality of that day, that

life.

If you understand this once and alter your thoughts at the

time of waking up, you will alter the whole consciousness,

the quality of your consciousness can be changed.

When you get up from the bed, the first thought, let it be

related to love and compassion. Get up only to express your

life in bliss. Get up just out of joy. When you get up from

the bed, assume the body with this gratitude to the Divine,

your whole quality of your consciousness will change, you will

become an incarnation.

Here Krishna is actually giving a technique how to become

Krishna, how to enter into Krishna consciousness, how to

become an incarnation. The man who assumes the body out

of love and compassion is incarnation. If you assume the body

out of greed or fear, you are man.

Early morning, first thought, let it be from gratitude, let it be

from love, let it be from compassion. Your whole life will

become pure eternal bliss. Your whole life will be a different

consciousness.

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{ÉÚ ÉÉÇ¦ªÉÉºÉäxÉ iÉäxÉè É Ê¿ªÉiÉä Á´É¶ÉÉä%Ê{É ºÉ&*

ÊVÉYÉÉºÉÖ®úÊ{É ªÉÉäMÉºªÉ ¶Éù¤Énù¥ÉÀÉÊiÉ´ÉiÉÇiÉä**6.44**

purva abhyasena tenaiva hriyate hy avasho api saha

jijnasur api yogasya shabda brahma ativartate (6.44)

purva: previous; abhyasena: by practice; tena: by that; eva:

certainly; hriyate: is attracted; hi: certainly; avashah:

automatically; api: also; saha: he; jijnasuh: inquisitive; api: also;

yogasya: about yoga; shabda brahma: scriptures; ativartate:

transcends

Due to the practice in his previous life, he certainly gets

attracted automatically to yoga and he is inquisitive about

yoga and transcends the scriptures.

202


|ÉªÉixÉÉtiÉ¨ÉÉxÉºiÉÖ ªÉÉäMÉÒ ºÉÆ¶ÉÖrùÊEòÎ±ù¤É¹É&*+xÉäEòVÉx¨ÉºÉÆÊºÉrùºiÉiÉÉä ªÉÉÊiÉ {É®úÉÆ MÉÊiÉ¨ÉÂ**6.45**

prayatnad yatamanastu yogi samshuddha kilbishaha

aneka janma samsiddhas tato yati param gatim (6.45)

prayatnad: by trying; yatamanah: endeavor; tu: and; yogi: yogi;

samshuddha: cleaned; kilbishaha: sins; aneka: many; janma:

births; samsiddhah: achieved; tatah: then; yati: achieves;

param: highest; gatim: state

A yogi by trying and practicing, after many births, is cleaned

of all sins and achieves the highest state.

203


iÉ{ÉÎº´É¦ªÉÉä%ÊvÉEòÉä ªÉÉäMÉÒ YÉÉÊxÉ¦ªÉÉä%Ê{É ¨ÉiÉÉä%ÊvÉEò&*

EòÌ¨É¦ªÉ¶SÉÉÊvÉEòÉä ªÉÉäMÉÒ iÉº¨ÉÉtÉäMÉÒ ¦É´ÉÉVÉÖÇxÉ**6.46**

tapasvibhyo adhiko yogi jnanibhyo api mato adhikaha

karmibhyash cha adhiko yogi tasmad yogi bhava arjuna (6.46)

tapasvibhyah: than the ascetic; adhikah: greater; yogi: yogi;

jnanibhyah: than the wise; api: also; matah: opinion; adhikaha:

greater; karmibhyah: than person who works for the fruit of

action; cha: and; adhikah: greater; yogi: yogi; tasmad: so; yogi:

yogi; bhava: become; arjuna: O Arjuna

A yogi is greater than the ascetic, than the wise and the

person who works for the fruit of the action. So, become a

yogi, O Arjuna.

204


ªÉÉäÊMÉxÉÉ¨ÉÊ{É ºÉ´Éæ¹ÉÉÆ ¨ÉnÂùMÉiÉäxÉÉxiÉ®úÉi¨ÉxÉÉ*

¸ÉrùÉ´ÉÉx¦ÉVÉiÉä ªÉÉä ¨ÉÉÆ ºÉ ¨Éä ªÉÖCiÉiÉ¨ÉÉä ¨ÉiÉ&**6.47**

yoginam api sarvesham mad gatena antar atmana

sraddhavan bhajate yo mam sa me yuktatamo mataha (6.47)

yoginam: yogis; api: also; sarvesham: all kinds of; mad gatena:

living in Me; antar atmana: thinking of Me; sraddhavan: in

full faith; bhajate: worship; yah: who; mam: Me; sah: he; me:

Me; yuktatamah: engaged; mataha: opinion

Of all yogis, one who always lives in Me, thinking of Me,

who worships Me in full faith, he is considered engaged in

Me.

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Here, Krishna describes the process of the human experience.

Why do we assume the body? We think that we can

experience bliss through the body and mind; that is why we

assume the body. When we realize that bliss cannot be

experienced through the body or mind but it can only be

experienced by going beyond it, we will not assume the body.

Your assuming the human body is simply your choice.

Then, people ask me, ‘Why do we choose to have the human

experience?’ That you should find out for yourself why you

assumed this body. I asked the question and I got the

answer; I know what for I chose the human experience. Ask

the question and pursue it as a quest; you will get the

answer, you will be enlightened.

We claim that we want to experience the ultimate, that we

want to be enlightened. But, I tell you, if you really wanted

to be enlightened, there is nothing to stop you. There is no

hindrance to your being enlightened except your own self.

As on now, actually, enlightenment is the last on your

laundry list of items that you want to do in life. When the

urge becomes urgent, when the question becomes a burning

quest, you will get the answer, there is no other way.

In these verses, Krishna promises a few things. He says that

what ever you have learnt in one life does not get wasted.

You do not start from ground zero. You start from where you

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left off. Your vasana, your mindset in one birth, ensures

continuity in another. He also promises that if you keep

practicing, if you keep trying, you will be cleansed of all sins

and reach the highest state. Such a person, Krishna promises

will reach Him.

At the end of the day, what Krishna implies is this: you need

to do your bit. You need to practice yoga, the path that leads

to self awareness, the path that leads to Krishna, with

dedication, perseverance and conviction. There is no other

way. There is no short cut. Once you do your bit, the Master

promises deliverance. He promises that you will be one with

Him.

Now, let us analyze this truth with our question and answers.

After that, we will enter into a technique given by Sri

Krishna to go beyond the mind, to awaken our senses, to

look in.

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Question: Beloved Master, how can one go about getting

closer to the present moment? How can we reduce our

number of thoughts per second?

Answer: This is from our second day’s session, when I was

explaining about the TPS (thoughts per second). The

moment we ask how I can start living in the present

moment; we already started living in the future. The very

question means that we have escaped or missed the present

moment.

We want an assurance that we must be able to live in the

present moment throughout our life.

We don’t need anything to live in the present moment. Just

live in this moment, that’s all. Nothing else needs to be

done. But we don’t feel fulfilled by living in this moment. We

need assurance that we will live in the present moment

throughout our life.

‘Teach me something so that I will not forget to live in the

present moment always’. That’s what we are asking when we

ask this question.

The moment we want assurance about the future, we have

missed the present. Be very clear, the future can never be

assured.

Whenever we remember, come back to the present, that’s all.

And if we live in the present, this moment, then naturally in

the next moment also we will be in the present.

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This is because the next moment takes birth from this

moment. This moment is the mother and the next moment is

the child. So, if we are in the present moment in this

moment, then next moment also, we will be automatically in

the present moment.

If we are postponing and escaping from this moment, then

from the next moment also we will escape. So, be very clear,

a simple technique to be in the present moment is to just be

in the present moment.

Question: At zero TPS, does the past, present and future

exist within that moment?

Answer: Yes, when our TPS is zero, past and future both

disappear. When the past and future have disappeared, what

is is, we can’t even call that as a present. Present is present

as long as we have past and future. When that too has

disappeared, what is, is. Buddha says ‘Thathata’. ‘What is’, we

can’t even call that as the present moment. This is what

Sankara calls as ‘Brahman’.

Question: How do you know the difference between being

an intellectual idiot versus the development of the

intellectual ability that you speak about in regards to the

sastra?

Answer: If one is torturing oneself and torturing others with

the knowledge which he has, then he is an intellectual idiot.

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If we are living happily and giving happiness to others with

the knowledge which we have, we are having intelligence.

A man who has got intelligence will increase the peace and

joy in his being and in others. Intelligence always creates

more bliss. Intelligence is bliss.

Please understand all these four are the same: Intelligence,

compassion, energy and bliss.

When our atman expresses through head, it is intelligence.

When our atman expresses through heart, it is compassion.

When our atman expresses through being, it is energy. When

our atman is there without expressing, it is bliss.

If we are intelligent, we will be blissful and we will radiate

bliss.

Question: Respected Master, committed one asks: how or

which key is of greatest importance to get rid of attachment?

Answer: Beautiful question! Especially the word ‘committed

one asks’. This way I can give the honest answer.

Always questions can be answered in two ways: socially

polite answer and honest answer. Here I can give an honest

answer because the question says, ‘committed one asks’. That

means she is going to go and follow.

If the person is not ready to follow, I can give just

consolation answers like, ‘Don’t worry, just pray to God,’ etc.

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It is very easy to give a socially polite answer. But here I will

give the real answer.

The one and only key to get rid of attachment is meditation

or looking in. All our intellectual analysis can only give us

courage but it cannot give us the solution. The one and only

way to get rid of attachment is meditation. Meditation is the

one and only key.

Question: What is the difference between dharma and

purpose?

Answer: Purpose drives us crazy. With purpose we stop

enjoying our life. We start thinking only about the goal. With

dharma, we live the very life. We start enjoying the path.

Dharma means enjoying the path and purpose means enjoying

the goal. If we are enjoying the path we are in dharma. If

we are enjoying the goal, we are living towards the purpose.

Question: Respected Master, what is the difference between

Bhagavad Gita and MahaGita referred as Ashtavakra Gita?

Answer: Ashtavakra Gita is also a beautiful book! More than

58 Gita are available. Rama Gita, Siva Gita, Anu Gita,

Vyaadha Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, etc. There are so many Gita

that are available, but nothing can be compared to Bhagavad

Gita. This is everything put together and some thing more.

Ashtavakra Gita is only for the people who want the spiritual

experience. Here Bhagavad Gita is for every being.

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If I start speaking from where I am, it will never benefit you

all. I should start speaking from where you all are and not from

where I am. Ashtavakra starts speaking from where he is.

But Krishna starts speaking from where we are. So, Krishna

can give us experience because He starts from where we are

standing.

Question: Dear Master, yesterday you said that I am God; I

am not sure about this. I did not find a single quality of God

in me. Please explain.

Answer: Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not,

realize it or not, want it or not, experience it or not, we are

all Gods!

Some fish go along with the current; some fish go against the

current. There are some people who just float with the

Existence, who just float with the Divine. There are some

people who go against the Divine, who oppose the Divine.

But one thing we should understand: Whether we flow along

with the current or go against the current, the fish is in the

water.

The same way, whether we become enlightened or think we

are not enlightened, we are enlightened. The choice is not

whether we are enlightened or not. The choice is either we

can realize and live blissfully or we can suffer without

realizing it.

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So, whether we realize it or not, we are God! In that there

is no choice. We have no choice in being God. We have only

one choice: If we want we can realize and express it joyfully,

or we can suffer. But we have no other choice.

Whether we flow along with the current or go against the

current, the fish is in the water. So, if we are not divine, we

cannot even inhale and exhale. It is the very energy inside

our being.

One more thing: Again and again, society creates guilt in us

that we are not enough unto ourselves. Please be very clear:

society sets a standard and it never lets us feel the divinity

in us.

First thing we need to understand is: We are beyond body

and mind. All our guilt is related to body and mind. So,

don’t have the standard, which is given by the society to

measure whether we are God, or not. The social standard

can never be fulfilled.

And one more thing: the moment we allow the guilt to

happen in us, we are ready to be exploited. Anybody who

wants to exploit us first puts the guilt in us. The person who

wants to exploit us in the physical level makes us believe we

are not strong enough. The person who wants to exploit us

in the level of beauty makes us feel we are not beautiful

enough. Only then all the cosmetic products will be sold.

Why do you think continuously these cosmetic companies

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conduct the beauty contests? So that, they will make us feel

guilty that we are not beautiful.

Be very clear: we are enough unto ourselves. Never run

behind anybody’s measurement. Why should we bother about

somebody’s measurement? Each one of us is a unique flower.

If God were an engineer, he would generate ten billion Miss

Universe and ten billion Mr. Universe. But he is not an

engineer.

We need a little bit of foolishness to be an engineer. God is

a painter. That is why every one of our dimensions is

different. Every one of us is unique. The moment we start

adding the guilt, ‘I am not beautiful’, we start buying all the

cosmetic products and we try all color paintings on our face.

We try all possible make up.

The same way, in the spiritual field also, the so-called

religious people put guilt in us. They just start putting guilt

in us, ‘We are not that, we are not this,’ etc.

First, they start giving us the ideas which are impractical.

Vivekananda says beautifully: ‘Never teach men to be

truthful. Teach them how to be.’ Never give dead teachings.

Give them the technology; give them the science that will

empower them.

The so-called religious people who don’t know the

technology, who don’t know to transform the energy by

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themselves, who have not transformed their energy, like a

parrot, they repeat morality, the impossible goals from

scriptures and create guilt in you.

That is why again and again I tell people: Never listen to a

person who is not enlightened. Never listen to a person who

has not experienced by himself. He will give us all impractical

ideas. As I was telling the other day: Dale Carnegie wrote a

big book, ‘How to stop worrying and start living’ and he

committed suicide. His teachings are impractical because he

himself has not experienced. So, be very clear, never take

anything from an un-enlightened man. When a person is not

enlightened, he creates only complications.

Even your so-called moral ideas are just problems. A person

should never be taught to be good, never. He should be

taught how to be good. The technology should be taught, the

science should be given. When we don’t give the technology

and only give them the advice, we only create more trouble

for others. The person who receives advice and not the

technology, he starts creating deep guilt in himself and he

becomes schizophrenic.

Please be very clear, guilt is created in you at three levels.

First is at the physical level, ‘You are not strong enough’.

Only if we believe we are not strong enough, we will become

a slave and others can control us.

Second is at the level of beauty, ‘You are not beautiful

enough’, now you are gullible for all the fashion shows and

215


the cosmetic products. Now, they can sell all the cosmetic

products and dump them on our heads.

The third is at the spiritual level, ‘You are not spiritual

enough, you are not pure enough, you are not a spiritual

being’. The people who are doing these three businesses

create these three kinds of guilt in us. Enlightened master

will always liberate us from all the guilt. Never carry guilt.

The people who are cunning enough to hide their personal

life create all the guilt in us. That’s all.

A small story:

Three women die and reach Yama’s abode. Yama Dharma

(Lord of Death who gives judgment at the time of death) is

sitting there for judgment.

He calls the first lady and she comes. He asks, ‘Did you live

a pure life?’ She says, ‘Yes, Lord! I lived a pure life. I was

100% truthful to my husband.’ Then Yama verifies with the

record, ‘All right, you lived a beautiful life. Have a golden

key.’ He gives a golden key and gives first class A/C suite in

the heaven. She leaves and the next lady comes for

judgment.

Now, Yama asks, ‘Did you live a pure life?’ She says ‘Almost.

Physically I never did anything wrong, but mentally once or

twice, when I saw one or two movies, mentally I did one or

two mistakes.’ Yama verifies with the report. He says ‘All

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right, at least you are honest, you agreed! Have the silver

key. Second class suite, go and enjoy.’ He sends that person

to heaven.

The third lady came for judgment. He asks, ‘Did you live a

pure life?’ She puts her head down and says ‘Lord, forgive

me, I was an actress. I have done everything; whatever you

can imagine and whatever you can’t imagine’.

Then Yama Dharma just looks this side and that side. He

says, ‘Have my room key, I will be there!’

Understand, all your morality is because of the guilt created

in you by the people who have covered their life, who give

their room keys.

Look into the life clearly. Don’t create guilt in you and suffer.

Don’t feel you are not God. The guilt created in us by these

so-called religious people only makes us feel we are not God.

Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, realize it or

not, want it or not, experience it or not, we are Gods! We

have only one choice, we can realize it and enjoy or we can

suffer without realizing it.

Now it is time to look in. Now it is time to tune ourselves to

that highest teaching given by Parabrahma Sri Krishna in this

Dhyana Yoga.

Now, we will enter into the meditation. If we are ready to

sit for the next ten minutes, we will start the meditation.

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Please sit straight and close your eyes. May your head, neck

and backbone, all the three be in a straight line. Inhale and

exhale as slowly as possible and as deeply as possible.

Slowly in a relaxed way, put your awareness in your ajna

chakra. Concentrate between the two eyebrows. Put your

awareness between the two eyebrows. Remember and pray to

that Sakti (Energy) which came as Krishna, which is guiding

us, which is helping us in our life; the energy, which gave

the Bhagavad Gita to us.

Meditate on the pure light energy. If your mind wanders

here and there, don’t worry, when you remember, bring it

back again and relax in your ajna chakra, between your

eyebrows. Don’t concentrate, just in a very relaxed way, be

aware of the ajna chakra, the space in between the two

eyebrows.

Slowly, very slowly bring your mind to your heart and

meditate on your heart center. If you want you can touch

your heart center by the hand and feel. Try to bring your

awareness to the heart center. Try to remember the heart

center. Forget all other parts of your body; forget your mind.

Just become the heart center; just be in the heart center.

Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible.

May you experience your inner space; may you experience

the eternal bliss, Nithyananda.

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, hi

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Relax. Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes.

We may think how a simple technique like this one can lead

us into our Self. Please understand we always live in the

head. Start living from the heart; we will start moving from

our intelligence; we will start moving not from our head but

from our heart.

When we start moving from the heart, we don’t calculate,

the very calculation disappears, the ‘I, I, I’ disappears. And

naturally our senses become sensitive. We don’t abuse our

senses. We don’t destroy our senses. Too much of the energy

that is supplied to the heart is taken away by the mind. The

fuel supply to the mind will be reduced and the fuel supply

to the heart will be increased.

So, continuously try to remember this heart region, the

anahata chakra. Naturally, we will have the awareness in the

ajna also. In the last session, Krishna gave the technique to

be in the ajna. Today, He says start with the ajna and come

down to anahata. This is because in the heart, there is a

possibility of much more happening. The possibility of

reaching is easier in the heart. The possibility is much more

in the heart. Krishna says, ‘Let you be in the heart.’

Look in! We will realize we are That. Just look in, we will

experience the eternal bliss, Nithya Ananda. Let us pray to

that Ultimate Energy, Para Brahma Krishna to give us all the

eternal bliss, Nithyananda.

219


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Om tatsaditi srimat Bhagavad Gitaasupanishadsu

brahmavidyaayaam yogasaastre

SriKrishnaarjunasamvaade atmasamyamayogo naama

Sashtoadhyayaha

Thus ends the sixth chapter named “Path of Meditation” of

the Upanishad of the Bhagavad Gita, the scripture of yoga,

dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of the

dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna.

220


vasaudovasautM dovaM kmsacaaNaUrmad-nama\dovakIprmaanandM kRYNaM vando jagad\gauruM

Vasudeva Sutam Devam Kamsa Chanura Mardanam

Devaki Paramaanandam Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum

I salute you Lord Krishna, Teacher to the World, son of Vasudevaand supreme bliss of Devaki, destroyer of Kamsa and Chanura.

221


GlossaryFor purposes of simplicity, the phonetic of Sanskrit has not been

faithfully followed in this work. There is no perfect transliteration

guide from Sanskrit to Roman script.

Aswattama is spelt as also Asvattama, Aswathama, Aswatama

etc., all being accepted. Sanskrit, as Hinduism, is tolerant.

Correctly pronounced Atma is Aatma; however in the English

format a is used both for a and aa, e for e and ee and so on.

The word s as used here can be pronounced as s or ss or sh;

for instance Siva is pronounced with a sibilant sound, not

quite s but not quite sh as well.

This glossary is not meant to be a pronunciation guide, merely an

explanatory aid.

Abharana: Removal; vastrabharana is removal of vastra,

clothes

Abhyasa: Exercise, Practice

Acharya: Teacher; literally ‘ one who walks with’

Advaita: concept on non duality; that individual self and the

cosmic Self are one and the same; as different from the

concepts of Dvaita and Visishtadvaita, which consider self and

Self to be mutually exclusive.

Ahara: Food; also with reference to sensory inputs as in

pratyahara

Ajna: order, command; the third eye energy center.

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Akasa: Space; sky; subtlest form of energy of Universe

Amruta, amrit: divine nectar whose consumption leads to

immortality

Anahata: that which is not created, heart energy center

Ananda: Bliss; very often used to refer to joy, happiness etc.

Anjana: eye shadow

Apu: Water, as energy

Arti, aarti: worshipping with a flame, light as with a lamp lit

with oiled wick, or camphor that is burnt

Ashirwad: Blessing

Ashtanga Yoga: Eight fold path to enlightenment prescribed

by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra.

Asraya: Grounded in reality; ashraya dosha, defect related to

reality

Atma, Atman: Individual Self; part of the universal Brahman

Beedi: Local Indian cigarette.

Beeja: seed; beeja mantra refers to the single syllable mantras

used to invoke certain deities, e.g. gam for Ganesha

Bhagavan: Literally God; often used for an enlightened

Master

Bhavana: Visuliazation

Bhakti: Devotion; bhakta , a devotee

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Brahma: Creator; one of the Hindu Trinity of supreme Gods

Brahmachari: literally one who moves with the True Reality

Brahman, one without fantasies, but usually taken to mean a

celibate; brahmacharya is the quality or state

Brahman: Ultimate reality of the divine, universal intelligent

energy

Brahmin: Person belonging to the highest caste or varna, the

scholar or priest class

Buddhi: Mind; also wisdom, intelligence. Mind is also called

by other names, manas, chitta etc.

Buddhu: a fool

Chakra: Literally a ‘wheel’; refers to energy centers in the

mind body system

Chaksu: Intelligent power behind senses.

Chandala: An untouchable; usually one who skins animals

Chandana: sandalwood

Chitta: Mind; also manas, buddhi.

Dakshinayana: Sun’s movement South starting 21st July

Darshan: That which is seen; usualy referred to seeing

Divinity

Dharma: Righteousness

Dhee: Wisdom

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Diksha, Deeksha: Grace bestowed by the Master and the

energy transferred by Master on disciple at initiation or any

other time; may be through a mantra, a touch, a glance

or even a thought.

Dosha: Defect

Dhyana: meditation

Drishti: that which is seen

Gada, Gadha: Weapon, similar to a mace; also Gadhayudha

Gopi, Gopika: Literally a cowherd; usually referred to the

devotees, men and women, who played with Krishna, and

were lost in Him

Gopura, gopuram: Temple tower

Grihasta: A householder; a married person; from the word

griha meaning house

Guna: the three human behavioral characteristics or

predipositions; satva, rajas and tamas

Guru: Master; literally one who leads from gu darkness to ru

light

Gurukul: literally ‘tradition of guru’, refers to the ancient

education system in which children were handed over to a

guru at a very young age by parents for upbringing and

education.

Homa: Ritual to Agni, the God of fire; metaphorically

represents the transfer of energy from the energy of Akasa

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(space) , through Vayu (Air), Agni (Fire), Apu (Water), and

Prithvi (Earth) to humans.

Iccha: Desire

Ida: along with pingala and sushumna the virtual energy

pathways through which pranic energy flows.

Ithihasa: Legend, epic, mythological stories

Jaati: Birth; jaati dosha, defect related to birth

Jagrat: awake

Japa: Literally ‘muttering’; conitinuous repetition of the name

of divinity

Jiva samadhi: Burial place of an aenlighetend master, where

his spirit lives on; jiva means living.

Jyotisha: Astrology; jyotish is an astrologer.

Kaivalya: Liberation; same as moksha, nirvana ..

Kala: Time

Kalpa: Vast period of time; similar to Yuga.

Kalpana: Imagination

Karma: spiritual law of cause and effect, driven by vasana

and samskara

Kosha: Energy layer surrounding body; there are 5 such

layers. These are: annamaya or body, pranamaya or breath,

manonmaya or thoughts, vigyanamaya or sleep and

anandamaya or bliss koshas.

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Kriya: Action

Kshana: Moment in time; refers to time between two thoughts

Kshatriya: Caste or varna group of warriors.

Kundalini: Ebergy that resides at the root chakra ‘muladhara’

Maha: Great; as in maharishi, great sage; mahavakya, great

scriptural saying

Mala: a garland, a necklace; rudraksha mala is a necklace

made of the seeds of the rudraksha tree.

Manan: What is thought

Manas: Mind; also buddhi, chitta.

Mandir: Temple

Mangal: auspicious; mangal sutra, literally auspicious thread,

the yellow or gold thread or necklace a married Hindu

woman wears

Mantra: A sound, a formula; sometimes a word or a set of

words, which because of their inherent sound , have

energizing properties. Mantras are used as sacred chants to

worship the Divine; Mantra, tantra and yantra are approaches

in spiritual evolution.

Maya: That which is not; not reality ; illusion; all life is maya

according to advaita.

Moksha: liberation; same as nirvana, samadhi, turiya etc.

Muladhara: the first energy center, mula is root, adhara is

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foundation, here existence

Nadi: River

Naadi: Nerve; also an energy pathway which is not physical

Naga: a snake; a naga sadhu is an ascetic belonging to a

group that wears no clothes.

Namaskar: Traditional greeting with raised hands palms

closed

Nanda: unbound

Nari: woman

Nidhityasan: What is expressed

Nimitta: Reason; nimitta dosha, defect based on reason

Nirvana: liberation ; ‘nibbhana’ in Pali language; same as

moksha, samadhi.

Niyama: The second of eight paths of Patanjali’s Ashtanga

Yoga; refers to a number of day to day rules of observance for

a spiritual path.

Papa: sin

Phala: Fruit; phalasruti refers to result of worship

Paramahamsa: Literally the ‘supreme swan’; refers to an

enlightened being of a specific level.

Parikrama: The ritual of going around a holy location, such

as a hill or water spot

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Parivrajaka: Wandering by an ascetic monk

Pingala: please see Ida

Prana: Life energy; also refers to breath; pranayama is the

control of breath

Pratyahara: Literally ‘staying away from food’; in this case

refers to control of alls senses as part of the eight fold

ashtanga yoga.

Prithvi: Earth energy

Purohit: Priest

Puja: normally any worship, but often referred to a ritualistic

worship

Punya: merit

Purana: Epics and mythological stories such as Mahabharata,

Ramayana etc.

Purna: Literally ‘complete’; refers in the advaita context to

Reality.

Rajas, rajasic: the mid characteristic of the three human guna

or behavior mode, referring to aggressive action.

Putra: son; putri is daughter.

Rakta: blood

Ratri: Intensity; also night;

Rishi: A spiritual sage

Sadhana: Practice, usually a spiritual practice

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Sadhu: literally a ‘good person’; refers to an ascetic; same as

sanyasi

Sahasranama: Thousand names of God; available for many

Gods and Goddesses, which devotees recite

Sahasrara: thousand petal lotus, the crown energy center

Sakti: Energy; intelligent energy; Parasakti refers to Universal

Energy; Divinity; considered feminine; masculine aspect of

Parasakti is the Purusha.

Samadhi: state of no mind, no thoughts; adhi is original and

sama is becoming that; literally, becoming one’s original state;

liberated, enlightened state. Three levels of samadhi are

referred to sahaja, which is transient, savikalpa, in which the

person is no longer capable of normal activities, and

nirvikalpa, where the liberated person performs activities as

before.

Samsaya: Doubt

Samskara: embedded memories of unfulfilled desires stored in

the unconscious that drive us into decisions, into karmic

action.

Samyama: Complete concentration

Sankalpa: Decision

Sanyas: Giving up worldly life; sanyasi or sanyasin, a monk, an

ascetic; sanyasini, as referred to a lady monk.

Sastra: Sacred texts

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Satva, satvic: the highest guna of spiritual calmness

Siddhi: Extraordinary powers attained through spiritual

practice

Sishya: Disciple

Simha: Lion; Simha Swapna is nightmare.

Siva: Rejuvenator in the Trinity; often spelt as Shiva. Siva

also means ‘Causeless Auspiciousness’; in this sense, Sivaratri,

the day when Siva is worshipped is that moment when the

power of this Causeless Auspiciousness is intense.

Smarana: Remembrance; constantly remembering the Divine.

Smruti: Literally ‘that which is remembered’; refers to later

day Hindu works which are rules, regulations, laws and

epics, such as Manu’s works, Puranas etc.

Sradha: sincere

Sravan: what is heard

Srishti: That which is, which is created

Sruti: Literally ‘that which is heard’; refers to the ancient

scriptures of

Veda, Upanishad and Bhagavad Gita, considered to be Words

of God.

Stotra:Devotional verses, to be recited or sung

Sudra: Caste or varna group of manual laborers.

Sutra: Literally ‘thread’; refers to epigrams, short verses which

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impart spiritual techniques.

Sunya: Literally zero; however, Buddha uses this word to

mean Reality

Sushumna: Please see Ida

Swadishthana: where Self is established; the groin or spleen

energy center

Swapna: Dream

Swatantra: Freedom

Tamas, tamasic: the lowest guna of laziness or inaction

Tantra: Esoteric Hindu techniques used in spiritual evolution

Tapas: Severe spiritual endeavor, penance

Thatagata: Buddhahood, suchness..a pali word

Tirta: Water; tirtam is a holy river spot and a pilgrimage

center

Trikala: All three time zones, past, present and future;

trikalajnani is one who can see all three at the same time; an

enlightened being beyond time and space.

Turiya: state of samadhi, no mind

Upanishad: Literally ‘sitting below alongside’ referring to a

disciple learning from the Master; refers to the ancient

Hindu scriptures which along with the Veda , form sruti.

Uttarayana: Sun’s movement North, starting 21st January

Vaisya: Caste or varna group of tradesmen.

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Vanaprastha: The third stage in one’s life, when a

householder, man or woman, gives up wordly activities and

focuses on spiritual goals

Varna: Literally color; refers to the caste grouping in the

traditional Hindu social system; originally based on aptitude,

and later corrupted to privilege of birth.

Vasana: the subtle essence of memories and desires, samskara,

that get carried forward from birth to birth

Vastra: Clothes; vastrabharana, removal of clothes, often used

to refer to Draupadi’s predicament in Mahabharata, when she

is forcibly undressed by the Kaurava Prince.

Vayu: Air

Veda: Literally knowledge; refers to ancient Hindu scriptures,

believed to have been received by enlightened rishi at the

being level; also called sruti, along with Upanishad.

Vibhuti: sacred ash worn by many Hindus on forehead; said

to remind themselves of the transient nature of life

Vidhi: literally law, natural law; interpreted as fate or destiny

Vidya: knowledge

Vishada: Depression

Vishnu: Preserver in the Trinity; His incarnations include

Krishna, Rama etc.; also means ‘all encompassing’

Vishwarupa: Universal Form

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Yama: discipline as well as death; One of the eight fold paths

prescribed in Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga; refers to spiritual

regulations of Satya (Truth). Ahimsa (Non Violence),

Aparigraha (Living simply); Asteya (Not coveting other’s

properties) and Brahmacharya (giving up fantasies); Yama is

also the name of the Hindi God of Justice and Death.

Yantra: Literally ‘tool’; usually a mystical and powerful graphic

diagram, such as the Sri Chakra, inscribed on a copper plate,

and sanctified in a ritual blessed by a Divine presence or

an Enlightened Master

Yoga: literally union, union of the individual self and the

divine Self; often taken to mean Hatha Yoga, which is one of

the components relating to specific body postures.

Yuga: a long period of time as defined in Hindu scriptures;

there are four yugas: Satya, Treta, Dwapara and Kali

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Scientific Research on Bhagavad Gita

Several institutions have conducted experiments using

scientific and statistical support techniques to verify the truth

behind Bhagavad Gita. Notable amongst them is the work

carried out by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose findings are

published through Maharishi Ved Vigyan Vishwa

Vidyapeetham.

Studies conducted using meditation techniques related to

truths expressed in the verses of the Bhagavad Gita have

shown that quality of life is significantly improved through

meditation. A greater sense of peace resulting in reduced

tendency towards conflict has been found.

Meditators gain greater respect for others and appreciate

others better. Their own inner fulfillment, without external

235


inputs, increases, resulting in self respect and reliance in turn

leading to self actualization.

The ability to focus enhances and brain function integration

has been demonstrated. These have resulted in greater

comprehension, creativity, faster response time in decision

making as well as superior psychomotor coordination.

Stress levels have been shown to decrease with enhanced

sensory perception and overall health. Tendency to depression

has been clearly shown to decrease.

There is enough evidence to show that as a result of

meditation, individuals gain a better ethical lifestyle which in

turn improves their interaction with others in the community,

resulting in less conflict and crime. Group meditation of 7000

people (square root of 1% of world population) was

significantly correlated to reduced conflict worldwide.

Meditation leads to higher levels of Consciousness. There is

supporting evidence to show from the work of Dr David

Hawkins and others through the tools of Kinesiology that

human consciousness has moved up in the last few decades,

crossing a critical milestone for the first time in human

history. Dr. Hawkins also rates the Bhagavad Gita at the

very highest levels of Truth conveyed to humanity.

We acknowledge with gratitude the work done by the

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi institutions and Dr. David Hawkins in

establishing the truth of this great scripture.

236


Family tree of the Kings of Hastinapura

237


Key Characters in the Bhagavad

Gita

Pandava’s side:

Krishna: God Incarnate. Related to both Kaurava and

Pandava. Arjuna’s charioteer in the war

Drupada: A great warrior and father of Draupadi

Drishtadummna: The son of King Drupada

Shikhandi: A mighty archer

Virata: Abhimanyu’s father in law and king of a neighboring

kingdom

Yuyudhana: Krishna’s charioteer and a great warrior

Kashiraj: King of neighboring Kingdom Kashi

Chekitan: A great warrior

Kuntibhoj: adoptive father of Kunti, the mother of first three

Pandava

Purujit: Brother of Kuntibhoj

Shaibya: Leader of the Shibi tribe

Dhrishtaketu: King of Chedis

Uttamouja: A Great warrior

238


Kaurava’s side:

Sanjay: Charioteer and narrator of events to Dhritharashtra

Bheeshma: Great Grandfather of the Kaurava & Pandava.

Great Warrior

Drona: A great archer and teacher to both Kaurava and

Pandava

Vikarna: third of the Kaurava brothers

Karna: Panadava’s half brother. Born to Kunti before her

marriage

Ashvatthama: Drona’s son; said to always speak the truth

Kripacharya: Teacher of martial arts to both Kaurava and

Pandava

Shalya: King of neighboring kingdom and brother of Madra,

Nakula and Sahadeva’s mother

Soumadatti: King of Bahikas

Dushassana: One of Kaurava brothers, responsible for

insulting Draupadi

Appendix

240


Nithyananda...

Paramahamsa Nithyananda is a Master and modern mystic

living amidst us today. Starting out at a young age, and

enduring years of intense penance, he persevered with the

single-pointed vision of experiencing inner bliss. He traversed

the length and breadth of the country studying yoga, tantra

and other Eastern metaphysical sciences with great Masters in

India and Nepal. He had many profound spiritual experiences

before experiencing inner bliss.

His mission is to help each individual actualize his inherent

potential. With a pragmatic and compassionate approach, and

an enlightened insight into the core of human nature, he has

emerged as an inspiring personality who continues to touch

and transform the lives of millions across the world.

241


His divine healing touch has taken the shape of Nithya

Spiritual Healing – a scientific system of spiritual healing

through meditation. He heals people world over, through his

direct touch and through ordained healers, curing illnesses

ranging from migraine to cancer.

The Nithyananda Foundation is his worldwide movement to

spread his message of meditation and bliss. With its spiritual

nerve center in Bangalore, India and the Western

Hemisphere headquarters in Los Angeles, USA, it operates in

over 800 centers in 30 countries across the world, working

steadily in transformation of humanity through transformation

of the individual.

His lucid explanation of practical issues and simple and

dynamic meditation techniques, help individuals blossom at

the physical, emotional and spiritual levels. Thousands of

volunteers – Ananda Sevaks work to support the mission world

over.

By offering himself as a living laboratory, he works with

Scientists across the globe to bridge the modern Western

system of logic and evidence and the ancient Eastern system

of mysticism, thus bridging Science and Spirituality for the

benefit of humanity.

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Bridging Science and Spirituality...

Swamiji works with doctors and scientists across the world to

record and analyze the mystic phenomena through modern

technology. He is continuing to intrigue the world of medical

science with results from the study of His own neurological

system. From the results recorded, scientists feel that the

potential for altering the rates and progression of many

diseases like heart ailments, cancer, arthritis, alcoholism etc.

is beginning to look achievable. They are compelled to

declare that there continues to be indications that the

human mind can choose to heal the human body...

For centuries, science and spirituality have been battling it

out on these issues of perennial importance for humanity.

Although spiritual leaders have always maintained that the

no-mind state is a ‘ real’ phenomenon, and a perfectly

realizable goal for all of us, the scientific community has

naturally been unwilling to accept this without solid proof.

For the first time in our century, science has hopefully found

a key to supernormal and paranormal phenomena, with sound

medical evidence that explains why the spiritually super-

evolved are blessed with ‘powers’ that the rest of us can only

dream about. The following few pages are summaries of

various types of research conducted on Swamiji’s neurological

system during His visits to the United States of America.

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Mind of a Mystic

A report by Dr. R. Murali Krishna, President COO,

INTEGRIS Mental Heath & James L. Hall, Jr. Center for

Mind, Body and Spirit, Oklahoma

Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda Swami is a trim, healthy-

looking young man with dark, shoulder-length hair.

Handsome and polite, possessing an open manner and a

wealth of curiosity, he could be any ordinary American

college student.

The difference is that ordinary American college students do

not wear saffron robes and turbans, have not experienced

spiritual enlightenment and are not regarded as a teacher, healer

and mystic by millions of people in all corners of the world.

A Mind Matters Column™

The Mind of a Mystic

By R. Murali Krishna, M.D.

President COO, INTEGRIS Mental

Health & James L. Hall, Jr. Center for

Mind, Body and Spirit

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A mystic? The term is not a bad fit for ‘Swami’, as he is

known. Mystics, popular culture tells us, have direct

communion with God. Through means not understood or

measurable, mystics are thought to have access to ultimate

realities or truths. Picture a mystic and you’ll probably picture

someone full of bliss, someone gifted with lofty thoughts and

insights that the rest of us do not possess.

The very presence of a mystic is thought to bring peace and

healing to others.

That’s an apt description of Swami, a 27-year-old from South

India. He is approached by thousands of people every year

seeking relief from diseases and ailments that conventional

medical approaches have not cured. Swami’s background

lends him the air of a mystic, too. He left his home as a teen,

visited ashrams across India, immersed himself in philosophy,

read extensively and mastered the art of meditation.

When Swami passed through Oklahoma City recently as one

stop in his world travels, I asked him if he would let me use

some of modern medicine’s newest technology to peer into his

brain while he meditated. My goal: to understand, measure

and demystify what happens during the mystic phenomena.

Swami, who believes that meditation has a scientific basis,

happily agreed.

The procedures Swami went through were administered by

some of Oklahoma City’s finest and most experienced

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physicians, neuropsychologists and researchers: Drs. Fordyce,

Ruwe and Higgins of the Jim Thorpe Rehabilitation Center

Neuropsychology Department and Dr. Chacko of the PET

Center of Oklahoma. These doctors were using technology

they use with patients on a routine basis. When they look at

images obtained by their technology, they know what’s normal

and what’s not.

The results from testing Swami? Decidedly not normal!

Imaging Brain Activity

Our first look into Swami’s brain was achieved with the help of

a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) device. Unlike

traditional diagnostic techniques that produce images of the

body’s structure or anatomy, such as X-rays, CT scans or MRI,

PET produces images of the function of the brain through the

metabolic activity of cells. An analog of glucose is attached to

a radioactive PET tracer. The PET scanner then images the

metabolically active brain areas at any given time.

In the case of Swami, the drug was intended to identify

highly active areas of the brain in an alert and conscious

state, in the early stages of meditation and during deep

meditation.

The results of the PET scan tests were stunning. To begin

with, the activity in the frontal lobes of Swami’s brain were

significantly heightened, even in early meditation stages. The

level of activity was several times higher than would be seen

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in the average human brain under any conditions. The

frontal lobes are associated with the functions of intelligence,

attention, wisdom and judgment.

When we then asked Swami to go into the deepest

meditation state, there were two more remarkable findings.

First, the dominant hemisphere of Swami’s brain was more

than 90 percent shut down. It was as if Swami’s brain had

packed up and gone on vacation. It was quiet and still,

completely at peace … and Swami had made it so at will.

A second amazing aspect of Swami’s deep meditation was

that the lower portion of his mesial frontal areas lighted up

in a very significant way. This area roughly corresponds to

the reputed location of the mystical ‘Third Eye’.

When we later asked Swami what he was doing when the

mesial frontal areas lighted up, he said he was opening his

Third Eye.

Associated with both cosmic and inner knowledge, and

thought to be a place of clarity and peace, the Third Eye is

considered by many to be the seat of the soul. Were we

seeing an indication that deep meditation can open an area

of the brain responsible for communicating with the divine,

looking deep into the mysteries of Self or creation? I believe

the PET scan revealed what I call the brain’s ‘D-spot’.

Whether you consider the ‘D’ in D-spot to stand for Delight,

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the Divine or even Dopamine (the chemical through which

our bodies experience pleasure), initial indications are that

meditation can stimulate it.

Measuring Brainwaves

The second procedure we used to look into Swami’s brain is

known as Quantitative Electroencephalography, or QEEG.

QEEG measures electrical patterns in the brain, patterns

commonly referred to as brainwaves.

There are four bandwidths of brainwaves, each different in

speed, and each associated with a different state of mind. For

instance, beta brainwaves are small and fast and linked with

an awake, alert state of mind. Alpha brainwaves are slower

and larger and are connected to feelings of well-being. Theta

waves represent a state of consciousness that is close to

sleep, a stage in which there is a sense of calmness and

serenity without active thought.

In a day’s time, most people will experience all four types of

brainwaves. The progression from one bandwidth to another,

though, is not so easily in their control.

From Swami’s QEEG, though, we can see that he has

complete control over his brainwaves. When in deep

meditation, his brain smoothly shifted from one state to

another, like a talented pianist playing the scales. There was

no hesitation and no retreating, just continuous, fluid shifts

from one type of brainwave to the next. Because the QEEG

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represents the five brainwave bandwidths as colors, it was as

if we were watching Swami float from color to color within a

rainbow!

Conclusions

The brain is the body’s most complex organ, containing more

than 100 billion neurons, each of them in chemical and

electrical conversation with upto 10,000 other neurons. Its

sheer capacity to process information is astonishing.

Remarkably, that complexity presents little difficulty for

Swami in managing his brain activity. Swami’s mind – his

thoughts, emotions and intellect – control his brain. He can,

in a very fluid, easy way, shift his brain function and alter his

brainwaves.

More than answering questions, the voyage we took into the

mind of a mystic brings intriguing questions for study.

Are there techniques we can learn and teach that will bring

balance and peace into people’s lives?

Can we invoke a healing response or accelerate healing

through specific training? Can we learn techniques that will

allow us to control pain or alter the course of a disease?

Can we learn to activate what I call our D-spot, thus

putting us in instant connection to delight or the divine?

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The results from our study of Swami are new pages in our

world’s growing book of research on the brain. There

continue to be indications that the human mind may be able

to choose to heal the body. We’re now looking at the

possibility of people learning and acquiring these healing

capabilities, an event of immense benefit for humankind. The

potential for altering the rates and progression of many

diseases – heart disease, cancer, arthritis, alcoholism and

many others – is beginning to look achievable.

Swami is a bridge between the invisible, ancient world of

mysticism and the modern, visible world of science and

discovery. As brain research continues on a widespread basis,

and as we appropriately bring the phenomena of mysticism

into the realm of science for further study, we are taking

strides on a path of hope and health.

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Offerings from Nithyananda Foundation

Specialized meditation programs are designed and offered

continuously worldwide to benefit millions of people at the

levels of body, mind and spirit. Some of the meditation

programs currently offered are as follows:

Ananda Spurana Program (ASP) / Life Bliss Program (LBP)

- Energize yourself!

The ASP or LBP is a chakra meditation camp.

It introduces us to the 7 vital energy centers in our body

called the chakras, whose functioning has a direct bearing

upon our physical and mental well-being. It explains the

direct relationship between our emotions and these energy

centers and offers simple meditation techniques for effective

handling of our own emotions, better clarity and a positive

mental setup, better interpersonal relationships, renewed and

inspired attitude towards work, and a blissful life.

There is a similar such program designed for students,

referred to as the student ASP or student LBP.

Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP)

- Death demystified!

Death is the mystery of all mysteries. Our idea and fear of

death pervades every moment of our lives and creates

conflicting emotions in us. We simply miss out on the art of

real living because of this.

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This program clearly explains what happens at the time of

death. It draws the relation between our created emotions of

desire, fear, guilt, pain and pleasure with the seven energy

bodies in us. It explains how each of these emotions arises

from one of these seven bodies and how they work upon the

departing soul as it crosses each of them. It brings to surface

all our conscious and unconscious emotions that have been

accumulated over the past lives, so we may be free from their

clutches. It is like a complete spiritual bath to be reborn,

equipped with the technique to live and leave joyously with

astounding awareness to replace deep ignorance.

Shakti Spurana Program (SSP)

- Cleanse yourself!

This is a meditation program that gives us an insight into

the 3 energy bodies in us that are the physical, subtle and

causal bodies. Suppressed emotions, unfulfilled desires,

restlessness, nervousness, lethargy and similar such emotions

associated with these 3 energy bodies are dealt with. It offers

solutions and techniques to kindle the inner intelligence to

liberate ourselves from these emotions.

Atma Spurana Program (ATSP)

- Connect with your Self

Man is an integral part of Existence. When he realizes this

experientially, he is enlightened. This meditation program

describes the five body sheaths called koshas that stand in the

252


way of man realising this truth. It offers techniques that pull

our awareness through these sheaths to reach the Self.

Bhakti Spurana Program (BSP)

- Enrich your emotional Being

Over passing years, the mind has taken over the being.

Humanity has fallen victim to the futility of the intellect.

The emotional being suffers as a result of this.

Bhakti or devotion is the language of the being. It is supreme

love towards Existence or God. It frees us from base

emotions, bringing equanimity of the mind and deep

fulfillment. It fulfills all our wants and takes us beyond them.

The Bhakti Spurana Program is a 4-day program that unfolds

the path of bhakti to the modern man. It steers us from

intellect to the being, from mundane worship to sheer

intimacy - with the Divine.

Nithyanandam

- Enlightenment intensive…

This is an intense meditation camp; a unique and first ever

offering of the technology of Bliss or Nithyanandam. All keys

to the ‘Experience of Enlightenment’, are handed over in

totality by the Master himself. This is an opportunity to go

beyond body and mind and experience pure Consciousness.

253


Dhyana Spurana Program (DSP)

- Mind is a myth; realize and liberate!

Our mind is nothing but a collection of our thoughts. By

nature, our thoughts are unconnected, independent and

illogical. But we try to connect all these thoughts and create

suffering for ourselves. The moment we realize that our

thoughts are unconnected and independent, we drop our

mind and become un-clutched. The moment we drop our

mind, we are liberated.

The Dhyana Spurana Program is a meditation program that

helps us drop our mind and remain centered in pure

Consciousness.

Arogya Spurana Program and meditation therapy

- Be healthy!

Arogya or Good Health is not just an absence of disease, it is

a positive well-being ness.

The Arogya Spurana Program is an intense meditation camp,

on the integrated science of body, mind and spirit. It is an

opportunity to understand that our body is not just a bio-

mechanism but one that has its roots in deep Consciousness

and Intelligence.

The Arogya Spurana Meditation therapy is a health and

healing program that takes you through meditation and

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healing to heal specific ailments, besides creating a new

mental setup attuned towards a positive wellbeingness.

Nithya spiritual healing initiation

- become a healer!

The Nithya spiritual healing initiation is a scientific process

by which you are initiated in the Ananda Gandha chakra to

become a channel for the Divine Energy to flow through you

to heal others. It works on the principle that Energy is

Intelligence. The uniqueness of this is that, it not only heals

the patient but also helps in your own spiritual growth.

Outwardly it is Healing and inwardly it is Meditation.

Ananda Yogam

- Expand and explode

Ananda Yogam is a free one-year residential program for youth

between 18 and 30 years of age. With its roots in the Eastern

system of Mysticism and Vedic learning, this program is to

empower the modern youth with

• Vocational skills

• Success Formulae and deeper Truths for Life

• Healing, meditation and yoga for overall well-being

• The capacity to actualize one’s entire potential

• Creative intelligence and spontaneity

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This program creates a clear and sound mental makeup in

every individual. It unleashes the untapped and infinite

capacity within, to excel in the outer world while remaining

centered within. It instills in one, the essence of the ancient

Vedic principles and the modern system of Logic. It creates

individuals with a capacity to be economically and spiritually

stable.

Above all, this is a lifetime opportunity to live and learn

under the tutelage of an enlightened Master.

Ananda Galleria (Divine Shop)

The Ananda Galleria offers a wide range of books in English,

Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Hindi, Portuguese, French

and other languages, compiled from Nithyananda’s discourses

worldwide. Also available are Nithyananda’s discourses in

cassettes, Audio CDs and Video CDs. In addition are

available a host of items like photographs of the Master,

shawls, chanting boxes, malas, chain dollars, photograph of

His eyes, T-shirts and so on.

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SUGGESTED FOR FURTHER READING...

Guaranteed Solutions

Guaranteed Solutions is a book aimed at bringing a radical

understanding of our emotions such as sex, fear, worry,

attention-need, jealousy, ego and discontentment. The

information is a compilation of the worldwide talks that

Nithyananda has given in meditation camps such as the

Ananda Spurana Program (ASP) and Life Bliss Program

(LBP). It introduces us to the 7 vital Energy centers in our

body called the chakras, whose functioning has a direct

bearing upon our physical and mental well-being.

The ASP/ LBP meditation camps explain the direct

relationship between our emotions and these Energy centers.

We are educated on the subtle ways in which these

emotions affect our overall well-being. In a very

comprehensive manner we are taught how these debilitating

emotions are mere shadows without objects. Powerful

meditation techniques are imparted to handle these

emotions. We are given the assurance that it is possible to

lead a life free from the power these emotions wield over us.

These camps provide tremendous scope to liberate ourselves

from the dilemmas of the mind and depression of our Being;

to be free from the mental slavery that is keeping our spirit

in bondage. We are helped to create a space in us to flower

and re-connect with our inner core, with our true Self -

which is beyond the body and mind, which is pure and

Eternal Bliss Nithyananda! These meditation camps are

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continuously conducted worldwide by trained teachers of the

Foundation.

Bliss is the Path and the Goal

This book is a compilation of Nithyananda’s discourses

covering a range of subjects, from How the Mind Works t o

How we abuse our bodies to Coping with the duality of material

and spiritual life. It answers many questions giving an updated

understanding, kindling our inner intelligence, and tuning us

to inner awareness. It is a handbook to guide us through the

workings of the mind, body and being so that we may live

our life in bliss.

Beyond Life and Death

Meditation is the way to unite, to commune between birth

and death. It teaches the art of living and leaving. Else, we

get caught in just one more cycle of life and death. In these

pages, through his discourses, Nithyananda demystifies death

and explains the need to understand it. He states with no

uncertainty that unless we understand death, we will not be

able to live life with richness.

From Ignorance to Enlightenment

In this book, Nithyananda takes us through Patanjali’s Yoga

Sutras. Sutras by definition are epigrams that mean a lot by

saying very little. There are many layers of meanings in each

Sutra. Nithyananda comments on these timeless Truths, giving

an updated understanding to the modern man. He answers

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questions that many spiritual seekers have through the

aphorisms of Patanjali.

Nithyopanishad

Upanishad means ‘sitting at the feet of the Master’.

Nithyopanishad is a compilation of a living enlightened

Master’s talks on the Master-disciple relationship. In a setting

fit for the Gods, amidst the Himalayan mountains, in the lap

of the sacred river Ganga, the Master expounds timeless

Truths in the classic Upanishad tradition. Questions transform

into doubts, doubts dissolve into awareness, as the Master

spreads his energy over the group. Anyone who has himself

the question, ‘Why do I need a Guru?’ will find his answers

here.

For further details and to purchase any of the above items,

please visit www.nithyananda.org.

259


Our Main Nithyananda Meditation Acadamies (NMA)

USA:

Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam

928 Huntington Dr, Duarte,

Los Angeles, CA 91010. USA

Ph.: 1-626 –205-3286

Email: [email protected]


4610, N.High Street

Columbus, OH 43214, USA

Ph.: 614-571-8425

India:


Nithyanandapuri, Kallugopahalli

Mysore Road, Bidadi, Bangalore - 562 109

Karnataka. INDIA

Phone: 91 +80 65591844 / 27202084

Fax: 91 +80 7288207

Email: [email protected]

URL: www.nithyananda.org


Sri Ananda Rajarajeshwari Temple, Nithyananda Giri

Pashambanda Sathamrai Village

Shamshabad Mandal

Rangareddy District

Andhra Pradesh - 501 218

INDIA

Ph.: +91 93470 65288

E-mail: [email protected]

260



36/1, Kamakshiamman Street, Peramanur, Salem – 636 007

INDIA

Ph.: 91 +427 3098133


Nithyanandapuri

Zamin Pallavaram, Chennai – 600 043 Tamilnadu

INDIA

Ph.: 98404 27966 / 94440 19791

(Directions: Behind Tirusoolam Hill.)


Nithyanandapuri

Othaivaadai Street, Pavazhakundru, Tiruvannamalai – 606 601

Tamilnadu. INDIA

Ph.: 94432 33789 / 94433 26202

(Directions: On Big Street (Peria theru), take the lane opposite Indian

Overseas bank. This is Othaivaadai Street.)


Nithyanandapuri

2/200, Tirumangkuruchi Post

Namakkal – 637 003

Pavazhakundru, Tamilnadu. INDIA

Ph.: 94433 88437 / 93447 17629

(Directions: Near the Collector’s office)


Nithyanandapuri

102, Azhagapurampudur, Salem – 636 016

Tamilnadu. INDIA

Ph.: 94433 64644 / 94432 35262

(Directions: Behind Sharada College)

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Nithyanandapuri

Zamin Pallavaram

Chennai – 600 043 Tamilnadu

Contact (s): Sri Ananda Samarpan – 98404 27966 /

Sri Nithya Divya Divakaran – 94440 19791

(Directions: Behind Tirusoolam Hill.)


Nithyanandapuri

Othaivaadai Street, Pavazhakundru, Tiruvannamalai – 606 601

Tamilnadu

Contact (s): Sri Ananda Prada - 94432 33789 /

Sri Nithya Deepak - 94433 26202

(Directions: On Big Street (Peria theru), take the lane opposite Indian

Overseas bank. This is Othaivaadai Street.)


Nithyanandapuri

2/200, Tirumangkuruchi Post

Namakkal – 637 003

Tamilnadu

Ph.: Sri Nithya Sarvananda - 94433 88437 /

Sudha Chandran - 93447 17629

(Directions: Near the Collector’s office)


Nithyanandapuri

102, Azhagapurampudur

Salem – 636 016

Tamilnadu

Ph.: Sri Nithya Bairavananda - 94433 64644 /

Sri Nithyananda Rishi - 94432 35262

(Directions: Behind Sharada College)

nithyananda - life bliss...

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