Beyond Scriptures 2

He is for intellectual people, emotional people, being level people, and something more. He has created keys to open all the locks. He has created methods to give spiritual experience to the whole of humanity, to people who have come, people who are here, and those yet to come. He has created the technology even for the next generations. He is Nithya Ananda – Eternal Bliss. Gita is the Ultimate Scripture - shastra, stotra and sutra.

Krishna is beyond scriptures.

When Krishna says,

Weapons do not cleave, nor fire burns the Atman

Water does not wet it and wind does not dry it

When He talks about the basic truths of life and spirituality, it is shastra.

When Arjuna says,

'Oh Lord, I bow down to you from the front, from behind, from all sides;

You are infinitely mighty, pervading everything, you are the Ultimate.'

Arjuna is doing the Stotra. Arjuna is praising the lord; he is expressing his devotion.

Whatever your thought is when you leave this body, absorbed in that thought, that alone you attain, Arjuna!

Here Krishna provides Arjuna the technique, the most powerful sutra that helps anyone attain what he wants to.

The Bhagavad Gita is the only scripture that combines the wisdom of shastra, the depth of feeling of stotra and the practical reality of a sutra. It is a means to enlightenment for all, delivered by the Master of Masters.

In this first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, we see Arjuna, the most prolific fighter amongst the Pandava princes and the darling of all his teachers, winner of Draupadi and the treasured friend of Krishna, in deep dilemma.

Years ago, a man called Arthur Koestler wrote an article about Communism titled 'Yogi and the Commissar.' We do not know whether he had read the Gita, but he had certainly captured Arjuna and his plight with his title.

Arjuna is both the Yogi and the Commissar. As a Yogi, he is deeply spiritual, centered within himself, and deeply aware of his moral and ethical obligations. As the Commissar, Arjuna is the warrior, ready to avenge, ready to impose order and control; he is the archetypal Kshatriya prince.

Only with enlightenment is it possible to continuously and consistently proceed with both these personalities without faltering. Arjuna falters as he faces his enemies on the battlefield of the Great Mahabharata War. His dilemma unfolds.

Arjuna's dilemma is such that he is now able to be neither a Yogi nor a Commissar.

He loses his detachment as a Yogi. In turn, he loses his courage as a Commissar.

He sees his enemies and identifies himself with them. In front of him are his mentors, family and friends. They are his extension, his lineage and his identity. He can no longer pretend that he is the ultimate warrior, the Commissar, who can dispassionately dispatch them to death.

Arjuna's dilemma is the dilemma of humanity. It is an internal conflict between what we perceive as our value systems and beliefs, and what we feel we can do. Our value systems and beliefs are the samskaras that drive our decisions. The problem lies in the fact that these samskaras lie deep in our unconscious. We are not even aware of them.

Arjuna understood his kshatriya code of conduct very well. This code demanded that he not turn down a righteous challenge to fight and gamble. However, his deep-rooted attachment to his clan and lineage proved stronger than what he considered to be his duties. These feelings were far stronger than the codes of conduct.

Arjuna's samskaras were primal. They related to survival issues, identity issues. By killing clan members, he was in effect destroying a part of himself. No code of conduct was worth that destruction. That was his dilemma.

All of us are caught in such a dilemma at one time or another. We are taught to follow certain societal rules and regulations. As long as our basic desires are in tune with these societal and religious rules and regulations, we have no problems, no confusion, and no dilemma. However, our dilemmas start when what we seek and the path we need to follow to achieve it, violate these rules and regulations.

Everyone, without exception, has inbuilt guilt for violating the commandments of religion and society. That is why Jesus said, 'He amongst you, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.' That guilt is sin. And we fear that unknown and unseen forces will rise against us to punish us for these violations. Desire versus guilt is our dilemma, always.

In almost all cases, if the desires are strong enough, desires win. Rules and regulations can wait, we say. At worst, we can always work out some means of appeasing these godly forces. After all, what are temples and priests for?

The truth is that society and religion encourage us to think this way. They know that no one can be controlled one hundred percent.

'Let us just put on speed breakers,' they say. 'Let us control them through fear and greed. If they are good all the time, that would be difficult. We shall be out of business. They can then deal directly with the unseen forces. That cannot be allowed. So let us install rules and regulations that cannot be observed for the most part. People will violate them; they will stumble. Let us then catch them and control them through fear and greed, through the fear of God.'

Such is the genesis of religious guidelines and societal regulations. Some religions are based only on such guidelines, without any intelligent and acceptable reasoning to support the regulations. It is almost as though they are established so that we break them and feel guilty. Once we feel guilty, we are caught.

In the spiritual sense, there is no such thing as sin. There is nothing that is totally good or bad. As the Tao says, good is mixed with bad; there can be no light without darkness, or good without evil. When you become truly aware, you realize that there are no sins.

Whatever happens to us happens as a result of natural laws. The realized ones flow with that realization. When one has compassion for humanity, when one feels for every living being the same compassion that one feels for oneself, one can do no harm to another. There can be no sin. And therefore, there is no guilt either.

Arjuna's progress on this path of self-discovery is the path of the Bhagavad Gita. That can also be our path if we internalize the message of the Gita. When there is no variation between what we wish to do and what we believe in, when we are aware of our samskaras and we act in total fulfillment of these samskaras in awareness, we have no dilemma. We are in fulfillment.

All of us are born with pre-existing desires; these are the vasanas, the mental set up that the spirit within us carries into our bodies with each new birth. These are also called prarabdha karma, those desires that we choose to fulfill when we take a birth. They carry their own energy for fulfillment in that lifetime.

The trouble is that the time between death and the next birth is quick and painful. The body mind system lapses into unconsciousness, a coma, as the energy leaves matter (body). As the energy enters another piece of matter, another body mind, the memory of the prarabdha karma is erased. When the spirit passes through the Causal energy layer as it crosses the seven mind body energy layers at death, we lose memory of our unfulfilled desires of that birth, the last thoughts, the vasanas and the prarabdha karma. Therefore, when we are reborn in another body, we no longer remember why we were born or with what desires and purpose we have chosen this birth!

That is the root cause of our dilemma.

Incarnations and enlightened beings choose a conscious birth with full awareness of their reason for birth when they are born. They know what they are here for. They have no confusion, no dilemma. Arjuna is not at that stage, nor are most of us.

Fortunately, it is possible to become aware of our prarabdha karma, our opening balance of desires. We can then work towards its fulfillment during each life without accumulating more karma (agamya karma) in this lifetime. Agamya karma is the 'current account' of desires that we accumulate in this lifetime.

By exhausting the prarabdha that we brought with us and by not accumulating more agamya, we lower the overall 'account' of total karmas that we collect over millions of births. This total account is called sanchita karma.

These karmas or unfulfilled desires are also referred to as samskaras, the engraved memories stored in our unconscious, stirring up these desires. They are also called vasanas or mindset, which in turn create the desires and store them as memories. These three words can be used interchangeably for all practical purposes, although they do have separate deeper meanings.

By understanding the nature and types of samskaras, vasanas and karmas that we carry over into this birth, we can work towards their fulfillment. Then, our stock of samskaras diminishes.

The Life Bliss and THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Programs, the Level 1 and Level 2 courses, address these karmas. In both workshops, participants learn about their samskaras, what motivates their behavior and how to dissolve these karmas. In a sense, we begin to understand our opening balance of desires in this life, the karma we accumulate during this lifetime and how to work upon and release them while alive.

This is also the process of Yoga that Krishna takes Arjuna through in these eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. These teachings are not meant for Arjuna alone. They are meant for us, so that we dissolve our samskaras, resolve our dilemmas and experience the ultimate truth.