Fix Your Mind On Me

12.2 Lord Krishna said, 'Those who fix their mind on Me eternally and those who are steadfast in worshipping Me with supreme faith, I consider them to be perfect in yoga, ready to be united with Me.'

Bhagavan says, 'Those who are established in their consciousness, that expresses devotional gratitude, bhakti, are always engaged in Me. Those who focus on the transcendental faith, meaning the experience that they undergo at the time of cosmic experience, they are engaged in Me. Both are ultimate. Both are united in Me.

Sanskrit is a beautiful language. We can make any meaning out of any word. That is why thousands of commentaries on the Gita are possible, yet the Gita is still new. No book has been commented upon by so many Masters, as much as the Gita has been. Each Master gives his own meaning.

Again, I insist that if a person who has not had a spiritual experience starts expressing and lecturing, he will naturally be in trouble and create trouble for others as well. In the same way that the blind leads the blind, both are led into trouble. Similarly, a person without any spiritual experience, when he translates or talks, he automatically does only text torturing.

Only a person who has had a true spiritual experience and one who is free from inner chatter is true to himself and others. Only then a person can transparently and honestly bare himself without thinking of others. Until then, there is inner chatter and an effort to filter. There is an effort to rehearse. We dare not bare the truth of the inner chatter to the outside world. We fear that what may spill out will be unacceptable, so we filter and replace what we feel inside us with lies. We make our lives into lies.

Understand this small example: let us say I draw a diagram and explain the concept of an experience that I have had to you. After a few days, you present only an audio CD of this session to a friend who did not attend this lecture. You have not had the experience. You are merely translating my experience. How much can you explain? How well will you explain? How much can the other person grasp? He will not grasp much. He will miss many details that are in the diagram. He will miss my body language completely. You cannot explain accurately either, because you are not the one who had the experience.

I am explaining through a picture. If you are here seeing and listening to me you will understand. Even then, it is difficult to grasp the truth, to understand it. So if you just give the audio CD to a friend who has not attended the program, how much will he understand? In the same way, if he tries to understand through the CD and gives a lecture on this subject to someone else, how much of it will be accurate?

A person who has not attended the lecture, who just has the audio recording or a copy of the book, cannot understand much. Like that, the Bhagavad Gita is a transcription of the audio recording. If the Gita were an audio recording, at least you would comprehend a bit more from the voice modulation. However, the voice modulation is not there. It is a transcription of an audio recording. How much can you translate or interpret?

That is why Vivekananda emphasized again and again not to read or listen to anything expressed by a person who has not personally experienced the Truth. Most importantly, he said, 'Bother about who is speaking, rather than what he is speaking.' He emphasized the personal experience. He added, 'All the books in the libraries in this world cannot lead you to the Truth. Once you have realized the Truth, you do not need books.'

Intellectual understanding is not experiencing. Understanding is a phenomenon of the mind. It is a byproduct of our ego. The filters of our mind and ego, color our understanding. Only then can the mind perceive and understand.

Experience is the Truth felt by the Being. Spiritual experience transcends mind and ego. It is pure, uncolored and permanent. By expressing an understanding of someone's experience, one may express a fact or an opinion at best, but never the Truth. Truth must be experienced to be expressed.

Here Bhagavan says,

mayy aavesya mano ye maam nitya-yuktaa upaasate sraddhayaa parayopetaas te me yuktatamaa mataah

Those who express their experience as devotion see the world upaasate. The word upassana can be translated in many ways. When we see the the Divine in everybody, when we express the truth of the spiritual experience, whatever we do is upassana. Please be very clear, when we can't see the Divine in people around us, we cannot see the Divine in any statue or any Master either. If we don't see the Divine in living beings, we cannot see the Divine in a God or a guru.

If it were not for the great Master Ramanuja, South Bharat would have completely lost its spirituality. Sankara settled in the north even though he was born and brought up in the south. He spent most of his time in North Bharat. Because of Ramanuja, devotion and spirituality thrived in South Bharat. Until his end, Ramanuja stayed in South Bharat. Not only that, Sankara lived until the age of thirty-two. Ramanuja lived on planet Earth for a long time and inspired thousands of people in the path of spirituality and meditation.

One young man asks Ramanuja, 'Master, please tell me how I can achieve bhakti, achieve God, achieve devotion?' Ramanuja asks, 'Have you ever loved anybody in your life?' This man was shaken. He said, 'I am a pure brahmachari, celibate. How can you ask me this question? I came to learn about God, and you ask me this question?' Ramanuja says, 'First go and love somebody. See how you feel when you love somebody. Then come back and I will teach you about God. I will teach you about bhakti, devotional love.'

This man was naturally taken aback. He could not understand Ramanuja. However, unless we love the person whom we can see, how will we love an entity that we have never seen? If we can't love Hindu beings whom we see everyday, how can we love the form of God whom we have never seen? What Ramanuja says is true. We should also understand that unless we radiate love in the space where we stay, we can't love the whole world.

Again and again I tell people, loving the whole world is easy. Loving your wife is difficult. Loving the whole world is easy because we don't need to do anything. All we must do is to say, 'I love the whole world, and I love the whole world.' But when we love our wife, we must change our attitude. We must change our mind. And we must change our words. We must do something.

To truly love someone whom we spend our life with, to prevent familiarity and breed contempt, we need to drop our 'I' and 'mine'. As long as we consider our spouse as a possession, what arises in our mind and heart is violence, not love. We will feel we must control the other being and we will feel we must prove that we are the owner. To even comprehend the meaning of true love, we need to drop the feeling that we possess.

The Lebanese philosopher and poet Khalil Gibran speaks on love in his celebrated book, The Prophet: share your bread with your beloved, but do not eat from the same loaf. Share what you drink with your beloved, but do not drink from the same cup. You do not own one another.

What many of us say to our spouse and feel we have the right to say is often what we would not dare to say to a stranger. We would be highly offended if we were told we have no right to behave like that to our spouse. We feel that social courtesies do not apply to spouses because we feel that we love them. Contemporary children do not put up with the kind of words spouses routinely use on each other.

How many can say with the hand on the heart that even 50% of the time, what you say to your spouse springs from true unconditional love? understand, it is only when you love your wife, can you begin to comprehend how to love the world. That is the entire purpose of marriage rituals and why that relationship is considered sacred. By developing that bond, that love between two people who are united for the rest of their lives, it is possible to develop that experience which is the Truth, which in turn leads to the expression of that same Truth as love to the rest of humanity.

Being established in that consciousness or expressing it towards the universe are the same. When a person is merged, when a person is established, he automatically radiates. If the love is not happening, if the expression is not happening, the person has not experienced. When the real experience happens, it automatically expresses. Experience is not something we can possess and keep in our cupboard. No! Experience will possess us and it will sink through us.

A disciple asked a Zen Master, 'Will an enlightened Master speak?' The Master said, 'No, an enlightened person never speaks. Only a person who doesn't know speaks.' Then the disciple asked, 'Will an enlightened Master keep quiet?' The Master said, 'No, an enlightened Master never keeps quiet. If he keeps quiet, then he is not enlightened.' The disciple was puzzled, 'You say he neither speaks nor keeps quiet. What does he do?' The Master replied, 'He sings. His Being sings. He neither speaks, nor keeps quiet. His very Being sings.'

This is because we cannot possess an experience. Only the experience can possess us. When experiences possess us, whatever we do will be a song. Any word that comes out will be a song. Our being will be so light. We will simply float. Our walking will be a dance. Our body language will radiate grace. All our expressions will be a great service to humanity.

The Zen Master says beautifully that an enlightened man never keeps quiet nor does he talk, he just sings. That is why the Gita is given in the form of a song. The Gita is not prose. It is poetry. Great truths can never be expressed in logic. They can only be expressed through poetry. Prose is logic. It is bound. It is rigid. But poetry is emotion. It is love and it flows.

Krishna says that a person established in the Consciousness is great; however, the person who expresses, who shares, who automatically radiates, is as great as the one who is established. The truth is that if a man is established in consciousness, he will radiate and he will sing.

Let me tell a small story from a great devotee, a bhakta, who lived in Varanasi.

This man was a great devotee of Krishna. He owned a small copy of the Bhagavad Gita. That was his entire possession, his only wealth. Every morning he bathed in the Ganga while reciting the Bhagavad Gita with devotion. He spent the whole day sitting and meditating on Krishna. He was continuously in the ecstasy of Krishna. He radiated Krishna bhakti, devotional love towards Krishna.

Of course, we see these types of souls only in Bharat. Society does not disturb people who just sit in ecstasy. Society takes care of them. In any other country such people would be called homeless, hounded by police and the public, put in a shelter and disrespected. Hindu culture is beautiful. If we sit in ecstasy, we are respected and worshipped!

This person was in ecstasy, always singing Krishna's name, in Krishna dhyana, in Krishna meditation, in Krishna smarana, repeating Krishna's name. He was lost in Krishna Consciousness. One day a beggar came and asked, 'Oh Swami, please give me something. For the last three days I have not eaten.' Now this posed a big problem to the bhakta. He himself was a beggar and had only one possession, the Gita. He owned nothing else. If someone gave him food, he ate. Otherwise he just sang Krishna's name. His only property was the Gita.

When this beggar asked for food after not having eaten for three days, he felt bad. He looked to see if there was something to give. There was only the Bhagavad Gita, which he had preserved and worshiped for many years. That was his sole possession, akin to God for him. It was everything to him.

Suddenly, he gathered courage and took hold of the book and said, 'I have nothing. I have only this book. However, if you go to the city and tell people that this book was my possession, you will be able to auction it. Surely someone will buy it. Many people respect me. To some extent, they feel devoted to me. So Krishna's blessing is there. Go to the market and auction this book. Take the money and eat and fulfill yourself and be happy.'

The beggar took the book and went away. The next morning, when he was about to chant the Gita, the bhakta said, 'Oh Krishna, I have given away your words to keep your words. What is your word? Your word is to radiate bhakti, to radiate devotion, and to radiate service. I gave away your word to keep your word.'

This bhakta was a true bhakta. He had seen the Truth. He had experienced it. So he was able to express it. He translated his devotion to Krishna as love and service to his fellow men. Keeping Krishna's word was more important than keeping Krishna's book. Actually, if we honestly keep the book and use it, we will have the experience. We will radiate His words. Only when we miss keeping His book, we miss keeping His words as well.

Q: I have read and known people who have had near death experiences, out of body experiences. All of them have described them as beautiful. Why do you describe death as painful, like a thousand scorpions biting you?

Please understand, I was talking about a normal man's death experience. Here you say, 'I have read and I know people who have had near death experiences.' The moment you say I have read, it means you have read about their experiences. You have heard from them, meaning that they are, in some way or the other, meditators or spiritual people. That's why they have had the experience and have come back.

I was explaining about leaving once and for all. You are speaking about having an experience and coming back. Having an experience and coming back means the experience is spiritual. It is not a death experience. I was talking about actual physical death, not conscious transformation.

Ramana Maharishi experienced a conscious experience of death. But I was describing the actual death of a normal human being, the physical death of a normal human being. Understand the difference.

In my experience of the truth, at the time of death the spirit passes through seven layers of energy. The entire life that one has lived is played back with no details omitted. The being relives the pains, pleasures, guilts, desires and all such emotions that it experienced when it was alive. That is how you pass through hell and heaven. The pain of that process is like a thousand scorpions stinging all at the same time. It is like the body being ripped open from head to toe. The only way to escape this pain is to have a glimpse of truth, at least once in one's life. That is possible only through meditation.

In the THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program (NSP), that is what I do. I take you through the journey that your spirit will pass through at death and meditate upon your samskaras at each stage in order to dissolve them. This opens the possibility of painless death and no rebirth.