Consciousness Is Eternal

13.13 I shall fully give you the understanding about the knowable with which one can taste eternal bliss or the being or the Consciousness that has no beginning.

A life beyond the law of cause, effect and the material world.

13.14 With hands and feet everywhere, with eyes, heads and mouths everywhere, with ears everywhere, He exists in the worlds, enveloping all.

The Paramatman (supreme Spirit) is all pervading. He exists everywhere.

13.15 The Paramatman is the original source of all the senses. Yet, He is beyond all the senses. He is unattached.

Although the Consciousness is the maintainer of all the living beings, yet He transcends the modes of the nature and at the same time He is the Master of the modes of our material nature.

13.16 The Supreme Truth exists both internally and externally, in the moving and nonmoving. He is beyond the power of the material senses to see or to know.

Although far, far away, He is also near to all.

13.17 Although the Paramatman appears to be divided, He is never divided. He is situated as one.

Although He is the maintainer of every living entity, it is to be understood that He consumes and creates all.

13.18 He is the source of light in all luminous objects. He is beyond the darkness of matter and is formless.

He is knowledge, He is the object of knowledge, and He is the goal of knowledge. He is situated in everyone's heart.

Krishna says, 'I shall explain the knowable, knowing which, you will taste the eternal Being: the beginning-less Consciousness that lies beyond the causes and effects of this material world.' In the previous verses, Krishna talks about the qualities that happen with the flowering of the Divine Consciousness within. Now He reveals to Arjuna that this Consciousness is eternal.

Please understand that our mind associates a time and space for every incident or event. The mind can only think chronologically. It is like an inner reference chart and all incidents are placed in this chart of time and space. Modern science asks questions like, 'How did this happen? What was there before that? What came after this? What triggered this?' When they asked about the creation of this universe, they best explained it with the Big Bang theory.

They said that a tiny mass of fire exploded and gave rise to our universe. What they could not answer was, 'What existed before that?' Krishna says that this universal energy, the ultimate Consciousness, always existed. It manifested in various forms as planets, as humans and so on, but it is eternal. It will continue to manifest itself and return to the Source and it will always exist.

The concept of time and space that we have is based on our mind and senses. Whatever we perceive is a projection of our mind. This understanding of time is different from an enlightened Master's understanding. He measures time in terms of kshana. Kshana is the time between two thoughts. It is the space between two thoughts. Buddha referred to this time and space as sunya. Sankara referred to it as purna. It is the no-mind zone, the mindful zone, in which we touch base with ourselves. It is that present moment in which we come face to face with the divinity within, by which we recognize the Cosmic Energy that is our essential nature.

When we are caught up chasing one material pleasure after another we have so many stresses, tensions, and worries bombarding our heads every second. Our kshana is very small because of the high number of thoughts inside. This is why we get a suffocated, panicking feeling. We are running in a rat race. We constantly feel time is running out. We are greedy for more and more experiences before this body dies and we're afraid that we might lose whatever we've come to possess.

We feel this way because we associate ourselves with the kshetra, the temporary body and mind. Please understand that the body and mind are made up of the five elements and they return to their source once they have served their purpose.

On the other hand, an enlightened Master knows he is kshetragna. He knows that he is not the body mind system. He has realized that he is Ultimate Consciousness. He has no urgency to run in the rat race because he knows that life goes on, even if this body perishes. He has become a witness to the mind. Any thought that springs up inside immediately expresses itself as an action. No thoughts accumulate inside. He experiences eternity because of this thoughtless zone that he stays in. This is the truth.

This is the beginninglessness of the Consciousness that Krishna explains here.

When we are in front of an enlightened Master, one who is in a no-mind state without thoughts, our thought level comes down and our kshana becomes longer. The gaps between thoughts extend. So without even trying, we become calmer, more peaceful, and more aware.

Our logical mind tries to reason things out. We rationally want to convince ourselves why something is a particular way. But all our logical understanding and all our knowledge through books only gives information about the changing world around us. The knowable that Krishna explains is beyond these changes. It is eternal because it does not follow the properties of creation and destruction like other objects around us. It has always been there and will always continue to exist.

Whatever physical matter we see around us follows a particular cause-effect relationship. However, our deepest core is untouched by these changes. Please understand that every thought inside us affects the functioning of the whole cosmos. Whether we want to accept it or not, we do not operate as separate islands. Thoughts that are present in the space that we live in affect our mental setup as well as the way we think and operate.

If we go online and search for 'Hidden Messages in Water,' we can read the research findings by a Japanese scientist on samples of water. He took many samples from the same water source and started talking to each sample with a different emotion. He labeled one sample 'love' and spoke words of love to it. Similarly, he labeled another sample 'hate' and spoke with vengeance and violence to it. He later crystallized these samples and observed them under an electron microscope. The sample labeled 'love' showed beautiful crystals that sparkled. The one labeled 'hate' was ugly and repelling.

If one man's thoughts could have so much impact on a sample of water, can you imagine what impact the collective emotions of humanity have on the universe? Today there has been a rise in the collective unconscious, the collective negativity. The universe responds to that. People ask me, 'Master, why did the tsunami kill so many innocent people?' Please understand that these natural disasters are a projection of our collective unconscious in the form of earthquakes, tsunami, wars, and other forms of mass destruction.

In exactly the same way, collective consciousness does mass purifying. It is not to say that those were killed were impure. It is that the total collective negativity must get expressed somehow, somewhere through these natural events. That is why sages and yogis started the concept of Kumbh Mela where the energy of millions of enlightened Masters comes together at the waters of Ganga and Yamuna. Imagine the purification process that occurs when the enlightened energy of millions of Masters touches the waters of these rivers. It has a counterbalancing effect. That is why taking a dip in the Ganga during Kumbh Mela has so much significance.

Last year, on September 21st, the United Nations World Peace Day, the worldwide centers of our THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Mission organized twenty-four hour meditation rallies for world peace. The concept is the same: when thoughts with the sankalpa, or intention of peace and harmony come together, it results in a sweet mood of peace and adds to the collective positive consciousness of planet Earth.

This positivity and negativity, creation and destruction, are all properties of the changing world around us, of the kshetra that we live in. The minute we know that we are not this changing kshetra but that we are the eternal and unmoving kshetragna, the Consciousness that runs the kshetra, we are liberated.

Krishna calls this eternal bliss jneya, knowable. When the knowing happens, the knowable (jneya), knower (jnata), and the knowledge (jnana) merge. In this experience knower, known, and knowledge become one. No separate experience, experiencer or object of experience exists. It is called triputi, where no difference between the three entities exists.

You see, it is like this: Imagine that you love driving and are sitting in a nice new car with all automatic systems and you are driving on a highway at full speed. You are so immersed in that joy of driving the car that you forget yourself. After some time you suddenly realize you are not even driving; the driving is simply happening. You have become the experience of driving and there is no more a sense of you doing the driving. The car is moving forward on its own and you have become the experience. Similarly, if you are immersed and involved deeply in any other passion, the experience, experiencer and object of experience suddenly merge into the eternal Consciousness. You call it being 'in the Zone.'

Krishna explained that His eternal nature, the eternal Self, is not bound by time. Now He says that He exists everywhere and He is not bound by space. Normally we understand the presence or absence of an object or person in terms of physical attributes. We function in our lives based upon what we see, smell, touch, taste and hear. If our pancha indriya, five senses, cannot sense anything, we think nothing exists.

One important and surprising thing is that an enlightened Master is more present in his absence than just only his physical presence. This means that his energy never dies nor does it know any barriers. Many disciples in different parts of the world tell me, 'Master, we wish to be with you more often, please visit us.' I tell them, 'Truly, sixty six percent of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM is in the mission and the message; only thirty three percent is in this body.' If we limit an enlightened Master to his form, we miss him completely. His energy transcends time and space and is always available everywhere forever!

When you are in the energy field of an enlightened Master who is no longer in his body, as in a jiva samadhi, the place where the Master's body has been buried, without even trying you become calmer and experience that space of peace within. Many great temples such as Tirupati, Thiruvannamalai, Mantralaya and Palani are built around the burial spots of enlightened Masters. That is why we feel the sanctity and peace-giving properties of these locations.

Although physically the Master is no longer in the body, we feel his presence. Why? He is not bound in space by the body. The cosmic energy that he manifests transcends space and time. Only we know physical barriers. Here, Krishna uses the phrase, 'eyes everywhere.'

During my travels during parivrajaka (monastic wandering), I stayed with and had the opportunity to learn from a great Master in the Himalayas, a naga baba. He had a unique method of teaching. Whenever people came to learn, he would stick his trishul, the trident that Shiva carries, in the ground and ask them to look at all three tips simultaneously. Sometimes his students would sit for three months staring at the trishul all day, trying to perfect themselves. It is much harder than it appears. One moment you can see one tip in your vision, and the next moment the next tip, and the next moment the third tip. I first thought it would be easy! But when I started practicing, I was shocked, 'Oh God, I can't even see this small trishul entirely, all at once!' Only then did I understand that without moving the eyeballs, without shifting the gaze, we couldn't see more than one point.

The trishul is a great weapon to create awareness of the third eye and a way to expand awareness. Right now, your field of vision is 120 degrees. If you start concentrating at one particular point, it will slowly become 30 degrees. The more you concentrate, the narrower the field of vision becomes. However, if you center yourself on the third eye, your awareness will slowly expand beyond 120 degrees, and you will first see 180 degrees, then 240 degrees, and ultimately 360 degrees. To create awareness by centering yourself on the third eye means to awaken your Consciousness.

When Krishna says, 'hands and feet everywhere, eyes, heads, ears and mouths everywhere,' what does He mean?

This is beyond the comprehension of the human mind and needs a little bit of internalization. We understand only one body because we associate ourselves with it completely. Let me explain with a small diagram:

This diagram shows the seven energy bodies or layers that we have. You see the outermost layer is the physical layer, with which we associate ourselves. We only know the gross layer where we have this body with one pair of eyes, hands, legs and one nose, head, etc. Now let us take a few points on that layer. Let us call them 'you,' 'me,' 'your neighbor,' 'Krishna,' 'Buddha,' etc. So, at the gross layer, you are different from your neighbor; your neighbor is different from me and different from the various forms of god. You can see each point being distinct from the others. We are so rooted in this physical gross layer that we see barriers because everything appears to be different from the other in this layer.

Now, for each point, if we follow the corresponding points in the inner layers, as we go deeper and deeper,

we suddenly realize that we all merge in the nirvanic layer. It is here that that Universal Energy connects every being. There is no difference in this space between you and me. This is the space of Consciousness that Krishna talks about. Here, Krishna and Buddha are no different. All are various forms of God are all manifestations of the same divinity.

The women who used to look after the cowherds during Krishna's time, the gopi, were great devotees of Krishna. Despite their other household chores, they were soaked in that devotion for Krishna all the time. It is said in the rasa leela that Krishna danced with each of the hundred thousand gopis in Brindavan. Krishna manifested a form for each of the gopis in order to dance with them. It was not merely one form, one body of Krishna, but He was present simultaneously in one hundred thousand forms.

Please understand the deeper meaning in this. Each gopi was so deeply connected with that Divine Consciousness, the Krishna Consciousness, that each one felt His presence. When we go within, into our core, we see divinity in everything. The gopis saw Krishna everywhere and in everything they did. This Universal Consciousness knows no physical barriers. That is why Krishna says He is 'all pervading.' He is all enveloping. He is omnipresent.

That is why I say, 'All healers are my hands, all acharyas (teachers), are my vak (energy of verbal expression), and all organizers are my mind.' I can only heal a limited number of people with these two physical hands. I can only conduct a limited number of discourses and programs with this one mouth, and I can only organize a limited number of events with one brain. That is why I operate through my healers, acharyas, and organizers. The cosmic THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM operates through them.

For a phone connection to happen from one country to another, we need to have the infrastructure: all the cables installed below the sea and so forth. But for this cosmic connection to happen, nothing is needed. We connect to the Self within, and suddenly there are no barriers. We simply fly.

Krishna goes on to give further qualities of the Self. You see all this is a theory and useless until one experiences the Self. If somebody asks, 'What does sugar taste like?' and if he has never tasted anything sweet before, how will you explain to him? You may explain as much as you want, 'It is in the form of white cubes, transparent and tastes very sweet.' When he asks, 'What does 'sweet' mean?', what will you say? You can continue to tell him other things about it, 'Sugar is made from sugar cane. Sugar cane is full of sugary syrup, it is fibrous, and you can chew on it.' What is the use?

Only if you put some sugar in his mouth and say, 'Here, this is how sugar tastes. This is how something sweet tastes,' does he experience what 'sweet' means. Until then it is theory with no practical, experiential value.

But the problem for intellectuals is that they are clouded with doubts and skepticism so a theoretical explanation is important. We want to measure everything based on what we know. Krishna is compassionate. He is patient.

In Chapter 11, He revealed to Arjuna His cosmic form, the viswa rupa darshan. But soon after that Arjuna feels intimidated and cannot handle the energy. He pleads to Krishna, 'I cannot understand You. I cannot withstand Your glory.' But Arjuna wants to know what Krishna is talking about. So once again Krishna gives all kinds of descriptions to penetrate Arjuna's doubts and fears.

The compassion of an enlightened Master is so great.

In spite of the doubts and skepticism, he quietly and patiently sits with the disciple until, one by one, all doubts are washed away. You see, our doubts and questions arise from our mind, forming a thick layer over us. A Master's grace gently dissolves this layer.

A small story:

A blind man argued with everyone that there is no such thing as light. If someone said that there was light, he asked that person to catch hold of it and show it to him. He said, 'If there is something called light, I want to touch it, taste it, go around it, play with it. Only then I will believe that there is light.' He argued with everyone until they gave up and accepted that he was right.

One day he went to Buddha. Buddha did not argue with him. Without a word, Buddha asked his doctor to examine and treat him. The blind man received his vision. As soon as he could see, the blind man's joy knew no bounds. He enjoyed seeing all the colors. Then he brought some flowers and fruits and offered them at the feet of Buddha and prostrated.

The blind man spoke from the depth of his heart, 'O Lord Buddha! Blindly I have been arguing with everybody. Others also argued with me and destroyed me. It is good that you have not argued with me. If you also had argued, I too would have argued with you and I might have been ruined. But now I understand that light exists.'

Out of the same compassion that Buddha had for the blind man, Krishna explains to Arjuna the same truth in many ways so that something might trigger the spark inside. In this verse, He says that He is responsible for the functioning of all senses but is beyond them. He is responsible for any life that happens, but is detached from them. He is the one who causes the three guna, qualities, to happen, but is beyond them; He is without them, nirguna.

Krishna says all life happens because of the thread of Him, the Universal Energy flowing in all beings. You see, so many things are happening around us, on their own, beyond our awareness. When we put a piece of bread in our mouth, we chew and swallow it. After that, the whole process of converting this to energy happens without us giving instructions. Forget giving instructions, we don't even know what is happening inside. Today, scientists may understand the chemical reactions, but they still don't know what differentiates a dead cell from a living cell. How then can one understand the universe and all the millions of stars and planets in the galaxies, running in perfect synchronization without any policeman sitting in space controlling them?

Please understand that the life force that runs us, the Parasakti, that controls every breath we take, the same energy that maintains an order in the chaos of the universe, is pure Intelligence. In Sanskrit, there is a saying, 'thena vina trunam api na chalati.' It means not even a blade of grass can move without the will of the Divine.

Krishna is sending a message to us about how much we depend on Him, that cosmic Intelligence, for anything to happen. At the same time, without getting involved, the Universal Energy is a witness to all activities and all life forms.

If we look deeper, we realize that whatever we see and perceive as objects, are creations of the mind along with the senses. We create a world of our own. Deep down, the true Self watches the whole thing without getting involved. Our mind reacts to a particular situation, causing pain or happiness. The mind projects some people as good, some as bad, and qualifies incidents and people as good, bad, painful, joyful, etc. and then runs after or away from experiences.

Earlier Krishna explained about the three qualities: tamas (lethargy), rajas (activity) and satva (harmony). These form the triguna, the three qualities. Any food that we eat, or action, or object can be classified as belonging to one of these categories. As long as we identify ourselves with this body and see everything in terms of names of forms, we keep classifying them – meditation is good, overeating is bad, etc.

For a jnani, a knower of the truth, everything is the same. He stops labeling because he has moved beyond names and forms, and beyond the dualities of good and bad.

Ramakrishna gives a beautiful analogy. When we stand in a valley, we see pits and depressions on the ground

when we look down and we see mountain cliffs when we raise our head. But when we climb up to the summit, we observe that all the ups and downs below no longer matter. We have transcended the ups and downs that we saw when we were on the ground, before we climbed to the summit.

How to climb to the summit? How to fly into the sky above all the ups and downs? You must relax. You must realize that you are already on the summit. You are beyond the ups and downs. You are beyond the three gunas. But no, we don't want to believe. Our mind tells us, 'No, no no. What is he saying? I have important things to do in life. How can I relax?' We love our tensions and problems too much. We like to clutch onto our lives and we do not want to let go because we think this is all there is. We do not relax. We do not realize that if we relax, we can fly. We can become the nirguna that Krishna speaks about.

A small story:

A hunter in a forest came across a clearing where there were many birds. He took a twig and tied a rope at the center of the twig. Then he took the two ends of the rope and tied them firmly to a pole on each side. Now the twig was hanging by the rope. He sprinkled a few grains around the setup. He was a clever hunter. Happily, he went away for a nap.

After some time, a bird was attracted by the grains and sat on the twig. The minute it sat on one side of the twig, the whole twig turned upside down due to the bird's weight. The bird now saw the whole world upside down and became frightened. It thought it was trapped! It clasped to the twig harder than ever and prayed to God to be set free.

After an hour, the hunter returned leisurely and caught hold of the bird. After that, you know what happened.

This is what we do in our lives. The bird did not realize that it was always free. All it needed to do was let go of the twig and fly away. Instead, what did it do? It held onto the twig harder and harder, thinking it was trapped. We do the same thing. We grasp and clutch onto our past. We clutch onto the pains and joys and keep missing the point. We keep missing the present moment. We miss eternity. We miss our Consciousness inside.

At the end of this discourse, we will do a meditation that will help us unclutch and go beyond.

The supreme truth is inside and outside all living entities. It is moving and non-moving on account of being subtle. It is near and far. Krishna uses all these terms and concepts such as moving, non-moving, near, far, inside and outside because these are the only terms we can understand and comprehend. He is giving us an idea to tell us that supreme Consciousness is beyond these concepts and terms that we know.

We always evaluate whatever we see with a fixed frame of reference, based upon a physical reference such

as near, far, inside, outside, etc. Please understand that these adjectives are relative. They happen when we use a fixed set of references to compare against. What is near for somebody may be far for somebody else. What is inside for something can be outside for something else. For example, we can say that the television is inside the house and the tree is outside. However at the same time, we can say that the tree is inside that town or city. With relation to the house the tree is outside, and with relation to the city the tree is inside. So it is relative to which objects, spaces or locations we use as our reference.

You see the world full of objects with different qualifiers because you associate yourself with a fixed entity. You think you are this body with a fixed boundary that is watching the rest of the world. When you cut yourself off from the rest of the objects around you, you label everything else based on this reference you have created. You say something is far or near, based on the physical boundaries with respect to the coordinates of your body. You have created a reference point. Whatever you do, however you think, is based on this reference point. You live in this space enclosed by your physical boundary or ghata akasa.

You see, there are three spaces we can live in: space that is covered by the body, space that is covered by the mind, and space that cannot be covered by body and mind. The first is ghata akasa, or the space enclosed by this physical body. This space exists inside our physical body. Most of us live in this space nearly all the time. The next is chidaakasa, the space that you are aware and conscious of. Right now, if you are aware of this hall it is your chidaakasa. This is the space of the thoughts and mind. The third is the maha akasa. This is the whole space, cosmos, everything put together.

The ghata akasa is made of the pancha bhuta, the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether. These elements become subtler as we move up from earth, to water, to fire, to air, to ether. None of the first four reflect Consciousness. Ether, the subtlest element, connects with Consciousness. It reflects Consciousness. And that is the reason we are alive. The problem is, we think Consciousness is bound by ghata akasa. We think it is limited to this body.

That is why we make this body the reference when we view the outer world. We think this body is the 'I' that sees the rest of the world. You see, all science had this as its basic foundation: we are separate entities defined by physical boundaries. Enlightened Masters that have moved beyond ghata akasa into the maha akasa understand that all this division of space is due to our ignorance.

Please understand that space can never be divided. Yet we divide it into boundaries and associate terms: within, inside, outside, near, far, etc. because of our limited understanding. This is the cause for our sufferings. First of all, we divide the space because of our ignorance. Second, we try to possess the space that we think is in our control. And third, we fear that the space might be taken from us. All fears, including the fear of death,

happen because we constantly try to protect the space covered by our body and mind. Such foolishness!

We must understand the basic truth that space cannot be divided. When we understand that we are maha akasa, we transcend all boundaries. When the jump from ghata akasa to chida akasa, and from chida akasa to maha akasa happens, we realize that there is no such thing as inside, outside, near or far.

Whatever space we may be in, the possibility of achieving a higher space is available to every one of us. Man, as such, is only potentiality. He is not actuality. He is not what he is supposed to be. As of now we are in potential or seed form and have not expressed our potential fully. We have not become trees yet. But that does not mean we cannot grow and become trees. When we transcend these relative boundaries we will understand through experience what Krishna says.

Krishna says that the supreme truth is inside and outside all living entities. It is moving and non-moving on account of being subtle. This is the space of maha akasa, which includes the space of everything. This space is absolute. Everything is included in this space. When there is no 'two,' how can we compare? How can we say something is near or far when there is only one? The truth is absolute and one.

Although the supreme Spirit, Paramatman, appears to be divided as the cosmic and individual entities, it is never divided. It is to be known that this is the basis of generation, maintenance, and destruction of life. The same Universal Energy that has no names or forms manifests itself into this world as various shapes, names, and forms. What is integrated and one appears as many.

When we pour water into containers of different shapes and sizes, it takes on their shapes. Water in each of the jars appears to be different from the others. If we carefully examine their contents, all of them contain the same water. Similarly, the world of many forms and shapes, so many species of plants and animals, make it appear as though there is so much variety. Underlying them all is the same energy. The prana shakti, life force, running in each of them is the same.