Going Beyond The Gunas

14.21 Arjuna inquired: O my Lord, by what symptoms is one known who is transcendental to those modes? What is his behavior? And how does he transcend the modes of nature?

14.22,23,24,25 The Blessed Lord said: He who does not hate illumination, attachment and delusion when they are present, nor longs for them when they disappear; who is seated like one unconcerned, being situated beyond these material reactions of the modes of nature, who remains firm, knowing that the modes alone are active;

He who regards alike pleasure and pain, and looks on a lump of earth, a stone and a piece of gold with an equal eye; who is wise and holds praise and blame to be the same; who is unchanged in honor and dishonor, who treats friend and foe alike, who has abandoned all resultbased undertakings - such a man is said to have transcended the modes of nature.

With great clarity the Master tells us what to do. He uses specific terms that cannot be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Krishna explains the nature of one who has transcended the three gunas, one who has gone beyond his natural attributes. He explains what we need to do to become a trigunarahita, to become liberated from the influence of the three gunas.

One who is beyond the three gunas is unaffected by the play of the three attributes. He is beyond the play of emotions. Whatever happens is right for him. Success and failure mean the same. Friend and foe make no difference. Poverty or richness has no influence.

Such an attitude of total detachment requires one thing: complete trust. When we trust that whatever happens is what needs to happen and we accept whatever happens as it arises, we are totally detached. Then whatever happens will be right. Such trust can only come from surrender.

I tell my disciples that because I have no home, every home that I visit is my home. Anywhere and everywhere I stay, whether it is under a tree or out in the open, is my home. Four walls, a door and a lock do not create a home for me. People ask why I wear jewelry or different kind of clothing. What difference does it make? This body itself is not mine. This skin is not mine. What difference would it make if I wore this or that?

There is neither attraction nor aversion. Just as people admire the clothes or accessories on a mannequin, I admire the clothes and jewelry on this body. They have no connection with me.

Every movement I make is at the order of Existence. I cannot move a finger without the permission of that Universal Energy. That is why when people talk about God, it is a concept to them, a theory to prove or disprove. To me it is reality; it is the reality of my existence every moment. When people look at themselves, the 'I', the identity, drives them. To me, that identity is not real. 'I' do not exist.

When we are one with Existence, one with nature, nothing affects us. I walked tens of thousands of miles barefoot across the length and breadth of Bharat. People ask, 'How is it your feet are so soft, not calloused and broken as ours would be if we walked barefoot even ten miles?' If we trust nature, nature looks after us.

When I lived at Tapovan at approximately 17,000 feet in the Himalayan Mountains above the starting point of Ganga, I wore only this two-piece clothing even in freezing winter. When we trust nature, cold and heat do not bother us. There are documentaries recorded by scientists showing how Tibetan Lamas pass an initiation test. They wrap themselves in wet clothes and sit in the freezing snow. They pass their test if they are able to dry their wet clothing by the heat generated through their meditation. They use meditation techniques to accomplish this; however, that is only part of the reason. The major reason is their trust in nature.

Pain and pleasure are part of our conditioning. During my parivarajaka days, I happened to visit a village in Central Bharat. I came across a strange characteristic in the lives of women there: painless delivery. The women used to enter huts specially built for that purpose. There were no cries and no shrieks. They went in alone, needed no help and simply came out smiling with a baby. I was surprised! When I asked an elder how it was that they had no pain and did not need a doctor or midwife, he did not understand my question. 'Pain?' he asked, 'What pain? Why should women feel pain at childbirth? It is a celebration.'

We create pain and pleasure through association, through conditioning. We create greed and fear through association. Our samskaras, our conditioned memories, create pain and pleasure.

Light and darkness, good and bad, right and wrong are based on conditioning. Our conditioning, the civilized education and refinement tells us that a person dressed in a particular manner is acceptable in society and another dressed differently is not. When such a statement is made by a global figure, such as Churchill calling Gandhi, a halfnaked fakir, many people take exception. But most people

behave the same way. We may not say it as strongly or as impolitely as Churchill, but we discriminate based on our upbringing. Otherwise we would not have a system of the untouchables in Bharat. This has nothing to do with religion or Vedic culture. No scripture ever said one person is inferior to another. All scriptures affirm that every human being is a spiritual being. All of us carry the seed of divinity in us.

So how can anyone quote scriptures to justify the unfair treatment of another person? When Krishna says, vasudeva kutumbaha, 'Let the world be your family,' there is no exclusion, none at all. When He says all, He means ALL!

Our conditioning, our upbringing, should be called 'down-bringing' since it drags us down and does not raise us up. Our conditioning inculcates these negativities in us. This is how society ensures its survival through controlling us with fear and greed.

Our NSP meditations are designed to dissolve our conditioning, our embedded memories. At the end of the four-day course in Bharat, which is a two-day course overseas, people fall at each other's feet with no differentiation of age, gender, wealth or class. Their negativities disappear and, at that heightened energy occasion, all that one can see is the Divinity in others. I have seen fathers-in-law fall at the feet of their daughters-in-law, something nobody would believe in the context of Hindu culture.