Action In Inaction And Inaction In Action

4. 17 The complexities of action are very difficult to understand.

Understand fully the nature of proper action by understanding the nature of wrong action and inaction.

4.18 He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction, is wise and a yogi,

Even if engaged in all activities.

4.19 He who is determined and devoid of all desires for sense gratification, he is of perfect knowledge.

The sages declare such a person wise whose actions are burnt by the fire of knowledge.

4.20 Having given up all attachment to the results of his action, always satisfied and independent,

The wise man does not act, though he is engaged in all kinds of action.

Here, Krishna says that the person who sees inaction in action and action in inaction has attained transcendence. When you see that it is not the 'I' in you that is doing the activities but it is the senses following their nature, when you see that it is the mind that is creating the false sense of identification of you with the action, then you have realized; you have attained transcendence because you are now no longer in the clutches of the mind.

It is the mind that makes you attached to something and repulsed by something else. When you are not in the clutches of the mind, you are free. You do actions because the senses by nature have to perform their functions. For example, the eyes see, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, the nose smells and the skin feels. Yet, you are free from the bondage of action because you do not have any identification with the action; you do not have any emotional attachment to anything. So naturally, you are free and you are liberated and you can do what you are doing most beautifully without expecting any particular result or being bothered by the results of the action.

This is what it means to be 'un-clutched'. Being 'unclutched' is the state where you are free and liberated. Let me expand on the word 'un-clutching' and what I mean by it.

Constantly you are connecting all your thoughts and creating connecting links in your mind. For example, the headache that happened ten years ago, the headache that happened five years ago, the headache that happened three years ago, the headache that happened yesterday, are all independent experiences that happened in your life.

For the sake of easy reference, you categorize all these experiences in your mind into one category of 'headache'. It is archived just for utility purpose, to serve as reference. It is just like how you file documents in your office in various categories, in various files. But what happens? By and by, you start believing that all these experiences are connected.

The suffering that happened ten years ago happened for a different reason, in a different place. It was a totally unique experience. The suffering that happened five years ago happened for a totally different reason. It was a completely different experience. The suffering that happened three years ago was again for a different reason.

Initially for the sake of ease, you archive them in the same place, for easy reference. By and by you start believing they are connected. When you start believing they are connected you create a shaft.

If you connect all the painful memories, you create a pain shaft and conclude, 'My life is suffering, my life is pain.' You start believing your whole life is a chain of suffering, a long chain of suffering. When you start believing that your whole life is suffering you have created a pain shaft and you are waiting in your life only for painful incidents, so that you can elongate that shaft.

One more thing you should understand, whatever you believe, that is what you expand also within you. If you believe something, you will again and again see that in your life. That is why Vedic rishis, sages, say that you create what you want. You create what you desire. By seeing you create. What ever you believe you will create and expand.

Once you start believing that your life is a pain, you are waiting unconsciously for painful incidents to strengthen that belief, to strengthen that judgment. We don't usually collect arguments to pass judgments; we collect arguments to support our judgments. The judgment is ready. We only collect arguments to support it. When you are clear that your life is a pain shaft, a big chain of pains, you are waiting for more judgments to support your faith, more judgments to support your belief.

Second thing, whenever you are adding the painful incidents unconsciously, constantly, you will be elongating that shaft, even though you may want to consciously end the pain by breaking it. If you believe your whole life is a shaft of joyful experiences, which we do very rarely, constantly you are in fear about whether the joy will continue. You wonder, 'Will it continue in the same way?'

If you believe life is a shaft of painful incidents, you do two things: unconsciously you gather more and more incidents and strengthen your faith about how your life is painful and consciously you also try to break the pain shaft! If you believe life is a chain of joyful incidents, unconsciously you will be in fear that it will end and consciously you will try to prolong it. Understand that these two big dramas we are continuously enacting with ourselves.

But the big difficulty, 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 shaft does not exist. You can neither elongate it nor break it. When you started archiving all the incidents in your life for the sake of easy reference, by and by you started believing that they are really existentially connected.

When you start believing that they are existentially connected, you believe your life as a pain shaft or a joy shaft. When you start believing life as a pain shaft you try to break it; when you believe it as a joy shaft, you try to elongate it. But one important thing you forget, you can neither break it nor elongate it because the shaft itself does not exist.

Just try this experiment:

Sit down for ten minutes with a pen and paper. Now, just start jotting down whatever thoughts come to your mind. Please do not edit your thoughts; write them down as they are. Do not judge yourself and do not try to control what comes to your mind. If you try to judge, you are playing a hypocritical game with yourself, that's all. Just write down whatever comes.

Now, read whatever you have written. You can see for yourself how unconnected and illogical your thoughts are! You will be sitting here and thinking, 'I think I should go to my office tomorrow', then the next minute, 'No, no no, I should just wake up and decide then', then, 'What should I do about dinner tonight?'

Have you seen a fish tank? Have you seen how the bubbles rise up in a fish tank? There is a gap between one bubble and the next. But the gap is so small that it looks like a continuous stream. Just like the bubbles in a fish tank, there is a gap between one thought and another thought in your mind as well. If you look a little deeply you will realize that your thoughts are independent thoughts like the independent bubbles. By their very nature, your thoughts are independent.

For example, if you see a dog in the street, suddenly you remember the pet you used to play with as a child. Then you will remember the teacher you studied with as a child, then, where your teacher used to stay, and so on! If you look at it logically, you will see that the dog in the street and the teacher are not connected in any way. There is no logical connection, but your mind simply flows. If you look a little deep you will understand that your thoughts are illogical, independent and unconnected.

When you believe that your mind is logical, when you believe that your mind has got its own logic, you have created the first original sin for yourself. That is the original sin. Believing your mind is logical is the first sin.

Understand, by your very nature you are un-clutched. By your very nature you are unconnected.

Connecting thoughts and seeing is like trashing all your emails and picking up some emails from the trash back again. When I say trash mails, I mean the thoughts that have left you already. Every moment you are renouncing the thoughts by your very nature. A new thought can appear only when the old thought has been renounced. But even after renouncing you try to pick up the thoughts from the dustbin and try to create a shaft with it. You feel that some valuable thoughts have been dropped in the dustbin, so you pick up some thoughts here and there. You pick up these thoughts from the dustbin, put them near your bed, spray a little perfume on them and keep them nice and pretty!

All you need to do is a few things. First, have a clear understanding that you are creating a shaft, shaft of pain, or shaft of joy and trying to fight with it, by either trying to elongate it or by trying to break it. Second thing, you don't even have to un-clutch yourself from the shaft because the shaft is imaginary. By your very nature, if you stop creating a shaft, you are un-clutched. You don't need to un-clutch.

Then we start asking, 'If I un-clutch, how will I do my job? How will I take care of my things? Will I not just lie down in my bed and waste my life? If I am un-clutched, why should I go to my job?' I ask you, why should you not go to your job?

The moment you say you will not go for your job, it means you have a little hatred or a little vengeance against the job. That is why the moment you get some excuse you want to escape from your job. By saying all these things, you are expressing your anger, your violence against your routine, nothing else.

I always tell people, 'Fine, don't do anything; just be un-clutched; for how many days will you be lying in your bed?' Maybe ten days, until your inactivity (tamas) gets exhausted. See, you have a certain amount of tamas in you. Tamas is one of the three attributes of purity, activity or inactivity. Until your tamas gets exhausted you will lie there, but after that what will you do? Naturally, you will start working and you will start moving! So do not be afraid; do not be afraid that if you are un-clutched, you will not do your daily routine.

That is what Krishna means by action and inaction. You cannot by nature be inactive. You will day dream if nothing else. You will clutch on to fantasies. You will try to escape from reality by deluding yourself, because your mind is clutched onto a soft and easy dream shaft.

When you truly un-clutch, when you are in the present moment, without any attachment to the past and future, you will realize that you are full of energy. You just cannot keep quiet. You will have to do something. That 'something' will be dictated by your present moment awareness, not by fantasies. I tell you, what you think as 'you' is not necessary to run your day-to-day life. This is the basic truth. What you think as you is not necessary to run your day-to-day life. This truth hurts us.

See, if somebody is happily independent of us, we can't tolerate it, it is too much. Constantly we need to feel we are needed. That is why we expect people to project their sufferings on us and we too project our sufferings on them, so that we feel important. What you think as 'you' is not necessary to run your day-to-day life.

People come and ask me, 'Constantly I repeat positive affirmations, 'I should stop smoking, I should stop smoking,' but it is not working. Why, Master?'

All these creative visualizations create more and more trouble. Because in the very words, 'I should stop smoking', the word 'smoking' is contradicting the 'I should stop'. You land up empowering the word 'smoking' as much as you are empowering the words 'I should stop'! Instead you should say, 'Let me have only healthy habits' or something totally positive without even the word 'smoking' in it.

Similarly, if you have a headache, instead of empowering the thought of the headache, you can do a very simple thing like deciding to have a glass of water. The moment you decide to have a glass of water, it becomes a fresh thought. The old thought of the headache has to disappear because the new thought that is water has to come into play, right? Once you keep replacing the thoughts, you break free from the headache based thought patterns and eventually expel the headache from your system itself.

You ask me, 'How can it be so simple, Master?' It is simple. Constantly you are taught that it is not so simple. It is simple. If you really understand, it is so simple. But soon after doing this, the thought of headache may come back, then what do you do? Understand: your faith in it is what brings it back. This is the basic problem. You are so faithful towards the thought about the headache, that you forcefully drag it back into your system; you being back a trashed file, that's all.

And one more thing: if it comes back, it can go also, is it not? Why don't you celebrate those moments in which it left you? Why do you constantly remember the moments it came back?

People ask me again and again, 'I fail when I try to unclutch Master.'

I ask them, 'Why are you connecting your past failure with your present failure?' When you connect all the past failures, you create one more word, 'failure'. The failure that happened nine years ago, the failure that happened eight years ago, the failure that happened yesterday are all independent incidents. Why do you connect all of them and create the next experience also as a failure?

Just relax and stop connecting and suddenly you will see such a deep inner healing happening in you; such deep peace happening in you. Suddenly you will see that you have dropped out of the war, the constant running. Just relax. I tell you when you become a drop out, when you drop out of this war, when you drop from this whole game, suddenly you will realize that the whole thing is just a psycho drama happening. Because you are constantly supporting it, you are creating these shafts, that's all!

Try this simple meditation:

Just close your eyes and sit. Whatever words are rising in you, just let them rise. Just do not connect them with any other thought, that's all. Just don't create a shaft; simply un-clutch.

If you feel bored, or if your mind asks what to do, just un-clutch from that thought as well. Do not even connect with that thought. Just sit, be un-clutched. If your mind connects with a thought, just un-clutch. Do not create, maintain, or destroy any thought.

Try this for a few minutes and you will see the effect for yourself. Krishna says that to understand what action is, you need to understand what inaction is. In my programs, this is what I tell people. To understand what meditation is, you need to understand what meditation is not.

I spend a day and a half explaining what meditation is not and less than half a day about what meditation is. It is the same thing with healing too. For two full days people are taught what healing is not with the help of a detailed manual! Then I come in and ordain the healers, which takes only half an hour!

When you un-clutch, you are seemingly in inaction. However, the removal of the various shafts of pain, pleasure, fantasies etc, releases so much of energy within you that you are now actively passive. You are at the height of potential energy, ready to release that energy for whatever purpose you decide in that present moment.

If instead, you are actively daydreaming, caught in the web of your shafts of fantasies and pleasures intermingled with sorrow and pain, you are seemingly active, very busy, but totally and uselessly busy. In fact, you are counterproductively busy as you are then digging yourself into more suffering.

In the process of un-clutching, you transcend both action and inaction. You successfully destroy the false notion of connectivity of thoughts and reach the state of the present moment, the state of no mind, and the state of dropping thoughts. In this present moment of unclutched condition, you are active and yet not attached to any activity. You are truly in Krishna consciousness.

All suffering and pain arise when we associate ourselves with the senses and the mind. The real Self in you is eternal, timeless, never changing. It is like this: when you see the clouds drifting in the clear sky, is the sky actually changing? No! The sky is like the canvas over which clouds of different forms and shapes drift across, sometimes completely covering the sky behind and sometimes drifting apart to reveal the sky behind.

When you travel in a train, have you looked out through the window? All the objects outside - the trees, the rocks, the buildings - everything seems to be in motion. It is relative motion that gives you this effect, this feeling that everything around you is moving. Just like this is a maya, delusion, because of the effect of maya also, it appears as if the Self is being affected by the emotions and the perceptions of the senses.

Just like when the clouds go over the clear blue sky it appears that the sky is being covered by different types and colors of clouds, so also the Self is like the clear sky over which the clouds of different emotions go over.

If you see yourself in a clear lake or a mirror, what you see is a reflection of what is being projected, right? Just like that, in the lake of the Self, of the being, whatever quality is projected on, it is what you will see reflected in the lake. Does it mean that the lake has become dirty? No! The reflection has no reality, no solid existence.

Actually, the Self is permanent. The Self in you, in me, in the person next to you is all the same. When everything is you, what is there to fear? Where is the question of conflict, jealousy, fear or greed?

Everything is you. Enjoy this world in its many forms and manifestations. Enjoy it in all these forms. However, enjoy without getting caught in attachment. Our senses are treacherous. They create addictions that overwhelm us. The more we have, the less we enjoy, and yet we cannot do without them. True wisdom is to step back from what the senses tell you, for they never tell you the truth.

Have you seen a person sell something, say a painting? You can see the seller would be busy trying to convince people, trying to get the best bargain. But see someone who is standing witnessing this whole scene, someone, who is neither interested in buying the painting nor in selling it. Only he can completely enjoy the painting!

This world is like a poem written by the Great Poet and all that comes in the poem are verses of infinite bliss. A small story:

There was once a father stag that was standing with the young stag in front of a lake. The stag was looking at its own reflection in the water of the lake and telling the young stag, 'Son, see how powerful we are! Look at what we have been endowed with long horns, strong feet, and sharp eyes. We are truly powerful.'

Just as the stag was talking, a dog jumped in front of the stag. The stag, in a split second, just leapt and ran instinctively out of fear.

Then the child stag asked its father, 'Father, what is the use of being powerful if we have to run away from the dog?'

When we are faced with a testing situation, we forget all our truths that we have taught ourselves as philosophy. Now, that does not mean that we do not accept the truth. It is just that we feel we are not strong enough to experience it. We need to persevere, fill the mind with the highest thoughts, the highest truths. Then, it can become an experiential reality in our lives.

See, without the right ideals, you may reach the goal but it will take much longer. But, if you have the right ideals, you will reach the truth much faster. When you take the help of those who have seen the truth, it is more intelligent to experiment with the techniques that they advocate.

We are taught that we are weak human beings, sinners. But the Vedic rishis have time and again declared, 'We are the children of immortality.' Let us be open to positive, affirmative thoughts rather than continuously repeating negative and self-defeating thoughts to ourselves. These are not just positive thoughts or statements. Understand that these are great truths that our rishis have experienced, which they declare to us, encouraging us to experiment and experience as well. They are not mere words trying to convey an idea. With them come the energy and power of the experience that is possible for every one of us.

Here is a very simple example of how our perception is what decides everything including our attachment: if there is a baby and a pot of gold lying next to it, suppose a thief comes and steals the pot of gold, would the baby be bothered about it? Do you think it will be upset about it?

No! The baby would not even know that the thief has done the act of stealing the pot of gold. The baby wouldn't be upset about any loss of wealth. But suppose an adult were to be in the place of the baby. Surely he would be upset and angry with the thief stealing the pot of gold, is it not? What we have inside decides what we see outside. The child, being blissful and centered within itself, would never see anything disturbing outside, whereas an adult sees things in a different light because of his conditioned attachments and greed.

That is what Krishna says here: be involved completely in the action yet be detached, independent and satisfied within. Then you can function beautifully, spontaneously, flowing in tune with the ultimate energy of Existence. Life then becomes a celebration. Every breath that you take, every single thing that you do is an act of joy and an expression of the loving energy in you. Your joy is no longer dependent on what society says or thinks about you or your actions, because you are completely centered in yourself.

Whatever we do, whatever we think, we are subconsciously seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone. You may not accept this but if you analyze deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. If you just sit and note down, in a day, how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in society, you will realize what I am saying.

It is like a signature campaign that you are involved in for your whole life. All your activities, all your efforts are to get the signature of the others around you. In a big register, you make a column, 'Good Father' and then you do whatever is expected of you from your children and you ask for their signature under the column of 'Good Father'. Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends, you make the respective columns like 'Good Husband', 'Good Employee, 'Good Friend', and then you do all the things that they expect you to do and ask for their signature under their columns. Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature in their registers under the columns meant for you.

Why do we bother so much about others' opinions about us? Why are we trying to derive strength from others all the time? The reason is, one, we don't know anything about ourselves. We know ourselves only through others' opinions of us. Second, when others give us their approval and attention, they are actually giving us energy. Attention is energy.

Be very clear, when you are dependent on external sources for energy, it only means that you are psychologically handicapped*.* When you need physical support, you are physically handicapped. When you need psychological support, you are psychologically handicapped, that's all. With physical handicaps, you know that you are handicapped because you can see it clearly, but with psychological handicaps, you don't even know that you are handicapped.

If you have seen children at play you might have seen them build castles with cards. They will place the cards at a certain angle to each other and build several layers of such patterns in a pyramid shape. They happily build the pyramid and equally happily remove one card from the castle and watch the whole thing collapse! In fact, they will delight in that aspect just as much as the building up of the card castle.

Just like this, we build our own self-image like a castle out of people's opinions of us and arrange all these certificates and signatures and build a castle to form our self-image. The image looks beautiful until even one person withdraws their certificate. Then what happens? The castle simply collapses! You start feeling miserable and unfit. You see, at least in the case of the children, they build their castles with their own cards. But we build our castles with others' certificates. So what do we do? We start working hard to maintain our 'castle'. We start behaving in a way such so that people don't remove their certificates, so that people will think well of us. This is how we get enslaved.

Because you don't know anything about yourself, you turn to society for an answer. And society happily puts its labels on you, 'you are good-looking', 'you are a failure', and so on. It is like how a parcel without a proper address is pushed from place to place. We move around, collecting all the stamps that society puts on us. By and by we forget our true nature, and the fact that we are not the labels but the stuff inside the parcel.

Never invest so much in others' opinions to the point that they become the center of your life. Don't make others the source of your energy. Don't depend on others for your psychological survival. Be your own source of energy and inspiration!

Ashtavakra says beautifully, 'Bondage is when the mind longs for something, grieves about something, rejects something, holds on to something, is pleased about something or displeased about something. Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, does not grieve about anything, does not reject anything, does not hold on to anything and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything. Bondage is when the mind is tangled in one of the senses and liberation is when the mind is not tangled in any of the senses. When there is no 'me', that is liberation, and when there is 'me' there is bondage. Consider this carefully and don't hold on to anything nor reject anything.'

Q: Master, what you say is very difficult to practice even if we accept it. For instance, if we are injured and feel the pain now, it is the reality for us in this present moment. I do not need to link it to the past experiences. So how will I break out of the connectivity with pain?

Treat the pain of the present as the pain of the here and now. Do not link it to pains that you had in the past and with the sufferings that you experienced then. They have no relevance to the present pain.

In Quantum Physics theories of today, they say that we collapse events that happen separated in space and in time into a current experience. These events are separate events. They may or may not have been sequential. That does not matter. But the logical connection is somehow established in your mind.

If you feel pain, you normally would like to wish that pain away. You keep thinking again and again, 'I do not want this pain.' This does not work because your mind gets caught in the word 'pain'. It does not let go. So the pain does not go.

If you wish the pain to dissolve you need to focus on wellness. Do not associate the experience with the word 'pain' which has negative connotations in your mind. Instead, think about being well.

Better still, focus your attention on the pain. Watch the pain intensely but without ascribing the word 'pain' and the meaning 'suffering' to it. For a brief moment the pain may seem to intensify but then it will dissolve. Try it the next time you have any pain.

Pain is caused by the absence of attention to your body-mind system. It is your system telling you that it needs to be looked after. Pay attention, close attention to it. It will feel better and the pain will go away.

Another thing is that pain and suffering are two different things. Pain affects the body. Suffering affects the mind. You can have pain in your body and yet have no suffering. Body pain cannot be avoided, as it is physical, but mental suffering is your own creation.

When you un-clutch, when you stop linking with the past, what disappears is the suffering. Each experience is viewed as a new one with no past association. You will find that this is not so difficult to do. You need some practice, that's all.