Doubt Destroys

4.37 Just as a blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, o Arjuna,

So does the fire of wisdom burn to ashes all actions, all your karma.

4.38 Truly, in this world, there is nothing as pure as wisdom.

One who has matured to know this enjoys in himself in due course of time.

4.39 A person with shraddha (courageous faith) achieves wisdom and has control over the senses.

Achieving wisdom, without delay, he attains supreme peace.

4.40 Those who have no wisdom and faith, who always have doubts, are destroyed.

There is no happiness in this world or the next.

4.41 O winner of riches, one who has renounced the fruits of his actions, whose doubts are destroyed, who is well situated in the self, is not bound by his actions.

4.42 O descendant of Bharata, therefore, stand up, be situated in yoga.

Armed with the sword of knowledge; cut the doubt born of ignorance that exists in your heart.

A beautiful story that you may have read as a child:

Once, there were four blind men. They were traveling through a forest. They came across an elephant. But none of them had ever seen an elephant in their lives. All that they had known in their lives was through the four senses of hearing, touch, taste and smell. So, when they came across the elephant, each of them started touching and feeling it and tried to figure out what it was.

The first man touched the elephant's trunk and said, 'Oh, this is a tree trunk in front of us.' The second person touched the legs and said, 'No, this is a stump of wood!'

The third person touched the tail and said, 'No way! This is a rope!' The fourth person who was touching the body said, 'This is a boat!'

When you follow sensory inputs and come to conclusions, you are no different from the blind men. Even if you are not blind, almost all of what your senses feed into you can be false and interpreted based on your inclination. The filter of your ego interprets whatever you perceive through your senses. Your ego decides as to how you understand what you see, hear, touch, taste or smell, and thereafter how you act.

There is only so much you can see through the lens of your ego. Whatever you see will be tinted because you are seeing it through your mind, through your biased perceptions based on past memories. To see the truth, you need to really 'see' beyond your ego, mind and senses. When you do that, you can see the infinite dimensions of the ultimate.

The words that you gather cannot give you the ultimate knowledge. When you just gather words without digesting the meaning, either indigestion sets in or you start vomiting out those words on others.

A small story:

Once, a blind man went to a doctor to see if he had any hope in getting back his eyesight. The doctor checked him and said, 'Yes, I can do an operation and you can get back your eyesight. Then, you can drop your stick and start walking.'

The man replied, 'Doctor, I understand I will get back my eyesight, but how can I walk without the stick?'

The blind man could not understand that he can walk without a stick! He does not even know what it means to be able to see. The doctor has to do the operation to give him back his eyesight, then automatically he will drop the stick.

When I tell people to drop their mind, they look at me as if I am a mad man. 'How can we drop the mind?' they ask. 'It is easy for you, you have renounced everything, you have no wife, no responsibilities, and on top of it you are enlightened. So, you can talk. How can we, living in this ocean of bondage, the samsara sagara, be in no-mind and yet survive?'

It is only when you drop the mind, it is only when you stop connecting your thoughts to form a shaft, that you really start 'seeing'. Your ego stops interfering with the truth of what you see. It stops filtering and adding tones to what your senses experience. Your baggage of value systems and beliefs, your embedded memories, your samskaras, dissolve, and the new 'you' is born. You are reborn.

All your actions then arise out of intuition, from the super conscious state, the state of truth, where no mind can exist.

In the next verse, Krishna uses the word 'shraddha' again. Actually, shraddha cannot be translated as faith. Shraddha does not mean faith, it means faith plus courage to execute the idea; courage to experiment with the idea is shraddha. Courage to experiment with the idea is what is referred to as shraddha.

When you have the knowledge and at the same time, you have courage to follow the teachings, then you can achieve the ultimate.

Many people do not have the courage to follow their results through. When Galileo declared that it is the Earth that goes around the Sun, while the Christian belief at that time was that everything revolves around the Earth, he was persecuted. In his writings, he actually has a footnote: 'We can deny this but since the Earth and Sun are not Christians, they will continue to move the way they do, irrespective of Christian beliefs!'

If you see our eastern rishis, they did so much inner world research. Millions of rishis have done full-time research for thousands of years using their bodies and minds as laboratories. This knowledge of the inner world is the result of their courageous experiments and studies. They were true inner scientists who had not only the curiosity and the perseverance to know but also the courage to follow their findings.

Look at Patanjali: he boldly declares all that he says in the Yoga Sutras is completely open to experimentation and verification. He says, 'You are free to try this and if you find anything more to be added or edited, you are free to do so.' He has experimented and presented his research report. He invites you to try out these in your life and if you learn something more from that, his work is open to editing. That is the beauty of our system; it is a living system open to being updated.

Our Masters have declared that it is the truth that matters, so they present their research reports based on what they have learnt from experience. If by practicing the truth one loses something, it is better to lose it. Whatever cannot stand the test of truth, let it get washed away. It is better for our being that it gets lost as early as possible.

Of all religious and spiritual doctrines, it is only the scriptures of the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal path of righteousness, as the Hindu philosophy is called, that allow themselves to be updated. The Vedas and the Upanishads, which we believe are the voices of Nature, are not rules and regulations. They are truths to be understood and followed only in awareness. There are no punishments if one does not follow them, nor is one condemned a sinner if one doesn't follow them.

The rules and regulations, which followed in later days, came clearly with the injunction that they can be modified if there was need. Nothing was sacred just because it was uttered. All what we follow blindly today as traditions, came through societal interpretation. It is for us to sift through these truths with conscious awareness.

Once tested, proven and accepted, we need to have the courage to practice these truths. Mere knowledge is insufficient. That is what shraddha is about. With shraddha, faith combined with courage, you make the effort to conquer your senses, and direct your mind towards the truth, instead of your mind and senses leading you wherever they wish to.

Many people in this world are blessed by Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth), Saraswati (Goddess of Knowledge) but very few people are blessed by Kali (Goddess of Courage). When Lakshmi and Saraswati join with Kali, your liberation is assured!

In the next few beautiful verses, Krishna says that there is no happiness for those who always have doubts and who have no knowledge and faith. He uses the word 'always'. He does not say that from the beginning itself you should not have any doubts. Having doubts is natural; as long as you have the mind, doubts will be there. But you can go beyond it.

In the Shiva Sutra, Devi asks, 'Oh Shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes the seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form, pervading forms? How may we enter it fully beyond space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared.'

Beautifully she expresses her whole state of mind through these few words. The last words are, 'Let my doubts be cleared.' She never says, 'Please answer my questions.' If she had made that mistake by asking 'answer my question', she would have produced one more Gita through Shiva.

See, in the Gita, Arjuna is not ready to surrender to Krishna completely. That is why in the beginning Krishna has to give him all the intellectual answers. Arjuna thinks he can solve his confusion through these answers; he doesn't know that these are much deeper doubts that need to be cleared through experience of the truth. That is why Krishna has to give more than 700 verses to first convince Arjuna that he does not know. When Arjuna finally gives up saying 'I don't know' then Krishna reveals Himself! He reveals the truth and makes Arjuna experience it because that is the only way he will realize the truth.

If you say 'let my questions be answered', you want only intellectual answers. But Devi says, 'Let my doubts be cleared, whether you give words or energy or techniques, I am not bothered, but let me be free from doubts.'

When questions become a quest, you start speaking in this language. When the urge becomes urgent, you start speaking in this language.

Devi starts with beautiful words, 'Let my doubts be cleared.' This shows a deep surrender of Devi. A deep, passive, waiting, without knowing what is going to happen, is passive surrender. That is what I call total surrender.

Actually, the moment you decide 'I will wait forever', things will simply start happening for you! As long as you are in a hurry and agitated, you stop things from happening in you. It is like you trying your best for the lotus to blossom. What will you do? You open out the petals by hand. Will it be a flower? It will never be a lotus flower. A lotus can be called a lotus flower only when it blossoms by itself. Give it a little space and time.

The moment you decide to wait, things will simply start happening, and you don't have to wait anymore. You have to wait till you decide to wait. The moment you decide to wait, you don't have to wait anymore.

When you ask 'why', you cannot reach the truth, because you are not even ready to see 'what' and you ask the 'why' before that. Just allow the Master to do the operation and give you back your true Self, and automatically you will drop what you are not.

Krishna refers here to the stages in the Master-disciple relationship. There are many levels. The first level is purely intellectual, doubt-based. 'Doubt-based' refers to the negative doubts, which are purely intellectual. It is like you are telling yourself on seeing the Master, 'Eh! What is this guy going to sit and do? Let us see. How is this fellow able to mobilize such a big crowd at such a young age? He seems to be hardly 30. He doesn't seem to be trained in marketing and doesn't seem to be very intelligent either. How is this fellow mobilizing such a big crowd around him? What is going on here?'

The next step is intelligence; from intellect to intelligence. You tell yourself, 'Why not attend this program and see what this fellow is really doing?' By this time, it has changed from, 'What this fellow is doing!' to 'Oh I think he means something. But I neither believe nor disbelieve. Ok let us see.' The intellect is becoming intelligence. You are giving a little space for the Master.

Then, next, if you continue to start looking in, first from intellect to intelligence, then from intelligence to intelligence combined with emotion, like 60% intelligence, 40% emotion, that is the time you will feel like a friend towards the Master.

After that, it becomes 60% emotion and 40% intelligence. That is the time you will feel like the Master is like an elder, like a father or mother or lord or teacher. You feel respectful towards him. And then, the relation becomes pure emotion. You will feel a deep connection like a mother and son.

Then, after that, it is neither emotion nor intellect nor intelligence. It is a being level relationship. It is the deep connection of a beloved, the madhura bhava.

And suddenly, you will see, he is not even the beloved, he is beyond the beloved. You start experiencing the mahabhaava, what I call the guru-disciple experience, experiencing yourself as the Master. That is what I call 'Tat tvam asi'. 'Tat tvam asi' means 'That art thou'. It means you are the Master.

First it is just intellect, where you have doubts. But you have to go beyond that. If you are stuck in this level of negative doubts, naturally you will suffer with the doubts and misery. The next level is intelligence, then 60% intelligence and 40% emotion, then 60% emotion and 40% intelligence, then pure emotion, then 60% emotional and 40% being level, then pure being level and then all these and something more.

When you go beyond doubts and beyond faith, into the realization of the formless energy that is you, then you find yourself.

I am presenting this secret science as a hypothesis. Now you are welcome to analyze this with your questions.