1. Bhagavad Gita, Commentary by Nithyananda - Chapter 5 - Live all your Dimensions

In this series, a young enlightened Master, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM comments on the Bhagavad Gita.

Many hundreds of commentaries of the Gita have been written over the years. The earliest commentaries were by the great spiritual masters such as Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva, some thousand years ago. In recent times, great masters such as Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi have spoken from the Gita extensively. Many others have written volumes on this great scripture.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita is not just a literary translation and a simple explanation of that translation. He takes the reader through a world tour while talking about each verse. It is believed that each verse of the Gita has seven levels of meaning. What is commonly rendered is the first level meaning. Here, an enlightened master takes us beyond the common into the uncommon, with equal ease and simplicity.

To read THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's commentary on the Gita is to obtain an insight that is rare. It is not mere reading; it is an experience; it is a meditation.

Sankara, the great master philosopher said:

'A little reading of the Gita, a drop of Ganga water to drink, remembering Krishna once in a while, all this will ensure that you have no problems with the God of Death.'

Editors of these volumes of Bhagavad Gita have expanded upon the original discourses delivered by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM through further discussions with Him. For ease of understanding for English speaking readers, and to cater to their academic interest, the original Sanskrit verses in their English translation have been included as an appendix in this book.

This reading is meant to help every individual in daily life as well as in the endeavour to realize the Ultimate Truth. It creates every possibility to attain nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Live All Your Dimensions

If we look closely at our lifestyle, what we accept as normal is actually chaotic and crazy. But we have been conditioned to it since childhood so we are not even aware of this.

From an early age we are taught certain beliefs and habits that cut deep grooves in our mind. The rest of our lives we follow these furrows and tracks of thinking. In Hindu villages, even today, they grind oil seeds in a traditional expeller, powered by bullocks. These bullocks are tied in such a way that they walk round and round in circles to crush the seeds inside the expeller. If we analyze the way we live, we are very much like these bullocks! We get caught in a rut and we go round and round driven by our senses and memories. Just as the bullocks chew the cud as they walk around, we too chew the cud of our memories and sensual perceptions as we unconsciously follow our same routine day after day, year after year.

Even when we think we are breaking the routine and doing things creatively and rationally, it is just an illusion of our mind. We are still driven by our unconscious mind and the memories stored in the unconscious mind. Any scientist worth his salt will tell us that nearly ninety percent of our mind exists in the 'unconscious' zone, where all our deep memories are stored. This is the hard disk of our mind. What we think of as our conscious and rational mind is just a flash memory drive that is transient.

These engraved memories stored in the deep unconscious mind make decisions on our behalf, even though we are completely unaware of it. What we think of as an intuitive decision is actually an instinctive decision that arises from our unconscious.

Even educated people do not understand the difference between intuition and instinct. Instinct is the unconscious. Instinct is what drives animals. Instinct is the deeply grooved habit patterns that are encoded in the genes and DNA.

Since the unconscious brain acts much faster than the conscious brain, the instinctive action of the unconscious is of crucial value to our survival.

Intuition on the other hand is a super conscious state of the mind. It is a state of mind that is developed through meditation. It is where we reach when we move inwards through our senses. It is a state of living and being in the present moment.

Intuition transcends time and space. Intuition allows us to explode in all directions while instinct restricts us to the furrowed path of our conditioned, unconscious memories.

Time and again people tell me, 'Master, it is easy for you to do what you do. You have no family ties. You have renounced wealth. We are bonded to relationships and material possessions. How can we become spiritual?'

Let me tell you clearly that this is your instinct speaking. You are caught in the conditioning of your unconscious mind, believing that you can do only one thing. You have sold yourself into the bondage of believing you are uni-dimensional.

By nature we are multi-dimensional. By nature we are intuitive. By nature we are enlightened. All that we lack is the awareness of our potential.

In the verses that follow and in the rest of the Gita, the great Master tells us how to break away from our bondages and become multi-dimensional. He teaches us how to reach our true state. This is what the word samādhi means, to go back to our true nature.

Time and again Jesus uses the word 'repent' as in 'repent or you shall perish'. This word is mistakenly taken to mean that He wants us to regret or feel guilty. This is not at all what it means. This word 'repent', native Aramaic, is used by Jesus to instruct us 'to go back to the original state'! It had exactly the same meaning as the word 'samādhi'.

Throughout the Gita, Krishna talks about yoga. Each chapter refers to one type of yoga or another. Yoga is the same as samādhi. Yoga means 'uniting'. It means uniting with our true nature.

When we unite with our true Self, we become multidimensional. We can be material and spiritual. There are no constraints and no limitations. We are free. We had great kings like Janaka, who were realized spirits. Material wealth does not limit anyone from being spiritual. Attachment to wealth through greed, and the fear of losing that wealth stops one from being free.

5.1 Arjuna said:

Oh Krishna, you asked me to renounce work first and then you ask me to work with devotion.

Will you now please tell me, one way or the other, which of the two will work for me?

5.2 Krishna says: The renunciation of work and work in devotion are both good for liberation.

But of the two, work in devotional service is better than renunciation of work.

5.3 He who neither hates nor desires the fruits of his activities has renounced.

Such a person, free from all dualities, easily overcomes material bondage and is completely liberated, Oh Arjuna!

5.4 Only the ignorant speaks of the path of action to be different from the path of renunciation.

Those who are actually learned say that both action and renunciation lead to the same truth.

In all the previous four chapters, Krishna talks with such clarity and authority that it would dissolve the doubts of anybody listening to Him. Krishna has been explaining again and again so clearly in every verse, and yet Arjuna has come back to the same point.

If you look at it, it will seem like Arjuna was playing a game. A person who was a king could never have been so dumb. Either both of them were playing a game so that the Gita could be delivered to the world or Arjuna was really desperate with no other way to save himself. There is no other book that is so clear, so direct. There is no other Master who is so straight in giving instructions.

After all the explanation given by Krishna previously, Arjuna continues to ask, 'Oh Krishna, first of all, you asked me to renounce work and then again you recommend work with devotion. Now, will you kindly tell me, definitely, which of the two is more beneficial?'

We will never be able to solve that problem if we start thinking about which would be more beneficial. Please be

very clear: we can never solve a problem if we start thinking in terms of its benefits.

First of all, 'benefit' is a very subjective term because the scale with which this is measured can vary from person to person. Before we evaluate the benefits of something, we should be clear about the scale we want to use to measure the benefits. What is beneficial for one person may be completely useless for another. The scale that we use for measuring success is a very important thing.

Before jumping to a conclusion and branding ourselves as 'successful' or 'unsuccessful', we need to know the scale with which we are going to measure our life. Unless we know the scale, it does not make sense to conclude anything. Even jumping to a conclusion should be done with clear intelligence. Jumping to a conclusion without intelligence is like falling out of an airplane without a parachute. We just won't know where we will land.

Before measuring life in terms of success or failure, one should know how this success is to be measured in the first place. If we are going to measure our life with a scale of dollars, then we have to work only for dollars. So, from morning to evening, we would work only for that goal. At the end of the day, we know, 'Yes, this is the scale with which I am going to measure my life.' Based on this, we can come to the conclusion about whether we are succeeding or failing in our life.

But you see, by the time we reach evening, the very scale changes. Then what do we do? We start our life using one scale and after a few years we measure again using a totally different scale. The very yardstick used for measuring our success or failure will have changed.

I can say one thing: it is fortunate that the scale changes. The scale changes with maturity. If we learn our lessons from Existence, if we grow with every mistake in life, then the scale with which we measure success in life should also change.

If it does not change, please be very clear, we will start the next life from ground zero. We would start our life again from the same point where we last left. It is an endless game unless we learn lessons and move on. We will play the same game again and again and again. If the scale with which we measure our success changes, it shows we are getting mature.

If it stays in the same scale of dollars and wealth, please be very clear, not only will we not be able to measure our life clearly but we will also be sure of failure. This is because there is no end to accumulating money or any material wealth. First of all, we set high standards for ourselves in terms of luxuries and material comforts. Even if we achieve these, we are not successful in our own eyes because we would have extended our target by comparing with others. Out of greed we keep saying, 'What next, what next'. There is no end to this.

At the end of our lives, we feel we have not done enough. What happens next? We again start our whole game of life from day one, from square one with the same limited maturity.

A very important thing: if only money is our scale, if only worldly comfort is our scale, be very clear: again and again we will feel we could have done a little more. We would always feel that we did not do enough and that we missed out in life. There is no absolute scale that defines success in monetary terms. For any amount of money that we have, we would be happier with a dollar more.

Let me tell you a small story:

A king's barber used to live a very happy life. Every morning he would go to the palace to shave the king's face. The king would give him ten gold coins and the barber would return home. He used to live his life happily with the ten gold coins given to him everyday after shaving the king's face. His life was really beautiful and blissful. There was nothing to bother about; there was nothing about which he was worried. He was happy.

One day when he was coming back from the king's palace, suddenly, he heard a booming voice. 'Dear Son, do you want forty gold coins?'

The barber said, 'Forty gold coins? What am I going to do with them? I have no use for that. My expense is ten gold coins and that is enough. I don't need anything more.'

The booming voice said, 'I will give you twentyfour hours to think. You can go home, discuss with your wife, come back tomorrow and tell me. If you decide yes, I shall give you a magical jar full of gold coins.'

This poor soul, he should have at least kept quiet about this! He went and opened his mouth to his wife.

She started to scream, 'You fool! Don't you have any sense? You should have brought that jar. She raved and ranted, 'You never did this for me, you never did that for me.' Throughout my life, I am wearing the same sarees (traditional attire of Hindu women). You have never gifted me any jewelry. You have never indulged me. You have never taken me on a vacation. What have I enjoyed after marrying you?'

I tell you, marriage is a three-ring circus: one is the engagement ring, next is the wedding ring and the third is suffe-ring!

When she started shouting at him, the barber said, 'Alright, fine. Don't worry. The booming voice has given me time till tomorrow morning. I have time to decide. Tomorrow morning, I will talk to him and get the jar.'

The next day morning, he asked the voice, 'Please give me that jar.' Immediately, a yaksha (an astral being) appeared before him and said, 'Have this jar. This jar has got 990 gold coins, just 10 gold coins less than 1000.'

The guy brought the gold jar back to the house. He was very happy that he could spend it for at least 99 days if he spent ten coins per day. But the moment his wife got the jar, she said, 'What is this? The jar is not overflowing. There is something missing.' He said, 'I don't know. This is the way I got the jar. The yaksha told me that it is a little less.'

She started worrying, 'Had it been full, how nice it would have been! It would have been so good.' The next day, when the barber came back, she hurriedly grabbed all the ten gold coins that he had got from the king that day and put them in the jar. She wanted the jar to overflow. But to her surprise, again the level in the jar was below the brim. It was not full.

The barber's wife now started becoming restless. She waited anxiously for the next day's wages to fill the jar. The next evening, again, she took the money from the barber and put them into the jar. Again, it was a little short from being full. It was almost full but it was not completely full. This went on continuously for a week. She stopped giving food to the barber and cut all expenses. She took away all the money and desperately waited to see the jar overflow.

In one week's time the barber had become tired and dull. It showed on his face that he was drained out. The king started enquiring, 'What happened? You used to look so fresh. What happened to you? For the last one week I have been observing. You are tired. You have started thinking about something. You have started worrying. What happened to you? Did you accept the yaksha's jar?'

The king asked the barber, 'Did you accept any gold pot from anybody?'

The barber was shocked at this remark. He said, 'Oh King, how do you know?' The king said, 'Whoever is suffering in this country, whoever is unhappy in this country, all of them have one thing in common. They accepted the yaksha's jar.

The king said, 'When you go back home, get rid of the yaksha's jar if you wish to be happy again.'

The man did so and lived happily again from that day on.

What the king said applies to all of us. Go back home and see if you have yaksha's jar or not, and if you do, get rid of it. If you are worrying, if you are suffering, there is every chance that in your house you have the yaksha's jar. The yaksha's jar never gets filled.

Of course, when I say yaksha's jar, it may not literally be there in your house. But it will surely be there in your head. Be very clear: sometimes yaksha hands over the jar in the form of a bank balance! Don't think it will be only in the form of a jar. It may be in your mind. Yaksha's jar is made out of kapāla, meaning the head, which always makes us feel we are not enough, we are not complete, and we are not full. Our head makes us feel continuously

that we are not enough unto ourselves and we are not complete. That is yaksha's jar.

Yaksha's jar means our mind. However much we may have, whatever we may get, in ten days we will feel it is not sufficient. In ten days our mind will take everything for granted. Yaksha refers to a person who has got wealth but neither does he enjoy it nor does he share it with the world. In Bharat, there are many agricultural fields where they keep two or three dogs. The dogs will neither eat nor will they allow other animals to come and eat. In the same way, if we have wealth and neither enjoy nor share it with others, we are called a yaksha.

When accumulation of wealth is done greedily, there is never an end, like the yaksha's jar, because there is always scope for more. And secondly, when one is so preoccupied about accumulating, enjoyment never happens. The greed of wanting more and more and the fear that the saved balance will deplete, hinders true enjoyment of the wealth. Why are we accumulating possessions if we do not stop and enjoy them?

I always tell people, 'Either you do dāna (charity) or you achieve mahādāna' (the final and grand sacrifice or death). If you do dāna you share a little along with enjoying yourself. You will enjoy, others also will enjoy. If you don't do small dāna, you will become mahādāna, which means you will leave everything and go away once and for all when you die.

All our material goals are updated once we reach them. Let's say you want a Mercedes Benz and work relentlessly for it and finally buy it. Once you achieve it you start wanting a Ferrari. Suddenly the Mercedes Benz looks like nothing.

Ramana Maharishi says beautifully, 'Before achieving it, even a mustard seed will look like a mountain.' Without that, it will seem as if your life will not move. It will seem as if that is the basic and most important thing for your life. 'Once you achieve it, even a mountain will look like a mustard seed.'

The mind is such, that before achieving, even a trivial thing seems so important and huge in our lives like the mustard seed that initially looks like a mountain. Suddenly, once it is achieved, even a mountain will look like a mustard seed. This is because something else looks like a mountain now. We get caught in the trap of achieving, and lose any ability to relax and enjoy what we have achieved.

The person who continuously feels, that he is not fulfilled or the man who measures his whole life with the scale of wealth will never feel fulfilled, because he has got the yaksha's jar in his house. He will have only more and more suffering. The Yaksha's jar will never be fulfilled. The Yaksha's jar will never be filled.

First, we need to understand the scale with which we are going to measure our life before concluding whether what we do in our life is beneficial to us or not. That is the baseline that we have to establish first.

Here, Arjuna asks:

'Now, will you please tell me surely, which of the two: karma, action or sanyās, renunciation is more beneficial?'

All of us, again and again continue to ask this question to ourselves. Mind is dilemma! Please be very clear, our mind is nothing but dilemma. Our mind will be alive as long as we are caught between the extremes. The moment we come to any single conclusion we will be liberated. We will be ignorant as long as we are moving from one extreme to the other.

Don't say, 'Ignorance is bliss.' If ignorance is bliss why are so many people suffering on this planet Earth? Why do you think so many are suffering? Ignorance is not bliss. Innocence is bliss. That is the difference. Innocence means we will not carry a scale with which we are continuously measuring our life.

Ignorance means we will have a scale but we will not able to fulfill our life according to our scale. If we neither have a scale nor have a goal, then there is no problem. But if we have enough intellect to have a scale but we are not able to fulfill it, then that is what I call ignorance.

The first thing we need to understand is that mind as such is a disease. The first and last disease is dilemma, the play of the mind. Dilemma is the disease with which man starts his life and ends his life too. I can't even say 'ends'. He will even be in a dilemma about whether or not to end it! But death comes and his life is just taken away from him. It is just taken away. Worry is nothing but dilemma.

Here, Arjuna is in a dilemma as to which of the two is more beneficial for him. If we look into the entire life as a utility, as some means to a benefit, please be very clear, we are creating our own hell. If we reduce life to this, we will be in hell.

Life has no separate benefit. Life itself is a benefit. We cannot brand our life as a success or failure with a scale. If we have a scale, please be very clear that we will never be satisfied. This is because if we don't achieve whatever we set out to do, we will feel life is a failure. If at all we do achieve it, we will face the depression of success. That's all.

There are people, especially in the West, who have achieved all that they wanted in life. They have realized their own dreams, the dreams borrowed from others, the dreams imposed on them, everything. But they feel a deep void in them. This is what I mean by the term 'depression of success'.

They start wondering about what it was that they ran after. When they were running, their desires drove them. They were a part of the rat race. One desire would have led to a bigger one. Once they achieve all that they thought would give them happiness, they suddenly find that they have no drive to acquire more and they are dissatisfied as well. Eventually, they are confused about themselves. They do not know what more to desire. They feel something is lacking and cannot comprehend what it could possibly be.

This is because they ran without awareness, without stopping to give an appointment to themselves, without any self-inquiry. They ran because everyone around was running. They never stopped for a minute to question why or what they really wanted in the first place. They never stopped long enough to see if what they achieved brought long lasting results. So when they stop running or when suddenly they can't run anymore, they fall back into themselves and suddenly find that they are out of sync or dis-eased with their own being. This is what becomes depression or disease.

So be very clear: if we don't achieve, we feel life is a failure. If we achieve, we face the depression of success. Either way we are in trouble.

Life itself is a benefit. If we ask which of the two is more beneficial, it means we have a business mind, a pure business mind. With life we cannot do business. Our whole life cannot be managed as a business. At some point we need to relax from the business mind. We need to relax from the business mentality.

I always tell people, 'For at least half an hour per day, for at least 30 minutes per day, do something which will not get dollars for you - some painting, some writing, some poetry, something.' When you start painting, don't start thinking of a big gallery with your paintings. Don't start thinking, 'I will make all these paintings and put up a gallery in New York and make money.' For at least 30 minutes, do some painting or creative work without bothering about where to have a gallery or how to show off your art work to people.

Even before starting to paint, we would have started to think, 'My friend will come home. I will show this to him and explain how I started these paintings and how I developed this concept.'

Think about my plight. I have to go to thousands of houses. In some of the houses, when I go, they start giving me a commentary on the whole house. They start from the entrance and say, 'Master, this photo is from this temple from this city and I bought it in 1962…' People just love talking about such things.

When you start writing a few poems, don't start thinking of a Pulitzer Prize. Don't start thinking, 'I will publish this. It will be recognized like the famous Gitanjali. I will then win the Nobel Prize.' No! Without thinking about any result or benefit, just do something. Don't start thinking of how you will go about explaining what you are doing to your friends. Don't start planning, 'Next party, I think I should read out this poem aloud.' Do something just for the sake of doing it; not for any purpose at all. During that half hour, you will fall into your very being!

Go to some place of worship, clean and wipe the place. Don't think, 'I will be the leader of a volunteer batch.' The moment you take a broomstick in your hand, start swabbing, start cleaning the place without any big expectations in return. Engage yourself in any form of selfless activity at a place of public service, like cleaning the place, serving food, anything. But do it without expectations, without thinking of how to make a big deal out of it. Do it without thinking how to derive some benefit from it.

Normally we start planning, 'How can I have a volunteer batch and how can I become the leader of that batch? How can I have control over the others in the group and put forth my agenda? How can I have a say in that place?' Even doing volunteering is an ego boost for many of us. Many of us like to volunteer mainly so that we can go and tell others about it and get applauded for it. Now at least for 30 minutes do something that will not give any benefit to you or what you think of as some benefit to you.

No money or name and fame should come to you from that half an hour. If you can just use 30 minutes from your life for this, you will start tasting the real essence of life. As long as you are sitting in the head, continuously calculating, you will only be having a bargain with your life, 'What is more beneficial? What am I going to achieve by this? What am I going to achieve by that?'

I tell you: you will see a different dimension of your being if you follow this technique. I promise that these 30 minutes will lead you to Krishna Consciousness. These 30 minutes will be the only useful time in your life. After a few days, these 30 minutes will be the most useful time in your life. With at least 30 minutes you will drop from your head, which is continuously calculating, 'What will I get. What will I get. What will I get.'

Continuously we are doing business with life. Continuously we are expecting and calculating, 'What will I achieve through this? What will I achieve through that? How can I achieve more?' Continuously we are expecting further results. We are always thinking of 'what next?' and 'what is in it for me?'

There are many people who come and sit and listen to these discourses so that they can go and repeat it to others, so that they can go and tell all these things to others. Please don't do that. Let it sink in to you first.

When you stop calculating, when you stop evaluating your actions in terms of visible benefits, you will start tasting life. You will come alive.

Life is not business and it cannot be business. Here, again and again, Arjuna is stuck because of this one point. He thinks that life is business. Of course, Krishna is so patient. He is so compassionate; He is the embodiment of mercy! Literally, inch by inch, He brings Arjuna up. He does not lose His patience. He does not say, 'I told you earlier…'

I can say that Krishna uses at least 100 verses to explain this one concept of karma sanyāsa yoga, the paths of Duty and Renunciation. Throughout the Gita, He has used at least 100 verses to explain the concepts of karma and sanyās that we are about to discuss. But He does this without losing His patience at any point. Not once does He shout at Arjuna. He is an embodiment of compassion. He comes down to the plane of Arjuna and gradually transforms him by reiterating the same teachings.

The question concerning karma and sanyās, duty and renunciation, has been asked again and again from time

immemorial, and each time, it has been answered. Yet this question remains.

Somebody asked me the other day, 'Why is the Gita still relevant today?' I said, 'Because we never learned.' Why is the Gita still relevant for modern day people? Although it was uttered at least 5000 years ago it is still relevant today. Why? It is simply because man has not learnt his lesson yet. History repeats itself.

The unconscious process never comes to the conscious energy. Man as such is governed to a large extent by the unconscious. He is not even aware of what he is going after most of the time. That is why he goes on and on but never achieves. He thinks he wants something and runs after it. But by the time he gets his hands on it, he wants something else. So there is a constant restlessness within.

This puts man in constant dissatisfaction and depression. Let me tell you that by merely flooding awareness into this depression you can get out of it. I always tell people, if you just allow a single instance of depression to work on you and you get rid of it with awareness, in the process you will become enlightened. Nothing else is necessary. A single instance of depression is enough. It will completely burn you; you will become enlightened. But we never allow anything to work on us. We are scared to confront our own selves. We just allow the unconscious to take over and rule us instead of boldly facing it and seeing it run away.

Life is the greatest master. Nobody can teach us

greater things than life. Life continuously teaches us; it gives us lessons. But we never mark the points and learn them. We never mark the place from where we stopped our journey. When we stop our journey, at least if we mark the place in this life, saying; 'I covered this much distance, I learnt all these things, In the next birth I will continue from where I left last,' if we do that much, that is enough. When I say birth, I do not mean just the totality of our life. I am referring to each day. Each day and night is a birth*.* It is a life cycle*.* We do die and get reborn.

Everyday, consciously decide, 'Let me learn one lesson today.' Or if one lesson a day is too much, do this once a week. Tell yourself, 'I will allow one understanding to enter into my consciousness.' I tell you, if you had allowed one understanding to enter into your consciousness every week, you would have been enlightened by now. Your life would have been blissful, without any worries.

If you decide every weekend, 'I will observe my life completely during this full week. I have traveled this much of distance. Let me stop here and mark it.' Next week, you refer back to where you had left and say, 'Yes, this week I will start from here.' If you do this much sincerely, it is more than enough. Your whole life will be transformed.

But the problem is that we always mark in the wrong places.

A small story:

Two friends rented a boat and went fishing. One day, to their great fortune, they managed to catch a hundred fish. One of them instructed his friend, 'Mark this place. Next time we will come straight here and directly start fishing here.'

Next time they were about to set out for fishing again, This person asked his friend, 'Did you mark that place?' The friend said, 'I put the cross mark in the boat.'

The other person said, 'What a fool you are! If we don't get the same boat, what will we do?'

We also mark, but on the boats, not in life. Our markings disappear; our mind is like water. We never mark where we should, in the bigger picture of our lives. We are so caught up with marking our desires and goals. These markings of desires and worldly goals continuously get washed away and new markings are made. They update themselves based on inputs from the world around us, based on what society has to say. We forget that these markings are temporary and do not reflect the growth within. One might have all the riches in the world and might still be a wreck inside.

What truly matters is the inner transformation, which we never bother to think about. We never allow any understanding to work on us. If we consciously are aware of what we are doing and what our pitfalls are, we can start to learn from them and grow to be better individuals. But again and again we make the same mistakes. May be the scale differs. We make the mistake on a larger scale each time we repeat it, that's all.

The person who commits the same mistake on a larger scale becomes a leader. If we commit the same mistake on a smaller scale, we become a follower, that's all. A leader is a person who commits mistakes on a large scale and who can hide them, whereas a follower justifies the same mistakes, maybe in smaller scales, in the name of the leader. The only difference between a leader and a follower is the scale.

I tell you, if you allow even a single lesson to enter into your life, penetrate into it and work on it, your whole life will be transformed. I always tell our ashram brahmacharis (celibate disciples) and our ashramites (other ashram residents) to at least do new mistakes. To tell you honestly, we are not so intelligent to commit new mistakes. We are not even that creative and innovative to make new mistakes, that is the problem.

Even if you decide not do the same mistake once more, your life will be transformed. But again and again, we do only the same kind of mistakes because our mind works in the same route. That route is only called saṃskāra: a recorded route, an engraved memory. If we take up the life of karma or sanyas based on a recorded memory, we will never achieve bliss. We will never be able to reach the eternal consciousness.

Karma or sanyas both will not help us to achieve realization if it is practiced out of engraved memories, our saṃskāras. Through neither of them will we be able to realize the Truth.

Let us analyze these paths of karma and sanyas.

Let us look a little deeply into these two concepts of karma and sanyas. Karma is normally done out of greed and desires. Sanyas is always invariably out of fear, bhaya. There is a fear of life. When you are not ready to take the risk, you renounce everything. The fear of being hurt is the first reason. Fear of getting hurt is the first reason for sanyas.

Please be very clear: all the so-called traditional sanyas is nothing but running away from the fear of life. Sanyas is a way of escapism, turning away from the responsibilities that life presents. When a person is not able to face the hardships of life and is bogged down by it, he takes sanyas as an easy escape exit. He is scared of being swallowed by the tides of life. In the name of renunciation, he covers the deep laden fears.

Then we have people running behind material wealth, greedily, in the name of karma. On one side are the people who are running behind their greed. On the other side are those who are running away from fear. Both categories of people are not going to achieve the eternal bliss, the eternal consciousness. Both are not on the right track.

On the whole planet earth, only three types of human beings exist: one who has surrendered to greed, one who has surrendered to fear, and third, and one who has surrendered to intelligence, divine consciousness or eternal consciousness, to the ātman.

The person who has surrendered to greed gets lost. He is caught in mūlādhāra chakra (root energy center at the base of the spine). He runs greedily behind many things in life to possess them, which in turn leads to more greed and is then caught in this vicious cycle. He has literally become a slave to greed.

There is a beautiful Upaniṣad story:

There are two birds on the same tree. One bird is sitting calmly, enjoying the silence, its own inner space. It is completely satisfied, a fulfilled being. Another bird is sitting a little below, busily pecking at the fruits. It goes to one side of the tree, selects a fruit and eats it. It then returns to where it started, goes to the other side and eats another fruit.

When the fruit is tasty, it enjoys. When the fruit is not tasty, it suffers. It goes to one side and feels the joy and goes to the other side and feels the suffering. It continuously goes from this side to that side. Suddenly, this bird looks up and sees the bird that is sitting silently and thinks, 'How is this bird so calm and completely satisfied? Let me go and see. Let me talk to this bird.' Slowly, slowly, this small bird goes to the bird that has been sitting peacefully.

When it goes near to that bird, suddenly, this small bird realizes that it is itself nothing but a reflection of that bird which is sitting silently and becomes one with it.

A beautiful story! In the same way, as long as you are a jīvātman, ordinary soul, you struggle between the fear and greed. You go from this extreme to that extreme. You are pulled and pushed. The moment you realize that inside your being, there is something which is never touched, which is undisturbed by your greed and fear, you start traveling towards it. When you go more and more near to it, you realize you are that. You are that Consciousness.

Here, Krishna explains the same thing: we are caught between this fear and greed. Either we surrender our self to fear or we surrender our self to greed. There are very rare individuals, very rare beings who surrender to intelligence, to divine consciousness.

Always people come and ask me, especially these socalled intelligent people, come and ask me, 'Why should I surrender to the Divine?' You are continuously seeing the accounts of life, but life is not a business.

Arjuna asks here 'Which is more beneficial for me?' Keeping track of accounts is good in business but not in life. Be very clear, in life, accountants will be the worst failures. Accountants will be the worst failures in life. They can't live. They can't live because they will be continuously calculating.

People come and ask me, 'Why should I surrender to the Divine? If I surrender, what will I get? If I surrender, what will I get?'

If you don't surrender to the Divine, you will be surrendering to your fear or greed, that's all.

Please be very clear: I am not asking you to surrender to the Divine just to get something. I am not giving any promises and I am not giving any assurance. But one thing you need to understand, if you don't surrender to the Divine, you will be surrendering to your fear or greed.

People who deal with accounts, the accountants, never ever live life happily. You can never see an accountant who is happy. They start living their whole life with accounts.

If at all he is happy, he must be intelligent.

Small story:

One man wants to have an accountant. He is interviewing a candidate for employment as his accountant and asks, 'Can you do double entry?' The accountant says, 'I can do even triple entry, sir.' The man asks, 'Triple entry. What is that?'

The accountant says, 'The first entry is the original accounts showing the actual income, showing the actual profit. This is for the person who has put more money in the company. The second entry is for showing a small profit for the person who doesn't come to the company regularly, who is somewhere else.'

He continued, 'The third entry is for showing loss for income tax purposes. I can do triple entry!'

Accountants are really good at making triple entries. That may be good for business, but when it comes to life, they are always losing. Never live the accountant's life. Life is beyond calculation.

The moment we ask, 'What will I get by surrendering to the Divine?' we miss the whole idea of surrender. Otherwise, we will be surrendering to our greed and our fear, nothing else. Either we surrender to the Divine or we surrender to fear or greed.

Venkateshwara (a Hindu deity) holds the chakra (discus) in one hand that represents fear. In the other hand He has the shankh (conch), success. The conch is blown when you achieve success. This represents greed because man is constantly seeking success in everything and is never satisfied.

If you don't surrender to His pāda (feet) and His pāduka, the footwear, you will surrender to the conch and discus, that's all. In other words, you will surrender to fear or greed if you don't surrender to His energy. This goes to say that those who constantly approach God for fulfillment of their desires or for refuge for their problems are actually surrendering to greed and fear, symbolized by Venkateshwara's conch and discus. Only very few surrender to the feet of Venkateshwara, the ultimate surrender.

Our whole life is running behind greed or fear. The path of karma yoga, seeking liberation through action or duty, happens because of greed. The path of sannyāsa yoga, seeking liberation through renunciation, happens because of fear. This is how we live our lives.

Neither the path of karma (action) nor the path of sannyās (renunciation) will help us unless we change the attitude. If we change the attitude, karma, sannyās, or anything can help us. All we need to know is this: don't bother about whether we are a karma yogi or a sannyās yogi. It is the attitude with which we approach and live life that is most important.

Again and again, Krishna is placing the emphasis on the attitude, on the being. If we don't know the root cause of our actions, why we are living with karma or why we pick up sannyās, we will not be able to solve the problem.

A small story:

A person goes to a bar, drinks too much and drops right there. The bartender comes and kicks him in the back to wake him up. The next day, the same story repeats. This same person comes, drinks, and again falls down. Again the bartender comes and kicks him in the back to wake him up. On the third day, again this same person comes and says, 'Just give me soda. I don't want anything else.' The bartender asks, 'Why?'

The guy replies, 'I've realized that drinking gives me back pain.'

Be very clear, when we don't know why we are having that back pain, we can never solve it. We should know clearly that the back pain is not because of drinking. It is because we were kicked, we were beaten.

In the same way, our suffering is neither because of karma nor because of sannyās. Suffering is because of our wrong attitude. And I tell you, with this wrong attitude, be it karma or sannyās, it feels like a punishment. With the right attitude, be it karma or sannyās, it is a blessing.

With the wrong attitude, if you take sannyās, be sure you are going to struggle and suffer. In the same way, with the wrong attitude, if you are taking the path of karma, again you are going to struggle and suffer.

It is the attitude with which we take life that matters. If we decide to enter into karma, drop the goal. Just enjoy doing the karma and don't worry about the goal. Living itself is beautiful. Realize that life itself is beautiful. On the other hand, if we decide to take up sannyās, again drop the goal. Don't think sannyās is going to have a goal. The goal of a sanyasi (monk) is also a goal, which must be dropped. He may have some goal to achieve - this or that. Again, that is a goal and it has to be dropped.

The karma yogi runs towards the goal, the sanyasi runs away from the goal. He runs away from something. Running away from something is also going to give us more suffering. Whether we are a sanyasi or a karma yogi, it is the attitude that needs to be changed.

Sānkhya yogou prithagbālāha pravadanti na paṇḍitāha, Krishna says. Indirectly He tells Arjuna that he has yet to learn, that still he is ignorant.

Only the ignorant man speaks that this thing or that thing is important. Only the ignorant man says that karma yoga is different from sankhya, the sannyās. Here, the words karma and sannyās, these two words are equated to karma yoga and sānkhya yoga.

Those who are actually learned, I can say those who are actually experienced, say that both karma and sannyās lead to the same truth. Through both these paths, one achieves the results of both. If we change the attitude of greed in karma yoga, we will drop into the eternal consciousness. If we change the attitude of fear in sannyās, again we will drop into the eternal consciousness. Through both, what we are supposed to achieve, we will achieve when we take the right attitude.

So here Krishna says, 'Only the ignorant person says that one is superior to the other or that they are two different paths. Both the paths are one and the same.' A person who can travel alone, who is courageous enough, takes the life of sannyās. A person who needs somebody's help or who wants to share his life takes the life of karma. It is up to us; both the paths are one and the same. All we need to do is to have the right attitude, have the right attitude. It is attitude that is really the important thing, not what we are doing.

What is important is having the right reason and the right intent.

What we are doing is not important. It is our being that is important. These three words should be understood: being, doing and having.

If we are continuously doing, doing only for having, we will never have it. Even when we are having, we will be doing. The man who is doing just for having will never be able to experience or enjoy life because even when he is having, he will be doing.

The man who is established in his being will enjoy both doing and having at the same time. By just being, he will enjoy doing and having. All we need to do is only one thing, a simple technique. The whole thing is now reduced to a one-line message.

Let all our mental thoughts, let all our physical deeds be directed towards gratitude to the Divine.

Don't work out of fear or greed, because with whatever we achieve out of greed, we are not going to be fulfilled. It is like pouring ghee (clarified butter) into the fire. Can we quench the fire by pouring oil into it? Never! Similarly, we will never get to feel the fulfillment. So all our actions that are done out of greed will only make our senses weak and tired.

In the same way, all our laziness born out of fear will only make our mind restless. We may not be doing it physically, but our mind will be worrying.

If we have become a karma yogi out of greed, our senses will only be weakened. How much can we run? All the running will only make our senses weak. If we become a sanyasi out of fear, again, because of our vows we may not do anything physically but the whole day we will be sitting and worrying.

Part 2: Bhagavad Gita, Commentary by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM - Chapter 5 - Live all your Dimensions

A simple truth:

When a man doesn't have money, the problem is money. When he has got money, the problem is sex. When he has got sex, the problem is comforts. When he has got comforts, when everything goes well, he starts worrying about death.

He has started bothering about death. He has started thinking about death. Something or the other will always be going on in his mind.

Don't think that people who have become sanyasi, who are sitting in the Himalayas, are in bliss and that they are in ecstasy. No! Unless they change their attitude, they cannot experience joy. Unless the attitude changes, they cannot experience bliss.

Bliss is directly related to our attitude. Being, doing and having: our whole life will be in doing and having if we are caught in fear and greed. If we surrender ourselves into the being, doing and having both will happen to us with tremendous ecstasy.

Never work out of greed, because that is wasteful. Never work out of fear. Again it is wasteful.

Never become silent out of fear because there is nothing to lose. Why should you be afraid? Whether we are afraid or not, everything is going to be taken away. Why not be blissful?

In the same way, never work out of greed because whatever we achieve is going to be taken away. Then why should we waste our life in working?

This is a beautiful story:

One man went to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and asked for money as a blessing. Ramakrishna never blessed for money. This man went to Ramakrishna and asked, 'Master, please bless me that I should have wealth.' Finally, Ramakrishna said, 'Alright; may you have wealth.'

This man used to collect paper from the roads. He would go from house to house and collect old newspapers. He used to make his money and living out of it.

The way Ramakrishna blessed, something happened. Within ten years, he became the owner of a very big newspaper called Ananda Bazaar Patrika. If you are from Calcutta, you will know. The founder of Ananda Bazaar Patrika is a disciple of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna blessed him, 'You will have wealth.' Till today, this newspaper is in circulation.

You will be surprised, he didn't have children. At the end of his life, he said, 'Oh God! Now I realize my mistake! I asked for wealth from my Master. Throughout my life, I did only one thing. I worked like a donkey, that's all. Nothing else was achieved. I created the whole thing and I will be now leaving it and going away. I just worked, worked, worked for somebody who will enjoy this wealth.'

So, if we work out of greed, please be very clear, one day we will repent. One day we will surely repent.

Why do you think parents are so possessive of their children? Parents have some vengeance inside. They think, 'I worked and created so much wealth. I am leaving it for this child. Why doesn't this fellow obey my words, listen to my words?' All the possessiveness comes because you suffered and created the wealth. That is why you have so much of possessiveness. You try to control them so much.

If the wealth is created without suffering, when we give, it will be graceful too. We will give it gracefully as a gift. We will not bind the recipient in so many ways. We will not torture him. We will not expect him to do so many things. We will not play with our wealth. We will write our will clearly in an open way.

Why do you think people always write their will secretly? It is so that they can dangle the carrot. It is nothing but dangling the carrot so that the son or daughter should be continuously behind them.

When a person who has created wealth out of suffering gives that wealth to someone, he gives the suffering also. People come and ask me, 'Master, I hear that the parents' karma will come to the children. Is it true?'

The sins or the merits of the parents will not come to you. But their mental setup will influence you; it will come to you. This is because they will try to force that on you. They will try to force their mental setup on you.

They will expect that you should live the way they want you to.

We always try to fulfill our ambitions through our kids. If we want to become a doctor and if we have not achieved, fulfilled, if we have not become a doctor, we try to fulfill our ambition through our kids. We try to fulfill our ambitions through our kids, through the next generation. Never do that. If we do that, we will be destroying their life. We will be sharing not only our wealth but our suffering also.

The man who created wealth out of suffering will give the suffering to the person to whom he gives the wealth.

Next thing: if he is not able to torture his son or the daughter who has received the wealth, he will start suffering. If he knows that his son is not going to listen to him, the son is not going to live as he wants, he will start suffering. He will suffer thinking, 'I am leaving all these things, believing my son and I don't know what will happen. I don't know what he will do.' When he dies, he will have the worst death. He will be like a yaksha. He will come back and sit on that property. Be very clear: he will not let even his son enjoy that property. He will come back and sit on that property.

I have seen many litigation cases where the parents give their wealth to their kids, somehow or other, even after thirty or forty years, the kids will not be able to enjoy that wealth. Be very clear: it means the property is with yaksha. The man has come back and he is sitting as a yaksha in that property. Neither he will enjoy nor will he allow others to enjoy.

The property will be in Hindu litigation, in Hindu courts. In Hindu courts, we know when judgments come: the last judgment day! Only on that day, all the judgments are given. And when exactly the last judgment day is, neither you know nor I know! I don't know even whether God knows or not!

There is a small story:

The American president goes and asks God, 'God, when will our country become number one?' God says, 'Fifty years.' Then, he thinks, 'Fifty years! I don't know whether I will be alive or not.' He starts weeping.

Next, the Russian president goes and asks, 'God, when will our country become number one?' God says, '100 years'. The Russian president thinks, 'Oh! Neither will I be alive nor will my son be alive.' He starts weeping.

The Hindu President goes then and asks God, 'God, when will Bharat become number one?'

God starts weeping, 'I don't know whether I will be alive or not!'

So, whenever the judgment comes, it takes its own, sweet time. If the file has to be taken from one table to another table, if the file grows its own legs and moves, only then it is possible! Otherwise, it takes its own sweet time.

What to do? Nothing else can be done! We have to share this truth.

Again and again, we share what we create. That's what I always tell people: if the wealth is created out of a pain-body, you will transfer the pain body also to the next generation along with the wealth. It should be created out of just a relaxed mood, out of a voluntary decision or I can say without any strong motivation.

One important thing we should understand: working without motivation is completely unheard of in the West.

All the people who are working in the field of mind, the psychologists, psychiatrists, the people who work and do research in the field of mind, all the scientists always emphasize that without motivation we cannot work. That is why there are so many motivational gurus in the West. Motivational gurus haunt the West. So many motivational gurus wanting to make money by telling others how to be motivated!

Please be very clear: these scientists, these psychologists, these doctors have come to this conclusion that work without motivation is not possible after doing analysis on diseased patients, not on enlightened beings.

They never had a specimen of Buddha. They never encountered an enlightened person. That is why they say work without motivation is impossible.

I tell you, work without motivation is the only work.

Work without motivation will never make us tired! Every moment we will be ecstatic. We will be working out of bliss. Understand this one concept, this one technique.

Further, for the first time, Krishna gives a meditation technique in this chapter. Today, we will practice that technique to achieve the bliss consciousness. Until the fifth chapter, He was giving only intellectual advice, shastra. Krishna now thinks that Arjuna has become mature or realizes that without some technique, it is now impossible to relate with Arjuna.

Krishna realizes, 'If I don't give him a technique, I cannot escape from him.' Masters give meditation techniques in two situations: one is when they see the person is mature enough, the other is when it is better to give some technique, otherwise the person would constantly bug the master. The person will continue to question, and he will not keep quiet.

So I don't know what Krishna has decided, whether he thought that Arjuna has become mature or he thinks 'let him at least sit for a few minutes with closed eyes'. He gives a technique. Now we will practice that. We will enter into that technique.

Before the technique, He gives a beautiful explanation about the technique in the next verses. Yes, you have a question…?

Q: Is going into an ashram or being a sanyasi a form of running away? Many people seem to be moving into ashrams only to get away from what they seem to see as the suffering they face in the material world. Will they not face a different kind of suffering in the ashram or the forest too?

Beautiful question!

A small story:

Three guys had been in an asylum for a long time. The doctors felt they had improved and can be released. But just to make sure, the resident doctor gave them a test.

He took them to an empty swimming pool, made them climb the diving platform and asked them to jump into the water.

The first guy jumped and broke his arms. Screaming, he was led away. The second guy jumped and broke his legs. He too left crying. The third went up, looked down and came down. Doctors asked, 'What happened?'

He said, 'No, I cannot jump'. The doctor was very happy. He signed the patient's release forms. As the man was leaving the asylum, the doctor asked him, 'Why was it that you could not jump?'

The man said, 'I don't know how to swim!'

Right action, wrong reason! Right decision, wrong cause!

This is far worse than doing the wrong thing of making the wrong decision or committing the wrong action. At least then we will be told we are doing something wrong. Someone: our spouse, parents, children or friends will make it their business to tell us.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason, no one will know because we are not doing something wrong. Even we will not know, unless we question. So nothing can stop us.

If we move into an ashram for the wrong reasons, we are in deep trouble. That is why I give a trial period of about a year. If you come there because my form attracts you or because you think you are doing it to achieve something, I will make sure you realize your folly. I shall drop you if your reason is ego. I shall drop you because you need to drop your ego. I shall drop you out of compassion for you.

Only when you come in for the right reason, for reasons of inner awareness, with no agenda, just to be, will ashram life be the right decision for the right reason for you. You will settle into yourself peacefully, without effort, with no suffering.

In the past many people have tried to be peaceful for the wrong reasons, those were the monks. The monasteries all over the world were full of such people. But they were dead even while being alive. They could

not laugh, they could not love, they could not sing, and they could not dance. They attained peace at the cost of their life. They became utterly cold. Their peace was not a cool phenomenon. It was ice-cold. It was the peace of the cemetery.

And there have been people who tried to attain bliss: painters, poets, dancers, musicians, and all kinds of artists, who lived in the world as passionately as possible. They were alive but very feverish. They were passionate, but the passion was such a fire that it only burned them. Many artists, many poets, went mad. Many have committed suicide for the simple reason that they had no idea how to be peaceful. Their bliss consumed them, and they could not contain it.

A true sanyasi has to be a totally different person from these two. He has to become the beginning of a new man: peaceful at the very core of his being; at the center, peaceful, at the circumference, blissful. This is the ultimate harmony. This harmony can be called God, enlightenment, nirvana, or any name that we want to give to it: truth, beauty, liberation.

5.5 He who knows, knows that the state reached by renunciation and action are one and the same.

State reached by renunciation can also be achieved by action, know them to be at the same level and see them as they are.

5.6 Renunciation without devotion afflicts one with misery, Oh mighty-armed one.

The wise person engaged in devotion attains the Supreme without delay.

5.7 The person engaged in devotion, beyond concepts pure and impure, self-controlled and who has conquered the senses is compassionate and loves everyone.

Although engaged in work, he is never entangled.

5.8, 5.9 One who knows the truth, though engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, dreaming, and breathing knows that he never does anything.

While talking, evacuating, receiving, opening, closing, he considers that the senses are engaged in gratification.

Yat sankhyaiha prapyate sthanam tadyogairapi gamyate Ekam sankhyam cha yogam cha yaha pashyati sa pashyati

One who knows that the position reached through sankhya yoga and karma yoga are both one and the same, and that the position reached by sankhya yoga can also be achieved by karma yoga, sees both of them in the same level and sees things as they are.

Beautiful sloka, beautiful verse!

One more important thing: All of us are not always karma yogi or doers and all of us are not always sanyasis or monks. No sanyasi is for 24 hours a sanyasi. When he surrenders himself to the greed, he is a doer. No karma Yogi is for 24 hours a karma Yogi. When he surrenders to fear, he is a sanyasi.

So be very clear: whenever we make an optimistic decision, we are karma Yogi. Whenever we make a pessimistic decision, we are sanyasi. It is we who play both the roles.

Who is an optimist and who is a pessimist? Optimist is a man who created the airplane; pessimist is a man who created the seat-belt.

In life you play both the roles. Optimist is a man who created the airplane; pessimist is a man who created seatbelt. You always play both the roles. In life, sometimes, you are optimist and sometimes, you are pessimist.

Here, both can lead to the same goal if the attitude is pure, if the attitude is perfect. One important thing we need to understand: anything created out of greed will create more greed. Anything created out of fear will create more fear, that's all.

Please be very clear: whenever we move our body, whenever our body is moved by a particular emotion, that emotion gets settled inside our system. That will become part of our system and that emotion will be created again and again in our system.

Jiddu Krishnamurti made a wonderful statement about emotions arising in the human body. He is a great enlightened Master from Bharat, one who is not recognized widely in Bharat!

He says beautifully, 'If you can, try to remain centered, silent, without moving your body when a particular emotion rises in you, without co-operating with it. Within eleven times, or I can say within eleven emotional upsets, you will be liberated from that emotion.'

Vivekananda says beautifully, 'Enlightened Masters and enlightenment is the greatest gift given to the planet Earth by Bharat.' But the problem is we have given it away as a gift. We are not using it! While gifting it to others, we forgot how to use it. It started with Swami Vivekananda, and all the Masters have been given away to the world. Hindus have forgotten to use what they gave as a gift.

Understand, it is an important thing: if you are caught by that emotion, if you are caught in lust, if you are caught in fear, just eleven times, whenever that emotion rises, whenever that emotion comes up in your being, don't allow your body to co-operate. Don't allow your body to flow with that emotion. Don't allow your body to move with that emotion. Within eleven times, I assure you, you will be liberated from that emotion.

You may think, 'What is this, Master? Just eleven times! Is it so easy?' It is easy. All great things are easy. Only we complicate them. We complicate because we don't believe anything that is easy.

A small story:

A person goes to the doctor and asks, 'Doctor, how much will you charge to pull this tooth out?' The doctor says, 'Ninety dollars.' This person asks, 'Ninety dollars just for a two minute job?'

The doctor says, 'I can do it more slowly if you like!'

We don't like simple things. We want to complicate things.

Actually, eleven times is too much. I think with all the 'factor-of-safety' idea, Krishnamurti said eleven times. He might have given this discourse here in the USA; he must have been afraid of these lawsuits! So that is why he gives this number of eleven times with a factor of safety. If somebody practices for fewer times and they don't get the result, they may sue! That is why he says eleven times, just to make sure.

But I tell you honestly, eleven times is too much. Eleven times is not necessary. When that emotion rises in you, don't cooperate. Let your body not go behind that emotion. Let you not be taken away by that emotion, whether it is anger or irritation or depression or lust or fear or anything.

Just decide, 'I am not going to be taken away by this emotion.' Eleven times is too much. I tell you, within three or four times, you will be liberated from that emotion because you will learn the technique. You will have the key now in your hand: how not to be taken away by that emotion, how to be centered, rooted in your Self, in your being. Whether it is anger or fear or greed, it gets more and more power and strength if your body is also cooperating with it.

With whatever emotion your body moves, that emotion gets recorded inside your system. Please be very clear. And that emotion will happen again and again, many more times, and much more intensely. Both frequency and intensity of that emotion will increase.

There is a beautiful movie, 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' If you find time you should see that movie. I am not promoting it. I don't have any contract with them! Don't think I have some contract. I really enjoyed that movie. Of course, I don't have that much patience to sit for any movie.

Once, two of our devotees invited me to come for a show in New York called 'Bombay Dreams'. They invited me. I said that I can sit for fifteen minutes. If it will finish in fifteen minutes, I will come. They said that no show would finish in less than three hours. 'Then,' I said, 'it is not for me.' Fifteen minutes is the maximum time I can watch any show. So I didn't watch that. But somehow I watched this movie 'What the Bleep Do We Know?'

Really, sometimes, I am surprised, how these people sit in front of the TV, hours together; really couch potatoes! I am just surprised how they can sit for hours together! Something is being shown there on the TV and they sit and watch! And they don't even keep quiet; continuously they will be eating something. The whole table will be full before the program starts. When the program is over, that table will be empty and the stomach will be full. And it is dangerous. We don't know what we are eating. That is another problem.

An important thing we should know: Ramanujacharya (Vaishnavite Philosopher Circa 11th Century AD) says beautifully, when it comes to 'aahar-shuddhi', the purity of food. He says that when you eat something, you digest not only the food that you eat. You digest the thoughts which you think while you are eating. So please be very clear: your eating should be done like a puja (worship). The problem is now the puja is also corrupted!

Eating should be done with a deep sincerity. Never, ever eat watching the television or reading the newspaper. That will make you dull. When I say more dull, understand already we have enough of tamas (laziness); already we have enough of tamasic energy. The tamasic energy will be significantly enhanced.

Never eat with the negative thoughts. At the time of eating, you should never be supplied negative thoughts. And women, please be very clear: when you cook or when you serve, don't complain.

In Bharat, usually only at the time of serving, the wife will start, 'This is not available; that is not available in the house. You are not giving my monthly allowance properly. This has not come to the house properly. That is not here…' They will start the whole purana, epic story. Never start the house purana when you serve or when you cook because the thoughts will also enter into the mind. Thoughts also will be digested. Understand that your emotions go and settle down into your system.

Anyway, I can never watch anything more than fifteen minutes. Somehow, this one movie, 'What the Bleep Do

We Know?' I sat throughout and watched. Really, I enjoyed. I wanted to explain a concept from that movie. And it is satya (truth); it is not only just projected by them. It is a truth from Vedanta. But they have visually explained it nicely.

They say that whenever some emotions happen to your system, it is like rain. The emotion is poured like rain. It happens inside your system, in your being. There are particular cells that catch those emotions. For example, if you think about anger, there are particular cells that catch that anger emotion. Not only do they just catch and stay, they will start reproducing. This cell will create at least four or five more cells that can receive this emotion.

An important thing we should know is that the basic quality of life is reproduction and expansion. This is the survival instinct. The survival instinct is governed by the swadishthana chakra. Reproduction is governed by the muladhara chakra. Both these are closely associated. The fear is associated with swadishthana chakra and reproduction is associated with the muladhara chakra; both the chakras are very close to each other.

These cells that catch the anger emotion start reproducing and each cell creates five or six more cells. Next time, when the anger shower happens, when the anger rain happens, all these cells will also catch the same emotion. They become the size of the original cells. They come to this same, original size. Now these cells also start reproducing. The third time, when the shower happens, all these cells catch the emotion and start storing.

That is why, every time when we are showered with the same emotion, it becomes stronger and stronger. We are addicted to that emotion. We will not be able to control that emotion.

The first time, if anger is showered on us, if we are affected for ten minutes, then the next time, it will surely become twenty minutes. Third time, it will naturally become half an hour. That is how the emotion becomes stronger and stronger.

In our being, again and again, when we cooperate with these negative emotions, we create the same type of mood, the same type of that lifestyle in us.

One more thing: not only will this emotion get recorded in us, but the big problem is that we will express the same thing on others. What we have is only what we will vomit on others.

If we are working to strengthen our greed, we will be caught by the emotion greed and we will radiate that emotion greed. We will vomit that emotion greed on others. We will torture others also with that same emotion.

Next, if we are working out of fear, again, we will be caught by that emotion fear and express that emotion fear and we will torture others with that same emotion fear.

Be very clear: warriors are caught in fear. That is why they torture others. They give fear to others. The warriors are the most cowardly people. A real warrior is

a person who has conquered his being, who has won his being. Only he can be the real warrior.

If out of fear we are doing anything, we will reproduce the same fear in others. We will create the same fear in others.

Now, take a few minutes to sit and analyze, 'Throughout this life, all these years I was driven by greed and fear. What I have achieved? What have I got? Where am I standing? What has really happened?'

Consciously think. Consciously allow this idea to work on you. Decide, 'From today, I will not do anything out of greed or out of fear.' Immediately the fear will rise in you, 'What will happen to my bills? Who will pay? What will happen to my house? Who will repay the mortgages? What will happen to my car? What will happen to my kids? Who will feed them? What will happen to my social prestige and name and fame? Who will maintain it?'

Please be very clear that you have enough energy and you have enough strength to maintain yourself without fear and greed. The important thing you need to trust is that you don't need energy from fear or greed to run your life. That is the first thing you need to understand. You have enough potential energy to live your life and to achieve what you want.

Mahavira, one more great enlightened Master, says, 'When you come down to this planet Earth, when you take the body, you bring enough of energy to live all your desires or to achieve whatever you want to achieve in this life.' You have already brought enough fuel. You don't need fuel from fear or greed.

You always think, 'If I stop fueling myself from fear or greed, I may stop working.' No. There is reserve in all your vehicles. Enough fuel is available but psychologists can never believe that unmotivated action is possible because they have never seen a Buddha.

Again and again the people who are working in the field of psychology come to a conclusion, 'Only with motivation a man can work.' I tell you, 'No!' No. What motivation have birds got to sing? But these Freudians are so focused on sex that even for that, they have started giving a meaning! They say that the bird is calling for its spouse. They have started interpreting even birds' singing! They can't see anything as it is.

That is why here, Krishna says:

5.14 The master does not create activities or make people do or connect with the outcome of the actions.

All this is enacted by the material nature.

5.15 The Lord, surely, neither accepts anyone's sins nor good deeds.

Living beings are confused by the ignorance that covers the knowledge.

5.16 Whose ignorance is destroyed by the knowledge?

Their knowledge, like the rising sun, throws light on the Supreme Consciousness.

5.17 One whose intelligence, mind, and faith are in the Supreme and one who has surrendered to the Supreme,

His misunderstandings are cleansed through knowledge and he goes towards liberation.

A very deep understanding is embedded in this teaching of Krishna. He says, 'I do not create activities or make people do or connect with the fruits of the actions. All this is done by the material nature of humans.'

Krishna is talking not just about the actions of an individual devotee or disciple but at a much larger scale. He is talking about the creation of the Universe itself. Understand, nothing in this universe can be created or destroyed. When I say, nothing, I mean NOTHING. Everything that exists has always existed in some form or the other. It will continue to exist in some form or the other. Whether it is an object or a living being, it has always existed. Only the form may vary.

To the intellectual mind, science also says the exact same thing that matter and energy are inter-convertible and energy can never be destroyed. The beauty of the Veda is it says what science has now understood. What is the last line of science was the first line of the Upanishads.

The Isavasya Upanishad opens with, 'Īśā vāsyam idaṁ sarvam', meaning, 'all that exists arises from energy'. Now after so much scientific research, quantum physics has concluded that matter and energy are one and the same. This is the latest scientific advancement or invention. But this was the first statement in the Isavasya Upanishad, which says everything is energy.

People ask me, 'Who created this Universe?' I tell you, the Universe itself is the creator, the created and the creation. If the creator and the creation were different, it means that the creator is more intelligent than the creation. But the creation and the creator are one and the same; they are both Divine.

We consider what we see in front of us as the universe and ask who created this universe that has a form. We believe that there has to be some stronger energy that created what we perceive as universe. We fail to understand that everything, every matter is energy. So when everything is energy, where is the difference between the creator and the creation? Both creator and the creation are energy. Both of them are divine. The difference is because of the way that we perceive them. We associate a form to the creation.

That is what is meant by līlā, the Divine play. The un-manifest, formless Energy made itself manifest in the creation. The creator is formless energy and it manifests in the creation that we perceive as having form. When we realize that the creation is also the same energy that created it, we will see that both are one and the same. We will understand that the universe created itself.

We cannot answer the question 'why' for this in the logical plane. If we get caught in 'why' in the beginning, we will be stuck with it forever. Instead, explore the 'what'. Try to understand what we really are, what is this universe and when we get the answer to just that question of what we are, who we are, we will see that along with the answer, the question 'why' itself disappears; it simply dissolves.

Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi's meditation technique was to probe with the question, 'Who am I?' This is also the basis of Zen koans like 'imagine your form before your birth' or 'focus on the sound of one hand clapping'. These questions cannot be answered by the mind since we cannot answer these questions logically. Our mind cannot comprehend these things at all.

God created man in His own mould so that He could experience Divinity. You see, God as God, as the unmanifest, as pure energy cannot see the Divinity outside of Himself. When He is everything, how can He see Himself separate? Everything exists as a part of Him; so He cannot look to see the Divine outside.

It is like this: can you say how you experience, how you feel your hand from inside your body? Can you describe how you feel your hand from inside? No! On the other hand, can you describe how you feel when you touch your own hand with the other hand? You will have some feeling; is it not? Even though it is your own hand touching the other, you can feel it because from outside, your two hands are separate; you can perceive them as different parts of your body.

In just the same way, God can experience and express Himself through man. Man is a part of God just like both the hands are a part of the same body and can be felt separately. Now, just like one hand in itself cannot understand that the hand it is touching is a part of the same body, similarly, man cannot understand that he is a part of God.

What does it take for the hand to understand that the other hand is actually a part of the bigger whole called the body? It takes the understanding, the perception that the entire body is a single entity with the different parts of the body being integrated in it, connected together.

Similarly, it takes the understanding of our consciousness to see that we are a part of the Whole and that the individual consciousness is an integral and connected part of the collective consciousness. Just like the individual hand in itself can never understand the truth that it is a part of the whole body, the individual ego can never understand the truth that it exists as a part of the Whole. The ego has to dissolve for the truth to be revealed and understood.

It is as if we want to see our own beauty, but how can we do that unless we see our own reflection in a mirror? The mirror in which God sees Himself is man. Can the reflection be a separate entity from what it is reflecting? No!

Man can experience and express the divine in him. The game of life is all about man trying to realize the Divine in him and the Divine trying to express itself through man.

What Krishna teaches here is actually a sūtra, a technique. The Western Master, Gurdjieff used this technique very often. In his ashram, he would create situations to master this technique of being unperturbed by external incidents. You would enter a room where a group of people would be sitting and something would be done to make you angry. It would be done so naturally that you would not realize the situation was being set up.

Others would join in to enhance the disturbance and right at the point where you are about to explode, Gurdjieff would shout, 'Remember, remain undisturbed!' The disturbance cannot disappear suddenly because it is a physiological happening. Your hormones have been released into your system; the body has been poisoned.

Even though the anger cannot go away immediately, there is the awareness in you that will dissipate the effect of the anger that remains in the periphery. The center, the core is untouched. You are now aware of these two points, the core and the periphery as two distinct identities co-existing.

In our ashram also, in my programs as well, there have been many such incidents and situations that I create to make people go beyond their mind to realize their core that is a silent witness to all external events. That is the real being.

I tell you, the ashram is actually a spiritual laboratory. Constantly, situations arise and you will go through the

entire gamut of emotions in response to various situations. But when you go through these with awareness instead of judging the situations or the people and getting disturbed and upset, you will have the tremendous, deep experiential realization of an undisturbed, silent core within you that is unaffected by everything outside of you.

This one glimpse will become the strong bulwark, support for you and the next time you see that you are being swayed by emotions, you will remember this and such awareness will make you conscious. Only when you are unconscious and ignorant can you be under the sway of emotions.

A small story from the life of Buddha:

Buddha was passing by a village. The villagers were against the teachings of Buddha and a few of them insulted him. Buddha just listened and then said, 'I have to reach the next village. Can I go now? If you have finished with whatever you had to say to me, I can move. Or if you have something more to say, while returning, I can stop here. You can come and tell me.'

The villagers were surprised. They could not understand why Buddha did not react the way they had expected him to in an angry or defensive manner. They said, 'But we have not been saying anything; we have been shouting and insulting you!'

Buddha said, 'You can do that. But if you are

looking for any reaction from me, you have come too late. Ten years before, if you had come with these words, I would have reacted. But now I have become a Master of myself. You cannot force me to do anything.'

This is what is meant by the term 'being centered'. This is what is meant by the term 'becoming a Master'. Then you are no longer a slave to your emotions, or to others. Otherwise, anybody can shake you. They can push and pull you in different directions and you won't be integrated and whole.

Krishna separates morality from spirituality in these verses.

I tell you, heaven and hell are not physical; they are psychological. The concept of heaven and hell is completely in our heads. I always tell people, you don't commit sin and then go to hell. You commit sin because you are in hell. When you are not aware, when you do things unconsciously, when you are disturbed and not at peace with yourself, you are in hell. The quality of your inner space is what decides the quality of your life.

Somebody asked Buddha, 'If you don't have compassion in your life, what kind of hell do you get?' Buddha replied, 'No punishment can be given to such a man who has no compassion because he is already in hell.'

I tell you, don't live with your conscience; live with consciousness. Live with understanding and awareness and you can never make a mistake. Morality is just skin-

deep. The so-called moralists have their rules and regulations for the whole society because they lack the understanding. They are either afraid to face reality or feel guilty about themselves. They go about preaching morality to other people because they lack the intelligence to live life spontaneously.

Understand, there is no such thing as virtue or sin. Everything is energy. What exists is energy. Energy cannot be categorized as good and bad. Emotions such as lust and anger are also energy. These are actually a tremendous energy but we don't know how to handle them, how to respect them and that is where the trouble starts. These so-called base emotions arise due to our own ignorance. When our awareness and understanding transform the base emotions, they become the higher emotions, just as lust gets transformed to love when the understanding happens. This is the ultimate alchemy.

Just live every moment in bliss. Consciously decide that you will face every moment with a deep awareness, with a deep ecstasy. The very decision will transform your life. We will see life with a completely different attitude. Not only will we feel total and complete, we will radiate the bliss to others as well.

A beautiful story:

Naropa, an enlightened Master, was asked by someone when he became enlightened, 'Have you achieved liberation now?'

Naropa replied, 'Yes and no both. Yes, because I am not in bondage. No, because the liberation was also a reflection of the bondage.'

The liberation existed as long as the concept of bondage existed. Both are just individual concepts that exist as long as the other exists. We experience that liberation only when we were in the clutches of bondage. They are opposites and they will remain as long as the mind, which dwells and survives in the opposites, exists. As long as the mind comes into play, liberation and bondage cannot exist independently. They depend on each other.

For example, when you have a headache, why do you want to get rid of it? Think about it. Why do you yearn for a state in which the headache is absent? That is because you have experienced a state of headache-lessness before. If you never had a headache, will you ever yearn to be in a state of no headache? How can you? You don't even know, you won't even perceive a state as having or not having a headache because you don't even know such a thing as headache exists. Anything can be felt by the mind only in contrast, in opposites.

That is why Naropa says, 'Yes and no both. Yes, I am not in bondage. No, because the liberation was also a reflection of the bondage.' He says that now he is beyond bondage and liberation both because the mind that perceives these opposites is no longer there to judge these, to categorize these.

We are in ignorance when we think that liberation is some state that we need to achieve. The moment we want to achieve, we want to possess something, we want to hold on to something, it will simply slip from our hands like sand or water simply slips from our hands the moment we close our fist tightly.

The light of knowledge dispels the ignorance and we realize the state in which we have always been.

Understand, ignorance, just like darkness, has a negative existence.

If I want to take this microphone in front of me out of the room, I can easily remove it, is it not? I can just take it and keep it outside to remove it from the room. But if there is darkness inside the room, can I remove it? Can I physically remove the darkness out of the room? No! I can bring light into the room and the darkness disappears. But I cannot remove the darkness directly. This is what I mean by something having a negative existence.

Ignorance also can be removed by just shining the light of knowledge on it. Just like the rising sun removes the darkness of the night, the light of knowledge dispels the darkness of ignorance.

What is that ignorance that we need to remove by bringing in the light of knowledge? Just think what we are looking for in life. Whatever we do, what do we want to get out of it? Simply put, we want to be happy, right? We want to feel happy in whatever we do.

But the strange truth is, we are already pure bliss. Please understand, I am not saying we have achieved bliss. I am saying we are bliss. Each one of us is pure bliss. The problem is we are not ready to accept this ultimate truth and relax, because the moment we accept this, we no longer have a separate personality; the ego has no basis to exist. What identity can it have if you are already what you ultimately want to be? There exists no more desire then; there exists no more fear. Without greed and fear, how can the ego exist and drive you?

It is our ego that makes us feel incomplete. The ego needs us to be a solid entity for it to exist. The mind always yearns to be occupied, to be engaged in doing something, in running behind something. Only then can it survive.

When we are pure bliss, we have nothing to run after because we are complete unto ourselves. But in this zone, we are nothing. We have no identity because we have merged into Existence, the ultimate and only reality. This is too much for the ego to handle. The mind, therefore, plays a very cunning and subtle game to keep us engaged in some pursuit, material or spiritual.

We may not accept this truth but if we look deeply, we can see clearly that it is us who choose to stay in suffering. We think that we want bliss and that we want to drop our ego. But deep down, we choose to stay with our ego.

Krishna gives us another technique to liberate ourselves.

He says surrender leads to liberation, and happens when one's intelligence is focused on Him.

When we believe there is a life force that is conducting this universe and is taking care of us, we relax. When we relax and are not stressed or worried, we can live and function at our optimum potential. We can express our creativity and live spontaneously. We experience a great freedom and liberation. This is true knowledge. This is the knowledge that cannot be taught or picked up. The Master can simply transmit it when our being is ready to receive it.

All we need is the faith to allow the supreme intelligence to guide us, to surrender our mind that oscillates between the extremes. The knowledge removes the ignorance and misunderstandings. All our problems are due to the lack of knowledge, due to ignorance on various subjects. Whether it is fear or greed or worry or anger, all these emotions are able to control us because we are not aware. We allow them to unconsciously control us.

When we bring a deep awareness into anything, the solution simply stands out. When we go deeply into any emotion with deep awareness, we can flower out of it. This is true knowledge.

I tell you, at the times of real testing, of extreme doubt, doubt your ego. Never doubt the Master. The Master is the only truth you can cling to when all else gives way. The Master is the only one who can guide you when everything seems to be confusing. At the start of the war Arjuna is utterly confused but has the intelligence to listen to Krishna in that time of extreme doubt.

Surrender can happen at different levels. Bodhidharma said,

Buddham saranam gacchami Dhammam saranam gacchami Sangam saranam gacchami

This means,

5.18 One who is full of knowledge and compassion sees equally

The learned brahmana, the cow, the elephant, the dog and the dogeater.

5.19 In this life, surely, those whose minds are situated in equanimity have conquered birth and death.

They are flawless like the Supreme and therefore, are situated in the Supreme.

5.20 One who does not rejoice at achieving something he likes nor gets agitated on getting something he does not like,

Who is of steady intelligence, who is not deluded, one who knows the Supreme, is situated in the Supreme.

5.21 One who is not attached to the outer world sense pleasures, who enjoys in the Self, in that happiness,

He is self-connected and engaged in the Supreme and enjoys unlimited happiness.

Krishna succinctly explains the neutrality and equanimity of Existence. Existence has no favorites. All comparative and hierarchical definitions are manmade.

Krishna says there is no difference between a human and an animal, and that there is no difference between those we consider to be saints and sinners. A learned scholar, the priest and the Brahmana should be seen as an equal to an animal or a person who eats dogs.

Even more dramatically, He says that the dog and the eater of the dog are the same.

This is what Shankara means when he sings the six verses of his Atma Shatakam. 'I am not the enjoyer. I am not the enjoyed. I am not the enjoying. I am beyond all that; I am just the embodiment of Shiva.'

This is one of the most beautiful messages from one who is arguably the greatest philosopher ever to have been born on this planet. 'I am not the doer, I am not the deed, I am not the doing,' he says. 'I am just the witness, beyond all these.'

When we go beyond all three, not being the subject, object and verb, all connotations disappear. The eater and the eaten merge. All meanings disappear. We reach the source. There are no thoughts and there is no mind. There is just you, your being. That is the true you, the Supreme.

Animals and plants do not differentiate and discriminate. Except in man-made fables, animals do not think of one animal as superior to others or another as inferior to others. Lion is a king only to us, not to other animals. There are many animals that are not afraid of the lion.

A king was depressed with all his responsibilities and went to Buddha seeking advice. Buddha sent him with a disciple into the nearby garden and told him to look at the citrus tree and the rose bush that were growing next to each other.

The king came back puzzled. He asked what was there to see. 'I saw the tree and bush, that's all. What else?'

Buddha said, 'Neither the citrus tree is jealous of the rose bush whose flowers every one admires, nor is the rose bush complaining that people pluck all its flowers while the tree is left unharmed. Each of them is centered in its own uniqueness. There is no comparison. There is no envy. There is no unhappiness.

The king realized how foolish he was for complaining about his responsibilities. He thanked Buddha and left in peace.

Existence continuously showers bliss upon each of us. Only, we are not open to receive it. Existence sees everyone as equal. It does not discriminate. Everyone is a part of the same Existence.

Similarly, Masters see the whole world as one with their own selves. That is why they can only show compassion to anyone and everyone.

External appearances are ephemeral. When we see the eternal, blissful being as the core of each and every one of us, we will realize the inherent divine nature of each of us. This knowledge, gained through the experience of Self, results automatically in swelling compassion to the whole of Existence.

Understand that the classifications of lower species and higher species, good and bad are all made by society, by our minds, our egos. Existence itself does not make any distinction in the name of high and low. Only the human beings think that they are an advanced species and that they are more intelligent than the rest of nature. We think our intellect is greater than the intelligence of Existence.

A small story:

One night, a thief knocked on the door of a monastery located in the middle of a forest. The

Master opened the door and allowed the man to spend the night in the ashram.

The next morning, the thief thanked his host and asked for his permission to leave. He also confessed to the Master that he was a thief and had burgled the palace the previous night. The Master was aghast.

He started weeping loudly, 'What a great sin I have committed by allowing a thief to spend a night in my ashram! I gave him food too. What can I do to atone for my sin?'

At that time, he heard a voice from the sky, weeping even louder than him, 'You are upset and weeping because you have looked after him for one night. What about me? I have been looking after him everyday for all these years!'

The Master had actually become egoistic. He started feeling holier than others. God never differentiates between a sinner and a saint. These are all societal. In a forest, who is a sinner and who is a saint?

Every atom on earth is divine. When we take things for granted, when we take life for granted, we do not realize this and create boundaries for ourselves. When we just realize that this very life is a divine gift to us, our attitude changes from taking things for granted to one of gratitude to Existence for everything.

Have you worked hard to earn this life? With every breath that you take every moment, the life energy flows into you and keeps you alive. Can you say you created the life energy that sustains you? We take for granted the life energy that goes in through our breath. We take for granted the mechanism and energy that converts bread into blood. Anything that we have in life we take for granted. The mind continuously runs behind 'more and more'.

If we make a list of what we have, what Existence has showered upon us and compile a list of what we really want to feel happier, we will quickly realize how much longer the first list is. Have we ever strongly considered what our life would be like if we did not have even a small limb that we take so much for granted? Can you imagine the limitations we would have without a toe or thumb, not to speak of our eyes or ears?

We take so much for granted. We assume that what we have been given is our rightful due and then crave for more. We are here as gifts of nature. Instead of being grateful to Existence for what we have been showered with, we complain about what we do not have.

Remember that when Existence, when God does not grant us what we seek, He is doing it out of deep compassion and wisdom. We think God has the power to give us what we ask for. Of course, He has. But we don't think he also has the wisdom to decide what we should be given and when.

He does not grant many of our prayers because, in His compassion and wisdom, He knows what we need. He knows that far better than us. That is why it is said to be careful what you wish for, because you may get it. It is true. We have no wisdom when it comes to asking. We

ask because we see someone else apparently enjoying something. We do not even know if that person is really enjoying; we just think he or she is. That creates envy and desire in us and we too seek the same.

The Divine is far wiser. The divine knows what we really need. The Divine knows that what we want is all borrowed. There is a huge difference between what we need and what we want. We do not realize the difference. The Divine does.

For the next couple of days, just try living with the attitude of gratitude, with love for everyone and everything around you, with a deep awareness and automatically, you will see that you can experience each and every person and thing as a unique creation of Existence, as a reflection of the Divine. Just decide consciously that you will respond with love for the next couple of days, whatever may be the situation. Just for two days decide not to react the way you have been reacting all these years; instead, respond with love.

Just the very attitude change will bring a tremendous peace and relaxation to you.

Krishna says, when you look at all things without differentiation, without favoritism, without attachment, then you are a true renunciate, a true sanyasi, a true monk.

Can you look at death and birth in the same manner? We celebrate birth, we condole death. Why?

Both are passages. Neither is a beginning nor an end. The cycle of life is continuous. We move seamlessly from birth through living into death and again into birth. It is just that, in this life, we do not remember what happened in the period between our death last time around and our birth this time. That loss of memory is for our own safety.

We are perturbed by that loss of knowledge, by the loss of memory. What we do not know frightens us. If we understand that death is no different from birth and the life after death may be no different from our current life, there will be no fear. This can happen when we have the experience of death while we are still live. This is what we teach in our programs.

An important thing: how we look at death reflects a lot about how we look at life. I can say, our perception of death changes our way of life.

Death is feared by most of us because it is considered a discontinuity. When we realize that death is just a continuation in some other form, we will not fear death. Then the joy of birth and the sadness at death will both be seen as the same.

A small story about Socrates:

The Greek society killed Socrates by forcing him to drink the poisonous juice of the hemlock herb. Just before he drank the poison, one of his disciples asked him, 'Master, are you not afraid of dying? You appear to be so calm.'

Socrates replied, 'Why should I be afraid? I know that only two things can happen after death. Either I

will continue to exist in some other form or name, or I will cease to exist after death. If I continue to exist in some other form, there is nothing to worry about; if I cease to exist, nothing remains to worry! So either way, there is nothing to fear!'

Our idea of birth and death is very direct evidence, a clear mirror of how we look at various situations in life. That is why understanding about birth and death is actually fundamental to leading a life of realization.

Ashtavakra, the great Master says, 'Seeing this world as pure illusion, and devoid of any interest in it, how should the strong-minded person feel fear, even at the approach of death? Equal in pain and in pleasure, equal in hope and in disappointment, equal in life and in death, and complete as you are, you can find peace.'

Understand, one who knows that what he sees is illusion, just a play of mind and if he is completely detached from this illusion, he will not fear death. As long as we hold on to this illusion created by the mind that we call reality, we have a feeling of losing it when we think of death. When we see pain and pleasure as the same and are not affected by either of them, we will be free from the fear of death. Because then we realize that nothing is taken away from us when death comes. There is no disappointment when death comes to us.

Enlightened Masters' experience about death really teaches us a lot. Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi got his enlightenment through a conscious experience of death.

When Bhagavan was a young boy, one day he was just lying on his bed in his uncle's house in Madurai in Bharat. Suddenly he got the feeling that he was going to die! He felt that death was coming upon him.

He had two choices: to resist the feeling or to accept it and go through it. He chose the second, to accept death as it is and go through it. He became enlightened after he experienced the process of death.

Usually people resist, so they pass into a coma and leave the body in a state of unconsciousness. Ninety nine percent of us leave the body in a state of unconsciousness.

In our second level program, the THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program (NSP) now called Life Bliss Program Level 2 or LBP 2, we go into the complete understanding of death, what happens exactly when we die. We teach you to experience the process of death and to understand how and what happens, so that there is no mystery. Therefore, there is no fear.

Though we know from the moment of birth that our life will culminate in death, we never try to visualize it; we never try to welcome it. At least once if we go through death, through our fear with consciousness, we will lose our fear for death automatically.

Bhagavan was courageous enough to choose the second path. He co-operated with the feeling. He allowed death to happen. He decided to see what would happen during death. He saw clearly one by one, the parts of his body dying. Slowly, his whole body was dead. He saw his body turn into ashes.

Suddenly, he realized that something remained even after that; something that cannot be destroyed. At that moment, it hit him that he was pure Consciousness, beyond the body and mind. He was simply a witness to the whole thing.

That knowledge was tremendous and it never left him. When he came back into his body, he was Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened Master.

When we conquer the fear of death, we conquer death itself, because death is just one more imagination!

When we get over the cycle of greed and fear, we can be in equanimity in all situations in life; then we are situated in the Supreme Consciousness. It is then we have touched our core, our real Being.

Krishna goes on to explain the characteristics of one who is Supreme.

He says that one who is of steady intelligence, one who does not get caught in the play of opposing emotions like pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, is truly not deluded and is established in the truth, and in the Supreme. He is Supreme himself.

What do we need to know to get out of the whirlpool of emotions?

If we look deeply, we will see that for all our emotional blocks like fear, greed or worry, at the root are born of an expectation for a certain thing to happen in a certain way, a certain situation to present itself in a certain way. We always have a fantasy about how things should happen and how they should be.

We live in a virtual world and when there is a gap between reality and imagination, the trouble starts. The greater the gap, the more tension, disappointment and frustration we experience. We start to like or dislike something based on this gap. We create all negative emotions and forget about our innate blissful nature because we constantly fantasize about how things should be. The likes and dislikes are a product of the mind, not of the being. The being is just bliss and not related to any external incident.

Beautifully, Krishna says, 'An object of enjoyment that comes of itself is neither painful nor pleasurable for someone who has eliminated attachment, and who is free from the dualism of self and the other and therefore, from desire.'

This is actually a sutra, a technique that Krishna gives. If we put our attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between the two, we actually go beyond both and we can transcend the play of the mind. What do we normally do? If we are in pain, we try to run away from it. If we are in pleasure, we try to cling onto it. Understand that both pleasure and pain are of the mind. They are based on our samskaras. They are not of the being. Instead of trying to hold onto pleasure or running away from pain, just be with it, just witness it. The nature of the mind is to move to the opposites. By its very nature, the mind will move from one extreme to the other. Using this technique, we can transcend this nature of the mind.

For example, if we have a headache, don't try to resist it. Just witness it. Accept it. As the tree is there, as the night is there, so also the headache is there. On the other hand, if we are very happy, don't try to cling onto it. Whether it is happiness or pain, just be a witness to it. It is like standing in front of the sun in the morning. The sun just rises and we just watch it. The sun will set in the evening, we watch that also, with no attachment to the sun rising or setting.

In fact, this is the whole principle behind the 'middle path' of Buddha. Buddha endorses neither indulging in pleasure nor abstaining from it. Be involved but be aware. When we are aware, we can never be unconsciously pulled into it. Then desire cannot overcome us. We are always the Master. Whenever we want, we can get out of it.

Only when we are not aware can the sense pleasures control us. When we are not aware, not conscious, then we get caught in the cycle of guilt and desires because after the desire gets fulfilled, we go through guilt for having succumbed to the desire. But we did not live the desire fully with awareness, so we can't get out of it either. The next time, again, the desire happens and again we go through it incompletely and then feel guilty. The only way to get out of this vicious cycle of desire and guilt is to go through the desire with awareness.

Normally we go through only two modes with all our desires. We either suppress or express. If, because of past experience and samskara, we think the experience would be painful if we suppress the desire. Sometimes we may suppress a desire even if the experience may seem like it won't be painful. This is because of negative associations imposed on us by society. If it is seen to be pleasurable, we go into the experience willingly and we express our desire.

Suppression does not lead to elimination of that desire. It temporarily blocks access, but that desire will rise with renewed vigor again. Expression also does not mean fulfillment. Again and again the desire will rise even after repeated expression because we rarely experience anything with awareness.

In expression of a desire, we have the choice to experience with awareness. Once we experience a desire with full awareness, whether related to food, sex or material desires, we will find that the desire is fulfilled and we will not be bothered by it anymore. We will transcend the desire. It is actually that simple.

This is what I term karma. Karma is nothing but unfulfilled desire that makes us repeat the same experience again and again, mindlessly, simply because we do not have the intelligence to enter into that experience with complete awareness. Once we experience the situation with awareness, in that present moment, we will experience what Shankara experienced. We will not be the doer, the deed or the doing. We will transcend all three. We will transcend our karma. We will be Supreme.

Krishna advises us to turn inwards. Move away from your senses, move into your Source, He says.

By nature, by our very being we are tuned inwards. By conditioning, by the absorption of experiences of the outer world, we lose this capability to turn inwards. We will see that most children are blissful, just curious and happy to be what they are. They are happy to do what they do. They are in bliss.

Then unfortunately, they grow up to be adults! They lose that bliss. They lose that natural response to turn inwards. Society and adults teach them to trust their senses. They tell them that what they see, hear, touch, smell and taste are the truthful reality. Over time children, like adults before them, become slaves to their senses. They fall into the trap of sensual pleasures, or what they imagine and fantasize to be pleasures. Once in, it is difficult to get out.

One who indulges in sense pleasures is just caught in the push and pull of desires and guilt. He is just under hormonal torture. Our mind is like a monkey. It flirts from one desire to the next as soon as one is fulfilled. Till that desire is fulfilled, it will make it look like the most important thing and after it is fulfilled, it will seem the most insignificant. Then the new desire will appear allimportant. This is how we get caught in the rat race and the web of sense pleasures.

Again and again, we look outside for solutions that keep us happy. Everything that happens around us and outside us gives us sense pleasures. If we see our list of desires, most of them are not even ours. They are borrowed from others. We will be totally happy with our car until our neighbor gets a new car. We will be totally happy with our job until our colleague gets promoted to a higher post.

We constantly update our list of desires by looking at what is going on outside and we start believing that fulfilling these desires will give us what we define as happiness or pleasure. Whatever happens outside, it completely controls our level of satisfaction and our state of happiness. So to fulfill these desires, we keep on running the rat race, not knowing what exactly we want.

Now, you see, even if we fulfill these desires, we generally develop a deep sense of guilt and dissatisfaction in the end. This is because these desires were never really ours. We ran behind them because we saw someone doing something and we believed that doing something like that would make us happy. So as long as our mind is stuck in the sense pleasures from outside, we will always be running behind more and more desires that will ultimately lead to guilt and dissatisfaction.

In our second level meditation program, LBP 2 or THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program, I make people write down their desires. Some people write just a few desires and close their books. I tell them, 'If you have only so many desires, then you must be enlightened.' You should see how people fill pages with their list of desires. After a deep meditation, when they are asked to remember their desires, they can remember only a handful.

You see, they wrote probably fifty desires but after the meditation they can remember only a few of them, less than ten. Why is it like that?

It is because what they remember are their true desires. These are the desires that they truly want. The rest of the forty desires are borrowed desires. These borrowed desires are the play of the mind. We can see how dangerous it can be to run behind desires that build due to outside pleasures.

When we look for fulfillment outside, we are looking for solutions outside. However, the real solution lies inside. We need to be able to connect to our true self and not be driven by the mind. The true source of pleasure is not outside us. The true source of pleasure is not because of things outside us. We should realize that we are blissful by nature. Our being is always blissful. Our core is always blissful.

So the correct place to look for pleasure is not outside. It is very much inside us. If we realize this, we will always be centered in ourselves. We will not be bothered by what goes on outside because we know exactly that we are inherently blissful. He who is free from being and non-being, who is contented, desire-less, and wise, even if in the world's eyes he does act, does nothing.

We must have seen, on the surface, to the external world, that a mad man with tremendous laziness will look very similar to a mystic in deep bliss. On the surface, to the outer world, they may seem very similar but inside, they are the complete opposites.

A madman is lazy and is lying around. There are so many things that are going on in his mind. However, a mystic is sitting completely relaxed because he is centered in his being. We might find the mystic sitting and doing nothing. To us he may seem the same as a madman. But the mind of the mystic is not doing anything. There are lesser thoughts and he is complete unto himself.

When we are situated in the core of our being, when we are one with the Self, we are not shaken by the emotions that happen on the periphery. It is like a rock that is standing in the ocean. The waves of the emotions are continuously lashing against the rock but the rock still stands unperturbed.

The happiness arises from our very being, from our Self. It is unlimited because it cannot be stopped by any external agent. The ananda spurana (fountain of bliss) is eternal, nithya.

This is what we teach in our first level program, Ananda Spurana Program ASP, also called Life Bliss Program, LBP. We teach you how to re-experience the bliss that you constantly felt when you were a child; the bliss that you lost as you grew up, as you became educated.

With societal conditioning, we block the energy centers in our body-mind system that connects us to the Existential energy. As long as these centers are fully open and unblocked, we are in constant contact with our primary source of energy. We are at ease, we are in comfort, and we are in bliss.

When these centers get blocked through conditioning, with the growth of negativities in us, with accumulation of

samskaras in us, we lose that bliss, that comfort, and that ease. We become dis-eased.

These energy blocks are the root cause of all our illnesses, be they of the mind or body. Through the use of meditation techniques, we teach you how to unblock and energize these energy centers, chakras, so that we can experience that bliss again. That is why this program is called Ananda Spurana; Ananda is bliss, Spurana is to gush. The bliss we blocked out starts gushing again. We stopped the bliss flow. We teach you how to stop the stopping and let bliss flow within you again.

Q: Master, how can we see everything equally, without differentiation? We ourselves are not created equally; we are all different and diverse. How then is it possible to see every one else the same way as Krishna suggests?

This is a wonderful question.

We are created equally. The Divine does not discriminate or differentiate. Our basic structure is the same. We all have a mind, body and spirit system, to make us functional. However, we carry a mindset from our previous birth, a tinge, an intent, a subtle essence that is called vasana, which makes us different.

It is as if we are all spherical balls in space. What is inside us is the same as what is outside in the space; both are exactly the same energy. The skin of the ball is our body. At death the skin dissolves. It is like a the rubber covering of a rubber ball with air inside or the rubber covering of a balloon filled with air suddenly disappearing. What happens then? The air inside merges with the air outside, is it not?

That is what happens at death too. We merge with the outer energy, after giving up this body. Only difference is this: during our life we have accumulated experiences and memories and have therefore formed a mindset, vasana. It is as though each ball has a different-colored air, one pink, one blue, one green and so on, its own vasana. So when the rubber disappears, the air inside stays separate from the air outside. Though it is the same energy it has a tinge that separates.

The different colored air spaces now have to find other balls, new balls, which have similar characteristics with their color to accommodate them. The spirit, which is tinged with vasana has to find bodies suitable for that vasana. It looks for the right parents, right environment, right time and right space to be reborn so that its carryover vasana can be accommodated and fulfilled.

We are created equally, but with some differences based on our past experiences and attitudes, which define our bodies, mind and other conditions in this lifetime. Remember though, essentially we are all the same energy and therefore we are the same. It is this equality that we need to be aware of and seek. Though we may start unequally because of our mindset, we can all reach the same equal state. That is the state of our true nature.

This is what Krishna refers to when He talks about equanimity. We call it samadrishti, equanimity of

perception, to see everyone and everything equally without discrimination and differentiation. We are all creatures of the same Existence, children of the same energy. Once we understand that commonality, there is no difficulty in practicing equanimity.

5.22 The intelligent person surely does not enjoy the sense pleasures, enjoyments

Which are sources of misery and which are subject to beginning and end.

5.23 Before leaving this present body, if one is able to tolerate the urges of material senses and check the force of desire and anger,

He is well-situated and he is happy in this world.

5.24 One who is happy from within, active within as well as illumined within, surely, is a yogi (united in mind, body and spirit)

And he is liberated in the Supreme, is self-realized and attains the Supreme.

5.25 The holy men whose sins have been destroyed are working for the welfare of other beings,

Those who are self-restrained and have cleared all their doubts and dualities attain the eternal happiness of God, Nithya Ananda, of Divine.

5.26 They who are free from lust and anger, who have subdued the mind and senses,

And who have known the Self, easily attain liberation.

Krishna says that sense pleasures are bounded; they do not last forever. They are just temporary.

Generally, we are controlled by what happens outside us. The state of happiness and sadness in us happens due to various things that are going on around us. Happiness is an emotion that is created by something outside of us. It could be due to a pleasant situation, or through a person whom we like, some action that pleases us and so on.

When we experience happiness due to some event outside us, be very sure, sadness is around the corner. When we experience the joy in us because of an external source, we will experience sadness once that external source is taken away from us.

We always attach our happiness to something that is external to us. We say we are happy because of this event or because of that person. If these things are taken away from us, we are left with sadness. It is like a pendulum swaying from one extreme of happiness to the other extreme of sadness.

In our programs, we ask participants to imagine a state of great happiness and stay with it for a while. After that experience, we ask them to describe what they went through. Invariably it was happiness related to a person or an event, that was related to an external source and the happiness was brought about by the sense perception.

Now when we ask them to remove that event or person from their imagination, there is deep sorrow. They feel they have lost something. They will grieve. That is how temporary happiness and sorrow are for all of us, how pain and pleasure are for all of us.

The event and the person do not cause happiness and sorrow. It is caused by our perception, by our sense perception and by the judgment based on sense perception. That is why the same event that may be joyful to one is sorrow filled for another, and would leave a third one undisturbed. It is our attachment to that person or event and our judgment based on our conditioning

that creates the sorrow or happiness. The incident by itself is neutral.

There is a beginning and an end to these states of sorrow and happiness. But bliss is something that continuously happens in us for no reason. When we are happy, sadness is bound to come after the source of external pleasure is gone but bliss is our nature. How can it go away? We are blissful by our inherent nature. Bliss is steady and unperturbed. It is absolute, not relative.

Bliss does not depend on external sources. It is inside us. It is internal. Once we are centered in us, we are always in bliss. Unlike happiness, we experience joy for no external reasons. We are not affected by what happens outside us. When we are constantly experiencing the inner joy or bliss, whatever happens outside us does not increase or reduce the amount of happiness we experience.

Happiness or sadness happens because of our sense pleasures which are again a result of our mind and ego. Our ego, our false association of ourselves with various emotions is actually the cause of our misery. At the core of our beings is pure bliss. But we are functioning at our periphery and are not able to see this core.

This is the reason we go though various emotions and are driven by greed, fear, comparison. The sense pleasures and apparent enjoyments are merely the play of the mind. The sense pleasures are due to our attachment to external sources or factors. All our emotions are controlled by these attachments.

If we watch with deep awareness, we can see that the mind plays a subtle and cunning game of projecting various desires and making us see reality with the tinted glasses of that desire. The expectations are finely ingrained by the mind; they exist in every small thing that we do.

If circumstances are such that our desires are getting fulfilled, we feel happy. We feel sad or unhappy if something does not go according to our expectations or desires. Even if there is a slight setback, we start to worry and all kinds of emotions take us over. Also, our list of desires always keeps growing. So the number of sources of external sense pleasures also keeps increasing. We try to see our state of happiness in these pleasures which actually do not exist.

This is what is really meant by maya. Ya ma iti maya: that which does not exist but which troubles as if it exists is maya. We don't see reality as it is because we are all the time looking at life through glasses tinted with our biased perceptions, through our limited view of life.

When we start watching these sources with awareness, we break the chords of attachment of our state of joy with these external sources and desires. When we are aware of what we really want, this dependency on sense pleasures breaks. When we are centered in ourselves, we start taking things as and when they come.

I am not saying you do not enjoy the joy that you get from external sources or fulfillment of our desires. No. All we should do is to be aware of them. Do not attach your

state of joy to these sense pleasures. If they happen, let them happen. Let them not dictate your state of happiness.

All we have to do is be aware of our innate nature, the bliss within us. The fountain of bliss and ecstasy is happening every moment in our beings but we have masked it successfully by giving life to our ego that has no solid existence in the first place. When we are aware of this bliss, we do not need anything outside to keep us happy. This state of bliss is eternal. It is always inside. Once we know this, we will always be in eternal bliss, nithya ananda.

Krishna gives us now a beautiful technique to reach that ultimate Krishna Consciousness, to reach the beautiful space of bliss:

He is repeating exactly what I said. If we can at least once settle inside, if at least once we settle inside our Being, when we are attacked by this emotion of desire and anger, without moving our body, without cooperating, without being taken away by that emotion, we are well-situated. This means that we achieved what has to be achieved; we are blissful in this world.

People ask me again and again, 'Master, what is the purpose of this body and mind?'

The purpose of body and mind is only one thing: to achieve, to learn how to experience joy without body and mind.

If we can learn having happiness, bliss without the body and mind, we achieved the purpose of body and mind; over! After that, we can throw away the body and mind; we can live without body and mind.

The person who is able to live without body and mind is jivanmukta. Even if the body and mind is with him, he will not be touched by it. He has no use for it. If we don't have any use, any need for it, will you go to LA? No. Unless you have some reason, you will not go there.

In the same way, unless you have some reason, you will not assume this body. If you had started, if you had a single glimpse of bliss without this body and mind, the bliss that is beyond this body and mind, you will never be disturbed by this body and mind. Even if it is there, it will be following you; you will not be following it.

As of now, you may not be driving a car because you don't know how to start or how to stop. If you don't know how to put the brakes on when you are driving the car, it means you are not driving the car. The car is driving you! Without reading the owner's manual and learning to drive, if you sit in the car, you will be doing this mistake only. Without the manual, if you straightaway enter the car, you will be doing these types of mistakes. Only when you know how to start or to stop, you are driving the car. Otherwise, the car is driving you.

Please be clear: read the owner's manual before getting into the vehicle. Gita is the owner's manual for your body and mind. Read the owner's manual before getting into the body and mind so that you will be able to stop when

you want to stop. You will not get into the accident of repeating the life and death cycle.

Here Krishna says: The man who is not moved, who can tolerate the urges of material senses, check the force of desire and anger, he is well-situated and he is happy in this world. He knows where he is. He knows his place. If you don't know your place, it is very difficult.

In this world, many of us don't know our place. That is why we feel we are uprooted. We don't feel we belong to this life. We don't feel we are at home because we don't know our place.

Small story:

In a dark theater, during the intermission, one guy went out, came back with popcorn and Coca-Cola. He came near a woman and asked, 'Did I hit you? Did I step on your foot a few minutes ago?' She said, 'Yes. As a matter of fact, you did.' She was thinking that he was about to apologize.

Instead he said, 'Thank you. Then, this is my seat!'

You don't know your seat. You don't know your place. You have to identify your place only through these sources. You don't know where you are situated. Only a person who has gone beyond greed and fear can relax into his being. He will know what his place is in this planet Earth.

If we don't fuel our being with fear and greed, suddenly, we will see a new clarity. We will start working out of intelligence. We will start working out of Divine Consciousness. We will start working out of eternal bliss.

Just decide, 'Whatever I do out of greed will only result in more and more greed. I have been running and getting nowhere. Enough!' In the same way, if we are escaping from something out of fear, decide 'Alright, how long can I escape? How long can I run? This fear will come and attack me in some other form. If I am afraid of this and run, I will be afraid of something else; something else will come.'

It is just the fear, not the object about which you are afraid. The object is not going to chase you but the fear will chase you. You may go away somewhere but you are carrying the tent, the canopy of fear and greed with you. Wherever you go for a picnic, you open your own little small tent. Similarly, wherever you go, you carry your own small tent of fear and greed. You may try to escape by running here and there but wherever you go, you carry your canopy of fear and greed.

There are so many great escapes, especially in this country! They claim that the world's happiest place is Disney World. Actually, I went all over; this Disney World, Disney Land, MGM Studios and all possible places of relaxation and entertainment. Wherever popular places exist, they took me there. After seeing, I really felt sad inside me. These people took me there for entertainment. That shows how much of depression the people are carrying inside! So much of entertainment is necessary means they are carrying so much of depression inside!

If we need so much of entertainment, please be very clear that something is seriously wrong within our system. Something is seriously wrong in the whole system. By his nature, man doesn't need so much of entertainment.

If we need so many things to make us happy, there is something seriously wrong in the whole system. We need to look into the system and repair it.

Again and again, Krishna declares, 'Let you work out of joy'. And I tell you, if you work out of bliss, you will create bliss for yourself and you will create bliss for others and you will never know what tiredness is. You will never even know the word 'tiredness'.

Let me tell you honestly that I still can't understand the meaning of the word tiredness. How can you have tiredness? Tiredness is the inner contradiction between the iccha shakti (power of desire) and kriya shakti (power of action), between your being and your action. There is an inner contradiction. Inside, there is a deep problem. Your greed and fear are attacking each other, that is all.

If we are feeling tired, inside us a big war is going on. The Mahabharata yuddha (The Great War) is going on. Inside us, the war between the fear and greed is happening.

Man whose Consciousness is clear can never experience tiredness. The very idea of tiredness is totally wrong. How can there be tiredness? Just do what you want; that's all.

In the young age, when I was in college, I used to sit and meditate. In the morning, I would sit for four hours and in the evening I used to sit for four hours. Just casually, I used to sit and meditate. My room-mates would ask me, 'How are you able to sit for so many hours?' And I used to tell them, 'What is there? It is my body, my mind. If you want, can't you sit? If you can't even sit with your body and mind, what are you going to achieve?'

Why do we feel tired? We feel tired when we are not total, when we are not integrated within ourselves.

When we are divided within ourselves, one half of us fights with the other half. One half is the part of our being that wants to express itself but we have suppressed it for various societal reasons. The other half of our being is what is expressing itself in the manner that we are forcing it to.

What happens? Because constantly we have to put in effort to be what we naturally are not, we become tired at some point. When we become tired, the suppressed, unconscious half of us becomes more powerful than the conscious, pretentious half and it starts dominating the fight.

Just integrate yourself, be complete with awareness rather than suppressing yourself and there will be no unconscious half to fight with. Then where is the question of feeling tired?

We feel tired only when we are not completely involved in what we are doing, when our intelligence is not completely behind the action. Become complete, integrated, and whole. Then you can never feel tired whatever you do.

See how long are you able to sit here listening to me? How is it that you are not feeling tired sitting for so many hours? It is because when I speak, I speak from my being, with a totality. When I speak with totality, automatically, you receive me and my energy also totally.

This is the state from which enlightened Masters operate. That is why there is no sense of tiredness in them even though they are intensely involved every moment in what they do.

Can we imagine ourselves being intensely involved in our work for even an hour at a stretch? We start feeling tired. We feel tired only when there is a gap between what we are doing and what we want to do. When we are driven by greed for something, we are caught up in the goal and the goal is something we want to achieve. What we are doing is not yet the goal and hence, we feel we are running towards the goal. Or we are driven by fear of something; we want to escape from the object of fear and hence, here also we are not completely involved in what we are doing.

Honestly, I am not able to understand how a man cannot sit with himself. It is our body, our mind; that's all. Just sit. Over!

Why? Why are you not able to sit? It is because continuously you pour the wrong fuel into your system. That is why you are not able to sit with yourself. It is, after all, your body and your mind. Bring it completely under your control. If you can't bring this under your control, never ever expect you can bring anything under your control.

We are continuously chasing power. We want to control that and control this; we have so much desire for power. The power hunger is so high in us that we are always running behind something to get control over it. Understand, first let us get our body and mind under our control. Let that be controlled by us. Then, automatically, we can get anything under our control. If this is not under our control, whatever is under our control will not be under our control.

Please be very clear: the first thing that we need to do is bring our body and mind under our control. As of now, it is under the control of fear or greed.

One thought from greed is enough: our body just runs. One thought from fear is enough: our body just runs. Let it be completely under you. Let it be completely under your Consciousness. Let you fill your body and mind. Let your eternal bliss, eternal consciousness fill your body and mind.

Here is a beautiful sutra, a beautiful technique, from Krishna to enter into the Consciousness:

Here, it is to be noted that one needs to be happy from within. It cannot be the smile due to social etiquette but should be a deep expression of the love in our being. All of us are so used to living an artificial life, driven by social pressures, that we have forgotten our being. Here, happiness refers to the bliss that happens within us for no external reasons but simply happens because that is an expression of our very nature.

We feel happy or satisfied when we are running after our desires or when we keep ourselves away from our fears. So every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by either greed or fear.

But how can we be happy or satisfied when in this moment we are running towards or away from something? This means we are not actually experiencing the moment. We are not actually living in the present moment. We are continuously in the web of greed and fear. We are either living in the past or we are in the future thinking about our list of desires. Because in the past our desires were not always fulfilled, we fear about whether our desires will get fulfilled in the future.

We are never in the present moment. We can enjoy something totally only when we are completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment, enjoying what we are doing here and now.

When you are in the current moment, when you are completely in the present moment with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy that has no reason and which is not affected by the past or future. It is not affected by either our fear or our greed. It is always there.

Naturally, the current blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. We enter a virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious cycle of fear and greed that we are now caught in.

Why do we run behind our desires or why are we afraid of something? If we analyze this a little deeply, this running towards or away from something is fundamentally because we think that life has some goal to be achieved.

We continuously run towards the goal that we set in life. Understand, life in itself has no goal to be achieved. The very life itself is the goal. The path itself is the goal. If we think that the goal and the path are different, we will run towards the goal; we will run towards the horizon. Can we ever touch the horizon? The more we run towards it, we will find it receding from us, is it not? Why? Because the horizon is imaginary, it is an illusion.

If we are running behind a goal in life, we will be disappointed at the end of life. Sadly, we will feel terribly dissatisfied. We will feel a complete void when we look back at what we have been running for.

But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every moment when we are on the path of life, we are achieving the goal. The goal is achieved every moment of our life.

So every moment when we live with full awareness, with full enthusiasm, we actually enjoy that moment. When we are completely immersed in the present moment in whatever we are doing, we are enjoying the path. When the path itself becomes the goal, we are enjoying the goal also every moment.

The self-realized one is active and happy because he is completely in the present moment, living in reality. The Divine Energy simply blissfully flows through him and he does his activities with that blissful Energy. He no longer needs to derive energy for his activities from desire.

Here, Krishna refers to the Master being active within. He is referring to the state in which we are in the peak of activity yet in the ultimate relaxation. Such a state is indeed possible and in fact, is the only state in which we can really be involved in what we are doing. It is the only state in which we can be completely satisfied and blissful in what we are doing.

This is what Krishna says: when we are tuned fully inwards, we no longer have any attachment to what happens outside, we are one with the All, the Existence, and we have transcended all karma, all sins. We are then in Brahma Nirvana, Ultimate Liberation, one with the Existence, and we are in THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, eternal bliss.

When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up more and more responsibility. We would want to share that love with as many as we can and for this, we will take up responsibility.

When we are tuned inwards, we live in the present; past and future do not exist for us. When we are in the present, we are one with Existence. I call this All-oneness. We are All in One. We encompass everything. We do not differentiate.

In this state, we are at the height of spontaneity. Spontaneity does not mean creativity. Creativity is a byproduct. Spontaneity is being in the present, being responsible for everything around us. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is defined. We flow out and reach. We expand and cover.

The more responsibility we take up, the more we expand. Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. But if we don't shrug it and keep on shouldering it, we will expand and the Divine Energy will automatically flow in us. And we can take up more and more responsibility only when we feel overflowing Energy in us.

When we take up responsibility, we take it up without any doubts. Usually whenever we are asked to do something, the mind comes in between. It creates a dilemma. It makes us think of a lot of things. We start analyzing intellectually and logically. Our mind starts seeing the pros and cons. We start weighing our options. So at the end of it, we act out of greed or fear.

Mind is dilemma. As long as duality exists, the mind exists. As long as we intellectually weigh the situation for good and bad, the mind exists. We have to cross this barrier. We have to cut across the wall. The dilemma of wanting or not wanting to do something should not come at all.

Remember, as long as there is dilemma, be very clear, our mind is working. A lot of times when people come to me and I ask them to do something, just by the very way they say, 'Yes, I will do', I can tell whether they really want to do it or not.

Our response to take up a responsibility is shaky when we are in a dilemma, when our mind operates. We should take up responsibility spontaneously. Then no doubt remains. We just know. We operate from an extreme relaxation and spontaneity. The ability to respond spontaneously is actual responsibility.

Only when we go beyond the mind, beyond duality, we see the absolute oneness and synchronicity of the entire Existence. Only when we are in this state of oneness with Existence, will we take up responsibility. At this point, there is no mind that is acting. We are in a state of deep relaxation or bliss. And this will create the ability to spontaneously respond when we are in this state.

This is very important for us to do good work. When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up responsibility because we want to share that blissful love with others around us. Only when we work out of bliss, we will do good things for others.

When there is no dilemma, when we take up responsibility spontaneously, we do not act out of fear or greed. We are just serving, we are doing good things. There is no expectation, no fear and no greed on our part. We will always be giving.

If we are working out of fear or anger, fear or greed, even if we do good things, it will end up only in trouble. It will not end up as a service.

You see, actually this is a virtuous circle. When we are in state of no dilemma and when we are acting spontaneously, we have crossed the mind. We take up responsibility in a state of bliss because mind does not function any more.

When we take up responsibility, we are serving without fear or greed. We are in tune with the Existence. When we are in this state, we will be more and more blissful. We are ever ready to take up responsibility. Responsibility knows no limits; it does not recognize boundaries.

We are continuously in bliss, continuously flowing with Existence, we are in heaven. We are in THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

5.27, 5.28 Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows,

Suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence,

The transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear and the byproduct of desire and fear, anger all three.

One who is always in this state is certainly liberated.

5.29 One who knowing Me as the purpose of sacrifice and penance,

As the lord of all the worlds and the benefactor of all the living beings, achieves peace.

Here, the 'Me' refers to the Supreme witnessing Consciousness, the Krishna Consciousness; it is not the six foot Krishna frame.

A real incident that happened:

Some ardent Krishna devotees, more fanatics I should say rather than devotees, once asked me 'Master, do you believe in the Gita?' I replied 'Of course; Gita is the ultimate expression of spirituality; it is the unabridged dictionary of all the world philosophies. There can be no other book better than the Gita.'

Hearing this, they said, 'If you think so, then Krishna is everything. Why are you then worshipping other gods? Worshipping Krishna will suffice.' I then explained to them that when Krishna said 'I am Everything', He was in the inspired Consciousness mood. It was not Vasudeva Krishna, the son of Devaki and Vasudeva who was speaking. It was not Krishna the man, but the Energy called Krishna, Parabrahma Krishna who was speaking. It was the Divine Energy. He was in the ecstasy of the enlightenment state. It had nothing to do with the form.

When you are enlightened, you feel the whole world is you and you are the whole world. The energy that moves the sun, the moon and the earth, moves your body too. When you experience the Ultimate Experience, you will understand this Truth.

When I said that Krishna was in an enlightened state when He spoke those words, they immediately asked me to give proof that He was speaking from that state and not as an ordinary man.

I had to substantiate this theory with an incident from the Mahabharata. Two to three months after the Kurukshetra war, when Arjuna was with Krishna, Arjuna said to Krishna, 'Oh Krishna, I was so involved in the war when you delivered those beautiful truths and understandings to me in the Gita. I have not been able to retain most of them. Can you please repeat them again to me? If it could be recorded, it would be of immense value to future generations.'

To this request, Krishna just smiled and said, 'Oh Arjuna, not only you but I also have forgotten. When I gave you the Gita, I was in the inspired Super Consciousness state. The enlightened Energy was working through me. I was Parabrahma Krishna and not Vasudeva Krishna.'

Of course, Krishna promised to remember and recollect whatever He could. Whatever He recollected was compiled as the Anu Gita. This is a much smaller book and does not have all the teachings that are in the original Bhagavad Gita.

I always tell people, the outer guru, the Master is needed only to kindle the inner spirit, to awaken the inner guru. Once the inner guru, your Consciousness is awakened, the outer guru needs to be dropped. Just like after burning the dead body, the very stick that is used to stoke the wood to burn the body is dropped into the same pyre, so also the outer guru needs to be dropped.

Let us now enter into the technique. For the first time, Krishna gives a beautiful technique to move your energy from fear and greed to Divine Consciousness, eternal Consciousness.

Your fear is rooted in the Swadishthana chakra; this is the energy center that is situated two inches below the navel. Your greed is rooted in the Muladhara chakra, the chakra that is in the root of your spinal cord.

Krishna gives us the technique of how to elevate ourselves from these two chakras to the eternal Consciousness, the ajna chakra at the brow center, where the eternal Consciousness resides, where our very being resides. When we have elevated our self to ajna, we go beyond our ego or mind. We are in tune with the eternal Consciousness.

We are all caught in the muladhara and swadishthana, fear and greed. That is why, continuously, we can watch and see that we have sort of a tensed feeling. We will be continuously holding our muladhara and swadishthana. Here, now, just look into your being. You see, relax. You can feel near the muladhara area, you will be tightly holding yourself. You always hold yourself. You are always in tension.

You are always tensed in the muladhara and swadishthana chakras. Krishna explains how to relax that area, how to stop the fuel coming from greed and fear,and get the amrita-dhara (flow of nectar) from eternal Consciousness.

Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence, the transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear and the byproduct of desire and fear, anger - all three. One who is always in this state is certainly liberated, sada mukta eva saha.

First, He gives the technique to enter into that state. Then He says, if you can stay in that same state, you are liberated.

Now, at least let us try to have a glimpse of this state that Krishna explains in this verse. I will try to guide you step by step through this meditation.

Please try to enter into that state.

Please sit straight and close your eyes. Let your head, neck and backbone be in a straight line. Intensely pray to that ultimate Energy, Parabrahma Krishna, to give the experience of this meditation to us.

First thing, visualize that all your senses are completely shut. Visualize that your eyes are completely closed; your eyes are shut. Don't allow any visualization to happen inside your being. Not only close the eyelids; close the eyes. Visualize that your eyeballs have become completely dark. You are seeing only darkness in front of you.

Visualize your ears are shut. Visualize your sense of touch is shut. Visualize your smelling capacity is shut. Visualize your face to be shut. Feel deeply that all the five senses have been shut down.

Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. Slowly, let your nostrils blow the air. Let your Consciousness reside between the two eyebrows. In a very relaxed way, let you be aware of the space between your two eyebrows. Don't concentrate; don't tense yourself. Just be very relaxed, have a deeply relaxed awareness.

Let your muladhara be relaxed. Let the root of your spine be relaxed. Let your swadishthana be relaxed. Let your whole consciousness come up to the ajna chakra which is between the eyebrows. Let you concentrate on the space between the eyebrows. Let you relax in ajna chakra, between the eyebrows.

Visualize cool, soothing light in the ajna chakra, in the space between the eyebrows. Relax in the ajna chakra between your two eyebrows.

Just forget about the world. Forget all other parts of your body. Forget about your mind. Forget about the body, mind and the world; remember only the ajna chakra, the space between the two eyebrows. Relax in the same state in your ajna chakra.

Go deeply into the ajna chakra, in the space between the two eyebrows. Visualize a beautiful, cooling, soothing

light in the ajna chakra. Let you experience beautiful, blissful light in the ajna chakra. Don't tense yourself; let your awareness be in the ajna chakra in a very relaxed way; let your consciousness rest in the space between the two eyebrows. Let you rest in the space between the two eyebrows in a relaxed way.

Let you relax in the same space of Eternal Consciousness. Let you be beyond the body, mind. Let your intelligence be awakened; let you work from your Eternal Consciousness.

Let you have the pleasant awareness of ajna chakra.

Let you all have the grace of the Divine Consciousness. Let you be established in the Eternal Consciousness. Let you all be in, with and radiate eternal bliss, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

Om shanti, shanti, shantihi…

Om tat sat

Relax; slowly, very slowly, you can open your eyes.

Let you start staying in this same mood at least for next ten days.

Understand: don't concentrate by force. Have a pleasant awareness. When you keep the pleasant awareness around your ajna chakra, your whole energy will be directed towards the Eternal Consciousness. You will receive energy from Eternal Consciousness, from immortality, amrutatva.

You will not be driven by fear or greed. You will be driven from Eternal Consciousness from above. From below, if you are driven, you are man. From above, if you are driven, you are an incarnation. You are divine. You are God.

Let you learn the science of how to connect yourself with the Divine Energy, how to be driven by the Divine Consciousness. Let you function through the Eternal Consciousness.

Let you be in and become one with and radiate eternal bliss, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Thank you!

Arjuna uvacha

Sanyasm karmanam Krishna punaryogam cha shamsasi Yacchreya etayorekam tanme bruhi sunishchitam 5.1

Arjuna uvacha: Arjuna said; sanyasm: renunciation; karmanam: of all actions; Krishna: O Krishna; punah: again; yogam: devotion; cha: also; shamsasi: praising; yat: which; shreya: beneficial; etayoh: of the two; ekam: one; tat: that; me: to me; bruhi: please tell; sunishchitam: definitely

5.1 Arjuna said:

Oh Krishna, you asked me to renounce work first and then you ask me to work with devotion.

Will you now please tell me, one way or the other, which of the two will work for me?