Cleansing Ignorance With Knowledge

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,