Controlling The Wavering Mind
Controlling The Wavering Mind
6.30 For one who sees Me everywhere and who sees everything in Me, for him I am never lost nor is he lost to Me.
6.31 He who is in oneness with Me in all respects, worships Me situated in all beings and remains present in Me.
6.32 One who can feel the happiness or misery of others equally as he can feel his own happiness and misery is the supreme yogi in My opinion, Oh Arjuna.
6.33 Arjuna said: O Madhusudhana, I am not able to see this system of yoga as
told by You in the situation of the mind being restless and not steady.
6.34 O Krishna, the wavering mind is agitating, strong and firm. I think it is difficult to control the mind like it is difficult to control the wind.
6.35 The Lord said: O mighty-armed son of Kunti, it is undoubtedly difficult to control the wavering mind but by practice and detachment, it can be controlled.
Here, Krishna gives a promise. He says that for anyone who sees Him in everything and who sees everything in Him, He is always available. What He means is not that we should see the form of Krishna in everyone, with the flute and two peacock feathers. Of course, that form is beautiful but do not get caught up with the form. The form is there one day and not there the next; it is ephemeral. It is like this, if my finger is pointing in the direction of the moon, look in the direction of the moon and enjoy its beauty. Instead, if you watch my finger, you will miss the moon!
What Krishna means by 'Me' is the Krishna energy, the Divine Consciousness. See the Divine in everybody and everything and automatically, you will relax. You will no longer fight because you will see everything around you as a part of the Divine, including yourself. What is there to fight with and what should you fight for? You will simply relax.
Existence is waiting with open arms to engulf us, to dissolve us into Itself, but only if we are ready to let go. If we just have the courage to let go with an open heart, we will meet and merge with it. When we are ready to feel the embrace of Existence, we rise into a higher plane, a plane of higher Consciousness. We enter into a space we never even knew existed. With Existence we always fall in to rise.
My devotees ask me, 'How can we tell that you are the right Master for us?'
I tell them simply, 'Forget about any analysis or any intellectual reasoning. If I am truly your Master, you can never forget me. I will be there even in your dreams!' The relationship between a Master and a disciple is one of pure love. When we are truly in love, we see the object of love in everything around us. We are consumed by that feeling. The Master fills every pore of our being. We never need to ask, 'Are you my Master?' We just know! He has filled our being, touched us at our core because to him, there is no separation. Here, Krishna is describing the state of the enlightened person. An enlightened person can empathize with everyone because he experiences himself as everyone.
A small story from the life of Vivekananda:
One night, Vivekananda woke up at two am and awakened his disciples. His disciples were anxious and wanted to know what was happening. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a natural calamity happening that was causing him the pain. The next morning, the newspapers carried the news of a terrible earthquake in Cuba that consumed
many lives. Vivekananda was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world thousands of miles away.
What happened in Vivekananda is what we call empathy. It is not sympathy.
Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells us that they are suffering, we make some noises and just confirm their suffering for them. That is sympathy. When we sympathize, we affirm to them that their worries are big, so we actually give them a subtle ego boost.
What an enlightened person or a Master feels is never sympathy. It is empathy. Empathy is when we feel another's suffering in our own being. It is when a person does not have to tell us he is suffering, but we simply know because the Existential energy in us feels it. Masters are one with us because they are one with Existence and we are a part of Existence. It is only that we see them as separate. In reality that is not the case.
When we realize the sense of oneness with the entire universe, we experience a tremendous overflowing of love and compassion for every being without discrimination because we realize that everyone is a part of the same Whole. That is why we can see that Masters are such an ocean of infinite love and know only to give. They are Existence itself. They shower without asking questions because they feel a constant devotion towards the entire universe or life force or Parabrahma Krishna. They are one with Existence and cannot see anyone as a separate entity because there is no separateness.
It is only our senses, mind and logic that perceives information and categorizes it and analyzes it to create the separateness. As long as we use our logic, our collected information, words and our little dictionaries to analyze the information received through our senses, we will only be excluding and judging based on our limited opinions and pre-conceived notions. Existence or the universe is a living energy with infinite potential and is simply beyond our logic. Only when we drop our logic, mind and ego can we merge with Existence and become whole and start seeing that everyone and everything is an extension of the same life force with just different expressions.
Just as the fingers on the hand and toes on the feet belong to the same body, we will be able to see that everyone is a part of the same Universal Energy. This is when true compassion, empathy and service towards everyone can happen. Until then we will only be using our logic, mind, ego, and conditioning to serve others.
When we realize the oneness, we will express our unconditional love and compassion towards everyone without discrimination, because we know that all discrimination is baseless and false. Our very walk and talk will start radiating so much bliss that our very presence will start healing others. We will become a blessing for planet Earth. We will become a blessing for people who experience our presence.
There are a few disciples who have internalized me so much, imbibed me in them so much that they express me
in everything that they do. People who come to the ashram are amazed to see these people who walk like me and talk like me. Some people think that these disciples are doing it to show off. No, they are so much in tune with me that they reflect my body language in them. My presence is in them.
Krishna goes further to explain the state of an enlightened person or a person who is one with the divine consciousness. He says that the enlightened person will feel equally the happiness and pain of another person as he feels his own. Such a person feels one with the whole world. For him, everything is a part of him, so there is nothing else other than his own self. His boundary does not end with the boundary of his own physical body. What does Krishna mean when He says that the enlightened person feels happiness and distress equally in himself and in others? First, he said that the enlightened person is beyond the opposites, the dualities, beyond the opposing emotions of happiness and distress.
It is like this, say there are two trees in a forest. Now, if one tree falls on the other, we can say that the tree on which the other tree has fallen feels the impact, the weight or the pain of a tree falling on it. Now, say the tree actually feels the entire forest as a part of its own self. Can we say that it will feel 'another' tree falling on it? When everything is a part of its own self, where is the idea of 'other'? When the idea of 'other' disappears, then where is the pain? The idea of pain is relative, in relation with the 'other'. The enlightened person is just immersed in enjoying Existence. No separate identities or judgment about right or wrong, happiness or misery exist. These terms and concepts exist only as long as one feels separate.
A yogi in the state of super-consciousness will just watch everything in Existence without judging or labeling. He will be in a state of complete celebration of life. Existence is love. It is only love and nothing else. Yet, the compassion of the yogi, the Master, is such that he feels the experiences that others undergo and he empathizes with them. The Master's state of equanimity is not disturbed and yet he feels the pain and joy of others.
This expression of collective consciousness is what Krishna has described elsewhere as vasudeva kutumbaha. It means that the world is our family and we should feel for the rest of the world as we would for our immediate family. When we exist in this state of consciousness, we are true yogis.
Arjuna introduces the word 'difficult' here. Be very clear, the moment we categorize something as easy or difficult, we have made it that way. People ask me, 'Master, is brahmacharya difficult?' I tell them, it is neither easy nor difficult. It is just a way of life. If we say it is easy, it becomes a little difficult!
For example, now I am sitting here. Can we say that this sitting is easy or difficult? If I had arthritis, sitting would be difficult. On the other hand, if I were standing for a long time, sitting would be easy. This is just
comparative reality. In the same way, stilling the mind, yoga, is also a way of being. When we complicate things by using words, we make it difficult for ourselves, just to fulfill our ego. Understand that the ego can be fulfilled only through difficult things. Simple things cannot satisfy the ego.
After listening to Krishna about controlling the mind, Arjuna expresses his doubts about being able to still the mind. We have to understand here that he is talking for not only the other people during his time, he is actually asking about problems that will be faced by future generations also. We all have this question in our minds, this doubt in our minds. Arjuna's question is not just an individual's question. His question is the question faced by each and every one of us, irrespective of our age, gender, social structure or culture.
People ask me, 'Why is the Gita relevant even today?' Because the questions faced by Arjuna are the same questions that we face today and the answers of Krishna are relevant even today. The questions are the fundamental quest of the individual and the answers are the eternal Truth. The Truth is neither old nor new; it is eternal. Krishna, the energy and His teachings are the timeless Truths. The doubt that Arjuna has raised is even more applicable to the modern man. In the present age, there is so much competition, materialism and so much exposure to fantasies through the media. We have become more complex than our forefathers because of this cerebral layer that has formed with all the fantasies bombarding us from all directions.
The problem is that we are not ready to spend some time or do simple, practical techniques in the inner world because we are so caught up in the outer world, driven by fear and greed. We are in a constant rat race. Arjuna cannot understand how to practice yoga given the unsteady and wavering nature of the mind. Five thousand years ago, even though there was no infiltration by television, magazines and media on the scale that we have now, Arjuna expressed his doubt about how to handle the mind.
Here, Arjuna addresses Krishna with his concerns about the mind being so strong and obstinate that it sometimes overcomes the intelligence. We saw in the beginning of this chapter how we make illogical decisions based on our samskaras or engraved memories. It is our unconscious zone and our lack of awareness about this that causes our mind to implement illogical decisions. It is only when we understand why we make illogical decisions that we can find ways to stop making these kinds of decisions. The first and foremost thing is to accept that we have a problem. The next thing is to understand how the problem is created. That is what Arjuna does here. It is only then that we can overcome the problem. If we ignore or run away from the problem we can never resolve the problem.
So the first thing to accept is that our mind does flicker and oscillate. Accepting and being aware is different from judging whether it is easy or difficult to control the mind. We then need to understand how it
flickers or oscillates. For this we need to watch the mind. This is meditation. The very act of watching and being aware of the mind will take us beyond the mind.
Here, Krishna has to answer from the same plane that Arjuna asks the question. Arjuna says that the mind is wavering and difficult to control. Just as one thorn is used to remove another thorn, Krishna has to give Arjuna a technique. He has to give something to the mind that has created the problem. He has to support the idea that it is difficult to control the mind. So Krishna has to give some technique at this point - practice and detachment. Now, if He tells Arjuna that this problem is not a problem at all but a creation of his mind, Arjuna will not understand. Krishna has to give a technique for the mind to play with.
Masters give meditation techniques so that we try all of these and ultimately realize we are bliss, and that meditation is our natural state, and that there is nothing to be achieved. But, if I tell you that right away, you will not believe me. The mind cannot believe something so simple. It will create all kinds of contradictions as to why it cannot be so simple. Krishna also has to give a solution for the questioning mind. He emphasizes on perseverance and penance. Don't think penance means leaving home, going to the Himalayas and sitting in meditation with fasting. Penance is persevering with conviction until we experience the Truth.
Krishna also gives the root of the problem in controlling the mind and the technique to solve it, whch is detachment. Here we need to understand the word 'detachment'. Whether we say ego or mind, it is just the collection of thoughts. Thoughts can exist only in relationship to our identity and the past or the future.
In the present, we cannot have thoughts because the moment we think, that very moment, the present has slipped into the past. The present is constantly slipping into the past. The mind moves only because it is attached to the past or the future. The mind is constantly driven by fear and greed related to our identity. Either we fear losing the carefully constructed image or identity we have created for ourselves or we are greedy to develop a better image of ourselves in our eyes and in the eyes of society. We create two identities, one that we project to ourselves and one that we project to the outer world. The mind is in constant fear and greed about maintaining and developing these identities.
The mind becomes so attached to these identities that it is constantly reviewing the past incidents that helped or hurt these identities or it is constantly planning the future to either protect or develop these identities. This constant pre-occupation of the mind in the past and future is the root cause of the oscillation and movement of the mind. The mind is always in such constant preparation that it never rests and never lets us stay in the present moment. If we look deeply, staying in the present moment means total insecurity. It requires us to be ready to embrace the present without planning for the future or reviewing the
past. There is no security for our identity. This seems like a great danger for our ego, our carefully constructed identity. The mind is not prepared for that.
If we look deeply, we will realize that our identities are nothing but a collection of opinions and ideas from society and people around us. All that we are trying to do in maintaining this ego is trying to carefully run our lives according to these opinions and ideas. It is as if we are constantly walking a tight rope. The pole in our hands is our ego and the rope is the path and framework laid out by society. We are constantly trying to get the applause of the audience, society.
This false image that we have constructed about ourselves is the root cause of all misery. I tell you, any identity that we create about ourselves that is less than the idea of our being God, is a false identity. If we consider ourselves to be anything less than God, we suffer from an inferiority complex. If we have the courage to detach ourselves from the certificates of society, if we have the courage to drop these false identities about ourselves, then we can embrace the Divine. Detachment is the direct technique that Krishna is suggesting here. Detachment at the root level will lead to the detachment of everything else. Detachment from the ego or the identities will lead to detachment from desires. This is detachment from the past and future. This is being 'unclutched'.