Look In Before Coming To Any Conclusion

We will start with a small story.

A Hollywood director was shooting a big budget movie in a deserted area. You know how these films are made. They spend a lot of money building sets and dream sequences. The whole film is geared to fulfill our dreams. They spend enormous amounts of money on the actors and actresses. They cannot afford to waste any time, because time is money for them.

In the middle of a day's shooting when the sun was shining bright, an old native American Hindu appeared on the set and whispered hoarsely to the director, 'Tomorrow rain,' and he went away. The director took no notice of the man until it so happened that the next day it poured and no shooting was possible. The director still did not link the Hindu's words with the rain.

Again after one week, the same Hindu appeared and said, 'Tomorrow storm,' and disappeared. This time too, the director and others took no heed of what this strange man said. Exactly as the Hindu predicted there was a big storm the next day. The director had to cancel that day's shooting.

The Hindu appeared a few more times with his predictions. After noticing that his predictions came true each time, the director was really impressed.

He told his assistant, 'We can save a lot of money with the help of this man. Get that old Hindu no matter what it costs, we will pay him and keep him with us.'

After three weeks, the Hindu disappeared and didn't come back for over a month. The director was very upset and sent out search teams. They finally located the Hindu and brought him back to the sets.

The director asked him sincerely, 'Please tell me about tomorrow's weather. I have to shoot an important scene and the set is very expensive. I am relying on you to tell me about tomorrow.'

The old man just shrugged and said, 'Don't know about tomorrow; my radio is broken.'

Look in before coming to any conclusion. This is the message for today.

The sixth chapter of Bhagavad Gita starts with Krishna's verse first. In this chapter Arjuna is not asking any questions of Krishna. Krishna continues His answers from the previous chapter.

6.1 Bhagavan says:

One who performs actions without being attached to its outcome is an ascetic. He is a religious performer of purification of mind.

One who has stopped performing any actions, one who doesn't accept the sacred fire and doesn't perform his rituals, is neither an ascetic nor a karma yogi, a sage immersed in action.

6.2 Oh Pandava, renunciation leads to the state of yoga where one is linking oneself with the Supreme. This union with the Divine can happen only when you renounce self-interest.

6.3 A person who initially wants to start practicing the yoga system laid down by the sages should carry out all activities in line with that system. Activities for all other reasons will cease.

6.4 Any one is said to have attained the state of yoga when, having renounced all material desires, He neither acts for sense gratification nor engages in result focused activities.

Krishna continues with what He said earlier in a little more detailed way. He says, the person who is not attached to the fruits of his action is an ascetic and he is a karma yogi. Please understand, karma, the state of action or sanyasa, the state of renunciation*,* is not related to your doing. It is directly related to your being. Being a sanyasin, a renunciate monk, is not a status, it is a state. It is a state of mind.

Whether you are doing karma yoga or you remain a sanyasi is in no way going to affect you. If one is a karma yogi, one goes about doing the work that is allotted to him without attachment and without expectations. This is done even in the middle of one's life as a householder, businessperson or an employee. The status is not of any consequence.

In the same manner, it is immaterial whether one dons saffron robes to be a renunciate or an ascetic. One can wear all the outer trappings of a monk and still be fully clutched in the samsara maya, the illusion of life*.* In the verses of Bhaja Govindam, Sankara says this beautifully about the ascetic who cheats the world and himself. The ascetic has his hair knotted, he shaves his head bald, he pulls out his hair one by one in penance, he wears saffron robes, but he does not see even though he has eyes. The fool, he does all this only to fill his belly. What is one's attitude, whatever is one's being, that alone really matters. That ensures the state of one's being. Here Krishna gives the gist of the last chapter.

People repeatedly ask me, 'Master, should we renounce everything to achieve enlightenment? How can we lead our day-to-day life and yet hope to achieve spiritual progress?'

I tell them, 'No! Just renounce what you don't have.

That is enough. You don't have to renounce what you have.' I tell them to live with whatever they have, and to just renounce what they don't have. We fantasize about all that we do not have, that is the problem. There are thousands of things that we don't have, but we live with all those things mentally. The problem is not what we have, we have gotten used to those things anyway. That is our reality. It is what we don't have that creates problems. Just renounce what you don't have. That is enough to solve all the problems. Then you will start living intensely with what you have and you will enjoy being with what you have acquired so far.

One of the major problems we bring upon ourselves is that we chase desires and possessions. And once we have achieved what we want, we don't have time to enjoy it. It is as if the enjoyment is only in the chase and not in the posession itself. Once we posess it, we simply move on to the next chase, that's all. We spend no time in enjoying what we have, but waste our time chasing what we think we should have. The present has no meaning to many of us. Because of this, we miss reality, we miss true enjoyment. It is the illusion of the speculative future that draws our interest and causes misery to us.

There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit: brahmacharya. Just like so many other Sanskrit words, this word has no equivalent word in English. The word has often been translated as celibacy. But celibacy is not the right equivalent for brahmacharya. The word has such a wonderful meaning. In English you don't have an equivalent word because the very idea never existed. The very idea of brahmacharya never existed. Brahma means

Existence, reality, Divinity. Charya means 'living like'. It means to walk the talk, to move with. Brahmacharya refers to a person who lives like the Gods, who lives with Existence, who lives with reality.

Please be very clear, the word brahmacharya does not mean one who is unmarried. Over the course of time when it was translated as celibacy, people started to use that word to denote an unmarried person. No! Brahmacharya refers to one who lives with Existence, one who lives with reality, one who lives unattached.

One of the four stages of life as defined by the scriptures is brahmacharya. It is the stage in which a young student learns at the feet of the Master. It is the time that a person spends in the gurukul, the Vedic system of schooling. This training starts at the age of seven when the parents hand the child over to a Master. The child stays with the Master until early adulthood. By the very nature of this system the child stays celibate during his or her stay at the gurukul. At the end of this period, depending upon the child's aptitude and skills, he or she moves on into life as a grihastha, a householder, or a sanyasin, an ascetic. This period of brahmacharya, under the Master's guidance in one's early years, provides the background to shed fantasies and live life in reality.

In today's world most of us live with fantasy. Look in! Look in and you will understand how much fantasy there is inside. Our whole life consists of running behind fantasies because we don't live with the reality of our existence. From the time we start interacting with the external world, even from our childhood, we are exposed to so many different forms of media. Unlike even fifty years ago, today the television and the internet flood us with information. They flood us equally with fantasies.

A young girl of ten came with her parents to my ashram. Just for fun I asked her whom she would marry when she grew up. She named a popular film actor who was already married with children. Her innocence had been robbed by fantasies. If Rama and Sita had lived in today's world, with all the fantasies being thrown at them, even they would have been tempted!

In our lives the search for a life partner is a very serious issue. We search for the ideal life partner with great vigour and determination. Nature has intended us to pursue this relationship actively in the interest of the survival of the human race. We spend a lot of time in this activity.

A small story:

An old man used to sit on a beach and watch all the women who passed by.

A young man who saw him doing this for many days became curious and asked the old man, 'Sir, I see you sitting here every day looking at the women. That is quite strange at your age. Why are you doing this?'

The old man said, 'Oh, I have been doing this for many years now. I am searching for my life mate, my soul mate.'

The young man was surprised and he asked, 'You mean to tell me in all these years you never found one who matched your requirements?'

The old man replied sadly, 'Well, actually many years ago I did find my ideal mate.'

The young man asked, 'Then what happened? Why did you not marry her?'

The old man replied, 'Well, she was searching for her ideal mate too...'

Even if we find someone who matches our so called ideal, when we start living with the person, reality will slowly reveal that the template that we so carefully built over many years is different, and the person who we are living with is different. The template can never be matched because the template itself is just a fanstasy.

Another small story:

A man presented his friends with a puppy when they were getting married since he knew that both the bride and groom were fond of animals. After six months he happened to meet the husband and asked him how his married life was.

'Well, it's the same with just one change,' said the husband, 'when we first got married, my wife used to bring me the newspaper everyday with my coffee in the morning and the pup used to bark. Now the pup brings in the newspaper and my wife barks!'

We neither live with the real husband nor do we relate with the real wife. Though we may live in the same house, how many times do we look into each other's eyes? How many times does eye contact happen? The reason is that there is always a screen of fantasy between our spouse and us, just like between life and us. We don't want to see life as it is. We are not ready to accept life as it is. We are continuously working and developing life but we are not ready to look into life as it is.

There is a book, 'Men Are from Mars And Women Are from Venus.' There are so many things that the author has expressed that we can see in reality, in our very lives. I feel we should find some other title for the book. They should find another title. Venus and Mars are too close. They are from the same galaxy!

Anyway, our life is filled with fantasies; fantasies about how our would-be should-be and what-we-shoulddo if reality does not match fantasy. We are continuously chiseling the other person and the other person is continuously chiseling us with the hope that the other will match the ideal. We have some preconceived notion and according to our notion, we chisel the real person. All the sounds heard in our house are that of the chisel and the hammer. We are continuously chiseling. We can chisel a stone and make a beautiful sculpture and keep it in our house. We can chisel wood and make beautiful furniture and have it in our house. But can we chisel a living being?

In the Shiva Sutra, Devi Parvati asks her husband Shiva, 'Lord, in the bed of a married couple how many are there?' Shiva replies, 'Four.' Seeing Devi's surprised look, He explains, 'There is the couple, husband and wife, and along with them there are the fantasies of the husband about his wife and the wife about her husband.' Such a marriage is not marriage. When husband and wife carry fantasies about what the other should be, how can the marriage prosper?

When we start chiseling a living being, we create more trouble for ourselves and for the other person. A person who is mature enough to live with reality has achieved the state of brahmacharya. He is living with the real person or situation. He accepts the present moment for what it is; he does not dream of how it should be. So just drop your fantasies. Live with reality. That is what I call brahmacharya.

Here, Krishna says, 'Just renouncing the sacred fire and not performing one's duty does not mean one is an ascetic or sanyasi.' In those days, fire was the basis for everything whether it was cooking or spiritual practice. For everything one needed fire. I can replace the word 'fire' with 'cell phone' for today's world.

In this age, we can say, 'Don't think that by sacrificing the cell phone and laptop you become a sanyasi or a great karma yogi.' Just like how the cell phone and laptop have become a basic necessity today, in those days agni (fire) was a basic need for life. Just like how we are able to relate with people through the cell phone, our ancient rishis (mystics) knew the techniques of relating with higher energy through fire.

We should understand an important thing: the Vedic Masters knew how to use fire to communicate with the higher energy, just like how we use the cell phone to communicate. All of science is based on using light particles. Science can be reduced to the use of light particles whether it is electricity, atomic energy, or other forms of energy. Everything is about handling light particles but with different formulae.

Whether it is our fan or iron or a microscope or a video camera, laptop, or atomic bomb, everything can be reduced to that one single thing, the technique of handling light or electro magnetic particles. Scientists worked on light energy and created all these objects. Our eastern rishis worked with sound energy and created all these products. We really had the pushpaka vimana (flying chariot) and we did really have the brahmastra (nuclear weapon). Everything was true.

But in the course of time we lost the technology, that's all. The technology of handling sound waves was lost. As the technology is lost, the existence of these things in the past is questioned today. People now believe that all these things are just mythology, just purana, epic stories. No. We have lost the key and because of that we are unable to open the lock. Just because we are not able to open the lock, don't think that there is no treasure.

The entire collection of scriptures, the Vedas, is nothing but learning the techniques of tuning oneself to work with sound particles. Just as how scientists work with light particles, the rishis have worked with sound particles. They were able to relate with higher energies and were able to communicate just with the vibrations through fire. Whether it was Sanjaya*,* the charioteer of the Kaurava king - Dhritharashtra, seeing the Mahabharata war through telepathy, or the pushpaka vimana, the flying chariot, or Brahmastra, the ultimate fire weapon, these were all true. When the cultural invasion of Bharat happened, these techniques were lost.

I have seen a sanyasi create fire by just uttering a few words. He was able to create fire out of nothing but a few words. Even now, if we go to the Kumbha Mela, the holy river festival that occurs once in twelve years in Bharat, we can see hundreds of people like this. I have seen sanyasis bury their heads inside the earth for more than twenty-four hours. There are so many people who can play with sound energy. I have seen this myself at the Kumbha Mela.

Ten years ago at the Haridwar Kumbha Mela with my own eyes I saw a sanyasi floating in the air with people watching him in awe. I have also seen a sanyasi sitting on a board full of sharp nails. We even have a video recording of it in the ashram showing how they sit on nails and how they float. With sound energy they are able to do whatever science is able to do with light energy.

So here, Krishna says that just by renouncing fire, a person cannot become a sanyasi. Similarly, here I can say that just by renouncing our cell phone in life, we cannot become a sanyasi. The attitude needs to be changed. To truly renounce, the mind has to renounce thoughts. Usually, wherever our body is, our mind is not. When we are at home, our thoughts are at the office. When we are at the office, we worry about what happens elsewhere. When we are on vacation, we worry about work and cannot enjoy ourselves. To bring the mind to where the body is, to renounce the inner chatter, is the starting point of renunciation.

Thoughts cannot be suppressed. The more we suppress them the more they erupt. We cannot control the mind in a traditional manner. We need to let go. We need to constantly bring ourselves back to where our body is, to the present, to the here and now, away from the dead past and the unborn future. Renunciation of the past and future, by bringing our mind to focus on the present, is renunciation.

This renunciation does not happen by giving up what we believe is essential to material welfare such as the fire and the cell phone. It also does not happen by giving up what we think are superficial to spiritual progress, such as rituals. Giving these up without bringing in the true awareness of consciousness is not renunciation.

In the first verse Krishna gave the essence of the last chapter, like a follow up. Then He continued.

Krishna has already said renunciation for the sake of renunciation, renunciation of material things without renouncing desires, is of no value. It has been said that when the great sages went into deep meditation, the Gods above would get terrified, especially Indra, who was forever getting into trouble with these sages! You see, in those days, sages, the great rishis, were all householders. So Indra would try and disturb them by tempting them. Even great tapasvis (men with the experience of long meditative penance behind them) were not immune to these temptations.

There is a very famous painting that was published on many calendars. Ravivarma, the King of Travancore, painted the great sage Viswamitra being tempted by the celestial nymph Menaka. In the painting, Viswamitra is holding his hands up shielding his eyes to prevent himself from seeing Menaka. But the fingers are wide spread so that he could peep through his fingers!

All these are metaphorical stories. There are no celestial nymphs because there is no heaven and there is no Indra. If Indra were to send down a celestial nymph each time someone meditated, all men would immediately take up meditation! It is our inner fantasy that comes out as Menaka. Just sit, meditate, and you will see! Women that you have never seen will come in front of you. You have to renounce fantasies. These fantasies are the creation of the ego, mind, identity - whatever names you wish to call it. This self conjures up all these visions, unreal fantasy visions, to keep you occupied, to keep you in control.

We may think that we are in control of our mind. This is a fantasy and an illusion. Our mind controls us. This is what Krishna means by sankalpa, self interest, because the mind wishes to satisfy the senses that it operates and controls. By visualizing, by hearing, by smelling, by tasting, by touching through the sense organs, our mind wants us to experience pleasures that will keep us under its hold.

Only when we renounce the mind's control by going beyond the senses can we become a true renunciate. This is what Krishna said in the earlier chapters. 'Control your senses and still your mind so that you can reach Me,' He said.

When Krishna talks about 'self', is the small 'self', the external identity that we confuse with our Self, the real inner core, the Truth. If we can, when we do renounce this so-called self-identity, which is not the true Self, then we will perceive our self as the supreme Self that is our true identity. An ordinary person sees his own self as being the body, mind, memories, senses and the identities that he creates for himself. These are the antennae through which we can project ourselves onto the outer world.

Normally we create two identities. One identity called ahankara, is the identity that we project to the outer world. This identity is usually based on our achievements in society, our profession, our possessions, etc. The second identity is called mamakara, which is the identity we project to our inner self. This identity is usually based on our ideas about our attitudes, our beliefs, and our self-esteem.

Through a combination of these two identities we create an image about ourselves that we hold onto with deep conviction and belief. Our true Self is beyond this image. If we don't want to be controlled by the mind, any activity that we perform to satisfy this false identity or ego should be renounced. As long as we allow our senses to feed us, we will be nurtured and controlled by sensory pleasures that satisfy our ego. Our mind will then keep us in its control.

Renunciation of these fantasies that we feel we need for self-satisfaction is Yoga. Yoga is the state when our desires, expressed through sensual pleasures, dissolve. We unite with our true Self in this state. In this state, there is no gap between the Divine and us. Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, want it or not, we are God. We are divine. All we can do is accept it, experience it and express it or we can just continue to struggle and fight. That is the truth.

A small story:

A man was informed that his wife had just fallen into the river. He ran to the river to save her.

To everyone's surprise, he ran and jumped into the river and started swimming in the opposite direction, against the current.

People who watched the scene shouted to him and called him a fool. They asked him, 'Why are you swimming against the current? Your wife has been carried with the current, downstream.'

The man said, 'You don't know about my wife. Even in the river, she would go only against the current!'

We can be like a rock in water, forever resisting the flow of the water. The river pounds the rock, eventually reducing it to sand that settles at the bottom. Or we can be like the reed that bends and flows in whichever direction the water flows. There is nothing that the water can do to the reed. By giving in to the water flow, the reed defeats the water.

This is what Christ was referring to when He said, 'The meek shall inherit the earth.' He was not saying that we should be cowards or be scared of our own shadow and that then He would deliver the world to us. Meekness here is not cowardice, it is not fear. Meekness is a virtue that allows us to flow with the current. Meekness allows us to flourish. Meekness is the ability to know that we are not in control but that the universe is in control. Meekness is wisdom. The wise shall inherit the earth.

In Sanskrit there are two terms 'drishti srishti' and 'srishti drishti'. Drishti srishti means to look at the world as it is and take life as it comes. Srishti drishti is just the opposite, as when we want to mould the world into how we would like it to be. We want the world running according to our fantasies, instead of accepting the reality of the world. This is a sure recipe for disaster, much like the woman swimming against the current who meets disaster.

We have a choice. We can either move against the current, believing that we control our destiny and struggle all the time. Or we can flow with the current, surrender to the Divine of which we are an integral part, and be in bliss. Whether we go against the current or go with it, we are in the water. Whether we realize it or not, we are Divine. When our desires for external sensual pleasures are in control, we experience the divinity that is inside us.

This is the state of Yoga that Krishna talks about - the state of true renunciation where there is no suppression. Instead, there is transformation. The path is no longer towards self or sensory satisfaction. In fact, there is no 'towards'. There is no goal. The goal is the path itself, nothing more. When we lead our life with no expectations, the mind cannot speculate. It cannot control us through its play with the senses.

Krishna says next, 'A person who initially wants to start practicing a yoga system laid down by the sages should carry out all activities in line with that system. Activities for all other reasons will then cease.'

This is such a beautiful instruction for anyone doing yoga. In the present day, especially in the west, the true meaning of yoga is lost. It is lost completely. Yoga is not about physical exercise and sweating in high temperatures. It is not about breath control. Its purpose is not body fitness. Yoga integrates body, mind and spirit. It is a journey into the inner Self, towards the Self.

Patanjali, the great sage who laid down the system for yoga practice in his Yoga Sutras, laid down an eight-part system called Ashtanga Yoga. Today this is being misinterpreted as 'eight steps of yoga'. We will not reach anywhere if we practice each step separately and sequentially. That was not Patanjali's purpose.

Patanjali laid down eight limbs or parts that needed to be practiced simultaneously, not one after another. There is no purpose in practicing yoga through two of the eight parts, asana, physical postures, and pranayama, breath control. But these are the only two parts taught by most yoga teachers today. What is the point? Nothing of real value will come out of it.

Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga has bliss as its end result and as its path. When practiced properly, bliss is not only the destination but also the path itself. Have you seen even one yoga practitioner enjoying what he or she is doing? They are grimacing all the time, forcing their body, controlling their breath, torturing themselves. What for? Patanjali never asked them to torture themselves or their students.

Yoga as it is practiced now only breeds our ego. Just look at how full of pride the yoga masters are now. They have added many components to yoga: deluxe yoga, super deluxe kundalini yoga, instant enlightenment kriya yoga! There are so many desperate people out there waiting or a solution that these teachers never have a shortage of students.

Patanjali laid down a system that is a way of life. Starting with inner and outer regulation, yama and niyama, his system cleanses our body, mind and spirit. The steps raise our awareness. Just yama, which is one of the eight limbs, has five parts, one of which is satya or truth. If we practice this sincerely. it will lead us into enlightenment. Another part is brahmacharya, which is enlightenment. It is walking in tune with reality. Actually, we need to be in the eighth state of samadhi to truly be able to practice even one of the yama principles with awareness.

The Yoga system is a parallel system, not a sequential system. When each of its parts is acted upon with awareness, every single thing that we do will be in tune with nature. We will automatically surrender to nature. We will attain the true yogic state of samadhi.

Ahimsa, non-violence, is another part of the first limb, yama. Religion teaches non-violence as a moral injunction: if we are non-violent, we will reach heaven and if we are violent we will end up in hell.

But I tell you, no morality can be practiced. Advice is one thing everyone is ready to give but no one is willing to take. It is very difficult to practice any morality. If we are successful, then we will be schizophrenic. If we master any morality we will be suppressed and eventually depressed. If we can understand and practice, it can never be a discipline. It will be just falling in tune. We will be tuning ourselves to Existence.

There is no reality to hell or heaven. If we are supposed to follow morality just out of fear of hell or hope of heaven then I don't think we have grown at all. Ahimsa should be practiced out of deep understanding, and then we will start radiating it in our very walk and talk. Even animals will be attracted to us. Our very being will be a blessing to planet Earth.

One of the other rules in yama is satya, truthfulness. Truthfulness can happen in us only after we have experienced samadhi, the eighth limb. We can neither understand the truth, nor feel the truth, nor live the truth until we experience samadhi, or enlightenment. Until we attain enlightenment, whatever we think of as the truth is nothing but a fact, a perception, not reality. It is the truth as perceived by our five senses. We perceive the world with our 120-degree vision and our gathered societal knowledge, conditioning, etc. It is only when we reach enlightenment we will be able to see 360 degrees in all directions and perceive Truth as it is. The rules of yama and niyama (moral discipline) will only be established firmly after we have experienced samadhi.