Sankhya Yogah

Make no mistake, you are divine! Whatever state you are in now, you are still divine within! Let Krsna tell you how to live and radiate your divine potential.

It is here that we enter into the real Gītā. It is from here that Bhagavān or God, Nārāyaṇa starts speaking and singing the Gītopaniṣad into the listening of Nara Arjuna, and through Arjuna into the listening of the whole of humanity.

Until now Kṛṣṇa was speaking as a man, as Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa, in His human form, but it is only from here that Kṛṣṇa sings as Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, in His divine state as Bhagavān, the universal Kṛṣṇa.

Understand, only an intelligent man will allow the other person to speak. Only a man of completion will provide integrated listening to himself and others. We all speak continuously to each other, but a conversation does not really happen. When the other person speaks we do not listen; we are busy preparing our own reply. We never speak into the listening of others, we just speak into the non-listening of others! We need intelligence; we need integrity to allow the other person to speak into our listening.

Listen... A person was telling his friend that he had not spoken to his wife for a whole week. His friend asked him whether he was angry with her or if he had fought with her.

The man replied, ‘No, I am afraid of interrupting her!’

Not speaking does not mean we listen! Same way, just speaking continuously does not mean others listen!

There are no extraordinary speakers; there are only extraordinary listeners! It is extraordinary listeners who are extraordinary speakers. Because Kṛṣṇa is an extraordinary listener, He allows Arjuna to speak into His listening!

We may either speak verbally or mentally, but in any case; we are speaking continuously without giving integrated listening to ourselves and others. We are not speaking into the listening of others. Even when we keep quiet, we are not listening.

But Kṛṣṇa does listen! He is the embodiment of completion. He listens completely to Arjuna’s dilemma from His pure space of listening and only then does He speak into the listening of Arjuna and answers compassionately to enrich him. Of the original 745 verses in the Gītā, as part of the Bhīṣma Purāna of Mahābhārat, He responds in depth to Arjuna’s 57 questions through 620 verses.

In the first chapter, Kṛṣṇa does not say a word to interrupt Arjuna. He allows Arjuna to speak fully into His listening for one whole chapter of Arjunaviśāda Yogaḥ. He keeps quiet, even on seeing the depth of Arjuna’s confusion and depression. He consciously analyzes the root of Arjuna’s thoughts, his root thoughts patterns to determine the platform of powerlessness upon which Arjuna is standing.

Look in! When was the last time you really listened to your own words? We never ever really listen, either to ourselves or to others. When you really start listening to yourself, you will naturally become more aware of the words you give to yourself and others. You will also have the ability to listen to others’ words with integrity.

Listening is directly connected to your ability to handle reality as it is, without creating your own unconscious ideas and conclusions.

Please listen, the moment you start talking to somebody, when you don’t have listening, you start coming to your own conclusion even before the information is cognized in you, either by rejecting that person or taking that person as a big threat. Both will lead you to suffering.

That is why the very first step of Hindu spiritual practice is Śṛavana, Integrated Listening. It is possible to become a successful businessman just by studying the first few chapters of Gītā. You can reach the peak possibility of your profession and of your life just by learning the art of integrated listening from Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Once you provide your integrated listening to yourself and others, you will automatically be able to speak into the listening of others and thus communicate to enrich yourself and commune to enrich others as well.

When you experience the words you utter to you and to others as the extension of your life, they directly affect you. When the words uttered by you are not listened to, the completion is disturbed. I tell you, if the person to whom you are talking to is not in the space of listening, the ideas you want to express will never be delivered. It may lead to an argument, but it may never lead to intelligence transfer.

Listen! Information transfer is argument. Intelligence transfer is Listening. In arguments, information can be transferred, but never intelligence. Only in integrated listening can intelligence be transferred.

A devotee once asked me, ‘Swamiji, how is it that you are able to answer so many questions?’ There is only one secret to this. I know how to give my integrated listening to the question, that’s all. If you know the technique of right listening, the reply is immediately ready in your being, ready for the intelligence transfer to others.

Listening makes you God

Listen! Please come to the space of listening. Many teachers tell you, ‘However much you listen, unless you practice, it won’t help you.’ I tell you now, ‘However much you try to practice, unless you listen, it won’t help you!’

The problem is that we do not trust ourselves and our innate intelligence to respond to a question without preparation. That is why we start preparing the reply even before listening. Whenever we allow our incompletions to wake up and interfere into our thinking or cognition process, listening stops. Hearing is not listening.

Integrity, the power of words starts with listening, continues with listening. Human beings miss life when they miss listening. For a person who wants to begin the life, the first thing he needs to learn is listening. Listening is God. Just by listening you experience God!

In Vedānta, the first principle is Śṛavana—Integrated Listening; the second principle is Manana—Intranalyzing, meaning analyzing the truth for the sake of internalizing it not for rejecting it; and the third principle is Nididhyāsana—Living and radiating the truth!

Any transmission of knowledge, energy or experience happens between a Master and disciple only when the disciple gives his or her listening! Even Vedic Ṛṣis start with this chant: śrunvantu viśve amṛtasya putrāḥ—Oh! Sons of Immortality, please listen to me!

Here, Kṛṣṇa is giving His integrated listening to Arjuna! He is interested in the real problem and not in expressing what He knows. He wants Arjuna to learn the ability to give integrated listening to himself, to have the clarity of mind. He is interested in enriching him to find a solution to his own problem. He allows Arjuna to speak so that He can listen and transmit the ultimate knowledge and experience of completion to him.

One needs intelligence, or I may say enlightenment, the space of completion to listen. Unless you start living completion, you will not even be able to maintain listening. Even listening is achieved with completion. Completion brings listening to you. Only an Enlightened Master, an Incarnation like Kṛṣṇa can listen, only He can speak into the listening of others. In the first chapter He listens fully and completely. Even in this second chapter named Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ, He allows Arjuna to speak into His listening in many verses.

Please understand the definition of Listening. Let me define what Right Listening is, śravana.

Right listening means allowing the words to enter your inner space automatically; letting them cognize, without you constantly interfering with your incompletions, is Listening.

People come to me and say, ‘Swamiji, you know our problems; please give us the answer.’ I ask them to speak out and state their problems clearly.

They say, ‘You are enlightened, you already know our problems; please give us the answer.’ I say, ‘Yes, I know your problem even if you don’t speak, but you will not know your own problem if you do not speak into my listening!’

Listen! When we know how to speak into the listening of the listener, we also know how to speak into our listening. Listen! The power of thinking or mano śakti is open to us when we practice authenticity. Our mind should be open to the space of possibilities.

When you listen, you understand, you become God. Listening makes you God! Only God can make you God. Nothing else can make you God. Only diamond can cut the diamond! Listen. Any listening is God. If you are listening to the sparrow’s sound now without giving any meaning to it—just pure listening—that is God. Only if you learn pure listening, you will also be able to learn and give the right meaning.

On the Kurukṣetra battlefield Kṛṣṇa delivers the Gītā to Arjuna. People who have the rationality to compute time may wonder, ‘Arjuna spoke for so long. Now Kṛṣṇa speaks for so long. How is it possible for these two to hold such a long conversation in the middle of a battlefield? Wasn’t Duryodhana fed up or didn’t he think that this was a good opportunity to get rid of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa?’

That’s how the logical, unaware mind thinks. Such a mind cannot conceive the possibility that a conversation can indeed take place in silence, in the space of pure listening. Understand, pure listening happens only when you start listening into your listening. At the higher level of communication, in the pure space of listening your mind needs to be still to allow the grace to move in. Only with completion inside, you can even listen at this moment. Understand, in the state of incompletion, you don’t listen! You act like you’re listening, but you don’t listen! You act like you’re seeing, but you don’t see! It is very important.

Understand, sitting in completion with listening is Upaniṣad. This is the subtlest and most powerful of all communications. At this level, communication becomes communion. So, please move to the space of Upaniṣad. Listen! Sit in Upaniṣad, in the space of listening. When you are in completion, you can sit even facing the wall for twelve years that Bodhidharma did. He was facing the wall of the cave sitting for twelve years, because he was in completion. When you are in incompletion, even watching a movie facing the television, you can’t sit more than ten minutes; you go on changing channels.

The essence of all the Vedic scriptures is called Upaniṣad or ‘just sitting.’ It is the ultimate technique. When you sit with the Master, the Upaniṣad, the sitting happens; some strange process starts happening in you, which can neither be called a technique nor a no-technique. It is literally like cooking or boiling.

In my satsangs, which are Upaniṣad, I give gaps in between my words. These gaps are the moments when I actually listen to you. Because in the gaps, based on your body language, I know whether you are restless or restful! Are you listening? Or are you just arguing inside you?

Listen. I am not a professional speaker; I am a professional listener. Before I start speaking, in the silence I listen to you. Every time I give a break between words, I listen to you. I speak what will make you listen. I speak into your listening. That is why my listening ends up as your listening! As I am a listener, I make you listen! I end up making you listen! Just by listening, you will reach the depth of you; you will experience the depth of you. Even now, look inside you. Find out, are there any incompletions? Is there any restlessness inside you? Then you will not be able to listen.

Whenever you listen to you, you listen to others. When you don’t listen to others, you don’t listen to you also. Get it? Listen to you and listen to others. Only when you listen to you first and see that you are in completion, you can listen to others. If there are incompletions inside—I have not done this, I have not done that, this has not happened, I am restless—if you have such incompletions inside, be very clear, you will not be listening to me. You may be sitting here out of compulsion, or some other reason, but you will not be listening to me. When you don’t listen, more and more incompletions happen.

When they talk of great Masters like Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi communicating in silence, it was indeed true. To communicate, you need not open your mouth. You only need to bring completion and give your right listening, śravana. In the presence of the Master, answers will appear even before your questions are asked.

Intellectual seekers, with years of questioning behind them, come to me and ask, ‘Swamiji, why is it that when I come to you with hundreds of questions, when I am in front of you, there is no need to ask you about them? I feel as if the answers are already there!’

This is not imagination; this is the truth. Questions are a reflection of your inner ego, your root pattern, which is violence. When you are in front of the Master, with śravana, integrated listening, the first thing that happens is the melting of your root pattern like snow melting in the sun. Therefore, questions also disappear. You start feeling that miraculously, the answers appear in front of the Master. The truth is that the answers were all already there. The Master’s presence dissolved the root pattern and let the answers out.

You can open up to the Master at three levels. You can converse and convey through words and the Master will listen. At the next level you can communicate from the heart in silence; you can visualize instead of verbalizing in speech. Finally, you can commune in silence through Upaniṣad and the Master will grasp this even more powerfully.

Here Kṛṣṇa allows Arjuna to verbalize, He allows him to speak into His pure listening, so that to begin with, Arjuna himself will develop the ability to have integrated listening and understand his problem. Once Arjuna cognizes and expresses his confusion, he can relapse into silence and commune with the Master of completion in the space of Upaniṣad.

2.1 Sañjaya said: As Arjuna’s eyes overflowed with tears of pity and despair, Madhusudana (Kṛṣṇa) spoke to him thus.

2.2 Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says: Where from have these impurities descended on you at this critical time, Arjuna! You behave unlike a nobleman and this will keep you away from realization.

2.3 Do not yield to fear, Pārtha! It does not befit you. Drop this powerlessness of heart and stand up, O Parantapa, destroyer of enemy.

Arjuna was distraught with pity and despair. His pity was for his opposition that consisted of his svajanam, kinsmen, elders, teachers, relatives and friends. He despaired at the thought of what would happen if he did have to kill them. He had collapsed in his chariot and his bow and arrow had slipped from his hands.

Kṛṣṇa allowed Arjuna to exhaust himself, physically, emotionally and spiritually. He listened to him carefully, completely. Kṛṣṇa wanted to give Arjuna time to open his mind, heart and being to Him, Arjuna’s friend, guide and master, so that His answers would penetrate Arjuna’s very being.

Then He spoke for the first time, as if opening His being directly. Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, ‘My dear Arjuna, how have you acquired these impurities? They do not at all befit a man who knows the value of life. They lead not to higher planes but to infamy, akīrti karam arjuna.’

śrī bhagavān uvāca kutas tvā kaśmalam idaṁ viṣame samupasthitam I anārya juṣṭam asvargyam akīrti karam arjuna II 2.2

This verse is connected to the next one.

‘O Pārtha! Do not yield to this degrading impotence. It does not befit you. Give up such petty powerlessness of heart and arise, O Parantapa, destroyer of enemy.’

klaibyaṁ mā sma gamaḥ pārtha naitat tvayy upapadyate I kṣudraṁ hṛdaya daurbalyaṁ tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa II 2.3

Kṛṣṇa gives the direction to the whole Gītā with this one truth to awaken Arjuna from his delusory incompletions. Kṛṣṇa is the true Master and does not beat around the bush. Understand that Kṛṣṇa is not a philosopher; He addresses the dilemma of Arjuna straightaway.

Kṛṣṇa asks Arjuna directly, ‘How did such impurities, such incompletions come upon you? They are not for a man like you. They will not lead you to higher planes but only defame you.’ In the next verse He asks Arjuna to give up this powerlessness and asks him to arise, addressing him as ‘Parantapa, destroyer of the enemy.’

Kṛṣṇa knows Arjuna’s root thought pattern. Please understand that Arjuna is not depressed because of a spiritual search. It is just that he does not want a solution; he wants only support.

Understand, asking for solutions and asking for support are two different things. What Arjuna needs is support, not a solution. This is why Kṛṣṇa does not speak of spirituality in these two verses. Arjuna’s root thought pattern originates from fear and worry. His maṇipūraka cakra (navel center) and svādiṣṭhāna cakra (being center), energy centers that get locked due to worry and fear, are now completely locked! Because of his fear pattern, he has deep seated incompletions, stress and worry.

Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna’s deep fear and powerlessness straightaway without any philosophy, and asks him to give up his foolish weakness and get up and fight—tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa. He does not offer any consolation, just a straightforward scolding, and a slap to awaken him!

If Arjuna had been in a mood of stotra, meaning devotional surrender that he reaches only later on, these two verses would have served as sūtra or techniques for him. Had he been without fear and expressed full faith and devotion in Kṛṣṇa, these two verses would have been enough to wake him up and stand powerfully.

At this point, Arjuna is in the state to be intellectually convinced and Kṛṣṇa employs śāstra as the right approach. Since he was not in the mood of stotra, not yet ready with devotion and faith, Kṛṣṇa had to create the śāstra or method, to bring him to the stotra state. The whole issue was due to his root pattern of fear plus worry and powerlessness because of this fear.

All our depression, worry patterns are nothing but root pattern of a deep fear of life, a deep self-doubt, fear of expansion and fear of losing something. You need to stand up and complete with your root thought patterns to be rid of them. Please understand, even your ignorance is nothing but your fear of expansion. Many times, you continue to pretend to be in ignorance, because of your fear of failure.

There are many levels of fear: fear of losing our wealth and status, fear of losing a limb or our health, fear of losing our near and dear ones and fear of the unknown or death. That is why Kṛṣṇa says that Arjuna is not behaving as an ārya, a word that can be interpreted as a nobleman; an integrated human, not a particular race or caste. Vedic literatures say that an ārya is one who is evolved, cultured, integrated and authentic, a prince amongst men.

Arjuna is confronted with all the four fears: fear that he may lose whatever he possesses, that he may be maimed in the war, that he may lose his near and dear ones, and fourth, that he may lose his very life. These fears have in turn led to his powerlessness of heart. Understand, all your fears, all your anxieties, all your patterns are directed only in one line—fear of your possibilities!

Listen!

Your bigness frightens you. You always believe that you are suffocated by your smallness. NO! You are suffocated by your bigness! Whenever bigness is demanded of you, whenever you feel you are being ‘forced’ to expand, you shrink even further into your comfort zone. Arjuna’s tiredness, his weakness, his powerlessness all these are nothing but the resistance he has to seeing his own bigness!

That is why, when someone tells you that you are weak, poor and a sinner, it is so easy to accept it. But if someone tells you that you are Divine, you are powerful, you are complete, your whole identity starts trembling with fear! Arjuna trembles and collapses totally fearing his bigness, shrinking into his weak-heartedness!

But life always demands your expansion, because expansion is the natural law of life. Here, Kṛṣṇa, the source of life, demands Arjuna to stand up and expand into his powerfulness, and give up his degrading powerlessness unbefitting an ārya prince, who is also famous as parantapa, conqueror of enemies.

But Arjuna is carrying such a deep fear of life, especially fear of life in the form of other people—because people are the most living expression of Life! The whole Kaurava army and his dear ones are the people who now represent his deepest fears of life.

Listen! The more you engage with life, the greater the expansion that will be demanded of you. Whenever you are feeling weak, tired, and powerless, the first thing you should do is this: immediately take on ten responsibilities and commit to fulfill them within an impossibly short time! Shake your inner space so powerfully with that commitment that there will be no way for weakness and tiredness to grow inside you.

Kṛṣṇa directly addresses this weakness, powerlessness in Arjuna and the fear of life in the form of his kinsmen with the śāstra, the explanation of wisdom that is directed to the head, the intellect. He shakes Arjuna’s inner space demanding of him to take up the responsibility to stand up and commit to powerfully uproot all his impossibilities, and fight— tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa!

Later on in the Gītā, in the eleventh chapter, after beholding Kṛṣṇa’s cosmic vision, Arjuna realizes who Kṛṣṇa truly is; that He is beyond everything and beyond his imagination, his comprehension. He is not surprised any longer that all the deities worship Him and surrender to Him. Kṛṣṇa then repeats the same words that He says now, after which the Gītā ends and Arjuna engages in the war.

These same words uttered by Kṛṣṇa later on, when Arjuna is in the state of stotra, a state of pure devotion and faith, become the sūtra, the technique of enlightenment for Arjuna. Listen! When you are in devotion, you will just live life. You will not have any fear. Fear is always out of powerlessness. When you are in love, you will not know anything called fear or worry. That stage is yet to happen. Since Arjuna is not yet in the devotional state now, these words are only plain wisdom.

Kṛṣṇa is not a philosopher; He is a personification of enlightenment, of infinite powerfulness. All philosophy is an attempt to convince the other to do what the philosopher wants of him. Philosophers are the most dangerous people who invent logical reasons that encage, enslave or engage you to follow their words. Here Kṛṣṇa straightaway enriches by giving the conclusion directly to Arjuna. However, as Arjuna is not in the complete space to receive it because he is not mature enough to assimilate it, Kṛṣṇa needs to give Arjuna the experience.

Please listen! When you started having a root pattern, when you first had powerlessness, after that you never grow. Arjuna’s age is sealed mentally. Physically he may be a grown-up, as a warrior among warriors, but mentally his age is sealed. Only when Kṛṣṇa gives the experience of His own space of completion to Arjuna, he expands; he becomes powerful, he matures into a ripened enlightened soul.

There is a beautiful story in the Upaniṣads:

A disciple goes to the Master and asks, ‘O master! Teach me atmajñāna, knowledge of inner Self.’

The Master says, ‘Thou art that! Tattvamasi. You are God.’ The disciple, unable to believe this, thinks to himself, ‘How can I be God? I am still afraid of my wife. I have all these problems and a thousand questions!’

Only when the Master proves to him that the Master himself is God, the disciple trusts the Master’s words.

The Master needs to first prove that he is God in order to make you understand that you are God. Here Kṛṣṇa does the same thing by repeating that He is all of this. Kṛṣṇa later explains His glory and that all the deities, Vedas, the scriptural wisdom, are worshipping at His feet; the whole world is in Him. He makes these incredible statements that would appear egoistic to a normal person. And yet Kṛṣṇa says all this, even at the risk of being misunderstood. He repeats that He is God to make you realize that you are God.

With authority He states, ‘I am God’ to make you realize that you are God.

Continuously human beings resist expansion. Incarnations happen on the planet to remind human beings about their possibilities, to expand human consciousness. That is why again and again they are doubted. Arjuna is Nara, human being who resists his expansion, and Śrī Kṛṣṇa is Nārāyaṇa, Divine Incarnate who reminds him of his highest possibility of expansion—that he is God, that Nara is the reflection of Nārāyaṇa, who is mirroring the infinite inner space of God!

You would not believe the words of ordinary people. You need to listen to the words from a source of authority that has the right to say them. Here Kṛṣṇa says the same words that He repeats throughout the entire Gītā. But as of now Arjuna is not able to take it all in. It is too much for him to grasp in his present condition.

Once Kṛṣṇa proves His divinity, Arjuna believes His words and is ready to follow them. Similarly, when masters prove their divinity and express great powers or miracles of their energies, they do not do so for their ego satisfaction. They do them to prove that they are God, so that you believe their words and experience that you are God.

Understand: when I am expressing the aṣṭa-mahā-siddhis, extraordinary eight yogic powers, it is not to show that I am extraordinary; it is just to show that it is possible for you! Nothing more is required than carrying the space of possibility, with the understanding—‘When Swamiji can do it, I can do it!’ That’s all!

It is the authority with which Kṛṣṇa is seen transmitting the Gītā that makes it a scripture. ‘I am the Divine,’ says Kṛṣṇa. ‘If you believe in Me, you too shall realize your inner divinity.’ It is this profound and yet simple message that has resounded so deeply in the hearts, minds and beings of generations of Hindus, in turn establishing the scriptural sanctity of the Gītā.

Here all the verses of the Gītā are reduced to just two verses by Kṛṣṇa.

He straightaway addresses and completes the root pattern where Arjuna is stuck, that is in his need for name and fame or rajas. A man who is centered on satva, goodness, who has neither greed nor lethargy but a neutral attitude, will work out of compassion. A man who is centered on rajas will work only for name and fame. A man who is centered on tamas, lethargy, will work only for sensual pleasures.

Duryodhana works only through tamas, which explains his cruel and gross behavior. Dharmarāja Yudhiṣṭira works on satva, out of compassion. Here Arjuna is centered on rajas, therefore he is working only for name and fame. This is why Kṛṣṇa asks him not to work in this way as it would ultimately bring Arjuna a bad name, akīrti karam arjuna. This is how He straightaway puts His hand on the tumor, the tumor that is the subtle root pattern working within Arjuna.

Fortunately for us, Arjuna is not intelligent enough. Or rather, he acts as if he is not intelligent enough to understand these words. He has lived with Kṛṣṇa for more than thirty years in close friendship and must have intelligence. He puts his questions and doubts not for himself but for enriching the future generations and for the whole of humankind.

Most of the time our problems are very simple. It is we who complicate them. Our patterns are not as big as we think they are. When we verbalize, analyze, label and associate with them as impossibilities, we have created a whole new problem that had not existed earlier in our being.

You have only one mind. You can either use it to enrich yourself in solving the problem, or it will naturally enslave you in creating more problems. Understand that if you are not solving your existing problems, you will be creating more problems. At the level of the mind, there is no position of simply standing, no status quo—you either climb or fall, you are either in space of possible or impossible!

Here Kṛṣṇa straightaway addresses Arjuna’s root pattern. Kṛṣṇa is not creating any philosophy but gives the answer straightaway in just one line. However, as Arjuna is not mature enough because of his root pattern, he has to be given an intellectual explanation of his possibility.

All Western philosophies begin with logical analysis and end with the conclusion. All Eastern processes begin with the conclusion and then give the analysis. Eastern masters are compassionate. They first give us the option of grasping the solution, if we have the intelligence. They expect us to transform with just the trust in them. If we don’t have this qualification of grasping and trusting, they have no other option but to go into detailed explanation, they start the regular process.

Here Kṛṣṇa tries the first method of sudden enlightenment, the immediate liberation, the ultimate possibility but Arjuna is not mature enough to receive it or comprehend it. So Kṛṣṇa now starts the process of explaining it to him step- by-step.

There are two ways in which people react to the sanctity and divinity of Kṛṣṇa in Bhagavad Gītā. To one set of people, Kṛṣṇa has no special qualification to be called divine and these people may not even believe in anything such as the Divine. As atheists or agnostics, the only way such people can be convinced is initially through the rationale of the dialogue in the Gītā. The dialogue surpasses anything written in any language at any point in time in its clarity and wisdom. The message of Kṛṣṇa is universal and timeless. Those who do not accept and understand, it just means that as of now, it is not their time to understand and transform.

The laws of nature do not change just because we do not accept and understand them. The earth was always round and never flat and it always revolved around the sun, even when the societal leaders denied these truths and killed people for expounding these truths.

There is another class of people who say that there is only Kṛṣṇa, who is divine and all other divine manifestations have no relevance. One such group of people came to me after I had spoken on the Gītā, very perturbed.

They said, ‘From what you say, we see that you accept the divinity of Kṛṣṇa.’

I said, ‘Yes, I very much do. He is the Pūrṇāvatār, the complete incarnation.’

They complained, ‘Then how can you worship Śiva in your ashram? We believe you have a Dakśināmūrti (Śiva) temple in your Bidadi ashram in India. How can you do this?’

I asked them, ‘Have you read Anu Gītā which is also another part of Mahābhārat?’ They said, ‘No.’

I then explained to them about Anu Gītā: After the war, Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa are together and Arjuna says, ‘Dear Kṛṣṇa, I do not remember all of what you taught me at the battlefield, when you delivered the Gītā to me. Can you please enlighten me again?’

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Oh, you have forgotten? I too have forgotten what I then said!’ Arjuna exclaims, ‘Kṛṣṇa, how is that possible?’

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘At that point I was Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the universal Kṛṣṇa. I was Bhagavān, Superconsciousness. I was the Divine. Now, I am Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa, son of Vāsudeva. So, I do not remember what I spoke to you as Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa. I shall try and remember.’

What he remembered and recounted was Anu Gītā. Kṛṣṇa, as Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, is the Divine energy, the formless Brahman, the same as Śiva, Viṣṇu or Devī. He is the ultimate Truth, the Puruṣottama, as are these other manifestations of the same Brahman.

It is only the ignorant cows of Kṛṣṇa who fight with the equally ignorant monkeys of Rāma, forgetting that Rāma and Kṛṣṇa are both the same energy.

The constant, repetitive reference to Bhagavān in the Gītā is to emphasize this point that Kṛṣṇa is not just the mere charioteer of Arjuna, Pārthasārathi, or Keśava, destroyer of the demon Keśin or Madhusūdana, destroyer of the demon Madhu, but that He is Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Energy, who is formless and nameless. This is also to reinforce the satya, truth that you too, like Arjuna, are God and no less.

Understanding the divinity of Kṛṣṇa is a step to intranalysing and living one’s own divinity. That possibility of divinity is what completes and liberates. That is why Ādī Śankaracārya, the great Incarnation sings in Bhaja Govindaṁ, ‘Even a little reading of the Bhagavad Gītā will liberate you from death.’

Arjuna is now pleading Kṛṣṇa, ‘Oh Lord, leave me now! I will beg and eat becoming a Sannyāsi.’ He continues, ‘It is better for me to seek alms as an ascetic or even a beggar than kill these elders—śreyo bhoktuṁ bhaikṣyam apīha loke (2.5). Once my hands are stained with their blood, how can I enjoy worldly pleasures? I am confused as to which would be better, for them to slay me or for me to slay them, yadvā jayema yadivā no jayeyuḥ (2.6). How can we live after slaying our kinsmen and elders?— yān eva hatvā na jijīviṣāmas.’

Understand, Bhagavān is not against Arjuna’s Sannyāsa. He does not want Arjuna to take Sannyās out of powerlessness.

Arjuna says, ‘Oh Lord, leave me. I will beg and eat—bhoktuṁ bhaikṣyam.’ No! I tell you, Arjuna would not have become a sannyāsī. He would have gone and asked for food in a royal way, ‘Hey, give me food.’ If somebody doesn’t give, he would have picked up his gāṇḍiva bow and arrow to shoot the person for his food.

To become a Sannyāsi, Śrī Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Go to Sannyāsa out of completion.’ Bhagavān is only saying one thing, ‘Out of completion, take any decision. Out of completion, take any decision!’

Listen. Bhagavān denies Arjuna even his decision to take Sannyāsa because Arjuna takes that decision out of powerless pattern. He accepts Arjuna’s decision to fight, because he took the decision out of powerfulness, completion! Whether it is Sannyās or fight, powerlessness never leads your life to any next steps.

Arjuna says further, ‘Now I am confused about my duty and have lost all composure because of misery and weakness—kārpaṇya doṣhopahata svabhāvaḥ (2.7). I can see no solution to my dilemma. Even if I slay these people and gain control over the earth, or even control over the heavens, what good will it do me? In this condition, I ask you to tell me, for certain, what is best for me, yat śreyaḥ syān niścitaṁ brūhi tanme. Now I am your disciple and the soul is surrendered unto you. Please instruct me—śiṣyas te’haṁ sādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam (2.7).’

I must now tell you an important truth.

Here Arjuna says, ‘My soul is surrendered unto you—māṁ tvāṁ prapannam.’ This is a lie. Had his soul been truly surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, he would simply have followed what Kṛṣṇa said and would not have waited for an intellectual explanation.

Arjuna says his soul is surrendered to Kṛṣṇa but when Kṛṣṇa asks him to do His bidding, he is not ready to do so and is confused! Surrender out of confusion is not surrender, as you do not even know if you are doing the right thing.

Understand that surrender after clarity, intelligence of śāstras, out of completion, is true surrender.

Here Arjuna surrenders only verbally as he says that he is confused, that his mind is bewildered, sammūḍha cetāh. You must either do what you think is right or do as the Master instructs. Here Arjuna wants the Master to say what he wants to hear, not what the Master wants to say. So, although Arjuna says he has surrendered, he has not done so.

Time and again, people come to me for advice and ask, ‘Swamiji, I have this problem. Please advise me what to do. Whatever you tell me I shall do.’ Then, if I ask them to come to the ashram for a few days or attend a meditation course, they give me a dozen reasons why it cannot be done. Some even say, ‘Swamiji, the time has to be right before we do that. Perhaps the time is not right.’ Nonsense..simply nonsense! Understand, you are not controlled by some unknown destiny that you can conveniently blame just because you cannot do something right. Your destiny is in your own hands. Each one of you has the power to decide what you want to do, what you want to create. So does Arjuna!

Arjuna is asking Kṛṣṇa to tell him what he needs to do in the same way that I just described how people come and ask me. Kṛṣṇa knows this only too well. However, only out of compassion, Kṛṣṇa continues to enrich, express and teach him the Truth.

Here begins the śāstras. The two verses that Kṛṣṇa speaks bidding Arjuna to give up his powerlessness and stand up and fight are sūtra, techniques. But as Arjuna is not ready to receive them, he has to commence the śāstra, the background knowledge.

Kṛṣṇa, fully aware of Arjuna’s dilemma, moves forward in his mission to destroy Arjuna’s identity, the root pattern. The Guru, Master is a surgeon who removes the cancer of ego, the root thought pattern. This is what Kṛṣṇa does throughout the Gītā dialogue. To give Arjuna credit, he stays through this surgery. Many weaker men would have run away from the operation theatre, this battlefield, with no desire to let go of their identities. Arjuna’s greatness lies in his integrity, his powerful determination, his decision to listen to his Master and be guided by Him.

So, Arjuna implores his Master, ‘Kṛṣṇa, please tell me what to do. I am your disciple. You are my refuge.’

Arjuna’s integrity lies also in not making any decision when he is feeling powerless. When you are in the space of powerlessness, the only one decision you have to make is to come out of powerlessness. No other decision should be made. When you are in powerlessness, any decision made leads to more and more powerlessness, more and more suffering.

In his deepest powerless moments, the only decision Arjuna takes is to come out of his powerlessness. He declares to Kṛṣṇa that he is His disciple and exposes his inauthenticies to Kṛṣṇa. It is this readiness to surrender to the Master that brings completion to Arjuna and enriches him to take the responsibility to win the war, which in reality is the war within himself. This is the war that each one of us is fighting each day with our powerlessness, if we are truly aware. This is the war that we need to fight to drop our root pattern, our mind, and the identity that binds us to all the bondages upon this earth.

Listen! Whatever you think is yours and whatever you think is you, is different from the truth. It is the Master who can lead you through the path of self-completion, as Kṛṣṇa is now leading Arjuna. To be led, you need the attitude of surrender, the decision to surrender your powerlessness.

2.9 Sañjaya said: Guḍākeśa (Arjuna) then said to Hṛṣīkeśa (Kṛsṇa), ‘Govinda, I shall not fight,’ and fell silent.

2.10 Then, Hṛṣīkeśa, Kṛṣṇa smilingly spoke the following words to the grief-stricken Arjuna, as they were placed in the midst of both armies.

2.11 Bhagavān said: You grieve for those who should not be grieved for and yet, you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

2.12 Never was there a time when I did not exist; nor did you, nor all these rulers, And nor shall any of us ever cease to be hereafter.

2.13 Just as the spirit in this body passes through childhood, youth and old age, so does it pass into another body; the man centered within himself does not fear this, or deluded by this .

Even though it is written here in the past tense, I feel Kṛṣṇa should always be addressed in the present tense. He is still relevant, present to each of us today. We cannot say, ‘Kṛṣṇa was’ but ‘Kṛṣṇa is’, not ‘Kṛṣṇa said’ but ‘Kṛṣṇa says.’

Once again, having lamented about what he is being forced to do, and not wishing to do what he is expected to do, Arjuna, like a petulant child sits down saying, ‘Govinda, I am not going to fight, na yotsya iti govindam (2.9).’ It is as if Arjuna is waiting to be persuaded. He is seeking an explanation.

Kṛṣṇa says to him gently and smilingly, ‘While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief—aśocyān anvāśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāṁś ca bhāṣase. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead—gatāsūn agatāsūṁś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ (2.11).’

Again, Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna’s incompletion directly, ‘O Arjuna! You speak as if you are intelligent, enlightened, prajñā-vādāṁś.’ You speak the words without having experienced them. Therefore, your words do not carry conviction. Your emotion, your being, shows that you are not enlightened, that you have not understood. A truly enlightened person will never worry for the living or the dead.’ If you worry for somebody living or dead, you cannot be an intelligent person. What is death and life after all? There are thousands, rather millions, who have lived and gone.

See the brilliance of Śrī Kṛṣṇa! He is so soaked in the space of completion. The moment Kṛṣṇa opens His mouth, the first truth that comes out from Him is Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ. I can be sure that Kṛṣṇa is filled with Kapila.

Kṛṣṇa is the greatest follower of Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ. Please understand, when you are in a crisis, the first few words you utter are the words with which you solve your own problem. When somebody asks you for advice, what comes up first? The words that you use to enrich yourself, will only come out to enrich others. Understand, if suddenly, if I am forced to solve a problem, the first solution that will come out of my mind will be the solution or philosophy with which I am solving my own problems.

So, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself is not a bhakti yogi. Bhakti yoga comes only from His archives. From His table, only Sāṅkhya Yoga comes. You may be a master of the books that you have in the archives, but the books you have on your table have mastered you! That is why they are occupying your table. They are master for you.

Please listen! I can be sure that Kṛṣṇa is more shocked than Arjuna because He has never seen this dimension of Arjuna—shivering, shaking! It was a shock even for Kṛṣṇa when Arjuna drops his Gāṇḍiva bow and says, ‘I am not interested in fighting!’ Kṛṣṇa has never seen this powerless, weak side of Arjuna. See, trusting Arjuna, He went all the way as a peace ambassador to the assembly of Kauravas. The great war of Mahābhārat was the first World War because at that time, the whole of humanity, fifty-four deśas (countries) were divided into two parts. The whole world was participating. Either you are on the side of Duryodhana, the Kaurava clan or on the side of Arjuna, the Pāṇḍava clan.

And suddenly, Arjuna is saying, ‘I am not waging the war!’ How will you handle this? How Kṛṣṇa feels! Everyone knows Kṛṣṇa may not be in the front, but He is running the whole show, the whole war play! So, Kṛṣṇa is completely cornered now. He has to solve Arjuna’s problem.

The first idea with which Kṛṣṇa is sorting out Arjuna’s problem is Sāṅkhya Yoga. This means Kṛṣṇa Himself was practicing Sāṅkhya Yoga. He is a person established in the knowledge of completion!

It is important to understand the rules of Existence, of the Divine. Only the ignorant worry about people who are living or dead. A truly intelligent person does not bother about death.

Often people ask me, ‘How was the Universe created? Was it by Brahma, as Hindu scriptures say? From my personal experience, I say to them what Buddha said thousands of years ago based on His personal perception. ‘The Universe,’ Buddha said, ‘has neither been created nor will it ever be destroyed. It always has been.’ The Universe created itself. It is the creation that embodies the creator and results in what has been created. Our questions regarding the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of what happens around us arise only when they threaten us. These questions, these issues about the morality of the Universe, spring forth only when our ego, our identity is threatened, when our life is threatened.

The creator is also the destroyer. What is created will be destroyed. We have no agreement with God that when we are born we will be assured of so many years of life along with the knowledge of the timing and nature of our death.

When you truly realize your Self, when you are complete, enlightened, you will be aware of when you will die and how you will die. It will then make no difference to you whether your body is alive or dead. Living and dying are no longer issues in which you feel you need to play a part. They are progressions of nature and being enlightened and complete, you flow with Nature.

We are just playing with words when we talk about karma and destiny, saying that they are responsible for everything that happens to us. Let me tell you this: We are responsible for everything that happens in and around us. We are responsible for what we do. It is a misrepresentation of Nature’s law of responsibilism to blame nature for what happens to us.

When you take responsibility for how you think and feel, instead of leaving the responsibility to destiny, society, media and others, if you take the responsibility, you can awaken your inner power of leadership, you can make your non-mechanical parts of the brain to function. Listen! When you don’t take responsibility, others take it on their own and make you a follower. Society and all other power-hungry people who are interested in controlling you, take the responsibility for your body, mind and brain if you don’t take the responsibility.

Some people question, ‘Is it fair that we are held responsible for what we did in another lifetime and are not even aware of now?’ What do we know of fairness except what we determine to be fair out of our own selfishness?

It is possible to be conscious of previous births; it is even possible to have a conscious birth, coming into this world fully conscious and aware. For that to happen, we need to drop our root thought pattern and merge with Nature. We need to responsibly surrender our existence to Nature. When we do so, Nature responds and opens up. Listen, when you take responsibility for all the happenings in and around you, a new energy and a new possibility opens up in you. The first step to realize the divine in you is to take responsibility. Decide whether you are reason or not, you are taking responsibility for all happenings in and around you, because it is affecting you!

Sañjaya says Kṛṣṇa was smiling as He uttered these words. Kṛṣṇa must have been laughing at Arjuna. ‘You fool; you pretend to be wise and quote the scriptures.Who do you think you are quoting the scriptures to? What can you understand of what I Myself have said?’

Kṛṣṇa continues: ‘Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you and all these kings, and never in the future shall any of us cease to be.’

na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ I na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ sarve vayam ataḥ paraṁ II 2.12

With this verse begins the essence of the whole Gītā. This is ātmajñāna, Self-Realization, the knowledge of completion. If you can understand this one verse, you can become enlightened straightaway and enter into eternal bliss.

If you think our souls will also die with our bodies, you are wrong. We were there before our birth and will remain after death. It is not true that any of us will not be in the future.

Listen. You existed in the past, exist in the present and will exist in the future. Your face and body may change but you continue to exist. Then why do we think we will die and why do we fear death? If what Kṛṣṇa says is true, why are we worried about this life and about death? You need to first understand the concept of the past, present and future to enable you to understand what Kṛṣṇa says.

Let me explain this concept of time first.

Time is like a shaft continuously moving from the future on the right into the past on the left (see diagram). The future is on your right and the past is on your left. The future is continuously moving into the past; every moment and every second it is turning into the past. The present is the point where the future and the past meet. Your mind as such is nothing but movements between the past and the future.

You cannot have any thoughts if you stop thinking about the past and the future. Your thoughts consist of nothing but the constant movements between the past and the future. The more your thoughts shift from past to future or future to past, the higher the frequency of thoughts. The less you shift from past to future or future to past, the lesser the number of thoughts. Try to think of something in the present, you will find that you cannot. You can think of it only by taking it into the past or future. You are either worrying about the future or remembering the past.

The higher the frequency of thoughts, the more you are caught in the physical and material world. For example, if you have 100 Thoughts Per Second (TPS,) it means you have jumped 100 times back and forth between the past and future in one second! If you have 80 TPS, it means you have jumped 80 times between these two dimensions. The higher the frequency, the more you will be away from the present and more problems you have. If the number of thoughts reduces, you fall into the present moment.

The past, present and future, all the three put together are eternal, Nitya or Ātman. Only when you come to the present moment do you experience Ātman—your true Self, but as of now you are constantly shuttling between the past and future. When the number of thoughts Past Time Shaft Future 100 TPS 80 TPS 60 TPS 40 TPS 20 TPS 0 TPS Present Moment Each Moment Slipping from Future to Past reduces, you will not even be aware of the passage of time. For example, when you are with someone you love, even two or three hours will seem like a short while. But, when you are with someone whose company is boring, even a short time seems very long.

Time is more psychological than chronological. That is why, in our scriptures or Vedas, we have the word kṣaṇa to describe the unit of time. Kṣaṇa does not denote one second, but is defined as the gap or time interval between two thoughts. The larger the kṣaṇa or the gap between two thoughts, the more in the present we are. Each person’s kṣaṇa will be different depending on how busy his mind is! When our TPS is lower, we will naturally be in completion, in ecstasy, in bliss. When the number of our thoughts is high, we are in hell. Hell and heaven are nothing but the number of thoughts that we entertain, that’s all. That is why I say heaven and hell are not geographical places, but psychological spaces.

With a higher frequency of thoughts, you think you are the body. When the frequency of thoughts reduces, you think you are the mind and just emotion. When the thoughts become zero, you realize you are Ātman, Self; you exist in the past, present and future. Only a man who’s TPS is zero can realize what Kṛṣṇa says—You will be there forever. But now, as the frequency of thoughts is very high, you do not have the patience or energy to undestand who you are and your nature.

Kṛṣṇa says beautifully, ‘You were there in the past, you are in the present and you will be in the future; you do not die. You existed before birth and will remain after death. Whatever dies, can never live. Whatever lives can never die.’ When Kṛṣṇa says, ‘You are the eternal soul,’ He means that as a being, you are beyond time.

Here, your deep consciousness says that something is living in you. This quality you wrongly attribute to your body and mind. You are not the body or the mind. As long as you are caught in the past and the future incompletions, you think that you are the body-mind. The moment you come down to the present moment, you are in the eternal space of completion, you experience that you are beyond the body, beyond the mind.

Please listen! Anything which does not allow, anything which stands in between you and the present moment, acting as a barrier; which does not allow you to connectcompletely with life and with other people in your life in the present moment, is what I call incompletion.

So, the first thing you need to do in life is bring completion. Kṛṣṇa does not mean that we existed in the form that we are here now, or that He was present always as Kṛṣṇa in the form we imagine Him to be, with a flute and a peacock feather. He means that our spirits which are eternal, always existed and will always exist. In our spiritual state, that of our soul, we are divine, one with the universal energy, Brahman.

The gist of the second chapter, Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ is that you are the soul, that you are complete, that you are divine and that you are God.

Completion is the only methodology where you can complete with your past and future incompletions. You need to know that when you do completion now, don’t think that only your future will be in completion and complete. No! Even your past gets altered. Even your past becomes complete! The moment you create the space of completion, what Kṛṣṇa declares, ‘you are the eternal soul, beyond your body and mind,’ becomes reality in your life.

Kṛṣṇa is established in the space of Sāṅkhya knowledge. Kapila Muni, the founder of Sāṅkhya, does not elaborately talk about God, but he talks about the methodology to reach God. Sāṅkhya does not speak about God, because completion itself is given the place of God. Please understand, Sāṅkhya does not have the system of God because the methodology to reach God is made as God. It is a lifestyle. The methodology of completion is God. Completion is God!

Even as the spirit resides in this body, the body passes through its seasons of childhood, youth, middle age and old age as the seasons of Nature do in each year. Finally, it passes through death, and then reappears, just as trees shed leaves in autumn and produce new leaves in spring.

Transition of the spirit through the body as it ages is no different from the transition of time through the seasons. One does not grieve as one enjoys the pleasures of childhood, youth and middle age. Why then should one grieve the onset of old age and then death? At death, the spirit passes from one body into another body. It has three kṣaṇa to achieve this, each kṣaṇa being the time period between thoughts. A person who is in a high thought frequency, a high TPS state, has a much shorter time to shift from one body to another. A person in a no-mind, no-thought state has infinite time, as the time between thoughts is infinite. His spirit is at liberty to stay free without taking another body as long as he chooses, or more correctly, as the universe chooses. All Enlightened Masters are in this category. When the spirit leaves the mind-body system, it becomes one with the Universal Energy.

Imagine a number of circles drawn on a whiteboard. Think of the whiteboard space as the universal energy. Individual body-mind systems are represented by the circles drawn on the whiteboard. The white space enclosed in the circles is the spirit and this is the same energy as the white space outside the circles. The space within or inner space is the individual soul, Ātman and the outer space is Brahman.

When a bodymind dies, when an individual dies, all that happens is that these perimeter lines get erased, that is all. The space within the circle merges with the space outside the circle. White merges with white. Energy merges with energy.

When the spirit, the energy, is ready to move into another mindbody system, it enters another circle. It is a continuous, ongoing process and a natural process. One who cognizes this process and accepts it is an integrated and authentic person living in the space of completion. Kṛṣṇa refers to him as ‘dhīraḥ’, one who is firm, centered, aware, and complete.

2.14 O Kaunteya (son of Kuntī), contact with sense objects causes heat and cold, pleasure and pain, and these have a beginning and an end. O Bhārata, these are not permanent; endure them bravely.

2.15 O Purṣurṣabha, chief among men, these surely do not afflict the brave person who is centered and complete, Pleasure and pain are the same to him and he is certainly ready for immortality, amṛtatvā.

2.16 The non-existent (asat) has no being; that which exists (sat) never ceases to exist; This truth about both is perceived and concluded by the Seers of Truth.

2.17 Know It to be indestructible, by which all this body is pervaded. Nothing can destroy It, the Imperishable.

2.18 These bodies of material energy are perishable. The energy itself is eternal, incomprehensible and indestructible. Therefore, fight, O Bhārata.

Kṛṣṇa says here that the sensory experiences, mātrā-sparśhaḥ are all temporary. Feelings of hot and cold, śītoṣṇa, sweet and sour, wet and dry, experiences of pain and pleasure, sukha-duḥkha, as well as other experiences of like and dislike are all temporary, anityāḥ. These experiences do not affect the centered person who is qualified to be enlightened, so amṛtatvāya kalpate.

These sensory experiences are anitya or impermanent and unreal. Moreover, they are relative. What may be considered hot by one person may not be perceived as hot by another.

There are many sādhus or ascetics, who stay in the higher reaches of the Himalayan mountains with least clothing; in temperatures everyone would consider bitter cold. There are those who carry out the parikramā, circumambulation, of Mount Kailaśa and Lake Mansarovar. Studies conducted on Tibetan Lamas in their high altitude snow-covered monasteries showhow the Lamas can bear extreme cold without any discomfort. Renowned scientists from reputed institutions such as the Harvard Medical School have conducted such studies. When Nature is accepted totally, heat, cold, rain, dryness and all these changes do not affect the body-mind system

If we walk around without footwear, the earth that we walk upon becomes our friend. As long as we wear footwear to protect ourselves from Nature, we are treating Nature as an outsider, as an enemy. One who is firmly grounded in himself is grounded in Nature. Kṛṣṇa says that such a person is qualified and ready for enlightenment. Such persons have brought their senses under control, and as a result have their mind too under control.

What Kṛṣṇa says here, and what has been experienced by the wise sages of the East for thousands of years, is only now being grasped by scientists and researchers. It is now accepted by medical science that the body-mind dies many deaths before its final exit. Cells within our body die in thousands every day and get reborn. Over a period of a few years, every single cell in the body-mind system is replaced and renewed. What you were two or three years ago is not what you are today. Every single cell in your body-mind system, and therefore, every single bone, muscle, tissue, artery, vein, limb and body part is new, completely different from what it was two or three years ago.

The body-mind continually ceases to exist and gets recreated. It is not permanent. Separate from the body-mind system is our spirit that lives on eternally. The spirit remains the same throughout our life with no change, despite all the changes in the body-mind system. It continues to be, to exist, even after our death. The spirit does not die with the body. It lives on. It is permanent and true.

When one understands this difference between what is eternal, nitya, and what is ephemeral, anitya, one becomes a seer and knower of Truth.

Nitya and anithya do not translate into real and unreal. In the same way māyā , loosely translated as illusion, is not unreal. Māyā and anitya are real and perceived by our senses but they refer to things that are not true, that are not lasting. They are factually real but truthfully unreal! That which is true will always be true; it cannot cease to exist. Truth here refers to the state of permanence, of being eternal.

I say a living master is not present as you feel, and a dead master is not absent as you think. The presence of a dead master, an enlightened dead master, is permanent and always real. A living Master’s form is not His only presence. He is present in His absence as well.

Our perceptions through our senses may be real but not necessarily true. A dream is very real when it happens. You may get angry, frightened, excited, lustful, and such when you dream. Your body responds to these emotions and your senses react to what you observe in the dream. Yet the moment you start witnessing the dream, you awaken. You cannot dream when you become aware. The dream is not true, though it seemed real.

The same happens when you are awake and daydreaming, which is most of the time! You are awake but you fantasize. Even when you think you are fully awake, what you perceive through your senses may not be what you interpret it to mean. Your mind always filters through its own lens of the root pattern or ego. You judge whatever you perceive through your conditioned memories and then selectively put together pieces of what you perceive, to support your judgment.

Please listen!

A blind man was sitting in front of a huge fire with a burning stick in his hand. Somebody came and asked him, ‘What is this? Such a huge fire! Don’t you see? What are you going to do about it?’

The blind man said, ‘Yes, yes! That is why I took this burning stick and put it on my eyes. Now I am not seeing the fire!’

Can that be the solution? You may laugh now, but all your solutions are usually of this type. And you even accept as your master, the fool who tells ‘Take the stick and put it on your eyes!’ Will not seeing the fire, solve the problem? Burning your eyes is not going to give you liberation from the scenes you are seeing. Look in! Shrinking from life is nothing but putting the burning stick in your eyes!

Just because your eyes are burnt, it does not mean that the fire will not impact you or the world will not impact you. Perception of fire is still burning from inside you, as per your experience. The innermost perception has to change. You need to realize that it is not the outside scene, but the innermost perception you carry for the outside scene, which is impacting you and giving you the experience of your reality.

I tell you, if there is fire burning and you sit at a distance and just go on gazing at the fire, you will feel the heat in your body! If you just turn your eyes away while maintaining the same distance—you will not see the burning and no more experience the burning in your body! How? The seeing has reduced the distance between you and the fire! That is perception and reality!

This is what Śrī Kṛṣṇa means when He says, ‘O son of Kuntī, contact with sense objects causes heat and cold, pleasure and pain, and these have a beginning and an end.’

Understand, a pattern is any action that is unfulfilled as per your fantasy, either because of an outside hindrance or an inside hindrance, and is in incompletion!

Please listen! Now, I am defining perception.

The way your patterns react and respond to the facts is perception. Perception is nothing but processed facts. There are three levels of perception:

• No pattern, no perception—that is the worst. • Pattern with perception—that is okay. • Perception but with no pattern—that is the best.

I am giving you the essence of philosophy, which is a combination of your patterns and facts. If only facts are playing a hundred percent role, you don’t have any pattern. These are the non-responders who are soaked in dullness. They neither have patterns nor have consciousness. The vast eleven lakh (one hundred and ten million) army of Kauravas signifies this dull unconscious space of ‘no pattern, no perception.’ They lived in stupid materialism with their life philosophy as stupid atheism. That is why Duryodhana is never attacked by any pattern or dilemma that overpowers Arjuna.

Then, there are responders who have ‘patterns with perceptions.’ The moment Arjuna sees the vast Kaurava army, his whole body and being shivers with the fear pattern. His patterns do not let him see the army as army and just fight as per his natural perception of himself as a warrior. No! He sees relatives, friends and teachers and wants to escape the war; he wants to shrink from life!

Ultimately, we have the Lord of all perceptions, the one with complete consciousness, Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa Himself! His very existence is the pure space of perception. He is the destroyer of all patterns, who enriches Arjuna in destroying and completing with the army of root patterns by transforming Arjuna’s own perception!

Please listen! The best enriching philosophy on the planet Earth is Kapila’s Sāṅkhya! Do you know why? Because He has no patterns.

Kapila is established in completion—the space of pure perception! No patterns are involved in the processing of information through the senses. The fire is seen as the fire. Not even an iota of the idea of heat or cold is superimposed on it! Superimposing any idea on life takes away the joy of life.

The great news for human beings is that māyā (illusion) can be transformed. Perception can be transformed. You can become enlightened! O humanity! I am here to give you the great news! Perception can reach completion! When you bring completion into the perception, a moment of perception can literally bring enlightenment!

Let me give you an example. Recently I visited the cremation grounds in Vārāṇasi with a group of disciples. When we were watching the dead bodies burning in front of us for some hours, some people were just sleeping, some were affected and were feeling nauseated, and some were not at all affected by the same scene of the body burning part by part in front of our eyes. What is the difference? It is just the processing of information with patterns. The possibility of perception!

That is the reason why the great Masters have always urged their disciples to wake up. Jāgṛat is the word used to awaken them. This is not the call to wake up from sleep but the call to wake up into completion! It is the call to emerge from the non-existent reality of processed facts or patterns into the truly existent Truth of self-experience.

Most of the time we exist in our past or future. We are constantly caught in the experiences of the past, under the excuse of learning from them. But in actuality, we are caught in guilt, regret or pleasure from remembering the past memories. The future is just as unreal as the past. Yet, we build castles, we plan, we dream, and we fantasize about the future without the capacity to execute any of it. We are not even sure we will take our next breath. How can we control events of the future when we cannot control our next breath? The futility of our constant movement between past and future and back again is the greatest wonder of all.

Now, I am giving you the best possibility of perception. Listen! Bring integrity in your thinking. Your eyes, your senses will not forget the reality even at that moment, and will not cognize heat or cold, pain or pleasure. Many times, due to lack of integrity our mind and body cognize their own facts, their own concepts.

The only truth, the only true reality, is the truth of this very moment. As long as we are in this present moment, we have a pure perception without any patterns, only then we are truly complete and integrated. The present moment never ceases to exist. In fact, that is all that does exist. The present moment alone is sat, truth, everything else is asat, untruth.

One who realizes this truth and acts out of completion, says Kṛṣṇa, is enlightened. We are all made of body, mind and spirit. The body is tangible; we can feel its boundaries. When a part of the body is sick, we can feel the discomfort. As long as we feel the body working smoothly, we say we are in good health.

Our mind is subtle. We do not feel the mind in the same way as we feel the body. We do not feel its boundaries. Yet, we feel the effects of the mind: thoughts, desires, emotions etc. Modern scientific studies have shown that what we term as mind is spread all over the body. Mind and its intelligence are inbuilt into our cellular structure. Recent studies have shown that it is our root thought patterns not genetics, which in turn arise from our earliest experiences of powerlessness, which define the birth and development of our mind, and in turn influence the cellular structure. Earlier it was believed that genetic modifications to the cellular structure influenced the way we cognized.

The process where we perceive or receive information through five senses, internalize it with our root thought patterns, and respond based on our patterns is Cognition. Now it is proven that it is our root thought pattern that leads to our cognition and thereafter determines our genetics.

Even subtler is the spirit. In fact, many people question this entity called spirit. What it is, they ask. What is this thing called spirit or soul? We cannot see it and we cannot touch it. Becoming aware of this subtle spirit or soul is just what Self- realization is all about.

In these verses, Kṛṣṇa says first that the spirit pervades the body— avināśi tu tad viddhi yena sarvam idaṁ tatam. His definition of body is the body-mind system. Secondly, He states that the body and mind are destroyed at death—antavanta ime dehā nityasyoktāḥ śārīriṇaḥ. Thirdly, He declares that the spirit does not die at death—vināśam avyayasyāsya na kascit kartum arhati. Fourthly, He explains that the spirit is beyond our mental comprehension—anāśino ‘prameyasya.

When death happens, bodily functions stop and the senses, which are a function of the mind, stop working. The entire body-mind system is then left by itself and it degenerates. This part is clear to all of us who have seen death. What is unclear or unknown to us is that there is something within us that does not perish at death. Kṛṣṇa clarifies here that this is the Self, Ātman, the energy that never dies. What is death? Is it the spirit leaving the body that causes death, or is it that death forces the spirit into leaving the body? The body-mind system is perishable, that it has a definite shelf life and comes with an expiry date. However, beyond this expiry date, there is something that lives on and that is the spirit. This spirit is energy; it is the energy of life.

Kṛṣṇa urges Arjuna to fight saying, ‘Therefore, fight, O Bhārata, tāsmad yudhyasva bharāta’, with the full understanding that what he thinks of as real is unreal, that what he thinks of as permanent, Nitya is impermanent, Anitya and what he thinks he is about to destroy can, in truth, never be destroyed.

Kṛṣṇa tells him to open his eyes and see with pure pattern less perception; that what he is about to do will only destroy that which is going to perish anyway. Even if he wants to, Arjuna cannot destroy the imperishable, avināśi spirit that lives on.

Arjuna’s concern about the death of his kinsmen and elders arises out of his root pattern of fear and insecurity about his own death. He does not realize his true imperishable nature and therefore he is afraid of dying. By extension of this fear, he is afraid of others’ deaths as well, especially at his own hands. Kṛṣṇa tells him that there is no such thing as death and that death is unreal, anāśinaḥ.

All our lives we see people around us dying. Death is the only certainty in this otherwise uncertain world. Everyone, whether a beggar or a prince, must die. When we wake up from a dream, we don’t mourn our dream lives, as real as they felt at the time. Do we? No. In the same way, when we awaken into the highest state of consciousness, we have the same experience that this ‘real’ life was only a dream. There is nothing to mourn or fret over. The lineage of all enlightened masters has again and again supported Kṛṣṇa’s declarations with their own direct experience. The body is just the shell that houses your spirit. Even when the body perishes, you do not. It is impossible because you are eternal, Nitya; you are bliss, Ānanda.

Kṛṣṇa is firmly stating this reality that there is no such thing as death, nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ. He says what dies or seems to perish is unreal, nāsato vidyate bhāvo; it had no permanent existence anyway. What does have existence, what is truly real, exists now, has always existed and will exist forever!

Look in! When you drill with integrity and authenticity, normal perception itself is nothing but perception of God! Because any perception will directly lead you to the space of the root of all actions, including perception! You will see that the ultimate perception, what Kṛṣṇa declares as your true nature of eternal existence and indestructible energy becomes your reality!

Sāṅkhya is reality. What exists as reality is perceived by you without the interference, perversions created by your powerless patterns. Sāṅkhya is the philosophy of reality—ultimate existentialism. Completion will lead you to experience that Sāṅkhya, the reality, existential reality—Tattva Satya, Satya Tattva!

2.19 Neither understands, he who takes the Self to be slayer nor he who thinks he is slain. He who knows the Truth understands that the Self does not slay, nor is It slain.

2.20 The Self is neither born nor does It ever die. After having been, It never ceases not to be. It is Unborn, Eternal, Changeless and Ancient. It is not killed when the body is killed.

2.21 O Pārtha, how can man slay or cause others to be slain, When he knows It to be indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchangeable?

2.22 Just as man casts off his worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, The Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters newer ones.

2.23 Weapons do not cleave the Self, fire does not burn It, water does not moisten It. And wind does not dry It.

2.24 The Self can neither be broken, nor burnt, nor dissolved, nor dried up. It is Eternal, All-pervading, Stable, Immovable and Ancient.

2.25 The Self is said to be unmanifest, unthinkable and unchangeable and able. Knowing this to be such, you should not grieve.

Then Kṛṣṇa is slapped with shock by Arjuna—this is the right description I will give, Kṛṣṇa wakes up! The first thing that comes out from Kṛṣṇa is sāṅkhya yogaḥ. In Sāṅkhya, you are recognized as a soul. The idea taught to you about you is—you cannot be cut by weapons, you cannot be burnt by fire, you cannot be made wet by water, and you cannot be blown away by air. Nothing can do ‘nothing’ to you. Nothing can be done to you by anything.

Understand, the moment Bhagavān is opening His mouth, you are given an amazing introduction about you!

Kṛṣṇa is one of the greatest followers of Kapila, the celebrated Incarnation of Mahādev and Viṣṇu in Śrimad Bhāgavatam. Kapila is the first thinking man on the planet who experienced completion, the founding father of this great Sāṇkhya philosophy, the founder of Mahānirvaṇi Pīṭha. That is why even when Bhagavān addresses His own glory later, when He introduces Himself, He says, ‘siddhānāṁ kapilo muniḥ (10.26)—Among the great perfect beings, the complete beings, I am Kapila.’ ‘I am Kapila among the siddhas, the great incarnations!’

Siddha means a complete being. This means that in Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s time, Kapila was the star of the spiritual world. That is why He remembers Kapila. That is why I say that Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa is also the Mahāmandaleśvar (spiritual head) of Mahānirvaṇi Pīṭha. Śrī Kṛṣṇa also studied Sāṅkhya; He is a follower of Sāṅkhya philosophy.

Kṛṣṇa directly addresses some of Arjuna’s earlier doubts in these verses. Arjuna has claimed that destroying his people, svajanam will bring him untold grief, not only in this world but in future births as well. Kṛṣṇa explains to Arjuna that all his fears are misplaced. There is no death in reality. What is seen as death is the destruction of the impermanent body. No one therefore can kill another person or be killed by another person. Both are illusions.

The spirit that occupies the body lives on forever. It occupies the body temporarily, but by itself the Self is eternal, indestructible, and has no births and deaths. It is the body, the sheath that covers it, that dies and is reborn. The spirit or the Self lives on forever.

What Kṛṣṇa says here is radically different from what any other scripture has said. Kṛṣṇa denies the concept of death here. He says there is no such thing as death. He is not saying: be good, and you will be taken care of when you die and if you are bad, you will suffer. He says there is no death, that’s all.

Here Kṛṣṇa is talking to someone who has witnessed death. So, He has to explain to him that death does not exist. It is the individual’s attachment to the body that creates the illusion that the individual also perishes with the body. Attachment to the body is the most intense of all attachments. We also get attached to material possessions as well as our relationships. The potential loss of these leads to fears similar to that of losing one’s body. One who understands that all these attachments are temporary and are the cause of all our suffering, understands the truth. Understanding this truth removes all fears.

In some cultures, people are bred on the pattern that one’s life ends at death. This pattern leads to desperate inadequate cognition, as if there is no further time to seek happiness. Once a person understands that death, like birth, is merely a passage, and sees the continuity of being, the fear of losing one’s identity disappears along with fears of sin and hell.

This is why religions that accept the continuance of life after death, as Hinduism and Buddhism do; breed a culture of tolerance amongst their followers. There is no rush to live and extract the maximum juice out of one’s life in a single birth. They propound that we all come from a common energy source and we go back to this source, and the cycle continues. Those who understand this spiritual truth teach completion, inclusion and compassion, and they have no desire to convert others to their beliefs.

It is easy to misinterpret these verses and propose that if there is no one really killing or being killed, then what stops us from mindless killing? Listen. That is not what Kṛṣṇa intends. One who truly understands that death is not the end of the path, but only a milestone in the journey, is not perturbed by death when it happens naturally or when it is caused for a purpose.

Here Kṛṣṇa reveals to him a more subtle level of truth that he hasn’t yet grasped. Arjuna shies away from killing, not because of his conviction of ahimsā, non-violence, but because of his root thought pattern that he identifies with the people he has to destroy. His hesitation is from his delusory incompletions, ignorance, attachment and fantasy, not from the wisdom of non-violent compassion.

Kṛṣṇa’s message to Arjuna is as it would be to someone who has to uphold dharma at all costs. However, it would not be a blind acceptance of orders, it would not be a powerless action driven by fear and greed. It would not be killing for gain and or killing out of fear that one would be killed. It would be an ultimate powerful action from the space of completion; born out of the knowledge that such destruction is needed for universal good and that such destruction would lead to creation.

You may ask, ‘If nothing is destroyed and nothing can be destroyed, is there no sin in killing at all? So Kṛṣṇa is indifferent to mass violence? No, He is not. For one thing, Kṛṣṇa speaks as an enlightened Master from an existentialist perspective and declares that, even when the body perishes, the spirit lives on, and therefore, there is no death.

Violence and killing are not merely physical acts. They are psychological compulsions acted out of incompletion in the physical realm. The ruler of a country who orders warfare against others is the violent one, even if he hides behind his throne. Violence of the mind carries on as the vāsana or desires; the essence of the spirit, that incarnates from birth to birth. That is the horror that does not end with death. The spirit is violated, degraded, and degenerated by this attitude of violence.

A violent man is always a coward, an inauthentic person who does not have the courage to face the truth. He does not have the sensitivity to treat others as he expects to be treated. He goes out-of-integrity, losing his power of words, isolating himself in a cocoon of lies, using the excuse of defending himself, and commits violence against others.

When we become aware and conscious that the person next to us is actually an expression of the energy of God, how can we possibly respond with violence? It has nothing to do with whether someone is family, part of our culture, religion or nation; or part of our history, habits or beliefs. The other person may oppose all that we believe in. Yet he is as much a part of this Universe as we are.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says, ‘O Pārtha, how can that man slay or cause others to be slain, who knows him to be indestructible, eternal, unborn, unchangeable?’

ya enaṁ vetti hantāraṁ yaś cainaṁ manyate hatam I ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyaṁ hanti na hanyate II 2.19

How can we? How can violence develop in us when we recognize ourselves to be God, which automatically enables us to be aware that every other living being, animate and inanimate too is God’s image?

If this message of Kṛṣṇa is truly understood, there can be no violence in this world, no self-hatred and no killing at all. You will not even kill an insect. You will not kill even in self-defense because once you are in completion, your space of completion is transmitted to the other being and that being will not even attack you.

Understand what Kṛṣṇa says and you will never have fear, either for yourself or for others. You are imperishable, you are complete; everyone around you is imperishable, complete. Shed your fear and violence and be complete. Let enriching others; let love for others fill your being.

Please listen from the space of listening!

One of the important secrets I want to share with you.

Any root pattern you carry can be destroyed if you just have love for people. Decide to go on enriching everyone who is happening in your life. When you enrich others, be very clear, you are constantly getting enriched. Decide life is for others. Life is for enriching. Enriching is life!

I tell you from my own experience, when I decided any wealth that comes around me is for others, the Cosmos showered me with wealth more than what I needed even for doing the work I am doing. In the same way, my knowledge is for others. I am not going to keep anything secret to me. Because I decided that whatever knowledge I have is for others, Cosmos is going on showering!

Listen to the definition of Enriching. Enriching is the power that unlocks the power of Living, ātma śakti in you.

Enriching is you taking the responsibility with integrity and authenticity that you are continuously committed to enriching, which is expanding yourself and life in and around you.

Listen! The purpose for which you are born is enriching yourself and others. When you operate out of this understanding, you are most alive, at your peak and living enlightenment!

When Ādī Śaṅkara decided to bless a poor lady, immediately the golden amalaki (gooseberry) showered. If it happens in your life, you will have a bag to collect everything and you will tell the lady, ‘You gave one amalaki. You take one amalaki!’ The old lady gave only one amalaki to Śankara. That is why Cosmos doesn’t shower when you ask.

Just decide that life is for others! All the best things will be showered on you. You will get back to the space you were in when you were born— the purest space of life, the imperishable space! This is the jumpstart technique for enlightenment. Decide from this moment, ‘Life is for Others! Life is for Enriching!’ All your insecurity, fear, anger, greed, all your root patterns will become rootless patterns. Kṛṣṇa is giving this jump-start technique of enlightenment to Arjuna so that he enriches himself and others and fights to destroy the very root of his root pattern of fear and violence .

Do not Fear Death, You Are Imperishable

Kṛṣṇa continues with Sāṅkhya, the knowledge of completion:

Just as man casts off his worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, the Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters newer ones, anyāni saṁyāti navāni dehī (2.22).Weapons do not cleave the Self, fire does not burn It, water does not moisten It, and wind does not dry It. The Self can neither be broken, nor burnt, nor dissolved, nor dried up. It is eternal, all pervading, stable, immovable and ancient.

nainaṁ chindanti saśtrāṇi nainaṁ dahāti pāvakaḥ I na cainaṁ kledayanty āpo na śoṣayati mārutaḥ II 2.23

These verses are amongst the most quoted verses of Bhagavad Gītā. Here, in very few words, Kṛṣṇa expounds upon the entire truth of life and death, mind, body and spirit. He clarifies why we should accept death gladly, as a matter of fact and course, instead of grieving over it. He says this so simply that even an innocent child can understand this truth.

Do we grieve over a dirty shirt that we have cast away when we know we will have a new one? Do we say, ‘Oh, I am so attached to this shirt. I cannot let it go. Let me keep wearing it. I shall be heartbroken if I have to take off this shirt?’ If only we understand that a body needs to be changed when it grows old, in just the same way as the shirt does when it is dirty, there would be no grief, no attachment.

Kṛṣṇa goes on to explain further what that unchanging continuity is. What is the nature of that spirit? How is it that it is everlasting?

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘O Arjuna, the Soul is not destroyed at all. No astra, no brahmāstra, no nuclear weapon can destroy the energy within the body. Fire cannot burn It, water cannot wet It, and air cannot dry It. It is not made of the elements and cannot be destroyed by the elements. It is the energy behind the elements that creates the elements. How can It then die?’

‘It cannot be disintegrated in any manner, by breaking, dissolving, burning or drying, acchedyo ’yam adāhyo ’yam akledyo ’soṣya eva ca. It is eternal. It transcends all the elemental powers. It pervades the Universe, nityaḥ sarva gataḥ sthānuṛ (2.24). It has been there always, sanātanaḥ. Therefore, It never can be destroyed.’

An understanding of the truth that Kṛṣṇa unveils here is the key to immortality. It is the key to liberation from the bondage of life and death. It is the doorway to enlightenment.

‘Do not fear death, nānuśocitum arhasi (2.25).’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘neither yours nor that of others. It is just a passage. It is the disappearance of this material body. However, you are beyond this material body. Even if the body perishes, you live on, so you do not have to worry or fear.’

What survives death is the sacred spirit in you that can never be destroyed. This spirit is not matter; it is pure energy. How can you destroy energy? Science states that energy can only appear in another form; it cannot be destroyed. As I said before, it is the energy behind the elements; it is that source which creates the elements. It is the energy that has always been and will be, never created, never destroyed. It is unchanging, eternal and all pervading. The experience of every enlightened being verifies the truth that Kṛṣṇa is uttering.

‘When you are that spirit, that energy,’ asks Kṛṣṇa, ‘what is there to grieve about? When you are the Divine yourself, what can you fear? What more can you ask for?’

Listen. At the heart of all torture and killing is fear and greed. When we sincerely contemplate on these teachings, we complete with our fear and greed patterns, and we live peacefully in completion. From this space of completion, comes enriching. Enriching brings the space of Enlightenment in you. The whole cosmos will simply be pouring its energy into you, through you, because you are sharing it with the whole Cosmos!

It is when we are driven by our root patterns that we get fixed in obsessive beliefs and become intolerant of other beliefs, that we become afraid to lose our identity. That insecurity and fear of loss of identity is greater than the fear of death. So we respond violently. To avoid being killed, we kill.

Once we understand what Kṛṣṇa says, that death is like changing a worn-out garment, our fears will disappear. Why do we need that garment at all? We will feel freer, fully liberated when we do not have that garment. Going beyond the garment is going beyond the pattern of bodymind. It is going beyond the root of the root pattern, the cycle of life and death, saṁsāra. It is going to the ultimate liberation, in this life itself. It is the ultimate relaxation.

2.26 O Mahābāho (mighty-armed), even if you should think of the Soul as being constantly born and constantly dying, Even then, you should not lament.

2.27 Indeed, death is certain for the born and birth is certain for the dead. Therefore, you should not grieve over the inevitable.

2.28 O Bhārata, all beings are unmanifest in their beginning, seemingly manifest in their middle, and unmanifest again in their end. So, what need then for grieving?

2.29 One sees It as a wonder, another speaks of It as a wonder, another hears of It as a wonder. Yet, having heard, none understands It at all!

2.30 O Bhārata, This that dwells in the body of everyone can never be slain; Therefore, do not grieve for any living being.

When you understand what Kṛṣṇa is saying in these verses you get over any fear of death. In fact you will celebrate death.

Sometime ago, when I was delivering a discourse in India, news arrived that my father had died. I continued with the discourse. Later that night, many of our disciples traveled with me to Tiruvannamalai where the body lay. If you see the videos of this event, you will find that my mother never once cried. She is a very traditional person, brought up in a rural environment that sets great importance on social behavior. When one’s husband dies one is naturally heartbroken; especially as in the case of my mother and father, who were very close to each other. His departure would have been a great loss to her. She understood the meaning of these verses of Kṛṣṇa without my ever having to explain them to her.

When I told her my father, her husband, is now in the energy form that is eternal, she trusted my words implicitly and joined me in celebrating his release. We are not talking about philosophers and saints here. We are talking about ordinary people whose lifestyle was all about fear of death and grief at death. They understood very easily what Kṛṣṇa is saying. They understood that the spirit lives on after the body perishes and death is indeed an event to celebrate and not to grieve. It is only the scholars who have a mere intellectual understanding of what Gītā says with no trust in Kṛṣṇa, and still suffer from the fear of death. Kṛṣṇa’s words are not about logic; they are about trust in the Master.

Death is inevitable for the born, jātasya hi dhruvo mṛtyur; and birth is certain for the dead, dhruvaṁ janma mṛtasya ca. Whether the spirit lives on after the body perishes and locates itself in another body may be a debatable point to some. Kṛṣṇa says that this is not a reason to lament death, na tvaṁ śocitum arhasi (2.27). In either case, death can be a passage that one can look forward to. We all know death is inevitable. Yet for many It is a wonder.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘One sees It as a wonder—āścarya-vat paśyati, another speaks of It as a wonder—āścarya-vad vadati, another hears of It as a wonder. Yet, having heard, none understands It at all—śrutvāpy enaṁ veda na caiva kaścit (2.29)!

Listen. Bringing the dead back to life is not a wonder or miracle. The real wonder and mystery though, is the transformation of individuals instilling in them the truth of completion to live integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching, and causing these four powers of words, thinking, feeling and living as reality. This indeed is the miracle that only a true Master can perform.

I tell you, mystery school is nothing but the Master’s inner space with his vast responsibility—whoever comes inside, in whatever form is processed, transformed and released! Integrity, authenticity, responsibility, enriching—these are the real wonders of transformation. Many of us do believe that life is a wonder; truly so. Life is wondrous! We do not understand how life is created. We may have a biological explanation as to how a new life is created.

Even today there is no absolute proof as to how the Universe was created. All one has are theories such as Big Bang etc. What was there before the Big Bang? No one knows, how the first life form originated. Again, there are only theories. From time immemorial what happens after life, or more correctly, after death has been the human quest. The cycle of life and death is a mystery and a wonder. While Quantum Physics and Molecular Biology are making rapid advances in this area, yet there is no ‘scientific’ proof, as the logical mind would demand.

Those who are authentic enough to accept and be complete with the truth of the eternal nature of the spirit are the fortunate, the blessed. Those who fight and grieve are the wretched, the miserable, the incomplete. You cannot fight life or death. They are both beyond you, out of your control. You can marvel at them and be happy and joyous. Or you can keep questioning and doubting them, and be miserable. This is the choice and free will you have.

The illustrious King Yayāti lived for hundreds of years.

Bhāgavatam, the great Hindu epic, says that when Yama, the god of death, came to Yayāti at his appointed time of death, Yayāti begged to be allowed to live on. Due to his deep incompletions with life, he said he had not lived life enough and he needed more time. Yama relented and said that if one of his sons would give Yayāti the rest of his life, then he could live that long. Using the life span of his son, Yayāti lived many more years but with more and more incompletions.

Finally the realization dawned on him that no matter how long he lived, his incomplete desires would never cease and that his completion would never happen through material enjoyment. Yayāti completed with his root pattern and gave himself up to Yama once he realized this truth.

It is not death that frightens us. It is leaving our incomplete desires and unlived life that frightens us. The problem is that we do not know how to live a fulfilled life in the space of completion. All our desires are partially fulfilled or incomplete because, before they are fulfilled, we move on to other desires. The hangover of that past incomplete desire continues to chase us as a pattern in the present. The simple fact is that we do not know how to be complete, joyful.

Please listen. Every thought, every desire you have is a commitment you have given to yourself. Every thought you complete is a word you have given to you. You have to honor it. You cannot entertain any thought of fear or greed, doubt or denial because you are literally sitting under a kalpataṛu, a wish-fulfilling tree, all the time!

There is a beautiful story.

Once a traveler was resting under a tree in a forest, without knowing that the tree was a Kalpataṛu.

Suddenly he had a desire, ‘If somebody brings me some food now, how nice it will be! I am so hungry.’

Immediately the food appeared before him! The man was overjoyed and happily ate the food.

Then he thought, ‘If somebody gives me a cot, it will be so nice. I could lie down and sleep peacefully.’ Immediately a cot with a soft bed appeared!

The man lay down happily on the cot to rest.

Suddenly he had the thought, ‘Oh, God! Whatever I am thinking is happening! But it is getting dark now. What if a tiger suddenly appears and attacks me? What will happen?’

You know the rest of the story!

Understand, it was not only that man who was sitting under a Kalpataṛu tree, all of us are always under the Kalpataṛu, the wishfulfilling tree. Every thought we give to ourselves will be honored if we don’t complete with it. Now I know, everyone has a fear—Oh God! I have had so many negative thoughts. What to do?

Listen: there is nobody alive who has not entertained the thought of suicide at least once! All of us have fear. What do we do if all the words which we gave to ourselves now start getting fulfilled? You don’t have to worry; you just have to complete them. Sit and declare to yourself consciously that you are not going to honor all the negative words you gave to yourself, and you are dropping them, completing them.

So listen. You cannot entertain any desire in you leaving it incomplete. It will continue to chase you as the tiger and will not let you be complete with anything you do and experience. Only when you complete, integrity, the power of words starts expressing through you.

Start creating the right inner software, the right inner space, by bringing integrity as the principle of life. Integrity means not just fulfilling, but honoring the words you give to others. The first step to integrity is completing with all the negative words you created within you about you and life, and completing all of them.

Listen. Completion means feeling empowered, feeling powerful, without any hangover, without feeling powerless, during and after every situation in your life! If you are powerful, you won’t be violent. You will not be in guilt, fear or carry incomplete desires.

Kṛṣṇa reveals that to be truly complete, joyful, to be eternally blissful, is to cognize the truth that you are indestructible, that your spirit lives on, and that life and death are but a mere passage. When you cognize this truth and start living it with integrity and authenticity, you will be living death. If not, you will be dead living. I have seen people who are dead living and I have seen people who lived death.

Death is not an end; it is a passage of sorts. The truth is that the spirit is not satisfied with mere material pleasures. However much you please your senses, you cannot achieve satisfaction, you cannot achieve completion. The more you enjoy through your senses, the more the need for enjoyment. It never stops. Discontentment with material pleasures alone is hardwired into the human psyche.

Spirituality is the total understanding and cognition of completion with life—materially, physically, emotionally, relationally and in all senses without any incompletion and responding to life with the four tattvas, spiritual principles of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching. These tattvas arise out of the space of completion.

Completion makes you integrated; completion makes you authentic; completion makes you responsible; completion makes you enrich yourself and others. This completion arises out of our ability to be complete with the present moment. The present moment is the only moment when we are truly alive, awake.

Whether one believes in God or not, and accepts the inner divinity within oneself or not, is irrelevant to how one understands life after death. If, instead of believing in God, we choose to believe in science, we still need to accept that there are no answers to what we were before we were born and what we will be once we are dead. It is still unmanifest at both ends; it is still a mystery before and after, with no answers.

This understanding can only come with the understanding that we live on in spirit.

Kṛṣṇa declares to Arjuna, ‘O Bhārata, whatever is permanent and real was unmanifest before it became manifest in the middle—avyaktādīnī bhūtani vyakta-madhyāni bharāta and again it will become unmanifest— avyakta-nidhanāny eva. Therefore, what is the need to lament, tatra kā paridevanā (2.28).’

Everything is in a state of becoming something else. At every moment we die and are reborn; millions of cells in our body-mind system die every day and are reborn. Yet, through all this change there is continuity. There is a continuity that we cannot see, touch or feel. What we see as manifested, as this body and mind, hides from us the process of constant change that happens within us, as well as the continuous thread that holds the whole process together.

2.31 You should look at your own responsibility [svadharma} as a kṣatriya. There is nothing higher for a kṣatriya than a righteous war. You ought not to hestitate.

2.32 O Pārtha, happy indeed are the kṣatriya who are called to fight in such a battle without seeking; This opens for them the door to heaven.

2.33 If you will not fight this righteous war, then you will incur the sin of having abandoned your own responsibility [svadharma], and you will lose your reputation.

2.34 People, too, will remember your everlasting dishonor, and to one who has been honored, dishonor is worse than death.

2.35 The great generals will think that you have withdrawn from the battle because you are a coward. You will be looked down upon by those who had thought much of you and your heroism in the past.

2.36 Many unspeakable words would be spoken by your enemies reviling your power. Can there be anything more painful than this?

2.37 Slain, you will achieve heaven; victorious, you will enjoy the earth. Therefore, O Kaunteya (son of Kuntī), stand up determined to fight.

2.38 Pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat—treat them all the same. Do battle for the sake of battle. You shall incur no sin.

Kṛṣṇa works on Arjuna at two levels. At one level He talks to Arjuna at the super conscious plane educating him on what the ultimate Truth is.

He talks to Arjuna about how the undying and indestructible spirit lives on. Here, Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna’s fears about killing his svajanam, his relatives, elders and teaches him that what he considers to be the end of life for these people is just one step in their journey.

Kṛṣṇa then descends to the practical level at which Arjuna exists and begins addressing his svadharma, Arjuna’s own dharma, the natural path of his responsibility. Kṛṣṇa explains to Arjuna why, from a societal point of view, he should not run away from the battlefield, but instead, stay on and fight as behaves a warrior. Kṛṣṇa here addresses Arjuna as kṣatriya, the warrior.

In each society there are groups of people who are the designated protectors of that society. They are the warriors, the soldiers, who defend their country and countrymen. In the same manner, there are others who are designated as clerics and priests, as teachers, as businessmen and as workers.

When Kṛṣṇa refers to Arjuna as a kṣatriya, he is referring to the entire personality of Arjuna, the great warrior, which has been decided only partly by birth and mostly by training based on his aptitude. Arjuna is the quintessential warrior who knows no fear, and yet is now disturbed by issues of whether he is doing right or wrong by fighting against his kinsmen.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Fight! You are a kṣatriya. By fighting as your own responsibility demands, svadharmam api cāvekṣya (2.31), you earn merits and go to heaven. If you run away from this war, you commit a sin for being out-of-integrity with your responsibility, hitvā pāpam avāpsyasi (2.33). You will also be termed a coward and people who know you will laugh at you, akīrtiṁ cāpi bhūtani kathayiṣyanti te ‘vyayām (2.3). You will be dishonored, and for a kṣatriya, dishonor is far worse than death, sambhāvitasya cākīrtir maraṇād atiricyate (2.34).

‘Do not worry about victory or defeat. If you are defeated and slain you will ascend to heaven. If you are victorious, you will enjoy material benefits in this world itself. Therefore, O Kaunteya, fight as it is your responsibility as a kṣatriya.’

hato vā prāpsyasi svargaṁ jitvā vā bhokṣyase mahīm I tasmād uttiṣṭha kaunteya yuddhāya kṛta-niścayaḥ II 2.37

Kṛṣṇa says to treat pain and pleasure, gain and loss, victory and defeat all the same. He says to fight without worrying about the outcome. To fight is your responsibility. You shall incur no sin.

sukha-dukḥe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau I tato yuddhāya yujyasya naivaṁ pāpam avāpsyasi II 2.38

When the Paramātma—supreme Soul says this, it means that Arjuna does not have to worry about right and wrong, about sin or merit. Isn’t fighting, isn’t killing people a sin, you may ask. Then why is it that Kṛṣṇa encourages Arjuna, not merely encourages, but actually forces Arjuna to fight and kill? What is the operative logic here, you may ask.

There is no logic. Kṛṣṇa’s exhortation is beyond human rationale. It is not what you do that matters; it is who you are being that matters. It is your space that matters. Whether you are being complete or incomplete matters. An Enlightened Master can do no wrong even if he kills, because when he kills, it would be with completion, not with compulsion for personal benefit. On the other hand, any average person with incompletions, even while doing an act of kindness, he may be doing something wrong.

Kṛṣṇa is not worried about what you do, He is concerned only about who you are being. If your actions are from completion, if they are innocent of motives, whatever you do is right. If what you do is motivated by patterns of fear and greed, pain and pleasure, victory and defeat, you can do nothing right. Whatever you do for gain is sinful. Understand, if the gap between who you are and who you want to be is without responsibility, it is greed. If it is with responsibility, it is possibility! When there is no responsibility-bridge, it is greed. When you are building the responsibility-bridge to achieve what you want to be, then it becomes a possibility; it is no more greed!

I tell you, Kṛṣṇa is enriching Arjuna with the bridge of responsibility to expand Arjuna’s shrinking identity as a kṣatriya. Even Śrī Rāma had to build the bridge to reach Sītā! When you add responsibility to greed, the gap suddenly reduces. The gap reduces drastically! Responsibility infused into thinking removes the agitation and disconnection with you.

We always feel that responsibility is a burden. NO! It is a power!

Responsibility directly leads you to leadership consciousness. As long as you feel responsible only for your family, you remain as the head of your family. When you feel responsible for the community, you become a leader of the community. As your feeling of responsibility expands, your leadership quality also expands.

The decision to feel responsible for the whole Cosmos is Enlightenment! Feeling responsible for the Whole and declaring to live by your feeling is responsible declaration, known in Hindu spiritual practice as nididhyāsana.

Responsible declaration unlocks the power of feeling, prema śakti in you. But the moment you hear that you are responsible for everything happening around you, you think, ‘If I feel responsible for all the garbage on the streets, I will be stuck cleaning it up the whole day! I will not be able to do anything else!’

Please listen!

I am not saying that if you feel responsible for the streets, you will need to clean them yourself. I am also not saying that you will NOT clean them yourself. Anything may happen, but don’t be afraid to dive into the feeling of responsibility just because of your imaginary complications. Don’t stop yourself from feeling it at all.

Understand the science of feeling. You can feel anything as joy or anything as pain—it is your freedom! Even the greatest achievement can bring pain to you, and even the worst experience can be a joyful learning. You have the ability to decide how you want to feel!

Listen: whenever you feel empowered, you are joyful. Whenever you feel powerless, you experience suffering. All your suffering pain, anger, guilt, fear, jealousy, frustration is nothing but powerlessness expressing in different ways! When you feel responsible for everything that happens in your life, you will feel that everything is joyful—because nothing can make you powerless. So, empower yourself with responsibility and unlock the power of feeling.

By unlocking the power of feeling, you will always act from a space of power and completion and start focusing on the solution, not the problem; without worrying about its outcome. As Kṛṣṇa says, you will begin holding success and failure, pain and pleasure the same and just fulfill your responsible declaration. With responsibility, your inner space expands and opens up new possibilities and you gain higher control of your life. Ultimately, you raise yourself to the next level of success and evolve into a new being.

Please listen. When you take responsibility to fulfill what others expect from you, the whole Cosmos expresses through you! You will have extraordinary powers, because it is directly seva, enriching others. Whenever you enrich others with a feeling of responsibility, without having any other motive, the Cosmos celebrates your Existence. It just celebrates your Existence!

What happens when the fear of loss of reputation and loss of identity disappears? Will your greed still last? Fear and greed are strong motivators because we are not sure about ourselves; we are caught in self-doubting pattern. We do not know who we are and we do not take responsibility for who we want to be. Here Kṛṣṇa is breaking that mould. Act without fear and greed, He says. Do not worry about consequences. Do not doubt yourself and your actions. This is against all societal and religious conditioning.

Kṛṣṇa, as the transcendental Parabrahman, is not concerned about the practical and societal consequences of Arjuna walking out of the battlefield. He is only concerned about what that would do to Arjuna’s inner self. He wants Arjuna to reclaim his inner space, which is occupied by his self-doubt. If Arjuna had truly been steeped in ahiṁsa, non-violence, Kṛṣṇa would have never attempted to persuade Arjuna into violence. Arjuna however, was trying to avoid fighting, not because of any moral and conscientious objection, but out of his root thought pattern of emotional attachment to his kinsmen and others arising out of his own identification with them.

In these verses, Kṛṣṇa is trying to bring Arjuna out of his root pattern, his dilemma, which has obscured his normally clear vision. Kṛṣṇa is trying to get Arjuna to transcend his conditioned actions based on fear and greed relating to the killing of his kinsmen, his svajanam. He is getting him to act out of completion, out of his svadharmam, without worrying about the outcome.

2.39 Thus far, what has been taught to you concerns the wisdom of Sāṅkhya. Now, listen to the wisdom of yoga [buddiyoga]. Having known this, O Pārtha, you shall cast off the bonds of action.

2.40 There is no wasted effort or dangerous effect in this path of yoga. Even a little knowledge of this, even a little practice of this dharma, protects and releases one from very great fear.

2.41 O Joy of Kuru, on this path (of yoga), the intelligence is resolute with a single-pointed determination. The thoughts of the irresolute are many, branched and endless.

2.42, 43 Men of little knowledge, who are very much attached to eulogizing the flowery words of the Vedas, O Pārtha, argue that, ‘there is nothing else’; these advocates of Vedas (vādīna) look upon and recommend various fruitful actions for elevation to heavenly planets, resulting in high birth, power, and so forth. Thus being desirous of sense gratification and opulent life, they say that there is nothing more than this to living.

2.44 Those whose minds are attached to sense pleasures and lordship, who are diverted by such teachings, for them, the determination for steady meditation and samādhi, fixed intelligence does not happen.

2.45 O Arjuna! Be you above the three guṇas (attributes) that the Vedas deal in: free yourself from the pairs-of-opposites and be always in satva (goodness), free from all thoughts of acquisition (yoga) or preservation (kṣema), and be established in the Self.

2.46 The Brāhmaṇa (sage), who has known the Self, has little use for the vedic scriptures, as these are like a pool of water in a place that is already in flood, overflowing with a great water reservoir.

Kṛṣṇa begins His teachings of karma yoga to Arjuna in these verses. These verses should be read carefully by those who believe solely in scriptural authority, based on their superficial understanding of what has been said.

Kṛṣṇa unequivocally says here, ‘Forget the Vedas.’

He says, ‘All the knowledge contained in the Vedas is of as much use as water in a flood to one who has realized himself. The Vedas are limiting; they concern the three attributes, satva, rajas and tamas, the attributes of calmness, aggressive action and lazy inaction. The time has come now to move beyond these attributes; at least move from rajas into the state of satva, calmness.’

‘Do not quote to Me what the scriptures say,’ Kṛṣṇa says. He continues, ‘Do not tell me about what you should do and should not do through rituals and practices that will please the deities and ancestors so that you will benefit materially in this life, and spiritually in some after-life. All this is for people with limited understanding of their own Self, who have not experienced the Truth, who still hanker for sensual pleasures and name and fame.’

‘Move beyond them to the single-pointed determination of yoga that I shall teach you,’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘and be established in a state where you are no longer concerned about creation, preservation and destruction. You will be beyond these and reach the state of Parabrahman.’ Only the Master of the Universe, can say such things and get away with it! Kṛṣṇa’s authority as He speaks these words is compelling. He is casting away the divinely transmitted scriptures, the Vedas, to instill truth in the inner space of Arjuna. It is the truth as spoken by the Divine who Himself has all the knowledge contained in the Vedas.

The Vedas, the collection of knowledge as directly experienced by the great sages, the Ṛṣis, was conveyed for generations by word of mouth and was referred to as Śruti meaning, ‘that which was heard internally, not as an external expression.’ The moment an experience is expressed, it is no longer the truth of that experience.

All the great scriptures, Vedas, Upaniṣads and Gītā, exist at different levels of understanding, seven levels, to be precise, depending on the energy level that one dwells in. At the highest level one understands that all that there is, is INFINITE, each one infinitely powerful. There is no experiencer, experienced or experience as separate entities at the highest energy level; ALL is INFINITE.

Kṛṣṇa refers to that truth here in these verses, the truth of the highest energy. ‘Do not be carried away by the apparent ritualistic approach of the Vedas as propounded by half learned scholars,’ the Master says, ‘go beyond; go beyond duality, nirdvando. All these seem to bring joy but are transient; that joy is the brief intermission between periods of sorrow. Go beyond the three attributes, nistrai-guṇyo bhavārjuna and seek the firm truth of the Infinite, the Union, that is Yoga,’ He says to Arjuna.

‘There is something beyond the superficial understanding,’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘that will take you beyond the three human attributes of satva (calmness), rajas (active action) and tamas (passive inaction) and into liberation arising out of true understanding. At that stage you will be beyond creation, preservation and destruction, as these would have no meaning in the understanding of the permanence of the Ultimate energy—nirdvando nitya-sattva-stho niryoga-kṣema ātmavān (2.45).’

Kṛṣṇa finally says, ‘Once you understand and realize Brahman, all the knowledge of the Vedas that you quote so passionately, will be of as much relevance to you as a lake in the midst of an ocean.’

Kṛṣṇa is leading Arjuna step by step as if teaching a baby to walk. One by one the Master demolishes Arjuna’s conflicting patterns, arguments and fears, dispelling his dilemma. These first baby steps address Arjuna’s intellect, for that’s all Arjuna has been using till now. Kṛṣṇa shows Arjuna how meaningless his intellectual knowledge is. It is all borrowed, with no experiential backing. He now leads him into experiential knowledge.

2.47 You have a right only to work, but never to the fruits (outcome) of action. Never let the fruit of action be your motive; and never let your attachment be to inaction.

2.48 O Dhanañjaya! Do your actions dropping all attachment to the outcome, being centered and complete in Yoga. Be balanced in success and failure. Such evenness of mind is Yoga.

The entire teaching of Bhagavad Gītā can be summarized in the above two verses. The sheer brilliance of the wisdom of the Universal Master is reflected in these verses. Whenever I get a chance I refer to these verses to explain how one should lead one’s life.

Kṛṣṇa says many, many things in these few words. He says, ‘You have the right and responsibility to work. You have no responsibility or right to the results of that work. Do not focus on the result and make it either a pattern of greed to chase or fear to stay away from. Do what you have to do with a centered mind, a complete inner space without worrying about whether you will succeed or fail.’

karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana I mā karmaphala hetur bhur mā te saṅgo’stv akarmaṇi II 2.47

Nothing more can be said or ever needs to be said about why and how one should perform.

Many people wrongly communicate and misunderstand these verses. There are people who stay away from work that they fear may end in adverse negative results. As long as the results can be positive either to themselves or others, they will carry out and complete what they are assigned sincerely. But when they think that something bad may happen, that they may fail, they will stop doing whatever they are doing.

One of the biggest problems human beings have is this—you love to be successful, but you deeply believe that you are a failure. This is one of the biggest paradoxes. This shows the lack of integrity in your thinking. Understand, some of your actions may be a failure, some of your decisions or dimensions may be a failure, but YOU are never failure, because you are still breathing!

There are others who feel that doing nothing and disengaging from all action or akarma is the best solution, since all actions result in reactions and they accumulate karma. Of course, almost all of us go on blindly doing whatever we are told to do when we see money or material rewards in front of us.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Stop! Who do you think you are? You are here to do My work. You have no right to take the results that are Mine.’

His position is similar to that of a landowner who has sharecroppers working on the land. The sharecroppers have no right to anything but their sustenance wages. They need not worry about whether the land will yield well or not. All that they need to do is honor the work they have committed to and fulfill their own responsibilities to their peak capability in caring for the land. They just need to be in integrity and authenticity to their work. That’s all! The landlord is the owner and ultimate beneficiary.

Listen. Awareness of what Kṛṣṇa says here is the solution to all our day-to-day problems. Do what you have to do as your right and responsibility, without worrying about the results. Do not act with hopes of a certain reward. Do not stop doing what you need to do because you are afraid of what may lie ahead.

Constantly bring integrity to your thinking, authenticity to your feeling, responsibility to your actions, enriching to your lifestyle! You will see, you will realize an extraordinary space in your life, what Kṛṣṇa calls as being balanced in success and failure and being complete in yoga, siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (2.48).

With integrity, you will literally clean your inner space of the constant unwanted beliefs that you carry, like the strong belief that you will be a failure. This continuous belief holds you from taking responsibility for your actions, makes you worry about the results, and leads you towards failure! When you start thinking with integrity, you will diagnose those self-fulfilling negative prophecies that you constantly give to yourself.

When even a small thing happens, you immediately declare failure. We go on doing this. The first thing to do is to declare your integrity, not your failure. When you start thinking with integrity, you will diagnose your own self-fulfilling negative prophecies.

If you have a strong idea or self-doubt what you are doing is going to be a failure, the moment you think that it is a failure, it is a commitment and word you are giving to you. Do you understand? So if you give that word, you naturally have to fulfill it. Do you want to fulfill that word? No. Then tell yourself that I am not going to fulfill it. It means that whenever you have a thought, ‘I am a failure,’ you should know—this is a commitment I am making to me, and I have to honor it. You may say that it comes on its own. Then complete it! Consciously disown and complete with it.

Listen! Not fulfilling your everyday commitments will only make the weeds hide behind your unconscious patterns. Swami Vivekananda is very clear, yoga can happen in you, only along with responsible actions. Karma yoga does not happen without responsible actions.

Sometimes, you execute actions the whole day, but there is no feeling of responsibility for it! When you have not lost the inspiration to take responsibility, nothing is lost. I tell you, if you take responsibility, even death cannot come near you. Death waits for you to complete your responsibility. So for anybody who wants to live long, just practice authentic responsibility for your actions. Do not worry about the outcome of your work—mā karmaphala hetur bhur (2.47)! Listen. When you take responsibility with authenticity, consciousness starts growing more intensely in the body! Shrinking does not happen. Consciousness growing in your body is enlightenment!

Many of you in corporate life are focused on results. You will do something only if we think that it will be effective. You get caught in the result even before you start. So how do you define what is effective? Ninety percent of the time effectiveness is interpreted as something that benefits our self-interest. Even if it benefits the organization, we do it because our performance will be recognized and we will be rewarded. We learn this lesson early in life. Our elders teach us this rule from infancy. ‘Do this and we shall reward you; do that and we will punish you.’ We are all brought up with the deep root pattern of what is good for us and what is bad for us, what will be successful or what will be a failure. Both success and failure, siddhya-asiddhyoḥ are based on anticipated rewards or punishments.

Sometimes, you take up failure as a self-sympathy creating mechanism. Or you think that you have to work for success, but failure is natural. No! Success is natural; you have to work for failure. Bring integrity; you will understand that success is the natural flow of your life just like Nature.

Society operates on this principle of greed and fear to prevent us from doing actions that it does not want us to do. Religions do the same. Society threatens you with legal punishment here and now; religion threatens you with punishment in the hereafter, in hell. What is hell or heaven? Do they exist? No, they do not.

When you clean your inner space with the power of integrity, you will realize that all the contradictions, conflicts and confusions you carry are responsible for your whole life, for all reactions you attract from others and society. You are responsible for all your actions, the reactions you attract from others and the happenings of life. Integrity will automatically teach you responsibility. You will understand that for everything happening in and around you, you are responsible.

You are not in integrity with yourself, when you say one thing and do another. You do not walk your talk. But, when you do walk your talk and your talk is in integrity and authenticity, then your words will become reality. You will have vāk siddhi—the power to manifest your word as reality! But if the talk itself is lacking integrity, then your walk and your actions will also be out-of-integrity and you lose self-confidence. Ultimately it is all about the truth of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching from your space of completion.

Integrity is the first lesson of spiritual life. Integrity is not just a simple vow, a simple word. Integrity is all about ironing out your thinking, aligning your thinking. If you bring integrity to your inner space, you will realize that even accidents are attracted by you. You are attracting everything in your life, whether it is wealth or poverty, right or wrong. You are responsible for your life.

You need to know a beautiful story about the child devotee, Prahlād’s life.

When Prahlād’s angry father asked Prahlād—‘Is your Narāyaṇa, your God, in this pillar? Is He inside that pillar? Is He in this stone?’

Prahlād was about to raise his small finger and show his father that his God was really there in the pillar. When Prahlād was about to point-out the pillar, Narāyaṇa started running from his heavenly abode in Vaikuṅṭa!

His consort Lakṣmī asked, ‘What happened? Why are you running so fast? What is there to be in such a hurry about?’

Narāyaṇa said, ‘No, you don’t know! Wherever my devotee Prahlād points his finger, I have to enter into that pillar! Wherever he points, I have to occupy that place and emerge from it!’

Listen! When a child is established in integrity, just for his hand movement or the direction he shows, God lands! Listen! The whole world moves as you want when you are established in Integrity.

When you are in completion, with integrity, without internal conflict or contradictions, whatever you project on the cosmos is a project for the cosmos! Simply cosmos does it. When you are integrated, the outer world obeys you just like that. That is the power of integrity! Please listen: nothing is political or accidental on the planet Earth. Everything runs on the natural law of life, dharma of these four principles.

What Kṛṣṇa says here is the law of Nature. Nature just is. Nature just acts as per these four cosmic principles. Nature does not think about end results, successes or failures, rewards or punishments.

People ask me, ‘Swamiji, why is nature so cruel? Why are there natural disasters? Why do young children die?’ The answer is what Kṛṣṇa gives here. Nature goes about its job without any thought about what the end result will be. What happens will happen. It is bound to happen. Nature follows its dharma, its path of righteousness. The problem is that we do not understand the laws of nature; we measure natural actions by our yardstick of logic.

You will then ask me, ‘How do we know what to do? How do we know what is svadharma, our path of righteousness? Do we decide we are a kṣatriya, therefore we should fight and kill and not worry about who dies, or, we decide we are a vaiśya, a businessman, in which case our svadharma is to make money without worrying about how we make money?’ No, Kṛṣṇa is not talking about acting in selfishness; the Universal Master is talking about acting from the space of completion. He says, ‘Be centered and complete in yoga, and drop all attachment to results; do what you have to do.’

yoga-sthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tvaktvā dhanañjaya I siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate II 2.48

What beautiful wisdom!

Yoga is union, union of man and Divine. Yoga is completion with the Divine.

Yoga is your realization of your own Self, your realization that you are divine. It is the state of completion, the state of truth, the state of the present, when all that you do will be in righteous consciousness, dharma. When you perform with this completion, and with no expectations, you will do what is right and just.

Our thoughts are unconnected, illogical and unpredictable. It is only when we link thoughts together that problems start and suffering happens. We remember a few out of hundreds of events and try to create a link between these few. Ninety percent of what we cognize and experience is never recorded by our conscious memory; it just slips into our unconscious. Within the ten percent of what we retain, what stays in our memory is always that which falls outside the pattern. If it is part of a normal pattern we will almost always ignore and forget the event.

So, do not link thoughts and create a shaft of thoughts. Unclutch from your thoughts by bringing integrity and weed out all your negative self-fulfilling patterns, and automatically the mind will drop. This is the way to stay in the present. Some of you misunderstand the word ‘Unclutched’ as ‘not to do anything.’ You think that to drop the mind is to be passive, inactive, doing nothing. No, not at all! You can be doing nothing and yet occupy your mind fully. That is what they mean by saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. When you have nothing to do, what you end up doing is creating fantasies.

Listen! Constantly listening to your own inner space is the beginning of integrity. If your inner space says that there is nothing more to listen, if only silence is there, then that is the end of integrity. You have achieved integrity. As long as you are hearing something from your inner space, it is lack of integrity. Go on listening. Even while you are in action, karma— sitting, driving, talking or walking, listen to you.

Inaction, akarma is not what is advised. Understand: When you experience integrity and your mind drops, when thoughts cease, and your energy level is high, you cannot be inactive. You will act spontaneously out of sheer necessity. Physical and mental idleness are never produced by a no-thought mind or inner space. One must not link idleness with calmness. One with a no-thought mind, one who is complete in yoga, dwells in peace, calmness and harmony—the space of restful awareness, but is always aware and alert to act spontaneously in the way that would best suit each situation in every moment.

With a no-thought mind comes great awareness and energy; idleness or lethargy is far from it. An incomplete, confused, restless and overworked mind is constantly occupied with chatter and fantasies that can result in apathy and idleness.

Integrity is the basic requirement for Unclutching. When you are in a state of an unclutched inner space, you are in completion and you are in the present moment, where regrets of your past and expectations of the future are absent from your mind. Whatever you do in such a state of completion would be the right thing to do. You are not influenced either by fear or greed regarding the outcome. You do what you have to do, naturally.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says that you must act with responsibility in the present moment of completion. He says, ‘Do not get attached to the results of your action, nor get attached to inaction, thinking that it could be an easy way out of this problem.’

2.49 O Dhanañjaya, beyond the action with selfish motive is Yoga (of action) in wisdom [buddhiyoga]. Wretched are those whose motive is the fruit (outcome); Surrender yourself fully to the wisdom of completion.

2.50 Endowed with the wisdom of evenness of mind, move away from both good and evil deeds in this life; Therefore, devote yourself to Yoga. Authenticity in action is Yoga.

2.51 The wise, having abandoned the outcome of their actions and possessed of knowledge of completion, are freed from the cycle of birth and death. They go to the state that is beyond all sorrow.

2.52 When your wisdom takes you beyond the delusion, You shall be indifferent to all what has been heard and what is yet to be heard.

2.53 When you are not confused by what you have heard and your wisdom stands steady and unmoving in the Self, You shall attain Yoga, Self-realization.

Kṛṣṇa emphasizes what He has said before and ends with a punchline. He says, ‘Act without attachment. Do not worry about success or failure in results. Center yourself in wisdom of completion that takes you beyond action and the desire for fruits of action. Once you are centered in wisdom of completion you will act wisely. Once you give up attachment to results, you will be freed from the cycle of birth and death and you will be beyond sorrow.’ In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa begins initiating Arjuna into yoga with the second tattva of authenticity or śraddha. Kṛṣṇa is the greatest strategist of life.

Here, He begins revealing the truth of authenticity, the strategy of life, the strategy that will make Arjuna succeed and expand!

Kṛṣṇa declares, ‘yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam.’ Please understand, I first want you to understand these words: ‘yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam—yoga is authenticity in action.’ Not just ‘perfection in action’ but I am translating it as ‘authenticity in action.’

buddhi yukto jahātīha ubhe sukṛta-duṣkṛte I tasmād yogāya yujyasva yogaḥ karmasu kauśalaṁ II 2.50

Let me define Authenticity.

Authenticity is you being established in the peak of your energy, the peak of your capability, and responding to life from who you perceive yourself to be for you and who you project yourself to be for others, and what others expect you to be for them.

Authenticity in your thinking means raising you to the peak. Raising you, again and again, higher and higher, expanding you more and more.

Listen, the moment I say ‘expanding you more and more, continuously, ’ do you feel, ‘Oh, God! Then it is unending process? I will never be able to rest at all!’ If you cherish this idea in you, then you are death-oriented; you are entertaining death in your heart. The idea you entertain in your life invites different happenings of life. So, don’t blame, if you get any killer diseases in your life, because you invited them. Understand, first thing you need to do is break that pattern.

Kṛṣṇa gives the ultimate winning strategy of life to Arjuna—to stand up with the courage of authenticity in all his actions, yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam. He urges Arjuna to devote himself to yoga, buddhau yogād dhanañjaya buddhau śaraṇaṁ anviccha (2.49)—to bring authenticity in his action, to expand himself to the peak of his energy. Arjuna can complete his root pattern of fear, only when he raises and expands himself fighting as a kṣatriya warrior. Only then Arjuna will be authentic. The state of fear can be born in you only when you are inauthentic.

Listen! Every time inauthenticity is allowed in you, it leaves a powerful fear in you. Arjuna’s inauthenticity in not raising himself to his responsibility and to others’ expectation of him as a warrior, led him to be death-oriented and collapse with fear.

Listen. Life is expansion. Life is expansion. When you feel, ‘Wow, I am going to expand, expand, expand! Authenticity is the best principle,’ then understand, you are entering into akśardhām—eternal life!

Break the pattern of—‘am I never going to rest or what?’ Why do you need rest? Increasing the speed of running is rest. Make it into flying! That is rest. You see, when you drive or run on the road, there is friction. If you want bliss, joy, peace, don’t reduce the speed of life; reduce the friction. Just take off! Your body, mind, inner space, consciousness, whatever you feel about you, go on expanding, expanding, expanding! That is the only way life can continue to ooze in you, overflow in you.

If you say, ‘No, I can expand. Now I do two hours of work, which I will make into four hours; not more than that. Then I will rest.’ No! Make it into twenty-four hours and few more minutes, and penetrate into time. Whenever you need more time to do more work, stop the time, complete the work, and allow time to move. You can do! Listen. Something has to grow in your body—either life or death. Life has no pause button. Either life has to grow in your body or death has to grow in your body. The inauthenticity, which you entertain, is death for you.

Power of authenticity! I tell you, my strategy for life is—everything should only be from authenticity. Authenticity is my strategy plan. Pick up authenticity as your strategy plan in every moment of your life. Whether it is to do with health, creativity, solving relationship problems, creating wealth or achieving inner fulfillment, have authenticity as your strategy plan.

Kṛṣṇa then adds, ‘When you are centered in wisdom of completion you will no longer be deluded by what you hear. When you are no longer deluded by what you have heard, you are liberated.’ Kṛṣṇa’s immediate reference here is to the scriptures, the Vedas. He chides Arjuna and says, ‘Don’t be confused by what you hear, even if it is supposed to be divine knowledge, the Vedas. Remember: If you are really centered in wisdom, you can never be deluded; you will be in completion.’

Vedic scriptures are not dead knowledge that is a burden upon us to abide by. The Vedic scriptures, the śrūti, divine in origin, and the smṛti, rules and regulations laid down later by Manu and other sages, make no such claims. They are the living guidelines that lead us into wisdom and liberation. In fact, Hindu scriptures have both the humility and the power to challenge us to transform ourselves according to the needs of the day, but stipulate that we first experience what is said.

‘So,’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘let the Vedas say what they want, but put what you hear, see, and read to the test of wisdom to go beyond delusion.’ Kṛṣṇa is the Vedas, the source of all knowledge. He himself declares this in Gītā and yet He asks Arjuna to experiment and be guided by his inner wisdom, not by what he merely hears. What courage, what authority! Only one who is so sure about the truth can say, ‘Do not listen to what I say and how I act, but listen to your inner voice of truth born out of your own experience.’

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Don’t be inactive, do what you need to do. Do it with no expectations and no attachment to results. Do it with a centered mind, and in wisdom of your own inner calling, and not because of something you have heard. You will then go beyond all suffering and be liberated.’ These steps are so simple that everyone can practice them; in fact everyone should practice them. Stay fully in the space of completion, and based on the truth of integrity and authenticity, act. You can never go wrong. I promise you that.

When you feel integrity is your responsibility, you are in the zone of practice; you are a seeker. When you understand integrity is your right, you are in the zone of enlightenment! Kṛṣṇa is taking Arjuna on the path of Enlightenment through simple steps initiating him into the tattva of integrity and authenticity.

Listen. With integrity you experience the space of positivity. With authenticity you experience the space of possibility. Only a man who lives authenticity is a liberated one, a yogi, the one devoted to authenticity in action. Only when you surrender yourself to practice integrity in thinking and authenticity in action—yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, you will realize that you are responsible for success and failure, for good or bad, for everything you experience. You drop your attachments and your fear patterns, and experience self-realization— tadā yogam avāpsyasi (2.53).

2.54 O Keśava. What is the description of Sthitaprajña, one who stays fixed in completion and is merged in the restful awareness of truth and wisdom? How does one of steady wisdom speak, how does he sit, how does he walk?

2.55 Śrī Bhagavān says: O Pārtha, a man who casts off completely all desires of the mind and is satisfied in the Self by the Self, He is said to be Sthitaprajña, one of steady wisdom in completion.

2.56 He whose mind is not disturbed by adversity, and who, in prosperity does not go after other pleasures, He who is free from attachment, fear or anger is called a sage of steady wisdom.

2.57 His wisdom is fixed on one who is everywhere without attachment, Meeting with anything good or bad, and who neither rejoices nor hates.

2.58 As the tortoise withdraws its limbs from all sides, when a person withdraws his senses from the sense-objects, His wisdom becomes steady in completion.

2.59 Though for the embodied, the sense enjoyments may be restricted, the taste or desire for sense objects remain; but, such tastes or desires also leave him on seeing, experiencing the Supreme.

Arjuna is now curious and wants to know more. He asks Kṛṣṇa, ‘You are telling me all this, that is wonderful. You tell me that I must perform without expectations and attachment and that I must be complete in wisdom. I would like to live that way and move on the path of wisdom. Pray, tell me what kind of a person is this, the one who always stays in the steady space of completion—sthita prajñasya kā bhāṣā samādhi-sthasya keśava (2.54).

How does he behave, walk and talk? Let me model myself on him.’

For the fifth time Arjuna expresses authentic interest in what Kṛṣṇa is saying. Arjuna has realized that whatever he said earlier had arisen from his confusion, his patterns. Arjuna is intelligent enough to know that he does not know.

When Kṛṣṇa tells him to behave in a manner befitting the code of the warriors, this piece of advice certainly makes good sense to Arjuna. However, what Kṛṣṇa says further confuses Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa says to do what you have to do without being concerned about the outcome. This is a strange idea to Arjuna. He has rarely done anything in his life without thinking about the result of his action.

Arjuna, the greatest of marksmen, is conditioned with the pattern to first define his target and then act. Kṛṣṇa has confused him totally now. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Release your arrow; where it lands is my business.’ At least, this is how Arjuna understands what Kṛṣṇa says. Arjuna has enough trust in Kṛṣṇa not to ignore this instruction from the Divine.

So he asks, ‘Tell me who is it who acts without any interest in the outcome? Who is it who is not concerned about the result, whether it is good or bad, painful or joyful, and how do I identify such a person?’

Kṛṣṇa responds, ‘This man is free from desires and emotions. He has neither greed nor fear. He has no patterns. He is always complete in himself. Pleasures through the senses do not interest him. He has withdrawn his senses from the external or outer world and has integrated them inwards into his inner space, directed them towards that Supreme Truth that is beyond all pleasures, attachments, emotions and sense objects.’ Kṛṣṇa thus describes the Realized Yogi, the Sthitaprajña to Arjuna so that he too may emulate him and realize himself.

‘Nirmohatve niścalatatvaṁ,’ says Ādī Śaṅkarācārya, taking a cue from the Master. It means: Absence of desires leads to a clear and still mind and inner space, steeped in the wisdom of completion. When there are no desires, there are no emotions such as joy, depression, sadness, anger, disappointment, jealousy that normally arise from the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of such desires. When the mind is without fear and anger, without expectations of success and failure, the unattached mind seeks that which is unattached. First the objects drop, then the desire for the objects disappears as truth dawns. This may sound complicated, but is as simple as counting ‘1, 2, 3.’

This Universe is responsible for all of us. We exist not because of ourselves and our actions but in spite of it. The Universe functions on the science of responsibility, upāyanaṁ. Responsibility is the science of life.

Listen. The whole Universe is a holographic structure. For example, if there is a ten-by-ten meter hologram or a picture, on cutting it into several ten-by-ten millimeter ones, the same picture will be there inside it. That is a hologram. It means that whatever is in the macrocosm—the whole Universe, is also there inside your body—the microcosm! If you dissect, dissect, and go into a small atom, the brahmāṅda (macrocosm) will be there in pinḍāṅda (microcosm). Whatever is there in the pinḍāṅ- da is there in the brahmāṅda. The cosmos functions with the principle of a hologram. Responsibility is the DNA, which awakens the cosmic hologram in you. If you want to experience the macrocosm hologram in the microcosm, awaken responsibility.

Listen. The macrocosm and microcosm are just mirroring each other’s possibility. When we feel the responsibility for existence, we become existence and existence feels responsible for us. When we let go of our patterns, when we listen to the Universe and feel responsible, the Universe feels responsible for us and gives us all that we need to live with abundance.

But the problem is that we don’t listen and we don’t take responsibil- ity and destroy our own possibility! We do not stop with our needs but get greedy with our wants as well. There is no way all our wants can be fulfilled without taking away the needs of other beings in this Universe.

Feel responsible! You are the microcosmic hologram of the macrocosmic diagram. Once we choose to live based on responsibility, we know our real present needs and not futuristic wants. We rise into the present moment of completion. Desires based on past and future dissolve. We then realize that we too are the brahmāṅda, Universe and that we can have all that we need as all that belongs to the Universe belongs to us also.

2.60 O Kaunteya (son of Kuntī), the turbulent senses carry away the mind of a wise man, Though he is striving to be in control.

2.61 Having restrained them all, he should sit steadfast, intent on Me. Whose senses are under control, his mind is steady in the present.

2.62 When a man thinks of objects, it gives rise to attachment for them. From attachment, desire arises; from desire, anger is born.

2.63 From anger arises delusion, from delusion, loss of memory, from loss of memory, the loss of discrimination, from loss of discrimination, he perishes.

2.64 The self-controlled man, moving among objects with his senses under control, free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace.

2.65 All pains are destroyed in that peace, for the intellect of the tranquil-minded soon becomes steady.

2.66 A person not in self-awareness cannot be wise or happy or peaceful. How can there be happiness to one without peace?

2.67 He loses his awareness of the present moment when his mind follows the wandering senses, Just as the wind carries away a boat on the waters.

Kṛṣṇa continues to explain to Arjuna how difficult it is to control the senses and what happens when one loses control of the senses.

Kṛṣṇa says that our senses are turbulent, and however much we try to control them, they stay out of control. He says that the only way is to integrate and fix one’s mind on Him once the senses are under control and the mind is steady. The mind cannot be stopped. Thoughts cannot be stopped as long as the body exists. You can bring integrity to your thinking by doing completion with your root patterns. Thus integrating your mind on something that transcends sensory pleasures, it will become quiet by itself. Once the mind discovers the bliss of this completion, it will never want to stray again.

A small story:

A man, intent on spiritual progress, went to a master and begged him to teach him how to control his mind. The master tried to explain that the mind couldn’t be controlled in the way he was seeking, by stopping his thoughts, but he wouldn’t listen. Fed up, the master gave him a bottle of a liquid and told him to drink three drops three times a day.

The man asked, ‘That’s it? It will control my mind?’ The master said, ‘Just one thing, make sure you don’t think of a monkey when you drink the medicine.’

‘Oh, sure, quite simple!’ said the man as he walked out. At the door he turned and asked, ‘By the way, in case I do think of a monkey, what should I do?’

‘Take a shower,’ said the master, ‘and try again.’

As soon as the man went home, he took out the medicine and opened his mouth to drink it. Just then he remembered the master’s warning—and remembered the monkey!

‘Oh, my God!’ he said to himself, ‘Now I have to take a shower. What else to do!’ You can guess the rest of the story. Each time he opened his bottle of medicine, monkeys invaded his mind and all he did was keep taking showers. It got to a point where as soon as he got out of the shower, thoughts of monkeys arose in his mind.

He ran to the master and pleaded, ‘Forget the medicine. Just get rid of the monkeys, please!’

You can never destroy thoughts or suppress them. Suppression does not work on the mind, only completion does. Suppressed emotions solidify as a volcano of root patterns and explode when they get the chance. You can only complete with thoughts by doing self-completion with them, and gradually the mind will settle down. Lack of integrity is nothing but suppressing your thoughts and putting all your problems under the carpet.

Please understand, however much you try to push the incomplete conversations with you under the carpet, they do not die. They run around under the carpet like Tom and Jerry cartoon! In the same way, the incompletions pushed under your inner space, say, ‘No, no, no! Why are you asking too many questions? Somehow I will win. Keep quiet!’ Without completing, if you push your own questions under the carpet, they will not die or keep quiet. Today or tomorrow, you have to face those questions. You have to face that part of you.

When you do completion and settle into the present moment, with no expectations and no attachments, you will find that your inner space becomes quiet and your senses slow down.

Kṛṣṇa says that from attachment springs desire, from desire arises anger, from anger arises delusion, from delusion comes loss of memory, and from loss of memory develops loss of discrimination which then leads to one’s destruction. The only way to stop this, the Lord says, is to control one’s senses, complete with oneself and surrender to Him, the Universal energy, and achieve everlasting peace.

The map has been so clearly laid down by the greatest Master, not because He wants you to follow it, but because in His infinite grace and compassion He is making you aware of what is in store for you if you do. He teaches that if you do not control your senses, you will be destroyed. Go through each of these stages laid down by the Master. The path will be crystal clear. Each one of us develops attachment, liking, hatred and dislike for many things through our experiences. These likes and dislikes stay in our unconscious memory as root thought patterns and even without any conscious awareness on our part, drive us into actions through desires or into inaction through fears. When the desires are fulfilled, there is temporary satisfaction; then the desires grow. When the desires do not get fulfilled we are disappointed, we get angry.

We should be angry with our own selves for having had the desires or for not having worked with authenticity, wholeheartedly at the peak of our capability towards fulfilling the desire, but we actually get angry with other people who we think are responsible for our failures. We do not realize that blaming others will make us feel more and more powerless!

Kṛṣṇa reveals two very important truths here in the last two verses. One is that you can never be peaceful unless you are complete, conscious. The other is that you cannot be complete if you are led by your senses. Therefore, as long as your senses lead you into what you think is a pleasurable journey; you cannot really be happy or peaceful. It is just another trick your mind is playing on you. Your happiness is not real happiness. It is just a gap between two periods of sorrow. What you hear, what you think you hear, what you see, what you think you see, and so on, all these sense inputs are unreliable, incomplete cognitions.

I tell you, with anybody who succeeded, till that success happened, he only failed! But if he had held on to his past record, success should not have happened in his life. This journey never stops all through your life unless you make a serious attempt to complete with it. Your mind, on its own, would never want to stay in the present moment, which is the only moment of truth. Self-completion, svapūrṇatva is the only direct method to reclaim your space of completion. This is your basic right. Reclaim it!

Understand, you can make whatever you can visualize as reality. With integrity and authenticity, visualize yourself in the space of non-falling, moving only from completion to completion, fulfillment to fulfillment. Your past is history. Your past record is the dumping ground of all your regrets and guilt. There is no greater sin that you can commit than carrying past records of these regrets and guilt.

Or your mind dwells in the future, a future that does not exist. You speculate, and dream creating stories and arguments, building a case for your future. If you are questioned, you would say, ‘I need to plan.’ How much of what you plan is based on present reality? There is nothing wrong at all if you are grounded in reality and plan to progress in that reality. That is what I call chronological planning which is necessary if you live in the world. I do it too. For example, it is planning the day ahead, with what time you will wake up, what time you will have the meeting and then return home etc. But most of the time what you do has nothing to do with reality. You either worry about things that you have no control over and plan how to escape such worries, or desire things not in your reach out of sheer greed. Just think with integrity, feel with authenticity and act with responsibility.

Drop the past records. The past track never gives you the confidence, the possibility. Unless you see the possibility, life does not flow in you! Excitement does not happen in you. The past records always bring deep sorrow, because by nature, past records are death. Possibility, by nature, is Life! The past record is neither as bad as you remember, nor worthy of being remembered. Possibility is life. Life is possibility, not past record.

Our senses aid us very ably to see only the past records and project them as worries and desires. They make us believe that all this is real and make us react to situations as if they are real. It is the same way that we get up from a nightmare sweating profusely out of fear. Although just a dream, it makes us sweat. In the same manner, these projections of our mind, even when we are fully awake, appear real to us.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Get away from your senses; escape from their control; ground yourself in the completion of the present. Only then can you be at peace. How can there be happiness for one without peace, aśāntasya kutaḥ sukham? (2.66).’

What is this present moment? What is this completion? When we do the self-completion process, our mind and inner space becomes integrated and authentic and stops moving back and forth between the past and future, it will by itself land in the present moment. The present moment is what we are doing now. If you are reading this book, don’t half read this book and half listen to music; don’t half read this book and half talk with someone. Either be complete and focus completely on what you are reading or don’t read at all.

The next time you do anything, bring completion and be integrated to what you are doing at that moment. If you are brushing your teeth, just focus on how the brush moves and how the paste tastes. Stop thinking about the meetings later at your office or getting your children ready for school, or whatever it is that you need to do a few minutes or hours later.

When you settle into the space of completion, you are out of the clutches of your senses and mind. You will still see and hear, but none of what you see and hear will divert you from what you are integrated to doing. You will be aware of only what you are doing in that present moment. This is what we call meditation. Meditation is nothing but being integrated completely to what you are doing at a particular moment.

When you plan for the unimaginable, when your nervous system is loaded with things that you are not able to even comprehend, the excitement that oozes in your nervous system is bliss! Understand, bliss does not come to lazy bums! Bliss does not happen to people caught in the past records. This is what Kṛṣṇa says will lead you into peace and very soon to being steady—prasanna-cetaso hy āśu buddhiḥ paryasvatiṣṭḥate (2.65). When you are complete, your senses are in your control instead of you being under their control. You become peaceful, you are in bliss.

2.68 O Mahābāho (mighty-armed one), his knowledge is therefore steady whose senses are completely detached from sense objects.

2.69 The self-controlled man is awake in that which is night to all beings. Where all beings are awake, it is night for the sage who sees.

2.70 Just as all waters enter the ocean, which, though always being filled from all sides, remains unmoved; likewise, he, into whom all desires enter themselves, remains unmoved, undisturbed, can alone attain peace; not the one who desires to fulfill desires.

2.71 The man who moves about abandoning all desires, without longing, without the sense of ego—‘I’ and ‘mine’, attains peace.

2.72 O Pārtha, this is the state of Brahman, Brāhmī-sthiti; none is deluded after attaining this. Even at the end of life, one attains Brahmanirvāṇa, oneness with Brahman, when established in this state.

In His concluding words in this chapter, Kṛṣṇa clarifies to Arjuna once again, how to reach liberation, how to become one with Brahman which is one’s true and natural state. We have seen that a person not centered in self-completion cannot be peaceful or happy or wise. A person who is led by his senses cannot be complete. A person who is in control of his senses is firmly in control of his mind and emotions. Only such a person is truly awake.

We all think we are awake; are we really? We live in daydreams even if we are awake. The only occasion when we are truly awake is when we are in the space of completion. A person in such a space of completion is whom Kṛṣṇa calls a ‘Muni,’ a realized being living in the present. Such a person is always awake, having experienced his inner awakening, whether physically awake or asleep.

Kṛṣṇa says that such a person is in sleep when others are awake, yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni sā niśā paśyato muneḥ (2.69). The realized person, although he may appear to be living and actively participating in the activities of the same world that we live in, is in reality, in a state of passive alertness or restful awareness.

This means that his senses are not immersed in worldliness and he is centered and complete in his Self. He is dead and asleep to this world because he has moved beyond his senses. A truly realized person is also awake when others are asleep, yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgrati saṁyamī (2.69). Even in his sleep he is aware, in what is called the state of supta chittam.

A person who is in the space of completion is still as the waters in the bed of the ocean. Though there are waves in the surface, they do not disturb the bed of the ocean. Even when desires assail him, they are mere waves in the periphery of his consciousness, and do not disturb him at all. He has abandoned all attachment to ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ He is without thoughts and desires and when thoughts and desires come to him, they merge into him without disturbing him.

How this is possible? The ‘Muni,’ one who is still, in silence, is one who is in total control of his senses. When the senses are controlled, when the ego is out of action, all thoughts and desires are just witnessed. The ‘Muni’ does not get involved in these thoughts and desires. He does not even try to stop or suppress them, as he knows it is impossible. He just lets them be watching them go past, just like the ocean watches impassively as other waters merge into it.

We are all enlightened because we are all a hologramic part of the reality of the Universe, Brahman. All that we lack is the awareness of the truth of our Enlightenment. What prevents you from realizing that you are enlightened is your root pattern, ego. This ego is not necessarily about any arrogance. It is the perception of who you think you are, your inner-im- age; what you project yourself to be for others, your outer-image; and what others expect you to be for them, others’ image. It is the collection of thoughts, experiences and emotions that go to make up that ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ This identity is that of the body and mind, not of your spirit. Therefore, it perishes with your body and is transient.

A person who is in control of his senses, his mind and thoughts, lives in the present moment, in full awareness of his true nature and is one with Brahman. For such a Muni, the knowledge of Advaita, the space of oneness with Brahman, becomes a living reality. He conquers all the wrong self-identification with his inner and outer identities. Such a person who is self-aware is fully awake even when he is asleep.

People with a strong consciousness of ‘I’ live out of their blocked mūlādhāra cakra, the root energy center. They are at the very beginning of their spiritual evolution. Their main concerns will be about their own survival, and they are caught in lust, anger and greed. The person with a strong attachment to ‘mine,’ the possessions belonging to the ‘I,’ constantly lives in fear of losing these possessions. Such people live out of their blocked svādiṣṭhāna or spleen cakra—the energy center that gets locked due to fear. They live in insecurity of losing possessions, of losing identity, and finally, of death.

Energization of the mūlādhāra and svādiṣṭhāna cakra and moving the energy up through the anāhata or heart cakra to the ājña or thirdeye cakra (energy center between eyebrows) opens us to completion, the reality of looking at others, at Universe as our own self and finally dropping the root pattern—one’s identification with ‘I’ and ‘mine.’

Listen! Completion can make you experience Advaita (nonduality), the ultimate space of Consciousness, immediately. Then, true surrender to the Universe and identification with one’s true nature occurs, and Enlightenment happens. You then become God!

Kṛṣṇa completes His description of the person established in yoga whose profile Arjuna has asked for. Kṛṣṇa concludes by saying that a person steeped in yoga is complete in reality and is one with Brahman—eṣā brāhmī sthitiḥ pārtha. He says that this person is liberated even if he were to reach that state at the end of his life—brahma-nirvānaṁ ṛcchati (2.72).

Kṛṣṇa is in the process of enriching Arjuna what he truly is and how he can realize that truth. Control over the senses, being in the state of restful awareness instead of letting the senses control you, surrendering to the Universe instead of fighting the Universe, dropping one’s mind and identity; staying in the space of completion are the surest ways to realize the truth, the truth that you indeed are God.

I tell my disciples time and again, ‘I am not here to prove my Divinity. I am here to prove your Divinity.’ This is the timeless message of Kṛṣṇa, the message of Bhagavad Gītā.

Arjuna’s confusion is slowly reducing. Actually, it is good to be confused. It is much better to accept that one is confused than to live in the delusion that one knows everything. Arjuna had the courage of authenticity to come out and tell Kṛṣṇa his fears and doubts. This is the first step towards clarity. How long it takes for that clarity to emerge doesn’t matter. One is on the path of completion and that is what matters.

Listen to the Truth.

The science of completion is the essence of Sāṅkhya Yoga. Completion makes you experience the Sāṅkhya of life. In this second chapter of Gītā on Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ or Transcendental Knowledge of Completion, Śrī Kṛṣṇa who is the space of completion Himself, sets Arjuna on the path of completion. May all of you travel that path too!

Let us pray to the ultimate Existence, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to give us all the experience of eternal bliss, Nityānanda. Thank you!

Thus ends the second chapter named Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Knowledge of Completion,’ of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna-saṁvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna.