Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13 - Lesson 6 of 10_English

BEYOND THE BODY AND MIND

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The very understanding about the kṣetra, meaning the material things around us, teaches us how to control them. The minute we understand the kṣetra, the body-mind, we realize we are not the kṣetra! If we are the kṣetra, then how can we understand it? You see, we can read this book because we are not the book. There is a separation between the book and us. In the same way, only when we understand the kṣetra, do we understand that we are not the kṣetra. This understanding that we are not the kṣetra brings with it the understanding that we are the kṣetrajña. When we realize that we are the kṣetrajña, we have transcended the kṣetra.

LIFE IS A DREAM

Actually, there is no such thing as kṣetra. It is a projection of the mind, just like a dream. You see, when we go to bed we know that we are so-and-so. We know our whole identity with solid clarity when we go to sleep. We know that even if we have dreams, they are not real. We will wake up the next day and continue our life.

But the minute we drift into the dream state, we start to think that the dream is real. The more we get into the dream, the more our identity completely changes to suit the role in the dream. What happens in the dream may not be related to what we do in real life. Yet we start to believe it all. If a lion in the dream attacks us, we feel fear and worry and we may even sweat as though it is really happening to us! In the same way, we think this life is real. If I tell you now that the life that you are leading is nothing but a creation of your mind, will you believe me? No! You are so immersed in this dream that you think is real.

See, when we wake up from a dream, why do we suddenly understand that it was not real? It is because suddenly we perceive a separation between the dream and us. The understanding that it was merely a dream, puts us into reality. Similarly, the understanding that this world is nothing but a projection of the mind, the understanding that this is not our real identity, will put us into reality

Let us say we dream of
winning some award in front
of thousands of people. The
mind is so powerful that it can
create the entire picture
including every detail of the
auditorium, all the thousand
people sitting and clapping,
the speeches, everything that
we would normally see in an
auditorium. The mind is so
powerful to be able to give life
to the scene around us and
not just to our identity in the
dream. This is what the mind
does in the so-called real
world also. The only
difference is that we wake up
easily from our night dreams.
However, we do not know
how to wake up from this
bigger day dream that we now
think is reality.