Delusion of Senses🔗

18.36,37 And now hear from Me, O Arjuna, about three kinds of pleasure. The pleasure that one enjoys from spiritual practice results in cessation of all sorrows. The pleasure that appears as poison in the beginning, but is like nectar in the end, comes by the grace of Self-knowledge and is in the mode of goodness.

18.39 Pleasure that is delusion from beginning to end and born out of sleep, laziness and illusion is said to be of the nature of ignorance.

18.40 No one, either here or among the celestials in the higher planetary systems, is free from these three states of material nature.

Earlier Krishna spoke about the influence of gunas on the intellect, that in turn defines the way we act. Now He talks about how we respond as a result of our behavior.

Krishna says that spiritual practice that is the state of satva is difficult in the beginning, and it is like poison; however, it becomes life-giving nectar in the end. Sensual pleasures born out of rajas, on the other hand, seem like nectar in the beginning but become poisonous. In the tamasic state, Krishna says one is deluded as if in sleep, laziness and illusion. Every human is in one state or another. Not merely humans, even the celestials who are supposedly more evolved are in the same mode. No one can escape the effect of the gunas, the nature of attributes.

How beautifully the Master summarizes how we become deluded by our senses. It is not easy to begin spiritual practice. In the Vedic tradition, in the gurukulam schools, from a young age children were brought up in a spirit and environment of spirituality. They learned to control their mind and senses at an early age and to focus upon Self-realization. They understood by the example of their Masters that there was something more pleasurable beyond sensory pleasures. This gave them courage.

In today’s age, this is impractical. Invading Moguls and the colonizing British destroyed the Vedic culture, especially the gurukulam tradition. This was not accidental or incidental. It was a deliberate strategy. Aurangazeb ordered his men to convert Hindus to Islam or kill them. He advised that it was better to convert. He knew conversion added another person to his religion, whereas killing only eliminated a Hindu. British rulers identified the educational system of gurukulam as the key to Hindu ethos and targeted its destruction so that they could subjugate.

What we have today is a mass of literate Indians who are uneducated. They are totally unaware of the great tradition of our Vedic culture. They think rituals are stupid and meaningless. Hindu philosopher scholars, equally ignorant of our culture, egg them on. We have lost the knowledge of connectivity between these rituals and spirituality. Rituals, when carried out meaningfully, are the basis of spirituality.

If in His era, Krishna says that spirituality is like poison and unpleasant to start with, how much more dangerous and unpleasant will it taste today? Who is concerned about when and how it becomes nectar? I have told you based on what Krishna has said that you must live in the present. Now you will tell me that spirituality is like poison and that is what matters. How can you accept that spirituality is pleasant?

Dangerous isn’t it? Logic is dangerous when used half way. Krishna affirms that spirituality is nectar and perpetually life giving. That awareness and understanding

in this present moment will save your spirit from untold hurt and pain. The spiritual path seems unpleasant when you do not realize the bliss that it provides.

When we are in the rajasic mode, only sensory pleasures of the body matter. In the tamasic mode, we don't even know we are in deep sloth and ignorance beyond caring. Sensory organs are powerful. They are windows to the external world and are conditioned from a young age to what we avoid as pain and chase as pleasure. Bodily pleasure gives mental pleasure and therefore emotional satisfaction. When we are caught in these emotions, the play of the senses, we get lost. It is a constant rewind operation based on what gave us pleasure. Hence, we want it replayed. Our past drives our future. Attachments and expectations drive our actions.

In our Nithyananda Spurana Programs (NSP or Life Bliss Level 2) I take participants through a journey of the death experience. I take them through the process in which at the time of death the spirit travels every inch of your life as you lived it, not missing one thought. At that time, all that you chased and enjoyed as material and sensual pleasures are played back in flashback. Many experiences were in three dimensions and vivid color at the time of enjoyment whereas they play back in monochrome and silent mode. However, the few moments of spiritual experiences that you may have had, such as with a Master, may have seemed irrelevant at the time; yet they play back multidimensionally and in vivid color.

We may not believe it now, but it is true. What seemed like nectar turns out to be poison. What seemed like poison becomes true nectar.

I am not saying leave your homes and move into my ashram. First of all, I have no space in my ashram. You can lead the life that you have, but lead it with awareness. As long as you look at your sensory perceptions for what they are — an illusory sales promotion — you are safe.

A small story:

A businessman died and was offered the option of hell or heaven. No one had told him he would have options, but then smart as he was, he decided to push his luck further. 'Can I sample both before I decide?' he asked. Surprisingly the answer was, 'Yes.'

He was first taken to hell. It was like a disco. All kinds of people dancing to techno music. He saw many people he knew. He waved to them, but they didn't seem to notice. Everyone seemed dazed, but having fun. It was so different from the fire and brimstone that his priest had described.

Next they took him to heaven. Here it was somber and serious. It was full of old men with long beards. He did not know anybody there. At the end of the trip, he was asked where he wanted to go. His choice was obvious. He said, 'Hell, of course.' The Manager said, 'Be careful, once you are sent there, you can't change your mind.' The businessman was used to taking calculated risks and said, 'I am sure I want to go to hell.'

As he finished saying this, he found himself in a hot and fiery place, with horned devils and all things about hell that we've been told. The man was shocked!

'What is this? This is not the hell I saw just a few minutes ago! What happened to the hell I saw before?'

The guard replied, 'Oh, that is our marketing department!'

This is what Krishna tells us: don't be misled by the senses. Senses are provided to deceive us for no other reason! All that we can do is look at the outer world and suffer. Either we suffer then and there through painful experiences or we suffer later after going through experiences that we think are enjoyable. Either way it is poison, now or later.

Krishna describes the tamasic person with great insight. He does not use the word poison in describing the state of such a person. A tamasic person is like a drug addict. At least a rajasic person enjoys the experience now, and suffers later. A tamasic person has no enjoyment. He is in suffering, without knowing that he is suffering, his delusion so deep. That is why he passes his suffering on to others with no compunction. That is how ignorant people who rise to become leaders act.

Q: Master, education teaches us that we must think through problems to reach a solution. Yet, you say to stop thinking. What then is the point of education?

Truth can't be reached by thinking. Thinking can arrive at a theory, a hypothesis; it cannot know truth itself. Truth can be known when thinking ceases, when we become absolutely silent and when we move into a state of utter awareness, but it is a state of utter thoughtlessness, too. That's why few people arrive at the ultimate truth.

Many have strived, many have struggled and many have desired. All the same, they were working through the mind. The mind can spin and weave beautiful fictions. It cannot give you that which is.

Mind is made of the stuff dreams are made of. Dreams are different from thoughts. Dreams are pictorial thoughts. Dreaming is a primitive way of thinking. That's the way children think. Children's books must include many pictures, colorful illustrations because children are less interested in text and more interested in pictures.

Slowly as they grow up, pictures become less and less. By the time they reach their post-graduation in the university, pictures disappear; they are not needed. They have moved from pictures to words.

Thinking is a more sophisticated and evolved way of dreaming. It is more eccentric, more mathematical and more philosophical. Even so, deep down, it is the same process. Whether you think in pictures or words makes no difference.

Ancient languages like Chinese are pictograms. They don't have an alphabet. They are the most ancient languages. They must have been the first languages. Still they carry that ancient primitive mind.

For example, they say if you write 'war' in Chinese, you must make a pictogram: a roof with two women sitting underneath – that means one man and two wives. That is war, when one is enough – two is too much!

Thinking has its own limitations. The greatest limitation is that it can go round and round in circles but it never reaches the center of things. Truth is that which is. We cannot fabricate it. We can't think about it. It is already there. We just need to look at it. If we are trying to think about the truth, we have missed it because we need an unoccupied consciousness.

The whole process of meditation is becoming an unoccupied consciousness. There are no dreams and no thoughts, just a silent awareness. There is nothing to hinder and disturb, nothing to interpret and interfere. Then we see that which is. That is satya, the Ultimate Truth.

Truth is for the courageous. The greatest courage is to drop our mind because we consider it the most precious thing. We don't know anything higher than that. Education teaches us to have more and more refined minds. Education is a process of refining our mental processes. We devote almost one third of our life to universities. That is the most precious time of our life because we will never be that young again. We will never be that fresh again. We will never be that intelligent again. We will never have that much energy and strength again.

The most precious time of life is devoted single-heartedly to a one purpose: refinement of the mind. Then one day, when somebody says 'drop it,' it seems impossible. We have acquired it through hard effort, years of training, examinations and all the nightmares that we go through in those examinations. Just think of that. And then a Master says, 'Drop it.'

He says, 'It is all rubbish. It is just junk.' It is junk!

The function of the Master is to help us get rid of our own mind. Great courage is needed to drop those twenty-five years and the training and all our degrees, the PhDs and DSCs. Certainly great courage is needed to close that whole chapter. It is becoming innocent again. Losing that grip of intellectual knowledge and losing all that we have learned means we will be in a state of non-knowing again. Even so, that's what is required for knowing truth.

The state of non-knowing is the basic requirement for knowing truth because only the innocent ones can know it. Knowledgeable ones miss it. The knowledgeable ones keep asking, 'Why?' Those who really seek ask, 'How?'

This is the way of the disciple: not to ask, 'Why?' But this certainly requires courage.

Bliss is possible only through great intelligence. Misery needs no intelligence. Any fool is capable of being miserable. That’s why there are so many miserable people in the world. It is because there are so many foolish people in the world.

People ask me, ‘Why don’t we see many blissful people?’ The simple reason is few people allow their intelligence to function. They live in ignorance.

Foolishness pays in certain ways. It is a good investment sometimes. Intelligence has always been a problem. If we are intelligent, we are constantly in trouble because unintelligent people surround us. There will be no communication with them. And they are in the majority — we will be alone. They can crush us. They can kill us.

They can force their ideas upon us and manage to torture us in a thousand and one ways. They don’t allow individuality. The crowd wants us to be part of the crowd. It wants us to surrender our intelligence to the crowd.

Whatever the crowd believes in, it wants us to follow that whether it is Communism, Christianity, Hinduism or Islam. It wants us to be a believer. Belief is one of the many poisons that kills intelligence. The crowd wants us to become a yes-man to all kinds of nonsense, superstitions and rotten ideas that are meaningless.

For centuries Christianity fought for the belief that the sun revolved around earth. It killed thousands of people for believing otherwise. Now we look back and laugh at how millions of people could believe such things for hundreds of years. If we ponder a little bit, we laugh, ‘How could so many people believe in these untruths?’

It was because of fear of the crowd and fear of what violence the crowd was capable of. The crowd wants us to conform. That’s the root cause of peoples’ intelligence being destroyed. When intelligence is destroyed, we cannot know bliss.

As the child grows up, it is robbed of the intelligence it brought with it at birth. It is educated and conditioned. All kinds of things are forced upon the child. By the time he is a grown-up man, he has lost his intelligence on the way somewhere. He has become stupid. And he remains miserable.

Religions exploit our misery. First, they make us fools, creating misery. Then they exploit our misery. They say, ‘You are miserable because you don’t believe in God. You sinned in your past lives and you are not virtuous. You need to confess, pray, come to church regularly, become more religious or become a monk or a nun, so that God can forgive you.’ These things appeal to people because they want to get rid of their misery. So they are ready to follow any idea.

On the other hand, an ignorant person cannot understand what he is doing, why he is doing it or where he is going. So first he needs to release his imprisoned intelligence. After that, bliss is simple. It is a by-product. Once we know our intelligence, we immediately feel a showering of bliss.

Yes, there is no point to education if it kills intelligence and stops bliss. Education that is designed for conformity is useless. It is dangerous. It corrodes the spirit.