Instructions for Enlightenment🔗

18.51,52,53 Endowed with purified intellect; subduing the mind with firm resolve; turning away from objects of the senses; giving up likes and dislikes; living in solitude; eating lightly; controlling the mind, speech, and organs of action; ever absorbed in meditation; taking refuge in detachment; and relinquishing egotism, violence, pride, lust, anger, and proprietorship, one becomes peaceful, free from the notion of “I” and “mine,” and fit for attaining oneness with the Supreme Being.

These verses are the ultimate sutra, the technique to liberate and realize Brahman. Krishna describes how to reach the ultimate Truth. He tells us to just follow His instructions.

The beauty of Krishna’s advice in the Bhagavad Gita is that there are no half measures. He makes no assumptions. He goes to the depths of Arjuna’s stated and unstated doubts and tells him in such clear words that there can be no ambiguity.

Bhagavad Gita is primarily a sastra, a scripture that provides knowledge. Even though the author who delivers it is the Divine Himself, He must bring Himself down to the level of Arjuna, a mortal.

Arjuna is full of questions, and so are all of you. Questions are born out of ignorance and never out of wisdom. Questions can never be answered. They raise more questions when they are answered. People keep asking questions without understanding what is being said. They don’t listen. Arjuna is not any different. That is why Krishna repeats the same words and concepts to answer the same question. His compassion drives Him to ensure that Arjuna understands.

As long as we question why, we never get a clear answer. Especially with Existence, the question ‘Why?’ has no relevance. As I said earlier, we operate at a different frequency from the Divine so even if it is explained, we will not understand. Why do people die? Why do earthquakes and tornadoes kill so many people? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people?

There can be no explanation to these questions. Spirituality is an inner science, not the outer sciences and that is fortunate. In the outer sciences, we keep asking ‘Why?’ and when we cannot get answers, we become stuck. In that case, we produce half-baked theories that convince no one. What does the Big Bang Theory of creation mean, when it doesn’t answer the question of what happened before the Big Bang?

Spirituality does not concern itself with ‘Why?’ It is about ‘how?’ ‘Why?’ is about logic. ‘How?’ is about realism. Sastra tries to answer the ‘Why?’ Sutra answers the ‘How?’ Once in awhile, the Master delivers the sutra amidst the sastra that He must deliver to keep Arjuna quiet. Here He explains step-by-step how to be liberated so that there can be no doubt at all.

He says, ‘Settle the mind and control the senses.’ Can you do that while sitting in the middle of a traffic junction? No. That is why He says go into solitude and cut yourself off from disturbances. Eat little, so that you are not

disturbed. Go into meditation and shut your senses to external objects.

These are the clearest instructions on how to meditate. Prepare yourself to be away from potential disturbances. There is no point in meditating when you are sure the phone will ring or a guest will be arriving. You are only wasting time. Fix a time and place when you will be alone and undisturbed.

There are simple ways to reduce sensory disturbances. Closing the eyes is insufficient. Your eyeballs will still move and an inner TV will play. Mentally freeze your eyeballs. Think they are made of stone and still them. At the same time place your tongue on your upper palate and lock it. If there is movement of the tongue, that creates verbalization, then visualization is difficult. These two tools of mentally freezing your eyeball movement and locking your tongue substantially reduce wandering of the mind due to sensory disturbances.

Meditate on an empty stomach. A full stomach makes us sleepy; it will not take us into realization. Ideally one should meditate in the same location regularly to preserve the energy raised in meditation.

These are the physical requirements. Next Krishna repeats what He has been emphasizing all along.

Drop your personality, He says, drop your ego, your attachments, your ideas of 'I' and 'mine,' as well as the emotions that attach you to survival and possession. Then you will be liberated and ready to reach the Supreme Being.

Q: Master, Krishna says to drop attachments and that is the only way. How is this possible?

Good question. This is why earlier Krishna said that moving into satva is like poison in the beginning and like nectar in the end!

The entire message of Gita is about renunciation. It is not renunciation in terms of giving up worldly life and moving into a forest or mountain retreat. It is about staying with the commitments you have undertaken and your assigned duties, while executing them without the feeling that you are executing them.

What is the purpose of this? The moment you are engrossed with the feeling of you doing the job, the feeling that it is 'your' job, you become emotionally attached to the success and failure of what you are doing. Modern management techniques may claim that this is necessary or that passion is needed to execute your duty. They are wrong. Yes, you need passion and commitment, no doubt, but there is no need for the sort of emotional involvement that makes you depressed if the results are not what you expected.

'Yes, but I am happy if the results are what I want,' you say. But how long are you happy? Human nature is such that you are never satisfied with one thing for long. You move in greed from one to desire to another. Even with a simple understanding of the law of probability that half the time you will fail and be in sorrow. You will bounce back and forth from sorrow to happiness, like a roller coaster ride.

You have asked, ‘How can I be unemotional? How can I be detached?’ These emotions —happiness and sorrow, irritation and excitement, violence and fear — happen when you set goals and expectations and link your future to them. You feel that only if things happen the way you want, your future is secure; otherwise you feel your future is in jeopardy. How many of these life and death situations do you face daily, weekly or monthly? It is unlikely that we face such situations where our life depends on what we do more than a few times in our entire life.

The rest is pure imagination. You build fantasies and feel that unless these fantasies are realized, you will not be happy. Then it is a given: you will not be happy. That is why most of you are unhappy. You simply build fantasies that have no connection with real life.

First, renounce these fantasies about things you do not have. Renounce what you do not have. Live with what you have and enjoy that. We can all do this. It is perfectly human to achieve this, is it not? There is nothing superhuman in accomplishing this, is there? You simply need to reduce your greed. Make an effort to appreciate what you already have. Make a list of everything you have, including your physical and mental faculties; then give gratitude to the Almighty for having been so compassionate towards you. All of you can see and hear,

is it not? Millions of people in this world cannot see or hear. You are not one of them. Has it ever occurred to you that you are special and that you should be grateful to Existence?

Once you get into this mode of being happy with what you basically need and have, the discipline of aparagriha laid down by Patanjali for simple living, you settle down into a mood of non-expectation. You enjoy the present instead of craving for the future.

You are a renouncer by nature. In order to have one thought, you must renounce the previous thought. It is impossible to have two thoughts at the same time. When you decide to stand, you renounce the thought and the action of sitting. A cell inside your body dies and another is born. Constant renunciation goes on within you physically, mentally and emotionally. You are not aware, that is all.

When you move into the present moment, you renounce the past and future. Focus on the present, and what you need to do now without worrying about what should happen. Let what happens happen. Do what you need to do. Focus on the path, not on the destination. The Japanese revolutionized the technology of manufacturing with this simple principle. The Six Sigma Principle that produces defect-free material arose out of the philosophy of focusing on the process, the path instead of the product or the destination.

When you focus on the path, you become emotional in the right way, while enjoying the journey. The path itself

has no goals fixed to it for you to achieve. So, there is no attachment. The requirement is only that you travel that path. Wherever you reach will be the right destination.

Live life the way it is served to you. Enjoy whatever happens. Be in the understanding that the Universe is always compassionate to you. Whatever happens is for our good. Whether we realize it or not at that moment, it is good for us. This is surrender. This is renunciation. When this renunciation happens, when you trust that whatever happens is for your good, the Universe smiles on you. Bliss descends on you!