I Am Eternal🔗

I am independent of them but they are dependent on Me.

7.13 The whole world is deluded by the three modes (goodness, passion and ignorance), and thus does not know Me.

I am above the modes and unchangeable.

7.14 My divine energy, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome.

But those who surrender unto Me can cross beyond it with ease.

7.15 Those miscreants who are foolish, lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by Maya (that which is not real), and who have taken shelter in demonic nature, do not surrender unto Me.

What Krishna says here will make many monks see red.

'I am the procreative energy,' says the Lord. 'I am the seed of all living beings.' He makes no excuses, no apologies.

He says, 'I am that procreative energy but without the fantasies of lust.' How can one be a Creator, if one cannot procreate?

Many of our great sages in the past, the rishis and maharishis, such as Vashishta and Vyasa were grihastas,

householders, who were family men with wives and progeny. Yet they were realized souls, enlightened. Other than Hanuman and Ganesha all our deities are married! Krishna is reputed to have had 16,008 wives!

How can the life form continue without procreation, without the sex act? Not everyone can have a virgin birth.

To imagine that to reach the Divine and realize the Self one must be celibate is the height of foolishness. To impose that as a precondition for anyone to even move into that path of spirituality is utter madness.

The desire for celibacy must happen before puberty. The first spiritual experience must happen before adolescence, so that the life-giving sex energy moves upwards as transcendental spiritual energy rather than descend as sexual and procreative energy. People who have this spiritual awakening because of their prarabdha karma (desires we are born with) are the Paramahamsa. That is their nature. Celibacy happens to them naturally.

To force celibacy after adolescence is difficult. It can be done but must be done with great caution and under supervision. Otherwise the so-called renunciate monk, the sannyasi, will pretend to follow brahmacharya, celibacy. Inside he will be a hotbed of fantasies ready to explode.

I have often explained that the word brahmacharya does not mean celibacy. It means ‘moving in reality.’ That is a very different connotation, if you study the meaning.

It is said that Krishna was crossing the river Yamuna with His flock of gopis, women devotees. The river was in spate. Krishna said to Yamuna, ‘If it is true that I am a brahmachari, part and let me walk across.’ The river parted and Krishna walked to the other bank.

A sannyasi who watched this was dumbstruck. ‘Krishna, a brahmachari? He walks with these women who are His lovers, and He says He is a brahmachari and the river parts for Him! How can this be?’

That is what Krishna explains here. I am the procreative energy, but without lust, without attachment and without fantasy. I am the ultimate reality!

Fantasies are the root cause of our problems. With each fantasy coming true, more fantasies arise. We can never be in reality. To be in reality one must be in the present moment. When you are in the present moment you are Krishna.

When we hanker after the past and speculate about the future, we slip into fantasies. We are no longer within the boundaries of our body. Our mind has moved away from our body into another world, the world of fantasy. This trip can have only one effect, that of sorrow. I tell my disciples, all you need to do is to renounce your fantasies to be blissful. You do not need to renounce what you have now.

Enjoy your wealth, enjoy your work, and enjoy your spouse and children. You have earned what you have.

Enjoy what is your due. Just stop fantasizing about what you do not have. Stop running after more acquisitions; stop and take time to enjoy what you have acquired.

Move into the present, here and now, into reality, and you will be a brahmachari!

Krishna talks about the gunas, the natural attributes, in these verses. Later on He devotes a chapter to this subject.

Prakriti has three elements called gunas. When prakriti is in equilibrium, it is pure potential energy. When it is disturbed, the gunas come into operation. Like building blocks, they combine in many ways and create, sustain and destroy.

Rarely is one guna present in a person. It is almost always a mixture. The three gunas that Krishna refers to are sattva, rajas and tamas, commonly translated as goodness or calmness, passion or aggression and ignorance or inaction.

The interplay of the gunas creates the functioning of the mind and through the operation of the mind, activity. Guna does not refer to the state a person is in. Gunas causes that state to happen. Sattva by itself is not goodness or calmness. It is the building block that leads to calmness.

No living being influenced by the mind is beyond the influence of the gunas. When one transcends the gunas, as

Krishna says about Himself, one becomes a triguna rahita, one who has transcended the three gunas. Such a person is no longer influenced by the mind and its actions.

I have said this elsewhere. Even an incarnation, an avatar, an enlightened energy being reborn into this planet on a mission, needs to initially be born with some guna infused into that being. It is like this: we cannot make jewelry out of pure gold. We must alloy it with copper.

In the same way, even an energy source that has transcended the three gunas needs to have some sattva guna infused in it to be born into this planet. The same is true of Krishna. As Vasudeva Krishna, the son of Vasudeva, He has some guna at play in Him.

Remember that Bhagavad Gita is rendered by Parabrahma Krishna and not by Vasudeva Krishna. So He says boldly, I am beyond the gunas. He says, I am the parama purusha, who sets prakriti into play, and I am beyond its influence. Krishna is the creator of Nature, which is even beyond prakriti, and is therefore beyond the vagaries of Nature.

We can see the interplay of the gunas as people move through their spiritual path. Most of you operate in the material world and generally you are in a state of rajas, with various proportions of sattva and tamas. Rajas is needed to create, to make things happen, and is the predominant guna of action.

Especially when you move into an ashram environment, committed to a life of renunciation and detachment, many fall into a deep state of tamas, inaction. It is not a state of ignorance, but one of inaction where all your suppressed opposition to your earlier life of meaningless activity surfaces and forces you into sheer inactivity.

You may sleep long hours, far more than normal, disinclined to do anything. However, this is a passing phase. All these suppressions surface and dissolve. Let them. You then move into sattva. To many, it is surprising that one falls into tamas before moving into sattva, yet it is a reaction to one's earlier lifestyle.

On the other hand, a person steeped in tamas is the person Krishna refers to as one who does not surrender to Him. Such a person is in deep darkness and ignorance. He is unaware of his potential. He is no better than an animal. In fact, an animal is better because it knows how to live in Nature, with Nature. An animal has no fantasies.

Unfortunately, a human being can distort his perceptions to such a point that he can deny his rightful nature. Maya, illusion, is also the interplay of the gunas. In fact, it is a basic interplay born out of the gunas. Maya is virtual reality and a collection of our fantasies. Just as darkness needs light to destroy it, we need awareness to destroy maya. Otherwise maya destroys us.

In Bhagavatam (the Hindu epic that describes Vishnu's various incarnations, and especially His incarnation as Krishna), there is this story.

Narada is the greatest devotee of Vishnu. He forever sings His praise and has nothing else on his mind. Over time Narada became conceited about being the most celebrated devotee. This happens to all devotees, including mine.

As a true Master, Vishnu took action. He called Narada and asked him to fetch a pot of water. Narada rushed out. Suddenly he was in front of a house asking for water. A beautiful maiden came out with water and Narada fell instantaneously in love with her. He married this girl and they raised children together.

One day there was a great storm. The house and the entire surroundings were flooded. The rushing water carried Narada and his family away. Soon they were separated and his family died. Narada wailed and screamed for help.

Suddenly he heard a voice, 'Narada, where is my water? What happened to you?'

Narada awoke, as if from a great sleep, and saw Vishnu smiling at him. He said, 'Even my greatest devotee is not immune to maya!'

As long as the mind is active, no one is immune to maya.

Q: Master, education emphasizes knowledge, whether it is the traditional Eastern or modern Western system. However, education does not seem to lead to happiness as it should. Why?

In the traditional gurukulam system of the Vedic culture, education was different from what it is today. It was not a commercial operation. It was a spiritual journey. The Master was not merely a teacher imparting book-knowledge. He was a spiritual guide who set himself as an example of how to live life.

We have degraded our educational system, even in India. British colonizers destroyed the gurukulam system because that was the only way to subjugate the people, by removing the tool that led to awareness. They replaced it with logical, scientific 'education' that has captivated our intellectuals.

Logic can never help with happiness, if happiness is to be a permanent experience. Logic comes from the mind and the mind is influenced by the senses. Spirituality is not an intangible concept. Spirituality is the total well-being of mind, body and spirit. Being controlled by the mind cannot lead to happiness. Transcending the mind leads to happiness. Transcending the senses leads to happiness. To transcend the mind and senses, one must give up logic.

Spirituality is about wisdom, whereas knowledge is about logic. Wisdom is rare but knowledge is cheap.

Knowledge is available everywhere. We gather it from books, from schools, from teachers. It is a simple process of feeding our bio-computer, the brain, with information. The brain goes on accumulating it. The brain is a sophisticated complex instrument, the most sophisticated. Man has yet to make computers as complicated as the brain.

A single man's brain cells can contain the information available in all the libraries in the whole world. Yet you remain the same. Your memory grows but your being remains a cipher.

Wisdom occurs through the growth of one's being. Knowledge happens with the growth of the mind. Forget knowledge and go deeper and into wisdom. Obviously, nobody can teach it to you. You must open your heart in deep trust to the wind, rain, and sun, to the whole of Existence. And in that opening, wisdom arises. In that very opening, in that surrender to the whole, one sees. One is no longer blind.

Man tries to be a master. He is not satisfied being a student. His life is an effort to attain mastery, power and prestige. He tries to accumulate money to be powerful, to have fame, or to make a great empire. This is the worldly man's effort. This is how Alexander the Great moved.

There is a totally different approach to life that is available for us to learn. Look at the lives of Buddha or Christ. They didn't try to be masters of the world. On the contrary, they tried to become servants of the world. The miracle and paradox is that Alexander dies a beggar and Buddha, the beggar, lives like an emperor and dies like an emperor. The paradox is that those who try to be masters are reduced to servants and those who try to be servants become masters.

Logical education teaches us to become masters, because that is all it can see. That is what logic leads us to, step-by-step. It is limited to what the senses see. Our education is about how we can succeed materially in this world. Our measurement of happiness is defined by possessions. It is defined by acquisitions, not by enjoyment.

Only when we go past the logic of such education can we realize true happiness. Then we experience that happiness lies in giving up: giving up control, possessions, and giving up our mental and emotional bondages. Happiness is when we serve others, when we become servants of others. Our current educational system cannot help us learn this. We need to change the system so that it shows us the path to true happiness.