No One Knows Me🔗

The ignorant do not know Me, unborn and eternal.

7.26 O Arjuna, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, I know all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that is to happen.

I also know all living entities; but no one knows Me.

7.27 O scion of Bharata [Arjuna], O conqueror of the foe, all living entities are born into delusion, overcome by the dualities of attachment and aversion.

Unintelligent men, who do not know my supreme, illimitable and immortal form, assume my illimitable form as manifested.

Here is another important verse. When He says earlier

So Krishna gives the explanation: ‘Unintelligent men, who are not mature, think I am just this form. Only an intelligent man understands that I am immortal. Even when I assume this form, I am that same Consciousness. I have not become an ordinary human being by assuming a human form.’ He declares His divinity openly. He declares, ‘I am the same even when I assume a human form. Don’t think I am one more demigod. ’

He says, ‘I am unborn, immortal, illimitable, even when I assume this form. Even when I assume this form, I am that same ultimate Divine. I am not an ordinary man.’ It’s an important statement. This statement is made to declare His enlightenment and to express clearly and explicitly, ‘I am enlightened. I am the embodiment of ultimate Consciousness.’ The problem is that the person who is receiving this is not mature enough to recognize it as such.

People ask me again and again, ‘Why is Krishna repeatedly declaring that He is enlightened?’ That’s a big problem. If you talk about something again and again, people tend to think that something is wrong with that.

There is a proverb in Tamil: if you wear a new ring, you always gesture with that hand because you continuously show it off. If you wear a new earring, what will you do? You shake your head to show it off.

If you speak about something again and again, there’s something wrong with that thing. If you are clear about it, why should you speak about it again and again? This is how a spiritually immature person will misunderstand what is said.

Arjuna is approaching Krishna out of fear and greed. When Gita started, Arjuna approached Krishna out of fear and depression, and also out of greed, with the ‘what is beneficial for me?’ attitude. He asked Krishna what would give maximum benefit, which is an expression of the attitude of greed.

Next he experiences fear. He is afraid of what will happen in the war. Fear and greed - that is the way he approaches Krishna. So initially even Arjuna sees Krishna as a demigod. At the initial level Arjuna's approach is also that of a demigod. That is the reason why Krishna now declares His glory, or His true form.

He says: 'All types of people come to Me. I fulfil them at different levels, to encourage their faith and to help them grow. But only intelligent people understand that, even if I assume this body, I am the ultimate; I am enlightened. Unintelligent people think by seeing my body, seeing my form, that I am not the Divine. So please be very clear, that I am THAT.' He makes a clear statement again and again, so that Arjuna understands.

We need to understand two important issues here. First, the formless energy of Krishna defines His supremacy, His divinity, His Krishna Consciousness. Second, in whatever form that formless is expressed, it is divine. It is the awareness of that divinity in Him that makes Krishna divine, the Supreme Master. If that awareness happens in you, you will be in Krishna Consciousness, immersed in Him; and you will be divine too. The intelligence Krishna talks about is the intelligent awareness of our own divinity, not merely that of Krishna. They are both one and the same. It is only when we are aware of our divinity that we appreciate the Divine.

I say to my disciples, 'Till you become enlightened, you will have no clear awareness of who I am. Till then you try to reach me out of fear or greed, however slight it may be. It is only when you are enlightened and are in the same awareness as me, when it is no longer necessary for you to fear me or desire through me, that you open up to me in sheer gratitude.’

That is the intelligence that Krishna speaks about. When that intelligence exhibits itself, when that awareness surfaces, then and only then true recognition of the Divine happens. That true recognition happens when you recognize the Divine within you.

Krishna asks: How can you recognize divinity when you are covered in ignorance? How can you recognize Me when you are not aware?

Out of the thousands who come to me, tens of thousands, the vast majority seeks favors of one kind or another. They come for the healing of the body and mind, they may come for repairing relationships, and they come for material benefits. Even those who do not look for material benefits may aspire to that intangible peace and bliss.

It is the rare person who comes without asking anything. It is not even seeking a benefit, tangible or intangible, that leads such people. It is an awareness of what they need to be and where they need to be. They are attracted like iron filings to a magnet. It is a call from their being which leads them to me.

In Mahabharata, the Pandava princes could recognize the true reality of Krishna. No one needed to coach them.

On the other hand, their cousins the Kaurava for the most part denied Krishna. They rejected and ridiculed Him. Duryodhana, who was offered the first choice by Krishna to choose either Him unarmed or His Yadava army, chose the utilitarian army. That was all Duryodhana could see. That was his level of awareness, steeped as he was in ignorance.

Arjuna jumped at Krishna’s offer. All Arjuna wanted was Krishna, His presence, not His army, not His divine powers, nothing at all.

It is a choice all of us need to make, whether we wish to be Duryodhana or Arjuna. It is not a difficult choice, as it will be determined by our being and our awareness. It will not be a choice at all. It will be a happening.

No one knows Me, says the Master. How true!

Don’t take me for granted, says Krishna. Do not put me in a frame for I shall not stay there, He says.

Can you know Nature? Can you predict Nature? Each time you think you can, Nature does things differently. Then you say Nature is cruel, and ask why Nature is so cruel. Nature is Nature, not cruel, not kind, it just is.

So is Krishna. His compassion is not pity as we imagine. The compassion of the Master is beyond our frames of time and space. So we cannot fathom what that means. When a tsunami kills a thousand people, we weep. When we pray and then win a lottery, we make a donation to the temple, terribly pleased. Divine compassion is not related to these. It is the truth that is beyond time and space.

My close disciples know that whatever I say is the truth and that what I say will happen. They don't question me, not because they are afraid. What is there to be afraid of? What control can I have over them? They are free to leave any time they want. In fact, I tell them the only thing that causes me to pause is when a disciple leaves me, because then I have lost the chance to help him. So actually, they know enough to blackmail me if they wish to!

But they don't. Instead they do not question me when I am seemingly irrational, angry, inconsistent or whatever. They know that I am Nature and that I flow. I am not in control of what I do, the Divine is. They recognize that and they follow.

They know that when I tell them something, it is not a fact but a truth: truth that is not constrained by time and space.

One of them recently told me this.

Over two years ago when my disciples went with me on the Himalayan trip to the char dham pilgrimage centers, I had asked them to say to the local religious authorities that I am a Mahamandaleshwar. This title is given to the leader of a very large religious organization. It is more than a title; it confers spiritual leadership, like being canonized as a saint. Without questioning, they announced that Mahamandaleshwar had arrived. As a matter of fact, no one questioned them. They accepted the statement and gave me respects when I visited the temples.

Recently in 2007, I was at the Ardh Kumbh Mela at Prayag in Northern India. It normally occurs every six years. However this time the river Ganga reversed her direction, which happens once in 144 years. So it was a great event and 90 million people gathered for a dip in the holy river. I went with a large group of disciples.

In every Kumbh Mela, the first right to bathe on the most auspicious day is given to the naga sect, who are a special sect, and among them the Nirvani Akhada, the naked monks. During part of my wandering days before my self-realization, I had been with a group of these monks and they had accepted me as their own. Now at the Kumbh Mela they asked me, in fact almost forced me, to become the Mahamandaleshwar of their sect. So, a few days before the day of the holy dip, I was made the head of their sect, and I was given the first right to enter the Ganga on that special day.

I did not make a connection between what I said two years earlier and what happened at that Kumbh Mela. It had nothing to do with what I said. It has to do with what Existence wanted. Because what I say is what Existence directs, there can never be a contradiction.

Truth is unpredictable because it is not bound by time and space as we know it. Truth cannot be known unless we are in truth ourselves. We cannot know Krishna unless we are in Krishna Consciousness.

Krishna Consciousness is not about going around chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Such chanting, unless done with awareness, is a farce; actually it is a tragedy. True Krishna Consciousness needs no words. In fact, it has no words because the experience is beyond expression. One who experiences it does not express it.

Fear and greed are what drive us, says Krishna. That is our delusion. That is the delusion that leads us away from Him.

Attachment and aversion, raga and dvesha, form the duality, the polarity of human life. Even at the fundamental cellular level, biologists have shown that this tendency is exhibited. If you place a single cell in a Petri dish and place a drop of nutrient, it is attracted to it and moves towards it. If you place a drop of toxin, it moves away. If on either side, you place drops of nutrient and toxin, it remains immobile.

At the cellular level, attraction aids in growth and aversion in survival. A cell can either grow or protect itself. At the multi-cellular level with higher intelligence, human beings act the same way as the primary cell. They get attached to what they think is good for them and flee what they think is not good.

Unfortunately, what works well at the cellular level does not work so well at the human level simply because

humans have greater intelligence. Cells obey Nature and are directed by Nature to recognize instinctively what is good and what is bad. They also automatically accept the consequence.

Humans are different. They bypass signals from their body, refuse to accept what Nature tries to tell them and indulge in or avoid activities or objects based on their logic. Logic overriding Nature is a sure recipe for disaster. That is why we are unhappy all the time.

Shedding attachment and aversion is the first step to awareness. Attachment and aversion are born out of our past; based on experiences and memories, what we call samskara in Sanskrit. Based on these samskara, we try to define our future. The problem is that these samskara operate at an unconscious level and drive us from unawareness to unawareness.

Therefore, we end up acting instinctively, but unlike our cellular brethren, without listening to Nature.

Human beings are given intelligence so that they can rise above instinct and logic and operate out of intuition. This intuition is born from awareness. It comes through meditation. With awareness, we understand that there is truly nothing that we can be attached to, since everything is impermanent. As I said earlier, every moment of our life is a psychodrama.

The same is true of aversion. It arises from insecurity and fears. What is there to be afraid of in life? Each occasion we are afraid, we die. If we shed our fear of death, we lose all fears. When we move into awareness, through meditation, we settle within our boundaries of body-mind and we move into the present moment. When we are in the present moment there is no duality of like and dislike, attachment and aversion. We respond to each event as it unfolds with clarity, with intuitive intelligence and we are always right.

Q: When I see your disciples, those who live in the ashram and those who follow you while living outside, I see a calmness that I envy. I hope I too can reach there.

Of course, you will. All you need is the decision. They say a disciple meets the Master when the disciple is ready. That is true, because there are so many Masters waiting; only the disciples are few!

Being in an ashram is different from being in a monastery. A monastery is about discipline. It is about rules and regulations. An ashram is about freedom. It is a space where you explore your personal freedom.

Whether at Bidadi or LA, two locations where we have our major ashram establishments, we have guidelines; we have no rules. These guidelines assist in the control of your mind and senses, presumably the purpose that you came to this place for. Otherwise why would you come?

If you wish to enjoy sensory pleasures, you can go to many other places. You would be foolish to come to my ashram, or any ashram, if that is what you wish to do - and by mistake if you land here, then you will of course be miserable.

The starting point is a desire to know more about who you really are. You are not satisfied with whatever you are, whatever you have achieved. You start looking for what you think is your purpose in life. In truth, there is no purpose to your life. You are here to experience and enjoy what you experience, that is all. Instead, you look for meanings where there are none.

This search for meaning, this seeking for purpose, leads you to a Master. You may be initially attracted to him intellectually. Later, you may be attracted to him emotionally. You start believing what he says. But as long as you are a day-tripper or weekend visitor, this relationship stops at the gates of the ashram or wherever you meet him. Your normal worldly burdens overwhelm you the moment you are outside his sphere of influence. Out of sight is out of mind.

The ashram helps you link with people of similar needs and beliefs, and takes you to a deeper understanding of what the Master and the Master's teachings are about. Many of our followers who cannot move into an ashram environment, get together at least once a week in what is termed a satsang. A satsang means a gathering of people in search of truth. The truth of the experience of all Masters is the same; their expressions may be different.

At the level of the satsang, at least once a week, they gather with people of similar intention and belief so that their search gets intensified. At the level of the ashram, you make it more permanent. If you are so inclined, the process can be faster.

If your search is serious, you become sincere in what you do. You will not be able to be idle in the ashram. Many sleep only a few hours every night. All you need is three to four hours of sleep every night to rejuvenate yourself. The problem is that you do not sleep; you toss and turn. When you learn to flow with your energy and the energy around you, you fall into deep sleep immediately when you lie down.

My ashrams are my womb; they are my energy centers. When you are in them, you are rejuvenated, refreshed and alive. You are awake in all senses of the term. The calmness that you perceive in the ashramites is the non-judgmental wakefulness that they live in