Remember Me Constantly🔗

Kṛṣṇa gives different ways to attain Brahman or God or ultimate consciousness. He says that people learned in the Vedas attain Brahman. This does not mean that we read the Vedas and forget about them. Kṛṣṇa speaks at a far deeper level.

If someone is completely immersed in the scriptures, his thoughts will continuously be along those lines even at the end of his life. That is what Kṛṣṇa means by His words ‘Immerse yourself in the scriptures’. Keep reading some scripture or the other and imbibe its truth. It will have a tremendous impact on you.

Even if we do not understand the deeper meanings of these scriptures, it is ok. These scriptures are energy hubs. When we read them, the sound that is generated cleanses our inner being. That is the power of those verses. They will transform you.

If you listen to vedic chants, you will see they are chanted in a specific way. When they are chanted, they completely cleanse our system, our inner being. Most of us are not aware of this, yet they carry that energy for us.

If we visit the ancient temples in India, we will see that the sanctum sanctorum is very peaceful. When we enter that place, automatically our being too becomes peaceful. Why do you think that happens? This is because, when the priest chants, the sound of the chants energizes everything in the place.

One more thing, these scriptures talk about realizing the Self. They are guides to enlightenment. So when we read them, we will get into that mood of enlightenment! Our mind will be tuned to that frequency.

It is like this: When we come out of a movie theatre after watching a movie, our mind keeps processing the scenes of the movie, is it not? It tries to recollect the various scenes. For one or two days, we experience a hangover. In the same way, when we read these scriptures, even if we don’t completely understand them, we will experience a hangover. We will continue to think about what they say - enlightenment, Self ... these thoughts will come into our mind again and again.

Similarly, when our thoughts are always directed towards Self-realization, our thoughts will be of enlightenment at the time of death also.

Kṛṣṇa says, when we read the scriptures, when we practice its lifestyle, we practice brahmacarya. Brahmacarya is commonly misinterpreted as celibacy. Brahman means the Self and carya means to walk the path. So brahmacāri means one who follows the path to attain the Self.

A small story:

There was an old sea captain who was telling a story from his adventures to a group of people at a party.

He said, ‘Once, I was shipwrecked on the coast of South America, and there I came across a tribe of women who had no tongues and were very wild.’

One lady said, ‘My goodness! They couldn’t talk?’

The old captain replied, ‘No they couldn’t talk, and that was what drove them wild.’

Be very clear. Suppression does not lead to transformation. It only creates depression. Suppression of desires is very dangerous; it is like a volcano ready to erupt anytime and we won’t even know it.

Our inner space must be cleansed, free from fantasies and we should strive to merge with the Brahman. That is brahmacarya.

All great truths were told by different masters in different ways, yet the truths remain the same. Here Kṛṣṇa talks about the deeper meaning of Yoga. Yoga means the continuous process of uniting our mind, body and soul. Patañjali, the father of yoga, talks about this verse in his Aṣṭāṅga yoga. Aṣṭāṅga yoga means eight limbs of yoga and two of these limbs are pratyāhāra and dhārana. These two parts talk about what Kṛṣṇa mentions.

Now, how do we bring about that continuous process of uniting body, mind and soul? What should we do? You see, our body-mind system reacts to different external situations. These external situations are like food, āhāra to our system and our five sense organs are the points through which we take in this food.

Our mind functions because we give food to our mind through our senses. We react to situations and our mind is continuously occupied because of this. We are again and again jumping from past to future and back to past.

Pratyāhāra means getting ourselves out of the clutches of these senses. It does not mean that we physically shut down our senses. Even if we close our ears and mouth, there is inner chatter, is it not? Even if we shut down our senses physically, our mind functions. When I say, ‘Close the doors of your senses,’ I mean, ‘continue to hear everything going on outside but do not process anything. Whatever comes, just witness.’ That is the only way we can close the doors of our senses. Neither suppress thoughts nor create thoughts. Just watch them.

We cut the continuous flow of inputs from our senses when we increase our awareness. The number of thoughts, TPS, drops slowly as awareness rises. This is what Kṛṣṇa means by closing all the senses. When we do this, our awareness becomes more and more concentrated on the present moment. We focus on our divinity. We automatically fall into the present moment. Awareness of our breath becomes more acute. We feel life energy or prāṇa filling our system.

This is called dhārana, the single-minded focus. We can focus on the life-force energizing our system when we increase our awareness and close all the inputs from our senses. We automatically unite mind, body and spirit. This is yoga.

Again and again Kṛṣṇa emphasizes this truth so much. He continuously tells Arjuna the importance of the last thought before death. These are not mere words to be read and not put into practice. People have used these words and left their bodies gracefully. Thousands of enlightened beings have constantly thought about God. They have expressed their undaunted devotion in so many carefree ways. People realized the power of that devotion only after these enlightened beings left their bodies, completely merging with the cosmos.

Kṛṣṇa says the people who reach Him are those who remain continuously on the path of yoga, continuously fixed upon the Divine without deviation. Kṛṣṇa asks us to be in that consciousness all the time. The problem is when an enlightened master says, ‘Think of Me all the time,’ we question, ‘What kind of an egoistic person is He? Why should we think of Him?’

Actually, our ego plays the game. We think Kṛṣṇa is exploiting us when He advises us to be in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Many people think I am exploiting them when I make such statements. They think I profit from all of this.

Be very clear, Kṛṣṇa, or any enlightened master, only asks us to keep our inner space completely free of desires. Our thoughts are generally related to greed and fear. We keep piling up desires because our thought patterns are of greed and fear. When we die, our soul re-experiences these desires making death painful. An enlightened master has seen this process and He wants everyone to know the secret of mastering the art of leaving.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says again and again: When we direct our thoughts to the Divine, our whole being is filled with gratitude to the Divine.

When we think of the Divine, we should do so out of gratitude, and not out of greed or fear. Be very clear that thinking of God out of greed or fear will not help us. Our thoughts about God, our devotion to the Divine should be out of pure gratitude to Existence.