This Is Whom I Love🔗

12.18,19 One who treats friends and enemies the same, who faces in the same manner honor and dishonor, heat and cold, happiness and sorrow, fame and infamy, one who is always free from attachment, always silent and satisfied with anything, without a fixed home, who is fixed in mind and who is devoted to Me, such a person is very dear to Me.

Again Krishna says, 'Such a person, full of devotion is dear to Me.' He is not ready to put down any more rules, which means He is almost ending His instructions. He is almost saying, 'This is the way, if somebody is like this then I love him, that's all. I am not interested in anything else.' He says, 'One who is neutral towards friends and enemies, who is the same in honor and dishonor, heat and cold, joy and pain, free from attachment to the fruits of action, who remains the same in criticism and praise, who is thoughtful, who is content with whatever he gets, who does not care for any house and is resolute in mind, such a man, full of devotion is very dear to Me.'

Here is a beautiful phrase, 'One who does not care for any house and who doesn't bother to build a house for himself.'

Let me tell you a story. Ravana lived for one kalpa (many thousands of years). Vyasa lived for four kalpas. Ravana was building Lankapuri, his capital in Sri Lanka. He got Lankapuri as a gift from Shiva and he was developing it. When Vyasa came to the city, Ravana asked him, 'Oh Vyasa, did you see my palace, and my country? How grand they look.' Vyasa replied, 'Yes, I have seen them.'

Ravana showed him everything with pride and asked, 'Why don't you build a house for yourself?'

Vyasa smiled and says, 'My life is just four kalpas. I have no time to waste building houses. After all, I am going to live here for only four kalpas, why should I waste time building houses?'

Ravana lived for only one kalpa, for which he built such a big house. Vyasa whose life was four times as long, thought it was unnecessary to waste part of his life building houses! ‘One who is not concerned about owning a house is full of devotion and he is near to Me, dear to Me.’ Krishna concludes this chapter on Bhakti Yoga, Union through Devotion, saying that one who lives in righteousness is devoted to Him.

Dharma is spiritual righteousness. It is not, and has nothing to do with rules and regulations laid down by society and religion. Human tendency is always to break rules. If there is a speed restriction, the driver will speed, especially when he feels there is no cop around. Rules, especially societal rules, seem to restrict one’s freedom of expression and movement. Rules are always needed for others but not for us.

Religious rules and commandments are even worse. They are based on principles of greed and fear and designed to control, totally control. Unlike societal leaders, religious leaders know that they have no constitutional powers to control. Therefore, they must devise subtler techniques of control. So they came up with the concept of sins. Along with sins, religions created heaven and hell.

But religions must survive and to survive they must control. If they lead you to believe that you are divine, how will they survive? So they must brand you as a sinner, a sinner from birth. You must be led to believe that only religion can give you salvation. They teach you from the start that you cannot redeem yourself because your nature is evil.

Understand that you are no sinner! Divinity resides within us. Our only sin, the original sin, is in not recognizing that we are Divine. Therefore we don’t need to strive to attain salvation. We just need to become aware of our inner divinity. In Hindu scriptures, spiritual truths are called yama and comprise the following: satya, ahimsa, asteya, aparigraha and brahmacharya. These are not very different from the Ten Commandments.

Satya is truth. It is truth in thoughts, words and action. What is inside is shown outside. Truth can only be expressed when one is living in awareness in the present, when mind and ego are disengaged, when whatever is felt is expressed without being filtered by the ego.

Ahimsa is non-violence, again in thought, words and action. Ahimsa arises from the realization of the cosmic consciousness, that we are one with the universe, that we are one with every being in this universe. When this realization dawns, what ‘other’ exists to harm? Violence dissolves and compassion blossoms.

Asteya is not coveting, not just possessions but qualities, attention and the like. It is to realize one’s own uniqueness in the context of the cosmic consciousness, and to realize that Existence is showering equally and uniquely on all of us. So then what need is there to seek what is rightfully someone else’s? Just decide: what Existence gives them is good for them and what Existence bestows upon me is best for me and my overall expansion.

Aparigraha means to live simply and minimally within one’s needs and not to develop and chase desires based on greed.

Brahmacharya is living in and with Reality. This word is often translated incorrectly as celibacy. What it actually means is to drop one’s fantasies, illusions and expectations about life and oneself. It means living with spontaneity and intelligence in the present moment.

In this day and age it is humanly impossible to follow these ideals implicitly. Sanyasis who take these vows have a tough time fulfilling them. For those in day-to-day material life, these are almost impossible to achieve.

In my experience, I would say that these rules of yama, of spiritual conduct, are a product of enlightenment and not a path to enlightenment. In this modern age, the path of righteousness that Krishna talks about leading to Him is the path of meditation. When we follow meditation, one automatically gets into the virtuous circle of conscious awareness that takes us to Krishna Consciousness.

Meditation is a process of shutting the mind down. In this process of reaching the no-mind state, the ego drops. The barrier to the realization that our true nature is divine disappears. We become who we are. We realize we are one with the Divine.

Q: How does one let go of attachment? It seems inseparable from living.

A: When I stay at devotees' homes, they ask me, 'Master, did you sleep well in this new place?' I tell them, 'Only when you have attachment to a house, does another house become a new place and you struggle. When you don't have an attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go.'

Our ashram records show that I visited 1,200 homes during the last two years. In India, each day I used to visit forty homes. I have stayed in hundreds of homes around the world, but I never feel that someplace is new. I feel totally at home anywhere.

People ask me on the following day, 'Master did you sleep well? Are you comfortable?'

I say, 'What is there in this? If I stretch my hand out, I get food. If I stretch my leg out, I sleep, that's all!' That's life. There is nothing else. If you don't feel attached to one home, you feel at home in the entire world. You are totally relaxed anywhere in the world.

People ask me, 'Master, how can you travel continuously?' This question comes from people who travel for business. They say, 'If we go to one or two places and come back, it takes one week to recover, to settle down again and get back to our routine, our life, for us to feel comfortable, to feel ourselves. How can you travel continuously?' I stay for a maximum of one week in any place. Now, because we have an ashram here, I have been staying for more than a week. Otherwise, never more than a week.

The secret is not feeling connected to one house. Then you will feel connected to the whole world. You will

have a deep feeling of being at home with the whole world. Wherever you go, you will experience a deep, relaxed bliss and ecstasy. As Krishna says here, 'One who does not care for any house, such a man full of devotion is very dear to Me.' When one is not fixed in a physical location, only then one can be fixed in mind.

When people asked Ramana Maharishi to suggest a form of meditation, he advised them to walk around the Arunachala Hill and focus on the Hill. They wondered, 'Why is he saying this? How can we meditate while walking? All meditations must be done while sitting cross-legged with eyes closed.'

No. Understand, when the body is moving, it is easier to keep the mind stationary. In our Chakra energization programs, the Life Bliss Programs, we have a meditation on the vishuddhi, the throat chakra. This meditation involves active movement, actually running, while keeping the mind focused on the vishuddhi chakra. This is a powerful meditation that infuses energy. It is easier to focus with the mind if the body is moving.

When one is truly in the present, when one is aware, when one's consciousness is awake, there can be no duality. Our self merges with the Self; we are one with the Divine. Everyone is us. Then where is the question of friends and enemies? We are one with nature. Where is the question of feeling hot and cold? When we are one with the universe, when all is the same, where is the question of feeling honor or dishonor, from whom to whom and by whom? The experience and the experiencer become the same. The expression and the experience become the same. Krishna takes us into that state, the state of Krishna Consciousness, being one with Him, the Divine, where all these dualities merge.

Q Master, if every waking and sleeping is akin to birth and death, and at the time of birth if we create an earthly life, does it mean that each awakening after sleep is an opportunity for a new life in our current form?

Yes, everyday is an opportunity to transform your body and mind. Let me tell you clearly, you can even transform your body! Not only the mind, even your body because your body is created by your mind. Everyday is an opportunity given to us to transform our lives. Every sleep is death, every awakening is birth; it is janana and marana, birth and death. Everyday is an opportunity for us to transform our lives.

At the point of awakening, when your subtle body settles into your gross body, the thoughts that arise in your mind are the attitude that develops and determines your mood and action for the rest of the day. When you wake up in the morning, as you wake up, when you are still in bed, run your hands over your body from the top of your head to tips of your toes. As your hands feel the top of your head, say to yourself that you have a lovely head with wonderful hair. Do not worry about whether you do have or your perception of whether you believe you have. Just do it. Then offer gratitude to the universe for giving you such a lovely head and wonderful hair. This way, run through your entire body down to your feet and toes.

This whole exercise may take ten minutes. It is a powerful meditation technique that not only determines your mood for the day, but also infuses a strong self-image and love for yourself. This translates into love for others. Yes, each awakening can transform your life, if you allow it to and you know how.

Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Krishna, to make us all experience the truths of bhakti yoga, that love is our very life. Let us pray to Him to give us the conscious experience of bhakti, devotional love, and make us experience and radiate eternal bliss, nithyananda.

Thank You.

Thus ends the 12ᵗʰ chapter named Bhakti Yoga, ‘Path of Devotion’ of the Upanishad of the Bhagavad Gita, the scripture of Yoga, dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna.