Beyond Scriptures🔗

There are millions of scriptures and millions of books on planet Earth. From time immemorial, human beings have created scriptures and still continue to create spiritual books. But Bhagavad Gita is incomparable. We cannot compare this book with any other because no other book has penetrated human consciousness so deeply. No other book has contributed to the preparation of so many enlightened beings on planet earth like Bhagavad Gita. No other book is a complete encyclopedia of spirituality. Bhagavad Gita is the unabridged dictionary and encyclopedia of spirituality.

Spiritual literature can be classified into three categories. First we have śāstras: śāstras give us clarity about the aim of life, the goal of human life. They teach us how to live life, the purpose of life, and the goal of life. They give intellectual understanding about the ultimate truth of man and God.

Śāstras logically and intellectually answer all major questions. Through them, we can be logically convinced to follow the ultimate path. Śāstras guide us in life. These books give us regulations, do's and dont's, what should be done and what should not be done.

There are many examples. The Ten Commandments are śāstras. The śruti and smṛti of Hindu religion, the sacred scriptures such as the Vedas and Upaniṣads, and the guidelines such as the Manusmriti and epics such as Ramayana, are śāstras. The Bible, Koran, Dhammapada of Buddha, Zend Avesta of Zoroaster, and Jewish Kabbalah are śāstras.

The second category of literature is stotras. It is the expression of someone who has realized the ultimate truth; a person who has had the glimpse of divine love. When such a person expresses his joy, the expression is stotras.

When we worship and surrender ourselves to the Divine, the form of expression is stotras, devotional compositions. The literature from the heart is stotras; literature from the head is śāstras.

The third type of literature called sūtras gives us techniques to realize the state of uniting with the Divine.

Śāstras give us intellectual understanding, stotras give emotional feeling, sūtras give the being level experience.

Śāstras are like signboards, intellectual scriptures that explain the basics of life. Stotras help us surrender to the Divine. The glory of the Divine is expounded on by the stotras. Sūtras give us techniques to achieve devotion or enlightenment.

Śāstras alone cannot lead us to enlightenment, although they can be a good support; they can take us to an enlightened master. Until that point, it is a great help. Stotras are spoken from the level of emotion, feeling. When we have a deep feeling, we just express it. It just flows through us. Our whole being is flowing; that is stotras. Sūtras means the technique that helps us achieve the goal of the śāstras and the stotras.

The goal of śāstra is the soul, divinity within; the goal of stotras is God. Of course, both are one and the same, but they have two different paths.

People who are intellectually oriented, who are centered in logic, analysis and calculation need śāstras, intellectual scriptures. They do not do anything unless they are intellectually convinced, unless they are clear about the whole thing. We cannot say that because of this attitude, they should not seek spirituality. However, there are many scriptures that say, 'Don't come inside if you don't have faith.'

Let me tell you, we should look at man with more compassion. We can't put faith as the main criterion to enter into spirituality. If we put faith as the first criterion, we are refusing to give spirituality to almost 90% of humanity because for most people it is not easy to believe anything immediately. Faith may not be instantaneous.

Words like belief and faith have limited relevance. These words are outdated. They no longer have the meaning they had ages ago. These words are totally out of our lives. We can't say that only the person who believes, the one who has faith, can come for spirituality. Spirituality should be open to every being. We should create a system through which we can reach every individual.

Our vedic seers created śāstras to give us intellectual understanding. They logically taught us the path and the goal, and why we are asked to do all these things and why we need spirituality. All these major questions are answered logically and intellectually in śāstras and the conclusions are given to us.

We need to understand a few things about śāstras. Śāstras completely take away our doubts. Doubt is a devil. Once a doubt enters our mind, we can't sleep, we can't rest until we clear it. Śāstras help us get rid of these doubts intellectually.

One thing we should understand about intellectual clarity is that unless we have complete intellectual clarity, our belief will be a pseudo belief; anyone can shake our faith. Our faith does not have a strong base. Our faith is almost like a building without a foundation. If we build without a foundation, what will happen to the building? It will collapse. The same will happen to us if we don't have the base of śāstras.

A person asked the great master Vivekananda, 'Master, what is the importance of Veda and why should we study the scriptures?'

Vivekananda said, 'If you study the scriptures, all your faith and sincerity will become so strong that nobody will be able to shake you.'

Otherwise, any fool can tell us that what we are doing is superstitious and we can start thinking, 'Am I really doing superstitious things? Am I really following the right path? What am I doing?' We will start having doubts about ourselves. We won't have faith in ourselves.

Every human being should understand that we don't believe our belief. We may think we believe in something; we may think we have faith, but our faith or belief is not deep enough. It does not take us anywhere unless we have the foundation of intellectual conviction. Unless we have the deep foundation of śāstras, we will not be able to believe in anything.

Please be very clear, even our emotions are not so deep. We think we have love, we think we believe. I see all types of people who say they believe in what they think. One man said, 'Oh master, I love the whole world.' Again and again, I tell people that to love the world is easy, but to love your wife is very difficult!

That is why we are stuck. To love the whole world is very easy. We can always say Vasudaiva Kuṭumbakaṁ - the world is my family. The problem is that we are not in tune with our own family. We think we love, but we don't really love. Our emotions are not deep; our faith is not deep. This is because we don't have the intellectual conviction.

If we do not have the intellectual conviction and have only faith, our faith can be shaken by anybody. Just one person is enough to break our faith. We can be totally shaken. Śāstras, the intellectual understanding, give a base so that all our convictions, all our faith, all our belief can enter into our being and start working.

Bhakti, devotion, is just an alchemy process. It is as if a touchstone has touched us. Ramakrishna says beautifully, ‘If a touchstone touches any metal it becomes gold; just a touch of the stone is enough for any metal to be converted into gold.’

Devotion is a touchstone. The moment devotion touches us, we become God, we become divine. The problem is, we never allow devotion to touch us; we never allow devotion to work on us; we never allow devotion to penetrate our being.

We think we want God, but we are continuously afraid of the Divine. We may think we want the Divine, but as long as it is superficial, as long as it is under our control, things go well. The moment the devotion enters our being, and starts the process, we say, ‘No, no, not that much. This is enough! I think that is too much for me!’

We stop at a certain point; our faith is pseudo faith.

A small story:

One guy lived throughout his life as an atheist. One day he fell from a cliff and was hanging on to a small branch. Slowly, the branch also started giving way. The man started shouting, ‘Oh God! I never believed in you, but now I do. Please save me! Please save me, now that I believe in you.’

A booming voice from heaven said, ‘Oh my son, don’t worry. I will save you. Just let go of the branch! Let go of the branch and I will save you.’

Immediately the man responded, ‘Is there anybody else out there who can save me?’

Our faith is just a show. Is there anybody else who can save me? God is only one of the many choices for us.

If there is no good movie on television, then we go to the temple. If we don’t have any other commitment, any other party on a particular day, we go to the temple. God is only one more choice in our lives. Till we have an intellectual conviction about life, God is just one more choice; spirituality is just one more choice. We just choose. It is just one more shop like Walmart and K Mart; it is Spiritual Mart; we decide which shop we should enter! It is just one more shop, nothing more than that. The basic need for life is intellectual conviction.

A small story:

There was a grandmother in a village. She went to the city to visit her five year old grandson who lived with his parents.

At bed time, she went to her grandson's room to wish him good night. The boy was praying.

She asked him, 'Do you say your prayers every night?' He replied, 'Yes.' She asked, 'And what about morning?' The boy replied, 'No. I am not scared in the daytime.'

This is how our relationship with God is. It is only this much! Our spirituality is just a game. We remember God only when we need something. When things go well according to our chosen route, then God is great, else throw away the God. I have seen people who pass exams and break coconuts as an offering in front of Ganesha temples, but if they fail, they break the Ganesha idol itself!

If they pass in their exams, they break coconuts for Ganesha and if they fail they break Ganesha himself!

Our faith is pseudo if it is not life transforming. We do not allow devotion to work on us. A beautiful verse in the scriptures of Vedānta says: To clear your intellect, you must break your intellect; you must open your intellect; you must have a clear intellectual understanding about life, about spirituality, about everything. Śāstras give us that intellectual clarity, that intellectual understanding.

All the great devotional people like Chaitanya, Ramanuja and Madhva had a strong intellectual base. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a great Nyayaika philosopher. Nyayaika means logic; he was a great philosopher of logic. Once you reach that height, those peaks of logic, only then you fall into the valley of love; only then you are qualified to fall in love. Unless you reach the heights of logic, you are not qualified to fall into the valley of love. All great masters and great devotees who reach the peak of intellect have a strong śāstras base.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Ramanuja, Madhva, all these great masters of devotion, had a strong intellectual base in the first category of scriptures, śāstras.

Next are the stotras. Stotra means expressing our experience, love or devotion to our master or God. Expressing our deep love is stotra. We stand in front of the Divine, feel the energy of the Lord and express our emotions.

Many people ask, 'Swamiji, why does Hinduism have idol worship?' Hinduism does not have idol worship. We don't worship the idol. We worship through the idol. When we stand in front of the idol, do we say, 'Oh stone! Give me a boon. Oh stone! Please save me?'

No! We say, 'Oh God, please save me.' We don't worship the idol. We worship through the idol. So we are not doing idol worship. We worship through the idol. In Vaishnavism, the devotional stream of Hinduism, there is a beautiful word arcāvatāra. This means the idol worshipped in the temple is the incarnation of God.

Arcāvatāra means incarnation of God. The idol is not just a stone. Incarnation means the Divine descending on planet earth, just like the ten incarnations of Vishnu. All these idols are like these ten incarnations. Just like these incarnations, the stone, the idol that we worship is called arcāvatāra. We relate to the Divine through the idol.

When we stand in front of the idol and pour our heart out through verses, this expression is what is stotras. All the songs written by great devotees like the Alvars, Nayanmars, Meera and Chaitanya - are stotras.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, sometimes I don't feel like chanting these stotras. Should I do it mechanically even if I don't like doing it?'

I say, 'Do it. You may feel it is a mechanical exercise for one or two days. However, it will become your being once you start enjoying the meaning and experiencing what you express. It will become your feeling.' When you express your heart, it becomes stotra.

Next is sūtras. Sūtras give us the technique to reach enlightenment. Śāstras are from the intellectual level. Stotras are from the emotional level. Sūtras are from the being level.

There are three kinds of human beings: head oriented, heart oriented and being oriented. To fulfil everyone, our enlightened sages have created three kinds of literature - śāstras, stotras and sūtras. Bhagavad Gita is the only book that is a combination of śāstras, stotras and sūtras! In Bhagavad Gita, all three are combined together, with something more!

Gita is śāstras; it gives a clear intellectual understanding about life, soul, as well as the do's and don'ts, rules and regulations. I have not seen any other book explain these concepts so deeply.

Just explaining do's and don'ts will not help. Giving the intellectual reason as to why it should be done or not done is necessary. Many books talk about how many times you can marry or whether you can marry at all. Many books lay down all these rules, but give no explanation. Very few books give reasons why we should or should not do something. Gita is the only book I know that gives a strong intellectual base, intellectual clarity and understanding about what we should do.

No other religion has as many scriptures as Hinduism. Within the vedic literature, our masters have chosen three books called 'prasthānatraya'. These books are the ultimate authorities in spirituality. One is the Brahma Sutra, the second is Upaniṣads and the third is the Bhagavad Gita.

Veda Vyasa, an enlightened master, wrote the Brahma Sutra. Many enlightened masters taught what is known as Upaniṣad. However, Gita is directly from God, from a pūrṇāvatār - a perfect incarnation, Krishna. Among the incarnations, Krishna is considered pūrṇā, complete, a full incarnation.

Why is Krishna considered the only perfect incarnation? Why can't he be just one more incarnation? First understand why incarnations come to planet earth.

Ramakrishna recounts beautifully: There was a beautiful paradise with many trees and varieties of flowers and fruits. Three friends were walking near this paradise that had a big wall around it. One of them climbed the wall and peeped inside.

He cried out, 'Oh my God! Such a beautiful place!' He jumped into the garden and started enjoying the fruits. The second man climbed the wall and saw the garden. He too felt it was beautiful, but he had a little bit of courtesy. He turned and said to the third man who was below, 'Dear friend, there is a beautiful paradise below. Come, I am going in.' Saying this, he jumped over and started enjoying the fruits.

The third man climbed the wall and saw the paradise. He saw his two friends and understood the level of joy and bliss that they were enjoying. Then he said to himself, 'Let me go down and tell all the people about this beautiful paradise. I will bring them all to enjoy this garden.'

An incarnation is someone who comes down to tell others about the blissful place that he experienced. The man who descends from the Divine to express the bliss of that divinity is an incarnation. The person who returns to planet earth to tell you about divinity and to make you realize what he has experienced, is an incarnation.

A scientist is a person who creates a formula to understand things of the outer world. For example, Newton saw the apple falling from the tree. Suddenly some understanding came to him, ‘Why is this falling? What is happening? Why shouldn’t it go up? Why is it coming down?’ Newton glimpsed the truth at that moment. He analyzed and created a formula so that everybody could understand what happens when an objects fall. Newton created a formula, the theory of gravity. A scientist is a person who creates a formula for the outer world.

In the same way, an enlightened spiritual master is a person who creates a formula to reproduce his inner world experiences. Scientists create formulae for the outer world, whereas a master creates a formula to recreate the experience of the inner world. Meditation techniques are these formulae.

An incarnation is a person who can directly give the experience without even using the formula! All these great incarnations come down to planet earth to make people realize that they too are divine, that they too are God, to tell people that the other side is beautiful. ‘There’s a very big paradise. Come, let us go and enjoy. Come, join me,’ they say.

An incarnation is a person who has descended to teach divinity to the world. Why is Krishna a perfect incarnation? He has all the qualities needed to push human beings to divinity. The person who can push human beings to divinity is called jagat guru – the guru who awakens. He is the teacher, the master of the whole universe.

The invocation verse of Bhagavad Gita says:

The verse says that Krishna is the jagat guru. Jagat guru is a person who can help the whole world, all types of human beings at all levels. The universe is a place with all types of human beings who are at all levels of experience and maturity. Krishna can help people from all levels to experience divinity, to reach the ultimate, to realize the truth.

There are intellectual people, emotional people and people at the being level. Some incarnations, such as Shankara, strongly appeal to intellectual people. Shankara suits intellectual people. Buddha suits intellectual people. Intellectual people can easily relate to Buddha, but it is difficult for emotional people to relate to Him. We can't imagine Buddha with a flute! We can't imagine Buddha singing and dancing. We can't imagine Shankara singing and dancing. We can't imagine Shankara doing rās-līla!

Buddha and Shankara will appeal only to the intellectuals.

There are some incarnations for emotional people. Emotional people relate to Meera and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who are always singing, dancing and celebrating. An intellectual man can never understand Meera or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He can never understand Aandal, another great devotional type of person. He can see them dancing, but he cannot see for whom they are dancing. They can never understand these incarnations.

People who are at the being level, centered on their being, find it difficult to relate with intellectual or emotional masters. They straightaway want the experience. They are neither ready to analyze nor ready to believe. A person ready to analyze goes to shāstras. A person ready to believe is drawn to stotras, but a person who wants a straight experience, instant coffee, instant experience, can neither wait for shāstras nor stotras. He straightaway wants the technology, the applied science. shāstras are like the main theory, the basic science. Stotras are like the marketing department, publicity. Sūtras are applied science. They give straight answers.

You need to understand a bit about this marketing department.

A small story:

One man died and reached Yamadharma's court for judgment. Yama is the God of death and justice. Yama said, 'You have committed some sins and you also have some merit. You are allowed to be in heaven and in hell. You have a choice. You can see both the places and choose which one you want.'

The man said, 'Alright, I will check out both places and then decide.'

He went to hell first. The people were so beautiful, dancing and singing. It had become completely hi-tech. Computers were available. Internet was available. They watched the news everyday. Everything was so new, air-conditioned, and people were serving so many types of food. He wondered,

'What is this? What happened to hell?'

People in hell said, 'All the technical experts are here. So we changed the whole setup. Now we have updated the whole system. It is no more like old times. Now, everything is new.'

Then the man said, 'Alright, let me go and see heaven. There is a chance that some techies would have gone there as well. There is a possibility.'

In heaven, he saw the same old saints with long beards, sitting on clouds and singing! Nothing else; nothing new. It was the same old heaven, nothing much was happening.

He went to Yama and said, 'I think I will go to hell.'

Yama said, 'Please be certain. You cannot change your mind. Are you sure?'

The man said, 'Yes, I will go to hell. It's so cool!'

As soon as he decided, a door suddenly opened and he fell into hell. He was shocked! There was the conventional hell - people being tortured by devils. It was the traditional hell. He asked, 'What is happening? What is this? When I came half an hour ago, hell was different. Now the whole thing has changed.'

They all gathered around him and one of them said, 'No, no, that was the promotional feature from our marketing department!'

Be very clear, sometimes we are caught in the marketing department. Don't be caught in the marketing department, and when you do go to the marketing department, be clear about what the truth is and what exaggeration is. You need to analyze. Of course, when I say we go through the stotras, we need to understand it. Please be very clear, when we go through the purānas, the epic stories, we need to understand the spirit of the purānas.

There is a big difference between fact and truth. Purānas, our epics, are truths. They are showing us, leading us to the truth. So while understanding stotras we should understand the spirit of the stotras.

The next level people, the being-level people, neither want shāstras nor stotras; they straightaway want the applied science, technology. For them Shiva, who created the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, is the answer. All the great meditation techniques he delivered are for those people who are being-oriented. Zen masters are ideal for these kind of people. They will be able to relate well with Zen masters. For the intellectual crowd, there is one kind of incarnation, for the emotional crowd, there is another kind of incarnation, and for being-level people, yet another kind of incarnation.

But Krishna can relate to people at all three levels. If you are intellectual, He gives you the Gita; he is Gita Krishna. If you are emotional, you can have Radha Krishna, the beloved of Radha! He can sing and dance; he can play; he can be naughty; he can fulfil your emotional being; he can give you the ultimate emotional fulfilment. At the being level, you straightaway want the technology of enlightenment. Again, He offers the truth, Dhyāna Yoga - the path of meditation techniques - in the Gita.

Krishna is complete fulfilment. His very life is a technique! The very life of Krishna is a technique that leads you to enlightenment. The body language of an enlightened person is a sūtra, a technique. Krishna is the person whose body language straightaway leads you to enlightenment. Understand that Rama will lead you to dharma, righteousness. If you follow what Rama did, you will have dharma, but with Krishna, you will straightaway have mokṣa, liberation!

When we experience the being of Krishna, when we understand Krishna, His very being is a technique. His very life is a technique. That is why there is a word in the Bhāgavatam (ancient Indian epic) called ‘līla dhyāna’. Just remembering the līla, the playful pranks of Krishna, is dhyāna, meditation.

No other incarnation is given the word līla dhyāna. No other incarnation is praised like this. Just remembering His acts is meditation!

The great sages were once disturbed by the singing and dancing of the gopikās (cowgirls who were Krishna’s playmates). So they went to Krishna’s birthplace, Vrindavan, to see what was happening. They just wanted to see for themselves.

They thought, ‘Why are the gopikās so happy and always singing and dancing? We sages are sitting with closed eyes trying to meditate with long faces and nothing is happening. We have been meditating for a long time, but these gopikās are always happily singing and dancing! What is really happening in that place?’

A small story within this story:

A man was sitting on the riverbank trying to meditate. He heard the sound of anklets. He opened his eyes and saw a young woman walking towards the river to fetch some water. He asked, ‘What is this? What kind of disturbance is this?’ Then he closed his eyes and started meditating again.

The next day, at the same time, he heard the sound. Unconsciously he opened his eyes, saw the girl, and asked her, 'What kind of disturbance are you creating?' Again, he closed his eyes and started meditating.

On the third day, he became anxious when the exact time came, and started waiting for the sound of the anklets!

Back to the story, the singing and dancing of the gopikās around Krishna disturbed these sages. They wanted to know what was going on in Vrindavan. They came down to see the gopikās, but the gopikās did not receive them properly, nor did they care to listen to what the sages had to say. They were happy, completely fulfilled, and in total contentment in their reminiscences with Krishna.

The sages asked, 'What is this? We are great sages. We have come all the way to see you and you are not even receiving us properly.'

One gopikā asked, 'Sages? Who are they?'

'We meditate on His feet in our heart,' explained one of the sages.

The gopikā said, 'Meditate on His feet? Come, we will show you. We are playing with His entire form! You are meditating on Him. Why? Come, we will show you how we are playing with Him. You say you are trying to remember Him. We are trying to forget Him! He is so much in our being. We are unable to forget Him. We are unable to do our work. He has completely filled up our inner space!'

Many people ask, 'Swamiji, should we remember you? Should we take you as our master?'

I tell them, 'Never make that mistake. If I am going to help you, if I am your master, you will not be able to forget me! That is the real scale to know if I am your master or not.'

If you must remember me with effort, then I am not your master. Forget me. Carry on doing your work. Carry on with your life. If you must remember something consciously, with effort, it is ugly. Only when you can't forget, only then, devotion happens in you. These gopikās say, 'We are unable to forget Him.'

Krishna appeals to the being level people. They are continually aspiring, seeking an experience straightaway. Just by His will, He can give that experience to them. He can give experience of enlightenment to Arjuna, by just showing him His cosmic form, Viśvarūpa darśan!

Krishna shows that He is in everybody, that everybody is in Him. Just by will, Krishna is able to give an experience of the Divine, eternal bliss, to Arjuna. Whether we are intellectually oriented, emotionally oriented or being level oriented, we can find our fulfilment in Krishna.

Krishna can give us fulfilment. When intellect ripens, it becomes intelligence; when emotion ripens, it becomes devotion; when our being ripens, we become enlightened.

All these three enlightenment modes - being, devotion and intelligence - express at their peak in Krishna. Hence, Krishna can fulfil every being. That is why He is called jagat guru, master of the whole universe.

One man in India said to me, 'I am a jagat guru.'

I was surprised! I wondered, 'What is this? It is like having a small hotel on the roadside and naming it the Sheraton!'

I asked him, 'Jagat guru? What do you mean by that word? Do you know the qualifications of a jagat guru?'

He said, 'I have one disciple and his name is Jagat. I am his guru!'

So understand: Jagat guru does not mean just the guru of one person Jagat. Jagat guru leads the whole universe into the divine consciousness!

Krishna is a Jagat guru.

To a person who is intellectually oriented, the Upaniṣads will appeal; the śāstras will appeal; the Brahma Sutra will appeal.

To a person who is emotionally oriented, the stotras will appeal. The songs of Chaitanya, Meera and Tulsidas will appeal.

For a person who is being-oriented, the Vignana Bhairava Tantra or Patanjali Yoga sutra will appeal.

Krishna appeals to every being.

He is for the intellectual people, the emotional people, the being level people, and something more. He has created keys to open all the locks. He has created methods to give the spiritual experience to the whole of humanity, to people who have come, people who are here, and those yet to come. He has created the technology even for the future generations. He is nitya ānanda - eternal bliss. Gita is the ultimate scripture - śāstra, jagat guru and sūtra.

Krishna is beyond scriptures.

When Krishna says,

‘Weapons do not cleave, nor fire burns the Atman

Water does not wet it and wind does not dry it’

When He talks about the basic truths of life and spirituality, it is śāstra. He is giving intellectual knowledge.

When Arjuna says,

‘Oh Lord, I bow down to you from the front, from behind, from all sides;

You are infinitely mighty, pervading everything, you are the Ultimate’

Arjuna is doing the stotra. Arjuna is praising the lord; he is expressing his devotion.

When Krishna says,

‘Whatever your thought is when you leave this body, absorbed in that thought, that alone you attain, Arjuna!’

Here Krishna provides Arjuna the technique, the most powerful sūtra that helps anyone attain what he wants to.

Bhagavad Gita is the only scripture that combines the wisdom of śāstras, the depth of feeling of stotras and the practical reality of sūtras. It is a means to enlightenment for all, delivered by the master of masters.

In this first chapter of Bhagavad Gita, we see Arjuna, the most courageous fighter amongst the Pandava princes and the darling of all his teachers, winner of Draupadi and the close friend of Krishna, in deep dilemma.

Years ago, a man called Arthur Koestler wrote an article about Communism titled ‘Yogi and the Commissar.’ We do not know whether he had read the Gita, but he had certainly captured Arjuna and his plight with his title.

Arjuna is both the yogi and the commissar. As a yogi, he is deeply spiritual, centered within himself, and deeply aware of his moral and ethical obligations. As the commissar, Arjuna is the warrior, ready to avenge, ready to impose order and control; he is the typical kṣatriya prince.

Only with enlightenment is it possible to continuously and consistently proceed with both these personalities without faltering. Arjuna falters as he faces his enemies on the battlefield of the great Mahabharata War. His dilemma unfolds.

Arjuna's dilemma is such that he is now able to be neither a yogi nor a Commissar.

He loses his detachment as a yogi. In turn, he loses his courage as a commissar.

He sees his enemies and identifies himself with them. In front of him are his mentors, family and friends. They are his extension, his lineage and his identity. He can no longer pretend that he is the ultimate warrior, the commissar, who can dispassionately dispatch them to death.

Arjuna's dilemma is the dilemma of humanity. It is an internal conflict between what we perceive as our value systems and beliefs, and what we feel we can actually do. Our value systems and beliefs are the saṁskāras that drive our decisions. The problem lies in the fact that these saṁskāras lie deep in our unconscious zone. We are not even aware of them.

Arjuna understood his kṣatriya code of conduct very well. This code demanded that he cannot turn down a righteous challenge to fight and gamble. However, his deep-rooted attachment to his clan and lineage proved stronger than what he considered to be his duties. These feelings were far stronger than code of his conduct.

Arjuna's saṁskāras were primal. They related to survival issues, identity issues. By his killing clan members, he was in effect destroying a part of himself. No code of conduct was worth that destruction. That was his dilemma.

Each of us is caught in such a dilemma at one time or the other. We are taught to follow certain societal rules and regulations. As long as our basic desires are in tune with these societal and religious rules and regulations, we have no problems, no confusion, and no dilemma. However, our dilemmas start when what we seek and the path we need to follow to achieve them, violate these rules and regulations.

Everyone, without exception, has inbuilt guilt for violating the commandments of religion and society. That is why Jesus said, 'He amongst you, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.' That guilt is sin. And we fear that unknown and unseen forces will rise against us to punish us for these violations. Desire versus guilt is our dilemma, always.

In almost all cases, if the desires are strong enough, desires win. Rules and regulations can wait, we say. Worst come worse, we can always work out some means of appeasing these godly forces. We think, after all, what are temples and priests for?

The truth is that society and religion encourage us to think this way. They know that no one can be controlled one hundred percent.

‘Let us just put on speed breakers,’ they say. ‘Let us control them through fear and greed. If they are good all the time, that would be difficult. We shall be out of business. They can then deal directly with the unseen forces. That cannot be allowed. So let us install rules and regulations that cannot be observed by most of them. People will violate them; they will stumble. Let us then catch them and control them through the fear of God.’

Such is the genesis of religious guidelines and societal regulations. Some religions are based only on such guidelines, without any intelligent and acceptable reasoning to support the regulations. It is almost as though they are established so that we break them and feel guilty. Once we feel guilty, we are caught.

In the spiritual sense, there is no such thing as sin. There is nothing that is totally good or bad. As the Tao religion says, good is mixed with bad; there can be no light without darkness, or good without evil. When you become truly aware, you realize that there are no sins.

Whatever happens to us happens as a result of natural laws. The realized ones flow with that realization. When one has compassion for humanity, when one feels for every living being the same compassion that one feels for oneself, one can do no harm to another. There can be no sin. And therefore, there is no guilt either.

Arjuna’s progress on this path of self-discovery is the path of Bhagavad Gita. That can also be our path if we internalize the message of the Gita. When there is no variation between what we wish to do and what we believe in, when we are aware of our saṁskāras and we act in total fulfilment and awareness of these saṁskāras, we have no dilemma. We are in fulfilment.

All of us are born with pre-existing desires; these are the vāsanas, the mental setup that the spirit within us enters into our bodies with each new birth. These are also called prārabdha karma (for detailed explanation, please refer karma diagrams), those desires that we choose to fulfill when we take birth. They carry their own energy for fulfillment in that lifetime.

The trouble is that the time between death and the next birth is quick and painful. The body-mind system lapses into unconsciousness, a coma, as the energy leaves matter (the body). As the energy enters another piece of matter, another body-mind, the memory of the prārabdha karma is erased. When the spirit passes through the causal energy layer as it crosses the seven mind-body energy layers at death, we lose memory of our unfulfilled desires of that birth, the last thoughts, the vāsanas and the prārabdha karma. Therefore, when we are reborn in another body, we no longer remember why we were born or with what desires and purpose we have chosen this birth!

This is the root cause of our dilemma.

Incarnations and enlightened beings choose a conscious birth with full awareness of their reason for birth. They know what they are here for. They have no confusion, no dilemma. Arjuna is not at that stage, nor are most of us.

Fortunately, it is possible to become aware of our prārabdha karma, our opening balance of desires. We can then work towards their fulfillment during each life without accumulating more karma (āgāmya karma) in this lifetime. Āgāmya karma is the 'current account' of desires that we accumulate this lifetime.

By exhausting the prārabdha that we brought with us and by not accumulating more āgāmya, we reduce the overall 'account' of total karmas that we collect over millions of births. This total account is called sañcita karma.

These karmas or unfulfilled desires are also referred to as saṁskāras, the engraved memories stored in our unconscious zone, stirring up these desires. They are also called vāsanas or mindset, which in turn create the desires and store them as memories. These three words can be used interchangeably for all practical purposes, although they do have separate deeper meanings.

By understanding the nature and types of saṁskāras, vāsanas and karmas that we carry over into this birth, we can work towards their fulfillment. Then, our stock of saṁskāras diminishes.

The Ananda Spurana and Nithyananda Spurana Programs, the Life Bliss Level 1 and Level 2 courses, address these karmas. In both workshops, participants learn about their saṁskāras, what motivates their behavior and how to dissolve these karmas. In a sense, we begin to understand our opening balance of desires in this life, the karma we accumulate during this lifetime and how to work upon and release them while alive. This is also the process of yoga that Krishna takes Arjuna through in these eighteen chapters of Bhagavad Gita. These teachings are not meant for Arjuna alone. They are meant for us, so that we dissolve our saṁskāras, resolve our dilemmas and experience the ultimate truth.

Q: Swamiji, you mentioned that the Mahabharata war is a metaphor. Please elaborate.

If you know the story, I can elaborate on the metaphor. Since many may not have read this epic in detail, let me cover only a few important points.

The Mahabharata war lasted eighteen days. Bhagavad Gita was delivered as eighteen chapters. In the war there were totally eighteen akśouhiṇīs or divisions. The number eighteen is a mystical number. Now let me give you the theory of counting numbers. The more numbers you have started counting, the deeper the vengeance or logic which has developed in your system.

In ancient times, which we call the age of truth or Satya Yuga, people were able to count only till number three. In the following age of Treta Yuga, people were able to count up to seven. In the period that followed, Dvāpara Yuga, people were able to count upto eight. When people started counting till nine, it was the age of strife, Kali Yuga, which we live in today! Keeping account of more than eight thoughts in your memory space creates discomfort.

The ability to count more means that logic is able to advance step-by-step and more thoughts are able to flow. If eight thoughts can flow from you towards the outer world without any break, then you are materialistic; you are focused on the external world, the periphery.

Understand that if you are able to produce eight continuous thoughts without your being reminded to move inwards, it means that you are materially focused, and this leads you to depression. You will be in depression. The ability to have eight continuous thoughts without having self-recovery, without self-healing thoughts intervening to remind you of your true nature, is the pathway to hell.

Whenever your ten senses, which are your gateways to the external world, are added to the eight thoughts, you are in depression and you are in difficulty.

See, as long as you don't add thoughts to your hardware, your senses, you are okay. You don't have only five senses as you think. You have ten senses. There are five senses of perception called jnānendriya, and five senses of action called karmendriya. Your tongue when it engages in talk is being a karmendriya; when it does the act of tasting, it is a jnānendriya.

There are five input and five output senses, totally ten senses. When your ten senses are added to your mind, which can count to eight, you are in depression. Either you should not be able to count to eight or all ten senses should not be active. If both are happening you are in deep trouble.

All ten senses are not active in some animals; they are saved. If your ten senses are active and you can count to eight, you are depressed. That is why the number eighteen plays a major role.

What happens when your mind can count to eight, when it can continuously have eight externally focused thoughts? When the mind touches the eyes, it creates millions of thoughts related to the eyes. When it touches the nose, it creates millions of thoughts based on the nose. When it touches the tongue, it creates millions of thoughts related to the tongue. You are overwhelmed by thoughts, and actions driven through these thoughts.

In the Mahabharata War, there were eighteen divisions called akśouhiṇis, which consisted of soldiers, elephants, horses and so on. Of these the Kaurava army had eleven and the Pandava army had seven divisions. Put together, these symbolically represent eighteen million thoughts. When thoughts are high, the larger number of thoughts will be depression oriented. So, eleven million joined the negative group – the Kauravas, and only seven million were self-healing thoughts, self-recovery thoughts belonging to the Pandavas.

Let me give a description of destructive thoughts and self-healing thoughts.

You receive a message that a thief entered your home and took your money and valuables. Now this is a loss. The moment you hear this you think, ‘Oh God, what will happen to me? Everything is lost; nothing is there.’ All kinds of depressive thoughts are generated. A depressive thought trend starts.

On the other hand, you can choose to respond with self-healing thoughts also. For example, you may think, ‘Alright, even if I lose that money, it does not matter, I can always earn more. Even if I have ten times more wealth, what is the point? I am going to leave all that one day and die.’

The person who has renounced everything enjoys everything! Understand that.

Such thoughts are self-healing thoughts. You should have had some click with these self-healing thoughts, by listening to a master or by contemplating and experiencing it yourself. There should have been an inner change, a cognitive shift, a transformation, a psychological revolution; these are what I mean by 'clicks'.

The sudden and bright thoughts that you had when you heard a living master talk, are clicks. You were actually initiated when you got the click. You would have suddenly felt, 'Yes, what He says is right!' Or you yourself might have contemplated and got initiated, become self-illumined. An inner voice would have said, 'Yes, right!' Those thoughts are self-healing thoughts.

So in the Mahabharata, the self-healing thoughts are seven million and the destructive thoughts are eleven million, and the fight starts!

Arjuna is the individual consciousness; he is oscillating between what he sees as good and what he sees as bad. Your laziness to fight with the negative thoughts is tamas, inaction. You justify yourself and say, 'What is the need to fight with all these negative thoughts? It is okay, let them rule.' Your body is the land for which the eleven million and seven million are fighting. This is symbolised by Arjuna's hesitation to fight in the war.

There were one hundred Kaurava brothers: one hundred negative entities. One hundred brothers mean the cloning of one main thought into one hundred parts. Yes, it was cloning; the first cloning on planet earth was that of the Kauravas!

Who are the five Pandavas? They are the sons of Nature, born of immaculate conception: Yudhishtira from Yama, god of death and justice; Arjuna from Indra, god of the heavenly beings; Bhima from Vayu, god of wind; and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva, from the Ashwini putras, divine beings. All the Pandavas are sons of Nature!

The sons of Nature will always be self-healing thoughts, and the cloning of negative thoughts will always be depressing and destructive.

Among the Kauravas, Duryodhana is possessiveness. Shakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, is the energy that fans possessiveness and exploits it. Shakuni is cunningness. They gather together with the help of eleven million self-destructive thoughts (their army). The problem is that Arjuna, the individual consciousness, at the time of fighting the negative thoughts, goes into depression. He says, 'God! I have done so many sins and I have so many negative thoughts. When will I conquer and exhaust them?'

That is when a master, a Krishna, is needed to say, 'Don't bother. These thoughts do not have life. They are all unconnected, random, illogical and meaningless words.' Your negative thoughts do not have power over you once you understand that they are meaningless and unconnected. Once you distance yourself from them, once you unclutch from them, they become powerless!

This is the truth you need to learn. This is the essence of the Gita. If you have done the Nithyanandam course and know the Mahabharata story, you can understand the whole scene. On one side, there are eleven million negative thoughts. Naturally when an individual consciousness sees eleven million negative thoughts, he thinks, 'How can I ever become enlightened? When and how will I get all these guys out of me? And what is the need anyway? After all I am a householder. It's okay. Let them be there as they are. I have responsibilities; I have duties. Why should I kill all these thoughts? I cannot leave my people. I cannot give up my possessions.' You are simply unable to muster the courage. Not only that, you will ascribe your cowardice as a commitment to your parents or family! That is the cunningness!

See, a real commitment will never have a contradiction or conflict. But whenever a master tells you to do something and you say you have a commitment, you are simply justifying your laziness. It is purely because of your laziness and inaction that you justify it. You are in the same place as Arjuna is before the war. That is why the first chapter of Gita is called 'Arjuna viṣāda yoga,' Arjuna's depression.

The arrows that Arjuna releases when he follows Krishna's advice are thoughts he is unclutching from and disengaging from. Every time you unclutch from a thought, you have released one arrow! One thought has left you! One guy is down!

Arjuna justifies his cowardice as compassion. He expresses his cowardice as compassion. He falls into depression and confusion. When you are depressed, you say, 'No, this is not possible; why should I then act?' That is the time you need the master who will tell you, 'No, it is possible. You must finish it off!'

Why are Bhishma and Drona, the great teachers and elders on the negative side of the war? This is important to understand. Sometimes some self-healing thoughts get surrounded by negative thoughts and support negative thoughts.

Let me give some examples, though some of them may hurt some of your feelings.

Some techniques would have helped you grow in the past. However, they will not be helping you grow anymore. When such techniques continue to influence you, you need to fight them. They are the Bhishmas and Dronas who stand as part of the negative thoughts in the war.

For example, you are with a guru, and you practice some techniques or follow some system of belief with him. After some time, the guru's teaching does not help you grow further. But just because he did something good for you in the past, you stick to him. You are unable to go or grow beyond him. Such attitudes or thoughts are the Bhishmas and Dronas. They are just as dangerous as Duryodhana and Dusshasana!

Understand: They are as dangerous as Duryodhana and Dusshasana.

Who is Bhishma? He is the embodiment of your parents and elders. He symbolizes all your past conditioning, your parental conditioning. The moment you try to unclutch from your mind, the first one who comes up is Bhishma. He is your conditioning; he is your embedded memory bank. He is Bhishma Pitāmaha, the great father; he stands up in front of you first. That is why Bhishma came to the war first, with his big, fresh, eleven million strong army: eleven million thoughts!

So Bhishma is your parental conditioning and the societal conditioning from a young age. He is whatever you respect as your elders. You need to overcome him in your journey of enlightenment!

After parental conditioning comes the person who gave you the spiritual fire. Whoever it was who raised your frequency by a few levels, will come. Who is Drona? Drona taught Arjuna the art of archery. He was the initial level guru who gave Arjuna the inspiration. Drona taught logic and spiritual enquiry to Arjuna. All the intellectual material that you have read so far that keeps you away from an enlightened master, is what Drona stands for. After some time, he himself may become the obstruction to your growth. When Arjuna is with the ultimate master, Krishna, even this initial level guru is an enemy. He is just as dangerous as Shakuni and Duryodhana. He is equally dangerous!

After Drona, your charitable attitude will surface and stand as your enemy in your progress. This is Karna. Who is Karna? He is the embodiment of charity. There are people who are caught in creating wealth just to do charity. Understand that this is also an undesirable attitude. Many people think, ‘I will make money and do charity.’ Understand, they are caught in the disguise of charity! They will never become enlightened! They need to move beyond their so-called idea of charity, only then will they attain enlightenment.

You can be a Karna and feel good, but that does not mean you will become enlightened. No! However, if in the last few moments of your life, you give away something to an enlightened master, like Karna who handed everything over to Krishna, then there is a possibility of enlightenment for you.

What does this mean? The master takes away all your possessions and attachments. Krishna did not become rich by taking things from Karna. Understand this very clearly. Can you say Krishna became rich by taking things from Karna? No! The master accepting something from you is not for him to become rich, but to liberate you from something in which you are caught.

Karna was not able to die. The god of death who is also the god of justice was not allowing him to die because of the merits he had obtained and carried on account of his charity. That was why Krishna was unable to liberate Karna until He said, ‘Give me all your good deeds.’ Karna gave away all the merits to Krishna and became liberated that very moment.

That is why we call it Karna mokṣa, not Karna vadha: Karna’s liberation, not Karna’s destruction. For the evil ones like Kamsa, it is Kamsa vadha, destruction; but for Karna, it is Karna mokṣa, liberation, because he was stuck in compassion not in anything demonic.

Once you surpass Karna or compassion, your unguarded and pure ego will come and stand for the final fight: symbolized by Duryodhana in the war. And of course, Krishna plays the master game and slays Duryodhana as well.

Only after all these traits in you are gone, will you see enlightenment. Both positivity and negativity must die before enlightenment. The mind load has to reduce and thoughts have to reduce to zero. That is the way the Mahabharata unravels. That is the way the whole Mahabharata opens up.

Your negative thoughts never oppose you directly. They never come and stand in front of you without a positive front. They can never justify themselves as they are. They need a positive front to impose themselves upon you. The eleven million depressive thoughts will not attack you without the support of a Bhishma, Drona or Karna. These three are the positive fronts – parental conditioning, your teacher and your compassion.

So beware of the Bhishmas, Dronas and Karnas. If you overcome them, you are enlightened! If you are hypnotized, or lose confidence seeing them, you are lost. You are Arjuna, gone into depression!

Now, who are Arjuna’s assistants in the war? Yudhishtira, or dharma, signifies morality. Even while you are unclutching, you must have morality as the base. Just because you are unclutching, you should not start womanizing or using drugs! You will tend to think, ‘After all I am unclutched, let me start doing these things.’ No! That will not work. Dharma must be the base.

The next assistant is Bhima, courage. The courage of the individual consciousness is Bhima. Unclutch with strength and courage. Decide, ‘Whatever happens, I am going to unclutch. I may have knee pain, I may have back pain, I may have any pain, still I will unclutch.’ And what is unclutching? It is Arjuna wielding the arrow to slay the negative thoughts. That courage is Bhima.

Who is Sahadeva, the other support for Arjuna? Sahadeva is the knowledge of enlightened masters gained by reading books and biographies of enlightened masters. Sahadeva gives you tips from enlightened masters. Sahadeva is the embodiment of your knowledge. Sahadeva’s brother is Nakula. Nakula is the science of keeping your body strong till you become enlightened. So there is a need for maintenance of health through yoga and various techniques till you become enlightened.

These are all the ones you need as assistants! Above all of them is the person driving your chariot – your friend, philosopher, guide and master, Krishna!

Now, when you start the war, eleven million are standing in front of you. All the conditioning, teachers, parents and elders are standing in front of you. Those who were teaching you what you should and should not do from day one are standing in front of you. Who else is standing? The person who gave you spiritual inspiration in your life is there. Third, all your charitable attitudes are standing in front of you. What will you do now? Not only that, Shakuni, Duryodhana and all the negative persons are hiding behind these persons as well; they are not in the forefront. They confront through positivism so you may be put into illusion.

Now the war starts and you see the whole army arrayed against you. You think, ‘Oh, God! Eleven million of them; what will I do?’ You turn to Krishna and say, ‘Krishna, I don’t need to do anything of this sort. No! I don’t feel like fighting. Say whatever you say but I am leaving now. I am going to disappear from here. Even if I have to beg and eat, it is alright, but I don’t want to be a part of this drama. No!’

Krishna says, ‘Fool! Whether you kill these eleven million thoughts or not, it is of no consequence. They anyway have no life; they are dead already!’

Krishna says, 'Whether you kill them or not, they are dead already! You just take your arrow and act as if you are killing them! Just unclutch a few times. They are actually not there! It is just your fear that is giving power to these eleven million thoughts (people).'

Arjuna never bothered to look at the seven million people standing behind him: the self-healing thoughts. Arjuna never bothered to notice that. That is why I tell people, 'You clutch only to the negativity and suffer; you do not clutch to the positivity and experience bliss. The first thing you need to do is clutch to the positivity.'

Even after all these repeated teachings, you remain unconvinced. Then finally, the master gives you energy darśan – he reveals His Viśvarūpa darśan (His cosmic energy form) to you. He says, 'Alright you fool, you are unable to intellectually understand what I say. Now see who is talking to you about these things,' He then reveals His cosmic form to you. Then you get totally shaken up! You say, 'Oh, God...!' You see that the master is the embodiment of all the positive and negative perceptions and beyond everything as well. He is everything and He is beyond everything. His cosmic form, the Viśvarūpa, is the ultimate experience.

You then get the courage, 'After all, I will not be lost.' You get the courage and take your gāṇḍīva, the bow of Arjuna! Understand this important Sanskrit word: gāṇḍīva. It means 'something that cannot be taken away from you'. Unclutching is a technique that can never be taken away from you! It is said that Arjuna's bow and arrow were such that his quiver of arrows could never be exhausted. He was a born archer. Any mantra (powerful chant) can be taken away from you. But the technique of unclutching can never be taken away from you because it is your very nature. All you need to do is unclutch, unclutch and unclutch.

In ten days, Bhishma is lying on a bed of arrows. All your conditioning disappears. All the parental influence disappears and along with that, a few million thoughts disappear. It was Shikhandi who killed Bhishma. Understand who Shikhandi was. He was a transsexual. See, the first and basic parental conditioning that enters your system is the teaching that you are either a male or a female. You are taught to be very strongly associated with a particular gender. In reality, you have both male and female energies in you, but parental conditioning does not encourage this idea. Shikhandi is a rebel, who does not accept parental conditioning. Symbolically he is brought in to kill Bhishma! No one else can conquer Bhishma. Gender differentiation such as male or female is the first societal conditioning. Becoming gay or transsexual is the rebellion against that basic conditioning. Being a little crazy is good at certain times! The attitude of saying 'no' is good to overcome parental conditioning. That is why in India you must leave home in order to break your societal conditioning and seek enlightenment. After you have conquered Bhishma, your parental and societal conditioning, you have to drop the attitude of Shikhandi; you have to drop Shikhandi, because he will not work against Drona, the next in line to be killed!

Removal of parental conditioning is a big success. Now, understand that parental conditioning will never die completely because the language that you have learned will never die till you leave the body. That is why Bhishma never really died. He was lying in a corner, on a bed of arrows, inactive, that's all. He cannot attack you any more. He will just be lying in one corner. You move beyond the influence of parental conditioning.

So the thoughts attacking you from parental conditioning lose power and lie incapacitated in one corner. The inner chatter and genetic structure of your parents will be with you until you leave the body. But they will not have the negative influence they once had. This is what the incapacitated body of Bhishma represents.

Once the Mahabharata War is over, all the Pandavas, the good thoughts, ask Bhishma who was lying on the bed of arrows to bless their coronation. Bhishma beautifully teaches them how to rule the country.

Draupadi, the common wife of the Pandavas, is unable to bear this. She says to Bhishma, ‘Father, please keep quiet. I feel so disgusted listening to your words. You talk about noble things, but what happened when my sari was being ripped off and I was abused in public? What happened to your dharma, your moral code? Come on, answer me!’

Bhishma says, ‘At that time, I was unable to talk. I did not have intelligence because I ate the food of Duryodhana. I committed aśraya doṣa, the sin of consuming impure food.’

Whoever pays you or paves your way in life, their quality will become your quality. Blessed are those who work under enlightened masters! Blessed are those whose boss is an enlightened master. Whoever pays you, their quality will enter into your head and become yours. Whether you believe it or not, unconsciously, you imbibe their quality. Bhishma says, ‘I ate Duryodhana’s food. I committed aśraya doṣa, the sin of taking food from an impure person. So, my intelligence never worked at that time. But now, because of Arjuna’s arrows, because the individual consciousness has showered so many arrows of unclutching on me, all my impure blood has gone!’

If you constantly unclutch from parental conditioning, thoughts that enrich parental conditioning start to leave you. Then dharma, righteous awareness, emerges from your parental conditioning. Parental conditioning can put you in depression if you are constantly influenced by the negative thoughts that it generally brings with it. Instead, if you constantly unclutch from it, the same parental conditioning can help you maintain your dharma; it will teach you dharma! That is the story of Bhishma.

Bhishma is parental conditioning. He says, ‘All the negative blood generated by impure food has left my body and that is why now, I can tell you what to do and what not to do.’ Parental conditioning will be available to guide and help you only by the tenth day of continuously unclutching (tenth day of the Mahabharata war). It is only then that it will lose its negativity.

Once you overcome parental conditioning, your book-based spiritual knowledge surfaces next for you to fight! This is logical knowledge acquired through education. It is the intellectual stuff about spirituality that has not become a direct experience for you. It is still at the intellectual level. It becomes the reason that is stopping you from surrendering to an enlightened master. You are caught in educational conditioning. At this stage, you are fighting the character Drona (Arjuna’s teacher) in the war!

People who have gained some spiritual knowledge through teachers or books, are unable to surrender to a living master because their previous teacher, in the form of the spiritual knowledge acquired so far, stands in front of them blocking the path to liberation. That is Drona.

Let me give the essence now.

The number eighteen is a mystical number. You cannot count more than eight with logic. In Satya Yuga, the first quarter of time, you could count only up to three; in Treta Yuga, the second quarter of time, you could count only up to seven; in Dwapara Yuga, the third quarter of time, you could count up to eight; in Kali Yuga, the fourth quarter of time, you started counting more than ten. Depression is sure to result if you have more than eight thoughts without going into your self-healing mode to remind you of your true nature.

When the ten senses of perception and action, jnānendriya and karmendriya, are added to the eight thoughts of the mind, it leads to depression. Either you should not count up to eight thoughts or your senses should not be active. Each sense creates millions of thoughts. You need to break from this eighteen in order to be enlightened.

The reference to eighteen million soldiers in the Mahabharata war is to the eighteen million thoughts in your system; eleven million on the negative side, and seven million self-healing ones. The moment you hear about a financial loss, you are depressed. It is negative. On the other hand, it is self-healing if you think, 'It does not matter,' and you let go. This attitude arises either as a click from a living master or as a self-illumining healing thought.

Arjuna represents the individual consciousness. The laziness to fight with negative thoughts is what is called tamas – our attitude that delays our own enlightenment. The body is the land for which the fight is going on between the negative and positive thoughts. One hundred brothers are cloned as one hundred negative thoughts, the Kauravas. The Pandavas are sons of Nature, from Yama, Indra, Vayu and Ashwini Kumaras. The sons of Nature are always self-healing; the cloned ones are destructive.

Duryodhana is ego and possessiveness. Shakuni is cunningness. When Arjuna wonders how he can cope with these negative thoughts, he gives up in depression. He needs an enlightened master who tells him to unclutch. Arjuna, instead of owning up to his own cowardice, talks about his commitments to his family and his clan. He justifies his tamas. That is Arjuna's vishāda: his dilemma and depression. He tries to justify cowardice as compassion; compassion towards his fellow beings who are actually negative influences. Each arrow that Arjuna later shoots is one act of unclutching from the negative thoughts.

Why are Bhishma and Drona, a parent and a teacher, on the negative side? Self-healing thoughts can turn negative when they are surrounded by negative thoughts. If you are caught in something that has helped you grow in the past, but over time has lost the ability to teach you more, you get stuck in it, not knowing how to go past it. That is what Drona and Bhishma represent. They are as dangerous as Duryodhana and Dusshassana who are readily seen as evil. Drona taught archery and inspired Arjuna but in front of Krishna, Drona is also an enemy.

Next in the war to confront Arjuna is Karna who represents charity for selfish purposes towards material ends. He could not become enlightened through 'noble' acts. He became liberated only when he surrendered everything to the enlightened master Krishna. The master takes what you give in order to liberate you. Karna's good deeds stand in the way of his own enlightenment. Krishna asked for them and liberated him! That is why, it is Karna mokṣa, liberation, and not Karna vadha, destruction.

Bhishma is the embodiment of conditioning due to parents and elders. The first thing to come up when you try to unclutch is your early years of conditioning. That is why Bhishma comes up as the first commander in the war. After him comes Drona, the first teacher. After Drona was the charitable attitude, Karna. After Karna was the ego in the form of Duryodhana. This is how the leadership of the Kauravas opens up. Negative thoughts cannot stand by themselves. They need the support of Bhishma, Drona and Karna.

Dharma is the morality we must hold on to even if we are unclutched. We cannot slip into immoral activities (There were several people who come to support Arjuna in the war). Bhima is courage. Sahadeva is the embodiment of knowledge. Nakula has techniques to keep our bodies fit through yoga, etc. These are all Arjuna’s supporters.

Finally, he who drives the chariot of Arjuna is the master, Krishna!

Your elders and teachers stand in front of you and prevent you from unclutching. Your good deeds and ego also stand in front of you. All the negativities are hiding behind these elders and good deeds. So you say, ‘I don’t want to fight; I would live by begging, but I don’t want to fight.’ Krishna tells Arjuna that these thoughts have no solid substance anyway, and all Arjuna needs to do is just shoot an arrow and act as if they need to die. When Arjuna is still not convinced with Krishna’s words, He gives him darśan, His cosmic vision. The master shows himself as all positive and negative thoughts and beyond.

Gandīva is the tool that cannot be taken away from oneself. Arjuna’s unclutching is represented by his gandīva that is believed to have an inexhaustible quiver of arrows. It means that the unclutching technique cannot be taken away from you because it is your very nature.

After ten days, parental conditioning becomes non-functional. It will never die, but it can be made inactive. This is what is represented by Bhishma lying on a bed of arrows, incapacitated. The Mahabharata war is over and Bhishma is lying on a bed of arrows. Bhishma teaches the Pandavas how to rule the country. Draupadi says, ‘Why don’t you keep quiet? What happened to all your righteousness when I was about to be disrobed in public?’

Bhishma says, ‘I could not talk then. I was overwhelmed by negative thoughts. I was eating Duryodhana’s food. Therefore, I could not think positively. I was overwhelmed by aśraya doṣa, the sin of impure food. Arjuna’s arrows removed all the impure blood from me. Now I can think intelligently.’

Parental conditioning can make you depressed. If you unclutch from it, it can guide you like how Bhishma did, and lead you into righteous awareness.

These are the metaphors of Mahabharata.

The master creates the war within the disciple so that he can conquer his own negativity. Until that war is started, you live in hiding, agnatavasa, without your rightful kingdom, which is enlightenment!

Q: Swamiji, what is the relationship between enlightenment and personality development?

Enlightenment is not about developing your personality; it is about dropping your personality. What is personality development? A bunch of thoughts that provide clicks, or shifts in our thought pattern, so that our so-called problems disappear. Those ‘self-help’ thoughts will be alive only for a few days. Visualization and positive thinking have power only for a few days. These may provide temporary development but never a permanent solution. Only an enlightened master can continuously provide clicks and initiations to solve your problems. Not only that, a master continues to support you even after the clicks stop working.

A person who solves your problems even when the clicks stop working is an enlightened person.

Any book with a click will be a bestseller. When the clicks stop working, people blame themselves to be inadequate. They don’t suspect the person who provided the clicks. They consider themselves to be at fault.

This is the real danger of swallowing material provided by unenlightened people. You fall into the danger of suspecting your own capability. The struggle to make an unworkable click function as a transformation technique becomes a rigorous practice, a sadhana.

Q: Swamiji, what is needed to go beyond Drona, Karna and finally Duryodhana?

Drona’s killing required the involvement of four people - Arjuna who represents the individual consciousness; Krishna who represents the universal consciousness;

Yudhishtira who represents morality; Bhima who represents courage. The moral code of not acting against the teacher has to be dropped in order to go beyond the teacher. Here, the master takes charge of the situation. He absolves Arjuna and Yudhishtira of their guilt. Unless Drona falls, you cannot be enlightened. The strategy that Krishna employs to kill Drona is: Do not tell a lie, but twist the truth enough to make it work.

Understand, for me to tell you to drop your earlier bondages like your teacher, I must trust your individual consciousness so that you will not apply the same thing to me! It is a subtle game. This cannot be done verbally. Krishna tells Bhima to kill an elephant called Ashwatthama. Ashwatthama is also the name of Drona's son, who is everything to him. Krishna tells Yudhishtira, ‘Announce that an elephant named Ashwatthama died in the war.’ When Yudhishtira says, ‘The elephant named Ashwatthama has died,’ Krishna simultaneously blows his conch so that Drona does not hear the word ‘elephant’. He only hears ‘Ashwatthama has died.’ Drona lays down his weapons in grief and gets killed.

Your morality has to agree to drop Drona. Here you cross morality, society's moral codes, for the sake of your ultimate master and enlightenment!

Next is Karna, who is good, compassionate and charitable. He is goodness, satva. You think the external world and people are real and so you show compassion. But this premise is not true. The external world outside and around you is not real as you think. You think that the ‘seer’ and the objects seen are different. The shift back and forth between the seer and what is seen is the process of seeing. The person who drops this shift is the one who has renounced. The shift stops, renunciation results and enlightenment occurs. The seer dissolves out of devotion, and only the seen remains. Then enlightenment, the seeing, happens.

You have to remove the weapons of compassion, such as the internal struggle with questions like, ‘Is it reasonable to work for my own enlightenment while millions of people are starving out there?’ This is a manifestation of what you perceive to be compassion. If this is your dilemma, then you are stuck in the fourteenth day of the Mahabharata War when Karna confronted Arjuna!

Because of Karna's compassionate deeds, all the arrows showered on him by Arjuna become flowers. When you are stuck in compassion, you cannot be directly killed. You are said to be in the space of heaven. But it is still not the enlightened space! A person may live a good, charitable and noble life and yet not be enlightened. They continue to live under the burden of engraved memories. Zen masters say that even if an enlightened being kills, he causes only good through it; whereas with an unenlightened being, even if he does good, he may cause harm. If this truth is understood, then one will not question Krishna’s actions in the war.

Krishna renders the satvic (goodness) quality of compassion harmless. Shalya, Karna’s charioteer, represents spontaneity. Compassion is always driven by spontaneity. Compassion happens only when spontaneity is there. Krishna creates trouble between spontaneity and compassion. He separates Karna and Shalya – compassion and spontaneity.

Goodness is the brother of Nature, but it is standing in the way of Realization! So the master says, ‘Finish this goodness. You cannot be stuck with compassion; even that is an attachment.’ Overcoming Bhishma is on par with becoming an ashramite (living within a spiritual community and unclutching from parental conditioning) - the first step in dropping your bondages. Going past Drona is like taking sanyās - renouncing all attachments. Going past Karna is like living enlightenment and dropping even what we traditionally consider as ‘being good’. Arjuna had to go past his elder brother Yudhishtira, who was goodness personified.

Finally you face your unguarded ego. You come face to face with yourself. Suddenly, you find that you do not want to stay with the master anymore. You feel disconnected from him. When you are at this stage, you are facing Duryodhana in the war. You cannot do much to break Duryodhana. The individual consciousness cannot do anything with the ego. Then, how can you fight and win?

This is when you need the complete protection of the master. When the last fight between you and your ego takes place, even the master cannot work directly on you. He has to wait until the ego is tired. When people say they feel disconnected, I talk and talk and tire their intellect and ego. Suddenly the ego falls and enlightenment happens!

After he falls, the blood of Duryodhana, the ego, becomes nectar, amṛta! That is why Draupadi applies it to her hair and ties her hair up, thus fulfilling a vow that she had taken. Without the ego, your logic can become an aid to teaching and preaching without ensnaring you. Without the ego, you can take guidance from parental conditioning without being influenced by it. You will find that the parental conditioning has lost its negativity and only the righteous qualities in it remain. Then you can take tips from your parents as to how to lead your life.

Q: Swamiji, how do we differentiate between Drona and Sahadeva?

Sahadeva was a master of astrology. Duryodhana goes to Sahadeva to fix an auspicious date to start the war. Sahadeva obliges and gives him the date, a new moon day. This means that if Duryodhana starts the war on this date, he will be victorious. Krishna is troubled since He knows that what Sahadeva says will come true. To change the course of the war, Krishna offers a traditional ancestral offering on the day before the new moon, instead of on the new moon day itself. The sun and moon are shocked. They come running together to Krishna to find out why He appears to be going against tradition.

Krishna asks them, 'What is the definition for the new moon day?'

They respond saying, 'It is the time when the sun and moon meet.'

Krishna says, 'Are not the two of you meeting now? So this is the new moon day!'

Thanks to Krishna's intervention, the war started one day in advance - the day before new moon, and Duryodhana was defeated.

Sahadeva was not bothered about whether Duryodhana was victorious or was defeated. He considered it his responsibility to give him the right guidance. That is his specialty.

I know that some disciples may go against me. Still I teach them and allow them in my ashram. I work on the possibility that they may benefit and be transformed. Drona will never do such a thing. That is the difference between Sahadeva and Drona.

Q: Swamiji, what do Kunti and Draupadi represent?

Kunti, mother of the five Pandavas, is innocent. She is the mother of individual consciousness (Arjuna). She provides a body into which the individual consciousness can land. She has no other role.

Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, is māyā or illusion. Maya is the non-reality that is perceived as reality, and which can bind you as well as liberate you. Until she is wounded, Draupadi will bind you. If she is wounded she will work on the individual consciousness to liberate you. The very home you are in may drive you to enlightenment when all the juice of life is lost. She is the sister of an enlightened master (Krishna), a subtle character. She can bind you or enlighten you. This is the meaning of the attempt made to disrobe her, which is a turning point in Mahabharata.

Q: Swamiji, what are the roles of Vidura and Balarama?

Vidura and Balarama are enlightened mystics who cannot help anyone. They disappear once the war begins.