Do As I Teach🔗

3.30 Dedicating the results of work to Me, with consciousness filled with spiritual knowledge, without desire for gain and without sense of ownership, without being lazy, do what you have to do.

3.31 Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow these teachings faithfully, without envy, become free from the bondage of actions.

3.32 But those who do not regularly perform their duties according to My teaching, are ignorant, senseless and ruined.

Next Krishna makes an important point. He clarifies one more point.

Krishna says: Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow this teaching faithfully, without envy, become free from the bondage of actions.

Here you need to understand two things. He says, ‘according to My injunctions’. It means that when you enter into your being, whatever your being says is Krishna’s words. When he says My injunctions, He means the injunctions from the ātman, injunctions from the being.

When you drop the goals and fall into your being, the Divine will guide you. You will be guided by nature. You will be guided by God Himself and you will become an instrument in His hands.

If you become a hollow bamboo without any blockages inside, you will become a flute in the hands of Krishna. Dropping your purposes or dropping your ego is what I call becoming a hollow bamboo. If you become a hollow bamboo, you will become a flute in the hands of Krishna.

If you are a solid bamboo, you will be used only to carry dead bodies. In India, bamboo poles are used only to carry dead bodies. But if you drop the ego and fall into the being, you will become an instrument in the hands of the Divine; you will become a divine flute.

When you become a flute, the air that enters into you comes out as music. In the same way, when you become an instrument in the hands of the Divine, the air that enters into you comes out as śāstra or mantra or music. Whatever comes out of you becomes Divine. Your words become mantra (sacred words), your actions become tantra (sacred techniques), and your form becomes yantra (sacred form).

The moment you drop the ego, your words become mantra or sacred words to guide people. Your form becomes a yantra or sacred form to be meditated upon, your actions become tantra, or techniques to realize the Divine, and you become Divine.

If you carry your ego like a solid bamboo, you can use it only to carry a dead body!

Now it is up to you whether to become a hollow bamboo and become a flute in the hands of Krishna, or to be a solid bamboo and carry the dead body to the cremation ground.

Here, He says, ‘Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions, according to your inner consciousness...’ Please be very clear, as long as you follow the goals set by society, you will be carrying a social conscience. The moment you drop social conditioning, the purposes taught to you by society, you will drop conscience and start living with consciousness.

Social conscience is different, spiritual consciousness is different. If you live with goals, you will carry a social conscience in your life. If you realize the beauty of purposelessness you will carry spiritual consciousness in your life.

‘The man who lives according to his consciousness, believing in and having śraddhā (faith) towards these teachings...’ Why does Krishna ask for śraddhā here? This is the first time Krishna says ‘śraddhā’. Why?

Of course, the word śraddhā cannot really be translated as faith. Faith is a very poor word for śraddhā. In English, there is no equivalent word for śraddhā.

Śraddhā does not mean just faith. It means faith plus the courage to execute the idea. The courage to experiment with the idea is what is called śraddhā. Here Krishna says, ‘śraddhāvanto anasūyanto,’ the man who executes the teachings with śraddhā, with the courage to follow. Why do we need courage to follow?

A small story:

A man born blind goes to the doctor and asks, ‘Doctor, will you help me gain my eyesight?’ The doctor says, ‘Don’t worry, I will perform an operation. You will get your vision and after that you can walk without your stick.’

Blind people always carry a stick to feel their way around. The doctor tells him that he will be able to walk without the stick.

The blind man asks, ‘Doctor, I understand you will do an operation. I understand I will have my eyesight restored. But I don’t understand how I can walk without the stick. How can I walk without my stick?’

By and by, the blind man had forgotten that stick was just an aid. He had started thinking that the stick was necessary even just to walk. But until the operation is done, until he gets his eyesight and experiences the truth that the stick is no longer necessary, he has to have śraddhā towards the doctor’s words and go with the operation.

In the same way, I tell you, just live without the mind. Just live without purpose and goals; you will be able to walk without the stick. The stick is nothing but your planning and worrying. But you never believe that you can live without worrying. By and by, worrying has become a part of you. So you can never imagine that you can survive without worrying.

When I say you can live without worrying, you will say, ‘No, no, no! How can it be possible? If I don’t worry what will happen to my children? What will happen to my house? What will happen to my wife? What will happen to my family? What will happen to my property? What will happen to my lawsuits?’

Please be very clear: Never think your life is going smoothly because of you. It is going smoothly in spite of you! Your life is not going smoothly because of you; in spite of you it is going smoothly!

When you have the courage, the śraddhā towards these teachings and start living without purpose, only then will you realize you don’t need the stick to walk. Once you enter into the depths of your being, you will enter into a totally different dimension.

Whatever you think now as spiritual life or material life, both will lose their meaning and you will enter into a new dimension of life.

For example, can you explain about life to a four-year-old child? You can't. He will not be able to understand. He can understand only toys. He can only play with toys. Once he becomes older, naturally he will be able to understand what life is. Automatically toys and dolls will leave him.

Do you miss your toys? Do you feel that you have renounced your toys? No! When you grow, you start experiencing a different dimension of your life and the toys simply drop.

You dropping smoking is not important, smoking dropping you is important.

When you enter into your being, when you experience the purposelessness of life, the so-called material life and spiritual life both drop you and you enter into what I call 'Quantum spirituality' or eternal consciousness. You are then in eternal bliss; you start living in eternal bliss.

Only when you reach the being will you understand that you don't need worries to live. You don't need your mind. You don't need to be harboring any worry to live. Until you reach the being, you need to have śraddhā. Until you gain your vision, you must have śraddhā and lie down on the operating table. You need to allow the doctor to work on you. That is the reason Krishna says, 'śraddhāvanto anasūyanto.'

The next word is a beautiful word: 'anasūyanto', which means 'without envy'. This is an important thing. Whatever has been said so far, everyone is able to understand and agree with.

But suddenly, a thought comes, 'My brother has purchased two houses. My sister is getting a big new car. How can I live just like this?' The moment you get such thoughts, 'He has that, she has this,' what happens? All your spirituality, all your purposelessness, all your philosophy, everything just disappears. You are again in the same rat race. If your neighbor buys a new air-conditioner, the temperature in your house shoots up.

Krishna says, 'without envy'. Envy is the thing that puts you again and again in the same rut. The problem with the rat race is, even if you win, you are still a rat! Even if you win, you are only a rat. Nothing more than that!

The moment envy or jealousy enters into your being, purposelessness disappears. Again, you fall into social conditioning; you start running behind goals. Envy or jealousy is what makes you run like a rat.

There is a beautiful idea from Tantra about māyā śakti (the power of illusion). Illusion makes us all dance with just this one stick called jealousy. Have you seen

the guys who make money using monkeys in India? On the roadside, they do a small show with monkeys. They always carry a small stick. They rotate the stick and shout in Tamil, 'Aadu da rama, aadu da rama': dance Rama, dance Rama. They give instructions and the monkey obeys. With a small stick they make the monkey dance and do whatever they want it to.

In the same way, the power of illusion is making you run as it wants with just one stick called jealousy, envy or comparison. The moment you compare, you just jump into the same path again, the same rut, the same routine, which I call the purposeful life. Then you become a karmi, not karma yogi.

The man who lives in eternal consciousness, nitya ānanda, and allows his body and mind to work according to their nature, is centered in eternal consciousness. He is called a karma yogi, one who has espoused action without attachment as the ultimate renunciation.

But the man who acts out of jealousy, out of envy and out of comparison, enters into social conditioning. He is caught in the rat race, and is called a karmi, one who is focused on action arising from greed.

The difference between a karmi and a karma yogi is only this: The man who is driven by jealousy is a karmi, and the man who allows the eternal consciousness to drive him is a karma yogi.

One more thing: When we do things out of comparison, we do only foolish things. Our intelligence stops working. And our performance will definitely fall short of our potential, because now we are using someone else's productivity as our measuring stick. We might be capable of accomplishing much more than what our neighbor has done, but now we are setting our sights on his achievements!

A small story:

A Christian and a Jew were staying opposite each other. Not only were they staying opposite each other but they were great rivals as well. If the Christian made a rose garden in front of his house, within 24 hours the Jew would bring in a new rose garden. If the Jew painted his house white, within 24 hours the Christian's house would also be painted white.

Suddenly, one day a new Mercedes Benz was standing in front of the Jew's house. This was too much for the Christian. Somehow he found the money, and within 24 hours not only did he buy a Rolls Royce, he parked it outside his home and started sprinkling holy water on it as well.

The Jew saw this from his house and asked, 'Hey! What happened to you? You got a new Rolls Royce, that's ok. Until yesterday you were alright. But why are you sprinkling water on the car this morning?'

The Christian said, 'I am baptizing it.'

Now the Jew was in big trouble! What to do? That evening he was seen cutting the exhaust pipe of his Benz with a hacksaw blade!

If you understand, understand. If you have not understood, ask the people who are laughing!

If you do things out of jealousy, out of envy, out of comparison, you will end up doing only these types of things. Your intelligence will stop working. When you start comparing, intelligence stops working.

Please understand that each one of us is unique. There is no need to compare with any other person. You are unique. The main problem is that you compare only with the nearest person, five inches above and five inches below, only with those persons do you compare yourself. You don't compare yourselves with Bill Gates, do you? You compare only with your neighbor. You compare only with your colleague. You compare only with your brother or your sister.

The problem is not even failure; the problem is your worry about failure. That is why you don't aim at unreachable goals, you aim only at reachable goals, and you compare only with those people in your immediate world. Understand that this comparison is what is driving you crazy. Again and again and again it brings up the whole social conditioning in you and eats away your whole life. Your whole life is eaten away by this one illusion called comparison.

Your whole joy, ecstasy, the very bliss or the ecstasy of living is swallowed by this one illusion called comparison. Just like how the whole earth is swallowed by the ocean at the time of the final deluge, in the same way, just this one concept of comparison, swallows your whole life.

Jealousy and comparison have no absolute existence. There are two levels of reality: comparative reality and existential reality. If you build your life based on existential reality, you will never suffer. If you build your life based on comparative reality, you will be continuously suffering till death. Not only at the time of death, even after death.

Don't build your inner space on comparative reality. Let your inner space be built on existential reality. Accept life as it is. If you build your life on existential reality, you will live your life blissfully in eternal consciousness, as a karma yogi.

A small story:

A man comes to the bar with a big grin on his face and asks the bartender to serve drinks for the whole house. ‘Serve drinks to everybody. I will pay,’ he says. The bartender serves drinks and says, ‘This is so nice. I am very happy you did a good thing for everybody. May I know why you did this?’

The man says, ‘I am very happy today. I have become taller than my younger brother. My younger brother used to be taller than me, so people used to tease me all the time and ask, ‘Are you older or is he older?’ So I had a problem. Today, I have become taller than my younger brother.’

Your younger brother being taller than you is a huge problem.

The bartender asked, ‘At your age, how did you suddenly grow and become taller than him?’

The man replied, ‘Oh, no! I have not grown. He met with an accident and both his legs have been amputated.’

This may seem to you to be in bad taste in a social sense. However, this is how many people react when they see another person doing better than themselves.

When we compare, when we live with jealousy, when our life is based on comparative reality, please be very clear, we end up doing only these types of things. We become blinded by comparison and our very nature becomes dangerous. Let your inner space be built on existential reality, not on comparative reality.

By nature, a person with a body and mind has to act in one way or the other. If you follow your nature, you can be comfortable and flow in tune with Existence. When you are relaxed, when you are blissful, you express yourself beautifully.

When you become possessed by greed or fear and try to be what you are not, you suppress yourself. What can suppression do? You cannot suppress energy. You can only transform energy. It can never be destroyed or suppressed.

For example, if you see someone who generally irritates you, what is your reaction? If you are in a position to show your irritation, you will do so. It may be a person who cannot affect you in terms of your money or position. In that case, you will make your irritation known to the person because you are not afraid of losing anything. He is not in a position to affect you adversely. But, say this person is your boss. Now, you are afraid to make your irritation known because he holds the power to affect your job, your source of income. So you suppress your emotions.

Neither expression nor suppression can be the solution. The solution is to infuse awareness and understanding into this process. Your reaction of irritation is not because of anything the person has done. If you just look a little deeper, you can see it is how you choose to react that decides what you feel about the person. You choose to get irritated by what he is doing.

Why should you allow yourself to get worked up about the other person's actions? Also, it may not even be that the person has done something which you think is irritating. He may have done the same thing a couple of times before. But this time, he may have come with a completely different intention. Yet you are already biased by your past perception about him. You have decided unconsciously this is what he is going to do and you get irritated even before he comes close to you.

That is why I say that awareness is the key. If you are aware of what is happening both within you and outside you, you will not be controlled by your unconscious. You will be able to see clearly when biased emotions arise or unconscious reactions arise. The very awareness is enough. You don't need to suppress the emotion or express it. The awareness will itself bring the emotion under your control.

Q: Swamiji, when a relationship is not working out, when should we persevere and when should we abandon it and get on with our lives?

I think what you are asking me is, just how much conflict should one be prepared to put up with in a relationship! Right?

Love is the most dangerous path there is! Only those with great courage dare tread this path. At any bend on this path you have to be prepared for great joy, great pain, great beauty, great struggle, great understanding.

Yes, there is bound to be conflict in every relationship, because every individual is unique, and no two personalities fit together so perfectly that no rough edges remain.

If there is conflict, don't sweep it under the carpet out of fear that it will destroy the relationship. On the contrary, ignoring it can do just that. Allow the conflict. Examine it. See what you can learn from it. Is it stemming from something in yourself that you are secretly unwilling to acknowledge?

It is only in an intimate relationship that you discover yourself. Your partner is like a mirror reflecting your true nature. After all, who else dares point out your worst flaws with so much clarity!

So examine the nature of your conflict. Also remember, in every relationship, there is a time to stay together and a time to move on. What kind of love do you share? Are you really, truly, surely in love? Do you relate deeply with each other, being to being?

Don't look for reasons and arguments. Don't intellectualize the process - simply turn the question inwards with complete honesty and trust. The answer will arise on its own. If your answer is 'Yes', then understand that the issues of conflict are mere ripples on the surface of your relationship.

These are just situations created by the ego to counter the sense of 'no-self', of surrender, that comes with love. Work around these situations with love and care.

If the answer you are hearing is 'No', then maybe it is time to move on. To remain in a relationship where there is no true relationship, no connection of being to being, is sacrilege, unfair to you both. Love, for you, may be elsewhere. Don't search for it. Just be open to the possibility.

In the meantime, don't let the conflict destroy the relationship, destroy you both. Nobody deserves that. Accept that this is not the person for you, and move away without resentment or bitterness. Don't destroy your own capacity to love. To become bitter will only cause you more suffering, and destroy your faith in love itself. And that is the most dangerous thing that can happen to anyone.

Many people have followed this technique I am about to describe with tremendous healing effect in their relationships. To understand the principles behind this technique it is useful to have attended at least the basic Life Bliss Program Level 1.

We all have seven energy centers in our body-mind system, called cakras in Sanskrit. Each center controls an emotion. When the cakra is blocked in energy you feel the effects of negativity and when it is energized you feel at ease. Simply put, a blocked center leads to dis-ease.

The root cakra or root center is blocked by greed, lust and anger, the spleen center by fear, the navel center by worry, the heart center by attention need, the throat center by jealousy, the eyebrow center by ego and the crown center by discontentment. A person who has gone through the LBP 1 course will be able to recognize the blocked center from which the other person is acting, based on the emotions of the interaction with that person.

Normally one would respond from the same energy center or another blocked center. We tend to respond to an angry person with anger or fear. However, we have the capability to respond to all such interactions from an open heart cakra. All that we need to do is respond with unconditional love. Whether a person comes to us in anger, fear, worry or ego, it is possible to respond with love, and with no expectation in return.

You may think that this is impractical. It is not. If you try this, you will find that your relationships improve miraculously. It is especially difficult with people close to you, especially a spouse, and therefore, all the more reason to practice with one's spouse! Many people say, and believe it when they say it, that they love the whole world. When you ask them to prove that they love their spouse, they are stumped!

People talk about Transactional Analysis and other such techniques. They talk about cross-communication between parent and child. Ultimately all communication is based on emotions and feelings. These emotions are linked to the various energy centers. Love is the most powerful emotion. It is the only emotion that can overcome all other emotions, when it is spontaneous and unconditional.

This is why in every culture and religion, love is associated with the Divine and the heart is associated with love. Open your heart, energize your heart center and let unconditional love flow out of you. It will transform you and transform others.