Doubt Destroys🔗

4.37 Just as a blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, O Arjuna,

So does the fire of wisdom burn to ashes all actions, all your karma.

4.38 Truly, in this world, there is nothing as pure as wisdom.

One who has matured to know this enjoys in himself in due course of time.

4.39 A person with śraddhā (courageous faith) achieves wisdom and has control over the senses.

Achieving wisdom, without delay, he attains supreme peace.

4.40 Those who have no wisdom and faith, who always have doubts, are destroyed.

There is no happiness in this world or the next.

4.41 O winner of riches, he who has renounced the fruits of his actions, whose doubts are destroyed, who is well established in the Self, is not bound by his actions.

4.42 O descendant of Bharata, therefore, stand up, be established in yoga.

Armed with the sword of knowledge, cut the doubt born of ignorance that exists in your heart.

A beautiful story:

Once there was a drunkard. His wife was always fighting with him to stop drinking.

One day she showed him a newspaper and said. ‘See this! Our neighbor had an accident yesterday. He was totally drunk. He got into a boat and pushed it into the river. Somehow he upset the boat, fell into the river, and got drowned. If he had not been drunk, he would not have died. This is what will happen to you also if you don’t give up drinking.’

The man asked, ‘He fell into the river, right?’

His wife replied, ‘Yes.’

The man asked, ‘He did not die till he fell in the water, right?’

His wife replied, ‘That’s true.’

The man then declared, ‘Then it was the water that killed him, not the drink!’

When you are led by your sensory inputs, you easily come to the wrong conclusions. You interpret based on your inclinations and not on the truth. The filter of your ego interprets whatever you perceive through your senses. Your ego decides as to how you understand what you see, hear, touch, taste or smell, and thereafter how you act.

There is only so much you can see through the lens of your ego. Whatever you see will be tainted because you are seeing it through your mind, through your biased perceptions based on past memories. To see the truth, you need to really ‘see’ beyond your ego, mind and senses. When you do that, you can see the infinite dimensions of the ultimate.

The words that you gather cannot give you the ultimate knowledge. When you just gather words without digesting the meaning, either indigestion sets in or you start vomiting out those words on others.

A small story:

Once, a blind man went to a doctor to see if he had any hope of getting back his eyesight. The doctor checked him and said, ‘Yes, I can do an operation and you can get back your eyesight. Then, you can drop your stick and start walking.’

The man replied, ‘Doctor, I understand I will get back my eyesight, but how can I walk without the stick?’

The blind man could not understand that he can walk without a stick! He does not even know what it means to be able to see. The doctor has to do the operation to give him back his eyesight, then automatically he will drop the stick.

When I tell people to drop their mind, they look at me as if I am a mad man. They ask me, 'How can we drop the mind? It is easy for you, you have renounced everything, you have no wife, no responsibilities, and on top of it you are enlightened. So, you can talk. How can we, living in this ocean of bondage, the saṁsāra sāgara, be in no-mind and yet survive?'

It is only when you drop the mind, it is only when you stop connecting your thoughts to form a shaft, that you really start 'seeing'. Your ego stops interfering with the truth of what you see. It stops filtering and adding tones to what your senses experience. Your baggage of value systems and beliefs, your embedded memories, your saṁskāras, dissolve, and the new 'you' is born. You are reborn.

All your actions then arise out of intuition, from the superconscious state, the state of truth, where no mind can exist.

In the next verse, Krishna uses the word 'śraddhā' again. Actually, śraddhā cannot be translated as faith. Śraddhā does not mean faith. It means faith plus the courage to execute the idea; the courage to experiment with the idea is śraddhā. Courage to experiment with the idea is what is referred to as śraddhā.

When you have the knowledge and at the same time, you have the courage to follow the teachings, then you can achieve the ultimate.

Many people do not have the courage to follow their research through. When Galileo declared that it is the earth that goes around the sun, while the Christian belief at that time was that everything revolves around the earth, he was persecuted. In his writings, he actually has a footnote, 'We can deny this, but since the earth and sun are not Christians, they will continue to move the way they do, irrespective of Christian beliefs!'

If you see the eastern sages, they did so much inner world research. Millions of them have done full-time research for thousands of years using their bodies and minds as laboratories. This knowledge of the inner world is the result of their courageous experiments and studies. They were true inner scientists who had not only the curiosity and the perseverance to know, but also the courage to follow their findings.

Look at Patanjali: He boldly declares that all that he says in the Yoga Sutras is completely open to experimentation and verification. He says, ‘You are free to try this, and if you find anything more to be added or edited, you are free to do so.’ He has experimented and presented his research report. He invites you to try out these in your life and if you learn something more from that, his work is open to editing. That is the beauty of our system; it is a living system open to being updated.

Our masters have declared that it is the truth that matters, so they present their research reports based on what they have learnt from experience. If by practicing the truth one loses something, it is better to lose it. Whatever cannot stand the test of truth, let it get washed away. It is better for our being that it gets lost as early as possible.

Of all religious and spiritual doctrines, it is only the scriptures of the Sanātana dharma, the eternal path of righteousness, as the Hindu philosophy is called, that allow themselves to be updated. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads, which we believe are the voices of Nature, are not rules and regulations. They are truths to be understood and followed only in awareness. There are no punishments if one does not follow them, nor is one condemned as a sinner if one doesn’t follow them.

The rules and regulations, which followed in later days, came clearly with the injunction that they can be modified if needed. Nothing was sacred just because it was uttered. All that we follow blindly today as traditions, came through societal interpretation. It is for us to sift through these truths with conscious awareness.

Once tested, proven and accepted, we need to have the courage to practice these truths. Mere knowledge is insufficient. That is what śraddhā is about. With śraddhā, faith combined with courage, you make the effort to conquer your senses, and direct your mind towards the truth, instead of your mind and senses leading you wherever they wish to.

Many people in this world are blessed by Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth), Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge) but very few people are blessed by Kali (the goddess of courage). When Lakshmi and Saraswati join with Kali, your liberation is assured!

In the next few beautiful verses, Krishna says that there is no happiness for those who always have doubts and who have no knowledge and faith. He uses the word ‘always’. He does not say that from the beginning itself you should not have any doubts. Having doubts is natural; as long as you have the mind, doubts will be there. But you can go beyond it.

In the Shiva Sutra, Devi asks, ‘O Shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes the seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading form? How may we enter it fully, beyond space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared.’

Beautifully she expresses her whole state of mind through these few words. The last words are, ‘Let my doubts be cleared.’ She never says, ‘Please answer my questions.’ If she had made that mistake by asking, ‘Answer my question’, she would have produced one more Gita through Shiva.

See, in the Gita, Arjuna is not ready to surrender to Krishna completely. That is why in the beginning Krishna has to give him all the intellectual answers. Arjuna thinks he can solve his confusion through these answers; he doesn’t know that these are much deeper doubts that need to be cleared through the experience of the truth. That is why Krishna has to give more than 700 verses to first convince Arjuna that he does not know. When Arjuna finally gives up saying ‘I don’t know’ then Krishna reveals Himself! He reveals the truth and makes Arjuna experience it because that is the only way he will realize the truth.

If you say, ‘Let my questions be answered’, you want only intellectual answers. But Devi says, ‘Let my doubts be cleared, whether you give words or energy or techniques, I am not bothered, but let me be free from doubts.’

When questions become a quest, you start speaking in this language. When the urge becomes urgent, you start speaking in this language.

Devi starts with the beautiful words, ‘Let my doubts be cleared.’ This shows the deep surrender of Devi. A deep passive waiting without knowing what is going to happen is passive surrender. That is what I call total surrender.

Actually, the moment you decide ‘I will wait forever’, things will simply start happening for you! As long as you are in a hurry and agitated, you stop things from happening in you. It is like trying your best to make the lotus bloom. What will you do? You open out the petals by hand. Will it be a flower? It will never be a lotus flower. A lotus can be called a lotus flower only when it blossoms by itself. Give it a little space and time.

The moment you decide to wait, things will simply start happening, and you don’t have to wait anymore. You have to wait till you decide to wait! The moment you decide to wait, you don’t have to wait anymore.

When you ask ‘why’, you cannot reach the truth, because you are not even ready to see ‘what’ and you ask the ‘why’ before that. Just allow the master to do the operation and give you back your true Self, and automatically you will drop what you are not.

Krishna refers here to the stages in the master-disciple relationship. There are many levels. The first level is purely intellectual, doubt-based. ‘Doubt-based’ refers to the negative doubts, which are purely intellectual. It is like you are telling yourself on seeing the master, ‘Eh! What is he going to sit and do? Let us see. How is he able to mobilize such a big crowd at such a young age? He seems to be hardly thirty. He doesn’t seem to be trained in marketing and doesn’t seem to be very intelligent either! How is he mobilizing such a big crowd around him? What is going on here?’

The next step is intelligence; from intellect to intelligence. You tell yourself, ‘Why not attend this program and see what he is really doing?’ By this time, it has changed from, ‘What is he doing!’ to ‘Oh, I think He means something. But I neither believe nor disbelieve Him. Ok, let us check it out.’ The intellect is becoming intelligence. You are giving a little space for the master.

Then, next, if you continue to start looking in, first from intellect to intelligence, then from intelligence to intelligence combined with emotion, like 60% intelligence, 40% emotion, that is the time you will feel like a friend towards the master.

After that, it becomes 60% emotion and 40% intelligence. That is the time you will feel like the master is like an elder, like a father or mother or lord or teacher. You feel respectful towards him. And then, the relationship becomes pure emotion. You will feel a deep connection like a mother and son.

Then, after that, it is neither emotion nor intellect nor intelligence. It is a being-level relationship. It is the deep connection of a beloved, the madhura bhāva.

And suddenly, you will see, he is not even the beloved, he is beyond the beloved. You start experiencing the mahā bhāva, what I call the guru-disciple experience, experiencing yourself as the master. That is what I call ‘Tat tvam asi’. ‘Tat tvam asi’ means ‘That art thou’. It means you are the master.

First it is just intellect, where you have doubts. But you have to go beyond that. If you are stuck in this level of negative doubts, naturally you will suffer with the doubts and misery. The next level is intelligence, then 60% intelligence and 40% emotion, then 60% emotion and 40% intelligence, then pure emotion, then 60% emotional and 40% being level, then pure being level and then all these and something more.

When you go beyond doubts and faith, into the realization of the formless energy that is you, then you find yourself.

I am presenting this secret science as a hypothesis. Now you are welcome to analyze this with your questions.

Q. Swamiji, how to find out whether somebody is enlightened or not?

Arjuna asks the same question. I think in the second chapter, Krishna answers this same question. Let me give you the verse.

Arjuna asks:

Arjuna asks, ‘Krishna, what are the signs of him whose consciousness is thus merged in transcendence? How does he speak and what is his language? How does he sit and how does he walk?’

This is a question from the second chapter. Of course, in the second chapter, Arjuna is not ready to even relate with Krishna. That is why Krishna is explaining about enlightenment.

Immediately Arjuna asks how to find out whether somebody is enlightened or not; how an enlightened man would walk and sit. Actually he is addressing this question to find out whether Krishna is enlightened or not!

For example, when Krishna says that these are the qualities of enlightenment and explains about it, immediately, Arjuna asks, ‘How does an enlightened man behave, tell me’. What does this mean? He doubts Krishna, Krishna’s authority! He wants some scale with which he can measure Krishna.

But one important thing: Even though, out of compassion, Krishna tries here to answer logically, you cannot logically measure enlightenment. That is the ultimate truth. Just out of compassion, Krishna tries to give some idea. Actually, Krishna is just postponing the question, He does not answer.

There are two or three methods to deal with questions. A person came to me and asked me, ‘Swamiji, please tell me how to realize God. How to achieve God? Teach me something about God, something about ātman and brahman.’

I started talking to him, 'Yes, how are you? Where are you from? What are you doing? What is your wife doing? How is your family?' I started a polite conversation. He too started talking. The conversation went on and on. After that he was with me for three hours but he didn't raise his original question even once!

He forgot the very question. He did not even remember the question that he had asked. He did not even come to the subject. Then understand how important this question was for his life!

He asked just because he had to ask something. When you see the master, you feel you have to show that you have some spiritual interest. In some way you have to relate with him. And you have to show that you also know a few words.

One man came and told me, 'Swamiji, tell me the mantra (chant) to invoke the eighteen-handed goddess Kali.' He was asking me to give him the chant to worship the eighteen-handed goddess Kali. He said, 'She should listen to what I say. Give me the mantra for it.'

I told him, 'First learn the chant to make your two-handed wife listen to your words! First learn how to handle two-handed women! Then you can go about learning how to work with eighteen-handed women!' You don't know the basic science of life, how to live with your wife! You want to learn big words. We always waste our life with big words, with fancy terminology.

So this guy who wanted to know about God forgot the question itself! After that he spent two or three hours with me, but he did not even remember the question. He asked the question just because he had to speak something. It was not his quest. Questions are answered in one way; quest is addressed in another way.

Please be very clear, questions are answered in one way, quest is addressed in another way. A young man once asked me, 'Swamiji, have you seen God?' It seems he had read a lot about Sri Ramakrishna and Vedanta literature. And I could see that he was wearing a Vivekananda pendant around his neck.

He asked, 'Have you seen God?' I asked him, 'Have you read Ramakrishna and Vivekananda's life?' He said, 'Yes! I am asking you like how Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna. In the same way I am asking you. Have you seen God?'

I just caught hold of his shirt, so that he would not run away. Then I said, 'Ramakrishna said that he had seen God. And Vivekananda simply followed Ramakrishna. Throughout his life he was with Ramakrishna. Now I tell you, not only have I seen God, I will show you, come! Once I show you, you have to be committed for your whole life.'

The fellow ran away! He just disappeared. He escaped and ran away.

Don't ask the question if you cannot take up the responsibility. Don't ask just because you read about Ramakrishna and Vivekananda's lives. Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna, true. But he had the courage, he had the guts to follow Ramakrishna after that. When Ramakrishna said, 'Yes, I have seen God,' Vivekananda followed. I told him, 'Not only have I seen Him, I can also show you, come.' The fellow just escaped!

We always waste our lives with empty words. Questions will be addressed in one way, while quest will be addressed in a different way. Here, Arjuna is asking a question. It is not a quest.

How to find out whether it is a question or a quest? If it is a quest, you will have only one word, you will put one question and stop. You will then wait for the answer.

If it is just an intellectual question, you will continuously speak out at least ten words. Here he is asking ten questions: How does he speak? What is his language? How does he sit and how does he walk? That means he is not even interested in the answer!

If you are interested in the answer, you will stop with the first question. You will wait for the answer. Then you will put the next question. But here he goes on posing questions, purely intellectual. Arjuna is in the process. He is in the process. Then Krishna starts.

Of course, please be very clear, Krishna is not answering. He is just postponing the question. He knows that answering this question is in no way going to help. So He answers in such a way that Arjuna would neither feel that he did not receive the answer, nor would he be able to come to a conclusion with the answer!

Here He is giving an answer:

He says, 'Partha, when a man controls all types of desires and selfish deeds that arise from the mind and when he remains satisfied with himself and his consciousness, in his eternal bliss, then he is said to have a stable mind and life.'

Alright, how many of you can find out with this scale, whether somebody is enlightened or not? Tell me. Here He has given the answer. Can any of us use this answer? After the answer, you will have more problems than before the answer!

Actually, sometimes, by giving an answer, you will create more questions than what existed before the question was posed! Originally, if Arjuna had ten questions, after this answer, he would have had twenty questions! Because the answer says, ‘Who is completely established in his own consciousness, who is satisfied in his own consciousness, he is said to have a stable mind and life.’

And He says, ‘He is said to have’. He is not giving from his experience. He could have said, ‘He is’. But He is not saying that. ‘He is believed, or said to have a stable mind and life’. He is just trying to escape, putting the blame on the tradition. He is not directly coming in the front. He is not confronting the question directly. He is just passing it on. He is just pushing it away because Arjuna is not yet ready for the ultimate truth.

Whenever close disciples asked Ramakrishna for some boon, he would say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care.’ Whenever he wanted to avoid the question or boon for the present, he would say, ‘Go to Kali and pray!’ He would not put himself in the front. He would just avoid the issue. The same thing Krishna is doing here. He is saying, ‘It is believed.’

Next verse:

The translation goes: One whose mind remains free from emotional agitation even in miseries, who does not search for pleasure, and who is free from attachments, fear and anger, is called an enlightened man - who is in eternal bliss, eternal consciousness.

If your inner space is not filled with too much of emotional attachments, it can freely flow in life. It can freely flow in life.

Many people ask me, ‘Swamiji, how are you continuously able to quote from the scriptures? From where are you able to get so much information? How are you able to speak so many things?’ I tell them, ‘It’s a very simple secret.’ So many people ask, ‘How are you able to have such a sharp memory? Give us a technique to have sharp memory.’

This is the ultimate technique for a sharp memory. How to have a sharp memory? Just drop the emotional attachments.

It is just like how a computer works. If your hard disc is filled with high-resolution photographs, what will happen? It will crash! If it is filled with only word documents, it can handle any amount of memory. Your emotional attachment makes word documents into high-resolution photographs. Word documents are transformed into high-resolution photographs, high-resolution pictures, by your emotional attachment to them.

When you are emotionally attached to it, again and again you remember only that. That portion takes away the majority of your inner space. Your whole inner space is swallowed, taken away, by that one particular picture.

If at all you can do surgery in your inner space and peer inside, you will see that most of your inner space is filled with four or five big-sized photographs. Your wife or family or kids; only those four or five pictures will be there in high resolution. Ninety percent of your hard disc is filled with these four or five high-resolution pictures. That is why you don't have memory space left for any other work. Your whole memory space is already occupied. No memory space is left.

But if at all you can bring it down, if at all you can reduce the emotional attachment to these few high-resolution pictures, you will be able to handle more word documents, and therefore have more memory.

That is the secret Krishna is giving here. Whose inner space is completely free, whose hard disc is completely clean, he who can process any information at any time, whose inner space is open, free and sharp, is called sthitaprajña. He is called the person who is in eternal consciousness.

These are all the answers Krishna gives Arjuna. But I tell you, with this scale, you will never be able to find out who is enlightened and who is unenlightened; by using this scale intellectually it is simply impossible.

If you want an honest answer I can tell you one thing: You can never find it out logically. If somebody is enlightened, when you see him, something will simply happen inside your heart. Beyond your intellect, your whole heart will fall in tune with him. You will not be able to forget him.

You will be pulled. Your whole being will be attracted to him. He will automatically fill your whole being. You will not know what is happening to you. You yourself will not be able to understand or analyze logically.

You will be just waiting, thinking, ‘When can I see him next? When can I see him next?’ Your heart will simply fall in love. I can say, with masters, you rise in love; with ordinary people, you fall in love! Something will happen in your space. Beyond your control, beyond your logic, your heart will know, he is enlightened. You will not be able to say ‘no’ to him.

Be very clear, if that happens, that person is going to help you. That person is going to show you what life is. That person is your master. If that doesn’t happen, don’t bother, continue your search. You will meet the right person. Continue your search, you will meet the right person.

Don’t bother about who is enlightened or who is not enlightened. Intellectually you cannot find out. If somebody is going to help you, your heart will simply fall in tune with him. If it falls in tune with him, even if he is not enlightened, he will help you. Even if he is not enlightened, you will be helped by him.

If your heart has not fallen in tune, even if he is enlightened, he is not for you. Forget about him. So you don’t have to use your head at all. Just relax. Your heart knows how to show you the right path, how to guide you onto the right path. Your heart is the judge which will guide you automatically in the right time, in the right moment, towards the right person.

So, let the divine Parabrahma Krishna guide us all to the right energy, to the right attitude and the right experience. Let Him shower eternal bliss. Let Him make us experience and radiate eternal bliss, nityānanda. Thank you.

Thus ends the fourth chapter named Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ of the Upaniṣad of Bhagavad Gita, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna.

Dimensions

CHAPTER 5

Seeking more and more does not lead to happiness. It leads to only depression. Then what leads to happiness?

◆ Is going into an ashram or being a sanyāsi a form of running away? Many people seem to be moving into ashrams only to get away from what they seem to see as the suffering they face in the material world. Will they not face a different kind of suffering in the ashram or the forest too?

◆ Swamiji, I am confused by the word bliss. All I understand is that it is the same as happiness or joy. But you say it is not. Please explain.

◆ Swamiji, I understand the truth of what Krishna says. Giving up sensual pleasures and treating everything as the same, is the answer. But how can I practice this understanding? As a normal human being, I am controlled by my senses. Please guide me.

◆ Swamiji, of all the qualities that humans possess and express, what would be the greatest virtue, the one that would be close to divinity?

◆ Swamiji, how can we see everything equally, without differentiation? We ourselves are not created equally; we are all different and diverse. How then is it possible to see every one else the same way as Krishna suggests?

◆ Swamiji, how can one control the pressures of the senses? I have the intention but do not have the capability. I need help.

◆ Swamiji, how do we know whether a master is enlightened or not?