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Duryodhana was a coward by nature, suffering from a deep inferiority complex and a strong need for attention. He had always been threatened by the fact that his Pandava cousins were superior to him and his brothers. He was especially afraid of Arjuna and Bhima, who were physically stronger and more skilled than him. Like all bullies through the ages, Duryodhana was only afraid of being overpowered by someone whose physical power was greater than his own.

Duryodhana felt secure only when surrounded by cronies. His strength and valor arose from the feeling of being supported by his clan and the army around him. On the positive side, Duryodhana was an extremely generous friend who gave his all for the sake of someone he trusted. This quality had attracted strong men like Karna to him who swore undying loyalty. Even though Karna knew that Arjuna was his own brother, all he could say to his mother Kunti was that she would finally be left with five sons, implying that one of her sons, either Arjuna or Karna, would perish in the war. Such was the loyalty that Duryodhana evoked in his friends.

Duryodhana now rightly went on to claim that there were a number of people, who were great warriors, who would willingly lay down their lives for him. These warriors might have been aware that Duryodhana was an immoral person, but such was their commitment to him that it did not matter.

Duryodhana then began to boost his own morale by saying that the power of the Kaurava army led by Bhishma was immense, whereas the Pandava army with Bhima as one of the commanders was limited in power. Duryodhana's reference to Bhima alongside Bhishma was due to the fear that he had, of the oath that Bhima had taken - to break Duryodhana's thigh and drink his blood to avenge the insult to Draupadi. Duryodhana knew in his heart that this would happen and the only factor that could prevent it would be the protection of Bhishma.

Duryodhana then addressed the Kaurava army, exhorting them to support their Commander-in-Chief Bhishma. In response, Bhishma blew his conch like a lion, making Duryodhana joyful.

Bhishma was the first Kaurava Commander-in-Chief and Duryodhana wanted to make sure that the entire Kaurava army was committed to his leadership. In the past, Duryodhana had not hidden his feelings that Bhishma was partial to the Pandavas. Now, however, the die was cast, and Bhishma, the greatest warrior either side had known, was leading the Kaurava army. Duryodhana wanted to take no chances that his past hatred towards Bhishma would affect his assembled supporters.

In some ways Duryodhana had no choice. Though he knew that Bhishma, as well as Drona, would have gone with the Pandava princes and Krishna had they not been bound by their strong bonds of duty, he could not afford to antagonize them.

Bhishma was the grand sire and patriarch of the Pandava and Kaurava clan. Bhishma was born to Ganga as Devavrata. He was the only surviving son of eight sons whom Ganga had given birth to. When his father king Shantanu wanted to marry Satyavati, a daughter of a fisherman, Devavrata swore never to marry so that his stepmother Satyavati's children could have access to his father's throne.

Satyavati was the grandmother of both Pandu and Dhritarashtra. Bhishma was highly respected for his valor and sagacity. It is one of the greatest ironies of Mahabharata that wise men like Bhishma and Drona chose to be on Duryodhana's side, knowing fully well that whatever path Duryodhana was following was morally incorrect.

In the highest spiritual sense there is no right or wrong morally. Everything is neutral. Bhishma and Drona were not ordinary people. They were highly learned in the scriptural truths. Moreover, they were fully aware that Krishna was an incarnation, and the very fact that Krishna sided with the Pandavas was a clear indication to them as to how the war would unfold. As great warriors themselves, they had no fears about their own deaths; and more importantly they had no guilt about what they had embarked upon.

Men like Bhishma and Drona, as well as others such as Kripacharya, trusted their awareness. Duryodhana was their prince and they were committed to him. They were not concerned about the result of the war; to them it was a certainty that Duryodhana would perish and they would too, along with him. In fact, there is a point in the war when Krishna was greatly angered at the rout that Bhishma was causing in the Pandava army and unhappy at the deferential way Arjuna was treating Bhishma. Krishna got down from Arjuna's chariot that He was driving and advanced menacingly towards Bhishma.

Bhishma instantly laid down his arms, joined his palms in prayer to the advancing Krishna who was wielding His sudarśana cakra, the divine discus weapon on His finger, and greeted Him. 'Lord, it will be the greatest blessing for me to die at Your hands.'

To these great warriors, dying on the battlefield was the duty of a kṣatriya, a warrior. What was more important to them was that they were rooted in the awareness of the present moment, carrying out their duty. They weren't concerned with the righteousness of Duryodhana's motives. Their awareness transcended the moral rights and wrongs established by society and religion. They disapproved of Duryodhana's insult of the Pandava princes and Draupadi in the court but did not protest. They disapproved of Duryodhana's instigation of this war and yet took his side, knowing fully well that what lay ahead was destruction.

This was not foolishness or resignation. This was surrender to the inevitable, surrender to the Divine. At the level of their consciousness, these great masters allowed Nature to take its own course, and allowed themselves to be swept along with the tide.

To relax and allow whatever happens to happen is the sure sign of an evolved spirit. Ordinary human beings have the freedom to think, choose and act. As a result, they think they are in control of their destinies. In a sense they are; they make their decisions and act upon them. But it is their unconscious saṁskāras, the memories, value systems and beliefs that drive them into and through all these decisions.

A cycle is created as the saṁskāras lead to certain actions and those actions in turn mould their mental set-up and reinforce these saṁskāras. Yet, a human being has the choice to break out of this cycle and live in freedom from his saṁskāras.

It is our constant conflict with Nature that leads to our suffering. We believe that we act out of intelligence, when most of the time our actions are driven by instinct, the unconsciousness where the saṁskāras reside. The unconscious mind operates at a much higher speed and stores far more data than our conscious mind. Typically, if the unconscious mind is capable of storing and accessing 60 million images within a short time, the conscious mind during the same period can process 60 at best. The speed of the unconscious mind has been designed by Nature to cope with life or death issues. Unfortunately, this system gets misused for all other mundane issues as well.

If we learn to flow with Nature, like the reeds in a river, as they say in Tao, we will always do the right thing. We suffer when we resist Nature and therefore limit our options. There are two ways to live life. One is to accept the world and life as it is, what in Sanskrit is termed sṛṣṭi dṛṣṭi. The other way is to try to make circumstances evolve according to our viewpoint, called dṛṣṭi sṛṣṭi.

The first attitude, one of acceptance, brings happiness; the second, one of resistance, brings suffering. No one can change the world according to his viewpoint. It is an exercise doomed to encounter failure.

In our lives, we cannot even change the attitude of our neighbor or our spouse.

At best, we can transform ourselves, that’s all.

All talk about revolutionizing the world is just useless talk. No revolution has ever succeeded in bringing about any significant, positive change. Revolutionaries who claim that they are against dictatorship become dictators themselves. That has always been history.

Ironically, an enlightened master has no such freedom. He is a faithful channel of the universal energy, Parāśakti, the divine Existence. Every move and every thought is at the behest of the Divine. An enlightened being is beyond choice. An enlightened being is in complete surrender to the Divine.

The scale that is applied to ordinary humans cannot measure the motives and actions of an enlightened being. Their actions are taken in a no-mind, thought-free state that flows constantly in the present, with no expectations of what may happen in the future and no regrets about what happened in the past. Their actions may seem immoral or at least strange when perceived through the lens of the rules and regulations of society. But they are beyond society.

Bhishma was of divine origin, the son of Ganga. He had the gift of living as long as he wanted and to die when he wanted. His integrity and morality were the standard for his era. Yet Bhishma kept quiet when Draupadi was attempted to be disrobed and insulted. He did not act when Duryodhana denied the Pandava princes even a patch of land. He chose to fight for Duryodhana.

However, when Duryodhana requested him to lead the Kaurava army, Bhishma told him that the Pandava princes were as dear to him as Duryodhana was, and while he would wage war against their army, he could not take their lives. This was the condition under which Bhishma agreed to fight against the Pandava army on Duryodhana's behalf.

Bhishma had repeatedly counseled Duryodhana against his evil deeds towards the Pandava princes and Duryodhana was aware of how Bhishma opposed his acts. Yet, in this instance, Bhishma's compassion for Duryodhana overcame his distaste for his actions and behavior. Bhishma understood the desperate fears running through Duryodhana's mind and felt the need to reassure him.

In response to these exaggerated claims of Duryodhana, Bhishma blew his conch as a sign of resounding affirmation of whatever had been said by Duryodhana. Sanjaya said that Bhishma's conch sounded like the roar of a lion, coming from the oldest and the bravest of all the warriors assembled on the battlefield. It was also an affirmation of Bhishma's own support to the Kaurava prince and the signal for the war to begin. Bhishma's conch was a celebratory signal, seeking victory.

Q: Swamiji, how can there be no right and wrong in what we do? Can we then do whatever we wish without fear? Need someone have no fear of the hereafter if one is powerful enough to overcome societal authority?

At the highest spiritual level, at the level of Existence, right and wrong do not happen in the way we think. Nature does not follow our societal rules of right and wrong. This is why we are often in anger and sorrow when thousands are destroyed in natural calamities or when young ones die in accidents.

We say Nature is cruel. We ask, ‘Does God exist? God is supposed to be compassionate. How can He allow these things to happen?’

We have no understanding of how Nature operates. Nature just is. It does not accept any conditions known to our logic. People only dimly understand the laws of Nature.

Let us imagine a situation where you are driving a car and you run over an anthill. The car destroys a whole colony of ants. Would you have even noticed it? You would drive on without being aware of what havoc you had caused upon this colony of ants. Had you run into a moose or a deer, you certainly would have known because your car would have been damaged, but not so with an anthill.

Nature takes as much notice of us as we do of ants. The frequencies are different, just like how our size and frequency are different from those of ants. Enlightened beings operate at the frequency of Existence. They follow the laws of Nature, not of humans. When I said there is no right and wrong in Nature, it applies at the level of Existence and enlightened masters.

It is true that at the level of human beings you need to have guidelines of right and wrong, of what to do and what not to do. But be careful. When these are enforced without understanding they will never work. Most of the regulations laid down by many religions are beyond understanding. One religion says you cannot eat pork. Another prohibits beef and yet another stipulates that everything can be and must be eaten. One religion says that you can marry only once and must stay with that spouse for the duration of your life. Another says you can leave one spouse and take another; some say you can be married to four at a time.

Different religions say contradictory things about what is right and wrong, and they have different gods and different versions of heaven and hell. It is as if each religion issues a different passport and visa when you die!

If one thinks about all this with awareness, the underlying reasons will become clear. The rights and wrongs that society and religions lay down have nothing to do with the truth of existential reality. These regulations, which define our conduct, be they right or wrong, are in place for the sake of self-preservation. It is like saying, ‘I agree not to kill you and in turn you agree not to kill me.’ This is gradually extended across society. Such regulations are needed to provide safety to all those who live within that society.

What about those actions that extend beyond the individual? When one group attacks another group and kills its people, with or without provocation, how can you justify it? When you kill someone else in defense of your country you are called patriotic, and you are celebrated as a hero. But you are still a murderer! If the murder is carried out in the name of patriotism, does it become justifiable?

Throughout the history of mankind there have been hundreds, if not thousands of wars. In each war the victor was always considered to be in the right. All these wars were in defense of so-called noble principles. Whoever won had a nobler principle, that’s all. If Hitler had won world War II, history would have been rewritten and he would have been a hero.

It is as the Tao says: There is no right and wrong, no good and bad, no light and darkness. Everything that is terribly wrong has something right in it for someone. Everything wonderfully right has something wrong in it for someone. Such is the truth of life.

What has been considered right at one point in time and space, is considered wrong at another point in time and space. What is considered absolutely incorrect at one time becomes universally acceptable in another era. At one time in India, it was considered a duty and an honor for a woman to commit suicide by walking into the funeral pyre of her dead husband. If she did not voluntarily walk into the pyre, she was forcibly burnt. At one time, so-called witches were burnt at the stake and it was considered justifiable. Today these acts are considered barbaric aberrations.

Fundamental, existential truths cannot oscillate between right and wrong. They have to be one or the other at all times and in all space. Unfortunately, in the true existential sense, there is no such definition. It is simply because Existence does not operate that way. Existence is random, truly random. Randomness cannot be differentiated as right random and wrong random.

Human nature is such that whenever rules are made, the first impulse is to break the rule. This impulse is deeply rooted in us and is part of our desire to be free of all bondages. If there is a speed limit, and if you do not see a cop, you will speed. If you happen to get caught speeding and you are in a country where corruption is an acceptable practice, you may try to wriggle your way out through a bribe.

One can understand a child doing such a thing. A child is driven by curiosity and does things that may seem dangerous and incorrect to an adult. But why does a conditioned adult break rules? First of all he does not believe that the rule applies to him. He is perfectly happy to have the rule applied to everyone except himself. Each man and woman would like to be free from rules that bind them, but want them to be applied to others so that they can be free from interference.

Anything that you do out of a sense of duty to your conscience is always forced, because it is based only on what you have been taught as right or wrong. Because it is forced, you will always want to break away in some way or other from some of those rules. It is only when you consider something to be right or wrong based upon a deep internal awareness, that you do it with earnestness. You do it because something deep inside you tells you it is the right thing to do. Conscience is societal. consciousness is natural.

As an adult, whatever you do must be done in awareness, not out of force.

Unfortunately, we always get caught in this game of choosing between right and wrong. We are conditioned from early childhood to play this game. Our emotional strings are controlled as if by a master puppeteer, through greed and fear. It could be our temple telling us that if we covet our neighbor's wife we will go to hell. Or it could be our legal system that tells us that if we do not pay taxes we will go to jail.

We are invariably ruled either by fear or by greed. Fear and greed are embedded deeply into our psyche through conditioned mindsets of good and bad. Be very clear, it is not the conscious mind directing us, not at all. It is the unconscious mind driving us through embedded memories, memories that we have limited access to.

If we act out of greed, we have temporary pleasure. Often, even that pleasure is tinged with guilt. For example, if you give alms to a beggar, you will wonder at the back of your mind whether you are doing the right thing, or possibly supporting one of their bad habits. You will wonder if you are encouraging other able-bodied people to beg. If the beggar is disabled, you will remember stories about how children are maimed and used by beggar mafia in some countries! For every well-intentioned action, your mind can bring up at least a few arguments against it.

Our concepts of right and wrong seem absolute to us, or at least absolute in relation to our conditioning. First, we need to drop our judgment about something or someone being right or wrong. We are no one to judge and in any case, our judgments are based purely upon our own social conditioning. God Almighty does not judge, contrary to what religions may say. So we can very well drop our negativities first. Then we will realize that our impressions about other people's negativities will also drop. We will start seeing good in each person and in every situation.

Second, we need to raise our awareness through meditation. We need to look inwards and connect with our consciousness. There is no other way for us to understand and accept the ways of Nature. There is no absolute right or wrong in Nature. Nature just flows. With meditation, we too learn to flow.

As you flow, you learn to act in awareness. You learn to extend a helping hand to a passerby even if it seems to involve personal danger. Actually, you will fall so much in tune with Existence that you won't even feel that there is any danger that can threaten you. You will begin to experience that everything is happening only for the good.

One of our healers told us this incident recently.

As he was walking to a meeting he passed a man lying face down on the road. Normally he would have walked by, and he almost did. Then something strange happened. He thought of me and his legs couldn't move! They in fact moved backwards to the spot where the man lay. Despite the delay, he stayed till an ambulance came to pick up the man.

This is not about right and wrong. This is about awareness. This is not about what others would say or do. He said, a few hundred people passed by looking and not doing anything. If so many people chose to do nothing, then some would consider the right action based on that alone, is it not? But for the person who stopped to help, the correct action was to be of service.

There are people who interpret their religious scriptures to mean that they can destroy those who do not believe in their God or their principles. How can you call these people or their religious leaders who encourage this attitude spiritual? There are millions, perhaps billions, who believe this implicitly and therefore act without awareness. How can spirituality be exclusive? It is never exclusive. It is inclusive, always inclusive. This divisiveness is what causes the collective unconsciousness to rise in our society.

Whenever something is collective, it will be from the unconscious. It can never be from awareness. To be in consciousness, you need to work individually. Conscience can be collective; consciousness is the path of aloneness.

Do not worry about what others say about right and wrong, including me. That is my awareness, not yours. Go into your inner space and find out your own answers through a process of connecting with your awareness. Only then can you be free from your bondages of fear and greed, as well as guilt. Only then will you be liberated.