Live All Your Dimensions🔗

If we look closely at our lifestyle, what we accept as normal is actually chaotic and crazy. But we have been conditioned with it since childhood so we are not even aware of this.

From an early age we are taught certain beliefs and habits that cut deep grooves in our mind. The rest of our lives we follow these furrows and tracks of thinking. In Indian villages, even today, they grind oil seeds in a traditional expeller, powered by bullocks. These bullocks are tied in such a way that they walk in circles to crush the seeds inside the expeller. If we analyze the way we live, we are very much like these bullocks! We get caught in a rut and we go around driven by our senses and memories. Just as the bullocks chew the cud as they walk around, we too chew the cud of our memories and sensual perceptions as we unconsciously follow the same routine day after day, year after year.

Even when we think we are breaking the routine and doing things creatively and rationally, it is just an illusion of our mind. We are still driven by our unconscious mind and the memories stored in the unconscious mind. Any scientist will tell us that nearly ninety percent of our mind exists in the 'unconscious' zone, where all our deep memories are stored. This is the hard disk of our mind. What we think of as our conscious and rational mind is just a flash memory drive that is transient.

These engraved memories stored in the deep unconscious mind make decisions on our behalf, even though we are completely unaware of it. What we may think of as an intuitive decision is actually an instinctive decision that arises from our unconscious.

Most people do not understand the difference between intuition and instinct. Instinct is the unconscious. It is what drives animals. It is the deeply grooved habit patterns that are encoded in the genes and DNA.

Since the unconscious brain acts much faster than the conscious brain, the instinctive action of the unconscious is of crucial value to our survival.

Intuition on the other hand is a superconscious state of the mind. It is a state of mind that is developed through meditation. It is where we reach when we move inwards through our senses. It is a state of living and being in the present moment.

Intuition transcends time and space. Intuition allows us to explode in all directions while instinct restricts us to the furrowed path of our conditioned, unconscious memories.

Time and again people tell me, ‘Swamiji, it is easy for you to do what you do. You have no family ties. You have renounced wealth. We are bonded to relationships and material possessions. How can we become spiritual?’

Let me tell you clearly that this is your instinct speaking. You are caught in the conditioning of your unconscious mind, believing that you can do only one thing at a time. You have sold yourself into the bondage of believing you are uni-dimensional.

By nature we are multi-dimensional. By nature we are intuitive. By nature we are enlightened. All that we lack is the awareness of this potential of ours.

In the verses that follow and in the rest of the Gita, the master tells us how to break away from our bondages and become multi-dimensional. He teaches us how to reach our true state. This is what the word samādhi means... to go back to our true nature.

Time and again Jesus Christ uses the word ‘repent’ as in ‘repent or you shall perish’. This word is mistakenly taken to mean that He wants us to regret or feel guilty. This is not at all what it means. This word ‘repent’, native Aramaic, is used by Jesus to instruct us to ‘go back to the original state’! It had exactly the same meaning as the word ‘samādhi’.

Throughout the Gita, Krishna talks about yoga. Each chapter refers to one type of yoga or another. Yoga is the same as samādhi. Yoga means ‘uniting’. It means uniting with our true nature.

When we unite with our true Self, we become multi-dimensional. We can be material and spiritual. There are no constraints and no limitations. We are free. We had wealthy kings like Janaka, who were realized souls. Material wealth does not limit anyone from being spiritual. It is only the attachment to wealth through greed, and the fear of losing the wealth that stops one from being free.

5.1 Arjuna said:

Oh Krishna, you asked me to renounce work first and then you ask me to work with devotion.

Will you now please tell me, one way or the other, which of the two will work for me?

5.2 Krishna says: The renunciation of work and work in devotion are both good for liberation.

But of the two, work in devotional service is better than renunciation of work.

5.3 He who neither hates nor desires the fruits of his activities has renounced.

Such a person, free from all dualities, easily overcomes material bondage and is completely liberated, Oh Arjuna!

5.4 Only the ignorant speaks of the path of action to be different from the path of renunciation.

Those who are actually learned say that both action and renunciation lead to the same truth.

In all the previous four chapters, Krishna talks with such clarity and authority that it would dissolve the doubts of anybody listening to Him. Krishna has been explaining again and again so clearly in every verse, and yet Arjuna has come back to the same point.

If you look at it, it will seem like Arjuna was playing a game. A person who was a king could never have been so ignorant. Either both of them were playing a game so that the Gita could be delivered to the world or Arjuna was really desperate with no other way to save himself. There is no other book that is so clear, so direct. There is no other master who is so straight in giving the instructions.

After all the explanation given by Krishna previously, Arjuna continues to ask, 'Oh Krishna, first of all, you asked me to renounce work and then again you recommend work with devotion. Now, will you kindly tell me clearly, which of the two is more beneficial?'

We will never get an answer if we start thinking about which would be more beneficial. Please be very clear: We can never solve a problem if we start thinking in terms of benefits.

First of all, 'benefit' is a very subjective term because the scale with which this is measured can vary from person to person. Before we evaluate the benefits of something, we should be clear about the scale we want to use to measure the benefits. What is beneficial for one person may be completely useless for another. The scale that we use for measuring success is a very important thing.

Before jumping to a conclusion and branding ourselves as 'successful' or 'unsuccessful', we need to know the scale with which we are going to measure our life. Unless we know the scale, it does not make sense to conclude anything. Even jumping to a conclusion should be done with clear intelligence. Jumping to a conclusion without intelligence is like falling out of an airplane without a parachute! We just won't know where we will land.

Before measuring life in terms of success or failure, one should know how this success is to be measured in the first place. If we are going to measure our life with a scale of dollars, then we have to work only for dollars. So, from morning to evening, we would work only for that goal. At the end of the day, we will know, 'Yes, this is the scale with which I am going to measure my life.' Based on this, we can conclude whether we are succeeding or failing in our life.

But you see, by the time we reach evening, the very scale changes! So what happens? We start our life using a certain scale and after a few years we measure again using a totally different scale. The very yardstick used for measuring our success or failure will have changed.

I can say one thing: It is fortunate that the scale changes. The scale changes with maturity. If we learn our lessons from Existence, if we grow with every mistake in life, then the scale with which we measure success in life should also change.

If it does not change, please be very clear, we will start the next life from ground zero. We would start our life again from the same point where we last left it. It is an endless game unless we learn lessons and move on. We will play the same game again and again and again. If the scale with which we measure our success changes in the right way, it shows we are becoming mature.

If the scale stays in the same level of dollars and wealth, not only will we not be able to measure our life clearly but we can also expect unhappiness. This is because there is no end to accumulating money or any material wealth. First of all, we set high standards for ourselves in terms of luxuries and material comforts. Even if we achieve these, we are not successful in our own eyes because we would have extended our target by comparing with others. Out of greed we keep saying, ‘What next, what next’. There is no end to this.

At the end of our lives, we feel we have not done enough. What happens next? We again start our whole game of a fresh birth and life from day one, from square one, with the same limited maturity.

One important thing: If only money is our scale, if only worldly comfort is our scale, be very clear, again and again we will feel we could have done a little more. We would always feel that we did not do enough and that we missed out in life. There is no absolute scale that defines success especially in monetary terms. For any amount of money that we have, we would be happier with a dollar more.

Let me tell you a small story:

A king’s barber used to live a very happy life. Every morning he would go to the palace to shave the king’s face. The king would give him ten gold coins and the barber would return home. He used to live his life happily with the ten gold coins given to him everyday after shaving the king’s face. His life was really beautiful and blissful. There was nothing to bother about. There was nothing about which he was worried. He was happy.

One day when he was coming back from the king’s palace, suddenly, he heard a booming voice, ‘Dear son, do you want forty gold coins?’

The barber said, ‘Forty gold coins? What am I going to do with them? I have no use for it. My expense is ten gold coins and that is enough. I don’t need anything more.’

The booming voice said, ‘I will give you twenty-four hours to think. You can go home, think about it, come back tomorrow and tell me. If you decide ‘yes’, I shall give you a magical jar full of gold coins.’

This poor barber should have at least kept quiet about this. He went and opened his mouth to his wife!

She started to scream, ‘You fool! Don’t you have any sense? You should have brought that jar. She raved and ranted, ‘You never did this for me, you never did that for me.’ Throughout my life, I am wearing the same sarees (traditional attire of Indian women). You have never gifted me any jewelry. You have never indulged me. You have never taken me on a vacation. What have I enjoyed after marrying you?'

I tell you, marriage is a three-ring circus: One is the engagement ring, next is the wedding ring and the third is suffe-ring!

When she started shouting at him, the barber said, 'Alright, fine. Don't worry. The booming voice has given me time till tomorrow morning. I have time to decide. Tomorrow morning, I will talk to him and get the jar.'

The next day morning, he told the voice, 'Please give me that jar.' Immediately, a yakṣa (an astral being) appeared before him and said, 'Have this jar. This jar has got 990 gold coins, just 10 gold coins less than 1000.'

The guy brought the gold jar back to the house. He was very happy that he could spend it for at least 99 days if he spent ten coins per day. But the moment his wife got the jar, she said, 'What is this? The jar is not overflowing. There is something missing.' He said, 'I don't know. This is the way I got the jar. The yakṣa told me that it is a little less.'

She started worrying, 'Had it been full, how nice it would have been! It would have been so good.' The next day, when the barber came back, she hurriedly grabbed all the ten gold coins that he had got from the king that day and put them in the jar. She wanted the jar to overflow. But to her surprise, again the level in the jar was below the brim. It was not full.

The barber's wife now started becoming restless. She waited anxiously for the next day's wages to fill the jar. The next evening, again, she took the money from the barber and put them into the jar. Again, it was a little short from being full. It was almost full but it was not completely full. This went on continuously for a week. She stopped giving food to the barber and cut all expenses. She took away all the gold coins from him, put it in the jar and desperately waited to see the jar overflow.

In one week's time the barber had become tired and dull. It showed on his face that he was drained out. The king started enquiring, 'What happened? You used to look so fresh. What happened to you? For the last one week I have been observing that you are tired. You have started thinking about something. You have started worrying. What happened to you? Did you accept the yaksha's jar?'

The barber was shocked at hearing this. He said, ‘Oh king, how do you know?’

The king said, ‘Whoever is suffering in this country, whoever is unhappy in this country, all of them have one thing in common. They accepted the yakṣa’s jar at some point in time.

The king said, ‘When you go back home, get rid of the yakṣa’s jar if you wish to be happy again.’

The man did so and lived happily again from that day on.

What the king said applies to all of us. Go back home and see if you have yakṣa’s jar or not, and if you do, get rid of it. If you are worrying, if you are suffering, there is every chance that in your house you have the yakṣa’s jar. The yakṣa’s jar never gets filled.

Of course, when I say yakṣa’s jar, it may not literally be there in your house. But it will surely be there in your head. Be very clear: Sometimes yakṣa hands over the jar in the form of a bank balance! Don’t think it will be only in the form of a jar. It may be in your mind. Yakṣa’s jar is made out of the Brahma kapāla, meaning one of Lord Brahma’s head that Lord Shiva holds in his hand, which simply swallows anything that is put into it and asks for more. The yakṣa’s jar makes us feel that we are not enough, that we are not complete, that we are not full. Our head makes us feel continuously that we are not enough unto ourselves and we are not complete.

However much we may have, whatever we may get, in ten days we will feel it is not sufficient. In ten days our mind will take everything for granted. Yakṣa refers to a person who has got wealth but neither does he enjoy it nor does he share it with the world. In India, there are many agricultural fields where they keep two or three dogs. The dogs will neither eat the grains nor will they allow other animals to come and eat. In the same way, if we have wealth and neither enjoy nor share it with others, we are called a yakṣa.

When accumulation of wealth is done greedily, there is never an end, like the yakṣa’s jar, because there is always scope for more. And secondly, when one is so preoccupied about accumulating, enjoyment never happens. The greed of wanting more and more and the fear that the saved balance will deplete, hinders true enjoyment of the wealth. Why are we accumulating possessions if we do not stop and enjoy them?

I always tell people, ‘Either you do dāna (charity) or you achieve mahādāna (the final and grand sacrifice or death). If you do dāna you share a little along with

enjoying yourself. You will enjoy and others also will enjoy. If you don't do some dāna, you will achieve mahādāna, which means you will leave everything and go away once and for all when you die.

Ramana Maharishi says beautifully, 'Before achieving it, even a mustard seed will look like a mountain.' It will seem that without that, your life will not move. It will seem as if that is the basic and most important thing for your life. 'Once you achieve it, even a mountain will look like a mustard seed.'

The mind is such, that before achieving, even a trivial thing seems so important and huge in our lives like the mustard seed that initially looks like a mountain. Suddenly, once it is achieved, even a mountain will look like a mustard seed. This is because something else looks like a mountain now. We get caught in the trap of achieving, and lose the ability to relax and enjoy what we have achieved.

Here, Arjuna asks:

'Now, will you please tell me surely, which of the two: Karma, action or sanyās, renunciation is more beneficial?'

All of us, again and again continue to ask this question to ourselves. Mind is dilemma! Please be very clear, our mind itself is nothing but dilemma. Our mind will be alive as long as we are caught between any two extremes. The moment we come to any single conclusion we will be liberated. We will be ignorant as long as we are moving from one extreme to the other.

Don't say, 'Ignorance is bliss.' If ignorance is bliss why are so many people suffering on this planet earth? Ignorance is not bliss. Innocence is bliss. That is the difference. Innocence means we will not carry a scale with which we are continuously measuring our life.

Ignorance means we will have a scale but we will not be able to fulfill our life according to our scale. If we neither have a scale nor have a goal, then there is no problem. But if we have enough intellect to have a scale but we are not able to fulfill it, then that is what I call ignorance.

The first thing we need to understand is that we have made our mind itself as a disease. The first and last disease is dilemma, the play of the mind. Dilemma is the disease with which man starts his life and ends his life too. I can't even say 'ends'. He will even be in a dilemma about whether or not to end it! But death comes and his life is just taken away from him. It is just taken away.

Here, Arjuna is in a dilemma as to which of the two is more beneficial for him. If we look into the entire life as a utility, as some means to a benefit, please be very clear, we are creating our own hell. If we reduce life to this, we will be in hell.

Life has no separate benefit. Life itself is a benefit. There are people, especially in the West, who have achieved all that they wanted in life. They have realized their own dreams, the dreams borrowed from others and the dreams imposed on them. But they feel a deep void in them. This is what I mean by the term ‘depression of success’.

They start wondering about what it was that they ran after. When they were running, their desires drove them. They were a part of the rat race. One desire would have led to a bigger one. Once they achieve all that they thought would give them happiness, they suddenly find that they have no drive to acquire more and they feel dissatisfied also. Eventually, they are confused about themselves. They do not know what more to desire. They feel something is lacking and are unable to comprehend what it could possibly be.

This is because they ran without awareness, without stopping to give an appointment to themselves, without any self-inquiry. They ran because everyone around was running. They never stopped for a minute to question why or what they really wanted in the first place. So when they stop running or when suddenly they can’t run anymore, they fall back into themselves and suddenly find that they are out of sync or dis-eased with their own being. This is what becomes depression or disease.

So if you constantly look for some benefit from life, if you don’t achieve, you will feel life is a failure and if you achieve, you are bound to face the depression of success. Either way it is trouble.

Life itself is a benefit. If we constantly try to see which of two things is more beneficial, it means we have a pure business mind. With life we cannot do business. Our whole life cannot be managed as a business. At some point we need to relax from the business mind.

I always tell people, ‘For at least half an hour per day, do something which will not get dollars for you - some painting, some writing, some poetry, something.’

When you start painting, don’t start thinking of a big gallery with your paintings! Don’t start thinking, ‘I will make all these paintings and put up a gallery in New York and make money.’ For at least 30 minutes, do some painting or creative work without bothering about where to have a gallery or how to show off your art work to people.

Even before starting to paint, we will think, 'My friend will come home. I will show this to him and explain how I started these paintings and how I developed this concept.' You will decide how to bore your friend with your plans.

Now think a little about my plight. I visit so many houses in a year. In some of the houses, when I go, they start giving me a commentary on the whole house. They start from the entrance and say, 'Swamiji, this photo is from this temple from this city and I bought it in 1962...' People just love talking about such things.

Similarly, when you start writing a few poems, don't start thinking of a Pulitzer Prize. Don't start thinking, 'I will publish this. It will be recognized like the famous Gitanjali. I will then win the Nobel Prize.' No! Without thinking about any result or benefit, just do something. Don't start planning, 'In the next party, I think I should read out this poem aloud.' Do something just for the sake of doing it, not for any purpose. You will see that during that half hour, you will fall into your very being!

Or instead of painting or writing poems, go to some place of worship, clean and wipe the place. Don't think, 'I will be the leader of a volunteer batch for this place.' The moment you take a broomstick in your hand, start swabbing, start cleaning the place without any big expectations in return. Engage yourself in any form of selfless activity at a place of public service. Serve food for people. But do it without thinking of how to make a big deal out of it or how to derive some benefit from it.

Even doing volunteering is an ego boost for many of us. Many of us like to volunteer mainly so that we can go and tell others about it and get applauded for it. So now at least for 30 minutes do something that will not give any benefit to you or what you think of as some benefit to you.

No money or name and fame should come to you from that half an hour. If you can just use 30 minutes from your life for this, you will start tasting the real essence of life. As long as you are sitting in the head, continuously calculating, you will only be having a bargain with your life, 'What is more beneficial? What am I going to achieve by this? What am I going to achieve by that?'

I tell you: You will see a different dimension of your being if you follow this technique. I promise that these 30 minutes will lead you to Krishna consciousness. These 30 minutes will be the only useful time in your life.

There are many people who come and sit and listen to these discourses so that they can go and repeat it to others, so that they can go and tell all these things to others. I am not saying don’t do that. But allow it to sink in to you first.

When you stop calculating for getting benefits, you will start tasting life. You will come alive.

Life is not business and it cannot be business. Here, again and again, Arjuna is stuck because of this one point. He thinks that life is business. Of course, Krishna is so patient. He is so compassionate. He is the embodiment of kindness! Literally, inch by inch, He brings Arjuna up. He does not lose His patience. He does not say, ‘I told you earlier...’

I can say that Krishna uses at least 100 verses to explain this one concept of karma sanyāsa yoga, the paths of Duty and Renunciation. Throughout the Gita, He has used at least 100 verses to explain the concepts of karma and sanyās that we are about to discuss. But He does this without losing His patience at any point. Not once does He shout at Arjuna. He is an embodiment of compassion. He comes down to the plane of Arjuna and gradually transforms him by reiterating the same teachings in different ways.

The question concerning karma and sanyās, duty and renunciation, has been asked again and again from time immemorial, and each time, it has been answered. Yet this question remains.

Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Why is the Gita still relevant today?’ I said, ‘Because we never learned.’ Why is the Gita still relevant for modern day people? Although it was uttered at least 5000 years ago it is still relevant today. Why? It is simply because man has not learnt his lesson yet! History repeats itself.

The unconscious process never comes to the conscious energy. Man as such is governed to a large extent by the unconscious. He is not even aware of what he is going after most of the time. That is why he goes on and on but never achieves. He thinks he wants something and runs after it. But by the time he gets his hands on it, he wants something else. So there is a constant restlessness within.

This puts man in constant dissatisfaction and depression. Let me tell you that by merely flooding awareness into this depression you can get out of it. I always tell people, if you just allow a single instance of depression to work on you and you move through it with awareness, in the process you will become enlightened. Nothing else is necessary. A single instance of depression is enough. It will completely burn you; you will become enlightened. But we never allow anything to work on us completely. We are scared to confront our own selves. We just allow the unconscious to take over and rule us instead of boldly facing it and seeing it through.

Life is the greatest master. Nobody can teach us greater things than what life can. Life continuously teaches us. But we never note the points and learn them. We never mark the place where we stopped our journey in this birth. When we stop our journey, at least if we mark the place in this life, saying, 'I covered this much distance, I learnt all these things. In the next birth I will continue from where I left last,' if we do that much, it is enough. When I say birth, I do not mean just the totality of our life. I am referring to each day and night. Each day and night is a birth. It is a life cycle. We do die and get reborn everyday.

Everyday, consciously decide, 'Let me learn one lesson today.' Or if one lesson a day is too much, make it once a week. Tell yourself, 'I will allow one understanding to enter into my consciousness this week.' I tell you, if you had allowed one understanding to enter into your consciousness every week, you would have been enlightened by now. Your life would have been blissful, without any worries.

If you decide every weekend, 'I will observe my life completely during this entire week. I have traveled this much of distance. Let me stop here and mark it.' Next week, you refer back to where you had left and say, 'Yes, this week I will start from here.' If you do this much sincerely, it is more than enough. Your whole life will be transformed.

But the problem is that we always mark in the wrong places.

A small story:

Two friends rented a boat and went fishing. One day, to their great fortune, they managed to catch a hundred fish. One of them instructed his friend, 'Mark this place. Next time we will come straight here and directly start fishing here.'

The next time they were about to set out for fishing again. One of them asked the other, 'Did you mark that place?' The other replied, 'Yes, I put the cross mark in the boat.'

The first one said, 'What a fool you are! If we don't get the same boat, what will we do?' We also mark, but on the boats, not in life. We never mark where we should, in the bigger picture of our lives. We are so caught up with marking our desires and goals. These markings of desires and worldly goals continuously get washed away and new markings are made. They update themselves based on inputs from the world around us, based on what society has to say. We forget that these markings are temporary and do not reflect the growth within.

What truly matters is the inner transformation, which we never bother to think about. We never allow any understanding to work on us. If we consciously are aware of what we are doing and what our pitfalls are, we can start to learn from them and grow to be better individuals. But again and again we make the same mistakes. May be the scale differs, but the mistakes are the same!

The person who commits the same mistake on a larger scale becomes a leader. The person who commits the same mistake on a smaller scale becomes a follower, that’s all. A leader is a person who commits mistakes on a large scale and who hides them, whereas a follower is one who does the same mistakes on a smaller scale and justifies them. That is the difference between a leader and a follower.

I tell you, if you allow even a single lesson to enter into your life, penetrate into it and work on it, your whole life will be transformed. I always tell our ashram brahmacāris and brahmacārinis (young unmarried boys and girls training on the path of sanyās) and our ashramites (other ashram residents) to at least do new mistakes every time! To tell you honestly, we are not so intelligent as to even commit new mistakes. We are not even creative and innovative to make new mistakes, that is the problem.

Even if you merely decide not to do the same mistake once more, your life will be transformed. But again and again, we do only the same kind of mistakes because our mind works in the same route. That route is only called saṁskāra: a recorded route, an engraved memory. If we take up the life of either karma or sanyās based on a recorded memory, we will never achieve bliss. We will never be able to reach the eternal consciousness.

Let us analyze these paths of karma and sanyās.

Let us look a little deeply into the two concepts of karma and sanyās. Karma is normally done out of greed and desires. Sanyās is always invariably out of fear, bhaya. There is a fear of life. When you are not ready to take the risk, you renounce everything. The fear of getting hurt is the first reason for sanyās.

Please be very clear: All the so-called traditional sanyās is nothing but running away from the fear of life. Sanyās is a way of escapism, turning away from the responsibilities that life presents. When a person is not able to face the hardships of life and is bogged down by it, he takes sanyās as an easy escape exit. He is scared of being swallowed by the tides of life. In the name of renunciation, he covers the deep fears.

Then we have people running behind material wealth, greedily, in the name of karma. On one side are the people who are running away from fear. On the other side are those who are running towards their greed. Both categories of people are not going to achieve the eternal bliss or consciousness. Both are not on the right track.

On the entire planet earth, only three types of human beings exist: One who has surrendered to greed, one who has surrendered to fear, and third, the one who has surrendered to the supreme intelligence, divine consciousness or eternal consciousness.

The person who has surrendered to greed gets lost. He is caught in the mūlādhāra cakra. The mūlādhāra cakra is the root energy center at the base of the spine that harbours greed when allowed to. Such a person runs greedily behind many things in life to possess them, which in turn leads to more greed and so he gets caught in this vicious cycle. He literally becomes a slave to greed.

There is a beautiful Upaniṣad story:

There are two birds on the same tree. One bird is sitting calmly, enjoying the silence - its own inner space. It is a completely satisfied and fulfilled being. Another bird is sitting a little below, busily pecking at the fruits. It goes to one side of the tree, selects a fruit and eats it. It then returns to where it started, goes to the other side and eats another fruit.

When the fruit is tasty, it enjoys. When the fruit is not tasty, it suffers. It goes to one side, feels the joy, goes to the other side and feels the suffering. It continuously goes from this side to that side. Suddenly, this bird looks up and sees the bird that is sitting silently and thinks, 'How is this bird so calm and beautiful? Let me go nearer and see. Let me talk to this bird.' Slowly, slowly, the small bird moves towards the bird that is sitting peacefully all this time.

As it goes nearer the other bird, the small bird continues to taste more fruits and suffers because the fruits get sour. Suddenly, when the small bird is close enough to the other bird, it realizes that the other bird is nothing but its own self, which is sitting silently and beautifully watching the small bird getting distracted in its path, suffering with sour fruits! The small bird simply becomes one with the other.

This is a beautiful story! In the same way, as long as you are a jīvātman, ordinary soul, you struggle between fear and greed. You go from this extreme to that extreme. You are pulled and pushed. The moment you realize that inside your being, there is something which is untouched, which is undisturbed by your greed and fear, you start traveling towards it. When you go more and more near it, you realize you are That. You are that consciousness.

Here, Krishna explains the same thing: We are caught between fear and greed. Either we constantly surrender our self to fear or we surrender our self to greed. There are very rare individuals, very rare beings who surrender to intelligence, to divine consciousness.

Always people come and ask me, especially these so-called intelligent people, come and ask me, ‘Why should I surrender to the Divine?’ You are continuously seeing life as accounts, which is why you ask me this question.

Arjuna asks here, ‘Which is more beneficial for me?’ Keeping track of accounts is good in business but not in life. Be very clear, in life, accountants will be the worst failures. They can’t live because they will be continuously calculating.

People come and ask me, ‘Why should I surrender to the Divine? If I surrender, what will I get?’

If you don’t surrender to the Divine, you will be surrendering to your fear or greed, that’s all.

I am not asking you to surrender to the Divine just to get something out of it. I am not giving any promises or assurance about surrendering to the Divine. But one thing you need to understand, if you don’t surrender to the Divine, you will be surrendering to your fear or greed.

An accountant can never be happy. If at all he is happy, he won’t be an accountant, he must be simply an intelligent person!

A small story:

A man wants to have an accountant. He interviews a candidate for the post. He asks him, ‘Can you do double entry?’ The accountant says, ‘I can do even triple entry, sir.’ The man asks, ‘Triple entry. What is that?’

The accountant says, 'The first entry is the original accounts showing the actual income, showing the actual profit. This is for the person who has put more money in the company. The second entry is for showing a small profit for the person who doesn't come to the company regularly, who is somewhere else.'

He continued, 'The third entry is for showing loss for income tax purposes. So I can do triple entry!'

Triple entries be good for business, but when it comes to life, it doesn't work out. Life is beyond calculation.

The moment we ask, 'What will I get by surrendering to the Divine?' we miss the whole idea of surrender.

Venkateshwara (an Indian deity) holds the cakra (discus) in one hand that represents fear. In the other hand He has the śaṅkha (conch), which represents success. The conch is blown when you achieve success. This represents greed because man is constantly seeking success in everything and is never satisfied.

If you don't surrender to Venkateshwara's pāda (feet) and His pāduka, His sandals, you will surrender to His conch and discus, that's all. In other words, you will surrender to fear or greed if you don't surrender to His energy. This goes to say that those who constantly approach God for fulfillment of their desires or for refuge for their problems are actually surrendering to greed and fear, symbolized by Venkateshwara's conch and discus. Only very few surrender to the feet of Venkateshwara, which is the ultimate surrender.

Our whole life is running behind greed or fear. The path of karma yoga, seeking liberation through action or duty, happens because of greed. The path of sanyāsa yoga, seeking liberation through renunciation, happens because of fear.

Neither the path of karma (action) nor the path of sanyās (renunciation) will help us unless we change our very attitude. If we change the attitude, karma, sanyās, or anything can help us. All we need to know is this: Don't bother about whether we are a karma yogi or a sanyās yogi. It is the attitude with which we approach and live life that is most important.

Again and again, Krishna is placing the emphasis on the attitude, on the being. If we don't know the root casuse of our actions, why we are living with karma or why we pick up sanyās, we will not be able to solve our problems.

A small story:

A person goes to a bar, drinks too much and drops right there. The bartender comes and kicks him in the back to wake him up. The next day, the same story repeats. This same person comes, drinks, and again falls down. Again the bartender comes and kicks him in the back to wake him up. On the third day, again this same person comes and says, 'Just give me soda. I don't want anything else.' The bartender asks, 'Why?'

The guy replies, 'I've realized that drinking gives me back pain.'

Be very clear, when we don't know why we are having the back pain, we can never solve it! We should know clearly that the back pain is not because of drinking. It is because we were kicked, we were beaten.

In the same way, our suffering is neither because of karma nor because of sanyās. Suffering is because of our wrong attitude. And I tell you, with this wrong attitude, be it karma or sanyās, the path will feel only like a punishment. With the right attitude, be it karma or sanyās, the path will feel like a true blessing.

With the wrong attitude, if you take sanyās, be sure you are going to struggle and suffer. In the same way, with the wrong attitude, if you are taking the path of karma, again you are going to struggle and suffer.

If you decide to enter into karma, drop the goal. Just enjoy doing the karma and don't worry about the goal. Living itself is beautiful. Realize that life itself is beautiful. On the other hand, if we decide to take up sanyās, again drop the goal. Don't think sanyās is going to have a goal. The goal of a sanyāsi (monk) which is renunciation also a goal, which must be dropped. The karma yogi runs towards the goal, the sanyāsi runs away from the goal.

Krishna says, sāṅkhya yogou prithagbālaḥ pravadanti na panditaḥ. Indirectly He tells Arjuna that he has yet to learn, that he is still ignorant.

Only the ignorant man speaks that this thing or that thing is important. Only the ignorant man says that karma yoga is different from sāṅkhya, the sanyās. Here, the words karma and sanyās, these two words are equated to karma yoga and sankhya yoga.

Those who are actually learned, I can say those who are actually experienced, say that both karma and sanyās lead to the same truth. Through both these paths, one achieves the results of both. If we change the attitude of greed in karma yoga,

we will drop into the eternal consciousness. If we change the attitude of fear in sanyās, again we will drop into the eternal consciousness. Through both, what we are supposed to achieve, we will achieve when we take the right attitude.

So here Krishna says, ‘Only the ignorant person says that one is superior to the other or that they are two different paths. Both the paths are one and the same.’ A person who can travel alone, who is courageous enough, takes the life of sanyās. A person who needs somebody’s help or who wants to share his life takes the life of karma. It is up to us. Both the paths are one and the same. What is important is having the right reason and the right intent, not what we are doing.

What we are doing is not important. It is our being that is important. These three words should be understood: being, doing and having.

If we are continuously doing, doing only for having, we will never have it. Even when we are having, we will be doing. The man who is doing just for having will never be able to experience or enjoy life because even when he is having, he will be doing.

The man who is established in his being will enjoy both doing and having at the same time. By just being, he will enjoy doing and having. All we need to do is only one thing, a simple technique. The whole thing is now reduced to a one-line message.

Let all our mental thoughts, let all our physical deeds be directed towards gratitude to the Divine.

Don’t work out of fear or greed, because with whatever we achieve out of greed, we are not going to be fulfilled. It is like pouring ghee (clarified butter) into the fire. Can we quench fire by pouring ghee into it? Never! all our actions that are done out of greed will only create more desire and make our senses weak and tired.

In the same way, all our laziness born out of fear will only make our mind restless. We may not be doing things physically, but our mind will be worrying.

If we have become a karma yogi out of greed, our senses will be weakened. How much can we run? If we become a sanyāsi out of fear, again, because of our vows we may not do anything physically but the whole day we will be sitting and worrying.

A simple truth:

When a man doesn't have money, the problem is money. When he has got money, the problem is sex. When he has got sex, the problem is comforts. When he has got comforts, when everything goes well, he starts worrying about death. He starts bothering about death. He has starts thinking about death. Something or the other will always be going on in his mind.

Don't think that all the people who have become sanyāsi, who are sitting in the Himalayas, are in bliss. No! Unless they change their attitude, they cannot experience joy. Unless the attitude changes, they cannot experience bliss.

Bliss is directly related to our attitude. Being, doing and having... our whole life will be in doing and having if we are caught in fear and greed. If we surrender ourselves to the being, doing and having both will happen to us with tremendous ecstasy.

Never work out of greed because whatever we achieve is going to be taken away at the time of death. Never become silent out of fear because there is nothing really to lose. Why should we be afraid? Whether we are afraid or not, everything is going to be taken away at the time of death. So, why be afraid? So in either case, why not we just be blissful then?

This is a beautiful story:

One man went to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and asked for money as a blessing. Ramakrishna usually never blessed anyone for money. This man went to Ramakrishna and asked, 'Master, please bless me that I should have wealth.' Finally, Ramakrishna said, 'Alright, may you have wealth.'

This man used to collect paper from the roads. He would also go from house to house and collect old newspapers. He used to make his money and living by selling it.

The way Ramakrishna blessed him, something drastic happened in his life. Within ten years, he became the owner of a very big newspaper called Ananda Bazaar Patrika. If you are from Calcutta, you will know about this paper. The founder of Ananda Bazaar Patrika is a disciple of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna just blessed him, 'You will have wealth.' Till today, this newspaper is in circulation.

You will be surprised, he didn't have children. At the end of his life, he said, 'Oh God! Now I realize my mistake! I asked for wealth from my master.

Throughout my life, I did only one thing. I worked like a donkey, that's all. Nothing else was achieved. I created the whole thing and I will now be leaving it and going away. I just worked, worked and worked for somebody else who will enjoy this wealth now.'

So, if we work out of greed, please be very clear, one day we will repent. One day we will surely repent.

Why do you think parents are so possessive of their children? Parents have some vengeance inside. They think, 'I worked and created so much wealth. I am leaving it for this child. This child must obey my words, he must listen to my words.' All the possessiveness comes because you suffered and created the wealth. You try to control the children as much as you can because of this.

If the wealth is created without suffering, when we give it, it will be graceful too. We will give it gracefully as a gift. We will not bind the recipient in so many ways. We will not torture him. We will not expect him to do so many things. We will not play with our wealth. We will write our will clearly, in an open way.

Why do you think people always write their will secretly? It is so that they can dangle the carrot. It is nothing but dangling the carrot so that the son or daughter is continuously behind them until they die and they read the will.

When a person who has created wealth out of suffering gives that wealth to someone, he gives the suffering also. People come and ask me, 'Swamiji, I hear that the parents' karma will come to the children. Is it true?'

The sins or the merits of the parents will not come to you. But their mental setup will influence you; it will come to you. This is because they will try to force that on you. They will try to force their mental setup on you. They will expect that you should live the way they want you to.

We always try to fulfill our ambitions through our kids. If we want to become a doctor and if we have not achieved it, we try to fulfill our ambition through our kids. We try to fulfill our ambitions through our kids, through the next generation. Please don't do that. If we do that, we will be destroying their life. We will be sharing not only our wealth but our suffering also.

The man who created wealth out of suffering will give the suffering to the person to whom he gives the wealth.

Next thing: If a person is not able to torture his son or the daughter who has received the wealth, he will start suffering himself. If he knows that his son is not going to listen to him, that the son is not going to live as he wants him to, he will start suffering. He will suffer thinking, ‘I am leaving all these things, placing trust upon my son. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what he will do.’ When he dies, he will have the worst death. He will be like a yakṣa. He will come back and sit on that property. Be very clear: He will not let even his son enjoy that property. He will come back and sit on that property.

I have seen many litigation cases where the parents give their wealth to their kids, and somehow or other, even after thirty or forty years, the kids will not be able to enjoy that wealth. It means the property is with a yakṣa guarding it. The man has come back and he is sitting as a yakṣa in that property. Neither will he enjoy it nor will he allow others to enjoy it. And God knows when the high court will pass the judgement. The judgement might take its own, sweet time.

Again and again, we share what we create. That’s what I always tell people: If the wealth is created out of a pain-body, you will transfer the pain body also to the next generation along with the wealth. It should be created out of just a relaxed mood, out of a voluntary decision or I can say without any strong motivation.

One important thing we should understand: Working without motivation is completely unheard of today.

All the people who are working in the field of the human mind, the psychologists, the psychiatrists, the scientists, always emphasize that without motivation we cannot work. That is why there are so many motivational gurus today. Motivational gurus haunt us. So many motivational gurus wanting to make money by telling others how to be motivated!

Please be very clear: These scientists, psychologists and doctors have come to the conclusion that ‘work without motivation is not possible’, after doing analysis on diseased patients, not on enlightened beings.

They never had a specimen of a Buddha! They never encountered an enlightened person. That is why they say that work without motivation is impossible.

I tell you, work without motivation is the only real work. Work without motivation will never make us tired! Every moment we will be ecstatic. We will be working out of bliss. Understand this one concept, this one technique.

Further, for the first time, Krishna gives a meditation technique in this chapter. Today, we will practice that technique to achieve the bliss consciousness. Until the fifth chapter, He was giving only intellectual advice, śāstra. Krishna now thinks that Arjuna has become mature or Krishna realizes that without some technique, it is now impossible to relate with Arjuna.

Krishna realizes, ‘If I don’t give him a technique, I cannot escape from him!’ Masters give meditation techniques in two situations: One is when they see the person is mature enough, the other is when it is better to give some technique, otherwise the person would constantly question them. The person will continue to question, and will not keep quiet.

So I don’t know whether Krishna thought that Arjuna has become mature or he thought, ‘Let him at least sit quiet for a few minutes with closed eyes!’ He gives him a technique. Now we will practice that technique. We will enter into that technique.

Before the technique, He gives a beautiful explanation about the technique in the following verses. Yes, you have a question...?

Q: 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?

A beautiful question!

A small story:

Three men had been in an asylum for a long time. The doctors felt they had improved and could be released. But just to make sure, the resident doctor gave them a test.

He took them to an empty swimming pool, made them climb the diving platform and asked them to jump into the pool.

The first man jumped and broke his arms. Screaming his lungs out, he was led away back into the asylum. The second man jumped and broke his legs. He too left crying, back into the asylum. The third man went up, looked down and refused to jump. The doctor asked him, ‘What happened?’

He said, ‘No, I cannot jump’. The doctor was very happy. He signed the third man’s release forms. As the man was leaving the asylum, the doctor asked him, ‘Why was it that you would not jump?’

The man said, ‘I don’t know how to swim!’

Right action, wrong reason! Right decision, wrong reason!

This is far worse than doing the wrong thing of making the wrong decision or committing the wrong action. At least then we will be told we are doing something wrong. Someone, like our spouse, parents, children or friends will make it their business to tell us.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason, no one will know because we are not doing something wrong. Even we will not know, unless we question it ourselves. So nothing will stop us from doing it.

If we move into an ashram for the wrong reasons, we are in deep trouble. That is why I give a trial period of about a year. If you come there because because you think you are doing it to achieve something, I will give you time to realize your wrong decision.

Only when you come in for the right reason, for reasons of inner awareness, with no agenda, just to be, will ashram life be the right decision for the right reason for you. You will settle into yourself peacefully, without effort, with no suffering.

In the past many people have tried to be peaceful for the wrong reasons. Those were the monks. The monasteries all over the world were full of such people. But they were dead even while being alive. They could not laugh, they could not love, they could not sing, and they could not dance. They attained peace at the cost of their life. They became utterly cold. Their peace was not a cool phenomenon. It was ice-cold. It was the peace of the cemetery.

And there have been people who tried to attain bliss, like painters, poets, dancers, musicians, and other artists, who lived in the world as passionately as possible. They were alive but very feverish. They were passionate, but the passion was such a fire that it only burned them. Many artists, many poets, have gone mad. Many have committed suicide for the simple reason that they had no idea how to be peaceful. Their bliss consumed them, and they could not contain it.

A true sanyāsi is someone entirely different from these two. He is the beginning of a new man: peaceful at the very core of his being and peaceful at the periphery too. This is the ultimate harmony. This harmony can be called God, enlightenment, nirvana, or any name that we want to give to it: truth, beauty, liberation.