Path To Self Realization🔗

Krishna says that sense pleasures are bounded; they do not last forever. They are just temporary.

Generally, we are controlled by what happens outside us. The state of happiness and sadness in us happens due to various things that are going on around us. Happiness is an emotion that is created by something outside of us. It could be due to a pleasant situation, or through a person whom we like, some action that pleases us and so on.

When we experience happiness due to some event outside us, be very sure, sadness is around the corner. When we experience the joy in us because of an external source, we will experience sadness once that external source is taken away from us.

We always attach our happiness to something that is external to us. We say we are happy because of this event or because of that person. If these things are taken away from us, we are left with sadness. It is like a pendulum swaying from one extreme of happiness to the other extreme of sadness.

In our programs, we ask participants to imagine a state of great happiness and stay with it for a while. After that experience, we ask them to describe what they went through. Invariably it was happiness related to a person or an event, that was related to an external source and the happiness was brought about by the sense perception.

Now when we ask them to remove that event or person from their imagination, there is deep sorrow. They feel they have lost something. They will grieve. That is how temporary happiness or sorrow is for all of us, how pain or pleasure is for all of us.

The event and the person do not cause happiness and sorrow. It is caused by our perception, by our sense perception and by the judgment based on sense perception. That is why the same event that may be joyful to one is sorrow filled for another, and would leave a third one undisturbed. It is our attachment to that person or event and our judgment based on our conditioning that creates the sorrow or happiness. The incident by itself is neutral.

There is a beginning and an end to these states of sorrow and happiness. But bliss is something that continuously happens in us for no reason. Bliss does not depend on external sources. It is inside us. It is internal. Once we are centered in us, we are always in bliss. When we are constantly experiencing the inner joy or bliss, whatever happens outside us does not increase or reduce the amount of happiness we experience.

Happiness or sadness happens because of our sense pleasures which are again a result of our mind and ego. Our ego, our false association of ourselves with various emotions is actually the cause of our misery. At the core of our beings is pure bliss. But we are functioning at our periphery and are not able to see this core.

The ego is what is really meant by māyā or illusion. Yā mā iti māyā: that which does not exist but which troubles as if it exists is māyā. We don't see reality as it is because we are all the time looking at life through glasses tinted with our biased perceptions, through our limited view of life.

When we start watching these sources with awareness, we break the chords of attachment of our state of joy with these external sources and desires. When we are aware of what we really want, this dependency on sense pleasures breaks. When we are centered in ourselves, we start taking things as and when they come.

I am not saying you should not enjoy the joy that you get from external sources or fulfillment of our desires. No. All I saying is, be aware of it when it happens, that's all. Do not attach your internal state of joy to these sense pleasures. If they happen, let them happen. Let them not dictate your state of happiness.

Krishna gives us now a beautiful technique to reach that ultimate Krishna consciousness, to reach the beautiful space of bliss.

He is saying exactly what I said earlier. If we can at least once settle inside, if at least once we settle inside our being when we are attacked by this emotion of desire and anger, without moving our body, without cooperating, without being taken away by that emotion, we are well-situated. This means that we achieved what has to be achieved; we are blissful in this world.

People ask me again and again, 'Swamiji, what is the purpose of this body and mind?'

The purpose of body and mind is only one thing: to achieve, to learn how to experience joy without body and mind.

If we can learn to have happiness, bliss, without the body and mind, we have achieved the purpose of the body and mind; over! After that, we can throw away the body and mind; we can live without the body and mind.

The person who is able to live without the body and mind is called a jīvan mukta

In the same way, unless you have some reason, you will not assume this body. If you had a single glimpse of bliss without this body and mind, the bliss that is beyond this body and mind, you will never be disturbed by this body and mind. Even if it is there, it will be following you; you will not be following it.

It is like this: If you don't know how to put the brakes on when you are driving the car, it means you are not driving the car, the car is driving you! Without reading the owner's manual and learning to drive, if you sit in the car, you will only be doing this mistake. Without the manual, if you straightaway drive the car, you will be doing these types of mistakes. Only when you know how to start or to stop or apply the brakes properly, you are driving the car. Otherwise, the car is driving you.

So read the owner's manual before getting into the vehicle. The Bhagavad Gita is the owner's manual for your body and mind. Read the owner's manual before getting into the body and mind so that you will be able to stop when you want to stop. You will not get into the accident of repeating the life and death cycle.

Here Krishna says: The man who is not moved, who can tolerate the urges of material senses, check the force of desire and anger, is well-situated and he is happy in this world. He knows where he is. He knows his place. If you don't know your place, it is very difficult.

In this world, many of us don't know our place. That is why we feel we are uprooted. We don't feel we belong to this life. We don't feel we are at home because we don't know our place.

A small story:

In a dark theater, during the intermission, one man went out, came back with popcorn and Coca-Cola. He came near a woman and asked, 'Did I step on your foot a few minutes ago?' She said, 'Yes. As a matter of fact, you did.'

The man said, 'Thank you. Then, this is my row!'

You don't know your row! You don't know your place. You have to identify your place only through these sources. You don't know where you are situated. Only a person who has gone beyond greed and fear can relax into his being. He will know what his place is in this planet earth.

If we don't fuel our being with fear and greed, suddenly, we will see a new clarity. We will start working out of intelligence, out of divine consciousness, out of eternal bliss.

Just decide, ‘Whatever I do out of greed will only result in more and more greed. I have been running and getting nowhere. Enough!’ In the same way, if we are escaping from something out of fear, decide, ‘Alright, how long can I escape? How long can I run? This fear will come and attack me in some other form. If I am afraid of this and run, I will be afraid of something else later. So let me face it now.’

It is just the fear, not the object about which you are afraid. The object is not going to chase you but the fear will chase you. You may escape somewhere but you are carrying the canopy of fear and greed with you. Wherever you go for a picnic, you open your own little canopy.

There are so many places for great escapes today! They claim that the world’s happiest places are the theme parks with all those roller coaster rides and water rides. People even take me to these places to show me. After seeing those places, I feel really sad inside me. These people take me there in the name of entertainment. That shows how much of depression people are carrying inside them. So much of entertainment is necessary means they are carrying so much of depression inside.

By his very nature, man doesn’t need so much of entertainment.

If we need so many things to make us happy, there is something seriously wrong in the whole system. We need to look into the system and repair it.

Again and again, Krishna declares, ‘Let you work out of bliss.’ And I tell you, if you work out of bliss, you will create bliss for yourself and you will create bliss for others; you will never know what tiredness is. You will never even know the word ‘tiredness’.

Let me tell you honestly that I still can’t understand the meaning of the word ‘tiredness’. How can you have tiredness? Tiredness is the inner contradiction between the icchā ṣakti (power of desire) and kriya ṣakti (power of action), between your being and your action. There is an inner contradiction. Inside, there is a deep problem. Your greed and fear are attacking each other, that is all.

If we are feeling tired, it means there is a big war going on inside us. The Mahabharata (Indian epic) war between fear and greed is happening within us.

Man whose consciousness is clear can never experience tiredness.

In my young age, when I was in college, I used to sit and meditate. In the morning, I would sit for four hours and in the evening I used to sit for four hours. Just casually, I used to sit and meditate. My room-mates would ask me, 'How are you able to sit for so many hours?' And I used to tell them, 'What is there? It is my body, my mind. If you want, can't you sit? If you can't even sit with your body and mind, what are you going to achieve?'

Why do we feel tired? We feel tired when we are not total, when we are not integrated within ourselves.

When we are divided within ourselves, one half of us fights with the other half. One half is the part of our being that wants to express itself but we have suppressed it for various societal reasons. The other half of our being is what is expressing itself in the manner that we are forcing it to.

What happens? Because we constantly have to put in effort to be what we naturally are not, we become tired at some point. When we become tired, the suppressed, unconscious half of us becomes more powerful than the conscious, pretentious half, and it starts dominating the fight.

Just integrate yourself. Be with complete awareness rather than suppressing yourself, and there will be no unconscious half to fight with. Then where is the question of feeling tired?

We feel tired only when we are not completely involved in what we are doing; when our intelligence is not completely behind the action. Become complete, integrated, and whole. Then you can never feel tired, whatever you may do.

See for how long are you able to sit here listening to me. How is it that you are not feeling tired sitting for so many hours? It is because when I speak, I speak from my being, with a totality. When I speak with totality, automatically, you receive me and my energy also totally.

This is the state from which enlightened masters operate. That is why there is no sense of tiredness in them even though they are intensely involved every moment in what they do.

We feel tired only when there is a gap between what we are doing and what we want to do. When we are driven by greed for something, we are caught up in the goal and the goal is something we want to achieve. What we are doing is not yet the goal and hence, we feel we are running towards the goal. Or we are driven by fear of something; we want to escape from the object of fear and hence, here also we are not completely involved in what we are doing.

Honestly, I am not able to understand how a man cannot sit with himself. It is our body, our mind; that’s all. Just sit; over!

You are not able to sit because you continuously pour the wrong fuel into your system.

We are continuously chasing power. We want to control so many things in our life. We have so much desire for power. The power hunger is so high in us that we are always running behind something to get control over it. Understand, first let us get our body and mind under our control. As of now, it is under the control of fear or greed. Let that be controlled by us. Then, automatically, we can get anything under our control. If our body and mind are not under our control, whatever we wish to bring under our control will never come under our control.

One thought from greed is enough: our body just runs. One thought from fear is enough: our body just runs. Let it be completely under you.

Here is a beautiful sūtra, a beautiful technique from Krishna to enter into the supreme consciousness:

Just be happy from within. Don’t smile for just social reasons. Let your smile be a deep expression of the love in your being. All of us are so used to living an artificial life, driven by social pressures, that we have forgotten our being. Here, happiness refers to the bliss that happens within us for no external reasons but simply happens because that is an expression of our very nature.

We feel happy or satisfied when we are running after our desires or when we keep ourselves away from our fears. So every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by either greed or fear.

This means we are not actually experiencing the moment. We are not actually living in the present moment. We are continuously in the web of greed and fear.

We are never in the present moment. We can enjoy something totally only when we are completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment, enjoying what we are doing here and now.

When you are in the current moment, when you are completely in the present moment with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy that has no reason and which is not affected by the past or future. It is not affected by either our fear or our greed. It is always there.

Naturally, the current blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. We enter a virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious cycle of fear and greed that we are now caught in.

Why do we run behind our desires or why are we afraid of something? If we analyze this a little deeply, this running towards or away from something is fundamentally because we think that life has some goal to be achieved.

We continuously run towards the goals that we set in life. Understand, life in itself has no goal to be achieved. The very life itself is the goal. The path itself is the goal. If we think that the goal and the path are different, we will run towards the goal; we will run towards the horizon. Can we ever touch the horizon? The more we run towards it, we will find it receding from us, is it not? Why? Because the horizon is imaginary, it is an illusion.

If we are running behind a goal in life, we will be disappointed at the end of life.

But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every moment when we are on the path of life, we are achieving the goal, which is bliss! The goal is achieved every moment of our life.

So every moment when we live with full awareness, with full enthusiasm, we actually enjoy that moment. When we are completely immersed in the present moment in whatever we are doing, we enjoy the path. When the path itself becomes the goal, we enjoy the goal also every moment.

The self-realized one is active and happy because he is completely in the present moment, living in reality. The divine energy blissfully flows through him and he does his activities with that blissful energy. He no longer needs to derive energy for his activities from desire or fear.

Here, Krishna refers to the master being active within. He is referring to the state in which we are in the peak of activity yet in the ultimate relaxation. Such a state is indeed possible and in fact, is the only state in which we can really be involved in what we are doing. It is the only state in which we can be completely satisfied and blissful in what we are doing.

This is what Krishna says: When we are tuned fully inwards, we no longer have any attachment to what happens outside; we are one with the All, the Existence, and we have transcended all karma, all sins. We are then in brahma nirvāna, the ultimate liberation, one with Existence, and we are in nityānanda, which means eternal bliss.

When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up more and more responsibility. We would want to share that love with as many as people as we can and for this, we will take up responsibility.

When we are tuned inwards, we live in the present; past and future do not exist for us. When we are in the present, we are one with Existence. I call this All-one-ness. We are All in One. We encompass everything. We do not differentiate.

In this state, we are at the height of spontaneity. Spontaneity does not mean creativity. Creativity is a byproduct. Spontaneity is being in the present, being responsible for everything around us. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is defined. We flow out and reach. We expand and cover.

The more responsibility we take up, the more we expand. Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. But if we don't shrug it and keep on shouldering it, we will expand and the divine energy will automatically flow in us. And we can take up more and more responsibility only when we feel overflowing energy in us.

When we take up responsibility, we take it up without any doubts. Usually whenever we are asked to do something, the mind comes in between. It creates a dilemma. It makes us think of a lot of things. We start analyzing intellectually and logically. Our mind starts seeing the pros and cons. We start weighing our options. So at the end of it, we act out of greed or fear.

Mind is dilemma. As long as duality exists, the mind exists. As long as we intellectually weigh the situation for good and bad, the mind exists. We have to cross this barrier. We have to cut across the wall. The dilemma of wanting or not wanting to do something should not come at all.

Remember, as long as there is dilemma, our mind is working. Many times when people come to me and I ask them to do something, just by the very way they say, 'Yes, I will do,' I can tell whether they really want to do it or not!

Our response to take up a responsibility is shaky when we are in a dilemma, when our mind operates. We should take up responsibility spontaneously. Then the mind will not have its say. We just know, that's all. We operate from an extreme relaxation and spontaneity. The ability to respond spontaneously is what I call responsibility.

Only when we go beyond the mind, beyond duality, we see the absolute oneness and synchronicity of the entire Existence. Only when we are in this state of oneness with Existence, will we take up responsibility. When we reach this state, there is no mind that is acting. We are in a state of deep relaxation or bliss. And this will create the ability to spontaneously respond when we are in this state.

This is very important for us to do good work. When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up responsibility because we want to share that blissful love with others around us. Only when we work out of bliss, we will do good things for others.

When there is no dilemma, when we take up responsibility spontaneously, we do not act out of fear or greed. We are just serving, we are doing good things. There is no expectation, no fear and no greed on our part. We will always be giving.

If we are working out of fear or anger, fear or greed, even if we do good things, it will end up only in trouble. It will not end up as a service.

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

You are right. If it were that easy, everyone will be on his way to enlightenment. But, it is also true that since there are many enlightened beings, it is proven that it can be done!

You need two things, commitment and patience. This is what we call tapas - penance. Someone told me tapas is the word for midday snacks in the Spanish language! No, it is not that! Nor is it penance in the form you imagine: standing with one foot raised or one hand raised or standing in water etc. Tapas is the sincere commitment to realize oneself, to realize one's true nature with discipline, faith and patience, with no expectation that anything may come of it.

Tapas is a state of mind, and it can be developed. In order for it to succeed, it requires intense devotion and surrender to a master and the master's grace.

I have spoken of what I call Living Enlightenment. Every time you need to decide about something that you are not sure is right or wrong or is being done

in a state of awareness, just ask yourself, 'What would my master have done?' Then do it the way that you think your master would have acted!

This is a sūtra, a technique, to instant enlightenment. You cannot have any greater guidepost in this life, a better template in this life, than your master. If you can imbibe His teachings adequately you can certainly get an answer to how He would have behaved in a particular situation. Just act in that manner.

One of my disciples narrated to me an icident after I had spoken of this technique. He was walking down the road to work when he passed a person lying on the pavement. Normally he would have walked past. Even that day he almost did. But he said something dragged him back as he remembered my words. His legs refused to move on and dragged him to that person. He called for medical help and stayed with that person till help arrived.

Each time you do this, something happens within you and you move a few steps forward in controlling your instinctive behavior. You become more and more aware. Even if you give in to your senses, that is fine. Do not suppress the action or feel guilty about having given in. You will have the awareness that you should have acted differently and that you should act differently. Just that awareness, along with your faith in the master's words, will help you act differently. And this way, you will slowly transform.