Going Beyond the Guṇas🔗

14.21 Arjuna inquired: O my Lord, by what symptoms is one known who is transcendental to those modes? What is his behavior? And how does he transcend the modes of nature?

14.22,23,24,25 The Blessed Lord said: He who does not hate illumination, attachment and delusion when they are present, nor longs for them when they disappear; who is seated like one unconcerned, being situated beyond these material reactions of the modes of nature, who remains firm, knowing that the modes alone are active;

He who regards alike pleasure and pain, and looks on a lump of earth, a stone and a piece of gold with an equal eye; who is wise and holds praise and blame to be the same; who is unchanged in honor and dishonor, who treats friend and foe alike, who has abandoned all result-based undertakings - such a man is said to have transcended the modes of nature.

With great clarity the master tells us what to do. He uses specific terms that cannot be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Krishna explains the nature of one who has transcended the three guṇas, one who has gone beyond his natural attributes. He explains what we need to do to become a triguṇa rahita, to become liberated from the influence of the three guṇas.

One who is beyond the three guṇas is unaffected by their play. He is beyond the play of emotions. Whatever happens is right for him. Success and failure mean the same. Friend and foe make no difference. Poverty or richness has no influence.

Such an attitude of total detachment requires one thing: complete trust. When we trust that whatever happens is what needs to happen and we accept whatever happens as it arises, we are totally detached. Then whatever happens will be right. Such trust can only come from surrender.

I tell my disciples that because I have no home, every home that I visit is my home. Anywhere and everywhere I stay, whether it is under a tree or out in the open, is my home. Four walls, a door and a lock do not create a home for me. People ask why I wear jewelry or different kind of clothing. What difference does it make? This body itself is not mine. This skin is not mine. What difference would it make if I wore this or that?

There is neither attraction nor aversion. Just as people admire the clothes or accessories on a mannequin, I admire the clothes and jewelery on this body. They have no connection to me.

Every movement I make is at the order of Existence. I cannot move a finger without the permission of that universal energy. Usually when people talk about God, it is a concept to them, a theory to prove or disprove. For enlightened beings, it is reality; it is the reality of their existence every moment. When people look at themselves, the 'I', the identity, drives them. For enlightened beings, that identity is not real. 'I' does not exist.

When we are one with Existence, one with nature, nothing affects us. I walked tens of thousands of miles barefoot across the length and breadth of India. People ask, 'How is it your feet are so soft, not calloused and broken as ours would be if we walked barefoot even ten miles?' I tell you: If we trust nature, nature looks after us.

When I lived in Tapovan at approximately 17,000 feet in the Himalayan Mountains above the source of the sacred river Ganga, I wore only this two-piece clothing even in freezing winter. When we trust nature, cold and heat do not bother us. There are documentaries recorded by scientists showing how Tibetan Lamas pass an initiation test. They wrap themselves in wet clothes and sit in the freezing snow. They pass their test if they are able to dry their wet clothing by the heat generated through their meditation! They use meditation techniques to accomplish this; however, that is only part of the reason. The major reason is their trust in nature.

Pain and pleasure are part of our conditioning. During my parivrājaka (monastic wandering) days, I happened to visit a village in Central India. I came across a strange characteristic in the lives of women there: painless delivery of babies. The women used to enter huts specially built for that purpose. There were no cries and no shrieks. They went in alone, needed no help and simply came out smiling with a baby. I was surprised! When I asked an elder how it was that they had no pain and did not need a doctor or midwife, he did not understand my question. 'Pain?' he asked, 'What pain? Why should women feel pain at childbirth? It is a celebration!'

We create pain and pleasure through association, through conditioning. We create greed and fear through association. Our saṁskāras, our conditioned memories, create pain and pleasure.

Light and darkness, good and bad, right and wrong are based on conditioning. Our conditioning, the civilized education and refinement tells us that a person dressed in a particular manner is acceptable in society and another dressed differently is not. When such a statement is made by a global figure, such as Churchill calling Gandhi a 'half-naked fakir', many people take exception. But most people go by it and behave the same way. We may not say it as strongly or as impolitely as Churchill, but we start discriminating based on our upbringing. Otherwise we would not have a system of the untouchables in India. This has nothing to do with religion or vedic culture. No scripture ever said one person is inferior to another. All scriptures affirm that every human being is a spiritual being; all of us carry the seed of divinity in us.

So how can anyone quote scriptures to justify the unfair treatment of another person? When Krishna says, Vasudaiva kuṭumbaha, ‘Let the world be your family,’ there is no exclusion, none at all. When He says all, He means ALL!

Our conditioning, our upbringing, should be called ‘down-bringing’ since it drags us down and does not raise us up. Our conditioning inculcates these negativities in us. This is how society ensures its survival through controlling us with fear and greed.

Our NSP meditations are designed to dissolve our conditioning, our embedded memories. At the end of the four-day course in India (which is a two-day course overseas), people prostrate at each other’s feet with no differentiation of age, gender, wealth or class. Their negativities disappear and, at that heightened energy level, all that one can see is the divinity in others. I have seen fathers-in-law prostrate at the feet of their daughters-in-law, something nobody would believe in the context of Indian culture!

Q: You always speak of ānanda, bliss; you also talk about the state of grace. Are they the same?

Bliss is an inner phenomenon. Grace is its outer expression. Bliss is the flower. Grace is the perfume. Bliss is the experience. Grace is the expression.

Grace can only be blissful. It cannot be sad or serious. It can only be cheerful and laughing. Bliss cannot be anything other than graceful. It can't be ugly. It has tremendous beauty. It is the spirit of beauty. They are two sides of the same coin.

People ordinarily think of bliss as a peak, never as a valley, but bliss has both sides. No peak can exist without a valley. No valley can exist without a peak. They are one phenomenon, inseparable. One must learn to be blissful in both situations. When you are on the sunlit peak, it is easy to be blissful. The altitude, silence, sun, open sky and the freedom of that openness helps to make you blissful. You are far away from the world and its problems and anxieties. But you cannot live on the peak; you must come back to the valley.

The peak can only be a holiday. One cannot exist there longer than that; hence one must learn how to be blissful in the valley, in the turmoil of the world, in the darkness, in the dismal world of the valley, in the struggle, competition and in all that the valley contains. One must learn to be silent and blissful even when the situation is just not conducive to it, when in fact, the situation is against it.

Unless you can be blissful in a situation that ordinarily creates misery, you are not a blissful person yet. Unless you can be in heaven even in hell, you have not arrived home. Much more still needs to be done.

There is an ancient parable:

An enlightened master arrives at the gate of heaven and he is asked, 'Where would you like to go?' He immediately says, 'To hell.'

The gatekeeper is puzzled and confused. He says, 'You are the first person in millions of years who has asked to go to hell. Are you crazy? Why do you want to go to hell?'

The master said, 'I know that I can be in heaven anywhere. Heaven is in my heart. I have lived in the world. I was always in heaven. I have not lived in hell. Send me anywhere and I will still be in heaven. Wherever I am, heaven is there.'

This is a true, authentic achievement. Otherwise, you only live cheerfully and blissfully when the situation permits, allows, helps and nourishes you.

Live in the world, in the valley, with a song in your heart. Live in the valleys of the world but remain unaffected, untouched and uncontaminated by all that exists there. It is possible. It is the greatest miracle and joy when it happens because then you have transcended all outer situations. And transcendence is the ultimate goal of seekers.

Bliss is also love and love is another name for life, another name for Existence, another name for God. The more the understanding grows, the higher love soars. Love moves higher on the wings of understanding, on the wings of awareness and meditation.

Love plus meditation equals the true seeker's path. Make your love more and more meditative, wherever it is, and meditation will take it upwards.

A small story:

Two beggars lived in a forest. One man had no legs and the other man had no eyes. One day a great fire broke out. The man without the legs could see; however, he could not move. He could see how to escape, but he could not escape. The other man could move, but he was unable to escape without seeing where to go.

Both men would have died if they had tried to escape on their own. They joined together. The blind man took the other beggar on his shoulders. Collectively, they had two eyes and two legs.

That's exactly the situation of man: without love you don't have energy to move. Without meditation you don't have a vision or any insight. With love plus meditation, you have both: you have energy to soar and you know where, how and when to go.

Our bodies die. However, we are neither born nor can we die. We are eternal. To know this is to be free from fear. It cannot be just a belief. Millions of people believe that they are immortal. But they believe out of fear. They fear death. They want to be immortal. Hence they believe in it. But they don't know, and the fear and doubt persist deep down inside. At the moment of death, belief won't help them. Doubt will explode. They will die in doubt, and to die in doubt is to miss the whole point. So it is not a question of belief. It must be an understanding.

Meditation is the way to know it. It opens the doors of eternity, timelessness. In the beginning of our meditation practice, time disappears for a few moments. Then we experience more and more of 'time disappearing'. One day suddenly we are surprised: Hours have passed; yet it is as if the inner clock has stopped. There is no time movement inside. When we can transcend time, we have transcended death. Time brings death. It is time that brings birth.

There is a Sanskrit word for both time and death: kāla. Going beyond time is to go beyond death. This is a great understanding. Meditation leads us beyond time.

Let it become our experience. We don’t need to believe. There are enough believers in the world. We need people who know. These are the people who will be the harbingers of a new humanity. These are the people with understanding. They don’t believe in God. They understand and know God.

Bliss is a phenomenon that cannot be hidden. It is fire. It is flame. We cannot hide it. Bliss shines forth. It is impossible to hide it.

Secret traditions advise people to ‘hide it’. This is because if our bliss is known in some cultures, countries or traditions, we will be in danger. These cultures killed people because they were joyous. These people, in their utter joy and divine madness, they said things that opposed the religious interpretation of the scriptures. They went against tradition and conformity.

In great joy a Sufi master declared, ‘I am God.’ He wanted to share it. His master warned him to keep his mouth shut and not to utter a word. This man promised, yet moments came when he would shout, ‘I am God.’ And not only would he shout, his whole being would shout. Each fiber of his body would shout! He was so full of light. He was killed, murdered.

Miserable people cannot tolerate a blissful person. It hurts to see somebody blissful. It creates jealousy. It hurts their ego. So Sufis learned to hide it. So have others. Ultimately it is impossible to hide it. Bliss is a luminous phenomenon.

Misery is dark; bliss is bright. Misery is a light unmanifest, a candle unlit; bliss is a candle lit. How can we hide it? It is impossible. Of course we have not yet created a society that loves these masters without judgment. We have not been able to create a society that appreciates blissful people. However, even if we lose our life letting our whole being declare the ultimate Truth and joy of Existence, it is worth it.

Man looks small. He is not. He is like a small seed that can grow into a big tree. And a single seed can fill the whole earth with greenery. A single seed contains infinity. Like that, man is a seed of divine love and that seed can become a vast continent. And unless it does, we are never contented. Unless we become pure love with no desire to gain anything except the joy of sharing, we are unfulfilled. Only by becoming total and absolute love, does life come to its ultimate peak. That peak is called God, paradise, and nirvāṇa.

We must grow towards more and more love. No other prayer is needed, no other scripture is needed and no other discipline is needed. Love is more than any scripture or discipline. It brings its own order; it turns our chaos into a cosmos.

Trust in love because love is the foundation of all transformation. Love is the innermost core of alchemy. Love makes us content. People live in discontentment. To live in discontentment is to live in complaints, grumbling and always asking for more and more. To live a discontented life means to live in desire, and desires are unquenchable. One's life becomes a long tragedy. It is a long series of failures and frustrations, a desert where nothing grows and nothing flowers.

Man can live in desire or in no-desire. Seeking means starting and it is a path of no-desire. Seeking means, whatever is, is more than enough. One is thankful for whatever is. One does not ask for more. On the contrary, one is grateful because so much has been given. When we see what has already been given to us, we are surprised.

So much has been given, unasked. Feel grateful for it. That is the way of contentment. Contentment is being thankful towards Existence and in that thankfulness much more keeps coming to us. It is a paradox of life, that when we desire, nothing happens except frustration and when we don't desire, everything happens and we become entitled to miracles!

Remember that this single word 'contentment' contains the whole of spirituality. It comes out of wisdom. Contentment does not come out of knowledge. It comes out of knowing and experiencing. It is not based upon other authorities. It is rooted in our own vision and direct experience.

Knowledge is cheap. We can collect as much as we want of it. All we need is a good memory. This is not difficult. Memory can be trained and made more skillful. However memory will not transform us. It has its use in day-to-day affairs and in scientific work. Yet it is useless as far as our subjectivity is concerned.

The inner journey needs to be without any burden of knowledge. One must go inwards like an innocent child. The less we know the better. If we don't know anything, that's the best. That's what Socrates says, 'I know only one thing: I know nothing.'

The moment one turns in, is the turning point. That is the moment one becomes wise. That is the moment one starts experiencing life. Otherwise words, theories, and philosophies go on interpreting life for us and don't allow us direct, immediate contact with life. They are not bridges. They are walls.

Innocence is the bridge and when innocence blooms it is wisdom. The ultimate wisdom is bliss and its expression is grace. Then a man becomes a child again. Then the circle is complete, the circle is perfect. This is the perfection of life. If we die knowledgeable, we miss the point; the circle is incomplete. We will be born again to complete it. When we die in bliss, we die in grace, never to return.