Of Gold And Women🔗

16.21 There are three gates leading to this hell: lust, anger and greed.

As they lead to the degradation of the soul, these three are to be abandoned.

16.22 Those who have escaped these three gates of hell, O son of Kunti, behave in a manner beneficial to the (evolution of the) soul, and thus (gradually) attain the supreme destination.

16.23 But he who discards scriptural injunctions and acts according to his base impulses attains neither perfection, nor happiness, nor the supreme destination.

16.24 By the regulations of the scriptures, one should understand what is duty and what is not duty. After being versed in scriptural injunctions, one should act accordingly.

Krishna ends the chapter with this advice: Shed anger, greed and lust and we will be saved. He calls them gates to hell.

These are the qualities of the blocked mūlādhāra cakra. These are attributes that bind us to 'me' and 'mine'. We mistakenly believe that these qualities are essential for our life on this planet. Nothing can be more wrong.

As long as we are bound by anger, lust and greed, what He calls the three gateways to hell, we are in bondage; we are in suffering. We do not need to die and be escorted to someplace called hell. We live in it day after day and suffer.

Kāma, krodha and lobha: lust, anger and greed - when we shed these we are liberated. Ramakrishna says again and again, drop kāñcana and kāminī, gold and women, greed and lust, and we will be liberated. Lust for women, and greed for old, these two desires more than anything else, cause all our sufferings.

Krodha, anger, arises out of the suffering. We feel thwarted and we feel angry. The cycle goes on. When these three combine, they create moha, or delusion. There is nothing real about kāñcana - gold and kāminī - woman, because these are impermanent; they cannot give abiding joy. We may feel the pleasure for a while. After that, we will take them for granted. We will be like that king in the story I told earlier, whose possessions had to be robbed before he could come out of his depression.

Management of these emotions is addressed in detail in our Life Bliss Program. We explain the origin of these emotions and how to control them. We teach meditation techniques that liberate us from the harmful expressions of these emotions.

At one level these emotions are desires. Anger, greed and lust are expressions related to desires. Desires are energy. Lust is what drives us into reproduction and it is essential for the survival of species. Greed is the extreme expression of our survival needs. Anger is often the driving force to get things done. They achieve positive results, too.

However, Krishna refers to the expression of these emotions in the context of self-gratification. He refers to the gratification of base impulses. The baseness of the impulse is related to the intention. As long as these are expressed with the attitude of 'me,' they are base and demonic impulses. There are no redeeming features.

Lust can be transformed when it is expressed in an unselfish and unattached way. Lust will then totally disappear. Compassion and caring will be in its place. Every woman, including his own wife, was 'mother' to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, enlightened master from India. That was the extent of his purity and devotion. Of course, such people are exceptions.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, man has evolved from mammals. Mammals are polygamous by nature. How can we expect human beings to be monogamous?'

Please understand that animals mate to procreate, never for entertainment. Only humans engage in sex for entertainment. That is why there is so much pornography. Animals mate purely for reproduction and the survival of their species. So it makes no difference whether they mate with one or many. They also mate at certain times, unlike humans. Animal lust is pure. There is no fantasy involved when animals mate. No animal fantasizes about another animal when it is mating.

Human beings indulge in sexual fantasies. Their lust is impure. It is corrupted because lust is not used for what it is intended. It is used for everything except reproduction. How many couples indulge in sex with no thought except that of their mate?

In the Shiva Sutras, Shiva tells Devi that in every couple's bed there are four people. In addition to the man and the woman, there is the man's fantasy of his woman and the woman's fantasy of her man. It is an orgy, not a relationship.

Human beings have the consciousness to rise from polygamous instincts to monogamous intelligence. That is the whole basis of societal regulations. We may look at it as a constraint, but it is a discipline that prevents abuse of one human being by another. Why else is there a need to marry? You can always live like animals and do what you please, if you can.

We can't. Our intellect will not allow us. Our mind will create a thousand fantasies. It will create desire first and then guilt. So we swing from desire to guilt, guilt to anger, anger to depression and so on. It will become a vicious cycle.

Living like an animal is not an option for a human being. Ascent is the natural law, not descent. We need to rise in awareness, not descend into ignorance. That is why, if we are aware, we move from the polygamous instinct to monogamous intelligence. In fact, if we are truly intelligent, our intuition takes us beyond monogamy into aloneness.

Aloneness need not be running off into a forest to meditate. We can be alone in the midst of a family. Being alone is to move to our core. Aloneness is our real nature as a human being. Then we move into that attitude of 'you' instead of focusing on 'me.'

Lust is one aspect of the broad spectrum of desires. Unending desire is greed. When a desire is truly fulfilled, it leaves us. Karma is unfulfilled desires that goad us into action. We can never fulfill our desires because many of these desires are not truly ours. We borrow these desires from other people. We need a bigger house, fancier car or younger wife because our friend, neighbor or cousin has one.

Even if we acquire one, the satisfaction will be temporary. We will meet another friend, neighbor or cousin who has a bigger house, better car or more beautiful wife. So it goes on. It goes on without end. There is never contentment. Each desire is the seed of suffering. That is why Krishna calls it a gateway to hell. But how do we get rid of these desires?

This is what we teach at our second level Life Bliss Program, the Nithyananda Spurana Program or NSP. We help identify true desires, the prārabdha karma, with which we are born into this world. These are our true needs, not borrowed wants. We have the energy to fulfill them and discard them. Our karma dissolves.

The NSP course leaves us free of negativities. People who attend this program say that they cannot hate or even dislike anyone. The 'I' blossoms into 'you' effortlessly.

At this stage, we shed anger as well. Anger and guilt are byproducts of desires. What we cannot acquire makes us angry. Anger produces guilt. Being angry towards a person is fruitless. Much of the negativity expressed towards others comes back to us. It depletes our energy. Anger or even guilt is also often an expression of one's inability to do something. It is a self-centered emotion born of one's weakness.

Suppression of anger does not help. It can actually lead to chronic diseases like cancer. When we learn to turn the emotion of anger towards an issue instead of a person, it becomes energy instead of a disability. Anger needs to be transformed into the positive energy of action.

What Krishna asks us to do is to transform negative emotions like lust, greed and anger into positive energies. He tells us that these are gateways to hell so long as we use them from the attitude of 'me.' When we transform these emotions into energy, by shifting to the attitude of 'you,' these same emotions become gateways to heaven.

Q: Swamiji, in order to achieve bliss, instead of being caught in temporary pleasures that only result in suffering, is it enough to drop anger, lust and greed?

First of all, bliss is never an achievement on our part. Whatsoever we do to achieve bliss is doomed to fail. All our effort emerges from the mind, it comes out of the ego, it comes out of our anguish, anxiety, desire and ambition; it comes out of our confusion. It can't bring bliss to us. It can bring only misery.

The struggle for bliss becomes one more struggle, like the struggle for kāminī and kāñcana, women and gold, lust and greed. You only move from one misery to another misery. While you are changing from one misery to another, you may think those intermediate moments are blissful. You feel joy in those small gaps when you change tracks; that's all.

But bliss always comes from the beyond as a gift. We must be passively receptive to it. We are not to be aggressively active for it, just be receptive like a womb. We must be feminine to receive bliss. We must become pregnant with God.

When ego disappears, anger, greed and lust also disappear. What is left is bliss.

Bliss has a luminosity of its own. Misery is dark; bliss is bright. The miserable person casts a shadow on others, too. He comes like a black hole, he sucks people's energy; his presence is destructive. However, the presence of a blissful person is creative, nourishing. It showers light on others.

Bliss is never in the past and never in the future; it is always in the present. Bliss means to be in the present, to be totally here and now. Then one's heart dances and sings and great celebration flowers in one's being: each cell dances, each fiber of one's being sings.

Because bliss is always of the present, one philosopher said that he does not want to go to paradise because he will get bored of bliss! There will be only bliss and nothing else. There will be no misery, no tension, and no anxiety. He does not understand what bliss is; he is simply playing with the word. Bliss is always young: as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as a rose opening up. It never grows old and one never grows tired of it, one is never bored by it.

Bliss is that with which you can never be bored, because it is never old. It is always new, and it is never repetitive. It is so fresh every moment, how can you be bored? Hence all the religions say that the angels go on singing on their harps. All that they do is sing, because singing represents joy: they rejoice! This is not a state somewhere above you in the sky. That state is within you. Whenever you are in contact with the present, you are in paradise. 'Now' is another name for paradise.

Bliss is a by-product of total trust in Existence or in God. God is not a person but the impersonal presence. The very life or Existence is God and the living energy is God. And to trust in it means to stop struggling against it. Struggling against it creates misery; it is trying to go upstream. Trust means surrender, going with the stream. And going with the stream is bliss. All misery is because of the ego and its struggle, its resistance. Trust means that resistance has been dropped. You don't think of yourself as separate from the Whole; you are just an intrinsic part of the great harmony of Existence, a small note in this great orchestra. Then bliss is natural.

My whole effort here is to help you move towards bliss. The way to bliss is through the heart and through devotion. That is why in addition to meditation, we engage in dancing and singing devotional songs. These are the ways in which you can be persuaded back to the heart.

Once you are there, once you have tasted the peace of the heart, you will be surprised. The head is left far behind. It is no concern of yours. It is as if it no longer belongs to you, it may be somebody else's head. It is so far away, so distant that you don't even hear the noise. The heart is so deep that the head becomes infinitely distant. Those are the moments when you feel for the first time what bliss is; otherwise it is only a word.

Rarely have people felt the real taste of bliss. People use the word and they think they understand it. They can't understand; it needs some existential experience to understand it because bliss is synonymous with God. Bliss is the ultimate meaning of life.

To feel that one is 'nobody' is of tremendous significance because that cuts the root of the ego. The ego lives through the idea of superiority. And sometimes the ego stands on its head; then it lives through inferiority. However, a person who knows that he is nobody is neither superior nor inferior, he is simply not. And in those moments of non-being, bliss descends.

Without ego, you cannot be miserable. Just try! Nobody has ever succeeded, and I don't think anybody ever will. Without the ego it is impossible to be miserable, just as with the ego it is impossible to be blissful. When there is no ego, only bliss is left.

Ego keeps you restless, keeps you occupied: 'Do this, do that, be this, be that.' It goes on giving you new projects. It never leaves you alone. It keeps goading you. You must become somebody, you must be the president of the country or the prime minister, and you must be famous. You must earn so much money. It goes on goading you till it either drives you mad, drives you to the point of suicide, or drives you to a master!

By dropping the ego, great rest happens. Then there is no need to try any relaxation method; one is relaxed, there is nothing to be tense about. That natural, spontaneous relaxation brings bliss in a flood; one is overwhelmed. And bliss never comes in small measures. When it comes, it comes like a flood; when it comes, it drowns you totally.

Go beyond ego. The very idea is dangerous; ego must be dropped, because the moment you think of yourself as great, you think of others as inferior; it is based on comparison. Comparing yourself with anybody is harmful. It is harmful to the other and to you. Everybody is unique. Nobody is great and there is nobody who is not great. Nobody is big and nobody is small. All are unique, incomparably unique.

This is the spiritual understanding. When one becomes awakened, this is how one looks at people. They are not alike; at the innermost core they are the same, but on the circumference they are unique personalities. A rose is a rose, a lotus is a lotus: neither is the lotus greater nor is the rose greater. Both have blossomed, both express God in their own ways.

Love yourself. That is the beginning, then love those close to you, then love the world, then love the whole cosmos; only then will you be able to love God. The journey begins from one's self and ends in God. These are the two banks of the river. You are on one bank, God is on the other; love is the bridge. The bridge passes over the whole river, but people fear love; that's why they keep praying. They never understand what they are doing; their prayer is ignorance. Unless it is full of love, it can't be true.

Unless you live in love, you can't enter any temple of God; and one who lives in love need not enter a temple, he is already in it. Remember this simple message and try to live it, because this is not a doctrine to be believed in, but a life to be lived. Bloom in love and release the fragrance of love. That is prayer. And only the fragrance of love reaches God, nothing else.

All of you need to become a living message of bliss, not only in words but also in deeds. Your being must radiate bliss. You need to be blissful and you must create an atmosphere of bliss around yourself, so that whomsoever comes in contact with you immediately feels the cool breeze of bliss.

The real message cannot be conveyed through words. Words can help. But they are secondary; the real message can be communicated only through being; that is primary. Be cheerful, be blissful, be a song and a dance, and transform your whole life into a sacred celebration, into a sacred ceremony. This is surrender.

The moment one starts seeking and searching for oneself, one becomes the blessed one. The enquiry itself is the beginning of the transformation. The more passionate the enquiry, the sooner transformation comes. Make it intense and make it total.

Surrender must be a deep commitment. Surrender must become more valuable than anything else in life, even more valuable than life itself. This is one fundamental secret of life and Existence: you live only when you have something for which you are ready to sacrifice your life.

Life begins only when you have something more, higher, bigger, holier than life, in your life. Only when life becomes a means to a higher end, then your life starts having a context. And in that context only, there is meaning, significance, and bliss.

Meditation leads to bliss; it makes it happen. It leads you within and ultimately that's where God is. Slowly learn how to dissolve. Dissolve in any act, then that act becomes blissful. If you jog, you disappear in the jogging and there is no jogger, only jogging remains. Or if you meditate in the early morning, there is no meditator but only the meditating remains. You are so possessed by the act itself there is only the act and no doer inside. Then it is bliss, a blissful dance.

Meditation is the key to bliss. Some people believe that meditation is nothing but a kind of thinking, thinking of higher things. When you think of God, when you think of Love, it is called meditation. No, that is contemplation. It is better than thinking about useless things, but it is not meditation.

Thinking is not meditation. Whether you think of God or money, it doesn't matter. Going beyond thoughts is meditation.

Thinking in any manner about any object is a disturbance in meditation. In the East, meditation means a state of no thought. It is pure Being. That is the greatest experience in life, when you simply exist. No thought crosses your being. The whole traffic stops and the mind disappears. All that remains is consciousness. Whatsoever was hidden behind the thoughts is no more hidden. Whatsoever was involved in thoughts is no more involved. All energy is released. One is simply a pool of energy, and so silent that not even a ripple arises.

Bliss happens if we fulfill one condition, that of being peaceful at heart. And it is not difficult to fulfill. The heart is peaceful; however, we are not there. We live in the head. The head remains with thoughts, desires, imagination, memory; the constant traffic of all these things will be there. It is always rush hour, twenty-four hours a day; the crowd of desires is passing day in, day out.

If you try to make the mind silent, you get into more trouble and become frustrated. That happens to people who don't know what right meditation is. Then they learn tricks to hypnotize themselves. And there are tricks available: repeat a certain mantra, chant a certain name and constantly repeat certain words. Any words will do; there are no sacred words, all words are the same.

This is not meditation. Constant repetition of a name creates a state of deep sleep in the head: you fall asleep. It is good, nothing is wrong with good sleep; but it is not meditation and it will not transform you. The real transformation happens when your energy moves from the head to the heart. When you reach the heart, you reach the core of your consciousness.

In that silent pool of consciousness, of energy, Existence is reflected; we come to know that which is. God is another name for that which is.

The most important thing to remember in life is that God loves us: He has not forsaken us, He is not indifferent to us and He is continuously concerned about us, He cares.

The deeper this idea enters your heart, the better, because when you feel more loved by God, you will be able to love others. That's how we are able to love: if we are loved, we can love. If we are not loved, we don't know how to love; we don't know what love is.

God is our substance, our very being. He is not something outside us; He is our innermost core. We do not need to seek and search for Him. Only this has to be remembered: we have forgotten it. God is not lost; only we have forgotten who we are.

Don't be identified with the body. Don't be identified with your mind, country, race or religion. Don't be identified with anything. Don't think, 'I am this' or 'I am that'. Remember, neither 'this' nor 'that'. That is one of the secret teachings of the mystics: neti-neti, neither 'this' nor 'that'. Avoid 'this' and avoid 'that,' too.

If you can avoid both polarities, day and night, life and death, body and mind, then slowly a third energy arises in you, a third force arises in you. That is consciousness. That's your reality. That is freedom: freedom from fear, anxiety, misery, freedom from the world, freedom from the wheel of life and death. Then you are a witness, watching, getting identified with neither 'this' nor 'that'; you are a spectator, a mirror reflecting but not getting caught in any reflection.

When you are a witness, the 'me' and 'mine' drop. What remains is identification with your energy, with your state, not your status. In that state, you are one with all. It is 'you' that becomes the focus, no longer 'me'. You become divine.

Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Krishna, the divine consciousness, to bless us all with 'daiva sampať and establish us in eternal bliss, nityānanda.

Thank You.

Thus ends the sixteenth chapter named Daivāsura-Sampad-Vibhāga Yogah of the Upanisad of Bhagavad Gita, the scripture of yoga, dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna.

Living is about experimenting with the truth. It is about having the courage to experiment with the truth. Just reading or listening and thinking one has understood it is meaningless. The understanding must be applied with courage.

◆ Throughout the history of mankind there has been strife based upon one's scriptural understanding and differences in understanding. You say all religions have the same fundamentals. Then why is there always this strife and violence?

◆ Swamiji, you said that vāsanās make the spirit choose a new body to be reborn in. Why is there a difference in attitude between siblings? One may be money-oriented, another service-oriented, a third may be power-crazy. And all three are different from their parents. Why is this?

◆ You tell us to search for bliss. You and Krishna say that sincerity, courage and faith will take us on the path to bliss. But the path to bliss does not seem easy. There are many pitfalls. We do not even recognize bliss when we experience it. How can we cope?

◆ Swamiji, the vedic science of medicine, Ayurveda recommends food types in line with one's constitution. Are those similar to what Krishna says?

◆ You say that God is love. Some cultures depict God in a state of anger and fury. Their monks are serious. They seem to have no humor. Can bliss arise out of anger and fury?

◆ Swamiji, you have said that the path to bliss is a path of aloneness, not loneliness. Can you please explain?

◆ Swamiji, what are faith, blind faith and belief? These words are used interchangeably when applied to how we should approach God or the master. But these words do not mean the same, do they?

◆ Swamiji, you said that if we give importance to negative thoughts, saṁskāras get embedded in the unconscious zone. Please soulc you explain further. Vāstu consultants recommend changes in home for improving positive energy, balance and if we can't do it, then what?

◆ Swamiji, the other day you talked about the question on birth, meditation and liberation, and this whole life cycle of saṁsāra. The answer was not given. Could you please provide the answer?

◆ Dear Swamiji, will a mother’s prayers work for her children?

◆ How can we differentiate between intuitive and impulsive decisions? In this information age, one’s decision directly or indirectly impacts many people. Can you kindly help us understand this?

◆ All enlightened masters I have heard about left home for at least a number of years to experience enlightenment. Is this necessary? If not, why did they do it?

◆ When everything is divine in this universe, how can there be good and bad, happiness and sadness, lower level and upper level, jīvātma (individual self) and paramātma (supreme Self), permanent and impermanent, etc. Is it not true only in the eyes of the perceiver?

◆ Respected Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda, my love and praṇāms to you, Kindly answer these questions now or at such time as you feel appropriate. If God is at such a high vibration, as to be unaware of deaths caused by catastrophes, just as a SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) is unaware of the ants it crushes, then does it not follow that God does not hear our cries for help, when we are swept up in these catastrophes? And if that is the case, do our prayers reach God?

◆ If Ātman or Self is created or is svayambhu (self-created), why was the body required for its movement?

◆ If Ātman is not creating karma, and body is creating karma, then Ātman is only the carrier of karma. Is this true?

◆ Like Arjuna, I have my own battle to fight, but instead of it being the Mahabharata, it is the ‘Law School Court Competition’. I know what must be done, but I lack the focus and energy to accomplish that. Do I lack sincerity? How do I build it?

◆ _Ātman_ is indestructible, so it is everlasting. From where did it originate? If _Iśvara_/_Ātman_/God is regulating, is it the same _Iśvara_ who made _Ātman_?

◆ Dear Swamiji, I have attended your discourses since Sunday. When I am in your presence I feel blissful. I feel lost in your presence. I feel like I have fallen in love with you, in a pure way. I then go home, and dream of you. It is sometimes hard to distinguish if I am at your discourse or dreaming.

◆ You said earlier that _smṛti_ is alterable and it changes with time. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about the caste system and who can be a _brāhmaṇa_, etc. But in India we have so many problems with the caste system. So, if _smṛti_ is properly interpreted, it should not give rise to any problems. Am I correct?

◆ There are great ideals in spirituality. What bothers me is that I find a divergence between the ideals and daily life. There is not only caste discrimination, but there are also a variety of other discriminations such as the discrimination against poor people. When a maid comes to work in the house, and she is ten years old and is missing school, my heart aches. That will not happen in the West. I'm not defending the West, but we must be cautious when we make statements about the West. Yes, ours is a great religion. I have great love for it, but have we updated it? Have we moved with time? Whose responsibility is it to make sure we continuously update religion? I also find a great love for materialism, which is against the laws of Hinduism. It is not enough if just great men like you practice the religious ideals, it should be possible for the common man to practice it. How can we say that we have spiritual freedom in the East and not in the West? We need to look at what we mean by spiritual freedom.

◆ Respected Swamiji, I am one of the sheep-lion who has forgotten his lion self. Now I want to roar. How?