Beyond purity and impurity🔗

I tell you, you can never possess, you can never achieve enlightenment. Only enlightenment can possess you. It happens to you when you drop all desires. Actually, our true nature is neither pure nor impure. It is something beyond purity and impurity. This is what we call visÁuddhi - beyond purity and impurity.

When your visÁuddhi cakra, the energy center in the throat region is awakened, we start nearing our true nature. Whether we accept it or not, believe it or not, we are bliss. Our very nature is bliss.

Our true nature itself is self-control. When we realize and experience that our being is pure bliss, the other emotions automatically drop. Until that point they mask our true nature. When we allow ourselves to be our true nature, to be bliss, we live spontaneously. We respond with intelligence instead of through programmed unconscious responses. Then it is not a problem to control the senses because they are under the control of the ultimate Existence. There is no question of having to control them.

In the Mahabharata war Krishna drives Arjuna's chariot. The horses represent the senses held beautifully in control by the divine charioteer. He drives the being represented by the warrior, in the body represented by the chariot towards victory, towards bliss. When the individual consciousness surrenders control to the Divine, the Divine controls the body-mind-spirit and steers one towards one's true nature, bliss.

Society teaches us from a very young age what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. So, we have programmed reactions, fixed perceptions about everything. The moment we see a situation, we react in the manner we have been taught. Note that we only react, not respond. With conscience, we can only react. We can only react by looking up our database of the past, what we did in a seemingly similar situation, what was the reaction of people then.

If what we did was appreciated, endorsed, we will react in the same fashion that we did before. If people around us did not like what we did, we will feel uncomfortable and to remove the discomfort, we will now react in a manner that we think will be acceptable to others. This is what happens all the time. It may not be very obvious to us because reacting like this has become a way of life for us.

We have forgotten what it is to respond with intelligence. Please be very clear: No situation can be exactly the same as before. How can it be? Can a river flow in exactly the same way at two different points? No! The very water would have changed from the time it flows from one point to the other even if the two places look exactly the same when seen from outside.

Life is like a river. It is continuously changing, continuously in flux. Existence is energy. It can never repeat itself. Every moment is unique. Because we see it from the limited perception of our mind, because the mind tends to always analyze and categorize, we categorize life as well into different categories. We say, ‘These are pleasant situations, those are unpleasant situations, this is good, that is bad, this is right, that is wrong, this should happen, that should not.’ It is not Existence that makes these distinctions but us.

If we can just understand this much, if we can allow this understanding to penetrate us, we can simply relax. We will then allow our consciousness to respond. Understand: Conscience is a very poor substitute for consciousness.

Have the courage to live life with intelligence, with consciousness and awareness, with spontaneity. See what a wonderful difference it makes to every moment of your life! Just this small change in attitude can do wonders for you; every moment will then be a celebration!

When the intelligence happens, the compassion also descends. Compassion for the whole world automatically happens in you because you see yourself in each and every one. How can you feel anything but compassion then? That is why masters can only feel compassion to everyone and that is why they feel responsibility towards the whole world.

When we flow in tune with Existence, we become a channel for the divine energy to flow through us. If the bamboo can remain hollow, it will become a beautiful flute and simply the air from the lips of the Divine will come out of the flute as heavenly music, as beautiful notes. Instead, if the bamboo is blocked with dirt in the form of ego, it will remain dead and can only be used for carrying a dead body!

These verses of Krishna are very powerful, but often misinterpreted. Many people use them conveniently to justify their actions. It is like you commit a murder and then claim you didn’t do it but your hands did it! Be very clear: Not being the doer does not mean we give up responsibility for our actions. It means exactly the opposite. When we are so involved in the action, when we are completely relaxed, we are overflowing with compassion and love, and we just do out of the blissful energy in us.

You must have noticed in your life, when certain people act in what would normally be seen as disrespectful manner, they still don’t come across as disrespectful. The energy behind the action is what decides the effect and the perception of the action.

Even in our ashram, I sometimes seem to be harsh with the residents and when I fire them it will be just open, direct firing. But not a single person has left the ashram because he or she was fired! When masters scold, the energy behind the firing is only of compassion; they do everything only for our growth. The energy behind the words of firing carries a tremendous power of transformation and if we are just open to receiving it, it will simply rid us of the blocks and tumors in our system and we can simply flower.

When we are complete and total in what we do, our whole intelligence, our whole energy will be behind the act. When we are truly involved in any action, we become the action. The action and we are no longer separate. On the other hand, if we do something without being fully involved, our energy is not completely behind the action. Energy is intelligence. So, when our energy is not total, be very clear, our intelligence is not completely behind the action.

When the energy behind the action is total, whatever we do will always propagate the blissful energy that is behind the action. That is why even a simple technique like watching the breath given by Buddha can be so powerful. But even a seemingly big action of moral good does not have the desired energy and effect.

Another very important understanding from this verse is this: Every moment, every action, whether it is talking or breathing or seeing, should be done with awareness. That is true meditation. I always tell people, meditation is not something you do for a fixed amount of time during the morning or the evening. It is not a quantity that can be added to your life.

I have seen so many people who claim that they have been meditating for 30, 40 or 50 years. What they mean is that they have been sitting with closed eyes, doing some breath control, trying to concentrate and all such techniques. But even after so many years, the person inside remains exactly the same. Absolutely no transformation has happened.

Meditation is actually a quality that needs to be added to our life. It should permeate the very way in which we view life, the attitude with which we perceive everything. When we infuse awareness into every action, we are in meditation.

So how to be in complete awareness? We can be aware only when we can distance ourselves from what is happening. When we can witness the scene without getting involved in it ourselves, only then can we watch the scene clearly.

Otherwise we assume some role in the scene. When that happens, we create some vested interest in it. We have some expectation that things should happen in a certain way that we consider beneficial to us. The moment we get involved, the distance between the scene and us has dropped and we can no longer be the witness. Then we can never see things as they are.

It is just like when we are in a dream. When we are in the dream, we don't realize it is a dream. We think everything that is happening is reality. The moment we wake up from the dream we realize in a flash that it was just a dream. It has no basis, no significance whatsoever.

The way we are living life now is exactly the same. We are living life in the dream of the future and the past. And we think that the dream is reality. We are caught up in the dream, thinking it is reality. The reality is actually in the present. When we realize this, we simply wake up to the true reality from the dream of illusion. Then, we understand that the senses, body and mind are not us. We are something much beyond these. With this awareness we become blissful.

_Q: Swamiji, I am confused by the word bliss. All I understand is that it is the same as_ _happiness or joy. But you say it is not. Please explain._

Bliss is the state of being spontaneous, being in the present, responding, and not reacting to what happens around you. To be spontaneous means to live moment to moment, to respond to that which is, with no prejudice, with no mind, with no past and no future, with no time at all. Then suddenly there is a meeting, a meeting between you and Existence. That meeting is bliss, that meeting is God. To be spontaneous means to be responsible to the present moment. People are ruled by their past. Life goes on changing every moment but the mind remains clinging to the past. There is a gap between the mind and life now. Anything that comes out of the mind is never going to be a real response. It is only a reaction.

And it always falls short. It can't reach the target. It either goes above or goes below the past, as it knows nothing of the present. Bliss is a totally different phenomenon from joy, pleasure and happiness. It is not pleasure, because it has nothing to do with the body. It is not happiness; happiness is of the mind and is very momentary. It just comes and goes and keeps you in turmoil. You can never trust it. It is bound to betray you. That is its very nature.

Bliss is not even joy, because joy is of the heart. Bliss is beyond all three; it is of the spirit. It is not something you choose. It has to happen. It chooses you. To experience it a person has to stop identifying himself as the body, mind and heart. It is eternal. Once it comes, it is forever.

Then one can trust, relax and rest. It can't be stolen, it can't be taken away, and it can't be burned. Even death is impotent as far as bliss is concerned. One who has known bliss has known something deathless.

The search is to find something that is eternal, that is bliss. And the way to obtain it is through meditation. Meditation takes us beyond the body-mind, because meditation is not identifying with all that which we have become identified with: I am not the body or the mind or the heart. When this understanding arises in us meditation has flowered. In that flowering is bliss.

Why do so many people choose to be in misery while few choose to be in bliss? All of us claim that we want to be in bliss. Then why do we end up in misery? The reason is that the more miserable we are, the bigger our ego becomes. The ego feeds on misery, on negativity, on darkness; that is its food and nourishment. If we choose to be blissful, if we choose to be a song, we will have to risk one thing, only one thing: the ego, because that is the only discordant note in our being. We will have to drop the idea that 'I am'. We will have to learn a totally different language – that 'God is and I am not'. 'I' and God cannot exist together. That is impossible. Either 'I' can exist or God can exist.