C H A P T E R 5🔗

5.1 Arjuna says: Oh Kṛṣṇa, you asked me to renounce work first and then you asked me to work with devotion. Will you now please tell me, definitely, which of the two will be more beneficial to me?

5.2 Bhagavān says: The renunciation of work [sannyāsa] and work in devotion [karmayoga] 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 Mahābaho (Arjuna)!

5.4 Only the ignorant, not the wise, speaks of the path of action [karma-yoga] to be different from the path of renunciation [sāṅkhya yoga]. Those who are actually learned say that one who is firmly established in either of the paths, achieves the fruit of both.

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 on a scale of dollars, then we have to work only for dollars. So, from morning to evening, we need to work only for that goal. Based on this, we can conclude whether we are succeeding or failing in our life. It is fortunate that the scale changes with maturity. If we grow with every mistake in life and complete with it, then the scale with which we measure success in life should also change. If it does not change, we will start our next life from ground zero.

Here, Arjuna asks: ‘Kṛṣṇa! Now, will you please tell me surely, which of the two: karma, action or Sannyāsa, renunciation is more beneficial— sannyāsaṁ karmaṇāṁ kṛṣṇa punar yogaṁ ca saṁsasi (5.1)?’

Again and again, all of us ask ourselves this question. The mind is in dilemma! The mind asks for a single instruction! 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.

Life has no separate benefit. Life itself is a benefit. There are people who have achieved all that they wanted in life. But they feel a deep void, a deep incompletion in them. This is what I mean by the term ‘depression of success.’ They feel something is deeply lacking and are unable to comprehend what it could possibly be.

This is because they ran the rat race of life without carrying the space of completion, without stopping to complete with their root patterns of desires, of fear and greed, without any self-inquiry.

Do something enriching just for the sake of enriching, not for any purpose. Enrich just for the sake of enriching. You will see that during that half hour, you will fall into your very being; which is the space of completion!

You can also enrich at some place of worship by cleaning it without expecting anything in return. Engage yourself in any form of selfless enriching activity. Serve food to people. Even while volunteering, we do it so that we can tell others about it and get applauded for it. So now at least for 30 minutes, authentically enrich with responsibility, without the cognition of getting yourself any benefit. No money or name and fame should come to you from that half an hour. If you can just do this, you will start tasting the real power of life. Enriching is the power of living, ātma śakti.

I always tell people, if you just allow a single instance of depression, powerlessness to work on you and you face it consciously with the process of completion, in the process you will become enlightened. Nothing else is necessary. A single instance of depression is enough. It will completely burn you and 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 space of powerlessness to overpower us instead of boldly facing it with power and joy, and seeing it through its completion.

We mark our patterns, not our possibilities. We never mark where we should in the bigger picture of our lives. We are so caught up with marking our small desires and goals fueled by our incompletions. We never mark the spot of our peak possibilities. 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 space of possibility within, which comes only from completion.

Let us deeply analyze these paths of Karma and Sannyāsa. Karma is normally out of greed and desires. Sannyāsa 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 Sannyāsa. Sannyāsa is a way of escapism, turning away from the responsibilities that life presents. When a person is bogged down by responsibilities of life, he takes Sannyāsa as an easy escape route. In the name of renunciation, he covers his deep fears. This is not true Sannyāsa.

Then we have people running after material wealth 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 eternal bliss or consciousness. Both are not on the right track of completion.

In the entire world, only three types of human beings exist: One who has surrendered to greed, one who has surrendered to fear and the one who has surrendered to the supreme intelligence, divine consciousness. The person who has surrendered to greed gets lost. Such a person runs after many things in life to possess them, which in turn leads to more greed. He literally becomes a slave to greed.

In the same way, as long as you are a jīvātman, an ordinary soul, you struggle between fear and greed. You go from one extreme to another. The moment you realize there is something inside your being that is untouched by your greed and fear, you start traveling towards it. When you get closer to it, you realize you are that Consciousness.

Here, Kṛṣṇa explains the same thing, we are caught between fear and greed. Either we constantly surrender ourselves to fear or we surrender ourselves to greed. Very rare individuals surrender to intelligence, to Divine Consciousness.

Our whole life is spent running behind greed or fear. The path of Karma Yoga, seeking liberation through action or responsibility, happens because of greed. The path of sannyāsa yoga, seeking liberation through renunciation, happens because of fear. Neither the path of karma (action) nor the path of sannyāsa (renunciation) will enrich us unless we complete with our greed and fear

and transform our very space into the space of completion. If we change the incomplete space to that of completion, karma or sannyāsa or anything can enrich us.

Sannyāsa is you living in the space of completion and constantly enriching everyone to be in the space of completion.

Again and again, Kṛṣṇa is placing the emphasis on the space of completion, on the being. If we don't know the root cause of our actions, why we are living with karma or why we pick up Sannyāsa, we will not be able to solve our problems. Our suffering is neither because of karma nor because of Sannyāsa. Suffering is because of our wrong attitude of incompletion.

With the wrong space of incompletion, if you take the path of karma or sannyāsa, you will struggle and suffer, and make others suffer as well. If you decide to enter 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 Sannyāsa, again drop the goal. The goal of a Sannyāsi (monk), which is renunciation, is also a goal and it must be dropped. The karma yogi runs towards the goal, the Sannyāsi runs away from the goal.

These three words should be understood: being, doing and having. If we are continuously 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.

5.5 He who knows, knows that the state reached by renunciation [sānkhya] and action [karma] are one and the same.

State reached by renunciation can also be achieved by action, know them to be at the same level and see them as they are.

5.6 Renunciation without devotion afflicts one with misery, Oh mightyarmed one. The wise person engaged in devotional service attains the Supreme without delay.

5.7 The person working in devotion, who is a pure being, self-controlled and having conquered the senses, identifies his Self with the Self of all beings. Though engaged in work, he is never entangled.

5.8,5.9 One who knows the truth, though engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, dreaming, and breathing, always knows within himself that—'I never do anything at all.'

While talking, letting go, receiving, opening, closing, he considers that the senses are engaged with their sense objects.

Not all of us are karma yogi or doers and not all of us are Sannyāsis or monks. No Sannyāsi is a Sannyāsi for 24 hours. When he surrenders himself to the greed, he is a doer. No karma yogi is a doer for 24 hours. When he surrenders to fear, he is a Sannyāsi. So, whenever we make an optimistic decision, we are a karma yogi. Whenever we make a pessimistic decision, we are Sannyāsi. It is we who play both the roles.

Please listen: Whenever we move our body while feeling a particular emotion, that emotion gets settled inside our system. That emotion will become part of us and get created again and again in our system. Jiḍḍu Kṛṣṇamurti, an Enlightened Master from India, made a wonderful statement about emotions. He says, ‘If you can, try to remain centered, silent, without moving your body when a particular emotion rises in you, without co-operating with it. Within eleven times, or I can say within eleven emotional upsets, if you have managed to be this way, you will be liberated from that emotion.’

For example, if you are caught in an emotion, say lust or fear, then for eleven cycles, whenever that emotion rises in your being, don’t allow your body to co-operate. Don’t allow your body to flow or move with that emotion. Within eleven cycles, I assure you, you will be liberated from that emotion. You may think, ‘What is this, Swamiji? Just eleven times! Is it so easy?’ It is easy. All great things are easy. Only we complicate them because we don’t believe that anything is easy.

I can tell you with integrity and authenticity, eleven times is too much. When that emotion rises in you, don't cooperate. Let your body not go after that emotion. Don't be taken away by that emotion, whether it is anger, irritation, depression, lust, fear or anything else. Just decide, 'I am not going to be taken away by this emotion. I am completing with it.'

Whether it is anger or fear or greed, it gets more power and strength if your body cooperates with it. With whatever emotion your body moves, that emotion gets recorded inside your system. And that emotion will happen again and again, and much more intensely. Both frequency and intensity of that emotion will increase.

An important truth is that the basic quality of life is reproduction and expansion. This is the survival instinct governed by the svādiṣṭhāna cakra, the fear energy center within our body. Reproduction is governed by the mūlādhāra cakra, the sex energy center in our body. These cells that catch the anger emotion start reproducing and each cell creates five or six more cells. Next time, when the anger shower happens, all these cells will also catch the same emotion. They grow to the same original size. Now these cells also start reproducing. The third time, when the shower happens, all these cells catch the emotion and start storing it. That is why, every time we experience the same emotion, it becomes stronger and stronger.

In our being, again and again, when we cooperate with these negative emotions, we create the same type of mood, the same type of pattern and lifestyle in us. Not only will this emotion get recorded in us, but we will express the same thing to others also. What we have within us is what we will vomit on others also.

When you come down to this planet, you bring enough energy to live all your desires or to achieve whatever you want to achieve in this life; to create your reality as you want. You have already brought enough fuel. You don't need fuel from fear or greed. You always think, 'If I stop fueling myself with fear or greed, I may stop working.' No. There is enough reserve fuel in you.

That is why here, Kṛṣṇa beautifully says—'yaḥ paśyati sa paśyati'. The man who is beyond the pull of fear and greed is the only one who can see things as they are. If you are caught in fear or greed, you will see things only as you want, never as they are. For example, on seeing a beautiful, tall building, a man who is caught in greed will think 'If I have at least one building like this, how nice it will be!' The man caught in fear will think, 'I should not see these things. They stress me out. I should go and live in the forest.' But only a person who is liberated from these two emotions will see it as it is.. His seeing will be a pure perception of seeing, beyond any patterns.

Just decide, 'For the next ten days I will trust the words of Kṛṣṇa. I will practice this truth with integrity and authenticity. I don't need fuel from fear or greed because I have brought enough energy.' When the Divine sends you to earth, He sends you with whatever you need. In Vedānta, that is what we call prārabdha karma. When you come down you bring enough of energy for your senses and body to acquire whatever it needs to live life blissfully. The only problem is you don't trust that you have brought everything. And after coming down, you accumulate more and more desires from others and then you try to fulfill all those desires too.

Work only for your desires. Don't waste your life working for others' desires. Decide clearly, 'For the next ten days, I will work only out of my power, my joy and bliss. I will do everything out of my completion.' I can assure you, it will transform your life. This one idea can liberate you straightaway from all bondages.

Don't be bothered about the initial feeling of emptiness. It is like this: If we don't have anybody to nag us we will feel we are missing something! So, when you practice this, you will feel you are missing that constant nagging. Don't worry. You will settle into that new consciousness. Your whole being will become new.

Remove the tremendous stress and load from your inner space. Decide, 'For ten days, I will do all my actions out of deep bliss, out of a settled mood of powerfulness and joy.' If you practice this, the constant irritation that remains in you will disappear.

In Saṃskṛit, 'Śiva' means causeless auspiciousness, reasonless energy. It is possible to live with that reasonless, unmotivated energy. Only two things are needed for that. The first thing is trust that you have that

energy. The next thing is starting to live it. Only these two things are needed to reach the Divine Consciousness. When we start working with the causeless auspicious energy, we become Śiva. Otherwise, we are Śava (dead body).

Just sit down for five minutes and be aware of how you perceive situations. With completion and awareness, look at everything you think and do, and you can understand what I mean. When we come to an understanding of our own self and are able to live as a witness to everything that goes on around us, unaffected by situations and people around us, we become a realized soul, living enlightenment. If we do things fueled by fear and greed, we become hypocrites.

You see, renunciation, Sannyāsa is going beyond desires, including ‘desirelessness.’ Apart from material desires, the desire to be spiritual and attain God is also a desire. The mind always hankers after something in the future. Only when we drop all desires, when we are completely at ease and ecstatic in the present moment of completion, we have gone beyond the clutches of the mind. Only then do we see reality as It exists here and now.

Seeing this reality as It exists is what Kṛṣṇa beautifully calls—yaḥ paśyati sa paśyati. Otherwise, we always live in our world of illusion, māya, because the future is unreal; it is an illusion. The real, the present, can never be perceived by the mind because it is beyond logic. That is why Existence can never be understood and experienced by the mind. The truth can only be experienced.

When we allow ourselves to be our true nature, to be bliss, we live spontaneously and respond with intelligence instead of programmed unconscious reactions. Then there is no need to control the senses because they are under the control of the ultimate Existence. There is no question of having to control them.

We have programmed reactions, default cognitions about everything. We see a situation and we react based on others’ expectation from us, anyakāra and our expectation from others, svānyakāra. We can only react by looking up our database of the past records, referring to the reaction of people then. If what we did was appreciated, we will react the same way. If we are not appreciated and there is a gap between others’ expectation from us and our expectation from others, we create a self-doubt and feel uncomfortable and restless. And to remove the discomfort, we now react in a different manner, one that we think will be acceptable to others.

Existence is energy. It can never repeat itself. Every moment is unique.

Have the courage to live life with intelligence, with consciousness and completion, with spontaneity. Just this small shift in your space 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 every one. These verses of Kṛṣṇa are very powerful, but often misinterpreted.

‘One who knows the truth, though engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, dreaming, and breathing knows that he never does anything.’

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.

Listen. When we are complete and total in what we do, our whole intelligence, our whole energy will be behind the act; we become the action. The action and we are no longer separate. Energy is intelligence. So, when our energy is not total, our intelligence is not completely behind the action. When the energy behind the action is total, whatever we do will always radiate the blissful energy that is behind the action.

Another important understanding from this verse: Every moment, every action, whether it is talking or breathing or seeing, should be done with awareness and completion.

5.10 He who acts without attachment, giving up and surrendering to the eternal consciousness, he is never

affected by sin, in the same way that the lotus leaf is never affected by water.

5.11 The Yogis, giving up attachment, act with the body, mind, intelligence, even with the senses for the purpose of self-purification.

5.12 One who is engaged in devotion, gives up attachment to the outcome of one's actions and is centered, is at peace. One who is not engaged in devotion, attached to the outcome of one's action, becomes entangled.

5.13 One who is controlled, giving up all the activities of the mind, surely remains in happiness in the city of nine gates (body), Neither doing anything, nor causing anything to be done.

This is the whole essence of the Gītā. This detachment is renunciation. Renunciation of attachment is true renunciation.

Kṛṣṇa says here, 'saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ (5.10)—Action without attachment is renunciation.' It is only this renunciation that leads to liberation. If you see the lotus flower, it grows in a dirty pond; its stalk is completely inside the dirty water. The flower is so beautifully above the water and the dirt around it is hardly noticed! Similarly, when you are neck-deep in the activities of the world and yet unaffected by what goes on, when your core is undisturbed, you have reached the goal of renunciation.

The basic truth behind creating this space of centeredness and completion is really this: Existence is a loving Mother caring for us every moment, providing all that we need. When this understanding happens, we surrender to Existence. The wave drops into the ocean, blissfully aware that it is a part of the ocean. It no longer feels it is a separate entity trying to fight Existence, thinking that the ocean, the Whole, is its enemy. Surrender needs to happen out of a deep understanding, not out of a superficial acceptance of the inevitable. If it happens out of acceptance, it will be just a compromise out of fear. There is no point in saying, ‘Oh, it is destiny. It is written on my forehead and it is foretold by the stars.’ This is not true. We have free will and we can do what we want. We neither have to accept nor reject, but surrender to the flow of life with the true understanding that we are being taken care of. When this completion happens out of deep understanding, it is beautiful, total and it is true. One more important truth. To whom or to what we surrender is not important. What is important is the surrender itself. Swāmi Vivekānanda says that all our prayers to God do only one thing: they awaken our own inner potential energy. When we pray intensely, our own inner potential energy is awakened and it showers its blessings on us in the form that we believe as God, irrespective of what form we worship. Having the wisdom or buddhi to understand that Existence cares for us, and surrendering to Existence is the ultimate intelligence. Realizing that Existence is not just a brute force or power but that it is intelligent energy is the key to a life of bliss.

Again and again, Kṛṣṇa is repeating a single point in various ways: action without attachment—saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ (5.10). He emphasizes that life happens only when we live as a witness to everything that happens, when we do not identify and attach with external incidents. We just have to watch what is happening in and around us without letting what happens outside affect our inner space.

Here, Kṛṣṇa gives us a technique to realize who we are. By giving up attachment to the sense objects, by dropping all false identifications with the body, senses and mind, we can live life with intelligence and this leads us to self-purification, self-completion.

Kṛṣṇa tells us that our job is only to do the work, not to be concerned about the results. He beautifully says, 'brahmaṇy ādhāya karmāṇi (5.10)—do the work surrendering to the eternal consciousness.’ We need to keep doing things because we have so much loving energy inside us. We can just exude energy without any reason or any expectation. When we are like this, we are not bothered about the results. When I say we are not bothered about the results, I don’t mean that out of a frustrated or cynical conclusion. What I mean is that we don’t even know to expect results because we are continuously moving and expressing our blissful inner energy, that’s all. We are just living in the space of completion and doing whatever that comes in our way to do. We are just flowing joyfully, that’s all. We flow with the Universal energy. This flowing energy is real love. When we work without unnecessarily thinking about the result, all our energies will be used towards realizing

the goal. The energy will not be dissipated in imagining the results. The power of desire, icchā śakti, will be converted to the power of action, kriya śakti. The desire may initially be a goal, but what is important is the path and not the end result. The goal is merely a byproduct.

In these verses, Kṛṣṇa refers to the body, which has nine gates to the external world: the two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, mouth and the two organs of evacuation. Here, Kṛṣṇa does not refer to not doing anything out of laziness and indulgence. Actually, if we can become intensely lazy, we can be in meditation! Here, the laziness is a deep mental laziness where the mind has been stilled. It has stopped all activity but the body moves according to the will of the divine. We are in the midst of intense activity and yet are not doing anything. The mind separates the doer from the action. Kṛṣṇa is talking of being so completely involved in something that we become the very action itself. First, we become the witness to the action, only then we can become completely involved in it. When we start distancing ourselves and become a witness, only then we can be completely involved in the action and then the doer and the action merge into each other. It is not the action that gives us the joy but the conscious experience of the bliss within us through the action that actually gives us happiness and bliss.

5.14 The Master does not create activities or make people do or connect with the outcome of the actions. All this is enacted by the material nature.

5.15 The Lord, surely, neither accepts anyone's sins nor good deeds. Living beings are confused by the ignorance that covers the knowledge.

5.16 But, whose ignorance is destroyed by the knowledge, their knowledge, like the rising sun lights up everything, throws light on the Supreme Consciousness [tat param].

5.17 One whose intelligence, mind and faith are in the Supreme and one who has surrendered to the Supreme, his misunderstandings are cleansed through knowledge and he goes towards liberation.

Understand, nothing in this Universe can be created or destroyed. When I say, nothing, I mean nothing. Everything that exists has always existed in some form or the other. It will continue to exist in some form or the other.

The Īśāvāsya Upaniṣad opens with the words—Īśā vāsyaṁ idaṁ sarvaṁ—meaning, 'all that exists arises from energy.' Now after so much scientific research, quantum physics has concluded that matter and energy are one and the same. But thousands of years ago, this was the first statement in the Īśāvāsya Upaniṣad, which says everything is energy.

People ask me, 'Who created this Universe?' I tell you, the Universe itself is the creator, the created and the creation. If the creator and the creation were different, it means that the Creator is more intelligent than the creation. But the creation and the Creator are one and the same; they are both divine. That is what is meant by līla, the divine play. The unmanifest, avyakta, the formless Energy made itself manifest, vyakta in the creation. The Universe created itself. What does it take for the hand to understand that the other hand is actually a part of the bigger whole called the body? It takes the cognition that the entire body is a single entity with the different parts of the body being integrated in it. Similarly, it takes the understanding of our consciousness to see that we, the individual consciousness, are a part of the Whole and are an integral and connected part of the collective consciousness. The individual ego can never understand the truth that it exists as a part of the Whole. The ego has to dissolve for the truth to be revealed and understood.

What Kṛṣṇa teaches here is actually a sūtra, a technique. Understand, when you are disturbed or angered by anything, the disturbance cannot disappear suddenly because it is a physiological happening. Your hormones have been released into your system; the body has been poisoned. But when you remain in the space of completion as a witness, even though the anger cannot go away immediately, there is the awareness in you that will dissipate the effect of the anger that remains in the periphery. The center, the core is untouched. You are now aware of these two points, the core and the periphery as two distinct identities co-existing.

This one glimpse will enrich you and become the strong support for you. The next time you see that you are being swayed by incompletions, you will remember this and such awareness will make you conscious and complete.

Kṛṣṇa gives us another technique to liberate ourselves. He says surrender leads to liberation, and happens when one's intelligence is focused on Him.

When we believe and cognize that there is a life force that is conducting this Universe and is taking care of us, we relax. When we relax, we can live and function at our peak potential. We can express our creativity and live spontaneously. We experience great freedom and liberation. This is surrender. This is true knowledge too. This is the knowledge that cannot be taught or picked up. The Master can simply transmit it when our being is ready to receive it.

All we need is the faith, the courage of authenticity to allow the supreme intelligence to guide us, to surrender our mind that oscillates between the extremes.

In times of extreme self-doubt, doubt your ego. Never doubt the Master. The Master is the only truth you can cling to when all else gives way. The Master is the only one who can guide you when everything seems to be confusing. So, first of all, you need to complete with this self-doubting pattern of constantly doubting yourself. Because you constantly doubt yourself, you doubt the truths of completion, the four tattvas (principles), you doubt everything. You doubt you. Because you doubt you, you doubt me.

Please listen, if you doubt you, you will doubt me also because I am inside you more than you exist in you! If you are occupying twenty to thirty percent of you, I am occupying sixty to seventy percent of you. So, naturally if you doubt you, you will doubt me. And, if you have anger towards you, you will have anger towards me!

The Master has no vested interests, no desires to fulfill in life. Masters come out of sheer compassion for the whole of mankind, to dispel the ignorance of seekers, to show them the light.

Kṛṣṇa says there is no difference between a human and an animal, and that there is no difference between those we consider to be saints and those we consider to be sinners. A learned scholar, the priest and the brāhmaṇa should be seen as equal to an animal or a person who eats dogs. Even more dramatically, He says that one in full knowledge sees the dog and the dog-eater as the same—śuni caiva śva-pāke ca paṇḍitāḥ sama- darśinaḥ (5.18).

Can you look at death and birth in the same manner? We celebrate birth, we condole death. Why? Both are passages. Neither is a beginning nor an end. The cycle of life is continuous. We move seamlessly from birth through living into death and again into birth. It is just that in this life, we do not remember what happened in the period between our death in our previous birth and our birth this time. That loss of memory is for our own safety. We are perturbed by that loss of memory.

What we do not know frightens us. If we understand that death is no different from birth and that life after death may be no different from our current life, there will be no fear. This can happen when we have the experience of death while we are still alive. This is what we teach in our programs. An important thing: How we look at death reflects a lot of the way we look at life. I can say our perception of death changes our way of life.

Death is feared by most of us because it is considered a discontinuity. When we realize that death is just a continuation in some other form, we will not fear death. Then the joy of birth and the sadness at death will both be seen as the same. Our idea of birth and death is direct evidence of how we look at various situations in life. That is why understanding about birth and death is actually fundamental to leading a life of realization.

Kṛṣṇa goes on to explain the characteristics of one who is Supreme. He says that one who is of steady intelligence, sthira buddhir asammūḍho; one who does not get caught in the play of opposing emotions or patterns like pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, is truly not deluded and is established in the truth, and in the Supreme, brahma-vid brahmaṇi sthitaḥ (5.20). He is Supreme himself.

Beautifully, Kṛṣṇa says, ‘An object of enjoyment that comes of itself is neither painful nor pleasurable for someone who has eliminated attachment and who is free from the dualism of self and the other and therefore, from desire.’

This is actually a sūtra, a technique that Kṛṣṇa gives. If we put our attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between the two, we actually go beyond both and transcend the play of the mind. What do we normally do? If we are in pain, we try to run away from it. If we are in pleasure, we try to cling onto it. Understand that both pleasure and pain are of the mind. They are based on our saṁskāras, root thought patterns from our past. They are not of the being. Instead of trying to hold onto pleasure or running away from pain, just be with it, just witness it. The nature of the mind is to move to the opposites. Using this technique, we can transcend this nature of the mind.

Be involved but be aware without resistance to life, neither rejecting nor accepting anything. When we are aware and do not resist anything, we can never be unconsciously pulled into it. Then desire cannot overcome us. We are always the Master. When we are not conscious, then we either start resisting or accepting and we get caught in the cycle of guilt and desires. After the desire gets fulfilled, we go through guilt for having succumbed to the desire. But we did not live the desire fully with completion, so we can’t get out of it either. Next time, the desire happens and again we go through it incompletely and then feel guilty. The only way to get out of this vicious cycle of desire and guilt is to go through the desire with completion without any resistance to it.

Karma is nothing but unfulfilled desire that makes us repeat the same experience again and again, simply because we do not have the intelligence to enter into that experience with complete awareness. Once we experience the situation with awareness and complete with it, we will experience what Śaṅkara experienced. We will not be the doer, the deed or the doing. We will transcend all three. We will transcend our karma. We will be supreme.

Kṛṣṇa advises us to turn inwards. Move away from your senses, move into your Source, He says. By nature, by our very being we are tuned inwards. By conditioning, we lose the capability to turn inwards.

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

Happiness or sadness happens because of our sensory pleasures that 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 and complete with our root patterns, 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 sensory pleasures breaks. When we are centered and complete in ourselves, we start taking things as and when they come.

Man whose consciousness is complete can never experience tiredness. When I was in college, I used to sit and meditate for four hours every morning and evening. My roommates would ask me, 'How are you able to sit for so many hours?' And I used to tell them, 'Why not? 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 integrated within ourselves. One half 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. Because we constantly have to put in an inauthentic 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.

This is what Kṛṣṇa 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. We are then in brahma nirvāṇa—the ultimate liberation, one with Existence, and we are in nityānanda, eternal bliss. When we feel genuine love for others, we feel responsible for everyone, and we take up more and more responsibility. We want to enrich others and share that love with as many as people as possible.

When we are tuned inwards, we live in the present; the 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 are in the space of Advaita, non-duality. We encompass everything. In this state, we are at the height of spontaneity; we are at the peak of our possibility. Spontaneity does not mean creativity. Creativity is a byproduct. Spontaneity is being in the present, being responsible for everything. Nothing is excluded. We flow out, 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 with the right reason, 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.

5.27, 5.28 Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, Suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence,

The transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear and the byproduct of desire, fear and anger, all three. One who is always in this state is certainly liberated.

5.29 One who knowing Me as the purpose of sacrifice and penance, As the Lord of all the worlds and the benefactor of all the living beings, achieves peace.

For the first time, Kṛṣṇa gives a beautiful technique to move your energy from fear and greed to divine consciousness, eternal consciousness. Your fear is rooted in the svādiṣṭhāna cakra, the energy center situated two inches below the navel. Your greed is rooted in the mūlādhāra cakra, the energy center that is in the root

of your spinal cord.

Kṛṣṇa gives us the technique to elevate ourselves from these two cakras to the eternal consciousness, the ājñā cakra at the brow center, where the eternal consciousness resides. When we have elevated our self to ājñā, we go beyond our ego or mind.

We will be continuously holding our mūlādhāra and svādiṣṭhāna tightly. Now, just feel yourself in your mūlādhāra area. You will see that you are tightly holding yourself in tension.

Kṛṣṇa explains how to relax that area, how to stop the fuel coming from greed and fear, and get the amṛta- dhāra (flow of nectar) from the eternal consciousness. Shutting out all external sense objects, keeping the eyes and vision concentrated between the two eyebrows, suspending the inward and outward breaths within the nostrils and thus controlling the mind, senses and intelligence, the transcendental who is aiming at liberation, becomes free from desire, fear, and the byproduct of desire, fear and anger—all three. One who is always in this state is certainly liberated.

First, He gives the technique to enter that state. Then He says if you can stay in that state, you are liberated. Now, at least let us try to have a glimpse of this state that Kṛṣṇa explains in this verse. I will guide you step by step through this meditation. Please try to enter that state.

Please sit straight and close your eyes. Let your head, neck and backbone be in a straight line. Intensely pray to that ultimate energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to give us the experience of this meditation.

First, visualize all your senses completely shut; your eyes are completely closed. Don't allow any visualization to happen inside your being. You should close the eyes too, because we continue to see things from behind our eyelids even though we shut our eyelids. Visualize that your eyeballs have become completely dark. You are seeing only darkness in front of you.

Visualize your ears are shut. Visualize your sense of touch is shut. Visualize your smelling capacity is shut. Visualize your face to be shut. Feel deeply that all the five senses have been shut down.

Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. Slowly, let your nostrils blow the air. Let your consciousness reside between the two eyebrows. In a very relaxed way, be aware of the space between your two eyebrows. Don't concentrate; don't tense yourself. Just be very relaxed, have a deeply relaxed awareness.

Let your mūlādhāra cakra, located at the base of your spine, be relaxed. Let your svādiṣṭhāna cakra, located just below the navel center, be relaxed. Let your whole consciousness come up to the ājñā cakra, which is between the eyebrows.

Concentrate on the space between the eyebrows.

Visualize cool, soothing light in the ājñā cakra, in the space between the eyebrows. Relax in the ājñā cakra. Forget all other parts of your body. Forget about the body, mind and the world; remember only the ājñā cakra, the space between the two eyebrows.

Go deeply into the ājñā cakra, in the space between the two eyebrows. Visualize a beautiful, cooling, soothing light in the ājñā cakra. Let you experience beautiful, blissful light in the ājñā cakra. Don't tense yourself; let your awareness be in the ājñā cakra in a very relaxed way; let your consciousness rest in the space between the two eyebrows.

Relax in the same space of eternal consciousness. Let you be beyond the body and mind. May your intelligence be awakened. Let you work from your eternal consciousness. Let you have the pleasant awareness of the ājñā cakra. Let you all have the grace of the divine consciousness. Let you be established in the eternal consciousness. Let you all be in, with and radiate eternal bliss, nityānanda.

Om śānti, śānti, śāntihi...

Om tat sat.

Relax. Slowly, very slowly, you can open your eyes.

Try to remain in this mood at least for the next ten days.

Understand: Don't concentrate by force. Have a pleasant awareness. When you keep the pleasant awareness around your ājñā cakra, your whole energy will be directed towards the Eternal Consciousness. You will

receive energy from Eternal Consciousness, from immortality, amṛtatva. You will be driven from above by the Eternal Consciousness. If you are driven from below by fear or greed, you are man. If you are driven from above, you are God.

Let you learn the science of how to connect yourself with the Divine energy, how to be driven by the Divine Consciousness. Let you live all your possibilities. Let you function through the Eternal Consciousness.

Thus ends the fifth chapter named Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, 'The Yoga of Renunciation,' of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṃvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.