Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ🔗

16.1 – 16.3 Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, > Fearlessness, purification of the being, cultivation of > spiritual knowledge, charity, and being centered on the being, performance of > sacrifices, and accumulation of knowledge, austerity, simplicity, non-violence, > truthfulness, freedom from anger, renunciation, tranquility, aversion to fault finding, > compassion for all living entities, freedom from covetousness, gentleness, modesty, > studied determination, vigor, more forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, freedom from > envy and from the passion for honor, these transcendental qualities, O Son of Bharata > (Arjuna), belong to Divine men, endowed with Divine nature.’

Here Kṛṣṇa gives all the divine qualities, one by one. It is not necessary to explain all the qualities. Let us take a few. Let us take fearlessness, abhayaṁ for example.

Most of your sufferings are because you are afraid to think about some parts of your life, some components of your life. You are afraid of thinking. You always think that because you are thinking, you are getting fear. No! You are actually afraid of thinking. That is why those thoughts may cause fear in you, you think and then you stop thinking!

Ironing out your thinking and not being afraid of thinking about anything, taking any thinking to the logical conclusion is Integrity.

See, all the things that you want in your life, you think that you won’t get them, even if you work for it. But all the things that you don’t want, you are afraid that you will get them, even if you just think about them.

Life is not that unfair with you. Anything happens only when you take the responsibility of inviting it and making it happen. You should know very clearly and see your own hypocrisy.

First thing you need to do—sit with yourself and list out all the areas of your life that you are afraid of. Whatever you are afraid of, write it down and logically think about it. Allow all of them to surface. Let your mind face the fears. Let your mind speak everything. Think intensely and logically about the fears. Give it half an hour. You may feel afraid, tears may roll and your whole body may shake. Let everything come out. I tell you, anything that stays in your unconscious as a weight and makes you brood over it, bring all of them out and consciously think through them to the logical conclusion. With integrity, fear of thinking will disappear, and once fear of thinking disappears, they cannot cause fear to you.

16.4 Pride, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness or cruelty, and ignorance—these qualities belong to those born with demonic nature, O Pātha (son of Pṛithā).

16.5 The transcendental qualities are conducive to liberation, whereas the demonic qualities make for bondage.

Do not worry, Pāṇḍava, you are born with Divine qualities.

I have explained at length to you the Divine qualities. Now hear about the demonic qualities also, so that you will understand and live your life blissfully and happily.

Kṛṣṇa says that all actions done out of arrogance, out of pride, out of ego, for name and fame, and for power, are demonic in nature.

If you thing you are really a seeker, then do this one spiritual practice for seven days. Work based on this single statement: instead of deciding based on the default root cognition of ‘me, me, me’, decide based on the new root cognition of ‘You, You, You’.

Here, Kṛṣṇa gives the technique to change the master, the ego or the root patterns that makes decisions. He gives the straight technique for the cognitive shift to happen. At present, the root cognition happens in us keeping the ‘I’ as the center; He gives a simple technique to replace the ‘I’ with ‘You’ so that the cognitive shift happens.

Enrich others with the space of ‘You’ which will naturally make you express these divine qualities in life. Enriching will be just your lifestyle. You will understand that enriching the ‘You’ enriches the ‘I’ back. Enriching others enriches you back. Experientially you will understand that ‘you’ is one with others, others are one with you. Automatically you will become blissful, free from anger and full of dhārmic (righteous) qualities.

There are four muktis or levels of liberation:

sālokya mukti, sārūpya mukti, sāmīpya mukti and sāyujya mukti. Sālokya means ‘same place’; it means we will be allowed to stay in Vaikuṇṭa, Viṣṇu’s abode. We will have a residence in heaven. Sārūpya means we will have the same form as the Lord. For example, we can see Jaya-Vijaya, the gatekeepers of heaven; they have the same ṣaṅkh (conch), cakra (discus), gadā (mace), padma (lotus)—all the accessories of Viṣṇu in the same svarūpa (form).

Sāmīpya (being near) is being in the inner circle; the cakra that Viṣṇu is carrying has achieved sāmīpya mukti! Becoming enlightened oneself is sāyujya mukti. Sāmīpya mukti is the best Enlightenment because we can enjoy Him forever! It is like an ant forever enjoying the sugar candy.

Sāyujya mukti is like becoming the sugar candy. This is for all the ṛṣis. For devotees, the ultimate state is sāmīpya mukti.

Now, here is another important point. After hearing about ‘You’ and ‘me’, the next thought that may come to our mind is, ‘Swamiji, I do not know whether I am working based on root cognition of ‘You’ or based on ‘me’. I am worried about whether I am a demon or divine. Please guide me, tell me, based on which quality I am working.’

Let me assure you that if this fear arises in you, you are divine. The person who is ready to look into his mind, the person who is afraid about whether he is living rightly or wrongly, always lives rightly. Only the person who is arrogant is demonic.

Now Lord Kṛṣṇa explains that living with transcendental qualities, that is the right space of ‘you’, one achieves liberation or Enlightenment— nivṛitti. By living with the space of ‘I’ we create more bondage. The demonic qualities make for bondage, meaning pravṛitti.

Kṛṣṇa says that one with a demonic nature is not aware of what bondage is and what liberation is. People of this nature are so deeply immersed in their attachment and aversion that they no longer feel themselves separated from these qualities. They are so much in bondage to their senses that they can no longer know they are in bondage.

out of lust and desire, and is unreal.

Kṛṣṇa says that when we are unable to recognize this energy, we are demonic. We do not believe everything operates out of this energy; instead we believe we make things happen with our greed, lust and desires. We believe we run this world with our puny intellect that we consider intelligence.

Kṛṣṇa says firmly that when we believe that we are the cause of this Universe, this Existence, we are so deluded and locked in our own little identities, with small intelliegence, we destroy the world and ourselves as well.

In the earlier verse, Kṛṣṇa explained how a person with demonic nature could destroy this world. Here, He shows how such a person can destroy himself. Out of pride, arrogance and hypocrisy, such a person moves in a path directed by purely selfish and material objectives, and derives results that produce suffering.

The nature of the unconscious mind is to react to the senses. We may think we respond consciously. But almost all the time our reactions are instinctive, decided by vāsanās and saṁskāras, conflicting patterns and root patterns, rather than by conscious application of our rational mind. This is what Kṛṣṇa refers to as the nature of a demonic person. Instinct is the nature of animals, and because it is their nature, it works well for them. They flow with nature.

Instinct is not the nature of humans. Human consciousness can rise to the intuitive level, in which awareness results in high action. This is the potential of the Divine inherent in all of us. Instead of rising to the intuitive level, the super conscious level, most people find it easier to descend into the instinctive or unconscious level.

Every sensory organ has its own āhāra, inputs, upon which it feeds. Based on these inputs, the eye, ear, tongue, nose and skin develop their desires and convey these desires to the body-mind system. Control of these senses and the desires that they weave is what Sage Patañjali prescribed as pratyāhāra, one of the eight methods of his Aṣṭānga Yoga.

Once we allow our mind to get driven away by the senses, there is no stopping. We won’t know how to make it stop either. So we continue with our fantasies. We are driven by comparison and envy. We are not merely fulfilling our needs, we are actually fulfilling other people’s wants and desires.

(Supreme Divine),

who is situated in his own body and in the bodies of others, and blasphemies against Him.

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad puts it so well:

As are your thoughts, so is your will; as is your will, so your action, as are your actions, so is your destiny.

Destiny is nothing but the end result of how we exercise our free will. The problem is, we have no will; in the morning we want to do one thing, by noon it is something different, by night it is totally different. So, if our will keeps changing, how can it ever be converted into action?

People tell me, ‘Swamiji, you say creating the space by visualizing it in the present helps make things happen in reality; we have tried: nothing happens.’

Nothing happens because you are full of self-contradiction, self-doubt, self-hatred and impossibilities. If we wish to get rid of back pain, and we keep saying, ‘Let this back pain go,’ it will never go. Every time we utter the words back pain, our mind latches more firmly onto the past hangover of pain. If we want to get rid of pain, we must complete with all self-doubts and create the space for health visualizing it in the present; not pain, not getting rid of pain, but feeling healthy.

When you create the space to make something into reality, complete with all the doubts, complete with all the impossible ideas that come to you, complete with your ability to even create the space.

Bringing your past hangover into the present is incompletion. Bringing your future possibility into the present is Space.

When we surrender to Kṛṣṇa, our surrender must be total. We must take the responsibility to fulfill the space of surrender. There can be nothing between Him and us. Then, He surely liberates us. Because then we are already liberated, we are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Meditation leads us to surrender. Meditation is the process of creation of the space of completion. Completion is the knowledge that we are one with the Universe. It is then about ‘you’ instead of ‘me’. The feeling of ‘you’ and the absence of ‘me’ dissolve the idea of ‘I’ as identity. This is the foundation of surrender.

When we are one with the Universe, one with Kṛṣṇa, there is nothing else we need to look up to. There is nothing else to look for. We have reached eternal bliss—Nityānanda.

Krodha, anger, arises out of suffering. We feel thwarted and we feel angry. The cycle goes on. When these three combine, they create moha, or delusion.

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. 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. There is never contentment. Each desire is the seed of suffering.

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, powerlessness.

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'. 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, 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. You are in the space of Living Advaita, oneness— living the truth that everything is 'you' and 'you' are everything. Because 'you' is 'me', 'me' is 'you', 'you' 'me' becomes 'you-me'. It is 'you-me' that becomes the center, no longer 'me'. You become Divine, daivic.

Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the Divine Consciousness, to bless us all with 'daiva sampat' and establish us in eternal bliss, nityānanda.

Thank You.

Thus ends the sixteenth chapter named Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ, 'The Yoga of Divine and Demonic Nature,' of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṁvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.

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