HAPTE🔗

R 6

Please understand, karma—the state of action, or sannyāsa—the state of renunciation, is not related to your doing. It is directly related to your being. Being a sannyāsi, a renunciate monk, is not a status, it is a state of mind. Whether you are doing karma yoga or you remain a Sannyāsi is in no way going to affect you. If one is a karma yogī, one goes about doing the work that is allotted to him without attachment and without expectations.

People repeatedly ask me, ‘Swamiji, should we renounce everything to achieve Enlightenment? How can we lead our day-to-day life and yet hope to achieve spiritual progress?’

I tell them, ‘No! Just renounce what you don’t have. That is enough. You don’t have to renounce what you have.’ I tell them to live with completion with whatever they have, and to just renounce what they don’t have. We fantasize about all that we do not have, that is the problem. There are thousands of things that we don’t have, but we live with all those things mentally. The problem is not what we have, we have got used to those things anyway. That is our reality. It is what we don’t have that creates problems. Just renounce what you don’t have. That is enough to solve all the problems. Then you will start living intensely with what you have.

Brahmacharya is nothing but being authentic with high energy happening in you. Here, Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Just renouncing the sacred fire and not performing one’s duty does not mean one is an ascetic or sannyāsi.’

Understand, the Vedic Masters knew how to use fire to communicate with the higher energy, just like how we use the cell phone to communicate. All of science is based on using light particles, whether it is electricity, atomic energy, or other forms of energy, but with different formulae. Our eastern sages worked with sound energy and created all these products. We really had the pushpak vimāna (flying chariot) and we did really have the brahmāstra (nuclear weapon). They were able to relate with higher energies and were able to communicate just with the vibrations through fire.

So here, Kṛṣṇa says that just by renouncing fire, a person cannot become a Sannyāsi. Similarly, here I can say that just by renouncing our cell phone in life, we cannot become a sannyāsi. The space needs to be transformed.

To truly renounce, the mind has to renounce thoughts. Usually, wherever our body is, our mind is not.

To bring the mind to where the body is to renounce the inner chatter by completing with thoughts patterns. This is the starting point of renunciation.

Renunciation of the past and the future, by bringing our mind to focus on the present space of completion, is true renunciation.

You have to renounce fantasies. These fantasies are the creation of the ego, mind, identity, root patterns— whatever name you wish to call it. This self creates up all these unreal fantasy visions, to keep you occupied and under control.

. Only when we renounce the mind’s control by going beyond the senses can we become a true renunciate. ‘Control your senses and still your mind so that you can reach Me,’ Kṛṣṇa says in earlier chapters.

Renunciation of these fantasies that we feel we need for self-satisfaction is Yoga. Yoga is the state when our desires, expressed through sensual pleasures, dissolve. We unite with our true Self in this state. In this state, there is no gap between the Divine and us.

In Saṁskṛit there are two terms, ‘dṛṣṭi sṛṣṭi’ and ‘sṛṣṭi dṛṣṭi’. Dṛṣṭi sṛṣṭi means to look at the world as it is and take life as it comes. Sṛṣṭi dṛṣṭi is just the opposite, when we want to create the world as we would like it to be, as we want to see it. We want the world running according to our fantasies, instead of coming to terms with the reality of the world.

This is the state of yoga that Kṛṣṇa talks about—yogārūḍhasya tasyai va śamaḥ kāraṇam ucyate (6.3), the state of true renunciation where there is no suppression. Instead, there is transformation into completion.

Kṛṣṇa says next, ‘A person who initially wants to start practicing a yoga system laid down by the sages should carry out all activities in line with that system. Activities for all other reasons will then cease.’

Yoga is a straight technique to achieve the Divine experience. This formula cannot be modified or altered or practiced in parts and pieces. This formula has to be practiced with this right reason as prescribed for one to realize the divine nature of one’s Self, asserts Kṛṣṇa. Yoga is a formula in which there are techniques that can be practiced to reach the Divine.

Learning yoga means bringing integrity to your body. Once we become intensely tuned to the eight-fold formula, it will become such an integral part of our being that it will become difficult to forget it even for a minute. When we practice yoga to meet with the Divine we will not treat yoga as an activity to be performed at a particular time of the day. We will live and breathe yoga.

6.5 You are your own friend; you are your own enemy. Evolve yourself through the Self and do not degrade yourself.

6.6 For him who has conquered the Self, the Self is the best of friends. For one who has failed to do so, his Self will remain the greatest enemy.

6.7 For one who has conquered the Self, who has attained tranquility, the Supreme is already reached. Such a person remains in this state, in happiness or distress, heat or cold, honor or dishonor.

6.8 A person whose mind is contented, because of spiritual knowledge, who has subdued his senses and to whom stone and gold are the same, and who is satisfied with what he has, He is said to be established in self-realization and is called an enlightened being.

6.9 A person is considered truly advanced when he regards honest well-wishers, affectionate benefactors, the neutral, the mediators, the envious, both friends and enemies, the pious and the sinners with equality of mind.

You are your own friend; you are your own enemy. Evolve yourself through the Self and do not degrade yourself.

In my discourses, if I have quoted any Gītā verse more than twice, it is this one. I can say this single verse provides the essence of the whole Gītā.

In the last chapter we learned the technique from Kṛṣṇa for moving from fear and greed into Divine consciousness and bliss.

In this verse, Kṛṣṇa says:

‘One must raise himself with the help of his own being and not degrade himself. The being is the friend of the conditioned soul and his enemy as well.’ You are your own friend and you are your own enemy. If you know the technique of how to lift yourself by yourself, you will become a friend of your Self. If you let yourself down, you will become an enemy of yourself.

When we start anything new, we will always have three phases. The first is resistance. The second is avoidance. We just avoid, neither caring nor resisting. The third is acceptance.

First, resistance: we will repeatedly fall. We will forget. Our system will resist. We will try to create complications and complaints and all possible arguments.

When we can’t practice these teachings, we start justifying ourselves. Since we are unable to follow, we start criticizing Kṛṣṇa. This is the best way to escape and avoid the teachings of Kṛṣṇa. When our being resists, if we allow the resistance to grow, we are our worst enemy. This is what Kṛṣṇa means by saying, ‘May you lift yourself by yourself. May you raise yourself by yourself ’ If we don’t, we will be our worst enemy. It is up to us to enrich ourselves as best friend or to hurt ourselves as our worst enemy.

Please listen: Nobody can hurt you unless you allow him or her to. Nobody can help you unless you allow him or her to.

If you have fallen, if you have failed while practicing these words, the teachings or the meditation techniques, if you have forgotten, don’t worry. Again and again, lift yourself. Don’t give up on you. Don’t feel depressed and don’t have guilt. Don’t get dejected thinking you will not be able to do it. Don’t doubt your self. Again and again, lift yourself.

Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘May you lift yourself by yourself. Nobody can do anything unless you lift yourself— uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānaṁ avasāyadet.’

Don’t give up on you and people! Internalize this important truth— do not give up on yourself and people! Even if people fail a hundred times, continue to work with them. When you are frustrated at other people’s failure, understand that it is nothing but your frustration towards your own failure. If we turn our back on people, we are not living dharma, because when we give up on others, we have also given up on ourselves!

When we conquer the mind, happiness and distress are both one and the same and we are not touched by it. Now, Kṛṣṇa has an important point here. He says, ‘For one who has conquered his Self, has already attained the supreme bliss, jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ, for him happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same, śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu tathā mānāpamānayoḥ (6.7).’

Throughout this chapter Kṛṣṇa emphasizes this one idea—senses. Kṛṣṇa speaks about the senses. How can happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor be the same for a man? How is it possible?

The first thing is that when our senses do the work, we decide ‘yes’ or ‘no’ only based on our past experiences, the experiences with which we have grown or the words with which we have conditioned our mind and memory. Here Kṛṣṇa says the person who has achieved bliss is not affected by heat or cold and joy or sorrow—śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu. How do we reach that state? First, understand that when I say conquering the senses, I don’t mean controlling the senses or destroying the senses. If we try to control or destroy the senses, we will only struggle and suffer more and more. If we try to control our body, that is not going to work either.

Kṛṣṇa says beautifully, ‘For one who has conquered the self, jitātmanaḥ.’ When He says self, He means the whole cognition where the decision-making happens. Mind-Intelligence-Ego is the spot where the decision-making is happening. The ego or root patterns or the intelligence, the place from where we make decisions, is continuously supplying energy to our senses. So all we need to do is to work at the level of the mind and not at the level of the senses to become jitātmanaḥ. If we try to work at the level of the senses, we will create only more and more perverted desires, leading to more and more incompletions.

See, I initiate thousands of people into a powerful spiritual process called Nirāhara Saṁyama, liberating them from their food patterns. Listen. It is awakening, rekindling the power of your bio-memory to produce energy and food directly from air, water and space. It is not fasting. An important rule in this process is the moment one feels hungry or tired, one has to start eating. One cannot use his or her willpower. Understand, if

you fast, in the dream you will be dreaming as if you are feasting, eating! But, not a single one of my Nirāhara Saṃyama participants has a dream of eating food and feasting! Why? Because they are initiated into the most practical method of completing with all the root patterns. They don’t suppress their hunger, they just go beyond it, they go beyond their senses!

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘One who has conquered the mind achieves the Paramātman (divine Self), jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ (6.7).’ We don’t need to achieve bliss. It is always there within us. If it has to be achieved, there is every possibility it can be lost. If it can be lost, what is the guarantee it will be there forever? Anything, if it has to be specially achieved, is not worth achieving. But if it is our very nature, then it becomes easy. Kṛṣṇa says that all we need to do is conquer our mind. We don’t need to achieve anything.

The fountain of bliss is continuously happening in us. Our very life energy is bliss. Unless we have the bliss energy in us, we cannot inhale and exhale. But we are stopping the bliss fountain again and again. All we need to do is stop the stopping process. That’s all. We don’t even need to create anything or achieve anything. Kṛṣṇa says that we just have to conquer the mind because the Self has been already achieved and we are with it. All we need is completion with our Self.

Understand, our thoughts create our senses. Don’t think we are living with what we have. We create what we want to have. Our thoughts are so powerful that they can just change the whole body. For example, just think of one thought that creates disturbance inside you. Or think of a person who took money from you and has not returned it. Immediately, we experience the change happening in our system. Our blood boils, our blood pressure rises, our heart rate and pulse rate rise. A single thought can change the whole body chemistry.

Our body is created only by our thoughts. In India there is a great science called sāmudrikā lakṣaṇa. Just by seeing the body-language—the face, the body, the way of standing, sitting and walking, the trained sage can tell everything about the person’s mind. This is because he knows the secret that the mind creates the body. The body is the outer expression of the mind. The mind is the inner experience of the body. If our mind changes, our body can be changed and our whole system can be changed.

Kṛṣṇa says one more important thing about heat and cold. Let me tell you very clearly: I lived in the Himalayas and I used to sleep on the snow with this same cotton dress. It may be very difficult to believe but it is the truth. All we need to do is stop resisting. Just try this experiment: the moment you feel the cool breeze, don’t create the idea, ‘It is cold, I may catch a cold, I may have wheezing or sinus problem.’ Just don’t create such words.

The words you give to yourself can be nectar or poison. The words you constantly repeat to yourself, have to be enriching you, exciting you and enlightening you. The words you give to you are āhara (food), what you consume to create life in you. The words you give to yourself are more important than the words you give to others. Because the flow of your life—the level of contentment that you feel in your life and the experience of fulfillment that you feel in your life, everything depends on the words that you have given to you. Whenever we repeat something, we create that quality in us.

He says one more important truth, ‘Honor and dishonor will be the same—māna-apamānayoḥ.’ This is very difficult to believe. Cold and heat or hot and sweet can be the same. We can even accept that. But honor and dishonor, how can the two be the same? A single word thrown at us is enough to anger us and hurt our honor.

A thought pattern is a pre-defined way of responding to any situation based on a powerful past experience like failure, rejection, being punished, being subjected to abuse or witnessing the death of a loved one. During such moments of crisis, you create an idea about yourself and life—like ‘I am weak’ or ‘I am a failure’ or ‘Nobody loves me’ or ‘Life is dangerous, so I have to be very careful.’ Almost all root thought patterns are negative, even the ones which may lead to success in your life, because they are born out of your feeling of powerlessness. You have many thought patterns, but a root thought pattern is one of the few defining thought patterns that are continuously running your life without your knowledge!

In the Inner Awakening Program, the first session is about the understanding of root thought patterns. It is about why we get depressed, why we are in conflict, why we repeatedly fall into a powerless state. It is because our energy source is others’ certificates. We don’t have any self-respect and self-completion. We constantly live in self-doubt, self-hatred and self-denial. If others’ opinions about us are good, we think we are great. If others’ opinions about us are not good, we immediately lose self-completion and fall into self-

denial. If our idea about ourselves is ‘nobody loves me’, then we project the outer personality of ‘I am a very loving person’ or ‘I am a very friendly person.’ This is inauthenticity.

But our root pattern is—we don’t even love ourselves. That is why there is so much of self-hatred. We don’t have any self-respect, only self-hatred, self-denial. That is the reason for the wars within and around us.

Living is a power. If we want to live, we must learn how to stand on our own two feet, learn how to be complete with ourselves, how to raise ourself by ourself without giving up on us and others. This is the science of completion that is taught and transmitted experientially in the Inner Awakening program.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘A person whose mind is content because of spiritual knowledge, who has subdued his senses and to whom stone and gold are the same, and who is satisfied with what he has, is said to be established in Self-realization and is called an enlightened being’

There are three things we need to understand here: First, experience comes out as expression. Second, the quality of experience and the quality of expression, are very closely associated with one another. And third, a very important thing, is that if you concentrate on the expression, you will reach the experience. Here, again and again, Kṛṣṇa speaks about how an enlightened person lives and the qualities that an enlightened person expresses, so that we can meditate on it. When we begin internalizing these ideas in our lives, we can reach the consciousness of an enlightened being. When we contemplate upon these ideas, we start expressing them naturally and they sink into our being.

6.10 A Yogī should always try to concentrate his mind on the Supreme Self; situated in a secluded place, he should carefully control his mind without being attracted by anything and should be free from the feeling of possessiveness.

6.11 In a clean and pure place, one should establish his seat by laying kuṣa grass, a deerskin and a cloth one over another, neither too high nor too low.

6.12 Sitting firmly on that pure seat, the yogi should practice the purification of the self by controlling the activities of the mind and the senses.

6.13 Holding the body, head and neck steady, looking at the tip of his nose without looking in any other direction.

6.14 Let him sit with an unagitated mind, free from fear and in tune with Existence, controlling the mind, focusing it on Me and making Me the Supreme goal.

Controlling the senses requires controlling the mind. Controlling the mind requires control of thoughts. Controlling the thoughts requires integrity. When we continuously live integrity, we will become aware of the thoughts and processes happening in our inner space.

And constantly listening to our own inner space is the beginning of integrity. If our inner space says that there is nothing more to listen, if only silence is there, then we have achieved integrity.

We need to do two things to control our thoughts. First, we need to stay in the present moment by refusing to move to the past and future and second, we need to disconnect thoughts. I call this Unclutching.

I am not saying to stay without thoughts. That is not possible; just witness thoughts. Understand that thoughts are unconnected. Detach yourself from the emotional baggage of the thoughts. If we detach ourselves from the regrets of the past and the speculations about the future we will automatically rise into the present.

That is what Kṛṣṇa talks about here—dropping the attachment and possessiveness to desires, not the desire itself. It is the feeling of ‘mine,’ the desire to possess, that creates the feeling of ‘I,’ not the other way around. Our

identity is made up of all the things that we want, that we desire, that we are attached to. These constitute our mental make-up. The seeds of desire and embedded memories are the stuff our package of ‘I’ is made of. Once the feeling of possession, the feeling of ‘mine’ disappears, it is possible to shed our identity as well.

Here Kṛṣṇa updates the technique that He gave earlier. Here He gives three more instructions:

1. Head, spine and neck should be in a straight line.

2. We should fix our eyes on the tip of the nose. If we look at the tip of the nose, naturally, our awareness will settle on the third eye. Our concentration will settle on the ājña cakra (the brow energy center).

3. We should meditate on ‘Me’ as the supreme goal.

Firstly, it prevents us from dropping off to sleep. Whether we close our eyes fully or half close them, it is important that we disconnect from the external world. When the eyes are focused on the tip of the nose, they are not looking at external objects and ninety percent of sensory inputs are cut off. In addition, the focus is on the third eye between the brows, which, when energized, dissolves the ego block.

Finally, Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Focus on Me—manaḥ saṃyamya mac-chitto. Make Me the Supreme goal—yukta āsīta mat-paraḥ (6.14).’ He means our true Self.

We have two lives in us. One is the life we want to live–the dream. The other is the life in reality–the life we are living. The meeting of these two lives is what I call Yoga.

You can unite the two either by reducing the depth of fantasies or by increasing the expression of your energy so that reality can come closer to the dream.

Bliss is beyond attachment to any object, material or spiritual. Bliss is beyond the pairs of opposites. When we are happy due to some pleasurable event or person, the momentary joy comes because the number of our thoughts comes down when we meet the person. When the number of our thoughts comes down, bliss happens in us. But the bliss itself comes only from our own being, not from the person who we met. In fact, it continuously happens within us, irrespective of anything that goes on outside. Then why do we not feel the bliss continuously? It is because we are under the control of the mind, which needs the pairs of opposites to survive. We can go beyond the mind.

Being in the present is what eternity is. The present blissful moment gives birth to the next moment, which will be blissful. But if we try to look for bliss in the future, thinking that we can do various things to create a blissful future, it will never happen. When we are not in reality now, we are creating the blissful future from our fantasies. So come to terms with reality here and now and be blissful; automatically the future will also be blissful.

When Kṛṣṇa talks about the mind and the senses being controlled, He is not talking about suppressing the mind and the senses.

To be balanced in whatever we do and to act without attachment is the path of a Yogī. Whether it is eating or sleeping or working, we should be sensitive to our body’s intelligence.

The main aim of all our yoga and meditation techniques is to reach the level of our being. When we reach the being, we are in ‘nitya ānanda’ or ‘eternal bliss’. We are in union with the Divine. Bliss is actually what we are running after but we think it can be achieved through money, comforts, relations and what not.

When we exist with responsibility without taking in the poison or throwing it out, meaning without running towards the desires or running away from the fears, we become Śiva and live life blissfully as Nityānanda, irrespective of what comes our way.

Kṛṣṇa talks about two important things: practice with determination and practice without deviating from the prescribed way. Both are key elements to experience yoga.

After a few days of practice it is easy to fall into inertia, tamas, and give up on ourselves. Our mind has been programmed with our old routine for years and will draw us back to the old ways. This is where determination is needed. Determination driven by curiosity and the quest to see and experience the truth is what will give us the energy to practice yoga.

The other important element is practice without deviating from the prescribed way. All eight parts of yoga need to be practiced, simultaneously. Even one part of Patañjali’s Aṣṭāṅga Yoga will take many lifetimes to achieve, given the modern man’s mindset.

Please understand, Patañjali’s Aṣṭāṅga Yoga, eight organs of yoga or aṅga has unfortunately been wrongly translated by the English yogis as ‘eight steps of yoga’. Because of this, it has become just a small few techniques or methods to make your body flexible and a little healthy. That is a disgrace done to yoga.

Satya, truth, is a part of yama, the first of the eight steps of Aṣṭāṅga Yoga. If we consistently practice truthfulness alone, we will reach samādhi, the state of liberation. Our thoughts, words and actions become pure and truthful only when we are enlightened; only when we bring integrity in our words, authenticity in our thinking and actions, responsibility in our feeling, and enriching in our living.

Please listen! Yama is Integrity. Niyama is Authenticity. Āsana, Prānāyama, Prayāhara, Dhārana are Responsibility. Dhāyana and Samādhi are Enriching.

This is what Kṛṣṇa means when He says, ‘Self is satisfied by the Self in the Self, yatra caiva ātmanātmanaṁ paśyann ātmani tuṣyati (6.20).’ All of this has to happen together, not part by part. When one aspect is complete, all others also become complete. This is the state of pūrṇa, complete completion. Nothing can be taken away from it. Nothing can be added to it that would make any difference to its state of completeness. No joy can make it more blissful, no sorrow can make it less blissful. One becomes centered in bliss.

The senses and the mind wander aimlessly. We cannot suppress desires, because anything suppressed will surface with more intensity. We might have experienced in our own lives that a desire may be satisfied momentarily, but soon afterwards, it arises again. Instead we need to understand what is happening and how it is happening. The way out of the mind is also through the mind and not by avoiding it. Completion process is the key through which all our emotions can be handled. They basically originate from the root patterns of greed and fear. As we witness and do completion with our root patterns, the fear and greed lose their grasp on the mind.

Kṛṣṇa says that we need conviction and intelligence to be established in the Self. Why does He talk about conviction? Understand that intelligence cannot happen without a strong conviction, a strong intellectual base.

There are different ways to learn and develop clarity and conviction. We can learn from our experiences as well as from others' experiences. For example, when we touch the flame of a candle, we learn that it burns. When we touch a burning gas stove, we learn again that fire burns. One by one, we can experience and learn that all fires burn. Or, when we touch the first form of fire, immediately we can learn that all fires will burn! Coming to a conclusion and a clear understanding that all fires burn, after just one experience, is intelligence!

Now, Kṛṣṇa is emphasizing an important spiritual quality perseverance. In the previous verse, He spoke about conviction. Now, he talks about persevering with that conviction. What happens most of the time to most of us is that when we realize we need to transform, we try a few times and then we give up on ourselves thinking we cannot do it.

Strength is Life. We should just decide that we will not be trapped in this cycle of guilt and desire. We need to measure ourselves by our strongest moments, our greatest moments of powerfulness, when we have displayed extraordinary awareness, courage, compassion, love and such other divine qualities. A human being is the sum of his greatest moments of completion.

Understand that you attract 'like' incidents in your life. 'Like attracts like.' The energy of one frequency attracts the similar frequency. This is what is meant when Kṛṣṇa says the true yogi reaches the state of ultimate happiness, the state of eternal bliss and divine consciousness by his identification with the Absolute.

In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa talks about passion and sins.

Passion is nothing but a deep attachment to something for the pleasure that it gives. Usually we associate passion, sin and such terms with deeds that we classify as right or wrong. But here, Kṛṣṇa does not talk about sin in the way society teaches us. It is not morality that He is talking about. I tell you, there is no sin except the sin of connecting thoughts and thinking that we are logical beings.

So, the key is to be in the space of completion every moment. The solution is not to condemn ourselves as sinners and expect some external force to bring completion to us. It is we who choose everything in our lives and how we want to live.

I tell you, live according to your intelligence and awareness. If you depend on others, even after becoming an adult, it means you are not mature. Anything done out of conscience does not have the conviction of experience to back it. That is why it is never done whole-heartedly, because your energy, your intelligence is not behind the action.

Kṛṣṇa says that the realized person, yoga-yuktātmā, sees the Supreme in everyone and everything. He

sees everything situated in the Supreme and all beings situated in the Supreme. The yogi is in touch with the higher Self and is in bliss.

When we experience the Truth, we see everything in ourselves and ourselves in everything. In fact, in my first spiritual experience at the age of twelve, this is what I clearly saw.

When I was twelve, I was playing with this technique of just watching where thoughts came from, the source of my thoughts. At that age, I didn't even realize it was meditation. One day, at the foothills of Arunachala, in my hometown of Tiruvannamalai in South India, I was sitting on a rock, just playing with this technique that I had been practicing for two years.

Suddenly, something happened; something opened within me. I felt as if I was being pulled inside. Suddenly, I could see 360 degrees in all directions. My eyes were closed but I could see everything in front of me and behind me. Not just that, I felt that whatever I was seeing, was all me. I could see myself in everything—in the trees, in the rocks, in the ground, in the hills, everything!

The Viśvarūpa Darśan, vision of the cosmic form, that Kṛṣṇa gives Arjuna is the glimpse of the same Truth, where Arjuna sees that Kṛṣṇa is one with the Universe.

In the ultimate sense, the moment we understand that we are deeply, totally and intensely connected to the whole Universe, not only do we start experiencing bliss, we really start living in the space of completion. Many dimensions of our being start opening. Right now we are stressed out and disturbed continuously because we think of ourselves as individual egos. If we disappear into this collective consciousness, we will experience so many dimensions and so many possibilities that we simply cannot imagine right now!

6.30 For one who sees Me everywhere and who sees everything in Me, for him I am never lost nor is he lost to Me.

6.31 He who is in oneness with Me in all respects, worships Me situated in all beings and remains present in Me.

6.32 One who, by comparision to his own Self, sees the true oneness of all beings, in both their happiness or misery, is Supreme Yogi in My opinion, Arjuna.

6.33 Arjuna says: O Madhusūdana, this system of Yoga as described by You, appears unendurable to me, for the mind being restless and unsteady.

6.34 O Kṛṣṇa, the wavering mind is agitated, strong and firm. I think it is difficult to control the mind like it is difficult to control the wind.

6.35 Bhagavān says: O mighty-armed Kaunteya, it is undoubtedly difficult to control the wavering mind but by practice and detachment, it can be controlled.

Kṛṣṇa gives a promise. He says that for anyone who sees Him in everything and who sees everything in Him, He is always available. Neither Kṛṣṇa is lost to him nor he is ever lost to Kṛṣṇa.

When we realize the sense of non-duality and infinity with the entire Universe, we experience a tremendous overflowing of love and compassion for every being without discrimination, because we realize that everyone is a part of the same Whole. That is why we can see that Masters are such an ocean of infinite love and know only how to give. They are Existence itself. They shower love without asking questions because they feel a constant devotion towards the entire Universe or life force or Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa. They cannot see anyone as a separate entity because there is no separateness.

Just as the fingers on the hand and the toes on the feet belong to the same body, we will be able to see that everyone is a part of the same Universal Energy. This is when true compassion, empathy and sincere service towards enriching everyone can happen. Until then we will only be using our logic, mind, ego and conditioning, to enslave others.

When we realize the infinity of everyone, we will express our unconditional love and compassion towards everyone without discrimination, because we know that all discrimination is baseless and false. Our very walk and talk will start radiating so much bliss that our very presence will start healing others. We will become a blessing for planet Earth and the people who experience our presence.

A Yogī in the state of super-consciousness will just watch everything in Existence without judging or labeling it. He will be in a state of complete celebration of life. Existence is love and nothing else. Yet, the compassion of the yogi, the Master, is such that he feels the experiences that others undergo and he empathizes with them. The Master’s state of equanimity is not disturbed and yet he feels the pain and joy of others. This expression of collective consciousness is what Kṛṣṇa has described elsewhere as Vasudaiva Kuṭumbakam. It means that the world is our family and we should feel the rest of the world as we would for our immediate family. When we exist in this state of consciousness, we are true Yogīs.

Arjuna introduces the word ‘difficult or su-duṣkaram’ here. Be very clear, the moment we categorize something as easy or difficult, we have made it that way. Understand that the ego can be fulfilled only through difficult things. Simple things cannot satisfy the ego. Here, Arjuna addresses to Kṛṣṇa his concerns about the mind being so strong that it sometimes overcomes the intelligence. The first and foremost thing is to accept that we have a problem, we have a root pattern. The next thing is to understand how the root pattern is created. That is what Arjuna does here. It is only then that we can overcome the root pattern. If we ignore or run away from the pattern we can never resolve and complete with the pattern. So, the first thing to accept is that our mind does oscillate, then to understand how it oscillates. For this we need to watch the mind and do completion with the thought patterns. This is meditation. The very act of watching, being aware of the mind, and completing with it will take us beyond the mind.

Masters give meditation techniques so that we try all these and ultimately realize we are bliss, and that meditation is our natural state, and that there is nothing to be achieved. But, if I tell you that right away, you will not believe me. The mind cannot believe something so simple. It will create all kinds of contradictions and self-doubts as to why it cannot be so simple. Kṛṣṇa also has to give a solution for the doubting mind. He emphasizes perseverance and penance. Don’t think penance means leaving home, going to the Himalayas and sitting in meditation while fasting. Penance is persevering with authenticity until we experience the Truth. Kṛṣṇa also reveals the root of the problem of controlling the mind and gives the technique to complete with it through unclutching.

The mind becomes so attached to these identities that it is constantly reviewing the past incidents or it is constantly planning the future to either protect or develop these identities. This constant pre-occupation of the mind with the past and future is the root cause of the oscillation of the mind. If we look deeply, staying in the present moment of completion means total insecurity. It requires us to be ready to embrace the present without planning for the future or reviewing the past. This seems like a great danger for our ego.

Listen. I tell you, any identity that we create about ourselves that is less than the idea of our being God, is a false identity. If we consider ourselves to be anything less than God, we suffer from an inferiority complex. If we have the courage to detach ourselves from the certificates of society, if we have the courage to drop these false identities, then we can embrace the Divine. Detachment is the direct technique that Kṛṣṇa is suggesting here. Detachment at the root level will lead to detachment from everything else. Detachment from the ego or the identities will lead to detachment from desires. This is detachment from the past and future. This is being ‘Unclutched’.

Kṛṣṇa assures Arjuna by saying that there is no destruction either in this life or the next life for one who is on

the right path, the path of yoga. Kṛṣṇa is giving a wonderful assurance for all of us that even a small amount of practice of this yoga will save us from the cycle of birth and death. Any yoga practiced will give us tremendous benefit. The very intent to practice yoga itself means that we have gained knowledge about the problem of the mind. Listen, any movement of the body with a strong intention will cause that intention to get deeply inscribed into our bodies and muscles. If the intention is wanting to become one with our true identity and wanting to drop our false identity, it will get deeply inscribed or recorded in our body and will remain there and automatically the body will start moving towards that one goal.

6.41 The person who has fallen from yoga {yogabraṣṭa} after many years of living in the planets of the pious and doing virtuous deeds, takes birth in the house of the virtuous and prosperous.

6.42 Or the Yogī certainly takes birth in a family of wise people. Certainly, such a birth is rare in this world.

6.43 O son of Kuru, on taking such a birth, he revives the intelligence, consciousness of the previous body, and tries again to attain complete success [yoga].

Our choice of the next body is based on the way we have lived our life in this body. For example, if we live to eat rather than eat to live, at the time of death, we will still have the desire to continue eating. So, we will design our next body to fulfill this desire. We might choose the body of a pig. Or, if we have lived our life only for sleeping and doing no creative work, we might choose the body of a buffalo. So, based on the attitude we have lived with, we choose the next body. This is the basic idea on which our janma- maraṇa cakra (cycle of life and death) revolves. Here, Kṛṣṇa gives the assurance to Arjuna and to the whole of humanity that a person who has performed virtuous activities takes birth in a family of wise people or in a prosperous family. His pious activities will earn him a place among the higher worlds. After dwelling there for a while he will take birth in the family of righteous people to once again enable his spiritual seeking. Once we leave the body, in three kṣaṇa, three moments, we get into a new body and we are reborn. Kṣaṇa in Saṃskṛit does not mean 'seconds'. It means the gap between two thoughts. If we have been constantly running behind desires, the gap between two thoughts will be really small for us. When we learn to relax into the present, the gap between two thoughts increases and the three kṣaṇas can be a long time. In three kṣaṇas, we take on the new body to fulfill whatever desires were unfulfilled when we left the previous body. Here, Kṛṣṇa says that on taking birth, we gain the intelligence of the previous body and continue the journey where we left off. Early morning, the thought with which we enter into the body, which makes us assume the body, is going to play a major role in our consciousness. The first thought is going to play a major role in our consciousness throughout the day.

Kṛṣṇa is actually giving a technique on how to become Kṛṣṇa, how to enter into Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, to become an Incarnation. The man who assumes the body out of love and compassion is an Incarnation. If we assume the body out of greed or fear, we are human. Early morning, let the first thought be gratitude. Let it be out of love and compassion. Our whole life will become pure eternal bliss, Nithyānanda.

6.44 Due to the practice in his previous life, he certainly gets attracted automatically to Yoga and he is inquisitive about Yoga and transcends the scriptures.

6.45 And when the Yogī engages himself with sincere endevour in progressing fruther, being cleansed of all incompletions, then ultimately, achieving perfection [saṁsiddhi] after many births of practice, he attains the highest state [parām-gati].

6.46 A Yogī is greater than the ascetic [tapasvī], greater than the wise [jñāni] and greater than the fruitive worker. Therefore, Arjuna, do become a Yogī.

6.47 Of all Yogīs, one who always lives in Me, thinking of Me within himself, who worships Me in full faith, he is the most intimately united with Me in Yoga and is the highest of all Yogīs; that is My opinion.

Why do we assume the body? We think that we can experience bliss through the body and mind; that

is why we assume the body. When we realize that bliss cannot be experienced through the body or mind, we know that going beyond the body is the only way to experience it. Then we will not assume the body. Assuming the human body is simply our choice.

In these verses, Kṛṣṇa promises a few things. He says that whatever we have learned in one life does not get wasted. We do not start from ground zero in the next birth. We start from where we left off. Our vāsanas, our mindset in one birth, continues into another. He also promises that if we keep practicing, if we keep trying, we will be cleansed of all sins and reach the highest state. Such a person, Kṛṣṇa promises, will reach Him. At the end of the day, what Kṛṣṇa implies is this: We need to do our bit. We need to practice yoga, the path that leads to self-awareness, to self-completion, the path that leads to Kṛṣṇa, with dedication, perseverance, with integrity and authenticity. There is no other way. There is no short cut. Once you do your bit, the Master promises deliverance. He promises that you will be one with Him. We will enter into a technique given by Śrī Kṛṣṇa to go beyond the mind, to awaken our senses, to look in.

Please sit straight and close your eyes. Keep your head, neck and spine, all three in a straight line. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible and as deeply as possible. Slowly, in a relaxed way, bring your awareness to your ājña cakra. Concentrate between the two eyebrows. Bring your awareness between the two eyebrows.

Meditate on the pure light energy. If your mind wanders here and there, don't worry. When you remember, bring it back again and relax in your ājña cakra, between your eyebrows. Don't concentrate. In a very relaxed way, be aware of the ājña cakra, the space in between the two eyebrows.

Slowly, very slowly bring your mind to your heart and meditate on your heart center. If you want, you can touch your heart center with the hand and feel it. Try to bring your awareness to the heart center. Try to remember the heart center. Forget all other parts of your body; forget your mind. Just become the heart center. Just be in the heart center. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. May you experience your pure inner space. May you experience the eternal bliss, Nityānanda. When we start acting from the heart, we don't calculate. The very calculation disappears, the 'I, I, I' disappears. And naturally our senses become sensitive. So try to continuously remember this heart region, anāhata cakra.

Naturally, we will have awareness in the ājña also. In the last session, Kṛṣṇa gave the technique to be in the ājña. Today, He says start with the ājña and come down to anāhata. This is because in the heart, there is a possibility of much more happening. The possibility of reaching is easier and greater in the heart. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Let you be in the heart.’

Look in! You will realize ‘You are That.’ Just look in, you will experience the eternal bliss, Nitya-ānanda. Let us pray to that Ultimate Energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa to give us all the Eternal Bliss, Nityānanda.

Thus ends the sixth chapter named Dhyāna Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Path of Meditation,’ 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