The art of Listening🔗

Through the entire opening chapter of the Gītā, it is Arjuna who continuously speaks, while Kṛṣṇa listens, listens and listens!

Only an intelligent man will allow the other person to speak. We all continuously speak to each other, but a 'real' conversation does not happen. We simply carry out simultaneous monologues with each other. We are polite enough to pretend that we are listening, so that we will, in turn, be heard. You need intelligence to allow the other person to speak. You need intelligence to listen!

When you listen to others, you listen to yourself. And when you don't listen to others, you also don't listen to yourself. Are you getting it? Only when you listen to you, you will be able to listen to others. When you listen to others, you will also listen to YOU! Because any listening that happens, happens from the space of completion. Please understand, you can only listen when you are complete. If there is any incompletion in you, you will not be able to listen.

What is incompletion? For example, you are sitting here right now, hearing me speak, but you are not listening to me, you are thinking—'I have not done this, I have not done that, this has not happened, that has not happened, I am restless'—that is incompletion. If you have such incompletions inside, be very clear, you will not be listening to me. You may be sitting here out of compulsion or some other reason, but you will not be listening to me. And when you don't listen, more and more incompletions happen. It is a vicious circle.

If you listen, especially to the words that come out of the space of completion of an enlightened being, you will suddenly see that the energy of those very words goes and changes your inner space.

See, when you come to me and tell me about your problems, I give you my authentic listening. That is why you suddenly feel light; you suddenly feel that all your problems are not big anymore. It is the power of listening. Listening awakens your intuition. Listening awakens your innermost intelligence. Listening is GOD!

By His very listening, Kṛṣṇa is able to heal the restlessness in Arjuna, the incompletions in Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa is showing us the power of His completion, the power of His listening. He just listens while Arjuna empties himself. He allows Arjuna to speak into His pure listening. Now, the real Gītā can start!

Please understand, when Kṛṣṇa listens to Arjuna, He is interested in Arjuna's real problem, not what Arjuna is complaining about. And He is not interested in just expressing what He knows. He allows Arjuna to speak into His listening, so that He can go to the root of the problem and address the issue. He knows that once He allows Arjuna to express his problems, Arjuna himself can find a solution to them. And as Arjuna continues to speak, he exposes the root of his problem—his root thought pattern.

Let me define root thought pattern.

The first strong cognition you receive in your life, which influences you to continue to function based on the same cognition, is a root thought pattern! It is the pattern you develop when powerlessness takes you over for the first time in your life. Your pure cognition is imbalanced and your mind is born!

Listen! The way you behave, feel and respond, all come from this root thought pattern. It is the limiting cognition that happens in you and fills you at a very young age, overpowering you. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes it is greed, sometimes it is jealousy and sometimes it is the decision to prove yourself. Sometimes, it is just plain confusion and worry!

Throughout the initial chapters of the Gītā, Arjuna is operating out of his root thought pattern—his parental and societal conditioning— struggling with all the dos and don'ts that he learnt from society. The moment he sees that the enemy he has to fight are his own extended family, he is overcome by powerlessness and refuses to fight, lamenting, 'svajanam, svajanam!'—my people, my people! The bonds of family were rooted in his very identity, and to Arjuna, to cut these bonds was to destroy himself! This was Arjuna's

dilemma.

It is here that the Gītā begins, as Kṛṣṇa finally begins to speak.

In the succeeding chapters of the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa compassionately guides Arjuna, releasing him from his root thought pattern, guiding him to completion, and leading him to the ultimate knowledge—the knowledge of the Self, ātmajñāna. Arjuna is re-established in jīvanmukti, Living Enlightenment; the space of living Advaita.

The essence of Kṛṣṇa’s teachings in the Gītā can be understood through four simple but powerful Universal principles, the four tattvas—Integrity, Authenticity, Responsibility and Enriching. These four principles awaken the four innate great powers within us.

Let me define these principles.

Integrity (sampūrti) is you fulfilling the word and thought you give to yourself and to others, and experiencing a state of ‘pūrṇatva’—completion with yourself and with life.

Authenticity (śraddha) is you being established in the peak of your capability, and responding to life from who you perceive yourself to be for yourself, who you project yourself to be for others, and, what others expect you to be for them.

Responsibility (upāyanam) is living and responding to life from the truth that you are the source of, and therefore, you are responsible for all happenings in and around you.

Enriching (āpyāyanam) is you taking responsibility with integrity and authenticity, that you are committed to continuously enriching, which is expanding yourself and life, in and around you.

Any problem or conflict you have in your life can be handled very practically, efficiently and skillfully with these four principles. I can say with my entire experience that these four principles are the essence of all spiritual scriptures! They are the essence of life.

These four spiritual principles awaken four great inner powers in you. Each tattva is the key to unlock a corresponding power in you. Now, I will reveal these four inner powers that manifest when Kṛṣṇa’s message is internalized and lived.

Listen! You actually have the power to simply manifest the reality of your choice!

Whether you know it or not, whether you believe it not, in each one of you is an enormous potential energy that expresses as four great powers.

To be able to unlock these great powers inside you, you must first understand a little more about yourself. They are related to the four major dimensions of your life—your words, your thinking, your emotions, and your living. When you awaken your peak possibility in each of these dimensions, it becomes a great power and support in your life.

These four inner powers are…

The power of words or vāk śakti. The power of words will be available to you when you practice Integrity.

The power of thoughts or mano śakti. The power of thinking will be open to you when you practice Authenticity.

The power of feeling or prema śakti. The power of feeling will be possible when you practice Responsibility.

The power of living or ātma śakti. The power of living will be established in you the moment you Enrich others.

Now, I will summarize Kṛṣṇa's teachings through these tattvas and their powers.

Listen!

Your words are your life. Integrity is the key that unlocks the power of words.

We all know honesty. Honesty is more like ethics, morality. But with the tattva of integrity, you are taking a step deeper than honesty. With honesty, you only have to honor the words that you give to others. With integrity, you also have to honor the words that you give to yourself. Honesty is not integrity. Integrity is honesty also.

It is very unfortunate that society teaches you to honor the words that you give to others, but forgets to teach you to honor the words that you give to yourself. The words you give to yourself are as important as— or more important than—the words you give to others. Because the flow of your life—the amount of contentment that you feel in your life, the degree of fulfillment 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!

Please understand, the words you give to yourself form the bone structure of your life. If you commit with yourself that you will become a doctor and you don't honor that word, and you don't even bother to complete that word inside your heart, then that word hangs inside you as a broken commitment given by you! Integrity is you not carrying the hangover of the commitments you have made, either to yourself or to others.

When you break the commitments you give to you, you lose self-confidence. The more commitments you give and break, the more your self-confidence is lost. You lose confidence in you! When you break the commitments you give to others, it takes away their confidence in you. When you break the words you have given to yourself, you lose confidence in yourself. When you don't honor the words you give, and don't even bother to complete with them, the broken commitments that hang in your heart take away your self-confidence in life!

This is what happens to Arjuna on the battlefield.

Arjuna is a kṣatriya by birth, a warrior, a Pāṇḍava prince. When the Pāṇḍavas decide to wage war against their Kaurava cousins, Arjuna is perfectly aware that this includes a large part of his extended family! Yet he makes the decision to fight as per his dharma, as per his path as a kṣatriya. But when he enters the battlefield, he only sees 'friends', 'teachers', 'uncles' and 'relatives' leading the army, not the evil men who snatched away his kingdom and publicly insulted his brother and wife! Caught in the clutches of his parental conditioning, Arjuna instantly becomes powerless and decides to leave the battlefield.

By trying to escape from the battle, Arjuna falls completely out of integrity with his dharma as a warrior; he has slipped from his dharma. As a kṣatriya, he should have fulfilled the words he gave to himself, to his family, and to his Master; and he should have had the courage to face his decision of waging war against the Kauravas. Otherwise, he should not have taken the decision for war! But by becoming powerless and preparing to leave the battlefield, Arjuna is out of integrity with his dharma. This is what happens when you function out of your root pattern. You fall out of integrity with the words you give to yourself and others, and the root pattern takes over your response to life!

Understand, taking responsibility for your words is practicing dharma, the right living. In Mahābhārat, dharma is defined as 'This is the essence of dharma. Do not do unto others that which would cause pain when done to you.'

The only way to come out of lack of integrity is through completion.

Through His dialogues with Arjuna on sāṅkhya yoga and karma yoga, the nature of life and the purpose of action, Kṛṣṇa helps Arjuna find the right understanding to complete with the limiting cognition created by his root thought pattern. Kṛṣṇa teaches Arjuna two key concepts— Nityam (the nature of the Eternal) and na tvam śocitumarhasi (the pointlessness of grieving). By revealing to Arjuna the truth about his true eternal self, Kṛṣṇa helps him with the right understanding to go beyond all the arguments of his logic and complete

with his root pattern.

Arjuna then awakens his power of words that brings him the spontaneous intelligence and the clarity to use the right words to verbalize his real self-doubts. His initial powerless words of grief such as, ‘katham bhīṣmamahaṁ saṅkhye droṇaṁ ca madhūsudana (2.4)—O Madhūsudana, how can I oppose Bhīṣma and Drona in the battle who are worthy of my worship?’, now turn into words of enquiry such as, ‘sthitaprajñasya kā bhāṣā samādhistaye keśava (2.54)—what are the descriptions of the steady one who is merged in the awareness of truth and wisdom? How does he speak, how does he sit and how does he walk?’

Now, Arjuna is ready for the next lesson—Authenticity, the power of thinking.

With authenticity, you open the power of thinking in you!

When you unlock the power of thinking, you will be able to spontaneously focus your thoughts to achieve your highest potential.

Kṛṣṇa now initiates Arjuna into the path of authenticity in action and the path of knowledge in renunciation in Karma Yoga and Jñāna-karma-sannyāsa Yoga. ‘Yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam—Yoga is authenticity in action,’ declares Kṛṣṇa.

The entire teaching of Bhagavad Gītā can be summarized in these two verses. Nothing more can be said or ever needs to be said about why and how one should perform.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘You have the right only to work, but never to the results of that work. Let not the outcome be your motive; but do not move into inaction. Do what you have to do with a complete inner space centered on yoga. Be balanced in success and failure. Evenness of mind is yoga.’

He emphasizes again and again to be complete in yoga and drop all attachments—‘Act without attachment. Do not worry about the success and failure in results of your actions. Surrender yourself to the wisdom of completion.’

I am going to share an important concept here.

Listen! You don’t have just a single identity, as you imagine. You have four identities!

Please understand, what you consider as you has four dimensions.

All these identities put together is YOU.

Authenticity is nothing but keeping your four identities in tune and being at the peak of all four dimensions of you.

Usually, what you think as you—your mamakāra, inner image is always less than what you are, and what you project as yourself to others—your ahaṁkāra, outer image is always more than what you are. For example,

you may experience yourself as a very fearful person, but you will always project yourself as strong and powerful. Rarely, some people have a high mamakāra, but they project a low ahamkāra to others. And many times, the others' image or anyakāra that others have about you will be completely different from both your mamakāra and your ahaṁkāra!

When one identity is fighting with another identity, how can your thinking be focused? All your energy is going to be used in reconciling your fighting identities. When all your identities or 'images' are in tune, all your thinking will be aligned in one direction. Your thinking becomes clear and sharp, like a laser beam. You will awaken the power of thinking.

Authenticity is not just you living at what you think as your peak, or what you project as your peak, but also at what others think as your peak and what you experience life to be for you. Only when you stretch yourself to others' image and expectations about you, you express extraordinary capacities and miracle powers.

Every time you raise yourself and stretch yourself to fulfill others' anyakāra, you achieve completion. You achieve fulfillment. You achieve union. Liberation from your individual identity happens to you only when you raise yourself to others' anyakāra. When you stretch yourself to others' anyakāra, liberation from ahaṁkāra and mamakāra happens!

You may think, 'I am responsible for what I feel as me, and what I project as me to others. But why should I take responsibility for others' expectations about me?'

As long as you think that you are stretching just because of others' expectation, you will carry continuous irritation, agitation and heaviness. Understand this important truth—It is YOU who is sitting in the inner consciousness of those who have expectations about you, and making them expect things from you!

Listen: when you are not ready to listen to your own heart and expand, the Divine helps you by creating the same expectation in others, so that you can expand! It is some part of you which is suppressed by you, which wants to realize itself, that goes and sits in another's heart and becomes their expectation about you, so that the suppressed part is realized!

At the root of mamakāra is your jīva—your soul, in which all of us are one. If you suppress it in one body, it simply comes out in another body. When you are suppressing your expectations (mamakāra) about you in your own body, it simply comes out as anyakāra in another's body. Nobody else is forcing you. It is your own expectation about you, giving you one more chance! Now, it is no more somebody else's anyakāra. You are simply expanding to fulfill your own mamakāra and ahaṁkāra.

Others' expectation about you is nothing but a reminder, another chance that Bhagavān (Divine) gives you to realize yourself. When you realize that this is also your own expectation about you, you will have fulfillment!

The Bhagavad Gītā is the manifestation of Arjuna's suppressed longing to realize his own divine self. With authenticity, Arjuna discovers his power of thinking. He is now able to dive deeper into his suppressed thoughts and allows them to surface in Kṛṣṇa's Divine presence!

In the early chapters, Kṛṣṇa shares His anyakāra for Arjuna. He urges Arjuna to realize his eternal blissful self. He gives him an intellectual understanding of this truth. Through the chapters of Jñāna-karmasannyāsa Yogaḥ and Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, Kṛṣṇa guides Arjuna on the ways to achieve this.

Kṛṣṇa gives the ultimate winning strategy of life to Arjuna—to stand up with the courage of authenticity in all his actions—yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam. He urges Arjuna to devote himself to yoga to expand himself to his peak energy. Kṛṣṇa then deepens Arjuna's understanding by revealing to him the deeper truths of death, renunciation and sannyāsa.

Once this understanding has settled in Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa leads him to the next tattva, Responsibility, the power of feeling.

Kṛṣṇa's teachings in the next chapter, Dhyāna Yoga, can be summarized in these words—'Look in' and

‘Take responsibility to raise yourself ’.

Listen! Responsibility is the key that awakens the power of feeling. The power of feeling is unlocked when you recognize yourself as a leader and take responsibility for everything in and around you!

Here, Kṛṣṇa teaches Arjuna the techniques to go beyond the mind and senses and become liberated. He guides Arjuna to rise to the level of Īśvaratva, leadership consciousness and become like Himself.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says,

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

By this Kṛṣṇa means—if you know the technique of how to raise yourself by yourself, you are the friend of your Self. If you let yourself down, you are the enemy of your Self!

Listen: Responsibility means thinking, feeling, acting and cognizing life from the truth that YOU are the source of everything; therefore, you are responsible for all happenings inside you and around you.

I know the big question you will all have now! You must be thinking, ‘How can I be responsible for everything happening around me? I can be held responsible for what is happening inside me. How can I be held responsible for what is happening outside me? For example, if an accident happens in my life, how can I be responsible?’

Everybody asks this question. Let me answer you.

• A person who does not feel responsible even for his own actions is an animal. He lives at a very low level of consciousness!

• A person who feels responsible for his own actions is a human being. He lives at the middle level of consciousness.

• A person who takes responsibility even for others’ actions is Divine. He lives in leadership consciousness, Īśvaratva.

Please understand, only when you feel that you are responsible for everything happening in and around you, you will start looking into the truth and start seeing the possibility for a solution. Only when you take responsibility will you even find the solution!

Listen. When you take responsibility, the higher energies express through you. Even if you take one step towards responsibility, the Cosmos takes a thousand steps towards you, taking responsibility for you. When you are in the space of responsibility, both your inner space and your outer space support you. The whole Universe supports you, because the Universe experiences its fulfillment through the cognition of those who feel responsible.

Take responsibility in every situation. When you don’t feel responsible, you are a drop in the ocean. When you feel responsible, you are the ocean in a drop! When you take responsibility, Īśvaratva, leadership consciousness starts happening in you.

The power of feeling is nothing but your ability to realize yourself as the source of all the happenings in your life. This understanding gives you tremendous control over your own life and gives you the power to be a positive influence in the life of others.

With responsibility, life happens to you. But life always demands your expansion, because expansion is the natural flow of life. The more you engage with life, the greater the expansion that will be demanded of you. When you take responsibility for whatever is seen and experienced by you, that which is unseen and un-experienced by you takes responsibility for you! If you take responsibility for the known part of God and the world, the unknown part of God and the world takes responsibility for you. When God takes responsibility for you, you are God. You are an Incarnation!

Kṛṣṇa guides Arjuna to realize Kṛṣṇa consciousness through the tattva of responsibility. Kṛṣṇa’s teaching

of responsibility culminates in Viśvarūpa Darśan, where He blesses Arjuna with a glimpse of His Cosmic dimension, His infinite expansion—a foretaste of Arjuna’s own Enlightenment.

Listen.

Your expansion frightens you. Whenever bigness is demanded of you, whenever you feel you are being ‘forced’ to expand, you shrink even further into your comfort zone. Your tiredness, your weakness, your powerlessness all these are nothing but the resistance you have to seeing your own bigness!

That is what becomes of Arjuna after Viśvarūpa Darśan, the fear of expansion overtakes him. But being devoted to Kṛṣṇa, the embodiment of Cosmos, Arjuna responsibly expands and awakens his Enlightenment with the next tattva of enriching, the power of living. Kṛṣṇa assures him after the darśan that only by taking the responsibility to enrich others—by doing His work, by being undividedly devoted onto Him, can Arjuna expand himself into his highest possibility—madkarma-kṛn mad-paramo mad-bhaktaḥ (11.55)!

We now come to the fourth tattva—enriching. Enriching means infusing all these three tattvas continuously, in your life and others’ lives! You may ask, ‘I can understand why I should enrich myself. But why should I enrich others?’

Listen. Life happens to you with others! The purpose for which you are born is for enriching yourself and others. When you operate from this understanding, you are most alive, you are at your peak and living enlightenment.

Enriching is the key that unlocks the power of living in you!

Please understand, every relationship you experience is just one dimension of you. It is your son who makes you a father, it is your wife who makes you a husband, it is your followers who make you a leader. Each significant relationship in your life is one dimension of you. And unless you fulfill all your dimensions, how can you be fulfilled?

Again and again, the ego forgets, the ahaṁkāra forgets, that all its joy comes only when it stretches itself to others’ anyakāra (expectations), not when it fights with others’ ahaṁkāra! You very conveniently forget this important fact and take life happening to you with others for granted. You think, ‘My brother has to behave like a brother! My father has to behave like a father! My teacher has to behave like a teacher,’ without taking the responsibility or understanding that you should also fulfill your role! Why should the teacher enrich the student, if the student does not take the responsibility of enriching the teacher?

Kṛṣṇa beautifully enriches Arjuna—‘If you don’t do yajña (enriching sacrifice) and give back to the Divine for what you receive, you are a thief!—yo bhuṅkte stena eva saḥ (3.12).’ It means that anything you receive from the Cosmos without enriching in return, is stolen!

Please understand, enriching means taking responsibility for everyone. I tell you, when you take responsibility for others, extraordinary powers start flowing through you! When you start enriching others, the whole Cosmos starts expressing through you. Whenever you enrich others, the energy that flows through you is cosmic energy. If you want to taste and experience cosmic energy, just start enriching others! The excitement you feel, the freshness you feel and the readiness, the joy and the inspiration that happens in you is all Cosmic energy, pure Cosmic energy.

Just see Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa! He is the ultimate embodiment of enriching. His very presence is enriching. Throughout the Gītā, He takes responsibility for Arjuna’s inauthenticity, for Arjuna’s confusion, without giving up on him. The entire Gītā itself is the manifestation of His enriching expression. Bhagavad Gītā is Lord Kṛṣṇa’s gift to the world, enriching generations with its timeless truths. Lord Kṛṣṇa blesses Arjuna and humanity with the ultimate tools to look inward and explode in Divine Consciousness.

Again and again, Kṛṣṇa beautifully says—‘To know your Self is to know God.’

What Kṛṣṇa says is true for everyone. Whether you accept it or not, any idea that you have about yourself, other than the understanding that you are God, is low self-esteem! What you are lacking is just the awareness of the truth. Once you realize the truth that you are God, there is no difference between you and Kṛṣṇa. You are enlightened.

Kṛṣṇa is so compassionate that He expresses the whole Bhagavad Gītā just to prove this. That is what Kṛṣṇa came to prove. He has no need to prove that He is God. His mission is to prove that you are God! His mission is to enlighten Arjuna and through Arjuna, the rest of humanity. Kṛṣṇa’s expression is the ultimate

enriching, because he takes responsibility even for your enlightenment! That is why He concludes the Bhagavad Gītā with the importance of completing with one's root patterns and joyfully surrendering to Life.

Kṛṣṇa showers Himself on Arjuna, waking him up to the experience of the Whole. He simply says, 'Drop everything and surrender onto Me. Drop everything you know as dharma, whatever you think you know as life, just drop it! I will liberate you from all sinful reactions. Do not worry.'

The Enlightened Master is nothing but concentrated Life! When you drop your conflicts, your root patterns and surrender to His wisdom, He liberates you. This is the ultimate enriching!

Please understand, these four tattvas are the very nectar pot of spirituality. They exist in our very DNA. They are the natural flow of life and they can solve any problem.

When you live these tattvas, you will find that

These four Universal principles will continuously inspire, encourage and make you experience your ultimate possibility. When you live these tattvas, you will constantly expand and fulfill the very purpose for which the Bhagavad Gītā was delivered!