Verses 1.31–1.35🔗

Arjuna now started developing his theme in detail. He started expressing his doubts with clarity. One may ask, ‘How can such doubts be clear?’ Doubts need to be clear if they are to be resolved. Thoughts need to be integrated if they need to be complete. Listen. A clearly expressed word is fulfillment. The word which constantly keeps you in completion and expands you is Integrity. Everything starts with the word. Unclear doubts lead only to more confusion.Thoughts and words lacking integrity lead to incompletions. Unintelligent beings that lack integrity have unclear doubts. Integrated Listening to yourself Arjuna’s doubts were precise. Arjuna started listening to himself. Listening to you is the first step to spirituality.

Constantly listening to your inner space is the beginning of integrity. Listening brings integrity into our words. We never ever really listen, either to ourselves or to others. When you really start listening to yourself, you will naturally become more aware of the words you give to yourself and others. You will also have the ability to listen to others’ words with integrity. Listening is directly connected to your ability to handle reality as it IS, without creating your own unconscious ideas and conclusions. When you don’t have listening, you always come to a conclusion even before the information is cognized in you. That is why the very first step of Hindu spiritual practice is Śravana, Integrated Listening.

Because Arjuna was listening to himself, he started thinking with integrity. When we bring integrity in our thinking, the first thing is that we will know what is happening inside us. Arjuna has clarity about the doubts arising inside him, and is now exposed to his own inauthenticies. How could he seek happiness through destruction of his kinsmen, he asked. How could any good come out of this action? How could he desire power, possessions and pleasures through such action? And if he did gain those things as a result of killing his family, of what use would such a life be to him? Though Arjuna was in a dilemma, it was a dilemma born out of intelligence, not out of ignorance.

Arjuna had been taught all his life to seek power, possessions and pleasures, and he had done it. Up to this point, he had not come across a single situation where the cost of acquiring these had seemed to be greater than the accruing profit, the resulting enjoyment. Perhaps he had never bothered to evaluate the cost and benefits. For the first time in his life, he has faced a situation that forces him to evaluate his options. ‘Do I forge ahead and destroy what is dear to me so that I get more power and possibly more pleasure?’ he asks. What a fundamental question, one that each one of us should ask ourselves.

How often do we lack integrity and go behind activities that promise us more material benefits, even though we know that these may in some way damage our life or the lives of those we care about? The problem is that life is not so predictable, yet we try to control it as if it is. The bigger problem is that we are deeply conditioned by our root thought patterns, our unconscious space, which ensures that in spite of all precautions, we keep making the same mistakes, living our past memories even in our present. Please listen! The ideas we carry about our old failures, every idea we carry about the past, is wrong.

Before changing our future, by avoiding or replicating our past, we need change our past. Unless we change our past, we cannot change our future. We will immediately think, ‘How can I change my past? It has already happened.’ No! The idea we carry about our past is completely wrong. We are not carrying it as it happened. We are carrying the edited version, with all the sound effects, volume effects and music effects, etc! People usually say, ‘Don’t bother about the past, change your future!’ I tell you‚ don’t bother about the future; change your past. Because your future lies in the past! Change your past. The hangover you carry about the past is the disease you carry.

Unless you complete with the past, your past cannot be transformed. I tell you, not having the hangover with the words you committed with you and with others, is Integrity. Not having the load of the past negativity is Integrity. Positivity means absence of the load of the past negativity. Integrity starts only when we are in a state of completion, when we complete with the root thought pattern . Very few of us stop and bring integrity to our thinking and question the purpose and value of our actions. With few exceptions, we are taught how to live and what to do with our lives, first by our families and later by society.

We do our best to seek fulfillment. Most often, we are taught the wrong mediocre ideas about life, and try to keep up with our personal and professional commitments, and it never occurs to us to ask ourselves—are we truly fulfilled and successful? Never do we doubt, ‘Why am I doing, what I am doing?’ Instead, our lives become a constant series of—’what next, what next?’ For example, as youngsters we think, ‘As soon as I get out of my parents’ house and into college, I will be happy.’ When that is accomplished, our minds immediately rush to the next goal, ‘As soon as I graduate and get a good job or career I will be happy.’

Once that is done, it is marriage, home, children, and vacation. On and on it goes, until we have all the things that we want but not the completion for which we worked. Invariably we realize only in our old age that something is wrong in the way we worked and we don’t know why. If we look into our lives, exactly this madness is going on. The ‘why’ is not kept alive in us consistently. We do not discover the ‘why,’ ‘for what’ we are doing things! ‘What is the Why of my Life?’ cries Arjuna It takes a lot of courage of authenticity to bring integrated listening to our thinking, to stop and question our lives, our actions and society’s plan for us.

Understand, the attitude of asking ‘WHY’ needs awareness, but we forget to ask the ‘why’. We don’t take our thoughts, words and deeds to the logical conclusion. It takes authenticity, the power of thinking, the inner strength to say to the world, ‘Stop, I want to get off; I want to know why am I doing, what I am doing? I want to seek true inner bliss!’ It takes tremendous courage of authenticity to recognize the transitory nature of life and its limited offer of happiness, to say—‘I want something more.’ It takes enormous courage to complete with the materialism of the world to seek one’s true purpose in life.

I tell you, if just the ‘why’ is kept alive, ‘why am I feeling powerless?’, ‘why am I feeling tired’, ‘why am I feeling sick?’, ‘why am I depressed?’; just if the ‘why’ is strong enough to take you to the logical conclusion, our problems will be solved. If we just keep this one question alive, ‘Why am I doing what I am doing?’ and are able to take this one question to the logical conclusion in our life, I tell you, we will be enlightened. You will radiate enriching! ‘What is the purpose of my life, Kṛṣṇa?’ wailed Arjuna. Arjuna is now thinking with integrity and questioning himself, his training and his purpose when faced with the task of fighting against his kinsmen.

The scene from his chariot has taken him off balance! In his heart he knows that what he is about to do is correct. All of his training as a kṣatriya confirms this as well. But when faced with the reality of actually killing those who have been near and dear to him, he loses his will. He is feeling completely powerless. Why? Arjuna is a courageous man. Only a courageous person will have the confidence to open himself up so transparently and expose his innermost fear patterns, his lack of integrity and inauthenticities and seek help. Arjuna was not depressed, he was confused. He could certainly differentiate between right and wrong.

His sudden confusion grew out of his awareness of his parental and societal patterns that what he had been taught throughout his life, might be wrong! Fortunately for Arjuna, his charioteer is none other than Kṛṣṇa Himself, Lord of all beings and knower of all! Only He can see what is at the heart of Arjuna’s grief. Only He could provide answers to Arjuna’s doubts and completion to his dilemma. Arjuna argues that the reason one would fight to gain power and wealth was for the sake of one’s near and dear ones. However, his near and dear ones were the people with whom Arjuna should fight! Even if they killed him, he would not consider killing them at any cost, ‘If I would not kill them for all the riches of the three worlds, why would I destroy them for the sake of earth, this one world, alone?

Arjuna questioned Kṛṣṇa. When asking, Arjuna calls Kṛṣṇa as Madhusūdana, which means the slayer of the demon Madhu. Arjuna implies that Kṛṣṇa may be a destroyer, but Arjuna himself would not like to be one like Him. Arjuna’s dilemma had now become deeper and more complicated. He had now got into justifications as to why he should not kill; he began to justify his lack of integrity and authenticity. To any observer, his dilemma had validity. This is a common cunning, safe game we all play with ourselves. When the stakes are high in any competitive environment, when we don’t want to expand to our peak capability, we play this inauthentic game.

We fantasize about rewards far greater than what could possibly materialize. The more unrealistic and unlikely the reward, the easier it is to refuse it. Arjuna is playing this same safe, inauthentic game. Understand, when we are authentic, we will commit words which express our maximum peak capacity, as per our understanding, and as per others’ understanding of our peak capacity. When we unlock the power of thinking, we will be able to spontaneously focus our thoughts to achieve our highest potential. Constantly functioning at your peak possibility is Authenticity. Authenticity is the key that unlocks the power of thinking, mano śakti. Arjuna said he would not kill even if he were to be killed.

This is just a spontaneous lie. I tell you, spontaneous lying means you feel powerless. You are inauthentic to yourself. It is Arjuna’s own loss of identity that is bothering him, the loss of identity that would result from the destruction of his lineage. Arjuna then says that he would not consider killing his kinsmen and teachers, even if he were offered all the three worlds of Universe in return. Why then, he queries, would the reward of just this planet Earth, be attractive to him? Who was offering Arjuna the three worlds anyway? The notion was a figment of his overexcited imagination born out of his powerlessness. If Kṛṣṇa had turned around and offered Arjuna the control of the Universe, Arjuna’s dilemma would have actually become far worse!

However, posing it as a symbolic question as Arjuna did, made him look noble. Arjuna is consoling himself with the idea that the rewards of winning this battle are too small and that even if he were to be offered control of the Universe, he would not be tempted. It is a safe position he is taking, since the chances of his being offered the control of the Universe are infinitely small. What matters is that it calms his bruised, powerless mind and keeps the focus off the real source of his fear. Time and again, people play this safe game with themselves and others. It starts when we cannot face the truth with integrity and authenticity and therefore cannot tell the truth.

We just give up on ourselves and go out-of-integrity with our words and become inauthentic with our thinking. For the majority of us, our identity lies in the roles we play, the responsibilities we have, the worrying we do and the acceptance that we receive from others. Without these possessions and relationships to form the foundation of our personalities, without the foundation of ‘mine,’ we feel lost and have no ‘I.’ Like us, Arjuna found it better to invent a host of other inauthentic reasons to avoid facing the truth. We create illusions in our mind about the situations we face, about how critical they are to our existence. Then we create fantasies in our minds about what is going to happen to us, be it an imagined good or difficulty.

We do everything except being in integrity and authenticity with our space of positivity and possibility, and facing the present moment with completion. As we will see later, facing the present moment with the space of completion, pūrṇatva; living the four spiritual principles of life— integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching, and awakening the four great inner powers is precisely what Kṛṣṇa forces Arjuna to do. When Arjuna is able to surrender to Kṛṣṇa’s teachings and brings completion to his root patterns, then his self-doubts and illusions dissolve. Arjuna then realizes the truth, satya of these sacred tattvas and reaches his highest possibility—living enlightenment, jīvan mukti. He understands what he needs to do and becomes a spiritual warrior, a pure instrument of Kṛṣṇa and goes about powerfully radiating responsibility, enriching himself and the world with Divine purpose.