Verses 10.8–10.11🔗

Now, instead of understanding these statements of Kṛṣṇa intellectually, we should try experiencing them. In the deep meditative mood, let us feel connected to the Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to our very life source, to our very life energy. Let us enter into meditation, because all the following verses in this chapter must be experienced. They cannot be understood. There is nothing much to understand. Later Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Amongst the Ṛṣi, I am Nārada. Among the months, I am Margazhi. Among the rivers, I am Gangā. Among the fish, I am Makara.’ He explains His glories at length. We may think, ‘Why does He explain these things in a detailed way?’ He makes us understand, wherever we see the glory, wherever we see the Divine radiating, there lies the greatness.

We realize this is true when we start experiencing, when we deeply understand these basic truths of completing with ourselves and connecting with the Universe. We experience life as divine and a blessing when we understand these things. It happens when we connect with the Divine, when we trust, when we completely open up, when we don’t have other vested interests and when we do not beg for anything from life. As long as we are begging for things in the hope that, ‘with this, I will feel blissful,’ or ‘with that, I will feel blissful’, we will ask only for this or that. Only when we understand, ‘I want just Him, nothing else.

I want the pure experience of the Divine, nothing else,’ we experience the whole of Existence in a totally different way. The cognitive shift starts happening in us. I can imagine how Arjuna felt when Kṛṣṇa revealed these things for the first time, inch by inch. ‘Oh Arjuna, I am that. I am this. I am everything.’ Arjuna may not have said anything, but he surely must have felt that he was expanding. Understand this example: You and your husband were ordinary people when you were first married. Slowly, your husband entered politics and became a mayor. After five years, he became governor, a well-known person. Already, you feel connected to him since he is your husband.

Now, he becomes a famous person or you understand him as a big person. You deeply feel the gratefulness or the gratitude to him because his expansion has helped bring about yours. In the same way, Arjuna already felt deeply connected to Kṛṣṇa as his friend. Now, he understands the glories of Kṛṣṇa. When Kṛṣṇa reveals His glories and expands, Arjuna also expands. He says, ‘Oh God! I am a friend of such a great person. Oh Kṛṣṇa, You are a great person. I am your friend. I am deeply connected to You.’ When we deeply feel connected to the Master and He expresses His glory, we expand. Here, Arjuna is enjoying the same mood that Kṛṣṇa enjoys.

Inch by inch, Arjuna is enjoying the joy and bliss. Arjuna asks, ‘Oh Lord! It is so beautiful. I never feel bored. Please tell Vibhūti Yogaḥ You Are The Ultimate 765 me again and again, all of your glories.’ Always Engage In Me Kṛṣṇa explains inch by inch. He reveals who He is and how He is shining. He talks about Līlā dhyāna, meditating on the divine play of the Lord. What the eyes see intensely gets registered in the mind. What gets registered in the mind, the eyes see intensely. When the mind is engaged in the Divine, when the heart is captivated by the Divine, we automatically live every moment remembering the Divine.

We enjoy talking to each other about the Divine glories because all around us, we see these glories. We are so full of Divine ecstasy and bliss, so fully complete and not wanting anything, because we see life overflowing with Divine bliss and glory. This was the state of the gopīs, the blessed girls who tended cattle in Kṛṣṇa’s home Briṇdāvan. They constantly played with Kṛṣṇa from the time of His infancy. Their entire world revolved around Him. Their minds and hearts were filled with Kṛṣṇa, with no intellect filtering their emotions. Viṣṇu, whose incarnation Kṛṣṇa is, wanted to teach a lesson to his disciple, Nārada. Nārada considered himself to be Viṣṇu’s greatest devotee.

Kṛṣṇa played His līlā (divine play) and pretended he had a headache. His devotees brought him all kinds of medicines, which he tried and pronounced useless. He told them, ‘The only substance that will cure my malaise is the dust from the feet of a true devotee.’ Nārada and the great sages were shocked. How could they allow the dust of their feet to fall on their Master’s head? ‘It will be a sacrilege,’ they argued. One day Viṣṇu pretended to become annoyed. He told Nārada, ‘Get out of My sight. Go to the gopīs in Briṇdāvan and tell them what I said and seek a solution.’ When Nārada reached Briṇḍāvan, the gopīs were so busy with their chores that they would not talk to him.

Nārada explained, ‘I have come from Vaikunṭa.’ They were not impressed. He told them, ‘Vaikunṭa is the home of Viṣṇu.’ ‘Who is Viṣṇu?’ they asked. Nārada said, ‘Viṣṇu is Kṛṣṇa.’ As soon as he uttered the word Kṛṣṇa, they gathered around Nārada and asked him in one voice, ‘How is our Kṛṣṇa, our darling?’ Nārada said, ‘He is suffering from a headache.’ They asked, ‘What can we do? We cannot let our Kṛṣṇa suffer.’ Nārada told them that Viṣṇu had asked for the dust from the feet of one of his true devotees. One gopī immediately removed her upper cloth. She placed it on the ground and all the gopīs danced upon this cloth to collect the dust from their feet.

Folding the cloth, not worried that she had nothing covering her breasts, the gopī said, ‘Here take this to our Kṛṣṇa. We do not know which of us is his true devotee. So this has all the dust from all our feet. Go now and give it to Him.’ Nārada asked, ‘Aren’t you worried that you are giving Kṛṣṇa the dust from your feet to put on His head?’ In one voice, the gopīs answered, ‘Are you crazy? He, our Lord and Lover, is suffering and has asked for the dust from our feet. If it would cure Him, we are ready to dance on His head! We shall give our lives for Him.’

Nārada, humbled, returned to Vaikunṭa with the gopī’s upper cloth filled with dust from their feet. Viṣṇu took the cloth in His hands, smelled the dust and pronounced Himself fully cured. The sages, devas and Nārada watched in amazement. ‘What did they tell you, Nārada?’ He asked. ‘Did they give useless reasons and advance futile arguments as to why they could not apply the dust from their feet on their Lord and Master, as you all did?’ Vibhūti Yogaḥ You Are The Ultimate 767 Nārada hung his head in shame. Even to this day all main entrance steps to Viṣṇu temples have the imprint of feet carved upon them. These imprints represent the feet of devotees whose feet dust Viṣṇu covets more than all the crowns He is adorned with!

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘With mind and lives absorbed on Me, always enlightening one another and talking about My glories, the wise are content and blissful. To those who are always engaged in Me with love, I give them enlightenment for which they come to Me.’ teṣāṁ satata yuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ pṛīti pūrvakam I dadāmi buddhi yogaṁ taṁ yena mām upayānti te II 10.10 Kṛṣṇa here talks about satsang, the collection of people whose hearts, minds and bodies are immersed in Him. They are the ones who can talk about nothing except Him, who are filled with bliss and love for their Lord and Master. He promises He will provide them the intelligence to enlighten them and bring them to Him.

I keep telling my devotees about the importance of satsangs. These are regular get togethers where people listen to the Master’s words, dance to the kīrtans and go home with refreshed and reinforced memories of their Master. Everyone who attends satsangs regularly can tell you that the Master is present with them, wherever they may be, at that particular moment. Master Destroys Ignorance An ashram is an intensified satsang that is forever, twenty-four by seven. That is why I motivate groups of people to form ashrams, spiritual communities, where they can follow their spiritual quest with one-pointed minds. We are eligible to be part of an ashram community when we are deeply in love with our Master.

The motivation to live in an ashram is neither fear that he will hurt us if we leave, nor greed that he will take us to a non-existent heaven if we stay. Rather, it is love born out of this present moment of completion. We must have shed our entire ego and surrender ourselves to the One who has already surrendered Himself. Only then the process works. Otherwise, it is just the blind leading the blind, which is a cult. Here Kṛṣṇa talks about such an energy field, an ashram. An ashram is not a serious center of penance with old people meditating in painfully distorted postures. Come to one of our ashrams and see for yourself.

No one will be serious. They will be laughing all the time. They are not like Nārada and the sages engaged in intellectual arrogance. They are the gopīs who are in love with their Master; with their entire being filled with love for Him. Their being carries the space of brahmaṇyam bahuputratām, the feeling that they are the favorite inheritor of the cosmos. At the ashram, each one does what he can, noone forces them to do anything. But the energy of the Master provides them with intelligence to live for others, to enrich others to the peak of their possibility. It does not allow them to waste themselves in frivolous activities.

They live and radiate the truth that life is for enriching! One does not work out of fear, greed, motivation or necessity. An ashramite (ashram resident) works out of gratitude. Once we start to measure what people do and start comparing, we create a political organization, not a spiritual organization. Listen. A man who works out of fear and greed is a śūdra. The man who works out of attention need is a vaiśya. The man who works out of jealousy or comparison to prove that he is superior to others is a kṣatriya. The man who works out of gratitude is a brāhmaṇa. These differentiations do not come by birth.

They are a result of our guṇas, our attributes, our mental make-up, our root patterns. They come into our being when we earn and develop them. A man cooked for a certain monastery for thirty years. He never bothered to be around the Master, nor did he attend the Master’s discourses regularly. When it was time for the Master to leave his body, he called everyone to announce the heir to the monastery. Everyone expect- Vibhūti Yogaḥ You Are The Ultimate 769 ed someone who was always very close to the Master to take that seat. Instead the Master said, ‘You have all listened to my discourses all these years.

However, this cook lived my teachings. He is my successor.’ By saying that, he gave the cook the experience of his enlightenment. People are not equal. Each one comes with his own karma (unfulfilled actions) and a particular root pattern. As long as the Master is there, He takes care of everything. When the Master is not there in body, the whole thing becomes dharma, righteousness. When the Master is there, everything becomes mokṣa, liberation. That is the difference between dharma and mokṣa. Work for mokṣa. That is the difference between an ashram and a monastery. My mission is for people to live together focused on spiritual evolution; to enrich with science of living enlightenment, towards transformation of oneself through meditation.

Soon people will find out how much better this system works compared to their normal lifestyle. I say to all of them, as Kṛṣṇa said: those who are always engaged in Me with love, I give them Enlightenment by which they come to Me. The Master defines Himself in the last verse: ‘I destroy the darkness of ignorance within them, with the shining lamp of wisdom, through my compassion.’ teṣāṁ evānukampārtham aham ajñāna-jaṁ tamaḥ I nāśayāmy ātma-bhāva-stho jñāna-dīpena bhāsvata II 10.11 The Saṃskṛit word ‘Guru’, meaning Master, has two syllables: gu refers to darkness and ru to light. The Master leads the disciple from darkness into light with compassion. This darkness of ignorance is the identification that one has with one’s self, one’s material attachments and material possessions.

This identification surely leads to sorrow since this attachment is for things that are fleeting and not for something long lasting. Wealth gets created overnight and disappears just as quickly. Relationships, however sound, last only as long as the body lasts, most often far less, since the mind is even more incomplete in holding onto relationships. Nothing that exists in this world, nothing that is of material creation, can last eternally. Our impression that material possessions and attachments last, comes from ignorance. This ignorance is born of self-identity, ego. The Master is the only person who can dispel that darkness. Only He can light up that wisdom within you in order for you to realize that you are already one with Existence and therefore need nothing from this material world. Your Master gains nothing from teaching you. He gains nothing from enlightening you. He does it out of sheer compassion, so that others may experience the same bliss that He constantly experiences. Know Yourself By Yourself