Verses 12.13–12.14🔗

you don’t do these, that too is okay. However, if you do them, you will be very dear to Me—yo mad-bhaktaḥ sa me priyaḥ.’ In other words, it is emotional black mail, not directly but indirectly, but all for a good cause! ‘One who is not envious, but is a kind friend to all living entities, who does not think of himself as a proprietor, and who is free from false ego, who is equal in both happiness and distress, who is tolerant, always satisfied, self-controlled, and engaged in devotional service with determination, with intelligence fixed on Me, such a devotee of Mine is very dear to Me.’ adveṣṭā sarva bhūtānāṁ maitraḥ karuṇa eva ca I nirmamo nirahaṅkāraḥ sama-duḥkha-sukhaḥ kṣamī II 12.13 santuṣṭaḥ satataṁ yogī yatātma dṛḍha-niścayaḥ I mayy arpita mano-buddhir yo mad bhaktaḥ sa me priyaḥ II 12.14 Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 907 Important Qualities Of Enriching Understand here, He says, ‘Who is not envious and a kind friend to every living entity.’

These are important qualities. Let us analyze our minds. When we honestly analyze our mind, we realize that if somebody came to you and told you he loved you, you wouldn’t believe it. The first thingyouwoulddoisfigureoutwhathewantsfromyou.Youdon’tbelieve you are worthy of being loved. Next, you don’t believe that somebody can honestly love you, because you don’t love anybody honestly. Because you are calculative, you expect the other person also to be calculating. All our love is skin deep and you know how deep skin is! Here, He says, ‘A person who is a kind friend of everyone, who honestly serves, feels the friendliness in everybody and is free from false ego.’

Now we should understand the term ‘false ego, ahaṁkāra’. Ego not only means showing what you don’t have, but also hiding what you have. There are two types of ego: active ego and passive ego. Active ego is showing what you have and passive ego is characterized by these kinds of thoughts, ‘Oh, what can I do, I am a simple person, I cannot achieve anything, and I cannot do anything.’ Hiding oneself is an outcome of the passive ego. An inferiority complex is a manifestation of the passive ego. At least there is one positive point regarding the superiority complex. With a feeling of superiority, wherever one goes, one gets a big beating from society.

But with inferiority complex, society does not attempt to correct you. It is a cunning way of hiding yourself from life. You will not even know that you have a problem. A person who looks for name and fame, and a person who doesn’t want name and fame are both egoistic. If you ask for name, you are egoistic. And if you don’t, it shows passive ego. Whereas a person who lets things happen and a person who allows things to flow, lives in reality. Kṛṣṇa makes a comment, ‘After all, who is going to know who you are? Why do you think you are a big person and your name is so great and that everybody knows your name?

You think you are great, that is why you don’t want name and fame. Nobody knows your name, relax.’ Kṛṣṇa says clearly. Nobody knows our name. Asking for name and fame and saying, ‘I don’t want name and fame,’ are different aspects of ego, different varieties of ego. The inferior ego is also ego, which is why he says ‘false ego’. You are not only supposed to be free from ego, you are supposed to be free from false ego as well. You shouldn’t hide yourself in inferiority complexes. A small story: A master tells a disciple, ‘Please press my feet.’ The disciple says, ‘Oh, I am a sinner, how can I touch Your feet?’

He does not want to do it because he is lazy. So he says, ‘I am a great sinner. I am impure. How can I touch Your feet; how can I do that?’ Later, a devotee brought fruits and prasād, offerings. The master put a little in his mouth and left the rest. The next day, he saw nothing on the plate. He asked his disciple, ‘What happened to the fruits and prasād?’ The disciple answered, ‘It was guru prasād, offering to the master. I could not let it go for a waste. I finished the whole thing because it was guru prasād.’ Look at the mind, how nicely it handles different situations!

Wherever we want, we insert whatever is convenient. The moment you understand the futility of your goal and wealth, that nothing is going to be with you forever, all of these divine qualities radiate through your being. You will be transformed into a person who is established in forgivingness, who maintains equanimity of mind, who is satisfied and united with yoga. Actually, when you are blissful inside, you radiate these qualities. A man who is totally blissful inside radiates pleasantness for absolutely no reason. We continuously carry a sense of slight irritation in our being; we are Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 909 waiting to pounce on people.

We don’t know what we are doing. We jump and bite people at the slightest provocation, because we carry some irritation pattern within us. We continuously vomit upon others the suffering and misery that we feel. This irritation pattern arises within us out of constant worry, inner chatter because of incompletions. We feel we may not get what we are planning for and what we want. Worry arises as a result of the gap between what we expect and what we think we are capable of getting. Worry is futile because there are many factors other than our capability that determine the outcome of what we do. We cannot control even our own breath.

We cannot say with certainty whether we will take the next breath. What arrogance it is then to think that we can determine our future or the outcome of our actions! Worry and irritation are pointless and make you powerless. Worry, anxiety and irritation dissolve once we settle into the present, the space of completion. Only in the present are we in a position to influence our actions and the immediate outcome of those actions. When we settle into the present, thoughts cease and worry and irritation disappear. We realize how irrelevant, unproductive and inauthentic worry is. Only how consciously you live, with what consciousness you choose to live remains with you.

Only the consciousness of completion remains with you. When you understand the importance of your state of being, you automatically start radiating pleasantness and joy. Meditation For Devotion I give people a simple meditation technique to experience Bhakti Yoga–the Path of Devotion. Just practice the technique of radiating pleasantness and friendliness. How does one do it? From morning till night whenever you remember, inhale, inhale, and inhale only the pleasant qualities of bliss. Visualize you are inhaling bliss and exhaling bliss. Your whole being will be filled with joy. In the beginning you will be visualizing, imagining. But in a few days you will realize it is your quality. One more thing you should know is that imagination and visualization are two different things.

Imagination translates into kalpanā in Saṃskṛit, while visualization translates into bhāvanā. Bhāvanā is different from kalpanā. Kalpanā means imagining things that are not there. For example, if you think of an elephant with ten trunks, that is imagination, kalpanā, that which is not there. But bhāvanā means visualizing that which is present but maybe eluding you. If you sit during the day and visualize stars in the sky, that is not imagination. It is visualization. Because stars are in the sky even though you are unable to see them. So visualizing stars is not imagination. Perceiving what is there but what you are unable to see at this moment is visualization.

Trying to perceive what can never exist is imagination. So understand that meditating on gods and goddesses is not imagination. It is visualization. They are there. You cannot see them; that is all. You are supposed to fall in tune with them, like tuning your television. Similarly, visualization is tuning yourself. Just continuously visualize inhaling and exhaling bliss. Visualise prāṇa – the life giving energy—going inside and coming out. Prāṇa is energy and bliss. Prāṇa is not merely air. Prāṇa is the energy that goes through air. For example, a truck comes up to your house and unloads luggage and leaves. The truck is air and the luggage is prāṇa.

Using air as a medium, prāṇa enters. Prāṇa-śakti is the subtle part of air. Prāṇa-śakti is bliss energy, ānanda-śakti. So whenever you inhale, visualize yourself inhaling bliss. When you exhale, visualize yourself exhaling bliss. Inhale light and exhale light. Think that your whole body is a beanbag filled with light. Imagine your body is a beanbag filled with bliss and light. You will automatically start radiating bliss instead of irritation. Instead of vomiting the poison of anger and jealousy on others, you will radiate love and bliss. ‘Such a devotee of mine is very dear to Me, yo mad-bhaktaḥ sa me priyaḥ.’ Kṛṣṇa says that if somebody lives in this manner, that devotee is close to Him.

He doesn’t say ‘Do or don’t do.’ He does not want to make more rules. He is tired of making rules. He has reached a point where Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 911 his attitude is, ‘If you can, do it, otherwise, what can be done?’ He is in a relaxed mood. I think this happens to all masters. After some time they say, ‘Alright, do whatever you want, what can be done?’ They can guide or show you only to a certain extent. Beyond that if masters persist, people start thinking that the masters have some vested interest in making people enlightened. Understand, they just share to enrich with what they have, out of completion, joy and bliss.

You are not ready to trust the Master. You keep resisting Him. When the Master says drop ‘I and mine,’ people are afraid that the Master may pick them up and take it with him! People are suspicious. That is why Masters sometimes say, ‘This is the right way, but do as you want to do.’ ‘One who has fixed his mind and intellect upon me, mayy arpita mano buddhir (12.14),’ says Kṛṣṇa. It is difficult for the devotee and disciple to have this attitude of surrender to the Master or the Universe. As long as things go the way the person wants, as long as the Master allows the devotee to do what he wishes, the Master is a great master and worthy of celebration.

But once the Master turns serious and takes up his responsibility of spiritual surgery on the disciple, he wants to run away. I tell people, ‘Decide well in advance whether I am your right Master or not.’ A Master takes his responsibilities seriously. His major responsibility is surgery; it is the surgery of the cancer of ego. Once the disciplemakesacommitment,theMastermakeshiscommitmenttoo.Itis dangerous to run away from the operating table. You lose your whole life by running away. You may have to wait many births before you get another chance. Here, Kṛṣṇa is in the same mood and He says, ‘Such a devotee of Mine is dear to Me,’ that’s all. He is talking about the commitment that the devotee makes to Him. He says, ‘One who makes that commitment to Me and fixes his mind and intellect upon Me, he is dear to Me and will be liberated.’ So says the great Master of the Universe. Be Unaffected