Verses 12.18–12.20🔗

Again Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Such a person, full of devotion is dear to Me— bhaktimān me priyo naraḥ (12.19).’ He is not ready to put down any more rules, which means He is almost ending His instructions. He is almost saying, ‘This is the way, if somebody is like this then I love him, that’s all. I am not interested in anything else.’ He says, ‘One who is neutral towards friends and enemies, who is the same in honor and dishonor, heat and cold, joy and pain, free from attachment to the fruits of action, who remains the same in criticism and praise; who is thoughtful, who is content with whatever he gets, who does not care for any house and is resolute in mind, such a man, full of devotion is very dear to Me.’ samaḥ śatrau ca mitre ca tathā mānāpamānayoḥ I śitośṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu samaḥ saṅga-vivarjitaḥ II 12.18 Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 921 tulya nindā-stutir maunī santuṣṭo yena kenacit I aniketah sthira matir bhaktimān me priyo naraḥ II 12.19 Here is a beautiful phrase, ‘One who does not care for any house and who doesn’t bother to build a house for himself, aniketah sthira matir.’

Let me tell you a story. Rāvaṇa lived for one kalpa (many thousands of years). Śrī Vyāsa lived for four kalpas. Rāvaṇa was building Lankāpuri, his capital in Śrī Lanka. He got Lankāpuri as a gift from Śiva and he was developing it. When Vyāsa came to the city, Rāvaṇa asked him, ’Oh Vyāsa, did you see my palace, and my country? How grand they look.’ Vyāsa replied, ‘Yes, I have seen them.’ Rāvaṇa showed him everything with pride and asked, ‘Why don’t you build a house for yourself?’ Vyāsa smiled and said, ‘My life is just four kalpas. I have no time to waste building houses. After all, I am going to live here for only four kalpas, why should I waste time building houses?’

Rāvaṇa lived for only one kalpa, for which he built such a big house. Śrī Vyāsa whose life was four times as long, thought it was unnecessary to waste part of his life building houses! ‘One who is not concerned about owning a house is full of devotion and he is near to Me, dear to Me.’ Kṛṣṇa concludes this chapter on Bhakti Yoga, Union through Devotion, saying that one who lives in dharma, righteousness is devoted to Him. ye tu dhamāmṛtam idaṁ yathoktaṁ paryupāsate I śraddhadhānā mat-paramā bhaktās te ‘tīva me priyāḥ II 12.20 Dharma is spiritual righteousness. It is not, and has nothing to do with rules and regulations laid down by society and religion.

Human tendency is always to break rules. Societal rules seem to restrict one’s freedom of expression and movement. Understand that you are no sinner! Divinity resides within us. Our only sin, the original sin, is in not recognizing that we are divine. Therefore we don’t need to strive to attain enlightenment. We just need to become aware of our inner divinity. In this modern age, the path of dharma, righteousness that Kṛṣṇa talks about leading to Him, is the path of meditation. When we follow meditation, one automatically gets into the virtuous circle of conscious awareness and completion that takes us to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Meditation is a process of shutting the mind down by completing with all root thought patterns of the mind.

In this process of reaching the no-mind state, the ego drops. The barrier to the realization that our true nature is divine disappears. We become who we are. We realize we are complete. We realize we are one with the Divine. Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to make us all experience the truths of Bhakti Yoga, that love is our very life. Let us pray to Him to give us the conscious experience of bhakti, devotional love, and make us experience and radiate eternal bliss, Nityānanda. Thank You. Thus ends the twelfth chapter named Bhakti Yogaḥ, ‘Union through Devotional Love,’ 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.

The Field And The Knower Of The Field You are a wave in the ocean of Existence. When the wave understands that it is not separate from the ocean, it drops its resistance and merges with the ocean. c h a p t e r Kṣetra Kṣetrajña Vibhāga Yogaḥ In this chapter, Kṛṣṇa speaks to enrich Arjuna about kṣetra (Field) and kṣetrajña (Knower of the Field). This chapter is known as the Kṣetra Kṣetrajña Vibhāga Yoga, or the yoga of discrimination of the kṣetra, the field, and kṣetrajña, the knower of the field. Kṛṣṇa clearly talks about the physical matter in which we exist, as well as the consciousness that stays in the matter.

In some way or other all of us are related to this whole universe, whether we understand it or not, whether we experience it or not. The consciousness is the root cause. It is not only the origin, but also the cause. It is the source from which we come and in which we stay. The whole Universe, the Universal consciousness, is the space in which we all happen. Kṛṣṇa uses the wave and the ocean as an analogy. The ocean is the Universal consciousness or god, ātma or whatever we may call it. Buddhists use the word Nirvāṇa, Vedantis say Brahman. Kṛṣṇa reveals the secret that we are like the waves, and the whole is the ocean.

He explains how we can experience completion and infinity with the ocean. Our only problem in life is that somehow we have forgotten that we are a part of the ocean. We forgot that we belong to the kṣetrajña. The word kṣetrajña means consciousness, which is the cause for the field to function. Kṣetra means field and kṣetrajña means knower of the field. Kṣetra means body and kṣetrajña means the consciousness that knows it has a body. Our consciousness is kṣetrajña and our body or matter is kṣetra. In this chapter, Kṛṣṇa reveals the secrets of kṣetra and kṣetrajñya. If we don’t know the secrets of kṣetrajña, the kṣetra acts as if it is the owner.

The Field And The Knower Of The Field KṣetraKṣetrajñaVibhāgaYogaḥ TheFieldAndTheKnowerOftheField 925 Getting Into the Body and Mind A small example: You buy a new car. You sit in the car and start driving. Suddenly, after ten minutes you realize that you do not know how to stop it. If you don’t know how to stop the car, you are not driving the car, the car is driving you. In the same way, we get into this mind and into this body and start living. Suddenly at one point, we find that we are unable to stop the body or mind. It goes on as it wants and it is uncontrollable.

Bring the body and mind under your conscious awareness. The body and mind are good servants but not good masters. As servants, they are great. Of course, without the body and mind you cannot live life, you cannot enjoy life. They are needed. But, unless they are under your control, they will become your masters. Only two options are possible: Either you enjoy them or they enjoy you. In the beginning you may start smoking. After some time, you may not really be enjoying the smoke, but the smoke will be enjoying you. Similarly, in the beginning you may start drinking alcohol. After some time, the alcohol will be drinking you.

In the beginning you start a habit and after some time that habit takes over your life. The habit will be enjoying your life. Then you are no longer a person with choices: You are a set of habits that is continuously repeated without your control. When we start using a car without reading the owner’s manual, suddenly we realize that we do not know where the hand brake is. We don’t know how to turn left or right. When we enter into the body and mind without knowing how to handle them, we are in the same situation. Bring the body and mind under your control before you are brought under their control.

Whether it is a material life or a spiritual life, unless the body and mind are under our control, whatever we may think or whatever we want to do is of no use. Suppose we sit down in the morning and draw out a big plan for the day, analyzing all the data, ‘I must do this,’ ‘I must do that,’ but at the end of the day, beyond our control, we spontaneously indulge in a drink and sleep or do other things, what is the use of the whole day’s plan? Nothing! We go on creating what we want to do in our mind, but at the end of the day, the body behaves the way it wants to.

Even the mind behaves as it wants to. We get nowhere! ‘Life,’ the very word ‘life,’ can happen only when the body and mind are under your control. As long as the body and mind are not under your control, you will not even experience the word ‘life.’ Until the body and mind are under your control, you are not living. Only the root thought patterns or the engraved memories are living you. Unless you find your root thought patterns and complete, life does not start for you. Until we experience the kṣetrajña, the knower of the field, the real life never begins. This is why the vedic system considers a person to be born only when his individual consciousness is awakened.

Until then his physical birth is not accepted, nor is he considered a human being or a manuṣya. According to the Vedas, when someone’s inner consciousness is awakened he is considered a human being or a person who has taken birth. Until then he is one among the animals. The Saṃskṛit word manuṣya has two meanings. One is ‘descendant of Manu,’ and the other is ‘the man who can handle the mind or one who has gone beyond the mind.’ Manu is supposed to be our first forefather. Only when we can handle the mind, we become manuṣya. In Saṃskṛit they say, ‘pratyagātma caitanya jāgrataṁ.’ It means that only when the individual consciousness is awakened is one considered to be a person.

In the Indian Vedic system, when a child turns seven he is initiated into the Gāyatrī, a sacred mantra or chant. You should understand one important thing here. The Vedic religion, or Hinduism, the integrated sanātana-dharma, is the only religion in which there is no enslaving or encaging or engaging philosophy. You are not given any faith, any concept and any philosophy; you are only enriched to awaken your highest possibility, your consciousness. You are not asked to believe in anything. You are just given a technique to do completion with your body and mind. That’s all. KṣetraKṣetrajñaVibhāgaYogaḥ TheFieldAndTheKnowerOftheField 927 The first thing that our Ṛṣis or ancient Indian Enlightened Masters want us to do is to bring our body and mind under our control with the power of completion.

They want us to learn how to live in completion with our body and mind. The Gāyatrī mantra is like an owner’s manual for the body and mind. If we have a car, an owner’s manual is a basic need. Without reading the owner’s manual, if we start driving a car, then whose mistake is it? Only at around the age of seven do we start to handle our body. After the age of seven the intellect starts working and we start making decisions. The moment we start making decisions, we should first know how to bring the body and mind under control. That is why the Vedic Masters teach the completion technique to awaken the inner intelligence and to master the consciousness. It is similar to reading the owner’s manual before using the car. What You Know Is Not You