Verse 12.8🔗

Just fix your mind upon Me, the supreme personality of the Divine and engage all your mind, body and senses in Me and you will thus live in Me always, without a doubt, assures Kṛṣṇa. mayy eva mana ādhatsva mayi buddhiṁ niveśaya I nivasiṣyasi mayy eva ata ūrdhvaṁ na saṁśayaḥ II 12.8 ‘Na samśayaḥ, without a doubt,’ He says. Now He comes to the technique. At one point the virtuous circle must begin. First, He explains the virtuous circle of the ultimate experience and expression. Now He comes to the technique. Please understand that love is not a mood. It is not a mere emotion. It is our very Existence.

As long as it is our mood, it will come and go. There are two kinds of love, horizontal love and vertical love. Let me explain. Horizontal love is like a horizontal line, flat. It is related to time: it starts and ends. Anything that starts must end. If it takes more time to end, don’t think it is permanent. Anything that starts must end. It may take a few years or a few months, but it ends. It is impermanent and time bound. This is horizontal love. Horizontal love is related to time. Vertical love is related to consciousness. Vertical love neither starts nor ends. It does not discriminate.

It is our very quality. It flows. If we discriminate and love, it cannot be love. It is an infatuation. As long as the other person fits into our frame, our love grows. The moment the other person doesn’t fit into our frame, our love disappears. In our Inner Awakening meditation retreat, I ask people to make a list Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 881 of at least one or two persons in their lives whom they really love. Usually, in the beginning, people come up with a big list: husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister and so on. They include people whom they would like to please or need to please in order to be happy and be undisturbed themselves.

When I begin the process, people start crossing out names of people from their list, one by one. Understand, if you cross out something, then it was not love even in the first place. However, people get stuck when they come to the names of their sons or daughters. I say that all your love is for some reason. For economical benefit or psychological support, you hang onto these relationships. The next reason we love is to receive good certificates, positive recognition. Sometimes we share love and show love. We may not do so for economical benefits or psychological support, but we may expect a good certificate or attention for being loving and kind.

Some need for attention is always present. There is always some dependent need in us that motivates us to express love. It is never unconditional or complete love. People say, ‘No Swamiji. I don’t love my son or daughter for any of these three reasons.’ I ask them, ‘Alright, if suddenly your son starts to decide things on his own, if he doesn’t fit into your frame, if he doesn’t follow your guidance, will your love be the same? Enquire authentically.’ Naturally people say, ‘No, it will not be, the love will reduce a little.’ What does this mean? We love our next generation as long as they are extensions of our life.

We fulfill our desires through them. Whatever we couldn’t accomplish, we try to accomplish through them. As long as they act and live as an extension of our life, the relationship is beautiful. But the moment they start deciding on their own, the moment they feel we are suffocating them, the moment they stand up and say ‘no,’ the relationship takes a different turn. This is horizontal love. That is why it ends with some reason. Vertical love never ends because it never starts. Suddenly, at some point we realize, we are living inside everybody just as we live inside our own body. There is a beautiful example given in the Upaniṣads.

A master asked a disciple, ‘Do you enjoy all your five senses?’ The disciple said, ‘Yes.’ The master enquired, ‘What if one of your senses was missing, would you have the same amount of joy?’ The disciple replied, ‘No, it would be twenty percent less, and if two of my senses were missing, it would be forty percent less.’ The master suddenly said, ‘What if you had five more senses?’ The disciple answered, ‘Naturally my enjoyment would be a hundred percent extra. If I am given one more body, naturally I will enjoy everything twice as much. Or if I am given five bodies, naturally I will enjoy things five times as much.’

If we experience that we are living in all the bodies of this world, how much joy or ecstasy would we experience? It would be immeasurable, eternal and ultimate. That is what enlightened people experience all the time—living Advaita! When they experience themselves as the whole Universe, or as being in every body, they experience tremendous ecstasy, pleasure or bliss. That is why they don’t need anything from the outer world. An elderly person came to one of our programs. Afterward, he said to me with a lot of sympathy, ‘You have become a master and an ascetic at such a young age. You have missed life.’ He expressed his sympathy.

He felt that I had missed out. I told him, ‘Don’t be sympathetic towards me. Actually I should feel sympathetic towards you. Even after sixty years, you are unable to liberate yourself. Even after sixty years, you are suffering Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 883 in saṁsāra, the illusion of worldly life. I should be sympathetic towards you!’ Real Renunciation Is Completion With The Whole When we experience ecstasy and bliss within, we don’t feel we are missing anything from the outside world. Real renunciation is not about our renouncing the world. It is about the world renouncing us. When we have that completion, joy, ecstasy and bliss, we automatically radiate that bliss.

We never feel that we miss anything or that we have lost something. I tell people not to renounce the world unless they feel completion and ecstasy inside. Never renounce. Work towards completion and ecstasy. When that happens, renunciation automatically happens. If you renounce the outer world without having established the inner world with completion, you will fall into depression. When you are complete with you, the world will be complete with you. When you are incomplete with you, the world will be incomplete with you! Completion with you is Inner Awakening. Completion with the whole Universe is Sannyāsa. Sannyāsa means completion with the Whole. You are clear with your accounts and there is no incompletion!

I have seen many Sannyāsis who have taken this path without achieving the inner experience of completion. They are caught in social service and then fall into depression. Around the age of forty to forty-five, they become depressed. They counsel the whole world while they are depressed. Never renounce the world unless you have had a solid experience of completion inside. When you have had the experience, you don’t need to renounce. Automatically renunciation happens. All these things will drop you. Instead of you dropping them, they will drop you! You dropping these things always creates problems. When they drop you, it is the right thing. When you start experiencing the joy in you, nothing needs to be renounced, automatically renunciation happens.

Establish Your Intelligence On Me Here, Kṛṣṇa gives techniques to start the virtuous circle. ‘Fix your mind on Me, mayy eva mana ādhatsva. Establish your intelligence in Me, mayi buddhiṁ niveśaya. In this way, after acquiring the boundary-less consciousness, you will live in Me always, nivasiṣyasi mayy eva.’ How should we establish our intelligence in Him? Continuously try to enrich yourself and others with these thoughts and ideas that Kṛṣṇa teaches. Rāmakṛṣṇa says that what we belch depends upon what we eat. For instance, if we eat some kind of vegetable or fruit, the smell of that comes out when we belch. In the same way, if we add these ideas continuously to our mind and consciousness, we naturally radiate them.

They start shining through our being. When He tells you to let your intelligence be established in Him, it means that when we are in trouble, the solution should automatically come to us based upon these ideas. As of now we run and refer to a book, which means we have a Guru only in the outer world. If we digest and enrich ourselves with these ideas, even when we don’t have problems, they will lodge themselves in us and take us to higher and higher levels of completion. When we have problems, they will guide and enrich us. If you read books only when you are in trouble or when you are seeking a solution, you will not digest the ideas because your mind will be confused.

How will you receive them? How can you digest them when you are troubled and confused? It can’t happen this way. I tell you: dharmo rakśati rakśitāḥ When you protect dharma, it protects you. When you excite dharma, it excites you. When you enrich dharma, it enriches you. When you are integrated to it, it is integrated into you. When you are authentic with it, it is authentic with you. When you take responsibility for it, it takes responsibility for you. Only when you enrich it, will it enrich you. Dharma means the natural law of the Cosmos. It is an independent intelligence. When your mind is in the normal state, receive these ideas and en- Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 885 rich yourself and others constantly as a regular habit.

Let it become your normal life style. Just as you eat and bathe everyday, in the same way, absorb these ideas regularly. Understand, from my daily morning satsangs to Inner Awakening program, and even after that, I continue to speak on the four tattvas to enrich people with this dharma. Then, is it all the same? No! It is neither the same nor is it different! It means that you are being guided deeper and deeper, layer by layer, into the same tattvas! In his commentary on the Chandogya Upaniṣad, Śankara has written beautifully about purification of food. āhāra śuddho satva śiddho dhruvā smṛtiḥ When our āhāra, food, is purified, our memory is purified.

Please understand that āhāra doesn’t mean just the food that we eat. It refers to whatever we take in through the five senses. Television programs that we watch are āhāra. Music that we listen to is āhāra. The food that we eat is āhāra. The odours that we smell are āhāra. The touch that we enjoy is āhāra. So, all that we take in through the five senses should be pure. Only then can we radiate purity, can we radiate bliss, can we radiate divine intelligence. Unless we purify the āhāras that is ingested through the other senses as well, we cannot expect purification of our memories. I feel blessed that when I was born and brought up, there was no television in my village.

People ask me, ‘Swamiji, how do you grasp things so easily?’ Of course, I somehow pick up things easily, quickly. One small fact: Only a few years ago I started speaking English. I studied a little bit of English in school but that was through my native language Tamil in which I learned everything. Look in! Look into your life. When you start taking responsibility, you can decide the way your heart beats; you can decide the way your lungs function; you can even control the automated organs of your body and you can decide the functioning of non-mechanical parts of your brain. Each one of us have mechanical parts and non mechanical parts of the brain.

Mechanical parts of the brain are responsible for the functioning of your body—like the heart, lungs, liver, kidney, intestine, the functioning of your nervous system, experiencing touch, taste, seeing etc. The non-mechanical parts of your brain are responsible for the extraordinary powers—like telepathy, teleporting, vāk siddhi (the power of words, wherein any blessing given becomes a reality). Please listen. Extraordinary powers are not mythological stories or just some blind faith. I have already done enough scientific research to demonstrate the genuineness of the possibility of teleportation, telepathy and materialization. Only when you take the responsibility, will you find the solution. I tell you, in every situation take the responsibility. You will have leadership consciousness happening in you, īśvaratva.

Our brains are hardwired to experience higher possibilities and higher consciousness. It is this part that I call as non-mechanical parts of your brain. Listen! Whether you accept it or not, understand it or not, your body carries at least seventy times more energy and power than what you use in your day-to-day life. Science has proved this through various methods and ways. Just one small alteration in your brain can make you live without food, for months! I am not giving you any fantasy theory. I am giving you the practical experience of hundreds of my disciples who are living this through nirahara samyama. Purify Your Senses, Without A Doubt Reach Me If you watch some horror movie continuously for three days, you will start seeing ghosts!

Even a screen moving will look like a ghost. Whatever happens around you, you will connect it with the impression of ghosts that was left on your unconscious. Another thing, ghosts as such don’t have a physical body. As ordinary Bhakti Yogaḥ Love Is Your Very Life 887 humans, you have three bodies—physical, subtle and causal. Even if spirit bodies exist, they don’t have a physical body. Of course, first of all, they don’t exist. But for argument’s sake, if I collect all of your arguments and if I must argue and accept that they do exist, they exist only in the subtle body and causal body. No ghost comes to you with a physical body except your spouse!

Never allow these horrible things that cause suffering, into your consciousness. If you don’t allow these things into your consciousness, your intelligence will automatically be established in the Divine. The thoughts that you take in, play a major role in the expression of your consciousness. Just take in this one truth that Kṛṣṇa speaks of, ‘Establishing your intelligence in Me.’ Please understand that whatever you take in as your inputs, you establish your mind only on that. So let your inputs be purified. Let purification of your sensory inputs, happen to you. Your consciousness will automatically be established in the Divine. Again and again, try to absorb these ideas. Let these ideas penetrate you.

Don’t go behind ideas that make you feel low and that put you into depression. For example, for the last eleven days you have been listening to these ideas. Now, when a problem arises, you will automatically remember, ‘Swamiji said this. I have heard this idea. I think this is what I must understand now.’ This will start arising from your being. The truth will begin to enrich you from within yourself. If it starts coming up, you have authentically listened to what I have said. Otherwise, you are just a silent listener, a silent listener who is sitting here and seriously thinking of something else or passing judgment on my oratorical skills!

Whether you are a silent listener or somebody who really heard the discourse, can only be determined by how much these words get repeated in you. I tell people that when the source of the words is enlightened consciousness, the words simply penetrate you and automatically come into your mind whenever you need their help. People ask me, ‘Swamiji, how can we remember these ideas and practice them?’ I tell them, ‘Never bother remembering them. Just listen, that’s enough. These words are from my experience. So naturally they will penetrate your being.’ Whenever it is necessary, you won’t need to remember these words. The words will remember you. Without effort, these words will stay in you and surface.

Automatically they will come up when needed. They will erupt into your consciousness, like a pop-up. Similar to the pop-up on your computer monitor, they come up in your consciousness and guide you. You don’t need to do anything. All you need to do is authentically listen, as a means to put them into your being. Listen, listen to these words repeatedly. Naturally your consciousness will be established in the Divine. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Immerse your mind completely in Me. Focus your entire attention upon Me. Without a doubt you will reach the blissful state.’ Practice To Perfection