Verses 15.5–15.6🔗

Kṛṣṇa explains the same truth again at a deeper level. He had expressed the same idea in earlier chapters. But Arjuna was unable to understand. At that time, Arjuna was in the questioning mood. In the questioning mood, we miss the whole subject and are busy preparing questions. Now that mood has gone and there are only doubts, no questions. Beyond Attachment, The Eternal Consciousness nirmāna-mohā jita-saṇga-dośa adhyātma-nityā vinivṛtta-kāmāḥ I dvandair vimukhtāḥ sukha-duḥka-saṁjñair gacchanty amūḍhāḥ padam avayayaṁ tat II 15.5 Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Those who are free from pride, delusion, and attachment, those who dwell in the Self, who are complete with lust, who are free from the dualities of joy and sorrow, who are not confused, and who know how to surrender to the supreme person, attain the eternal consciousness.’

Puruṣottama Yogaḥ No Questions, Only Doubts1093 What wonderful usage of words! He does not say who have ‘renounced’ lust. No, because renunciation won’t do. Vairāgya means beyond attachment and detachment. Rāga means attachment. Arāga means detachment. Virāga or vairāgya means beyond attachment and detachment. It is non-attachment. Until the age of seven, we are attached to toys. By age eight or nine we are forced to be detached from these. By twenty, most people are complete with toys, beyond attachment or detachment to children’s toys. With detachment, we might have renounced it externally. But the inner urge for it prevails. That is why Kṛṣṇa uses fitting words: vinivṛtta-kāmāḥ, those who are ‘complete’ with lust.

Nivṛitti is the completion you carry that leads to more and more completion. In this state, we know what we can afford. We know it is there at our disposal. We don’t possess anything, we don’t own anything, but everything is at our disposal. We can use it or drop it based on the need. Life is also like a toy. If this is fully understood, you will live like a king, not an ordinary materialistic king, but an enlightened king, a Rājaṛṣi. This is a tattva (principle). This is not for understanding. This is to be meditated upon. On meditating upon this technique, these characteristics will start flowering in you and give you a clear-cut idea about the causal body.

Earlier, Kṛṣṇa explained ways to erase and complete with our root thought patterns, saṁskāras. Now He speaks on the creation of a proper layer. It is about re-programming your causal layer with the space of completion. Programming the Causal Layer Please listen! In two words I am giving you the gist: Completion and Creation of space. I can say, this is the essence of all the essence of my messages. As essence of the Vedic tradition, I have given so many messages. Now I can say, all their essence is this— Using your ātma jñāna, using your conscious energy, using your peak possibility and making it into reality, making it into life.

Kṛṣṇa gives the essence of the most secret science, the science of completion and creation of space. He gives the technique for creation of the causal body. Kṛṣṇa’s words are mantras. Actually Kṛṣṇa uses the same words again. Not only words and expressions, He uses the same letters again. Earlier He used these words as advice. Now He uses same words as programming techniques for completion and creation. This chapter is about programming our causal layer; completing our root patterns, saṁskāras. This program creates the space in our causal layer to make our conscious energy into our reality; for life to happen in its peak energy! As long as Arjuna was in the questioning mood, these same words were spelt out as advice.

When he enters into the mood of doubts, he receives the same words as techniques. When the disciple is in a questioning mood, the Master’s words will be taken as advice. Only when the disciple stops questioning and starts listening, these same words will be techniques. Listen, with advice, you need keys to open the door. Techniques are the keys themselves. They are ready to open the door. Arjuna receives the gist of earlier chapters. He receives the juice in this chapter. In North Indian monasteries, this chapter is chanted before every meal. This 15th chapter must be chanted before meals, since this chapter is a programming tool of the inner space.

The mere words of this chapter can do wonders in reprogramming your causal layer with the space of completion and creation. It takes less than five minutes to chant it. Anybody can do it. Don’t worry about the meaning. If you understand the meaning, it is good. Yet, it is highly useful even if chanted without understanding. Repeating these words can program your causal layer with the power of completion and creation. Especially, when you chant them in a mood of surrender, with due respect to the Master, it directly touches the causal layer. Puruṣottama Yogaḥ No Questions, Only Doubts1095 Arjuna is completely in a receiving mood. He is fully connected to the Master.

If the disciple is completely feeling connected to the Master, Existence helps him through the Master. Arjuna needs no explanations, no logic. He is ready to live the Master. Hence, Kṛṣṇa utters the following words to program the causal layer. He gives techniques to create the space of completion and creation in Arjuna. He says: ‘Those who are free from pride, delusion, and attachment, those who dwell in the Self, who are complete with lust, who are free from the dualities of joy and sorrow, who are not confused, and who know how to surrender to the supreme person, attain eternal consciousness.’ Lust is difficult for a man to shed.

Even the greatest of sages have succumbed to lust. Lust is of the body and as long as body consciousness remains, lust will stay. Only a person who has gone beyond body consciousness can drop lust. A small story: A small boy went to a kids’ movie with his parents. It was about a lion cub and other animals in a jungle. The boy was thoroughly enjoying it. Suddenly there was a scene where the lion cub was trapped by a hunter and became terrified. The boy was not able to bear this scene. He just jumped from his seat and ran down the hall towards the movie screen. He started throwing up his hands and legs as if in a fight with the hunter in the movie who was about to cage the lion cub.

Soon the other animals in the jungle joined together and drove away the hunter and rescued the cub. The boy came back to his seat and proudly told his mother, ‘See how I went first and all the animals followed me and we saved the cub!’ Just as the boy thought that the movie was real, we believe that the input perceived by our senses is also real. We are caught in the māyā or illusion created by our senses. The most powerful illusion is the lust within us. Suppressing lust externally and not indulging in sex does not and will not make one enlightened. It only turns one insane.

Celibacy of the body, without eliminating the fantasies of the mind, creates greater suffering than indulging in lust and sex. Enlightenment helps one transcend lust and sex by transcending the senses and attaining a no-mind state. An Enlightened Master transcends sex. He is genderless. He becomes ardhanārīśvara, a man-woman, a person who expresses both traditionally male and female qualities or attributes. One key attribute of Enlightenment is genderlessness. Kṛṣṇa is direct. He does not believe in giving brain candy to keep you happy. He is brutally direct. He says, ‘He who has conquered lust.’ Lust is a primal emotion provided by nature for continuation of the species. Going beyond lust, conquering by completing with lust, is the first major step in realizing Super-consciousness.

Human beings are forever confused between love and lust. They think only animals are lustful. Actually, only animals are capable of pure lust when they mate. Humans, with their rationalization, can neither be lustful nor loving. So, they are forever in the twilight zone, dissatisfied and unfulfilled. In ancient times, lust and sex left the householder around the age of forty because they had enjoyed these fully. When a desire is fully experienced it leaves your system. Now marital relationship has become a business for security or material benefits. You may live in the same home, but not in a homely way. You have to remove the imagination and dreams from your lust, both about your partner’s body and your own body.

Add friendliness to love. As of now, our love and lust are deep-rooted violence, to own the other person while he or she resists. It’s a war. Instead, add friendliness to relationships. Welcome the partner as he or she is; do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept the mind, body and being as it is. Puruṣottama Yogaḥ No Questions, Only Doubts 1097 Many of us are ashamed of our body. We hate it. All body pains and chronic skin diseases arise out of low self-esteem and disrespect to our body. We would like to be someone else. We would like to shape our body and dress like someone else.

We stop staying within the boundary of our own skin, and fantasize about being someone else. Whenever we hear our name we think of our face, not our whole body, because we are not comfortable with our body. When we do not accept ourselves fully and copy someone else artificially, we can be beautiful at best, but never graceful. Grace comes from within. For the next few days, watch your body with love. Feel comfortable. Our body oozes bliss all the time. Yet we feel only the pain. If we are relaxed with our body, our mind will not wander. Usually, when we are at home, our mind is in the office and when we are working, we wish we were at a party.

Where our body is, our mind will not be. Drop your imagination and dreams, and be complete. Add friendliness towards yourself and others, towards their body, mind and being. Carry words that heal others. Carry your body in a way that heals others. Carry friendliness with you always. This is a spiritual process. Carry the grace and goodwill of Lakṣmi instead of observing fasts and pūjā. The first time you approach others with friendliness, they may not receive you openly because of your past inauthentic behavior. Persist and persevere. Complete with the idea of impossibility. Complete with your self-doubt. Stand up powerfully. Don’t give up on you and others. Don’t stop even if others do not reciprocate.

Carry on till others feel enriched and reciprocate. Complete! Create the space of friendliness towards yourself and others, and persevere. Lust will turn to love. Your being will be in Eternal Bliss. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘That supreme space of eternal consciousness, My Consciousness, is not illuminated by the sun or the moon, or by fire. Those who enter that space never return to this material world.’ na tad bhāsayate sūryo na śaśāṇko na pāvakaḥ I yad gatvā na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama II 15.6 These words are not advice. They are for contemplation. Advice is the only thing everybody gives and nobody takes! Kṛṣṇa gives these words to program our Causal layer with completion.

These are words to contemplate, to meditate upon. They are the hymns to be meditated upon. In the Inner Awakening program, participants are guided through a meditation upon darkness while working on the Causal layer. This darkness is not mere absence of light. It is Energy. The Causal layer of energy is the passage through which the spirit passes on its last leg before it leaves the material world. When the spirit is stuck in this Causal layer, one is in coma. One can be stuck in this layer for a long time. Those who go past the causal layer, this layer of energetic darkness, where neither the sun nor the moon shines, nor fire warms, progress onwards to the Cosmic layer and then to the nirvanic layer, which signifies true liberation.

One can meditate upon this technique, upon this truth expounded by Kṛṣṇa, through the darkness meditation in some of our meditation programs. This meditation, which focuses on darkness, liberates one from the fear of death and the fear of loss of identity that causes the fear of death. Death is not an option. Death of the body is certain. Separation of the spirit from the body-mind is painful. Vivekananda says it is like a thousand scorpions stinging at once. At death the spirit leaves the body shell and merges into infinite energy. It then reappears in another shell, another body. It is like drawing circles on a whiteboard. The background is Universal energy and the perimeters of the circles drawn are the bodies that envelop the individual spirit.

These circles separate individual spirit or self from Universal energy or Self. When we erase these circles with the process of completion, the Puruṣottama Yogaḥ No Questions, Only Doubts1099 whiteness within the circles merges into the whiteness of the background. Individual self merges with universal Self. When the spirit is such that it has completed and created the space beyond attachment and lust and is constantly focused on the Self, then there is no return for that spirit into another body-mind complex. Else it returns. Kṛṣṇa points out that the death of the body is a certainty, however, the death of the spirit is impossible. The spirit lives on. When the spirit is evolved it doesn’t revert to a mental setup and root pattern that it transcended in the previous birth, that’s all. Mind Is the Conditioning