Verses 16.10–16.12🔗

rules, and is short on self-completion and dharma, righteousness. When we are caught in the material world, focused on ‘I’ and ‘me’, we are stuck in the mūlādhāra and svādiṣṭhāna cakras. Greed and fear rule us and we are forever in the bondage of attachment and aversion. Whatever we do is with selfish and impure motives, and results in consequences that are mostly illusionary. In the earlier verse, Kṛṣṇa explained how a person with demonic nature could destroy this world. Here, He shows how such a person can destroy himself. Out of pride, arrogance and hypocrisy, such a person moves in a path directed by purely selfish and material objectives, and derives results that produce suffering.

Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ You And Me 1163 When we focus on matter, we tend to lose sight of the energy inherent in matter. When we focus on the form, we cannot see the formless that enables the form. What is permanent in both cases is the formless energy that drives the form and matter. Science has moved a long way from the Newtonian model based on matter and form. This model is no longer relevant. From the days of Einstein, when matter and energy were linked inextricably, the concept has changed. Today all sciences accept that matter and energy not only co-exist, but also that the same object or event can be perceived or experienced by the observer as matter or energy or both.

So, we are back to the Indian master Ādī Śaṅkarācarya’s theory that the observer determines what is being observed. We may think this is fanciful. However, this is an accepted theory in the most advanced form of Quantum Physics today. Elementary subatomic particles, when observed in identical conditions with identical tools, appear differently to different observers. As yet there is no explanation for this phenomenon. Our ancient Sages, Ṛṣis explained that this happens based on our deep root cognitions, which colors our perceptions. When science is sufficiently advanced, it will accept this truth. Listen! Just as the army tanker has teeth in its wheels, and leaves its footprint when it goes on the road, in the same way, you leave the imprint of the guilt from your past, when you plan your future with fantasy, without responsibility.

When you take responsibility, it is no more a fantasy. But when you don’t take responsibility, it is a fantasy. When you plan for your future without responsibility, you leave the imprint of the guilt from your past! Once we know how to lead our life without fantasies with responsibility, the fear of death disappears. Then suffering and misery dissolve automatically. We move from the demonic into the divine realm. Here Lord Kṛṣṇa explains the same concept in a deeper way, and gives a beautiful punchline. Many take shelter in pleasures and pain that end only with their death. With some, even at that time, it doesn’t end. They think of the money they paid for insurance, casket, marble gravestone, etc.

They regard gratification of desires as the sole objective in life. The nature of the unconscious mind is to react to the senses. We may think we respond consciously. But almost all the time our reactions are instinctive, decided by vāsanās and saṁskāras, conflicting patterns and root patterns, rather than by conscious application of our rational mind. This is what Kṛṣṇa refers to as the nature of a demonic person. Instinct is the nature of animals, and because it is their nature, it works well for them. They flow with nature. Instinct is not the nature of humans. Human consciousness can rise to the intuitive level, in which awareness results in high action.

This is the potential of the Divine inherent in all of us. Instead of rising to the intuitive level, the super conscious level, most people find it easier to descend into the instinctive or unconscious level. The problem is that we do not know how to fulfill desires. We go through peaks of emotions goaded by our desires and then slip into valleys of depression and guilt. Our emotions are not authentic because they do not touch our inner core. If we intensely experience these events born out of desires and perceived by our senses, we find that neither the peaks thrill us nor the valleys sadden us. We don’t need to suppress or ignore these emotions; we can experience them fully without differentiation and move on.

We rush towards pleasure and away from pain. We are so eager to fulfill our desires that we go to any length to amass wealth and do any deed, however questionable it may seem. As Kṛṣṇa says, this goes on until we die. If we expect that we will suddenly be filled with thoughts of the Divine at death, even though our whole life we chased only pleasures, this is another foolish fantasy. If all our life we have been chasing money, at the point of death also, we will be obsessed with money, even if we realize that we can’t take it Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ You And Me 1165 with us.

If all our life we have been obsessed with lust, we will die in lust. If we live as a demon, focused on ‘me’, we cannot suddenly take the leap to ‘You’ at the point of death. That does not happen. Only if man blossoms in his consciousness, he is God; he is Bliss. He is in Nityānanda. Sensory Traps