Verses 16.17–16.20🔗

Kṛṣṇa has said in other verses that He will receive anyone with compassion and liberate them. Here He says He will cast them aside into suffering. How do we reconcile these two positions? Both positions are true! After all, every word that an enlightened Master utters is true. It is our understanding that needs to evolve. Kṛṣṇa is compassion Incarnate. Anyone who surrenders to Him is liberated. That is the absolute truth. The problem is that we only pretend to surrender. What we have are mere words with no integrity and no authenticity. Our thoughts do not match our words, and our words do not match our actions. People come to me and say, ‘Swamiji, we surrender to you.

Please help us and relieve us of our suffering.’ When I tell them to attend the meditation program the following week, they say they need to check their appointment book! Is this surrender? Does this have any meaning? It is sheer hypocrisy, trying to involve the Master in a conspiracy of our own making. As human beings we have free will. The problem is that we feel free, yet we are unwilling to exercise our will. People ask whether they are controlled by destiny or free will. I tell them that no destiny binds them; they are free to exercise their will. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad puts it so well: As are your thoughts, so is your will; as is your will, so your action, as are your actions, so is your destiny.

Destiny is nothing but the end result of how we exercise our free will. The problem is, we have no will; in the morning we want to do one thing, by noon it is something different, by night it is totally different. So, if our will keeps changing, how can it ever be converted into action? Create the Space of Surrender People tell me, ‘Swamiji, you say creating the space by visualizing it in the present helps make things happen in reality; we have tried: nothing happens.’ Nothing happens because you are full of self-contradiction, self-doubt, self-hatred and impossibilities. If we wish to get rid of back pain, and we keep saying, ‘Let this back pain go,’ it will never go.

Every time we utter the words back pain, our mind latches more firmly onto the past hangover of pain. If we want to get rid of pain, we must complete with all self-doubts and create the space for health visualizing it in the present; not pain, not getting rid of pain, but feeling healthy. When you create the space to make something into reality, complete with all the doubts, complete with all the impossible ideas that come to you, complete with your ability to even create the space. Stand up Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ You And Me 1171 powerfully without listening to any form of impossible shouted by your mind towards you.

When you create a space, first thing itself you will face is depression of past failures and complete distrust. ‘How can this be reality? I suffered too much! I know it is not possible!’ This is the first thing you go through, and two days you get depressed and lock yourself in the bedroom. So, understand, when you create a space, this is the first thing you face. So, complete with that first. Completion with that is the most important thing. Listen! I am defining Space Creation. Bringing your past hangover into the present is incompletion. Bringing your future possibility into the present is Space. Please listen! Bringing your past hangover into the present is incompletion.

Bringing your future possibility into the present is Space Creation. Bring your future possibility into the present and decide you will not challenge the power of the space, but you will take the responsibility to fulfill that space. When we surrender to Kṛṣṇa, our surrender must be total. We must take the responsibility to fulfill the space of surrender. There can be nothing between Him and us. Then, He surely liberates us. Because then we are already liberated, we are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Here, He talks about people who feel no need to surrender to Him. They are so full of ego, that they feel He is their competitor. He says He will cast them into the material world.

In this material world, they can follow their senses, sense objects and what they consider to be sensual pleasures till death. As I said before, it is our decision. Even Kṛṣṇa is helpless to change it, because He has given us the power to decide. He has handed over the decision to us; to decide whether we want to be ‘me’ or ‘You’ focused: demonic or divine. ‘You’—The Foundation of Surrender Saying again and again, ‘I believe in what Kṛṣṇa says,’ has no meaning. It does not help. Faith does not mean belief. Belief is not trust. Belief is a pseudo-trust, imposed, cultivated out of fear. It is not something that has grown from within us.

Rather, it is something that has been implanted by others: society, religion, the state. Believers remain stupid; they never grow in intelligence. And society does not want people to be intelligent. The ‘yes’ of a man who cannot say ‘no’ is always powerless. First a man must learn to say ‘no,’ only then does his ‘yes’ have meaning. Faith is different from belief. With faith we grow. We grow in love to a Master and to God. Most of us look to God as a person to pray to, to worship. We feel God is a third person. He is not us. Prayer and worship become important pathways to reach this form.

The moment we drop the idea of a person, prayer disappears; instead, meditation becomes significant. Meditation is going inwards. So, it is more difficult for many who are educated rationally. That’s why meditation never became the central core of religion in the West. In the East all the great masters founded their teachings on meditation. They taught followers to turn inwards. They taught them to be God, not to worship God. Meditation leads us to surrender. Meditation is the process of creation of the space of completion. Completion is the knowledge that we are one with the Universe. It is then about ‘you’ instead of ‘me’. The feeling of ‘you’ and the absence of ‘me’ dissolve the idea of ‘I’ as identity.

This is the foundation of surrender. Become a servant of love. You then become a master of humanity. One begins as a servant. However, one ends as a master. In this world, you often begin as a master and you end up as a servant. That is the law of the external world. In the inner world there is a totally different law. You begin as a servant and you can end up as a master. You surrender to love, you surrender and love and you shall certainly conquer the world. Buddha has said: In the outer world everything is sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end; in the inner world, everything is bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end.

Only the end matters. Where you Daivāsura Sampad Vibhāga Yogaḥ You And Me 1173 begin is not in your control. Once you understand how to love the people around you, only then can you love God. You cannot hate your neighbor, brother or spouse and love only God. This is impossible. When you start loving those around you, you start loving yourself more. Strangely, you start thinking less about yourself. In your defeat, you win others. This is what surrender is about: It is asking for your defeat. Let me repeat: Surrender, renunciation of the self, or sannyāsa is a defeat, a defeat of the ego. God is realized the moment the ego is dissolved.

Surrender is the search for the Divine principle. Call it God, truth, freedom, or nirvāṇa. They mean the same thing. The search is for something that is missing in life. We are alive but unaware of what life is about. We exist, but we are completely oblivious to the fact of who we are. This is what Kṛṣṇa talks about in this chapter. The courage to move from ‘me’ to ‘You’ is the courage to trust, love and surrender. When that happens there is nothing else but Him. We become Kṛṣṇa. When we are one with the Universe, one with Kṛṣṇa, there is nothing else we need to look up to. There is nothing else to look for. We have reached eternal bliss—Nityānanda. Of Gold And Women