Verses 17.23–17.28🔗

In conclusion, Kṛṣṇa moves on to a different plane altogether. So far He explained the distinctions between sacrifice, austerity and charity—yajñas tapas tathā dānaṁ tesāṁ bhedam imaṁ śṛṇu (17.7). He clarified what needs to be done and how. He spelled out the . ŚraddhatrayaVibhāgaYogaḥ Authenticity:StraightwayTo Liberation 1235 different modes based on the nature of people in relation to performing sacrifice, austerity and charity. Please understand that all kinds of food, penance, sacrifice or charity fall into the basic three categories explained by Kṛṣṇa—sātvic, rājasic and tāmasic. These translate as the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. But the important thing is that as long as they are done in the materialistic world, they are conditioned.

When they are done from the space of completion with the attitude of gratitude to the Divine and Existence, only then you encounter spiritual progress or spiritual elevation. Our scriptures explain that anything done in the nature of rajas or tamas cannot give the ultimate result. Only the act done from the space of satva or goodness gives the final result. One who does such acts without this awareness has temporary results but not the final result. In the days of Mahābhārat, sacrificial rituals were a part and parcel of daily life. This is not the case today. The brāhmaṇas (highly learned sect of people) were the keepers of the sacred knowledge that connected the physical ritual with the metaphysical truth expressed by the great sages in the Vedas.

They were the keepers of the flame, in a real sense, since most vedic rituals invoked and addressed the fire energy. Sacrifices or yajña were directed towards enriching the elemental energies and celestial beings. Austerity or tapas was directed towards enriching your own self. Charity or dāna was directed towards enriching those around you. The brāhmaṇas were expected to lead an austere and charitable life in keeping with the spirit of their profession. In this chapter Kṛṣṇa elaborates on these concepts so that everyone can move forward on the path to completion or liberation. It is not only for the brāhmaṇas, it is also for kṣatriyas, vaiśyas and śūdras—the other castes.

Any member of any caste is qualified for completion if he follows these principles. Completion has nothing to do with birth. The prime requirement is authenticity, śraddha. Śraddha refers as well to the understanding that the enriching act of sacrifice, austerity or charity, yajña, tapas or dāna is not directed towards oneself or a material goal. They are directed to the enrichment of Supreme consciousness. Commit to complete with yourself and others. When I say ‘others’, I don’t mean only the friends and family and relatives who are present in your life. Complete with your kula devatā (family deity), complete with your kula guru (family guru), complete with your house, complete with the plants with which you are living, complete with your pet, complete with the different energies of the Cosmos, complete with everything!

Continuously complete and continuously enrich others! The real scale and measure of your completion is whether you are able to move the others’ space and enrich others and life continuously. If you are not enriching constantly, be very clear, the completion has not yet happened in you. I tell you, when completion happened in me, I just realized the authentic selflessness, śraddha. All our selflessness is also packed in our selfishness. All our selflessness is packed in our selfishness. When I completed, I discovered the authentic selflessness and enriching which never tires me. If you are getting tired, please be very clear, still you have incompletions in you. You have to complete!

You have to complete! Listen! This is the scale—having a tireless mind. The being happened in me is just because my enriching is out of pure selflessness. I tell you, once you complete, you will suddenly realize, ‘Why should I live now?’— ‘For enriching! Nothing else...Nothing else!’ Complete! Complete! Complete! In the last three verses Kṛṣṇa provides the technique to achieve this space of completion that expresses as the space of enriching, the shift of space from self to Self. He provides the method by which anyone can surrender the results of his activities, the fruits of his action called karma phala to the Divine. He provides the tool in the form of the invocation, Oṁ Tat Sat.

ŚraddhatrayaVibhāgaYogaḥ Authenticity:StraightwayTo Liberation 1237 oṁ tat sad iti nirdeśo brahmaṇas tri-vidhaḥ smṛtaḥ I brāhmaṇās tena vedās ca yajñāś ca vihitāḥ purā II 17.23 The three words ‘Oṁ Tat Sat ‘are the words of the Divine. • ‘Oṁ iti etat brahmano nedisthaṁ namaḥ’, shows the first goal, the beginning. • ‘Tat tvam asi’ indicates the second goal, the continuation. • ‘Sat eva saumya’ is the third goal or final result. All three combined give the words: Oṁ Tat Sat. This is why these words have such great importance or significance. Any person doing enriching or working with the space of addressing Oṁ Tat Sat will be with Existence, the Divine consciousness.

These three words simply imply: ‘I offer all to that Truth. I surrender everything to that Divine. Let that be the Truth.’ This is the Mahā-vākya, the great truth, handed down by the Master to Arjuna as the technique to ensure śraddha, authenticity in all activities of sacrifice, austerity and charity. Please understand that any action, whether penance, charity or sacrifice, has no meaning when the purpose is not to achieve the Ultimate, the Divine. The final aim in all the Vedas is to gain the experience of Kṛṣṇa or the supreme consciousness. No success, completion, fulfillment or happiness is possible without following this principle. The Guru or spiritual Master is the only being who can enrich you and guide you into the space of completion to make your life successful and fulfilled.

Understand, people are conditioned to worship all kinds of deities or demi-gods or spirits right from birth. This is simply because their nature is from one of the three guṇas. Among the three guṇas, satva guṇa is considered the best and higher than the other guṇas, namely rajas and tamas. But the path of achieving the ultimate consciousness, the understanding of Kṛṣṇa, goes beyond and transcends all three guṇas. This is where the role of a Guru or a spiritual Master is important. He directs and leads you on the path of complete cognition for an experience of the ultimate consciousness. Such an understanding, such a perception, leads to faith and ultimately to love for the Divine.

This is the purpose and final goal of life. Let us all pray to Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa with all authenticity to give us the experience of this chapter of the Gītā that leads to attainment of the ultimate consciousness, Nityānanda! Let us all experience Śraddha, the authenticity and imbibe and experience the truths of Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa. Let us pray to Him to give us all the authenticity and experience of the truth that He is teaching through the Gītā, to all of us, and let Him make us experience and establish ourselves in Eternal Bliss, Nityānanda! Thus ends the seventeenth chapter named Śraddhatraya Vibhāga Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Discerning the Three-Fold Faith,’ 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.

Drop Everything And Surrender Do not worry. There is nothing to surrender except the ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ Krsna reveals the final secret to experience and become Him—‘Drop everything you know as dharma and surrender onto Me. I promise you liberation, moksa.’ c h a p t e r ... Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ . Drop everything and surrender. This is the gist not only of this final chapter of Bhagavad Gītā, but it is also the essence of the entire Bhagavad Gītā. In addition, throughout the ages it has been the basis of the teachings of all the spiritual Masters. Kṛṣṇa concludes the Bhagavad Gītā with one subject: drop everything and surrender.

Beautifully He says: sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja I ahaṁ tvām sarvapāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā sucaḥ II 18.65 Drop everything, whatever you know as dharma, whatever you know as life, whatever you think you know, just drop it. Drop everything and surrender. Whatever you know is only your knowledge, it is just what you know. It is not what is. Knowledge does not prove Existence In fact, wisdom and truth are about what we do not know. That is all! What we know cannot lead us to the ultimate Truth. Knowledge of the mind, that we take so much pride in, functions like blinkers that we wear to shut out the truth of Existence.

The mind is not the scale of measure of Existence. What we are has nothing to do with our thoughts. What we are is beyond our thoughts. If our thoughts alone could define what we are, we would be nothing more than a biomechanical machine. Humans think. That is the problem. Our great Sages, the ancient Ṛṣis declare, ‘Drop your mind and you will be complete. You will realize your true potential as a human.’ Ādī Śaṅkarācārya, one of the greatest Masters and Hindu philosophers, proclaims this so beautifully in the verses of his Ātma Drop everything And Surrender Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1241 Ṣaṭakam. To define what He truly is, Śaṅkara negates his body, mind, senses, emotions and all his relationships.

By negating all this, he declares his inner divinity boldly and beautifully. Understand, we are spiritual beings in human form, and not human beings striving to be spiritual. Our potential is infinite. Our intelligence is unlimited. But our intellect is limited. When we started the Bhagavad Gītā series, we learned what śāstras, stotras and sūtras are. Śāstra is knowledge of the intellect. It is acquired by reading and understanding. Stotra is knowledge acquired through learning, through the heart, that is through devotion. Sūtra is learning through the being, that is through meditative techniques that cut to the core of what is essential. Even knowledge about God creates bondage when it is merely intellectual because we will only know about God.

That is all! We will not know God. Please understand this. Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God. When we completely surrender everything, we will not even have the idea that we know God. When that idea does not exist in us, we know God. Otherwise we may know about God but we do not know exactly what the Divine is. Words do not express God. No expressions can lead to the experience of God. God is when expressions cease. Masters say that the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. It is only a pointer, a reminder. Words about God in any form, however sincere they may be, are mere pointers and reminders.

The problem with religions is that they teach us about God. They do not teach us how to know God. Religions tell us a few things about God and instill fear and greed in us. No spiritual Master preached violence. If he did, he would be no master! Great spiritual Masters and Incarnations happen with the mission to raise us to a super conscious state. They aim to cause our Inner Awakening, awakening the individual consciousness, so that we realize that we are one with the collective consciousness of this Universe. They come with a mission to make us understand that we must move from the space of ‘I’ to ‘you’ and ‘us.’

Unlike spirituality that spreads love among people, religion fosters violence. Understand: Enlightenment is a gift. It makes no difference what effort we put in. We may have stood on one leg for hundreds of years. We may have fasted for thousands of years. We may have practiced meditation or yoga or some other technique. These are equivalent to buying the one-dollar lottery ticket. Anything we put in is comparable to that one-dollar lottery ticket. What we receive in return is a pure gift. Whatever we do is within the dream. How can that get us something beyond the dream? Śrī Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Drop everything and surrender—sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja.’

First let us understand the word ‘surrender’. The word itself frightens people. We must understand that we are not going to lose anything when we surrender. We are only going to gain everything. However, for lack of a better word, we must use this word. Surrender and Understand Realize first of all that we have nothing of any value to surrender! We only think we have something to surrender. The truth is that we have nothing to surrender. We simply need to open our eyes and see that everything that is, is divine. It is Existence. Whatever we think is ours does not exist! The ‘I’ and ‘mine’ that we hold onto are mere lies.

The moment we understand this, we surrender. The moment we surrender, we understand. When we call something ‘mine’, legally it may belong to us, but existentially, it does not. Legally we can fence off a piece of land and call it ours. Legally we can own things. But Nature or Existence does not know that it is ours. When a cyclone hits, it does not care whose property it is. It does not know the law! It does not know that legally a cyclone is not allowed on someone’s property! For Existence there is no law. Your idea of ‘mine’ is protected by the laws of society. You cannot Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1243 truly use the term ‘law of the land.’

The land has no laws. Only society has laws. The land can have an earthquake at any time. We cannot have laws to govern Nature. The law of the land is beyond your comprehension. As long as you are caught with the concept of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, you will not understand the truth about Existence. You are caught in thinking that something is ‘you’ and something is ‘yours’. When Kṛṣṇa tells us to drop everything and surrender, He asks us to open our eyes and see the foolishness of the drama we play with our possessions and expectations. Listen! It is one thing if you play the game to cheat others; but, do not cheat yourself.

Please understand, there is no ‘I’, there is no ‘mine.’ The person who is intelligent and willing to open his eyes and see reality, will sooner or later wake up to the truth that there is no ‘I’ or ‘mine’. Can whatever you think of as ‘I,’ either your body or mind, function without air? Can you say that the air belongs to you? This basic energy, prāṇa, which goes in and comes out, does not belong to you. If prāṇa stops happening, what you think of as ‘you’ disappears. It is like saying that the foundation does not belong to me, but the first floor of the house is mine!

You can do that legally. But it is impossible existentially. In the same way, the building may belong to you, but the earth that it sits on does not belong to you. The earth can give one small shake, and whatever you thought was yours just disappears! The very foundation of whatever you think is ‘you’ does not belong to you. It belongs to the Whole. It belongs to Existence. It belongs to the Universe. It belongs to Nature with whom you are continuously fighting. The base or root of what you think of as ‘you’ does not belong to you. We take for granted the air that continuously goes in and comes out.

We believe that the air belongs to us. There is no break in this natural supply. Maybe if God called a strike, like a workers’ union strike, we would understand that we cannot take even the air for granted. Suppose He called a strike for a minute, then we would understand that it did not belong to us. But He is a Karuṇāmūrti, god of mercy. Out of His compassion, He never goes on strike! That is why we take life for granted. Just because certain things belong to us legally, we think that the concept ‘mine’ is solid. The truth is that both the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ have no base.

Anybody who is intelligent enough to open his eyes and see, realizes that ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are a drama. The moment the air that goes in does not come out, it is over. ‘I’ disappears. Immediately your name will be taken from the nameboard outside your house and put on your tombstone. You will be called a dead body! You will be taken to the place where you can rest forever! Your house and car will be useless. So, whatever we think is ‘I’ and ‘mine’ is baseless. Sometimes even the piece of land that we think belongs to us we may find doesn’t, when we see the papers of that land!

Our life itself is built on paper. The moment we have the intelligence to see this, the moment we wake up to this reality, we achieve the state of surrender. The moment we understand that in Existence nothing called ‘I’ or ‘mine’ exists, we immediately experience tremendous relief from the need to continuously protect ourselves. These two instincts of holding onto ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are the reason for physical and mental problems. The instinct to survive and the instinct to possess are the root cause of our problems. On the other hand, when we realize that the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ do not exist, we realize how we have cheated ourselves and how foolish we have been in spending our whole life and energy in building sandcastles.

The whole thing is pure fun! We must understand that whatever way we live and whatever we may build, does not belong to us. If we do not internalize the outer incidents and if we treat them with the indifference they deserve, we experience what I call surrender. There is only one thing to remember: Do not internalize sensory inputs and do not take things too seriously. When you take life too seriously, you can be sure of one thing, and that is sickness. All seriousness is a form of sickness. When you think the ‘I’ or ‘mine’ is the truth, you create trouble for yourself. The moment you believe that there is an ‘I’ Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1245 in your being, you start moving away from life.

The idea that you have of yourself has no base, whatever you may think of as you. Sometimes you think you are the body. Sometimes you think you are the mind. And other times, you think you are the senses. No matter what you identify yourself with, it is baseless. Please listen. There is another critical aspect to understand in this regard. Whatever aspect you think of as ‘you’ will not grow. If you think you are the body, you stop the growth of the body because you do not like change. When you think you are the mind, you stop the growth of the mind. You stop the inputs to the mind.

That is the reason egoistic people cannot listen to new ideas or read about them. They cannot learn because learning is against their vested interests. They think that they already know and have nothing more to learn. When you think that your mind is you, the very attitude of learning, the beginner’s mind, is lost. Wherever you cling, you destroy that. If you think you are the body, you do not let the body rejuvenate itself. You do not let your body do its regular work. If you think you are the mind, you do not let it learn anything new. You do not allow anything new to enter. That is a sure way of destroying it.

The same applies to what you consider as ‘mine’. This is based on the laws of society. In no way is it related to the laws of Existence. You are not who you think you are It is well known to science that of the trillions of cells in our bodymind system, millions of cells die each day and millions of cells are reborn. After a few years, there isn’t a single cell in our body which existed two years earlier. Every single entity in the body is new. This means that there is really no constant ‘I’ as we imagine. Yet, we carry that label proudly. All we are is a bunch of memories, root patterns, collectively known as saṁskāras.

Our root patterns define us. Our root patterns rule us and make decisions for us. That is what this ‘I’ is all about. When we complete with our root thought patterns and give up our possessions and attachment to possessions, we feel liberation. When I walked out of my home for spiritual wandering, I felt no loss. Today, the whole world is my home! This does not mean that all of you need to become monks, renunciates and Sannyāsis. You can happily continue your normal life, but drop your attachments, fantasies, speculations, greed and fear about the past or the future. So, you need not renounce what you already have.

All you need to do to achieve the space of completion is to renounce what you do not have. Renunciation does not mean sitting cross-legged with a tense look and eyes closed. If Enlightenment could happen by shutting off our senses, it would be easy. We would just need to sit in soundproof rooms and wear blindfolds. Renunciation, tyāga is a state of mind and not a mere state of the body. It is even more than a state of mind; it is a space of being. We can renounce attachments to relationships and possessions while being involved in material life. On the other hand, we could take Sannyāsa, go to the distant Himalayas, and every time we close our eyes, our inner television would switch on.

The surrender that Kṛṣṇa talks about involves completing and dropping fantasies of the future, incompletions of the past, and surrendering to the reality of the present. The true reality, the only truth is that we are part of the universal energy. We are part of the collective consciousness. When we have this awareness, there is no room for the individual ‘I’ and ‘mine’ to rule our actions. Throughout Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa talks about renunciation. Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahamsa said that the Gītā is nothing but ‘Tā Gī’, meaning tyāga, or renunciation. Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa said, ‘Keep repeating ‘Tā Gī’ and you will understand ‘Gī Tā.’ Again and again Kṛṣṇa speaks about renunciation: How we should surrender the fruits of action to Him, without renouncing the action itself, and how all knowledge and action should be surrendered at His Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1247 feet.

He prepares Arjuna for this final moment when He tells him that all that needs to be done is surrender. That is all. Surrender is of three kinds. The first step is the surrender of the intellect. For most people, especially intellectuals, this is the easiest. Your ego must be ripe before it can fall. The more stuff you pack into your thick skull, the more bloated it becomes. You become intoxicated with your own knowledge. You become intellectually arrogant. You are then ripe for surrender. When someone appears on the scene and proves that intellectual knowledge is a pile of garbage, a person with a truly ripe intellectual ego understands and accepts the truth.

Only those with half-baked knowledge who pretend to have intellectual status have a problem in understanding such a truth. A true intellectual can understand that all acquired knowledge is a mirage, an illusion. When this happens, such a person surrenders his intellect to the Master who shows him the way. Many intellectual seekers and spiritual shoppers come to me with loads of questions. After spending time with me, most of them tell me with great surprise that they no longer have questions. I don’t take the trouble to answer their questions. No one can answer such questions. All I do is add more words to them. They struggle with the new words and ultimately find the right answers themselves!

When I do answer, I answer the questioner. I address the person, not his question. I look into his being and provide the solution. The next step in surrender is the surrender of the heart. People ask how they will remember me when they go away from the ashram. I tell them that if I am their Master, they will have trouble forgetting me! Remembering me is not an issue, forgetting me is. The thought of the Master will melt your heart. You will become emotional. You do not need to be in the Master’s physical presence. The mere thought is enough. Tears will flow from your eyes. This is a powerful form of surrender.

Rāmakṛṣṇa says, ‘Know this for sure: When the mere thought of your iṣṭadevatā (favorite deity) or your Master reduces you to tears, you are in your final janma, your final birth.’ What an Enlightened Master says is always true. So powerful is this surrender that it can liberate you, complete you, enlighten you. This is the power of devotion, bhakti. Kṛṣṇa keeps repeating that this is the easiest way to reach Him. Do not worry about learning scriptures or performing rituals. Do not worry about techniques. He says, ‘Just be devoted to Me and Me alone, and I shall save you.’ The third and final form of surrender is the surrender of the senses.

When the surrender of senses happens, Enlightenment happens, and when Enlightenment happens, the surrender of the senses happens. Walking with Arjuna after the Mahābhārat war, Kṛṣṇa points to a bird on a tree and remarks, ‘Arjuna, look at that green crow!’ Arjuna responds, ‘Yes, Kṛṣṇa, I see the green crow.’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘What a fool you are! How can a crow be green?’ Arjuna simply says, ‘Kṛṣṇa, when you told me to look at that green crow, what I saw was indeed a green crow.’ Such was the state of Arjuna’s surrender to his Master, whatever He said was what Arjuna’s eyes saw. This is the final state of surrender.

The master-disciple relationship is the most mysterious phenomenon in Existence. It is not intellectually comprehensible. It cannot be proved in a logical way. Those who become Sannyāsis out of a logical conviction by listening to Masters and becoming convinced that what the Masters say is true, are only on the periphery. The true disciple has nothing to do with what the Master is saying; the true disciple has something to do with what the Master IS. The true disciple rises in love. It is not a question of conviction. It is something more mysterious and transcendental. Hence, a real disciple cannot explain to anybody what has happened. Everybody will think that he has gone mad, that he has been hypnotized and that he is no longer in control of his senses.

Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1249 Peoplewhothinklikethatarenottoblame.Certainthingsarebeyond explanation. They elude rationalization. And in fact, life begins when you come in contact with something incomprehensible, inexplicable, indefinable and unprovable; yet somewhere deep down, your heart says it is so. It is falling totally in love, and it is a love of an entirely new quality. This love is not limited to the Master but it is experienced towards the entire world. You no longer think in terms of ‘I,’ but in terms of ‘you’. This is compassion. This feeling of unconditional, uncalled for and uncontrollable love is compassion. This happens when your ego surrenders. It may surprise you that an enlightened Master has no freedom to do what he wishes.

His surrender to the cosmic energy is so total that every move he makes is dictated by that energy. Ordinary people have the freedom to do what they wish. All this talk about destiny has no meaning. Each of you has full freedom to do what you wish. After doing what you want and suffering, you claim it was because of your destiny! Whatever you do is within your power. In contrast, I have no power to move on my own. Every word I utter is at the command of Parāśakti, the Cosmic energy. Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s message to enrich Arjuna and to all seekers is to be complete, drop everything and surrender unto Him—mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja (18.65). That is the only and final solution. The Act And The Actor