Verses 17.8–17.10🔗

Kṛṣṇa talks about the nature of food consumed by people of satva, rajas and tamas temperaments. He explains what kind of food these people like, what kind of lives these people lead and what kind of understanding these people experience in their lives. The most important thing is what kind of understanding they acquire. See, the same words can be cognized in many different ways. We need to understand the word in the context of its spirit. Words can easily be misunderstood! Please don’t miss the essence of the words. It is easy to miss the spirit, the true meaning behind the words. Experiment with courage. And if you can’t, if this is not the truth for you, forget about it.

At least you will be free to search somewhere else. Experiment and Experience If you think that it is the truth and you don’t execute it or experiment with it in your life, then drop it! Otherwise it will become a habit to listen to the truth and not practice it. It will become an inauthentic mental setup. It is the most dangerous mental setup. People ask me, ‘Swamiji, should I renounce everything to become enlightened? Should I become a Sannyāsi, a monk?’ I tell them, ‘No. There is no need. Just do one thing. Don’t have the inauthentic mental setup of receiving the truth and not taking the responsibility of practicing it.

Complete with all your self-doubting, ‘impossible’ patterns and create the space for authenticity, which is creating your best inner image, outer image, others’ image and life’s image, that’s all.’ Inauthenticity is the most dangerous thing that can happen to any being. Please be very clear, receiving the truth and understanding it intellectually without having the courage of authenticity to live it is the worst possible mental setup. That is the worst devil or demon that can catch hold of you. So at least have the courage to decide, ‘This is not for me because this is not the truth.’ If you believe this is the truth, then have the courage of authenticity to experiment with it.

That is all I am saying. Don’t come back to me like a beggar with a powerless mood, ‘How can I have my own mind under my control, how can I be complete, how can I be authentic, can you tell me?’ Once you are married, you don’t go around and ask, ‘How can I have kids?’ You are a man! You know it! Once you are initiated, you don’t go around and ask, ‘How can I practice integrity and authenticity?’ It is a simple decision! Weakness is death which you give to yourself. Nobody can save you. Vivekananda is right when he says, ‘Nobody can save a person filled with weakness!’

You don’t need to swim and save yourself. If I come in the ship and throw the rope, you can at least hold the rope so that I can lift you! If you don’t have the power even for that, then nobody can save you! You have heard many things. Kṛṣṇa does not say anything new in this chapter. He says only one thing, ‘Be authentic.’ Authenticity is the straight way. I tell people, ‘Authenticity is the basic spiritual virtue. Authenticity is the basic spiritual virtue.’ First be a gentleman, then you can be a spiritual man. Gentleman means to be authentic to what you feel as you, what you ŚraddhatrayaVibhāgaYogaḥ Authenticity:StraightwayTo Liberation 1213 project as you, what others’ expect from you, and what you expect from life—being aligned and truthful to the core to all these four identities.

Never do anything without being clear and complete about the truth, and never stop doing anything if you know it is the truth. The scientist is courageous enough to authentically go after the truth. Wherever the research takes him, he is ready to experiment. The brain which is established in integrity and authenticity can read any book and understand the truths from that book. It can. Just like how the Paramahamsa swan can separate the water from the milk in a mixture of milk and water, the brain established in integrity can separate truth from untruth. The brain established in integrity and authenticity is Paramahamsa. In the same way, you must become an inner scientist, a spiritual scientist.

You must have the courage of authenticity to go behind the experience within the words. You must be able to play with them. A small story: An Enlightened Master and his disciple went to the river to bathe. Suddenly, the disciple fell into the river and shouted, ‘Master, save me, save me!’ The Master said, ‘You are ātman (soul), save yourself. You are God, save yourself.’ The disciple shouted, ‘Master, first save me, then you can teach me philosophy. Then you can teach me meditation. First, please save me.’ The Master replied, ‘Stand up and save yourself.’ The disciple shouted, ‘No, No, Master, save me first. Then you can teach me.’

The Master shouted back, ‘Fool, I am telling you to stand up.’ The disciple became frightened. Just out of fear, he simply stood up, and realized that the water was only up to his knees! When you stand up, you understand the whole saṁsāra sāgara, the ocean of Life. Whatever you consider to be the great worries of your life are not even up to your knee level. They are just up to the ankle level. Because you are lying down, because you never stand up, you think you are drowning; you think you are going to die. I tell you from my personal experience, if you stand up with the power of authenticity, you will realize that the water is only knee-deep.

Whatever you regard as the saṁsāra sāgar (ocean of life) is only knee deep. It is nothing. There is no way it can affect you. But you need courage of authenticity to stand up. For example, if the disciple had decided, ‘No, no, I am drowning and instead of pulling me out and helping me, Master is teaching me impractical and impossible things. What kind of a Master is he?’ If he simply blamed the Master, doubting the Master and doubting himself, he would have gone with the river. He had the courage of authenticity, he just decided to complete and drop his doubts and impossibilities, and in a minute, he got the power of possibility to experiment with the master’s words and was saved.

You need the power. Stand up with the courage of authenticity as your bone marrow. You need the courage to stand up with authenticity and see the truth by yourself. Nothing will be lost. If something can be lost, it is better to lose it as soon as possible. May you be rid of that thing or situation. If something can be lost by practicing the truth, may it be lost as early as possible. The earlier it is lost, the better for you. May you flood your being with the Truth. Whatever cannot stand, whatever is washed away, let it be washed away. May it be lost from your being as early as possible.

Kṛṣṇa explains here about the energy of various food substances. Generally, all food that is not from plants i.e., from animal origin, has ŚraddhatrayaVibhāgaYogaḥ Authenticity:StraightwayTo Liberation 1215 negative energy. Food that is hot and spicy tends to aggravate desires. Vegetarian food that is fresh and not spicy is ideal for spiritual practices. In our Nithya Spiritual Healing system, it is essential that the healers become vegetarians and give up substances such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. I have nothing against alcohol or meat. I have no theories about cruelty to animals and so on. Plants also have life, just perhaps not at the same frequency. So if one argues from the point of cruelty to animals, eating vegetables also is cruelty to plants.

This system is based on deep meditative techniques. For the meditative energy to be effective, negative energy substances should not be used. I have seen that these meditations do not go together with meat as well as with tobacco and alcohol. If healers eat meat, smoke or drink, they are affected physiologically and psychologically. Any serious meditation technique requires one to be in the energy field. The word āhāra used by Kṛṣṇa can be expanded to mean food for all senses, not merely for the tongue. All sensory inputs need to be of the same description that Kṛṣṇa uses here, promoting ‘longevity, virtue, strength, health, happiness and joy’ to aid one’s progress in one’s spiritual path by the sātvic route.

Ayurveda recommends different foods for each constitutional type based upon tastes such as sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, etc. These are specific recommendations as to what tastes would be healthy for which constitutions and based on this what kind of vegetables and fruits one should eat and so on. Even cooking methods are specified that can be used to provide wholesome ayurvedic food. Kṛṣṇa outlines a more general classification based upon the purity and nature of food. Kṛṣṇa explains that tāmasic food, putrid and stale, is forbidden for consumption by vedic tradition. The injunction is to eat food within a few hours of cooking. Beyond that, the food should be discarded.

Eat fresh food in silence and with completion and gratitude. Pay attention to each morsel of food and eat with gratitude and love. Eating does not need to be a social occasion. It should not be. Enjoy your social interactions before and after meals, not while eating. Be in the present moment while you eat. What Kṛṣṇa says makes pure sense for wellness. Natural foods contain their own flavor and goodness. You do not need to add spices and flavoring agents to corrupt their taste. He says eat food as it comes, fresh from the earth, and cooked with the energy of fire. Eat it while it is fresh. You will be in satva. You will be in bliss. Enriching Without Expectation