Verses 18.7–18.12🔗

Kṛṣṇa says that nitya karma or obligatory responsibilities must be followed with discipline and consistency. Not doing these takes us into the state of tamas, inaction born out of ignorance and laziness. Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1261 Nitya karmas vary from person to person. The duties of a householder are different from those of a monk or a student. Each has clear guidelines in terms of what they should and should not do. Many times the idea of dropping our responsibilities and taking up a different role is more attractive than growing in completion so that we can perform our own responsibilities well and without attachment. Be very clear, without the right cognition of completion, no role that we take up will work out for us.

Instead of taking up responsibility and expanding you and your life around you, watching television, sleeping or daydreaming seems much more pleasant and easy. We would rather do that than meditate or perform pūjā or whatever is our prescribed duty. Please listen! I am talking something very important and very mystical! It takes just four days for your muscle-memory to taste laziness, boredom and tiredness and settle down with it! I tell you, never ever take vacation for four days continuously in your life. The very frequency in which you function is reduced. Because, in four days, your muscle-memory gets settled with tiredness, boredom and laziness! Even if you are without job for four days, be active in something.

Go and meet your friends, family. Take up some voluntary service. Do not be without responsibility for four days. You may ask, ‘Why four days?’ Listen! It takes four days for anything to become part of your muscle-memory. For four days in the morning, if you don’t come for yoga, don’t come for satsang, fifth-sixth day your muscle-memory will start proposing alternatives to you at that time. What are the alternatives? Sleeping, rolling on the bed, TV, so many things are there. Feel Responsible in Your Being One of the biggest diseases that people suffer physically is unable to be active, having incompletions with being active. Giving up the responsibility for what needs to be done because it is uncomfortable is not renunciation!

That is convenient inaction born out of rajas. Please listen! I am defining Sannyāsa. When you don’t take responsibility for anything, you live as slave, śūdra. When you take the responsibility for the money of the society, you become vaiśya. When you take the responsibility for weapon of the society, you become kṣatriya.When you take the responsibility for knowledge of the society, you become brāhmaṇa. When you take responsibility for everything, you become Sannyāsi. Only when you take responsibility, life happens to your body. If you have any disease, take responsibility for it; so that you can heal and then take care that you don’t attract that disease again back.

In the same way, if you have broken a relationship because of your irresponsibility, unconsciousness, now take the responsibility that next time you don’t do it. Life does not end by breaking one relationship. You don’t need to be depressed or you don’t need to start being in that same space of powerlessness. When you take the responsibility you can even patch up with the relationship you broke. You can approach the person and rebuild the relationship. Listen. One of the biggest problem we have is—‘let me have the power first, let me have the status first, let me have the position first, then I will take the responsibility.’ No!

That does not happen in life. Take the responsibility to build the state inside you. Then, after you are tested by the Cosmos, it gives you the status. That status can never be taken away. I took the responsibility for teaching the science of Enlightenment. I started living, I started building the state, then human society has tested me enough. Now I can simply see many powerful positions are automatically coming towards me. Listen, I am not going in search of them. Responsibility attracts more responsibility. The problem is we are afraid of more responsibility, so we deny even the responsibility that we have in our hand. But more and more responsibility adds more and more life energy into you.

Understand, because Siddharth took the responsibility and he Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1263 became Buddha, the whole of Buddhism is built on responsibility and enriching. Integrity leads to authenticity. Responsibility leads to enriching. Take responsibility for everything happening around you. Buddha did not make that man old. Buddha did not make that man diseased. Buddha did not kill that man. But he took the responsibility for that state of affairs! He did not say, ‘Oh! I don’t know why he became sick. I don’t know why he became old. I didn’t kill him.’ Had he thought in that manner, Siddharth would have been Siddharth; Buddha would never have happened!

Fortunately, he thought that he is responsible for it. He cognized His responsibility. Siddharth became Buddha when He applied the truth that the science of life is responsibility! After attending a course many ask how many meditation techniques they can do each day. I tell them, ‘Do at least one properly.’ A week later, after the fervor has cooled down, if I ask, they sheepishly say, ‘I do not have time to practice even one meditation, Swamiji.’ All of us find time for everything except meditation. We find time to give appointments to everyone else except ourselves! Who is the loser? Kṛṣṇa says that doing what needs to be done because that is what is our responsibility, without attachment to the action and without desire is the ideal condition of satva.

Kṛṣṇa has said this many times in the Gītā. He repeats it again so that the message sinks in our muscle-memory and bio-memory. Do what must be done. Do what your responsibility is, based on your societal or religious beliefs and codes. However, do it with integrity and authenticity without attachment and expectation of results. The consciousness of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, in terms of the performance of the activity should be absent. The consciousness of ‘feeling responsible in your being’ should be present. Restricting your being in feeling responsible is what I call conditioning. Responsibility in your being means the space from whichyoucognize,fromwhereyoumakedecisions,carryingresponsibility in that zone. Please listen! If you don’t feel you are responsible for something, you don’t even think in that line.

If you feel you are responsible for something, only then will you even look into that part of your life. When you feel responsible in your being, for any problem, or anything, you find solution for that problem or that situation. You don’t need to do any action, you don’t need to do any thinking. Decide from your being that you will feel responsible for the whole world. You will take actions towards your immediate responsibility as per your prescribed duty , but you will feel responsible for the whole. Suddenly, you will see all your actions will have authenticity, your thinking will have integrity! Mainly, whatever you are doing, if you take responsibility for the world, even if you are a doctor, you will become a better doctor.

If you are a lawyer, you will become a better lawyer. If you are an engineer, you will become a better engineer, If you are a politician, you will become a better politician. If you are a doctor, know that you are responsible for the whole world. So you are responsible for your patients also! With this context when you start functioning, even you attending to your patients will become a spiritual practice leading you to enlightenment, because in any context you do any action, that context will become your bio-memory and reality. If you are a cook and you are cooking with the responsibility that only if you cook you will have money, and with that money only you can take care of your needs and your family, then you may be a good family man, you may be a head of family, you may be a good cook, nothing more than that!

But, if you do the same job with the cognition of ‘I will enrich the world with the food! I am responsible for the whole world. So this cooking and enriching the world is the immediate action I will do, but I am responsible for the whole world.’ I tell you, just with this shift in your cognition, you will be a karma yogi; because innumerable right things will be added to your thinking, to your being, to your action and to your life. It is the amount of responsibility you bring into your being that Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Drop Everything And Surrender 1265 makes your life juicy. I tell you, if you bring more responsibility into your cognition, your life becomes exciting!

Understand, if your cognition shrinks, you also shrink, your actions shrink, your integrity shrinks. If your cognition expands with more responsibility, authenticity happens in your action, integrity happens in your thinking and your words. Kṛṣṇa says that a person in the sātvic space of completion, calmness and awareness is undisturbed by external conditions. He is not bothered whether someone appreciates or condemns what he does. He just feels responsibility in his being. He is clear what he should do and he carries on with excitement. Renunciation is in the true spirit of completion and is done out of goodness, only when a person renounces the expectation of result. It is natural that a human being cannot remain still without doing some work.

Man must be doing something, anything, all the time. If not physically, at least mentally he does something. Even in sleep, he dreams. If we close our eyes, we watch our inner television. Mentally we think the whole day, but it is not directed in one direction, we are not useful to ourselves and to others. Please understand, when you lack integrity, when you have incompletions mentally, even if you think, it will not be useful thinking. Only an Enlightened person truly keeps his body and mind still. So the normal man is never without activity. This being the case, the only way man can be comfortable and at peace with himself is by not having any expectation of the result of his thoughts or words or actions.

This can be achieved by every one of us. Kṛṣṇa says that one who is not concerned about the fruits of his action has truly renounced. Attachment to action and to the results of action creates more desires. Even when an action has been completed and the expected result achieved, as long as one is attached to that action and its result, another desire crops up. Even when one desire is fulfilled, another unfulfilled desire rises. This is a constant, consistent sequence of incompletions. This is what I call karma. Karma is nothing but unfulfilled, incomplete desires. As long as we have attachment to the action as ‘doer’, which in turns creates an expectation of reward or punishment, we are caught in the cycle of karma and saṁsāra.

Our concern about whether an action or the result is good, bad or a mix of both, follows us as our mental patterns or vāsanā after death. Please understand that no one is ‘up there’ keeping an account of our deeds and misdeeds. Our own spirit does that job. So we can never escape! No amount of propitiation or contribution to ‘noble’ causes will erase the knowledge from our inner Self of what we have done. When we die, the body perishes but the spirit moves on to another body. That spirit carries its earlier mental patterns, its vāsanā. There is no exception to this rule. Saṁskāras or root patterns are the carried-over incomplete desires and they cause the cycle of saṁsāra, birth, death and rebirth.

However, we have no unfulfilled desires, karma, saṁskāra or vāsanā left when we renounce attachment to ‘doership’ and become a mere witness to both the action and the result. This means we act without expectation and attachment to the result of our action. Such a person breaks out of this cycle of saṁsāra. Technology Of Surrender