Verses 2.9–2.13🔗

Even though it is written here in the past tense, I feel Kṛṣṇa should always be addressed in the present tense. He is still relevant, present to each of us today. We cannot say, ‘Kṛṣṇa was’ but ‘Kṛṣṇa is’, not ‘Kṛṣṇa said’ but ‘Kṛṣṇa says.’ Once again, having lamented about what he is being forced to do, and not wishing to do what he is expected to do, Arjuna, like a petulant child sits down saying, ‘Govinda, I am not going to fight, na yotsya iti govindam (2.9).’ It is as if Arjuna is waiting to be persuaded. He is seeking an explanation. Kṛṣṇa says to him gently and smilingly, ‘While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief—aśocyān anvāśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāṁś ca bhāṣase.

Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead—gatāsūn agatāsūṁś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ (2.11).’ Again, Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna’s incompletion directly, ‘O Arjuna! You speak as if you are intelligent, enlightened, prajñā-vādāṁś.’ You speak the words without having experienced them. Therefore, your words do not carry conviction. Your emotion, your being, shows that you are not enlightened, that you have not understood. A truly enlightened person will never worry for the living or the dead.’ If you worry for somebody living or dead, you cannot be an intelligent person. What is death and life after all? There are thousands, rather millions, who have lived and gone. Kṛṣṇa’s first enriching words are Sānkhya See the brilliance of Śrī Kṛṣṇa!

He is so soaked in the space of completion. The moment Kṛṣṇa opens His mouth, the first truth that with Kapila. when you are in a crisis, the first few words you utter are the words with which you solve your own problem. When somebody asks you for advice,whatcomesupfirst?Thewordsthatyouusetoenrichyourself,will only come out to enrich others. Understand, if suddenly, if I am forced to solve a problem, the first solution that will come out of my mind will be the solution or philosophy with which I am solving my own problems. So, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself is not a bhakti yogi. Bhakti yoga comes only be a master of the books that you have in the archives, but the books you have on your table have mastered you!

That is why they are occupying your table. They are master for you. Please listen! I can be sure that Kṛṣṇa is more shocked than Arjuna because He hasnever seen thisdimension of Arjuna—shivering, shaking! It was a shock even for Kṛṣṇa when Arjuna drops his Gāṇḍiva bow and says, ‘I am not interested in fighting!’ Kṛṣṇa has never seen this powerless, weak side of Arjuna. See, trusting Arjuna, He went all the way as a peace ambassador to the assembly of Kauravas. The great war of Mahābhārat was the first World War because at that time, the whole of humanity, fifty-four deśas (countries) were divided into two parts. The whole world was participating.

Either you are on the side of Duryodhana, the Kaurava clan or on the side of Arjuna, the Pāṇḍava clan. And suddenly, Arjuna is saying, ‘I am not waging the war!’ How will you handle this? How Kṛṣṇa feels! Everyone knows Kṛṣṇa may not be in the front, but He is running the whole show, the whole war play! So, Kṛṣṇa is completely cornered now. He has to solve Arjuna’s problem. The first idea with which Kṛṣṇa is sorting out Arjuna’s problem is He is a person established in the knowledge of completion! It is important to understand the rules of Existence, of the Divine. Only the ignorant worry about people who are living or dead.

A truly intelligent person does not bother about death. Often people ask me, ‘How was the Universe created? Was it by Brahma, as Hindu scriptures say? From my personal experience, I say to them what Buddha said thousands of years ago based on His personal perception. ‘The Universe,’ Buddha said, ‘has neither been created nor will it ever be destroyed. It always has been.’ The Universe created itself. It is the creation that embodies the creator and results in what has been created. Our questions regarding the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of what happens around us arise only when they threaten us. These questions, these issues about the morality of the Universe, spring forth only when our ego, our identity is threatened, when our life is threatened.

The creator is also the destroyer. What is created will be destroyed. We have no agreement with God that when we are born we will be assured of so many years of life along with the knowledge of the timing and nature of our death. You are Responsible for Everything When you truly realize your Self, when you are complete, enlightened, you will be aware of when you will die and how you will die. It will then make no difference to you whether your body is alive or dead. Living and dying are no longer issues in which you feel you need to play a part. They are progressions of nature and being enlightened and complete, you flow with Nature.

We are just playing with words when we talk about karma and destiny, saying that they are responsible for everything that happens to us. Let me tell you this: We are responsible for everything that happens in and around us. We are responsible for what we do. It is a misrepresentation of Nature’s law of responsibilism to blame nature for what happens to us. When you take responsibility for how you think and feel, instead of leaving the responsibility to destiny, society, media and others, if you take the responsibility, you can awaken your inner power of leadership, you can make your non-mechanical parts of the brain to function. Listen!

When you don’t take responsibility, others take it on their own and make you a follower. Society and all other power-hungry people who are interested in controlling you, take the responsibility for your body, mind and brain if you don’t take the responsibility. Some people question, ‘Is it fair that we are held responsible for what we did in another lifetime and are not even aware of now?’ What do we know of fairness except what we determine to be fair out of our own selfishness? It is possible to be conscious of previous births; it is even possible to have a conscious birth, coming into this world fully conscious and aware.

For that to happen, we need to drop our root thought pattern and merge with Nature. We need to responsibly surrender our existence to Nature. When we do so, Nature responds and opens up. Listen, when you take responsibility for all the happenings in and around you, a new energy and a new possibility opens up in you. The first step to realize the divine in you is to take responsibility. Decide whether you are reason or not, you are taking responsibility for all happenings in and around you, because it is affecting you! You Exist in Past, Present and Future Sañjaya says Kṛṣṇa was smiling as He uttered these words.

Kṛṣṇa must have been laughing at Arjuna. ‘You fool; you pretend to be wise and quote the scriptures.Who do you think you are quoting the scriptures to? What can you understand of what I Myself have said?’ Kṛṣṇa continues: ‘Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you and all these kings, and never in the future shall any of us cease to be.’ na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ I na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ sarve vayam ataḥ paraṁ II 2.12 With this verse begins the essence of the whole Gītā. This is ātmajñāna, Self-Realization, the knowledge of completion. If you can understand this one verse, you can become enlightened straightaway and enter into eternal bliss.

If you think our souls will also die with our bodies, you are wrong. We were there before our birth and will remain after death. It is not true that any of us will not be in the future. Listen. You existed in the past, exist in the present and will exist in the future. Your face and body may change but you continue to exist. Then why do we think we will die and why do we fear death? If what Kṛṣṇa says is true, why are we worried about this life and about death? You need to first understand the concept of the past, present and future to enable you to understand what Kṛṣṇa says.

Let me explain this concept of time first. Time is like a shaft continuously moving from the future on the right into the past on the left (see diagram). The future is on your right and the past is on your left. The future is continuously moving into the past; every moment and every second it is turning into the past. The present is the point where the future and the past meet. Your mind as such is nothing but movements between the past and the future. You cannot have any thoughts if you stop thinking about the past and the future. Your thoughts consist of nothing but the constant movements between the past and the future.

The more your thoughts shift from past to future or future to past, the higher the frequency of thoughts. The less you shift from past to future or future to past, the lesser the number of thoughts. Try to think of something in the present, you will find that you cannot. You can think of it only by taking it into the past or future. You are either worrying about the future or remembering the past. The higher the frequency of thoughts, the more you are caught in the physical and material world. For example, if you have 100 Thoughts Per Second (TPS,) it means you have jumped 100 times back and forth between the past and future in one second!

If you have 80 TPS, it means you have jumped 80 times between these two dimensions. The higher the frequency, the more you will be away from the present and more problems you have. If the number of thoughts reduces, you fall into the present moment. The past, present and future, all the three put together are eternal, Nitya or Ātman. Only when you come to the present moment do you experience Ātman—your true Self, but as of now you are constantly shuttling between the past and future. When the number of thoughts Past Time Shaft Future 100 TPS 80 TPS 60 TPS 40 TPS 20 TPS 0 TPS Present Moment Each Moment Slipping from Future to Past reduces, you will not even be aware of the passage of time.

For example, when you are with someone you love, even two or three hours will seem like a short while. But, when you are with someone whose company is boring, even a short time seems very long. Time is more psychological than chronological. That is why, in our scriptures or Vedas, we have the word kṣaṇa to describe the unit of time. Kṣaṇa does not denote one second, but is defined as the gap or time interval between two thoughts. The larger the kṣaṇa or the gap between two thoughts, the more in the present we are. Each person’s kṣaṇa will be different depending on how busy his mind is!

When our TPS is lower, we will naturally be in completion, in ecstasy, in bliss. When the number of our thoughts is high, we are in hell. Hell and heaven are nothing but the number of thoughts that we entertain, that’s all. That is why I say heaven and hell are not geographical places, but psychological spaces. Withahigherfrequencyofthoughts,youthinkyouarethebody.When the frequency of thoughts reduces, you think you are the mind and just emotion. When the thoughts become zero, you realize you are Ātman, Self; you exist in the past, present and future. Only a man who’s TPS iszero can realize what Kṛṣṇa says—You will be there forever. But now, as the frequency of thoughts is very high, you do not have the patience or energy to undestand who you are and your nature.

Kṛṣṇa says beautifully, ‘You were there in the past, you are in the present and you will be in the future; you do not die. You existed before birth and will remain after death. Whatever dies, can never live. Whatever lives can never die.’ When Kṛṣṇa says, ‘You are the eternal soul,’ He means that as a being, you are beyond time. Here, your deep consciousness says that something is living in you. This quality you wrongly attribute to your body and mind. You are not the body or the mind. As long as you are caught in the past and the future incompletions, you think that you are the body-mind.

The moment you come down to the present moment, you are in the eternal space of completion, you experience that you are beyond the body, beyond the mind. Completion, the Eternal Space in the Present Please listen! Anything which does not allow, anything which stands in between you and the present moment, acting as a barrier; which does not allow you to connectcompletely with life and with other people in your life in the present moment, is what I call incompletion. So, the first thing you need to do in life is bring completion. Kṛṣṇa does not mean that we existed in the form that we are here now, or that He was present always as Kṛṣṇa in the form we imagine Him to be, with a flute and a peacock feather.

He means that our spirits which are eternal, always existed and will always exist. In our spiritual state, that of our soul, we are divine, one with the universal energy, Brahman. Completion is the only methodology where you can complete with your past and future incompletions. You need to know that when you do completion now, don’t think that only your future will be in completion and complete. No! Even your past gets altered. Even your past becomes complete! The moment you create the space of completion, what Kṛṣṇa declares, ‘you are the eternal soul, beyond your body and mind,’ becomes reality in your life. Kṛṣṇa is established in the space of Sāṅkhya knowledge.

Kapila Muni, the founder of Sāṅkhya, does not elaborately talk about God, but he talks about the methodology to reach God. Sāṅkhya does not speak about God, because completion itself is given the place of God. Please understand, Sāṅkhya does not have the system of God because the methodology to reach God is made as God. It is a lifestyle. The methodology of completion is God. Completion is God! Even as the spirit resides in this body, the body passes through its seasons of childhood, youth, middle age and old age as the seasons of Nature do in each year. Finally, it passes through death, and then reappears, just as trees shed leaves in autumn and produce new leaves in spring.

Transition of the spirit through the body as it ages is no different from the transition of time through the seasons. One does not grieve as one enjoys the pleasures of childhood, youth and middle age. Why then should one grieve the onset of old age and then death? At death, the spirit passes from one body into another body. It has three kṣaṇa to achieve this, each kṣaṇa being the time period between thoughts. A person who is in a high thought frequency, a high TPS state, has a much shorter time to shift from one body to another. A person in a no-mind, no-thought state has infinite time, as the time between thoughts is infinite.

His spirit is at liberty to stay free without taking another body as long as he chooses, or more correctly, as the universe chooses. All Enlightened Masters are in this category. When the spirit leaves the mind-body system, it becomes one with the Universal Energy. Imagine a number of circles drawn on a whiteboard. Think of the whiteboard space as the universal energy. Individual body-mind systems are represented by the circles drawn on the whiteboard. The white space enclosed in the circles is the spirit and this is the same energy as the white space outside the circles. The space within or inner space is the individual soul, Ātman and the outer space is Brahman.

When a bodymind dies, when an individual dies, all that happens is that these perimeter lines get erased, that is all. The space within the circle merges with the space outside the circle. White merges with white. Energy merges with energy. When the spirit, the energy, is ready to move into another mindbody system, it enters another circle. It is a continuous, ongoing process and a natural process. One who cognizes this process and accepts it is an integrated and authentic person living in the space of completion. Kṛṣṇa refers to him as ‘dhīraḥ’, one who is firm, centered, aware, and complete. Atman Brahman The Only Reality Is Impermanence