Verses 3.14–3.16🔗

This metaphorical explanation in a few verses actually has a deep meaning about life, about how we connect with life, how we depend on the Universe, and how we affect the whole Universe. Just this concept that Kṛṣṇa explains in a few verses here is explained in detail in the Chāndogyopaniṣad. Our relationship with the activity of Nature is a very deep one. Our actions are like oblations offered in a fire sacrifice. Our activities are not just movements of the limbs. When we perform a yajña, a fire sacrifice of enriching the Source, the Cosmic Energy we pour various offerings into the fire. We do so to tap the Cosmic Energy and to flow in tune with Existence, with Nature.

The subtlest, most powerful and all-pervasive Cosmic Energy is invoked through the slightly less subtle air element when we chant the mantra and we connect and enrich the still, less subtle fire energy through the fire ritual. Energy is then transferred to water, a grosser energy, and then the water in the pots is poured over plants, idols and humans as well as the earth, which is the grossest form of energy. When we chant the mantra, it is a very powerful way to enrich the Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 219 world, through our integrity and authenticity. You take the responsibility for the words, and for making the mantra into reality.

When you take the responsibility for the words you utter and start working, you enrich the world mystically and physically, metaphysically and physically. A physical action is a gross expressed action, something that can be seen on the physical plane. Thoughts, mental actions, are subtler unexpressed actions, and they cannot be seen on the physical plane. Enrich to Relate with Expressed and Unexpressed God Enriching is the way in which you relate with the expressed component of God, the expressed part of God. Integrity and Authenticity are the ways in which you relate with the unexpressed, avyakta part of God. Responsibility and Enriching are the ways in which you relate with vyakta, the expressed part of God.

When we perform a sacrifice, we perform certain invocations to the higher energies. So, we attract corresponding effects for our actions. Our actions are like offerings in a sacrifice. When the actions are in tune with tattvas of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching, which is the flow of Existence, it is like offering ghee (clarified butter) into the fire. When we do not flow in tune with Existence, it is like offering mud into the fire. You know the kind of smoke comes out of the fire when you offer ghee and the kind of smoke that comes out when you offer mud. Just like you can determine the quality of the offering you gave to the fire from the quality of the smoke, the result of your actions can be determined from the quality of your actions.

The quality of the end result is based on our input, our offerings, our enriching. Integrity and Authenticity are the right ways to relate with the unexpressed part of God, avyakta. Responsibility and Enriching are the right ways to relate with the expressed part of God, the world, vyakta.Ifyoudonotenrich,youactivelycreateaselfishpatternandyour offerings bring that same result. Be very clear, either you give or you swindle. There is no middle. Kṛṣṇa says that rains become possible from the enriching sacrifice, yajñād bhavati parjanyo and the enriching sacrifice is born of actions, yajñaḥ karma-samudbhavaḥ (3.14). Rain is a grosser form of energy that is activated by the subtler unexpressed energies which are influenced by our authenticity in actions and integrity in words, thoughts and vibrations.

Rain is the cause, the source which is responsible for the growth of food grains. Food is the enrichment needed to sustain our bodies and minds, which give rise to further authentic action and integrated thinking. So, you see this cycle now, of how the subtle energy, avyakta, the unexpressed part of God manifests itself in the grosser world as vyakta, the expressed part of God, and how the actions in the grosser world affect the subtler elements. If we just understand this, we will realize that everything that we do and experience is caused by our own actions. We realize that we are the source of everything, and therefore responsible for everything that is happening.

We invite our destiny. As we sow, so shall we reap. Enriching is sowing the seed for the fruit to happen. Integrity is the root, authenticity is the tree, responsibility is the fruit, enriching is sharing the fruit to create more fruits. Every person who eats the fruit is responsible for sowing the seed for more fruits to happen. Understand, this is what Kṛṣṇa says, ‘O Pārtha, he who does not adopt the prescribed, established cycle lives a life full of sins, aghāyur idriyārāmo.Rejoicinginsensegratification,helivesauselesslife,moghaṁ pārtha sa jīvati (3.16).’ When you do not enrich every person with the fruit of enriching after constantly being enriched by the sacrifice of the Existence, the Supreme, your life becomes full of sins and you live a useless, incomplete life.

That in turn brings the cycle of more and more incompletions! If you are rich, be the ground on which the seed can be sown. If not, at least pour water for the seed to become a tree. If not, at least be a gardener to weed out the unnecessary things for the seed to become fruit again. Either offer your time, talent, or treasure. If you have eaten the Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 221 fruit, it is your responsibility to make the seed again into a fruit. After eating the fruit, be responsible to sow the seed and make sure the seed again brings more fruits for more people to enjoy.

Our body-mind is highly influenced by our thoughts and words. The words you constantly repeat to yourself, have to be enriching you, inspiring you, exciting you and enlightening you. The words you give to you are āhara (food), what you consume to create life in you. Power of Creating the Space of Enriching Bliss attracts fortune. You may wonder, ‘Fortune can bring us bliss but how can bliss bring us fortune?’ In India, when any new activity is started, be it a business or construction or education, the first thing that we do is sit down and create the space for a few moments; we close our eyes and remain in a meditative mood.

We try to bring about some kind of an energy play or transformation inside us. Of course, over the years, this has become a prayer and a ritual. That is a different issue. But the first thing that we do is sit down and try to kindle the energy flow, the space of completion in us. You need to know an important lesson, when you decide to become responsible, the whole Cosmos simply listens to you; it simply follows you! With responsibility, even if you sit in one corner, your very space changes the way the world responds to you! Swami Vivekananda says beautifully, ’In India, even if we want wealth, we sit under a tree and create the space.

It happens around us!’ He said these words in America, the country which teaches you that you have to work hard to accumulate wealth. If you sit with yourself, you may accumulate peace but not even a piece of bread! Yet, He says, ‘In India, even to accumulate wealth, we just sit and create the space, and it happens!’So, when you take responsibility, sit by creating the space and be ready to sacrifice. The world will simply move based on your word! The world will move as you want! When the energy flow, the space in us becomes complete, it has the property of influencing and causing external incidents as we want.

Whether you believe it or not, accept it or not, like it or not, want it or not, you are deeply connected to Existence. You are an integral part of Existence, not an independent island as you think. Every subtle movement or subtle thought in one part of the Universe causesacounter-effectatthatsamemomentelsewhereintheUniverse.Our thoughts and energy flow have the capacity to create and attract incidents and people of the same nature. What I have said here is one of the age-old truths expounded by our ṛṣis, sages in Upaniṣad, the Vedic experience. It is interesting that modern science is coming up with some startling evidence that reveals some of these truths now.

Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese doctor and research scientist is renowned for his book, The Hidden Messages in Water. He conducted extensive experiments on water samples taken from all over the world. He took similar samples of water and exposed the water to different influences. To one set of samples, he spoke positive words such as ‘love’ and ‘gratitude,’ to some he recited Buddhist chants. To another set, he spoke words such as ‘anger’ and ‘war’. Then he froze the different water samples so that he could photograph their crystal form. In the samples that had been exposed to positive energy, beautiful clear crystals were formed, like diamonds! The water exposed to negative energies did not form into crystals; they looked like a tumor: dark, cloudy and without any distinct geometrical pattern.

Several hundred experiments were conducted to prove the effects of the vibrations created by our words and thoughts on matter. Water being the most common molecule in our bodies, we can now see the obvious and dramatic effect our thoughts have on ourselves and others! It doesn’t stop there. Our thoughts have the capacity to affect the oceans and the seas. Recent research by Russian scientists throws an entirely new light on how our DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies. They did experiments where they superimposed certain Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 223 frequencies onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself!

Science is beginning to touch what our Vedic Seers have declared thousands of years ago about collective consciousness. What we do in any plane, physical or mental, expressed or unexpressed affects our consciousness. And since we are all a part of the common fabric called Existence, our consciousness is a part of the collective consciousness, which also gets affected by our thoughts and actions. Weather is strongly influenced by earth resonance frequencies, and the same frequencies are also produced in our brains. When many people take the responsibility to bring integrity and authenticity to their thinking and actions, the individual consciousness aligns and expands to affect the collective consciousness. So we can actually even influence the weather by our thoughts.

This is what Kṛṣṇa means when He says that rains are caused by sacrifice—yajñād bhavati parjanyo and enriching sacrifice is born of actions—yajñaḥ karma-samudbhavaḥ (3.14). It is an ultimate statement that proves the power of enriching, the power of living. When a large number of people collectively integrate their thoughts and align their actions to enrich others with no expectations and with full faith in the abundance of the Universe, the Universe responds. Rain falls, grains grow, and abundance results. It has actually been revealed by various studies that when a number of people integrate their thoughts with something similar, like during celebrations or a football world championship, then certain random number generators in computers start to deliver ordered numbers instead of random ones!

Also understand, all so-called natural calamities are nothing but the effects of global collective negative thoughts. At a young age, we were trained in ‘mathematical logic’ but never in ‘Existential logic’. Mathematical logic is very straightforward and should be applied only where it is appropriate. In matters concerning life and relationships, mathematical logic will only cause chaos. With it, we will always look to conclude with a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ judgment. There is something deeper than this—and that is Existential logic. This comes with a mature understanding and flowering from within. Your integrity, the thoughts and energy directly affect your body, your cell structure, your decisions, your capacity to fulfill your decisions, the outer world incidents, and even accidents.

Integrity is the mathematics of Life. It is simple, straightforward mathematics. If you add one thing and another, this is the result. You can simply practice it like mathematics. If you add two negative statements, two negative commitments to your thinking, you will have two negative happenings. If you repeat a negative commitment hundreds of times, it will be strong, equivalent to a hundred times! So, you have to complete until your negative commitments are dropped. But even if you have millions of negativities, if you just multiply it by zero, the whole thing will become zero! Master’s initiation is like multiplying by zero! Currently, you are always centered in either greed or fear.

Every action is performed either out of desire or out of fear. It becomes very easy for others to exploit you because of this. You become very vulnerable. Some people have become so selfish that they care only about their personal pleasure or pain. Only when life hits at them there, they understand the constitution of Life, not otherwise. They create a powerless space that attracts similar incidents into their life. They also corrupt the energy flow of their inner space this way. If you are sensitive enough to understand life and the facts, and the truth, the Cosmos does not teach you in a very hard way; it teaches you in a mild way.

If you can change your inner space from this incomplete space to the space of completion, the space of bliss, Ānanda, then the energy flow in your inner space will start brimming and your thoughts will become declarations of integrity, which is like multiplying all your past negativity by zero. Then you will be complete in the present moment. When you do this, you have power to control external incidents because you and Existence have a very deep connection at the energy level. This is the thread you need to catch in order to understand that bliss Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 225 attracts fortune. When you are blissful, when your inner space is not one of worry, fear and greed patterns but one that is in the space of completion in the present, you will automatically attract the best of things.

If you divide it by zero, then even if your negative commitments land into infinity, they become positive, because there is no infinity in negativity. Darkness can never be infinite. Light can be infinite, negativity can never be infinite; only positivity can be infinite because infinity needs to exist. Negativity does not exist. When you throw a pebble into a lake, ripples start from that point to the edge of the lake. Similarly, your thoughts have a permanent effect on the Universe. Imagine if the lake were infinite light. Ripples with a continuous effect would be created, even though the magnitude of each ripple would be different. The Universe is a huge wave of ‘Tathāstu!—so be it!’

So everything is as you create, as you organize, as you arrange! Put a little intelligence, time and energy into creating the right space in you. If you carry the space of many births, you will have many births! If you carry the space of a soul, you will have a soul! If you carry the space of no-soul, you will NOT have a soul! That is why I say this—decide to create the space for the best possibility. You have a soul, and it can do anything you want! This is the best space. Create it! That will be your reality! I don’t want to say it will become your reality; it will be your reality!

Every action has a cause and an effect. Using the same principle, I can say that you can actually create the desired effect by just causing its visualization in your inner space. For example, when you meditate, if you visualize you are bliss, bliss is bound to happen in and around you as an effect. It would seem that the cause has created the effect. But in life, cause and effect are actually a cycle, each generating and being generated by the other. Understand, anything that has not made its effect completely in you is cause. Anything caused which has made its completion in you is effect. Anything which has not caused its complete effect in you is cause.

This is the endless cycle Kṛṣṇa refers to when He says that work originates with the Creator, who in turn originates from the Supreme Existence, and therefore all sacrifices are from the Supreme to the Supreme. Live the tattvas intensely! Bring them into your life layer by layer. Your body will listen to you. Your mind will listen to you. The world will listen to you. The Universe will listen to you. Humanity will listen to you. You will enrich the Universe and the Universe will enrich you. When we are in the mood and space of surrender to these tattvas, we no longer retain our identity. We are one with Existence. Whatever we do, we do by Existence and for Existence. There is no separation. Act Without Attachment