Verses 4.18–4.20🔗

Here, Kṛṣṇa says that the person who sees inaction in action and action in inaction has attained completion. karmaṇy akarma yaḥ paśyed akarmaṇi ca karma yaḥ I sa buddhimān manuṇyeṣu sa yuktaḥ kṛtsna karma kṛt II 4.18 When you see that it is not the ‘I’ in you that is doing the activities, but it is the senses following their nature; when you see that it is the mind that is creating the false sense of identification of you with the action, then you have realized; you have attained completion because you are now no longer in the clutches of the mind. It is the mind that makes you attached to something and repulsed by something else.

When you are not in the clutches of the mind, you are free. You do actions because the senses by nature have to perform their functions. For example, the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose smells. Yet, you are free from the bondage of action because you do not have any identification or any emotional attachment to anything. So naturally, you are liberated and you can do actions most beautifully without expecting any particular result. This is what it means to be ‘Unclutched.’ By your very nature, You are Unclutched Being ‘Unclutched’ is the state where you are free and liberated. Let me expand on the word ‘Unclutching.’

If you observe your mind keenly, you will see that you are constantly connecting all your thoughts and creating links in your mind. For example, the headache that happened ten years ago, five years ago and yesterday are all independent experiences. For easy reference, you categorize all these into ‘headache,’ just like you file documents in your office. By and by, you start believing all these experiences are connected. When you start believing they are connected you create a shaft. You connect all painful memories, create a pain shaft and conclude, ‘My life is suffering, my life is pain.’ Now when you start believing your whole life is suffering, you have created a pain shaft and you are waiting only for painful incidents in your life so that you can elongate that shaft.

First understand, whatever you believe is what you create within you and outside you. You will see that manifesting in your life over and over again. That is why vedic ṛṣis, sages, say that you create what you want. By seeing, you create. You will wait unconsciously for painful incidents to strengthen that belief, that life judgment. Second thing, whenever you add the painful incidents unconsciously, you will be elongating that shaft, even though you may want to consciously end the pain by breaking it. If you believe your whole life is a shaft of joyful experiences, which we do very rarely, constantly you are in fear about whether the joy will continue.

If you believe life is a shaft of painful incidents, you do two things: Unconsciously you gather more and more incidents and strengthen your faith about how your life is painful, and consciously you try to break the pain shaft! If you believe life is a Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 305 chain of joyful incidents, unconsciously you will be in fear that it will end, and consciously you will try to prolong it. Understand these are two big dramas we are continuously enacting with ourselves. You forget that you can neither break the shaft nor elongate it because the shaft itself does not exist! The shaft itself is your own imagination.

Just try this experiment: Sit down for ten minutes with a pen and paper. Now, just start jotting down whatever thoughts come to your mind. Please do not edit your thoughts; write them down as they are. Do not judge yourself and do not try to control what comes to your mind. If you try to judge, you are playing a hypocritical game with yourself. Now, read whatever you have written. You can see for yourself how unconnected and illogical your thoughts are! One moment you would think, ‘I think I should go to my office tomorrow,’ then the next minute, ‘No I should just wake up and decide then,’ then, ‘What should I do about dinner tonight?’

Have you seen how the bubbles rise up in a fish tank? There is a gap between one bubble and the next. But the gap is so small that it looks like a continuous stream. Similarly, there is a gap between one thought and the next thought in your mind. Your thoughts are independent like the bubbles. By their very nature, your thoughts are independent. For example, if you see a dog in the street, suddenly you remember the pet you used to play with as a child. Then you will remember the teacher, then the place where your teacher used to stay, and so on! The dog and the teacher are not connected in any way, but your mind simply flows.

Look a little deeply, you will understand that your thoughts are illogical, independent and unconnected. When you believe that your mind is logical, you have created the first ‘original sin’ for yourself. Understand, by your very nature you are unclutched. Every moment you are renouncing the thoughts by your very nature. A new thought can appear only when the old thought has been renounced. But even after renouncing them you try to pick up the thoughts from the dustbin and try to create a shaft with them. Listen, first understand consciously that you are creating a shaft of pain or a shaft of joy and trying to fight with it, by either trying to elongate it or break it.

Second, you don’t even have to unclutch yourself from the shaft because the shaft is imaginary. By your very nature, if you stop creating a shaft, you are Unclutched. Then we will start asking, ‘If I unclutch, how will I do my job? How will I take care of my things? Will I not just lie in bed and waste my life?’ I ask you, why should you not go to work? The moment you say you will not go to work, it means you have a little hatred towards your job. The moment you get an excuse you want to escape from your job! By saying all these things, you are expressing your anger, your violence against your routine.

That is what Kṛṣṇa means by action, karmaṇi and inaction, akarmaṇi. You cannot be inactive by nature. You will daydream, clinging on to fantasies. You will try to escape from reality by deluding yourself, because your mind is clutching onto a soft and easy dream shaft. When you truly Unclutch, without any attachment to the past and future, you will realize that you are full of energy. You will have to do something. That ‘something’ will be dictated by your present moment completion, not by fantasies. What you think of as ‘you’ is not necessary to run your day-to-day life. This is the basic truth. If you just observe yourself, if somebody is happily independent of us, we can’t tolerate it, it is too much.

Constantly we need to feel we are needed. That is why we expect people to project their sufferings on us and we too project our sufferings on them, so that we feel important. What you think of as ‘you’ is not necessary to run your day-to-day life. People ask me, ‘Constantly I repeat positive affirmations, ‘I should stop smoking, I should stop smoking,’ but it is not working. Why, Swamiji?’ All these creative visualizations create more and more trouble. Because in the very words, ‘I should stop smoking’, the word ‘smoking’ is contradicting the words ‘I should stop.’ You end up empowering the word ‘smoking’ as much as you are empowering the words ‘I should stop’!

Instead you should create the space Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 307 of health and say, ‘Let me have only healthy habits’ or something totally positive without even the word ‘smoking’ in it. Similarly, if you have a headache, instead of empowering the thought of the headache, just decide to have a glass of water. The moment you decide to have a glass of water, it becomes a fresh thought and the old thought of the headache has to disappear. Once you keep replacing the thoughts, you break free from the headache-based thought patterns and eventually expel the headache from your system itself. You may ask me, ‘How can it be so simple, Swamiji?’

It is simple. You are constantly taught that it is not so simple. But soon after doing this, if the thought of the headache comes back, then what do you do? Understand: You are so faithful to the thought of the headache that you forcefully drag it back into your system; you bring back a trashed file. Think of it this way: If it comes back, it can go back again. Why don’t you celebrate those moments it left you? Why do you constantly remember the moments it came back? People ask me again and again, ‘I fail when I try to unclutch, Swamiji.’ I ask them, ‘Why are you connecting your past failure with your present failure?’

When you connect all the past failures, you create one more shaft—‘failure’. Just relax and stop connecting and suddenly you will see a deep inner healing, a deep peace happening in you. Suddenly you will see that you have dropped out of the war, the constant running. Just relax. When you drop out of this whole game, suddenly you will realize the whole thing is just a psychodrama. Unclutch From Your Thoughts Try this simple meditation: Just close your eyes and sit. Whatever words are rising in you, just let them rise. Just do not connect them with any other thought, that’s all. Just don’t create a shaft; simply Unclutch.

If you feel bored, or if your mind asks you what to do, just unclutch from that thought as well. Do not even connect with that thought. Just sit, be Unclutched. If your mind connects with a thought, just unclutch. Do not create, maintain or destroy any thought. Try this for a few minutes and you will see the effect for yourself. Kṛṣṇa says to understand what action is, you need to understand what inaction is. In my programs, I tell people, ‘To understand what meditation is, you need to understand what meditation is not.’ I spend a day and a half explaining what meditation is not and less than half a day explaining what meditation is.

When you unclutch, you are seemingly in inaction or akarma. However, the removal of the various shafts of pain, pleasure, fantasies etc., releases so much energy within you that you are now actively passive. You are at the height of potential energy, ready to release that energy for whatever purpose you decide in that moment. If instead, you are actively daydreaming, caught in pain and pleasures shafts, then you are seemingly active and busy, but totally useless. In fact, you are counterproductively busy, pushing yourself deeper into more suffering. In the process of Unclutching, you transcend both action and inaction, karmaṇi and akarmaṇi. You successfully destroy the false cognition of the connection between the thoughts and rest in the present moment, the space of completion, the state of no-mind, the state of dropping thoughts.

In this unclutched space, you are active and yet not attached to any activity. You are truly in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. All suffering and pain arises when we associate ourselves with the senses and the mind. The real Self in you is eternal, timeless, never changing. It is like this: When you see the clouds drifting in the clear sky, is the sky actually changing? The sky is like the canvas over which clouds of different forms and shapes drift across, sometimes completely covering the sky behind them, and sometimes drifting apart to reveal the sky behind. Just like this, due to māyā, delusion, it appears as if the Self is being affected by the emotions and the perceptions of the senses.

If you see yourself in a clear lake or a mirror, what you see is a reflection of what is being projected, right? Just like that, in the lake of the Self, of the being, whatever quality is projected is what you will see reflected in the lake. Does it mean that the lake has become dirty? The Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 309 reflection has no reality, no solid existence. Actually, the Self is permanent. The Self in you, in me, in the person next to you is all the same. When everything is you, what is there to fear? Where is the question of conflict, jealousy, fear or greed?

Everything is you. Enjoy this world in its many forms and manifestations. However, enjoy without getting caught in attachment. Our senses are treacherous. They create incompletions, addictions that overwhelm us. The more we have, the less we enjoy, and yet we cannot do without them. True wisdom is to step back from what the senses tell you. Have you seen a person sell something, say a painting? You can see the seller busy trying to convince people to get the best bargain. But see someone standing, witnessing this whole scene, someone who is neither interested in buying the painting nor in selling it. Only he can completely enjoy the painting!

See, if you have the right ideals, you will reach the truth much faster. We are taught that we are powerless, that we are sinners. But time and again, the vedic sages have declared, ‘We are the children of immortality—amṛtasya putraḥ.’ Let us bring integrity to our thinking with life affirmative thoughts rather than continuously repeating negative and self-doubting thoughts to ourselves. The positive thoughts are not mere statements. These are great truths that our sages have experienced, and encourage us to experiment and experience as well. With them come the energy of possibility and power of the experience to make it our reality. When we are blissful and complete within ourselves, we would never see anything disturbing outside.

That is what Kṛṣṇa says here: Be involved completely in the action yet be detached, independent and satisfied within. Then you can function spontaneously, flowing in tune with Existence. Life then becomes a celebration. Every single thing you do is an act of joy and an expression of the loving energy in you. Your joy is no longer dependent on what society says or thinks about you, because you are complete in yourself. Equanimity In Success And Failure