Verses 4.37–4.42🔗

Asmall story: Once, a blind man went to a doctor to see if he had any hope of getting back his eyesight. The doctor checked him and said, ‘Yes, I can do a surgery and you can get back your eyesight. Then, you can drop your stick and start walking.’ The man replied, ‘Doctor, I understand I will get back my Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 331 eyesight, but how can I walk without the stick?’ The blind man could not understand that he can walk without a stick! He does not even know what it means to be able to see. The doctor has to do the surgery to give him back his eyesight, then automatically he will drop the stick.

When I tell people to declare completion and drop their mind, they look at me as if I am a mad man. They ask me, ‘How can we drop the mind? It is easy for you, you have renounced everything, you have no wife, no responsibilities, and on top of it you are enlightened. So, you can talk. How can we, living in this ocean of bondage, the saṁsāra sāgara, be in no-mind and yet survive?’ It is only when you drop the mind, drop your self-doubts, it is only when you stop connecting your thoughts to form a shaft, that you really start ‘seeing’. Your ego stops interfering with the truth of what you see.

It stops filtering and adding tones to what your senses experience. Your baggage of embedded memories, your saṁskāras, dissolve, and the new ‘you’ is born. All your actions then arise out of intuition, from the super conscious state, the state of truth, where no mind can exist. Śraddha Enriches you with Knowledge In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa uses the word ‘śraddha’ again. What a beautiful verse, ‘śraddhāvān labhate jñānaṁ—the one established in authenticity is enriched with knowledge.’ Actually, śraddha means faith plus the courage of authenticity to live to your highest possibility; the courage to be established in the peak of your capability. Understand, continuously committing with words that express your maximum peak capacity, as per your understanding and as per others’ understanding is what is referred to as śraddha, authenticity.

Understand, authenticity means stretching, stretching, and stretching. Go on stretching, that is Life! Go on stretching without fear, and without giving up on yourself. Do anything to honor and fulfill your words. Stretch yourself. Let all the powers inside you be unleased! Kṛṣṇa declares the power of authenticity here, ‘śraddhāvān labhate jñānaṁ (4.39).’ Only the authentic one is enriched with knowledge. When you have the knowledge and the courage of authenticity to follow and live the teachings, then you can achieve the ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of enlightenment. Many people do not have the courage of authenticity to see their research through. The eastern vedic sages did so much inner world research.

Millions of them have stretched themselves fearlessly doing full-time research for thousands of years, using their bodies and minds as laboratories. Why? Just to enrich others! This knowledge of the inner world is the result of their authenticity, their space of possibility to do courageous experiments and studies just for enriching others. They were true inner scientists, true śraddhavān who had not only the curiosity, ‘the great why’ and the perseverance to know, but also the courage of authenticity to follow, live and express their findings. Look at Patañjali, the father of yoga—He boldly declares that all that he says in the Yoga Sutras is completely open to experimentation and verification.

He says, ‘You are free to try this, and if you find anything more to be added or edited, you are free to do so.’ He has presented his research report. He invites you to try out these in your life and if you learn something more from that, his work is open to editing. That is the beauty of our system; it is a living system open to being updated. Of all religious and spiritual doctrines, it is only the scriptures of the sanātana-dharma, the eternal path of righteousness, as the Hindu philosophy is called, that allow themselves to be updated. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads, which we believe are the voices of Nature, are not rules and regulations.

They are truths to be understood and followed only in awareness. There are no punishments if one does not follow them, nor is one condemned as a sinner if one doesn’t follow them. This is the greatness and pristine beauty of sanātana-dharma, the eternal path of living. We are the most powerful, most sophisticated, most intelligent, most cutting-edge presentation of the Truth left with Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 333 the possibility to evolve more and more, open for the possibility of being updated! Nothing was sacred just because it was uttered. All that we follow blindly today as traditions came through societal interpretation. It is for us to sift through these truths with conscious awareness.

Once tested, proven, accepted and intranalysed, we need to have the courage of authenticity to practice these truths. Mere knowledge is insufficient. That is what śraddha is about. With śraddha, faith combined with courage of authenticity, you make the effort to constantly stretch and align yourself to the peak capability of what you feel as you, what you project as you, and what others’ perceive as you. This dawns the ultimate knowledge in you. With authenticity you conquer your senses, and direct your mind towards the truth, instead of your mind and senses leading you wherever they wish to. The state of fear can be born in you only when you are inauthentic.

Only a man in authenticity, living authenticity, is a liberated one enriched with the ultimate knowledge, śraddhāvān labhate jñānaṁ (4.39). Completing Self-doubt in any field is Education In the next few verses, Kṛṣṇa says that there is no happiness for those who always have self-doubts and who have no knowledge and authenticity. He uses the word ‘always.’ He does not say that from the beginning itself you should not have any doubts. Having doubts is natural; as long as you have the mind, you will have doubts. But you can go beyond it by completing with your self-doubts. Kṛṣṇa warns, ‘The one without the wisdom and without authenticity, who always has doubts, is destroyed.

There is no happiness for the one who doubts the self, either in this world or the next.’ Self-doubt destroys you—saṁśayātmā vinaśyati and the one who has the self-doubt is never happy anywhere—na sukhaṁ śaṁsayātmanaḥ (4.40). First, we need to understand what self-doubt is! What is the root of this self-doubt? In your life, when the first root incident happens, you make your inner image, you project the outer image, and you create the life image to protect yourself for survival reason. For example, at the age of three or four, you run around and play in the rain. Your mother sees you and strongly pulls you into the house and gives you a slap saying, ‘Don’t go out in the rain!

You will catch a cold! Your health will be spoiled!’ She screams at you. For a child, getting slapped, being pulled inside the house and locked up is too much. The child will not understand that it is only a slap. The child will literally feel he is going to die! At that moment, the child will create the inner mage, mamakāra: ‘I am helpless.’ He will create the outer image, ahaṁkāra: ‘I am powerful,’ because he cannot survive with the idea, ‘I am helpless in the society. I am helpless in life.’ So, naturally, he will create a compensating outer image, ‘I am powerful,’ and he will create the life’s image or svānyakāra, the image about his mother and life, that life is cruel.

So, when this root pattern is formed, you start living and you naturally project your pseudo outer image: ‘I am powerful.’ If you are not able to convince others with the pseudo outer image, it is good for you. But if you convince them with the pseudo outer image, when you come back to your private space like your bedroom, you will start thinking, ‘Oh God! I made every one believe my outer image as the truth, but my inner image is different from my outer image!’ So, this clash is self-doubt. This clash is what Kṛṣṇa calls as saṁśayātmā. Please listen! I am giving you the example of a tree.

If root pattern is the root of a tree, lust patterns are the parasites of the tree, every day suffering and powerlessness are the leaves of the tree, self-doubt is the fragrance of the tree. So, please understand, when you convince others with your strong outer image, and your inner image starts questioning you; your inner image questioning you is self-doubt. That is where the self-doubt starts. This is where your root of unhappiness grows—na sukhaṁ śaṁsayātmanaḥ (4.40). In any field if you carry self-doubt, you will continue to be powerless. In any field if you complete with your self-doubt, you are Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 335 educated.

For example, look into the first time you started doubting your ability to memorize poetry or mathematics tables. Complete with that incident and pattern. Suddenly, you will awaken your ability to memorize in an unimaginable way. That component in your brain, which is now non-mechanical, will be awakened. Similarly, if you complete with self-doubtinanyfield,suddenlythatnon-mechanicalpartofthebrainwill immediately be awakened. Awakening all the non-mechanical parts of the brain is what I call Inner Awakening. In any field in your life if you complete with your self-doubt, you become educated in that field. Please understand, education is nothing but completing with self-doubt. If you complete with all your self-doubts in the field of dentistry, you are a dentist now.

If you complete with all your self-doubts in the field of law, you are educatedasalawyer.Ifyoucompletewithallyourself-doubtsinthefieldof transformation, you are a master of transformation. Listen! Education is nothing but completing with self-doubts. Education is nothing but completing with self-doubts. I can keep repeating just this one line. I tell you, this is the precise, concise definition I have ever given about education: Completing with your self-doubt in any field is education. In any field, whether it is self-transformation, cooking, medicine, law, or construction, in any field, complete with your self-doubt. Your kuṇḍalini energy, your innate potential energy will flow in that direction and you will excel in that field. Master-disciple Relationship In the Śiva Sutra, Devi asks, ‘O Śiva, what is your reality?

What is this wonderfilled universe? What constitutes the seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading form? How may we enter it fully, beyond space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared.’ Beautifully, She expresses Her whole state of mind through these few words. The last words are, ‘Let my doubts be cleared. Let my doubts be complete.’ She never says, ‘Please answer my questions.’ If She had made that mistake by asking, ‘Answer my question’, She would have produced one more Gītā through Śiva. See, in the Gītā, Arjuna is not ready to surrender to Kṛṣṇa completely. That is why in the beginning Kṛṣṇa has to give him all the intellectual answers.

Arjuna thinks he can solve his confusion through these answers; he doesn’t know these are much deeper doubts that need to be cleared through the experience of the Truth. That is why Kṛṣṇa has to give more than 700 verses to first convince Arjuna that he does not know. When Arjuna finally gives up saying ‘I don’t know’ then Kṛṣṇa reveals Himself! He reveals the truth and makes Arjuna experience it because that is the only way he will realize the Truth. If you say, ‘Let my questions be answered,’ you want only intellectual answers. But Devi says, ‘Let my doubts be cleared, whether you give words or energy or techniques, I am not bothered, but let me be free and complete from doubts.’

When questions become a quest, you start speaking in this language. When the urge becomes urgent, you start speaking in this language. This shows the deep surrender of Devi. A deep passive waiting without knowing what is going to happen is passive surrender. That is what I call total surrender. Actually, the moment you decide ‘I will wait forever,’ things will simply start happening for you! As long as you are in a hurry and agitated, you stop things from happening in you. It is like trying your best to make the lotus bloom. You open out the petals by hand. Will it be a flower? A lotus can be called a lotus only when it blossoms by itself.

Give it a little space and time. The moment you decide to wait, things will simply start happening and you don’t have to wait anymore. You only have to wait till you decide to wait! Just allow the Master to do the surgery and Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ The Path Of Knowledge 337 give you back your true Self, and automatically you will drop what you are not. Here, Kṛṣṇa refers to the stages in the Master-disciple relationship. There are many levels. The first level is purely intellectual, doubt-based. ‘Doubtbased’ refers to the negative self-doubts, which are purely intellectual. It is like you are telling yourself on seeing the Master, ‘What is he going to do?

Let us see. How is he able to mobilize such a big crowd at such a young age? He seems hardly thirty. What is going on here?’ The next step is intelligence; from intellect to intelligence. You tell yourself, ‘Why not attend this program and see what he is really doing?’ By this time, it has changed from, ‘What is he doing!’ to ‘Oh, I think He means something. But I neither believe nor disbelieve Him. Ok, let us check it out.’ The intellect is becoming intelligence. You are giving a little space for the Master. Then, if you continue to start looking in, first from intellect to intelligence, then from intelligence to intelligence with emotion, like 60% intelligence, 40% emotion, that is the time you will feel like a friend towards the Master.

After that, it becomes 60% emotion and 40% intelligence. That is the time you will feel like the Master is like an elder, like a father or mother or lord or teacher. You feel respectful towards him. And then, the relationship becomes pure emotion. You will feel a deep connection like a mother and son. Then, after that, it is neither emotion nor intellect nor intelligence. It is a being-level relationship. It is the deep connection of a beloved, the madhura bhāva. And suddenly, you will see, he is not even the beloved, he is beyond the beloved. You start experiencing the mahā bhāva, what I call the Guru-disciple experience, experiencing yourself as the Master.

That is what I call— ‘Tat Tvam Asi.’ Tat Tvam Asi means That art thou. It means you are the Master. First it is just intellect, where you have self-doubts. But you have to go beyond that. If you are stuck in this level of self-doubts, naturally you will suffer with misery, with self-hatred and self-denial. Then, the next level is intelligence, then emotion, then pure emotion, then emotional and being level feeling connection, then pure being level connection, and then all these and something more. When you go beyond doubts and faith, into the realization of the formless energy that is you, then you find yourself. So, let the divine Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa guide us all to the right energy, to the right path of knowledge and the right experience.

Let Him shower eternal bliss. Let Him make us experience and radiate eternal bliss, Nityānanda. Thank you. Thus ends the fourth chapter named Jñānakarmasannyāsa Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Action In Knowledge And Renunciation,’ of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṃvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. Live All Your Possibilities Seeking more and more does not lead to happiness. It leads to depression. Then what leads to happiness that is eternal?. c h a p t e r Sannyāsa Yogaḥ If we look closely at our lifestyle, what we accept as normal is actually chaotic and crazy.

But we have been conditioned with it since childhood so we are not even aware of this. From an early age we are taught certain beliefs and habits that cut deep grooves in our mind. For the rest of our lives we follow these patterns of thinking. In Indian villages, even today, they grind oil seeds in a traditional expeller, powered by bullocks. These bullocks are tied in such a way that they walk in circles to crush the seeds inside the expeller. If we analyze the way we live, we are very much like these bullocks! We get caught in a root pattern and we go around driven by our senses and memories.

Just as the bullocks chew the cud as they walk around, we too chew the cud of our memories and perceptions as we unconsciously follow the same routine day after day, year after year. Even when we think we are breaking the routine and doing things creatively and rationally, it is just an illusion of our mind. We are still driven by our unconscious mind. These engraved memories or root thought patterns stored in the deep unconscious mind make decisions on our behalf, even though we are completely unaware of it. What we may think of as an intuitive decision is actually an instinctive decision that arises from our unconscious.

Understand the difference between intuition and instinct. Instinct is the unconscious. It is what drives animals. It is the deeply grooved root patterns that are encoded as bio-memories in the genes and DNA. Since the unconscious brain acts much faster than the conscious brain, the instinctive action of the unconscious is of crucial value to our survival. Intuition is a super conscious state of the mind. In any field when you allow your peak possibility without self-doubt, when you complete Live All Your Possibilities Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 341 with your self-doubt, your logic gets so refined that it becomes intuition. Understand, in any field if your logic is refined, it becomes intuition.

In any field if you allow your Kuṇḍalini (potential energy) to express itself to its peak possibility without self-doubt, in that field you become a leader. Take the example of self-transformation. Understand, you can allow your potential energy to flow in the direction of enlightening you if you complete with the self-doubt, ‘Will I ever be enlightened? Can I ever be enlightened?’ If you are young, you think, ‘I am too young for enlightenment.’ If you are old, you think, ‘I am too old for enlightenment.’ Listen. Pṛākṛitaṁ is logic. Saṃskṛitaṁ is intuition. Refined logic is intuition. It is where we reach when we move inwards through our senses. It is a state of living and being in the present moment of completion, the space of enlightenment.

Intuition transcends time and space. Intuition allows us to explode in all directions while instinct restricts us to the logical path of our unconscious memories, our incompletions. By Nature You Are Multi-dimensional Time and again people tell me, ‘Swamiji, it is easy for you to do what you do. You have no family ties. You have renounced wealth. We are bonded to relationships and material possessions. How can we become spiritual?’ Let me tell you clearly that this is your instinct speaking. You are caught in the inadequate cognition of your unconscious mind, in your root patterns, believing that you can do only one thing at a time. You have sold yourself into the bondage of believing you are one dimensional.

By nature we are multi-dimensional. By nature we are intuitive. By nature we are enlightened. Listen! By nature, God built you with the power of words, power of thinking, power of feeling and power of living. Your inbuilt innate nature is expressing these great inner powers. That is why you feel so fulfilled whenever you are in integrity. That is why you feel so complete when you enrich others. That is why you feel so blissful when you cause others’ reality. We can live a beautiful life! All that we lack is the awareness of our potential and all possibilities of our life. See, the possibility of human life is what we call Kuṇḍalini energy.

There are multiple possibilities in you. You are multi-dimensional. It is like a set-top box where you have the possibility of 170 channels, but the channel you watch is up to you. Kuṇḍalini is your possibility. Letting your possibility happen in you, trusting your possibility without self-doubt, responding to your possibility without self-doubt is Kuṇḍalini energy. Please understand, each human being allows himself to be expressed without self-doubt in at least one dimension. Even if you think you are a useless fellow, to be useless in that dimension, you allow your possibility without self-doubt. Somebody allows their possibility, without self-doubt, in the field of cooking. He may be useless in all other fields but in cooking, he has no self-doubt.

He knows that he will be able to cook any dish he sees. Every person allows and expresses his peak possibility in at least one field without self-doubt. It is not that you don’t express your possibility in any field at all. If that were true, you wouldn’t be alive. Even to be alive, you have to allow the Kuṇḍalini, the potential energy to breathe through you at least in one field. I have seen some people who are so cunning that in their cunningness, they allow their peak possibility to express itself. A great lawyer may have a lot of doubt about his character but in his legal field, he will not have any doubt.

So understand, when you express your peak possibility without any self-doubt in any field, you allow your Kuṇḍalini to be awakened in that field. In that field your logic gets so refined, it becomes intuition. Helping you realize your possibility and supporting you to complete with your self-doubt is Kuṇḍalini Awakening. Many recent neurological researches are proving what I am saying. I am giving it as a formula. Either you are multi-dimensional or non-dimensional! There is no such thing as ‘persons in single dimension.’ You are multi-dimensional, meaning you can think for everyone, or you Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 343 are non-dimensional, it means you cannot think even for yourself and somebody else thinks for you!

When you start thinking for everyone, you develop a beautiful faculty. It is actually through thinking that you reach the thoughtless space, not the other way! In the verses that follow and in the rest of the Gītā, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Master of all possibilities enriches us on how to break away from our bondages and become multi-dimensional to realize our peak possibility, and to express the powers of our possibilities. Constantly turning many impossibilities into possibilities by playing that within human laws, rules and regulations is the job of an Incarnation. Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa, who is the possibility of all Incarnations, teaches us how to reach our true state. This is what the word samādhi means—to go back to our true nature.

Kṛṣṇa constantly turns what Arjuna thinks as ‘impossible’ into ‘possible’ by demonstrating His peak possibilities to express themselves through Arjuna within the laws of human realm, within the laws of Kurukṣetra warfield. Kṛṣṇa Himself does not use a single weapon throughout the Mahābhārat war, but becomes the cause for Arjuna to live and express his own peak possibilities. It is through the multi-dimensional space awakened by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Pāṇḍavas that they stand victorious. Throughout the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa talks about yoga. Each chapter refers to one type of yoga or another. Yoga is the same as samādhi. Yoga means ‘uniting’. It means uniting with our true nature. When we unite with our true Self, we become multi-dimensional, we become the space of possibilities.

We can be material and spiritual. There are no constraints and no limitations. We are free. We had wealthy kings like Janaka, who were realized souls. Material wealth does not limit anyone from being spiritual. It is only the attachment to wealth through greed and the fear of losing wealth that stops one from being free. Further, for the first time, Kṛṣṇa gives a meditation technique in this chapter. Until the fifth chapter, He was giving only intellectual advice, śāstra. Kṛṣṇa now thinks that Arjuna has become mature, or Kṛṣṇa realizes that without some technique, it is now impossible to relate to Arjuna. Kṛṣṇa realizes, ‘If I don’t give him a technique, I cannot escape from him!’

Masters give meditation techniques in two situations, either when they see the person is mature enough, or when the person is constantly questioning them without transforming. So I don’t know whether Kṛṣṇa thought Arjuna was now mature or He thought ‘let him at least sit quietly for a few minutes with closed eyes!’ Either way, He gives him a technique. Action Or Renunciation