Verses 5.1–5.4🔗

In all the previous chapters, Kṛṣṇa talks with such clarity and authority that it would dissolve the doubts of anybody listening to Him. And yet Arjuna has come back to the same point. It seems like Arjuna was playing a game so that the Gītā could be delivered to the world. A person who was a great king could never have been so ignorant. There is no other book that is so clear, so direct. There is no other Master who is so straight in giving the Truth and the experiential expression of the Truth. After all the explanations given by Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna continues to ask, ‘Oh Kṛṣṇa, first of all, you asked me to renounce work and then again you recommend work with devotion.

Now, will you kindly tell me clearly, which one of the two is more beneficial?—yac chreya etayor ekaṁ tanme brūhi su-niścitam (5.1).’ We will never get an answer or solve a problem if we start thinking about which would be more beneficial. Before we evaluate the benefits of something, we should be clear about the scale we want to use to measure the benefits. What is beneficial for one person may be completely useless for another. The scale that we use for measuring success is a very important thing. Unless we know the scale, it does not make sense to conclude anything. Even jumping to a conclusion should be done with clear intelligence and completion.

Jumping to a conclusion without intelligence is like falling out of an airplane without a parachute! We just wouldn’t know where we will land. Before measuring life in terms of success or failure, one should know how this success is to be measured in the first place. If we are going to measure our life on a scale of dollars, then we have to work only for dollars. So, from morning to evening, we need to work only for that goal. Based on this, we can conclude whether we are succeeding or failing in our life. But you see, by the time we reach the end of the day, the very scale changes!

We start our life using a certain scale and after a few years we measure it again using a totally different scale. It is fortunate that the scale changes with maturity. If we grow with every mistake in life and complete with it, then the scale with which we measure success in life should also change. If it does not change, we will start our next life from ground zero. It is an endless game unless we learn lessons and move on. If the scale with which we measure our success changes in the right way, it shows we are becoming mature. If the scale stays in the same level of dollars and wealth, not only will we be unable to measure our life clearly but we will also attract unhappiness and incompletions.

This is because there is no end to accumulating money or any material wealth. First of all, we set high standards for ourselves. Even Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 347 if we achieve these, we are not successful in our own eyes because we would have extended our target by comparing ourselves with others. Out of greed we keep saying ‘What next, what next’. There is no end to this. At the end of our lives, we feel we have not done enough. Again we start a whole new game of birth and life with the same incompletions, same limited maturity. Listen! If money and worldly comfort alone is our scale, again and again we will feel we did not do enough and that we missed out in life.

There is no absolute scale that defines success, especially in monetary terms. For any amount of money that we have, we would be happier with a dollar more. Yakṣa’s jar and Brahma’s head Let me tell you a small story: A king’s barber used to live a very happy life. Every morning he would go to the palace, do his work and the king would give him ten gold coins. He led a happy and peaceful life without any worries. One day when he was returning from the king’s palace, suddenly, he heard a booming voice, ‘Dear son, do you want forty gold coins?’ The barber said, ‘Forty gold coins?

What am I going to do with them? My expense is ten gold coins and that is enough. I don’t need anything more.’ The booming voice said, ‘I will give you twenty-four hours to think. You can go home, think about it, come back tomorrow and tell me. If you decide that you want them, I shall give you a magical jar full of gold coins.’ This poor barber went and said this to his wife! She started to scream, ‘You fool! Don’t you have any sense? You should have brought that jar. She raved and ranted, ‘All my life, I am wearing the same clothes and jewelry. You have never taken me on a vacation.

What have I enjoyed after marrying you?’ When she started shouting at him, the barber said, ‘Alright, fine. Don’t worry. The booming voice has given me time till tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, I will talk to him and get the jar.’ The next day morning, he told the voice, ‘Please give me that jar.’ Immediately, a yakṣa (an astral being) appeared before him and said, ‘Have this jar. This jar has got 990 gold coins, just 10 gold coins less than 1000.’ The guy brought the gold jar back to the house. He was very happy that he could spend it for at least 99 days if he spent ten coins per day.

But the moment his wife got the jar, she said, ‘What is this? The jar is not overflowing. There is something missing.’ He said, ‘I don’t know. This is the way I got the jar. The yakṣa told me that it is a little less.’ She started worrying, ‘Had it been full, how nice it would have been!’ The next day, when the barber came back, she hurriedly grabbed all the ten gold coins for that day and put them in the jar. She wanted the jar to overflow. But to her surprise, again the level in the jar was not full. The barber’s wife now waited anxiously for the next day’s wages to fill the jar.

The next evening, again, she took the money from the barber and put them into the jar. Again, it was almost full but not completely full. This went on continuously for a week. She stopped giving the barber food and cut all expenses. She took away all the gold coins from him and desperately waited to see the jar overflow. In one week’s time the barber had become tired and dull. The king started enquiring, ‘What happened? You used to look so fresh. You have started worrying. What happened to you? Did you accept the yakṣa’s jar?’ The barber was shocked at hearing this. He said, ‘Oh king, Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 349 how do you know?’

The king said, ‘Whoever is suffering in this country, all of them have one thing in common. They accepted the yakṣa’s jar at some point in time. When you go back home, get rid of the yakṣa’s jar if you wish to be happy again.’ The man did so and lived in completion, happily and blissfully again from that day on. What the king said applies to all of us. Go back home and see if you have yakṣa’s jar or not, and if you do, complete with it. If you are worrying, if you are suffering with incompletions, there is every chance that you have the yakṣa’s jar of incompletions in your house.

The yakṣa’s jar never gets filled, it is always incomplete! Of course, when I say yakṣa’s jar, I mean it may not literally be there in your house. But it will surely be there in your head as incompletions. Sometimes yakṣa hands over the jar in the form of a bank balance. Sometimes he hands it out as knowledge. Sometimes he hands it out as name and fame! It may be in your mind, in your inner space sitting as complicated patterns, as incompletions claiming over your own power. Listen! Yakṣa’s jar is made out of the Brahmakapāla—meaning one of Lord Brahma’s heads that Lord Śiva, in the form of Māhākāla, destroys.

Mahādeva assumes the form of Kālabhairava to destroy the incompletions of Brahma. Brahma once got into the hypocritical incompletion of thinking he is Sadāśiva. Sadāśiva had five heads, Brahma also had five heads. But Brahma forgot that Sadāśiva had one more space in Him, which is called Adho Mukha—the Superconscious, Enlightenment, avyakta—the unmanifested. Brahma had not realized his unmanifested side. So he suddenly started behaving like Mahādeva, saying, ‘So what? I have five faces. He also has five faces.’ Mahādeva then took the form of Māhākālabhairava and removed one of Brahma’s heads. Once Mahādeva removed the head, Brahma automatically settled into the space of completion. But all the incompletions of Brahma were stuck in Mahādeva’s hand in the form of that Brahmakapāla or skull, which simply swallows anything that is put into it and asks for more.

Then, Devi offered food to that skull and completed it. Viśveshvara, Viśvanātha became Kālabhairava to complete Brahma. Mahādevi became Annapūrni (mother who bestows completion with food) to complete the Brahmakapāla. Understand the truth from this powerful happening! The yakṣa’s jar is the head of Brahma that makes us feel that we are not enough, that we are not complete, that we are not powerful and joyful. Our head makes us continuously feel powerless, insecure that we are not enough unto ourselves and we are not complete. On one side, no matter how much we have, in ten days, we feel it is not sufficient. In ten days, Brahma’s head, our incomplete mind, will take everything for granted.

On other side, it makes us cunningly believe that we know, when we don’t know. Yakṣa refers to an incomplete, powerless person with complicated patterns, who has wealth and the power of completion but neither does he enjoy his powerful space nor does he enrich to share it with the world. In India, they keep a few dogs in many agricultural fields. The dogs will neither eat the grains nor will they allow other animals to come and eat. In the same way, if we have the power of completion and enriching, and we neither enjoy nor share it with others, we are called a yakṣa. One of the biggest problems is, in spite of reminding you again and again, you put all your energy to support your incompletions saying ‘If I don’t support my incompletions, people will exploit me because others are in incompletion.’

If you feel insecurity, be very clear, you have already become Brahma. Now you need Kālabhairava to happen in you. Any form of insecurity is Brahma. Remove that insecurity and incompletion from your life. Be like Kālabhairava when you have to complete with all your incompletions, because your incompletion always behaves like Brahma. Even though it does not know, it acts as if it knows. When accumulation of wealth or knowledge is done greedily, there is never an end, like the yakṣa’s jar, because there is always scope for Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 351 more. And secondly, when one is so preoccupied about accumulating, completion and joy never happens.

The greed of wanting more and more power and the fear of losing the power hinders the true power and joy of the wealth. Why are we accumulating possessions if we do not stop and enjoy them? I tell you, Kālabhairava is power and joy. These two qualities completeallyourincompletions.Allyourincompletionswillbecomplete. Your very DNA should be programmed with the space of Kālabhairava, power and joy! Mahākālabhairava is embodiment of power and joy! Only power and joy brings completion and keeps you alive, awake, aware. I always tell people, ‘Either you do dāna (charity) or you achieve mahādāna (the final and grand sacrifice or death). If you do dāna, you share some of your completion while also enjoying and enriching yourself.

You will be enriched and so will others. If you don’t do some dāna, you will achieve mahādāna. This means you will leave everything and go away carrying the mahādāna of your incompletions once and for all when you die. Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi says beautifully, ‘Before achieving it, even a mustard seed will look like a mountain.’ It will seem like your life will not move without it. It will seem like it is the basic and most important thing for your life. ‘Once you achieve it, even a mountain will look like a mustard seed.’ This is because something else looks like a mountain now. We get caught in the trap of achieving, and lose the ability to relax and enjoy what we have achieved.

Karma or Sannyāsa, What is my path? Here, Arjuna asks: ‘Kṛṣṇa! Now, will you please tell me surely, which of the two: karma, action or Sannyāsa, renunciation is more beneficial— sannyāsaṁ karmaṇāṁ kṛṣṇa punar yogaṁ ca saṁsasi (5.1)?’ Again and again, all of us ask ourselves this question. The mind is in dilemma! The mind asks for a single instruction! Our mind will be alive as long as we are caught between any two extremes. The moment we come to any single conclusion we will be liberated. We will be ignorant as long as we are moving from one extreme to the other. Don’t say ‘Ignorance is bliss.’ If ignorance is bliss why are so many people suffering on this planet?

Ignorance is not bliss. Innocence is bliss. Innocence means we will not carry a scale with which we are continuously measuring our life. Ignorance means we will have a scale but we will not be able to fulfill our life according to that scale. We have made our mind itself a disease, a dilemma. Dilemma is the disease of incompletions with which man starts his life and ends his life too. Even ‘ends’ is not the right word to use because he is in a dilemma about whether or not to end it! But death comes and his life is just taken away from him. Here, Arjuna is in a dilemma as to which of the two is more beneficial for him.

If we look into life as a utility, as some means to a benefit, then we are creating our own hell. If we reduce life to this, we will be in hell. Listen! Life has no separate benefit. Life itself is a benefit. There are people who have achieved all that they wanted in life. But they feel a deep void, a deep incompletion in them. This is what I mean by the term ‘depression of success.’ They feel something is deeply lacking and are unable to comprehend what it could possibly be. This is because they ran the rat race of life without carrying the space of completion, without stopping to complete with their root patterns of desires, of fear and greed, without any self-inquiry.

They ran foolishly because everyone else was running. They never stopped for a minute to question—‘why am I doing what I am doing’, ‘what do I really want’, ‘why do I feel the way I feel’. So, without finding the root patterns that drive them in the rat race, when they stop running or when they can’t run anymore, they fall back into their incompletions. They suddenly find themselves diseased with their own being. This is what becomes depression or disease. So, if you constantly look for some benefit from life, if you don’t achieve, you will feel life is a failure and if you achieve, you are bound to face the depression of success.

Either way it is trouble. Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 353 Life itself is a benefit. If we constantly try to see which of two things is more beneficial, it means we have a pure business mind. We can’t do business with life. At some point we need to relax from the business mind. I always tell people, ‘For at least half an hour per day, do some enriching which will not get dollars for you­ —some painting, some writing.’ When you start painting, don’t think of a big gallery with your paintings! Do some creative work without bothering about how to show off your artwork to people. Even before starting to paint, we will think, ‘My friend will come home.

I will show him how I developed this concept.’ You will decide how to bore your friend with your plans. Do something enriching just for the sake of enriching, not for any purpose. Enrich just for the sake of enriching. You will see that during that half hour, you will fall into your very being; which is the space of completion! You can also enrich at some place of worship by cleaning it without expecting anything in return. Engage yourself in any form of selfless enriching activity. Serve food to people. Even while volunteering, we do it so that we can tell others about it and get applauded for it.

So now at least for 30 minutes, authentically enrich with responsibility, without the cognition of getting yourself any benefit. No money or name and fame should come to you from that half an hour. If you can just do this, you will start tasting the real power of life. Enriching is the power of living, ātma śakti. Listen! With enriching, you will achieve the ultimate result of establishing your existence into everything. You establishing your existence into everything is what I call ‘serving.’ In any form of serving or enriching, you expand and become part of it. As long as you are in your own head, continuously calculating, you will only be bargaining with life, ‘What is more beneficial?

What am I going to achieve by this?’ You will see the power of living—a different dimension of your being, if you practice this technique of enriching. I promise you that this enriching will lead you to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the consciousness of completion. When you stop calculating for getting benefits, you will start tasting the fruit of life. Listen! Enriching is enjoying and sharing the fruit of life! When you enrich others you will come alive. A mango does not achieve its ultimate, if you just eat the fruit and destroy the seed. The fruit realizes itself only when the seed is able to give more fruits. Life is not and can never be business.

Here, again and again, Arjuna is stuck because he thinks that life is business. Of course, Kṛṣṇa is very compassionate. He is the embodiment of kindness! Literally, inch by inch, He brings Arjuna up without giving up on him. He does not lose His patience. He does not say, ‘I told you earlier…’ I can say that Kṛṣṇa uses at least 100 verses to explain this one concept of Karma-Sannyāsa yoga, the paths of responsibility and renunciation. But He does this without losing His patience at any point. Not once does He shout at Arjuna. He is an embodiment of compassion. He comes down to the plane of Arjuna and gradually transforms him by enriching him with the same teachings in different ways.

The question concerning Karma and Sannyāsa—responsibility and renunciation—has been asked from time immemorial, and each time it has been answered. Yet this question remains. Somebody asked me, ‘Why is the Gītā still relevant today?’ I said, ‘Because we never learned it.’ Although Gītā was uttered at least 5,000 years ago it is still relevant today. Why? It is simply because man has not listened and he has not learnt his lesson yet! History repeats itself. The unconscious process never comes to the conscious energy. Man as such is governed to a large extent by the unconscious. He is not even aware of what he is going after. He thinks he wants something and runs after it.

But by the time he gets his hands on it, he wants something else. So there is a constant restlessness, powerlessness within. This puts man in constant incompletion, dissatisfaction and depression. Listen! By merely flooding completion into this depression you can Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 355 get out of it. I always tell people, if you just allow a single instance of depression, powerlessness to work on you and you face it consciously with the process of completion, in the process you will become enlightened. Nothing else is necessary. A single instance of depression is enough. It will completely burn you and you will become enlightened. But we never allow anything to work on us completely.

We are scared to confront our own selves. We just allow the unconscious space of powerlessness to overpower us instead of boldly facing it with power and joy, and seeing it through its completion. Look into every moment you feel powerless in your life even now. Don’t try to escape from those moments! You can never escape! Life is the greatest Master, it continuously teaches us. But we never learn from it. We never mark the spot where we stopped our journey in this birth. That spot where we stopped life’s journey is the root pattern. When we stop our journey, if we at least mark the spot in this life saying, ‘I covered this distance, I learnt all these things.

In the next birth I will continue from where I left last,’ it is enough. Please listen. The moment your root pattern is born, your life is destroyed! Your growth is stopped! Only when you find your root pattern and complete with it, you come back to life again. When I say birth, I do not mean just the totality of our life. I am referring to each day and night. Each day and night is a birth. It is a life cycle. We die and are reborn every day. Do Self-completion, SvapūrṆatva Everyday at least for forty-two minutes, consciously decide to do the selfcompletion process, svapūrṇatva kriya. Decide consciously to be complete: ‘Let me sit and face my powerlessness and complete with my patterns.

Let me restore my space of completion today.’ Tell yourself, ‘I will allow the cognition of completion to enter into my consciousness this week. I will solve all my problems only with this complete cognition. I create the space of completion.’ If you had completed with all your patterns before sleeping every night and allowed the cognition of completion to enter your consciousness every week, you would have been enlightened by now. Your life would have been blissful. But the problem is we do not take the responsibility for our possibility. Instead, we always mark the spots of our life’s journey in the wrong places—in our patterns. We mark our patterns, not our possibilities.

We never mark where we should in the bigger picture of our lives. We are so caught up with marking our small desires and goals fueled by our incompletions. We never mark the spot of our peak possibilities. These markings of desires and worldly goals continuously get washed away and new markings are made. They update themselves based on inputs from the world around us, based on what society has to say. We forget that these markings are temporary and do not reflect the space of possibility within, which comes only from completion. What truly matters is inner transformation, which we never bother to think about. We never allow any understanding of completion to work on us.

If we are consciously aware of our root patterns, why we are doing what we are doing and what our pitfalls are, we can start to complete with them and grow to be powerful, complete individuals. But again and again we make the same mistakes. The scale may differ but the mistakes are the same! A leader is one who commits mistakes on a large scale and hides them, whereas a follower is one who commits the same mistakes on a smaller scale and justifies them. That is the difference between a leader and a follower. To be honest, we are not intelligent enough to create new patterns. We are not creative and innovative enough to make new mistakes.

Even if you merely decide not to make the same mistake out of the same pattern once more, your life will be transformed. But again and again, we make the same kind of mistakes because our mind works in the same route. That route is only called saṁskāra: a recorded route, an engraved bio-memory or a root pattern. If we take up the life of either karma or sannyāsa based on an incomplete recorded bio-memory, we Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 357 will never achieve completion, bliss. Surrender to experience Karma-Sannyāsa as One Let us deeply analyze these paths of Karma and Sannyāsa. Karma is normally out of greed and desires.

Sannyāsa is always invariably out of fear, bhaya. There is a fear of life. When you are not ready to take the risk, you renounce everything. The fear of getting hurt is the first reason for Sannyāsa. Sannyāsa is a way of escapism, turning away from the responsibilities that life presents. When a person is bogged down by responsibilities of life, he takes Sannyāsa as an easy escape route. In the name of renunciation, he covers his deep fears. This is not true Sannyāsa. Then we have people running after material wealth in the name of karma. On one side are the people who are running away from fear. On the other side are those who are running towards their greed.

Both categories of people are not going to achieve eternal bliss or consciousness. Both are not on the right track of completion. In the entire world, only three types of human beings exist: One who has surrendered to greed, one who has surrendered to fear and the one who has surrendered to the supreme intelligence, divine consciousness. The person who has surrendered to greed gets lost. Such a person runs after many things in life to possess them, which in turn leads to more greed. He literally becomes a slave to greed. There is a beautiful story in Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad: There are two birds on the same tree. One bird, a completely satisfied and fulfilled being, is sitting calmly, enjoying the silence of its own inner space.

Another bird is sitting a little below, busily pecking at the fruits. It keeps flitting from place to place, trying to eat the fruits. When the fruit is tasty, it enjoys. When the fruit is not tasty, it suffers. It continuously oscillates between enjoyment and suffering. Suddenly, this bird looks up and sees the bird that is sitting silently and thinks, ‘How is this bird so calm and beautiful? Let me go closer and see. Let me talk to this bird.’ Slowly, the small bird moves towards the peaceful bird. As it goes closer to the other bird, it continues to taste more fruits and suffers because the fruits are sour.

Suddenly, when it is close enough to the other bird, it realizes that the other bird is nothing but its own self, which is sitting silently and beautifully watching the small bird getting distracted in its path, suffering with sour fruits! The small bird simply becomes one with the other bird. This is a beautiful story! In the same way, as long as you are a jīvātman, an ordinary soul, you struggle between fear and greed. You go from one extreme to another. The moment you realize there is something inside your being that is untouched by your greed and fear, you start traveling towards it. When you get closer to it, you realize you are that Consciousness.

Here, Kṛṣṇa explains the same thing, we are caught between fear and greed. Either we constantly surrender ourselves to fear or we surrender ourselves to greed. Very rare individuals surrender to intelligence, to Divine Consciousness. Arjuna asks here, ‘Which is more beneficial for me?’ Keeping track of accounts is good in business but not in life. People come and ask me, ‘Why should I surrender to the Divine? If I surrender, what will I get?’ If you don’t surrender to the Divine, you will be surrendering to your fear or greed. I am not asking you to surrender to the Divine just to get something out of it. When it comes to life, profit and loss doesn’t work.

Life is beyond calculation. The moment we ask, ‘What will I get by surrendering to the Divine?’, we miss the whole idea of surrender. Venkaṭeśvara (incarnation of Lord Viṣṇu) holds the cakra (discus) in one hand, and this represents fear. In the other hand, He has the śankha (conch), which represents success. The conch is blown when you achieve success or victory. This represents greed because man is constantly Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 359 seeking success in everything and is never satisfied. If you don’t surrender to Venkaṭeśvara’s pāda (feet) and His pāduka (sandals), you will surrender to His conch and discus. In other words, you will surrender to fear or greed.

Those who constantly approach God for fulfillment of their desires or for refuge for their problems are actually surrendering to greed and fear. Only very few surrender to the feet of Venkaṭeśvara, which is the ultimate surrender. Our whole life is spent running behind greed or fear. The path of Karma Yoga, seeking liberation through action or responsibility, happens because of greed. The path of sannyāsa yoga, seeking liberation through renunciation, happens because of fear. Neither the path of karma (action) nor the path of sannyāsa (renunciation) will enrich us unless we complete with our greed and fear and transform our very space into the space of completion. If we change the incomplete space to that of completion, karma or sannyāsa or anything can enrich us.

All we need to know is this—it doesn’t matter if we are a karma yogi or a sannyāsa yogi. It is the attitude, the space from which we approach and live life that is most important. Let your inner space be the space of completion. Listen! When you are in incompletion, you constantly feel powerless and anything you do comes out of powerlessness. Anything done out of incompletion, be it Karma Yoga or Sannyāsa yoga, leads you to more and more incompletion. Anything done out of completion, leads you to more and more completion. I am defining Sannyāsa. Sannyāsa is you living in the space of completion and constantly enriching everyone to be in the space of completion.

Again and again, Kṛṣṇa is placing the emphasis on the space of completion, on the being. If we don’t know the root cause of our actions, why we are living with karma or why we pick up Sannyāsa, we will not be able to solve our problems. Our suffering is neither because of karma nor because of Sannyāsa. Suffering is because of our wrong attitude of incompletion. And with this wrong attitude of incompletion, be it karma or sannyāsa, the path will feel only like a punishment. With the right space of completion, any path will feel like a true blessing for you and for others. With the wrong space of incompletion, if you take the path of karma or sannyāsa, you will struggle and suffer, and make others suffer as well.

If you decide to enter karma, drop the goal. Just enjoy doing the karma and don’t worry about the goal. Living itself is beautiful. Realize that life itself is beautiful. On the other hand, if we decide to take up Sannyāsa, again drop the goal. The goal of a Sannyāsi (monk), which is renunciation, is also a goal and it must be dropped. The karma yogi runs towards the goal, the Sannyāsi runs away from the goal. Kṛṣṇa says—sāṅkhya yogou pṛthagbālāḥ pravadanti na paṇḍitaḥ (5.4). Indirectly He tells Arjuna that he has yet to learn, that he is still ignorant. Only the ignorant man says that karma yoga is different from sāṅkhya yoga, the Sannyāsa.

Here, the words karma and sannyāsa are equated to Karma Yoga and Sāṅkhya Yoga. The experienced say that both karma and sannyāsa lead to the same truth. Through both these paths, one achieves the results of both. If we complete with the pattern of greed in karma yoga and complete with the pattern of fear in Sannyāsa Yoga, we will drop into eternal consciousness. Through both, we will achieve when we create the right space­—the space of completion. So Kṛṣṇa says here, ‘Only the ignorant person says that one is superior to the other or that they are two different paths. Both the paths are one and the same.’ A person who can travel alone, who is courageous enough to live in the space of completion and decides to enrich others with completion takes the life of Sannyāsa.

A person who decides to live in the space of completion and who wants to enrich others by sharing his life takes the life of karma. It is up to us. Both the paths are one and the same. What is important is having the right reason and the right space, not what we are doing. What we are doing is not important, who we are being Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 361 is important. These three words should be understood: being, doing and having. If we are continuously doing only for having, we will never have it. Even when we are having, we will be doing. The man who is doing just for having will never be able to experience or enjoy life because even when he is having, he will be doing.

The man who is established in his being will enjoy both doing and having at the same time. By just being, he will enjoy doing and having. All we need is a simple technique. The whole idea is now reduced to a one-line message. Let all our feelings, let all our mental thoughts, let all our physical deeds be directed towards gratitude to the Divine. Don’t work out of fear or greed, because no matter how much we achieve out of greed, we will not be fulfilled. It is like pouring ghee (clarified butter) into the fire. Can we quench fire by pouring ghee into it? Never! All our actions that are done out of greed will only create more desire and make our senses weak, tired and incomplete.

In the same way, all our laziness born out of fear will only make our mind restless and incomplete. We may not be doing things physically, but our mind will be worrying. If we have become a karma yogi out of greed, our senses will be weakened. How much can we run? If we become a Sannyāsi out of fear, again, we may not do anything physically but the whole day we will be worrying. A simple truth: When a man doesn’t have money, the problem is money. When he gets money, the problem is sex. When he gets sex, the problem is comforts. When he gets comforts and everything is going well, he starts worrying about death.

Some incompletion or the other will always make his mind powerless. Don’t think that all the Sannyasis sitting in the Himalayas are in bliss. No! Unless they create the space of completion, they cannot experience power and joy. Unless the very space changes, they cannot experience bliss. Bliss is directly related to our inner space. Our whole life will be spent in doing and having if we are caught in fear and greed. If we surrender ourselves to being, doing and having both will happen to us with tremendous ecstasy. Never work out of greed because whatever we achieve is going to be taken away at the time of death.

Never become silent and inactive out of fear because there is really nothing to lose. Whether we are afraid or not, everything is going to be taken away at the time of death. So why be afraid? In either case, why not be blissful? One important thing: Working without motivation is completely unheard of today. All psychologists, psychiatrists and scientists always emphasize that we cannot work without motivation. That is why there are so many motivational Gurus today. These people have come to the conclusion that ‘work without motivation is not possible’ after analysis on diseased patients, not on enlightened beings. They never had a specimen of a Buddha! They never encountered an enlightened person.

That is why they say that work without motivation is impossible. I tell you, work without motivation is the only real work. It will never make us tired! Every moment we will be working out of bliss. Devotion Above Action