Verses 5.22–5.26🔗

Kṛṣṇa says that sensory pleasures are bound to end; they do not last forever. Generally, we are controlled by what happens outside us. Our happiness is an emotion that is created by something outside of us—a pleasant situation, the presence of someone we like, and so on. When we experience happiness due to some event outside us, be very sure, sadness is around the corner. When we experience the joy in us because of an external source, we will experience sadness once that external source is taken away from us. We always attach our happiness to something that is external to us. If these things are taken away from us, we are left with sadness.

It is like a pendulum swaying from one extreme of happiness to the other extreme of sadness. The event and the person do not cause happiness and sorrow. It is caused by our sensory perception and by the judgment based on this perception. That is why the same event that may be joyful to one is sorrowful for another, and would leave a third one undisturbed. It is our attachment to that person or event and our judgment based on our patterns that creates the sorrow or happiness. The incident by itself is neutral. There is a beginning and an end to these states of sorrow and happiness. But bliss is something that continuously happens in us for no reason.

Bliss does not depend on external sources. It is inside us. Once we are centered in us, we are always in bliss. When we are constantly experiencing the inner joy or bliss, whatever happens outside us does not affect our space of bliss. Happiness or sadness happens because of our sensory pleasures that are again a result of our mind and ego. Our ego, our false association of ourselves with various emotions is actually the cause of our misery. At the core of our beings is pure bliss. But we are functioning at our periphery and are not able to see this core. The ego is what is really meant by māyā or illusion.

Yā mā iti māyā—that which does not exist but which troubles as if it exists is māyā. We don’t see reality as it is because we are all the time looking at life through glasses tinted with our biased perceptions, through our limited view of life. When we start watching these sources with awareness and complete with our root patterns, we break the chords of attachment of our state of joy with these external sources and desires. When we are aware of what we really want, this dependency on sensory pleasures breaks. When we are centered and complete in ourselves, we start taking things as and when they come. I am not saying you should not enrich yourself with the joy that you Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 401 get from external sources or fulfillment of our desires.

No. All I am saying is, be aware of it when it happens, that’s all. Do not attach your internal state of joy to these sense pleasures. If they happen, let them happen. Let them not dictate your state of happiness. Kṛṣṇa gives us now a beautiful technique to reach that ultimate Kṛṣṇa consciousness, to reach the beautiful space of bliss. He is saying exactly what I said earlier. If we can, at least once, settle inside our being, into our space of completion, when we are attacked by this incomplete emotion of desire and anger, without moving our body, without cooperating, without being taken away by that emotion, we are well-situated.

This means that we achieved what has to be achieved; we are blissful in this world. GĪtā—Owner’s Manual for Body-Mind People ask me again and again, ‘Swamiji, what is the purpose of this body and mind?’ The purpose of body and mind is only one thing: to achieve, to learn how to experience joy without body and mind. If we can learn to have happiness and bliss, without the body and mind, we have achieved the purpose of the body and mind; over! After that, we can throw away the body and mind; we can live without the body and mind. The person who is able to live without the body and mind is called a jīvan mukta—a person living enlightenment.

Even if the body and mind are with him, he will not be touched by them. If we don’t have any need, will you go to Los Angeles? Unless you have some reason, you will not go there. In the same way, unless you have some reason, you will not assume this body. If you had a single glimpse of bliss without this body and mind, the bliss that is beyond this body and mind, you will never be disturbed by this body and mind. Even if it is there, it will be following you; you will not be following it. It is like this: If you don’t know how to put the brakes on when you are driving the car, it means you are not driving the car, the car is driving you!

Without reading the owner’s manual and learning to drive, if you sit in the car, you will only be in trouble. Without the manual, if you directly drive the car, you will make all sorts of mistakes. Only when you know how to start or to stop or apply the brakes properly, you are driving the car. Otherwise, the car is driving you. So read the owner’s manual before getting into the vehicle. The Bhagavad Gītā is the owner’s manual for your body and mind. If you read the owner’s manual before getting into the body and mind, you will be able to stop when you want to stop. You will not get into the accident of repeating the life and death cycle.

Here Kṛṣṇa says: The man who is not moved, who can tolerate the urges of material senses, check the force of desire and anger, is well-situated and he is happy in this world. He knows where he is. He knows his place. In this world, many of us don’t know our place. That is why we feel uprooted. We don’t feel we belong to this life. We don’t feel we are at home because we don’t know our place. Only a person who has gone beyond greed and fear can relax into his being. He will know what his place is in this planet Earth. If we don’t fuel our being with fear and greed, suddenly, we will see a new clarity.

We will start working out of intelligence, out of Divine Consciousness, out of Eternal Bliss. Just decide, ‘Whatever I do out of greed will only result in more greed. I have been getting nowhere. Enough!’ In the same way, if we are escaping from something out of fear, decide, ‘Alright, how long can I escape? This fear will come and attack me in some other form. If I am afraid of this now, I will be afraid of something else later. So let me face it now.’ It is just the fear, not the object about which you are afraid of. You may escape anywhere but you are carrying the canopy of fear and greed with you.

Wherever you go for a picnic, you open your own little canopy. There are so many places for great escapes today! These places showhowmuchofdepressionpeoplearecarryinginsidethem.Ifsomuch entertainment is necessary, it means they are carrying so much depression inside. By his very nature, man doesn’t need so much entertainment. If we need so many things to make us happy, there is Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 403 something seriously wrong with the whole system. We need to look into the system and repair it. Again and again, Kṛṣṇa declares, ‘Let you live in the space of completion. Let you work out of bliss.’ And I tell you, if you are complete and work out of bliss, you will create bliss for yourself and for others; you will never know what tiredness is.

Let me tell you honestly that I still can’t understand the meaning of the word ‘tiredness.’ How can you have tiredness? Tiredness is the inner contradiction between the icchā śakti (power of desire) and kriya śakti (power of action), between your being and your action. Inside, there is a deep problem. Your greed and fear are attacking each other. If we are feeling tired, it means there is a big war going on inside you. The Mahābhārat war between fear and greed is happening within you. Man whose consciousness is complete can never experience tiredness. When I was in college, I used to sit and meditate for four hours every morning and evening.

My roommates would ask me, ‘How are you able to sit for so many hours?’ And I used to tell them, ‘Why not? It is my body, my mind. If you want, can’t you sit? If you can’t even sit with your body and mind, what are you going to achieve?’ Why do we feel tired? We feel tired when we are not integrated within ourselves. One half of our being that wants to express itself but we have suppressed it for various societal reasons. The other half of our being is what is expressing itself in the manner that we are forcing it to. Because we constantly have to put in an inauthentic effort to be what we naturally are not, we become tired at some point.

When we become tired, the suppressed, unconscious half of us becomes more powerful than the conscious, pretentious half, and it starts dominating. Just integrate yourself. Be with completion rather than suppressing yourself, and there will be no unconscious half to fight with. Then where is the question of feeling tired? We feel tired only when we are not completely involved in what we are doing. Become complete, integrated, and whole. Then you can never feel tired, whatever you may do. See how is it that you don’t feel tired aftrer sitting with me for so many hours? It is because when I speak, I speak from my being, with a totality.

When I speak with totality, you automatically receive me and my energy. This is the state from which enlightened Masters operate. That is why there is no sense of tiredness in them even though they are intensely involved in what they do. We feel tired only when there is a gap between what we are doing and what we want to do. When we are driven by greed for something, we are caught up in the goal and the goal is something we want to achieve. What we are doing is not yet the goal and hence, we feel we are running towards the goal. Or we are driven by fear of something; we want to escape from the object of fear and hence we are not completely involved in what we are doing.

Honestly, I can’t understand how a man cannot sit with himself. It is our body, our mind after all. Just sit! You are not able to sit because you continuously pour the wrong fuel into your system. We are continuously chasing power. The hunger for power is so high in us that we are always running behind something to get control over it. First, let us get our body and mind under our control. As of now, it is under the control of fear or greed. Let that be controlled by us. Then, automatically, we can get anything under our control. If our body and mind are not under our control, whatever we wish to bring under our control will never come under our control.

One thought from greed is enough: our body just runs. One thought from fear is enough: our body just runs. Let it be completely under you. May you be complete with your body and mind! Just Be Happy From Within Here is a beautiful sūtra, a beautiful technique from Kṛṣṇa to enter into the supreme consciousness: ‘Just be happy, restful and complete from within’, says Kṛṣṇa, ‘yo’ntaḥ sukho antar-ārāmas tathāntar-jyotir eva yaḥ (5.24).’ Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 405 Just be happy from within. Let your smile be a deep expression of the love in your being. All of us are so used to living an artificial life that we have forgotten our being.

Every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by greed or fear. This means we are not actually experiencing the moment of completion. We can enjoy something totally only when we are completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment, enjoying what we are doing here and now. When you are in the space of completion in the present moment with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy that has no reason and which is not affected by the past or future.

Naturally, the present blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. We enter a virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious cycle of fear and greed that we are now caught in. Why do we run behind our desires or why are we afraid of something? It is because we think life has some goal to be achieved and we continuously run towards the goals. Understand, life in itself has no goal. The very life itself is the goal. The path itself is the goal. If we think the goal and the path are different, we will run towards the goal; we will run towards the horizon.

Can we ever touch the horizon? The more we run towards it, we will find it receding from us, because the horizon is imaginary, it is an illusion. If we are running behind a goal in life, we will be disappointed at the end of life. But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every moment is blissful! The goal is achieved every moment of our life. So every moment when we live with full completion, with full enthusiasm, with powerfulness, we actually enjoy that moment. When we are completely immersed in the present moment, we enjoy the path. When the path itself becomes the goal, we enjoy the goal also every moment.

The self-realized one is complete, powerful, active and happy because he is completely in the present moment, living in reality. The Divine energy blissfully flows through him and he no longer needs to derive energy for his activities from desire or fear. Here, Kṛṣṇa refers to the state in which we are in the peak of activity yet in the ultimate relaxation. Such a state is indeed possible and is the only state in which we can really be involved in what we are doing, and completely satisfied, complete and blissful in what we are doing. Why To Feel Responsible? This is what Kṛṣṇa says: When we are tuned fully inwards, we no longer have any attachment to what happens outside; we are one with the All, the Existence, and we have transcended all karma.

We are then in brahma nirvāṇa—the ultimate liberation, one with Existence, and we are in nityānanda, eternal bliss. When we feel genuine love for others, we feel responsible for everyone, and we take up more and more responsibility. We want to enrich others and share that love with as many as people as possible. When we are tuned inwards, we live in the present; the past and future do not exist for us. When we are in the present, we are one with Existence. I call this All-one-ness. We are All-in-One. We are in the space of Advaita, non-duality. We encompass everything. In this state, we are at the height of spontaneity; we are at the peak of our possibility.

Spontaneity does not mean creativity. Creativity is a byproduct. Spontaneity is being in the present, being responsible for everything. Nothing is excluded. We flow out, we expand and cover. The more responsibility we take up, the more we expand. Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. But if we don’t shrug it and keep on shouldering it with the right reason, we will expand and the divine energy will automatically flow in us. And we can take up more and more responsibility only when we feel overflowing energy in us. With responsibility, we harness the power of feeling. When we feel the space of responsibility, we take it up without any doubts.

Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 407 Usually whenever we are asked to do something, the mind comes in between and the responsibility feels like a load. Without the right context of responsibility, our mind creates dilemma. We start analyzing intellectually and logically. So at the end of it, we act out of greed or fear. As long as we intellectually weigh the situation for good and bad, the mind exists. We have to cross this barrier by completing with our greed and fear patterns. We have to cut across the wall of incompletions and enter the space of feeling the responsibility. The dilemma of wanting or not wanting to do something should not come at all.

Many times when people come to me and I ask them to do something, just by the way they say, ‘Yes, I will do it,’ I can tell whether they really want to do it or not! Our response to take up a responsibility is shaky and inauthentic when we are in a dilemma, when our mind operates. We should take up responsibility spontaneously. Then the mind will not have its say. We just know, that’s all. We operate from an extreme relaxation and spontaneity. The ability to respond spontaneously out of the space of completion is what I call responsibility. Please listen! Responsibility can happen to you only after completion.

If you take responsibility because you have to be a performer, or a leader, or be productive, you will feel responsibility as a weight on you! If responsibility is taken out of wrong reason, you are not going to feel responsible! Listen! Understand, only when you complete, you will know the right reason for taking responsibility. Only then, you taking responsibility will be really useful to you. So understand, responsibility can happen in you only after completion! I’ll now tell you why you need to feel responsibility, why you should take responsibility. Listen. Whatever happens in and around you—you ARE the source! That is why you need to take responsibility for whatever is happening in and around you.

You need to take responsibility because you are responsible, and not for any other reason. Whether you believe it or not, you ARE the source. With this clarity, out of this context, if you take responsibility, every action, whether it is taking your children to the school, attending to your calls or your business meeting, everything will become a spiritual practice leading you to jīvan mukti, living enlightenment. When you learn responsibility, you may naturally perform well in your office, in your business, in your family. You will become responsible, no doubt. I am not against it. I am not against you performing in your office or you taking responsibility for your family.

But all that should be the side effect! The main effect of you feeling responsibility should be— you becoming jīvan mukta, living enlightenment! Live this principle of responsibility. Then you will understand that all your decisions will be out of the experience—‘I am the Source.’ Listen!Ifyoufunctionwiththistruth,‘Iamthesource,soIamresponsible’; everything you do will become a spiritual practice for you to become a jīvan mukta. Only when we go beyond the incompletions of the mind, beyond duality, we see the absolute oneness and synchronicity of the entire Existence and we start living in the state of Advaita. When we reach this state, there is no mind that is acting. We are in a state of deep relaxation, completion and bliss.

And this awakens the power of feeling in us to spontaneously respond to everything with responsibility. When we feel genuine love for others, we will take up responsibility because we want to share that blissful love with others around us. Only when we work out of bliss, we will do things to enrich others and ourselves. Taking responsibility and enriching makes life happen to you! When we take up responsibility spontaneously, we do not act out of fear or greed. We will always be giving. Know Me And Be In Bliss