Verses 5.5–5.9🔗

Beautiful verse! Not all of us are karma yogi or doers and not all of us are Sannyāsis or monks. No Sannyāsi is a Sannyāsi for 24 hours. When he surrenders himself to the greed, he is a doer. No karma yogi is a doer for 24 hours. When he surrenders to fear, he is a Sannyāsi. So, whenever we make an optimistic decision, we are a karma yogi. Whenever we make a pessimistic decision, we are Sannyāsi. It is we who play both the roles. Who is an optimist and who is a pessimist? An optimist is a man who created the airplane. A pessimist is a man who created the seat-belt.

In life you always play both the roles. Sometimes you are an optimist and sometimes you are a pessimist. Here, both can lead to the same goal if the inner space is pure and complete. Anything created out of greed will create more greed. Anything created out of fear will create more fear. Anything created out of incompletion will create more incompletion. Please listen: Whenever we move our body while feeling a particular emotion, that emotion gets settled inside our system. That emotion will become part of us and get created again and again in our system. Jiḍḍu Kṛṣṇamurti, an Enlightened Master from India, made a wonderful statement about emotions.

He says, ‘If you can, try to remain centered, silent, without moving your body when a particular emotion rises in you, without co-operating with it. Within eleven times, or I can say within eleven emotional upsets, if you have managed to be this way, you will be liberated from that emotion.’ For example, if you are caught in an emotion, say lust or fear, then for eleven cycles, whenever that emotion rises in your being, don’t allow your body to co-operate. Don’t allow your body to flow or move with that emotion. Within eleven cycles, I assure you, you will be liberated from that emotion. You may think, ‘What is this, Swamiji?

Just eleven times! Is it so easy?’ It is easy. All great things are easy. Only we complicate them because we don’t believe that anything is easy. A small story: A person goes to the doctor and asks, ‘Doctor, how much will you charge to pull this tooth out?’ The doctor says, ‘Ninety dollars.’ This person asks, ‘Ninety dollars just for a two minute job?’ The doctor says, ‘I can do it more slowly if you like!’ Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 365 We don’t believe in simplicity. We want to complicate things. I can tell you with integrity and authenticity, eleven times is too much. When that emotion rises in you, don’t cooperate.

Let your body not go after that emotion. Don’t be taken away by that emotion, whether it is anger, irritation, depression, lust, fear or anything else. Just decide, ‘I am not going to be taken away by this emotion. I am completing with it.’ I tell you, within three or four times, you will be liberated from that emotion because you will learn the technique of completion. You will have the key now in your hand: How not to be taken away by that emotion, how to be complete, rooted in your Self, in your being. Whether it is anger or fear or greed, it gets more power and strength if your body cooperates with it.

With whatever emotion your body moves, that emotion gets recorded inside your system. And that emotion will happen again and again, and much more intensely. Both frequency and intensity of that emotion will increase. There is a movie, ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?’ In this movie, they show this idea beautifully. It is a truth from Vedānta. They say that whenever an emotion happens within your system, it is like a shower of rain. The emotion pours like rain. It happens inside your system, in your being. There are particular cells that catch these emotions. For example, if you think with anger, there are particular cells that catch anger as an emotion.

Not only do they catch the emotion, they start reproducing as well. Each cell will create at least four or five more cells that can catch this emotion. Listen. An important truth is that the basic quality of life is reproduction and expansion. This is the survival instinct governed by the svādiṣṭhāna cakra, the fear energy center within our body. Reproduction is governed by the mūlādhāra cakra, the sex energy center in our body. These cells that catch the anger emotion start reproducing and each cell creates five or six more cells. Next time, when the anger shower happens, all these cells will also catch the same emotion. They grow to the same original size.

Now these cells also start reproducing. The third time, when the shower happens, all these cells catch the emotion and start storing it. That is why, every time we experience the same emotion, it becomes stronger and stronger. We are addicted to that emotion. If we are affected by anger for ten minutes the first time, then the next time, it becomes twenty minutes, then half an hour. This is how the emotion becomes stronger and stronger. In our being, again and again, when we cooperate with these negative emotions, we create the same type of mood, the same type of pattern and lifestyle in us. Not only will this emotion get recorded in us, but we will express the same thing to others also.

What we have within us is what we will vomit on others also. Drop Greed and Fear, Live Power and Joy If we are working to strengthen our greed, we will be caught by the emotion of greed and we will radiate that emotion. Next, if we strengthen our fear, again, we will be caught by that emotion of fear and express that emotion, torturing others with it. Be very clear: Warriors are caught in fear. That is why they torture others. They give fear to others. Warriors are the most cowardly people. A real warrior is a person who has conquered his being; who has won his being. Only he can be the only real warrior.

If we do anything out of fear, we will reproduce the same fear in others. Now, take a few minutes to sit and analyze, ‘Throughout this life, all these years I was driven by greed and fear. What have I achieved? What have I got? Where am I standing? What has really happened?’ Consciously and actively think about it. Consciously allow this idea to work on you. Decide, ‘From today, I will not do anything out of greed or out of fear.’ Immediately the fear will rise in you, ‘What will happen to my bills? What will happen to my house? Who will repay the mortgages? What will happen to my car?

My kids, who will feed them? What will happen to my social prestige and name and fame?’ Understand, you have enough energy and strength to maintain yourself without fear and greed. All you need is trust that you don’t need energy from fear or greed to run your life. That is the first thing you need Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 367 to understand. You have enough potential energy to live your life and to achieve what you want. When you come down to this planet, you bring enough energy to live all your desires or to achieve whatever you want to achieve in this life; to create your reality as you want.

You have already brought enough fuel. You don’t need fuel from fear or greed. You always think, ‘If I stop fueling myself with fear or greed, I may stop working.’ No. There is enough reserve fuel in you. But psychologists can never believe that unmotivated action is possible because they have never seen a Buddha. They conclude, ‘Only with motivation can a man work.’ What motivation have birds got to sing? But modern day psychologists are so focused on sex that even for that, they have started giving a meaning! They say that the bird is calling out to its partner. They can’t see anything as it is. That is why here, Kṛṣṇa beautifully says­—‘yaḥ paśyati sa paśyati’.

The man who is beyond the pull of fear and greed is the only one who can see things as they are. If you are caught in fear or greed, you will see things only as you want, never as they are. For example, on seeing a beautiful, tall building, a man who is caught in greed will think ‘If I have at least one building like this, how nice it will be!’ The man caught in fear will think, ‘I should not see these things. They stress me out. I should go and live in the forest.’ But only a person who is liberated from these two emotions will see it as it is..

His seeing will be a pure perception of seeing, beyond any patterns. Now, decide strongly, ‘Throughout my life, I have been either pushed by fear or pulled by greed. Do I want to continue that?’ For someone trained and conditioned by society, it will be very difficult to believe that you don’t need energy from greed or fear to live. I know you are thinking, ‘He is talking, so let us listen. What can be done?’ I know thousands of questions are rising in your mind. But let me tell you: Your whole past, whatever your age may be, you lived only fueled by fear and greed. Just decide, ‘For the next ten days I will trust the words of Kṛṣṇa.

I will practice this truth with integrity and authenticity. I don’t need fuel from fear or greed because I have brought enough energy.’ When the Divine sends you to earth, He sends you with whatever you need. In Vedānta, that is what we call prārabdha karma. When you come down you bring enough of energy for your senses and body to acquire whatever it needs to live life blissfully. The only problem is you don’t trust that you have brought everything. And after coming down, you accumulate more and more desires from others and then you try to fulfill all those desires too. Work only for your desires. Don’t waste your life working for others’ desires.

Decide clearly, ‘For the next ten days, I will work only out of my power, my joy and bliss. I will do everything out of my completion.’ I can assure you, it will transform your life. Anyway, I am going to be here even after ten days. If it does not work out, come and catch me! I tell you, just living ten days out of joy and bliss rather than fear and greed will transform your whole life. This one idea can liberate you straightaway from all bondages. When you start practicing this, for the first few days you will feel a little unsettled because a new inner space is created.

Say ‘No’ to any desire or any fear that comes up. Initially, you will feel some emptiness, a vacuum, but don’t worry. In a few days you will beautifully settle with the new space. Don’t worry when you fail a few times. Starting this way is much better than staying in fear of failure. So start! At least you will know the technique. If you don’t even start, you will not even know where you are failing. I tell you with integrity, it will transform your whole life. It will give you such great strength and courage that invariably you will be liberated. Don’t be bothered about the initial feeling of emptiness.

It is like this: If we don’t have anybody to nag us we will feel we are missing something! So, when you practice this, you will feel you are missing that constant nagging. Don’t worry. You will settle into that new consciousness. Your whole being will become new. It is important that you trust that you have enough energy to run without fear and greed. Only children need candy to make them work. For you, trust in power and joy of completion should be enough. Now, Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 369 you are all grown-up. If you still need fear or greed, then you have grown only physically and not mentally.

One more thing: In just ten days, you will not lose your wealth. Is there anybody who thinks, ‘If I practice for ten days, I may lose all my wealth?’ If that is the case, that wealth is not worth having. It is better to lose it. In ten days if you can lose it, do you think it is worth having it? The earlier it is lost, the better it is for your being. Remove the tremendous stress and load from your inner space. Decide, ‘For ten days, I will do all my actions out of deep bliss, out of a settled mood of powerfulness and joy.’ If you practice this, the constant irritation that remains in you will disappear.

Knowingly or unknowingly, you carry constant irritation in you. That is why all of us are just waiting to burst and explode even for small things. Look into yourself: How many of you can authentically cognize, agree that you carry that constant irritation in you? Raise your hand (A few raise). Others are not authentic! Everyone carries it. This irritation we carry in our inner space is because of fear and greed. There is uneasiness between you and your being. That uneasiness expresses itself continuously to others. That uneasiness is what I call dis-ease. Let you be liberated from it from today. So, decide that just for ten days, you will not fuel yourself with fear and greed.

You will suddenly feel a new energy coming up from your being—pure enthusiasm and causeless auspicious energy. Causeless auspicious energy is what we call Śiva. In Saṃskṛit, ‘Śiva’ means causeless auspiciousness, reasonless energy. It is possible to live with that reasonless, unmotivated energy. Only two things are needed for that. The first thing is trust that you have that energy. The next thing is starting to live it. Only these two things are needed to reach the Divine Consciousness. When we start working with the causeless auspicious energy, we become Śiva. Otherwise, we are Śava (dead body). Here, Kṛṣṇa does not refer to renunciation the way we traditionally understand it.

Normally we think renunciation is giving up everything, especially responsibility. Just by so-called renunciation without completion, if we just go to the Himalayas and try to meditate, we will not become a Sannyāsi. When we use the word ‘renounce’ the way we understand it, we exclude something. Exclusion can never be the solution. When we say ‘I should give up or avoid something’, we exclude some creation of Existence. When we try to renounce the world, we are renouncing the creation of Existence. We are trying to prove that we are more intelligent than Existence. Our renunciation then becomes a show of our ego, even though this may not seem very obvious to us.

Actually, we try to renounce because we want to escape from the situation. The outer world, situations or people are never the cause of trouble in us. How can they control us? It is our patterns of fear and greed and the projections of our mind that are really the cause of all the trouble. Ever minute, our mind continuously creates subtle expectations of how things should be, how people should be, how life should be. The thought pattern needs to change from running away from something due to fear of it to facing the reality. Running away from material pleasures due to fear of facing reality or guilt imposed by society cannot be called renunciation.

Just sit down for five minutes and be aware of how you perceive situations. With completion and awareness, look at everything you think and do, and you can understand what I mean. When we come to an understanding of our own self and are able to live as a witness to everything that goes on around us, unaffected by situations and people around us, we become a realized soul, living enlightenment. If we do things fueled by fear and greed, we become hypocrites. Brahmacarya literally means living with reality. It does not mean celibacy, as you understand it. When we are complete and ecstatic, flowing spontaneously in tune with the wonderful symphony of Existence, we are true brahmacāris.

Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 371 When we are completely in the present space of completion, totally involved in what we are doing, we become the action itself, we no longer exist as the doer. That is when we have truly renounced the sense of ‘I am doing’, or the ego. Then we are true Sannyāsis. All we need is to experience that behind the shallow emotions that exist in the periphery, at the very core of our being is a complete, solid, silent center that is absolutely unaffected by external incidents. It is a pure witness to everything and is eternally pure. Don’t try to go to the Himalayas to escape from the world.

Create the Himalayas within you. Realize the silent, complete center in you. Create the space of completion in you! Look at the cause and address the root pattern in your world rather than addressing the symptoms of the world. You see, renunciation, Sannyāsa is going beyond desires, including ‘desirelessness.’ Apart from material desires, the desire to be spiritual and attain God is also a desire. The mind always hankers after something in the future. Only when we drop all desires, when we are completely at ease and ecstatic in the present moment of completion, we have gone beyond the clutches of the mind. Only then do we see reality as It exists here and now.

Seeing this reality as It exists is what Kṛṣṇa beautifully calls—yaḥ paśyati sa paśyati. Otherwise, we always live in our world of illusion, māya, because the future is unreal; it is an illusion. The real, the present, can never be perceived by the mind because it is beyond logic. That is why Existence can never be understood and experienced by the mind. The truth can only be experienced. How can the limited mind even come close to understanding the vastness and the splendor of Existence? How can we desire God or Enlightenment, which we have never known? We can always desire Enlightenment in a way that fits our limited, inadequate cognition, but that is still our imagination.

Experience Your True Nature You can never possess or achieve Enlightenment. It is only Enlightenment that can possess you. It happens to you when you drop all desires. Actually, our true nature is neither pure nor impure. Whether we accept it or not, believe it or not, we are bliss. Our very nature is bliss. Our true nature itself is self-control. When we realize and experience that our being is pure bliss, the other emotions automatically drop. When we allow ourselves to be our true nature, to be bliss, we live spontaneously and respond with intelligence instead of programmed unconscious reactions. Then there is no need to control the senses because they are under the control of the ultimate Existence.

There is no question of having to control them. In the Mahābhārat war, Kṛṣṇa drives Arjuna’s chariot. The horses represent the senses held beautifully in control by the divine charioteer. He drives the being represented by the warrior, in the body represented by the chariot towards victory, towards bliss. When the individual consciousness surrenders control to the Divine, the Divine controls the body-mind-spirit and steers one towards one’s true nature, bliss. We have programmed reactions, default cognitions about everything. We see a situation and we react based on others’ expectation from us, anyakāra and our expectation from others, svānyakāra. We can only react by looking up our database of the past records, referring to the reaction of people then.

If what we did was appreciated, we will react the same way. If we are not appreciated and there is a gap between others’ expectation from us and our expectation from others, we create a self-doubt and feel uncomfortable and restless. And to remove the discomfort, we now react in a different manner, one that we think will be acceptable to others. We have forgotten what it is to respond with intelligence. No situation can be exactly the same as before. How can it be? Can a river flow in exactly the same way at two different points? The very water would have changed from the time it flows from one point to the other.

Life is like a river. It is continuously changing. Existence is energy. It can never repeat itself. Every moment is unique. We see it from the limited perception of our mind, and organize Sannyāsa Yogaḥ Live All Your Possibilities 373 life into different categories. We say, ‘These are pleasant situations, those are unpleasant situations, this is good, that is bad, this is right, that is wrong, this should happen, that should not.’ It is not Existence that makes these distinctions but us. If we can allow this new cognition to penetrate us, we can simply relax. We will then allow our consciousness to respond. Have the courage to live life with intelligence, with consciousness and completion, with spontaneity.

Just this small shift in your space can do wonders for you; every moment will then be a celebration! When the intelligence happens, the compassion also descends. Compassion for the whole world automatically happens in you because you see yourself in every one. How can you feel anything but compassion then? That is why Masters can only feel compassion and responsibility towards the whole world. When we flow in tune with Existence, we become a channel for the divine energy to flow through us. If the bamboo can remain hollow, it will become a beautiful flute and simply the air from the lips of the Divine will come out of the flute as heavenly music.

Instead, if the bamboo is blocked with dirt in the form of ego, it will remain dead and can only be used for carrying a dead body! These verses of Kṛṣṇa are very powerful, but often misinterpreted. ‘One who knows the truth, though engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, dreaming, and breathing knows that he never does anything.’ It is like you commit a murder and then claim you didn’t do it but your hands did it! Be very clear: Not being the doer does not mean we give up responsibility for our actions. It means exactly the opposite. When we are so involved in the action, when we are completely relaxed, we are overflowing with compassion and love, and we just do out of the blissful energy in us.

Listen. When we are complete and total in what we do, our whole intelligence, our whole energy will be behind the act; we become the action. The action and we are no longer separate. Energy is intelligence. So, when our energy is not total, our intelligence is not completely behind the action. When the energy behind the action is total, whatever we do will always radiate the blissful energy that is behind the action. Another important understanding from this verse: Every moment, every action, whether it is talking or breathing or seeing, should be done with awareness and completion. That is true meditation. Many people claim that they have been meditating for thirty or forty years.

Even after so many years, the person inside remains exactly the same. Absolutely zero transformation has happened. Meditation is actually a quality that needs to be added to our life. It should permeate the very way in which we view life, the space from which we perceive everything. When we infuse the space of completion into every action, we are in meditation. So how to be in completion? We can be complete only when we can distance and disidentify ourselves from what is happening now and what we think happened in the past. When we can witness the past happening without identifying and getting involved in it ourselves, only then can we watch the scene as It Is.

Otherwise we assume some role in the scene. When that happens, we create some incomplete cognitions, some vested interest in it. We have some expectation that things should happen in a certain way. The moment we get involved and identify ourselves with the happening, the distance between the scene and us has dropped and we can no longer be the witness to see things as they are. It is just like when we are in a dream, we don’t realize it is a dream. We think everything that is happening is reality. The moment we wake up from the dream we realize in a flash that it was just a dream.

The way we are living life now is exactly the same. We are living life in the dream of the future and the past. And we think that the dream is reality. The reality is actually in the present, which is the space of completion. When we realize this, we simply wake up to the true reality from the dream of illusion. Then, we understand that the senses, body and mind are not us. We are something much beyond these. With this awareness we become complete and blissful. Controlling The Mind