Verses 6.1–6.4🔗

Kṛṣṇa continues with what He said earlier in a little more detailed way. He says, the person who is not attached to the fruits of his action is an ascetic and a karma yogi, one who continuously does authentic work without being attached to the results. Please understand, karma—the state of action, or sannyāsa—the state of renunciation, is not related to your doing. It is directly related to your being. Being a sannyāsi, a renunciate monk, is not a status, it is a state of mind. Whether you are doing karma yoga or you remain a Sannyāsi is in no way going to affect you. If one is a karma yogī, one goes about doing the work that is allotted to him without attachment and without expectations.

This is done even in the middle of one’s life as a householder, a businessperson or an employee. The status is not of any consequence. In the same manner, it is immaterial whether one dons saffron robes to be a renunciate or an ascetic. One can wear all the outer trappings of a monk and still be fully attached to the saṁsāra māyā, the illusion of life. In the verses of Bhaja Govindam, Ādī Śaṅkarācārya, the Enlightened Master of ancient India, says this beautifully about the ascetic who cheats the world and himself. He says, the ascetic has his hair knotted, or he shaves his head bald, or he pulls out his hair one by one in penance, he wears saffron robes, but he does not see, even though he has eyes.

He does all this only to fill his belly! One’s attitude, one’s inner space, one’s being alone matters. Here Kṛṣṇa gives the gist of the previous chapter. People repeatedly ask me, ‘Swamiji, should we renounce everything to achieve Enlightenment? How can we lead our day-to-day life and yet hope to achieve spiritual progress?’ I tell them, ‘No! Just renounce what you don’t have. That is enough. You don’t have to renounce what you have.’ I tell them to live with completion with whatever they have, and to just renounce what they don’t have. We fantasize about all that we do not have, that is the problem. There are thousands of things that we don’t have, but we live with all those things mentally.

The problem is not what we have, we have got used to those things anyway. That is our reality. It is what we don’t have that creates problems. Just renounce what you don’t have. That is enough to solve all the problems. Then you will start living intensely with what you have. One of the major problems we bring upon ourselves is that we chase desires and possessions. And once we have achieved what we want, we don’t enjoy it. It is as if the enjoyment is only in the chase and not in the possession itself. The present has no meaning to many of us. Because of this, we miss reality, we miss true enjoyment.

It is the illusion of the Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 421 speculative future that draws our interest and causes misery to us. Live with Reality, Live like God There is a beautiful word in Saṃskṛit: brahmacarya. Just like many other Saṃskṛit words, this word has no equivalent word in English. The word has often been wrongly translated as celibacy. Brahma means Existence, reality, divinity. Carya means ‘living like’. Brahmacarya refers to a person who lives like the gods, who lives with Existence, who lives with reality. Brahmacarya does not mean one who is unmarried. Brahmacarya refers to one who lives with reality, one who lives unattached.

One of the four stages of life as defined by the scriptures is brahmacarya. This period of brahmacarya at Gurukul, under the Master’s guidance in one’s early years, provides the background to shed fantasies and live life in reality. In today’s world most of us live with fantasy. We don’t live with the reality of our existence. From our childhood, we are exposed to so many different forms of media that flood us with fantasies. On physical maturity, everyone searches for an ideal person who can match their fantasy with great vigour and determination! Even if you find someone who matches your so-called ideal, when you start living with the person, life will slowly reveal that the ideal image so carefully built over many years is different from the person with whom you are living.

There is always a screen of fantasy between your spouse and you, just like between life and you. You are continuously developing on life but you are not ready to look into life as it is. A person who is mature enough to live with reality in the space of completion has achieved the state of brahmacarya. He is living with the real person or situation. He is complete in the present moment for what it is; he does not dream of how it should be. So just drop your fantasies. Live with reality. That is what I call brahmacarya. Brahmacarya is nothing but high energy, that’s all. I am defining brahmacarya.

It is nothing but being authentic with high energy happening in you. Only when you have low energy, you need other person’s presence in your life. Brahmacarya is nothing but being authentic with your high energy. Here, Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Just renouncing the sacred fire and not performing one’s duty does not mean one is an ascetic or sannyāsi.’ In those days, fire was the basis for everything, whether it was cooking or spiritual practice. For everything one needed fire. I can replace the word ‘fire’ with ‘cell phone’ for today’s world! In this age, we can say, ‘Don’t think that by sacrificing the cell phone and laptop you become a sannyāsi or a great karma yogi.’

Just like how the cell phone and laptop have become a basic necessity today, in those days agnī (fire) was a basic need in life. Just like how we are able to relate with people through the cell phone, our ancient ṛṣis (mystics) knew the techniques of relating with the higher energy through fire. Understand, the Vedic Masters knew how to use fire to communicate with the higher energy, just like how we use the cell phone to communicate. All of science is based on using light particles, whether it is electricity, atomic energy, or other forms of energy, but with different formulae. Whether it is our fan or a microscope or a laptop or atomic bomb, everything can be reduced to that one single thing, the technique of handling light or electro-magnetic particles.

Scientists worked on light energy and created all these objects. Our eastern sages worked with sound energy and created all these products. We really had the pushpak vimāna (flying chariot) and we did really have the brahmāstra (nuclear weapon). Everything is true. But in the course of time we lost the technology, that’s all. As the technology for handling sound waves was lost, the existence of these things is being questioned today. People now believe that all these things are just mythology, just epic stories. No! I tell you, Purāṇās are histories not stories; they are ‘His-stories’. Just because we have lost the key and are not able to open the lock, don’t think that there is no treasure.

The entire collection of scriptures, the Vedas is nothing but learning the techniques of tuning oneself to work with sound particles. Just as Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 423 scientists work with light particles, the sages have worked with sound particles. They were able to relate with higher energies and were able to communicate just with the vibrations through fire. Whether it was Sañjaya, the minister of the Kaurava king Dhritarāṣṭra, who saw the Mahābhārat war through telepathy with his third eye, or the puśpak vimāna, the flying chariot, or brahmāstra, the ultimate fire weapon, these were all true. When the cultural invasion of India happened, these techniques were lost.

I have seen a Sannyāsi create fire by just uttering a few words. Even now, if we go to the Kumbha Melā (the holy river Gangā festival, planet’s largest spiritual gathering in India), we can see hundreds of people like this. I have seen many Sannyāsis—some bury their heads inside the Earth for more than twenty-four hours; many can play with sound energy. I have seen a sannyāsi floating in the air and another sitting on a board full of sharp nails, with people watching them in awe. Be Complete and Renounce your Thoughts So here, Kṛṣṇa says that just by renouncing fire, a person cannot become a Sannyāsi. Similarly, here I can say that just by renouncing our cell phone in life, we cannot become a sannyāsi.

The space needs to be transformed. To truly renounce, the mind has to renounce thoughts. Usually, wherever our body is, our mind is not. When we are at home, our thoughts are at the office. When we are at the office, we worry about what is happening elsewhere. When we are on vacation, we worry about work. To bring the mind to where the body is to renounce the inner chatter by completing with thoughts patterns. This is the starting point of renunciation. Thoughts cannot be suppressed. The more we suppress them the more they erupt. We need to let go. We need to constantly bring ourselves back to where our body is, to the present space of completion, to the here and now, away from the dead past and the unborn future.

Renunciation of the past and the future, by bringing our mind to focus on the present space of completion, is true renunciation. This renunciation does not happen by giving up objects of material welfare such as the fire and the cell phone. It also does not happen by giving up what we think is superficial to spiritual progress, such as rituals. Giving these up without bringing in the true completion of consciousness is not renunciation. In the first verse Kṛṣṇa gives the essence of the previous chapter. Now He continues. Kṛṣṇa has already said that renunciation for the sake of renunciation, renunciation of material things without renouncing desires, is of no value.

Please listen. You have to renounce fantasies. These fantasies are the creation of the ego, mind, identity, root patterns—whatever name you wish to call it. This self creates up all these unreal fantasy visions, to keep you occupied and under control. We may think that we are in control of our mind. But actually, our mind controls us. This is what Kṛṣṇa means by sañkalpa, self-interest, because the mind wishes to satisfy the senses that it operates and controls. By visualizing, by hearing, by smelling, by tasting, by touching, through the sense organs, our mind wants us to experience pleasures that will keep us under its hold. Only when we renounce the mind’s control by going beyond the senses can we become a true renunciate.

‘Control your senses and still your mind so that you can reach Me,’ Kṛṣṇa says in earlier chapters. When Kṛṣṇa talks about ‘self’, it is the small ‘self’, the external identity that we confuse with our Self, the real inner core, the Truth. Only when we do renounce this so-called identity, which is not the true Self, then we will perceive our self as the supreme Self that is our true identity. An ordinary person sees his own self as being the body, mind, memories, senses and the identities that he creates for himself. These are the channels through which we can project ourselves onto the outer world. Normally we create two identities.

One identity called ahaṁkāra, the identity that we project to the outer world. This identity is usually based on our achievements in society, our profession, Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 425 our possessions, etc. The second identity is called mamākara, the identity we project to our inner self. This identity is usually based on our ideas about our attitudes, our beliefs, and our self-esteem. Through a combination of these two identities we create an image about ourselves that we hold on to with deep conviction and belief. Our true Self is beyond all these inner and outer images. Please listen. If we don’t want to be controlled by the mind, any activity that we perform to satisfy this false identity or ego should be renounced.

As long as we allow our senses to feed us, we will be nurtured and controlled by sensory pleasures that satisfy our ego. Our mind will then keep us in its control. Listen. I am defining Yoga. Renunciation of these fantasies that we feel we need for self-satisfaction is Yoga. Yoga is the state when our desires, expressed through sensual pleasures, dissolve. We unite with our true Self in this state. In this state, there is no gap between the Divine and us. Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, want it or not, we are God. We are divine. All we can do is accept it, experience it, live and powerfully express it or we can just continue to struggle and fight with it.

This is the truth. A small story: A man was informed that his wife had just fallen into the river. He ran to the river to save her. To everyone’s surprise, he jumped into the river and started swimming in the opposite direction, against the current. People who watched the scene shouted to him and called him a fool. They asked him, ‘Why are you swimming against the current? Your wife has been carried with the current, downstream.’ The man said, ‘You don’t know my wife. Even in the river, she would go only against the current!’ We can be like a rock in the water, forever resisting the flow of the water.

The river pounds the rock, eventually reducing it to sand that settles at the bottom. Or we can be like the reed that bends and flows in whichever direction the water flows. By giving in to the water flow, the reed rests in the water. In Saṃskṛit there are two terms, ‘dṛṣti sṛṣti’ and ‘sṛṣti dṛṣti’. Dṛṣti sṛṣti means to look at the world as it is and take life as it comes. Sṛṣti dṛṣti is just the opposite, when we want to create the world as we would like it to be, as we want to see it. We want the world running according to our fantasies, instead of coming to terms with the reality of the world.

This is a sure recipe for disaster, much like the woman swimming against the current and meeting with disaster. We have a choice. We can either move against the current, believing that we control our destiny, and struggle all the time. Or we can flow with the current, surrender to the Divine of which we are an integral part, and be in bliss. Whether we go against the current or go with it, we are in the water. Whether we realize it or not, we are Divine. When our desires for external sensual pleasures are controlled, we experience the divinity within. Yoga—Uniting the Body and Mind This is the state of yoga that Kṛṣṇa talks about—yogārūḍhasya tasyaiva śamaḥ kāraṇam ucyate (6.3), the state of true renunciation where there is no suppression.

Instead, there is transformation into completion. The path is no longer towards self or sensory satisfaction. In fact, there is no ‘towards’ or ‘goal.’ The goal is the path itself. When we lead our life with no expectations, the mind cannot speculate or control us. Kṛṣṇa says next, ‘A person who initially wants to start practicing a yoga system laid down by the sages should carry out all activities in line with that system. Activities for all other reasons will then cease.’ This is such a beautiful instruction for anyone doing yoga. Today, the true meaning of yoga is completely lost. Yoga is not about physical exercise or sweating in high temperatures.

Its purpose is not bodily fitness. Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 427 Yoga integrates body, mind and spirit. It is a journey into the inner Self, towards the Self. Patañjali, the great sage and the father of Yoga, who authored Yoga Sūtras, laid down an eight-limbed system called Aṣtāṅga Yoga. Today this is being misinterpreted as ‘eight steps of yoga’. Patañjali laid down eight limbs or parts that needed to be practiced simultaneously, not separately or sequentially. There is no meaning in practicing yoga through only two of the eight parts: āsana, physical postures, and prāṇāyāma, breath control. But these are the only two parts taught by most yoga teachers today.

What is the point? Nothing of real value will come out of it. In Patañjali’s Aṣtāṅga Yoga, bliss is the goal, the path, and the end result. Have you seen even one yoga practitioner enjoying what he or she is doing? They are grimacing all the time, forcing their body, controlling their breath, torturing themselves. What for? Patañjali never asked them to torture themselves or their students. Yoga as it is practiced now only breeds ego. They have added many components to yoga: Deluxe yoga, Super deluxe kuṇḍalini yoga! Yoga should be done as bhoga, not as roga. Yoga should be done as an enjoyment, excitement, bhoga and not as a roga, disease.

The excitement you radiate in your body, the whole bio-memory should be alive. Whole intelligence should be alive, up! Patañjali’s system of yoga is a way of life. Starting with inner and outer regulation, yama and niyama, his system cleanses our body, mind and spirit. Just yama, which is one of the eight limbs, has five parts, one of which is satya or truth. If we practice this with integrity and authenticity, it will lead us into enlightenment. Another part is brahmacarya, which is living enlightenment or walking in completion with reality. Actually, we need to be in the eighth state of samādhi to truly be able to practice even one of the yama principles with awareness.

Discovering your root pattern and completing it is the first step towards yoga. Please understand, yoga is not just moving your body or blowing your nose. No! Yoga starts when you discover your root thought pattern and complete with it. The yoga system is a parallel system, not a sequential system. When each of its parts is acted upon with awareness, every single thing that we do will be in completion with Nature. We will automatically surrender to Nature and attain the true yogic state of samādhi. Ahiṁsā, non-violence, is another part of the first limb, yama. Religion teaches non-violence as a moral injunction. But I tell you, no morality can be practiced.

Even if we are successful, then we will be schizophrenic. If we can understand and practice, it will never be a discipline. It will be just falling in tune with Existence. Ahiṁsa should be practiced out of deep understanding and then we will start radiating it in our very walk and talk. Even animals will be attracted to us. Our very being will be a blessing to planet Earth. One of the other rules in yama is satya, truthfulness. Truthfulness can happen in us only after we have experienced samādhi, the eighth limb. Until we attain enlightenment, whatever we think of as the truth is only a perception of our five senses, not reality.

The rules of yama and niyama (discipline) will only be established firmly after we have experienced samādhi. More than what actions you do, the space from which the actions are done and the context and reason from which the actions are done, that matter. Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, we are divine. To realize our divine nature, ancient mystics have created this wonderful eight-fold formula of the yoga system. Yoga in modern days is practiced just for health reasons. Listen! You can do yoga with a smaller reason and smaller context like just to have flexibility or to get out of back pain. Or you can do the same yoga with the right context of becoming in tune with Cosmos, Brahmāṅda.

In what context you do yoga, that result you reap. When you practice the right reason, right results come. When you practice the same yoga with the smaller reasons, only the smaller results come. At the most, you will have good health. Good health is just a by-product of practicing Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 429 yoga, not the end. The actual reason, the right reason that our wonderful Sages created this formula, was to create the divine experience within anyone who used the formula. Yoga is a straight technique to achieve the Divine experience. This formula cannot be modified or altered or practiced in parts and pieces.

This formula has to be practiced with this right reason as prescribed for one to realize the divine nature of one’s Self, asserts Kṛṣṇa. Yoga is a formula in which there are techniques that can be practiced to reach the Divine. Learning yoga means bringing integrity to your body. Once we become intensely tuned to the eight-fold formula, it will become such an integral part of our being that it will become difficult to forget it even for a minute. When we practice yoga to meet with the Divine we will not treat yoga as an activity to be performed at a particular time of the day. We will live and breathe yoga.

These eight limbs of yoga will influence any activity that we perform. For example, if you are speaking to someone you will constantly be aware of the need to speak the truth. You will constantly bring integrity into the words you utter to others and to yourself. ‘Yogasya prathamaṁ dvāram vānga nirodhaḥ. The first step in yoga is reduction in the words inside and outside of you.’ Why will the words you create be reduced when you step into yoga? Because you bring integrity and awareness into your system! Now you become responsible for the words you utter to you and to others. What will happen? Naturally, reduction in words will happen.

When you bring integrity, the words inside and outside you automatically drop, drastically. When we bring authenticity, the words will increase, and our capacity to fulfill it will also increase. ‘Yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam—yoga is authenticity in action!’ When authenticity is in action, it is yoga. If you are performing an activity, your awareness will be completely on that activity. You will bring authenticity in every level—the way you do business, the way you maintain relationships, the way you take responsibility, the way you think, cognize, and respond to the world, the way you behave with you, with your body; with everything bring authenticity. I was taught Aṣtāṅga Yoga by a great yogic Master, Yogirāj Yogānanda Puri (lovingly called Raghupati Yogi).

He started training me when I was barely three and he was then already nearing one hundred years of age. I truly believe that he was a descendent of Patañjali; he was so much in tune with the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. I hated a lot of what he made me do then. He made me climb pillars in the Arunachala temple in Tiruvannamalai with one hand behind my back! But it was this training that allowed my body to withstand the rigors of my spiritual wandering through the country and the Himalayan mountains, in search of Enlightenment. Now, I teach Aṣtāṅga Yoga, as it was taught to me, with the additional experiential insight of Patañjali’s vision that I have gained since then.

I call it Nithya Yoga. The path and purpose of Nithya Yoga is bliss. It is bliss arising out of the merging of body, mind and spirit, when the glimpse of what we truly are is experienced by us. The word ‘yoga’ in Saṃskṛit means to unite or to become one with. Actually, yoga refers to the process of uniting. What is important in yoga is the journey, the path, and the process. For whatever purpose, with whatever intention we move our body or bend our body, that idea, that intention, is completely inserted or recorded into our body and mind, our bio-memory. This may appear startling to us but it is the truth from my experience.

Whatever thought pattern and intention, the saṁskāra, you hold when you move your body, that saṁskāra will get inserted into you and will start expressing itself in your body. For example, if you move your body with the intention and the strong belief that you will have health, in whichever way you move your body, health will simply happen. With any physical movement, including just sitting, if you strongly believe that you will have health, health will simply happen in you. Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 431 This leads us to an important conclusion: the method in which we do postures in yoga is not important.

It is the thought, the idea with which we move our body in the posture that matters. Understand that the body itself is made out of bio-memories and muscle-memories. Whether we believe it or not, we are an expression of our own self-hypnosis. Here is a simple technique to experience this truth: For just ten minutes in the morning, visualize your whole body as a bliss bag filled with bliss. Then move the body in whatever way you want. The body will start working, experiencing and expressing the bliss. When we reach the state of yoga, we are in a meditative state of bliss. In this state, all desires for sense gratification and activities cease.

Our existence becomes an outpouring of bliss. There will be so much bliss bubbling up from inside that there will be no need to look for an outer object, person or location to influence this bliss. The desire to run after goals will automatically drop. This bliss is beyond the body and the mind. This state of bliss can radiate and flow out to touch outer objects, but the outer objects cannot influence this inner bliss! Are You Your Friend Or Your Enemy?