Verses 6.20–6.24🔗

Kṛṣṇa talks about two important things: practice with determination and practice without deviating from the prescribed way. Both are key elements to experience yoga. After a few days of practice it is easy to fall into inertia, tamas, and give up on ourselves. Our mind has been programmed with our old routine for years and will will draw us back to the old ways. This is where determination is needed. Determination driven by the curiosity and the quest to see and experience the truth is what will give us the energy to practice yoga. The other important element is practice without deviating from the prescribed way. We are re-introducing, re-presenting yoga in the form of Nithya Yoga—the yoga of eternity.

I can say re-presenting because it is a new expression. The method has evolved but the system, the truth itself is the same as the original system offered by the great master, Patañjali. His system is so complete that we can’t add even a single word to the techniques. It is the experience of Truth and Truth cannot be developed. Only lies can be developed. All we can do is help evolve the teaching of Truth to suit the current minds. Kṛṣṇa emphasizes here that yoga should be practiced in the prescribed way. All eight parts of yoga need to be practiced, simultaneously. Even one part of Patañjali’s Aṣtāṇga Yoga will take many lifetimes to achieve, given the modern man’s mindset.

Please understand, Patañjali’s Aṣtāṇga Yoga, eight organs of yoga or aṇga has unfortunately been wrongly translated by the English yogis as ‘eight steps of yoga’. Because of this, it has become just a small few techniques or methods to make your body flexible and a little healthy. That is a disgrace done to yoga. When you get a diamond and you use that diamond just as a vegetable cutter, it is a disgrace to the diamond. In the same way, when you use such a great power, the powerful science of yoga just as technique to bring a little health, it is so unfortunate! Satya, truth, is a part of yama, the first of the eight steps of Aṣtāṇga Yoga.

If we consistently practice truthfulness alone, we will reach samādhi, the state of liberation. Our thoughts, words and actions become pure and truthful only when we are enlightened; only when we bring integrity in our words, authenticity in our thinking and actions, responsibility in our feeling, and enriching in our living. Please listen! Yama is Integrity. Niyama is Authenticity. Āsana, Prānāyama, Prayāhara, Dhārana are Responsibility. Dhāyana and Samādhi are Enriching. This is what Kṛṣṇa means when He says, ‘Self is satisfied by the Self in the Self, yatra caiva ātmanātmanaṁ paśyann ātmani tuṣyati (6.20).’ All of this has to happen together, not part by part. When one aspect is complete, all others also become complete.

This is the state of pūrṇa, complete completion. Nothing can be taken away from it. Nothing can be added to it that would make any difference to its state of completeness. No joy can make it more blissful, no sorrow can make it Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 465 less blissful. One becomes centered in bliss. When centered in bliss, it is forever! Kṛṣṇa talks about moving into reality, transcending the senses and the mind. The way yoga is taught and practiced in many places, one is moved away from reality into a fantasy world, to fulfill one’s imagined needs. The senses and the mind wander aimlessly.

We cannot suppress desires, because anything suppressed will surface with more intensity. We might have experienced in our own lives that a desire may be satisfied momentarily, but soon afterwards, it arises again. Instead we need to understand what is happening and how it is happening. The way out of the mind is also through the mind and not by avoiding it. Completion process is the key through which all our emotions can be handled. They basically originate from the root patterns of greed and fear. As we witness and do completion with our root patterns, the fear and greed lose their grasp on the mind. Take fear for example.

What do we do when we feel afraid of something, whether it is fear of insects or fear of heights? The moment we are faced with the object of fear, we try to escape. Have we tried facing the fear? The next time you are afraid, try this. Instead of running away, just try looking at the fear consciously, go through it fully and declare completion with it. Do not identify with it by trying to suppress it or run away from it. I tell you, when you look at fear with completion, you will see that the fear does not exist as you thought it existed. It simply does not exist because fear is born out of ignorance, when something is unknown to you.

When we bring the light of knowledge upon fear, ignorance is removed and we get the courage to see the object as it is. Because now there is nothing hidden, our mind cannot fantasize about the unknown. So understand, our fears are nothing but negative fantasies and we can complete with them. The same also applies to greed. Why do we always feel that we need more? We start running after the next desire before one desire is even fulfilled. We are so tuned to running after things. ‘What next? What next?’ becomes our chant. Have we ever stopped to think what we are running for? After fulfilling a desire, have we stopped to think whether we have achieved what we wanted?

Have we stopped to enjoy what we just fulfilled? If we sit and contemplate sincerely over one desire after fulfilling it, by now, we would have gotten out of the vicious cycle of desires. Can we ever drink water from a mirage? Running after the fantasies created by the mind is just like running after a mirage or running after the horizon. We can never achieve bliss by running behind these fantasies because these fantasies have no existence in reality. Be In The Self And See The Supreme