Verses 6.30–6.35🔗

Here, Kṛṣṇa gives a promise. He says that for anyone who sees Him in everything and who sees everything in Him, He is always available. Neither Kṛṣṇa is lost to him nor he is ever lost to Kṛṣṇa. yo māṁ paśyati sarvatra sarvam ca mayi paśyati II tasyāhaṁ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati II 6.30 What He means is not that we should see the form of Kṛṣṇa in everyone, with the flute and two peacock feathers. Of course, that form is beautiful but do not get caught in the form. The form is there one day and not there the next; it is ephemeral. It is like this: if my finger is pointing in the direction of the moon, look in the direction of the moon and enjoy its beauty.

Instead, if you watch my finger, you will miss the moon! What Kṛṣṇa means by ‘Me’ is the Kṛṣṇa energy, the Divine consciousness. See the Divine in everybody and everything and automatically, you will relax. You will no longer fight because you will see everything around you as a part of the Divine, including yourself. What is there to fight with and what should you fight for? You will simply relax. Existence is waiting with open arms to engulf us, to dissolve us into Itself, but only if we are ready to let go. If we just have the courage to let go with an open heart, we will meet and merge with it.

When we are ready to feel the embrace of Existence, we rise into a higher plane, a plane of higher consciousness. We enter into a space we never even knew existed. With Existence we always fall in to rise. All Are Infinite People ask me, ‘How can we tell that you are the right Master for us?’ I tell them simply, ‘Forget about any analysis or intellectual reasoning. If I am truly your Master, you can never forget me. I will be there even in your dreams!’ The relationship between the Master and disciple is one of pure love. When we are truly in love, we see the object of love in everything around us.

We are consumed by that feeling. The Master fills every pore of our being. We never need to ask, ‘Are you my Master?’ We just know! He has filled our being, touched us at our core, because to him, there is no separation. Here, Kṛṣṇa is describing the state of the enlightened person. An enlightened person can empathize with everyone because he experiences himself as everyone. An incident from the life of Swami Vivekananda: One night, Vivekananda woke up at two a.m. and woke up his disciples. His disciples became anxious. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 477 in some part of the world there was a natural calamity happening that was causing him the pain.

The next morning, the newspapers carried the news of a terrible earthquake in Fiji Islands that consumed many lives. Vivekananda was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world thousands of miles away! What happened in Vivekananda is what we call empathy. It is not sympathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells us that they are suffering, we make some noises and just confirm their suffering for them. That is sympathy. When we sympathize, we affirm to them that their worries are big, so we actually give them a subtle ego boost. What an Enlightened person or a Master feels is never sympathy.

It is empathy. Empathy is when we feel another’s suffering in our own being. It is when a person does not have to tell us he is suffering, but we simply know because the Existential energy in us feels it. Masters are one with us because they are one with Existence and we are a part of Existence. It is only that we see them as separate. In reality that is not the case. When we realize the sense of non-duality and infinity with the entire Universe, we experience a tremendous overflowing of love and compassion for every being without discrimination, because we realize that everyone is a part of the same Whole.

That is why we can see that Masters are such an ocean of infinite love and know only how to give. They are Existence itself. They shower love without asking questions because they feel a constant devotion towards the entire Universe or life force or Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa. They cannot see anyone as a separate entity because there is no separateness. It is only our senses, mind and logic that perceives information and categorizes it and analyzes it to create the separateness. As long as we use our logic, our collected information, words and our little dictionaries to analyze the information received through our senses, we will be excluding and judging.

Existence or the Universe is a living energy with infinite potential, which is simply beyond our logic. Only when we drop our logic, mind and ego can we merge with Existence and become whole, and start seeing that everyone and everything is an extension of the same life force with just different expressions. Just as the fingers on the hand and the toes on the feet belong to the same body, we will be able to see that everyone is a part of the same Universal Energy. This is when true compassion, empathy and sincere service towards enriching everyone can happen. Until then we will only be using our logic, mind, ego and conditioning, to enslave others.

When we realize the infinity of everyone, we will express our unconditional love and compassion towards everyone without discrimination, because we know that all discrimination is baseless and false. Our very walk and talk will start radiating so much bliss that our very presence will start healing others. We will become a blessing for planet Earth and the people who experience our presence. There are a few disciples who have internalized me so much, that they express me in everything that they do. People who come to the āśram are amazed to see these people who walk and talk like me. Some people think that these disciples are doing it to show off.

No, they are so much in tune with me that they reflect my body language, my presence is in them. Kṛṣṇa goes further to explain the state of an enlightened person or a person who is one with the Divine Consciousness. He says that the enlightened person will feel equally the happiness and pain of another person as he feels his own. Such a person feels one with the whole world. For him, everything is a part of him, so there is nothing else other than his own self. His boundary does not end with the boundary of his own physical body. What does Kṛṣṇa mean when He says that the enlightened person feels happiness and distress equally in himself and in others?

First, He said that the Enlightened person is beyond the opposites, the dualities, beyond the opposing emotions of happiness and distress. It is like this, say there are two trees in a forest. Now, if one tree falls on the other, we can say that the tree on which the other tree has fallen Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 479 feels the impact or the pain of a falling tree. Now, say the tree actually feels the entire forest as a part of its own self. Can we say that it will feel ‘another’ tree falling on it? When everything is a part of its own self, where is the idea of ‘other’?

When the idea of ‘other’ disappears, then where is the pain? The idea of pain is relative. The enlightened person is just immersed in enjoying Existence. No separate identities or judgments about right or wrong, happiness or misery exist. A Yogī in the state of super-consciousness will just watch everything in Existence without judging or labeling it. He will be in a state of complete celebration of life. Existence is love and nothing else. Yet, the compassion of the yogi, the Master, is such that he feels the experiences that others undergo and he empathizes with them. The Master’s state of equanimity is not disturbed and yet he feels the pain and joy of others.

This expression of collective consciousness is what Kṛṣṇa has described elsewhere as Vasudaiva Kuṭuṁbakaṁ. It means that the world is our family and we should feel the rest of the world as we would for our immediate family. When we exist in this state of consciousness, we are true Yogīs. Arjuna introduces the word ‘difficult or su-duṣkaram’ here. Be very clear, the moment we categorize something as easy or difficult, we have made it that way. Understand that the ego can be fulfilled only through difficult things. Simple things cannot satisfy the ego. After listening to Kṛṣṇa about controlling the mind, Arjuna expresses his doubts about being able to still the mind.

Arjuna is actually asking about problems that will be faced by future generations also. His question is not just an individual’s question. The questions are the fundamental quest of the individual and the answers are the eternal Truth. We now have become more complex than our forefathers because of this cerebral layer that has formed with all the fantasies bombarding us from all directions. Arjuna cannot understand how to practice yoga, given the unsteady and wavering nature of the mind. Five thousand years ago, even though there was no infiltration by television and media on the scale that we have now, Arjuna expressed his doubt about how to handle the mind.

Here, Arjuna addresses to Kṛṣṇa his concerns about the mind being so strong that it sometimes overcomes the intelligence. The first and foremost thing is to accept that we have a problem, we have a root pattern. The next thing is to understand how the root pattern is created. ThatiswhatArjunadoeshere.Itisonlythenthatwecanovercometheroot pattern. If we ignore or run away from the pattern we can never resolve and complete with the pattern. So, the first thing to accept is that our mind does oscillate, then to understand how it oscillates. For this we need to watch the mind and do completion with the thought patterns. This is meditation. The very act of watching, being aware of the mind, and completing with it will take us beyond the mind.

Here, Kṛṣṇa has to answer from the same plane that Arjuna asks the question. Arjuna says that the mind is wavering and difficult to control like the wind, vāyor iva sa su-duṣkaram (6.34). Just as one thorn is used to remove another thorn, Kṛṣṇa has to give Arjuna a technique. He has to support the idea that it is difficult to control the mind. So, Kṛṣṇa has to give some technique at this point—practice and detachment. Now, if He tells Arjuna that this problem is not a problem at all but a creation of his mind, Arjuna will not understand. Kṛṣṇa has to give a technique for the mind to play with.

The Path to Self-realization Masters give meditation techniques so that we try all these and ultimately realize we are bliss, and that meditation is our natural state, and that there is nothing to be achieved. But, if I tell you that right away, you will not believe me. The mind cannot believe something so simple. It will create all kinds of contradictions and self-doubts as to why it cannot be so simple. Kṛṣṇa also has to give a solution for the doubting mind. He emphasizes perseverance and penance. Don’t think penance means leaving home, going to the Himalayas and sitting in meditation while Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 481 fasting.

Penance is persevering with authenticity until we experience the Truth. Kṛṣṇa also reveals the root of the problem of controlling the mind and gives the technique to complete with it, which is detachment. Here we need to understand the word ‘detachment’. Whether we say ego or mind, it is just the collection of thoughts. Thoughts can exist only in relationship to our identity and the past or the future. In the present, we cannot have thoughts because the very moment we think, the present has slipped into the past. The mind moves only because it is attached to the identities that we carry. Either we fear losing the carefully constructed inner image or we are greedy to develop a better outer image of ourselves in our own eyes and in the eyes of society.

The mind becomes so attached to these identities that it is constantly reviewing the past incidents or it is constantly planning the future to either protect or develop these identities. This constant pre-occupation of the mind with the past and future is the root cause of the oscillation of the mind. If we look deeply, staying in the present moment of completion means total insecurity. It requires us to be ready to embrace the present without planning for the future or reviewing the past. This seems like a great danger for our ego. Listen. I tell you, any identity that we create about ourselves that is less than the idea of our being God, is a false identity.

If we consider ourselves to be anything less than God, we suffer from an inferiority complex. If we have the courage to detach ourselves from the certificates of society, if we have the courage to drop these false identities, then we can embrace the Divine. Detachment is the direct technique that Kṛṣṇa is suggesting here. Detachment at the root level will lead to detachment from everything else. Detachment from the ego or the identities will lead to detachment from desires. This is detachment from the past and future. This is being ‘Unclutched’. Where Do I Go Without Yoga