Verses 6.44–6.47🔗

Kṛṣṇaisdescribingtheprocessofthehumanexperience.Whydowe assume the body? We think that we can experience bliss through the body and mind; that is why we assume the body. When we realize that bliss cannot be experienced through the body or mind, we know that going beyond the body is the only way to experience it. Then we will not assume the body. Assuming the human body is simply our choice. People ask me, ‘Why do we choose to have the human experience?’ That we should find out for ourselves. Why did we assume this body? I asked the question and I got the answer. I know why I chose the human experience. Ask the question yourself and pursue it as a quest and you will get the answer.

You will be enlightened. Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 491 We claim that we want to experience the ultimate and that we want to be enlightened. But I tell you, if we really want to be enlightened, there is nothing that can stop us. There is no hindrance to our being enlightened except our own self. As of now, actually, Enlightenment is last on our laundry list of items that we want to do in life! When the urge becomes urgent, when the question becomes a burning quest, then we get the answer. There is no other way. Intheseverses,Kṛṣṇapromisesafewthings.Hesaysthatwhateverwe have learned in one life does not get wasted.

We do not start from ground zero in the next birth. We start from where we left off. Our vāsanas, our mindset in one birth, continues into another. He also promises that if we keep practicing, if we keep trying, we will be cleansed of all sins and reach the highest state. Such a person, Kṛṣṇa promises, will reach Him. At the end of the day, what Kṛṣṇa implies is this: We need to do our bit. We need to practice yoga, the path that leads to self-awareness, to self-completion, the path that leads to Kṛṣṇa, with dedication, perseverance, with integrity and authenticity. There is no other way. There is no short cut.

Once you do your bit, the Master promises deliverance. He promises that you will be one with Him. We will enter into a technique given by Śrī Kṛṣṇa to go beyond the mind, to awaken our senses, to look in. MEDITATION Now it is time to look in. Now it is time to tune ourselves to that highest teaching given by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in this Dhyāna Yoga. Now we will enter into the meditation. If we are ready to sit for the next ten minutes, we will start the meditation. Please sit straight and close your eyes. Keep your head, neck and spine, all three in a straight line. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible and as deeply as possible.

Slowly, in a relaxed way, bring your awareness to your ājña cakra. Concentrate between the two eyebrows. Bring your awareness between the two eyebrows. Remember and pray to that Energy that came as Kṛṣṇa, that is guiding us and helping us in our life. Pray to that Energy that gave us the Bhagavad Gītā. Meditate on the pure light energy. If your mind wanders here and there, don’t worry. When you remember, bring it back again and relax in your ājña cakra, between your eyebrows. Don’t concentrate. In a very relaxed way, be aware of the ājña cakra, the space in between the two eyebrows. (a few minutes pass) Slowly, very slowly bring your mind to your heart and meditate on your heart center.

If you want, you can touch your heart center with the hand and feel it. Try to bring your awareness to the heart center. Try to remember the heart center. Forget all other parts of your body; forget your mind. Just become the heart center. Just be in the heart center. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible. May you experience your pure inner space. May you experience the eternal bliss, Nityānanda. (a few minutes pass) Om śānti, śānti, śāntihi... Relax. Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes. We may wonder how a simple technique like this one can lead us into our Self. Please understand that we always live in the head.

Start living from the heart. We will then start acting from intelligence. We will start acting, not from our head but from our heart. When we start acting from the heart, we don’t calculate. The very calculation disappears, the ‘I, I, I’ disappears. And naturally our senses become sensitive. We don’t abuse our senses. We don’t destroy our senses. Too much of the energy that is supplied to the heart is taken away by the mind. The fuel supply to the mind will be reduced and the fuel supply to the heart will be increased. So try to continuously remember this heart region, anāhata cakra. Dhyāna Yogaḥ Look In, Be Complete Before Any Conclusion 493 Naturally, we will have awareness in the ājña also.

In the last session, Kṛṣṇa gave the technique to be in the ājña. Today, He says start with the ājña and come down to anāhata. This is because in the heart, there is a possibility of much more happening. The possibility of reaching is easier and greater in the heart. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Let you be in the heart.’ Look in! You will realize ‘You are That.’ Just look in, you will experience the eternal bliss, Nitya-ānanda. Let us pray to that Ultimate Energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa to give us all the Eternal Bliss, Nityānanda. Thus ends the sixth chapter named Dhyāna Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Path of Meditation,’ of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṃvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.

Listen, Cognize And Radiate All living beings are caught in the duality of attachment and aversion. the greatest Master, Krsna explains how to move out of this bondage. He reveals the knowledge of associating with the Divine to radiate the Divine. c h a p t e r Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ ... Listen! To begin with, let us see why Kṛṣṇa has given us this chapter. Again and again Kṛṣṇa speaks the same Truth. Nothing else is spoken, only the same Truth. Then what is the need for so many chapters? People can say that Kṛṣṇa is repeating Himself. They may ask, ‘How many times must He say that the spirit is indestructible, or that all work must be done with authenticity without expecting returns or that one must surrender to Him to reach completion?’

Understand, if you have already listened even once, Kṛṣṇa will not repeat it again. Anything you listen from Kṛṣṇa, understand you are listening now, for the first time! If you had already listened, I will make sure the words do not fall in your ears the second time, because I won’t waste your time or my time. I am Kāla (time)! For a person who wants to begin the life, the first thing he needs to learn is listening! Understand, by ‘hearing’ you won’t understand the Master. Only by ‘listening to yourself’ you can understand the Master. I tell you, people who listen to themselves can understand what I am saying, even without any introduction to any spiritual philosophy.

People who don’t listen to themselves, they do not understand. Listening! Listening to yourself and speaking into the listening of yourself and others, makes our inner space cognize the right declarations. Many times people come and tell me, ‘I am not able to convince myself to drop my incompletions.’ This means that they are not able to speak into their listening! Speak into your listening! There is no shortcut, there is no cross cut. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So, the shortest route for anything is a straight line, a straight path. Listen, Cognize And Radiate Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 497 Listen! Please understand, I am defining Completion.

Ability to speak into the listening of yourself is Completion. Ability to speak into the listening of yourself is ability to complete. That is the ability to complete. It is all about developing your ability to speak into your listening, developing your ability to speak into others’ listening, developing your ability to give authentic listening to yourself, and developing the ability to provide authentic listening to others, that’s all! How many ever new words Kṛṣṇa may use, how many ever new words Arjuna may use, it is all about the ability to provide authentic listening to yourself and to to others, the ability to speak into your listening and the ability to speak into the listening of others, that’s all!

Kṛṣṇa shows the power of authentic listening and teaches Arjuna the ability to provide authentic listening to himself and to others, and to speak into the listening of himself and others! In the first chapter of Gītā—Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ, Kṛṣṇa provides authentic listening to Arjuna’s dilemma. So complete is Kṛṣṇa’s listening that Arjuna is able to listen to himself, his dilemmas and is able to pour out the depth of his root patterns into Kṛṣṇa’s listening. Just by His pure, authentic listening, Kṛṣṇa transforms Arjuna’s questions into quest, incompletions into completion, and his patterns into possibilities. Please listen from the space of listening! If you have authentically listened, if you have done śravana— listening authentically and manana—intranalyzing authentically, you will be radiating authentically.

Nothing can be done about it! Intranalyzing and radiating! Please listen, your life needs to be constantlypowerful.Youshouldbelivingtodowhatyouwant.Youshould be talking to get the result of what you want. You should be talking to move the other person the way you want. And you should not be talking by fighting with the patterns of the listener. You should be talking into the listening of the listener! When will that happen? If you are established into your listening, you will talk into the other person’s listening. Listen! When Arjuna listens to himself, he becomes a disciple; when Kṛṣṇa speaks into the listening of Arjuna, Arjuna becomes enlightened— Radiating Enlightenment! If I have to simply translate the word ‘radiating’ or nididhyāsana in a very colloquial way, it means: Minding your business!

Not wasting your life! Laziness, boredom, diversion, and postponing do not have a place in your life when you are radiating. Radiating means RADIATING! It is straightforward! Live your life authentically. Live your life with strength. Live your life intensely with clarity and powerfulness. First thing you need to learn to radiate, the first thing for nididhyāsana is: Learn to think and speak with the same cognition you arrive at by intranalyzing. Please understand, I am explaining step-by-step: First, you authentically listen to the great Truths. Whenever you authentically listen, whatever you listen will be converted as great Truths by your inner space. Your inner space has the capability; it has the power to separate the right from wrong.

There is a very beautiful example of Paramahamsa in Vedic tradition! Paramahamsa is the supreme swan. If you mix milk and water and leave it, this great bird Hamsa (swan) will separate the milk from the water and suck only the milk and leave the water! The Hamsa bird has that power. The Hamsa bird is said to be the only creature that has the rare capability of separating milk from water. In the same way, a person who takes the right things inside and leaves the unnecessary things outside is ‘Paramahamsa’. If you bring authentic listening in you, you will become Paramahamsa! Anything you listen, you know what to internalize and what to reject.

Paramahamsas are actually enlightened Masters who take the bird body. Soaring high in the skies, they express their freedom and enjoy their bliss! They are metaphysical birds, seen only through enlightened eyes or by people who live in the higher consciousness. If you see the emblem of Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam, you will see this Paramahamsa bird is our emblem. I had Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 499 a beautiful vision or experience, from which I created this emblem. Authentic listening brings tremendous clarity. See, this clarity is really lacking in the seeker’s life. Especially when somebody is interested to be enlightened, to live the life of a jīvan mukta (one who lives enlightenment), clarity is a very predominantly important quality.

Please listen! Clarity is Viveka. Ādī Śaṅkara has written a separate book on clarity called Viveka Chūḍāmaṇi. Authentic listening, śravana leads to clarity. And intranalyzing, manana leads to cognitive shift. If you don’t live that cognitive shift powerfully, you will lose it. Please listen! Powerfully living the cognitive shift is what I call radiating, nididhyāsana. I will tell you, how to find out whether you are radiating or not? Simply life around you will constantly be getting enriched, that is the signal! If the constant enriching is happening, then you are radiating! Around me, whether you are six or sixty, eight or eighty, you cannot go without getting enriched! Radiating, nididhyāsana means such powerful body language, such powerful words, such powerful thinking that you go on enriching, constantly winning the game of life!

Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the personification of all these three—śravana, manana, nididhyāsana, powerfully enriching Arjuna to learn authentic listening, authentic intranalyzing and radiating. First, Arjuna learns śravana to give his authentic listening to himself and to Kṛṣṇa; getting to the root of his root patterns in the chapters of Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ, Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ, Karma Yogaḥ and Jñāna-karma-sannyāsa Yogaḥ. Once he gets the tremendous clarity through authentic listening, he learns to do manana, intranalyzing the great truths in chapters such as Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, Dhyāna Yogaḥ and Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ. Understand, because Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the complete Incarnation, He directly transmits the space of radiating, nididhyāsana to Arjuna without the need for manana, intranalyzing.

When you are in the space of authentic listening to an Incarnation, who is also your Master, He can directly transmit the energy and experience of Enlightenment into you. Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa does this transmission in Vibhūti Yogaḥ and Viśvarūpa Darśana Yogaḥ to Arjuna. It is only for enriching the humanity that He continues to take Arjuna step-by-step into deeper levels of completion through the eighteen chapters. Ultimately, when the cognitive shift happens in Arjuna, he experiences nididhyāsana, radiating the same cognition he arrives at by intranalyzing. When Kṛṣṇa enriches him to powerfully live and radiate His very body language and experience Enlightenment, dropping everything and surrendering to Him in Mokṣa Sannyāsa Yogaḥ, Arjuna wins the game of life called Mahābhārat war!

People ask me, ‘Swamiji, how many days will it take for us to learn meditation?’ I tell them, ‘To learn meditation, two minutes are enough. To learn what meditation is not, you need ten days!’ Kṛṣṇa knows that Arjuna is just like us. He represents the sum total of humanity. To explain to a man or woman what needs to be done, and why it is right is not enough. The human mind will find a hundred reasons why ninety-nine other things are just as good. So the Master must also tell why the other ninety-nine things are not the straight path, and why we must stick to what the Master prescribes.

That is exactly what Śrī Kṛṣṇa does. Again and again, the great Master explains patiently why the ninety-nine other options are not really options at all. He does this to prove that the one option He outlines sinks deeply into Arjuna’s consciousness. As a result, this truth also sinks into the consciousness of every individual who reads the Bhagavad Gītā. When we express the truth logically, our mind always goes to the other end of the logic. So, we need to understand and cognize the truth from both ends. There is a beautiful philosophy in India, Nyāya Śāstra, or the scripture of logic. According to this, any statement has two lines of logic.

The first line of logic is regular logic; nyāya means regular. For example, if I make the statements, ‘All men have one head. Sundar is a man,’ we can Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 501 easily conclude that the third statement will be: Sundar has one head. This is simple logic. There is another kind of logic, a higher-level logic. For example, the first statement says, ‘There are two doors.’ The second statement says, ‘One door is open.’ An average person immediately jumps to the conclusion that the other door is closed. However, in this kind of logic we cannot jump to this conclusion. The second door may also be open.

In order that the listener, reader and disciple do not make mistakes in the understanding, the Master ensures that we know which door is open and which door is closed. It is not left to assumption on the basis of the disciple’s intelligence. But the Master does not explain for this reason alone. When the truth sinks into us, it should sink in without a trace or resistance. However, when something is not fully explained, our mind moves away from what is being explained. When this happens, instead of being integrated to what is said, the mind gets constantly distracted and becomes tired. A tired mind makes mistakes and falls from integrity.

Usually, in life, we go out of integrity and make mistakes when we jump to incomplete conclusions using the first kind of logic when we should have made those decisions using the second kind of logic. The moment somebody makes a statement, ‘You don’t have compassion,’ we immediately become defensive and say, ‘Do you mean to say I am cruel? You mean I am violent?’ We don’t have to jump to such an inauthentic conclusion. When we jump to conclusions, we create trouble not only for ourselves but also for others. Many times we make this mistake of lacking integrity in our listening. Don’t be in a hurry to cognize what is spoken, because your cognition is so much filled with judgments, opinions, attitudes, personal beliefs, and attributes.

Listening is life. Non-listening is death. When we handle our mind without integrity and authenticity, we make this mistake. The totality of words that we repeat inside our system creates our whole life. If our mind jumps to illogical conclusions like this, naturally we create trouble for ourselves and others. Ordinary Masters express their philosophy or their experience with the second kind of logic, which is why there is so much misunderstanding. There is a possibility of missing listening to their message and concluding with the wrong cognition. However, Kṛṣṇa is a Jagat Guru. He is not an ordinary Master. He is the Master of the whole Universe and He knows the minds of all possible types of human beings.

He knows the problems of non-listening, non-integrity, and inadequate logic. Kṛṣṇa is delivering this message in such a way that we cannot miss giving our authentic listening to Him and jump to any inauthentic conclusions, or wrongly cognize any statement in the flow of incomplete logic. He makes all the three statements. He is clear and complete. He says, ‘There are two doors, the first door is open, the second door is closed.’ He allows no space for us to lack listening because He speaks into our listening. He protects us from ourselves. That is why He repeats the same truth in each chapter from a different level of logic each time to take us to higher and deeper levels of completion.

He takes the complete responsibility for all three— śravana, manana, and nididhyāsana. In this whole chapter of Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ, Kṛṣṇa speaks about the same message from a different view so that we now learn to listen from the space of authentic listening—śravana, we understand and intranalyze to have the cognitive shift—manana, and we powerfully radiate the space of completion—nididhyāsana. One In A Billion Reaches Me