Verses 7.1–7.5🔗

Again and again people ask me, ‘Swamiji, why did you choose to speak on the Bhagavad Gītā? Why didn’t you choose books like Aṣṭavakra Gītā, Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, Brahmasutra or the Upaniṣads?’ I tell them that the Gītā expresses the truth in totality. Kṛṣṇa has created keys for all kinds of human beings. Kṛṣṇa fulfills every need of every human being. He says, ‘Listen, Arjuna, by practicing yoga in full consciousness of Me, with mind attached to Me, you can know Me in full, without doubt.’ In this statement, Kṛṣṇa uses the word ‘Me’ three times. Having read that, a psychologist will conclude that Kṛṣṇa is egoistic. According to psychology, if we use the word ‘I’ or ‘Me’ three or more times in a statement, we are egoistic.

A person might hate Kṛṣṇa because he feels Kṛṣṇa is egoistic. Again and again, He declares, ‘Surrender to Me. I am everything.’ We should understand here that He is expressing His glory. The person who hates Kṛṣṇa thinking He is egoistic, misses the truth or spirit expressed by the Gītā. In the same way, a person who loves Kṛṣṇa gets caught in His form and misses the juice of the Gītā! Whenever people are caught in the form, when they worship the form, they slowly start saying, ‘Gītā is great. Kṛṣṇa is God. He can express all these things, but surely it is not for us. It is not practical.’

In this way, they slowly create a distance between themselves and Kṛṣṇa. They worship the Gītā instead of practicing it. If we have a pot full of milk and we worship it but never drink it, will we get the benefit of the milk? Understand, unless we drink the milk, we will never get the benefit of the milk. Unless we imbibe Kṛṣṇa, we cannot get the benefit of the Gītā. When we don’t imbibe Kṛṣṇa’s teachings in our lives, when we don’t work towards experiencing Kṛṣṇa, worshipping Kṛṣṇa is nothing but inauthenticity. It’s a cunning method of escaping from the truth. Worshipping without intranalyzing and living is the worst form of inauthenticity.

People who hate Kṛṣṇa think He is egoistic. And people who love Kṛṣṇa are caught in His form and think they should surrender to the personality called Kṛṣṇa who came down in human form. Only a person who experiences Kṛṣṇa realizes the Gītā. Approach Divine the Right Way This chapter is about how human beings approach the Divine, why they approach the Divine, and at what level they approach the Divine. We approach the Divine in the way we want It. According to our maturity, we approach the Divine. At what level do we approach the Divine? What do we receive in Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 505 return?

How do we grow in maturity? Kṛṣṇa gives the answers to these questions in this chapter. Here He says, ‘Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and out of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.’ Beautiful! Here He says, ‘out of thousands’. In those days, the population must have been less, which is why He makes the statement ‘out of thousands’. Now we should say, ‘Out of billions, one may endeavor for perfection.’ manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye I yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ II 7.3 ‘Among millions of men, one man may endeavor for perfection, and out of those who achieve perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.’

There are millions of people out there, but only a few hundred are present today to listen to this Gītā discourse. And out of these few hundred, only a few will listen authentically, as it is expressed. We may sit here. We may even hear, but never think that we really listen. I request people to never repeat what I have said to others. If you do repeat it, then please don’t say, ‘Swamiji told me these things.’ Be very clear, you heard those things. Tell them, ‘I heard these things.’ Never say, ‘Swamiji said’. Many times we miss much of what is said. Modern scientists say that we observe hardly two percent of the things that happen around us.

If a hundred things happen around us, we observe and intranalyze only two! It is as if you have a hundred-page storybook, and somehow you lose the whole book except for two random pages. If you try to reconstruct the whole novel with only those two pages, how true will it be to the original? In the same way, you remember hardly two percent of what I say. With that two percent, if you try to reconstruct this whole discourse, naturally it will be your discourse, not mine. If you want to tell people what I spoke, please always say, ‘I heard Nithyananda say this.’ Never say, ‘Nithyananda said…’ Because you jump to conclusions, and because of your inner chatter, you miss authentic listening.

The Master is always ready to share and enrich with his experiences. That is his mission in life. The infinite compassion that fills an enlightened being is forever bursting to be let out to share, to teach, to guide, and to enrich. He is available continuously to the whole humanity, enriching with Enlightenment. That is why Kṛṣṇa says that He is now ready to explain. Listen! You will see miraculous transformations happening in your body and mind. Listening is God! Just by listening, you experience God! The question is whether or not Arjuna is ready to listen. Even if Arjuna was ready to listen and he became enlightened, are we ready to listen today, now?

Why does Kṛṣṇa say that a few even try, and of those who try, very few succeed? Remember that He is talking about Self-realization, about understanding who we are. Why is it so difficult even to try? We do not want to try because we are afraid. We are restless in any form of silence. If I am silent for a few minutes after I sit down before an audience, the entire audience becomes restless; they start fidgeting. Why do we find it difficult to meditate? After all, all we do in meditation is close our eyes and remain silent. Why is it difficult? We give appointments to everyone else every day of our lives, willingly and unwillingly.

Why is it so difficult to give half an hour a day to ourselves? Why would we rather watch television, knowing fully well that nothing of value will come from it? Why would we rather read the same old newspaper or social media pages again and again? Understand, all these are because we are afraid of being with ourselves. Why are we afraid of being with ourselves? We must ask and answer these questions ourselves. If Self-realization means going back to where we came from, and where we came from is a state of bliss and divinity, then why are we afraid to be with ourselves? The truth is that we have forgotten where we came from.

Nothing in the way we are brought up and ‘educated’ tells us that we come from Bliss Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 507 and we can regain that bliss. If we realize how easy it is to be blissful and return to our original state, no one can control us. That is what liberation means. But society, religion, and political and family structures operates on the principle of control. The moment we realize who we are and we are liberated, these institutions cannot make us do what they want us to do. From childhood we are conditioned to avoid looking too deeply into ourselves because if we do, we may find the truth and be liberated.

Most of society doesn’t know these deeper truths. This is how society puts generation after generation of people in deep illusion. The only true love is that of the Divine and that of the Master. Such love comes out of infinite compassion. It expects nothing in return. What can we offer God and our Master? So, if we need to follow the Truth, we must enrich ourselves to enrich others. We must be selfish; selfish to enter into this path of Self-realization. However it is not a selfishness born out of the usual material nature. It is selfishness born out of the desperate need to be selfless. When we reach our center or our core, we become one with humanity.

Then there are no differences among us. That is why even our spouses will be unhappy if we realize ourselves, because they cannot possess us anymore. At that point they must share us with humanity. But they won’t understand that the love of Self-realization is infinite, that there is no reduction in sharing, there is only growth in sharing. The path to Self-realization is the path of aloneness. It is not a lonely path; it is an ‘alone’ path. When we are alone, we are not lonely. We are all-in-one; that is what being alone means. From being fragmented, we become whole. From being islands, we become the Universe. This is the knowledge that Kṛṣṇa offers humanity.

Out of His deep compassion He says, ‘Please listen to Me and realize your Self and be liberated.’ One in a million may heed His words and start on this path. He then says that only one in a million who starts on this path will eventually find his own Self, and thus find Me. Is the path so difficult? No, it is not. Why then does it seem so difficult? We find the external world so attractive that we rarely stay on course in our internal voyage of self-discovery. It is always easier to blame other people or life and remain where we are than to step on the path of transformation.

Throughout the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa talks about how to control the mind. He gives specific science of what to do and what not to do. All we need to do is to follow the guidance of this Universal Master. Without any doubt, surely we can then become that one in a thousand or one in a million. But to follow Him, to allow Him to enrich us, we need to understand Him. In these verses Kṛṣṇa explains who He is. Kṛṣṇa explicitly separates Himself from His manifested energies in these verses. What we perceive as manifested energies—the five natural elements that are earth, water, fire, air and ether, and the three inner elements of mind, intelligence and ego—are His energies no doubt, yet they are not Him.

The Manifest and The Unmanifest Puruṣa and prakṛti are considered the operative principles of the Universe in the Hindu philosophical systems of Sāṅkhya and Vedānta. Puruṣa and prakṛti are unmanifest energy sources, puruṣa being inactive and prakṛti capable of being active. Everything else arises from these two elements when they operate together. Prakṛti gives rise to the Cosmic and individual intelligence and the five natural elements. The Taittreya Upaniṣad explains that the Cosmic energy gave rise to etheric energy or the energy of space, ākāṣa, which pervades the Universe. This is the largest and subtlest quantum of energy that pervades the Universe. From etheric energy the energy of air arises.

It is this energy of air, or vāyu, that sustains us in our body-mind system as the carrier of pranic or life energy. From the energy of air arises the energy of fire, agni. Many salutations in the Ṛg Veda, the first of the Hindu scriptures, are addressed to the fire. Almost all Vedic rituals are performed for the fire god. Āpas, the energy of water, arose from the energy of fire. Pṛthvī, the energy of earth arose Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 509 from the energy of water. The Taittreya Upaniṣad goes on to say that it is from the earth energy that plants, herbs, food were created, from which came humans.

Within the human is the intelligence that is a hologram of the Cosmic intelligence. The energy cycle is now complete. This energy tree, from its subtlest beginning to the grossest manifestation, is also the story of creation. Ten thousand years ago, sages of our ancient Vedic culture propounded these truths with no external devices to aid them. They intuited them, as they looked inward rather than outward. Our Vedic rituals were full of meaning. Today they are condemned as old fashioned and meaningless activities because we lost the link to their meaning. Spirituality is nothing but spirit infused into rituals. The fire rituals are methods to transfer the energy from the ether to earth, from the Cosmos to the individual.

Through the power of chants, sound energy, that activates the etheric energy, the energy is transferred through air to the fire in the sacrificial pit. The water stored in pots around the fire pit collects this energy. The energized water is then poured onto the earth, a deity or individuals to transfer this energy to them. Of the energies in the five natural elements, we can directly access the energies of earth, water, fire and air. We eat, drink, warm ourselves and breathe with these energies. However, we cannot directly access the etheric energy. Our ego, our mind, becomes a barrier to our absorption of this energy. Meditation is the key to imbibe the etheric energy of the Cosmos, the largest. subtlest energy source.

Vedic fire rituals are mass meditation processes—meditation for dummies! We just need to be there to absorb the energy, even if we do not have the capacity to meditate. The Cosmic intelligence is reflected in the human as the mind. The mind in turn uses the senses to access the external world. Each of the senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are related to the natural elements. Ether is linked to sound or the ears; air is linked to touch and the skin; fire is linked to color and form, and hence to sight and the eyes; water is linked to taste and the tongue; earth is linked to smell or the nose.

The mind receives information through the senses of perception, and executes decisions through the senses of action. When the senses are denied access to the external world, which is their sustenance, the mind shuts down. Thoughts cease! Ego is a creation of the mind. It is an illusion because it is not permanent; it is not the truth. True realization of the Self is achieved when the ego is shed and when the mind stops. Then, inner intelligence awakens to the Cosmic intelligence. Here, Kṛṣṇa refers to ego as ahaṁkāra. It is our identity that we project outwards, which is always in excess of what we think of as ourselves.

There is another side to our ego, called mamakāra, which we project inwards; what we think of as us inside us. This mamakāra is always lower than what we think ourselves to be. The perpetual gap between this outer projection and inner projection creates self-doubt, stress, suffering and dis-ease within us. When we realize our Self, we realize that we are Divine and nothing less. Anything we think about ourselves which is lower than this, is low self-esteem, is self-doubt. What Kṛṣṇa says is true for all of us. We are above the energies that constitute us. We too are the energy that constitutes our body-mind system. All that we lack is the awareness of this Truth.

Our natural state is to know ourselves. Once we realize the Truth that we are God, there is no difference between Kṛṣṇa and us. We are enlightened. That is what Kṛṣṇa came to prove. He has no need to prove that He is God. He doesn’t care if we know it or not. His mission was to enlighten Arjuna, and through Arjuna, the rest of humanity. His mission is to prove to us that we too are God! I Am The Thread