Verses 8.11–8.14🔗

Kṛṣṇa gives different ways to attain Brahman or God or Ultimate consciousness. He says that people learned in the Vedas attain Brahman. This does not mean that we need to just read the vedas and then forget about them. Kṛṣṇa speaks at a far deeper level. Remember what Kṛṣṇa says in the last verse. He says that whatever we think of at the time of death is directly related to our next birth. If someone is completely immersed in the scriptures, his thoughts will continuously be along those lines. That is what Kṛṣṇa means by His words ‘Immerse yourself in the scriptures’. Keep reading some scripture or the other and imbibe its truth.

It will have a tremendous impact on you. Evenifwedonotunderstandthedeepermeaningsofthesescriptures, it is ok. These scriptures are energy hubs. When we read them, the sound Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 609 that is generated is enough to cleanse our inner being. That is the power of those verses. They will transform you. If you listen to vedic chants, you will find that they are chanted in a specific tone and pitch. When they are chanted, they completely cleanse our system, our inner being. If we visit the ancient temples in India, we will see that the sanctum sanctorum has a beautiful peace inside it. When we enter that place, automatically our being becomes peaceful.

Why do you think we feel a moment of bliss as soon as we enter the sanctum sanctorum? When the priest chants, that place gets energized. The sound of the chants carries tremendous energy and energizes everything in the place. One more thing, these scriptures talk about realizing the Self. They are guides to Enlightenment. So when we read them, we will get into that mood of Enlightenment! Our mind will be tuned to that frequency. It is like this: After watching a movie, our mind keeps processing the scenes of the movie, is it not? For one or two days, we experience a hangover. In the same way, when we read these scriptures, even if we don’t completely cognize them, we will experience a hangover.

We will continue to think about what they say; what Enlightenment is, how to realize our Self, how enlightened Masters live… these thoughts will fill our mind again and again. This is what Kṛṣṇa wants! When our thoughts are always directed towards Self-realization, our thoughts will be of Enlightenment at the time of death also. Kṛṣṇa says, when we read the scriptures, when we practice this lifestyle, we practice brahmacarya. The literal meaning of brahmacarya is one who follows the path to attain the Self. ‘Brahman’ means the Self and ‘carya’ means to walk the path. Anyone who is on the path to attain Brahman is a brahmacāri. Suppression does not lead to transformation.

It only creates depression. Suppression of desires is very dangerous; it is like a volcano ready to erupt anytime and we won’t even know it. Only completion leads to transformation. Brahmacarya is not about leaving everything and becoming a celibate. Our inner space must be cleansed with the power of integrity and authenticity. Our inner space must be the space of completion, free from fantasies and we should strive to merge with the Brahman. That is brahmacarya. Here Kṛṣṇa talks about deep concepts of yoga. All great truths were told by different masters in different ways, yet the truths remain the same. If somebody who does not know the actual meaning of yoga reads this verse, he will be totally confused.

Nowadays when people hear about yoga, they think of physical exercise, about how to become slim doing yoga! Yoga has a much deeper meaning and Kṛṣṇa talks about it. Yoga means the continuous process of uniting our mind, body and soul. This truth is revealed by great enlightened Masters in different ways. Patañjali, the father of yoga, talks about this verse in his Aṣtāṅga Yoga, in the two limbs of yoga—pratyāhāra and dhārana. These two parts talk about what Kṛṣṇa mentions. Let us understand this verse. How do we bring about that continuous process of uniting body, mind and soul? You see, our body-mind system reacts to different external situations.

These external situations are like food, āhāra to our system and our five sense organs are the points through which we take in this food. Our mind functions because we give food to our mind through our senses. We react to situations and our mind is continuously occupied because of this. Our mind exists because we have thousands of thoughts, constantly jumping from past to future and back to past. Our five sense organs act as gateways through which this food goes in to our mind. Pratyāhāra means getting ourselves out of the clutches of these senses. This does not mean that we physically shut down our senses. Listen, pratyāhāra does not mean we shut our senses physically.

Even if we close our eyes, an internal television runs in our system, does it not? Even if our ears and mouth are closed, there is inner chatter, is it not? We don’t really shut down our senses. Even if we shut them physically, our mind functions. When I say, ‘Close the doors of your senses,’ I mean, ‘Do not Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 611 process the data.’ What I mean is, continue to hear everything going on outside, continue to smell everything around, but do not process anything. Whatever comes, just witness, that’s all. That is the only way we can close the doors of our senses.

We should neither suppress thoughts nor create thoughts. We should just watch them. We cut the continuous flow of inputs from our senses when we increase our awareness. The number of thoughts slowly drops as awareness rises. As we increase awareness, our thoughts per second, TPS, drops. This is what Kṛṣṇa means by closing all the senses. When we do this, our awareness becomes more and more concentrated on the present moment. When we shut our senses and remain in pure awareness, we focus on our divinity. We keep a single-minded focus on the divinity resonating in us. We automatically fall into the present moment. Awareness of our breath becomes more acute.

We feel life energy or prāṇa filling our system. This is called dhārana, single-minded focus. We can focus on the life force energizing our system when we increase our awareness and close all the inputs from our senses. We automatically unite mind, body and spirit. This is yoga. Kṛṣṇa continuously tells Arjuna the importance of the last thought before death. We saw in the previous verses how much importance He gives to this truth. You see, it is a powerful technique. These are not mere words to be read and not put into practice. People have used these words and left their bodies gracefully, understand that! They merged with the Ultimate consciousness by practicing these techniques.

Thousands of enlightened beings have constantly thought about God. They have expressed their undaunted devotion in so many carefree ways. People laughed when they danced and sang the glory of God. People realized the power of that devotion only after these Enlightened beings left their bodies, completely merging with the Cosmos. Kṛṣṇa says the people who reach Him are those who remain continuously on the path of yoga, continuously fixed upon the Divine without deviation. Kṛṣṇa asks us to be in that state all the time. He asks us to be in Kṛṣṇa consciousness all the time. The problem is when an Enlightened Master says, ‘Think of Me all the time,’ we question, ‘What kind of an egoistic person is He?

Why should we think of Him?’ Actually, our ego plays the game. We think Kṛṣṇa is exploiting us when He advises us to be in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Many people think I am exploiting them when I make such statements. They think I profit from all of this. Please listen! Kṛṣṇa, or any Enlightened Master or Incarnation, only asks us to keep our inner space completely free of desires. Our thoughts are generally related to greed and fear. We keep piling up desires because our root thought patterns are of greed and fear. When we die, our soul re-experiences these desires. Attachment to these desires makes our death painful. An Enlightened Master has seen this process and speaks from experience.

He is pure compassion and He wants everyone to know the secret of mastering the art of leaving. That is why Kṛṣṇa says again and again: When we direct our thoughts to the Divine, greed and fear are completely wiped out. Our whole being is filled with gratitude to the Divine. One more thing, many people think of God because they want to go to heaven. Some people are afraid of death so they think of God. Both are only because of greed or fear. When we think of the Divine, we should do so out of gratitude, and not out of greed or fear. Our thoughts about God, our devotion to the Divine should be out of pure gratitude to Existence. Brahma’s Day And Night