Verses 8.15–8.18🔗

Now He says, ‘After attaining Me the great souls who are steeped in yoga never return to this temporary world, which is full of miseries, because they have attained the highest perfection.’ mām upetya punar janma duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam I nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ II 8.15 The understanding of this science, the very intellectual understanding, gives the inspiration to experience truth and naturally leads us to the ultimate Truth. Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘If you achieve this state, you never come back.’ He inspires us; He persuades us to enter that state, to enter thoughtless awareness. The only job of an Enlightened Master is to make everyone realize the truth that he himself has experienced.

That is the only aim. There is no ulterior motive or vested interest. People again and again look at an Enlightened Master with suspicion. They suspect foul play. Understand one thing: A person who remains at the inner source of bliss never cares for anything external. Please understand that he does not need external sources of happiness because he has something more powerful. The inner guide is so powerful that the being is always blissful. That is the reason he does not see the world as a collection of miseries. You see, an enlightened Master may not get food for days, yet he is always blissful. Even in such situations, the only things that he experiences are gratitude and compassion.

He is neither attached to sorrow nor to happiness. He is detached from both to the same degree. He is always in a state of gratitude to the Universe. Worldly things do not affect him. Happiness and sorrow are not in his dictionary. An enlightened Master looks at misery and happiness with total gratitude and surrender to the Universe. Enlightened beings are beyond happiness as you understand it. They are not attached to anything. They are pure compassion. One more thing, an enlightened being surrenders everything that he has and gets, to Existence. When he gets food, he surrenders that; when he is hungry for days, he surrenders that to Existence.

Whether he has money or is in poverty, he is rich inside because he surrenders everything. He says, ‘Let Existence take care.’ All his responsibilities are handed over to Existence. There is a great relief inside when that state of surrender happens. We suddenly light up in joy. We consider something as misery because we think we are responsible for that something. We think we control it. That is why, when something does not happen according to our expectations, we see it as misery. But an Enlightened being is not like that. He simply flows. Whatever comes, he accepts it and surrenders it to Existence. Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 615 Beyond Karma In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa talks about the misery-filled world and we see how good deeds cannot get us out of the cycle of birth and death.

Kṛṣṇa says here: ā-brahma-bhuvanāl lokāḥ punar āvartino ‘rjuna I mām upetya tu kaunteya punar janma na vidyate II 8.16 ‘From the highest planet of Brahmaloka in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death takes place. But one who attains Me, one who attains My being, one who attains My consciousness, never takes birth again.’ I told you earlier about the different energy layers. Even if we reach the cosmic layer of Brahmaloka, the land of the Divine, we must come back and take birth again. It means that even if we are full of good intentions and good deeds, even if we are attached to good things, we must come back into a body.

Please be very clear, even if we are caught in doing good deeds, we return. Our good deeds, puṇya, cannot give us enlightenment. I tell people, ‘Even if you give money for my ashram, I cannot give you a speed pass to enlightenment!’ I cannot give you any speed pass. Be very clear, unless you have the conscious glimpse, unless you achieve at least one moment of thoughtless awareness, nobody can save you from the cycle of birth and death. Some people believe that when they give money to institutions, they receive a receipt and a pass to heaven when they die. They are buried with the receipt so that they can show the receipt to the gatekeeper of heaven and he will let them in!

I tell you honestly that at least I don’t have such a system with this institution. Let me be very clear! I never tell people, ‘Do charity and good acts and I can get you into heaven.’ Do things out of love and gratitude with no attachment, and you will be in heaven as a result of your mental setup. Do it out of gratitude, just for the sake of doing it, not expecting that tomorrow you will be given a special place in heaven. I tell people, ‘Even if you give money to my ashram, I cannot give you any speed pass; nothing can be done. This is the honest truth.’

People ask, ‘Then why do you build ashrams and temples?’ I build them because they are laboratories where the spiritual sciences can be practiced. All over the world I build vedic temples and ashrams as inner science laboratories where these truths can be practiced and intranalyzed, and where people will radiate the science of living enlightenment with integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching. Listen! Do charity and good acts with the consciousness that you are engaged in research in the inner sciences in these laboratories, just as the ṛṣis of the great vedic tradition did. Don’t do it for some special ticket to heaven. Don’t expect that if we do these things for Lord Viṣṇu, He will send a special flight with a garuḍa (eagle, Lord Viṣṇu’s vehicle) when we leave the body, and the airhostesses, Rambhā, Menaka and Urvaśi (celestial beauties), will take us there.

Nothing of that sort happens! If we expect these things to happen, we will sit, sit, sit and wait. Nobody will come and no such thing will happen! Be very clear, whether we acquire sin or merit, we suffer when we leave the body. Whether it is sin or merit, both are karma. Then what is to be done? When we live in the body, at least once, in one way or another, by meditating or by surrender, experience one glimpse of thoughtless, restful awareness. Work intensely for it, for at least one glimpse of thoughtless awareness, the witnessing consciousness, the space of completion. If we achieve one glimpse, it’s over.

That one glimpse acts like a conscious torch, and guides us through these seven layers when we leave the body. We will walk beautifully; we will slide through all seven layers. The enlightened Master’s initiation is the torch of consciousness that guides us through this path, through our living and leaving. Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 617 If we achieve that one glimpse of consciousness, we achieve what has to be achieved. If we have not had that, whatever we achieve is a pure waste. All merits and sins—nothing comes with us. We will not be judged by anything except this glimpse of samādhi, the ultimate truth. Samādhi in Saṃskṛit means: being in our original state.

Once we realize this state, we have arrived. Vivekananda says, ‘If you achieve even a single glimpse, you leave your body in that experience.’ It is because this intense experience of Self-realization will come up at the time when we leave the body. At the time of death, our whole life is played back to us in a fast-forward mode in a few seconds. And only the important scenes appear in multicolor again and again; all other scenes appear in black and white. They become the background. If we have had thoughtless awareness, the samādhi experience when we were alive, that alone will appear in multicolor; all other things will fade away in the background.

And naturally, we stay in that state and leave the body. One more thing—if there is a scratch on a videotape, the tape gets stuck in that place when it runs in fast-forward mode, is it not? So when the fast-forward happens, the remainder of the tape is erased. Similarly, thoughtless awareness is the stuck point in our life because in that space we never had a thought. We will be stuck there and whatever fast-forward happens beyond that, all the karma associated with it will be erased, washed away! It is like a virus entering our software; the more we try to operate the software, the more the virus destroys the software.

Similarly, thoughtless awareness is the divine virus for our saṁsāra sāgara—ocean of worldly life, for our desires, for the software that is our mind. Our mind is the software. Our mind is just a pre-programmed software. Please listen! Don’t think that the mind is intelligence. The mind is just a programmed software. For example, let us say we experience anxiety every morning because of office-related worries. Gradually, every morning at 10 am, we experience a low mood. The funny thing is, eventually we start experiencing the same depression even on the weekend when there is no office to attend! If we are a little aware and sensitive, if we observe ourselves, we will see that this is true.

How many of you have experienced this? If we have observed ourselves, we would have experienced this at least a few times. Then we tell our mind, ‘No, this is the weekend. I don’t need to go to the office. I don’t need to worry about those things.’ But every weekend, our mind goes back to the same mood because our mind is a pre-programmed software. Thoughtless awareness is a benign virus, if such a thing exists! The more we work with the software after the virus has entered, the more the software and programs will be destroyed. Similarly, if we have one glimpse of Consciousness in our lifetime, this glimpse takes over our being at the time of leaving the body, and the whole software is completely erased.

We do not have to take another birth. We assume the body and mind only if we believe there is something to be enjoyed or achieved through the body and mind. Unless we believe there is some work or enjoyment to be found downtown, will we go downtown? We will not. Similarly, unless we believe there is something to be achieved or enjoyed through this body and mind, we do not come down to planet Earth. When we are in this body, if we work on our root thought patterns, saṁskāras, and complete with them, we will liberate ourselves from their influence, and hence from the cycle of re-birth. Kṛṣṇa speaks in a detailed manner on these truths later.

Actually, you do not normally become aware of these root thought patterns, saṁskāras. In our Inner Awakening program, we take you through root pattern analysis techniques to uncover them first and complete with them. You write down, analyze and relive all that has happened in your life and all that you have stored in the various energy layers that the spirit will pass through when it leaves the body-mind system. You analyze: What is the root of your desires? Which of these are superficial incomplete desires? Which desires have been Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 619 imposed on you by others? What are your own desires, for fulfilling which, you carry your own energy?

For instance, guilt is initially imposed on us by society. Later we master the art of creating guilt and continue to create it for ourselves! First society teaches us; then we master the art. Next, pain and suffering. Society creates a scale deciding what pain is and what suffering is. Then, we actually turn our whole life into suffering by measuring it with that scale. In the Inner Awakening meditation retreat, we initiate participants into the science of completion and work deeply on every emotion related to root thought patterns or saṁskāras. Understand, this science is not only for dying but also for living! If we are stuck with guilt, we can never enjoy our desires.

When we don’t enjoy our desires, we create more guilt, that’s all. When we are stuck in guilt, we will not leave the desires and they cannot leave us. When we don’t leave our desires, we create more guilt. This becomes a vicious circle of incomplete emotions. So not only for dying, even for living we need to learn this whole science of completion, the space of thoughtless awareness. Experience His LīlĀ, Cosmic Play As of now, understand this one thing: Throughout this chapter Kṛṣṇa conveys the single message: Experience His consciousness, the thoughtless awareness or the witnessing consciousness in which Kṛṣṇa stays and plays the whole game of life, how He lives through the whole of life.

That is why Kṛṣṇa’s life is called līlā—cosmic play, Kṛṣṇa līlā. It is not history. It is līlā; it is a Cosmic play. For ordinary human beings, after they die, their life will be written as history. For incarnations, their life itself is a script that has already been written; they just come down and enact it, that’s all! For them it is a script; for us it is history. For us, after we die, somebody may write about us if we have achieved something! For the great Masters, it is a script. They come with the script and enact the whole thing. They play the whole game. That is why their life is called līlā.

If we achieve the witnessing consciousness, our whole life becomes līlā. We know the script and we are ready. When we know the script our whole life is a līlā. When we don’t know the script, it becomes history. Līlā Dhyāna is a such a powerful space creator. Please understand, your pastime always leads you to incompletion. An Incarnation’s pastime or līlā always leads you to completion. Your past always leads you to incompletion. An Incarnation’s pastimes, always lead you to completion. If you constantly remember what you did when you were a child, you will be in more and more incompletion. If you constantly remember what Kṛṣṇa does when He is a child, you will be more and more in the space of completion.

Understand, remembering your pastimes, creates more and more incompletions. Remembering the Incarnation’s pastimes creates more and more completion and the higher space. Whether it is Kṛṣṇa or Buddha, Mahādeva or Mīnākśi, even remembering their līlās, their cosmic play creates so much of completion in you, it heals your mamakāra, your inner image. Actually, because of this Līlā Dhyāna practice you become more complete with you. And if you observe deeply, you will find out if you have incompletion with you, that day you will feel that the Divine is angry with you! Understand, the completion you need to do with you and with others is responsible for how you feel connected to your Guru or God, outside and inside.

Kṛṣṇa conveys one thing: All we need to do is work to achieve a glimpse of thoughtless awareness, the space of completion. In the next few chapters, He speaks deeply, intensely about how to open every layer, how to progress, how to clean and complete with every layer and how to achieve the conscious glimpse or thoughtless awareness. He says further: ‘By human calculation, the thousand ages taken together form the duration of Brahma’s one day and such also is the duration of his night.’ Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 621 As I told you, one year for us is one day for the devatas, demigods. For Brahma, a thousand ages are taken as one day.

Only when we achieve the consciousness of nirvāṇa—thoughtless awareness, will we not take rebirth. Here He says a beautiful thing about kṣaṇa. At the time of death, our soul has three kṣaṇa to take another body. Three kṣaṇas can be three microseconds, three seconds or three minutes or three hundred years according to the person’s frequency of thoughts. It depends on his state of mind. If we have lived a restless life, our kṣaṇas will be in microseconds. If we have lived a peaceful, blissful life and achieved at least one glimpse of thoughtless awareness, our kṣaṇa can be even two or three hundred years. If we can stop the next thought from happening within our inner space, our kṣaṇas can be increased to any extent.

It can extend to eternity. So, kṣaṇas is relative and not absolute. Time is actually not chronological, but psychological. If we sit with a friend with whom we are comfortable and joyful, after three or four hours, we suddenly notice the time and say, ‘Oh! I don’t know how the time has passed by so quickly!’ At the same time, if we sit with somebody with whom we don’t feel comfortable, we will look at the watch and think, ‘Why is the watch not moving? Is there a problem with it? The time is simply dragging on.’ The number of thoughts that happen in our mind decides the time consciousness.

If thoughts are less, even after ten hours, we will not feel that ten hours have passed. If the number of thoughts is more, two or three minutes will seem like years. A small story: A lady goes to the doctor for a check-up. After a thorough examination, the doctor says, ‘I’m sorry. I have bad news. You may live only six months more at the most.’ She says, ‘What is this? What should I do now?’ The doctor says, ‘I have one suggestion. Marry an accountant.’ She asks, ‘Will that cure me?’ He replies, ‘No, no. But then the six months will seem very long.’ You see, at the most, we can extend time psychologically.

And when it happens, it is what we call ‘eternal hell’. The word ‘eternal’ is not chronological. Even if we make all possible mistakes in a hundred years, how can we be punished in eternal hell? It actually means that those hundred years seems eternal because of the crowd of thoughts, time will not seem to move. One year of human life equals one day of the devatas, demigods, because their thoughts per second (TPS) is very less. That is why the deity Natarāja in the temple at Chidambaraṁ in South India, has only six prayer offerings throughout the year. In one year, they worship the deity only six times!

Normally, the worship is carried out six times a day in other temples. But this temple is supposed to be where the devatas worship the Divine, so the worship is carried out according to their time! The six offerings of worship required for the deity are conducted in our one year because our one year is one day for the deities or devatas. Devatas refers to those whose TPS has come down, who have had a glimpse of samādhi. If our TPS is low, we too are in heaven. If our TPS is high, we are in hell. Heaven always looks brief; hell always looks eternal, because of the number of thoughts.

When we are in the body, if we have had a single glimpse of thoughtless awareness—the experience of meditation, then automatically this consciousness comes up at the time of leaving the body and we will have two benefits. We can choose to become enlightened and not take another birth, or we can choose the right place to express and work out our karma, to live as we want. We have both choices if we experience thoughtless awareness while living. My Supreme Abode