Verses 8.7–8.10🔗

In the first two of these verses Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Arjuna, you should always think of Me. You should always be in My state of consciousness even when you are doing your regular duty, even in your activities. Let your mind and intelligence be fixed in My consciousness. You will attain Me without doubt.’ tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu mām anusmara yudhya ca I mayy arpita-mano-buddhir mām evaiṣyasy asaṁśayaḥ II 8.7 Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 599 Again He uses the words, ‘without doubt, asaṁaśyaḥ.’ ‘Without doubt, you will achieve Me, mām evaiṣyasy asaṁśayaḥ.’ One important question we may ask, ‘Anyhow, I have to think of Him only at the time of leaving the body, so why bother doing that now?

Right now, let me lead my life. At the time of death, I will think about Him.’ Please be very clear, these verses answer that question. We cannot think about Him then unless we think about Him now. Don’t think that when we live our whole life chanting the words, ‘Coca-cola, Coca-cola’, suddenly at the end of our lives we will be able to say, ‘Rāma, Kṛṣṇa.’ No! Whatever we think during our whole life, the same thought will come to us in the end also. But we think, ’Now I can say ‘Coca-cola, Coca-cola’; at the end, I can always say, ‘Rāma, Kṛṣṇa.’ No! At the time of death, we will not be able to remember what we want to remember.

Our Consciousness will not be under our control at that time! At the time of our death, automatically the totality of our whole life will come up. The whole file will come up. Whatever we spent the maximum energy on, that file will automatically come up first. That’s all. We can’t do anything in that moment. Don’t think that we can forget about it now and tackle the issue of our last thought at the time we leave the body. It does not work that way! Only the thought that we lived with intensely throughout our life will come up at that moment. That is why He says, ‘Even when you do your duty, may you be absorbed in Me.’

This means that when we live, we should try to continuously be in thoughtless awareness, the witnessing consciousness, the Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The Supreme Witness The next question: ‘How can I be in the witnessing mode when I live my regular life?’ Start in a simple way. When you drive, when you sit, when you talk, see what is happening inside and outside you. You don’t need to close your eyes. At least while driving, please don’t close your eyes! Just move away from your body. See what is going on in your mind and what is going on outside your being. When you talk to someone, witness and listen to how he talks and how you respond.

Even before he finishes his statement, notice how you come to conclusions and how you are ready to jump on him with your own opinions! See and listen how you prepare your speech before he finishes his statement. Witness, continuously try to witness. Continuously listen. You will see the influence of desires, guilt and pain on your being automatically disappear. The moment you create a gap between you and your body-mind, immediately the suffering disappears. Suffering is due to attachment to your body and mind. All your sufferings disappear the moment you witness, that very moment. Actually, you may fail the first few times. After you face failure, you think, ‘It is difficult, I cannot do it,’ and you create an idea that it is difficult.

Somebody goes to Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi, the enlightened saint from India, and asks, ‘Master, is ātma vidya (knowledge of the self) difficult?’ He says, ‘The word difficult is the only difficulty.’ He sings beautifully in Tamil, ‘Aiyye ati sulabham atma viddai, aiyye ati sulabham’—Oh! So easy! The knowledge of the Self is so easy! He sings beautifully, ‘To achieve money you must work, to achieve name and fame you must work, to achieve anything else you must work. To achieve the knowledge of the Self, you need to just keep quiet. Nothing else needs to be done.’ Such a simple thing; a few moments of witnessing consciousness is enough. Now don’t start calculating, ‘From tomorrow onwards, 24 hours a day I will be in the witnessing consciousness.’

Then you will become frustrated if you are unable to be that way. So don’t bother. Even if you stay in that consciousness for five minutes, it is a big blessing. When you experience the relief that happens when you remain as the witness, even once or twice, when you experience the relief, you can see how the stress disappears from your being. Then you will automatically stay in that same state, because now you have tasted it. Once you know the taste, you will automatically come back to the same state, the same mood again and again. Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 601 Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa says, ‘If you give a little bit of abhin (an opium variant) to a peacock one evening at four o’clock, the next day exactly at four o’clock, it will be in front of your house!’

In North India they give abhin to peacocks to make them dance. Rāmakṛṣṇa says that once you supply abhin, they will automatically be there in search of abhin the next day at the same time. Similarly, if we just experience the relaxation that happens once, when we witness the body and mind, we will automatically come back for that experience, for that peace, again and again. If we feel witnessing is difficult, witness that thought also; be aware and authentically listen to that thought also. Go into the consciousness of your being. Experience samādhi so that all hindrances disappear. You will experience the ultimate, eternal consciousness. In the next verse Kṛṣṇa says, ‘At the time of death, fix your mind between the eyebrows.’

He adds, ‘without being distracted and with devotion.’ See, all this is not in our control at the time when the life force is about to leave the body. We cannot decide at that time, ‘Ok, let me focus between the eyebrows, let me think of devotion, let me not be distracted.’ But if we have led a life in such higher consciousness, this automatically happens at that time! When Kṛṣṇa talks about the space between the eyebrows, He speaks of the higher cakra or energy center in the body, related to higher consciousness. Our mind is nothing but a bunch of conditionings. All these conditionings influence us at the time of death.

How do we condition our mind? If we think that eating is the best thing in life, when we leave the body, what comes in front of us? All kinds of food and the Macdonald arches! If we are taught that eating is the greatest pleasure in life, we see only all kinds of food when we leave this body. Then the last thought will be, ‘Let me take birth in a family where I will be given food and nothing but food, where I will not have any other responsibility.’ We call for the archived files. The essence, the research report, is in front of us. From all the experiences of our past, we choose what we think is best and what we have worked for all our life.

Based on that, we make a decision, ‘Alright, if I want to eat, this is the right country.’ There we will spend our next life, in tamas, in dullness, not doing anything, in just pure laziness. A small story: A man goes to a doctor and says, ‘Doctor, please examine me. I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel dull.’ The doctor thoroughly examines him. The man says, ‘Doctor, please tell me in plain English, what is my problem?’ The doctor says, ‘If you ask me, in plain English, you are ‘lazy’. Nothing else is the problem.’ The man says, ‘Ok, now tell me the medical term for it; I will go and tell my wife!’

If we have lived that kind of a life, a lethargic, dead, dull and lazy life, that same laziness will make the choice for us when we take the next body. I have seen amazing laziness amongst people. If you want to see the ultimate laziness, come to the Himālayas. That is why Vivekananda says openly in his lectures, ‘The people who eat and sleep in the name of sannyās... make them stand up, and simply beat them!’ Pure laziness! If we live our life spending our energy in laziness, we just get lazier. We actually spend energy when we are lazy. Don’t think we are not spending energy. Have you heard the phrase, ‘tired of sleeping?’

Many people are tired of taking rest. To be tired of taking rest is tamas. If we have lived life completely in tamas, we naturally decide, ‘Anyhow, the ultimate thing in life is sleep. Now which country is the right country to allow lots of sleep? What type of body is the right body—whether pig or buffalo or human being? What type of family should I take birth in?’ We make a decision. Please be very clear, the whole calculation happens based on our own data, the data that we have collected. Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 603 As I said, at the time of leaving the body, the whole data appears before us in a single flash: the gist of the whole data, the gist of all three files—āgāmya (acquired) file, sañcita (bank balance) file and prārabdha (current) file.

Based on the files, we decide, ‘What am I supposed to do? What should be my next birth?’ The moment we decide, we enter that kind of body. One more important thing: Because we are so attached to the body and mind, we cannot live without a body for more than three kṣaṇas. The Saṃskṛit word ‘kṣaṇa’ does not mean ‘seconds’ or ‘moments’. It does not measure chronological time. It is the gap between one thought and the next thought. For most of us, kṣaṇa will be a few microseconds because of our endless stream of thoughts. While still in the body, if we have experienced ‘thoughtlessness’ at least once, (thoughtlessness means being alive without a sense of body and mind), if we have experienced thoughtless awareness, if we have been in Universal consciousness for a single moment without the body and mind, that is what I call Samādhi.

Four States of Consciousness Here is a small diagram to explain what exactly I mean by the word ‘thoughtlessness’. In our life, we experience two states of being and two levels of mind. For example, now, while we are awake, we have thoughts. In deep sleep, do we have thoughts? No! So the two possibilities for the mind are with thought and without thought. In the same way, in the being, there can be ‘I’ consciousness and no ‘I’ consciousness. As of now, while we are awake and talking and moving, we have the idea of ‘I’ all the time, that of ‘I’ consciousness. In deep sleep, do we have this consciousness?

No. The ‘I’ consciousness does not exist at that time. So the two levels of the being are: with ‘I’ consciousness and without ‘I’ consciousness. These two levels of consciousness and the two levels of mind and thought overlap each other and create four states of being in us. The state with thoughts and with ‘I’ consciousness is the waking state, jāgrat, in which most of us are now (not all, some of us are in the dream state—sleeping already!) The next state is when we have thoughts, but ‘I’ consciousness is absent. This is the dream state—svapna. You may ask, ‘How?’ It is like this: In the dream state, the frequency of thoughts will be more than the frequency of ‘I’ consciousness.

That is why we are not able to control our dreams. When we are awake, the frequency of ‘I’ is more, that is why we can control our thoughts; we can suppress them, divert them, create them; we can do anything we want because the frequency of ‘I’ is more than the frequency of thoughts. In the dream state, the frequency of thoughts is more than the frequency of ‘I’. That is why we cannot control our dreams. If we can have the dreams of our choice, we know what kind of dreams we will have! Dreams are not in our control. We cannot influence them. We cannot have choices because the frequency of thoughts is more than the frequency of consciousness.

So we have thoughts but no ‘I’ consciousness. The flow of thoughts happening in our being is the dream state. In the next state, neither ‘I’ consciousness nor the flow of thoughts exists. This is deep sleep. This is called suṣupti. The three states are jāgrat, Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 605 svapna, suṣupti—conscious, sub-conscious, unconscious. There is a fourth state that we have not experienced in our life, where we have no flow of thoughts yet we have ‘I’ consciousness, pure ‘I’ consciousness. This is samādhi, thoughtless awareness—turīya avastha, ātma jñāna, brahma jñāna, Self-realization, nirvāna, ātma bhūti, state of the Divine, nityānanda consciousness, eternal bliss! All these words refer to the state where we have pure awareness but no thoughts, where we exist without body and mind.

Jāgrat, svapna, suṣupti, in these three states, we live with the body and mind. In jāgrat, we live with the body that we have now—the sthūla śarīra or gross body. In svapna, we live with the sūkṣma śarīra or subtle body; please understand in the dream state also we assume a body. That is why we are able to travel in our dreams. For example, we fall asleep in Los Angeles but suddenly dream we are in India! It means we travel with a body, a subtle body called sūkṣma śarīra. In deep sleep, we assume a body called the causal body, kāraṇa śarīra. In turīya state, we experience boundarilessness, bodylessness.

There we have pure ‘I’ consciousness, with ‘I’ but without thoughts. Vivekananda says, ‘If you experience even a single glimpse of this consciousness when you are alive, the same thing automatically repeats when you leave the body. You leave the body in samādhi.’ All spiritual practices directly or indirectly aim at achieving this state where we exist with the awareness of ‘I’, but without the consciousness of body and mind. That is why Kṛṣṇa says that if we experience at least one moment of consciousness beyond the body and mind, we can choose our next life in a relaxed way. If we have not lived a single moment of our life without the feeling of being the body and mind, we cannot be without the body and mind once we die.

So once we die, we immediately try to catch hold of another body. Because we have never lived a single moment without body and mind, the moment we die, we will not bother about which body we are getting into. We rush as fast as possible. It’s like we are late for a train, so we run and jump onto the first train that we see, not thinking about where it’s headed. We say, ‘Let me just get into some train!’ We rush and get into some body or the other and come down to planet Earth yet another time. After coming down, we again forget the supreme purpose of assuming the body; this is the biggest problem.

If we have experienced a single moment of complete rest and thoughtless awareness, the state of restful awareness, then naturally at the moment when we leave the body, we will be in the same state. This state is also called ‘bodyless’ awareness because when we are in turīya state, all the three bodies do not touch us; neither the gross body nor the subtle body nor the causal body touches us. We experience awareness that is beyond the three bodies. If we have experienced this thoughtless restful awareness for even a single moment earlier, we will have the required clarity in the end. If we have experienced that we can exist without the body and mind, we will have the patience to work with our data files before assuming the next body.

We will go through the data line carefully and decide, ‘Should I take birth at all? What is the need?’ Sometimes, if we decide to take birth, we can even take a conscious birth, like the great Masters! Kṛṣṇa says yogabraṣṭha. We take birth in a family that will be conducive to our spiritual growth, which will not create obstacles to our spiritual practices. Kṛṣṇa says that only very rarely do souls take birth in this type of family. I have rarely seen parents who do not object when the son does spiritual practices. If your family does not object, if they do not disturb you, please be very clear, there is every chance of your being a yogabraṣṭha!

Otherwise, I have seen even religious parents creating obstacles if their son wants to enter sannyās or spiritual life. They say, ‘Go to temples but not to ashrams!’ But if you grow beyond the maturity of the parents, it is something that they cannot digest. Very rarely do souls take birth in families where they will not be disturbed. When I left home for my parivrājaka (wandering Sannyāsa life), I was young; just 17 years old. I told Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 607 my mother that I was going, that I wanted to live the parivrājaka life, I wanted to taste Sannyāsa life. She started weeping. So I asked her, ‘Do you mean that I should not go?’

She said beautifully, ‘No, I don’t want to stop you. But I am not able to digest the idea of your leaving, so I am weeping.’ Even today I am grateful to my parents because they did not stop me. Not only that, from a very young age I did all sorts of things that you can’t even imagine. Sometimes I used to spend the night meditating in the graveyard in the outskirts of my village! I don’t think other parents would have tolerated it. Yet somehow the atmosphere was such that I was able to continue my spiritual practice. If your family and surroundings do not disturb you but help you instead, please be very clear that you have taken a conscious birth—you are a yogabraṣṭha.

But if you have not experienced a single glimpse, a single moment of thoughtless awareness, you cannot live without the body and mind once you die. So within three kṣaṇas, you take birth in some way or the other. Even a glimpse of consciousness, a moment of realization, a single moment of thoughtless awareness, when you live with the body and mind is enough. Inner Awakening and Nithya Kriya Yoga Program, or LBP 2, are directly focused on this concept. All I try to do is give you a single glimpse of consciousness, thoughtless restful awareness. Actually, if you achieve one glimpse of thoughtless awareness, you achieve whatever has to be achieved in life.

If you have not achieved one glimpse of samādhi or thoughtless awareness, whatever else you achieve is not ultimately useful. In the next step, Kṛṣṇa explains how to achieve thoughtless awareness and gives a deeper understanding about death and the art of leaving. Remember Me Constantly