7. Chapter 7 — Jñāna-Vijñāna Yogaḥ · The Yoga of Knowledge and Realization

7.1

श्रीभगवानुवाच | मय्यासक्तमना: पार्थ योगं युञ्जन्मदाश्रय: | असंशयं समग्रं मां यथा ज्ञास्यसि तच्छृणु

śrībhagavānuvāca mayyāsaktamanāḥ pārtha yogaṃ yuñjanmadāśrayaḥ / asaṃśayaṃ samagraṃ māṃ yathā jñāsyasi tacchṛṇu / / 7.1

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, Arjuna, Listen to Me, you can know Me completely and without doubt by practicing yoga in true consciousness of Me, with your mind attached to Me.

śrībhagavānuvāca — Kṛṣṇa says · mayi — in Me · āsaktamanāḥ — mind attached · pārtha — Arjuna, O son of Pritā · yogaṃ — union · yuñjan — so practising · madāśrayaḥ — in My shelter · asaṃśayaṃ — without doubt · samagraṃ — completely · māṃ — to Me · yathā — how, in what manner · jñāsyasi — you can know · tat — that · śṛṇu — hear

7.2

ज्ञानं तेऽहं सविज्ञानमिदं वक्ष्याम्यशेषत: | यज्ज्ञात्वा नेह भूयोऽन्यज्ज्ञातव्यमवशिष्यते

jñānaṃ te’haṃ savijñānam idaṃ vakṣyāmyaśeṣataḥ / yajjñātvā neha bhūyo’nyaj jñātavyamavaśiṣyate / / 7.2

Let Me explain to you in detail this phenomenal and abso- lute knowledge along with its realization; by knowing which, there shall remain nothing further to be known.

jñānaṃ — phenomenal knowledge · te — unto you · ahaṃ — I · sa — with · vijñānaṃ — absolute knowledge · idaṃ — this · vakṣyāmi — shall explain · aśeṣataḥ — in full · yat — which · jñātvā — knowing · na — not · iha — in this world · bhūyaḥ — further · anyat — anything more · jñātavyaṃ — knowable · avaśiṣyate — remains to be known

7.3

मनुष्याणां सहस्रेषु कश्चिद्यतति सिद्धये | यततामपि सिद्धानां कश्चिन्मां वेत्ति तत्वत:

manuṣyāṇāṃ sahasreṣu kaścidyatati siddhaye / yatatāmapi siddhānāṃ kaścinmāṃ vetti tattvataḥ / / 7.3

Out of many thousands of men, hardly one endeavors or strives to achieve perfection of self-realization; of those so en- deavoring, hardly one achieves the perfection of self-realization and of those, hardly one knows Me in truth or reaches that state of oneness with Me.

manuṣyāṇāṃ — of men · sahasreṣu — out of many thousands · kaścit — hardly one · yatati — endeavors · siddhaye — for perfection of self-realization · yatatāṃ — of those so endeavoring · api — indeed · siddhānāṃ — of those who have achieved perfection · kaścit — hardly one · māṃ — Me · vetti — does know · tattvataḥ — in truth

7.4

भूमिरापोऽनलो वायु: खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च | अहङ्कार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा

bhūmirāpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṃ mano buddhireva ca / ahankāra itīyaṃ me bhinnā prakṛtiraṣṭadhā / / 7.4

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego all together these eight constitute My separated external energies.

bhūmiḥ — earth · āpaḥ — water · analah — fire · vāyuḥ — air · khaṃ — ether · manaḥ — mind · buddhiḥ — intelligence · eva — certainly · ca — and · ahaṃkāraḥ — ego · iti — thus · iyaṃ — all these · me — My · bhinnā — separated, various · prakṛtiḥ — external energies · aṣṭadhā — total eight

7.5

अपरेयमितस्त्वन्यां प्रकृतिं विद्धि मे पराम् | जीवभूतां महाबाहो ययेदं धार्यते जगत्

apare’yamitastvanyāṃ prakṛtiṃ viddhi me parām / jīvabhūtāṃ mahābāho yayedaṃ dhāryate jagat / / 7.5

Besides these external energies, which are inferior in nature, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is a superior energy of Mine. This comprises all the embodied souls of all the living entities by which this material world is being utilized or exploited.

aparā — inferior · iyaṃ — this · itaḥ — besides this · tu — but · anyāṃ — another · prakṛtiṃ — energy · viddhi — understand · me — my · parāṃ — superior · jīvabhūtāṃ — the living entities · mahā-bāho — O mighty armed one · yayā — by whom · idaṃ — this · dhāryate — bearing · jagat — the material world

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

7.6

एतद्योनीनि भूतानि सर्वाणीत्युपधारय | अहं कृत्स्नस्य जगत: प्रभव: प्रलयस्तथा

etadyonī ni bhūtāni sarvāṇītyupadhāraya / ahaṃ kṛ tsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayastathā / / 7.6

Know for certain that everything living is manifested by these two energies of Mine. I am the Creator, the Sustainer and the Destroyer of them.

etad — these two natures · yonīni — source of birth · bhūtāni — everything created · sarvāṇī — all · iti — thus · upadhāraya — know · ahaṃ — I · kṛtsnasya — all-inclusive · jaga- taḥ — of the world · prabhavaḥ — source of manifestation · pralayaḥ — annihilation · tathā — as well as

7.7

मत्त: परतरं नान्यत्किञ्चिदस्ति धनञ्जय | मयि सर्वमिदं प्रोतं सूत्रे मणिगणा इव

mattaḥ parataraṃ nānyat kiñcidasti dhanañjaya / mayi sarvamidaṃ protaṃ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva / / 7.7

O Dhanañjaya (conqueror of wealth), there is no truth su- perior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.

mattaḥ — beyond Myself · parataraṃ — superior · na — not · anyat kiñcit — anything else · asti — there is · dhanañjaya — O conqueror of wealth · mayi — in Me · sarvaṃ — all that be · idaṃ — which we see · protaṃ — strung · sūtre — on a thread · maṇigaṇāḥ — pearls · iva — likened

7.8

रसोऽहमप्सु कौन्तेय प्रभास्मि शशिसूर्ययो: | प्रणव: सर्ववेदेषु शब्द: खे पौरुषं नृषु

raso’hamapsu kaunteya prabhāsmi śaśisūryayoḥ / praṇavaḥ sarvavedeṣu śabdaḥ khe pauruṣaṃ nṛṣu / / 7.8

O Kaunteya (son of Kuntī), I am the taste of water, the radiance of the sun and the moon, the sacred syllable ‘Om’ in the vedic mantras. I am the sound in ether and ability in man.

rasaḥ — taste · ahaṃ — I · apsu — in water · kaunteya — O son of Kuntī · prabhā — light · asmi — I am · śaśisūryayoḥ — in the sun and the moon · praṇavaḥ — the letters a-u-m · sarva — in all · vedeṣu — in the Vedas · śabdaḥ — sound vibration · khe — in the ether · pauruṣaṃ — virility, manliness · nṛṣu — in man

7.9

पुण्यो गन्ध: पृथिव्यां च तेजश्चास्मि विभावसौ | जीवनं सर्वभूतेषु तपश्चास्मि तपस्विषु

puṇyo gandhaḥ pṛthivyāṃ ca tejaścāsmi vibhāvasau / jīvanaṃ sarvabhūteṣu tapaścāsmi tapasviṣu / / 7.9

I am the original fragrance of the earth, and I am the heat in fire. I am the life of all living beings, and I am the penances of all ascetics.

puṇyaḥ — original · gandhaḥ — fragrance · pṛthivyāṃ — in the earth · ca — also · tejaḥ — temperature · ca — also · asmi — I am · vibhāvasau — in the fire · jīvanaṃ — life · sarva — all · bhūteṣu — living entities · tapaḥ — penance · ca — also · asmi — I am · tapasviṣu — in those who practice penance.

Iam the thread,’ He says. ‘I am the thread, the sūtra, the technique on which all Existence is strung.’ mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanañjaya I mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇi gaṇā iva II 7.7 ‘O Dhanañjaya, conqueror of wealth, there is no truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.’ He declares powerfully—‘mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ—In Me is strung everything! sūtre maṇi gaṇā iva—Everything rests on Me as pearls strung on a thread.’ He declares with complete clarity that He is the thread of everything. What a beautiful analogy! That is why He is the sūtradhāra, the controller and director of the Cosmic play!

Nothing moves, nothing can move without Him. Nothing can be created, sustained or destroyed in the absence of His energy. People often ask me why I call myself ‘Swami’. They question me as to why I dress up in these ways and allow myself to be photographed. I tell them that I do not even identify with this body. This skin itself is alien to me. There is no difference between this skin and other coverings? So how does it matter? I look at myself the way you look at me, as a witness! Or the way you and I look at an idol. If this body is dressed well, I feel good—the same way you feel good seeing it dressed up, that’s all.

I am just a witness. God—An Idea? For you, God is a mere concept; He is just an idea. It is another play of your mind. You think of God and attribute various concepts to Him. You talk about Him in the same manner in which you would talk about a friend or relative, perhaps more glowingly or less glowingly depending on your inclination at that point in time. To you, your identity and your identification with your body-mind is real. Without this identity you are lost. If someone does not recognize you, you suffer. The moment someone praises you, you are in the seventh heaven. Your identity is your reality.

‘I’ is what makes you alive. To me, God is reality. I live with God every moment. The body, mind and the body-mind identification does not exist for me. It is only a concept! Therefore, when I refer to myself, I refer to that body-mind the same way that you refer to it. I too call it Swami or whatever! I cannot move a finger without permission from Existence, from that Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, that cosmic Kṛṣṇa. You may think, ‘This sounds nonsensical. He says he is enlightened and then he says there is nothing that he can do; he can do only as Existence dictates.’ Nonsense or not, this is the truth.

Whether you understand it or not, whether you accept it or not, this is the truth. What makes me move, talk, see and do all that you do is only what the Universe dictates. My disciples know that when someone with deep faith in me comes with a problem, I say, ‘I’ll take care.’ If it is someone who is yet to develop that deep faith, I say that I shall meditate or pray to Nityānandeśvara (Lord Śiva gracing as chief deity at Nithyānanda ashrams) for them! They go away happy to hear that. When I say, ‘I shall Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 513 take care,’ there is nothing special that I do.

I just pass it on to Existence. It is for Her to take care. Because I have that immense faith in Her, She always obliges! Things happen. People know that the energy beads that they wear, the string of rudrākṣa beads or sandalwood beads, is not a mere rosary. It is their hotline to connect to Existence. There have been so many people who share their experiences with the rudrākṣa. When someone is desperately in need of help of some sort, they simply hold onto the rudrākṣa beads and pray. The results are always instantaneous. All this has nothing to do with me although they hold onto the rudrākṣa thinking of me.

It has to do with Existence. The moment I feel that it is a result of my penance, it will stop happening! There is nothing that ‘I’ can do. There is nothing that this energy can do. That is what Kṛṣṇa talks about here. The great Master says, I am not what you see. I am not the energy that is manifested. It is not this six-foot Kṛṣṇa with a flute and peacock feather that makes things happen. It is the formless energy beyond Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa (Kṛṣṇa, the being in body, son of Vāsudeva). It is Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa (the Cosmic energy). Whenweseeanecklaceorgarland,dowenoticethethread,thesūtra? If it is a pearl or diamond necklace we may get it threaded in gold, but still we rarely notice the thread.

We delight over the pearls or diamonds, yet never think about the thread that holds them together, unless it snaps and all the pearls and diamonds spill on the floor. Then, we blame the thread! Kṛṣṇa says, He is the unseen thread—sūtre maṇi gaṇā, without which no rudrākṣa can exist. He says He is the unseen essence—mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ, without which there can be no substance. He says He is the unseen ultimate energy without which there can be no Universe— mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanañjaya. Have you ever wondered how this Universe operates? There are billions of planets like ours, millions of solar systems, thousands of galaxies and many Universes.

There is nothing that anyone can see that is controlling this Universe. We need traffic lights and policemen to control traffic on our roads. In the Milky Way there are no policemen to control the movements of planets and stars. Yet they move unerringly! Can you imagine the intelligence that controls multiple Universes? How is there such discipline and order in that seeming chaos that no one is in charge of? No one is responsible, or is someone? On the other hand, within this small body of ours we try to control everything. We control the food we eat, how much we exercise, how much we play, etc. Yet we can predict nothing about it.

Despite all the order that we impose, there is chaos sometimes! Control does not bring about order; it never can. Freedom brings about order. Chaos is freedom. Chaos is choice. The ultimate chaos is the cosmic Kṛṣṇa; He is also the Ultimate order too. Kṛṣṇa illustrates what He said earlier with specific examples. The beauty of Kṛṣṇa’s teaching in the Bhagavad Gītā is the depth to which He goes to make everything crystal clear to Arjuna. He makes no assumptions, takes nothing for granted. It is as if Arjuna is a child and He is the parent or teacher. For the Lord of the Universe to take the trouble to ensure complete understanding shows the depth of His compassion.

I explained earlier that in the five natural elements, the essence of ether is sound, of air is touch, of fire is form and heat, of water is taste and of earth is smell. Kṛṣṇa explains that He is the essential quality in each of these elements; also that He is the praṇava mantra—primordial sound—‘Oṁ’ and the radiance of the Sun and Moon. Life, any form of life in this and any other planet, cannot exist without this energy of cosmic Kṛṣṇa. But living within this energy field we lose sight of this energy. We become energy-unconscious. Kabir, the mystic poet said hauntingly, we are like fish that are immersed in life-giving water yet cry out saying, ‘We are thirsty.’

Kabir advises: Fool, become aware! You cannot be a fish in water and be thirsty! This is an incident from Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa’s life. Rāmakṛṣṇa asks his disciple Vivekananda, ‘Narendra (his pre-monasteral name), what would you do if you were a fly and you sat on the edge of a pool of divine nectar, amṛta?’ Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 515 Without hesitation Vivekananda responds, ‘I shall sip from it, of course.’ Rāmakṛṣṇa says, ‘Fool, you should fall into that pool and drown! How can you fear drowning in life-giving nectar?’ We are afraid, always afraid. We have no trust in ourselves and therefore no trust in Existence. If God were to come in front of us in any form other than what we recognize as Him, we would ask for His identification card!

Our intelligence is limited to visualizing Kṛṣṇa in His yellow dress with His flute and a peacock feather stuck in His hair. If Kṛṣṇa comes covered in ash, with a snake around His neck, the Kṛṣṇa follower will throw stones at Him saying, ‘That is Śiva. I do not worship Śiva.’ There are people who claim to have imbibed the Gītā, understood every word the Lord says, and yet have questioned me as to how I can worship Śiva in the āśram when I say Kṛṣṇa is the ultimate! It is for these people that Kṛṣṇa goes into such depths to explain that He is everything and above everything. He is the Creator—Brahma, the Sustainer—Viṣṇu and the Rejuvenator—Śiva. He is not either or; He is all and above all. I Am Eternal

7.10

बीजं मां सर्वभूतानां विद्धि पार्थ सनातनम् | बुद्धिर्बुद्धिमतामस्मि तेजस्तेजस्विनामहम्

bījaṃ māṃ sarvabhūtānāṃ viddhi pārtha sanātanam / buddhirbuddhimatāmasmi tejastejasvināmaham / / 7.10

O Pārtha (son of Prithā), I am the eternal source of all creatures, the intelligence of the intelligent, and the brilliance of all those who are brilliant.

bī jaṃ — the seed · māṃ — Me · sarvabhūtānāṃ — of all living entities · viddhi — understand · pārtha — O son of Prithā · sanātanaṃ — original, eternal · buddhiḥ — intelligence · buddhimatāṃ — of the intelligent · asmi — I am · tejaḥ — prowess · tejasvināṃ — of the powerful · ahaṃ — I am

7.11

बलं बलवतां चाहं कामरागविवर्जितम् | धर्माविरुद्धो भूतेषु कामोऽस्मि भरतर्षभ

balaṃ balavatāṃ cāhaṃ kāmarāgavivarjitaṃ / dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu kāmo’smi bharatarṣabha / / 7.11

I am the strength of the strong, and I am procreative energy in living beings, devoid of lust and in accordance with religious principles, O Bharatarṣabha (Lord of Bhārata).

balaṃ — strength · balavatāṃ — of the strong · cāham — I am · kāma — desire · rāga — attachment · vivarjitaṃ — devoid of · dharma — religious principle · aviruddhaḥ — not against the religious principles · bhūteṣu — in all beings · kāmaḥ — lust · asmi — I am · Bhārata ṛṣabha — O Lord of the Bhāratas

7.12

ये चैव सात्विका भावा राजसास्तामसाश्च ये | मत्त एवेति तान्विद्धि न त्वहं तेषु ते मयि

ye caiva sāttvikā bhāvā rājasāstāmasāśca ye / matta eveti tānviddhi na tvahaṃ teṣu te mayi / / 7.12

All states of being—be they of goodness (sāttvika), pas- sion (rajas) or ignorance (tamas)—all emanate from Me. I am independent of them but they are dependent on Me.

ye — all those · ca — and · eva — certainly · sāttvikāḥ — in goodness · bhāvāḥ — states of being · rājasāḥ — mode of passion · tāmasāḥ — mode of ignorance · ca — and · ye — although · mattaḥ — from Me · eva — certainly · iti — thus · tān — those · viddhi — try to know · na — not · tu — but · ahaṃ — I · teṣu — in those · te — they · mayi — unto Me

7.13

त्रिभिर्गुणमयैर्भावैरेभि: सर्वमिदं जगत् | मोहितं नाभिजानाति मामेभ्य: परमव्ययम्

tribhirguṇamayair bhāvairebhiḥ sarvamidaṃ jagat / mohitaṃ nābhijānāti māmebhyaḥ paramavyayam / / 7.13

The whole world is deluded by the three modes (good- ness, passion and ignorance), and thus does not know Me. I am above the modes and unchangeable

tribhiḥ — three · guṇamayaiḥ — by the three gunas · bhāvaiḥ — state of being · ebhiḥ — all these · sarvaṃ — the whole world · idaṃ — this · jagat — universe · mohitaṃ — de- luded · nābhijānāti — do not know · māṃ — Me · ebhyaḥ — above these · paraṃ — the Supreme · avyayaṃ — immutable

7.14

दैवी ह्येषा गुणमयी मम माया दुरत्यया | मामेव ये प्रपद्यन्ते मायामेतां तरन्ति ते

daivī hyeṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā / māmeva ye prapadyante māyāmetām taranti te / / 7.14

My Divine energy, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome. But those who surrender unto Me can cross beyond it with ease.

daivī — transcendental · hi — certainly · eṣā — this · guṇamayī — consisting of the three modes of material nature · mama — My · māyā — energy · duratyayā — very difficult to overcome · māṃ — unto Me · eva — certainly · ye — those · prapadyante — surrender · māyāṃetāṃ — this illusory energy · taranti — overcome · te — they

7.15

न मां दुष्कृतिनो मूढा: प्रपद्यन्ते नराधमा: | माययापहृतज्ञाना आसुरं भावमाश्रिता:

na māṃ duṣkṛ tino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ / māyayāpahṛtajñānā āsuraṃ bhāvamāśritāḥ / / 7.15

Those miscreants who are foolish, lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by māyā, illusion, and who have taken shelter in demonic nature, do not surrender unto Me.

na — not · māṃ — unto Me · duṣkṛtinaḥ — miscreants · mūḍhāḥ — foolish · prapadyante — surrender · nara adhamāḥ — lowest among mankind · māyayā — by the illusory energy · apahṛta — stolen by illusion · jñānāḥ — knowledge · āsuraṃ — demonic · bhāvaṃ — nature · āśritāḥ — accepting.

Iam the procreative energy,’ says the Lord. ‘I am the seed of all living beings.’ He makes no excuses, no apologies. He says, ‘I am that procreative energy but without the fantasies of lust, kāma-rāga vivarjitam dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu (7.11).’ How can one be a Creator, if one cannot procreate? Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 517 Many of our great sages in the past, the ṛṣi and mahaṛṣis, such as Vaśiṣṭa and Vyāsa were gṛhastas (householders), who were family men with wives and children. Yet they were realized souls, enlightened. Other than Hanumān and Gaṇeśa all our deities are married! Kṛṣṇa is reputed to have had 16,008 wives! How can the life form continue without procreation, without the sex act?

TFor celibacy to happen naturally, the first spiritual experience must happen before adolescence, so that the life-giving sex energy moves upwards as transcendental spiritual energy rather than descend as procreative energy. People who have this spiritual awakening because of their prārabdha karma (desires one is born with) are the Paramahamsas. That is their nature. Celibacy happens to them naturally. To force celibacy after adolescence is difficult. It can be done but must be done with great caution and under supervision. Otherwise the so-called renunciate monk, the Sannyāsi, will pretend to follow brahmacarya, celibacy. Inside he will be filled with fantasies, ready to explode. The word brahmacarya means ‘moving in reality’.

It is said that once Kṛṣṇa was crossing the river Yamuna with a group of gopīs, women devotees. The river was in spate. Kṛṣṇa said to Yamuna, ‘If it is true that I am a brahmacāri, part and let me walk across.’ The river parted and Kṛṣṇa walked to the other bank. A Sannyāsi who watched this was dumbstruck. ‘Kṛṣṇa, a brahmacāri? He walks with these women who are His lovers, and He says He is a brahmacāri and the river parts for Him! How can this be?’ That is what Kṛṣṇa explains here, ‘I am the procreative energy, but without lust, without attachment and without fantasy. I am the ultimate reality!’

Fantasies are the root cause of our problems. With each fantasy coming true, more fantasies arise. We can never be in reality. To be in reality one must be in the present moment. When you are in the present moment you are Kṛṣṇa. When we hanker after the past and speculate about the future, we slip into fantasies. We are no longer within the boundaries of our body. This way of living will lead only to suffering. All you need to do to be blissful is, renounce your fantasies. You do not need to renounce what material things you have with you. Enjoy your wealth, enjoy your work, enjoy your spouse and children.

You have earned what you have. Enjoy what is your due. Just stop fantasizing about what you do not have. Stop running after more acquisitions; stop and take time to enjoy what you have acquired. Move into the present, here and now, into reality, and you will be a brahmacāri! Beyond the GuṆas Kṛṣṇa talks about the guṇas, the natural attributes in these verses. Prakṛti, the energy that manifests in the Universe, has three elements called guṇas. When prakṛti is in equilibrium, it is pure potential energy. When it is disturbed, the guṇas come into operation. Like building blocks, they combine in many ways and create, sustain and destroy. Rarely is only a single element or guṇa present in a person.

The three guṇas that Kṛṣṇa refers to are satva, rajas and tamas, commonly translated as goodness or calmness, passion or aggression and ignorance or inaction. The interplay of these guṇas creates the functioning of the mind and through the operation of the mind, activity. Guṇa does not refer to the state a person is in. Guṇa causes that state to happen. Satva by itself is not goodness or calmness. It is the building block that leads to calmness. No living being influenced by the mind is beyond the influence of the guṇas. When one transcends the guṇas, as Kṛṣṇa says about Himself, one becomes a triguṇa rahita, one who has transcended the three guṇas.

Such a person is no longer influenced by the mind and its actions. Listen. Even an incarnation, an enlightened energy being reborn into Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 519 this planet on a mission, needs to initially be born with some guṇa infused into that being. It is like this: We cannot make jewelry out of pure gold. We must alloy it with copper. In the same way, even an energy source that has transcended the three guṇas needs to have some satva guṇa infused in it to be born into this planet. The same is true of Kṛṣṇa. As Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vāsudeva, He has some guṇa at play in Him.

Remember that Bhagavad Gītā is rendered by Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the cosmic Kṛṣṇa, and not by Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa. So He boldly says, I am beyond the guṇas. He says, I am the Param Puruṣa, the supreme being, who sets prakṛti into play, and I am beyond its influence. Kṛṣṇa is the creator of Nature, which is even beyond prakṛti, and is therefore beyond the plays of Nature. We can see the interplay of the guṇas in people as they move through this material world. People are generally more in a state of rajas— aggressiveness with passion, with various proportions of satva and tamas. Rajas is needed to create, to make things happen, and is the predominant guṇa of action.

Especially when you move into an environment, committed to a life of renunciation and detachment, many fall into deep state of tamas, inaction. It is not a state of ignorance, but one of inaction where all your suppressed opposition to your earlier life of meaningless activity surfaces and forces you into sheer inactivity. You may sleep long hours, far more than normal, disinclined to do anything. However, this is a passing phase. All these suppressions surface and dissolve. Let them. You then move into satva. To many, it is surprising that one falls into tamas before moving into satva, yet it happens and it is a reaction to one’s earlier lifestyle.

On the other hand, a person steeped in tamas is the person Kṛṣṇa refers to as one who does not surrender to Him. Such a person is in deep darkness and ignorance. He is unaware of his potential. He is no better than an animal. In fact, an animal is better because it knows how to live in Nature, with Nature. Besides, an animal has no fantasies. Unfortunately, a human being can distort his perceptions to such a point that he can deny his rightful nature. Māyā, illusion, is also the interplay of the guṇas.It is a collection of our fantasies. Just as darkness needs light to destroy it, we need awareness to destroy māyā.

Otherwise māyā destroys us. In Bhagāvatam (Hindu epic that describes Lord Viṣṇu’s incarnations, especially His incarnation as Kṛṣṇa), there is this history. Nārada is the greatest devotee of Viṣṇu. He forever sings His praise and has nothing else on his mind. Over time Nārada became conceited about being the most celebrated devotee. This happens to all devotees at some point in time. As a true master, Viṣṇu took action. He called Nārada and asked him to fetch a pot of water. Nārada rushed out. Suddenly he was in front of a house asking for water. A beautiful maiden came out with water and Nārada fell instantaneously in love with her.

He married this girl and they raised children together. One day there was a great storm. The house and the entire surroundings were flooded. The rushing water carried Narada and his family away. Soon they were separated and his family died. Nārada wailed and screamed for help. Suddenly he heard a voice, ‘Nārada, where is my water? What happened to you?’ Nārada awoke, as if from a great sleep, and saw Viṣṇu smiling at him. He said, ‘Even my greatest devotee is not immune to māyā!’ As long as the mind is active, no one is immune to māyā. Four Pious Men

7.16

चतुर्विधा भजन्ते मां जना: सुकृतिनोऽर्जुन | आर्तो जिज्ञासुरर्थार्थी ज्ञानी च भरतर्षभ

caturvidhā bhajante māṃ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjuna / ārto jijñāsurarthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha / / 7.16

O Bharatarṣabha, best among Bhārata, four kinds of pious men begin to render devotional service unto Me. They are: the distressed, the desirer of wealth, the inquisitive, and those searching for knowledge of the Absolute.

caturvidhāḥ — four kinds of · bhajante — render services · māṃ — unto Me · janāḥ — persons · sukṛtinaḥ — those who are pious · arjuna — O Arjuna · ārtaḥ — the dis- tressed · jijñāsuḥ — the inquisitive · arthārthī — one who desires material gain · jñānī — one who knows things as they are · ca — also · bharatarṣabha — O great one amongst the descendants of Bhārata.

7.17

तेषां ज्ञानी नित्ययुक्त एकभक्तिर्विशिष्यते | प्रियो हि ज्ञानिनोऽत्यर्थमहं स च मम प्रिय:

teṣāṃ jñānī nityayukta eka-bhaktir viśiṣyate / priyo hi jñānino’tyartham ahaṃ sa ca mama priyaḥ / / 7.17

Of these, the wise one who is in full knowledge and ever united with Me through single-minded devotion is the best. I am very dear to him, and he is dear to Me

teṣāṃ — of them · jñānī — the wise · nityayuktaḥ — ever steadfast · eka bhaktiḥ — whose devotion is to the one · viśiṣyate — better · priyaḥ — dear · hi — verily · jñāninaḥ — of the wise · atyarthaṃ — exceedingly · ahaṃ — I · saḥ — he · ca — and · mama — to me · priyaḥ — dear

7.18

उदारा: सर्व एवैते ज्ञानी त्वात्मैव मे मतम् | आस्थित: स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम्

udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānītvātmaiva me matam / āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā māmevānuttamāṃ gatim / / 7.18

All these devotees are indeed noble; one who knows Me, dwells in Me. Being engaged in My mission, he attains Me.

udārāḥ — noble · sarve — all · eva — certainly · ete — these · jñānī — one who is in knowl- edge · tu — but · ātmā eva — just like Myself · me — My · mataṃ — opinion · āsthitaḥ — situated · saḥ — he · hi — certainly · yuktātmā — engaged in devotional service · māṃ — unto Me · eva — certainly · anuttamāṃ — the highest goal · gatiṃ — destination

7.19

बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते | वासुदेव: सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभ:

bahūnāṃ janmanām ante jñānavānmāṃ prapadyate / vāsudevaḥ sarvamiti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ / / 7.19

After many births and deaths, he who knows Me surrenders to Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare.

bahūnāṃ — many · janmanāṃ — births · ante — after · jñānavān — he possessing knowl- edge · māṃ — unto Me · prapadyate — surrenders · vāsudevaḥ — cause of all causes · sarvaṃ — all · iti — thus · saḥ — such · mahātmā — great soul · sudurlabhaḥ — very rare.

Such a great soul is very rare. Kṛṣṇa now goes deeper. He talks about the Indian community system. Before entering into this subject, I bow down to the system that has been created by the ṛṣis (sages), which has made the whole spiritual science a reality. I bow down to the community system, which kept our scriptures alive, the spiritual science alive. In these modern times, abusing our social system created by the Ṛṣis has become a fashion! Especially in Southern India, abusing the Vedic system and abusing Swāmis has become the trend. If you want to show you are educated or an important person, abuse our Vedic system. You can immediately gain popularity.

Not only have we not understood our vedic system, we have also started disrespecting this great system created by our ancient masters. Please understand, only because of our Ṛṣis and because of the system that they created, Bhārata (India) itself is still alive today, which is the greatest miracle of God. No other culture has survived or lived for such a long time. All other cultures that came into existence after the Indian culture—Babylonian, Roman, Greek, etc.—knew how to fight, how to build empires and big cities in a professional way. They knew how to protect themselves. They were great warriors! Yet they were unable to survive. Today we see only their relics.

These cultures are not alive today. Of the Indian culture, the Indian system, we have at least 10,000 years of recorded history. There’s a beautiful book written by Swami Prakashananda Sarasvati. The book is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the authentic history of religion in Indian culture. According to him, sanātana dharma, the Indian culture is trillions of years old. And we have at least 10,000 years of recorded history of the Indian culture. No other country has been invaded as much as India. India has been invaded again and again by practically every culture, every country. Yet, no country has been invaded by India. India has never invaded any country.

Out of the forty-eight civilizations, which were over 5000 years old on the planet, the Hindu civilization, the vedic culture is the only one civilization that is still alive and flourishing! All the other forty-seven did not survive. Only because of this community system is the Indian culture alive today. Another important thing to understand when we read these things is—‘Man cannot live without creating a community.’ Man is a social animal. He creates some form of community or other. You cannot say that the United States does not have some form of community system. In other countries also the community system is there. However, these community systems are based upon money.

When I went to Brazil, I gave a discourse to a large company called Petrobras. One man asked, ‘How do you justify the community system in Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 523 India? The high caste people look at the low caste people in a disrespectful way. How do you justify this?’ Of course, there are a few issues in Indian culture also. Indians made mistakes in the sense they missed the spirit with which the community system was developed, and started following the letter. Some mistakes happened. That’s true. However, the whole community system cannot be labeled wrong because of a few mistakes. For example, if someone has a tumor in his body, the tumor must be operated on and removed.

You cannot straightaway kill the person! We can’t abandon the whole person because of the tumour. And it is we who committed mistakes, and now we are abusing the whole system. I told him, ‘Yes, one or two mistakes happened. But look at the developed countries or so-called cultured countries. If you enter an airplane and walk to the economy class past the first class, watch the way the first class passengers look at you! Have you observed how passengers in first class look at you? Just by observing, you can see how disrespectfully they look at you.’ Don’t think there is no community or class system in other countries.

In every country, there is a community and class system. The Indian community system The Vedic Ṛṣis at least created the community and caste system based upon intelligence and wisdom. In other cultures, the community system was created based upon money and power. The countries where the rulers are kṣatriyas (warrior class), are the ones who create the community system based upon power. The more powerful a person is, the more respected he is. In other countries, people who do business, the business class people, control the whole system. There the the wealthy people are respected more. Indiaistheonlycountrywherepeoplewhorespectedintelligenceand wisdom created the whole system. The system was created based upon intelligence, based upon wisdom.

So that is why, in India, the more wisdom a person carries, the more spiritual he is, he more he is respected. The whole social system was created based upon sharing from an enriching consciousness. Understand, you can create anything only when you see it and experience it from the state of enriching consciousness. Man must contribute something to enrich the community by doing actions in the enriching state. Let me describe the spirit with which the whole system was created, and how we abused it. First, the whole system is not based upon our birth. It is based upon our character. Kṛṣṇa says again and again that it is based upon our guṇas (nature), based upon our attitude towards life.

A person who works driven by fear, one who works out of fear, belongs to the working class called śūdra. A person who works out of greed, belongs to the merchant or business class called vaiśya. A person who works to get attention or to prove that he is superior, belongs to the kṣatriya community. A person who works out of gratitude from the enriching consciousness, expressing his bliss, is a brāhmaṇa. This was how people were categorized in those days. Everybody must contribute something to enrich the society. A person may enrich by sharing his time if he has nothing else. A person who shares his time is a worker, a śūdra.

He belongs to the working class. A person who enriches by sharing products, has time and a little bit of intelligence to create products, is a vaiśya, a merchant. A person who enriches by sharing confidence, who gives courage to the whole community, is a kṣatriya, a warrior! He unites the whole group as a community in a solid way by giving confidence, by sharing his confidence. A person who enriches by sharing his knowledge, bliss or spiritual wisdom, is a brāhmaṇa. This type of division is completely based upon our role, the role we play in the community, which is based upon our character. In no way is it related to our birth.

This is the spirit with which the whole system was created by the Ṛṣis. Here nobody is higher and nobody is lower. In the course of time, one or two mistakes happened. But because of that we can’t say that the whole system is wrong. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 525 caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjuna I ārto jijñasurartharthī jñānī ca bharataṛṣabha II 7.16 ‘O best among the Bhārata, four kinds of pious men begin to render devotional service unto Me: the distressed, the desirer of wealth, the inquisitive, and he who searches for knowledge of the Absolute.’ Here Kṛṣṇa talks about those who approach the Divine and the ways in which they approach the Divine.

Man is centered on seven basic emotions. Basically we live and work based on these seven emotions: greed, fear, worry, attention-need (name and fame), comparison and jealousy, ego and the last one, the seventh emotion, deep discontentment. These are the qualities with which man lives and he works. Man is centered on these seven different emotions. These seven emotions are seven energy centers that supply energy to us, fuel for us. Everything that we do in life is rooted in one of these seven emotions. If we are centered on greed, we approach God in the same way. Goddess Lakṣmi (goddess of wealth) appeals to us. Or we continuously run behind Kubera (Lord of wealth) and perform Kubera pūjā (worship of Kubera); we continuously repeat the concept of Kubera.

When we feel we are missing something, we try to get fulfillment by creating our own God and approaching Him in that mold. We approach the Divine with the same emotion, the same feeling that we miss in our being. One more thing: When we become mature, we approach the same Lakṣmi as Jñāna Lakṣmi (goddess of wisdom as wealth)! We pray to the same goddess to give us wisdom, to give us knowledge. According to our maturity we project and see the Divine. Understand, there’s nothing wrong in approaching the Lord from greed. There’s nothing wrong in starting our life with prayers for boons. However, we should not end our life also with prayers.

Then there is something wrong. It’s a good start, but a bad end! Vivekananda beautifully says, ‘It’s good to be born in the church, but not to die there.’ Before we die, we should grow out of it. We must become mature; we must realize the other dimensions of the Divine within us. In prayer, we pray to God; in meditation, we become God! Prayers give us immediate results. Praying to that higher principle or to the Divine is not wrong, yet it is not enough. Whereas in meditation, we become that higher principle or the Divine to which we constantly pour out our prayers. This is permanent. The Divine is nothing but a mirror; we see our own reflection.

And whatever we do to the Divine comes back to us. The more we understand, the more we grow and relate with the Divine in a more mature way. Otherwise we are confused and caught like a drunkard. A small story: A man returns home very late, completely drunk. Unable to walk, he somehow makes his way into the house, stumbles over a table and breaks a piece of glass. Not only does he break a piece of glass, the glass cuts him badly. He goes to the bathroom and tries to bandage himself, looking in the mirror. Then slowly, without making a sound, he enters the bedroom and falls asleep.

The next morning, his wife starts her enquiry, ‘What happened? What did you do last night?’ Hereplies,‘Ididn’tdoanything.Iamok.’ Thewifesays,‘No,tellme whyyouwerelate.’ He says, ‘I went and had a few drinks.’ She says, ‘That’s ok, but didyouhurtyourself?’ He replies, ‘No, I did not hurt myself.’ She asks, ‘Then why did you put so many bandages on the mirror?’ Instead of putting the bandages on himself, he put the bandages on the mirror! If we are drunk, if we are unaware, we land up doing the same thing! We would do everything to the mirror. Catching the mirror and catching the form is one and the same. If we put the bandage on the mirror, we can never be healed.

The mirror should be used to find out where to put the bandage on us. In the same way, we should use God or the Divine like a Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 527 mirror to find out where we have a problem. Don’t miss and try to do the healing work on the mirror. If we do that we will miss the whole thing. So be very clear: Starting life with prayers is a good start, but it is not the right place to end. We choose God based on our Emotions At the next level, the person is centered on fear and so he worships gods who will protect him.

He does the Sudarśana homa (homa refers to making offerings into a consecrated fire; Sudarśana homa refers to the fire ritual done for general protection), or he continuously does Mṛtyuñjaya homa (fire ritual done to avoid untimely death, improve longevity) for protection. He continuously goes about worshipping some planet or god. That’s why tribal gods have big swords. In many Indian villages also, you see gods with swords and big weapons. People who are fear-centered worship gods with weapons. All this is ok, nothing wrong, but it is not the place to stop. The third level is, approaching the Divine because of worry. Again, worry is nothing but mixture of fear and greed.

With worry, we approach the Divine in the same way. We pray to the Divine, ‘Please help me stop worrying. Please help me come out of these worries.’ At this point, we may do yoga or meditation for the sake of peace—not for spiritual Enlightenment, but to calm our mind, to get a little peace. The next level is based on attention-need. We approach the Divine for the sake of name and fame, for the sake of capturing the attention of people. Not only do we pray to the Divine, we gradually start representing the Divine also. If you go to India, you will see that the people who run temples behave almost like God.

It’s a big problem. I tell people: Unless you are mature, never take up the task of running a temple. One person asked me, ‘I don’t believe in spirituality. But, I want to run a temple as a social service. Shall I do it?’ I told him, ‘Never make that mistake! If you are not spiritually mature and you enter this work, surelyyouwilltroubleyourselfandothers.Byandby,itwillbecomeapure name-and-fame game! And naturally you will not only hurt yourself, you will hurt others too.’ There’s a beautiful ritual performed during the installation of a deity in a temple, called prāṇa pratiṣṭha. The scriptural instruction is that the person who installs the deity must be enlightened. Otherwise, the person who installs the deity receives the collective negativity of the people who pray in that temple.

It may be a frightening idea, but don’t think it’s a lie. It has meaning. The person who takes up this job without spiritual maturity will naturally end up with name and fame problems. He creates problems for himself and others. He starts representing the Divine and acts on behalf of the Divine. The people who stand and pray in front of God, the deity, are gullible because they are caught in fear and greed. You can easily exploit them. They are waiting for a solution. That is the reason why repeatedly, it is emphasized that only an enlightened person should run a spiritual organization. If we give a spiritual project to a person who has only the attitude of a businessman, he turns the whole thing into a business.

The Divine cannot be brought under accounts and mathematical calculations! The whole thing loses its spirit. That is why Masters emphasize that we need spiritual maturity before we enter into these activities. The next is comparison and jealousy. This is an extreme step. People always compare with others, and they feel jealous of the others’ position, their status or their wealth. A person who compares and feels jealous can never rest. Look into what makes us run in our lives. Why are we in a hurry? Listen, don’t be in a hurry! We don’t need to run. If we are centered on jealousy and comparison, again we approach the Divine from that angle and only for that purpose.

Expressing the Divine It is hard to imagine the extent of foolishness people go to if they are caught in jealousy and comparison. One is constantly caught in: this is mine; that is mine; this is the way I do it, etc. We need to realize that each of us is unique. God is not an engineer; He is an artist. He sculpts each Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 529 of us with His hands, lovingly and uniquely. Therefore, each one of us is different. When we approach the Divine with the mentality of jealousy and comparison, we are caught again. People ask me, ‘Swamiji, in our epics, we read about gods and goddesses fighting out of jealousy, greed, and anger.

What do you say about that?’ Listen, those epics were written for people caught in jealousy, so that they could relate with them. Don’t think that the Divine makes those mistakes! But if people think so, it means that they are relating with Him in their own mold! Even rituals are done only so that people feel comfortable with God and they start coming closer to Him. When people witness the ceremony of Gods getting married, they feel comfortable and safe. To make people feel relaxed, these stories are told and expressed. You see, unless the Divine is expressed in our language, we will not be able to relate with It.

That is why these stories are written. Next is the person who is centered on ego. This is slightly more difficult to deal with! The person who is centered on ego tries to get name and fame for himself. He starts claiming that he is divine without expressing the qualities of the Divine. That is why there’s a beautiful Upaniṣad verse that says: If you are divine, express it by your quality. Let people recognize it by your quality, not by your words. What you do speaks for you; what you speak will not do anything for you. What you do, the way in which you work, speaks for you.

Your words will not work for you. There’s a short, beautiful Upaniṣad called Paramahamsa Upaniṣad. It says, a Paramahamsa should not wear the saffron robe. Actually, technically speaking, I am not supposed to wear this saffron robe. They say we are not respected the way we have to be if we wear this saffron robe. By our very quality, because of our Divinity, we should be respected. The divine qualities expressed in our life, that alone should be respected, and not this robe or tradition. It should come because of the enlightened qualities expressed through us. Yesterday there was a question: How do we know if a person is egoistic or he is a real spiritual Master?

Please listen. A person who is egoistic can only play with words. Only a person who has achieved Enlightenment can radiate the energy to reproduce the same experience in you. If you get the experience, then be very clear your Master is enlightened. He is divine. He is the embodiment of spiritual experience and knowledge. If you get the words but not the experience, be very clear, the person or the path you are following is not the Ultimate. Words are like the menu card. Experience is like the food. If you go to a restaurant and they give you a menu card and say, ‘Here is the menu card, but the food is not available here,’ can you call that a restaurant?

No! The menu card is not enough to satisfy your hunger. In spiritual life we cannot stop with just the menu card. The person who has approached the Divine with ego always tries to represent the Divine without having the solid experience himself. That is why the Upaniṣads again and again emphasize experience. If we don’t experience, there’s something seriously wrong with the person whom we are following. I always tell people, if you have not experienced anything with me, please follow some other person. It is easy to put the responsibility on the disciples and continuously blame them by saying: ‘You are not qualified, you are not practicing perfectly, you have not tried, and that is why you have not had any experience.’

This is a cunning way of cheating the disciple and evading the truth. The disciple comes to a Guru because the disciple has not yet experienced. And the Guru says, ‘You are imperfect and that is why you do not have spiritual experiences.’ To learn this, one doesn’t need a Guru: a spouse is sufficient! Anyway, this is what the spouses tell each other continuously. A true Master will reproduce in you the same experience that happened in him, no matter what your condition is. I am enlightened only if you can experience my enlightenment, not otherwise. Aim directly at the Divine. The person who approaches the Divine with ego gets everything and Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 531 boosts his own ego.

He never surrenders to the Divine. His ego becomes stronger by getting all the knowledge. Be very clear, these are the most dangerous people. Instead of surrendering their ego to the Divine, they strengthen their ego with their knowledge. Listen. Knowledge can be used in two ways. With this knowledge, you can surrender to the Divine; or with this knowledge, you can make others surrender to you! It is up to you how you use it. When we approach the Divine with ego, instead of surrendering our ego, we strengthen our ego with knowledge. Approach Me with Gratitude The next level is the ultimate level. In this level, we go to the Divine with the attitude of gratitude, with the ultimate gratitude.

Here, the whole relationship takes a different turn. We feel so grateful, so deeply connected to the Divine, that our whole life changes. We move from the first level of greed, where we pray to boon-giving gods, to the next level of fear where the gods who can protect us appeal to us. The next is worry. Buddha appeals to us if we are centered on worry because he appears to be so peaceful and calm. To the person who is centered on name and fame, gods who give name and fame appeal the most. In the same way as with gods, people also approach Masters from all these various levels.

I have seven kinds of people who approach me: One, people who approach me out of greed; two, people who approach me out of fear; three, people who approach me out of worry; four, people who approach me for name and fame; five, people who approach me out of jealousy and comparison; six, people who approach me out of ego, to strengthen their ego by saying, ‘I am a disciple of Paramahamsa Nithyananda. I am close to him. He knows my name.’ Just to have ego satisfaction they come to me; finally, seven—there are a few, very few who approach me out of gratitude. There’s one more problem with people who approach me out of greed.

Not only do they have greed, they also have their own ideas and fantasies about a Master. They come with a frame and see whether I fit into that frame or not. Also, I face a big problem because of my young age. Let me narrate to you an incident that happened in our India ashram: One day I was sitting alone at outdoors in the ashram, without my turban. I was sitting there on a small rock, enjoying the cool breeze. One well-read, elderly scholar came to me and asked, ‘I want to meet Swamiji. Where is he?’ I told him, ‘Please go and sit in the Ananda Sabha (meditation hall).

He will come in half an hour’s time.’ He went and sat in the meditation hall. He went and sat in the hall. After half an hour, I wore my turban and went there and was about to take my seat. This man said, ‘No! I want to meet the big Swamiji. I want to meet Guruji (master).’ Isaid,‘Pleaseforgiveme.InthisashramIamtheSwami.Whom doyouwanttomeet?’ He said, ‘I have heard about Paramahamsa Nithyananda. He healed my cousin. I want to see him.’ Then I told him his cousin’s name and the disease he had and that I had healed him. I told him, ‘I am Paramahamsa Nithyananda.’ You will be surprised; he was not ready to believe me.

He just stared at me. Then I said, ‘Usually, Swamis don’t carry any identity card in India. Still, if you don’t believe me, look at that photograph (on ashram signboard). See the name, and see that face. I am that Swami!’ You will be surprised! I tell you, this is the truth. He said, ‘I am not ready to learn from you.’ He did not speak to me, and also went away. Because of his strong fantasies and imagination about what a Guru should be like, he was not able to even relate with me! When we have such strong fantasy or imagination about things, we will not be able to relate with reality.

It is the same with fear; people who Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 533 come with fear will never be able to get rid of that fear. They will be stuck with that because fear itself is a fantasy. At different levels, people approach the Master or God. The more mature we are, the more we will feel connected to that person who will give us fulfillment. When we become mature, when we are above fear and greed, we will approach the same Master, the same God, with more maturity, with more intimacy. We will feel deeply connected to him. In Bhāgavatam (Hindu epic glorifying devotion onto incarnations), we learn about five different attitudes with which we normally relate with a Master or God: 1) Dāsa Bhāva—seeing God as a lord or master and oneself as a servant, as with Hanumān who saw Rāma as his master and served Him as a path for liberation.

2. Vātsalya Bhāva—seeing God as a divine child, as with Yaśodā who saw Kṛṣṇa as her son. 3) Sakha Bhāva—seeing God or the master as a friend, the way Arjuna related with Kṛṣṇa. 4) Mātṛ Bhāva—seeing God or the master as a father or mother, the way Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa related with goddess Kāli (representation of the divine mother). 5) Finally, the fifth attitude is madhura bhāva—seeing God as a beloved, the way Radhā saw Kṛṣṇa. This attitude needs a tremendous amount of maturity. Only if we experience the consciousness which is beyond the body, can we relate with the Divine with the attitude of a beloved, madhura bhāva. These are the five different bhāvas (attitudes or feeling connection) with which people relate with the Divine.

With different maturity levels, different attitudes suit our minds. The more mature we are, the more the gratitude happens. The less the maturity, the more we fill our life with prayers. Prayer is greed; confession is fear! That is why I say, ‘Gratitude is the greatest prayer, and thank you, the greatest mantra.’ When we go beyond prayer and confession, we experience gratitude. We experience the Divine. Kṛṣṇa explains how we can grow step-by-step, how we can reach the ultimate maturity, how we can create and experience the Divine at the ultimate level. Let us see how Kṛṣṇa explains the process step-by-step. What is the technique Kṛṣṇa offers us to grow in maturity and experience eternal consciousness?

Based on how we approach the Divine, only based on how mature we are, the whole community system has been created. How much we enrich and share with society depends on how mature we are. With the same maturity, we approach God also. If we feel money is missing in our lives, we go to the God who gives money. If we miss knowledge, we go to Sarasvatī (the goddess of knowledge), who gives knowledge. If we feel insecure, we go to the god who protects us; we go to Mother Durgā or Kāli. If we miss spiritual experience, the ultimate experience, then we go to the divine incarnations, the ultimate expressions of the Divine.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Four types of people come to Me—caturvidhā bhajante māṁ ’ He explains the four types as four communities. The first are the people who are distressed, i.e., the working class or śūdra. The second are the people who desire wealth, i.e., the business people or vaiśya. The third are inquisitive people who continuously enquire, continuously ask, ‘Tataḥ kim? Tataḥ kim? Tataḥ kim?’ (What next?) A kṣatriya, for example, never rests because he constantly asks, ‘What next? What next? What next?’ The fourth is the person who searches for knowledge of the Absolute: He is a brāhmaṇa. ‘All four come to Me, all four reach Me, but from different levels.’

From different levels all four go to the same God, but they will not experience Him in the same way. They experience Him in different ways, according to their maturity. As long as you are caught in fear or greed, you will be attracted and go only to those types of gods. It is easy to go to a temple and pray, but difficult to go to a living Master and meditate. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 535 It is for mature people, not for everyone In the temple we see thousands; but in spiritual places, we see a few hundred. It is not for all; it’s a luxury!

Spirituality is a Luxury Spirituality is a luxury; only a few intelligent people can afford it! The price of spirituality is the limit of our suffering! Only if we have had enough suffering can we afford to get into spirituality. It is only for people who have understood that they have suffered. There are two things: It is not only the suffering, but the understanding that we suffer. This understanding is what I call intelligence. This intelligence happens even beyond age and experience. Just a glimpse of life is enough if this intelligence is there; we will understand how suffering happens and we will not get caught in it! Both—the suffering and the understanding—are needed to enter into spiritual life.

‘The person who approaches Me out of love and gratitude, is the best person, for I am dear to him and he is dear to Me.’ By this one verse, Kṛṣṇa ends the whole conversation, the whole concept. teṣāṁ jñānī nitya yukta eka-bhaktir viśiṣyate I priyo hi jñānino ‘tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ II 7.17 Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Starting at different levels is ok, but don’t stop there.’ We can start or take off from any level. However we should not stop and stagnate there. It is like failing to proceed to the second standard from the first. It is as if we want to stay in the same cozy, familiar level.

It takes many lifetimes to understand and achieve this maturity. When I say it takes many lives, some think, ‘Let me take some more lives and become mature.’ Now, that’s a big problem. Whenever we speak, we must make things very clear, otherwise you can’t imagine how many different ways people will interpret it! A small story: Once, a great scholar recounted the story of Hariścandra. Most people in India know the story of Hariścandra, a king who lived to uphold the truth with integrity and authenticity, and sold his wife for the sake of the truth. Just to keep his promise, he sold his wife. Such was his greatness.

The scholar narrated the whole story. After narrating the story, he asked one person, ‘What did you understand from this story?’ The person said, ‘Master, I understood that truth is the most important thing in life. We should give up everything for the sake of the truth. Truth is the ultimate.’ The scholar was pleased. He asked the next person, ‘What did you understand?’ The man said, ‘Master, I understood that in an emergency, it is ok to sell your wife.’ From the same story, two people have two different understandings! So be very clear, don’t miss the understanding. A common saying is, ‘As many Masters, so many paths.’ However I say, ‘As many disciples, so many paths!’

The Master may utter the same truth to his disciples, yet each understands and interprets in his or her own way. They all approach the Divine, but from different planes. Hence the attitude, the context with which one approaches matters how one experiences the Divine. Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Out of these, the wise is always devoted to Me. He is the best person.’ To start with, you can start at any level, yet you must strive to reach the Ultimate. And please don’t think, ‘Oh! Kṛṣṇa says it will take many lives; let me take some more lives and become mature.’ No! If you can enter into the knowledge this moment, the experience can happen to you this very moment.

You don’t need to postpone. Every moment is a new birth for you and every moment is death. The outgoing breath is death, and the incoming breath is birth. So be very clear, every moment you die and take birth. This moment can be a new birth for you. The person who understands this truth takes a new birth. He is called dvijā. A person who is initiated is called dvijā in Saṃskrit, which means twice-born or reborn. All Sannyāsis are twice-born or dvijā. ‘Reborn’ does not refer to being reborn physically, but at the being level. They give Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 537 birth to themselves. So understand that in this moment, a new birth can happen to you.

He Is Very Dear To Me Kṛṣṇa says: ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ—He is dear to Me, and I am dear to him. He is in Me and I am in him. Kṛṣṇa says beautifully that He is in you and you are in Him. The moment you understand this ultimate Truth, the moment you approach the Divine with the right attitude, you become the Divine. All you need to do is change your attitude. Over! Change your inner space and the whole thing is done. Please listen, one important thing. The Master or the Divine is in you only when you engage yourself in enriching service to Him. Sitting in front of the Master or the Divine, just enjoying the form, is not the enriching service Kṛṣṇa talks about.

Then you are only chasing Him from a purely selfish motive. When you devote yourself to the divine mission, you become a devotee. That is when you become dear to Him. Your worship is no longer selfish. It is towards the mission of the Divine, in whatever form. I tell my followers: Stop sitting in front of me, gazing and waiting for words to drop. Work for my mission. Enrich yourself and others by helping me to transform people. As long as you sit and gaze, you chase me. When you work for my mission, I chase you. I shall always be with you. Here Kṛṣṇa says clearly, ‘one who knows Me, dwells in Me.

Being engaged in My mission, he attains Me, āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim (7.18).’ When the scriptures say, ‘Follow the Master,’ they do not mean to follow the form. They advise you to follow the teachings of the Master, so that you can be the master too. They tell you to follow the institution of the Master, his community, his sanga. When we follow these three, the Master, his teachings and his mission, we are on the path to liberation. Only after many births and deaths can we relate to an enlightened person. We will not be able to relate to an Enlightened Master unless we undergo many births and deaths.

I told you about the seven steps in spiritual progress—1) go around many temples, perform many rituals, pilgrimages, etc. 2) do rituals by yourself 3) concentrate and pray to one God 4) instead of rituals, chant verses in praise of God 5) instead of chanting, visualize His form and meditate upon it 6) instead of meditating on any form, fall into that same consciousness, realize that the form and your soul are one and the same, that God and the soul are one and the same 7) experience reality! Don’t think these seven steps will be done in one lifetime. People take hundreds of lives to achieve this maturity. It is rare to achieve this maturity.

Kṛṣṇa says: sa mahātmā sūdurlabhaḥ (7.19)—indeed, very rare is it to see such great souls who have achieved that maturity. It is easy to relate with gods in the temple because they don’t demand discipline or purity from us. We can pray to Him, do whatever we want, and think He has blessed us and go away. However, relating with a living enlightened Master is difficult. People ask me, ‘Why do Masters become popular after their death?’ This is because it is easy to cheat ourselves with a photograph. We can do whatever we want and project everything as His blessings. And most importantly, we don’t have to give up our ego with dead Masters.

Connecting with dead Masters is easy because they don’t demand our ego. We don’t need to surrender. That is why there will be large crowds with dead Masters and temples. Sometimes we sit beneath that photograph and represent the Master. But this whole game is nothing but an ego fulfilling game. But with a living enlightened Master, we need to transform our life. We need to experience the truth. He will not let us sleep or rest. He will haunt us until we realize the truth. He will not let us do what we want. He will not fulfill our ego. I always tell people, ‘Dead masters are dead. The living Master is death!’

The living Master will be death for us, death for our ego. We cannot play our games with him. We must grow and become mature beings. We cannot play the same old game and put his name in front. He shakes us. He awakens us. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 539 Living Master Is A Nightmare, SiṂha Svapna! Living Masters are nightmares. That is why people are afraid to come near a living Master. We can’t play the same game with him. The game will be his! He is the director. Only a person who has understood, after many, many births and deaths, who has matured, who has enough knowledge, surrenders to Me, surrenders to the living Master, says Kṛṣṇa.

In India, especially in Tamil Nadu, kids play with wooden dolls. For one doll, they will drape a sāri and say, ‘This is mother.’ They will dress another in a dhoti and call it father, then brother, and so on. They say, ‘Mother is cooking. Father is going to office,’ and place the father doll in a small car. And then, they will say, ‘Sister is going to school.’ They will make cry sounds as though the sister cries not wanting to go to school. This seems like a game for kids. But please understand, you play the same game too in your life. You catch somebody and say, ‘You are my mother, you are my father, you are my wife, you are my husband, you are my son, and you are my brother.’

And if that doll doesn’t behave according to your frame or your image, you say, ‘It’s not a good doll,’ and you throw it away and cry. In the same way, when somebody doesn’t behave according to your frame, you feel they hurt you. You want all the people in your life to play their role the way you want them to play. When that doesn’t happen, you feel hurt. Then, suddenly, you die. You leave the body. When you go to another place, in your next birth, you again catch one more set of dolls and start the same game. Sometimes you bring dolls into the game, sometimes you throw dolls out of the game, sometimes you fire and sometimes you pamper them.

If you don’t have enough dolls, you get some cats or dogs to play with. Again and again, you play the same game. Only a person who is a little mature thinks, ‘What am I doing? How many times will I do this same psychodrama?’ Please listen! The whole thing is a psychodrama! Whether it is a relationship, or whether it is life itself, it is nothing but a psychodrama. You have an agenda. Society has taught you that, as a father, as a husband, or as a son, you should behave in a certain pre-defined manner. The person who understands that he is playing the same drama again and again, has achieved knowledge, the real intelligence about what is happening.

Then naturally you surrender. You surrender unto Me, asserts Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘One who understands that the cause of all causes is Me, realizes the ultimate divine. He realizes thus, ‘How many times will I play the same drama? How many times will I make the same mistakes?’ Until this realization, the whole thing is repeated again and again without end, without the experience.’ ‘The person who has understood, who has knowledge of this truth, surrenders unto Me, surrenders to the Master, an enlightened being— jñānavān māṁ prapadyate, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all there is. Such a great soul is rare—vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sūdurlabhaḥ (7.19).’

Only a person who has achieved this knowledge sees and relates with the Master in the real sense. There’s a beautiful verse that says, ‘Even if you have seen an enlightened Master once, you will become enlightened.’ Some people ask me, ‘Why haven’t I become enlightened yet, Swamiji?’ Be very clear, ‘Never think that you are seeing me; never think that by seeing through your eyes, you can see the Divine. You can see my form, but not me. Even if you have seen many Enlightened Masters, never think that you have seen them.’ The attitude or the space from which you have seen them plays a major role. If you went to them with fear or greed, you went to a demigod and not to an enlightened Master.

Only if you go with an attitude of love and gratitude, with maturity, only then do you see a living enlightened Master. The moment you see an enlightened being as He is, you will become enlightened. There’s no doubt about it. I Am In Your Heart

7.20

कामैस्तैस्तैर्हृतज्ञाना: प्रपद्यन्तेऽन्यदेवता: | तं तं नियममास्थाय प्रकृत्या नियता: स्वया

kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante’nyadevatāḥ / taṃ taṃ niyamamāsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā / / 7.20

Those whose discrimination has been distorted by various desires, surrender unto deities. They follow specific rules and regulations of worship according to their own nature.

kāmaiḥ — by desires · taiḥ — by those · taiḥ — by those · hṛta — distorted · jñānāḥ — knowledge · prapadyante — surrender · anya — other · devatāḥ — deities · taṃ-taṃ — that · niyamaṃ — rules · āsthāya — following · prakṛtyā — by nature · niyatāḥ — con- trolled · svayā — by their own.

7.21

यो यो यां यां तनुं भक्त: श्रद्धयार्चितुमिच्छति | तस्य तस्याचलां श्रद्धां तामेव विदधाम्यहम्

yo yo yāṃ yāṃ tanuṃ bhaktaḥ śraddhayārcitumicchati / tasya tasyācalāṃ śraddhāṃ tāmeva vidadhāmyaham / / 7.21

I am in everyone’s heart as the super soul. As soon as one desires to worship some deity, I make his faith steady so that he can devote himself to that particular deity.

yaḥ — that · yaḥ — that · yāṃ — which · yāṃ — which · tanuṃ — form of the deities · bhaktaḥ — devotee · śraddhayā — with faith · arcituṃ — to worship · icchati — desires · tasya — of that · tasya — of that · acalāṃ — steady · śraddhāṃ — faith · tāṃ — him · eva — surely · vidadhāmi — give · ahaṃ — I

7.22

स तया श्रद्धया युक्तस्तस्याराधनमीहते | लभते च तत: कामान्मयैव विहितान्हि तान्

sa tayā śraddhayā yuktas tasyārādhanamīhate / labhate ca tataḥ kāmān mayaiva vihitānhi tān / / 7.22

Endowed with such a faith, he endeavors to worship a particular demigod and obtains his desires; In reality, these benefits are granted by Me alone.

saḥ — he · tayā — with that · śraddhayā — with faith · yuktaḥ — endowed · tasya — his · ārādhanaṃ — worship · īhate — endeavors · labhate — obtains · ca — and · tataḥ — from that · kāmān — desires · mayā — by Me · eva — alone · vihitān — bestowed · hi — for · tān — those.

7.23

अन्तवत्तु फलं तेषां तद्भवत्यल्पमेधसाम् | देवान्देवयजो यान्ति मद्भक्ता यान्ति मामपि

antavattu phalaṃ teṣāṃ tadbhavatyalpamedhasām / devāndevayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti māmapi / / 7.23

Men of limited intelligence worship the demigods and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go only to the planets of the demigods, but My devotees reach My supreme planet.

antavat tu — limited and temporary · phalaṃ — fruits · teṣāṃ — their · tat — that · bhavati — becomes · alpa medhasāṃ — of those of small intelligence · devān — demigods’ planets · devayajaḥ — worshipers of demigods · yānti — achieve · mad — My · bhaktāḥ — devotees · yānti — attain · māṃ — to Me · api — surely

He says: I am in everyone’s heart as the Paramātman (super soul). As soon as one desires to worship a particular deity, I make his faith steady so that he can devote himself to that particular deity. Please understand that when He says ‘deity’ or ‘demigod’, He doesn’t mean the Supreme. Even if you approach Kṛṣṇa out of fear or greed, you approach only a demigod. When He says the word demigod, He means the attitude with which we approach the Divine; how we approach the Divine. With the right approach, even if you approach a demigod, he will be supreme! He will give you enlightenment. With the wrong approach, even if you approach Kṛṣṇa, you will have only material benefits.

There is a beautiful Līlā, happening of a divine play from Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa’s life. A rich man prayed to Kṛṣṇa to become a king. Twice a day, morning and evening he repeated, ‘Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa.’ He always asked Kṛṣṇa thus, ‘Kṛṣṇa, please give me a kingdom. Kṛṣṇa, I want to become a king.’ There was another poor lady, who had only one cow. With that milk she made a little butter and some sweets and offered it to Kṛṣṇa. The whole day she sat and chanted Kṛṣṇa’s name. Suddenly one day Kṛṣṇa appeared and responded to both of them. This man, who had asked for a kingdom, became a king. And in the case of this lady who prayed everyday toKṛṣṇa, her cow died.

Nārada asked Kṛṣṇa, ‘What is this, Kṛṣṇa? That man who repeats your name only twice a day has been made a king by you. This lady who remembers you 24 hours a day, got deprived of her only cow. What is this? Is it fair?’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘That man only wants the kingdom. He came to Me only for that. I am a utility to him. So I blessed him with what he wants. But for her, I was her whole life. There was only one small hindrance, only one thing that stood between her and Me, and that was the cow! I took that away. I removed that hindrance also.

Now she has come to Me and completely become Me!’ Whatever our approach to the Divine is, it plays an important role in our spiritual progress. If we approach Kṛṣṇa out of fear or greed, we worship a demigod. But Kṛṣṇa says we are not wrong, but just that it is not enough. Kṛṣṇa is not here to discourage us. Understand, nothing is wrong, but it is not enough, it is not complete. That is not the place to stop. It is a good place to have a visa, but not to have a green card or citizenship. Here, the planets or palaces of demigods are good places to visit, but not the right place to stay.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Because I am in everyone’s heart as the super soul, the Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 543 moment you desire to worship some demigod, I shall make your faith steady, so you can devote yourself to that particular deity.’ Stages of Seeking Let me describe how a seeker usually travels through all these paths and eventually reaches. When you start as a normal seeker, you hear about all kinds of rituals. You hear that a particular pūjā (worship), a particular homa (fire ritual) will give some specific benefit, and you starts doing these things. On Friday, you fast for Devi (the divine mother), on Saturday, you fast for Bālāji (another name for Lord Viṣṇu), on Sunday you fast for some other god, on Monday you fast for Śiva, on Tuesday for Skanda (Lord Subrahmanya), on Thursday for the Guru (the master), and so on.

This is the way it starts. Then slowly, you not only go to all these pūjās and homas, you also go to many different temples. After some time, you understand that these rituals and trips to the temples are too much. Then you think, ‘Why let somebody else do these things for me? Let me directly do it and relate with the Divine.’ You start your own temple in your own home. You engage in worship. This happens when you become a little mature. You think that you should feel directly connected to the Divine. ‘Let me do it by myself,’ you think. The first level in spirituality is going around visiting all the temples, watching all the types of offerings.

The second level is doing it yourself. The third level is realizing, ‘The Divine is there in all the gods, in all the forms. But I think I feel more attracted towards this one god, this particular god. So let me concentrate on worshipping the Divine in this form.’ Having one form and offering only to that form is iśṭa niṣṭa. This is the third level. The fourth level happens when you think, ‘More than these types of offerings, sounds imbued with energy is more powerful. Let me chant the sacred verses.’ Understand: surrendering through the body is pūjā; surrendering through words is japa, chanting verses in praise of the Lord; surrendering through the mind is jñāna, wisdom or knowledge of the Self.

So here you think, ‘Why not chant the name of God?’ You start repeating the name of your favorite deity. At every level of completion, different gods appeal to you; at every level, different Gurus or masters appeal to you, and you grow in your feeling connection or devotion with them. When you are at the level of going to pilgrimage places, people who guide you to these pilgrimage centers appeal to you. When you come to the level of pūjā and homā, other people who also do these rituals appeal to you! The person who teaches you pūjā appeals and connects to you. Even the people who teach you any skills like dancing, acting, martial arts, or even those who educate you in your studies and profession, they connect to you.

The pūjā ācarya or anyone who teaches and inspires you becomes your guru. Next, when you come to the level of completion where you begin focusing and offering to only one deity, the deity becomes your guru. This is iśṭa niṣṭa. Iśṭa niṣṭa means bowing down, revering only your iśṭa, your chosen deity. Wherever you bow down, even if you bow down to your father or mother, you should know that I bow down to my iśṭa who is in your heart—your ānanda gandha. Next, after some time you think, ‘Why only repeat this verse? Why not do some meditation?’ Now the person who teaches you meditation appeals to you.

Meditation is again saguṇa brahman, which means meditating on a form. This is Līlā dhyāna, the next level of completion or next space of iśṭa niṣṭa. Līlā dhyāna means strongly feeling connected to your own version of your chosen ideal. You are free to choose your ideal in Hindu tradition. You can choose your own Guru. You need to understand, living with your chosen ideal is called iśṭa niṣṭa. Līlā dhyāna means constantly remembering the actions and the life of your chosen ideal and being immersed in the qualities, words, actions, body language and life of the Master; whatever you may be doing, being totally immersed in Him. Understand, you may accept all divine beings.

It is not that you will not go to Viṣṇu temple or Devi temple, but if you are connected to Śiva, Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 545 if you have chosen Śiva as your ideal, you will know only He is your ideal. Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahamsa gives a very beautiful example of iśṭa niṣṭa. A woman in the house will serve everybody. She will serve the brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband’s elder brother, younger brother, sister’s husband; she will serve everyone, give them food and take care of them. But she knows her personal space is only for her husband! Same way, you may bow down in front of any god, any deity, any guru, but you know you are bowing down only to your Guru in these forms.

Living with God­ —Levels of Completion Listen, I am defining Līlā Dhyāna. Līlā dhyāna means being lost in the pastimes of the guru or god. With god, one thing is that you may not be directly involved in the whole līlā. So you have to remember, remember and try to practice. With a living Guru, you are directly part of the divine play. So, you don’t need to try to remember, remember; He will be remembering you! He will be remembering you! This is called līlā dhyāna. Even if you are afraid that he is going to shout at you, it is līlā dhyāna. Listen! Practicing the presence of God is constantly feeling you are with Him, He is with you.

Practicing the presence of God is the greatest, most powerful technique to put you in bhāva samādhi immediately. Bhagavān Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa did it; Bhagavān Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi also practiced it. You know you are bowing down only to your chosen ideal, Iśṭa niṣṭa. Same way, if your chosen ideal is Śiva, or Devi, or Kṛṣṇa, even if you bow down to me, you should bow down to me as an embodiment of your chosen ideal. And, if your chosen ideal is me, then even if you bow down to anybody else, you should bow down to them only as an embodiment of me. That isiśṭa niṣṭa. Practicing the presence of God, Līlā dhyāna, and Iśṭa niṣṭa, all the three boil down to the same space, space of bhāva samādhi.

I tell my disciples to practice Iśṭa niṣṭa, with the whole Existence cognizing—‘I bow down to Nithyananda who is in your ānanda gandha; whether he is awakened or not, whether you experience or not, He is there in your ānanda gandha. If you are initiated into ānanda gandha, you will also experience him. If not, you may not experience, but I can experience. I bow down to Nithyananda who is in your ānanda gandha.’ Understand, ānanda gandha is a nādi, a subtle cosmic energy center just below anāhata cakra (heart center) and above maṅipūraka cakra (stomach center), which is awakened only by an Incarnation. The Inner Awakening program participants are initiated into ānanda gandha and they become Nithya Spiritual healers as the channels of Cosmic energy transmitting healing to the world.

Listen! What you are carrying in the ānanda gandha will become reality. Please understand, your ānanda gandha is the source of your life. Just like any slide kept in front of projector light becomes reality, any truth kept in front of your inner space, your ānanda gandha becomes a reality. I have seen so many people, ordinary village men and women in India, living with their chosen ideal and living the highest enlightened life without even knowing the words integrity, authenticity, and all that! Without knowing any of these words, they are radiating Enlightenment! I tell you, just this one truth of Iśṭa niṣṭa and Līlā dhyāna has made millions of village Indians, Indian villagers enlightened!

Millions of Indian villagers practice the presence of God. Practicing the presence of God makes you more and more authentic. That is the beauty of the Hindu tradition! Beauty of the Vedic spiritual tradition! Iśṭa niṣṭa makes you do lot of self-completion with you. So, the first level of completion is attending rituals and visiting temples, pūjā and yātrā. The second level is doing the rituals yourself, pūjā. The third level is having the feeling connection and concentrating on one deity, and offering only to that deity, iśṭa niṣṭa. The fourth level of completion is realizing that the verses are more powerful than rituals, and you start chanting the name of your iśṭa.

The fifth level is Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 547 visualizing a form and meditating on His pastimes and being immersed in His qualities, words, actions, body language and life; instead of chanting, you enter the space of feeling and living with His presence. Then, when you sincerely meditate, He Himself appears. He gives you His darśan (vision) and guides you to the higher level of practice. He guides you to the right living Master. Sometimes He gives you darśan and guides you; sometimes He automatically makes you feel connected to your Master. Only a person who has come to this level of completion can feel directly connected to a living Enlightened Master.

Till you reach this level of completion, till this maturity happens, you cannot straightaway feel completely connected to an enlightened person. You need to go through all five levels of completion, only then will you feel completely connected to a living Master. When you come to the stage where you meditate on a single form, the Master happens in your life and guides you to the highest level of completion, enriching you with Enlightenment. The form upon which you meditate and your own form are expressions of the same divine energy. So the Master puts you into real meditation. This means turning towards yourself, turning towards your own consciousness, turning towards your own being or soul.

He gives you the technique to realize your being. This is the sixth level of completion. The seventh level of completion, the ultimate completion, the complete completion is when you experience that you are That. You achieve Enlightenment! This is the usual route of completion that seekers travel on, starting from the first level of completion, moving to the second level, and ending with the ultimate and complete completion of experiencing the Self. Completion is Self! Now find out in which level of completion you are in and try to go to the next level. That’s all. That is all you need to do. Just go on completing, completing, completing with everything, with Guru, with God, with Sadguru, with life!

Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Because I reside in everyone’s heart as the super soul, when somebody desires to worship a demigod, I make his faith steady, so that he can devote himself to that particular deity.’ When you approach the Divine even from the first level of completion, He helps you. He enriches you without doubt. He never gives up on you. You may give up on yourself, but He never gives up on you. One of the biggest qualities of an Incarnation is that He never gives up on you! When you start, you are like 18 carat gold. There’s nothing wrong with 18 carat gold, but you need to be put into the fire a little bit, and slowly, you become 22 carat gold.

Then you reach the Master, a living enlightened Master. Then slowly you become 24 carat gold, and you become enlightened. If you throw away the first step, giving up on the 18 carat gold, you never reach the second step. Unless you have gone through the earlier steps of completion, it will be difficult to relate and have feeling connection to a living Master. One morning, a man came to visit me and started speaking to me. He expressed his confusion. This happened after he had read many books. He said, ‘I am now more confused than before.’ In the Gītā, Arjuna says the same thing. After a few chapters, he says, ‘Oh Kṛṣṇa, I am now more confused than before hearing the Gītā!’

Understand, this clearly means that you have done your spiritual practice well! You really did your practice. Understanding that a particular practice is not helping you is the right enriching derived from the practice! Buddha teaches meditation to one of his disciples. The disciple tries his best to meditate and comes back and says, ‘Buddha, I am unable to meditate!’ Then Buddha says, ‘Don’t worry. You have understood properly. That is the purpose of this meditation. Understanding that you are not able to meditate is the purpose of this meditation. You have done it. Now forget about it and come to the next step.’ Sometimes these techniques make us mature by giving us the understanding that we are unable to do the technique.

That understanding is a big maturity. There’s nothing wrong in it. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 549 Approaching the Divine in some form is the first step, or the first level. There’s nothing wrong in that, but don’t stop there. Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘I make his faith steady, so that he can devote himself to that particular deity,’ which means that he can grow in that particular space of completion. There is the possibility of growth. He says, ‘I don’t discourage him; I make his faith steady, so that he will slowly come up to higher levels of completion.’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Even if you approach Me with an attitude of fear or greed, I fulfill your needs.

It is My own energy which fulfills them, so that you grow, and you come up to the next level of completion.’ If you receive boons through demigods, do not think that those deities are responsible for it. Do not think that the idols that you pray to are the ones who granted your prayers. All these are granted by the ultimate energy, the Existential energy. But you are not expected to stop with these boons. You are expected to grow further levels of completion. I always tell people, when you approach the Divine, first all your dreams will become reality. The divine will bless you. All your desires will be realized.

Later on, the Divine will give you the understanding that the reality you perceive is itself a dream! First God gives the śakti (energy) to turn your dreams into reality. Then He gives the buddhi (intelligence) to realize that reality itself is a dream! That is what He says here: When I bless you, according to your maturity, as per your level of completion and based on the way in which you approach the Divine, I give everything. There are many educated individuals who question me about the wisdom of idol worship and rituals. A small happening from Swami Vivekananda’s life. A disciple was massaging Vivekananda’s feet. A follower, a young student, came to Vivekananda, prostrated at his feet and said, ‘I adore you.

I adore you because you despise all these superstitions about idol worship and bathing in the Ganges. You are truly educated.’ Vivekananda roared at him, ‘You fool, what do you know about my beliefs. I pray everyday to Ma Kāli and bathe in the Ganges. Shed all your notions that worshipping idols is foolish and learn how to pray.’ Soon after, an elderly scholar came to Vivekananda and said, ‘Master, you are the greatest. Whatever you have said about learning the scriptures and going to temples is so powerful. I wish everyone would talk like you do.’ Vivekananda said to him, ‘What do you know about the scriptures? Is there any point in reading all this outdated material?

It only makes your ego stronger. Stop this nonsense and meditate.’ After the scholar left, the shocked disciple asked Vivekananda, ‘Master, I am confused. You have just reversed your position with these two people. What should I do?’ Vivekananda said, ‘Just keep your mouth shut and massage my feet. That is good for you.’ When you go to a temple and worship an idol, when you are in the first level of completion, you might feel that you are praying to a stone or metal idol. As your completion grows, you will realize that the idol is not just stone or metal; it is living energy. Even without much effort, you will start feeling the energy inside the temple.

Why do you think millions of people, visit holy shrines in Tirupati or Varanasi or Tiruvannamalai? A few hundred people can be misled, but not millions, and that too without any enticement. They go because they feel relieved, they feel deeply enriched; not all of them go merely out of greed and fear. There are thousands who go because unknowingly they feel the hand of God, as it were. They feel the touch and they feel the ‘energy connection’. Hindus worship through the idols, not the idols themselves; our rituals address the energy behind these idols. Logic cannot make us Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 551 understand this. Only faith can, the śraddha that comes from authenticity.

We need to go through this stage of worshipping the form before we realize the formless. Otherwise we will all be intellectual monsters. Religions that condemn idol worship without understanding the philosophy behind worship breed confusion that leads to destruction. In every form of learning we need to advance step-by-step. Only if we are an exception can we be promoted to university education without attending high school. Such exceptions are rare, and prove the rule. When we consider idol worship foolish and meaningless, it only means that we are foolish and ignorant. The minute science advances and when a scientist measures the energy vibration of our temples and proves that these are centers of cosmic energy, kṣetras, the same people will be queuing up at the temples.

When thousands and millions of people congregate to celebrate the Divine and offer gratitude, any place becomes a temple, a place of worship. Every twelve years, tens of millions of people gather by the sacred river Gaṅgā in India to celebrate Kumbh Melā. In certain years 100 million people have gathered on this occasion, in what is certainly the largest gathering in the world. No invitations or promotions are done, just the dates of Kumbh Melā mark the vedic calendar or Pañcānga on a Hindu’s home wall, that’s all! Simply millions and millions gather. As these people bathe in the sacred river with deep śraddha (authenticity), gratitude and prayers, the river gets purified and in turn purifies them.

It is a deep bio-spiritual interaction that raises the energy of the planet and the Universe. When Kṛṣṇa says, ‘He goes to the planets of the demigods,’ don’t think there is some planet out there! He talks about inner space and experience. If we worship some god out of greed, we never come out of that greed. We will be continuously caught in greed. If we worship some god out of fear, we will be always in that fear. If we worship the Divine out of love and gratitude, we experience a totally different inner space, the space of completion, the space of Enlightenment. Hell and heaven are not geographical; they are psychological.

Now all we need to know is how to create heaven, how to create the space of completion. There’s nothing that needs to be learnt about the art of creating hell. Now, it is time to learn how to create heaven. Kṛṣṇa says: Men of small intelligence—people caught in greed or fear, attention-need or worry—worship the demigods. Of course, sometimes we worship the demigods; sometimes we approach Bhagāvan Kṛṣṇa or the ultimate God with the same incomplete attitude—the attitude of asking and begging. If we carry the incomplete cognition of greed, whether we worship Kubera, the god who gives money, or Kṛṣṇa, in effect we worship only a devata (demigod).

Even if we worship Kṛṣṇa with that same incomplete cognition out of our space of incompletion, we worship only a demigod. It is the cognition of completion or incompletion that makes Kṛṣṇa either the ultimate God, Bhagavān or a demigod, Deva. It is we who create the cognition, the space. It is we who create the energy. By worshipping Devatas, we attain Devatas. This is an important sūtra, a technique. It says: antavattu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavaty alpamedhasāṁ I devān devayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti mām api II 7.23 It says that when we get boons from demigods, they are temporary. God will bless us with wealth when we ask Him.

But we need intelligence to preserve and to protect wealth. So be very clear, when we receive anything out of energy, without having the maturity to receive and sustain it, it is only temporary. If we have enough intelligence and maturity to have wealth, then naturally, we would have created it. Because we don’t have buddhi, wisdom, we ask God to give us śakti, energy. If we get śakti without buddhi, it will only be temporary. That is what Kṛṣṇa says: If we get śakti without buddhi, it is temporary. It will not remain with us. That is why He says that boons derived from demigods are temporary, not permanent.

And if we Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 553 continue to worship them, we are stuck with them. We create that kind of energy in our inner space. We live with that kind of energy in our being. Gratitude—The Greatest Attitude He makes one more statement: madbhaktā yānti mām api—My devotees attain Me. Then He says these words: If you approach Me with the ultimate attitude, with the attitude of love and gratitude, you achieve Me. The greatest attitude is gratitude. If you approach Me with gratitude, you experience Me. Again and again people ask me, ‘Swamiji, when I have so many problems, how can I be grateful?’ Listen, we continuously pray, ‘Oh God, please give me a diamond ring.’

Do we feel grateful that He gave us the finger to wear the ring? We don’t feel grateful that He gave us the finger. Be very clear, the finger is not our birthright. There are thousands of people who don’t have hands. There are thousands who don’t have a finger. It’s not our birthright. We continuously pray intensely, in all possible ways, ‘Oh God, give me this. Oh God, give me that.’ But we never feel grateful for the things that are showered on us. This very life is a blessing! Can we say that our life has been given to us as payment for some job that we did in Vaikuṇṭha (abode of Lord Viṣṇu) or Kailāśa (abode of Lord Śiva)?

No! It’s not as if we worked for 100 years in Kailāśa, and earned a check that says, ‘Alright, have 70 years of life.’ If we work in the army, they give us money to study. It’s not like that; we did not get life as a salary. It’s a pure blessing showered on us. Every breath is a blessing! The breath that we inhale and exhale is a boon given to us. This very life is a blessing. Continuously we miss things that are not part of our possession. But we never experience the things that are showered on us by the Divine. Each of us has a big list of things that God has not given us and we also have a big list of things that God has given us.

If you take a paper and pen and start writing these lists, both lists will be endless. Every moment of our life is a gift from the Divine. We are alive, we are still conscious; that by itself is a gift from the Divine. Now it’s up to us whether to look at the list of things not given to us and constantly feel miserable and live in hell, or look at the list of things showered on us and be in heaven. The second way makes us feel deeply grateful. It makes us say, ‘Oh God! You have showered so much on me, and given me the blessing of life.’

We feel grateful and create our abode, Vaikuṇṭa or Kailāśa. It’s purely our choice. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘These men of small intelligence worship demigods. Their results are temporary.’ We continue to live that way. When we feel life is a blessing and we approach the Divine with deep love and gratitude, not only do we experience divine consciousness, Kṛṣṇa says: They achieve ME. They attain ME—madbhaktā yānti mām api. There’s another verse where Kṛṣṇa beautifully says: ‘If you ask for something, I will give you that. If you don’t ask for anything, I will give you Me.’ People say, ‘Who wants Him? We want Him only as a utility, not Him. As long as He serves our purpose, things are ok. So we don’t want Him.’ People want only solutions. They don’t want the Divine. No One Knows Me

7.24

अव्यक्तं व्यक्तिमापन्नं मन्यन्ते मामबुद्धय: | परं भावमजानन्तो ममाव्ययमनुत्तमम्

avyaktaṃ vyaktimāpannaṃ manyante māmabuddhayaḥ / paraṃ bhāvamajānanto mamāvyayam anuttamam / / 7.24

Unintelligent men, who do not know Me perfectly, think that I, the supreme personality of godhead, the Bhagavān, who was impersonal before, have become a human being now. They do not know that I am imperishable and supreme, even when I assume the body.

avyaktaṃ — nonmanifested · vyaktiṃ — personality · āpannaṃ — achieved · manyante — think · māṃ — unto Me · abuddhayaḥ — less intelligent persons · paraṃ — supreme · bhāvaṃ — state of being · ajānantaḥ — without knowing · mama — My · avyayaṃ — imperishable · anuttamaṃ — the finest.

7.25

नाहं प्रकाश: सर्वस्य योगमायासमावृत: | मूढोऽयं नाभिजानाति लोको मामजमव्ययम्

nāhaṃ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yogamāyāsamāvṛtaḥ / mūḍhoyaṃ nābhijānāti loko māmajamavyayam / / 7.25

I am never revealed to the foolish and unintelligent, cov- ered as I am by My divine power ; the ignorant do not know Me, unborn and eternal.

na — nor · ahaṃ — I · prakāśaḥ — manifest · sarvasya — to everyone · yoga māyā — internal potency · samāvṛtaḥ — covered · mūḍhaḥ — foolish · ayaṃ — this · na — not · abhijānāti — can understand · lokaḥ — such less intelligent persons · māṃ — Me · ajaṃ — unborn · avyayaṃ — immutable.

7.26

वेदाहं समतीतानि वर्तमानानि चार्जुन | भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन

vedāhaṃ samatī tāni vartamānāni cārjuna / bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṃ tu veda na kaścana / / 7.26

O Arjuna, as the supreme personality of Godhead, I know all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that is to happen. I also know all living entities; but no one knows Me.

veda — know · ahaṃ — I · sama — equally · atītāni — past · vartamānāni — present · ca — and · arjuna — O Arjuna · bhaviṣyāṇi — future · ca — also · bhūtāni — living entities · māṃ — Me · tu — but · veda — knows · na — not · kaścana — anyone

7.27

इच्छाद्वेषसमुत्थेन द्वन्द्वमोहेन भारत | सर्वभूतानि सम्मोहं सर्गे यान्ति परन्तप

icchādveṣasamutthena dvandvamohena bhārata / sarvabhūtāni saṃmohaṃ sarge yānti parantapa / / 7.27

O scion of Bhārata (Arjuna), O conqueror of the foe, Parantapa, all living entities are born into delusion, overcome by the dualities of attachment and aversion.

icchā — desire · dveṣa — hate · samutthena — born · dvandva — duality · mohena — overcome · bhārata — O scion of Bhārata · sarva — all · bhūtāni — living entities · saṃmohaṃ — into delusion · sarge — in creation · yānti — go · parantapa — O conqueror of enemies.

Unintelligent men, who do not know my supreme, illimitable and immortal form, assume my illimitable form as manifested. Here is another important verse. When He says earlier—My devotees achieve Me, attain Me—naturally Arjuna would have had the doubt: are you one more devata (demigod)? So Kṛṣṇa gives the explanation: ‘Unintelligent men, who are not mature, think I am just this form. Only an intelligent man understands that I am immortal. Even when I assume this form, I am that same consciousness. I have not become an ordinary human being by assuming a human form.’ He declares His divinity openly. He declares, ‘I am the same even when I assume a human form.

Don’t think I am one more demigod.’ He says, ‘I am unborn, immortal, illimitable, even when I assume this form. Even when I assume this form, I am that same ultimate divine. I am not an ordinary man.’ This is an important statement. This statement is made to declare His enlightenment and to express clearly and explicitly, ‘I am enlightened. I am the embodiment of the ultimate consciousness.’ The problem is that the person who is receiving this is not mature enough to recognize it as such. People ask me again and again, ‘Why is Kṛṣṇa repeatedly declaring that He is enlightened?’ That’s a big problem. If you talk about something again and again, people tend to think that something is wrong with that.

There is a proverb in Tamil: If you wear a new ring, you always gesture with that hand because you continuously show it off. If you wear a new earring, what will you do? You shake your head to show it off! If you speak about something again and again, there’s something wrong with that thing. If you are clear about it, why should you speak about it again and again? This is how a spiritually immature person will misunderstand what is said. Arjuna is approaching Kṛṣṇa out of fear and greed. When the Gītā started, Arjuna approached Kṛṣṇa out of fear and depression, and also out of greed, with the ‘What is beneficial for me?’ attitude.

He asked Kṛṣṇa what would give maximum benefit, which is an expression of the attitude of greed. Next he experiences fear. He is afraid of what will happen in the war. Fear and greed—that is the way he approaches Kṛṣṇa. So initially even Arjuna sees Kṛṣṇa as a demigod. At the initial level, Arjuna’s approach is also as though it is towards a demigod. That is the reason why Kṛṣṇa now declares His glory, or His true form. He says, ‘All types of people come to Me. I fulfill them at different levels, to encourage their faith and to enrich them to grow. But only intelligent people understand, that even if I assume this body, I am the ultimate, Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 557 I am enlightened.

Unintelligent people think by seeing my body, by seeing my form, that I am not the Divine. So please be very clear: I am THAT.’ He makes a clear statement again and again, so that Arjuna understands. We need to understand two important issues here. First, the formless energy of Kṛṣṇa defines His supremacy, His divinity, His Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Second, in whatever form the formless is expressed, it is divine. It is the awareness of that divinity in Him that makes Kṛṣṇa divine, the supreme Master. If that awareness happens in you, you will be in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, immersed in Him; and you will be divine too. The intelligence Kṛṣṇa talks about is the intelligent awareness of one’s own divinity, not merely that of Kṛṣṇa.

They are both one and the same. It is only when we are aware of our divinity that we appreciate the Divine. I say to my disciples, ‘Till you become enlightened, you will have no clear awareness of who I am. Till then you try to reach me only out of fear or greed, however slight it may be. It is only when you are enlightened and are in the same awareness as me, only when it is no longer necessary for you to fear me or desire through me, that you open up to me in sheer gratitude.’ That is the intelligence that Kṛṣṇa speaks about. When that intelligence exhibits itself, when that awareness surfaces, then and only then true recognition of the Divine happens.

That true recognition happens when you recognize the Divine within you. How To Recognize Divinity? Kṛṣṇa asks: How can you recognize divinity when you are covered in ignorance? How can you recognize Me when you are not aware? Out of the thousands who come to me, tens of thousands, the vast majority seeks favors of one kind or another. They come for the healing of the body and mind, or they come for repairing relationships, and for material benefits. Even those who do not look for material benefits may aspire to that intangible peace and bliss. It is the rare person who comes without asking anything. It is not even seeking a benefit, tangible or intangible, that leads such people.

It is an awareness of what they need to be and where they need to be. They are attracted like iron filings to a magnet. It is a call from their being which leads them to me. In Mahābhārat, the Pāṇḍava princes could recognize the reality of Kṛṣṇa. No one needed to coach them for it. On the other hand, their cousins the Kaurava for the most part denied Kṛṣṇa. They rejected and ridiculed Him. Duryodhana, who was offered the first choice by Kṛṣṇa to choose either Him unarmed or His Yadava army, chose the utilitarian army! That was all Duryodhana could see. That was his level of awareness, steeped as he was in ignorance.

Arjuna jumped at Kṛṣṇa’s offer. All Arjuna wanted was Kṛṣṇa, His presence, not His army, not His divine powers, nothing else. It is a choice that all of us need to make, whether we wish to be Duryodhana or Arjuna. It is not a difficult choice, as it will be determined by our being and our awareness. It will not be a choice at all. It will be a happening. ‘No one knows Me, māṁ tu veda na kaścana (7.26)’, says the Master. How true! ‘Don’t take me for granted,’ says Kṛṣṇa. ‘Do not put me in a frame for I shall not stay there,’ He says. Can you know Nature?

Can you predict Nature? Each time you think you can, Nature does things differently. Then you say Nature is cruel, and ask why Nature is so cruel. Nature is Nature, not cruel, not kind, it just is. So is Kṛṣṇa. His compassion is not pity as we imagine. The compassion of the Master is beyond our frames of time and space. So we cannot fathom what that means. When a tsunami kills a thousand people, we weep. When we pray and then win a lottery, we make a donation to the temple, since we are very pleased. Divine compassion is not related to these. It is the truth that is beyond time and space.

Those who stay around me have experienced that whatever I say is the truth and it happens. They don’t question me, not because they are afraid. What control can I have over them? They are free to leave any time they want. In fact, I tell them the only thing that causes me to pause is Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 559 when a disciple leaves me, because then I have lost the chance to enrich him. They know the way enlightened beings flow. They recognize that and they simply follow. They know that when I tell them something, it is not just a fact but the truth: truth that is not constrained by time and space.

Over two years ago when I went to the Himalayas with a group of disciples to the cār-dhām pilgrimage centers, I had asked them to tell the local religious authorities that I am a Mahāmanḍaleśvar. This title is given to the leader of a very large Hindu religious organization. It is more than a title; it confers spiritual leadership, like being canonized as a saint leader. Without questioning, they announced that a Mahāmanḍaleśvar had arrived. They accepted the statement and gave the due respect when I visited the temples. Back in 2007, I was at the Ardh Kumbh Melā at Prayāg in Northern India, which normally happens every 4 years.

However this time the sacred river Gangā reversed Her direction, and this happens once in every 144 years. So it was more significant and 90 million people gathered for a dip in the holy river. I went with a large group of disciples. In every Kumbh Melā, the first right to dip on the day of the royal bath is given to the nāgā sādhus, who are a special sect of naked monks, and among them the Mahānirvanī Akhāḍa, the oldest apex body of Hinduism. During part of my wandering days before my self-realization, I had been with a group of these monks and they had accepted me as their own.

Now at the Kumbh Melā they conferred upon me the title of Mahāmanḍaleśvar of their akhāḍā (religious sect), just a few days prior to the day of the royal bath, and also gave the first right to enter the Gangā on that special day. Amongst the disciples was one who was present two years earlier during the Himalayan trip. He couldn’t believe how the words he had heard from me were manifesting themselves now! I explained to him, it had nothing to do with what I had said. It is just the way Existence wants things to happen. What is spoken through enlightened beings is what Existence directs, and there can never be a contradiction in that.

The Truth is unpredictable because it is not bound by time and space as we know it. Truth cannot be known unless we are in truth ourselves. We cannot know Kṛṣṇa unless we are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Kṛṣṇa consciousness is not just about going around chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa. Such chanting, unless done with awareness from the space of completion, is of no real consequence; True Kṛṣṇa consciousness needs no words. In fact, it has no words because the experience is beyond expression. One who experiences it does not express it. Fear and greed are what drive us, says Kṛṣṇa. That is our delusion that leads us away from Him.

Attachment and aversion, rāga and dveṣa, form the duality, the polarity of human life. Even at the fundamental cellular level, biologists have shown that this tendency is exhibited. If you place a single cell in a petridish and place a drop of nutrient, it is attracted to it and moves towards it. If you place a drop of toxin in the same dish, the cell moves away from it. If on either side, you place drops of nutrient and toxin, the cell remains immobile. At the cellular level, attraction aids in growth and aversion in survival. A cell can either grow or protect itself. At the multi-cellular level with higher intelligence, human beings act in the same way as the primary cell.

They get attached to what they think is good for them and flee from what they think is not good. Unfortunately, what works well at the cellular level does not work so well at the human level simply because humans have greater intelligence. Cells obey Nature and are directed by Nature to recognize instinctively what is good and what is bad. They also automatically accept the consequence. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 561 Humans are different. They bypass signals from their body, refuse to accept what Nature tries to tell them and indulge in or avoid activities or objects based on their logic. Logic overriding Nature always leads to suffering.

Shedding attachment and aversion is the first step to awareness. Attachment and aversion are born out of our past; based on experiences and memories that form the root thought patterns, what we call saṁskāra in Saṁskrit. Based on these saṁskāras, we try to define our future. The problem is that these saṁskāras operate at an unconscious level and drive us from unawareness to unawareness, from incompletion to incompletion. Therefore, we end up acting instinctively, but unlike our cellular brethren, without listening to Nature. Human beings are given intelligence so that they can rise above instinct and logic and operate out of intuition. This intuition is born from awareness. It comes through meditation.

With awareness, we understand that there is truly nothing that we can be attached to, since everything is impermanent. As I said earlier, every moment of our life is a psychodrama. The same is true of aversion. It arises from insecurity and fears. What is there to be afraid of in life? Every occasion that we are afraid, we actually die inside us. If we shed our fear of death, we lose all our fears. When we move into awareness, through meditation, we settle within the boundary of our body-mind and we enter the present moment. When we are in the present moment there is no duality of like and dislike, attachment and aversion. We respond to each event as it unfolds with clarity,withintuitiveintelligence,withcompletionandwearealwaysright. No Sin, No Virtue

7.28

येषां त्वन्तगतं पापं जनानां पुण्यकर्मणाम् | ते द्वन्द्वमोहनिर्मुक्ता भजन्ते मां दृढव्रता:

yeṣāṃ tvantagataṃ pāpaṃ janānāṃ puṇyakarmaṇām / te dvandvamohanirmuktā bhajante māṃ dṛḍhavratāḥ / / 7.28

Persons who have acted virtuously, whose sinful actions are completely eradicated and who are freed from the duality of reality and unreality, engage themselves in My worship with firm resolve.

yeṣāṃ — whose · tu — but · antagataṃ — completely eradicated · pāpaṃ — sin · janānāṃ — of the persons · puṇya — pious · karmaṇāṃ — previous activities · te — they · dvandva — duality · moha — delusion · nirmuktāḥ — free from · māṃ — Me · dṛḍhavratāḥ — with determination.

7.29

जरामरणमोक्षाय मामाश्रित्य यतन्ति ये | ते ब्रह्म तद्विदु: कृत्स्नमध्यात्मं कर्म चाखिलम्

jarāmaraṇa mokṣāya māmāśritya yatanti ye / te brahma tadviduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṃ karma cākhilam / / 7.29

Persons who are striving for liberation from the cycle of birth, old age and death, take refuge in Me. They are actually Brahman because they comprehend everything about activities that transcend these.

jarā — old age · maraṇa — death · mokṣāya — for the purpose of liberation · māṃ — unto Me · āśritya — taking shelter of · yatanti — endeavor · ye — all those · te — such persons · brahma — Brahman · tat — actually that · viduḥ — they know · kṛtsnaṃ — everything · adhyātmaṃ — transcendental · karma — activities · ca — and · akhilaṃ — entirely

7.30

साधिभूताधिदैवं मां साधियज्ञं च ये विदु: | प्रयाणकालेऽपि च मां ते विदुर्युक्तचेतस:

sādhibhūtādhidaivaṃ māṃ sādhiyajñaṃ ca ye viduḥ / prayāṇakāle ’pi ca māṃ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ / / 7.30

Those who know Me as the Supreme Lord, as the governing principle of the material manifestation, who know Me as the one underlying all the demigods and as the one sustaining all sacrifices, can with steadfast mind, understand and know Me, even at the time of death.

sādhibhūta — the governing principle of the material manifestation · adhidaivaṃ — underlying all the demigods · māṃ — Me · sādhiyajñaṃ — sustaining all sacrifices · ca — and · ye — those · viduḥ — know · prayāṇa — of death · kāle — at the time · api — even · ca — and · māṃ — Me · te — they · viduḥ — know · yukta cetasaḥ — with steadfast minds.

Kṛṣṇa talks here about pāpa and puṇya, sinful and meritorious acts. The concept of sin and merit itself is a delusion, one of duality. At the level of Kṛṣṇa consciousness there is no pāpa or puṇya, no sin and no act of merit. All are the same. Your immediate question will be, ‘Can I do anything I want? Can I kill, maim, annihilate, and be a Hitler?’ When you reach Kṛṣṇa consciousness you will not be a Hitler. It is impossible. At the level where you are now, it is necessary to follow some regulations because you still operate in duality. You operate from attachment and aversion. You act out of fear and greed.

Unfortunately, instead of these statements being guidelines for self-awareness as they were intended to be, they have become tools in the Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 563 hands of institutions, whether religious, political or societal, to control us. Thousands of years ago, great masters like Patañjali outlined prescriptions for Self-realization. In his Aṣtāṅga yoga, Patañjali established practices of yama and niyama. These are internal and external regulations for your guidance, not for others to manipulate you with. These are milestones to guide your way. Once you reach the destination, you don’t need the milestones; you don’t need any regulations. Every year, I take a group of disciples to the Himalayan mountains on a pilgrimage, and the first stop is Rishikesha, where the river Gangā is about to enter the plains.

Here I make them take the sannyās vows prescribed in yama. It is for their protection and guidance. It is not to instill notions of sin and virtue. Thesefivevowsaresatya,ahiṁsā,asteya,aparigṛhaandbrahmacarya. Satya is truth in thoughts, word and action; ahiṁsā is not harming anyone in thought, word and action; asteya is not coveting, not stealing what belongs to another; aparigṛha is living with minimal needs; brahmacarya is living without fantasies. They take these vows after a dip in the sacred river Ganga and participate in a vṛaja homa, a fire ritual of purification. For the next two weeks they wear the saffron cloth that I give them. These vows are for self-discipline and they lead one to awareness and completion.

No one needs to control us. Understand, as long as we need to look over our shoulder to see if someone is watching us, we are still living in hypocrisy. Kṛṣṇa addresses mortal beings here, in the form of Arjuna. So He talks about doing virtuous acts and avoiding sinful acts. What follows is more important. He says to go beyond duality, the duality of sin and virtue. This is only possible when we become aware. It is only when we become aware that we can reach Him. In the verses of the famous Bhaja Govindaṁ, Ādī Śankarācārya says hauntingly, punarapi jananaṁ punarapi maraṇaṁ ... Birth and death again and again; lying in a mother’s womb again and again.

This [ocean of] repeated birth and death is so difficult to cross. Please save me, O Murāre Kṛṣṇa!’ The greatest philosopher that Hinduism has known, prays to the greatest Master that the Universe has known, ‘Save me from this endless cycle of saṁsāra, the cycle of birth and death.’ To know that one needs to be saved from this cycle needs great wisdom. To seek the feet of the Master who can lead you to that liberation needs great wisdom and awareness. You can be born again and again and still think that you are being born for the first time, and that this is the only life that you have.

This knowledge requires no wisdom. With this knowledge, you focus on this life and want to extract the maximum juice out of it. You run after everything possible, as if there is no tomorrow. You live in a fantasy world. You enact a psychodrama. Please understand, this is not your only life. This body is not who you are. All this is temporary. What you chase is a dream. One day you will wake up and discover that this life is nothing but a dream. You are more than this body and mind; you are above this body-mind. What you are endures after death. When you understand this Cosmic Truth, you are liberated.

At some time, you do not wish to be part of this psychodrama anymore. You are bored. You ask, ‘What for?’ just as Śankara plaintively asks Kṛṣṇa, ‘Again and again, without end, I come and I go. Please save me from this useless journey; let me be with You.’ Buddha calls this cycle of birth and death a bondage. It is sorrow because it is not real. It is not the real you that dies and is reborn. The real you changes bodies as you change clothes. It Is Never Too Late To Reach Me Kṛṣṇa ends this chapter with the prescription for how to know and understand Him and reach Him.

Even at the time of death, He says, even if all your life you lived a dissolute life, if at the point of departure you realize your folly, the futility of the psychodrama that you have enacted, that is enough to redeem you. The mere recognition of that can save you. His compassion is unlimited. Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 565 He promises: Knowing me at the time of death, even at the time of death, will lead you to Me. Please understand, this is not easy, not so easy as it seems. If you have been ruled by greed, greed for power, wealth, possessions and all such material objects throughout your life, nothing can change suddenly at the time of death.

You will be full of the same fantasies that you were obsessed with throughout your life. Your last thoughts will be on those very same things. We cannot change our nature at the last minute. If we want to die with the thought of the Divine uppermost in our mind, we must cultivate the habit of remembering Him now. We should start knowing and understanding Him today. Then and only then will we know and understand Him at the time of death. Some may ask, ‘What is the need to understand and know Kṛṣṇa, whether at the point of death or before? If I do the right things in the right manner, why should it make any difference whether or not I understand and know Kṛṣṇa?’

Please understand that Kṛṣṇa is not talking about the physical Kṛṣṇa, or even about the Cosmic Consciousness that He is. He speaks about our understanding, about knowing ourselves, who we are. The ultimate Master resides within us, not anywhere else. The external Master, be He Kṛṣṇa or Nithyānanda, is a guide to make us understand, know and accept the Master within us. Yes, it may be possible in rare cases for that wisdom to dawn on us at the point of death, but it is not common. Someone who constantly seeks that truth will continuously search for that Master within, and has a better chance of making that connection earlier rather than later in life.

Kṛṣṇa in His deep compassion says, ‘Even if that happens at the point of death, I shall redeem you.’ He does not want us to miss that chance, even if we have not thought about Him all our lives. He does not rule out the possibility, even if we have not been seeking all our lives. He wants us to discover the master within. Even if we do that at the point of our last breath, it is okay with Him. Many read Gītā and claim that they understand what Kṛṣṇa says. What they mean is that they understand that language into which the Gītā they are reading has been translated, that’s all.

How can we even intellectually understand that Kṛṣṇa is supreme? Forget the demigods, how can we even accept that He is greater than us? We are so full of our identity and root patterns, that even if a thousand Kṛṣṇas were to descend in front of us, we would ask them for their identification cards! We will recognize Kṛṣṇa only if He comes in front of us in the mold and image of Him that we have stored in our minds! Kṛṣṇa must come to us in our image of Him. Then we will accept Him as the Supreme and hang His picture on the wall. Everyday, Kṛṣṇa comes to us in many forms.

He comes to us in the form of every person we meet.Wedecidewhomwewillacceptandwhomwewillreject.Wecannot accept Kṛṣṇa in parts and reject Him in parts. Either we accept Him totally or reject Him. We have to surrender to Him. We have to surrender our identity, our root patterns to Him. We have to surrender to Him that foolish image that we have in our minds of Him. Meditation is a technique for surrendering one’s identity. Completion is the process of surrendering one’s root patterns. Throughout the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa suggests to Arjuna techniques, sūtras that leads to liberation. Combined with the cognition at the intellectual level, śāstra, with the higher devotional acceptance of His glories through verses, stotra, the Gītā leads you through the path of surrender into liberation.

Dropping one’s identity requires a deep cognition, acceptance, intranalization, and completion which brings the merger of the Self, World and God. Simply put, we accept our Divinity and become one with the Divine. We become complete, whole! This is what Enlightenment is about. At the Inner Awakening program, you are initiated into the science of completion with everything—with yourself, others and life and into Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ Listen, Cognize And Radiate 567 the creation of the space to cause the reality for yourself and others. You are empowered with the four great powers of words, thinking, feeling and living to rewrite your future as you want. You can choose to be initiated into a meditation process that enriches you to reach your innermost core.

This meditation process, called the ānanda gandha meditation or ‘fragrance of bliss’ meditation, enriches you to constantly be in the space of completion and complete with any patterns as they surface. It anchors you to the present moment of completion where no root patterns or the branches of parasite patterns can form in you. In this state, you don’t create further karma (unfulfilled actions) and your mindset of unfulfilled desires is extinguished. You are liberated. You are in the space of perpetual completion! The simple truth is that the present moment of completion is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. When we reach this state of being in the present moment, we reach Him and we are complete.

So it is not the mere intellectual understanding of what we read in the verses, but the authentic listening, śravana, authentic intranalying, manana and powerfully living and radiating, nididhyāsana of what Kṛṣṇa speaks into our listening, that can complete us. So, let us pray to the Ultimate Kṛṣṇa to give us the intelligence and awareness to realize the truth about ourselves, to give us this experience of eternal bliss, Nityānanda May you reach Kṛṣṇa consciousness and realize eternal bliss, Nityānanda! Thus ends the seventh chapter named Jñānavijñāna Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga Of Knowledge and Conscious Realization of Absolute’, 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.

The Art Of Leaving Death is our ultimate fear. Anyone who claims not to be disturbed by the thought of death is only lying. The moment we understand death, our life becomes a celebration. Krsna reveals the secret of death, understanding which, we can live even our death. c h a p t e r Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ ... In this chapter, Kṛṣṇa speaks about death. He gives us deep insight into how death can become liberation and celebration. Death is the end of life, as long as we don’t understand it! The moment we understand it, it becomes a liberation and celebration. Death Is A Celebration Death is not the end of life, as we think.

It is the climax of life. End is different from climax. The moment we think that death is the end, we wonder about it, trying to figure out what happens next. We create more trouble for ourselves. We worry about death the moment we think it is the end. Our lives become dull because of such worries. The shadow of death happens even when we live. A man who is unable to understand death is like the living dead. A person who understands death will live even his death. A person who does not understand death dies even when he is alive. A person who understands death lives even when he dies.

Death or life are not incidental, they depend on our intelligence. When we have clear intelligence, we live our death. When we don’t know, when we do not have the clarity about death, we die even when we live. The fear of death haunts everyone from birth. All religions sprang up from this one fear, this one question: Why do we die? What happens after we die? How can we escape death? Each religion answers this question in its own way. Most religions answer in such a way that they can control us through the fear of death and the greed of escaping death. They talk about sins and merits and threaten us with hell and entice us with the promise of heaven.

None of these really exists. There is no heaven or hell that any religion can The Art Of Leaving Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ The Art Of Leaving 571 threaten or entice us with. These are not physical locations or even metaphysical locations; they are merely states of our mind. Death is not an end; it is a passage. It is a passage in a journey that continues. It is not a one-time event, as some religions seem to believe. We do not live and die once; we live again and again. As Kṛṣṇa says, the undying spirit casts off bodies as one casts off garments and puts on new ones. The spirit within is immortal.

The spirit within us is part of the Cosmic energy and lives on, whereas the bodies that it assumes perish. Enlightened Masters of the Vedic tradition experienced the state beyond life and death and have provided us with guidelines about how to achieve the same state. However, they expressed this to a select audience of disciples in a language coded for the understanding of those mature enough to work with that knowledge. Here Kṛṣṇa, the greatest of all enlightened Masters, out of His infinite compassion, provides this knowledge in a form that anyone can understand. All one requires to imbibe this knowledge, is an open mind and the willingness to work sincerely with integrity, authenticity and with dedication.

When we understand the art of living, the process of leaving becomes a celebration. When we understand that this life and the departure from this life is a single journey in a continuous cycle of birth and death, there is no urgency in living this life and there is no fear in leaving this life also. When we understand that what we do in this life and how we do it determines how we are reborn, we will have a far greater understanding of how to lead this life. Arjuna starts here with questions. Knowing Him At the Time Of Death

iti śrīmadbhagavadgītāsūpaniṣatsu brahmavidyāyāṁ yogaśāstre śrīkṛṣṇārjunasaṁvāde jñāna-vijñānayogo nāma saptamo’dhyāyaḥ