Q: Swamiji, in order to achieve bliss, instead of being caught in temporary pleasures that only result in suffering, is it enough to drop anger, lust and greed?
First of all, bliss is never an achievement on our part. Whatsoever we do to achieve bliss is doomed to fail. All our effort emerges from the mind, it comes out of the ego, it comes out of our anguish, anxiety, desire and ambition; it comes out of our confusion. It can't bring bliss to us. It can bring only misery.
The struggle for bliss becomes one more struggle, like the struggle for kāminī and kāñcana, women and gold, lust and greed. You only move from one misery to another misery. While you are changing from one misery to another, you may think those intermediate moments are blissful. You feel joy in those small gaps when you change tracks; that's all.
But bliss always comes from the beyond as a gift. We must be passively receptive to it. We are not to be aggressively active for it, just be receptive like a womb. We must be feminine to receive bliss. We must become pregnant with God.
When ego disappears, anger, greed and lust also disappear. What is left is bliss.
Bliss has a luminosity of its own. Misery is dark; bliss is bright. The miserable person casts a shadow on others, too. He comes like a black hole, he sucks people's energy; his presence is destructive. However, the presence of a blissful person is creative, nourishing. It showers light on others.
Bliss is never in the past and never in the future; it is always in the present. Bliss means to be in the present, to be totally here and now. Then one's heart dances and sings and great celebration flowers in one's being: each cell dances, each fiber of one's being sings.
Because bliss is always of the present, one philosopher said that he does not want to go to paradise because he will get bored of bliss! There will be only bliss and nothing else. There will be no misery, no tension, and no anxiety. He does not understand what bliss is; he is simply playing with the word. Bliss is always young: as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun, as fresh as a rose opening up. It never grows old and one never grows tired of it, one is never bored by it.
Bliss is that with which you can never be bored, because it is never old. It is always new, and it is never repetitive. It is so fresh every moment, how can you be bored? Hence all the religions say that the angels go on singing on their harps. All that they do is sing, because singing represents joy: they rejoice! This is not a state somewhere above you in the sky. That state is within you. Whenever you are in contact with the present, you are in paradise. 'Now' is another name for paradise.
Bliss is a by-product of total trust in Existence or in God. God is not a person but the impersonal presence. The very life or Existence is God and the living energy is God. And to trust in it means to stop struggling against it. Struggling against it creates misery; it is trying to go upstream. Trust means surrender, going with the stream. And going with the stream is bliss. All misery is because of the ego and its struggle, its resistance. Trust means that resistance has been dropped. You don't think of yourself as separate from the Whole; you are just an intrinsic part of the great harmony of Existence, a small note in this great orchestra. Then bliss is natural.
My whole effort here is to help you move towards bliss. The way to bliss is through the heart and through devotion. That is why in addition to meditation, we engage in dancing and singing devotional songs. These are the ways in which you can be persuaded back to the heart.
Once you are there, once you have tasted the peace of the heart, you will be surprised. The head is left far behind. It is no concern of yours. It is as if it no longer belongs to you, it may be somebody else's head. It is so far away, so distant that you don't even hear the noise. The heart is so deep that the head becomes infinitely distant. Those are the moments when you feel for the first time what bliss is; otherwise it is only a word.
Rarely have people felt the real taste of bliss. People use the word and they think they understand it. They can't understand; it needs some existential experience to understand it because bliss is synonymous with God. Bliss is the ultimate meaning of life.
To feel that one is 'nobody' is of tremendous significance because that cuts the root of the ego. The ego lives through the idea of superiority. And sometimes the ego stands on its head; then it lives through inferiority. However, a person who knows that he is nobody is neither superior nor inferior, he is simply not. And in those moments of non-being, bliss descends.
Without ego, you cannot be miserable. Just try! Nobody has ever succeeded, and I don't think anybody ever will. Without the ego it is impossible to be miserable, just as with the ego it is impossible to be blissful. When there is no ego, only bliss is left.
Ego keeps you restless, keeps you occupied: 'Do this, do that, be this, be that.' It goes on giving you new projects. It never leaves you alone. It keeps goading you. You must become somebody, you must be the president of the country or the prime minister, and you must be famous. You must earn so much money. It goes on goading you till it either drives you mad, drives you to the point of suicide, or drives you to a master!
By dropping the ego, great rest happens. Then there is no need to try any relaxation method; one is relaxed, there is nothing to be tense about. That natural, spontaneous relaxation brings bliss in a flood; one is overwhelmed. And bliss never comes in small measures. When it comes, it comes like a flood; when it comes, it drowns you totally.
Go beyond ego. The very idea is dangerous; ego must be dropped, because the moment you think of yourself as great, you think of others as inferior; it is based on comparison. Comparing yourself with anybody is harmful. It is harmful to the other and to you. Everybody is unique. Nobody is great and there is nobody who is not great. Nobody is big and nobody is small. All are unique, incomparably unique.
This is the spiritual understanding. When one becomes awakened, this is how one looks at people. They are not alike; at the innermost core they are the same, but on the circumference they are unique personalities. A rose is a rose, a lotus is a lotus: neither is the lotus greater nor is the rose greater. Both have blossomed, both express God in their own ways.
Love yourself. That is the beginning, then love those close to you, then love the world, then love the whole cosmos; only then will you be able to love God. The journey begins from one's self and ends in God. These are the two banks of the river. You are on one bank, God is on the other; love is the bridge. The bridge passes over the whole river, but people fear love; that's why they keep praying. They never understand what they are doing; their prayer is ignorance. Unless it is full of love, it can't be true.
Unless you live in love, you can't enter any temple of God; and one who lives in love need not enter a temple, he is already in it. Remember this simple message and try to live it, because this is not a doctrine to be believed in, but a life to be lived. Bloom in love and release the fragrance of love. That is prayer. And only the fragrance of love reaches God, nothing else.
All of you need to become a living message of bliss, not only in words but also in deeds. Your being must radiate bliss. You need to be blissful and you must create an atmosphere of bliss around yourself, so that whomsoever comes in contact with you immediately feels the cool breeze of bliss.
The real message cannot be conveyed through words. Words can help. But they are secondary; the real message can be communicated only through being; that is primary. Be cheerful, be blissful, be a song and a dance, and transform your whole life into a sacred celebration, into a sacred ceremony. This is surrender.
The moment one starts seeking and searching for oneself, one becomes the blessed one. The enquiry itself is the beginning of the transformation. The more passionate the enquiry, the sooner transformation comes. Make it intense and make it total.
Surrender must be a deep commitment. Surrender must become more valuable than anything else in life, even more valuable than life itself. This is one fundamental secret of life and Existence: you live only when you have something for which you are ready to sacrifice your life.
Life begins only when you have something more, higher, bigger, holier than life, in your life. Only when life becomes a means to a higher end, then your life starts having a context. And in that context only, there is meaning, significance, and bliss.
Meditation leads to bliss; it makes it happen. It leads you within and ultimately that's where God is. Slowly learn how to dissolve. Dissolve in any act, then that act becomes blissful. If you jog, you disappear in the jogging and there is no jogger, only jogging remains. Or if you meditate in the early morning, there is no meditator but only the meditating remains. You are so possessed by the act itself there is only the act and no doer inside. Then it is bliss, a blissful dance.
Meditation is the key to bliss. Some people believe that meditation is nothing but a kind of thinking, thinking of higher things. When you think of God, when you think of Love, it is called meditation. No, that is contemplation. It is better than thinking about useless things, but it is not meditation.
Thinking is not meditation. Whether you think of God or money, it doesn't matter. Going beyond thoughts is meditation.
Thinking in any manner about any object is a disturbance in meditation. In the East, meditation means a state of no thought. It is pure Being. That is the greatest experience in life, when you simply exist. No thought crosses your being. The whole traffic stops and the mind disappears. All that remains is consciousness. Whatsoever was hidden behind the thoughts is no more hidden. Whatsoever was involved in thoughts is no more involved. All energy is released. One is simply a pool of energy, and so silent that not even a ripple arises.
Bliss happens if we fulfill one condition, that of being peaceful at heart. And it is not difficult to fulfill. The heart is peaceful; however, we are not there. We live in the head. The head remains with thoughts, desires, imagination, memory; the constant traffic of all these things will be there. It is always rush hour, twenty-four hours a day; the crowd of desires is passing day in, day out.
If you try to make the mind silent, you get into more trouble and become frustrated. That happens to people who don't know what right meditation is. Then they learn tricks to hypnotize themselves. And there are tricks available: repeat a certain mantra, chant a certain name and constantly repeat certain words. Any words will do; there are no sacred words, all words are the same.
This is not meditation. Constant repetition of a name creates a state of deep sleep in the head: you fall asleep. It is good, nothing is wrong with good sleep; but it is not meditation and it will not transform you. The real transformation happens when your energy moves from the head to the heart. When you reach the heart, you reach the core of your consciousness.
In that silent pool of consciousness, of energy, Existence is reflected; we come to know that which is. God is another name for that which is.
The most important thing to remember in life is that God loves us: He has not forsaken us, He is not indifferent to us and He is continuously concerned about us, He cares.
The deeper this idea enters your heart, the better, because when you feel more loved by God, you will be able to love others. That's how we are able to love: if we are loved, we can love. If we are not loved, we don't know how to love; we don't know what love is.
God is our substance, our very being. He is not something outside us; He is our innermost core. We do not need to seek and search for Him. Only this has to be remembered: we have forgotten it. God is not lost; only we have forgotten who we are.
Don't be identified with the body. Don't be identified with your mind, country, race or religion. Don't be identified with anything. Don't think, 'I am this' or 'I am that'. Remember, neither 'this' nor 'that'. That is one of the secret teachings of the mystics: neti-neti, neither 'this' nor 'that'. Avoid 'this' and avoid 'that,' too.
If you can avoid both polarities, day and night, life and death, body and mind, then slowly a third energy arises in you, a third force arises in you. That is consciousness. That's your reality. That is freedom: freedom from fear, anxiety, misery, freedom from the world, freedom from the wheel of life and death. Then you are a witness, watching, getting identified with neither 'this' nor 'that'; you are a spectator, a mirror reflecting but not getting caught in any reflection.
When you are a witness, the 'me' and 'mine' drop. What remains is identification with your energy, with your state, not your status. In that state, you are one with all. It is 'you' that becomes the focus, no longer 'me'. You become divine.
Let us pray to the ultimate energy, Parabrahma Krishna, the divine consciousness, to bless us all with 'daiva sampat' and establish us in eternal bliss, nityānanda.
Thank You.
Thus ends the sixteenth chapter named Daivāsura-Sampad-Vibhāga Yogaḥ of the Upaniṣad of Bhagavad Gita, the scripture of yoga, dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna.