Part 2: Bhagavad Gita, Commentary by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM - Chapter 3 - Beauty of Purposelessness
ecstasy, unless that itself becomes bliss, you cannot experience what Krishna says in this verse: karmanye vaa adhikaaraste maa phaleshu kadaachana.
Be very clear, even if you think you have the right to the outcome of your action, even if you acquire the outcome as per your wish, what have you achieved? How long do you think you will be able to carry that? Nowhere can it come with you. And your life will not be fulfilled just by purpose. Purpose can be fulfilled, but through purpose, your life can never be fulfilled.
When you carry purposes in your life, you are not living; purposes are living through you, that's all. In your young age somebody teaches you some purpose, 'You should become a lawyer, or you should become a doctor.' You are given a purpose and that purpose is fulfilled through your life, but you will never feel fulfilled.
Never make the mistake of thinking you will be fulfilled when your purpose is fulfilled. No! Your fulfillment is completely different from the fulfillment of your purpose.
If you want to feel fulfillment, you have to work separately in a different direction. It is a totally different achievement. It is a totally different dimension of your life. Fulfilling your purpose cannot give you the feeling of fulfillment. If you want fulfillment of your being, listen to what Krishna says here.
I think Krishna is the first and the last Master, as far as I know, who declared the Truth as it is. No statement can be the ultimate, so I am saying it is only as far as I know. Krishna is the first and last Master who declared the truth as it is.
Two things: always people who are in politics, people in the outer world, know the techniques to achieve success in the outer world. People who are in the spiritual world know the techniques to achieve success in the spiritual world.
But Krishna is both. He is the only Master who is an enlightened man and a king. He knows how to give a technique to achieve total success in the outer world and in the inner world. He shows you how to furnish your outer space and how to keep your inner space empty. That is life in totality.
The whole of Gita is only about this one idea: how to furnish your outer space to the ultimate luxury level and how to keep your inner space at the ultimate blissful level.
Keeping your inner space in eternal bliss and keeping your outer space in ultimate luxury, Krishna is the only one who has produced a formula for inner space and outer space together.
You can't expect this from a Buddha because Buddha gave up the outer space. He lived with just three pieces of clothing and he lived the life of a monk. So whatever he produced, whatever formula he created, will lead you only to that state.
But Krishna lived as a king. Krishna lived not like a king, but as a king. Only Krishna can give practical instructions. Only Krishna can give a manual for practical spiritual living. With all other Masters, their manual is useful only for monks who are sitting in monasteries. Only Krishna's manual is useful for people who are living a regular lifestyle.
Here He says, 'Not merely by abstaining from work can one achieve freedom from reaction.' You can't achieve freedom from reaction by moving away from work.
I saw a monk who was considered a great Paramahamsa because he never got angry. His greatness was that people thought he never got angry. There was no need to get angry because he was sitting in the Himalayas!
He was sitting in the Himalayas and people were there to give food for him everyday. In the morning somebody brought breakfast, at noon somebody brought lunch, at nighttime somebody brought dinner. Somebody gave him clothes. What was the need to get angry? There was no need! He was respected because he never got angry.
Usually, human beings respect somebody who does something that they cannot do. If you want to have the respect of society, just do something that others can't do, that's all. Such foolishness!
So this person was considered to be a great person because he never shouted at anybody. Of course, nobody thought that there was any need for him to shout at anybody because he was sitting in the Himalayas and being taken care of by his devotees and disciples.
Somehow, somebody inspired him by saying, 'Master, let us go to the Kumbh Mela in Nasik.' The biggest gathering in the whole of humanity happens in Bharat during the Kumbh Mela. Once in four years it happens. Every four years the biggest gathering in humanity happens in Bharat at this event. It is not just the biggest spiritual gathering, but it is the biggest gathering in the world - of millions of people, tens of millions of people. Seventy million people attended the last Kumbh Mela. Seventy million!
Anyhow, they convinced the monk to go to the Kumbh Mela. After he attended the Kumbh Mela and was about to return to his Himalayan abode, all his disciples left him. That's because when he came down from the Himalayas, his routine got disturbed. Only then did his disciples experience his anger. He could also shout at others, get irritated and be angry.
Please be very clear, as long as a difficult situation doesn't come, all are great saints. Everyone is a saint until the opportunity comes. Only when the opportunity comes can you judge whether one is a real saint or just an escapist.
Abstaining from work or moving away from work cannot give you freedom from reaction. To have freedom from reaction, your inner space needs to be purified. Your inner space should become empty. You need to remove furniture from your inner space. Renouncing furniture in the outer world is not going to help you. Only renouncing furniture from the inner world is going to help you.
The idea of purposes, thinking that life has got a purpose, should be renounced. That is why Krishna says, 'Just by renouncing, just by outer renunciation, perfection can never be achieved; perfection can never happen.'
One more thing, if you renounce the outer world, you will be thinking about the outer world all the more. If you renounce the outer world, the outer world will fill your inner space even more.
A small story:
One enlightened Master and his disciple were walking near a river. They were supposed to cross the river to go to their monastery, their ashram. On the way, a young lady was standing. She wanted to cross the river, but was afraid to do so. She asked the Master, 'Master, can you help me cross this river?'
He said, 'Why not? Please come.'
He just lifted her, crossed the river, left her at the other bank, bade goodbye, and reached the ashram. The disciple was observing the whole scene. He was
not able to digest what he saw. He was burning. May be he was jealous! He was not able to digest it.
After reaching the ashram he was not able to control himself and asked his Master, 'Master, you are a sanyasi (monk). How can you touch a woman, in fact, a young woman and carry her through the river? How can you do that?'
The Master just turned, smiled at him and said, 'I left her long ago. Why are you still carrying her? I left her at the riverbank. Why are you still carrying her?'
Please be very clear, renouncing in the inner space, or emptying your inner space is the real thing to be achieved. That is what Krishna says here.
Q: If we are to drop the memories of what happened in the past as the Master indicates to his disciple, won't there be more problems? People do learn from their past, from their past mistakes. If they drop their impressions of the past, they will suffer. Wouldn't they?
A good assumption, but unfortunately not a correct one!
Think for a moment about your own self. Think about all the problems you have. Think about the most serious problems you have. You will find that these are repetitive. They are caused by the same conditions.
You have walked the path before, you have faced the problem, the same problem many times, and yet you act in the same manner as before, resulting in the same problem. Do you really ever learn?
Have you learnt to keep quiet when your wife says something to incite you? You know from the past that she is baiting you and you always have fallen for that bait. Yet, you rise to the same bait again. You know that you get angry easily and that makes you do irrational things. Does that knowledge stop you from getting angry?
You may say 'That is my nature, how can I change it?' If you cannot change it who can? Who suffers as a result? The truth is that you do not have the intelligence to learn from your past behavior and past errors and to rectify them. You act out of your unconsciousness based on judgments that your unconscious mind has already made for you.
Carrying the load of your memories does not in any manner help you prevent mistakes being made again. In fact it ensures that you make the same mistakes again.
When the Master tells his disciple that he left the woman behind a long time ago but the disciple was still carrying her, the Master refers to the judgment that the disciple had made. It is not the mere memory of the incident, which in fact is neutral, but the emotion attached to that memory, the judgment that you pass as a result of that emotion, that needs to be dropped.
As long as you retain these memories as emotional laden memories, they have the power to rule you and influence your decisions. Since these decisions are based on memories retained in your unconscious mind, they can rarely be useful. They cause you more suffering.
Dropping the memories is really about dropping your judgments about these events and the emotions connected to these memories. Dropping them enables you to drop your negativities. You feel clean and you feel liberated.
These emotional laden memories are embedded in our unconscious and drive our decisions and actions. What we think are rational decisions are in fact totally illogical decisions driven by unconscious embedded memories. I call these samskaras.
Samskaras are memories of experiences, mainly of unfulfilled desires, which are buried deep with our unconscious mind and are extremely powerful. Many of our emotional and physical disturbances are caused by these samskaras, also called engrams by some psychologists. These are a collection of value systems and beliefs that we accumulate from childhood based on upbringing and experiences.
These samskaras, whether you believe or not, are also carried over from previous lives. Our energy bodies, the spirits or souls, when they disengage from the material body mind system at death carry the mindset arising from the experiences of our current life. This mindset defines the way we are born again. I can tell you in all honesty that based on my experience that this is absolutely true.
In our Life Bliss programs, we teach you how to identify and dissolve these samskaras. In the Life Bliss Level Two Program, previously called the Nithyananda Spurana Program, the entire program process is one of eliminating your unconscious, embedded memories. Wasteful samskaras are dissolved and those that you brought with you at birth are revealed.
The samskaras that you were born with have the energy needed for fulfillment. Once you understand what these are, you can pursue them to fulfillment. This fulfillment is the ultimate liberation that is actually the meaning of your life. This is why you took birth.
Dissolution of the wasteful memories is the cleansing of the emotions attached to these memories. In these Life Bliss Programs you are led through techniques to relive your past experiences in a super conscious meditative state. This reliving helps in relieving the memories of the emotional baggage.
Look at it this way. These emotion-filled memories, energetically caught in your cells as biomemory, are like heavy video files that occupy huge amounts of space. When these emotions are stripped away, the files reduce in size and become text files!
This is what happens. Your memories still remain so that they can be useful. However, all the emotions
attached to these memories are stripped off and destroyed. So, when these memories do come back, they do not haunt you. You just witness them and move on.
When this process is internalized, all your negativities are removed. You are no longer judgmental based on your past experiences and memories. Judgmental behavior is not caused by memories, but by the positive and negative emotions attached to these memories. Even what we imagine to be positive is never positive. The positive attribute is a result of our ego and conditioning. An experience that gave you pleasure at one time and is remembered as being positive rarely brings you the same pleasure when repeated!
Dissolution of these emotions, removal of these samskaras transforms you. It is as if a veil is lifted from your face and as if cataracts are removed from your eyes. You start understanding the true meaning of life. You start figuring out who you are and why you are here.
This is what I have defined as my mission. My mission is your transformation.