Part 4: Bhagavad Gita, Commentary by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM - Chapter 3 - Beauty of Purposelessness🔗

3.30 Dedicating the results of work to Me, with consciousness filled with spiritual knowledge, without desire for gain and without sense of ownership, without being lazy, do what you have to do.

3.31 Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow these teachings faithfully, without envy, become free from the bondage of actions.

3.32 But those who do not regularly perform their duty according to My teaching, are ignorant, senseless and ruined.

Next Krishna makes an important point. He clarifies one more point.

Krishna says: Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow this teaching faithfully, without envy, become free from the bondage of actions.

Here you need to understand two things. He says 'according to My injunctions'. It means that when you enter into your being, whatever your being says is Krishna's words. When he says My injunctions, He means the injunctions from the atman, injunctions from the being, the paramatman.

When you drop the goals and fall into your being, the Divine will guide you. You will be guided by nature. You will be guided by God Himself and will become an instrument in His hands.

If you become a hollow bamboo without any blockage inside, you will become a flute in the hands of Krishna. Dropping your purposes or dropping your ego is what I call becoming a hollow bamboo. If you become a hollow bamboo, you will become a flute in the hands of Krishna.

If you are a solid bamboo, you will be used only to carry dead bodies. In Bharat, solid bamboo is used only to carry dead bodies. In the same way, if you drop the ego and fall into the being, you will become an instrument in the hands of the Divine; you will become a divine flute.

When you become a flute, the air that enters into you comes out as music. In the same way, when you become an instrument in the Divine's hands, the air that enters into you comes out as sastra or mantra or music. Whatever comes out of you becomes Divine. Your words become mantra (sacred words), your actions become tantra (sacred techniques), and your form becomes yantra (sacred form).

The moment you drop the ego, your words become mantra to guide people. Your form becomes yantra to be meditated upon, your actions become tantra, or a technique to realize the atman and you become Divine.

If you carry your ego just like a solid bamboo, which is used only to carry dead bodies, you will also be carrying this dead body. You will also be carrying this dead body of yours!

Now it is up to you whether to become a hollow bamboo and become a flute in the hands of Krishna, or to be a solid bamboo and carry the dead body to the cremation ground.

If you drop into your being, you will become an enlightened being, and you will become an instrument in the hands of the Divine. Your words will become mantra, your form will become yantra and your actions will become tantra. Instead, if you decide to carry your ego, you will be carrying this dead body wherever you go.

Here, He says, 'Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions, according to your inner consciousness...' Please be very clear, as long as you carry the goal of society, the purposes conditioned into you by society, you will be carrying a conscience. The moment you drop social conditioning, the purposes taught to you by society, you will drop conscience and start living with consciousness.

Social conscience is different, spiritual consciousness is different. If you live with goals, you will carry social conscience in your life. If you realize the beauty of purposelessness you will carry spiritual consciousness in your life.

'The man who lives according to his consciousness, believing in and having shraddha (faith) towards these teachings...' Why does Krishna ask for shraddha here? This is the first time Krishna says 'shraddha'. Why? 'shraddha vanto anasuyanto', He says.

Of course, the word shraddha cannot be translated as faith. Faith is a very poor word for shraddha. In English, there is no equivalent word for shraddha, because the very idea of shraddha has never existed in Western society.

Let me be clear, the very idea of shraddha never existed here. That is why the equivalent word for shraddha does not exist. Shraddha does not mean faith. It means faith plus the courage to execute the idea. Courage to experiment with the idea is shraddha. Courage to experiment with the idea is what is called shraddha. Here Krishna says, 'Shraddha vanto anasuyanto,' the man who executes the teachings with shraddha, with the courage to follow. Why do we need courage to follow?

A small story:

A man born blind goes to the doctor and asks, 'Doctor, will you help me to get my eyesight?' The doctor says, 'don't worry, I will perform an operation. You will get your vision and after that you can walk without the stick.'

Blind people always carry a stick to feel the road. The doctor tells him that he will be able to walk without the stick.

The blind man asks, 'Doctor, I understand you will do an operation. I understand I will have my eyesight restored. But I don't understand how I can walk without the stick. How can I walk without my stick?'

By and by, the blind man forgot that the stick is just an aid. He started thinking that the stick was necessary even just to walk. But until the operation is done, until he gets his eyesight and experiences, he has to have shraddha towards the doctor's words and go forth with the operation.

In the same way, I tell you, just live without the mind. Just live without purpose and goals; you will be able to walk without the stick. The stick is your worry. But you can never believe that you can live without worrying. By and by, worrying has become a part of you. So you can never imagine that you can survive. You can be alive without worrying.

When I say you can live without worrying, you will say, 'No, no, no! How can it be possible? If I don't worry what will happen to my children? What will happen to my house? What will happen to my wife? What will happen to my family? What will happen to my property? What will happen to my lawsuits?'

Please be very clear: never think your life is going very smoothly because of you. It is going very smoothly in spite of you! Understand? Your life is never going smoothly because of you; in spite of you it is going smoothly!

The moment you have the courage to have shraddha towards these teachings and start living without purpose, only then will you realize you don't need the stick to walk. Once you enter into the being, the depth of your being, you will enter into a totally different dimension.

Whatever you think of as spiritual life or material life as of now, both will lose their meaning and you will enter into a new dimension of life.

For example, can you explain the life of marriage to a four-year-old child? Can you explain to a four-year-old child what life is? You can't. He can't understand. He can understand only toys. He can understand only dolls and he can only play with toys. Once he becomes older, naturally he will be able to understand what life is. Automatically toys and dolls will drop from him.

Do you feel that you are missing your toys? Do you feel that you renounced your toys? No! The moment you grow, you start experiencing a different dimension of your life and the toys simply drop.

When you experience a different dimension of your life, automatically small things drop you and you drop them. Not even your dropping them is important, them dropping you is important. Your dropping smoking is not important, smoking dropping you is important.

When you enter into your being, when you enter into the purposelessness of life, the whole so-called material life and spiritual life drops you and you enter into a different dimension of life, a new dimension. That is what I call 'quantum spirituality' or eternal consciousness. You are then in eternal bliss; you start living in eternal bliss.

Now you may have a serious doubt, 'How can I live without worrying?' I tell you, your doubt is nothing but the same doubt as the blind man asking, 'How can I walk without the stick?' You cannot convince the blind man that he can walk without the stick until he gets his eyesight. Only after he gets his vision, will he be able to understand he doesn't need the stick to walk.

In the same way, only when you reach the being will you understand that you don't need worries to live. You don't need your mind. You don't need to be harboring any worry to live. Until you reach the being, you need to have shraddha. Until you get your eyes, you must have shraddha and lie down on the operating table. You need to allow the doctor to work on you. That is the reason Krishna is saying, 'Shraddha vanto anasuyanto.'

The next word is a beautiful word: 'anasuyanto', which means 'without envy'. It is an important thing. Whatever has been said so far, everyone is able to understand and agree with.

But, suddenly, one thought comes, 'my brother purchased two houses. My sister is getting a big new car. How can I live just like this?' The moment you get some thought, 'He is having that, she is having this,' what happens? All your spirituality, all your purposelessness, all your spiritual philosophy, everything just disappears. You are again in the same rat race.

Krishna says, 'without envy'. Envy is the thing that puts you again and again in the same rut. One great problem in the rat race is, even if you win, you are a rat. Even if you win, you are only a rat. Nothing more than that!

Please be very clear, the moment envy or jealousy enters into your being, the whole thing disappears. Again, you start running into social conditioning; you start running behind purposes. You start running behind the goals. Envy or jealousy is what makes you run like a rat.

There is a beautiful idea from Tantra about maya shakti (the power of illusion). Maya makes us all dance with just this one stick called jealousy. Have you seen the guys who make money with monkeys in Bharat? On the roadside, they will do a small show with monkeys. They will have a small stick. They will rotate the stick and shout in Tamil, 'Aadra rama, aadra rama': Dance Rama, dance Rama. They will give instructions and according to their instructions, the monkey will act. With a small stick they will make the monkey dance and do whatever they want.

In the same way, maya shakti is making you run as she wants with just one stick called jealousy, envy, or comparison. The moment you compare, you just jump into the same path again, the same rut, the same routine, which I call the purposeful life. Then you become a karmi, not karma yogi.

The man who lives in eternal consciousness, nithya ananda, and allows his body and mind to work according to its nature, is centered on eternal consciousness. He is called a karma yogi, one who has espoused action without attachment as the ultimate renunciation.

But the man who jumps out of jealousy, out of envy and out of comparison, enters into social conditioning He is caught in the social rut, the same routine of the rat race, and is called a karmi, one who is focused on action arising from greed.

The difference between karmi and karma yogi is only one thing: the man who is driven by jealousy is karmi, and the man who allows the eternal consciousness to drive him is called karma yogi.

All you need to understand is only this one word: without envy, 'anasuyanto', without jealousy. The moment you start thinking, 'Oh! He has all those things. He has all those things', you become mad. If the neighbor brings an air conditioner into his house, your house temperature increases. Your house temperature increases!

One more thing: when we do things out of comparison, we do only foolish things. Our intelligence stops working. Our intelligence completely stops working. And we will definitely fall short of our potential because now we are using someone else's productivity as our measuring stick. We might have accomplished much more than what our neighbor has done but now we are setting our sights on that!

A small story:

A priest and a rabbi were staying opposite each other. Not only were they staying opposite each other, but they were opposite to each other in many other ways as well. If the priest put rose garden in front of his house, within 24 hours the rabbi would bring in a new rose garden. If the rabbi painted his house white, within 24 hours the priest's house would also be painted white.

Suddenly, one day a new Mercedes Benz was standing in front of the rabbi's house. This was too much for the priest. Somehow he did something, and within 24 hours not only did he buy a Rolls Royce, he started sprinkling holy water on it as well.

The Rabbi saw from his house and asked, 'Hey! What happened to you? You got a new Rolls Royce, that's acceptable. Until yesterday you were alright. But why are you sprinkling water on the car this morning?'

The Priest says, 'I am a religious person so I cannot travel in a car which is not Christian. So I am baptizing it.'

Now the rabbi was in big trouble! What to do? That evening he was seen cutting the exhaust pipe of the Benz with a hacksaw blade!

If you understand, understand. If you have not understood, ask the people who are laughing!

If you do things out of jealousy, out of envy, out of comparison, you will end up doing only these types of foolish things. Your intelligence will stop working. When you start comparing, intelligence stops working.

Please understand that every one of you is unique. There is no need to compare with any other person. You are unique. The main problem is that you compare only with the nearest person, five inches above and five inches below, only with those persons do you compare yourself. You don't compare yourselves with Bill Gates, do you? If you do, even God cannot save you. That is different! But you don't. You compare only with your neighbor. You compare only with your colleague. You compare only with your brother and you compare only with your sister.

The problem is not even failure; you worrying about failure is the problem. That is why you don't compare with unreachable goals, you compare only with reachable goals and you compare only with those people in your immediate world. Understand that this comparison is what is driving you crazy. Again and again and again it brings up the whole social conditioning in you and eats away your whole life. Your whole life is eaten away by this one maya called comparison.

Your whole joy, ecstasy, the very bliss or the ecstasy of living is swallowed by this one maya called comparison. Just like the whole earth is swallowed at the time of pralaya (end of the world, with the earth being submerged in water) by the ocean, in the same way, just this one concept of comparison, this one idea of envy and jealousy swallows your whole life.

Jealousy and comparison have no existence. There are two things you need to know: there is something called comparative reality and something called existential reality. If you build your life based on existential reality, you will never suffer. If you build your mind on comparative reality, you will be continuously suffering even at the time of death. Not only at the time of death; even after death.

Don't build your inner space on comparative reality. Let your inner space be built on existential reality. Accept life as it is. If you build your life on existential reality, you will live your life blissfully in eternal consciousness, as a karma yogi.

A small story:

One guy comes to the bar with a big smile, a big grin on his face and asks the bartender to serve drinks for the whole house. 'Serve drinks to everybody. I will pay,' he says. The bartender serves drinks and says, 'this is so nice. I am very happy you did a good thing for everybody. May I know why you did this?'

The man says, 'I am very happy today. I have become taller than my younger brother. My younger brother used to be taller than me, so people used to tease me all the time and ask, 'Are you older or is he older?' So I had a problem. Today, I have become taller than my younger brother.'

Your younger brother being taller than you is a huge problem. Elder brother being taller can at least be tolerated, but younger brother being taller is too much.

The bartender asked, 'How at your age did you suddenly grow and become taller than him?'

The man replied, 'Oh, no! I have not grown. He met with an accident and both his legs have been amputated.'

This may seem to you to be in bad taste in a social sense. However, this is how many people react when they see another person doing better than themselves.

When we compare, when we live with jealousy, when our life is based on comparative reality, please be very clear, we end up doing only these type of things. We become blinded by comparison and our very nature becomes dangerous. Let your inner space be built on existential reality, not on comparative reality.

By nature, a person with a body and mind has to act in one way or the other. If you follow your nature, you can be comfortable and flow in tune with Existence. When you are relaxed, when you are blissful, you express yourself beautifully.

When you try to be what you are not because of your greed or fear, you suppress yourself. What can suppression do? You cannot suppress energy. You can only transform energy. It can never be destroyed or suppressed.

For example, if you see someone who generally irritates you, what is your reaction? If you are in a position to show your irritation, you will do so. It may be some person who cannot affect you in terms of your money or position. In that case, you will make your irritation known to the person because you are not afraid. He is not in a position to affect you adversely. But, say this person is your boss. Now, you are afraid to make your irritation known because he holds the power to affect your job, your source of income. So you suppress your emotions.

Neither expression nor suppression can be the solution. The solution is to infuse awareness and understanding into this process. Your reaction of irritation is not because the person has done something. If you just look a little deep, you can see it is how you choose to react that decides what you feel about the person. You choose to get irritated by what he is doing.

Why should you allow yourself to get worked up about the other person's actions? Also, it may not even be that the person has done something, which you think is irritating. He may have done the same thing a couple of times before. But this time, he many have come with a completely different intention. Yet you are already biased by your past perception about him. You have decided unconsciously this is what he is going to do and you get irritated even before he comes close to you.

That is why I say that awareness is the key. If you are aware of what is happening both within you and outside you, you will not get controlled by your unconscious. You will be able to see clearly when biased emotions arise or when your reaction to the person arises. The very awareness is enough. You don't need to suppress it or express it. The awareness will itself bring emotion under your control.

Q: Master, when a relationship is not working out, when should we persevere and when should we abandon it and get on with our lives?

I think what you are asking me is, just how much conflict should one be prepared to put up with in a relationship? Right?

Love is the most dangerous path there is! Only those with great courage dare tread this path. At any bend on this path you have to be prepared for great joy, great pain, great beauty, great struggle, great understanding.

Yes, there is bound to be conflict in every relationship, because every individual is unique, and no two personalities fit together so perfectly that no rough edges remain.

If there is conflict, don't sweep it under the carpet out of fear that it will destroy the relationship. On the contrary, ignoring it can do just that. Allow the conflict. Examine it. See what you can learn from it. Is it stemming from something in yourself that you are secretly unwilling to acknowledge?

It is only in an intimate relationship that you discover yourself. Your partner is like a mirror reflecting your true nature. After all, who else dares point out your worst flaws with so much clarity!

So examine the nature of your conflict. Also remember, in every relationship, there is a time to stay together and a time to move on. What kind of love do you share? Are you really, truly, surely in love? Do you relate deeply with each other, being to being?

Don't look for reasons and arguments. Don't intellectualize the process - simply turn the question inwards with complete honesty and trust. The answer will arise on its own. If your answer is 'Yes', then understand that the issues of conflict are mere ripples on the surface of your relationship.

These are just situations created by the ego to counter the sense of 'no-self', of surrender, that comes with love. Work around these situations with love and care.

If the answer you are hearing is 'No', then maybe it is time to move on. To remain in a relationship where there is no true relationship, no connection of being to being, is sacrilege, unfair to you both. Love, for you, may be elsewhere. Don't search for it. Just be open to the possibility.

In the meantime, don't let the conflict destroy the relationship, destroy you both. Nobody deserves that. Accept that this is not the person for you, and move away without resentment or bitterness. Don't destroy your own capacity for loving. To become bitter will only cause you more suffering, and destroy your faith in Love itself. And that is the most dangerous thing that can happen to anyone.

Many of my disciples have followed this technique I am about to describe with tremendous healing effect in their relationships. To understand the principles behind this technique it is useful to have attended at least the basic Life Bliss Program Level 1.

We all have seven centers in our mind body system, called chakras in Sanskrit. Each center controls an emotion. When the center is blocked in energy you feel the effects of negativity and when it is energized you feel at ease. Simply put, a blocked center leads to dis-ease.

The root center is blocked by greed, lust and anger. The spleen center by fear, the navel center by worry, the heart center by attention need, the throat center by jealousy, the eyebrow center by ego and the crown center by discontentment. A person who has gone through the LBP 1 course will be able to recognize the blocked center from which that person is acting based on the emotions of the interaction with that person.

Normally one would respond from the same energy center or another blocked center. We tend to respond to an angry person with anger or fear. However, we have the capability to respond to all such interactions from an open heart chakra. All that we need to do is respond with unconditional love. Whether a person comes on to us in anger, fear, worry or ego, it is possible to respond with love, and with no expectation in return.

You may think that this is impractical. It is not. If you try this you will find that your relationships improve miraculously. It is especially difficult with people close to you, especially a spouse, and therefore, all the more reason to practice with one's spouse. Many people say, and believe it when they say, that they love the whole world. When you ask them to show proof that they love their spouse, they are stumped!

People talk about Transactional Analysis and other such techniques. They talk about cross communication between adult, parent and child. Ultimately all communication is based on emotions and feelings based on emotions. These emotions are linked to the various energy centers. Love is the most powerful emotion. It is the only emotion that can overcome all other emotions, when it is spontaneous and unconditional.

This is why in every culture and religion, love is associated with the divine and the heart is associated with love. Open your heart, energize your heart center and let unconditional love flow out of you. It will transform you and transform others.

Do Your Duty

3.33 Even the wise person tries to act according to the modes of his own nature, for all living beings go through their nature. What can restraint of senses do?

3.34 Attachment and repulsion of the senses for sense objects should be put under control.

One should never come under their control as they certainly are the stumbling blocks on the path of self-realization.

3.35 It is better to do one's own duty, even if it is in a faulty manner, than to do someone else's duty perfectly.

Death in the course of performing one's own duty is better than doing another's duty, as this can be dangerous.

3.36 Arjuna said, 'O descendant of Vrshni, then, by what is man forced to sinful acts, even without desiring, as if engaged by force?'

3.37 The Lord said, 'It is lust and anger born of the attribute of passion, all-devouring and sinful, which is one's greatest enemy in this world.'

Here, it is important to understand what duty means. If I have to do my duty, I need to know how to identify what my duty is.

The idea of duty is different for different people, different countries, different cultures, and different religions. Hence the term 'duty' is impossible to clearly define. We have always been trained by society, by conscience, to consider certain acts as duty: some as good and others as bad. When something happens before us, we have a trained or programmed impulse to react in a certain way.

We are brought up with certain ideas of duty. For example, it is our duty to help elderly people. It is our

duty to follow principles of truth, non-violence, non-stealing and such tenets. We are brought up with these concepts of morality but how many of us have experienced the beauty of implementing them?

Then there are certain principles that get handed down depending on the religion you follow. For example, a starving person who finds a piece of meat has no problem eating it if he is a non-vegetarian. On the other hand, a vegetarian would feel it is his duty not to touch beef even if it means losing his life. In some religions, you can marry only once but in some other religions, you can marry multiple times. These are all socially defined duties.

One thing we should remember is that we should always try to see the duty of others from their eyes and not judge the customs of other people by our standards. No one standard is the standard for the universe. There is no universal scale by which you can measure people and their actions.

What Krishna talks about here is not socially defined duty or about conscience. He is talking about consciousness.

Vivekananda talks about a sage, a yogi in Bharat. He was a peculiar man; he would not teach anyone. If you asked him a question, he would not answer. However, if you asked him a question and waited for some days, in the course of conversation, he would bring up the subject and throw wonderful light on it.

He once told Vivekananda the secret of work. 'Let the end and the means be joined into one.'

When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond that. Do it as worship, as the highest worship and devote your whole life to it for that time. Give it your full attention. The right performance of duty at any point in life, without attachment to the results, leads us to the highest realization.

The worker who is attached to the results is the one who grumbles about the nature of the duty. To the unattached worker, all duties are equally good. He welcomes what he has to do, irrespective of the external nature of the job. He approaches every act with the same enthusiasm and liveliness and becomes completely involved in the task at hand.

In the great epic, Mahabharata, there are actually three versions of Gita: the Bhagavad Gita and the Anugita, both by Sri Krishna; the third and more important one is called Vyadha Gita, the song of a butcher.

A butcher delivered this Vyadha Gita; a man who is considered a sinner or a chandala (low caste person) delivered this great scripture.

There lived a great yogi, a person with special powers but who was not yet enlightened, so he was in the state between the normal and enlightened state; highly egoistic. He was meditating under a tree in a forest. A bird sitting on the tree relieved itself and the droppings fell on him.

He was disturbed and angry and he opened his eyes and looked at the bird. The bird was killed by the power of his gaze. The yogi was feeling very proud of what he had done.

He then went on his daily round of begging for alms. He came to a house and begged for food. The lady of the house called out from inside the house and asked him to wait as she was serving her husband. The yogi was upset. He thought to himself, 'Foolish woman! She is serving her husband, an ordinary man and she is making a great yogi like me wait!'

He was only thinking these thoughts when he heard the lady's voice again as if in answer, 'I am not like the bird in the forest to be killed so easily. Your powers may be used against birds but not against me, so relax!'

The yogi was simply shocked! The lady actually knew not only what he was thinking, but even about what had happened in the forest. The yogi apologized to the lady when she came out to give him food.

He asked her, 'Mother, how did you know what I was thinking? And how did you know about what happened in the forest? Please teach me how I can also achieve this.'

She replied, 'You have attained shakti (power) but not buddhi (intelligence). Go to the butcher who is down the road and he will teach you.' Now, the yogi was even more surprised. He thought, 'How can an ordinary butcher teach me anything about buddhi?'

But what the lady had done was too much for him. So he quietly took the lady's counsel and went down the road to the butcher's shop.

When he reached the butcher's shop, he saw that the butcher was busy cutting the meat of the dead animals that he had just slaughtered. He still could not imagine how he could learn anything from the butcher. But he wanted to have buddhi so he approached the butcher and asked, 'I was told by the lady nearby to ask you about buddhi. Can you explain to me how to attain buddhi?'

The butcher explained how he himself had achieved buddhi, the ultimate experience.

He did his job with complete awareness and was totally involved in his work. He did his job with complete intensity and used the money that he earned to take care of his aged parents, which he did with equal devotion and involvement.

Just the very doing of his duty had liberated him. The nature of his work, the act of cutting animals, was not important. The attitude with which he did it, the sincerity, was what mattered.

You may be doing the best of acts of social service and in the eyes of society you may be a great man. But if the attitude, the energy behind the act is not positive, the action is just hypocritical and insincere.

Each of us is unique in our capabilities and interests. Accordingly, our duties are also different. If you try to

imitate others, thinking that their duty appears more attractive, you will be making the mistake of following somebody else's path, which is not natural for you.

A small story:

A king once went to a Master to attain some magical powers, so that he could become more powerful than his neighboring kings. He sat in front of the Master and started telling him the purpose of his visit.

The Master listened patiently to the king. Then the Master told him to go into his garden, where a rose bush and a citrus plant were growing side by side. He told the king, 'These are your teachers. They can teach you what you need to learn.'

The king went into the garden, saw the two plants and could not understand what he was meant to learn from them. He came back to the Master and asked, 'Master, I am not able to understand how I can learn to be more powerful from the two plants. What exactly do you mean?'

The Master took him to the plants and explained, 'This citrus plant has been next to the rose plant for many years. Never has it aspired to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant has never ever aspired to become a citrus plant. They just attended to their own duties of growing and blossoming everyday.'

The Master continued, 'If a man had been in the place of the citrus plant, he would have compared himself with the rose plant and felt jealous of the attention that the rose plant was getting from people. Or if he was in the place of the rose plant, he would have looked at the citrus and envied it, thinking how peaceful it was that it did not have to bother about people plucking its flowers.'

You see, the two plants prospered because they used all their energy in their own growth. Not even a bit of their energy was wasted on analyzing the other's growth. One hundred percent of the energy that they had was used for their own growth.

This is what is meant by just doing one's own duty according to one's nature and not being bothered about comparing one's duty with somebody else's and without expecting the certain results from our actions.

These verses by Krishna have been misused by some to defend the caste or varna system in the Hindu religion. They say that what Krishna means is that one should not swerve from one's varna dharma, the duty of one's caste. They do not understand the origin of the caste system.

In Vedic culture, a child was taken into a gurukulam school (ancient system of learning at the feet of the Master), at a very early age, much before the age of seven. The Master then took care of the child until the child reached adulthood. He taught the child based on its abilities. Sometimes Vedic horoscopes were used to determine aptitude and potential. If the child seemed to have the aptitude to become a scholar he was trained in scriptures, and became a brahmin. If the child was aggressive and courageous, he was trained in martial arts, and became a kshatriya.

Varna or caste classification was based on one's natural abilities and not by birth. It was a state, not a status. Over time, this practice was corrupted to mean a classification based on heredity, with no attention paid to natural aptitude.

It is in the context of how education was imparted in the Vedic times that one needs to understand Krishna's injunction in these verses.

Arjuna then asks Krishna why even a centered person is led to commit sinful acts, as if forced by unknown powers. Arjuna's question is the eternal dilemma of expression or suppression.

For example, if you see a beautiful woman and you feel attracted to her, you feel this is not correct according to what society has taught you and you try to suppress your feelings. Can this work? If you try to suppress something, it will surface again with more intensity.

We are always conditioned by society, which teaches us that anyone with passion is a lower human. Anyone with lust is a lower person. Understand, there is no lower or higher person. Only a transformation of energy needs to happen.

The people who pretend to be moralists are either afraid to express their lust or they feel guilty to express it. So they go about preaching to others that being lustful means you are a lower person.

The moment you think you are a lower human, you start fighting with that feeling. Then it becomes very difficult to get out of that and for the transformation to happen. Anything that you resist persists. What you need to do is to bring in awareness and allow the transformation to happen.

What needs to be done is to have understanding and awareness, and the base energy of lust can be transformed to the higher energy of love. It is an alchemy process. Alchemy is the process of changing any base metal to a higher metal. Similarly, changing our base emotion, lust, to the highest emotion we are capable of, love, is an alchemical process. It is the ultimate alchemy.

In alchemy, first the impurity is removed from the base metal. Then something is added to it, and finally, the base metal undergoes a process and it gets transformed to the higher metal.

First, impurity should be removed from lust. We all have lust, which is an animal emotion. One more thing: at least animals have pure lust. When they are in a relationship, they forget about the world and are purely in the relationship. But for us, even our lust is not pure. It is contaminated by all kinds of imagination and fantasies that we have picked up from the media.

Because of your fantasy and imagination, you live with a solid cerebral layer with all the imagination collected from all that you have seen on the television, the internet, in books and so on. Even when you are in a relationship, you are relating with this layer. You are not relating with the actual wife or husband. The actual wife or husband becomes a poor substitute for the images in your mind.

Your lust is contaminated by feelings of guilt and desire. Either our conditioning from our past makes us feel guilty and makes us withdraw, or the intense desire to continue makes us indulge more, only to feel guilty again. It is a vicious cycle of pulling and pushing as a result of which lust is simply contaminated.

Always, if you notice, the moment you fulfill your imagination, you are engulfed by guilt. That is why sex makes you feel guilty. Family instills the first sense of guilt in you when you are a child. Then you master the art of creating guilt for yourself!

Understand, anyone who wants to have control over you, first instills guilt in you. They make you feel you are inferior in some fashion. Then, automatically, you follow what they are saying.

Man knows to control only through guilt. I tell you, rules are good for children. It is good to start with rules. But it is important that you grow and be led by your own intelligence.

When you indulge in desires and become prone to guilt, you are caught in a vicious cycle. That is why you don't go deep into your desires for fulfillment and come out of it liberated, but keep coming back with more and more craving. If you go deep into it, you will flower out of it!

In earlier times, people were able to drop their lust at the age of 40. They never had such complicated images in them. They related directly with their husband or wife. They were able to move deeper into lust and come out of it. Lust simply dropped from them and they did not have to drop it.

In Hindu marriages, there is a beautiful verse which priests make the couples recite, 'In the eleventh year of marriage, let the wife become the mother, and the husband the son.' This may sound strange as to how the wife can become a mother to the husband. What it means is let the relationship reach the ultimate fulfillment.

The ultimate fulfillment for a woman is when she expresses the motherliness in her, the creative energy in her. The ultimate fulfillment for the man is when he comes back to the innocence of the child. So, in the eleventh year, let the relation mature to such an extent that both the husband and wife attain the ultimate fulfillment.

First, impurity in lust needs to be removed like impurity in the base metal needs to be removed in alchemy. Then the component of friendship needs to be added. A deep friendship, a relationship at the being level and not just at physical or mental level needs to happen.

When you feel deeply connected to a person, there will be no need for physical proximity to that person. You will feel happy and satisfied with just the feeling of connection with him or her. This connection will not suffer separation or anything else.

Finally, the process needed for final transformation of lust to love needs to go through the process of patience and perseverance. You need to be patient for the other person to accept the transformation you are going through. You need to give time for the other to understand that this is indeed a real change that you are going through and not just a superficial, temporary change. Then he or she will automatically be transformed as well. The energy of your transformation is sure to touch the other person.

Here Krishna refers to lust and anger both born out of passion. Anger is also an emotion that is born out of lust. When the other person rejects your lust, it turns into anger against that person. Anger is again a tremendous energy that we misuse because we do not understand and respect it.

Greed, anger, and lust are all rajasic qualities that arise from passion and aggression. They arise from the blocked muladhara chakra, the root center. These are instinctive emotions that we inherit from our animal ancestors. The muladhara chakra is common to animals and humans; it is the highest of animal energy centers and lowest of human energy centers.

Indulging in these base emotions keeps a human being in bondage to one's sensual and instinctive nature. This is the reason Krishna classifies these as the root causes of sin. A human being is endowed with consciousness that rises above these instincts. The meaning of a human life is not mere survival; it is the realization of one's super conscious nature.

Anything that stands in the way of Self-realization is a sin.