Q: Master, what is needed to go beyond Drona, Karna and finally Duryodhana?
Drona's killing required the involvement of four people - Arjuna who represents the Individual Consciousness; Krishna who represents the Universal Consciousness; Yudhishtra who represents morality; Drona who represents the teacher who stands in your way to enlightenment. The moral code of not acting against the teacher has to be dropped in order to go beyond the teacher. Here, the master takes charge of the situation. He absolves Arjuna and Yudhishtra of their guilt. Unless Drona falls, you cannot be enlightened. The strategy that Krishna employs to kill Drona is: Do not tell a lie, but twist the truth enough to make it work.
Understand, for me to tell you to drop your earlier bondages like your teacher, I must trust your individual consciousness so that you will not apply the same thing on me! It is a subtle game. This cannot be done verbally. Krishna tells Bhima to kill an elephant called Ashwattama. Ashwattama is also the name of Drona's son, who is everything to him. Krishna tells Yudhishtra, 'Announce that an elephant named Ashwattama died in the war.' When Yudhishtra says 'The elephant named Ashwattama has died,' Krishna simultaneously blows his conch so that Drona does not hear the word 'elephant'. He only hears 'Ashwattama has died.' Drona lays down his weapons in grief and gets killed.
It is possible that Drona could have been an enlightened teacher. However, even with an enlightened master, one may not progress towards enlightenment under his guidance and may need another master. So one must go beyond Drona. Your morality has to agree to drop Drona. Here you cross morality, society's moral codes for the sake of your ultimate master and enlightenment. Drona must fall.
Next is Karna, who is good, compassionate and charitable. He is goodness, satva. You think the external world and people are real and so you show compassion. But this premise is not true. The external world outside and around you is not real as you think. You think that the 'seer' and the objects seen are different. The shift back and forth between the seer and what is seen is the process of seeing. The person who drops this shift is the one who has renounced. The shift stops, renunciation results and enlightenment occurs. The seer dissolves out of devotion, and only the seen remains and enlightenment, the seeing, happens.
You have to remove the weapons of compassion, such as the internal struggle with questions like, 'Is it reasonable to work for my own enlightenment while millions of people are starving out there?' This is a manifestation of what you perceive to be compassion. If this is your dilemma, then you are stuck on the fourteenth day of the Mahabharata War when Karna confronted Arjuna.
Because of Karna's compassionate deeds, all the arrows showered on him by Arjuna become flowers. When you are stuck in compassion, you cannot be directly killed. You are said to be in the space of heaven. But it is still not the enlightened space! A person may live a good, charitable and noble life and yet not be enlightened. They continue to live under the burden of engraved memories. Zen masters say that even if an enlightened being kills, he causes only good through it; whereas with an unenlightened being, even if he does good, he may cause harm. If this truth is understood, then one will not question Krishna's actions in the War.
Krishna renders the sattvic quality of compassion harmless. Salya, Karna's charioteer, represents spontaneity. Compassion is always driven by spontaneity. Compassion happens only when spontaneity is there. Krishna creates trouble between spontaneity and compassion. He separates Karna and Salya – compassion and spontaneity.
Goodness is the brother of Nature, but it is standing in the way of Realization. So the master says, 'Finish this goodness. You cannot be stuck with compassion; even that is an attachment.' The Gita is like doing the workshops Nithyananda Spurana Program or the Atma Spurana Program. Overcoming Bhishma is on par with becoming an ashramite (living within a spiritual community and un-clutching from parental conditioning) - the first step in dropping your bondages. Going past Drona is like taking sanyas - renouncing all attachments. Going past Karna is like living enlightenment and dropping even what we traditionally consider as 'being good'. Arjuna had to go past his elder brother Yudhishtra, who was goodness personified.
Finally you face your unguarded ego. You come face to face with yourself. Suddenly, you find that you do not want to stay with the master anymore. You feel disconnected from him. When you are at this stage, you are facing Duryodhana in the war. You cannot do much to break Duryodhana. The individual consciousness cannot do anything with the ego. Then, how can you fight and win?
This is when you need the complete protection of the master. When the last fight between you and your ego takes place, even the master cannot work directly on you. He has to wait until the ego is tired. When people say they feel disconnected, I talk and talk and tire their intellect and ego. Suddenly the ego falls and enlightenment happens!
After he falls, the blood of Duryodhana, the ego, becomes nectar, amrita. That is why Draupadi applies it to her hair and ties her hair up thus fulfilling a vow that she had taken up. Without the ego, your logic can become an aid to teaching and preaching without ensnaring you. Without the ego, you can take guidance from parental conditioning without being influenced by it. You will find that the parental conditioning has lost its negativity and only the righteous qualities in it remain. Then you can take tips from your parents as to how to rule as well as how to lead your life.
Q: Master, how do we differentiate between Drona and Sahadeva?
Drona stands against you if you do not agree with him. Sahadeva supports you even if you do not agree with him. That is the difference!
Sahadeva was a master of astrology. Duryodhana goes to Sahadeva to fix an auspicious date to start the war. Sahadeva obliges and gives him the date, a new moon day. This means that if Duryodhana starts the war on this date, he will be victorious. Krishna is troubled since He knows that what Sahadeva says will come true. To change the course of the situation, Krishna offers a traditional ancestral offering on the day before the new moon, instead of on the new moon day itself. The sun and moon are shocked. They
come running together to Krishna to find out why He appears to be going against tradition.
Krishna asks them, 'What is the definition for the new moon day?'
They respond saying, 'It is the time when the sun and moon meet.'
Krishna says, 'Are not the two of you meeting now? So this is new moon day!'
Thanks to Krishna's intervention, the war started one day in advance - the day before new moon, and Duryodhana was defeated.
Sahadeva was not bothered about whether Duryodhana was victorious or was defeated. He considered it his responsibility to give him the right guidance. That is his specialty.
I know that some disciples may go against me. Still I teach them and allow them in my ashram. I work on the possibility that they may benefit and transform. Drona will never do such a thing. That is the difference between Sahadeva and Drona.
Q: Master, what do Kunti and Draupadi represent?
Kunti, mother of the five Pandavas, is innocent. She is the mother of individual consciousness (Arjuna). She provides a body into which the individual consciousness can land. She has no other role.
Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, is maya or illusion*. Maya is the non-reality that is perceived as reality, and which can bind you as well as liberate you. Until she is wounded, Draupadi will bind you. If she is wounded she will work on individual consciousness to liberate you. The very home you are in may drive you to enlightenment when all the juice of life is lost. She is the sister of an enlightened master, a subtle character. She can bind you or enlighten you. This is the meaning of her vastraharana*, her disrobing, which is a turning point in Mahabharata.
Q: Master, what are the roles of Vidhura and Balarama?
Vidhura and Balarama are enlightened mystics who cannot help anyone. They disappear once the war begins.
Planet Earth is a battlefield