Part 2: Bhagavad Gita, Commentary by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM - Chapter 1 - Shastras, stotras, sutras🔗

Beings; one from Vayu, God of Wind; and two, Nakula and Sahadeva from the Ashwini Putras, Divine Beings. All the Pandavas are sons of nature.

Sons of nature will always be self-healing thoughts, and the cloning of negative thoughts will always be depressing and destructive.

Duryodhana is possessiveness. Sakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, is the energy that fans possessiveness and exploits it! Sakuni is cunningness. All these fellows gather together with the help of eleven million self-destructive thoughts. The problem is that Arjuna, the individual consciousness, at the time of fighting the negative thoughts, goes into depression. He says, 'God! I have done so many sins and I have so many negative thoughts. When will I conquer and exhaust them?'

That is when a master, a Krishna, is needed to say, 'Don't bother. These thoughts do not have life. They are all unconnected, random, illogical and meaningless.' Your negative thoughts do not have power over you once you understand that they are meaningless and unconnected. Once you distance yourself from them, once you un-clutch from them, they become powerless!

This is the truth you need to learn. That is the essence of the Gita. If you have done the Nithyanandam course and know the Mahabharata story, you can understand the whole scene. On one side, there are eleven million negative thoughts. Naturally when an individual consciousness sees eleven million negative thoughts, he thinks, 'How can I ever become enlightened? When and how will I get all these guys out of me? And what is the need anyway? After all I am a householder. It's okay. Let them be there as they are. I have responsibilities; I have duties. Why should I kill all these thoughts? I cannot leave my people. I cannot give up my possessions.' You are simply unable to muster the courage. Not only that, you will ascribe your cowardice as a commitment to parents or family.

See, a real commitment will never have a contradiction or conflict. But whenever a master tells you to do something and you say you have a commitment, you are simply justifying only your laziness. It is purely because of your laziness and inaction that you justify. You are in the same place as Arjuna is before the war. That is why the first chapter of Gita is called 'arjuna vishaadha yoga,' Arjuna's Depression.

The arrows that Arjuna releases when he follows Krishna's advice are thoughts he is un-clutching from and disengaging. Every time you un-clutch from a thought, you have released one arrow! One thought has left you! One guy is down!

Arjuna justifies his cowardice as compassion. He expresses his cowardice as compassion. He falls into depression and confusion. When you are depressed, you say, 'No, this is not possible; why should I then act?' That is the time you need the master who will tell you, 'No, it is possible. You must finish it off!'

Why are Bhishma, Drona, the great teachers and elders on the negative side of the war? This is important to understand. Sometimes some self-healing thoughts get surrounded by negative thoughts and support negative thoughts.

Let me give some examples, though some of them may hurt some of your feelings.

Some techniques would have helped you to grow in the past. However, they will not be helping you to grow anymore. When such techniques continue to influence you, you need to fight them. They are the Bhishmas and Dronas who stand as part of the negative thoughts in the war.

For example, you are with a guru, and you practice some techniques or follow some system of belief with him. After some time, the guru's teaching does not help you to grow further. But just because he did something good for you in the past, you stick to him. You are unable to go or grow beyond him. Such attitudes or thoughts are the Bhishmas and Dronas. They are just as dangerous as Duryodhana and Dushashana!

Understand: they are equally dangerous like Duryodhana and Dushashana.

Who is Bhishma? He is the embodiment of your parents and elders. He symbolizes all your past conditioning. The moment you try to un-clutch from your mind, the first one who comes up is Bhishma. He is your conditioning; he is your embedded memory bank. He is Bhishma Pitamaha, the great father; he stands up in front of you first. That is why Bhishma came to the war first, with his big, fresh, eleven million strong army: eleven million thoughts!

So Bhishma is your parental conditioning and the societal conditioning from a young age. He is whatever you respect as your elders.

After parental conditioning, comes the person who gave you the spiritual fire. Whoever it was who raised your frequency by a few levels, will come: Drona! Who is Drona? Drona taught Arjuna the art of archery. He was the initial level guru who gave Arjuna the inspiration. Drona taught logic, spiritual enquiry to Arjuna. All the intellectual material that you have read so far that keeps you away from an enlightened master, is what Drona stands for. After some time, he himself may become the obstruction to your growth. When Arjuna is with the ultimate master, Krishna, even this initial level guru is an enemy. He is just as dangerous as Sakuni and Duryodhana. He is equally dangerous!

After Drona, your charitable attitude will surface and stand as your enemy in your progress. This is Karna. Who is Karna? He is the embodiment of charity. There are people who are caught in creating the wealth machine just to do charity. Understand that this is also an undesirable attitude. Many people think, 'I will make money and give to charity.' Understand, they are caught under the disguise of charity! They will never become enlightened! They need to move on beyond their so-called idea of charity, only then will they attain enlightenment.

You can be a Karna and feel good, but that does not mean you will become enlightened. No! However, if in the last few moments of your life, you gave away something to an enlightened master, like Karna who handed everything over to Krishna, then there is a possibility of enlightenment for you.

Now… I have promoted my game! Giving money to an enlightened master will give enlightenment! (Laughs uproariously…audience applauds). That is what Krishna says; that is what the story says.

What does this mean? The master takes away all your possessions and attachments. Krishna did not become rich by taking things from Karna. Understand this very clearly. Can you say Krishna became rich by taking things from Karna? No! The master accepting something from you is not for him to become rich, but to liberate you from something in which you are caught.

Karna was not able to die. The God of Death who is also the god of Justice was not allowing him to die because of the merits he had obtained and carried on account of his charity. That was why Krishna was unable to liberate Karna until He said, 'Give me all your good deeds.' Karna gave away all the merits to Krishna and became liberated that very moment.

That is why we call it Karna moksha, not Karna vadha: Karna's liberation not Karna's destruction. For the evil ones like Kamsa, it is Kamsa vadha, destruction; but for Karna, it is Karna moksha, liberation.

Once you surpass Karna or compassion, your unguarded and pure ego will come and stand for the final fight: symbolized by Duryodhana in the war. And of

course. Krishna plays the master game and slays Duryodhana as well.

Only after all these traits in you are gone, will you see enlightenment. Both positivism and negativity must die before enlightenment. The mind load has to reduce and thoughts have to reduce to zero. That is the way the Mahabharata unravels. That is the way the whole Mahabharata opens up.

Your negative thoughts never oppose you directly. They never come and stand in front of you without a positive front. They can never justify themselves as they are. They need a positive front to impose themselves upon you. The eleven million depressive thoughts will not attack you without support of a Bhishma, Drona or Karna. These three are the positive fronts – parental conditioning, your teacher and your compassion.

So beware of the Bhishmas, Dronas and Karnas. If you overcome them, you are enlightened! If you are hypnotized, or lose confidence seeing them, you are lost. You are Arjuna, gone into depression!

Now, who are Arjuna's assistants in the war? Yudhishtra, or Dharma, signifies morality. Even while you are un-clutching, you must have Dharma as the base. Just because you are un-clutching, you should not start straightaway womanizing or using drugs. You will tend to think, 'After all I am un-clutched, then let me start doing these things.' No! That will not work. Dharma must be the base.

The next assistant is Bhima, courage. Courage of the individual consciousness is Bhima. Un-clutch with strength and courage. Decide, 'Whatever happens, I am going to un-clutch. I may have knee pain, I may have back pain, I may have any pain, still I will un-clutch.' And what is un-clutching? It is Arjuna wielding the arrow to slay the negative thoughts. That courage is Bhima.

Who is Sahadeva? Sahadeva is the knowledge of enlightened masters gained by reading books and biographies about enlightened masters. Sahadeva gives you tips from enlightened masters. Your Sahadeva is your embodiment of knowledge. Sahadeva's brother is Nakula. Nakula is the science of keeping your body strong till you become enlightened. So there is a need for maintenance of health through yoga and various techniques till you become enlightened.

These are the ones you need as assistants. Above all of them is the person driving your chariot – your friend, guide, philosopher and master, Krishna.

Now, when you start the war, eleven million are standing in front of you. All the conditioning, teachers, parents and elders are standing in front of you. Those who were teaching you what you should and should not do from day one are standing in front of you. And next, who is standing? The person who gave you spiritual inspiration in your life. Third, all your charitable attitudes are standing in front of you. What will you do now? Not only that, Sakuni, Duryodhana, all these negative fellows are hiding behind these persons as well; they are not in the forefront. They confront through positivism so you may be put into illusion.

Now the war starts and you see the whole army arrayed against you. You think, 'Oh, God! Eleven million of them; what will I do?' You turn to Krishna and say, 'Krishna, I don't need to do anything of this sort. No! I don't feel like fighting. Say whatever you want but I am leaving now. I am going to disappear from here. Even if I have to beg and eat, it is alright, but I don't want to be in this drama. No!'

Krishna says, 'Fool! Whether you kill these eleven million thoughts or not, it is of no consequence. They anyway have no life; they are dead already!'

Krishna says, 'Whether you kill them or not, they are dead already! You just take your arrow and act as if you are killing them! Just un-clutch a few times. They are actually not there! It is just your fear that is giving power to these eleven million thoughts (people).'

Arjuna never bothered to look at the seven million people standing behind him: the self-healing thoughts. Arjuna never bothered to see that. That is why I tell people, 'You clutch only to the negativity and suffer; you do not clutch to the positivism and experience bliss. The first step you need to do is clutch to the positivism.'

Even after all these teachings, you remain unconvinced. Then finally, the master gives you energy darshan – he shows His vishwaroopa darshan (His cosmic energy form) to you. He says, 'Alright you fool, you are unable to intellectually understand what I say. Now see who is talking to you about these things,' He then reveals His cosmic form to you. Then you get shaken up! You say, 'Oh, God…!' You see that the master is the embodiment of all the positive and negative perceptions and beyond everything as well. He is everything and He is beyond everything. His cosmic form, the vishwaroopa, is the ultimate experience.

You then get the courage, 'After all, I will not be lost.' You get courage and take your gandiva, the bow of Arjuna. Understand this important Sanskrit word: gandiva. It means 'something that cannot be taken away from you'. Un-clutching is a technique that can never be taken away from you! It is said that Arjuna's bow and arrow were such that his quiver of arrows could never be exhausted. He was a born archer. Any mantra (powerful chant) can be taken away from you. But the technique of un-clutching can never be taken away from you because it is your very nature. All you need to do is un-clutch, un-clutch and un-clutch.

Suddenly in ten days, Bhishma dies. All your conditioning disappears. All the parental influence disappears and along with that, a few million thoughts disappear. It was Sikandi who killed Bhishma. Understand who Sikandi was. He was a transsexual. See, the first and basic parental conditioning that enters your system is the teaching that you are either a male or a female. You are made to be very strongly associated with a particular gender. In reality, you have both male and female energies in you, but parental conditioning does not encourage this idea. Sikandi was a rebel, who did not accept parental conditioning. Symbolically he is brought in to kill Bhishma! No one else can conquer Bhishma. Gender differentiation such as male or female is the first societal conditioning. Becoming gay or transsexual is the rebellion against that basic conditioning. Being a little crazy is good at certain times. The attitude of saying 'No' is good to overcome parental conditioning. That is why in Bharat you must leave home in order to break your societal conditioning and seek enlightenment. After you have conquered Bhishma, your parental and societal conditioning, you have to drop the attitude of Sikandi; you have to drop Sikandi, because he will not work against Drona, the next in line to be killed !

Removal of parental conditioning is a big success. Now, understand that parental conditioning will never die completely because the language that you learned will never die till you leave the body. That is why Bhishma was never dead. He was lying in a corner; on a bed of arrows, inactive, that's all. He cannot attack you any more. He will just be lying in one corner. You move beyond the influence of parental conditioning.

So the thoughts attacking you from parental conditioning lose power and lie incapacitated in one corner. This inner chattering and genetic structure of your parents will be on you until you leave the body. But they will not have the negative influence they once had. This is what the incapacitated body of Bhishma represents.

Once the Mahabharata War is over, all the Pandavas, the good thoughts, ask Bhishma who was lying on the bed of arrows to bless their coronation. Bhishma beautifully teaches them how to rule the country.

Draupadi, the common wife of Pandavas, is unable to bear this. She says to Bhishma, 'Father, please keep quiet. I feel so dirty listening to your words. You talk about noble things, but what happened when my sari was being ripped off and I was abused in public? What happened to your dharma, your moral code? Come on, answer me!'

Bhishma says, 'At that time, I was unable to talk. I did not have intelligence because I ate the food of Duryodhana. I committed ashraya dosha, the sin of consuming impure food.'

Whoever pays you or paves your way in life, their quality will become your quality. Blessed are those who work under enlightened masters! Blessed are those for whom the boss is an enlightened master. Whoever pays you, their quality will enter into your head and become yours. Whether you believe it or not, unconsciously, you imbibe their quality. Bhishma says, 'I ate Duryodhana's food. I committed ashraya dosha, the sin of taking food from an impure person. So, my intelligence never worked at that time. But now, because of Arjuna's arrows, because the individual consciousness has showered so many arrows of un-clutching on me, all my impure blood has gone!'

If you constantly un-clutch from parental conditioning, thoughts that enrich parental conditioning start to leave you. Then, Dharma, righteous awareness, emerges from your parental conditioning. Parental conditioning can put you in depression if you are constantly influenced by the negative thoughts that it generally brings with it. Instead, if you constantly un-clutch from it, the same parental conditioning can help you maintain your dharma; it will teach you dharma! That is the story of Bhishma.

Bhishma is parental conditioning. He says, 'All the negative blood generated by impure food has left my body and that is why now, I can tell you what to do and what not to do.' Parental conditioning will be available to guide and help you only by the tenth day of continuously un-clutching (tenth day of the Mahabharata war). It is only then that it will lose its negativity.

Once you overcome parental conditioning, your book-based spiritual knowledge surfaces next for you to fight! This is logical knowledge acquired through education. It is the intellectual stuff about spirituality that has not become a direct experience for you. It is still at the intellectual level. It becomes the reason that is stopping you from surrendering to an enlightened master. You are caught in educational conditioning. In this stage, you are caught in the character Drona (Arjuna's teacher) in the war!

People who have gained some spiritual knowledge through teachers or books, are unable to surrender to a living master because their previous teacher, in the form of the spiritual knowledge acquired so far, stands in front of them blocking the path to liberation. That is Drona.

Let me recapitulate now.

The number eighteen is a mystical number. You cannot count more than eight with logic. In Satya Yuga, the first quarter of Time, you could only up to three; in Treta Yuga, the second quarter of Time, you could count only up to seven; in Dwapara Yuga, the third quarter of Time, you could count only up to eight; in Kali Yuga, the fourth quarter of Time, you started counting more than ten. Depression is sure to result if you have more than eight thoughts without going into your self-healing mode to remind you of your true nature.

When the ten senses of perception and action, gyanaendriya and karmendriya, are added to the eight thoughts of the mind, it leads to depression. Either you should not count up to eight thoughts or your senses should not be active. Each sense creates millions of thoughts. You need to break from this eighteen in order to be enlightened.

The reference to eighteen million soldiers in the Mahabharata war is to the eighteen million thoughts in your system; eleven million on the negative side, and seven million self-healing ones. The moment you hear about a financial loss, you are depressed. It is negative. On the other hand, it is self-healing if you think, 'It does not matter,' and you let go. This attitude arises either as a click from a living master or as a self illumined healing thought.

Arjuna represents the individual consciousness. Laziness to fight with negative thoughts is what is called tamas – our attitude that delays our own enlightenment. The body is the land for which the fight is going on between the negative and positive thoughts. One hundred brothers are cloned as one negative thought, the Kauravas. The Pandavas are sons of nature, from Yama, Indra, Vayu and Ashwini Kumaras. The sons of nature are always self-healing; the cloned ones are destructive.

Duryodhana is ego and possessiveness. Sakuni is cunningness. When Arjuna wonders how he can cope with these negative thoughts, he gives up in depression. He needs an enlightened master who tells him to un-clutch. Arjuna instead of owning up to his own cowardice, blames his parents, spouse and children. He justifies his tamas. That is Arjuna's vishada: his dilemma and depression. He tries to justify cowardice as compassion; compassion towards his fellow beings who are actually negative influences. Each arrow that Arjuna shoots is one act of un-clutching from the negative thoughts.

Why are Bhishma and Drona, a parent and a teacher, on the negative side? Self-healing thoughts can turn negative when they are surrounded by negative thoughts. If you are caught in something that has helped you grow in the past, but over time loses the ability to teach you more, you get stuck in it not knowing how to go past it. That is what Drona and Bhishma represent. They are as dangerous as Duryodhana and Dushashana who are readily seen as evil. Drona taught archery and inspired Arjuna but in front of Krishna, Drona also is an enemy.

Next in the war to confront Arjuna is Karna who represents charity for selfish purposes based on material ends. He could not become enlightened through 'noble' acts. He became liberated only when he gave everything to enlightened master Krishna. The master takes what you give in order to liberate you. Karna's good deeds stand in the way of his own enlightenment. Krishna asked for them and liberated him! That is why, it is Karna moksha, liberation, and not Karna vadha, destruction.

Bhishma is the embodiment of conditioning due to parents and elders. The first thing to come up when you try to un-clutch is your early years of conditioning. That is why Bhishma comes up as the first commander in the war. After him comes Drona, the first teacher. After Drona was the charitable attitude, Karna. After Karna was the ego in the form of Duryodhana. This is how the leadership of Kauravas opens up. Negative thoughts cannot stand by themselves. They need the support of Bhishma, Drona and Karna.

Dharma is the morality we must hold on to even if we are un-clutched. We cannot slip into immoral activities. There were several people who come to support Arjuna in the war. Bhima is courage. Sahadeva is the embodiment of knowledge. Nakula has techniques to keep our bodies alive through Yoga, etc. These are all Arjuna's supporters.

Finally, he who drives the chariot for Arjuna is the master, Krishna.

Your elders and teachers stand in front of you and prevent you from un-clutching. Your good deeds and ego also stand in front of you. All the negativities are hiding behind these elders and good deeds. So you say, 'I don't want to fight; I would rather beg and live, but I don't want to fight.' Krishna tells Arjuna that these thoughts are dead anyway, and to just shoot an arrow and act as if they need to die. If you are still not convinced with Krishna's words, He gives you darshan, His cosmic vision. The master shows himself as all positive and negative thoughts and beyond.

Gandiva is the tool that cannot be taken away from one's possession. Arjuna's un-clutching is represented by his gandiva. It means that the un-clutching technique cannot be taken away from you because it is your very nature.

After ten days, parental conditioning becomes non functional. It will never die, but it can be made inactive. This is what is Bhishma lying on a bed of arrows, incapacitated. The Mahabharata war is over and Bhishma is lying on an arrow bed. Bhishma teaches the Pandavas how to rule the country. Draupadi says, 'Why don't you keep quiet? What happened to all your righteousness when I was attempted to be disrobed in public?'

Bhishma says, 'I could not talk then. I was overwhelmed by negative thoughts. I was eating Duryodhana's food. Therefore, I could not think positively. I was overwhelmed by ashraya dosha, the sin of impure food. Arjuna's arrows removed all the impure blood from me. Now I can think intelligently.'

Parental conditioning can make you depressed. If you un-clutch from it, it can guide you like how Bhishma did, and lead you into righteous awareness.

These are the metaphors of Mahabharata.

The master creates the war within the disciple so that he can conquer his own negativity. Until that war is started you live in hiding, ajnanavasa, without your rightful kingdom, which is enlightenment!