Geeta Darshan #6

Now let us take the sutra.
And that Paramatma is perfect, pervading within and without all beings, moving and unmoving; and He Himself is the form of the changing and the unchanging. Being subtle, He is unknowable — not to be grasped by knowing. And He alone dwells utterly near and utterly far. And, indivisible and of one form like the sky, though all‑pervading, He appears as if separately situated within all moving and unmoving beings. And that knowable Paramatma is the sustainer and nourisher of beings, the destroyer of beings, and the source from whom all arise. He is the light of lights, said to be beyond Maya. He is of the nature of bodha — awareness — the one worth knowing, attainable through true insight, and dwelling in the heart of all.
Three essential points. First: whenever anything is to be said about Paramatma, the two opposite poles that language raises — the extreme polarities — must be held together at once. For both extremes are contained in Paramatma. And whenever we identify the Divine with only one extreme, we go astray — the Divine becomes partial, and our statement about Him becomes untrue, incomplete.
But the human mind wants to choose one extreme. We want to say: God is the creator. The religions of the world — except the Hindus — say God is the Creator. Only the Hindus upon the earth say: the Divine is both — creator and destroyer; creator and destroyer together.
This is greatly to be pondered; it is of immense value. That God is creator is easy enough to understand. But that He is the destroyer as well, the demolisher — this does not fit our understanding.
Your son is born, and you thank God that He gave you a son. But if your son dies, you do not have the courage to say: God killed my son. For the very thought that God killed your son feels outrageous — what kind of God is this who kills!
Remember, however: the One who gives birth must also be the principle that kills — whether we like it or not. Our like or dislike is not the question. The One who makes is the One who unmakes. Otherwise who will unmake?
And if the act of dissolution did not exist, the act of becoming would stop. If death were to stop in the world, birth would stop. Do not imagine that birth could continue and death come to an end. Where death is stopped, there birth will halt. And the ratio will always remain the same. If you stop death there, you must stop birth here.
Now, medicine has pushed death a little farther away, reduced some disease; so governments everywhere are busy with birth‑control. They must be — there is no other way. And if governments do not practice birth‑control, then famine will, starvation will, disease will. But between birth and death there is a proportion. If you block death, you will have to block birth.
In India many sadhus and sannyasins say birth‑control should not be. Then they must also say there should be no hospitals. If there are no hospitals, there will be no need for birth‑control. On this side everyone agrees that death should be delayed; saints exhort people to open hospitals, to stop death, to reduce disease — and the same saints teach people: do not do birth‑control. This is dangerous. This is against God.
If birth‑control is against God, then medicine is also against God — for God is giving disease and you are treating it! God brings death and you are getting cured! Then all medicine is a rebellion against God. Stop medicine; then there will be no need of birth‑control. People will balance themselves on their own. Stop death here, and birth will stop there.
Just think: if someday science discovers a method by which man need not die, we will have to render everyone sterile — for there will be no need to be born.
Birth and death are the two ends of the same thread. There is a balance within them.
This sutra first says: Paramatma is the union of both extremes. He is perfect within and without all beings.
Many believe God is outside. The common notion is that God is seated somewhere in the heavens — an old man with a long beard, enthroned and managing the whole world! This sometimes becomes dangerous too.
Carl Gustav Jung, the great thinker of the West, writes in his memoirs: when as a child I was told that God is seated in the sky upon His throne and is running the world, I could not say it to my father, but one thought kept coming to me again and again — if He urinates or defecates, it must all fall upon us! How long can He sit upon a throne like men do? He must, at some time, perform these functions!
He writes that this whirled about in his mind badly. He was only a small child. He could not say it to anyone — if he did, he would be beaten: how can you speak of God and feces! But when God is imagined as men are — sitting on chairs, with beard and moustache — then there must also be excretion. Unable to tell anyone, Jung says, the thought began to come in dreams — God is seated suspended in the air, and excrement is falling!
The common man’s notion is exactly this — God sits somewhere above in the sky — outside. Therefore you go to the temple, because God is outside. This is one extreme.
There is another extreme that holds: God is within; the outer is irrelevant. Hence no temple, no pilgrimage — no going anywhere outside. God is within.
This sutra says both statements are partial. Those who say God is within speak only half; those who say He is outside also speak only half. And both are wrong, for a half‑truth is worse than falsehood; it appears like truth and is not truth. God is both within and without.
That Paramatma is perfect within and without all beings, moving and unmoving.
Because the within and the without are two segments of Him alone. What is outside for us and what is inside for us — for Him there is neither outside nor inside. In both, He alone is.
Understand it thus: there is sky within your room, and there is sky outside your room. Is the sky outside or inside? Your house itself is built within the sky; so the sky is within your house and outside as well. The distinction of within and without arises because of the walls. Likewise, this body‑wall creates the gap of within and without. As such, He is neither this nor that — or He is both.
The sutra says: God is both within and without. He is the changing and the unchanging.
He is the changing and the unchanging. What changes is He; what does not change is He. Here too we create a dualism — that God never changes and the world is ever‑changing. But He is in the flux and He is in the non‑flux — He embraces both opposites.
Being subtle He is unknowable — not an object of knowing.
Very subtle. Subtlety has two forms: something may be too subtle to grasp, or too vast to grasp. Neither the infinite expanse is comprehended, nor the infinitesimal. Two ends escape us.
Two poles: the vast and the subtle. The subtle as in zero — subtler than the one, below the one where there is the zero. There are two kinds of zero: one below the one; and one that belongs to the infinite. Both are beyond comprehension. God is subtle in both senses — as the vast and as the void. Therefore He is unknowable — not the sort that can be understood.
But then it becomes difficult — if the Divine cannot be understood, why so much effort to explain? All scriptures, all rishis have been engaged in one endeavor — to explain the Divine; and He is not to be understood! Then what is the point?
Unknowable does not mean unexperienceable. He will not be grasped by understanding, but He can be tasted in experience.
If I try to explain to you the taste of salt — I cannot. God is far off; even the taste of salt cannot be conveyed. If you have never tasted salt, even if I pound my head and pile up all scriptures and discourse on all the sciences, in the end you will still ask: I have understood your words, but what is salty?
There is only one way — place a grain of salt on your tongue. No scripture is needed. That which cannot be understood can still be experienced — and you will say: now I know — the taste.
The taste of the Divine can descend. For this reason, to explain Him as a concept, as a notion, is futile. That is why we cannot open a school for God — and where we do, nothing comes of it.
Teach religion as much as you like; religion does not happen. After learning and training, man returns as empty as he went — sometimes even more cunning than before. He begins to make fine speeches, to talk religion — but the taste is not in him.
Krishna says: Being subtle, He is unknowable — not to be understood. He is utterly near, and utterly far.
He is very close — closer than you are to yourself. In truth, to say “close” is not right — you are He. And far beyond all distance — as far as you can conceive; if the universe had a boundary, then beyond that boundary too. Since there is no boundary, He is the farthest and the nearest. These are the two extremes Krishna is trying to join.
Indivisible — no division can be made in Him. And yet He is present in all divisions. And that knowable Paramatma is the one who sustains and nourishes beings, who destroys and who brings forth — all He alone is.
He creates, He preserves, He destroys. This vision is astonishing — and once it sinks in, that He makes, He sustains, He unmakes — all your anxiety ends.
This single sutra is enough to make you carefree. This single sutra is enough to free you from all anguish. For then nothing remains in your hands; there is no cause left to be troubled, no need to complain, no question to ask — why is it thus? Why disease? Why old age? Why death? There is nothing to ask. You know — from one side He creates, from the other He dissolves, and in the middle He sustains.
Therefore we have fashioned the symbol of the Trimurti — the three‑formed Divine. Three images, three faces of the Divine — Brahma the creator, Vishnu the sustainer, Shiva the destroyer. But Trimurti does not mean three Gods. They are only three faces; the statue is one, the Existence is one — with these three modes.
And He is the light of lights, beyond Maya. And that Paramatma is of the nature of awareness, the one to be known, attainable through tattva‑jnana — true knowing — and dwelling in the hearts of all.
Unknowable — not to be understood — and yet He alone is to be known. These statements seem contradictory; they create confusion. There is no contradiction. He will not be understood — if you insist on cleverness. If you try to know Him by intellect, by logic, by mathematics, by argument and proof — He will not be understood. All proofs are yours — they cannot be bigger than you. All arguments are yours — they cannot lead beyond your experience. And all arguments are barren — they yield no experience.
Yet He is to be known. Which means: another alchemy, another process is needed. The buddhi, the intellect, will not help. Is there any way of knowing without the intellect? Have you ever known anything without the intellect?
If you have known love, perhaps a hint will arise. In the experience of love you do not know by intellect — there is another way of knowing, a way of the heart.
A mother does not know her child by intellect. She does not think about him; she knows. Joined to the heartbeat, she recognizes. That recognition comes by another pathway — not straight through the skull; perhaps through the pulse of the heart, through feeling, through sensitivity.
For knowing God, intellect is not the instrument. Putting the intellect aside is the path. Hence all sadhanas are arts of setting the intellect aside. If in prayer and meditation one simply lays the intellect down — as one lays clothes aside before bathing — becomes utterly non‑intellectual, as a child, child‑minded, with nothing left of calculation — then the connection happens instantaneously.
Why should it be so? Because intellect is very narrow. The intellect is useful in the world — where we deal with the small, the minute. But as we turn toward the vast, the intellect becomes a very narrow doorway; you cannot enter by it. Lay it aside.
The saints have taught, by innumerable devices, one thing — how to be free of the intellect. Hence it also feels dangerous — for we believe we must preserve the intellect, keep it with us, hold on to thinking, so that no one deceives us, so that if we lay it aside nothing goes wrong and we are not able to do anything.
So we keep clutching the intellect, for with it we feel we are in control. When intellect recedes, control is lost — and we become parts of spontaneous nature. Therefore there is danger, and fear. There is some reason in this fear — it must be understood.
When anger seizes you, intellect steps aside. When anger has passed, intellect returns — and then you repent. When lust takes hold, intellect moves aside; when the act is over, you become sad and anxious: again the same mistake; how many times vowed, yet repeated. Then intellect returns.
Understand this: nature too functions only when the intellect is not in between. The lower in you also functions when intellect is not present. If you keep intellect alert, you cannot be angry; you cannot sink into lust.
If the whole world became utterly intelligent, procreation would cease; the world would end at once. For the activity of lower nature is possible only when you drop the control of the intellect. Nature can work within you only when your intellect does not obstruct.
That higher nature — which we call Paramatma — also functions only when your intellect is not. But here there is a danger to be seen: because we are afraid of the lower nature, we maintain the control of intellect. We fear that if we let go, anger or violence may happen; if we drop the intellect, our passions may run riot — we might do who knows what like a madman.
How many times the thought of killing has crossed the mind! But intellect says: what are you doing? It is sin; for births upon births you will wander; you will go to hell. And even if not to hell — there is the court, the police. And beyond all that, conscience will gnaw you — you murdered; how will you show your face? So intellect restrains.
If today someone says: drop the control of intellect, the first thought will be: if I drop it, I will pick up a sword and kill someone — for that impulse is ready within.
Out of fear of the lower nature we do not drop intellect — and we have no taste of the higher nature, for that too functions only when the intellect is put aside.
Understand it like this: when someone is ill, the physician’s first concern is to bring sleep — because while the patient remains awake he does not allow the body’s nature to work; he interferes. If sleep comes, nature completes her work; she heals the body, closes the wounds, removes the illness.
Hence the physician’s first worry is that the patient should sleep. Everything else — medicines — is secondary. Why such concern? Because the patient’s intellect is creating trouble. Let him sleep — and nature will work.
You too become healthy when you sleep; in the day you make yourself unhealthy.
You know, when the child is born he sleeps twenty‑two hours, twenty hours. In the mother’s womb for nine months he sleeps twenty‑four hours. As age grows, sleep decreases; the old sleep less; sometimes only two or three hours.
The old are very troubled; seventy‑year‑olds come to me asking for the way to get sleep.
You do not need sleep any more. As the body approaches death, nature reduces her work in it — no need. The work of building is closing down.
The child sleeps twenty‑four hours because nature has to build — if the child remains awake, he will interfere; his intellect will come in: the leg should be a bit longer; the nose such and such; the eyes bigger — he will start meddling. For nine months nature does not grant consciousness even once — unconscious, nature does her work. Once the child is complete, he comes out — but still he sleeps twenty‑two hours. Much remains to be done — preparation for the whole life.
As soon as the work on the body is complete, sleep settles at six, seven, eight hours. Nature’s construction is done; these eight hours are for daily repair. However you break the body by day, nature will put it right by night; in the morning you rise fresh to work again.
The old man near death needs even three hours more than enough — nature is no longer building, only dismantling. Therefore sleep keeps reducing.
Nature too works when you do not obstruct with intellect. I offer this example so that what is true of lower nature is understood to be true of higher nature as well. When you do not obstruct God and lay aside the intellect, then He too works. But because of fear of the lower, we fear the higher as well; out of fear below, we do not open above.
Therefore I say: see nature also as the outer form of God. Do not fear it. Enter it; do not run away. Allow it to happen; do not obstruct, do not control. Maintain awareness — that is a different matter; that is not intellect.
Intellect means: to interfere, to control — let this happen, let that not happen — to devise means. Awareness means: to witness. We will not interfere. If anger arises, we will witness anger; if lust arises, we will witness lust. We will watch; we will not judge from in between — whether good or bad, whether it should be or not, whether I should stop or allow; we will take no decision. We will simply watch quietly — as one standing by the roadside watches the traffic, as birds fly across the sky and you watch.
Learn to behold even the lower nature — then intellect recedes and the witness awakens. And when the fear below is gone, you can lay the intellect aside for the above as well — for you will have gained trust that there is no need to lug the intellect. And the very moment intellect recedes, the knowing of God begins.
He is unknowable to intellect; but when intellect is set aside, through prajna — through the witness — He is knowable, He is the one to be known, He is the one to be experienced.
Let us take one last point — for the key of the witness is priceless. If you understand it rightly, no secret of the Divine will remain unknown to you. To understand the witness, make small experiments. In any small act, do not be the doer — be the witness, so that a taste of the watcher begins to grow.
You are eating — become a witness. Suddenly remember — take a deep breath — and begin to see that you are seeing your body eating. At first there will be some awkwardness, something strange — for in place of two there are now three: earlier there was the food and the eater; hunger and the eater; now this third has arrived — the seer.
Because of the seer there will be a little difficulty. Eating will slow down; you will chew more, lift your hand more gently — for the presence of the seer reduces the restlessness of actions. Perhaps that is why we do not bring the seer in — we want to throw food in quickly and run. Somehow to push it in and rush out.
If you walk with awareness, you will find your pace slows.
Buddha walks — his pace is so serene, as if a film on the screen were being run in very slow motion — very gentle.
Someone asked Buddha: why do you walk so slowly? Buddha said: the question is upside down — you ask why I walk so slow; I ask you, why do you walk like madmen? Why such fever, such haste in walking? I walk with awareness — then everything slows.
Remember: the more awareness, the slower the act. And the more the doer is absent, the more the fever and frenzy drain from actions — they become quiet.
And remember: from quiet actions sin cannot be done. If you are going to murder someone and you are going very slowly, be sure — the murder will not happen. If you stand to strike someone’s head and you raise the sword very gently, before the sword reaches his head it will return to the sheath.
So slow — sin cannot happen. Sin needs fever, haste, speed. And one who lives in speed — whether he sins or not — much sin happens through him unknowingly. It happens by his very speed, by his fever. Fever is sin.
Buddha says: as you do with awareness, everything slows.
Walking on the road, suddenly remember; take a deep breath so remembrance becomes clear — and gently see that you are walking.
Sitting idle, close the eyes and see that you are sitting. With eyes closed you can clearly see the posture of your own form seated. Begin from one foot — what is its condition? Is it pressed, in discomfort, is an ant biting? Move upward; see the whole body — that you are seeing. Merely by seeing, you will sink into deep peace — for in seeing, man becomes the witness.
At night you lie in bed; before sleep, close the eyes for five minutes and see the whole body from within.
Perhaps you know, perhaps not — the West has only now explored anatomy, what lies within the human body — because they began surgery, cutting the body. For scarcely three hundred years has it been possible to cut the human body, since no religion allowed the dissection of corpses. The early surgeons were thieves — stealing corpses from morgues to cut and see within. But yoga has known much about the inner of man for thousands of years.
Now Western surgeons ask: how did the East, how did yoga know the inner of man? Not by cutting — but by the yogi’s witnessing.
If you enter within in the witness and begin to roam, in a few days you will be able to see your body from inside. You will begin to see bone, flesh, marrow, the network of nerves — from within. And once the body is seen from within, you cannot believe “I am the body.” The one who has seen the body has become separate from it — he has become the seer, the drashta.
Whenever you get a chance in the twenty‑four hours, in any action, hold onto witnessing. Two results will follow: action will become slow; the doer will thin out; thoughts and intellect will begin to recede, thinking will quieten, the see‑saw of the intellect will stop.
A small experiment: if you are doing nothing, just watch the breath. The breath goes in, the breath goes out; in — out — just watch it.
People ask me for a mantra. I say: do not take any mantra. One mantra has been given by the Divine — breath. Watch it. Breath is the first mantra. The very first act of the newborn is to take a breath; and when man dies, the last act is to let the breath go. Life is encircled by breath.
After birth, the first act is breath — the first doing. By taking breath you become the doer. Therefore if you can watch the breath, you will reach before the first doing. You will come upon that life which was even before breath, before birth.
If you become capable of watching the breath, you will know — death will be of the body, of the breath, not of you. You are separate from the breath.
Buddha placed great emphasis on Anapanasati — the yoga of watching the incoming and outgoing breath. He told his bhikkhus: do nothing else — there is only one mantra — watch the breath going in, watch the breath going out. Do not breathe forcibly, do not do anything to the breath — only watch; do nothing.
Close the eyes. Breath touches the nostrils and goes in; within it touches down to the belly; the belly rises. Then breath returns; the belly falls; the breath comes out; and a new breath begins. It is a circle — keep watching it.
If each day for fifteen or twenty minutes you only watch the breath, you will be astonished — intellect begins to recede; the witness begins to awaken; an inner eye begins to open; the doors of the heart, closed for lifetimes, begin to shift and slide. In that sliding doorway comes the first glimpse of the Divine.
Witnessing is the door; intellect is the barrier.
We will pause for five minutes. Then sit and join the kirtan; and if you cannot join, at least watch in the witness.