Geeta Darshan #6

Concentration is a method to attain power. Witnessing is a method to attain peace. From power, peace does not necessarily follow; from peace, power inevitably follows.

Those who are in search of power will have a taste for concentration. When the sun’s rays are converged, fire is created; when the mind’s scattered thoughts are gathered, power is born. Try a little and you will understand.

Whenever the mind becomes unified, your life-energy begins to flow in one direction. The narrower the channel, the more powerful the current. The more scattered the thoughts, the more your energy runs down many pathways; then only a paltry power remains in your hands. Whatever thought you become concentrated upon quickly turns into reality; a thought toward which the mind wavers has little chance of becoming real.

Even the worldly person seeks concentration. If the worldly person attains success anywhere, it is because of concentration. The scientist makes discoveries through concentration; the musician reaches deep mastery through concentration. But only a religious person is truly interested in witnessing.

A worldly person has no curiosity about witnessing; and even if he were to find witnessing lying by the roadside, he would not choose it. Because the result of witnessing is peace. The result of witnessing is becoming a zero. The result of witnessing is to dissolve. It is like the great death.

Through concentration your mind becomes stronger and the ego grows more powerful. Through witnessing, the mind becomes quiet, then ceases, and ultimately disappears; the ego dissolves. Witnessing is the experience of the soul hidden behind the mind; concentration only gathers the dispersed energies of the mind.

Therefore, one who attains concentration does not necessarily become religious; one who attains witnessing becomes religious inevitably.

Concentration will not take you to God. And if you are seeking God through concentration, one day you will have to drop concentration too. God is realized only when only one remains. Understand this a little. If two are present—“you” and your “God”—God will not be attained. Only when only one remains is realization possible: either only you remain (without any object called “God”), or only God remains and you are no more.

In concentration there are always two: you, the one who concentrates, and that upon which you concentrate. Duality is not destroyed in concentration; the two remain. In witnessing, duality disappears and nonduality is realized.

Hence my emphasis is on witnessing. And even when someone is interested in concentration, I try to steer him toward witnessing.

One can move toward witnessing via concentration too. For a scattered mind, even witnessing is difficult to practice; for a unified mind, witnessing becomes easy. That is why some religions have used concentration as the first step toward witnessing. But it is only a step, a means, not the end.

And remember: witnessing is both the means and the end. Witnessing is the practice, and witnessing is the attainment. Beyond witnessing there is nothing. So from the very first step, the practice of witnessing is the beginning of the goal.

Concentration is not the beginning of the goal. It is a tool, a pathway. It can bring you to the point from which the real journey begins—and even that only if you remain alert. Otherwise there is danger. In concentration there is every possibility of going astray.

It happened so. Vivekananda practiced concentration. He was a powerful man, and for powerful people it is easy to gather the mind. It is only because of weakness that we fail to gather the mind; because of weakness the mind runs here and there and we cannot rein it in. Our hands are weak, the reins are weak, and the horses bolt in any direction. In weakness we commit all our mistakes.

A man was on trial. In fifteen minutes he had beaten one man, pushed a second off a roof, and murdered a third. The judge asked, “How did you manage such heinous acts in just fifteen minutes?” The man said, “Forgive me—‘moments of weakness’!” The very moments you call weakness are where your strength shows itself. Your strength shows itself mainly in the wrong direction because there you need not exert it—your mind drags you there. Wherever you must go against the mind to show strength, there you turn weak, and nothing gets done.

Ask someone to sit quietly for five minutes and it becomes very difficult. He can remain restless for fifty years without the slightest hitch! Five moments of silence are hard. Thoughts roaring for lifetimes create no difficulty; but to bring the mind to one thought even for a moment—that becomes hard.

But Vivekananda was powerful. He practiced concentration, and his concentration matured. As soon as it did, the inherent danger appeared: with mastery of concentration one begins to feel, “I have become immensely powerful—whatever I decide can happen by thought alone.”

In Russia there is a woman who, if she concentrates for five minutes, can influence surrounding objects. Within a radius of twenty feet, a stone will move toward her by thought alone; a table can be pushed away by thought; objects on a table can be knocked off by thought. She has undergone major scientific tests there. They found that when thought becomes utterly concentrated, it produces shocks upon objects, like electric discharges. They have photographed and tested this, and every experiment showed that some electrical force flows from her that moves or draws objects. In a fifteen-minute experiment her body weight decreases by three pounds. So even if it is invisible, the force is still physical—otherwise why would three pounds of weight drop? Subtle, unseen, yet material. After such an experiment she feels unwell for a week; only then can she try again.

Whenever someone concentrates the mind, great power manifests. If you use it, that power becomes depleted; if you don’t use it and simply remain a witness to it, it returns into itself—and that re-absorption of power becomes the foundation of witnessing.

Vivekananda attained concentration, and as happens to all, he felt, “I am all-powerful; whatever I wish can be done by thought.” In Ramakrishna’s ashram there was a very simple man named Kalu—Kalicharan. A devotee, he had placed at least a hundred and fifty deities in his little room. It took him three to six hours to do his worship, because each deity had to be pleased a little—so many of them! Vivekananda would often mock him—Vivekananda’s mind was in fact skeptical by temperament; from the beginning, reason and logic were his grip. He laughed at Kalu: “Throw all this out! What rubbish you’ve piled up! You waste hours over these stones!”

As soon as Vivekananda had his first real experience of concentration, Kalu came to mind—Kalu was worshipping in the next room. Vivekananda thought, “Kalu, enough now. Bundle up all those gods and goddesses in a cloth and throw them into the Ganges.”

Kalu was worshipping when suddenly the feeling arose in him: “All this is useless.” He wrapped up the deities and set out for the Ganges. Ramakrishna, sitting in his room, called him: “Where are you going?” Kalu said, “It’s all pointless; I’ve done enough worship—nothing happens. I’m going to throw these gods and goddesses into the Ganges.” Ramakrishna said, “Wait a minute.” He sent someone to bring Vivekananda out of his room and said to Kalu, “This is not you who is going.” Vivekananda came, flustered. Ramakrishna said, “See what you have done! And if this is what you intend to do with concentration, I will keep your key forever. Only three days before your death will you get it back.”

Until three days before his death, Vivekananda could not practice concentration again.

If even a man like Vivekananda is ready to use power so trivially, how natural it is for others! That is why I put no emphasis on concentration. First make you adept in concentration, then lock away your key—why get into such tangles?

Witnessing is the easy path. And because it gives you peace directly, not power directly, as witnessing matures you become supremely peaceful. In that supreme peace such mischievous ideas do not arise. The urge to “show” something to others, to do something to others with your power, will not be born.

Otherwise all forms of power become ways to go astray. Do not think only wealth corrupts people; all kinds of power corrupt. Do not think only status corrupts; every kind of power corrupts. The truth is, your mind is always ready to go wrong; only you lack the power to go wrong grandly.

People often come to me: “So-and-so was such a good man—served in Bhoodan, massaged the feet of the poor, treated the sick, opened shelters for widows. Since he became a minister, he has completely changed! Power has spoiled him.” Why should power spoil him? All the pathways of corruption were within him, but he had neither the courage nor the means to walk them. As soon as courage, means, instruments arrived, he went astray.

People say, “So-and-so was good when he was poor. Since he got money, he’s gone crazy.” Everyone wants to go crazy, but even to go crazy you need facilities! Everyone wants to sin, but for sin you need convenience. Everyone wants to do wrong, but you need the capacity to do wrong. When capacity arrives, evil seizes you at once.

I tell you: not only wealth and position, even the power of concentration will carry you toward evil—because you already want to be evil; those seeds are lying within. They only need rain. When the rain of power comes, the sprouts appear. And we are all carrying seeds of poison.

Therefore my constant endeavor is that you do not get trapped by the very idea of moving toward power. Move toward silence, peace, and emptiness. As you become more silent, the poisonous seeds within you will have no way to sprout. As your silence deepens, those seeds will be scorched, burned. Power will also become available to you—but only when peace has become so dense that all the seeds of disease have been burned. Then power will come, and it cannot be misused.

And to tell the truth, you will not use that power at all. When a person becomes powerful and does not use it, then God uses that power. Understand this alchemy well. As long as you are the user, God does not use you. As long as you are the doer, you cannot become an instrument in God’s hands. The moment the very idea of “doing” evaporates and yet the power is there, it passes into God’s hands.

Krishna’s entire insistence to Arjuna in the Gita is this: drop the sense of doership. The moment your doership drops, the divine begins to flow through you—you are merely a vehicle.

So the path of witnessing and the path of concentration are very different.

But what is your longing? If you want to enlarge your ego and glorify it, witnessing will not appeal to you. You will then desire concentration, siddhis, powers. But remember: such a search is not religious. Wherever the idea arises, “I should become something,” you are moving away from religion.

Make this your touchstone. Let this feeling deepen daily: “I am dissolving; I am becoming a nobody.” Ultimately I must arrive at that place where I am lost—where, even if you search for the drop, it cannot be found; the drop has become one with the ocean. Then what need do I have of power? Power belongs to the divine—and when I dissolve in the divine, the whole of the divine is mine. Why should I seek a separate power?

To seek separate power means you are busy preserving your ego. And the ego is the world.

Impossible; because the search for the master begins where scripture fails. Only when you search and search within scripture and do not find, does the search for the master begin. Where the Bible, the Quran, the Gita and the Vedas fall short, from there the quest for the master starts. Why? And why is it impossible to go directly in search of the master?

First, scripture is dead. It does not hurt your ego. It is easy to place the Gita on your head. It is easy to bow before the Quran. But to place a living person upon your head is very hard; and to lay your head at the feet of a living person is far more difficult.

A book is dead. The dead pose no threat to your ego. A living person is dangerous. Bowing your head at his feet is painful; your ego struggles. That’s why one first tries scripture, hoping, “If I can get it from a book, why get into the mess of a living master!”

Then too, you can buy a book; you cannot buy a master. Books are sold in shops; there is no shop that sells masters. And you will draw meanings from a book according to your own convenience. You alone will be the interpreter; what meaning you extract depends entirely on you. Our unconscious always interprets in line with itself.

Therefore no book can transform you. Because who interprets the book? You. Suppose you read the Gita; the meanings you draw will be your own—your ego’s projections.

And from a book we extract only that upon which our present state of mind allows our attention to fall.

I heard an incident—true or false, I do not know. In erstwhile East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Yahya Khan had thrown in all his forces; the sun seemed to be setting on him every day. He panicked and called for the American ambassador, thinking they’d need more armaments. Before the ambassador arrived, he started flipping through the Bible, hoping to memorize a few verses to impress the ambassador on biblical grounds.

He opened the book. The first line his eyes fell on gave him a jolt: “And Judas went and hanged himself.” His situation did feel like a hanging at that moment. He got scared and quickly turned the page.

His eyes fell on another verse: “Go thou and do likewise.” He was shaken. He flipped to a third page: “Why delay? Why waste time in thought? Do it at once.” He slammed the Bible shut in terror.

On the understanding that your unconscious is at work, in China there is a book called the I Ching—the most unique book in the world. For thousands of years millions have used it. It’s an unusual book of divination. Whatever your question, the I Ching has an answer. Frame your question, cast the prescribed yarrow stalks or coins, open to the indicated passage, and you’ll get a response.

The I Ching is wondrous. First, it is in Chinese; even when translated, Chinese is unique—one character can have many meanings, for they are pictograms rather than phonetic words. And the I Ching is so mysterious that no statement is clear-cut; everything remains misty.

It’s like looking at a sky full of clouds: you can see whatever picture you wish. If you want a horse, a horse appears; if you want an elephant, an elephant appears—though there is neither horse nor elephant, just drifting vapor, its lines changing every moment. Whatever you imagine you begin to see.

Children see an old woman spinning yarn on the moon. Once the idea takes root, they begin to see it.

People read the I Ching and, in line with their own questions, extract answers. The book seems marvelous only because whoever composed it was a great craftsman of mystification. No answer is drawn in clear lines; it is so hazy that whatever meaning you want can be derived. So everyone pulls out his own meaning.

All scriptures are hazy. Not because hazy minds wrote them, but because truth, when poured into words, becomes hazy. The very medium of word introduces a fog.

And then it is you who gives the scripture its meaning. The one who reads ends up reading himself through the scripture. Therefore no scripture can take you beyond yourself; it will keep you within yourself. No scripture can give you more than you already are.

The state of scripture is like this. I have heard: an old villager went to an eye doctor. His vision had nearly failed. The doctor said, “No fundamental defect; glasses will fix it.”

The old man asked, “Will my eyes improve so much that I’ll be able to read and write?” The doctor said, “Certainly—you’ll be able to read and write.” He replied, “Then hurry, because I don’t know how to read and write!”

If you don’t know how to read, spectacles won’t help. Glasses only enable what you already know; they can’t give you more.

How can you read in scripture what you do not yet know? You can read only what you already know. That is why scriptures are futile if taken as an end. They cannot take you beyond yourself; no self-transcendence happens.

But scriptures are convenient. You can take whatever meaning you like. A book doesn’t quarrel. It cannot say, “You are misinterpreting me; this is not my meaning.” It gives no orders; everything depends on you.

So the ego first tries to seek through scripture. And when it fails… The unfortunate ones are those who think they have found through scripture. The fortunate are those who have at least enough intelligence to recognize, “I have not found it in the scriptures.” That is the mark of intelligence.

Many, lacking intelligence, imagine they have found. They memorize scriptural words and think the matter is finished.

When one becomes unsuccessful with scripture, his gaze turns to persons. The ego has tasted defeat; now it will seek a living person.

With a living person there are hurdles. The first: it is difficult to bow before him. And without bowing there is no way to learn.

Second: you cannot force your meanings. The living person will endeavor to move you according to his meaning. You cannot deceive a living man; you cannot impose your will upon him. And a living man can carry you beyond and above yourself.

Trying to bring about inner revolution through scripture is like trying to lift yourself by your own shoelaces. You are reading; you are interpreting; you are practicing—grabbing your own laces and trying to pull yourself up. It yields nothing—except one possible outcome: you get tired and begin the search for a master.

Thus scriptures have only one real utility: to bring you to the master. If the dead lead you to the living, they have done a great service.

And if you think you can avoid scripture and go straight to the master, that is very difficult, because that failure is necessary—that wandering and frustration within scripture is needed. You must be filled with its weariness and sorrow.

Both kinds of people come to me. One who is tired of scripture—I find working with him very easy. He is bored with the futile, now he wants the essential, the practicable. He is no longer academic; he is practical. His concern is no longer intellectual but meditative. He is free of scripture; now the thirst for practice has arisen.

Those who come without passing through scripture have scriptural curiosities. They ask: “Does God exist or not? Who created the world?” Such matters the scriptures can settle for them; they need not come to me. “From where did the soul come? Where is Brahman?” This is all idle talk; the scriptures can keep you busy with it. No living master will waste time on such futility.

So with those who have not gone through scripture, the difficulty is that their questions are scriptural and they waste time.

Passing through scripture is good. Your childish curiosities will either be cleared up or you’ll see they are worthless; then you will be filled with the thirst to know how life can be transformed. That thirst is of a different order.

And if you have understood the scriptures rightly, it becomes easy to understand the master—because whatever was missing in scripture is present in the master; he completes it. Where there were hints, where the path ran a little way and then petered out, from there the master begins. He is the complement—because beyond where words can take you, the master’s work begins.

There is an astonishing note in Mahavira’s life; the same is in Buddha’s life as well, and it does not seem accidental. Mahavira’s eleven chief disciples (ganadharas) were all great Brahmin scholars.

In a sense Mahavira is an opponent of the Brahmins, for he is inaugurating a new religion against the priest and the old scriptures; he refutes the Vedas and denies God. He himself was a kshatriya, but his eleven special disciples upon whom the whole of Jainism stands were all illustrious Brahmin pundits. It is surprising.

Exactly the same happened with Buddha. He was a kshatriya, yet his great disciples were all Brahmins—not ordinary Brahmins, but extraordinary scholars.

When Sariputta came to Buddha, five hundred Brahmins, his own disciples, came with him. When Maudgalyayana came, five thousand disciples followed him—he himself was a guru to five thousand.

Likewise in Mahavira’s life: when Gautama and Sudharma came, they too were eminent pundits, bringing groups of their own disciples.

Mahavira is a living master. Those eleven had already known the scriptures; they were masters of the Vedas, consummate scholars. They could understand Mahavira at once, because whatever the scriptures lacked was present in Mahavira. They caught hold immediately.

Mahakashyapa, Sariputta, Maudgalyayana—all were great scholars. They had searched through all the scriptures; nowhere was anything left unexamined. Yet everywhere something remained incomplete. At the very sight of Buddha, all became complete. In this man’s presence, the lack in scripture was instantly filled. Where the vessel of scripture was empty, seeing Buddha it became full. He was the very one the scriptures had been pointing toward.

Thus, even though he was their opposite in many ways, their surrender came easily. Those eleven pundits laid their heads at Mahavira’s feet, set fire to their scriptures, and said, “Now we have no need for them, for we have found the living one we were seeking.”

A map is needed only until you find the house you were seeking. Then you throw away the map—you say, “We have found the place the map indicated.”

So when Mahavira told his ganadharas to leave the Vedas, they said, “Just seeing you, they have already been left; nothing remains to drop.”

When Buddha said to Mahakashyapa, “Leave all—scripture, Vedas, God,” he replied, “Left! The moment I saw you, it all fell away. Your presence is enough. You are the living proof of all we sought. Until now we held to those things because they supported our search. Now the search is complete; they are no longer needed.”

You will be surprised to know: if scripture is rightly understood, there is no difficulty in leaving it. Difficulty arises only for those who have not digested scripture; they cling to it. Those who have digested it—what hindrance is there in dropping it? It drops of itself; in digestion it ends. The scripture’s work is over; from where it completes, the eyes begin to turn toward the master.

And without a master there is no way. From scripture nothing is going to happen. If at least this much happens, it is enough—but even that depends on your intelligence. If you keep extracting only your own meanings, perhaps even this won’t happen.

Mulla Nasruddin was passing a temple, driving his oxen. Worship was going on inside—arati, drums, bells. The oxen shied. Mulla got angry, walked in, and asked, “What are you doing here?” They said, “We are ‘taking down’ the arati.” Mulla said, “Then why did you ‘put it up’ in the first place, when you don’t know how to take it down!”

This is the meaning he drew! In Hindi, to “offer arati” is literally to “take arati down.” He took it literally: “If you can’t take it down, why did you put it up? First learn to take it down, then put it up.”

What meanings will you draw from scripture? They will come from within you. Mulla didn’t even know what arati is. He thought something had been hoisted up and now wouldn’t come down; they were making a racket to get it down.

Words can never be complete, because a word is not a thing; it is only a pointer. A pointer by definition is only an indication; the arrows go toward something—there is nothing at the sign itself.

By the roadside there is a stone post toward Delhi. It says “Delhi” with an arrow. Delhi is not there. Mulla could stop right there: “Here is Delhi—the stone says so.”

If you take scriptures and think “Delhi has come,” you are deluded. The post only shows the direction—travel must go further.

When Delhi truly arrives, the milestone will show zero—no arrow, just zero. And when a zero arises within you, know that Delhi has arrived. The day you are shunya—zero—your destination is reached. Before zero, there is no destination.

Search within the scriptures; with understanding, they are very lovely, because those from whom they have issued were unique beings. Some fragrance of them remains in their words. A word uttered by Buddha carries some of Buddha’s fragrance. If a heart is quiet, light, and intelligent—deeply sympathetic—you may catch a glimmer. But if you pounce upon the word, clutch it and memorize it, you kill it.

Words are fragile—handle them like flowers. As a poet uses words, so too a true reader of scripture approaches them: walking softly, touching lightly, coaxing the word so that meaning seeps out—never squeezing it by the throat to extract its “juice.”

Many do exactly that. You know the old Aesop fable: a man had a hen that laid a golden egg daily. Greed caught him and his wife: “All our life one egg a day! If there is an egg every day, the hen must be full of eggs. Let’s take them out all at once—why this daily worry and waiting?” They killed the hen. Not a single egg came out. They wept, but it was too late. The hen doesn’t store eggs; being alive, it creates one each day.

Words in scripture too can become alive through your sympathy. Meaning isn’t something stored inside that you can squeeze and drink like juice. Meaning comes if, with love and sympathy, you understand and woo the word.

That is why in India we do not “study” scripture; we do “path”—recitation. The difference is essential. Study means: analyze, argue, extract meaning. Path means: sing it, worshipfully; use it like song. No hurry for meaning. Let the words sink in, soak into your blood, down into the unconscious; become one with them. Then perhaps the hen begins to lay an egg.

Through deep sympathy a little meaning may dawn—and that meaning will help lead you toward the master. It will whisper: “This is scripture; now seek those from whom scripture flowed. If the scripture holds so much, how much more must be in those from whom it arose!”

Read the Buddha’s words—the Dhammapada. The Dhammapada is lovely, but how can it compare with Buddha himself! You cannot even infer what Buddha must have been like from it. If the Dhammapada is sweet, now seek Buddha.

And Buddha is not something that happened once and is gone. Buddha happens every day; the event of buddhahood keeps happening in many. The earth is never empty; buddhas are always present. You need not go back twenty-five centuries to find Buddha. If you don’t find the Dhammapada’s Buddha, you will find another buddha; that is what we call the master.

Read the Dhammapada; read the Gita. If the Gita gives you taste, then seek Krishna. Krishna is always present—that is the meaning of master.

Master means: we will seek the source from which such scriptures flow. We will not be satisfied with what has flowed out; now we will look for the Gangotri, the glacier from which the Ganges emerges.

People journey to Gangotri after following the whole course of the Ganges. In the same way, after journeying through the scriptures, you must reach the master.

Master means: the source from which scriptures arise; one who has known and lived truth, and from whom truth now streams.

And the earth is never without masters. Somewhere there is a buddha, somewhere a krishna, somewhere a christ.

Our trouble is that you live by old labels: it must say “Krishna” on it. That you won’t find. If it says “Mahavira,” then you will accept—but that individual has happened once. You can find a master, but not under the old name.

Names fade and change. If you have understood the scripture with sympathy—let its poetry be digested within, its song echo in you—you’ll see that names have no value; then catching Krishna anywhere becomes easy.

And if the Gita does not lead you to Krishna, it has missed its essence. That is why for centuries we keep discussing the Gita, the Vedas, the Quran, the Bible—it’s a kind of net.

People ask me why I speak on the Gita. It’s a net. What I am saying on the Gita I could just say directly—for it is I who am speaking; the Gita is only a pretext.

Why take the Gita as a pretext at all? Because of you. I could say it all without Krishna. What obstacle is there? Even if I bring Krishna in, what I have to say is what I will say—Krishna cannot create trouble in it. But I use his name for your sake.

You are enamored of old nets; I am concerned with fish. Whether you get caught in old or new is not the point. If you have a fondness for the old net, fine.

This is why discussions on the Gita, Quran, Bible, Tao Te Ching go on for millennia—people are attached to the old. Let them not be hurt; and slowly their attachment to the old will also fall away.

From scripture to the master, and from the master to the self—such is the journey. Scripture will take you to the master; the master will take you to the self. And until the zero of the self—shunya—arrives, know that the destination has not yet come.