Geeta Darshan #5

Now let us take the sutra.

Such men, possessed of hypocrisy, pride, and arrogance, clinging to desires that can never be satisfied, adopting false doctrines out of delusion, engage in corrupt conduct in the world.

And harboring endless anxieties that last till death, devoted to the enjoyment of sense-pleasures, they take that to be the only happiness there is.

Therefore, bound by the hundreds of nooses called hope, given over to lust and anger, they strive—by unjust means—to hoard wealth and many other objects for the fulfillment of their indulgences.

On the traits of those with demonic endowment, Krishna goes still deeper.

“Possessed of hypocrisy, pride, and arrogance...”

A person of demonic endowment always believes himself to be right and the other to be wrong. The other’s very “otherness” is his fault. It is not a question of what is right or wrong; for one endowed with demonic qualities, his own statement is right; the other’s is wrong.

Perhaps you’ve noticed: even when the other says exactly what you said yesterday, you still argue. Because the issue is not truth; the issue is that you must be right and the other must be wrong. You are always striving to prove that you are right.

In the endless disputes of the world there is no search for truth—only proclamations of ego. Whatever anyone may say, I am right. This is the inner hallmark of asuric endowment.

One of divine endowment, before calling another wrong, first tries to see where he himself might be wrong. That is why the one with divine qualities can learn; the demonic cannot. Learning is only possible if we can be wrong and the other can be right. If we are always right and the other always wrong, there is no room for learning. Discipleship cannot arise.

Therefore, a person of demonic endowment never becomes a disciple. He will say, “There is no true master.” “If we meet a true master, we will become disciples.” But he cannot be a disciple. He will find errors even in a Buddha and move on.

For discipleship, one must bow. One must feel, “I may be wrong; the other may be right.” “I am ignorant; the other may know.” One who has such a feeling can learn even from a child; he learns from plants and birds. For him, the whole world becomes the master.

But the person who thinks “I am right” has no way to learn in this world. He remains stuck, stagnant. His heart becomes like stone; it never blossoms like a flower.

Reflect: when you argue that something is right, are you really searching for truth? Or is it that your statement has become identified with your ego, and if the statement breaks, the ego will break? You can fight, quarrel, pile up arguments—but you will never change with those arguments, because they were never for truth.

A truth-seeker is always ready to be wrong. The more ready one is to admit one’s mistake, the greater the possibility of growth in life. He will keep learning to the very last breath. His learning has no end; his knowing has no shore.

The person of demonic endowment remains ignorant, because he cannot learn. The one with divine endowment goes on learning, and his knowing becomes oceanic.

“Clinging to desires that can never be satisfied...”

The demonic person runs his life on the support of desires that have no end, that cannot be fulfilled, that never have been fulfilled; their very nature is to be unfulfillable.

Buddha said: desires are insatiable; they cannot be filled. Not because your power is small, nor because life is short, nor because others obstruct you, but because their nature is insatiability. It cannot be otherwise.

Why? If you do not fulfill a desire, if you repress it, it will keep pushing, “Fulfill me!”—and will keep pushing through lifetimes. If you do fulfill it, then each fulfillment builds a habit; and as habit grows, demand increases.

A great dilemma: repress desire and it pursues you; fulfill desire and habit forms. In both situations, desire entangles. We rarely try the third way: simply to watch the desire—neither suppressing nor gratifying it; neither fighting it nor becoming its slave.

Two paths exist in the world. One is of indulgence: fulfill desires; such people are called “asuri,” of demonic endowment. Another is of fighting desires: repression; but they are not called people of divine endowment either—they too are asuric. The only difference is that some stand upright on their feet and some stand on their heads—doing a headstand.

There is a third category: the person of divine endowment. He does not fight; he is simply a witness to desire. And as witnessing deepens, desire burns out from the roots. There is no need to suppress it, and no need to fulfill it.

Difficulties exist in both indulgence and repression. These two paths stand before you, and you keep tottering between them. In the morning you think “wrong,” in the evening “right.” Today you think “let me satisfy desire”; tomorrow you fight and repress. So you sway, and life is wasted.

Our condition is like this. I have heard: a non-dualist sage came to a village. There was a simple poor farmer. The sage stopped him on his way to the fields and said, “Wait—will you spend your whole life in the fields? Remember: the world is maya.” The farmer said, “If you are teaching me, also give me a way.” The sage gave him the mantra soham: keep repeating soham, ‘I am That.’ After some days, the farmer kept chanting soham.

Then a dualist sage arrived. People told him, “There’s a simple farmer here who chants soham and is very cheerful.” The sage said, “Completely wrong. Bring him.” He told the farmer, “This is wrong. Soham is an Advaitin’s mantra. You’ll be misled. Correct it to dasoham—‘I am your servant.’ Add a ‘da.’” The farmer added ‘da.’

A few months later another non-dualist sage came. Hearing of the farmer, he said, “Wrong again. Duality should not enter the mantra. Instead of dasoham, add an ‘sa’: sada soham—‘Always I am That.’” The poor man said, “As you wish.”

What little peace he had found earlier, in the second mantra decreased; with the third he got utterly confused. Still, he began sada soham.

Soon another dualist came and said, “Wrong. Non-duality is itself wrong. Add another ‘da’: das dasoham—‘I am a servant, servant.’” The poor man said, “Now I will go mad. The little peace I had is gone. Where is the end of this?”

This is our condition: everything around is split into two camps. Some push you toward indulgence; others push you toward repression. Some are filled with life’s melancholy, saying, “Renounce it all.” Some are bursting with life’s gusto, saying, “Enjoy it all.” Between the two, man becomes deranged.

If you keep switching daily between the two, you create confusion, a fragmented mind, a schizophrenic state—where nothing seems clear: what is right, what is wrong; where to go, where not to go. One foot moves left, the other right; one goes forward, the other back. Life falls into chaos.

But we also have a difficulty: beyond these two, we don’t hear the third voice.

There is a third voice: the witnessing, aware seeing of the process of desire. Both the enjoyer and the renunciate are bound; only the witness is free.

The person filled with demonic endowment lives leaning on desires that can never be fulfilled; therefore he is always miserable. Walking with the unfulfillable, he will harvest misery: constant discontent, constant dissatisfaction, a constant feeling of “nothing has been gained—run more, run more.” Wherever he reaches, the voice of “more” continues.

“Out of delusion they adopt false doctrines and, given to corrupt conduct, they move in the world. Harboring endless anxieties until death, devoted to enjoyments, they hold that this alone is happiness.”

Whatever small scraps fall to them in this running—some fleeting glimmers of pleasure—they take them as the only happiness there is.

Reflect: you have lived so many years—at least this life you remember; leave aside the rest. Have you found any happiness? If you search honestly, you’ll find it hard to locate a single real happiness. Perhaps occasionally a glimpse, a mirage—like a rainbow in the distance. Try to grasp it, it disappears. From afar there seemed to be something; we carry our lives forward on that much.

A person of divine endowment is not satisfied so cheaply. People say the “divine” person is contented. I say: first, he is profoundly discontented—so much so that even the demonic appear content by comparison. The demonic says, “This is all the happiness there is,” and settles. The divine says, “There is no happiness here at all. It is a rainbow in the distance; in the hand, there is only water. Nothing is here.” So the demonic manages to find a little satisfaction even in dissatisfaction; the divine finds complete dissatisfaction in it. And because of this dissatisfaction, he sets out toward a new dimension, a new horizon. Seeing there is nothing in desire—only false glimmers—his journey begins beyond desire, into desirelessness.

First, the person of divine endowment becomes utterly dissatisfied with the world; this is the basis of his search for the divine. But the demonic says, “All right—this little happiness is all there is. There is nothing more worth having, and nothing more can be had.”

Many come to me and say, “We are content,” thinking they are saying something precious. “Whatever God has given, we are satisfied.” What has God given them? They say, “Everything is fine: a wife, a child, work is fine, enough money for daily bread; we are content.” They expect me to praise them as religious. But this is a mark of demonic endowment: “This much happiness is enough; there is nothing more.”

A person of divine endowment looks at life with piercing eyes and becomes wholly dissatisfied. If this is life, he is ready to die right now: there is no substance in it. And the moment he truly sees this, the relish of his eyes is withdrawn from this world; his eyes become free. He becomes capable of stretching them toward the other world. Attention, which was entangled here, returns, and can be directed beyond. Only a fully dissatisfied consciousness can discover the supreme satisfaction of the divine.

“Therefore, bound by the hundreds of snares of hope, and given over to lust and anger, they strive—by unjust means—to amass wealth and many other things for the fulfillment of their indulgences.”

Whoever does not seek himself will, knowingly or unknowingly, seek objects. Seek you must; the energy of life is inherently a search. If you don’t seek inwardly, you will seek something outwardly. And for the one who does not seek himself, nothing remains but the search for things.

There are only two dimensions in this world: either search for consciousness, or search for matter. If you are not searching for consciousness, what will you do? You will collect matter: hoard wealth, climb to high positions, build empires.

Such a person then engages in accumulation. And accumulation has its basic rules.

First: whoever is bent on hoarding cannot think in terms of justice. Matter belongs to no one. The land you call yours today belonged to someone else yesterday, and to someone else the day before. If you sit and reflect, “How can I lay claim to what is not mine?” you cannot accumulate.

Therefore, the accumulator resorts to any means whatsoever. And to accumulate matter, you must seize from others. Possessiveness is impossible without exploitation. To hoard, you must deprive others. To hoard, you must practice violence—gross or subtle. To hoard, you must protect yourself from charity, compassion, and kindness. You may have to steal; you may have to beg; you will do whatever is needed.

Once at a station, waiting for a delayed train, a beggar approached me. His face looked educated and cultured. I asked him to sit and tell me about himself. He was pleased. I had a book in my hand. He said, “You’re reading; I can talk to you. I too was once a writer; I wrote a book.” I asked, “Which book?” He said, “Twenty Ways to Earn a Living.” I was startled: “And yet you are begging!” He said, “Yes—because this is the twenty-first way I discovered later. If the twenty fail, the twenty-first never fails. It’s a sure shot.”

A thief snatches what belongs to others; a beggar also snatches—it’s a more artful method. He entangles the other so that if you don’t give, you feel guilty; if you give, you feel pain. Don’t imagine that when a beggar gets your coin he thinks you are generous; he thinks he was clever and you were a fool. If you give nothing and escape, then he respects your skill. In his eyes you are respectable only when you don’t give. If you give, he thinks, “All right then.” But he creates a situation in which, to avoid the awkwardness, you find it easier to hand over two coins.

The thief snatches; the beggar snatches; the businessman—who is between them—also snatches. All hunger for one thing: piles of wealth.

No matter how great the heap, in the end it becomes your grave. In the end, its only use is to bury you.

Understand this law: life-energy cannot exist without searching. If you are not searching inwardly, you will search outwardly. The outer search stops only when the inner begins. As soon as consciousness turns inward, the outer search drops of its own accord—because a greater treasure has begun to be found; because the real wealth arrives; because you yourself will laugh: “What childish games was I playing!”

Money is no more than a children’s game. We don’t notice it because old people play it too—and old people are nothing but grown children. Merely an aged body has little value; the mind remains childish.

Children collect stamps, butterflies, pebbles. Old people laugh at their madness. But what difference is there between a postage stamp and a thousand-rupee note? Both are products of the printing press. Their value is only a social stamp.

Children collect cigarette labels; the old collect banknotes. No real difference. The old hoarder is old only in body; within, he is juvenile, child-minded.

The demonic never loses his child-mind. He dies with a child’s mind. On his deathbed he still worries about possessions. The wise soon free themselves from the futile race for matter and set out in search of the divine.

The search for matter is outward; the search for the divine is inward. The search for matter is by exploiting others; the search for the divine is by refining oneself. In the search for matter, others are exploited; in the search for the divine, the soul is disciplined.

There are only two searches. And note: if someone thinks, “I will pursue both together,” he is mistaken. This does not mean you must run away from the world to seek the divine. Nor does it mean that if you seek the divine you must become poor and beggarly. It means this: as one seeks the divine, one’s grip on matter loosens. Even if matter lies around him, he does not clutch it. If it is snatched, he does not beat his chest. If it is there, fine; if not, fine. It is not his goal. And if for the inner search everything must be left, he is ready. If all is lost for the inner, he is willing. He is always eager to stake the entire outer for the inner—waiting for the moment when he will lose everything and save himself.

Jesus said: whoever would save himself must be ready to lose everything; and whoever is eager to save everything should remember—everything may be saved, but the self will be lost.

In the world there is a bargain: either you save things by selling yourself—whatever you earn, you earn by selling bits of your soul. The safe fills; the soul empties. One day the safe remains; you are gone. This is the poverty of the rich, their inner beggary.

I have heard: one morning a beggar went to Andrew Carnegie, the American billionaire, making a great commotion. Carnegie himself came out: “Why such noise? If you want alms, come at the proper time. The sun isn’t even up; I was sleeping.”

The beggar said, “Wait. Would you like advice about your business?” Carnegie said, “Not at all. What advice can you give? You have no experience.” The beggar said, “Then you also should not give me advice. You have no experience in my business. Until we make a fuss, does anyone give? If I came at the proper time, I’d never reach you—secretaries and guards would stop me. Coming at the wrong time, I met you directly. Don’t advise me; this is my ancestral trade—my forefathers did it.”

Carnegie writes in his memoirs: I was amused. I asked, “What do you want?” The man said, “I never take anything for free. I’m no beggar. But I can do something you cannot—if you want to wager.” Carnegie writes: I was intrigued: what can he do that I cannot? I said, “All right, a hundred dollars on it. What is it?” He said, “I can get a certificate that I’m a beggar; you cannot get a certificate that you aren’t.” Carnegie writes: I gave him a hundred dollars, and then kept thinking: whether or not I can get a certificate, a beggar is what I am. I have billions—so what? Begging goes on, asking goes on, searching goes on. No one will give me a certificate, because if I am a beggar, then no rich man exists in this world.

Carnegie left ten billion dollars when he died. But he wrote: a beggar I am—the man was right. Because desire is still there, craving is still there. My begging bowl is still in my hand. If I could get something more, I would trade everything to get it; I would spend myself further.

Two days before he died, Carnegie asked the man writing his biography: “If God gave you the chance, would you prefer to be Andrew Carnegie’s secretary writing his life, or to be Andrew Carnegie while he writes yours?” The secretary said, “Forgive me; don’t take offense—I would never prefer to be Andrew Carnegie. I’m fine writing your life.” Carnegie asked, “Why?” He said, “I arrive at eleven and leave at five. Your clerks come at ten, leave at five. The peon comes at nine, leaves at five. I see you at your desk from seven in the morning till eleven at night. Your condition is worse than the peon’s. May God never make me Andrew Carnegie. I don’t want to be you.”

Carnegie was right: I am a beggar too.

Even after gaining everything, if the soul is not found, beggary remains. If all is lost and the soul remains, for the first time the inner emperor is experienced.

That’s all for today.