Geeta Darshan #3

Krishna would say the same: dissolve the mind. But to dissolve the mind, it first has to be there! As of now, there is no mind. Our existence is nothing but the senses and the chase behind them. We have nothing like a real mind, nothing like will. In the first stage, will has to be created; in the second stage, even that will has to be surrendered. But only those who have it will be able to surrender; those who don’t—what will they surrender!

We tell a person, renounce wealth. But to renounce wealth, there must be wealth! If we say, “Give up wealth,” and there is none, what will he renounce?

Do you actually have a mind, or have you mistaken the heap of sensory cravings for the mind? So when someone tells us, “Surrender the mind at the feet of the Divine,” we in fact have nothing to surrender. We only have a stampede of desires, and desires cannot be surrendered. Has anyone ever said, “Surrender your passions to God”? No one has. The mind can be surrendered—an integrated will can be surrendered. And surrender is the highest resolve: the greatest, ultimate resolve is surrender.

Surrender is possible in the second stage. In the first stage, the will must be forged. A soul is also required! If you are to offer oblations at the feet of the Divine, will you arrive carrying your cravings? What is needed to offer is the soul. You, too, must be! Are you? If you search deeply, you won’t find that you are; you will find this desire, that desire—this passion, that passion. Where are you?

David Hume wrote in his memoirs that he read the oracle at Delphi—“Know thyself”—and since then he went within to try to know himself. But he never found himself; whenever he looked within, he found a desire, a thought, a passion, a longing. He never found himself. He grew weary of searching. Whenever he found something, it was some passion, some desire, some thought, some dream—never himself.

Nor will you find yourself. Before self-knowledge, the very being of the self must first sprout amidst the passions. Hume is right. If you go within, you won’t find the soul; you will find thoughts, appetites, desires. The soul can be encountered only through the doorway of will.

Therefore the first stage of religion is: create will—create the will-force. The second stage is: surrender that created will. First become a man of soul; then offer that soul like a flower at the feet of the Divine. First attain the soul; then attain the Supreme. To attain the soul you must rise above the passions; to attain the Supreme you must rise even above the soul. To gain the soul you must have mastery over the passions; to gain the Supreme you must have mastery even over the soul. But that is the second stage. It is not the opposite; it is the next step. Only he who has can surrender.

Jesus has a marvelous saying, very close to Krishna’s point: “He who saves himself will lose himself, and he who loses himself will save himself.” But before saving or losing, you must first be. Are you?

Whoever went to Gurdjieff and said, “I want to know myself,” Gurdjieff would ask, “Are you?” You too would be startled if someone asked you, “Are you?” You would say, “Of course I am!” But your being is only an aggregate. If all your passions, desires, thoughts were taken out of you, you would vanish like a void. You have no resolve that stands apart from thought, distinct from passion, different from desire. You have no experience of the soul. You are only an aggregate, an accumulation, a collection. What will you surrender, and where? Even the one who would surrender is absent within.

Therefore Krishna tells Arjuna: first become noble. Noble means: first become soul-possessed; first become manasvī—of strong mind; first attain will. Later he will tell Arjuna: “Drop everything and come to my refuge.” But only one who has will can drop everything. One who cannot drop even a trifle—how will he drop all? One who cannot give up a coin—how will he give up himself? One who cannot leave a house—how will he leave his very soul? Before you can renounce yourself, you must first be, in full strength.

Therefore will is the first discipline of religion; surrender is the last. You could say religion has only two steps. The first is will; the second is surrender. In these two steps the journey is complete. Those who stop at will may come to know the soul, but they will not know the Divine. Those who stop at passion will know passion, but not the soul. Those who surrender even the soul come to know the Divine. That is the final event, the ultimate, the supreme realization. For that, Krishna starts Arjuna from A-B-C. He tells him: first, become a man of will. And when he sees that will has arisen in him, he will say: now drop everything—sarva-dharmān parityajya, mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja—drop all and come to my refuge.

But the weak can never take refuge. This may puzzle you, because ordinarily the weak are thought to seek refuge. A weak person can never truly surrender. He doesn’t have the strength to place himself completely at another’s feet. Surrender is the greatest strength—very difficult, very arduous. Do not think it is easy. Ordinarily people imagine, “We are weak—by surrender we will attain God.” But the weak cannot surrender. The weak are so weak they cannot even be; what will they surrender? Yes, they can place their head at the feet; placing oneself is a wholly different matter. A child too can bow his head. To place yourself at the feet is another matter.

There is an incident about surrender that Kierkegaard tells—a story in Christianity. God said to a man: take your only son to my temple and cut off his head as an offering. Hearing this voice, he took his son and went to the temple. He sharpened his sword, placed the boy’s neck on the altar, raised the sword—then the voice came: stop! I only wanted to know whether you who talk of surrender have in you the strength worthy of surrender.

Yet even in cutting the son’s neck, less strength is needed than in cutting your own. Surrender means offering your own neck, not just bowing the head. Bowing can be momentary—down and back up. Surrender means: if bowed, it remains bowed; if surrendered, it stays surrendered. Surrender means: this neck will not rise again. Surrender means: now we have gone to the feet; now those feet are all—there is no “we.” Who can do this? Only he who has first gathered will, in whom an integrated individuation has happened, in whom the soul has crystallized. One in whom the soul is formed can also do the soul’s last act—surrender.

Therefore Krishna gives Arjuna the first lesson. He says: the superior man is he whose mind gains mastery over the passions, over the senses.

नियतं कुरु कर्म त्वं ज्यायो ह्यकर्मणः।
शरीरयात्राऽपि च ते न प्रसिद्ध्येदकर्मणः।। 8।।

Therefore perform the action enjoined by shastra as your own dharma. Action is superior to inaction, and even your bodily maintenance will not be possible through inaction.

Doing is superior to not doing, because “not doing” is only evasion—self-deception. Do you must. Since you have to act, it is better to act consciously. Since you have to act, it is better to act knowingly. Since you have to act, it is better to act openly through the front door. If you have to act, why creep in through the back? If you have to act, it is not right to act unconsciously, deceiving yourself—because then action can lead you down wrong paths. What is inevitable should be done wakefully, with acceptance, with total energy.

Therefore Krishna says: what must be done, do it wholly aware, as your own dharma. And he adds another point: let it be shastra-sanctioned. Your svadharma, sanctioned by shastra. Shastra does not mean “a book.” Its original, deeper meaning is: that which is sanctioned by those who have known—what the knowers, the realizers, have affirmed.

Human consciousness has a long journey. We come for a hundred years or so and depart. The individual comes and goes; humanness continues. Humanity’s experience is of millions of years; there is a distilled essence of that experience. Those who have known have said certain things. Krishna says: let your svadharma be what is sanctioned by that—the science known by the knowers since beginningless time.

Two things here need to be understood. In this country since ancient times society was divided into four varnas. Arjuna belongs to the kshatriya varna. From birth we divided society into four segments. There was no hierarchy, no high or low; it was a division of qualities—horizontal, not vertical. There are two kinds of division. One is horizontal: I am sitting on a platform, someone sits beside me, another behind me—we are on one level, yet distinct; the division is horizontal. The other is vertical: I stand on one step, someone stands higher, another higher still—the division is vertical.

In India the primary division of varna was horizontal. Shudra, brahmin, vaishya, kshatriya were not ranked above or below one another. They were four divisions standing on one plane in society. Later the horizontal division became vertical—higher and lower. From the day it became vertical, the precious foundation of varna collapsed, and the principle and psychology of varna turned into a basis for exploitation.

By Krishna’s time this distortion had not yet happened. Therefore Krishna says: follow your svadharma—the varna into which you were born, in which you were raised, educated, trained, the varna that has conditioned your very bones, blood, flesh, mind, and samskaras. To flee from that is worse than to perform the work of that varna. Why? There are many reasons; consider a few deeply.

- Every person has infinite potentialities. But out of those infinite potentialities only one can become actual. Not all can become real. When a person is born, many journeys are possible, but ultimately he must walk one path. Reality is always one-dimensional, while potentiality is multi-dimensional.

We can make a child a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer—there is great flexibility; infinite directions are possible. But he will actually go in only one. If we try to make him go in many, we will drive him neurotic, insane.

Modern science agrees. It says: every person’s capacity to know is vast; but whenever someone really goes to know, specialization happens. A person becomes a doctor—but even becoming a complete doctor is now difficult, because there are many branches: ear, eye, heart, brain. One eye alone is such a vast phenomenon that a single person could spend a lifetime and still not know it completely. Hence specialization is inevitable.

In the West today, specialists abound: a mathematician knows mathematics, but in physics he may be as naive as anyone else; a physicist may be as ignorant of chemistry as a village farmer. Each person’s capacity has limits, and within those limits he must travel. And those limits keep narrowing.

Just as science in the West became specialized, so in India thousands of years ago we specialized four basic types of personality. We said: if some are to be kshatriyas, it is proper they be given the chance from childhood to be kshatriyas. If some can only be brahmins and not kshatriyas, it is proper they breathe the air of a brahmin from the very first moment—let not even a moment be wasted.

There is a deeper point you may not ordinarily consider. Even though it was settled that from birth one would be brahmin or kshatriya, we still kept a provision for exceptions: when an exception arose, a person could move to another varna. But that was the exception, not the rule. At times a Vishvamitra would change varna—but that was not the norm. Generally, one initiated and formed in a given direction found joy in that direction and traveled along it.

Krishna could have told Arjuna to change varna, but he knows Arjuna well. He can be nothing but a kshatriya. Every pore of him is kshatriya; every breath, kshatriya. Truly, we have not produced another kshatriya like Arjuna. There is no way to change his svadharma. His personality has become one-dimensional. All his training is for exactly the work he now wants to flee.

Since we fixed that people would be grouped from birth, we also gave souls the facility of choosing their birth. Note this—on this rested the birth-based foundation of varna, which critics today do not understand. As soon as a person dies, the soul seeks a new life. According to what it did and became in previous lives, it seeks a new womb. The varna arrangement made that seeking easier.

A brahmin, upon dying, could easily find a brahmin womb. It was simple, not difficult—just as today, if a clinic’s board says “Eye Specialist,” the patient can find the right door. We similarly set a seal for the soul to find a womb according to its introvert or extrovert tendencies, its capacities and possibilities. Thus, generally, a brahmin, for countless births, entered brahmin wombs; a kshatriya found kshatriya wombs. The results were precious.

It meant we did not give specialization for only one lifetime; we gave specialization across a chain of lifetimes. If someday it could happen that Einstein were born again to a father who is a physicist and a mother who is a mathematician—if he could resume from where he left off—then extraordinary development would be possible. But if Einstein finds himself born into a shopkeeper’s house, the continuity between his past and new journey is badly disrupted.

It is hard today even to imagine that we tried to channel a person across many births. Hence Krishna says: shastra-sanctioned—the science known by innumerable knowers over immeasurable time. Your soul is not “kshatriya” only today; being kshatriya is your svadharma across many births. You are born with it. If you suddenly deny it today, you will only become a failure, a sadness, a frustration. Your life will be a wandering; it will not reach the peak experience that you as a kshatriya can reach.

Whenever people speak for or against varna, they have no sense that behind it is a science of many births. The point was to give the soul a direction, to help it find a womb suited to its svadharma. Today confusion has grown; the whole arrangement has broken because the science has been lost. Now souls find it extremely difficult to decide where to take birth; and wherever they do, whether it will connect properly with their past journey has become mere accident. We had made this a scientific method.

Rivers flow, but when science develops we dig canals. Rivers flow, but a canal flows in a planned way. The varna arrangement worked like a canal for souls. The day it broke, souls began flowing like rivers—without a coordinated channel for their journey.

Therefore Krishna says “shastra-sanctioned.” Meaning: what accords with the known science of souls up to that day. Arjuna, perform that svadharma. That is what is truly beneficial. And in any case, doing is always better than not doing—because there is no way to escape action.

There is a fundamental difference between resolve and repression of the senses. Resolve is a positive act, a creative, constructive act; repression of the senses is a negative act. Understand it this way: a man is hungry. He is suppressing his hunger—that is negative. He isn’t saying, “I will not eat—hunger, stop!” No. In his mind he is thinking of food, feeling hungry. He is both arousing the hunger and suppressing it. But he has no positive will that says, “No, I will not eat—finished!” There is no constructive act there. Hunger arises; he keeps pushing it down, fighting with it. But apart from the hunger, no resolve is born within him.

Understand it another way. A man—some desire has arisen within, say sexual desire—and with the person towards whom it has arisen, a sexual relationship is not possible. There may be social circumstances, other reasons—impossible. He is both stimulating the desire and suppressing it. If it were possible, he would want to fulfill it. But it is not possible—awkward, risky, unsafe, beyond propriety, against social rules; it would damage his image, it doesn’t suit his ego. “What will the wife say? What will the father say? The brother? What will people say?” All these are negative reasons. So he suppresses his sexual desire; yet at the same time he keeps inflaming the images tied to it, relishing and repressing. That will does not arise like this; and if a bit of will appears, it is soon destroyed.

No—the man is not concerned with who will say what; not concerned with what wife or husband or brother or society will say. That is not the question. He says, “If within me any desire arises that takes the reins out of my hands, that is wrong. There is no other fear, no other reason. I simply do not want to be dragged by desires within. I want to be the master.” So he says, “Enough!” Then he does not indulge in fantasy; he does not create sexual images, does not sculpt inner idols, does not dream. He says, “Stop.” And this “stop” is less about pushing something down and more about awakening something up. Now he begins to awaken himself. He says, “I should have such strength that when I say ‘Enough!’ the thing ends.” Then resolve arises within.

Resolve is a creative act. Resolve is to awaken a new power within. Repression is only to press down the old powers of desire. In repression, only the old forces remain in view; in awakening, a new force manifests. For the arising of this new force, it is not auspicious to experiment directly with passions. It is better to start with other sorts of things. For example, it’s winter and you are sitting in the cold. You begin to awaken within yourself the strength that will bear the cold without running from it. You say, “I will sit in this cold for an hour; I won’t run.” Here there is no fear of society, no rules or morality involved. You say, “I will not run. For one hour I will sit prepared to endure the cold, and I will watch whether some power awakens within that can bear the cold for an hour.” You are not suppressing anything; you are awakening something.

In Tibet there is a whole discipline called heat-yoga—producing heat by resolve. At Lhasa University every student had to pass through that discipline as part of examination. The test was strange: on a freezing, snowy night the students had to stand naked, and sweat had to drip from their bodies; only then were they considered to have passed. Not only sweat, because in heat anyone can sweat. The experiment is: if with firm resolve you say there is no cold, there is heat, the body begins to sweat.

Under hypnosis this becomes easy. If someone is hypnotized and told, “The sun is blazing, the heat is intense,” sweat will begin to flow from his forehead and body. Conversely, even if it is hot and you are drenched in sweat, if a hypnotized person is told, “It is bitterly cold, snow is falling outside, icy winds are blowing, your hands and feet are shivering,” then, in the very heat, he will begin to shiver. If in hypnosis an ordinary coin is placed in your hand and you are told, “A burning coal is on your palm,” you will scream and fling it away as if it were a coal. So far, so good—but a blister will actually form on the palm. Because when the resolve accepts that a coal is there, the body has to accept it too. If the hand has agreed that it is a coal, the body must burn; a blister must appear.

At Lhasa University, when a lama finished his study, he had to give this proof as a test of resolve. Everyone might get sweat, but how to decide first, second, third? Wet cloths soaked in water were given to all. Wear those, and warm the body so much that the cloths dry! The one who dries the most cloths in the night is first; the next, second; the next, third. And this is no longer only a Tibetan tale; today in many Western laboratories hypnosis has established that whatever the mind’s resolve truly accepts begins to happen.

Awaken resolve, and you won’t have to fight with passions. Suppression becomes necessary only because resolve is absent. If resolve is present, suppression is not needed.

Bertrand Russell writes in a memoir—he lived long, almost a century, and saw many colors of the world. He writes: “Now, when I go to Oxford or Cambridge, we have to shout through microphones, ‘Silence, silence! The Vice-Chancellor is coming!’ Yet nobody falls silent. And when I first went to university, the moment silence began to descend on the students, we understood the Vice-Chancellor was arriving. Silence itself announced that the master was coming.” When resolve stands within, desires fall silent. When it is absent, one has to silence desires by force. Their noisiness is due to the lack of resolve.

Let me give you the old definition. These days we say, “One should touch the guru’s feet.” The old definition is different: The one at whose feet, on coming near, you simply have to bow—that person is a guru. Today we say, “One should respect the father.” The old definition: The one to whom respect is spontaneously given—that one is a father. Before long we will be teaching mothers, “You should love your children”—we will have to teach it. But the one who simply pours love on the child is a mother. The moment “should” enters, the thing is already lost.

When resolve is within—when positive energy is inside—you don’t have to suppress passions. A mere hint is enough. Let resolve stand up here, and desire departs there. One has to suppress desire because resolve is not within. And by suppressing desires, resolve will not be born. When resolve is born, freedom from passions follows. Toward that resolve, don’t just keep fighting with passions. Remember a rule: whatever you fight, you give it undue attention. And whatever gets attention becomes stronger.

For passions, attention is food. If someone fights sex, his sex will increase, not decrease. Because the more attention given, the more sex gains power. Attention is nourishment. Stop fretting about sex. That’s why we coined the word brahmacharya. Have you ever pondered its meaning? It means to move in Brahman, to dwell in the divine. We say, leave worrying about sex; be concerned with diving into Brahman. As you immerse in Brahman, lust begins to depart. Fight lust, and you’re in trouble—it won’t depart, it will haunt you.

There is a law of reverse effect discovered in the West by the French thinker Émile Coué: the law of opposite result. Whatever you want to do, if you try too hard, the opposite happens.

Like a novice learning to ride a bicycle on a sixty-foot-wide road. On the edge stands a milestone. The beginner first sees the stone; the broad road he doesn’t notice. “Oh no, hope I don’t hit that stone!” As soon as this negative thought grabs him—“Don’t hit the stone”—the road vanishes from his awareness and only the stone remains. Now the cycle heads toward the stone. He panics. The more he veers toward it, the more he panics; and the more attention he gives to the stone, the more he wants to avoid it. But to avoid it, attention must remain on it; and whatever you attend to is hard to avoid. He goes and collides. Even a blind man riding would have only a one-in-a-hundred chance of hitting, because the road is sixty feet wide. But this man fixates on the stone as if hypnotized. He wants to avoid it—that very wanting is his trouble. What you want not to happen, happens.

If you decide you won’t get angry, you will get angry more readily. Don’t worry about anger; cultivate forgiveness. Look positively toward forgiveness; drop concern with anger. Aim to forgive, not “not to be angry.” Don’t take the negative stance “I will avoid lust”; take the positive stance “I will enter brahmacharya.” Otherwise you will be trapped in the law of reverse effect. Many are trapped. What they want not to happen keeps happening, daily. And when it happens, resolve weakens: “I tried so hard and yet it happened. I can’t do anything.” Resolve weakens further. Resolve grows on the positive path. Suppression of passions is negative. That is the difference.

यज्ञार्थात्कर्मणोऽन्यत्र लोकोऽयं कर्म बन्धनः।
तदर्थं कर्म कौन्तेय मुक्तसंगः समाचर।। 9।।

And Arjuna, even out of fear of bondage, it is not right to renounce action. For other than action done as a yajna, man becomes bound by action. Therefore, O Arjuna, free of attachment, perform action well for the sake of the Supreme.

Krishna says another wondrous thing: The man who flees from action in order to escape bondage does not act rightly. This is exactly what I was saying: the law of reverse effect. The one who, to avoid bondage, gives up action and runs, will attain the opposite result—he will be bound more. And the desire to flee the bondage of action is not a declaration of freedom; it is a declaration of dependency. You cannot run away from action anyway. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will have to act. Then what should one do?

Krishna says: yajna-like action. Action consecrated to the Divine—action I am not doing for myself. God gave life, birth, the world; He gave action. I do it for Him. One who acts as yajna does not fall into bondage.

Two things to note. First, one who runs solely to escape bondage will not escape; he will fall into new bonds. Remember, the one who runs from bondage is not strong. Only the weak run; the strong do not. The more he runs, the weaker he becomes. He runs out of fear. And the fearful—he is in bondage here; wherever he goes, he will be bound. How will the weak escape bondage?

A man is a householder and says, “Home is bondage.” Strange! A house doesn’t bind. Doors are open. A house is not iron chains. It is not fettered to your feet like a shackle. The house does not bind. Yet he says, “The house binds, so I will leave.” Now understand: does the house bind him? If so, leaving the house should free him. But what can a house bind? It is inert. It neither binds nor liberates. When you go to leave, it won’t even say, “Stop, where are you going?” It won’t care. Yet he says the house binds. In truth he is misunderstanding. He regards the house as “mine,” and with this “mine” he gets bound. The house doesn’t bind; “my” binds me to the house. But the “mine” will remain with him. When he leaves the house, it will become “my ashram,” and the ashram will bind. The “mine” goes with him—that is his weakness. The house will be left—houses never stop anyone; they are happy to be rid of nuisance! But you will carry the very mechanism that becomes slavery: “mine.”

A wife does not bind. Leave your wife and go—will lust remain behind with her? When she was not with you on a journey, was there no lust? When you leave her, will lust stay with her or go with you? It goes with you. And remember, the wife had become familiar; you will now see new women—lust will become even more greedy. The one who runs forgets that what he is running from is not the binding thing; it is the runner who is bound.

Therefore Krishna says: escape is futile. There is no running away; it is useless. Where will you go? How will you run from yourself? You may flee from everything, but you remain with you. And within that “you” lies all the sickness. So Krishna says: if someone runs from action to escape bondage, he is foolish. There is no bondage in action. “My action”—that is the bondage. If you can gather courage to say, “Action is God’s,” then action becomes yajna and its bondage falls. Why? Because then it is no longer “mine.”

The essence is this: “mine” is bondage—whether my house, my wealth, my son, my religion, my action, even my renunciation. Whatever is “mine” becomes bondage. Only one kind of action does not bind: action that is not mine, but God’s. Such action is called yajna.

Yajna is a highly technical word; it cannot be translated in any language. It is a wholly new form of action in which I am no longer the doer; God is the doer. A totally new conception of action in which I am only an instrument and the doer is the Divine; in which I become a flute; the song and notes are His.

Action as yajna does not bring bondage. So Krishna tells Arjuna: do not flee action; turn action into yajna. That is, dedicate it to God. Say with your whole being, “I am only a vehicle; do through me what You will.”

There is an incident in Nanak’s life, from which he became a saint. From that day his action became yajna. He had a minor job as a storekeeper, distributing rations to soldiers—measuring out wheat, lentils, chickpeas, all day long. One day something auspicious “went wrong.” When this happens, God enters life. He was counting: from one onward. Till twelve everything went fine. But when thirteen came, suddenly “terah” (thirteen) evoked “tera”—Yours. Up to twelve, fine. When turning the thirteenth measure, “tera”—Yours—arose. Then fourteen could not come out of his mouth; the next measure also he filled, saying, “tera… yours.” People thought he had gone mad. A crowd gathered. “What are you doing? Won’t you go on counting?” Nanak said, “What counting can there be beyond ‘Yours’? The Master has called; what counting remains?” The owner said, “You have gone mad!” Nanak replied, “Until now I was mad. Beyond this counting there is nothing. Now all is Yours.”

His job was lost—but a great employment was found: God’s. The petty master’s job ended; the Supreme Master’s began. Whenever anyone asked Nanak, “From where did this light come into your life?” he would say, “From ‘tera’—Yours. Whenever anyone asked, “Whence this dance, this music, this sound?” he would say, “One day I remembered—Only You are; all is Yours; nothing is mine.”

That is what Krishna tells Arjuna: once, with courage and resolve, if you know that the act is not yours, then there is no bondage. Why none? Because even to be bound, the sense of “I” is necessary. Who will be bound? The “I” is needed. If there is no “I,” who is there to bind? There must be “I” to be the prisoner, and “mine” to become the chain. The day a person can say, “Not I, Thou; not mine, Thine,” that day neither the bond remains nor the one to be bound. In such a moment, life becomes yajna. Yajna is liberation. Action done in the spirit of yajna is freedom.

सहयज्ञाः प्रजाः सृष्ट्वा पुरोवाच प्रजापतिः।
अनेन प्रसविष्यध्वमेष वोऽस्त्विष्टकामधुक्।। 10।।

At the dawn of creation Prajapati, having created beings together with yajna, said: By this you shall prosper; let this be the fulfiller of your desires.

Right after speaking of yajna-like action, Krishna says: at the first moment of creation the Creator expanded this very yajna-like action.

Understand this a bit. We constantly call God the Creator. But creation can happen in two ways. If God too created with a sense of “I,” it would not be yajna. For God, creation is utterly egoless, empty of “I.” We should say: the whole creation is for God a spontaneous flowering. No sense of “I create, I make.” It cannot be, because the “I” arises only where there is the possibility of a “Thou.” For God there is no “Thou”—He is alone. Hence “I” cannot exist in Him. And the day we are without “I,” we become part of God.

This creation is not the result of some desire in God. Creation is God’s very nature. As a seed breaks into a sprout, the sprout into a tree, the tree into blossoms—so creation is not separate from God; it is His nature.

Therefore I like to say: calling God “Creator” is a slight mistake, because we split Creator and creation. Better to call God Creativity itself—the process of creating. Keep Creator and creation as one. That is more fitting.

“On the first day”—for the sake of speaking; creation has no first or last day—Krishna says: on the first day, the life, motion, and creativity the Creator gave to the world was also yajna. And the day another person joins in action as yajna in the same way, he becomes a part of the Creator—His limb.

Meera dances. Ask her, “Do you dance?” She will say, “No—He makes me dance; He dances.” If someone asks Kabir, “You weave cloth—For whom?” Kabir says, “He weaves; for Him I weave.” Thus when Kabir wove and went to sell in the village, he would call out to everyone on the road, “Ram! Look—so fine, made for You.” In the market he’d say to customers, “Ram, where are you going? Such labor!” Customers were baffled—never imagined someone would address them as Ram.

When hundreds and thousands of devotees began to come to Kabir, they said, “Stop weaving cloth. Why do you need to weave?” Kabir replied, “When God still needs to weave, how can I stop? He is still weaving life and the world. I have left myself in His hands. Now His fingers weave through my fingers; His eyes see through my eyes. If He wishes, weaving will stop; if He wishes, it will continue. His will.”

So Kabir did not stop weaving; he went on. To me, Kabir is a deeper monk for continuing to weave. What used to happen still happens—only the difference is: action has become yajna. “He weaves; for Him I weave. I am not. So whatever He wills.”

On the day Jesus was crucified, when nails were driven through his hands, for a moment even Jesus trembled—wavered. From his lips came, “O God! What are You doing? What are You showing?” It was a complaint. He realized it. In the very next sentence he said, “Forgive me; my mistake. As You will.” In my view, a revolution happened between those two sentences. When he said, “What are You doing?” his “I” was present—action had not yet become yajna. The complaint meant: something wrong is happening; what should have happened isn’t happening; I am wiser—had You asked me, I would have said, “Don’t do this!” The complaint was deep. But within a moment, the revolution occurred. I say: on the cross, up to the moment he said, “What are You doing?” he was Jesus, son of Mary. A moment later—“Thy will be done”—he became the Christ. He ceased to be Mary’s son and became part of God. In that instant, action became yajna. No personal will remained; only His will.

Spreading this vast creation, God keeps saying—first day, middle days, last day—just one thing: do not bring this little “I” in between. Around that “I” all disturbance, obstruction, turmoil arise. Around that “I,” action becomes bondage. As with God—free…

Have you noticed: God is nowhere to be seen; the creation is visible, but not the Creator. Why? Because one who has no ego—how can he be visible! One who never even thinks “I created,” how can he appear! What has been done is visible; the doer is invisible. The doer is utterly absent; the deed, utterly present.

Krishna says: engage in action in such a way that only the action is visible and the doer is invisible; the doer is not.

Look at God—how absent! The world is very present; God seems utterly non-present. One who has no ego—how can he be present! His absence is his presence; his non-appearance is his very appearing.

I have heard a story. A Christian fakir pleased the gods; they came and held his feet: “We have come to grant you a boon. Ask.” The fakir said, “Too late. When I had asking in me, you were nowhere to be found. Now when there is no asking left, you have come! There is nothing to ask—because the asker is gone. You are troubling yourself. Whom are you speaking to?” They said, “We speak to you.” He said, “I am no more—ask God; only He is.”

The gods were even more pleased. They clung to his feet: “You must ask.” He said, “But who will ask? Of whom? And if I ask, it will be proof I do not trust God. What He wishes to give, He will; what He doesn’t, He won’t. What is fitting will happen; what is unfitting will not. Indeed, whatever happens is fitting, and what does not, is unfitting. So go—you’ve come to the wrong man.”

They said, “We seek such a man. We never go to those who ask; we go to those who do not. We never enter the full, for there is no space in them; we enter the empty. We have come. You must accept.” The fakir said, “If you will not relent, then give what you wish. But I will not ask.”

They said, “We grant you this boon: if you touch a corpse, it will come alive. Lay hands on the sick, they will be well. Cast your glance on a withered flower, it will bloom again.”

The fakir said, “Fine—but add one more thing: let it be that I never come to know of it. The dead may rise—but let me not know it. The sick be cured—but let me not know. I do not want to fall back into the hell of ego. Forgive me—this boon is dangerous. When the dead rise, I may come to think, ‘I did it.’ Better don’t give it to me—give it to my shadow. If my shadow falls on a corpse and he revives, I will not know. The shadow will trail me; corpses will revive, flowers will bloom, withered plants will become fresh—and I will keep running from my shadow. Please give the boon to my shadow.”

God is nowhere to be seen; only His shadow is sometimes glimpsed. The whole world runs on His shadow.

Krishna tells Arjuna: become just a shadow; let this “I” go. Live, breathe, act. Don’t run away. For even in running your ego remains: “I escaped, I got free of bondage, of action.” Your “I” won’t go; bondage will remain. Do only this much: drop the “I” and engage in yajna-like action. As the whole Existence is creating the world through yajna-like action, become a part of it—and you are free.

देवान्भावयतानेन ते देवा भावयन्तु वः।
परस्परं भावयन्तः श्रेयः परमवाप्स्यथ।। 11।।

Thus, by this yajna, nourish the devas and may the devas nourish you. Supporting one another, you will attain the highest good.

The final verse. Krishna says: in this way, performing yajna-like action, become allies of the devas and let the devas be your allies. Thus you can fulfill your true duty.

It is necessary to understand the word deva. Much confusion has arisen from it. Deva is a technical term. In this world, when people die, ordinary people find a womb quickly; a body becomes available immediately. But for a very exceptional, auspicious soul, a suitable womb is not immediately available; it must wait. For a very evil soul too, a womb is not readily available; it also must wait. For ordinary souls the womb becomes available at once—hence an ordinary man dies here and is born there; there is little gap between death and new birth—sometimes moments, sometimes not even that. Wombs are available round the clock; the soul immediately enters.

But a superior soul waits for a worthy womb. Such superior souls are called devas. Inferior souls also wait; they are called pretas—ghosts. Those who died doing much evil—such as a Hitler, on whose head lies the murder of millions—no ordinary mother or father can become a womb for that. Such a soul must wait long. But what will it do meanwhile? An evil person can never sit idle; he will keep trying. Whenever you do an evil act, such souls get supported through you; you become a vehicle, an instrument. In doing evil, some disembodied soul rejoices and assists you—one that wants to do evil but lacks a body. Often after committing a bad deed you must have wondered: “Strange—where did such strength come from that I could do this?” Many have this experience.

In anger you can lift a stone you couldn’t in calm—then you may not imagine that some evil soul could be helping you. When someone goes to commit a murder, he is not in the ordinary state—he becomes possessed. Many murderers tell courts, “We cannot believe we did it; we cannot conceive how we could!” When the murderous impulse rises in you, some soul eager to kill can mount you and aid you.

Krishna tells Arjuna the exact reverse: if you engage in a good action without the sense of doership, many devas support you. Even in good action you are not alone. Many souls, eager to do good, gather around you and become active. Immediately you begin to receive their support; from countless directions strength begins to flow toward you—strength that is not yours.

Therefore the good man is not alone on this earth, nor is the evil man alone. Only the mediocre are alone—those neither so good as to draw support from the good, nor so bad as to draw support from the bad. The ordinary, the middle—the middle class not in terms of money, but in terms of soul—only they are lonely; they get little support. Sometimes they may descend into evil and then receive support; or rise into good and receive support. But in this world, the good are not alone; the bad are not alone.

When a Mahavira or a Buddha is on earth, good souls gather and become active all around. So the stories you have heard are not just stories—that devas walk before and behind Mahavira; that devas attend Buddha’s assembly; that when Buddha enters a village, devas enter too. This is not mere mythology.

I say it is not, because now even on scientific grounds it has been established that disembodied souls exist; their images have been captured in thousands. Scientists in their laboratories are astonished. They no longer dare say there are no ghosts. Who could have imagined universities in California or Illinois opening departments to study ghosts! Fifty years ago the West laughed at the East as superstitious—though in the East there are still the naive who keep repeating the West’s fifty-year-old skepticism.

In fifty years the West has learned much and returned from many extremes. It has had to accept that all does not end with the death of the body; that something remains outside the body, which can even be photographed; that bodiless existence is possible. Not minor figures—Oliver Lodge testifies to spirits; C. D. Broad testifies; J. B. Rhine and Myers, lifelong experimentalists, say they no longer have the confidence they had fifty years ago to declare the East wrong.

Krishna tells Arjuna: if you forget your doer-ship and engage in the action given by God, the devas are with you; you have their support. Not only will you fulfill your duty, but many devas, eager to fulfill theirs, will fulfill it through you.

The good man is not alone; the bad man is not alone. Hence both can become very powerful—their strength begins to flow from disembodied souls all around.

To be continued.