Geeta Darshan #13

Those whose life has become a yajna—desireless, empty of ego—such men attain the Supreme, Para-Brahman; they attain Amrit, they attain bliss. But those whose life is not a yajna do not taste bliss even upon this earth—then what to say of the beyond? In this sutra Krishna says two or three things to Arjuna.
First: when life becomes a yajna!
What does it mean for life to become a yajna? So long as life revolves around vasanas, there is no yajna. So long as life circles only around one’s own ego, there is no yajna. The moment a person thins out vasanas and stops circling around himself, and begins to revolve around the Paramatman instead…
We know the temple. We also know the circumambulation made around the altar there. But we do not know its meaning. Thousands of times one may have gone to the temple, circumambulated the altar, and returned home. Yet the parikrama around the altar of the Divine is the symbol of that person whose ego is no more, who now moves only around the Paramatman in life, who orbits only Him. One’s own center is no longer there around which to turn. One becomes a satellite of the Divine. He comes to the center, we become the periphery; we circle around Him, revolve around Him.
The very moment someone becomes empty of vasana and ahamkar, his life becomes a yajna. I have already said much about this yajna; it must be kept in mind.
Second, Krishna says, such a man attains the nectar of knowing—Amrit as knowledge. The nectar of knowledge!
In this world there is no death other than ignorance. Ignorance is death. What does it mean that ignorance is death?
If ignorance is death, only then can knowledge be Amrit. If ignorance is death, it means death as such is nowhere. Only because we do not know does death appear. Death is impossible. Death is the most impossible event upon this earth; it cannot happen, it never has happened, it never will happen. Yet every day death seems to happen. It seems so because we do not know. We stand in darkness, in ignorance. That which does not die appears to be dying. In this sense, ignorance alone is death. And the day we know, death vanishes. It had never been anywhere. Only Amrit, only Amritatva remains; only immortality remains.
Have you ever noticed—have you ever seen a man dying? You will say, “I have seen many.” I say, you have not seen. Till today no one has ever seen anyone die. The very process of dying has never been witnessed. What we see is only the process of life taking leave—not the process of death.
We press the switch; the electric bulb goes dark. One who does not know will say, “The electricity has died.” One who knows will say, “Electricity was manifest; now it has become unmanifest. It was apparent, it has gone into latency. It has not died.” Press the switch again, the current returns. Press again, and it withdraws within.
Life does not end; it only takes leave of the body. But that departure appears to us as death. Why does it appear so? Because we have never experienced within ourselves an existence separate from the body. Our experience is only this: I am the body. Therefore, when the body ends, becomes fit for the funeral pyre, the natural conclusion follows: he is dead.
He who has not known within himself some element separate from the body is ignorant. Ignorant does not mean one without a university degree, without a certificate. The truth is: the more certificates the universities have given, the more ignorance has increased, not decreased. The reason is this: people began to take university certificates to be knowledge. Hence the search for real knowing seems unnecessary. The man without certificates still searches for knowledge. The so-called learned man has certificates; he assumes, “I am knowledgeable. I have a university degree. What more is needed?”
There is only one knowledge: knowledge of oneself. All else is information, not knowledge. All else is acquaintance, not knowing.
Bertrand Russell divided knowing into two parts: knowledge and acquaintance—jnana and parichay. Knowledge can be only of one thing: that which I am. All else is acquaintance, not knowledge. Whatever is other than myself, I can only be acquainted with it. My entry cannot be within it; I can only circle around it from the outside. I can only be introduced to it, know it from the surface; I cannot go inside. Inside I can go to only one place—the place where I am.
It is a most amusing fact: of oneself there is no mere acquaintance, and of the other there is no true knowledge. Of the other there is acquaintance; of oneself there is knowledge. There is no mere acquaintance with oneself, because there is no way to revolve around oneself from the outside. There is no knowledge of the other, because there is no entry within the other.
Yet we are strange people. We accept “knowledge” of the other, and we settle for “acquaintance” with ourselves. We make do with a description of ourselves—which cannot be—and we take another’s acquaintance to be knowledge—which cannot be. This is the state of ignorance. In ignorance there is death.
When you see a person going out—going out, not dying. Therefore Buddha used the right word: nirvana. Nirvana means the extinguishing of the lamp. The lamp is blown out; no one dies. The flame was visible; now it is not visible. It has taken leave of the field of seeing, has merged into the invisible. It can manifest again; it can subside again. This alternation of manifest and unmanifest can go on without end—until the flame recognizes that in manifestation also I am the same, in unmanifestation also I am the same; I neither manifest nor unmanifest—only the form appears and disappears. That essence hidden within the form neither appears in manifestation nor disappears in the unmanifest; it is not alive in life, nor does it die in death. Then there is the experience of Amrit.
Watching others go out, be extinguished, we calculate: all die, so I too shall die. But have you ever asked a dying man, “Have you died?” He does not answer; thus we assume he would answer yes. To take silence as a sign of assent is not correct in every case. Ask a dead man, “Have you died?” If he answers, know that he is not dead; and if he remains silent, we assume he is dead!
But silence is not a sign of assent. That he cannot speak, and therefore is dead—there is no reason to conclude so.
A Brahmayogi from the South, a sadhu, demonstrated experiments in dying at Oxford University, and at the universities of Calcutta and Rangoon. He would die for ten minutes. At Calcutta University ten doctors were present; they wrote certificates saying this man had died, because all the signs of death known to medical science were complete: no breath; he could not speak; no movement of blood; the temperature had fallen; the pulse was gone; the heart did not beat. The subtlest instruments declared the man dead. The ten signed, because the Brahmayogi had said, “Sign and give a certificate of death that I have died.”
Then after ten minutes everything returned. Breath moved again; the heart beat again; blood flowed again; the man opened his eyes; he began to speak; he sat up. He said, “Now what am I to make of your certificates? You are great tricksters—you give a living man a death certificate!” They said, “As far as we know, death had happened. Beyond that we do not know.”
But one of those doctors wrote in his memoirs that from that day he could never again issue a death certificate to anyone; because what he saw that day made it clear that the signs of death are only the signs of departure. And because people do not know how to return, our certificates prove right; otherwise all would be wrong. That Brahmayogi knows how to return.
Three times—at London, Calcutta, and Rangoon—he died and showed it; and in all three places he became the first man on earth to receive a death certificate three times!
What happened—what did he do? When the physicians asked the Brahmayogi what happened, what he did, he would say, “I simply contract my life within. As the sun gathers back his rays; as a flower closes its petals; as a bird folds its wings and sits within its nest—thus I draw life inward, inward, to where your instruments cannot catch it. I continue to be, therefore I can return. Then I open my wings again and fly in the sky of life—out of the nest.”
Within all of us there is that secret place—when the soul gathers there, instruments cannot detect it, the senses cannot detect it. In truth, instruments are nothing more than extensions of the senses. Instruments are only expansions of our senses. There is the eye; so we have made the telescope and the microscope—extensions of the eye that magnify it, enlarge its reach. There is the ear; so we have made the telephone—an extension of the ear. My hand is here; from here I cannot touch you. If I hold a stick in my hand and touch you with it, the stick has become an extension of my hand.
All instruments are extensions of our senses. Until now not a single instrument has been made that is other than the senses, not an extension. They are all extensions. What the senses cannot catch, instruments sometimes can—if it is very subtle. But that which is beyond the senses, the instruments cannot catch either.