Geeta Darshan #9

We call that our nature which is already given to us—what we cannot lose even if we try, what there is no way to lose. Nature means: that which is my very being, our very existence.

Those who know say that our nature is to be the Divine itself. It is not just one person who says this; in every corner of the earth, in different centuries, in different places, whenever anyone has known, they have said exactly this. It is an unqualified proclamation. There has not been a single person in human history who has said, “I went within and discovered that there is no Divine within man.”

Those who have said, “There is no God,” have never gone within. And those who have gone within have always said that the Divine is. If any truth can be an unqualified truth, it is this one truth: that man’s nature is the Divine.

People search for God. They will never find, because only that which has been lost can be searched for. In truth, the one who sets out to seek is himself the Divine—so how will he find? If we were separate from the Divine, we would encounter it somewhere or other; sooner or later there would be a face-to-face meeting. But we ourselves are the Divine. Therefore the one who sets out to seek God does not yet know that what he is seeking is his own very being.

This is our nature, which we can never lose—and yet, the wonder is that even this appears lost; otherwise why would we be searching? Since it cannot be lost, there must be something else that resembles loss. That is forgetfulness.

Nature cannot be lost, but it can be forgotten. Forgetting can happen. Even in the time of forgetfulness, nothing in fact changes; we remain what we were. And yet, what we are, we fail to understand ourselves to be.

The Divine is only forgotten.

Why, then, is yoga needed if the Divine is our nature? Yoga is needed to break this forgetfulness and to reestablish remembrance. This forgetfulness—this habit of forgetting—yoga is the means to break that arrangement.

Properly understood, the whole process of yoga is negative. It is not for acquiring something; it is for breaking what has become an obstruction in between. Yoga will not manufacture anything new; yoga will not bring a new attainment; through yoga there will be a re-remembering of that which has always and forever been given.
When the Buddha became enlightened, someone asked him, “What have you found?” The Buddha laughed and said, “Don’t ask. Please don’t ask. Because I haven’t found anything.” The man said, “Then all that effort went to waste? Yet people say you attained something. So what did you attain? You say you found nothing!” The Buddha said, “If I am to speak precisely, I can only say this: I lost something; I did not find anything.”
Naturally, the questioner was even more astonished. He said, “So much effort just to lose something! Then what is the fruit? What is the point? And why do you teach now?”

The Buddha said, “Precisely so that you too can lose something. What I ‘found,’ I can now say, was always within me—I simply did not know it. So how can I say I found it? It was already there. All I can say is: what was within me had certain inner obstacles to being known, and I lost those obstacles. I lost ignorance. And I will not say I gained knowledge, because knowledge was already there. I lost ‘myself.’ But I will not say I gained the Divine, because the Divine was already there. Only because of me it was not visible; because of my ‘I’ it was not visible. My forgetfulness was deep, and therefore it was not visible.

Yoga is the method to cut through forgetfulness.

Why is there forgetfulness? Forgetfulness, too, has a cause; it cannot be without reason. Keep three points in mind and the process of remembrance will become clear.

The first fundamental reason for forgetfulness is this: whatever we are, we can never know it without, at least once, forgetting it. Whatever we are, we can never recognize it without almost losing it once. For true knowing, a contrasting event must occur—that is the law of knowing.

If you never fall ill, you will never know you are healthy. Only when you become sick do you recognize you were healthy—or that you are healthy again now. Without the contrast of illness, there can be no remembrance of health.

If there were no darkness on this earth, no one would know light—light could be there and yet go unrecognized. The opposite must exist for recognition. Without old age, youth would exist yet be unknown. Without death, life would exist but remain unrecognized. We come to know life from the shore of death; against the backdrop of death, life stands out. If death never happened, you would never come to know life. This may sound very paradoxical—but it is so.

At school the teacher writes with white chalk on a blackboard. He could write on a white board too; the writing would be there, but you could not see it. He writes on a black board and then the white chalk stands out.

Among the deepest laws of life is this: we become aware of something only when its opposite is present; otherwise, we do not know it.

If the Divine is within us—and has always been—still we become aware of it only after forgetting it once. Without that, we cannot know it.

Therefore forgetfulness is an indispensable part of the process of remembrance. Separation from God is the preliminary to union with God. Going far from God is the first step on the journey of coming near. Only those will know Him who have been far from Him; those who have never been far will never know Him.

If you never had to lift your head from your mother’s lap, you would never truly know the lap; everything else might be known, but not that. Only when the mother’s lap is lost do you realize what it was. That is its meaning.

This truth applies to forgetting our own nature as well. One must forget; only then does awakening happen. It is the indispensable process for the birth of awareness.

And how does forgetting happen? There is only one way. To forget oneself, one must mistake oneself. Only then can forgetting occur. Otherwise, how could you forget? Hence consciousness takes itself to be the body, matter, mind, thought, emotion, tendencies—everything except the soul. It identifies with the other. That is the method of forgetting.

Yoga is the reverse journey from this method of forgetting—coming home, returning. We have gone far; now the return journey. Certainly, we arrive again where we began—but you will not be the same. When you departed, you had no inkling of the place; when you arrive, you will know it fully. You enter the same temple from which you once stepped out. But by arriving again—after this interval of forgetting—the meeting with the Divine, the ecstasy of samadhi, the festival of union, that unprecedented event will shower nectar into your very life-breath.

You arrive at the same place, yet you are not the same—because forgetfulness has intervened. And when remembrance returns, it stands out like white lines upon a black slate. For the first time, what is written can be read. For the first time, what is your nature manifests. For the first time, what is hidden is revealed, what is suppressed becomes uncovered. This is an inevitable part of life.

If someone asks, “Why is it so?”—that is a child’s question. Ask a scientist, “Why is the earth round?” He will say, “It is.” He can state facts; he cannot say why. Ask, “Why is there light in the sun?” He will say, “There is”—or after some probing, “because of helium, because hydrogen is undergoing nuclear fusion.” Then ask, “Why is it happening in the sun and not on the earth?” The scientist will say, “Don’t ask that. We can say that it happens; don’t ask why. Ask how—we can tell you how it happens.”

Religion too is a science. It also cannot say “why”; it can only say “how.”

Man forgets. How does he forget? By identifying with the other. How will he remember? By breaking that identification; remembrance will return. We can speak only of this process. Why am I discussing this process with you? Because yoga is pure science. Hence a remarkable thing has happened.

Three great religions arose in India—Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism. They may have many disputes and doctrinal controversies, yet regarding yoga there has never been any dispute. What is the reason?

Yoga is a science, not a doctrine—not philosophy, not metaphysics. It is a process, an experiment. Whoever undertakes it, the experience will bear fruit.

In that sense, yoga is the essence of all religions. Not only the three Indian religions; those that arose outside India—Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism—none of them, rightly understood, has any quarrel with yoga.

Properly understood, yoga is the process of all religions, wherever they arose. If in the future a science of religion is ever established anywhere in the universe, yoga will be its cornerstone—because yoga is only process.

Yoga does not say what God is; yoga says how God can be realized. Yoga does not say what the soul is; yoga says how the soul can be known. How! Yoga does not speculate who created nature or did not. Yoga says: these are the steps to descend into existence—descend and know. Yoga says: we will not tell you; you open your eyes and see. We only teach the way to open the eyes.

Yoga is pure science, direct science. Yes, there is a difference: science is objective, concerned with matter; yoga is subjective, concerned with the self. Science inquires into matter; yoga inquires into the Divine.

How does yoga carry out this re-membrance, this return? Keep a few points in mind. For Krishna has said: only by its constant practice does one become established in God. I would say: re-established.

What is yoga? What does it do? What is the alchemy, the chemistry, the master-key of yoga? Three stages:

1) In the human body we utilize only a fraction of our power, yet the body has the arrangement to generate infinitely more. For example, if we lay you on the ground, a car cannot be driven over your chest; you would be finished. But a car can be driven over the chest of Ramamurti; even an elephant can stand on it. Yet there is no fundamental difference in the bones of his chest and yours. His body is made of the same elements as yours. What does he do?

You use your chest only for the very small task of breathing in and out. Ramamurti takes a great task from the same chest: he drives cars over it, he lets elephants stand on it. Asked for his secret, he said, “The secret is what you use in a tire and tube. Rubber is ordinary; but when air is held at a particular pressure it can carry a heavy truck. I use my lungs the way you use a tire-tube. I hold the breath in a precise ratio; then if an elephant passes over my chest, it rests not on me but on the packed air.” Of course, there is a process and practice by which the chest can bear an elephant.

Our bodies have many capacities beyond our reckoning; they remain unutilized because ordinary living does not need them. Scientists estimate we use at most ten percent of the body’s potential; ninety percent is left unused. We are born, live, and die; the ninety percent that could have been, lies dormant.

Yoga’s first work is to awaken those sleeping powers through which the inward journey becomes possible. Without energy, no journey can be made. Whether a bullock-cart moves or a man walks or breath flows—every movement is the movement of energy. If you think you can reach God without energy, you are mistaken. The journey to God is subtle and deep; you need power for it. The little energy you ordinarily use is consumed by daily life; nothing is left. And whatever little remains, you have found ways to waste. Man lives almost bankrupt. He never awakens the hidden power.

So the first foundation of yoga is to awaken potential energy. For this, yoga devised every kind of method: pranayama to hammer and rouse sleeping energies; asanas to apply pressure on the body’s hidden energy-fields so they become active.

A train moves by very simple forces—water and fire producing steam. The thrust of steam moves the cylinder, the engine runs, and the train rolls on. Likewise, your body contains many powers; if pressed and activated, countless inner cylinders begin to move that presently lie idle. Yoga calls the energy-nodes where power is hidden “chakras.” For each chakra there are asanas and pranayama techniques to press, stir, and dynamize it.

We also use crude aids without understanding. Why do you put a pillow under your head to sleep? Without a pillow, more blood flows to the head; the brain’s nerves remain alert and sleep does not come. A higher pillow raises the head so blood does not surge to the brain.

The yogi does the reverse with a headstand. He sends the body’s blood to the head. Scientists say only a quarter of your brain works; three quarters remain stagnant. By a sharp surge of blood, those dormant areas can be activated. When silent portions awaken, your understanding changes radically; doors of new perception open within.

This is but an example. Many chakras exist, each with its own energy and specific uses. Asanas are experiments to awaken the power sleeping in them.

Through yoga the body becomes a dynamic force, a living embodiment of vibrant energy. On these wings the inner journey can be made; otherwise it is exceedingly difficult. Only then can remembrance of the Divine arise.

So the first special practice of yoga is to enliven, awaken, and re-energize the sleeping sources of power.

Sometimes accidents give a glimpse. In Switzerland a man fell from a train and injured his ears badly. In the hospital it was found that his ears began to receive radio stations within ten miles directly—no radio set needed. Astonishing! Yoga has always said the ear holds such capacity; it only needs awakening. Here it was activated accidentally; yoga knows how to do it systematically.

Earlier in Sweden, after an eye operation, a man suddenly began to see stars in the daytime. Stars are there by day too; only the sun’s light hides them. If you go down a deep dark well, you can see a few stars even by day. But that man could see stars in full sunlight! Yoga has long said the eye’s capacity is far greater than you know; the dormant centers must be awakened. Yoga has found the processes to activate these inner sources. Their constant practice turns a person toward the Divine. That is one.

2) The second point: we ordinarily assume that with the mind we have now we can move toward God. That is a mistake. With this mind it is impossible. This mind is the arrangement that ties us to matter; it separates us from the Divine—it cannot connect us. You need a new mind.

Yoga says such a new mind can be created, and it has discovered the complete alchemy for it. As for awakening bodily energy there are asanas, pranayama, mudras—hatha yoga has found incomparable keys, many still unknown to science—so for creating a new mind there is the experiment with sound, with mantra. Mantra-yoga is a whole science.

We hardly realize that our chitta—the mind-stuff—moves by sound. We live through vibrations.

Omkarnath Thakur, a great Indian musician, was Mussolini’s guest in Italy. At dinner Mussolini joked, “They say Krishna’s flute drew wild animals, made cows dance, peacocks spread their plumes. I can’t understand how music can do that!” Omkarnath said, “My capacity is not Krishna’s. None on earth understood music as Krishna did. But I can demonstrate a little.” Mussolini said, “Don’t explain; show.” With only spoon and fork and the china before him, Omkarnath began to play on the cups and saucers. Within minutes Mussolini’s eyes drooped as if drugged; his head began to strike the table. The utensils rang louder; his head struck harder. He shouted, “Stop! I can’t stop my head!” When it stopped, his forehead was bleeding. In his autobiography Mussolini apologized for his earlier statement: surely Krishna’s flute could summon wild creatures—when a civilized man cannot even stop his head under the spell of mere spoon-and-cup music!

The subtlest waves of the mind are waves of sound. Now in the West, sound-electronics, acoustics, is seriously studied because madness is increasing; researchers say traffic noise—horns, engines, airplanes, supersonic jets, jumbo jets—overloads the mind and deranges it. If certain sounds can drive one mad, is it so hard to accept that other, opposite sounds can make one serene? If some sounds can unhinge the mind, can not others settle it into samadhi?

Mantra-yoga is that endeavor. It discovered sounds whose utterance—outer, inner, heart-born, breath-born—begins to give the mind a new shape, a new pattern.

Every sound has its own pattern. Try this: spread fine sand on a thin sheet. From below, speak loudly “Ram!” The grains will vibrate and form a pattern. Repeat “Ram” many times, the same pattern re-forms. Say, “Allah!”—another pattern arises. Even utter a vulgar abuse—a pattern will form. And note: the abusive pattern will be ugly, chaotic; “Ram” or “Allah” will be balanced, harmonious, beautiful.

What forms on the sand forms in your chitta too. Your mind is far more sensitive than sand; the smallest sound-wave shapes it. The words you hear, the songs, the street noises—they build a certain kind of mind.

Yoga says: a new kind of mind is needed to go toward God. Use sounds that build a mind rhythmically attuned to the Divine. Hence the invention of repeating a single word continuously: so the pattern it creates settles, imprints on the mind, is imbibed and becomes one with it. Then the new mind begins to form.

Thus the second element of yoga is sound. The first is energy; the second is sound.

3) The third is meditation—attention, direction. Consciousness flows where we orient it. Where we turn it, it goes; and where it goes, it ceases to flow elsewhere. How can it flow toward God? God has no direction—remember. I am speaking here; your attention flows toward me and shuts off the rest. If a sound comes from behind, your attention darts there and your link with me breaks. But the Divine has no direction; He pervades all—directionless, beyond direction. Where then to turn the attention?

Yoga created such sounds as are directionless—like Om. If you intone Om, the sound is circular. Therefore its symbol is circular. When you chant Om within, you feel as if under a dome; the hemispherical temple dome is designed from the experience of Om. When you resonate Om deeply within, you sense around the head a circular space—directionless. Om seems to come from everywhere and go everywhere.

It is a unique sound; no other comparable sound has been found. It is the root, the seed-sound.

Only in this circular field can you become oriented toward the Divine; otherwise some direction will always pull you. When you are free of direction, the inward journey begins.

By the constant practice of yoga, Krishna tells Arjuna, one becomes established in God.

There is much more to say on yoga; we will go into it gradually.

Yatha dipo nivatastho nengate sopama smrita
Yogino yatachittasya yunjato yogam atmanah (6:19)

And just as a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, such is the simile given for the controlled mind of the yogi absorbed in meditation on the Self.

As in a windless space the flame is steady—unwavering, motionless—so becomes the yogi’s consciousness. This is the simile for the yogi’s awareness.

Note: as long as attention moves in any particular direction, the flame of consciousness will flicker. A car horn on the road—awareness quivers. Some gentleman giving a talk behind you—awareness quivers. All sounds shake consciousness. When will it be unmoving?

Only when beyond all these sounds we find within a sanctuary into which no sounds enter. Only when we create within a circular field of energy in which awareness comes to rest, as a lamp rests where no wind blows. Sound is the “air” for the mind.

So an inner, special arrangement of sound is needed for the flame to steady; yoga is that practice. Such possibilities exist for you too—nothing exclusive. Whoever labors steadily in that direction will attain it: the chitta forms a circular mandala within itself. The Buddhists call it a mandala: a circle in which you revolve within yourself; nothing enters from outside, and you do not go out. In this circle awareness becomes like a flame in a windless place. Only such unshaken awareness is established in God—for to be unwavering is to be established in God.

Vibration is worldly; non-vibration is God. If rightly understood, the world is a complex of vibrations. Like a leaf trembling in the wind—blowing left, it trembles left; blowing right, it trembles right—never still. So the chitta trembles in desires, tendencies, thoughts—always quivering.

A wavering mind cannot know the place where it truly is. The flickering flame cannot know the source of its light, of its life-breath; it knows only the gusts of wind. To know the source, one must come to a stop—be still.

How to bring about this stopping? The simile of the yogi is fine—but how does one become such a yogi? How to be still?

Often what seems very difficult is solved by a very small experiment. It seems hard as long as we only think and do nothing. The instant we do something, it becomes simple. A small experience breaks the greatest difficulty.

I have heard: where now stands the great Russian city Stalingrad, there was once the small town of Petrograd, founded by Peter the Great. When building it, he chose a rocky spur for his palace, but wanted a level ground. Engineers estimated an enormous cost to remove the rock. One day Peter went to inspect. A peasant with an ox-cart passed by and laughed, “Millions to level that? I can do it cheaply.” The engineers and the emperor laughed. But the peasant did it for a few thousand. He did not try to cut and haul the rock away; he dug a trench all around it, let the rock drop into the pit, and filled over it—leaving the ground level. Peter asked, “Where has the rock gone?” The peasant said, “You needed a level ground; you always thought in terms of removing it far away—we sank it deeper.” Peter set a memorial stone for that peasant: what great engineers pondered for months, a simple villager solved.

Many times what the learned cannot solve, a small practitioner can. This is exactly the case with yoga.

If you try to solve by thinking, no question of life will ever be solved. If you want peace and try to think your way to peace, you will never be peaceful—because thinking is a form of restlessness. Those who want peace often become more restless than those who don’t care; their restlessness doubles—restlessness, and the additional worry of “how to be peaceful.”

But a small method can suddenly quiet the mind—as if it had never been unquiet. It is like trimming leaves from a tree thinking you will end the tree. Cut one leaf, four sprout; until you cut the root, the tree will not end.

We all fight one thought at a time. Someone says, “I get very angry—how to get rid of anger?” People come to me: “Only anger—if that goes, all is well.” He thinks anger is separate from greed, and greed from pride, and pride from lust. They are not separate; they are leaves. Cut one, four appear.

Yoga says: cut the root, not the leaves.

Where is the root? Neither anger nor greed nor lust nor ego is the root. The root lies in the system of your mind, in its very arrangement. With such a mind, greed and anger are inevitable; lust and pride are inevitable. It is the nature of this mind. Change the mind. Replace this apparatus with a new one; then you will have a new mind in which anger, lust, delusion, greed do not arise.

What is the secret of changing the mind?

Yoga is the exposition of that secret. It offers three pathways because there are three basic types of people: those dominated by thought; those by feeling; those by action. For each, a distinct key.

Thus three principal branches—karma, bhakti, jnana—from which many offshoots arise. The lock is one house, but people stand at different doors with different keys.

One who lives by thought will find prayer, kirtan, bhajan meaningless; he is not at fault—his mind is different. He thinks, raises questions; feeling does not question—feeling accepts. For the thinker yoga has a separate path.

Jnana-yoga means: reach the place where neither the known nor the knower remains—only knowing remains. Its process: drop the known, the objects; drop the knower; abide only in the stream of knowing.

I look at a flower: there are three—the seer, the seen, and the stream of seeing. Jnana-yoga says: forget the flower, forget yourself—stand only in the flow of knowing.

The feeling-type will not grasp “standing in the stream of knowing,” because he does not live by understanding; he lives by feeling. Tell him: dance—dance in ecstasy, surrendered to the Divine. He will dance; he will not ask, “What will happen?” And everything will happen. In dance comes a moment when the dancer disappears, the idea of dance disappears, only dancing remains. Even the Divine for whom he danced is forgotten; the one who danced is forgotten; only dance remains. Just as only knowing remains—so the door opens when only dancing remains.

When Meera sings, Meera and Krishna are lost; only the song remains. “Mere to Giridhar Gopal”—neither “mine” remains, nor “Giridhar”—only the song remains. Where only song remains, the same event happens as where only knowing remains.

But Mahavira would not prefer song; he would say: only knowing—just knowing. That is his type. Meera would say: what will you do with knowing? It is dry. The song is moist; it bathes you in nectar. To Meera, knowledge is a desert; song is green and rain-filled.

Others, however, will find meaning in neither song nor knowledge; their life’s meaning opens through action. The karmic.

You know the story of Archimedes. A man of action, a scientist—his life is to do, to find through doing. The emperor had a gold crown suspected of being adulterated with copper; it must not be touched or scratched, yet its purity must be tested. Archimedes tried many experiments and was baffled. One day he lay in a full bath; as he sat, water spilled over. A flash: “Measure the displaced water! If it equals my body’s weight, a way can be found.” He leapt up, naked, ran into the street shouting, “Eureka! I have found it!” People said, “What are you doing?” The emperor said, “Come to your senses!” Archimedes returned. He had entered the samadhi of action—forgot himself, the emperor, the question; only the flavor of ‘found!’ remained. Later he said: the joy of that moment was unmatched. The secret he found was secondary; the ecstasy of finding was the real treasure. He did not even recall what had been found when passersby asked; only the tune “found!” pulsed within.

That moment of finding comes to the man of action too—through action. For someone like Arjuna, when swords flash and action becomes total—Arjuna vanishes, the enemy vanishes, only action remains—not “I wield the sword,” but “the sword is moving”—in such a moment, samadhi dawns.

These are three principal types. Though each divides further and yoga has many methods, by these three—knowledge, devotion, action—anyone can bring consciousness into that still space.

Let only knowledge remain; or only feeling; or only action. Let one remain in place of three; let the two poles dissolve and the middle remain: the seer and the seen drop, seeing remains; the knower and the known drop, knowing remains. Then consciousness becomes still—like a lamp where no wind blows.

To that stillness of the flame, Krishna says, the yogi is compared. The yogi, too, becomes thus steady.

Enough for today.

But for five minutes, no one will get up. For five to seven minutes, these sannyasins will dance. Dissolve with them—let only dance remain, only song remain. Don’t rise; remain seated. No one should get up and create disturbance. No one will come onto the stage to watch; only those who join the dance will come to the stage. Sit where you are. Clap from there. Rejoice. Hum the song.