Geeta Darshan #4

The final moment is the most important moment of the whole life. For it is the seed of the journey that lies ahead. In the last moment we compress and gather together all that our life has been, for the new journey. In that ultimate instant everything is amassed by whose support the onward journey proceeds.
If rightly understood, when someone is born, the moment of birth is not a beginning. In birth the same seed sprouts that was gathered at the previous death. The true beginning is death’s moment. It is then that the seed is made. The tree begins with birth, it sprouts and sets out on its pilgrimage.
Those who do not know call birth the beginning. Those who know call death the beginning. In one sense, death is both: the end of the past life and the beginning of a new one. Perhaps it is the most significant moment. For just at this time—if we can leap—out of the mad, whirling circle of the world’s frenzy; if at the moment of death we can jump beyond it, there will never be an easier time to leap. Because in the moment of death the body is being left. If you can be a witness to the body’s departure, not attached to it, then you can experience that which is bodiless, which while in the body seems difficult to taste.
A new birth has not yet begun; the old is ending. In that intervening, threshold moment, if there is remembrance of the Divine, consciousness begins its journey not into the world but toward Brahman.
Therefore here Krishna tells Arjuna what can be done in that final moment, and what journey the man who remembers in that last hour sets out upon.
Krishna says: that man suffused with bhakti, even at the end-time, by the power of yoga, firmly establishing the prana between the eyebrows at the center of the brow, then with an unmoving mind remembering, attains to that very divine Form.
There is much here to be understood.
A man suffused with bhakti! What is bhakti, and what is it to be endowed with bhakti? In human consciousness there is a capacity for thought. There is another capacity: feeling. Thought is the instrument for movement in the world; feeling is the instrument for movement beyond the world.
Human consciousness has two capacities. One: thought. The capacity of thought is useful for the world. Not a single step can be taken in the world without thought. But exactly thus there is another capacity: feeling. Without that capacity of feeling, not a single step toward Paramatma is possible.
But a great mistake happens. Since in the world we move with the support of thought, the experience of life—of many, many lives—becomes an experience of thought. And we also find that the more we think, the more success comes in the world. The distillation of uncountable lives becomes this: without thought there is no success. And without thought there is the fear of going astray. So when we set out toward God too, if ever we do, we take the same instrument of thought—so that we may not go astray, so that we may not fail.
And what we suppose is the means of success becomes the very cause of failure. And what we suppose will save us from wandering proves itself to be the wandering. Because the instrument that works in the world does not work toward God. As if one tried to see with the ears and to hear with the eyes and landed in difficulty, so does that person get into trouble who tries to walk in the world by feeling and toward God by thought.
But nobody commits the mistake of walking in the world by feeling. And if someone does, within a step or two he sees the mistake and takes his steps back. But toward God, ninety-nine out of a hundred commit the mistake of walking with the support of thought. And they do not turn back. Because our conviction runs so deep: without thought not a single step can be rightly taken—error will surely happen. This is true; but the dimensions of the world and of God are different. Understand these two dimensions clearly, then the bhakti-filled person will be understood.
Thought is the reaction of logic. Thought is the road of thinking. Thought is the method of analysis. If one wants to bring something under law, then thought and logic are necessary. Without logic no law is determined. If one wants to make a thought strong, then only by continuous thinking does it become strong. If one wants to separate the false idea, there is no means other than logic. If one wants to search out the right idea, only with logic’s chisel can one cut away and keep the true idea, can discover it. If one wants to break something open and inspect it, there is no way other than analysis. Break it, examine it, test it.
And so thought becomes the begetter of science. And therefore thought is the vehicle of worldly occupation. And therefore thought is not the path of the inner journey. Why? Because in that inner realm, in the search for God, one cannot go by analyzing objects. By analysis things die.
Even when we examine a person’s body, just now science, too, has begun to sense that we are making a mistake. A physician: if my body is ill, he examines my blood by taking it out of the body. But the moment it comes out, the blood is dead. The living, organic state that the blood had within my body is no longer there once it leaves. My eye: within my body the living state of the eye—if you take the eye out, you may be fooled that it is the same eye. It is not the same, because now it cannot see. And what cannot see—who will call it an eye? It only appears to be an eye. Now it is a dead thing. Now this corpse of an eye will be examined, while we wanted to examine the living—there will be error.
Whatever we can know by analysis is always dead. Therefore the physician never discovers the soul. There is no diagnostic route to the Atman, no clinical way. The more the physician searches within, the more dead things he finds. In the end he concludes that man is nothing but an aggregate of matter. The soul is missed.
By analysis, cutting, fragmenting, we can know only dead matter. Thus science has been very successful in directions pertaining to matter, but in directions pertaining to consciousness it has not been successful at all. In truth, no science of consciousness has yet been formed—perhaps never will be. Because thought is not its path. If living life is to be known, the path is feeling.
Thought breaks and then investigates. Feeling joins and then knows. Thought first breaks things and then enters within them. Feeling first connects with someone, then enters within. A physiologist’s knowledge is one kind—he will cut your body and tell what is inside. A lover’s knowledge is another—he, too, knowing through love, comes to know much about the beloved. But that knowing does not happen by cutting the beloved, it happens by joining with the beloved.
Feeling is the way of love. There we do not go to prove by logic whether God is or is not; we try to know by becoming attuned, by feeling.
Surely the method of breaking can never be the method of joining. Therefore thought does not lead toward the Divine. And hence the more the world becomes so-called thoughtful, the more it becomes deprived of God.
In these last five thousand years we have made man highly skillful in thinking, but the skill of feeling has been completely lost. Temples and mosques are dead today. Worship and prayer have gone stale. The reason is: the capacity of feeling by which the temple was alive, the stream of feeling by which the mosque was vital, the flow of feeling by which pulse and blood ran in prayer, the throbbing of feeling by which the heart of worship beat—that very feeling has been lost. And there is no training in feeling.
The name of training in feeling is the sadhana of bhakti. And the one trained in feeling is the bhakta. The one who has put aside thought and lived feeling. The one who has said: we will not think—we will feel. We will not question—we will love. We will not cut and dissect—we will connect and seek to know what is.
A flower can be known by plucking too—science sees that way, thought looks that way—by plucking and dissecting the flower. Pluck the flower and you will learn from what chemicals, what elements it is composed. How much mineral; how much soil; how much water; how much sunlight. By dividing and subdividing you come to know all that. But by the time you arrive at those findings, you have forgotten one thing: the flower is long gone. The flower is no longer there. And the experience of beauty that the flower carried will never be found among these cut, trimmed, analyzed fragments.
If now you show this chemical corpse, preserved in separate test tubes, to a poet and say: now compose a poem on the flower, for now, far more than what you saw before is captured here in these test tubes! No poetry will be born. Because there is no flower here. If you tell a lover of beauty: sing now, dance around this flower, because the flower around which you danced before was surrounded by sheer ignorance—you knew nothing. Now everything about the flower is known. Now you will sing a better song! It will not happen; song will not be born. Because the way of knowing the flower—not the content of the flower, not its body, but its life-breath—the way to know that. The body of the flower can indeed be known this way, because the body is dead. But the living flame that runs in the flower, the blossoming of beauty in it, that glimpse of God that shimmers in the flower—if that is to be known, one must sit beside the flower, utterly in love, utterly absorbed, entering a realm of feeling.
And here is a great wonder: when you think about something, that which you think about is destroyed; you remain. And when you join to something by feeling, the flower remains, and in a little while you are lost.
Going toward something by thought is aggressive, violent, it shatters the thing. You remain safe, the thing is broken. Around the scientist there is such a spread of broken, dead things—a junkyard. Everything around him is dead; only the scientist sits alive. He alone sits in the midst; all around him is a junkyard of corpses.
Elsewhere a poet sits beside a flower; elsewhere a lover sits. Then another event happens. There the moon and the stars are around—very eloquent, very alive—but the poet has vanished. He is not there.
Someone asked Rabindranath: you have written such beautiful songs! Rabindranath, have you ever failed? Rabindranath said: whenever I was there, then and only then I failed. Whenever I dissolved, only then was there success. If while writing the song I vanished, I succeeded; if while writing I remained, I never succeeded.
If the scientist, the thinker, dissolves and is lost—sometimes a scientist too is lost in his laboratory—when he is lost, then he is no longer a scientist, he becomes a poet. And often, becoming a poet, a scientist discovers such deep diamonds as he never discovered as a scientist. And sometimes even a poet does not dissolve; the flower is lost instead—then he is no poet, he is a scientist. Then what he brings back about the flower is not poetry, but dead rhyming.
This feeling within us—directing it toward Paramatma is what is called bhakti.
But we even approach God carrying thought along. We drag our whole logic with us. We carry all our volumes of thought on our backs. And given a chance, we would like to dissect God as well, perform surgery, examine Him thoroughly, and then write it up in a schoolbook for children.
But the man who carries thought never comes to meet Him; hence he cannot do surgery on Him. Otherwise many are so eager to perform a postmortem on God! If only His corpse would be found somewhere, they would perform a postmortem! Their eagerness is not for God; it is for their thoughts and their theories.
Mulla Nasruddin was an elder in his village; sometimes people would come to him to ask for medicine. An elder of the village, he knew a few remedies.
A skeptical fellow came and said, ‘Mulla, I take your medicines, but there is no trust left in doctors these days. I had a friend; his doctor kept treating him for pneumonia, and when he finally died, the postmortem showed he had TB!’
Mulla said, ‘Rest easy. When I treat pneumonia, the man always dies of pneumonia! So far in every postmortem I have been proved right. If you die by my medicine, you will die of pneumonia. It never happens that someone dies of some other disease.’
The man of thought is eager about his thought. He says, ‘If I have said it is pneumonia, you will die of pneumonia. And if you don’t accept it, the postmortem will prove that you died of pneumonia.’ He has no concern with you—the thought is concerned with its own ego. Hence those who revolve around thought revolve around ego. And what has God to do with ego!
Remember, in the state of feeling, ego does not survive. Feeling has no ego. Why? Because ego is born in the contact with others. When a man goes out of himself, ego is born. Where there is a ‘you,’ there the need for an ‘I’ arises. But when a man goes within, there is no ‘you’ there, so there is no need for the ‘I’ to arise. I cannot live alone; it needs the opposite pole of ‘you.’
Feeling is an inward movement, as if Ganga begins to flow back toward Gangotri. Feeling is going back, a returning. Thought is a rush outward. Hence thought will take you to the moon, to Mars, to the great suns. Only to one place it will not take you—within man. Thought will say, ‘Go farther, and farther.’ The farther the journey, the more thought rejoices. Only about one journey will thought refuse: the inner. It will say, ‘Why get into this useless business? What need is there to go within? And is there anything within that you can go to? Come to the moon; the attraction is intense. What is inside?’
And if thought, weary of the outer, tries sometime to go within, still it does not get in. It keeps circling outside. Thought cannot go within; it is made for the outside. Its dimension is the outer.
Feeling goes within. But we have no awareness of feeling. None at all. Generally what we call feeling is not feeling either.
A mother loves her son. Surely we will say: this is not thought, this is feeling. But if the mother were to learn today that this son is not hers—when she was in labor, in the hospital someone switched her child; for twenty years she has loved him—and today documents, certificates prove that the son is not hers but someone else’s—do you think the love will continue to flow in the same stream as a moment before? No; the stream will be dammed, it will scatter. Then was this a relation of feeling with the son, or was this too a relation of thought? Since ‘this is my son’—as long as he was ‘mine’ there was a relation; and ‘not mine’—the relation weakens and vanishes.
Feeling does not know mine-and-thine. Only thought knows mine and thine. Therefore the mother who has not tasted the joy of motherhood, who has loved only ‘my’ son—her feeling is not yet born. That is thought too.
Feeling does not know mine and thine; feeling knows only love. Whether he is mine or yours. And when feeling becomes deep, even if no one is present, in that solitude the stream of feeling continues to shower love.
When a Buddha sits somewhere, or a Krishna stands somewhere—even if no one is there—the rays of love spread just the same, as light streams from a lamp burning alone. That light is not dedicated to anyone, not addressed to anyone. It is simply feeling. And to dwell in that feeling is supreme bliss.
The day feeling becomes unaddressed, that very day it becomes addressed to God. The day feeling begins to flow without any address, from within, that very day it starts reaching the feet of the Divine. But this feeling is an inward-going, a returning to oneself.
So whoever wishes to move toward feeling, the first condition is to beware of thought. This does not mean one should drop thought. It means: think for the outer, and do not allow thought to interfere with the inner. Thought has a habit of interfering in everything. And if you tell thought ‘do not interfere,’ thought will say that you are interfering with its work.
Mulla Nasruddin is sitting at home. The postman slides a letter under the door. The wife gets up. Mulla was just rising but the wife reaches first, picks up the letter, reads the address. Mulla asks, ‘Whose is it?’ She says, ‘From my mother’s house.’ ‘To whom is it addressed?’ The wife says, ‘To me.’ She opens and starts to read. Mulla asks, ‘What is written?’ The wife says, ‘The letter is to me, from my people. Why are you so inquisitive?’ Mulla says, ‘There you go again with your foolishness! A thousand times I have told you: don’t interfere in my work.’
The letter is hers, from her family. She is reading. It is Mulla who is interfering. But he says, ‘There you go again—don’t interfere in my work.’
Thought obstructs feeling all the time. And if you tell thought not to obstruct, thought says you are obstructing its work. And you are so obsessed, so diseased with thought that you have forgotten you are separate from thought. This is the greatest difficulty.
Whenever you think, you suppose ‘I am thinking.’ And whenever feeling comes, you suppose some alien thing is intruding within. Our identity has joined with thought—our ego-bound identification. So when a man thinks, he says, ‘I am thinking.’ When he feels, he thinks some foreign element is interfering. We have no identification with feeling, though feeling is our root, our base.
So the first work toward a bhakti-filled mind is this: set a prohibition on thought from obstructing the inner path. Say to it: ‘No—there you have no work.’
There will be difficulty. But not much—if the resolve is there. Very soon a demarcation will be made—a boundary line—thought for the outside, feeling for the inside. The one who cannot draw a clear line within continues, by means of thought, to destroy his inner realm of feeling.
Let a little love arise and thought will say, ‘What mistake are you getting into! Illogical, irrational!’ You sit for meditation—thought says, ‘What are you doing?’ You begin kirtan—thought says, ‘What are you doing? Are you going mad? Becoming a fool?’ Feeling says: ‘Leap into sannyas.’ Thought says: ‘Have you lost your senses? Is your mind deranged? First think.’
You also will say that one must think before doing anything. But do you know there are things that cannot be done by thinking first? As if someone would think before loving. Surely one should think!
I have heard of a man who thought a lot—Immanuel Kant, a great thinker of Germany. A lady proposed marriage to him. Immanuel looked at her from head to toe—as thinkers inspect when they evaluate. He said, ‘Good. Give me time to think.’
If some little intuition was alive in the woman she would have known at once that this man is not for life. Then months passed, a year passed, three years passed, and after three years Immanuel came to her door.
Her father seated him and asked why he had come. A famous man! Immanuel said, ‘Some time ago your daughter proposed to me for marriage. For three years I have studied all aspects, thought, contemplated, weighed all pros and cons for and against marriage. I have come to say that no decision has yet been reached.’
The father said, ‘Now leave your concern. The girl was married two years ago. A child is already born. In any case you are quite late. Now leave the worry.’
Immanuel Kant was a thinker. If you go to love through thought, thought will be in your hand—love will be long lost.
But in love we do not commit this foolishness. Yet in prayer we surely do. ‘Why should I pray?’—this ‘why’ belongs to thought; it is not the question of feeling. Feeling never asks ‘why.’ Feeling asks, ‘How shall I pray?’ Feeling asks, ‘What is prayer?’ Not ‘why.’ ‘What will I get by praying?’—feeling does not ask that either. Has love ever asked what it will get from loving? The one who prays from feeling never asks. But we who pretend to pray keep asking, ‘What will I gain? Have I gained anything? Is anything coming of it?’
No, there is no feeling there. Put thought aside, otherwise in the realm of feeling there will be no movement. Tell thought, ‘Your boundary is there—work there. Outside the house; not within.’ There is also a world of my inner being where you do not interfere. Wrestle with matter; do not wrestle with Paramatma, otherwise you will defeat me. Cut matter; but do not prepare to cut love. Test matter; but do not go to test God.
Then the second step can be taken: the development of feeling. Wherever thinking does not gather momentum and experiencing does, give more and more time there.
We even do not listen to music as music.
I have heard: a great musician, Schubert, went to a village to perform. While he was playing his violin, an old man in front kept muttering, ‘Useless, nothing at all.’ Schubert became disturbed. There he sat, muttering again and again, and also whispering something to the man beside him. When he whispered, the secret was revealed. He asked the man next to him, ‘When will this fiddler stop—when will Schubert come?’ The very one playing was Schubert. The neighbor said, ‘Sir, this is Schubert!’ The old man exclaimed, ‘Wonderful! How marvelous the music! Schubert himself is playing before us!’ What happened? This man listens to who Schubert is; otherwise he is not moved.
Many of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were in people’s homes. Van Gogh was a poor painter. He borrowed some cigarettes; having no money to repay, he left a painting. Who would hang the painting of one who cannot pay for cigarettes? Not even a paan-seller would hang it. He tossed it into the junkroom.
Twenty-five years after van Gogh’s death, people began to search for his paintings—as often happens. Van Gogh had no money for food, and now each of his paintings costs hundreds of thousands. A great hunt began: where are his paintings? Because not a single painting sold in his lifetime—not one! He had given them away. A friend, to oblige him, would hang it in the drawing room, and as soon as he left, they would take it down and put it behind. And if he was to come again, they would quickly hang it so he would not feel hurt.
People searched; the paintings suddenly became precious. Fakes too were made in van Gogh’s style, and people made lakhs. A picture lying in the backroom—as soon as the owner learned it was van Gogh—‘Van Gogh!’—the painting came into the drawing room. Until then it lay in the junkroom.
Was this man able to form any relation with the painting? None.
If a diamond lies in your house and you take it to be a stone, no relationship forms. If a stone lies and the illusion arises that it is a diamond, a relationship forms. So your feeling has nothing to do with real beauty—this is all a matter of thought.
Where feeling is! Music is playing. Forget the concern of who is playing. Forget what is being played. Care only that the mind withdraw—where intellect recedes and only waves of feeling remain—does this music touch those waves? If it touches, set the intellect aside and flow in this stream of feeling.
Whether it is a flower, or the stars in the sky, whether music, or a glimpse caught in two beautiful eyes, whether the beauty of a face, or the beauty of a stone, whether a temple or a mosque—wherever you feel something is touching deeper than the intellect, put the intellect aside and open your heart so it may touch and awaken it.
If someone creates such an opening, such a door, soon he will find a unique sprouting of feeling within. With this sprouting of feeling comes love—unobstructed love. With this sprouting comes the realm of prayer—without greed, unconditional. With this feeling gradually comes bhakti.
Bhakti means love not toward one, but toward the whole. Not toward one, but toward the all. As long as beauty is seen only in the beautiful, complete beauty has not been experienced. When beauty begins to be seen even in the ugly, complete beauty is known. As long as love arises only toward a friend, there is no trace yet of perfect love; when love arises even toward an enemy, then the scent of perfect love is there.
The day this stream of feeling begins to flow toward all, without any reason, without any judgment, without any choice, it becomes bhakti.
Krishna says: the man endowed with bhakti, filled with such feeling, even at the end-time, by the power of yoga, establishes the prana well in the center between the eyebrows…
These two eyebrows of yours—the space between them is the most important place in this body. It is the seat of the third eye, the place of Shiva’s eye. The person whose feeling is of love toward the whole, of prayer, of worship, who sees none but God in this world—such a person at the final time stills awareness at the center between the brows. Why? Because when attention is centered at the brow, the further journey into bodily birth ceases.
The onward bodily journey, the coming-and-going, continues if there is no awareness at the third eye. If awareness is at the third eye, that is the door out of the world. There is a pathway there, a subtle junction through which one goes beyond the body. If there is awareness there, and the heart is full of love, full of feeling, without any wave of thought—only the depth of feeling—then… Understand this: the moment a wave of thought arises, attention slips from the brow. Just a ripple of thought, and attention slips. When thought is wave-less and feeling full, attention settles at the brow. A mind stilled upon the brow, remembering with unmoving awareness, attains the divine Form of God.
An unmoving thought never happens; only feeling becomes unmoving. If you say, ‘My thought is very steadfast,’ you speak wrongly. Thought is never steadfast. It is like saying: ‘The waves that rise in my river are very motionless.’ Madness. Waves are not still. The river can be still, but only when there are no waves. Feeling becomes motionless only when there are no ripples of thought.
Thought is wave; therefore wave-less thought means no thought—nirvichar. Thought is vibration; therefore thought without vibration does not exist. When ‘unvibrating thought’ occurs, thought is not. And whenever there is thought, vibrations go on.
If there is even the slightest vibration, attention cannot be held at the brow. One misses. And the aperture of the brow is so small that even if you tremble by a hair’s breadth, you miss. If there is a hair’s breadth of tremor, you miss. That place is very atomic, very minute; not a large door—a very subtle junction. Only those enter who no longer know how to tremble, for whom trembling has disappeared.
And remember, feeling is very without-tremor. If you have ever loved someone—as seldom happens; rarely is anyone so fortunate—if ever you have loved, then amidst all doings—walking, moving, engaged in work—within, an unshaken feeling for the beloved remains.
Someone asked Kabir: ‘How do you remember Him while engaging in all these tasks?’ Kabir said, ‘When the time comes, I will show you.’ One day, returning from the river after bath, the questioner was with him. He asked again. Kabir said—two village women passed by with water-filled pots on their heads. Their hands were free; they were chatting. Kabir said, ‘Do you see them? The pots are full, placed on the head, no hand supporting, yet with both hands free they chatter and walk. Do you think they are not remembering the pot?’
He stopped them and asked. They said, ‘If the remembrance of the pot were not continuous, the hands could not be taken away. Only because the remembrance is constant have we removed our hands. That remembrance itself supports it.’
A person engaged in all tasks—if filled with feeling—though entangled on all sides, within something remains ever supported. It remains held. In that state of feeling, if the final moment comes, the whole feeling condenses and centers on the brow.
Krishna says: by the power of yoga!
Because only those who have practiced centering attention on the brow will find it easy at the end for their feeling to settle there; otherwise it is not possible. There are pathways in the body; if they are not prepared, at the last moment it is very difficult to make them.
Perhaps you never take your attention toward the brow. Attention generally goes toward the sex center. At most, that is where man’s attention runs. The sex center is exactly opposite the third eye, at the other pole—two extremes.
Understand it so: if the sex center is much contemplated, within us only one highway is formed for consciousness—a smooth road, flat and ready. Just a little slip, and you reach the sex center. You fall ill and are idle—sex will seize you. Sitting idle at the office—sex will catch you. Sitting empty in the car—sex will catch you. Either keep thinking, keep entangled, or sex will grab you. A flat road is formed within; the mind is a bit free and it runs.
Another center is at the brow between the eyebrows; yogis call it the ajna chakra. This center is just the opposite. The devotee—as soon as there is any spare moment—his awareness darts to the brow. But for the consciousness of this brow, for its awakening and sensitivity, the practice of yoga is necessary. Gradually the most important place in the body will be felt to be the ajna chakra; whenever there is ease, time, energy, attention will immediately race to the ajna chakra.
If this pathway is prepared, then at the end all feeling gathers at the ajna chakra and goes beyond the cycle of bodies. If not, difficulty arises.
Therefore Krishna says: by the power of yoga, firmly establishing the prana at the center between the brows, then with an unmoving mind remembering, he attains the divine Form, the Supreme Person, Paramatma.
And, O Arjuna, that supreme state which the knowers of the Veda call Akshara, by the name Omkar; which the non-attached, striving great ones enter; and for which the desiring ones practice brahmacharya—that supreme state I shall tell you briefly.
The knowers of the Veda!
At once it is thought that Krishna must be speaking of those who know the four Vedic Samhitas, the Veda-reciting pundits. A man like Krishna cannot be speaking of them. A knower of scriptures is not important for a man like Krishna. But ‘Veda’ is a unique word. Veda means simply knowledge. Veda points directly to knowing. Scripture is its indirect sense. Its plain meaning is knowledge.
What we call ‘the Veda’ is only an echo, a reflection of that supreme knowing. Infinite Vedas can arise: as many mirrors as we take before that supreme knowledge, that many Vedas can be born. But Veda’s indication is toward that supreme knowing. Even if the four Samhitas were lost, the Veda would not be lost. Even if millions of Samhitas were born, the Veda would not be exhausted.
Those four Samhitas—Rig, Yajur, Atharva, Sama—are the first reflection of the supreme Veda in humanity’s memory. The Koran is also Veda, and the Bible is Veda, and Mahavira’s sayings, Buddha’s words—these are later reflections. But those who became fixated on the first reflection said: after this there is no other Veda.
Veda will go on being born. Whenever someone attains the supreme state, he becomes a mirror. And that eternal Veda, that timeless knowledge which resides in the heart of the Divine, forms its reflection again.
Surely that image differs according to the mirror. Rigveda is one image. The Koran another—Muhammad’s mirror. The Bible a third—Jesus’ mirror. Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu—thousands have given reflections—they all are Vedas.
Veda is not the name of a dead book. Veda is the name of that supreme knowledge before which the one who is completely empty stands.
So when Krishna speaks of the Veda, do not be deluded that he speaks of Hindu Vedas. No—men like Krishna do not speak in the language of adjectives: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain. Their language is the supreme language. By Veda they mean that Veda which has been reflected in those who became mirrors.
The knowers of such Veda call that supreme state ‘Akshara,’ and its symbol is Omkar. Akshara—that which never decays, never diminishes, never is destroyed.
We call all letters ‘akshara’: a, b, c… But they all decay, they all perish. To call them akshara is not right. If I do not speak, these letters cannot arise. If you remain silent, these letters vanish. They cannot be called akshara.
Therefore Krishna says, the knowers call that supreme state ‘Akshara,’ and that Akshara is Omkar. There is one letter too, Om, which is spoken only when you do not speak.
This must be understood a little.
All other letters are spoken only when you speak; if you do not, they disappear. There is one letter which, as long as you are speaking, is neither spoken nor heard. When you stop speaking, fall silent, become quiet, when even inner words cease—then a resonance, a sound begins to arise in the very life of life. The knowers of the Veda have called that resonance Akshara. Its symbol is Om—Omkar.
When someone becomes utterly silent, still within there resounds a sound. That sound is not produced by us, for we are silent. That sound is our very being. It is the sound of existence; existence itself resounds; our very is-ness resounds. That sound is called Akshara. Before we were, it resounded; when we are no more, it will go on resounding. Perhaps we are nothing but one wavelength of that sound—perhaps we are a densification of that primal resonance, a particularized form of that soundless sound. Its name is Om, Omkar.
This Om is not a word; it has no meaning. It is only an existence-indicator, an indication. Therefore the ancient way of writing Om is pictorial—by drawing. We can write Om with a-u-m. In English we can write O-m. But no, to write it as letters is not right. We write Om pictorially, as a figure. We do not give it letters; we give it only a form, a shape—so it remains distinct from other letters.
In truth that alone is the letter; all the rest we call letters are its offspring. In Om there is the harmony of the three sounds A, U and M. Om is the Akshara; then A, U, M are its three emanations. And all our alphabets are expansions of these three.
Eastern wisdom has known: Truth is One; when Truth becomes world, it is Three; and from Three, the many. Om is the One. Then A, U, M. And then all letters come. But they are not akshara. Only Om is Akshara.
The knowers have called that supreme state Omkar, Akshara. And the non-attached, striving great ones enter this—enter this Om, this Akshara.
As soon as one’s feeling steadies at the center of the brow, the resonance of Omkar begins there. With that resonance a person enters from the world into moksha. Say that resonance is the vehicle. As one comes closer to the center between the brows, the resonance becomes denser, deeper.
Kabir says: what thunder of lightning! What roaring clouds! How nectar showers! And what is this resonance—that is born nowhere, yet is heard!
As you move toward the brow center, your whole being begins to hum with sound. In that moment you remain only a collection of sound—not body, only nada. Riding on this nada a person rises through the aperture of the brow and enters the supreme state.
This which the knowers call Omkar—these words must be understood—non-attached, striving great ones enter it.
Non-attached! Those in whom not even this attachment remains: ‘May I enter moksha.’ For leaving all other attachments, only then does one reach the brow; yet one attachment remains: that I may enter liberation. If even so much attachment remains—that I may be free, may enter moksha, attain the supreme state, find the Lord—even that attachment becomes an obstacle. Wherever the notion of getting remains, the world begins. Wherever any desire arises, there we return to the journey of the world.
This must be well understood.
The seeker of God must, before attaining God, drop even the desire to attain Him. The seeker of moksha must, at the door of moksha, lay down the desire for moksha. Even that little desire is enough to return you to the world.
Non-attached—and yet striving. This is a wondrous thing. Non-attached and striving! The attached are seen striving; where there is attachment, there is effort. Where there is something to gain, there will be attempts to gain. But another phenomenon happens—call it an accident—when someone says, ‘Now I have no attachment,’ then he also drops effort. If there is attachment there is effort; attachment gone, people drop effort too. Danger lies in both.
Krishna says something else. He says: non-attached, and striving. Nothing to gain—and yet not a hair’s breadth lessening in endeavor. This is difficult. Nothing to gain—and yet endeavor unweakened. Run as if there is a destination to reach, and yet there is nowhere to reach. How will this be?
Sometimes it happens—when joy is in running itself.
One kind of running hides its joy in reaching somewhere, in some treasure at the end—so one runs. There is no joy in running; the joy is there at the end. If you tell such a person to run without attachment, he will sit down where he is. He will say, ‘If there is nowhere to arrive, why run?’ And Krishna says, ‘Run—and do not think of arriving.’ Meaning: run in the joy of running.
In truth, when a seeker descends deep, he no longer says, ‘I meditate in order to…’ He begins to know that meditation itself is bliss, yoga itself is bliss. He does not say, ‘I pray so that God may give me this or that.’ He says, ‘Even if there were no God, it would do; without prayer it wouldn’t do.’ He says, ‘Prayer is bliss—therefore I pray.’
Bhaktas have spoken wondrously and have taken splendid liberties with God, hard to account for. One says: ‘I have nothing to do with your moksha-voksha. Enough that I may take birth in the lanes of Vrindavan. I do not want your moksha-voksha. Only this: wherever you walked in Vrindavan, there I remain, lying in that dust. I can abandon your moksha; not your lane in Vrindavan.’
This joy speaks of something else. The one who can dare to abandon moksha has already attained it. There remains nothing to gain. Even the dust of Vrindavan will be moksha to him. Lying in that dust he will sit upon the supreme stone of siddhi.
Krishna says: non-attached and striving. Do not cultivate attachment; but do not give up endeavor. Keep endeavor alive. Surely now endeavor can continue only when endeavor itself has become joy.
People come to me and ask, ‘Why sannyas?’ They have already missed the point; the matter is over. ‘Why sannyas!’—that is a valid question for the world. ‘Why sannyas?’—not a valid question. Sannyas for sannyas’ own sake. No other meaning. If sannyas itself is bliss, only then can you be a sannyasin. If you think, ‘Let me take sannyas to get this or that,’ then you are making sannyas a worldly thing. Sannyas is joy in itself. Prayer is joy in itself. Worship is its own fruit.
Keep endeavoring yet drop attachment, says Krishna, and such great ones enter the Akshara resonance of Omkar. And that supreme state—it is for the desiring of which men practice brahmacharya…
And this is that supreme state for which those who desire it practice brahmacharya. This last aphorism is precious. They practice brahmacharya who desire that state.
Brahmacharya means a way of life like Brahman’s. The one who wishes to attain God must begin, even before attaining, to live a God-like life. Otherwise God may stand before us and we will not be a fit vessel. Otherwise we may even reach His door and will not have the courage to knock. Before the meeting with God, one must begin to live as if He is already attained. Begin to live as if He has come into the house and is seated; as if He is present—walking with you, standing in every heartbeat, vibrating in each step. The seeker should begin to live as if the Divine is with him, attained.
Then his conduct, slowly, slowly, with this sense of God’s companionship, becomes brahmacharya—Brahman-like. And the very moment the conduct becomes like Brahman, the meeting happens.
People say to me, ‘The mind has not yet changed; if we take sannyas, what will happen? Let the mind change completely, then we shall take sannyas.’
Even beginning the conduct of sannyas opens the door for sannyas to arrive. Even moving the lips in prayer opens the way toward the supreme resonance. The thought of walking toward a temple becomes a cause for the opening of the inner temple’s door.
Begin the conduct. Begin to live as if God is. And one day you will find that what began in conduct has come into experience.
Enough for today.
But for five minutes no one will rise. And today the kirtan is to be done by all, sitting, so you will have no need to stand to see. Participate sitting where you are. A stream of bliss flows—it is present here; when a river flows by, do not be mad—take a dip too.
So many are gathered; if so many do kirtan with total feeling, who knows how many pure rays will spread in all directions, how many will be benefited. A rain of Omkar can happen here and now. Let us all join with feeling. Clap hands. Chant the kirtan. Delight while sitting. Sway while sitting. This will be a seated kirtan.