It is said that the divine attributes lead one to liberation and the undivine attributes lead to bondage. Arjuna, grieve not, for you are born with divine attributes.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 575

In this verse the two mutually opposing sets of attributes are explained, the divine and the undivine.  One set of attributes takes man towards liberation and the other takes man towards perpetuation of bondage.  The list in the preceding verses describes the drives or tendencies latent in the human system.  Because this is the sixteenth chapter we can interpret these in terms of the gunas.  We can say that the divine attributes are rooted in sattwa guna and the undivine attributes are rooted in rajas and tamas gunas.  All human beings are either made up of divine or undivine attributes.  Those who are possessed of divine attributes make progress in yoga, and this progress is manifested in their life’s actions.  They carry the possibility of sadhana and siddhi.  Sadhana is the capacity to strive to make progress in yoga; siddhi is the capability to become an instrument or channel of divine.

The sixteenth chapter comes in the third part of Gita, the manifestation section.  Manifestation means sadhana is finished and the result is manifested through life’s action.  Gita emphasizes manifestation, so if what you are attaining is not manifested through life’s action, then Gita is not prepared to accept that it is your attainment.  It is just your information.  The moment something is attained in the system, it always finds its expression through action, reaction, and interaction.  Those who are dominated by undivine attributes manifest arrogance, diffidence, “I-ness,” pride, anger, superiority complex, ignorance about the reality of this world, and showiness.  These egoistic traits are the symptoms of an asuric tendency and nature.  Those who have predominantly divine attributes exhibit many such traits.  Foremost among them is absence of fear, or abhaya.  This is not fearlessness; fearlessness is different than absence of fear.  Then come purity, simplicity and all the attributes explained in the first three verses of this chapter.

Chapter 16 explains the way the world is manifested.  The world consists of two basic types of human beings.  One group is predominantly rajasic and tamasic; the other is primarily sattwic.   When the yogi in the path of Gita yoga reenters society after attaining the highest state, how is he supposed to deal with this manifest world?  To make it clear, the Lord explains the nature of human beings.  The sixteenth chapter begins with, “The Blessed Lord said.”  No question is asked by Arjuna but the spontaneous revelation from Lord Krishna continues.  Here Arjuna is no longer a yogi, no longer a seeker.  He has merged, and after the merger he asked one question, at the beginning of Chapter 12, and it is a question of the mind.

You may ask how there can still be a mind after the merger has come.  My answer is, the surface human mind will always remain, but it will not have the power to issue any commands to a God-realized soul for getting involved in this material, sensory world.   Still, mind will be there because mind symbolizes matter.  Even God-realized saints have this surface curiosity, but not have any deep curiosity.  Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, as he was reading the newspaper, “Bhagavan, what are you reading?  For you, everything is the Being, the Self.”  Bhagavan replied, “This Self is trying to know what the Self is doing when it is non-Self.”

Surface mind wants to know, but the curiosity of a deluded human being is different from the surface curiosity of a God-realized saint.  For the latter, because they still have to function in the world of matter, their surface mind is still active, but it is so thin that it cannot command anything.

Arjuna’s merger came in the eleventh chapter, when he could see Krishna in everything in the universe.  In his universal vision, he saw Krishna in a tree, a mountain, a river, a lake, a star in space, in human beings, in animals and everywhere.  He saw God as love, fear, horror, beauty, terror, mystery–everything.  When someone goes through the merger process, these are the experiences.  Sometimes there will be infinite beauty and charm; sometimes there will be oceanic sorrow; sometimes there will be pure ecstasy; and sometimes there will be a deafening solitude.

It is like watching a film on the screen, and like a dream.  The difference is, when you come out of a dream, you know that you were dreaming, but the person who has gone through the merger process does not feel it was a dream.  It is just the opposite: he feels that the merger is the reality and that this waking plane is just a reflection of that reality.  The reflection is as real as a person’s reflection in a mirror.  That is the state of God-realized mahatmas and saints.  Just for functional necessity they discharge their responsibilities, but they don’t get identified with anything.  Loss or gain, fame or defamation, hardship or luxury, these do not affect the state of the God-realized yogi.

In that state Arjuna asked the question, “Tell me, Lord, who is the greater devotee,” that is, who has attained a higher state in devotion?  That is a surface comparison.  Arjuna must have realized that although he has merged with the force he still cannot proceed without the form.  The form is still dear to him.  The surface mind must have given this prompting, “Then you have not attained the universal state of merger,” so it asked, “Tell me, Lord, who is more dear to you, one who is clinging to you the form or one who is only linked with you, the force?”

The Lord said, “Both are dear to me.  But, Arjuna, until one has gone beyond identification with his own body it is very difficult and painful to proceed in the path of yoga.”

What is there to be attained that is still difficult and painful for a God-realized soul?  He has nothing to attain in the material plane, but much to attain in the spiritual plane.  That is the last attainment in Gita yoga.  The God-realized soul has no desire or aspiration for material or social expansion and attainment, but he still has a hidden aspiration to transcend the veil.  From God-realization to gunatita will be a difficult and painful part of the journey if the form is not there, because the soul is liberated but the samskara is there, the samskara of this universe and of prakriti.

Purusha’s samskara is gone because the reason for which purusha entered the body has been fulfilled and there is nothing left for the purusha to want.  Just imagine such a state, of someone who has reached a stage of nothingness, but his life still remains.  Such a person has no desire, no hankering, and no aspiration–not even the aspiration for sadhana.  He sees and feels the futility of everything, but has no power to leave the body because there is a long life still to go.  Those who attain the gunatita state usually live longer.  Imagine if there is no form with whom you can share, for whom you can live, and to whom you can release your irritation or your worries.  And you do not have any way to quit.

Attaining a static state of the being is not a big attainment.  A dryness comes when a person experiences the pure static state of samadhi, and there is no tendency for anything.  That is the time the Mahaprakriti, the Maheshwari, the Divine Mother, takes care of the human body through some form.  Otherwise the yogis will leave the body.  They will be crushed under a lorry or fall from a mountain, or they may walk into a flooded river and be washed away, because mind as such is not there at that time.  Mind is temporarily merged, withered away.  The yogi has survived that stage and travelled farther.  He has entered into the shore of devotion, and that devotion takes him more and more inside the sea.

The Lord says yoga is very difficult and painful for such a person who is proceeding farther from the state of God-realization and heading towards the gunatita stage. You have no anchor and no goal.  At that time, if you are linked with a form that has attained the gunatita state, you get some strength and find some purpose to be in the body, even if it is not your individual purpose.

If there is no life after merger, the person remains in a state of God-ecstasy and then he leaves the body.  That’s the most desirable state.  But usually God-realized souls, if they are chosen to play a role, do not drop the body easily.  These yogis reach the God-realization state much earlier, in their forties, thirties, or even their twenties.  Bhagavan Ramana attained it at the age of sixteen.  Before fifty percent of the life is gone, the person must have reached either Self-realization or God-realization so that Prakriti gets the chance to work through the form.

This list of divine and undivine attributes is given in the sixteenth chapter because those who persevere and reach the gunatita level are either chosen instruments or channels.  This list enables them to know the nature of the world, that basically there are two types of people, the divine and the undivine, and only the divine type carries the possibility of sadhana, siddhi, and manifestation.  Therefore one should not waste time unnecessarily with those who have predominantly undivine attributes.

Just as you know that you cannot teach a dog to chant Veda, when you reach the gunatita stage you will also know clearly that there are some human beings who are basically undivine because they are dominated by tamas and rajas and you will not waste your precious time to try to change such people.  How much rajas or tamas they have determines the intensity of their I-ness, ego, clinging, demand, fear and imposition. Those who do not have sattwa will not be interested in liberation or yoga or sadhana.  They will be interested for bhoga, pleasure.  For the sake of discharging his role, one should see which form is more endowed more with divine attributes and which with undivine attributes.

The final phase of manifestation–the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth chapters–is nothing but preparation for withdrawal.  Everything is accomplished, so let us be ready for the return journey.  Moksha Yoga, the title of the eighteenth chapter, refers to how a fully liberated being drops the body and goes.  The sixteenth and seventeenth chapters are the last work to be performed before dropping the body: what you have attained has to be transmitted.

A liberated being must finish the last karma so that he will be allowed to drop the body.    The last karma is to give back, and transmit the light that you have received.  Every gunatita person carries that responsibility to give the light back to society.  For this, they will select those who have predominantly divine attributes.  One’s time on Earth is short; don’t make it longer by spending time with those who cannot be transformed.  That is the implied, hidden direction here.

Your job is to ensure that many are liberated, because you are liberated.  As a rich man gives away his wealth by writing a Will before he dies, so also an enlightened being must transmit and give away right before he drops the body.  If you cannot do that, you will come back again.  You will not return as a deluded being, but you will come back, because that’s the final duty.

The avatar comes again and again because while discharging his role he again gets compassion and promises something to someone, and in order to fulfill that he has to return.  This is how the perpetual play of Divine goes on and on.  In Rama avatar he created some karma, and to discharge that he came back in Krishna avatar.  Krishna avatar is considered purna avatar, complete, because that time he did everything as a play.  He will not come back to discharge any leftover karma.  The gunatita person should live life the way Krishna lived, whereby everything is just a divine play.  This is the most important hidden aspect.

Those who have divine attributes are naturally capable to move towards liberation.  Those who have undivine attributes are naturally moving away from liberation, so the gunatita person should not waste time on them.

[From an 11 April 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]

[On 24 February 2012, Swamiji revealed the inner meaning of Verse 56 of the Bhagavad Gita.  Click below to listen.  Total audio time: 62 minutes.]

[On 5 March 2012, Swamiji revealed the inner meaning of Verses 33-34 of the Bhagavad Gita.  Click below to listen.  Total audio time: 66 minutes.]

Today I will explain Verse 125, the sixth verse of the third chapter.  It has a connection with the previous verse: No one can ever remain inactive even for a moment, because all are helplessly driven to action by the modes of prakriti.

The purusha is helpless until it is liberated.  This helpless purusha is a slave to prakriti, so whatever prakriti commands, the purusha has to give consent.  Through the purusha, prakriti does what the purusha once upon a time wanted to do but could not, so it got stored up.

Prakriti has no will and purusha has no power, actually.  The purusha desires everything, without having the capacity for anything.  The purusha desires because in order to experience prakriti, the purusha entered the world of maya.  What is there to be experienced in prakriti?  Only two things: prakriti’s beauty and prakriti’s mystery.  Prakriti changes herself in variable ways so that the purusha can experience prakriti in her expanded, extended state, but because purusha is purusha, a time comes when the purusha gets fed up with these repetitive experiences, and wants to go back to its original state.  At that time prakriti does not allow that.  She does something so that the purusha is again diverted.  How she does it, the purusha is not able to know.  That prakriti is doing it, purusha is able to know, but the purusha knows this only after losing its identity.  Repeatedly the purusha goes through this crisis and knows, “Again I got trapped and again I got veiled.”  But how prakriti is doing this, the purusha is not able to know, because that’s the mystery.

The purusha gets fed up with this beauty aspect and becomes determined to penetrate through the mystery of prakriti—how she is doing what she is doing.  She is only veiling, trapping and clouding, so that the purusha is losing its awareness.  Until and unless the purusha becomes one-pointed to know how prakriti is doing what she is doing, yoga is not possible.  Here yoga refers to jñana yoga.  Jñana is not possible until the purusha is determined to know how prakriti is doing and how she is veiling:  “I was so alert, I was so determined, but again I fell into the trap.  How did she do it?”

This mystery goes on and on.  Lord Krishna now shows the way out.  The first thing he says in verse 125 is that one who outwardly restrains the organs of action but mentally dwells on the objects of senses is verily deluded and is a hypocrite.  Anybody can understand what is expressed here, but something is also implied and hidden, and that is to be brought out first.

The normal state of man is to run towards experience and enjoyment, and Gita says there is nothing wrong in that.  To run towards objects of pleasure is the natural dharma of the embodied being, because it was for that purpose only that the being entered the body.  The purpose was to experience the beauty and mystery of prakriti.

As per Gita, experience is an absolute term, not a relative one.  Because of ignorance, man is viewing experience as a relative term and labeling it as good experience, bad experience, pain and pleasure.  Experience is experience.  Don’t attach any normative or value sense to it.  Go through it.  For example, if we are driving to a distant place, and it is a long ride through a village road, and the road is uneven, there will be vibrations and jerks.  If one of the passengers says, “This is bad, this is bad, I am not going,” and gets down from the vehicle, then he cannot reach the destination.  This so-called “bad” will not be lasting until the end.  It’s just a bumpy road.  Neither the driving nor the car nor the driver is bad.

Similarly, while taking the purusha through the journey, prakriti will sometimes steer the wheel of life through a bumpy road.  At that time the experience will be different, and although we may give it a qualitative label like “bad” or “painful,” it is just a different experience.

The embodied being gets identified with the so-called good experience and wants that always, but prakriti is beauty, and beauty means variety.  Without variety, there is no beauty.  If prakriti always remains the same in every situation that beauty will be gone.  Prakriti is variety, so first the experience will be of one type, and then after some time it will switch to a different type.  But this purusha clings to the experience that appeals to it, and when a different experience comes the purusha grumbles and says, “I want that other experience.”  For prakriti to give the same experience to purusha, prakriti has to change the gear to reverse and go backwards, but the law of life is always a forward march.  It has to move continuously upward, so that the journey comes to an end from where it began.  It is like a circle.  Life’s wheel is constantly moving, and it should move.  That’s the purpose.

Prakriti’s target is for the purusha to reach its goal.  Reaching the goal means coming back to the point of origin, and the point of origin is the awareness, because the purusha is awareness.  The awareness started its journey in the zone of experience, and in the beginning the awareness was more, and experience was less.  Then the awareness gradually reduced while the experience grew.  That’s the natural way.  If you are not prepared to lose a portion of your awareness, you cannot gain the experience.

More experience means less awareness.  This is why when you begin from the topmost point and descend, when you are coming right to the bottom point, at that time your awareness is gone.  It is circular.  When you reach the bottom point, awareness is gone and you are experience.  That is why you say, “I am happy, I am sad, I am frustrated, I am depressed.”  That indicates total delusion.  Delusion is all experience, no awareness.  At this point, half of the journey is complete.  Next the ascending phase will begin again, back to the point of origin, to full awareness.

When you begin the upward the journey on the other half of the circle, you are leaving behind some of your experience and entering into awareness.  Life’s path is always a circle, and it has four stages.  According to Gita, these four stages are brahmin, warrior or kshatriya, merchant, and sudra or service.  The four stages of life do not mean four classes; they refer to four stages of evolution.  Yoga starts only when the beginning phase of the brahmin comes; that is the awareness and the awakening.

Natural law says man will always expand in the experiential zone.  However, in this liberal time, knowledge is available more freely than light from the sun, and man is receiving many things in his mind, and desiring that for which the time has not come.  His inner evolution has not yet come to that stage.  It is like if an eight-year-old girl will want to become a mother, because she read many things about the joys and prestige of motherhood, but she is eight years old.  In yoga, ninety-nine percent of the people have this problem.  They have more theoretical knowledge on yoga, without coming to the natural evolutionary phase to enter into the process called yoga.  That is the hidden point that Krishna is trying to bring out, regarding one who outwardly restrains the organs of action, but inwardly dwells on object of enjoyment.  If the circle is not complete, some of the residue desire to experience is still there, but due to too much bookish learning, or too much transmission of the outer knowledge, the man will think experience to be bad.

Why did Krishna not reveal Gita to Yudhishthira, who was the embodiment of pure sattwa, or to Bhima, who was in higher rajas and could achieve everything by effort?  Instead, he chose someone in the transition phase of experience and awareness, who was fully a householder.  This is very symbolic, and shows that you must have come at least halfway through the circle of life before you can really enter into yoga.  Until you have transcended the whole process and completed the journey, and you are above this circle—neither in the ascent nor descent phase—you cannot know which point is the point of origin.  That is why every point in the circle can be the point of origin.  Only after transcending maya you will be able to see at what point the circle began.  That is the sadguru.  The sadguru is able to see the soul’s evolution, and whether the ascending phase has begun, or the descending phase is continuing.  This is the reason every enlightened being, if they are truly enlightened, always have said, “Take it in a natural way.  In the course of time, at the right time, you will realize the being.” 

The implication of this verse is that it is natural for the senses to run towards the objects.  If you have entered into the yoga path, my experiential advice is that if you fall even after taking a resolve that you will not do something, don’t think that yoga is not possible for you.  Rather, recognize that some of this unfulfilled desire is still within you, and you have to go beyond it.  You don’t know how much is there—it may be one ton, it may be a hundred, or it may be an ounce.  You cannot know.  Gita says you have to constantly apply your discrimination, and through that your awareness will expand.  When awareness expands, experience is automatically absorbed, like blotter paper absorbing ink.

You must reach that stage where you are able to see whether your awareness is swallowing the experience, or your experience is swallowing the awareness.  If your experience is swallowing your awareness, you have not actually entered into the phase of yoga.  Yoga will wait.  Acquire knowledge about yoga, and get ready for it, but don’t give yourself credit that you are a yogi.  Be truthful.  Gita says one who is not truthful is a hypocrite.   In yoga, hypocrisy is a cup of poison, because it will not allow you to see your inner state.

Sri Aurobindo has written this beautifully in The Mother, that when hypocrisy comes the tendency will be to hide under subterfuges, to rationalize, and to pass the blame to others.  For example, I may claim that I did not want to go to the restaurant, but Tulsi called me and that’s why I went.  Or, I never wanted to shout at you, but you did something that deserved shouting.  This will be the normal language of the person: passing the blame to others, justifying and rationalizing, and hiding under small excuses.

Here we are in the third chapter of Gita, the beginning phase of yoga, and first six chapters of Gita make up the sadhana part.  Sadhana means effort; you have to put effort.  Through effort you must reach a certain point, then only the grace can take you beyond.  If you are not putting forth the effort and expecting the grace to just carry you, it is a fantasy.  That is what Sri Aurobindo explained in The Mother.

Some people enter into yoga and the next day declare, “I am beyond this, I am beyond that.”  If you reply, “You are not beyond that,” then you are the number one foolish person, and he is the number two foolish person.  The scriptures say, “If you are giving advice to someone who is not prepared to listen to it, then the first foolish man is you, not he.”  This is the reason the more you ascend in yoga, the more you become neutral, and a witness.  You don’t run to give advice and you don’t impose, because you are able to see that the system is not ready.  Here Lord Krishna is telling Arjuna to not become a spiritual hypocrite.  The meaning of hypocrisy is that you are outwardly saying you have attained something, but inwardly you actually have not attained it.  That is a big obstacle in yoga.

Gita says it is very natural for the senses to run towards the objects, and there is nothing wrong in it, but if you are in yoga you have to overcome it.  My personal experience was to overcome many of these obstacles by making them known, not by keeping them unknown.  People generally advertise their attainment, but I am a person who advertised his failure.  I have found from my life that not by hiding, but by confessing I overcame certain obstacles.  By confessing, “This is a weakness, yes, I know, but I am determined to go beyond it.”  This is the prayer I wrote: “Bestow on me the strength as great as the calamity you send, O Dear Lord, Dear God.”  Confession requires courage.  Without courage you cannot confess.  People say a coward will confess because of fear of punishment, but it is just the opposite.  Only a courageous man can confess.  Once you confess, if at heart you are aspiring to go beyond, the grace will come.  Committing a sin is a karma, but confessing it with repentance means the karma is washed away.  That’s the secret of the Bible’s prayer.  People go to churches to confess and it is forgiven—there is truth in that.  This is my experience of life, but it must come with repentance.  Repentance not because it was a sin and I am a sinner, but with determination that I want to go beyond it, because it is an obstacle for my higher ascension and it is not allowing me to climb to a higher state, that is why I want to get rid of this.   I am not getting rid of it because it is bad.  In yoga there is nothing bad.  Everything is good, if you know the purpose for which you are doing it.

The advice here is to study your system and evaluate the flow: is the inner current towards expansion in the experiential zone or towards ascension in awarenessional zone—at what stage are you?  Gita also says to follow your natural path, your innate nature.  My system was in the brahmin stage, not because I was born in a brahmin family, but because of my aspiration, my journey had crossed three-fourths, and only last fourth remained.  By the time I got awakened I knew my last one-fourth was there, so I was in the brahmin category.  That is why I had the pull for mind control, sense control, reading scripture, contemplation and meditation.  I was doing these in a natural flow; nobody was compelling me.  From that I knew I had entered into the fourth stage of my evolution.  Verse 664 lists the signs of one who has entered into the fourth phase, and from my own system I knew it.

For a long time I was still feeling the pull for certain food was because right from childhood, I was habituated with good food, so that memory and relish were there.  Gita’s advice is, don’t run away from karma.  Face it and finish it.  Be cleansed.  Then you will be a channel of manifestation of dharma.  Until karma is finished, dharma cannot be manifested.  Dharma has to wait.  If you are not finishing karma and try to manifest dharma, then you will encounter the same as Arjuna: standing in the field of dharma, he had to face the holocaust because karma was not finished.  Life will be a battle, and you will be wounded and injured, and become a half-baked yogi and a failure in the material world.  Failure is not the purpose of human life, because man is God who has forgotten his divinity.

Gita says look within and find out whether you have come to the stage when there is no more pull for experience, and all the pull is for awareness.  If you have reached that stage, don’t dwell on the objects if you have restrained the senses.

Gita is the manifestation path.  Krishna never told Arjuna to deny all experiences.  Krishna said, have experiences in moderation, not in madness.  Moderation is the key word in Gita.  You can confess, “Yes, I am trying to overcome, but still it is not one hundred percent.”  This is not hypocrisy.  It is truth.  That’s the advice given in this verse.

[From a 4 January 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India.]

Does tyaga lead to sannyasa or does sannyasa lead to tyaga—which one is the cause, and which is the effect?

Sannyasa is a three-dimensional concept: renunciation of result, renunciation of doership and renunciation of identification with the process.  Sannyasa is complete only when all the three conditions are fulfilled.  There must be no “I-ness,” no identification with the process of doing, and no hankering for a result of self-benefit.  It is not that the action is performed and a result is not coming.  A result will definitely come, because no action is devoid of result.  This result may be as you expect, or something completely opposite to your expectation, but result is a must.

You may bring me a cup of tea early in the morning, thinking,  “Swamiji will be happy,” or “Swamiji needs me.”  But instead of thanking you, I may scream and shout at you and throw the cup.  My throwing the cup or shouting is because of some action on your part.  The result of action always is there.  It may not be as we expect, but no result is possible anywhere in this creation without an action behind it.  This is why when Arjuna asked this question to Krishna, “Tell me the difference between tyaga and sannyasa,” Krishna did not answer it directly.  It’s a very tricky question, and the last one the seeker asked to the guru, in the final chapter of Gita and the last phase of the journey.

This concept of sannyasa and tyaga is more mystic than the concepts of God or Soul.  You can’t grasp it unless you relate it to your experiential vision.  This is not something to be understood intellectually.  It’s a very deep experiential concept.  First you have to understand what is sannyasa.  Sannyasa literally means renunciation, and renunciation is a three-dimensional concept.  Like this table, which has length, height and breadth, everything in this creation is three-dimensional, including man.

Man’s dimensions are not height and length, quality and color, or race and religion.  Man is a three-dimensional manifestation of consciousness.  One dimension is the doership: “I am doing, he is doing, she is doing.”  Until I have transcended doership in this form, I cannot see the absence of doership in another form.  As long as I feel, “I am doing,” so long also I will feel Sriramji is doing, Vishnudash is doing and Tulsi is doing.  When I transcend this doership in my form, I will not be able to see the doership in other forms either.  Second is the dimension of result.  We all see the result, either through the eye of our intellect or the eye of our expectation.  That’s why we are jumping into action.  If we don’t see the result we cannot jump into action.  Very few people exist who don’t see any result for their action but still perform it.  The third dimension is the process.

In sadhana, renouncing the result comes first.  You cannot renounce doership first, that is why Verse 94 came in the second chapter.  Your right is to the work, but not to the fruits thereof.  First, practice renouncing the result.  No one can renounce the result without performing action because without action there is no result, so you have to first perform, and then renounce.  Action comes first.  Every action produces a result and every action carries the fruit with it.  You have to perform action, so that you are creating an opportunity to see whether you are affected by the result or not.  You have to prepare the tea and bring it, because only then Swamiji has the option whether to shout at you or praise you.

Sannyasa means first renouncing the result: “I am making tea, but I am making it for Swamiji and for ashramites.  Not for me.”  But if you are making tea also with the intention that, “Swamiji will offer some to me, so while making it for Swamiji I am also making it for me,” this does not fulfill the condition of sannyasa.  The first and easiest form of sannyasa is renunciation of desire-prompted action, so that no action is performed with a desire.  Any action that is performed for self-benefit is desire.  Any action that is not performed for self-benefit is seva, a sacrifice. You are preparing a cup of tea, but not for you, knowing one hundred percent you will not drink it and you don’t need it, but you are making it for somebody else.  That is not desire but it is action.  The thought came, “Let me prepare a cup of tea for Swamiji,” and you don’t take tea.  Gita says that it is not desire.

Action can be desire-prompted, and it can be service.  When action becomes service then it is the beginning of the process called tyaga, but whether or not it is truly tyaga remains to be seen.  Still, the process began.  When you are preparing the tea for Swamiji without any desire for it whatsoever, and Swamiji does not take it, rather he shouts at you and throws the cup, and you do not get sad and your inner state is not disturbed, and you are feeling the same love and respect, Gita says that you are not only a sannyasi, but also a tyagi.  You are performing action just for the sake of duty, for the sake of service.

That is what the supreme prakriti is always doing.  Sun is rising in the east, and the whole Earth is lighted.  Some people use this for their benefit while others put their curtains down to keep it dark, and sleep.  Either way, the sun is not affected.  A child crawls towards a burning lamp and puts a hand on the lamp, and the fire is burns the child’s hand.  Fire is not making any discrimination, “O, here is a child she does not know, so let me not burn her.”  This is natural law.  When through our sadhana we reach such a state of naturalness, we are then sannyasis and tyagis.

Sannyasa is possible only if action is performed.  For me to enter into sannyasa I have to perform action.  For you to enter into sannyasa you have to perform action.  I cannot enter into sannyasa by simply allowing Tulsi to always cook food for me.  I must also take the opportunity of cooking food for Tulsi.  Unless I throw the seed of action I cannot get the possibility of being impacted by the result of my action.  Lord Krishna said sadhana through action is a compulsion in order to reach the state of actionlessness.  In Verse 123 of Gita, he explained that without performing action you cannot reach actionlessness.  Action is a must.  Nothing is possible if you do not perform action, and to quickly reach the state of actionlessness you should always perform action as a sacrifice, as Lord Krishna advised in Verse 128.  Convert all your action into sacrifice.

Here is an example of sacrifice: I will prepare food for Sriramji, but he has absolute freedom to reject it.  If he accepts it, that’s good and if he rejects that’s also good, but let me do my duty.  My state is not going to be disturbed whatever result my action may receive.  That is called the real state of yoga siddhi in Gita yoga: responding to that signal that comes from the heart without any expectation of result.  If it is accepted, my satisfaction is not increasing by an ounce, and if it is rejected my admiration is not decreased by a drop.  When sannyasa comes this state will remain constantly.  If such a prompting came from the heart and I did not listen to the signal, that prompting would not have been translated into action and the circle would not be complete.  When a signal comes the yogi must allow it to be released through action.  Only when the action is performed does the result have a possibility to manifest, and only when the result is manifested will the impact come back.

If there is absolutely no expectation, and the person is established in tyaga, the result comes—because everything returns to the point of origin—but it has no entry point, and it is diffused to the whole universe.  That is how a drop of charity performed with absolute purity, in a spirit of sacrifice, brings the abundance of an ocean.  On this principle is based this technology of nuclear fission, whereby one atom can produce immense energy.

If we are really practicing the yoga of Gita, every day we should perform some action that is going to benefit others and absolutely not benefit us.  This is how I started.  My sadhana of Gita began when I got this clarity that sannyasa is a three-dimensional concept and has to be practiced.  It won’t come to you all of a sudden.  By changing the robe from white to ochre you cannot become a sannyasi, nor by leaving your home and staying in an ashram, nor by abstaining from tasty food.  Sannyasa is a state of consciousness, and it is a huge attainment. I understood this and started practicing it when I was studying in class ten.  People say practice means mind control and sense control but I did not begin in that way.  Instead, I noticed these old people in our village were getting up early to gather flowers for performing puja.  There was a very old lady who would go to pluck the flowers alone, using a walking stick.  Most of the days she would be standing by the tree and if any boy was coming, she would ask, “Can you give me that flower, my hand cannot reach.”  Instead, the boys started taunting.  That is when I was contemplating on how to start practice.  The idea came to pluck some flowers each morning before she arrived, and put the basket right near the tree.  I thought if I was standing there to pick the flower for her, she would praise me and the ego in me would be delighted.  See how my sadhana consciously began.  I knew that I could not give her any chance to know that I was giving the flower.  So I would pluck it and put it right at the base of the tree.  She would look here and there, and call out to see whether anyone was coming for it, then finally take it and go.  I was watching from my terrace.

I would write in my diary, “One action performed.”  This was followed by a second action and a third.  When I went to college I developed the habit of putting money in an envelope and dropping it through the windows of some of my friends whose meals were stopped due to non-payment of cafeteria dues.  In our hostel if you made a partial payment, you were again allowed to eat.  Since I was from a rich family, my father was giving me much more than I could spend.  I would put ten rupees in a plain envelope and drop it through my friend’s door, because if I went and paid the manager, he would tell my friend who paid the dues.  Instead I started secretly dropping this money, and when the friend used it to pay the dues, the others would ask where the money came from.  “Somehow I found an envelope with ten rupees,” he would say.  Maybe God gave it.”  I would listen, never giving any hints that I was doing it. This is how the practice started.

Action must be performed which is not for self-benefit but for the benefit of others.  This can be started in small ways.  When you perform this type of action, to that extent you are transcending the desire plane and entering the aspirational zone and your consciousness will expand.  When it becomes a habit—and habit is the second nature of man—prakriti will create more and more opportunities.  As you think, so you become.  See what happens if you constantly start thinking, “How can I help?  Yesterday I helped one person, today how can I help two?  Yesterday I performed one desireless action, let me perform at least one more today.”

Sannyasa is to be practiced and that must begin with action that is not going to benefit you in any way.  Desireless action, not desire-prompted action.  This will lead to freedom from doership, the second step of sannyasa.  If you perform action in such a way that nobody will praise you, because nobody knows that you are doing it, then praise will not come and your system is expanding and you will have less pull to perform action for fame.  That is the easiest way to enter into a natural state of sannyasa.  Sannyasa should come naturally.  No need of changing your robes or running away from your family.  Remaining inside the family you can be a perfect sannyasi.

The third and most difficult part is renunciation of the identification with the process.  For example, if I shout at a woman and her husband says, “Swamiji, why are you shouting at my wife?” that is called identification with the process.  I am not shouting at the husband, I am shouting another person, but the husband is getting identified with my shouting because the husband is identified with his wife.  When I explained this in Rishikesh, people said, “Swamiji, you are saying someone will shout at my wife and I will not be identified but the scripture says one must always protect the honor of his wife.”

I told them, “Protecting and getting identified with your protection are two different things.  You have to understand.  You are not doing yoga; you are only listening about yoga.  That’s why this confusion is coming to you.  When you will actually practice yoga it won’t come.  Yoga is experiential, not intellectual.”

If you are doing sadhana step-by-step, here is my recommendation.  First perform action without a desire motive.  Second, perform action without a doership motive.  Third, try to be unaffected by the process.  Do what you feel to be done, but if you are unable to succeed, don’t break your head.  Be neutral, because it is something which prakriti does not want you to do.  When these three are complete you will be a perfect sannyasi, and a perfect sannyasi is a tyagi.  Unless you have become a sannyasi you cannot become a tyagi.  Sannyasa leads to tyaga.  Not vice versa. By the time you become a total sannyasi you are a tyagi.  You have to attain the state of sannyasa before your hair turns gray because sannyasa is a difficult sadhana.  You cannot do it when your body is weak.

Sannyasa is the state of sadhana and tyaga is the state of siddhi.  Tyaga is the attainment, while sannyasa is the practice whose purpose is to reach that attainment.  This is the reason when Arjuna asked Krishna, “Tell me what is sannyasa, what is tyaga, and the difference between the two,” Krishna did not answer directly.  He told Arjuna what the wise men and enlightened beings have said, and then he explained that tyaga is of three types, but Krishna not actually define tyaga or sannyasa.

Arjuna is you.  When you will not only read Gita, but also practice and live Gita, you will always feel, “I am Arjuna, I am at this stage.”  This is the life that you all should live.

[From an 18 January 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]

[On January 13, 2012, at Satyachetana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India, Swamiji revealed the inner meaning of Verse 512 of the Bhagavad Gita.  The recording is one hour and 6 minutes; click below to listen.]

This is the recording of Swamiji’s second Interaction during his 2011 visit to Chicago.  This took place on Saturday, September 17, at the temple within a devotee’s residence in Flossmoor, Illinois.  The total audio time is 1 hour and 14 minutes; click below to listen.

[More of Swamiji's Interactions, including nine from his recent trip to USA, are available for download from Satyachetana Publications.  More are added there regularly.]

This is the recording of Swamiji’s Interaction at the Moksha Festival in Santa Monica, California on 14 August 2011.  The total audio time is 1 hour and 14 minutes; click below to listen.

[More of Swamiji's Interactions, including nine from his recent trip to USA, are available for download from Satyachetana Publications.  More are added there regularly.]

This is the recording of Swamiji’s Interaction at the Sedona Creative Life Center in Sedona, Arizona on 10 October 2011.  The total audio time is 1 hour and 44 minutes; click below to listen.

[More of Swamiji's Interactions, including nine from his recent trip to USA, are available for download from Satyachetana Publications.  More are added there regularly.]

This is the recording of Swamiji’s Interaction at the Conference on the Spiritual State of the World, in Reno, Nevada on September 9, 2011.  The total audio time is one hour; click below to listen.

[More of Swamiji's Interactions are available for download from Satyachetana Publications.]