Avoid Spiritual Hypocrisy (Gita Verse 125)

Swami Sri Atmananda Posted on by

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Swamiji serves dinner at the Universal Veda Gurukulam as the students chant mantras before eating.

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 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 has 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 or 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 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India.]

Everything in This Creation is Three-Dimensional

Swami Sri Atmananda Posted on by

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Atharva Veda mantra posted on the campus of Central Sanskrit University in Puri.
Odisha, 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 Sam 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 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 Sam, 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 did 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 a 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]

Gita Verse 555: Applying Knowledge to Life

Swami Sri Atmananda Posted on by

Omm Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Message board one morning at Satyachetana Ashram

nirmaana-mohaa jita-sanga-doshaa निर्मानमोहा जितसङ्गदोषा

adhyaatma-nityaa vini-vritta-kaamaah अध्यात्मनित्या विनिवृत्तकामा:

dwandwair vimuktaah sukha-duhkha samgyair द्वन्द्वैर्विमुक्ता: सुखदु:खसंज्ञै

gachant-ya-moodhaah padam avyayam tat. र्गच्छन्त्यमूढा: पदमव्ययं तत्   

This verse comes in the fifteenth chapter, “The Yoga of the Supreme Being.”  Sadhana comes to an end when we reach the fifteenth step of the journey.  What is left is perfect manifestation.  In this chapter the Lord explains what should be the state of one who is fit to be a channel of the manifestation of the Supreme Truth.  Being and becoming are manifested fully at this stage.  Being is pure awareness, becoming is total experience.  At this stage, the yogi is established in experiential awareness and awarenessional experience

In the past I have explained the sequence of the descent, how a completely liberated being reenters the world of maya.  We began with the eighteenth chapter.  The liberated being reentering into the world of delusion is a conscious descent, like the Siva consciously descending to prakriti in order to manifest prakriti’s will.  Purusha has no will at all.  Prakriti has the will.  Prakriti wants perfect manifestation of the purusha.  The purusha must be able to retain its total awareness even while experiencing all that prakriti creates.  This is the object of prakriti.  The ultimate goal is: retaining the total awareness of the Being, the yogi must be able to function perfectly in the world of becoming.  But the universal experience is that as you go towards samadhi, the state of the Being, you develop a dispassion, repulsion, neutrality, and indifference towards experience.  That is not what Gita wants us to attain.

Prakriti here is synonymous with the purushottama.  In the seventh chapter the Lord explained the two prakritis: ‘I have one lower prakriti that is made up of the five elements and mano, buddhi and ahankära, that is mind, intellect and ego.  Then there is my higher prakriti, the jiva.’  But in the fifteenth chapter he says, ‘I am higher than the lower, and beyond the higher.  That’s the state.  That is I, the Supreme Being.’  In Verse 561, Gita says striving yogis can attain that stage.

For the yogi who has begun the journey, there are different junction points where he can review, reevaluate and look within to find out whether he is proceeding in the correct path.  At the end of the fifth chapter such an opportunity came to the yogi for the first time:

bhoktaaram   yagna-tapasaam  sarva-loka   maheshwaram

suhridam   sarva-bhootaanaam  gyaatwaa-maam   shaantim-richhati

“Knowing Me in reality as the goal of all sacrifices and austerities, the Lord of all the worlds and the Friend of all beings; one attains supreme peace.”

You should reach a state after perfect sannyasa whereby you the yogi, that is, the being, is enjoying, bhoktaaram, the fruits of all action that only come out of yagna, that is sacrifice, and tapasya, that is austerity.  That is the acid test of sannyasa.  Any result that comes from actions that are not considered yagna or tapasya should not be eaten.  That is the prohibited fruit.

Gita summarizes the whole concept of yagna into five types:

190: Some perform sacrifice with material possessions, some offer austerity as sacrifice, others follow any path of yoga as sacrifice, while some earnest seekers perform sacrifice in the form of wisdom through the study of scriptures.

A yogi who aims at the highest state of Gita yoga should not accept the reward of actions that are not from yagna or tapasya, even if they come without asking.  This is the reason I have put a restriction on what is given to me.  If you want to give, you give to the ashram, you give to a temple, but to give to Swamiji you have to qualify.  I am aware that the moment I allow anything to be accepted, I am likely to be contaminated by the karma of that action, because karmas are not performed in a spirit of yagna, nor in conformity with the triple austerity: verbal, mental and physical austerity.

A yogi gets contaminated even after attaining the state of the Being because the body receives the result of these actions that are performed without the spirit of sacrifice or austerity.  When the body is contaminated, the mind will be contaminated next, then the vital.  When the vital is contaminated it is manifested through our words and reaction pattern.  This is the reason the Lord said in his parting advice that even after attaining enlightenment, one is not supposed to give up sacrifice, charity and austerity because these purify even the liberated beings.

In Kali Yuga that contamination happens all the time, so after attaining true sannyasa the yogi should always ensure that he is not accepting the result of actions that are not sacrifice or austerity.  If this is ensured then the there is no chance of contamination.

Food is the first thing that contaminates your system, especially boiled food.  If you are taking food from someone whose consciousness is not pure, your system will be completely devastated.  Food nourishes your body but contaminates your consciousness if it is not coming from a pure source.  It must be prepared and offered in a spirit of yagna.

There was one great sannyasi siddha here who was always sitting, looking at Arunachala.  The moment you would go near him, he would change his posture so he was not looking at you.  People felt he was a mad sadhu, and they dropped coins and such near his place, thinking that he would take the money when they went away.  But when the time came for him to go, he would get up and leave all those coins and money that were thrown there.  Why?  Because money that is earned by man is fully contaminated by karma.  Who knows how many tons of desire, greed, lust, jealousy and hatred is in that money.  That is why money in Kali Yuga is called the maya shakti of the Lord.  If you can find a wealthy man who is truly detached from his wealth, you are seeing a replica of God on Earth in a human frame.

This is the first test for the yogi who is really aiming at the highest state – ensuring that whatever he accepts has come to him through yagna and tapasya.  A second test came at the end of the ninth chapter, another at the end of the eleventh chapter, and another at the end of the twelfth chapter.  These are the stages when the yogi can verify whether he fulfills these criteria.

Verse 555 gives more conditions.  If you fulfill them, be a hundred percent sure you are ready to manifest Divine in mind, life and body.  What are these conditions?

First is nirmaana-mohaa.  Maana is I-ness, mohaa is attachment.  One who is free from maana and mohaa is called nirmaana-mohaa, free from ego and attachment.  The yogi in Chapter 15 has already gone through merger in the twelfth chapter and is entering manifestation.  God-realization is a stage when the spark has merged with the source, but whether one has transcended prakriti’s triple veil or not will be tested now.  When he comes out of the hiranyagharba and lives in samsara, in the material plane, he will face this examination.  Just for functional necessity he has to use the words of a common man, but if he is not retaining his awareness, the veil will come to him unconsciously.

I was with Maharishiji eighteen hours a day continuously for more than three years.  I was amazed at how a person did not utter the word “I,” even in the gravest provocation.  That is a mighty achievement.  A similar state was attained by Papaji Swami Ramdas and by Bhagavan Ramana.  Bhagavan Ramana was a pure gyaani and did not participate in any of the activities on the outer plane, but Maharishiji was involved in action twenty-four hours a day, fully detached.  You could feel and see that.  No wonder he became the channel of manifestation.

The yogi’s system should be free from the triple coating of sattwa, rajas and tamas, and not just when he is sitting and speaking on God.  If he is still not getting contaminated with maana and mohaa when he is working with deluded human beings we can say he is a nirmaana-mohaa.

The next condition is jita-sanga-doshaa, one who has conquered the evils of companionship.  You cannot interpret this companionship from an ethical or moral angle.  Sanga-doshaa here refers to the evil that every action contains.  Every action carries with it the seed of future action and also the fruit of the action.  These are the two sanga-doshaas: the seed and the reward.  If you are identified with the result, if you are doing anything with a result motive, or if you are claiming the benefit of the result, you are not free from sanga-doshaa.   First perform action and when the result comes, renounce it.  Then you come to the next stage when you renounce the result before performing the action.  Because we are at the end of sadhana, I am not talking of the gross result.  I am talking of the identification that comes in the consciousness.  Everything in this prakriti plane is action.  From action comes reaction, and from reaction comes more action.  But if you have mastered the technique of karma yoga, you don’t perform action; you remain completely in a state of inaction.  You are simply responding to prakriti’s signal.  That is the secret to transcend prakriti.

Because we have to work in the material plane, in the world of maya, if we do not retain that awareness prakriti will trap us.  When the yogi transcends prakriti, prakriti cannot find any rope to trap him.  That’s the secret.

The fourth condition is adhyaatma-nityaa, always remaining in continuous proximity to the being, the atma, your core consciousness.  This is the reason when I descend I say, “Thus far and no farther.”  You should not be so involved in the world of maya that you will be far away from your center.  You may be playing with your children, talking to your wife, chit-chatting with your friends, saying, “Yes, Sir” to your boss, counting money, flying in an airplane, or walking through mud, but let your consciousness be very near to your awareness.  If you can ensure that, you will reach the state of satchitananda, Supreme Being.

Next is vini-vritta-kaamaah.  Here kaamaah means desire.  The forces of desire will be activated when you participate in the world of maya.  For the sake of manifestation you have to work, but you must be completely nivritta, completely free from desire-yielding forces.  Don’t expose your system unnecessarily to rajas and tamas because they will enter your system, and if you are not doing sadhana every day, if you are not doing meditation or pranayam or swadhyaya, there is no way this coating can be erased.  Yagna-daana tapah-karma paava-naani manee-shinaam—sacrifice, charity and austerity—if you are doing these regularly every day, nothing can remain within.  Otherwise the system gets contaminated and the forces of desire enter into you.

How can you ensure that your system is completely free from the forces of desire?  If you always remain in a state of adhyaatma.  You can remain in that state if you have conquered the evils of companionship.  You can do that if you are nirmaana-mohaa.

When these conditions are fulfilled, the next one is bound to come, that is dwandwair vimuktaah, you are liberated from the dilemma between happiness and sorrow.  When you transcend that, you will not hesitate to perform a disagreeable action and you will have no pull for an agreeable action.  That is the gunatita state.

Such a person attains the imperishable, absolute state, where neither the sun nor the moon ever shine, nor does the wind blow.  The Lord says, yad-gatwaa na nivarttante tad-dhaama paramam mama, that is my dhaama, my abode, that eternal state of tranquility.  That is where the devotees will go who have transcended the Vishnu maya, the triple maya.

This is how the dissection of the scripture should be very deep, so deep that one can feel it.  And how can you feel it if you are not receiving from someone who is fulfilled?  He is so full in feeling, that he can make others feel it.  That is fulfillment.  When the pot is full it overflows.  This is the reason scriptures are to be learned from tattwadarshis, enlightened beings, because you receive the transmission of their realization.  This transmission will take the veil from within, that is, the layers of sanskaras and karmas and desires that you are not able to reach.

In gyaana you are able to understand every meaning, every mantra, every symbol.  When gyaana is applied to life through karma it will produce bhakti.  When bhakti is applied through karma it will bring gyaana.  That is why great bhaktas are great gyaanis and great gyaanis are great bhaktas.  The secret is application.  If you don’t apply it, nothing will come.

[From a 2009 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India]

Join in the Maha Yajna

Swami Sri Atmananda Posted on by

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Anyone in the world can participate in the Maha Yajna as follows:

1. On any one day of the Yajna, light a lamp or candle for any one of the 55 Devatas on the following list, during the hours of the yajna havana (fire oblations) in India. The lamp or candle should burn for a minimum of 60 minutes.

2. When doing so, offer a prayer—not for yourself but for the entire earth and all of humanity

3. Send your name, location, and the Devata for which you lit the lamp, via the Contact page.

4. On the final day of the Yajna, a lamp for each global participant will be lit in one of the kundas so that each individual will also receive the benefit. 

Yajna timing: light the lamp or candle during any of the following periods. These are listed in India Standard Time, so covert that to your local time zone, and light the lamp accordingly. For example, 9 am in India is 7:30 pm Pacific time, so that is one of the periods when someone in San Francisco would light the lamp.

  • 22 Feb: 3 pm to 5 pm
  • 23, 24, 25 Feb: 8:30 am to 1:30 pm and 3 pm to 5 pm
  • 26 Feb: 8:30 am to 1:30 pm, and 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm 

Choose one Devata from the following list (Samaveda Samhita):

Aap
Aditi
Aditya
Aditya Gana
Agni
Agni or Havimshi
Agni Pavaman
Angira
Annam
Apanpat
Aparisukta
Apva
Ashwini Kumar
Ashwino Mitravaruno
Atma or Agni
Brahanspati
Bruhaspati
Dhavapruthvi
Gau
Indra
Indra or Marud Gana
Indragni
Indratrailok-yatma
Indravayu
Ishava
Lingokta
Marutagana
Mitravaruna
Pavaman Soma
Pavamana-dyetya
Prajapati
Purusha
Pusha
Ratri
Sadaspati
Samgramshisa
Saraswan
Saraswati
Savita
Soma
Surya
Surya or Atma
Tarya or Surya 
Tvashta, Parjanya, Brahanspati, Aditi
Usha
Vajina
Van
Varma Soma Varuna
Varuna
Vayu
Vishnu
Vishnu or Devagan
Vishwadeva
Vishwakarma
Yupa

For more details on the Yajna, see the invitation posted here.

The Benefit of Chanting

Swami Sri Atmananda Posted on by

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Visiting a school in Hyderabad, where the students chanted by heart
Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita

Chanting is the quickest, easiest and most powerful way of yoga.  What takes several years to achieve through normal meditation can be achieved within a couple of months through chanting.  That is why, in the Vedic period, sadhana was simply remaining in the house of the guru and only practicing swadhyaya.  Chanting is called swadhyaya.  When you do swadhyaya, who listens to it?  The soul listens.  You are chanting for yourself, for the Self.

If you are deep asleep in your room and I go and stand in front of your door and call your name, you respond when your mind receives it.  Mind responds to meaning.  If that word has no meaning, you will not respond, so even if you hear something you will not respond.  Vital responds to feeling and body responds to pressure or force.

The psychic responds to vibration, and the soul responds to rhythm.  That is called mantra.  When a mantra is chanted it has a rhythm, or chanda.  Now we are chanting the Veda each morning.  First sukta of the Veda is Gayatri chanda.  There are different types of Gayatri.  This one is called Tripada Gayatri, meaning “three steps”: first it will smash our gross thoughts of the physical world; second step, it overpowers all our vital relationships; third step it will smash our ego, so that the soul comes out.  So when you are chanting Gayatri continuously with proper rhythm, the attachment and the clinging and the ego are smashed.  What comes out is the soul.  That is why swadhyaya of the scriptures is performed, and the mother of all scripture is Veda.  Veda was there before god was there, because sabda is brahma, sound is brahma.  God is a discovery of human mind.  Veda pervades the whole creation, so Veda is the mother of all scriptures.  When you chant Veda you invoke the Mother force, and Gayatri is the mother of all chandas. Krishna, the supreme Lord also says this in Verse 407 of Gita: gäyatrï   chhandasämaham, ‘Among the chandas I am Gayatri.’

When you are chanting the Veda, you are invoking the supreme mother, the all-pervading prakriti, which vibrates the rhythm.  How far your force will go depends on how deep is your breath; how deep your breath goes depends on how many mantras you are able to chant without releasing your breath.  The longer is your prana, the greater is your control over your mind.  The deeper is your prana, the greater is your command over your vital.

In ashrams, there is no material activity, that is, any activity that is undertaken to expand matter for self-gain.  Any activity that is undertaken, not to expand matter for self-gain but to expand matter for manifestation of spirit, is not material activity.  What makes it yoga and what makes it bhoga, or enjoyment, is the attitude with which an action is performed.  If you do yoga, you are heading towards liberation; if you do bhoga you are heading towards disease, sickness, sorrow.  Bhoga brings roga, or diseases.  Yoga brings mukti, liberation.  Any action that is done for the purpose of manifestation or liberation is called yoga.  Any action that is done for self-gain is called bhoga, that is, samsara.

When you chant, your breathing is expanded and the prana is expanded.  A person who is only leading a very ordinary life, who has a human body but is actually an animal, the nature of his breath is very frequent and very short.  When you start doing yoga, your breath goes deeper.  To what extent you will breathe, whether to the first, second, third, fourth or fifth chakra, only the guru can tell you because the guru can see your system fully.  The guidance differs from person to person and each has the potential to grow from it.  First they overcome greed, then lust, fear and anger, because their sadhana is proceeding under the watchful eye of a seer who is guiding those individuals as per their system’s limitation.  But a child cannot do it, nor can one who is not leading a yogic life.

When you practice chanting like this your breath becomes deeper, and the deeper the prana goes, the more the apana comes out.  The seat of apana is at the muladhara, the first chakra.  Apana wants to come out, but it cannot come without prana going down.  When you hold the breath the apana joins with prana.  Apana brings out all the toxins from the body, from every cell.  Impurities are released through urine and stool, but the impurities of negative vibrations, negative thoughts and negative samskaras are stored up in every cell.  Only apana can bring them out, but apana cannot release it.  When apana joins with prana some of these toxins are released by prana.  Then when prana is released it is gone.  This is the secret: Pränäpäna  samäyuktah   pachämyannam  chaturvidham.  (Verse 564).

Someone came from another ashram a few years back.  He remained here for some time.  After eight or ten days he said, “Swamiji, I am feeling terrible difficulty for sadhana here.  My sadhana is not proceeding.”

I said, “I know that.”

“Swamiji, you know that?  Horrible thoughts are coming.”

I said, “Yes, I also know that.”

“Swamiji, what am I going to do?”

I said, “You have to go out of this ashram.  That’s the best thing for you.”

“I am staying in an ashram for twenty years, doing that yoga, but I have not attained what your people have attained here.  Why?”

I said, “Because you are doing yoga by reading a book.  They are doing yoga by following a master.”

His problem was, the moment he closed his eyes all his lustful thoughts were coming up; all lustful dreams were coming in the night.

“Why?”  He asked me.

I said, “Because you are living among celibates, you are living with brahmacharis, so the force they release is bringing up your hidden samskara.  There is no householder here, no lover nor beloved.  Brahmacharis radiate one type of energy that brings out the hidden energy.  Are you having that problem?”

“Yes, Swamiji.  What am I going to do?  Shall I meditate more?”

I said, “You cannot meditate.  Meditation requires that when you close your eyes, very quickly you should reach a thoughtless zone.  But you cannot go to the thoughtless zone because your breathing is short.”

Thought comes from the mind, and mind is the child of prana, so first control your prana, and the quickest sadhana for this is to chant the mantras.  When you are chanting, Dharmakshetre  kurukshetre samavetä yuyutsavah, you cannot release your breath.  You have to hold your breath to chant so if you are chanting four lines at a time, the breath is held.  See how easy is yoga.

Dharmakshetre kurukshetre samavetä  yuyutsavah, drishtwätu pändavänïkam, you continue.  First break it to small, small pieces.  When you don’t chant, your breathing goes its own way, and its own way is the monkey’s way, but when you chant, even if it is for half an hour, that half hour means pranayam.   Ayam means regulation, control; prana means life force.

In this chanting, now you are doing the third, fourth and fifth line in one breath, but no one is able to go to the sixth line.  When you are able to do that, your prana is going right to your manipuraka.  Then it goes deeper.  The longer the breath, the deeper is the force.

When you practice like this, and then you just sit, thought cannot come until you want it to.  If I sit hours and hours and hours thought will not come unless I invite it.  Awareness of a person will come, but thought of the person will not.  Awareness means no thought but you are conscious of the presence.

We are having awareness of God but no thought of God.  When thought of God will come, your life is divine.  When God will be in your thought, you achieved a great thing.  Mayyeva manädhatsva, God is in your thought, God is in your feeling, God is in your awareness.  Life is becoming divine.

[From a 2010 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai]