SRI KRISHNA: 1. I told this eternal secret to Vivasvat. Vivasvat instructed Manu, and Manu instructed Ikshvaku.

This verse is very much in the traditional scriptural style, almost like the Old Testament narratives where A begat B, B begat C, C begat D. But we should not get bored; they will tell us in their own way what finally happened.

When Sri Krishna says, “I told this eternal secret to Vivasvat,” he means that he inspired Vivasvat to start meditating, to restrain the senses, to put other people first, and to discover the Lord within. Vivasvat, having traveled this way, instructed Manu in meditation and the allied disciplines, and he too discovered the Lord within himself. Manu immediately ran after another man, called Ikshvaku, and instructed him to meditate and attain Self-realization also.

Almost all religions emphasize the precious truth of God’s grace. In some inscrutable way, there comes a time when the grace of the Lord touches us. When this happens, as Meister Eckhart says, we thrash about like a fish caught by the fisherman’s hook. The hook has entered the flesh of the fish, and though it may thrash and jump about, trying to get free, the hook only enters deeper and deeper.

We do not want to be released out of the prison we have come to love. But even though the grace of the Lord may have touched us, we cannot expect him to do all of the work. In order to progress on the spiritual path, we must have the grace of our own mind as well. We must make the right choices. As my granny would say, “Even if the Lord grants you grace, the temple priest may still stand in your way.”

Grace can come like the explosion of a bomb in our consciousness and often is followed by a period of turmoil and turbulence. Nothing seems to satisfy us. Money, material possessions, and prestige no longer satisfy us. The old palate-blandishments now taste insipid. We say that peach ice cream is not as good as it used to be; maybe the secret of making peach ice cream has been lost. So we try spumoni, but that proves to be even worse than peach.

Along with dissatisfaction comes utter restlessness. We cannot sit still; we cannot sleep in peace. This is the call from the Lord within to sit down and start meditating. Restlessness is power rising, which can be harnessed to turn us inwards to the practice of meditation.

SRI KRISHNA: 2. Thus, O Arjuna, eminent sages received knowledge of yoga in a continuous tradition. But through time the practice of yoga was lost in the world.

The word used here is parampara, which means from one person to another, from one generation to another, very often in the family line. Even today, in the Indian musical tradition, there are ancient families who, instead of bequeathing land or wealth to their children, bequeath a love for music. A few miles away from my little village in India there was a family like this. A boy from that home was in my high school. While we had our lunch under a mango tree he would sing devotional songs, and we would all stop eating to listen to him. When we would ask him, “How did you learn to sing” he would say, “You don’t have to learn to sing. I was just born singing.” In this tradition, the parents grant the legacy of musical consciousness to the children, and the son and daughter glory in carrying on the tradition of the parents to greater heights.

In the mystical tradition, if even one person takes to meditation and tries to lead the spiritual life, that person is establishing a parampara. After many years, someone in the family or an old friend, even someone who was sceptical in the beginning, may be inspired to meditate. Sometimes these paramparas may come to a temporary stop. The son becomes a potter, the daughter becomes a Shakespeare critic; the tradition goes down a blind alley and appears to stop there. But it is never lost for long, as we can see in the case of India, which has been blessed with an unbroken continuity of sages and saints. This spiritual tradition has sustained her civilization for more than five thousand years, even though her history is sorrowfully marred by invasion after invasion. Whenever India began to look away from her supreme goal, there has always arisen a great spiritual teacher, like Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, or Mahatma Gandhi, to restore her sense of direction.

But today, if travelers go to India, it is difficult for them to see traces of this tradition. The cities are like cities everywhere – turbulent, often violent, driven by material pursuits. Some people who go to India in search of the spiritual life, idealizing the country, imagine that as soon as they board Air India and put the safety belt on, the pilot and air hostess will begin chanting the mantram. They expect, upon landing at the Madras airport, to see people seated in meditation in the lobby. Unprepared for the appalling poverty and superstition they find almost everywhere, they want to run back to the airport and get the first flight to the West. But on the way back they may find someone like Ramana Maharshi sitting quietly under a banyan tree, fully enlightened, aware that all life is one. Immediately, they tear up their round-trip ticket and decide to settle down in his ashram.

In the following verses, the Lord reassures us that even though humanity seems to lose its way now and then, a great spiritual figure will arise at the appropriate time to remind us that it is not in the accumulation of money, prestige, and power but in living for others that we discover and fulfill the supreme goal of life.

SRI KRISHNA: 3. The secret of these teachings is profound. I have explained them to you today because you are my friend and devotee.

Arjuna likes to be called Krishna’s friend, as we saw recently in the excellent Kerala Kalamandalam performance of Kiratarjuniyam, “Arjuna and the Kirata.” In this Kathakali drama there is a scene where Arjuna is tested by Shiva, who is disguised as a rough forester. Shiva taunts him by asking the Indian equivalent of “Who do you think you are?”

Arjuna answers, “I come from a very ancient, noble family, the Pandavas.”

Shiva says, “Never heard of them.” That doesn’t upset Arjuna too much; he goes on talking about himself, his family, his kingdom. To everything Shiva says, “Never heard of it.” Finally, Shiva says, “Can’t you even tell me one little thing about yourself that might impress me?”

Arjuna, very proudly drawing himself up, says, “I have a friend. Guess who!”

“You tell me.”

“Krishna!”

Arjuna expects his opponent to be completely overwhelmed, but instead Shiva just laughs and tests Arjuna by saying, “That butter-­stealing, flute-playing cowherd who calls himself a divine incarnation?” Then, all of his love for Sri Krishna aroused, Arjuna pounces on Shiva, who is delighted with Arjuna’s devotion.

Now Lord Krishna reassures Arjuna of his love and says, “It is true that the spiritual tradition seems to come to a stop now and then, but I am going to whisper in your ears and give you personal instruction as to how you can discover me in your consciousness. I am doing this especially for you because you love me so much.” This is the same emphasis on love that we find in the words of Jesus: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” When we love those around us with all our heart by putting their welfare first, even though it is not easy for us, we are loving the Lord.

ARJUNA: 4. You were born much after Vivasvat; he was born long ago. Why do you say that you taught this yoga in the beginning?

“Krishna,” says Arjuna, “you and I are about the same age, but you are telling me that you have guided the meditation of spiritual aspirants in ancient times. I find this difficult to grasp. Perhaps my imagination is limited, but it looks to me as if you were not there. Why are you telling me of events that took place thousands of years before you were born in Mathura?” This is not asked critically, but Arjuna is historically oriented, just as you and I are, and would like to have a rational explanation.

SRI KRISHNA: 5. You and I have passed through many births, Arjuna. You have forgotten, Parantapa, but I remember them all.

Now I imagine the Lord of Love as smiling, prahasann iva and looking at Arjuna with great love; we should picture Sri Krishna now not as a forbidding spiritual figure, beetle-browed, with pursed lips, but as a playful, loving, and rather mischievous cowherd from Vrindavana. He tells Arjuna, “This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, but this is not the first time you have been on earth. You have been here many times before.”

It is not necessary to believe in reincarnation in order to lead the spiritual life. Whether we believe in one life or in many, we can all meditate, restrain our senses, and put others first. There is even a little danger in blindly accepting reincarnation. It may breed resignation and apathy if interpreted wrongly. The urgency of a task can be forgotten when we know we are going to come this way again. There is a story about a Hindu aspirant who was learning the headstand. He tried a few times but lost his balance and fell down. Then he gave up, saying, “I can always learn to do it the next time I come this way.”

Reincarnation is something like going back to school again. The other day, one of our friends, a professor on the Berkeley campus, was taken by his wife to get “back-to-school” clothes, and I told him that all of us have back-to-school clothes already – this body of ours. Until we are able to put our parents, partner, children, friends, and enemies first, we will have to come back to school. After a long semester, one hundred years, we are asked for our progress report, and we say, “We have dropped out. We haven’t taken the finals. We still love ourselves.” Whoever is in charge, whether it is Jesus the Christ, the Buddha, or Sri Krishna, will say very compassionately, “You had better register for the next semester.” In the Tibetan tradition, Bardo is the name given to the place where we wait between terms. The semester break may sometimes last a few hundred years while we wait for the right context. Someone who has dropped out this semester may come back a thousand years later and run into old classmates who ask, “What have you been doing the last nine hundred years?” “Oh, just waiting in Bardo,” comes the reply. “Just couldn’t get readmitted.”

The purpose of life is to finish our schooling by eliminating all that is selfish and separate in us. And when the degrees are awarded at commencement, our real parent, seated right in front, sometimes looking like Sri Krishna, sometimes like the Compassionate Buddha or Jesus the Christ, will proudly say that we have really graduated at last.

While Sri Krishna explains to Arjuna that he has been here many times, Arjuna thinks to himself, “My memory is a blank. I just don’t remember anything at all.” He is too polite to say, “I never have been here before. Why do you try to put all of these ideas into my head?”

The Lord says, “You have just forgotten. I too have been this way before, but I remember because I have maintained the continuity of my existence which is the Atman.”

As long as we believe we are the body, we cannot escape a disruption of consciousness at the time of death. But if we can rise above physical consciousness and discover for ourselves that we are not the perishable body but the imperishable Self, there can be no break in our awareness of the infinite continuity of existence. As Jalalu’l-Din Rumi has said:

I was a mineral, and arose a plant.

I died as a plant, and became a beast.

I died as a beast, and evolved into a man.

Why should I fear that I will lose by dying?

Once again I shall die as man to join

The holy company of angels. But I must

Soar above them too. “Everything must die

Save His Face.” When I have died as an angel,

I shall be that which is beyond the mind’s grasp.

Let me die to myself, for the ego’s death

Declares, “To Him we return.”

This is the unanimous testimony of the great mystics of what the practice of meditation can lead to in the supreme climax called samadhi.

SRI KRISHNA: 6. My true being is unborn and changeless. I am the Lord who dwells in every creature. Through the power of my own Maya, I manifest myself in a finite form.

7. Whenever dharma declines, O Bharata, and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself.

The Lord of Love, even though immortal and infinite, comes as a divine incarnation in times of great crisis to rescue mankind from disaster. The Lord, who is enthroned in all hearts, comes to life in a blessed individual in every country, every age, to bring humanity back to the spiritual path.

Dharma, the central law of our being, is to live for others, to love others more than we love ourselves. The proof of this law is that the more we dwell upon ourselves, the more insecure we become. It is only when we forget ourselves in the welfare of those around us that we can live in abiding joy and unshaken security. Jesus puts this into immortal words when he says, “Bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you.” By doing so we will help not only them, but ourselves also.

In any conflict, it is absurd to retaliate. It only adds to the chaos and makes conflict more violent. Never in the history of human relations has any problem been solved except through greater love, endurance, and forgiveness on the part of some person. Between parents and children, husband and wife, friend and friend, the central law of the relationship is putting the other person first.

Even in international relations, in order to establish peace on earth and goodwill among men, Gandhi has shown that nonviolence is the only way. At the beginning of the twentieth century, if anything looked eternal, it was the British Empire. When I was in high school, one of our geography teacher’s favorite tests was to have us color the Empire with our red crayon, and a good part of the world was red. Most of us took the Empire for granted and thought all we could do was accept it and learn to live with it. But Gandhi, as ordinary as you and I, received the touch of grace.

Gandhi’s school life was quite normal. He played truant and postponed projects just like you and me; and when he went to London to fulfill his family’s desire that he become a little pillar of the Empire, his early days there were just as ordinary. One of the most delightful pictures that we have of Gandhiji, the future ascetic, is in his striped suit, frock coat, and top hat. He carried a silver-headed cane and wore those indescribable relics of fashion, spats. He was growing up just like any other young fellow, wanting to be the mirror of fashion. He even tried to learn to play the violin and to dance the foxtrot. But already the light was being lit inside, entirely without his knowledge. The perennial spring of grace was beginning to open up inside, and when it finally reached the surface, it produced such power that one whole nation was able to free itself from foreign domination without firing a single shot. This measures the power locked up inside our consciousness; because this divine explosion took place in the deepest consciousness of one little man in faraway India, those days of imperialism and colonialism are ended.

In the early days of mystical transformation, people may not take it very seriously. They are likely to think, “He is always playacting. This is just another role that he has assumed. He is a born actor, but he will get tired of this mystic’s role soon.” Gandhiji said that in the early days he was supposed to be either an imposter, a madman, or a fool. And in Sri Ramana Maharshi’s village, I can imagine them saying, “At seventeen what can you expect? This is just another of his games. He thinks he is illumined, that he has attained nirvikalpa samadhi, but one of these days he will snap out of it and go back to his old crowd again.” It is during this period, when we have to face criticism and scepticism, that we learn to remain patient and unperturbed, sure that the source of all security is within.

It takes a few years for ordinary people like us to come to accept that the greatest blessing has fallen upon us without our deserving it. We can never get over the amazement of it. We are so frail, so petty, so full of weaknesses, yet in spite of all this, He whose love and power know no bounds has in his infinite mercy chosen us. For a long time, we think there must have been some mistake. Only after years of observing the daily growth in security, the increasing capacity to think of others, do we come to accept that, for no reason we can give, the mystic’s mantle has fallen upon us. Afterwards, this wonderment continues all the time. There was a mystic in India who used to sit on the bank of the river, look at his reflection in the flowing waters from morning to evening, and say, “How wonderful! How miraculous!” Once he was asked by the people passing by, “Whom are you describing, Blessed One?” The simple mystic became very shy and very embarrassed, but replied, “Myself.” Even in our dreams, we may come to hear the voice of Sri Krishna or Jesus the Christ saying, “My beloved.” And when we have reluctantly, humbly accepted this, there is no earthly circumstance that can ever affect our security. Once this mystical transformation has begun to take place, even though we may be small people, each one of us can make a significant contribution to world peace. If we can establish peace in our hearts, return love for hatred, and live for the welfare of our family and community, we have changed the world picture. In this way, many small candles can light up the night of selfishness that threatens us.

SRI KRISHNA: 8. I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to re-establish dharma.

In age after age, when violence increases, there comes a time when Mother Earth says, “I cannot bear any more; I am filled with grief seeing the way my children are raising their hands against each other.” To this cry, the Lord responds by coming to inspire and protect those who turn to him, who live in harmony with the law of unity, and who contribute to the joy of others. He comes to protect such people from the heavy odds ranged against them, to defeat violence, and to eliminate selfishness.

These words may be interpreted on several levels. First is the ­divine incarnation, called avatara in Sanskrit, of which Sri Krishna, the Compassionate Buddha, and Jesus the Christ are supreme examples. These mighty spiritual figures come, in answer to Mother Earth’s plea, to rescue the world from the morass of selfishness and violence in which it gets caught now and then.

There is another level also on which this incarnation can take place, as in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, who was completely transformed by the grace of the Lord. Gandhi, whose stature became like the Himalayas, changed the direction of human evolution by showing us through his life that nonviolence is the only way, that love is no longer a luxury, but a dire necessity. Hate and perish or love and prosper is the choice placed before us in the great crisis of human civilization facing the modern world. So even though spiritual giants like Mahatma Gandhi are not in the same category as Jesus or the Buddha, who were never involved in life, they do achieve great victories for the human spirit over selfishness.

On the third level, the ordinary level which I call the blessed anonymous level, every one of us has this choice: shall I prepare for the divine incarnation to take place in my consciousness by abolishing every vestige of selfishness and separateness in my heart, and thus contribute to the progress of humanity, or shall I, by foolishly running after my own profit and pleasure, handicap humanity to the extent that it is in my power?

Sri Ramakrishna, in one of his inimitable images, says that a great incarnation is like a mighty ship that takes many thousands across the sea. Avataras like Jesus or the Buddha are like mighty liners that ply the seven seas, but you and I can be little boats, or at least canoes. In Tamil there is a word which has passed into English, kattumaram: kattu is ‘to tie,’ maram is ‘wood,’ so catamaran means tying a few planks together and floating on the sea. We may not have the Atman-power to propel a big ship, but we can improvise – pick up a few pieces of driftwood, tie them together, and get into the sea. We may be able to take at least our family with us across the sea of life.

It is up to you and me to keep our doors open, to put up a ­little sign outside, “Ready for receiving an incarnation.” But the hall inside must not be cluttered up. It must be completely empty of attachments to one’s opinions and self-will. If we can empty our house and put up the little board outside, the Lord will come, pick it up, and say, “I am here.”

Even ordinary people like ourselves can gradually blossom into mahatmas. Maha is ‘great,’ and Atma is ‘Self.’ You and I are imprisoned in our little self. We just don’t like being free; we like thinking about ourselves, always on the lookout to see if others are denying us things to which we are entitled. The mahatma is the Great Self, the person who says “You and I are one,” and who lives in accordance with this oneness which is the divine principle of existence.

Even the desire to empty ourselves – to turn our back on our own pleasure and profit and to contribute to the happiness of others – is the result of divine grace. The desire to go against desires is one of the surest signs of grace. When desires come which formerly used to pick us up by the scruff of the neck and throw us from here across the Bay, we will now want to resist – not with weeping and sobbing but with a fierce joy, a sense of exultation.

But there is also the old momentum which now and then drives us to cling to some strong, secret selfish attachment. While we are progressing, resisting old desires, suddenly we see a little ego-hold. Immediately we cling to it. And this is the finest sign of grace: the Lord takes out his holy hammer and gives such a well-aimed, direct hit on the knuckles that we let go. Do not think that this happens only to you and me. Some of the greatest mystics have said, “How much you must love us, Lord! How many times you have hit us! If you had cared less, you would have given just one hit and said, ‘All right, they are free to choose.’ ” The great mystic will even say with joy, “Every time my thoughts stray from you, hit me hard. Take your hammer back as far as you can and bring it down hard.” All sorrow is lost when we can say this; everything becomes joy.

SRI KRISHNA: 9. He who knows me as his own divine Self, as the Operator in him, breaks through the belief that he is the body and is not born separate again. Such a one is united with me, O Arjuna.

When you have known the divine birth of the Lord within yourself, and you know the Lord to be the operator and yourself the instrument, you will never again fall into the superstition that you are the body, neither in this life nor thereafter.

We are so enmeshed in identification with our body that it is beyond our wildest imagination even for a split second to see what we will be without our body. It is a very merciful provision of sadhana that it takes many years to get over the age-old, race-old fallacy that we are the body. If out of a playful sense of mischief the Lord were to deprive us of our body-consciousness during meditation tonight, if kundalini were to burst into a cataclysmic explosion and send us fathoms deep into our consciousness, we would not be able even to get up from our chair. So for practical purposes, there may be some disadvantages in instant illumination. To be able to function in life after realizing the indivisible unity, Sri Ramakrishna says delightfully that we need to keep the “ripe ego,” in which we still know that we have parents, partners, and children. But this selfless little ego does not get trapped in its role. It knows it is acting in a play, performing with complete artistry.

We should do everything possible to reduce identification with the body. This can be done in many ways: by not allowing the palate to dictate what we should eat, by eating what is nourishing for the body, and by getting plenty of physical exercise.

Body-identification is perhaps the greatest superstition ever to trouble the world. That the sun goes around the earth is a small superstition. That the sun sinks in the sea and has his bath in its waters, as an old poem in my mother tongue puts it, is a very small superstition that does no one any harm. But this superstition that we are the body immediately leads to disastrous consequences. When we talk about people being different, races being different, we are really referring to the body. Separateness and insecurity are at their worst in people who are excessively body-conscious.

Sometimes there is the misunderstanding that in talking about rising above physical consciousness I am striking a note of stoicism. But it is the person who is least body-conscious who feels most deeply the departure of dear friends. If I may draw upon a personal example, yesterday I received a letter from my village informing me that one of my old friends in India passed away last week. I know he cannot die. I know that he is eternal because he is the Atman. But at the same time I so humanly remember his body, his little ways, that even in my sleep last night I was troubled. My friend’s cousin, whom I also knew in India, said in his letter yesterday, “Whatever the scriptures may say, it is terrible to bear the departure of somebody who has grown up with you and lived with you.” Rising above physical consciousness does not mean losing my sense of endearment and love for the Lord disguised in my own family and friends.

SRI KRISHNA: 10. Delivered from selfish attachment, fear, and anger, filled with me, surrendering themselves to me, purified in the fire of my being, many have reached the state of unity in me.

Vitaragabhayakrodha: “Be without selfish attachment, fear, or anger.” The Lord says, “Throw these three away. They are your worst enemies, trapping you in the cycle of birth, death, sorrow, and despair. Every day, do everything possible to get over selfish attachment to people and to things. Do everything possible to get over being the victim of fear and anger. Surmount these obstacles.” In this the practice of meditation can be of enormous help. In the very depths of your meditation, when you are no longer aware of the body, when concentration is complete, you can free yourself from selfish attachments to money, to material possessions, and to people, whom you may try to manipulate because of lack of detachment from your own ego.

Pain often accompanies the development of detachment. If as a child I have not been told no by my parents, then when I become an adult, I will not be able to take no from anyone at all. In relationships with children, love often expresses itself in the capacity to say no when necessary.

The other day we went to Santa Rosa to buy shoes for our little nieces, Meera and Geetha. While Christine was buying the shoes, with my mother smiling approval, I noticed a very loving mother with a girl about nine years old, who had probably been spoiled by always being allowed to have her own way. To everything that the salesgirl brought she said, “I don’t want it. It looks ugly. I am not going to wear it.” Within ten minutes the mother was at the end of her tether. She was a loving mother, but she had lost control of the situation.

So the application of this verse comes even in small things. We should not allow children to keep demanding what they want; we should exercise our good judgment and fill their needs but not spoil them by yielding to their likes and dislikes all the time. It is better to cross our child a little, and give him or her the shoes and clothes we think best, rather than let the child go on saying “No, no, no.” It is not a matter of clothes; it is a matter of self-will. If we cannot say no to our children when necessary, we will actually be teaching them to have more self-will.

In every relationship, the cultivation of detachment is painful, because we must go against our self-will, opinions, and pleasures. Even in our most intimate personal relationships, it must be admitted that often there is this taint of trying to bend others to our will, of expecting others to conform to our image of what they should be. This is often what disrupts personal relationships between older and younger people.

I must say with infinite gratitude to my grandmother, who had never heard of educational psychology, that after I left high school she began actively to help me rebel against some of the ideas with which I had been brought up. This was marvelous spiritual psychology, because when my spiritual teacher encouraged me to rebel against constricting ideas, it was no longer rebellion.

Without detachment, it is very hard for parents to go against their own self-will, their ways and upbringing, even though they know that their children are living in a different world and are exposed to a different climate. Only when we are detached in good measure from our own ego can we encourage our children to follow their own dharma, to grow to their full stature in their own way, by saying, “We will support you as long as you turn your back on what is selfish and self-willed.” Young people can respond tremendously to this capacity on the part of the older people to put their children first.

If only I can extinguish all that is selfish in me, erase every desire for personal profit, personal pleasure, personal prestige, and personal power, which is often at the expense of others, then the Lord will be free to fill me with his own love, his own wisdom, his own beauty. This is the significance of the word manmaya, ‘filled with me.’

In the classical Krishna tradition this is expressed in a very loving manner in a story about Sri Krishna and Radha. Radha is a lovely girl who represents the human heart, longing for the Lord. Sri Krishna is always represented as playing on the flute. One of his names is Venugopala, the divine flute-player, who is always playing his magic melody to rouse us from sleep, to make us come alive. Radha is head over heels in love with Krishna. This is just what you and I are wanting all the time, though we don’t know it: to be united with him, which means to be united with our Self, to be always embracing him who is our real Self. Radha looks at Sri Krishna with great jealousy in her eyes, and Sri Krishna says, “Honey, what’s the matter? Why are your eyes so green with jealousy?”

Radha answers, “Look at that flute; your lips are always resting on it. When will your lips rest on mine like that always?”

And Sri Krishna, very mischievously, takes the bamboo flute from his lips and shows it to Radha, saying, “See! It is empty, so I can fill it with music. You are so full of yourself, dwelling upon yourself all the time, that I cannot send in even one breath.”

Mam upashritah: “Depend completely on the Lord within.” Once when we went to the park, we saw a big circular area in which there were a number of little electrically run cars. Children would get into them, and at the appointed signal, the cars would all go around. Then the little children would call out to their parents, “Look! We are driving all by ourselves!”

All we have to do on the spiritual path is to surrender completely to the Lord within, to identify ourselves completely with him. He is the perfect driver. But instead we keep doing all sorts of things without really going anywhere at all – stepping on the brake, accelerating, and honking the horn, which we are really good at. We just keep honking, making the loudest noise possible. The Lord within says, “Why don’t you let me drive the car? You just keep quiet. You can sit by my side, but don’t give me instructions about where to go or what speed to use. Just trust me completely.”

One of the names of the Lord is Parthasarathi. Partha means ‘son of Pritha,’ which is a name for Arjuna; sarathi means ‘he who drives the chariot.’ The Lord is Arjuna’s charioteer and can be ours also. He comes to us and says, “I am such a good driver, let me be your chauffeur. You don’t have to give me anything; you don’t have to pay my salary; you don’t even have to repair your car. Just give me the keys; that’s all I want. Come and sit down, be quiet, and keep repeating my name.”

This does not mean that we should not take necessary precautions. Just because we are leading the spiritual life, we cannot afford to take traffic risks. We should not be under the impression that because the Lord is in us we can drive against the red light. If we were to ask Sri Krishna, “How do we show our faith in you during rush-hour traffic?” he would say, “It’s very simple. Don’t try to travel during rush-hour traffic. If you have to, check your car carefully and don’t ask the driver questions or get him entangled in arguments.” We show our respect for the Lord by taking every reasonable precaution and then saying, “I have done all that I can; now look after me.”

Madbhavam agatah: “He enters into my being.” As you drive out the love of material things from your heart, overcome selfish attachment to people, and free yourself of fear and anger, the Lord says, “I will fill you with love for everyone, love in which there is not the slightest trace of selfish desire for pleasure or prestige. And I will release the deeper resources in you to translate that love into selfless service.”

SRI KRISHNA: 11. As men approach me, so do I receive them. All paths lead to me, O Arjuna.

In medieval India there was a mystic called Kabir, who was claimed both by the Hindus and by the Muslims. Actually he was neither, because once he had experienced the unitive state, no names could confine him. One of his beautiful poems begins with the lines:

Where are you searching for me, friend?

Look! Here am I right within you.

Not in temple, nor in mosque,

Not in Kaaba, nor Kailas,

But here right within you am I.

Tragically enough, in the history of religious institutions, there sometimes has been a gradual forgetfulness of the central teaching of the founder, and an increase in emphasis on dogmas, doctrines, and rituals which are not of primary importance. This preoccupation with superficial matters makes us forget that all religions are founded upon the same mystical experience of the indivisible unity that is the Divine Ground of existence.

In this verse, one of the most marvelous in the Gita, the Lord says, with his infinite love, that it does not matter what religion you profess. Be a Christian. Be a Jew. Be a Buddhist. Be a Hindu, Muslim, or Zoroastrian. The important point is to follow faithfully what the Lord reveals through your particular scripture with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and all your spirit, and you will become united with the Lord of Love. This verse is perhaps the most superb exposition of the reality of all religions, the reality of all divine incarnations. Here, once and for all, the equality of all religions is emphasized, and we are told that we do not have to change our cultural context or leave the country, religion, or society in which we were born to attain the supreme goal of life and become united with the Lord.

The change that the Lord wants is a change of heart in which we turn our back upon all that is self-willed and separate in us. When the time comes for us to enter the portals of heaven, we are not going to be asked to show our membership card, not even of the Blue Mountain Center. The Lord is not going to ask us to which religion we belong, which church we attended, or who is our favorite padre. What he is going to ask us is, “Do you love me in all those around you? Have you put me first in those around you?” And the only answer we have to make is that, to the extent possible for us, we have been trying our best to submerge our own petty personality in the general joy and welfare of our family, community, and world.

SRI KRISHNA: 12. Those who desire the pleasures of this world, which are born of action, are really praying for them through their desires. For by action in the world the fulfillment of these desires is quickly obtained.

In this verse, the Lord lets us in on a big secret: that every desire is a prayer. Those who keep on thinking “I want money,” even if they may call themselves atheists or wear a button saying “I don’t believe in God,” are really saying to the Lord, who is within them, “Please give me money.” In this sense, the stock exchange is a temple. Everyone arrives early in the morning to perform the ritual. In the ashram, we meditate only one or two hours a day, but they meditate on money from morning until night, going through all kinds of altered states of consciousness with the advance of the bulls and the bears.

One of the cogent ways of looking upon the smoker, too, is as a religious person. In many oriental religious traditions the worshipper will come stand in front of the shrine, take a sandalwood incense stick, light it, put it in place gently, and pray. And the smoker, too, performs his ritual. He takes out his little packet and ceremoniously strikes the match. He does not just take the match and strike it: there is a way of balancing it and lighting it very artistically; otherwise it is not right. It is not just lighting the cigarette and putting it between his lips. There is a traditional way, sanctified by centuries, which must be followed. The way the smoker really prays is: “Lady Nicotine, if I find favor in your eyes, give me cancer. And if I am not found worthy of that, please don’t deny me emphysema.”

In everything we do, whenever we desire, we are praying to ourselves, and if our desire becomes deep enough, it will give us the will and show us the way in which we can fulfill it. For example, there is the desire for fame, which Ben Jonson called the “fruit that dead men eat.” How many millions of people keep praying for fame! Even among our own ordinary friends, there are likely to be a few with the innate desire for attention. Right from the time that they are three or four, children can develop this desire. Children who have learned a nursery rhyme – “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall” – must recite it in front of their grandfather, their grandmother, and anybody else who is prepared to listen. As our self-knowledge begins to improve, it is very interesting to see in what ways we try to draw attention. In innumerable little acts, from morning until evening, the main motive seems to be to draw attention, prop ourselves up, and make ourselves secure. Sri Krishna will say, “Why do you want to draw attention? You are completely secure, because I am here all the time.” Even a temporary awareness that the Lord of Love is always present within us will immediately free us from this deleterious habit of doing things to draw attention.

It is very easy to become famous. But one of the paradoxes of fame is that people who have longed for fame and striven for many years to become famous, to have their picture on the cover page of weekly magazines, after achieving fame come to envy anonymous people like us. It is so good not to be known. It is so refreshing to be anonymous, to live on the blessed anonymous level. Nobody recognizes us, nobody bothers us, everybody ignores us. Well-known figures from all over the world will say how much they deplore publicity. But if I may say so, if we do not want publicity, nobody is going to give it to us. There is no difficulty in remaining obscure, which is the ideal condition for leading the spiritual life.

It is very easy to make money. It is very easy to become famous. If we can unify our desires, even for a finite goal, we can attain it; but once all of our desires are unified, we will find that nothing finite can ever satisfy us.

In the Upanishads, there is a glorious passage that is one of the central principles of mysticism. It sums up the secret of all life: “You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your deep, driving desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.” All of us are capable of immense desires, but our capacity to desire and love is unfortunately cut up into innumerable little desires for profit, power, pleasure, and prestige. It is possible, through the dynamic discipline of meditation, to recall our innumerable detrimental desires from the wasteful channels into which they have flowed. And when we recall our desires from the restaurant, from the bank, from our wardrobe, and from all the petty little channels which consume our vital wealth, they all merge into one huge, all-consuming desire that can never be satisfied with anything finite. It is only those who live on the superficial level who can be satisfied by money, material possessions, pleasure, or fame. There is no point in blaming them. They live on the superficial level, and their mouth is very small, just a little parrot beak. Put one cherry in, and they are satisfied. But as our meditation deepens, our capacity to desire grows greater, and as a Hindi proverb says, you cannot satisfy the hunger of a camel by putting a mustard seed in its mouth.

Our capacity to desire is infinite when all of our desires are unified. Nothing finite can ever really satisfy the immense desires of a human being. St. Augustine – who used to paint Carthage red and knew what he was talking about – would say, “Lord, how can I ever find peace anywhere else when I am made to rest in thee?” This is written in every cell of our being, and paraphrasing it in applying it to modern times, I would say, “When you and I are made to find our joy in the Lord, how can we find it in LSD, in money, in food, in clothes?”

Once when Christine and I were going for our walk, we saw a little girl playing a game I hadn’t seen since we left India. She was making mud pies. I was so delighted on seeing a little girl making mud pies, just as they do in all the villages of Kerala, that I watched her for some time and, just to make conversation, asked her, “What are these?”

“Oh,” she said, “mud pies” – adding, just as her mother would, “but I don’t make them as well as I used to.”

I said, “Will you please let me have a few to eat?”

She looked at me and said, “They’re horrible! You shouldn’t eat mud pies. If you’re hungry, you should go home and ask your mother or wife to give you lunch.”

Unfortunately, what most of us are trying to do in life is eat mud pies.

The Lord says, “Don’t waste your love on money; that love is meant for me. Don’t waste your love on your own petty pleasure and profit. This is misusing the capacity for love that I have given you to find me present in everyone, everywhere.” The Lord has given us all a wide margin for experimenting with our desires. It requires a certain amount of juggling with the senses to find out they will not bring us abiding joy, but it becomes very tragic when we keep on juggling all our lives: first three balls, then four, then five, until finally we are the expert, juggling with sixteen balls while riding on a horse.

Over and over again, the Gita will say that this is not a moral issue at all; it is an engineering issue. Sri Krishna has given each of us a certain amount of fuel to undertake the long journey to the goal of life. The Lord is not miserly, either, so with all the responsibility of love, he gives us a few extra gallons for making a few detours. If he were an efficiency-minded fuel manager, he would say, “This is all you need, not one drop more.” But he loves us so much that he says, “I know the quirks of your mind, and I have given you some extra fuel.” He knows that before setting out on our transatlantic flight we will want to go to Milpitas or Walnut Creek once or twice, just to see what is going on. And as long as we make a few trips and find out that there is nothing doing in Milpitas, the Lord is satisfied, and life has served its purpose. But tragedy strikes when we use all of our great total of fuel in just making little local flights, going around and around in the same old circle, so that when the time comes to try the flight across the Atlantic, we find we do not have any gas. This is what may happen to all of us if we postpone the spiritual search too long.

SRI KRISHNA: 13. The distinctions of caste, guna, and karma have come from me. Understanding that I am their cause, realize that I am changeless and beyond all action.

The perennial philosophy in the Hindu tradition interprets the cosmos in terms of three gunas – sattva, rajas, and tamas. Sattva means law, rajas means energy, and tamas means inertia. According to this theory of the gunas, there may be surface differences between all of us, even though at bottom we are one. If you look at the five fingers of your hand, Booker T. Washington used to say, they all look different. Even the names are different. The thumb will say, “Don’t call me finger. I am the Thumb.” And another will say, “Don’t just call me finger. I am Little Finger.” Another says, “I point. I am the Index Finger.” The vision of people who are living on the physical level, going by physical appearance, living just for the moment, is only on the fingers. They see everything as separate. But as Booker T. Washington put it, if you look below at the palm, you will see there is only one.

It is only on the surface of life that we all look different and feel separate, only on the surface that sometimes, in order to bring about our own satisfaction, we clash with those around us. But if we can only deepen our awareness through the practice of meditation and direct our vision deep below, we shall begin to see that, as Meher Baba has said, “You and I are not ‘we’; you and I are One.”

The lowest guna is tamas, the state of inertia. This is a state familiar to all of us. When duties call for us to act, we feel inclined to say, “What does it matter? Why not drop out of society? Why not live in my ivory tower, the world forgetting, by the world forgotten?” One of the interesting characteristics of our time is the belief that by dropping out of society and turning our back upon the world, we can become aware of the indivisible unity of all life. But the Bhagavad Gita says emphatically that this is not the path for us to follow, and the language it uses is to the point: it is all right for a rock not to act, it is all right for a stone just to sit, but you and I as human beings have to respond to the challenges of the day and make a contribution in our own way to the solution of its problems. In one of the strong verses of the Gita (3:12), Sri Krishna says the person who refrains from action and drops out of life, when there are such terrible problems pressing upon us, is stena, a thief. The Gita is a call to selfless action, not action just for feathering our own nest but for contributing to the greatest extent possible to the welfare of our family, community, and world.

On the campus, the application of this verse is not to procrastinate, not to postpone last quarter’s project until next quarter. This only makes the problem worse. When we try to postpone we are making tamas more established instead of transforming it into rajas. When I was a professor at my university in India, during finals time all the usual symptoms that I see in Berkeley used to break out there, too. But there was one additional thing that I used to see in the Hindu temples, particularly in the villages. Many students who had seldom been to the temple would feel a sudden spurt of devotion on the eve of the finals. They would ask the Lord for his blessing and break coconuts in front of Lord Ganesha, who is called “the remover of obstacles.” The faculty used to say that when the price of coconuts has gone up, it means that finals have begun. And when the price of coconuts went down, I knew that finals were over and that students were not going to the temple any more. When she saw students going to the temple on the eve of finals, my grandmother used to remind me that not even the Lord would help those who postponed and did not study. She would say that it is good to go to the temple to show our faith in the Lord, but he expects us to study well all the same.

Whenever there is a tendency to postpone, it is good to get down to work immediately whether it is at our job, on the campus, or in the home. When there is something not very pleasant to be done, do it immediately. The pleasant things can wait a little, but the unpleasant things should be done immediately.

Here the practical hint I would give is that when you feel lethargic, unequal to the tasks that are incumbent upon you, go for a good, long walk repeating the mantram. This can change your attitude in less than an hour’s time. It is the initial leap that you have to make. You just have to press hard on the arms of your chair and leap like a mustang. The initial leap should give you the momentum to go for a long, fast walk, and once the blood has started spinning in your veins, the lungs have started going strongly, and the rhythm of the mantram has started echoing in your consciousness, in an hour’s time your attitudes change. There is no longer what you thought was a permanent resistance to work, no longer the diffidence in yourself. Even to prepare for the most important occasion, I would suggest a good, long walk repeating the mantram.

The body is meant for motion, but in our modern way of life, we have almost begun to forget this. In the morning we move about from the bedroom to the dining room where we sit. Then we go into the garage, get into the car, and sit until we reach our office, where we sit again at our desk. We come back in the evening and sit in front of the bridge table or television set. It is helpful to remember that the heart is not what the poets represent it to be – a delicate, brittle instrument. It is a sturdy old pump, and it has an immense capacity to keep itself well, to keep itself strong, provided we obey the simple, sensible rules of good health: eat moderately, eat only what is nourishing, eat only when hungry, keep walking whenever there is the chance, and keep repeating the name of the Lord whenever there is agitation, fear, anxiety, or conflict. If we observe these simple rules, we shall see in our own life how easy it is to be well.

The way to transform tamas into rajas is through activity. Then slowly we have to transform rajas into sattva; we must begin to direct all of our energies to the selfless service of those around us. We can harness our energy and restlessness and direct it to the supreme goal. Whenever we feel restless, that is the time not to run away, but to sit down, meditate, and sink down into the depths of our own consciousness.

The third stage, sattva, is known by its characteristics of serenity, tranquility, and detachment, which all of us need, particularly today in our troubled times. In sattva we work arduously but not for our own personal aggrandizement. Even in sattva, however, we still believe that we are the doer; therefore we are still involved in the fruits of action. It is not enough if we attain the sattvic level, because the supreme purpose of life according to the scriptures of all religions is to realize the Lord of Love who is present in everyone. Those who have become aware of the Lord are said to have gone beyond the three gunas. They have realized the unchanging reality, the indivisible unity which underlies the world of change. In every religion there are those who have gone beyond the three gunas, like Jesus the Christ, the Buddha, or, in our own times, Mahatma Gandhi, who is an inspiring example of one who transcended the limitations of space, time, and causality to become the perfect instrument of the Lord.

Applying the categories of the gunas to human evolution, the Gita says that the least evolved are the apathetic who do not act at all. Higher are those who act, even though part selfishly. Higher than they are those who act selflessly, but the highest are those who have realized the indivisible unity of all life, who have seen the Lord within all. This spiritual evolution is the original basis of what is called the caste system in India. But though in ancient times a man could move from one caste to another depending upon his personal merits, the system became rigid so that a man’s caste was determined only by birth, not by merit. In modern times the caste system in India became a great source of suffering and exploitation to all of us. It was a crying evil which Mahatma Gandhi tackled with his indomitable weapon of nonviolence, so that today the system is dying out in the cruel form it had gradually acquired over the ­centuries.

In the early days, one of the questions that I had to face often on the platform was, “What about the caste system?” I would ask in turn, “Where?” Every country has its own caste system wherever there is exploitation or discrimination, whether because of nationality, religion, property, race, color, education, or sex. There is one kind of caste system in India, another kind in Europe, a third in America, and a fourth in Africa; everywhere there is a caste system as long as we do not treat all those around us with complete love and respect, knowing the Lord is present in everyone.

SRI KRISHNA: 14. Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. He who understands this and practices it lives in freedom.

In this verse, Sri Krishna, the Lord of Love present in all hearts, gives us the secret of selfless action, called karma yoga. Anyone, according to Sri Krishna, who pursues personal pleasure and profit, anyone who indulges in action for money, for material possessions, power, or prestige, is a prisoner in action.

This is a marvelous concept which most of us cannot even grasp, because we live in the prison of the ego, compelled and driven into action for the sake of money, material possessions, power, and pleasure. As long as we continue to act while propelled by these personal motives of self-interest, we are not free agents but robots, automata being pushed from behind by forces out of our control. We can live selfishly, doing as much as we like and working very hard, but we know from the Gita that this action will only imprison us more and more. There may come a time, later in life, when the walls of this prison have become so high we cannot climb over them at all.

As long as we are living only for ourselves, to make a little money or to acquire a little prestige, we cannot have access to the deeper resources within us. On this point, my grandmother would sum up the message of the Gita in a few simple words. She would say that Sri Krishna gives me two ways to live. One is for myself, and when I live for myself I wither away and die. The other is to live for those around me, no matter how painful it may be at the outset, and to widen the circle more and more until it at last embraces all creation. With this path, the more I live for others the more resources will come into my hands.

A few days ago, on the way to San Francisco, we saw the new arrangement at the tollgate of the Bay Bridge. The traffic was particularly heavy, bumper to bumper, but there was one lane marked Exact Change where you keep your change ready, throw it in the basket, and shoot through. There are some rare people who have this kind of ego. It is just little and crumpled up from living for their parents, their partner, their children, their family, their community, country, and world. They have always been thinking about others and never about themselves, so their ego is tiny like a peanut. In life they go through the Exact Change line, throw their ego into the basket, and shoot through. The others come with their egos on trucks – sometimes huge trucks with two trailers, which are so large that they have to wait for all the other trucks in front to pass through first.

On the spiritual path, we have one choice, whether we live in a rich or a poor family, whether we are ignorant or learned, whether we are healthy or ailing: shall we go after what pleases us, or shall we go after what promises to bring the increasing happiness of all those around us? When we work under the compulsion of self-will, we are preventing the Lord from using us as instruments of his work. But if we let the Lord act through us and realize that he is the operator, we go beyond the law of karma, no longer to be bound by actions.

SRI KRISHNA: 15. Knowing this truth and desiring liberation, the spiritual aspirants of ancient times engaged in action. Perform action in the manner of those ancient sages.

Sri Krishna now tells Arjuna about mumukshu, which means ‘he who is very eager to have awareness of the indivisible unity of life.’ It is this eagerness to know for ourselves, in our own consciousness, that parents and children are one, husband and wife are one, boyfriend and girlfriend are one, friend and friend are one, and even friend and enemy are one, that will deepen our meditation, strengthen our willpower, and enable us to turn our back upon what is petty and selfish in all of us. Whenever people have deeply desired liberation, whenever they have wanted to realize the Lord of Love who is ever present in all creatures, they have always learned to act selflessly, to live for others, and to turn their back upon whatever selfish satisfaction they may have wanted in their earlier days.

Whatever mistakes you may have committed in the past, once you turn your back upon personal profit and pleasure and set your eyes on the shining goal, then the past begins to fall away from you. Thus, Sri Krishna adds, you, too, have the latent, seldom-suspected capacity within yourself to change yourself completely, to become mumukshu. It is this divine unpredictability which is the mark of the mystic, and in everyone there is this capacity. Through the practice of meditation, one of the most delightful pastimes you develop is the capacity to change your habits at will. You can take tea and become a tea addict, like Dr. Johnson, for a few months, and when your body is beginning to clamor for tea in the morning, you can just give it a cup of coffee. There is no “Et tu, Brute?” Then you give it coffee for a number of weeks, and when the body has forgotten tea and has become addicted to coffee, you give it decaf. This is how you win the freedom of the body.

The Gita will say, in marvelous language, even good habits are ties. First you get rid of bad habits by developing good habits. You cannot get rid of bad habits by saying “Go, go, go”; you get rid of bad habits by bringing in good habits which will force them out, and you don’t have to push because there won’t be any room to put their sleeping bag down. And then, the giants of all religions say, even the good habits have to go, because any habit is a form of rigid conditioning; any habit keeps you from freedom.

My wife and I used to go around Lake Merritt every day when we were in Oakland. We had been used to going around clockwise, and you know the feet; they almost get automatic: you get there and they immediately turn in the same direction. So one day I just turned in the opposite direction instead. Even in little things you can experience this thrill of liberating yourself from your habits. When you want to sit in a very comfortable chair, go and sit down in a very uncomfortable one. This is how you free yourself.

A friend of ours, who is much more daring than I am, once went into an ice cream parlor and said, “What is the worst kind of ice cream you have?”

The proprietor answered, “Licorice.”

“Bring a bowlful, please.”

The proprietor gasped. “You’re sure? One spoonful may be enough.”

She said, “Please bring a bowlful of licorice ice cream, and leave it to me.”

She disposed of every vestige of it, and when she asked for the bill, the proprietor looked at her with awe and said, “It’s on the house.”

This is one of the secrets the mystics tell us: when you free yourself from the tyranny of likes and dislikes, you can enjoy everything. With freedom from the tyranny of likes and dislikes comes freedom from allergy, which has become the bane of millions. Allergy is often a protest by the nervous system: “I have strong likes and strong dislikes; don’t try to trifle with me.” This is allergy. Gradually you can so free your nervous system that you can juggle with your likes and dislikes, which means you have gone beyond the law of duality where things are divided into pleasure and pain, success and defeat, birth and death. It is freedom from the tyranny of pain and pleasure, likes and dislikes, that will eventually give us the strength to realize moksha, or the indivisible unity of life, in our own consciousness.

SRI KRISHNA: 16. What is action and what is inaction? This question has confused the greatest sages. I will give you the secret of action, with which you can free yourself from bondage.

Here Sri Krishna comforts Arjuna by telling him that he needn’t think badly of himself because he lacks discrimination. Even some of the great sages lacked discrimination when they started on the spiritual path. Arjuna says, “Wait! Great sages? Maybe one day I too will become a great sage!” And he is consoled by the way that Sri Krishna says that even the kavis, the great sages, were sometimes confused about action and inaction.

Then Sri Krishna adds, “I will give you practical hints which will enable you to cultivate this discrimination. And” – to put his advice in the modern idiom – “remember, yaj jnatva mokshyase ‘shubhat: these words are not only for your diary. They are not to be put on buttons or on stickers for the back of your chariot. They are to be practiced. You have to carry them into your daily life, even though it may be unpleasant or even distressing.”

SRI KRISHNA: 17. You must understand what is action, what actions should be avoided, and what is inaction. For the true nature of action is difficult to grasp.

Sri Krishna, the Lord of Love present in all hearts, tells us how best we can use our life to alleviate the many woes to which the world has become subject during the course of the centuries. In understanding this secret of karma yoga, or selfless action, the word ­karma has to be understood not only as meaning deeds, but also words and thoughts. Even words are actions, and we all know from the advertising world the power of the word. Those word wizards who coin slogans which can even come with us into our sleep are, to use Aldous Huxley’s words, “the most influential of popular moralists and philosophers.” Some of these advertising slogans are the surest proof of the negative power of words. Anyone who doubts the efficacy of the mantram should simply observe the power of the advertising ­slogan.

Even thinking is a subtle form of action. Sigmund Freud has said that thought is action in rehearsal. When we are thinking angry thoughts against somebody, we actually are throwing abstract rocks at them. Sometimes I think a rock does not hurt so much as a harsh thought. We know how long people to whom we have unfortunately shown anger can suffer because of resentment and hostility. And we, too, suffer because we are violating the fundamental law of the unity of life.

People who think selfish thoughts can really show us that, as the mystics say, thinking is action. Living in a place where people are always thinking about their selfish satisfactions is living in an atmosphere worse than smog. The worst kind of smog is ego smog, and we have only to live with very egocentric people to know how deleterious it is. When we associate with agitated people, we come home so agitated that we cannot sit and have our dinner; we cannot go to sleep in peace. We cannot understand: in the afternoon we were feeling so placid and so composed; what happened to make us so agitated? Then we suddenly see: we went out with that fellow. We can all testify to this. When we are with agitated people, if we are not fairly calm within ourselves, naturally we participate in their agitation.

Conversely, in a very beautiful manner, when we are agitated, when we want to express our agitation by agitating a few more around us, we may go by mistake to the house of a serene person. Quietly established in himself, he comes out and says, “You want to agitate me? Come in.” We go right in and start agitating, recapitulating what wrongs the world has done to us, how we have always been innocent. But halfway we begin to say that maybe sometimes we do make mistakes, maybe sometimes we do provoke people. Our host is still not saying anything. He is just looking with shining eyes of love and understanding, and by the time the interview ends, we have become calm. We come out and don’t know what has happened to our agitation. “Is it the meal I had that may have corrected my agitation?” It takes a long time to understand that when we associate with people we also participate in their mental states. In Sanskrit there is a very good saying, Samsargad doshagunam bhavati: “By association we can become good and selfless, and by association we can become bad and selfish.”

Let us remember that we cannot avoid action by staying at home. Even if we tie ourselves up in a chair and take a vow not to move for the whole day, we are acting inside, and thoughts can be action in a very subtle form. In order to be entirely free in our action, the mystics say, thought has to be controlled at its origin. The Buddha has said in the Dhammapada that all we are is the result of what we have thought. The thoughts that germinate in the depths of our consciousness slowly drive us into action. Action, therefore, begins at the level of thinking, and the purpose of meditation is to control action at the source.

Vikarma is action which is prohibited to us because it inflicts suffering on others. Vikarma is wrong action. Any action which is born of anger, fear, or greed is vikarma. The Gita will say that any action that is propelled by anger is likely to bring sorrow not only to those against whom the action is directed, but also to the doer. When we are angry, most of us are prompted to action. Immediately tamas is transformed into rajas. Even the most phlegmatic person, when roused to anger, will leap up and start acting right and left, bringing suffering on everyone around.

In order to act wisely, we have to be free from anger, free from hostility, free from resentment. Unfortunately, even in the efforts being made to banish violence from our midst, I sometimes see an element of resentment and hatred. In order to counter violence, we should not get violent at all. We can deal effectively with violence by being persuasive, courteous, and considerate, and yet very, very firm. Gentleness and friendly persuasion can be effective with all human beings. The moment I get angry, you are going to get more angry; and when you get more angry, I am going to get most angry. This is what happens when we meet anger with anger. We move further and further apart; and two people who stood only two yards apart at the outset, by the time the peace negotiations are finished, have moved two hundred yards apart. Jesus has said that it is by bearing with people who provoke us, by blessing those who curse us, by doing good to those who hate us, that we can win them over. My humble conviction is that there is no human being who lacks this capacity to love and respond to love, because the Lord lives in all of us.

Just as action born of anger leads to disaster, so do actions done out of fear and greed. When we do things out of fear, we are likely to be far off the mark. When we do things out of the third propelling force, greed, this too leads to disaster. Actions motivated by these three do not benefit anyone.

The third term used is akarma, ‘inaction.’ When we empty ourselves of all selfishness and realize that the Lord within is the operator, all action falls away. We do not act; the Lord acts through us. Whenever Gandhi was asked how he was able to free India from the political domination of the greatest empire the world has known without firing a shot, he would reply that all he did was empty himself of his selfishness and separateness to become a humble instrument in the hands of the Lord.

This is the real meaning of inaction, but we do not achieve this state by merely refusing to act. There is a tremendous need for action in all of us ordinary human beings. The choice that we have is: shall we act under the compulsion of self-will, bringing about our own downfall and the downfall of others, or shall we act as an instrument of the Lord, contributing to the welfare of our family, community, country, and world?

SRI KRISHNA: 18. They who see action where there is inaction, and inaction where there is action, live in wisdom. Their consciousness is unified, and their every act is done with complete awareness.

Here Sri Krishna says a strange thing to Arjuna: “When a person becomes united with me, when he becomes an instrument in my hands, then even though he acts, he does not act.” Those who have surrendered themselves to the Lord do not act; the Lord acts through them.

This reminds me of when we held weekly meetings on the University of California campus in Berkeley. Curious things used to take place on campus in those days. One day, as I was leaving the meditation meeting, I saw a group of demonstrators being hauled away by the police. They would struggle for a while and then suddenly go limp. Then there was no struggle, no effort, and evidently no resistance at all. This was very protective, and I saw what effect it had on the people who were dragging those students away. It took away all their animosity, for what is the use of dragging a person who doesn’t object to being dragged? In this verse Sri Krishna tells Arjuna, “When the ego tries to drag you away, go limp.” When spiritual awareness increases, you can act from morning to night with great power and in the evening come back so fresh, so vital, and so light on your feet that you say, “Oh, I am not tired. I haven’t been acting; I’ve just been going limp.”

For me, Gandhi is the perfect example of the statement that a person filled with the love of God, practicing the presence of God, never acts at all. Once when I went to Gandhiji’s ashram, as I walked about in the neighborhood of his little cottage, I saw the unending stream of political leaders from Britain and India who came to him throughout the day. I was wondering how he was able to bear the pressure of these significant interviews which would change the relations of two great countries, and in the evening, I expected to see a tired, irascible, very impatient man coming out. Instead I saw a smiling figure who looked as if he had been playing bingo with children all day. I could not believe my eyes, because I was used to the idea that if we work eight hours we should be tense and ready to be irritated by anybody who tries to be nice to us. But he was completely untouched by his action.

Every day in our work, as long as it is not at the expense of others, we can learn to avoid tension and pressure when attending to the most challenging tasks that life may bring us. For most of us, tension has become a badge of action. In fact, we usually expect those who have engaged in intense action during the day to complain about their ulcers. Tension need not accompany action; we can act free from any tension, any movement in the mind, any ripple of consciousness. Once Gandhi was asked by Western friends, “Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years for these helpless millions of India. Why don’t you take a long holiday?” Gandhi replied, “I am always on holiday.”

When a person has made himself an instrument in the hands of the Lord as Gandhi did, then Sri Krishna says, “He is not acting at all. I act through him.” In the Gita this is called “inaction in action.” Conversely there are people who say they want to drop out of society and go away from the world. Such people, even if they try to keep quiet in the midst of the woods, are still active. All of us are active everywhere, and all of us influence our environment everywhere. Parents influence their children all the time by their attitudes and by their ways. Even when we refuse to act, Sri Krishna maintains, we influence people by our apathy.

The practice of meditation demands intense action. Without energetic, intense, selfless action, the practice of meditation can become quite dangerous, and we can become caught inside. To the orthodox Hindu the working out of bad karma through good karma is an essential part of spiritual progress. As long as we have a heavy load of unfavorable karma on our back, it will not be possible for us to wake up when we plunge into the depths of the unconscious. In some of the most profound stages of meditation, when we have touched the floor of consciousness, we are like divers who have gone fathoms deep to stand on the sea bed. Similar to the tremendous pressures bearing down on the diver is the pressure that bears down on the person who reaches the unconscious in meditation. When we reach the depths of the unconscious, we naturally become completely unconscious, but we must learn to become conscious at that time. Now to give a little preview of this magnificent climax of meditation, when we are standing there with this vast sea of consciousness pressing down upon us, instead of being frightened or paralyzed, or becoming completely unconscious, we must be able to repeat the mantram in the depths of our unconscious. If we can do this, we are worthy of becoming aware of the Lord.

SRI KRISHNA: 19. The awakened sages call a man wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge.

The Gita is an imperative call to action in which the Lord insists that none of us can afford to lie here inactive while the world burns in turmoil and violence. If we would all make the maximum contribution that lies within our power to conquer violence, we would see the reign of peace, of good will, and of love. It is natural for the vast majority of us, as we look around the world and see the conflagration threatening to engulf us, to throw up our hands in despair and say, “What can I do?” “But,” Sri Krishna will ask, “what is it that you cannot do?”

If we realize that in the depths of our consciousness dwells the Lord of Love, who is infinite love, infinite wisdom, and infinite capacity for selfless service, none of us would ever feel despondent or defeated. The feeling of being inadequate to the call made by life upon us, the Gita says precisely, is caused by our anxiety about results. We get involved in the results. We want to say, “See what I have accomplished.” We want posterity to turn the pages of ­history to see how many are devoted to our exploits. The secret of all action, as embodied by Mahatma Gandhi in his own masterly personal life, is to select a selfless goal – it does not matter how big or impossible – and do everything we can, in the face of challenges, difficulties, or persecution, to move towards that goal. It may not be possible for one person to achieve that goal, but the work will be continued and supplemented, becoming larger and larger until it reaches fulfillment.

The word used here is budhah, ‘those who are awake.’ These awakened ones would not say that you and I are acting. They would say we are only chasing our tail, going round and round in ineffective action, wasting our time and energy. Only those who turn their backs upon their own self-will and dedicate all their energy, time, resources – everything – to the Lord in the service of him in everyone around, can be said to be truly wise.

If we look at the so-called great achievements of people who have made their name in history, we will find the motive often may have been ambition, or prestige, or the lust for power. The Gita says such people do not really make a lasting contribution to the world. This is particularly true of the lust for power, which is perhaps the most corrupting of all lusts. As Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When we go after personal power, in the early days we might really want to make a contribution to our country and to world peace, but as power begins to intoxicate us, all these honest motives recede until finally we want power for the sake of power, for imposing our self-will on everyone around.

Sometimes after dinner at Ramagiri we talk about current issues, and the other day we were having a discussion about the concept of leadership in modern politics. I pointed out that the concept of leadership placed before us by Gandhi is that of leaders who turn their backs upon personal power, who seek not to enjoy the perquisites of office, and who think not of their image or of what posterity will read about them in history books. We all know how many times the occupants of office do things simply for ensuring victory in the next election. In India, too, it was not uncommon for us to see ­leaders coming on the platform to harangue us about what they were going to do for our benefit, what they were going to do for our progress, only to ensure their personal re-election. The concept that Gandhiji placed before the whole world is that the best leaders are those who are not interested in themselves but only in making their maximum contribution to the welfare of the people and the world. I give Mahatma Gandhi as an unvarying example of a great leader in politics who has worked for his people and his country without any thought of profit, prestige, or power.

People like Mahatma Gandhi, according to Sri Krishna, are those whose selfish desires, whose personal motives of profit, prestige, and power, have been consumed to ashes in the fire of knowledge. Sri Krishna, very compassionately, is saying that those who aim for office or anything else only for themselves are ignorant. They are ignorant of the most basic truth, that you and I are one.

SRI KRISHNA: 20. The wise man, ever satisfied, has abandoned all external supports. His security is unaffected by the results of his action; even while acting he is only an instrument.

When you have directed your life towards a selfless goal, then Tyaktva karmaphalasangam: “Do not get entangled in the result.” In order to undertake the great work for peace that is dear to all of us, we should have an adequate sense of detachment from the results of our work. If we are going to get agitated every time there is a rebuff, every time there is a reverse, we ourselves will become violent. As we all know, sometimes even the demonstrators against violence become violent. In the words of the Compassionate Buddha: “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. Hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law.” Similarly, we can say today: “Violence will not cease by violence. Violence ceases by nonviolence. This is an unalterable law.” In order to win over opposition, to bring people together, we have to be serene and compassionate, whatever the vicissitudes of life may bring us. Mahatma Gandhi was at his best when seemingly defeated. He used to say it was from prison that he struck his hardest bargains. Most of us look upon defeat and reverses as weakening us; but in karma yoga, every time we are defeated we seem to go deeper into our consciousness to bring out greater resources. When we think we have been defeated, when we come home and tell our family that we have been beaten, Sri Krishna may say, “In my book I say the guy is doing well.” In order to grow, in order to strengthen our muscles, we need opposition.

Defeat is found very often in the lives of selfless people as an opening into opportunity. The Gita says that when you follow the spiritual path, living for others, very often there come to you increased challenges, increased threats, to make you go deeper and deeper into your consciousness. If there were no difficulties, you would only be skimming on the surface of life. Gandhiji, in a rare statement in which he gave himself away, said, “I love storms.” It is a thrill to be in the midst of a storm when you are keeping the welfare of those around you first, when the lightning is playing about your eyes, and thunder is crashing in your ears. When everything is against you, you feel so sure that the Lord is within you that you have only to put your hand out and say, “Hold me; my morale is sinking.” It is not that Gandhiji was not afraid. He could get as afraid as you and I do under the pressure of circumstances, but he always knew how to say, “Please take my hand. See, it’s trembling.” And Sri Krishna loves trembling fingers when they are stretched towards him. He does not like those who proudly say, “Feel my hand. How steady it is!” When you surrender to him – when you say, “By myself I am so weak, so incapable of facing opposition, but with the Lord supporting me, what opposition is there that I will not face?” – then he comes to help you.

Nityatripta means ‘always satisfied.’ When we are engaged in a great struggle, for example against violence, one day we will gain a small victory. Then we want to celebrate, sing and dance, and get very elated. But on the following day there may come defeat, and on that evening there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Here Sri Krishna says, “What kind of equanimity are you observing? When there is victory, you should go about quietly repeating my name and at night peacefully fall asleep. There is nothing to be elated about. And when there is a reverse, why gnash your teeth? It’s not good for them. At that time, too, repeat my name and in the evening go to bed and fall asleep in the mantram.”

Every movement in the mind is insecurity. Every movement of the mind, whether it is caused by ambition, anger, fear, lust, or any other agitation, alienates us from our real nature. This is why the Bible says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” When the mind is still, we have gone beyond the mind. In meditation we try to still the mind, which is a very difficult thing to do. We may have been meditating for half an hour, and the mind is fairly calm. “Well, the mind is still,” we think. “I don’t have to concentrate now.” We relax our vigilance and immediately pandemonium bursts loose.

At no time should we allow the mind to be agitated. Agitation of the mind prevents us from releasing our deeper resources for creative action. Nityatripta also conveys the idea, given elsewhere in the Gita, that in order to be united with the Lord, in order to discover the indivisible unity of life, the mind has to be serene and waveless. In the Gita (12:17) Krishna says the person who never gets excited is very dear to him. This word “exciting,” that has become part and parcel of our advertising paraphernalia, is a very dangerous word, because its other side is “depressing.” We usually see only the facade. But whenever we see excitement, we should say, “Turn your back. Let me see what is written on it: d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n.” This is the lettering on the back of excitement. If we could have excitement without depression, I would recommend it for everybody, but so far no one has ever succeeded in separating the two, and according to the Gita this separation is not likely to be effected, not even by our best psychologists or technologists.

When John F. Kennedy was being installed as president, and all of us were looking forward eagerly to what he had to say, I remember a journalist going up and asking him, “Mr. President, you must be greatly excited today.” It was a very mature reply, in the Gita ­tradition, that he gave: “Excited, no. Very interested.” This is the ­mature attitude. After all, one is likely to be very interested when one is moving into the White House. This mature equanimity that all of us can learn to have is not lack of interest. It is the mystic who is interested in everything. There is a photograph of Gandhiji looking through a microscope, and I do not think even Louis Pasteur could have had that expression of concentration. Gandhi was interested in everything, but not excited by anything at all.

When you and I have a tendency to get excited, especially when good things happen, that is the time to go out for a walk, repeating the mantram. When your ship comes home, when you see it moving up to the pier, don’t stand there clapping wildly. Get off the pier and go for a long walk repeating Rama, Rama, Rama or Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Otherwise, if you keep on saying, “My ship has come home! My ship has come home!” before you know where you are, you will not be on the pier; you will be floating about on cloud number nine. It is all right riding on cloud nine, but the next day you will be skin diving. Sri Krishna tells Arjuna, “I am not asking you to avoid excitement. But when depression comes, as it must, don’t ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ ”

In order to understand the powerlessness of the intellect, talk to people who are just beginning to feel depressed. If we ask people who have some self-knowledge, “Why do you look like that? Why are your eyes so glassy? Why are you so indrawn? And why can’t I hear some of those old chuckles?” they will reply, “Oh, I am just feeling a bit low.”

And I have often suggested, “You have a bright intellect. Say ‘I am not feeling depressed,’ and pull yourself out.”

“It doesn’t work,” is their answer.

At that time, go for a tearing walk, burning up the sidewalk. Walk as fast as you can, repeating the mantram, and see what just one hour of walking repeating Rama, Rama, Rama can do. When you come back, you may even have forgotten what you were depressed about. This is a comment on the powerlessness of the intellect as compared to the immense power of the holy name.

The next objective is even more severe: nirashraya, ‘without any support.’ In order to be the instrument of the Lord, we must let go of all supports other than the Lord himself. Now we are prepared to let our right hand go free, provided we can hold on with our left. We all are trying to hold on to something. If it is not money, it is food, or cigarettes, or alcohol. Others try to draw support and security from prestige and power. This is the human condition. We have to hold on to something, and the Lord says, “Why don’t you hold on to me? I am right inside you. You don’t have to walk miles in the rain. You don’t have to go searching for anything. You don’t have to work hard to make money. Just hold on to me and say, ‘Let me be firm.’ ” The Lord says to all of us through Arjuna, “Let go of all your supports. Throw yourself at my feet, and I will protect you.”

Almost all of us will call to the Lord, “Hold me, help me,” but at the same time we continue to hold on to external supports. My grandmother drove this home to me when we went together to see a ballet in Kathakali based on a very moving episode in the Mahabharata. Draupadi, Arjuna’s wife, is being stripped of her clothes in front of a large number of courtiers by a revengeful enemy of her husband. Draupadi, whose honor is being violated, cries aloud, “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, protect me!”

Then, on another part of the stage, Sri Krishna is seen quietly seated playing on his flute. Sri Krishna’s queen gets very angry at her lord and says, “What kind of god are you? Here is your devotee, a loving, beautiful woman, being stripped naked in front of a hundred jeering enemies, and you are seated here, playing on your flute. Have you no love in your heart?”

Sri Krishna takes the flute from his lips very leisurely and pointing with it says, “Look.” Krishna’s queen looks down from their heavenly vantage point and sees that Draupadi is holding on to her sari with one hand while she stretches the other up towards the Lord in supplication. For a while Sri Krishna and his queen both look at Draupadi, until suddenly she lets go of her sari and joins both hands in prayer. It is a very thrilling moment, and when the whole gathering of courtiers gasps with terrible suspense, Sri Krishna sends down an unending sari. My grandmother, even though she must have seen this scene enacted many times, was so thrilled that she said, “Go on! Keep pulling the sari. Let us see you exhaust it!” And the more the enemy pulled, the more sari there was.

On the spiritual path we are likely to say to the Lord, “We know you are the citadel of security, Lord, but we would prefer to keep 25 percent in shares, 25 percent in currency, and 50 percent in you.” We shall find that it is this reservation, this looking backward, that keeps us from making rapid progress on the spiritual path. Never has anyone succeeded in seeing the Lord except by surrendering completely to him.

Those who are the same in victory and defeat, who are always loyal to the goal, come obstacle, come ordeal, and who do not depend upon any external support, do not act at all; the Lord acts through them. The Lord will act through us if we will only empty ourselves of all self-will, of all separateness. This is what we do when we truly love. When a husband loves his wife more than himself, or a wife loves her husband more than herself, this is what they are doing; they are emptying themselves of themselves. This can be done in every relationship, and we all have the opportunity to empty ourselves of our selfishness in our relationships with our parents, partner, and friends. Someone once asked me, “Supposing there is someone who doesn’t have any of these?” I said, “How about enemies? Who is there who doesn’t have enemies?” It is possible for all of us, through unremitting endeavor and the practice of meditation, to empty ourselves of all that is selfish, self-willed, and separate, so that we can make a great contribution to the amelioration of the lamentable conditions that exist in the world today.

SRI KRISHNA: 21. Free from expectations and all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, such a one does not incur sin by the performance of physical action.

To be free in action, to make his greatest contribution to the welfare of society, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna nirashi: he should have no expectations. It is a difficult concept for us to understand, because we think that if we do not have expectations, we will have no motive for action. But as long as we are expecting something, life can hold us hostage. Quiet reflection can bring home the profound wisdom of these words: if you want to go through life free, do not expect anything.

Sri Krishna says, “Do not go about begging of life, ‘Give me this; give me that.’ Then you are bound. Say instead, ‘I don’t want anything, Lord. If you want to give me defeat, I am not afraid. If you want to give me victory, I won’t object.’ ” This is the stature that the human being can reach by becoming aware of the Lord of Love within. We can function with complete freedom, not dependent on what comes to us in the way of success or defeat.

We have only to examine ourselves to see what a catalog of expectations we have in life. Accordingly, “disappointed” is one of the most frequently used words in our vocabulary. Almost every day there is some disappointment because, as the Gita implies, expectation and disappointment go together. In very loving language, Sri Krishna tells us through Arjuna, “I don’t want you to be beggars. You are my children, inheritors of all my wisdom, love, and beauty. There is no need for you to go about hankering for success or apprehensive of defeat.” When we take up a task which contributes to at least one person’s welfare – without asking, “Will this bring me promotion? Will this send my image down in history as a great man? Will this bring me that prize, or this profit?” – then we work without anxiety. To work in this way, without expectation, it is necessary to have complete faith in the Lord of Love within, who always sends us what is good for our spiritual development.

If we are to work and live in freedom, our body and mind must listen to us. When we sit down in meditation we are slowly teaching the body and mind to listen to us implicitly, to obey even our gentle hints. In the early days of meditation it is likely that the body will go to sleep. This is its idea of security. In order to train our body to keep awake in the deeper stages of meditation, every time we get sleepy we must draw away from our back support, sit up straight, and make the maximum effort possible to keep awake. For everybody at some time there is the problem of drowsiness. As concentration deepens, as the words of the inspirational passage begin to go slowly, the neuromuscular system relaxes. To see this happening during meditation we have only to look at the faces of people who have been tense; slowly they start smiling and the lips begin to open in beatitude. It pains me to say that this is the time when we should jut our chin forward and sit sternly erect.

As for the mind, for everyone the path of meditation begins with a wealth of distractions, because we have always let the mind have its own way. The Compassionate Buddha used to remark that there is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind. When we do not want to think about something, the mind will say, “That’s exactly what I am going to think about, and you can’t do anything about it.” None of us like harboring resentful thoughts, and we all have known times when hostile thoughts have kept boiling in our minds and we have tried to tell the mind, “This is not good for me.” But the mind says, “It’s good for me! It may not be good for you, but I like resentment. I like agitation, because that’s what makes me come to life.”

For a long, long time in meditation the main effort is in disciplining the mind, in bringing it back whenever it wanders away, in keeping it on the words of the passage in spite of all its attempts to get away from them. This is drastic and very dull discipline, but it will pay the richest dividends in the long run. Even if you sit for an hour in meditation doing nothing but bringing your mind back to the passage sixty times in sixty minutes, you have made progress on the spiritual path. Every time the mind runs out, you run after it, pick it up from the restaurant, or the bank, or the movie theater, and bring it back. Then, the moment you are not looking, the mind has run out again. You again run after it and bring it back. It is just like following a little child. For some years in meditation there is a real test of your patience. There are no thrills. There are no visions. There is no rapture. There is just plain tedium. If your desire for the Lord is great, you will put up with all this cheerfully, but if you are meditating just because, for example, the Beatles did it, your enthusiasm will not last long.

In the next word, tyaktasarvaparigraha, the Lord says, “You must not own anything. I am the owner. Don’t try to put your tag ‘mine’ on anything. Don’t ever say ‘This is my exclusive property.’ ” We own nothing because the Lord is the owner. He is the landlord; we are just transients. Here the practical application is that only when we are detached from things can we use them wisely. Those who are fond of money cannot use it wisely. Often rich people unfortunately use money to their own detriment, because they do not know how to use it for their own and others’ benefit. This does not mean we should give away everything. Sri Krishna is saying we should not be attached to our wealth and material possessions. It is possible for a millionaire to be completely detached in his villa in the south of France, while it is possible for a poor man to be attached to his shack with violent egoism. It is the attitude that matters here.

In the final stages of meditation, we become very eager to unify our love, to give everything to the Lord and be united with him. As Sri Ramakrishna puts it, when our boat is nearing the harbor we want to reach the harbor so soon, we are so eager to be in our home, that we start picking up everything and throwing it overboard to lighten the boat. We start throwing away all of the excess baggage that we have hoarded down the years. Then our eagerness becomes so great that we may start throwing away the anchor and the sails. This is where we have to be discriminating. The spiritual life does not require us to give up reasonable comfort and the necessities of life. If we live in poverty, without having enough food, instead of meditating on the Lord we will be meditating on food. It is luxury and the hoarding of things because of selfish attachment that we must give up.

Those who have no expectations, who are prepared for weal or woe, who have no selfish attachments to things or people, who do not even look upon their bodies as their own but as instruments given them by the Lord with which to serve humanity – such people do not act. The Lord acts through them. Sri Krishna almost implies, “Even when such a person raises his arm, it is not he who does it; it is I.” When they do anything, it is from the deepest level of their consciousness, where the Lord dwells all the time. Instead of acting, on the surface level of life, they allow the Lord to act through them from the deepest level. Then there is no tension, no fatigue, no fear, and there is immense creative activity which enables them to give their very best even in the most adverse circumstances.

SRI KRISHNA: 22. They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life, and who never compete. They are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them.

The nature of life is to bring us sunshine and shadow, pleasure and pain, success and failure, praise and censure. Wherever we live, in the West or in the East, on the campus or in the bazaar, this inescapable duality of life will always be around us. It shows our pathetic condition that almost every one of us hopes that one day we will be able to isolate pleasure from pain. This is one of the everlasting projects of humanity. It may not have been done by anybody in history, but I am going to do this one day in my lab; and when I have isolated the pleasure bacillus, I will be free. There are others who would like to isolate praise. Most of us appreciate praise, but it is disastrous to become dependent on it. If we are going to allow our security to be bolstered up by the praise, appreciation, and applause of others, we are done for. I have even heard about a well-known movie star who goes to sleep at night with an applause record playing. This is going to make him more and more insecure.

Under no circumstances should we be agitated if someone ignores us. I for one cannot find enough words for the advantages of being ignored. Nobody recognizes me – how good it is! I can walk anywhere in freedom, for nobody thinks I am anybody – how good it is! I always say that if I could write a play I would call it “A Place to Be Nobody,” which means that I do not want any attention from others, I do not want any appreciation from others, I do not want any support from others, because I have the source of all appreciation, support, and security within me. In life there are occasions when we are ignored and sometimes forgotten. That is the time for us to remind ourselves, “Oh, I am forgotten, very good! Nobody attends to me – excellent! Why should I need anybody’s attention?” This is the attitude of the real mystics, who are content because they are complete. We have a standing invitation from the Lord within, who says, “Any time you feel like it, you can make yourself free. Come to me. I have a banquet spread for you with ambrosia, the nectar that gives everlasting life.”

These attitudes can be cultivated skillfully. When I see the kind of feats performed in the circus, I know they must have required enormous endeavor. Most of us have seen two trapeze artists swinging over and under each other across the tent to exchange trapezes in midair; you don’t just go on the trapeze one day and say, “I am going to jump from one to another.” It is the same kind of practice, the same kind of skill, that people develop who win tennis championships. You do not go to Wimbledon on the first day you play tennis; you keep practicing, you develop your skills, and one day you will be at Wimbledon playing on the central court. It is the same on the spiritual path. These are attitudes that all of us can develop; even those of us who are the most sensitive to praise and appreciation can learn to be so secure within ourselves that the word rejected can be expelled from our dictionary. The one person who will never reject us is the Lord, and that is enough to make up for all the rejections we may have to undergo at the hands of everyone else.

One of the central ideas of the Gita is that as long as you look at life through the spectacles of pain and pleasure, success and failure, praise and censure, you will never see life whole. One of the fatal flaws of the intellect is that it can thrive only in the land of duality. You take the intellect from the sea of duality and throw it on the land of unity, and it dies. It says, “You mean, I can’t divide, I can’t categorize, I can’t classify things? I’m done for.” When Sri Ramana Maharshi used to tell people to go beyond pleasure and pain, they would ask, “Do you mean be indifferent?” His answer would be, “When you go beyond pleasure and pain, you reach abiding joy.”

Pleasure is something that comes and goes; joy is something that abides, and it is this state of abiding joy for which the mantram Rama stands. We enter into this state when we gradually go beyond the duality of pleasure and pain, success and defeat, praise and censure.

The next word is vimatsara: “Do not compete.” It is a strong word, and a concept which is alien to us today. We have come to believe it is only when we compete that we can give our best. I think there are other ways in which we can be inspired to give our best, and one is by reminding ourselves that when we contribute to the welfare of our family, our community, our country, and our world, we are actually serving the Lord. If we want to be aware of the Lord, if we want to be united with the Lord, we must contribute as much as we can to the happiness of those around us, turning our back upon our own petty pleasures and profit when necessary.

This word vimatsara also touches upon the harmful way in which most of us tend to compare ourselves with others. This, too, has become so common today that in order to esteem myself, I should always be able to say, “I am better than he, so I am good.” We have a distinguished American spiritual teacher in India, nearing his hundredth year now, who took the Sanskrit name Atulananda. It is a lovely name which means ‘one who does not compare people.’ As our spiritual awareness grows, we will know that the Lord is present in everyone and that there is a uniqueness about everyone. Truly spiritual people never try to compare themselves with others. I have never been able to understand the origin of this phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” It does not matter very much whether we keep up with Tom Jones or anybody else; what is important is for us to keep up with the Lord by serving him in everyone around us. Even here, as long, as we compete with each other and compare one with another, a certain amount of envy is inescapable. There is a girl in Kalidasa’s play Shakuntala who has a very beautiful name: Anasuya, ‘she who is free from jealousy.’ This is a very rare type, an ideal we can all try to imitate by not competing among ourselves or comparing ourselves to others around us, remembering that all of us have complete worth and value because the Lord is present in us all the time.

Samah siddhav asiddhau ca. Siddha is success; asiddha is failure. Sri Krishna again repeats these important words, saying, “If you want to love me, you must remain alike in success and failure.” In my humble observation it is not so very difficult to remain calm in failure. It is much more difficult to remain calm in success, which goes straight to the head. Those who have made money, who have become famous, for example, sometimes drop their old acquaintances and move out of their old area. In the spiritual tradition, it is when you become famous that you go to your old area and say to your old friends, “Now you can all bask in my success. We have grown up together, and you have taught me so many things that I owe my upbringing to you.” This is the kind of reverse perspective we can all try to follow. The higher we rise the more we should remember those who are less fortunate. Whether people recognize us, or praise us, or drop us, or even denounce us, there is no need for us to lose our calmness, our security, and our awareness that the Lord is within us all the time.

SRI KRISHNA: 23. Those without attachment to the ego are free; their minds are purified by the knowledge that all life is one. They perform all work freely, in the spirit of service.

Here Sri Krishna gives us the word gatasanga, ‘he who is free from attachment to his own ego.’ All of us have immense resources of love, most of which swirl around our own ego. As long as we are in love with our own ego, dwelling upon ourselves, dreaming about ourselves, it will not be possible for us to love our family or our community. In meditation, we gradually release this swirling whirlpool into channels of fruitful service which flow towards others. The more we think about ourselves, the less we can love others; the less we think about ourselves, the more we are able to love others. When the great day comes when I forget that most monotonous subject in the world, myself, on that day I am free to love everybody.

We all can enter into this state of abiding love by working at it every day, particularly in our domestic relationships, where we have the greatest opportunities for forgetting ourselves. It is absurd to talk about leading the spiritual life when we do not try to put the welfare of our family first. This is the training ground, and though the training is not easy at all, it can be accomplished by all of us with the repetition of the mantram. When irritations or conflicts occur – as they are bound to occur between two people who are brought up differently, who are conditioned differently, who have been exposed to different cultural influences in their early days – do not try to move further away; do not say, “I am not going to talk to you; I don’t want to see you.” That is the time to say, “I am going to get closer to you, and I am going to try to put your welfare first.” This is the challenge of friction; even friction can have spiritual value. The Bhagavad Gita throws a flood of light on how the unfavorable circumstances in our life can be utilized. If we do not utilize them, we are failing to take advantage of the great opportunities that come to us for removing friction, for banishing conflict, and for moving closer to the Lord in everyone around us.

The next word is one of Sri Krishna’s favorites: muktasya. Mukta means free. Sri Krishna asks, “Don’t you want to live in freedom?” When somebody is angry at you, and you are angry at that person, you are not living in freedom; you are living in bondage. You are only doing what the other person is making you do.

I used to get amazed at my granny, my spiritual teacher, when she would tell me that when I retaliate, when I move away from people, when I get estranged, I am only dancing to a tune anybody can play. I was a little puppet, she said, whose wires were being pulled by some of my high school classmates whom I disliked. If I want to be free, all that I have to do, whatever others may do, is try to stand calm, move closer, and give them greater love and greater respect. In my own small personal experience, when people get angry and cause trouble in personal relationships, I have found they are often crying out, “Help me to move closer to you.” We all have such experiences. All of us can do something in our own homes, in our own lives, to apply these precious words of the Lord to enable us to live in freedom.

We should remember that “freedom” here implies not only my own freedom, but also the freedom of all around me, in which I find my freedom. According to the Gita, it is not possible to find freedom by one’s own self; it is not possible for X, Y, or Z alone to become free and lead a free life. Freedom is indivisible, and in order for me to be free, I have to help others to be free. When we use the word “freedom,” what we usually mean is that as long as I am free, it does not matter whether or not you are free. What does matter is that I should be free, my community should be free, my country should be free. The Gita implies that this concept is preposterous; all life is one, and it is only in this total freedom that I can enjoy freedom.

The most challenging effort of freeing ourselves by helping those around us to become free begins, as usual, in the family. I have been reading a good deal lately about the family becoming obsolete. This is the fantasy of those who do not understand the value of the family in training us to learn to find our freedom by living for the freedom of all those around us. The family is really a free university. We are now familiar with free universities; we find them in Palo Alto and Berkeley. Everywhere now people are trying to establish free universities. I would say this is carrying coal to Newcastle. We all have a free university at home, where we really get our finest education in freedom. If we do not learn that the freedom of the family is the freedom of the individual members of the family, we are likely to be misfits in life for a long, long time. I would have no hesitation in saying a good son or daughter makes a good husband or wife, a good father or mother, and a good citizen. We can all start acting on this concept of freedom right in our own family, which does not mean Papa, Mama, Junior, and Janie, but all the members, including grandparents, uncles and aunts, and country cousins. The family can include our dearest friends and those who participate closely in all our endeavors.

To begin the spiritual life, which will enable us to become free, we need not play a part on a gigantic scale. Mogul art, one of the great periods of artistic achievement in India, often is in miniature. The artist concentrated on very small areas, on little things, and worked with such tenderness and precision that only somebody who understands art will be able to see all the love and labor that has gone into it. Family living is like Mogul art, worked in miniature. The canvas is so small, and the skill required is so great, that most of us really do not evaluate the vast potentialities of family life which can enable us all to find our freedom.

My wife and I can draw a little parallel from our own life at Ramagiri with my mother and the children. We usually keep one day in the week for outings, and last Sunday, a beautiful, balmy day, we took them to Santa Rosa. On the way, I was seated with Meera on one side and Geetha on the other, and they were asking me all kinds of questions to which it is very easy to say, “Keep quiet.” From an adult viewpoint, most of their questions were juvenile. But that is exactly what children are – juvenile people who are asking me juvenile questions that are just right for them. In fact, if they had asked me some adult question, I would have said, “Keep quiet.” All the time I was trying to remember what most of us older people forget: that every child has a point of view. They have their outlook on the world, their way of looking at life, which makes them ask these questions, and for them, these are matters of vital importance. They wanted to know, for example, why Texaco and Mexico should be spelled differently, why Texaco should be spelled with an a and Mexico with an i. To this you just do not say, “They are not the same.”

I had my arms around both of them. They had those high rainboots on, so every now and then I would get a kick from both sides, and it hurt. They are children, active and lively, and they sometimes kick. They do not intend to kick others, but my legs happened to be in the way so they got hit. In all these little details, we have to remind ourselves, “These children are not really kicking me; they are kicking their heels in the air, and my legs happen to be in the way.” I had to repeat the mantram, Rama Rama, to keep smiling. It is in these little things that we learn how to be loving. In order to love, to find our freedom, we do not have to go to the Himalayas or the Sierras. We just go to Santa Rosa in one of those little VW bugs, where we are so constricted that every kick is amplified.

When we got to Santa Rosa, we had to walk slowly because my mother is nearing her eightieth year. But the children wanted to run. We were in a crowded shopping center, where it is not proper for a sedate professor to be running about. But they were saying, “Uncle, we want you to run; to run is fun.” I did not say that a pompous professor like me should not be running; it would take away from my pomp. Instead I said, “I don’t care what people say; I’ll run with you,” and I started to make a good dash for it. I thought I was going to meet with appreciation, but little Geetha came up to me and said, “You are not supposed to step on the lines.” There was no “Thank you,” there was no “Well done,” so I had to do it all over again. This is the way you show love for children.

We usually conclude our visit to Santa Rosa by dropping in at an ice cream parlor. Little Geetha has just learned to read, and she was looking at the big board and asking, “What are all those flavors?”

I said, “There are many there.”

She tried to read a few, and then she said, “What is that long word I can’t read?”

I said, “Pistachio.”

“That’s my flavor.” So she got that, double dip, and Meera got butter brickle. They wanted to nurse their ice cream cones all the way back to Ramagiri. I was in the back seat again with both of them on either side, and such is their love for each other that every now and then they would exchange licks across my lap. It was dripping all along. I do not like suits being spoiled by pistachio and butter-brickle drips, and my first impulse was to say, “Stop dripping all over me.” Instead, I again tried to look at the situation from their point of view. For them it is not clothes that are important; it is their ice cream. I could see they were cone-conscious, and so I let them drip all the way home.

My mother, watching all this, was very happy that I still have not forgotten how to be tender to my own family. I learned how to be tender from my mother and from my grandmother, because they were able to show great tenderness to me. It is in this way that we find our freedom, by being tender and unselfish and putting up with innumerable discomforts for the sake of adding to the joy of the members of our family, and then gradually extending our love to include our friends, our community, our country, and our world.

Finally we come to jnanavasthitacetas, ‘the person whose mind has been purified by the knowledge that all life is one.’ When we begin to realize the unity of life in all our personal relationships, our mind becomes purified.

SRI KRISHNA: 24. The process of offering is Brahman; that which is offered is Brahman. Brahman offers the sacrifice in the fire of Brahman. Brahman is attained by the man who sees Brahman in every action.

This is an image taken from an ancient form of ritualistic worship in the orthodox Hindu tradition. In this ritual, called yajna, or sacrifice, the sacrificial fire is lighted and butter is poured as an oblation into the fire which represents the Lord. When we live for others in peace, in love, and in wisdom, our life becomes divine, and everything we do becomes an offering unto the Lord.

SRI KRISHNA: 25. Some aspirants perform sacrifices to the gods. Others offer selfless service as sacrifice in the fire of Brahman.

There are many ways in which you can make your offering unto the Lord. It is not what you give to the Lord, but the love with which you give that makes your sacrifice acceptable to him. The greatest gift you can give the Lord is yourself, and in order to do this, you must eliminate all your self-will and banish all violence from your life. Let me assure you that when you make this supreme offering to the Lord, it is not the Lord who is getting the bargain. He is not a good businessman. If at any time the Lord says he is prepared to receive you, do not make any terms. Agree on the spot, and he will never desert you.

SRI KRISHNA: 26. Some renounce all enjoyment of the senses and sacrifice them in the fire of sense restraint. Others partake of sense objects, offering them in service through the fire of the senses.

Here Sri Krishna is distinguishing between two different approaches to the spiritual life. One is the ascetic way, followed by members of the monastic order, and the other is the middle path of moderation to be followed by those of us who live in the world.

We should respect members of the monastic order in all religions because they have turned their backs upon the world in order to lead the spiritual life. While we were in India, we had the privilege of knowing a Hindu monk who had been the head of a great monastery in the Himalayas for many years. He retired from this office in his later years to lead a completely contemplative life. There is nothing in the world to tempt him. His eyes are always fixed on the supreme goal, and he therefore feels no conflicts. He does not envy the man of the world’s freedom to go to a movie or drop in at an ice cream parlor; in fact, he probably feels compassion for those of us who still respond to the call of these little delights. For him, these are wrong, but for those of us who live in the world, who follow the householder’s path to spiritual awareness, these little pleasures are not wrong. To live the monastic life and turn our back upon the world, and, in a sense, negate our senses and the world, is only one approach to the spiritual life. This path is suitable for a very rare type of person, and we should never deprecate those who follow it. But there is another approach to the spiritual life which is just as challenging, and more suited for the vast majority of us living in the modern world. On this path we live in the world and yet are not of it. For me, this kind of spiritual life is very satisfying. We live in the bosom of our family, as integral members of our society, and yet never forget that the Lord is enthroned in the hearts of all. We live in the midst of life and find our fulfillment not by negating the senses, but by harnessing them in the selfless service of others. Instead of going on fasts, for example, I try to eat good, wholesome food in temperate quantities, not for the satisfaction of my palate, but to strengthen the body so that I can help carry the burdens of those around me. If my body is not strong, I cannot contribute to the welfare of society, and I cannot give the best account of myself in life. Instead of fasting, therefore, I suggest eating moderately. Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do. This is what the Buddha called Madhyamarga, the Middle Path – the ideal path for the householder. It requires great artistry and vigilance. Instead of negating the body and senses, we train them to be instruments of selfless service. We harness our physical, mental, and intellectual capacities not to make money or achieve power or fame for ourselves, but to use these faculties with great detachment to make our contribution to life.

SRI KRISHNA: 27. Some offer the workings of the senses and the vital forces through the fire of self-control, kindled in the path of knowledge.

28. Some offer wealth, and some offer sense restraint and suffering. Some take vows and offer knowledge and study of the scriptures; and some make the offering of meditation.

This word yajna, ‘offering,’ means that everything we do should be for the welfare of all those around us. There are different ways in which people make contributions in the Lord’s service, and one is through wealth. Money is not evil; it is love of money that is evil. The scriptures always emphasize that it is the Lord alone who is to be loved; everything else is to be used.

We can look to Mahatma Gandhi to see how yajna can be applied in life. His material possessions were worth only two dollars at the time of his death, yet some of his best friends were very successful businessmen. He had a group of multimillionaires around him, and he was often criticized severely for being so close to them. But Gandhi would say that the Lord was present in them also. We should never forget that the Lord is present not only in the poor but in the wealthy too, not only in the ignorant but in the learned too.

When Gandhi was on a fast, distinguished doctors from various parts of the country would come to examine him, sometimes to get on the front page of the newspapers, and Gandhiji, who was aware of their motives, would allow himself to be examined carefully and then say, “My fee is twenty-five rupees.” All his faculties, all his skills, everything was used to raise money for his work. Among the women of the villages of India, he was particularly successful. There is a saying in India that a man’s best bank is his wife’s neck, and most well-to-do Indian wives have a lot of jewelry, which is considered to be a good investment. Gandhi would tell these women, “Your beauty does not depend on diamonds; your beauty comes from inside. You should reveal this beauty by putting the welfare of your family, your community, and your country first.” Then he would ask them all, even the little girls, to take off their gold bangles, and almost everybody present would respond immediately to his call. As long as there are poor people in the world, as long as there are people who are deprived and handicapped in the world, if we are sensitive, we will not load ourselves with unnecessary adornment. Again, this is not a plea for poverty but a plea for contented, simple living, in which all the legitimate needs of the body are satisfied. We can use our money, whether we have a lot of it or not, to contribute to selfless work that is aimed at the welfare of all.

Another way of making an offering to the Lord is tapoyajna. The word tapas has a number of related meanings: suffering, the practice of sense restraint, and heat. In deepening meditation a sense of rising heat, which is the rise of kundalini, is not unusual. On such occasions, have as much physical exercise as you can. Hard physical labor is the very best use of this rising heat, which becomes an offering unto the Lord when it is given for selfless service.

Now comes the word yogayajna, ‘the offering of meditation.’ People who meditate for long hours in the morning and evening are not doing so for selfish ends. It is a misunderstanding to think that people who meditate are seeking only their own salvation or illumination. What they are seeking is the removal of their selfishness and separateness. Every person who meditates rightly is doing so for all of us. In a home where there is one person, say the granddaughter, meditating regularly, even if the rest of the family does not see eye-to-eye with her, they will share in the spiritual bonus, because she is going to be secure, selfless, and able to put the welfare of those around her first. All of us benefit by living with someone who does not live for himself or herself. We do not need to examine all the pros and cons; we have only to live with such people, and by some unwritten law, our hearts and our respect gradually go out to them. In an unguarded moment we may say, “I wish I could be like that.”

Once a student from the University at Berkeley came to me at our meditation class and said, “I have a roommate who used to be a pain in the neck for a long time. Now I kind of like him, and I’m even beginning to wish I could be like him. I want to see what is happening here to turn him from a person I disliked into a person I want to be like.” My comment was, “That’s about the best description of meditation I have ever heard.”

So if in your home people refer to your meditation by saying, “Oh, he is still out on that Indian trip,” do not get agitated or try to defend yourself. There is no need to defend yourself; when you are meditating you have got a good defense lawyer in the Lord, who not only knows the law but wrote it. At first it is only natural that people will have misgivings about your moving away from the normal ways of life. But if you can show by your life that you are becoming less selfish, less self-willed, and increasingly able to love others, it is only a matter of time before everybody will benefit from your meditation.

In order to live the spiritual life, therefore, we can all follow this concept of yajna, which means we should give some of our time, our talent, our resources, our wealth, our skill, and our love to everyone around us. The more we give to those around us, the more we shall have to give. It is not the person who has much who is rich; it is the person who gives much. In other words, Sri Krishna is telling us through Arjuna that there are many, many ways in which we can worship the Lord who is in every one of us.

SRI KRISHNA: 29. Some offer the forces of vitality, regulating their inhalation and exhalation, and thus gain control over these forces.

The word used here is prana, which has a number of meanings. Most generally it means vitality, or to use a colloquialism, that which makes us tick. Prana can also be translated as our immense capacity to desire, which is closely related to our capacity to love.

Another meaning of the word prana is breath. In certain schools of meditation breathing exercises are prescribed to control the mind. I lose no opportunity to caution everyone not to take to these breathing exercises, because they can be dangerous. This is especially the case in our modern times, as our way of life is so artificial, so divorced from the natural rhythm of life, and these exercises require pure living conditions, which are rarely found anywhere these days. Such exercises must be done under the close supervision of a teacher who is thoroughly familiar with all the turns and twists we may come across on this particular path. Some of the occult exercises are so powerful that they can split a personality in two.

The very best practice for improving the breathing rhythm is to go for a long, hard, fast walk repeating Jesus, Jesus, Jesus or Rama, Rama, Rama. The rhythm of breathing, coupled with the rhythm of the footstep, will blend with the rhythm of the mantram to calm the mind. In the deeper stages of meditation, as our concentration increases, breathing can become so slow that it can drop from sixteen times per minute to eight. Do not pay any attention to this; the more attention you pay to the breathing rhythm, the more difficult it is for it to slow down. When you are meditating sincerely, the great day will come when breathing is suspended for two or three minutes. At the time, you may not be aware of it at all. But afterwards you feel such relaxation in the nervous system, such a quiet knowledge that things are going well on your spiritual path, that you will long more and more to recapture this spell when breathing has been momentarily suspended.

People who are very forgiving, who do not easily get agitated by dwelling upon themselves and can return good will for ill will, love for hatred, usually have long breathing rhythms. Those who are agitated and resentful, who are ready to take offense any time at anything, are the ones who breathe fast and irregularly. Any provocation can throw their breathing out of gear. This disruption cannot help but affect physical well-being, and in many forms of physical illness, emotional stress is very much responsible. For example, asthma and many more serious ailments are often emotional in origin. As our meditation deepens, our concentration increases, and our breathing rhythm slows down, we shall find the answer to many of our physical problems. In order to facilitate this slowing of the breathing rhythm, it is helpful to have regular walks every day repeating the mantram.

SRI KRISHNA: 30. Some offer the forces of vitality through restraint of their senses. All these understand the meaning of service and will be cleansed of their impurities.

The purification of the body is an essential step on the spiritual path. If we want to discover our real identity, to realize that all life is one and live in harmony with this unity, we must have a body that is healthy and strong, one which will never fail in the selfless service of others. This gives us a deep motive for exercising discriminating restraint over the senses. For example, we should not eat things simply because they look or taste good. The proper function of food is to have food value, and we should take care to eat only what is nourishing. It is not good to dwell on food, either. The gourmet who is constantly looking for new ways to stimulate the palate will become more and more trapped on the physical level. After we have taken reasonable care to see that we get the right food, served with love, we should then forget about it and leave it to the digestive system to do the rest. There is no need to talk about it; there is no need to ask, “When are we going to have another meal like this?” In this way, instead of being used by the senses and wasting our vital capacity on petty sensory pleasures, we must train the senses to be obedient servants. In recalling our desires from the wasteful sensory channels into which they are now flowing, we unify our capacity to desire. Then we can direct this unified love and energy towards the supreme goal.

SRI KRISHNA: 31. True sustenance is in service, and through it a man or woman reaches the eternal Brahman. But those who do not seek to serve are without a home in this world. How can they be at home in any world to come, Arjuna?

It is in making others happy that we find our happiness, and it is in serving others that we become fulfilled. If we pursue only our own private satisfaction, even in this world we are likely to be completely frustrated and insecure. In other words, even if we do not meditate, even if we do not follow the spiritual path, we cannot help finding that when we forget ourselves we are happy, and when we dwell upon ourselves we are miserable. Egocentric people are not only cut off from the mystical experience; they are also unable to enjoy the world. Selfless people enjoy life to the fullest, because they are always free.

SRI KRISHNA: 32. These offerings are born of work, and each guides man along a path to Brahman. Understanding this, you will attain liberation.

33. The offering of wisdom is better than any material offering, Arjuna. For the goal of all work is spiritual wisdom.

The concept of yajna is now brought to its consummation. The Lord says that it is good to give our money, material possessions, time, and energy to a worthy cause that seeks the general welfare. It is good for us to give, if necessary by reducing our style of living to simple comfort. This does not mean that we must sacrifice minimum comforts, but most of us can work long and hard enough to be able to give part of our time and earnings to a great cause. To be able to work for others without thought of a paycheck can bring joy to everyone. As long as we have been working just for pay, calculating how much we are making per hour, we cannot realize that working for a selfless cause can give more satisfaction than the pay envelope we bring home. This does not mean that we must give up our jobs; all of us have to maintain ourselves and our families. But over and above this it is necessary for all of us, in our own interest and in the interest of the general welfare, to give part of our time, talent, and money to a selfless cause.

But even though all these offerings are very important, the Lord will not be fully content with only these gifts. The greatest sacrifice is jnanayajna, the offering of wisdom. The greatest gift we can give the Lord is the sharing of spiritual wisdom with others. Helping others to find the Lord of Love hidden in their own heart is the greatest yajna. The Lord says here, “I want you to be united with me, to realize that I live in every living thing, that all life is one.”

All actions must eventually lead us to this knowledge of the unity of life. Even the mistakes we make will force us gradually, through increasing suffering, to go forward on the spiritual path. The Lord does not want us to suffer, but suffering is the only way he can keep us from going further and further away from him. We can all save ourselves a great deal of pain by the simple method of learning to respect other people’s needs more than our own. We may ask, “How do I know other people’s needs? I am not psychology-oriented. I am not a very good observer.” The Buddha’s answer to this is simple: “What hurts you hurts others.” We do not have to read books about other people’s needs. We do not have to go to the university or read Sanskrit or study Panini’s grammar. All we must do is remember that what hurts us hurts our father, what pains us pains our mother, what annoys us annoys our children, and what irritates us irritates our friends. All the psychology we need to know is contained in this: “Others and I are one.” We can understand everybody’s needs just by looking at our own, and we can realize the unity underlying all life by resolving: “Even if I have to inconvenience myself, even if I have to lead an uncomfortable life, may I be given the strength, wisdom, and humility never to contribute to the suffering of anyone on earth.” This is the supreme yajna which the Lord asks everyone to make.

SRI KRISHNA: 34. You should approach someone who has realized the purpose of life, and question him with reverence and devotion. He will instruct you in this wisdom.

In this and the following verses, Sri Krishna uses the word jnana again and again. Jnana means ‘knowing’ in the sense in which Socrates used it, that is, knowing oneself. We all have an amusing idea of knowledge. We can answer any question about Shakespeare, about Milton, or even about Beowulf, but if someone asks us who we are, we say, “How do I know?” This is the strange paradox that all the great spiritual teachers point out: what is the use of knowing everything else on earth if we don’t know who the knower is? We are born, we go to school, we get married, beget children, buy and sell, and pass away without knowing who we are. It is an appalling commentary on our concept of knowledge. In knowing ourselves we fulfill the supreme purpose of life; when we know ourselves, we know all life is one, and we have the desire and the will to live in harmony with this knowledge.

Spiritual awareness is really not taught; it is caught. This is a beautiful way of saying that when we love someone who lives without any thought of his own personal satisfaction, who devotes all his energy, love, and wisdom to help those around him find wisdom, we absorb, through our deep love for him, something of his spiritual awareness. Constant association with people who are spiritually advanced supports us by a process of absorption.

In English poetry, Edmund Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queene, is often called the poet’s poet because he has inspired so many poets. I sometimes feel tempted to call Sri Ramana Maharshi the saint’s saint because he has inspired so many saints. That is the kind of saint who takes my breath away. It is said also of Mahatma Gandhi that his glory lay in transforming little people into heroes. We go into the presence of a great mystic, look at him, listen to him, open our hearts to him, and even those of us who are clay are transmuted into gold.

The small quantity of spiritual awareness that has come to me is through my deep love for my grandmother, my spiritual teacher, who, without knowing how to read or write, is the most educated person I have ever known.

When I was a student at college, every weekend some students would have a holiday by going boating; but my idea of a holiday was to make for my village, about fifty miles from the college, to be reunited with my grandmother. It became quite a standing joke on the campus; everyone would say, “He has gone to see his grandmother.” Slowly, however, they began to see, even in this simple gesture, how intensely I yearned to be with her, and how intensely I felt the deprivation of being away from her. I used to go by train to the little town close to my village. On one Saturday morning I didn’t have a penny, but I had to go. I had such faith that I went to the railway station where the train was waiting. The guard of the train was watching me rather curiously because I looked so wistful. He asked me where I was going, and I said, “I want to go and see my granny.” He suppressed a smile and told the driver that there was a boy who wanted to go and see his granny. Then he asked, “Where does your granny live?”

“Near Palghat.”

“Have you got a ticket?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t have any money.”

Touched, he said, “Hop into my compartment. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t put it in your college magazine or I’ll lose my job. Just jump in here.” And he told the driver, “We have to take him to see his granny.”

There was such love in my eyes and such eagerness that even a railway guard, who sometimes can be pretty tough, was prepared to go out of his way and put me into his compartment. He let me out at Palghat and said, “Now run!”

From Palghat to my village it was seven miles of beautiful road with big trees on either side, sometimes with monkeys swinging from them. I used to enjoy walking along it, but more than the monkeys, and more than the trees, and more than the brooks, what gave me joy was the knowledge that every step would bring me closer to my granny. At that time I didn’t know she was my spiritual teacher; she was just my grandmother. When I arrived home, she would hold my hands and look and look at me; she didn’t need words. The first question she would ask me was, “What did you learn this week?” This gave me just the opportunity I had been waiting for. I would put my hands behind my back and say, “Now, Granny, listen carefully. This week the professor who teaches me logic has taught me what a syllogism is.” She used to gasp with admiration. “Syllogism!” Then, like most scholars, I would indulge in academic jargon to my heart’s content. Today I use very simple language; my standard is that what I say must be completely understandable to the garbage collector as well as the graduate student. If I were to consult some of my old academic colleagues on this, they would say I have become simplistic. I really thought my granny was simplistic, though I didn’t dare call her so. With the childlike simplicity of the spiritual woman, she would say, “Now, son, give me an example of this great learning that you have absorbed.” So I would quote my logic professor and say, “All men are mortal. I am a man. Therefore, ergo, I am mortal.” She just laughed and laughed and said, “I pay all this money so that you can learn this trash?” Then this unlettered, untutored woman stated the syllogism perfectly: “All men, all creatures, are immortal because the Lord lives in them. I am a creature. Therefore I am immortal.”

The secret of absorbing such spiritual wisdom is to open our hearts wide and give all our love to our spiritual teacher, who symbolizes our Atman for the present. When I would run home to see my granny, I did not know I had an Atman. Now that I look back I see that my grandmother was my Atman. That is why I loved her; she was my real ‘me,’ my perfect ‘me,’ my pure ‘me.’ I didn’t know this intellectually, but deep inside, from the very depths of my heart, a little voice was saying, “That’s you.” This is what happens to us when we see a great saint like Sri Ramana Maharshi. People whose hearts are not open, who have the window of their consciousness bolted and barred, look and see only a dapper, brown little man in a dhoti. But those whose hearts have opened, who are searching for the answer to the riddle of life and have flung the doors of their consciousness wide open, have only to see Sri Ramana Maharshi seated quietly before them to hear that little voice within them say in its sweet tones, “That’s you.” Beautiful hymns have been composed to Sri Ramana Maharshi; great singers and poets have described his beauty. But he will quietly say, “There is no Ramana Maharshi here. There is nobody here. It’s all empty. I am just an empty keyhole.” You apply your eye closely and look through this empty keyhole, and in the dim distance, you see the immense glory of the Lord flaming up against the background of the cosmos.

It is by this process of osmosis that spiritual awareness really comes to all of us. Books can never give spiritual awareness; it is only by seeing someone who has become united with the Lord through His grace that ordinary people like you and me can learn to discover our real Self.

SRI KRISHNA: 35. Arjuna, having attained this wisdom you will never again be deluded. You will see yourself in all creatures, and all creatures in me.

Once we wake up through the grace of the Lord from the long, lurid dream of multiplicity and separateness into the indivisible unity that pervades all life, we will never fall asleep again. Once we have awakened into this higher state of consciousness in which we see all as coming from God, subsisting in God, and returning to God, we cannot fall back again into the old dream of separateness. This is a significant verse because some people – great writers and artists, for example – have had an occasional flash in which they see the unity behind life for just a moment. Although they treasure the memory of this experience, they fall asleep again; they are caught again in the dream. Just as among dreams there are a few significant ones which strengthen us inwardly, so in this waking dream we may have an occasional insight into Reality, but we have no control over these experiences. Waking up permanently into a higher level of consciousness comes as the result of sustained sadhana. We can become established in the unitive state only through long and systematic discipline. These occasional flashes of mystical experience are only indications of a latent capacity which must be cultivated through the practice of meditation and ancillary disciplines if we are finally to wake up completely, never to fall asleep or dream again.

The word moha, ‘delusion,’ is used by Sri Krishna to tell us we are under a kind of hypnotic spell. We are all running after what we have been hypnotized to believe we want. We are told to go after money, and we start looking for money everywhere. We don’t want to know who we are because we are only looking for money. Some people even seem to have a dollar sign printed on their pupils; wherever they look they see possibilities for making money. They see a beautiful landscape and say, “Ah, what a nice subdivision this would make.” They go to a mountain top and see it as a good place for a motel. The same applies to pleasure. We are told to give our senses free rein by the mass media. The senses are wild horses that we can train to respond to the slightest move of our fingers. But if we do not train them, if we leave these wild horses to themselves, they will not know where to go; they will plunge headlong across moor and mountain, into morass and quagmire. We should never follow the siren call of sense-­pleasures which seems to tell us, “We will give you joy; we will give you security; we will give you fulfillment.” These promises are phantoms that will lead us further and further away from joy, from security, and from fulfillment.

As we progress on the spiritual path and awake from the confusion of separateness and self-will, we will begin to see the unity of life. We will begin to see the Lord in all. Even to be able to love a dog, we have to be spiritual. It is not enough if we buy a dog, get a collar, and call him Fido. The other day we saw a beautiful Newfoundland retriever in a car. He looked exactly like a small bear, occupying the whole front seat. The family who owned the dog must have been traveling throughout the night, because I could see from the bleary eyes of the dog that he hadn’t slept. His eyes reminded me of a scholar who has been poring over his books through the night; if he had been a human being he might have said, “I didn’t have a wink of sleep; I was up all night writing a paper on the tragedies of Shakespeare.” Instead he was trying to jump out of the car. I understand dogs very well, because I love them very much. I patted him and tried to clear his eyes a little, and he almost told me, “You know, I don’t like being cooped up in automobiles. One whole night I’ve been traveling. All I want is to jump out and run and run and run.” His eyes kept saying, “Run, run, run,” and in one moment he gave a leap and was out of the car. People thought he was a bear, and they were all running helter-skelter when his master, who would say he loves dogs, came and issued an order, “Get in!” He expected the dog to stand up and salute. The poor dog was trying to say, “All I want is a long, long run on the beach. Take me for a run, and then put me back in the car.” But there was one little boy we saw who really loved his dog. The dog was running on the beach wherever he wanted, and the boy was telling the dog, “I will follow you wherever you want to go.” The dog darted into the water, and the boy followed him into the water; then the dog jumped out of the water and onto a rock, and the boy followed him onto the rock. The boy was putting the dog first. In every relationship this is the secret of love. If I love you it means only one thing: that your happiness is more important to me than my own. This kind of love will give me the wisdom, the sensitiveness, and the will to conduct myself selflessly.

SRI KRISHNA: 36. Even if you were the most sinful of all sinners, you could cross beyond all sin by the raft of spiritual wisdom.

Spiritual wisdom, or jnana, which is developed through the practice of meditation, can do what nothing else can do; it is a boat that can take you across the stormy, treacherous sea of life. Sri Krishna says this jnana enables you to pick up two planks, discrimination and dispassion, tie them together, sit on them, and paddle with your hands until you reach the other shore of abiding joy, peace, and love.

The Compassionate Buddha was very fond of representing himself as a boatman offering to take us to the other shore that is nirvana. We usually tell ourselves he is misleading us; we like to be on this shore quarreling, manipulating, and being separate. The thought of going across to the other shore, where there are no quarrels, makes us wonder what we would do there.

Sri Krishna too says, in a magnificent verse in the invocation to the Bhagavad Gita, that he is kaivartakah keshavah, the boatman who will ferry us across the river of life to the other shore. We, however, prefer this shore. We don’t want to begin the journey towards peace and security; the mind keeps us on this shore visiting different ports here and there. In almost every port we have a love: food, money, clothes, all kinds of exotic things to add to our collection. But in moving away from this coast to the other, we must throw all these attachments overboard.

The grace of the Lord is like a wind that is blowing all the time, but it is our responsibility to get rid of our excess luggage and set the sail correctly. For a long, long time in meditation we are merely bailing out the boat and throwing things overboard. We all have an antique shop right in the basement: over the years we have collected all sorts of things, this one because it was on sale, that one because we couldn’t resist it. Some of the great mystics started, as you and I did, by throwing out things they had become tired of. This is how renunciation begins, by getting rid of things to which we are not very attached. If I have two sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I can give you one. We shouldn’t blame ourselves for beginning this way, for renunciation grows slowly with renunciation.

The second stage is harder; then we begin to throw away some of the things to which we are attached. There is a tussle, an inner conflict; to throw or not to throw is the question, but out it goes. But in the final stages, when we see the lights on the other shore, when we see Jesus walking about, the Buddha meditating, and Sri Krishna playing on the flute, all we want is to get where the action is. At that time, even selfish people like you and me, who have committed many mistakes in their ignorance, want to get there so fast that they take hold of everything – their glasses, the shirt on their back, even the sail and rudder – and start throwing it all overboard. The spiritual teacher will say at that time, “Don’t throw your glasses away; you won’t be able to see Sri Krishna!” In the final stages, the great difficulty is to persuade people to keep a few things, to keep their body fit and their intellect active to serve the Lord.

After reaching the other shore, to come back and take other people in your boat seems heartbreaking. When you have reached the shore of bliss and then come back, you see wars, famines, pestilence, and selfishness. You come back, as the Bible puts it, to the “valley of the shadow of death,” which takes a lot of renunciation. Sri Ramakrishna uses language which no other mystic has ever used to describe this. He calls it a soccer match. India is a poor country, and many of the fellows who really want to see a soccer match do not have the money to buy a ticket. But they have acrobatic skills, so they say to their friends, “Let’s stand on each other’s shoulders and have the fellow on the top, who can see over the bamboo fence, describe the game kick for kick, pass for pass, goal for goal.” With great effort, one of them finally gets to the top and sees the game. The whole team is playing as one; each team is putting the other one first. Who can lose? He gets so excited and so drawn in that he forgets his friends and throws himself over the fence. But a great mystic like Sri Ramakrishna, even though he sees the game and wants to jump in, thinks of all the poor people outside in life, so caught up in strife, so utterly miserable, and he denies himself the game. He jumps backwards, goes and gets us, and stands on the bottom so that we can get up on his shoulders and watch the game too. This is what Jesus is doing, what the Buddha is doing, standing and allowing anyone who wants to climb upon their shoulders and see the game. Great saints like Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana Maharshi, St. Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart, and St. John of the Cross have come and told us what the game is like. The Gita now asks us, “Don’t you too want to see this game where all become one, and to understand the game of lila, the divine play called life?”

SRI KRISHNA: 37. O Arjuna, even as the heat of a fire reduces wood to ashes, the fire of knowledge turns to ashes all selfish attachment to work.

38. Nothing in this world purifies like spiritual wisdom. It is the perfection achieved in time through the path of yoga, the path which leads to the Self within.

Sri Krishna says that even if in the past we have lived selfishly, often trying to snatch our happiness at the expense of others, jnana or spiritual wisdom will reduce our big funeral pyre of unfavorable karma to ashes. Do not be despondent over the past. Do not let it become oppressive. All the past, with all its mistakes, will fall away from us if we turn our eyes to the Lord with a one-pointed mind and travel untiringly towards the spiritual goal. This is the Lord’s promise given to us by the Gita.

In order to develop jnana, I know of no other discipline than the practice of meditation. In all religions, meditation – sometimes called contemplation or interior prayer – is emphasized by the great mystics as the path, the ladder of love, leading to the Lord. There are many allied disciplines, too, that accompany the practice of meditation, such as the discriminating restraint of the senses and the constant attempt to put the welfare of those around us first. One of the remarkable developments in meditation is that even if we take to meditation without any desire to practice these related disciplines, after a while we will be drawn to them. I used to have a friend who was allergic to my talk on vegetarianism. In an attempt to initiate me into the delights of eating my fellow creatures, he actually took me for dinner to a number of restaurants. He was meditating regularly, but every time I would talk about not wanting to eat my friends, he would say, “This doesn’t apply to me. I am going to show you that it is possible to progress in meditation without changes in diet.” I didn’t argue with him, which disappointed him; but after a year of meditation, he began to have a distaste for nonvegetarian food.

If we are practicing meditation regularly with sustained enthusiasm, this development is likely to take place. As meditation dispels the delusion of separateness, we become more and more conscious of a sense of fellowship with all creatures. The other day, while going to the beach, I was delighted to see the young lambs, some black-faced, some white-faced, running about on the green hills just like children. When we got to the beach, I enjoyed watching the sea gulls and those little creatures that I love so much, the sandpipers, who are like the imp Ariel in Shakespeare’s Tempest. They go up to the very edge of the water, and when a wave rolls in, they come running back on their thin little legs. We also saw three deer, a mother and two fawns, which had come down onto the beach. The people living nearby must have been very good to these deer for them to have such confidence; they were playing about, sure that the people loved them and wouldn’t harm them in any way.

As meditation deepens, our spiritual awareness should show itself in the capacity to understand the point of view of other creatures. Ecology is beginning to teach us that even in our relationships with plants and trees, we must be careful lest we exploit them thoughtlessly. Mahatma Gandhi was so aware of this relationship that he did not even like flowers to be plucked. He said a flower is most beautiful when it is on the bush. In India we have a hoary custom of garlanding people with heavy strings of flowers. Gandhi was constantly subjected to this garlanding, but when he became aware of his kinship with plants and trees, he told everyone that he would accept only garlands of homespun yarn made by the person offering the garland. This considerably reduced garlanding.

But while it is good to be friendly with trees and animals, it is most important to be friendly with human beings. It is most of all in our human relationships that we realize the unity of life. Trees don’t talk back. Animals don’t say, “Now you listen to me.” This give-and-take is the joy of the human situation. Wherever we go and say, “Now you listen to me,” the other person will say, “You first listen to me.” Where we find the you-first-listen-to-me attitude, there is the opportunity for patience. If there weren’t impatient people around us, how would we learn patience? I once asked my grandmother, my spiritual teacher, why there should be people to scold me, criticize me, attack me. Her reply was, “How else can you learn patience?” Left to ourselves we find it quite pleasant to say “Quiet!” and prevent others from talking. People who are not used to hearing no can become insufferable. When we purify ourselves by learning to be patient, by learning to forbear, we come at last to see the Lord hidden in our own and everyone’s heart.

SRI KRISHNA: 39. The man or woman who has spiritual wisdom as the highest goal, whose faith is deep and who restrains the senses, attains that wisdom quickly and enters into perfect peace.

40. But the ignorant, who are indecisive and without faith, waste their life. They can never be happy in this world or any other.

If I haven’t come to have faith in the Lord within, who is my real Self, then how can I be secure? How can I be at peace? How can I live for others or be loved by others? Here “faith,” or shraddha in Sanskrit, does not mean mere blind faith, but a deep belief based on personal experience. When we lead the spiritual life, we will begin to see an inner power guiding and protecting us in even the most difficult situations. When we experience this over and over again, we come to have a deep faith or shraddha in the Lord within. It is not enough if we have blind faith in spiritual ideals, based on the testimony of the scriptures or sages. We must realize these truths for ourselves, in our own life and consciousness. As the Buddha was fond of saying, the spiritual teacher only points the way; we must do our own traveling. The personal experience of others may plant the seed of shraddha in our hearts, inspiring us to lead the spiritual life, but shraddha can develop fully only if we experience these truths for ourselves.

While in South Africa, Gandhi made many friends among the people of the Christian community. One of these acquaintances tried to convert Gandhi to Christianity by assuring him that if he only had faith in Jesus he would be saved in spite of all his sins. Gandhi replied, “I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin.”

Without using the words religion or Lord, we can comment on this verse by recalling the famous inquiry of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who am I? The whole purpose of spiritual discipline is to discover who we are. In the supreme climax of meditation called samadhi, I discover that there is no separate me, no separate you, that all of us are governed by the underlying unity that is divine. On making this discovery, the rest of our life becomes an earnest endeavor to live in harmony with this unity, never inflicting suffering upon any creature but contributing to the best of our capacity to the progress of those around us.

Sri Krishna emphasizes that until and unless we come to have at least a dim awareness of the Lord within – which is what he calls shraddha, faith in oneself, faith in the unity of life, faith that the Lord is present in all – it is not possible to live in peace. Violence, in whatever form we see it, is a negation of this central unity. Any attempt at violence can only move people further and further apart. In every home and community there are likely to be occasional differences, occasions when someone may make a mistake. But the home or community can be held together if we believe in this underlying unity and act upon it.

SRI KRISHNA: 41. O Dhananjaya, the man or woman who is established in the Self, who has renounced selfish attachments in work and cut through doubts with spiritual wisdom, acts in freedom.

It is only after we have dehypnotized ourselves from the enticements of money and the blandishments of pleasure that we find how good it is to work when there is no paycheck coming. It is so soothing to work hard for the welfare of those around us without a mercenary motive that we forget all our tensions and frustrations. Some of us may contribute our time; for others it may be energy or skills. For still others it may be material possessions, or expert advice. But it is incumbent upon everyone to devote part of his or her resources to the welfare of others without any thought of personal profit or prestige.

Whatever we contribute to the welfare of others without a thought for our own profit or advancement is an offering made unto the Lord. On a poignant occasion, Jesus took his disciples to task by saying: “I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked, and you clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and you visited me not.”

And the disciples perhaps answered him, “We never saw you hungry; we never had any occasion to quench your thirst.”

Then Jesus really hit hard in answer: “Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.”

When people agitate us, it is often their way of asking for help. Anger is often a cry for help, and when we immediately get angry in return, we are actually pushing away a person who is half paralyzed. When someone is angry, the very best help we can render him or her is to be patient. The first time we do this the other person may actually take advantage of it, thinking, “Here is somebody who is very patient. I want a suitable outlet for my anger, and here is a godsend, just waiting for me to let him have it.” But we cannot improve the situation by returning anger for anger. This does not mean that we simply let angry people have their way, but that we patiently help them to see that their anger and self-will are not only harmful to others but to themselves as well.

SRI KRISHNA: 42. O Bharata, cut through this doubt in your heart with the sword of spiritual wisdom. Arise; take up the path of yoga!

Yoga is neither belief, nor dogma, nor metaphysics, nor philosophy. It is a method of union, a way of uniting all that is divided in our consciousness, uniting all life into the Divine Ground which is one. Yoga has very little to do with physical postures; the correct word for them is asana. We find all kinds of misuses of the word yoga in newspapers, magazines, and books, but in the Hindu scriptures yoga refers to the method, the spiritual disciplines, used to unify our consciousness so that we can come to love the Lord within.

Sri Krishna gives us a secret useful in daily life when he says we should be free from doubts. Most of us are plagued by doubts: “Does she love me? Sometimes I think so, but maybe she doesn’t.” She is also thinking the same thing. My grandmother had a severe statement to make about this kind of misgiving. She would say that we doubt whether others love us because our own love is divided. Wherever we have some reservation or division within ourselves, we look at others through it and immediately say, “He isn’t loving me enough.” The whole secret of love is not to ask how much others love us but to keep on loving – as St. Francis would say, more than we can. The more we try to love, the more we will be able to love. The passage of time should enrich our love: the person who loves at sixteen should be able to love much more at thirty. It is possible for all of us to deepen our capacity to love by constantly trying to put the welfare of those around us first, until we are finally able to love the Lord in everyone around us.

When we begin to practice meditation, too, it is not unnatural for us to have some doubts and misgivings about the timeless truths of the spiritual life. We all accept the infallibility of physical laws, but when it comes to spiritual laws we are not quite sure. We all believe in the law of gravity, but we sometimes ignore the law of karma. The spiritual teacher does not say that physical laws do not work; he says that spiritual laws, however, are also valid. The charge of fanaticism should really be leveled at the worldly person, because that is the person who says, “Only the physical world is real. I only believe in what I see with my eyes, hear with my ears.” But we have the personal testimony of those who have rebuilt their lives on these timeless truths that they are not only real, but accessible to all. Gandhi, who practiced complete nonviolence in thought, word, and deed, said, “I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.” Gandhi, who always claimed he had no more than ordinary capacities, is proof that these spiritual laws do work, and that by obeying them we can transform our character and consciousness. Gandhi belongs to our own century and faced many of the problems we ourselves are facing today, and even though physically dead, he still continues to give new direction to our civilization.

Even when we do come to believe in the validity of spiritual laws, we may still doubt our capacity to reach the goal by following all the drastic disciplines of meditation and sadhana. It is natural that this doubt should continue to haunt us for a long time, but as we go deeper and deeper into our consciousness through the practice of meditation, this doubt also will disappear when our desires are completely unified. What is most urgent is that we start now without allowing our purpose to be weakened by doubts and misgivings, and follow with resolute enthusiasm the path recommended by the Gita.

Sri Ramakrishna used to say that if you repeat Gita, Gita, Gita it becomes tagi, tagi, tagi, which means ‘one who has renounced.’ The Gita does not ask us to renounce our family or the world, but to renounce our self-will and separateness, which are the only barriers between us and the Lord of Love enshrined in our hearts. The ­English word “renounce” strikes a cold note, but the Sanskrit word tyaga implies a positive, joyful act in which we find fulfillment. In the words of Jesus, we have to lose ourselves to find ourselves.

When Gandhi was asked to sum up the secret of his life in three words, he quoted the opening of the Isha Upanishad: Tena tyaktena bhunjithah, “Renounce and enjoy.” Only when we renounce all selfish attachment, he meant, can we really enjoy anything in life. I would go farther and say, “Renounce and rejoice.” When we renounce our petty, finite ego in living for the welfare of all, we find infinite joy. In self-naughting we gain the joy of self-mastery and the limitless capacity to love others more than we love ourselves.

We can practice this in the midst of our own family if we try to keep the happiness of our parents, partner, children, and friends first in our consciousness, and our own happiness last. The going may be rough, but gradually we will gain the love and respect of ­everyone in our family and community. In time all those who come in contact with us will benefit by our sadhana and our selfless living.