Omm Namo Bhagavate

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 122

The Blessed Lord said:

Arjuna, to reach the highest state I have shown two approaches to people in this world long ago. One is through the technique of knowledge for the followers of Sankhya and the other is through the technique of yogic action for the followers of yoga.  3.3

In this verse, the Lord is saying that in this Earth plane, sadhana is of two types.  For the followers of Sankhya it is jñäna yoga and for the yogis it is karma yoga.  I had explained this to you before, he says.  This is Chapter Three.  Where did he explain this before?

Verse 86: Arjuna, the wisdom that you just received belongs to the tradition of Sankhya; now hear from Me the essence of the yoga of intellect which will enable you to be free from the bondage of action.  2.39

In Verse 86 he had said, “I explained this approach to you through Sankhya.”  Sankhya is discriminatory knowledge, that is, discriminating between Self and the non-Self.  The Self is all pervading, immutable, free from contamination, pure awareness.  Everything else is non-Self.

In the first part of the second chapter he gave the full definition and explanation of the nature of the Self and he showed how to do the sadhana of the Self, the sadhana of the awareness.  For these persons the goal is realization of the Self.  After Verse 86 he explained the sadhana of the supreme Self as it is manifesting on the non-Self, that is, in matter.  In Verse 86 he said, “You have listened to this from the angle of Sankhya; now you listen to it from the angle of yoga.”  In Verse 87 he says, “In this approach there is no loss, no fear of contrary result nor is there any apprehension of incurring sin.  Even a little progress in this path saves one from great fear.”

There is no fear of contrary result in yogic action, that is, in the second approach.  But it is implied that there is fear of contrary result in the first approach.  What type of contrary result is likely if one is not proceeding correctly on the sadhana of the self?

Participant: They are afraid they will not reach the Self.

Yes.  If he is stuck up somewhere he will take another birth, come as a yogabrashta.  But if he is doing it in a wrong way, then a contrary result will come.  He will fall back in awareness to the plane of matter.

Sadhana of the Self is the sadhana of expanding the awareness unilaterally.  As much as the awareness expands, so much is the experience swallowed by this awareness.  But if the person is not doing it in the right way, instead of expanding awareness, he will begin to expand experience.  His awareness will be fully swallowed by experience and he will become fully deluded.  But a yogi is not likely to be fully deluded, because the progress in yoga cannot be fully neutralized.

In Verse 273 the Lord says, ‘Arjuna, a yogi can never lose everything.  If he is not able to reach the goal, he will take another birth and he will be born in the family of the pure and prosperous, or he may be born in the family of saints and seers.’  For this second category there might be material struggle but in the first category there are no worries for any material struggle.  Pure means ethical and moral, prosperous means having enough to take care of all your reasonable needs.  A yogi only cares about his reasonable needs.  If an air conditioner is needed, it comes; if a fan is needed, it comes without struggling too much.  If the shade of a tree is needed, it is available.

A yogi does not need anything that is not required for his sadhana.  He is satisfied with whatever is available without putting too much effort, without making a desire, without demanding it.  That is yoga.  If prakriti is providing something less than optimum, the yogi may feel irritated or depressed, but he is able to overcome it quickly.  When he advances in the path of yoga, this symptom will vanish totally.  He will say, “Okay, that’s fine.  It was ordained for me to walk five miles, so I am walking.”  But if the person is feeling sad, thinking that because he does not have money, that’s why he cannot go in an air-conditioned vehicle, or if he thinks that he cannot be comfortable in a non-air conditioned vehicle and changes his plan accordingly, he is not a yogi.

If one who is doing the yoga of the Self is misguided and his experience will begin to expand, that yogi will be a hundred times more indulgent in the experiential plane.  That is a great loss to humanity.  One hundred deluded beings becoming more deluded makes no difference, but one awakened yogi who has really made progress then becomes deluded is a great loss for the Earth consciousness.  This is the reason guiding true seekers, giving them inspiration, support or service so that they are able to make progress, is considered the most intense punya karma.  You cannot substitute that punya with any type of charity or service or austerity.

If a yogi who is on the path of meditation, and beyond material desire, material possession and material craving, pursues a wrong direction—and at this stage of sadhana the wrong direction would be changing his track and accepting our path as his path—what will happen to him?  Gita says your path is better; others’ path is fraught with danger.  Changing one’s track is not allowed in yoga.

If a karma yogi changes the track and turns to only meditation, it is full of danger.  When a karma yogi who is sincerely pursuing yoga gets frustrated, or is convinced that he has fallen and there is no chance for him in this life, he will want to kill himself.  But if a yogi on the Sankhya path falls, he will fall from awareness to experience, and he will become ten times more indulgent.

I do not want any of my people to make that type of mistake.  Our time is limited and our goal is certain, definite.  We have to reach it, but our battle should be over at the midday of life.  Then the rest of the life we will be the instruments of divine manifestation.

The yoga of the Self can lead you to Self-realization and God-realization.  The yoga of the supreme Self begins with your conviction that you are the Self and you are here for something that is the responsibility of the Supreme.  You have a role to play as the called and chosen.  You are therefore doing yoga so that the supreme Self can manifest on the world of non-Self through you and your yoga.

You are the instrument, the channel, the pure Self and the spark of the Supreme.  You have nothing to gain.  You the spark have come from that total complete, so you are also inherently complete, full, pure and perfect.  Why are you here?  Because a crisis has come and you have descended as per supreme will with a commitment to complete this duty so that manifestation will be possible through you.

We are not doing karma yoga, dhyana yoga or Sankhya yoga; these are some of our instruments, our weapons.  We are in the battlefield.  It is an epochal battle and we are alone, fully armed to face any eventuality and counter any type of uncertainty.  Divine has prepared us so that we know which weapon to use at what time: when the discrimination weapon will be used, when the yogic action weapon will be used, when renunciation will be used, when pure knowledge will be used.  Do you see the difference?  These are all our weapons.

In my day-to-day life I am using many of these weapons when I am interacting with outer prakriti.  Sometimes I am so involved that you feel I am only attached to you and nothing else.  The next moment I am so far away that even your consciousness cannot reach there; so near but so far.  Sometimes I am so compassionate that I can forgive you if you are coming with a cup of poison and telling me to drink it, and sometime I am so ruthless that your ounce of mistake I am magnifying as if it is an ocean of mistake.  Sometimes fully involved, sometimes fully detached, sometimes fully embracing and sometimes giving you a severe kick.  When you become I, no one can take you for granted.  You are friend to all, enemy to none, serving all, attached to none.  That’s the state that will come.

Gita yoga is the yoga of collaboration with Divine.  Only a divinized human being can collaborate with Divine.  Otherwise how can a person be fully involved in an action, knowing for certain that the result is never going to come, that the project that Swamiji is launching with such fanfare is never going to happen, never going to be completed?  Why are you getting involved?  Because you are not human beings, you are divine beings who are trying to get rid of your human contamination.

We are doing the yoga of the supreme Self, trying to manifest the supreme Self through our own mind, life and body.  We are called and chosen; we are not deluded human beings.  The idea that we are deluded was fed to us, but ever since anyone has come to me, I am de-conditioning this by constantly saying that you are called and chosen.  That’s why you could recognize me and find your link with me.

Our sadhana is to expand the experience on the foundation of awareness without allowing the experience to be expanded more than the awareness.  We are not expanding the experience at the cost of awareness.  Whereas in the yoga of the Self, awareness is expanded at the cost of experience, so manifestation is not possible, although realization is assured.  In our case, realization is assured and manifestation is a struggle.  I have nothing more to realize, but I am struggling to manifest what I have realized.

Our job is to manifest divinity on matter.  First, we need highly evolved human beings, not deluded human beings.  We need seers and saints, jñanis and bhaktas and determined yogis.  Second, we need a material foundation.  Matter is divine, and it belongs to Divine.  ‘All wealth in its origin belongs to Divine, but due to the usurpation of the forces of the ego and the asura it has been under the possession of undivine forces, and because of its long possession it is contaminated and carrying the seal and stamp of I-ness in it.’  From the money chapter of The Mother book by Sri Aurobindo.  Whoever is possessing wealth gets contaminated with this I-ness, feeling “This is mine.”  It is very rare to find people in Kali Yuga who have a million but who don’t think it belongs to him or her.  I am that fortunate master who has found at least half a dozen people in my lifetime who have reached this stage and can say, “It does not belong to me, it belongs to Divine.”

Our yoga is the yoga of manifesting Divine through our mind, life and body.  My yoga was to manifest Divine through my form and because this is manifested, you are here listening to jñäna.  God is knowledge first.  Because it is manifested you are ready to sacrifice everything for me.  That is called love.  And because it is manifested, I am working for a global mission to manifest Truth consciousness.

My individual yoga is finished; my universal yoga has begun.  As a part of that universal yoga I am trying to manifest through your form what I have realized.  Now my yoga is to ensure that you are becoming a manifesting channel of divinity, of the Knowledge, the Wisdom and the Love that is manifested through my form.  This is very and visible.  But compare this with the other goal: a master attains nirvikalpa samadhi, can he transfer the nirvikalpa samadhi to another disciple?  No.  It is not possible.

Many of you are able to answer questions with clarity and depth that many realized saints are unable to answer.  Does it not prove that manifestation is already taking place, as far as jñäna is concerned?  Now collectively we are struggling at the second level, love.  But if knowledge has come, love cannot be far behind.  How soon love will manifest through your reaction depends on how much knowledge you are manifesting through your action.

If action is manifesting knowledge, the next thing that is guaranteed is that love will manifest through your reaction.  When love is manifested through reaction, the third thing is automatically guaranteed: truth is manifested through your interaction.  The truth is awakened in the person with whom you interact and he or she enters into a higher state of awareness.  Some transmission takes place that awakens the force of truth within and the awareness expands.  I want each one of you to become a living embodiment of this force on Earth.

Our sadhana is the sadhana of manifestation.  You should be a manifesting channel of divine love, of pure Self-knowledge, and you should be a transmitting channel of pure awareness so that whosoever comes in close contact with you feels awakened, looks to the inner being and is bound to think of something other than mere indulgence.  This is why our goal and our yoga are very difficult.

This is the reason a Krishna has to be there even at the eighteenth chapter, to give the final clarification, so that the battle is fought with adherence to the law of battle.  Victory is attained and then there will be a delightful farewell.

I want you all to take that type of farewell from Earth with sheer delight: my days are over, my mission is accomplished, and I am convinced you are capable to manage the kingdom.  Leave like a Bhishma, or leave like a Krishna, either way you are reaching the abode.

That’s our goal, that’s our mission, that’s our path.

From a February 2010 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai