Omm Namo Bhagavate

Sannyasa of Gita is not outer renunciation of matter. Gita neither approves nor recommends any type of outer renunciation. Outer renunciation is itself an antithesis of Gita’s philosophy. If nothing belongs to you, what is there to be renounced?

You are Brahman, you are atman, you are awareness. You have entered into this zone of experience to experience the objects. Whatever you will experience, whatever you are experiencing, and whatever is left for you to experience, nothing belongs to you. Everything belongs to prakriti. So how can you renounce that which does not belong to you? If something belongs to you, you can say, “Okay, I am renouncing.” But if it is not yours and you say, “I am renouncing,” that is not only ignorance, it is hypocrisy.

One who is ignorant says, “I have renounced,” and one who is foolish says, “I will renounce.” But one who is learned never says, “I will renounce,” because he knows through his conceptual clarity that, “I am Brahman, I am Atman, I have entered into the prakriti. I am awareness. Out of my self-will I entered into this zone of experience. Nothing belongs to me. So what is there for me to renounce?” With this clarity he proceeds to attain wisdom, and as much he becomes wise so much he knows that there is really nothing to be renounced. Gita yoga is neither for the ignorant nor for the foolish. It is for the wise.

What actually happens is that when this Brahman, this atman, enters into the zone of experience and starts experiencing prakriti, or matter, due to constant linkage with experience, slowly the being starts forgetting its own nature, which is awareness. As much as the awareness becomes reduced, so much the identification with experience and the object of experience increases. Then a time comes when the awareness is completely gone and the jiva begins to feel and think, “This is mine.”

The problem is that the yogi has accumulated so much samskara and so much karma, and is carrying so much identification, and needs to get rid of these. Getting rid of identification is called renunciation in Gita yoga: not getting rid of outer matter but getting rid of inner identification.

Gita’s renunciation is twofold. First is getting rid of the experience. Second is getting rid of the object. Not vice versa. First is getting rid of the experience, so don’t chase experience. If you have gone to your friend’s house and your friend has served you a delicious dish to eat and you like the taste and you feel, “Oh, if I will return to his house he will again give me this,” then you find excuses how to go again and you call the friend. That means you are creating karma, and chasing the experience. You want that experience to come you again through your effort, whereas the natural law says let experience come to you, rather than you going to the experience. That’s Gita yoga.

Let it come to you without putting any effort, because you are the lord of matter. Why should you chase it? Let it come and when it does, experience it with moderation—so that it will not allow your awareness to be swallowed up. Be conscious of how much you can experience so that you are not losing your awareness that, “I am Brahman, I am Atman, I am here to experience; I am the subject, let me not become the object.” Remain as subject; never become the object whereby someone or something else will experience you. You are the experiencer. That is what the last verse of the fifth chapter of Gita says: “I am the experiencer, I am the enjoyer.” How can you become the enjoyer, how can you become the experiencer if you are the object of experience? Don’t become the object; remain always as the subject. If you do that, if you remain as the experiencer, then the object will come to you automatically; you need not run towards the object. This is the secret of Gita yoga.

Renunciation of Gita is inner. You get rid of the inner identification with the objects of experience, with persons, and with places. Be delinked without making any formal announcement. Then your inner journey will not be challenged from the outer world. But if you begin by making announcements, challenges will come from all around. This is the reason first you have to acquire knowledge; you should get jnana, and wherefrom you get jnana? Not by reading books but from the jnanis. That is what was told in Verse 196.

Receive this from enlightened masters, not by reading books. It won’t come to you that way. Reading will only give you more information, not more knowledge, because knowledge cannot be acquired, it can only be attained. It is there in you, so receive this jnana from the enlightened masters. When you receive it you can know how to burn your karma, your samskara, your identification, as explained in Verse 197. With this jnana you will be able to see clearly and you will begin to see you, the Self.

These are all attainments before coming to the stage of sannyasa in the fifth step of Gita. One can know from looking within what stage of Gita he has reached. “Am I in dejection stage or am I in discrimination, have I come to the action stage, or have I climbed to the knowledge stage?” This is how the yogi should constantly ask himself.

At what stage of sadhana are you?

You cannot climb to the fifth step by lifting both of your legs at the same time. You will fall. But by lifting one foot to sannyasa while the other foot stands firmly on jnana, you can climb. This is the way. Jnana has to come first. With the help of this jnana, the yogi will begin to practice sannyasa. This practice must first be inner because yoga is inner, not outer. Ascetic bareness, compulsive asceticism and compulsory self-denial, Gita says all these will lead to self-deception and hypocrisy. If you have not acquired anything why do you bother to renounce anything? Even if you have acquired something, because now you are having jnana and you know nothing will go with you, why do you waste your time by outer renunciation? “To whom shall I give this house, to whom shall I give all my money, to whom shall I give all these things that I have acquired?” This is itself the proof that still the “you” is active, not the He.

Renunciation is a practice, not an action. Practice renunciation. It is not as easy as simply changing from your white cloth to an ocher robe and you become a sannyasi. That is hypocrisy. It is not so easy that simply you leave your wife and children and just go and stay in an ashram and say, “I am a sannyasi.” That is bogus. Those who do this create another samsara. Instead, allow the identifications to fall from within. When you are linked with You, all that is not You will automatically fall apart. Be linked with You. This is such a simple, profound truth. I can’t express the joy that I began to feel within when I conceptually understood it.

The jnani Arjuna committed this same mistake that all the yogis commit. He suddenly wanted to climb to sannyasa with both of his feet. When he found it is not possible he got confused and asked in Verse 205, “Krishna, you are praising renunciation and also you are praising action in material plane. I am confused. You are saying, be on matter and respond to matter and perform action as a yogi, and then you are saying renounce action and be a jnani. Tell me therefore, O Lord, O Guide, O Guru, O Master, precisely which one is better for me.”

Why this confusion is coming to Arjuna? Arjuna who asked this question is no other than you. You are Arjuna. Arjuna literally means one who is awakened to the inner call. Every seeker is Arjuna and every seeker commits the same mistake as Arjuna. When they listen of karma, they say, “I will be a karma yogi.” When they listen to the jnana they say, “Now I will get rid of this karma. I will simply stay with Swamiji or be in the ashram and listen to discourses—that will take me away to the highest state.” And when they come in contact with a bhakta, “Oh, twenty-four hours a day I will only chant God’s name.” Then when they come across with a yogi and they find, “He is in the bliss of meditation,” they sit and close their eyes thinking they can enter into samadhi.

When a child is with his father he want to imitate the father, when the child is with the mother he wants to imitate the mother, when the child with friends he wants to imitate the friends. But yoga is not a child’s play, it is an adult’s resolve. If the seeker does not have the resolve of an adult, nothing is attainable in yoga. This is the reason Gita yoga was revealed to an adult who had gone through all the experiences of life: fame as well as defamation, success as well as failure, ecstasy and depression, anger and infatuation, love and repulsion. He was having ambition and desire, and also his psychic bliss; he was having inner silence and also the outer noise and nuisance. He had experienced everything, and only an adult can do that, not a child.

This is the mighty yoga; this is for the warriors, not the cowards. A coward is one who runs away from the battlefield without fighting. So in yoga, a coward is one who runs away from the challenges of yoga the moment he or she feels “Oh, it will rob me of my ecstasy, it will rob me of my indulgence, it will rob me from my socializing, it will rob me from my relationship.” Gita yoga is not for this type of person.

Be grounded on jnana, then attempt sannyasa. As I said, jnana is not bookish knowledge, it is getting linked with the guru in consciousness always. Jnana is not reading volumes of books, not listening to discourses of a half a dozen seers or masters. Jnana is the link; it constantly flows as water constantly flows through the pipe, miles and miles so that the moment you open the tap, water flows down. Water is already there in the pipe, so you have to simply open the tap, then your bucket will be full. If water is not there in the pipe, you can’t fill the bucket.

The link with the guru must be constant and this link should be inner not outer. Jnana is compared with a burning lamp, and to keep the lamp continually burning, the link with the guru must be constant. That inner link is not an outer relationship. Outer relationship is necessary for social life: you meet your parents regularly, and you maintain your friendships. These are all outer relationships that have to be maintained. But the inner link you have to sustain, not maintain. In Verse 196, Gita says there are three ways you can sustain it. First is inner humility. Be humble whenever you think of your master. Just be humble because he is so vast and you are so limited, he is infinite and you are finite, he is the ocean you are the drop. This awareness is called the state of humility. If you are thinking of your master and such awareness is not coming, then you have not understood what is humility. Humility is not an outer posture or prostration; humility is an inner state of consciousness of feeling small in comparison to the biggest. If that quality is there in you, your relationship with the master is sustained.

Second is self-inquiry, which means, let the soul in you ask you the question, “Are you on the right path? You want to do this but are you sure it will not swallow your awareness?” This constant questioning will come because someone is there within who is constantly asking you, and he who is asking is the guru, because the guru is the embodiment of jnana only. If he is seated in your heart, he will constantly keep asking you whenever you are going out of the track, like, “Okay, I understand he is your friend but are you not entering into gossip? Maintain your relationship but don’t lose your awareness.” This type of thought will come to you. That means your link with the guru is sustained.

Third is to render service. This does not mean rendering service to your neighbor or friend. Render service to one who is on the same path. Render service to one who has attained higher awareness than you. Render service to to one who is awakened, to one who is carrying the awakening, or to one who is struggling to sustain his awakening. This is called seva. Not by cooking food, nor by massaging their feet nor by cleaning their room. These are all outer. These are needed but for maintenance, not for sustenance. Whereas Gita recommends seva for sustenance, not maintenance. This type of seva does not require money, nor a chunk of your time. It can be rendered even through consciousness by transmitting thought waves, by transmitting love, by simply whispering a few words of wisdom, or by simply sending an ounce of your heart’s love. That is seva to a seeker, a seer, an awakened being and one who  struggles to sustain his awareness.

When you are rendering seva to one who is struggling to sustain his awareness, you are actually rendering seva to the enlightened master, because enlightened beings remain in the body only to raise some people, and liberate some souls to the state of pure awareness. By assisting them in their mission you are actually rendering seva to them. But people don’t understand this. They consider that seva means they must cook the food, prepare the bed and carry the luggage. That is not seva because those who are truly enlightened, they don’t remain in the body; they only function through the body. They are not aware of their body; they simply allow you to render seva to their form out of their compassion for you, because you are at that level. Only by allowing you to do what you are feeling to do, they give you the chance to be lifted up.

Those who demand seva, those who expect seva from others, they have not become light; they are still in search of light. Those who demand love, those who expect love, those who run towards love, those who crave love, they have not become love itself, they are still searching for it. The same goes for jnana. Those who are reading books to know, or listening to know, or who are asking to be explained, they are not the manifest embodiments of jnana. They are still searching, still acquiring. But those who are acquiring and searching can never transmit it. To transmit you have to be that. The sun must be light itself then only it can transmit light. The fire must be heat itself then only it can transmit heat. In the same way, a person has to be love itself then only he can transmit love. A person has to be jnana itself then only he can transmit jnana.

To be linked with such enlightened beings is the first step, and when you are attempting sannyasa your link with the jnana, and the source of jnana—the guru–must be intact and solid. Otherwise you cannot enter into sannyasa.

Why are people not drawn to Gita? It is because guides are not available to transmit Gita. If guides will be available then the whole world will be drawn to Gita because this is supreme knowledge, supreme wisdom, and the eternal path. All other paths are only subways and by-lanes. This is the only freeway.

[From an August 2013 Interaction at the Divine Mission Center in Sacramento, USA.]