Link to World Peace Mantra
Support the Forces of Harmony, Love and Peace
Omm Namo Bhagavate
Announcement from Swamiji regarding the current global situation.
- For more details, see the next post, above.
- To hear a recording of the World Peace Mantra that Swamiji mentions, visit Satyachetana International.
In the Heart of Every Being
Omm Namo Bhagavate
From a September 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India. 11 minutes.
New Book: “Life and Yoga”
before gifting it to Monisha, a visiting devotee.
Omm Namo Bhagavate
Announcing the USA edition of Swamiji’s new book Life and Yoga, now available for worldwide delivery. This collection of excerpts from Swamiji’s spoken interactions discusses a wide range of yogic topics in simple language that makes even the deepest concepts easily accessible. To order, visit Satyachetana Publications.
New Year Message 2022
Omm Namo Bhagavate
Message for the New Year 2022
Welcome all beings, Awakened Seekers, Enlightened Seers, Masters, Teachers and Light Workers, Lovers Of Humanity and Mother Earth.
I welcome all to enter with Me into this year 2022,
“The Year of Upheaval and Hope.”
Let us all transcend our individual Asmita, ego of the Lower Nature,
and enter into the Universal in us
and work for the great transformation of the consciousness on Earth
and collaborate with each other
to handle the pressure of upheaval and turmoil of 2022
with hope and determination.
Cling to the Universal if you aspire to be a collaborator,
or be prepared to perish!
This is going to be an extremely challenging year for all of us.
Let us Live for the Universal,
Live with the Universal.
Blessings and Love,
Bhagavan Sri Atmananda
New Year 2022
Satyachetana Ashram
Tiruvannamalai, India
Action Without Attachment
Omm Namo Bhagavate
The unwise always act with attachment, but the wise man should always act without attachment to ensure the maintenance of world order.
Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 144
Karma, or action, has a purpose. What is that purpose? For an ignorant person the purpose is desire fulfillment. If there is no chance of gain an ignorant person will not work.
If we ask this ignorant person, what is gain–is it an experiential concept or a concept of understanding, every ignorant man will say it is experiential. He may not know anything else, but he knows very well how it is going to benefit him or not. Direct experience is a gain. Gain and lose are relative experiential terms, not intellectual terms.
Action originates from experiential validation. Without experience nobody will perform action. The reason many people are not interested in action is because they are ignorant, and they do not find any chance of enriching, expanding, sustaining or perpetuating their experience.
This verse says that the unwise always act with attachment. This attachment is to self-gain, result, reward and benefit. Even a child is not willing to listen if you do not pamper and tempt him: “I will give you a chocolate, just run there and bring that thing.” And child will run.
This means the embodied being may be completely deluded about the reality, but is always wise about one thing: the possibility of experience. That’s the purpose for which the supreme Self (paramatma) became the individual self (jivatma) and entered into a human form in this material world. That’s the main root from where this whole karma started. The Brahman, the unmanifest, took up the form for the purpose of experiencing himself, the prakriti. The manifest is the jivatma, the unmanifest is the paramatma, and experience is the key. When experience is finished or transcended, the jivatma becomes paramatma.
If experience is finished, there is nothing more to experience, and the cycle is complete. That is called liberation. It is liberation from this cycle of unmanifest to manifest, to unmanifest, back to manifest. This cycle continues as long as the experience remains incomplete; once the experience is complete there is no more coming and going.
Karma is nothing but desire that is stored up and accumulated, which has to be finished. The mystery is that in the process of satisfying one desire we create another desire. That is why this maze is never finished.
Liberation means to finish this desire for experience, which requires first switching off the process of manufacturing desire. So experience must be finished, then only liberation is possible. It can be finished three ways. One is by experiencing it. Second is by burning it through the fire of knowledge. If this fire is constantly burning within, the moment the desires arise in consciousness they come into contact with this fire and are burnt. Third is if it can simply be washed away through grace; that is bhakti.
The easiest and best way is to finish it through experience. This is the reason the very first advice that Lord Krishna gave to Arjuna is to endure these experiences calmly:
Verse 61: Arjuna, the feeling of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are caused by the contact of senses with the objects of pleasure. These feelings are temporary and recurring in nature; therefore, endure them calmly.
Verse 62: O best among men, the wise men who do not get perturbed with this feeling of pain and pleasure are indeed fit to attain immortality.
Enduring calmly is possible only if you are prepared to go through the experience. If you are avoiding experience, what is there for you to endure? Therefore, allow prakriti to take you beyond experience through experience. Don’t run towards pleasure, or away from pain. If pain is coming, endure it. That is Gita’s advice.
“O best among men” means the hero, the leader, and here Gita is talking of awakened beings, those who are yogis. One who is the king among the yogis is the most awakened and most determined. Such a person will not run away from the possibility of pain, defamation, torture, or hardship. He will endure it calmly.
The unwise are ignorant about the process of karma: how it is created, how it is burnt, how it is washed away and how it is transcended. You cannot renounce karma. You can only suppress it. That is why renunciation is a myth. How can you renounce anything?
Verse 146: Actions are performed by the modes of prakriti, but the ignorant person whose mind is deluded attaches doership to every action and thinks, “I am the doer.”
All the actions are done by prakriti. Due to ignorance the egoistic man feels, “I do it.” One who says, “I am not going to do it,” is equally ignorant.
The concept of knowledge in Gita is not intellectual understanding, but experiential validation of the understanding. If it has been experientially validated by you then that is wisdom. So knowledge of Gita is called wisdom, and one who has this wisdom is called a wise man. He is different from a learned man. A learned man is a scholar; a wise man is a seer. A learned man knows the scriptural meaning, the surface meaning, but a wise man knows the experiential meaning, the deep inner meaning, because it has been validated by his experience of life.
In Verse 144 when the Lord uses the word “unwise” this includes every category of learned men, from one who has just began to study scripture to one who is giving discourses on scripture. These are different levels of ignorance. Only when wisdom comes does action begin, and it is purified, profound action that dispels ignorance. That is what Gita means.
Gita is a yogashastra, a scripture on yoga, and it has to be interpreted from the angle of yoga. Yoga is not theory, nor a philosophy. It is practice and a process. My translation is a practical one that can show the path to one who really wants to enter into it.
Lord Krishna says, “The unwise always work due to attachment.” For such people, the nature of their action is constantly busy. If you ask them whether they are saturated with their karma, they will say no, and tell you their long list of responsibilities. But if you ask a wise man, he will say, “My work is always complete. I am simply responding to prakriti’s signal, doing nothing, simply responding.” This will be the realization.
This ignorance I am referring to is not lack of scriptural knowledge, but lack of experiential depth. The ignorant are constantly busy, always chasing pleasure or gain, fame or power, physical or mental or vital. As they are constantly working, a wise man should also keep constantly working, but the big difference is that the first group works for self-pleasure and self-gain, while the second group works only for manifestation. There is no other motive for the wise men. And they are constantly busy. The prime minister of a country is constantly busy, and an enlightened seer sitting in the solitude of a cave is also constantly busy.
When I was in the cave, sitting like a statue, I was constantly busy. Whenever I was coming back to body consciousness, my thought was going towards the whole humanity. I saw that the tsunami of ignorance had completely submerged the earth consciousness. I felt that the monkeys who were staying with me in the cave were really liberated, but the human beings who were bringing me fruits or milk were completely deluded. So a feeling of deep compassion was flowing and the thought that came was, how can the human soul be protected from this wave of ignorance that is surging ahead?
That was my thought every moment while I was in body consciousness. Now also that is the only thought that is the source of my action drive. Although there is no need and no compulsion, that is the motivational base of all my action.
That is Gita’s command in Verse 144: the wise man should also constantly act, never remaining in inaction even for a moment. Why? Lord Krishna says, for setting an example before others, and for sustaining and maintaining the world order. If that motivation is not coming and you feel you have nothing to do, I will say, in the light of Gita’s revelation, you have not reached the highest state of realization.
Remaining in a human form, if even for a moment any withdrawal symptoms are coming to you, then you have not reached the highest state. Krishna never felt frustrated in his life, even for a moment. That is why he is the most perfect human being that ever came to Earth: no frustration, and never for a moment Krishna was having this thought, “I have nothing to do.” That is why he is the highest ideal for every yogi.
In this verse, wise man means an enlightened being, the person who has fully understood the process and has validated it by his life’s experience. Such a person should not withdraw from or run away from action. He should constantly perform it for the sake of setting an example, and for maintaining world order. That is Gita’s message for the masses, and Gita’s command for the enlightened seers. This drive that one must work constantly should be retained until the last breath remains in the body. Till that moment man should continuously work, because this is the field of karma, and this karma must be performed for manifestation of dharma. If karma is not performed for manifestation of dharma then this field of action will become kurukshetra, the battlefield, and instead of becoming a valley of light and an ocean of love, life will become a battlefield of injury and death and disaster.
Every karma is a signal for expansion or a rope to trap you. If karma is not coming to you don’t run after it. This is natural law, prakriti’s secret. Anything that is needed for survival is already given. Understanding this secret, if you proceed on the track of life, keeping your awareness always in an expanded state, as this experience comes it will not overpower you. That is the message I get from this verse of Gita.
If you are performing action for the sake of setting an example and sustenance of world order, then you are a wise man. If you are performing action for any other purpose then you are not wise. Maybe you are learned man, a noble man, a charitable person, a literate person, an intellectual, a philosopher, a swamiji, a guru, or god on earth, but Gita puts all of these in the category of unwise people. This is the inner meaning of this verse.
It can be interpreted both as advice and as a command. It is advice for those who are studying Gita as a scripture on dharma, but it is a command from the Lord for those who are studying Gita as a scripture on yoga. This verse was a command for me: perform action continuously even though you have no compulsion. This is the reason I am working twenty-four hours per day, and no one is able to know why am I doing what I am doing.
When you enjoy the solitude of your own silence a light will emanate from you—that is the light of your own self. When this light is reflected on you that is called the state of bliss, ananda. This is why enlightened beings are always in a state of ananda, and retaining that state when they enter into society to perform action they experience something higher than ananda: dynamic delight.
Action is performed by a wise man in a state of delight. Whether fame or defamation comes, his state of delight is maintained, despite profit or loss, gain or pain. Nothing affects his state of delight. That is the secret of this creation. This is why Krishna was always in a state of delight. Krishna is not a man. He was god in a human form, the first god to walk over this earth in a human body. He has revealed this secret path to man so that every man can become god and walk on this earth. That’s the purpose of Gita’s revelation. And that is the purpose why I am again re-revealing it as per the need of the hour.
[From a March 2011 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India]
The Yoga of Devotion
Omm Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya
From an August 2011 Interaction at the Divine Mission Sacramento Center in California, USA.
Born with Divine Attributes
Omm Namo Bhagavate
It is said that the divine attributes lead one to liberation and the undivine attributes lead to bondage. Arjuna, grieve not, for you are born with divine attributes.
Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 575
In this verse the two mutually opposing sets of attributes are explained, the divine and the undivine. One set of attributes takes man towards liberation and the other takes man towards perpetuation of bondage. The list in the preceding verses describes the drives or tendencies latent in the human system. Because this is the sixteenth chapter we can interpret these in terms of the gunas. We can say that the divine attributes are rooted in sattwa guna and the undivine attributes are rooted in rajas and tamas gunas. All human beings are either made up of divine or undivine attributes. Those who are possessed of divine attributes make progress in yoga, and this progress is manifested in their life’s actions. They carry the possibility of sadhana and siddhi. Sadhana is the capacity to strive to make progress in yoga; siddhi is the capability to become an instrument or channel of divine.
The sixteenth chapter comes in the third part of Gita, the manifestation section. Manifestation means sadhana is finished and the result is manifested through life’s action. Gita emphasizes manifestation, so if what you are attaining is not manifested through life’s action, then Gita is not prepared to accept that it is your attainment. It is just your information. The moment something is attained in the system, it always finds its expression through action, reaction, and interaction. Those who are dominated by undivine attributes manifest arrogance, diffidence, “I-ness,” pride, anger, superiority complex, ignorance about the reality of this world, and showiness. These egoistic traits are the symptoms of an asuric tendency and nature. Those who have predominantly divine attributes exhibit many such traits. Foremost among them is absence of fear, or abhaya. This is not fearlessness; fearlessness is different than absence of fear. Then come purity, simplicity and all the attributes explained in the first three verses of this chapter.
Chapter 16 explains the way the world is manifested. The world consists of two basic types of human beings. One group is predominantly rajasic and tamasic; the other is primarily sattwic. When the yogi in the path of Gita yoga reenters society after attaining the highest state, how is he supposed to deal with this manifest world? To make it clear, the Lord explains the nature of human beings. The sixteenth chapter begins with, “The Blessed Lord said.” No question is asked by Arjuna but the spontaneous revelation from Lord Krishna continues. Here Arjuna is no longer a yogi, no longer a seeker. He has merged, and after the merger he asked one question, at the beginning of Chapter 12, and it is a question of the mind.
You may ask how there can still be a mind after the merger has come. My answer is, the surface human mind will always remain, but it will not have the power to issue any commands to a God-realized soul for getting involved in this material, sensory world. Still, mind will be there because mind symbolizes matter. Even God-realized saints have this surface curiosity, but not have any deep curiosity. Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, as he was reading the newspaper, “Bhagavan, what are you reading? For you, everything is the Being, the Self.” Bhagavan replied, “This Self is trying to know what the Self is doing when it is non-Self.”
Surface mind wants to know, but the curiosity of a deluded human being is different from the surface curiosity of a God-realized saint. For the latter, because they still have to function in the world of matter, their surface mind is still active, but it is so thin that it cannot command anything.
Arjuna’s merger came in the eleventh chapter, when he could see Krishna in everything in the universe. In his universal vision, he saw Krishna in a tree, a mountain, a river, a lake, a star in space, in human beings, in animals and everywhere. He saw God as love, fear, horror, beauty, terror, mystery–everything. When someone goes through the merger process, these are the experiences. Sometimes there will be infinite beauty and charm; sometimes there will be oceanic sorrow; sometimes there will be pure ecstasy; and sometimes there will be a deafening solitude.
It is like watching a film on the screen, and like a dream. The difference is, when you come out of a dream, you know that you were dreaming, but the person who has gone through the merger process does not feel it was a dream. It is just the opposite: he feels that the merger is the reality and that this waking plane is just a reflection of that reality. The reflection is as real as a person’s reflection in a mirror. That is the state of God-realized mahatmas and saints. Just for functional necessity they discharge their responsibilities, but they don’t get identified with anything. Loss or gain, fame or defamation, hardship or luxury, these do not affect the state of the God-realized yogi.
In that state Arjuna asked the question, “Tell me, Lord, who is the greater devotee,” that is, who has attained a higher state in devotion? That is a surface comparison. Arjuna must have realized that although he has merged with the force he still cannot proceed without the form. The form is still dear to him. The surface mind must have given this prompting, “Then you have not attained the universal state of merger,” so it asked, “Tell me, Lord, who is more dear to you, one who is clinging to you the form or one who is only linked with you, the force?”
The Lord said, “Both are dear to me. But, Arjuna, until one has gone beyond identification with his own body it is very difficult and painful to proceed in the path of yoga.”
What is there to be attained that is still difficult and painful for a God-realized soul? He has nothing to attain in the material plane, but much to attain in the spiritual plane. That is the last attainment in Gita yoga. The God-realized soul has no desire or aspiration for material or social expansion and attainment, but he still has a hidden aspiration to transcend the veil. From God-realization to gunatita will be a difficult and painful part of the journey if the form is not there, because the soul is liberated but the samskara is there, the samskara of this universe and of prakriti.
Purusha’s samskara is gone because the reason for which purusha entered the body has been fulfilled and there is nothing left for the purusha to want. Just imagine such a state, of someone who has reached a stage of nothingness, but his life still remains. Such a person has no desire, no hankering, and no aspiration–not even the aspiration for sadhana. He sees and feels the futility of everything, but has no power to leave the body because there is a long life still to go. Those who attain the gunatita state usually live longer. Imagine if there is no form with whom you can share, for whom you can live, and to whom you can release your irritation or your worries. And you do not have any way to quit.
Attaining a static state of the being is not a big attainment. A dryness comes when a person experiences the pure static state of samadhi, and there is no tendency for anything. That is the time the Mahaprakriti, the Maheshwari, the Divine Mother, takes care of the human body through some form. Otherwise the yogis will leave the body. They will be crushed under a lorry or fall from a mountain, or they may walk into a flooded river and be washed away, because mind as such is not there at that time. Mind is temporarily merged, withered away. The yogi has survived that stage and travelled farther. He has entered into the shore of devotion, and that devotion takes him more and more inside the sea.
The Lord says yoga is very difficult and painful for such a person who is proceeding farther from the state of God-realization and heading towards the gunatita stage. You have no anchor and no goal. At that time, if you are linked with a form that has attained the gunatita state, you get some strength and find some purpose to be in the body, even if it is not your individual purpose.
If there is no life after merger, the person remains in a state of God-ecstasy and then he leaves the body. That’s the most desirable state. But usually God-realized souls, if they are chosen to play a role, do not drop the body easily. These yogis reach the God-realization state much earlier, in their forties, thirties, or even their twenties. Bhagavan Ramana attained it at the age of sixteen. Before fifty percent of the life is gone, the person must have reached either Self-realization or God-realization so that Prakriti gets the chance to work through the form.
This list of divine and undivine attributes is given in the sixteenth chapter because those who persevere and reach the gunatita level are either chosen instruments or channels. This list enables them to know the nature of the world, that basically there are two types of people, the divine and the undivine, and only the divine type carries the possibility of sadhana, siddhi, and manifestation. Therefore one should not waste time unnecessarily with those who have predominantly undivine attributes.
Just as you know that you cannot teach a dog to chant Veda, when you reach the gunatita stage you will also know clearly that there are some human beings who are basically undivine because they are dominated by tamas and rajas and you will not waste your precious time to try to change such people. How much rajas or tamas they have determines the intensity of their I-ness, ego, clinging, demand, fear and imposition. Those who do not have sattwa will not be interested in liberation or yoga or sadhana. They will be interested for bhoga, pleasure. For the sake of discharging his role, one should see which form is more endowed more with divine attributes and which with undivine attributes.
The final phase of manifestation–the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth chapters–is nothing but preparation for withdrawal. Everything is accomplished, so let us be ready for the return journey. Moksha Yoga, the title of the eighteenth chapter, refers to how a fully liberated being drops the body and goes. The sixteenth and seventeenth chapters are the last work to be performed before dropping the body: what you have attained has to be transmitted.
A liberated being must finish the last karma so that he will be allowed to drop the body. The last karma is to give back, and transmit the light that you have received. Every gunatita person carries that responsibility to give the light back to society. For this, they will select those who have predominantly divine attributes. One’s time on Earth is short; don’t make it longer by spending time with those who cannot be transformed. That is the implied, hidden direction here.
Your job is to ensure that many are liberated, because you are liberated. As a rich man gives away his wealth by writing a Will before he dies, so also an enlightened being must transmit and give away right before he drops the body. If you cannot do that, you will come back again. You will not return as a deluded being, but you will come back, because that’s the final duty.
The avatar comes again and again because while discharging his role he again gets compassion and promises something to someone, and in order to fulfill that he has to return. This is how the perpetual play of Divine goes on and on. In Rama avatar he created some karma, and to discharge that he came back in Krishna avatar. Krishna avatar is considered purna avatar, complete, because that time he did everything as a play. He will not come back to discharge any leftover karma. The gunatita person should live life the way Krishna lived, whereby everything is just a divine play. This is the most important hidden aspect.
Those who have divine attributes are naturally capable to move towards liberation. Those who have undivine attributes are naturally moving away from liberation, so the gunatita person should not waste time on them.
[From an April 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]