राजविद्या राजगुह्यं पवित्रमिदमुत्तमम्।
प्रत्यक्षावगमं धर्म्यं सुसुखं कर्तुमव्ययम्।।2।।
rāja-vidyā rāja-guhyaṁ pavitram idam uttamam
pratyakṣhāvagamaṁ dharmyaṁ su-sukhaṁ kartum avyayam
Of sciences, the highest; of profundities, the deepest; of purifiers, the supreme, is this; realisable by direct perception, endowed with (immense) merit, very easy to perform, and of an imperishable nature.
~ Chapter 9, Verse 2
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अश्रद्दधाना: पुरुषा धर्मस्यास्य परन्तप।
aśhraddadhānāḥ puruṣhā dharmasyāsya parantapa
aprāpya māṁ nivartante mṛityu-samsāra-vartmani
Persons without Sraddha for this Dharma, return, O scorcher of foes, without attaining Me, to the path of rebirth fraught with death.
~ Chapter 9, Verse 3
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Acharya Prashant (AP): Shri Krishna is explaining adhyātma or rāja-vidyā to Arjuna. That’s the context. So, he says that rāja-vidyā or adhyātma or self-knowledge or Brahmajñāna is the highest, the deepest, the supreme purifier, realizable by direct perception, endowed with immense merit, very easy to perform, and imperishable. And he adds, but those who do not have śraddhā for Dharma, return again and again without attaining the Truth, caught in the cycle of birth and death.
Questioner (Q): In verse 9.2, Shri Krishna has used the word ‘susukham’, meaning very easy, and has called this rāja-vidyā as the king of sciences. But, in my experience, the ego seems like a mountain that is just not budging. Please help me understand why is it said to be ‘very easy’ then.
Also, in the next verse 9.3, Shri Krishna has mentioned śraddhā as a necessary condition, and in my case, doubts creep along this journey because of the nature of the unknowable-unmanifest. How then does a sadhaka develop unwavering faith in the Lord?
AP: The path of adhyātma is accompanied by relaxation of inner tension. Please pay attention to the whole process.
Why does one venture into his interiors first of all? There is nothing in our system that is designed to take us within ourselves. The mind is configured to be stuffed with worldly objects carrying name, shape, and form. The senses all look just outwards. In short, man is a creature designed to remain in the world, dwelling in the world, belong to the world, arise from the world, and be consumed by the world.
Then why does the path of rāja-vidyā or adhyātma or self-knowledge appear attractive as a possibility to some people, because this path is not at all intuitive? There is nothing in our tendencies, there is nothing in our pre-existing design, there is nothing in our biological design that encourages us or nudges us to look at the looker, to look at the mind itself. Yet we know that the path of Dharma or spirituality, rāja-vidyā, adhyātma, Ātmajñāna or Brahmajñāna not only exists but is actually the highest path if we go by the testimony of those who have ventured upon it.
So, why does man go towards adhyātma first of all? The reason is man’s nature. Nobody likes to be miserable and suffering. And given the way we are biologically designed, given our default configuration and conditioning, we are pre-set to suffer. You could say man is a machine designed to suffer.
Man is a strange machine. Man is a strange machine because no machine, as we know machines, ever suffers, because no machine really has consciousness, because no machine ever has an ‘I’. Man is a strange machine; a machine with an ‘I’. The ‘I’ is enclosed in the machine and the ‘I’ does not quite like that, because the nature of ‘I’ is freedom. The nature of ‘I’ is joy that accompanies freedom.
But the machine is a machine. The machine is designed to act just as per the design, and the design does not favour, not even allow the machine to look within itself. However, the ‘I’ suffers. Irrespective of what the design of the machine dictates, the ‘I’ still clamours for freedom. The machine is designed to remain in bondage; the machine is designed to remain and function as per the design. The ‘I’ does not like any designs. The ‘I’ likes a design-less sky. The ‘I’ loves a pattern-less sky in which there are no bondages, no restrictions, no algorithms, no blueprints.
So, we are creatures of suffering. We continue to live in an inner stress, an inexplicable restlessness. Now you will understand why Shri Krishna says here that the path of rāja-vidyā is easy.
It is easy because it arises from our un-ease.
Because we stay queasy, therefore adhyātma is easy.
Because we stay in a state of dis-ease, therefore adhyātma is the path of ease. The more you move along this path, the more you move on this path, the more you feel at ease.
That’s the reason why Shri Krishna says that this path is easy in the same breath in which he says, this path is the most mysterious, the most esoteric, the most hidden one. It’s a kingly secret, he says. It is the deepest of all profound truths. It might be the deepest, it might be even the toughest, yet it is the only path that leads to ease. And is it too much to say that that which leads to ease must be rightfully called as easy? What would you call as easy? That which appears easy but leads to difficulties, or that which appears difficult in your calculations, in your assumptions, in your imaginations, but is actually a giver of ease if you adopt it?
Therefore, wise people always say that what they are choosing is actually the easiest. If you will go to Lao Tzu, he will say that the Tao favours ease. He will say, ease is right. Now, that can be misleading. We might feel that that which appears easy is right. No. It has to be interpreted to mean that that which leads to an inner ease is the right thing for you to do, and that which is right for you to do is called Dharma.
So, Dharma is that which leads you into ease. And that should be obvious. If we are stiff and rigid and tense and insecure and alarmed, then it should be great to be led into ease. Why would any man in his right senses call a movement into ease as something difficult? It would require a special kind of lack of self-love to deny oneself ease and relaxation by terming relaxation as full of tension and ease as a thing of difficulty.
Next you are asking, Shri Krishna has mentioned śraddhā or faith as a necessary condition, and to you doubts are creeping on your journey, because of the nature of the unknowable-unmanifest. And you’re asking, how do you keep unwavering faith in the Lord. Certain things have to be clarified here.
Faith and belief are very different things. Faith is different from belief. Faith is different from trust. Belief and trust both are affirmative in nature and are functions of the ego.
Belief is when the ego acts blindly and takes something in the external world as truth or true without even verifying it. Somebody came to you and told you a few things about something or somebody. And because one is internally lazy, mentally slothful, one did not even make the effort to really verify the stuff. This could be called as an example of belief.
Trust would be when you go out and experiment and examine and crosscheck for yourself. And then you say, “Fine. This is how it is. This is how it is.” That’s trust.
Now, obviously trust is higher than belief, but belief and trust still belong to the same plane, because the ego is choosing to invest itself in some worldly object. Right? The ego is saying, “That which I’m right now talking of is worthy of being considered secured.” Right? When you say you have trust in something, then you feel secure of that thing, right? You know that that thing will now operate according to your expectations. You have kind of sized it up, measured it up. That’s what you mean by trustworthiness, right? A person is called trustworthy if he’ll not violate your expectations. Correct?
So, trust is higher than belief, but in both belief and trust the ego is still relating to and relying upon something or somebody in the world; an object of the senses, an object of name, form, dimensions. The ego is still operating in duality with itself at one end of that duality, and something at the other end it is now considering as worthy of being called as true. Right?
Faith is an entirely different thing. The method of faith is negative. You cannot have faith upon something or somebody or some book or some scripture or thought, idea, ideology, something. No. Faith looks inwards. Faith does not say, “Oh, I have great faith on the Lord!” People who use such expressions are either not using language correctly or are not faithful at all. You cannot say that you seek to have faith on God or Lord or something, no.
Faith is the ability to look at the one who believes or trusts and see that all belief and all trust can come to a naught, that with great danger is all belief and trust quite fraught. That’s faith.
Now, faith is dangerous because faith shakes you up. Faith is not telling you, something out there is going to help you, something out there is quite reliable, dependable. In faith what you are seeing is that whatsoever you consider as trustworthy or belief-worthy is actually just a figment of your own little assumption and creation. Now, when you see that, not only do those objects get reduced to rubble that were appearing so dependable just a moment before but also the one who was choosing to invest beliefs in them is now reduced to looking like a fool. Are you getting it?
So, there is you who is finding something quite dependable. Let’s call that something as Y and you are X. Faith is when you see that X and Y are interrelated; that not only is Y not worthy of trust, but actually X is stupid to have been trusting Y so far. So, X and Y both are gone. Both lose their position of eminence. Now Y is not something sacred and X is nobody wise. Otherwise, the usual process of trust is: Y is sacred. Y is sacred and that’s why I have so much trust in Y. And I? I am wise! Because I am wise, therefore I am confident that my trust in Y is well placed. Because I am wise, so I’m confident that as X, I am doing the right thing by trusting Y.
Faith sees that both X and Y are just dream stuff. Faith sees that it is a mansion standing on thin air, on a very weak foundation. The pillars are all made of just sand; they will collapse upon the slightest impact. That’s what faith sees.
But this must be unnerving you. You would be asking, “But then, faith leaves me with nothing to live on or live by. How do I survive?”
Well, you see, faith demolishes all that you were trusting so far, as well as the one who was trusting so far. And having demolished everything that you were clinging to for support, faith lets you see that you are still alright. Everything you considered as very-very important for your existence, for your survival, for your well-being is exposed as hollow and false and dangerous. And going by your assumptions, once this exposure happens, you should have simply succumbed, collapsed, died badly. But instead something else happens: you find that as soon as all the nonsensical stuff is gone, and as soon as the one who used to believe in nonsense is gone, not only are you not dead, but you’re actually now really alive for the first time. That’s faith.
So, faith then is to be alright without support. That’s faith. Faith is to expose the hollownesses of all your support systems. Faith is to expose the hollownesses of all your trusts and beliefs. And after that exposure you do not find yourself killed; after that exposure you find yourself born, reborn, or rejuvenated. That’s faith.
Therefore, faith is not belief, not trust, not confidence. You must’ve noticed the word that accompanied faith three times right now: ‘not’.
Faith operates in the negative.
Faith demolishes.
Faith says no.
Faith is strong because it says no to everything that seeks to give you support. If you can say no to everything that you have been using so far for support, then is it a symbol, a sign of your weakness or your strength? That’s what faith is. Faith says, “No beliefs are needed; no confidence is needed. I won’t live by knowledge. Of course, I won’t live by imaginations; I won’t live by anything. I don’t need to live by anything. I’ll keep aside everything that I have so far used to prop me up. I’ll throw away my crutches.”
That feeble voice within, that voice of the feeble one within keeps nervously warning you: “No, no, no, please don’t throw away the crutches! You need them! If you throw them away, then you’ll collapse!”
Faith is to not to listen to that voice. Faith is to say: No. I’ll be alright!
“Why will you be alright? I have proofs that you can’t be alright without your support systems!”
No, I’ll be alright.
“How will you be alright?”
That I do not know. That I don’t bother to know. I’ll just be alright.
“You will just be alright? That’s stupid!”
Then let that be. I don’t care. If that’s stupid… (shrugs)
Are you getting it?
So, you don’t need to have faith in the Lord. Rather, you need to have disbelief and distrust in yourself. That’s faith. Faith is to negate all beliefs and all trust. Faith is to be open to life. Belief and trust surround you, ostensibly secure you, shield you. But what they actually do is that they cage you against life.
Faith is to be open, available, vulnerable.
Faith is not to receive any wounds.
Faith is not that you will not receive any wounds; faith is not to never fail, but faith is that solid realization within that even if you will fail, you’ll be alright. The faithful does not say that “my lord will not allow bad times to come to me; my lord will not allow bad things to happen to me.” The faithful one says, “Let bad things happen to me. I’m alright.” And therefore, the faithful one obviously cannot live attached or identified with stuff that is prone to destruction. If you are living attached and identified with destructible and temporal stuff, then you will not be able to say that you’ll be alright irrespective of what strikes you. Are you getting it?
Please get this clear.
If you are praying to the Lord: “Oh Lord! Let good things happen to me! Let only good things happen to me! Please ward off all the bad things!” then you’re not faithful. The faithful one says, “Come what may. I’m ok sir. Come what may.” And bad things happen to everybody. It’s just that when bad things happen to a faithless person, bad things have a bad impact on him. When these bad things happen to a faithful person, the badness does not enter him. Bad things are happening—he’s still alright. Everything that can be called ‘bad’ is happening on the periphery. All the destruction, all the robbery, all the loss, suffering, defeat—all that is happening in another dimension, in the dimension of mortality, morbidity. In that dimension, losses are there, deaths are there, the disease is there, suffering is there. All that keeps happening there and that cannot be avoided. All that is happening to the body-mind complex and it is inevitable.
But, the faithful one remains distant. This game of happiness and sadness keeps happening. There is a disease, there is recovery, there is a disease, there is death, there is victory, there is defeat, there are profits, there are losses.
Losses do not touch the faithful one because profits do not mean much to him. No defeat will ever shatter him because no victory is too important for him.
That’s the faithful one. He’s alright under all conditions. He’s unconditionally alright—that’s faith. He denies all conditions in that sense.
Faith is negative.
Faith denies.
Faith denies the impact of all conditionality.
Conditions by definition change. The faithful one lives changelessly.
That’s what is meant by living in Krishna; to live in the unchangeable One.
It’s beautiful isn’t it? To be so absolutely secured. That’s Faith.
समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रिय:।
ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्।।29।।
samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣhu na me dveṣhyo ’sti na priyaḥ
ye bhajanti tu māṁ bhaktyā mayi te teṣhu chāpyaham
The same am I to all beings: to Me, There is none hateful or dear. But…
Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column
Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.
हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।
Overview
Fighting Duryodhana is Dharma. Fight Duryodhana in the way you can, that is swadharma. Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to your physical, social, temporal conditions. But remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma; swadharma will always be something…
सङ्करो नरकायैव कुलघ्नानां कुलस्य च ।। पतन्ति पितरो ह्येषां लुप्तपिण्डोदकक्रिया: ।।1.42।।
saṅkaro narakāyaiva kula-ghnānāṁ kulasya cha patanti pitaro hy eṣhāṁ lupta-piṇḍodaka-kriyāḥ
When the castes mix, that spells hell for the family. It destroys the family, in the way that the ancestors all fall because they are deprived of the Pindokdakriya.…
