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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
For these Prabhāta Rashmis I have been speaking on Bhagavad Gita particularly taking some verses, select verses where you will find the whole sādhana is presented in a very brief, precise but comprehensive manner. The only place and the factor that you have to be concerned with and focused on is your mind.
The mind is not like the sensory organs we have. Our body itself is something gross, it is a matter-energy aggregate and all the parts in the body are also physical, gross and material. We can easily see them, not only see ourselves, we can also say, “Come and see.” and we can uniformly see the eyes, nose, ears, hands, feet, stomach, chest etc. But when it comes to a question of the mind which makes us feel all these things, the mind becomes invisible. Though it is invisible, it is involved in all kinds of activity, interaction and experience of our life. Without the mind there is no physical movement possible at all! Without the mind, the digestion of food, assimilation, absorption, conversion or transformation into blood, nothing will take place. Though that is so, we are not able to have a feel, touch or experience of the mind. This is the jugglery and mystery of life.
This mind constantly produces the twin forces of attraction and repulsion, passion and prejudice, love and hatred, pleasant and unpleasant, friend and foe, all these are divisions and opposites made by the mind alone. As I mentioned earlier everyone at the time of birth is gripped by a delusion arising from icchā and dvesha – love and hatred. Once you understand this, always be conscious of this fact and let everyday of your life be a constant sublimation and integration of these two disturbing elements.
The only thing you have to focus on is the mind and the mental twins which the mind constantly produces. Listen to this statement of Krishna.
अभितो ब्रह्मनिर्वाणं वर्तते विदितात्मनाम् ।।
kāma-krodha-viyuktānāṁ yatīnāṁ yata-cetasām
abhito brahma-nirvāṇaṁ vartate viditātmanām
Suppose you try and you are conscious of the fact that mind produces love and hatred, likes and dislikes and through these we are ruled throughout our life. The success and fruition of human life consist in identifying this fact and trying repeatedly to sublimate it. We cannot fight against kāma-krodhas. We can only tame them. We can only maturate them. No struggle, no struggle, don’t struggle, don’t fight with them.
Any emotions of the mind cannot be fought with. But the same time, if we try to tame them, the most angry man, irritable man will become far more pleasant and flexible if he tries constantly for that. The effort is not physical at all. The effort is by the intelligence, from the intelligence, in the form of a knowing influence exercised on the mind. So the knowledge should be the influence. I always say, enlightenment is the greatest persuasion for anything in human life. So understand that it is so and see where we can go to.
Kāma-krodha-viyuktānāṁ yatīnāṁ yata-cetasām – By virtue of the pursuit of mind sublimation when the people who are given to inner austerity, wisdom austerity, yatīnāṁ yata-cetasām kāma-krodha-viyuktānāṁ – when the kāma and krodha attenuate, they decline and they come to a point of extinction, then see what happens!
Abhito brahma-nirvāṇaṁ vartate viditātmanām – Wherever the person goes, abhitah – surrounding him, around him, brahma-nirvāṇaṁ vartate. Wah! Wah! You don’t have to seek brahma-nirvāṇa. Brahma-nirvāṇa starts encircling you, surrounding you, gracing you wherever you go. You don’t have to seek brahma-nirvāṇa from a temple or a mountainous stream or from a river or a holy place. Brahma-nirvāṇa will start encircling you wherever you go. Why? The kāma-krodhas in your mind have become attenuated, they have been sublimated, they have become extinct.
Vartate abhitah - You don’t have to generate it. It spontaneously encircles you wherever you go because brahma-nirvāṇa is a free and natural expression of the pure mind. When the inner personality becomes pure and sublime, automatically that nirvana brilliance emerges from it. If you have eyes, vision follows. Wherever the eye is open, there vision irresistibly is there. Similarly the brahma-nirvāṇa also will be an irresistible expression, manifestation, display of your mind.
The same mind which was creating confusion, distortion, torment, affliction, affectation, now it will start floating in harmony, generating harmony, and wherever you go. Not that you feel the impact of brahma-nirvāṇa by closing up in a door, or in a guha and then pocketing your mind, then feeling a little nirvaana for a short while like half an hour or one hour. No! No! No! Brahma-nirvāṇa will become concurrent with your life and movement. Please think about this verse. What a great statement is this!
What are we saying? Kāma krodhas you constantly confront. It is not somebody’s kāma krodha. Your own and they are lurking in your mind. This mind-lurking kāma krodhas come into expression when you are wakeful and you become active and interactive. These kāma krodhas will be sublimated by you provided you understand them and the need for sublimation. The whole process is a knowledge sādhana, it is a knowledge process, a knowing process, a knowledge effect process and then brahma-nirvāṇa will become concurrent in your life. What a wonderful statement is this!
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.