Words From The Master: 15 Nov 2007

Discourse On Bhagavad Gita, 8th Chapter: The Art of Leaving. Sep 11, 2005, Thursday at The Malibu Temple, Los Angeles, USA.

Here, Krishna speaks about death. He speaks about how death can become a liberation and celebration. Death is death as we know it and think it is the end only when we don't understand it. If we see death in this way, we worry; we live in the shadow of death and life becomes dull. Even when we live we die. He who understands death will live even when he dies. Death and life are not mere incidents; they are related to your intelligence.

We don't have the right words in English to translate many of the beautiful expressions in Sanskrit. The moment we translate them, we only have one dimension of the sloka. Sanskrit is not just linguistic; it has power in the phonetic dimension. The very sound and vibration will transform you.

We need to understand the concept of padam padartha. If the word ‘cow’ is uttered, the distance between the word (padam) and the figure (padartha) does not exist in Sanskrit as it does in other languages. You don't even have to understand the meaning of the words in Sanskrit. The very sound will purify your body. Sabdha is where the air travels from the navel to the tongue. The sabdha changes the air into words or sound. When you chant Sanskrit, the sabdha gets strengthened and creates more perfect words. In other languages, it gets weakened. Sanskrit purifies your whole Being. Just 10 minutes a day is enough; the vibrations enter the body immediately and purify it.

Beautifully Arjuna asks, ‘What is Brahman, what is Self, what is the manifestation of this and how does Krishna stay in the body.’

Krishna reveals the secrets of death. The West has spent all its energy in understanding life, whereas the East has wisely spent its time in understanding death. Masters have brought such a gift of understanding of death to living. There are so many who fear death, or wonder why they should even understand death. Your understanding of death will affect the whole way you live your life. The concept of reincarnation in the East encourages many to disregard Time. Many rely on eternity. They feel they have all the time and this leads to lack of motivation to make the most of every moment. In the West, we never have enough time; either we live now or never.

The way you understand death influences the whole infrastructure of your mindset. Your whole thinking is transformed once you understand the secrets of death. The moment you understand, the whole quality of your Consciousness changes. The moment you experience the Truth, or even just have an intellectual comprehension, it is enough; your whole thinking will be transformed.

‘Yama’ means death and discipline. Once you understand death, your whole life becomes disciplined in a strange and honest way. Honest in the sense that most of our discipline is usually hypocritical.

We need to realize that Krishna’s inner space is totally pure, untouched. This is the true meaning of brahmacharya. He never experienced His body. He never comes down to normal body consciousness. When you perform an action without the consciousness of the body, your inner space remains pure. You can eat and yet be untouched by food.

A sannyasi goes to Jnanaraja, a great Enlightened King. He asks, “How can you say that you are enlightened and yet enjoy such luxury in your life?” Now, you have to understand something about sannyas. If you leave or escape the outer world hoping to gain the inner world, you start to disrespect those still living in and enjoying the outer world. And not only that, you begin to feel jealous and resentful. In essence you are caught between the two worlds. The king replies, “Tonight I am busy attending a party, why don't you stay in my palace. In a day or so we can talk.” The appropriate preparations are made for the sannyasi and the king instructs that a knife be hung from a thread pointing downwards above the head of the sannyasi’s cot. The sannyasi was not able to get any sleep. The whole time he was afraid that the knife might fall. The king asked him the following day how he slept. “You know very well what you have done, why are you asking me, how could I even dream of sleeping?” asked the sannyasi. The king laughed. “When death is in front of you, your whole life changes. You see, my whole Consciousness is different. I can live with all these things in my palace, yet my inner space is untouched by them because any moment I know that death can happen.”

So in this way, Yama makes its strange and honest effect upon your life. If you just understand this one concept, your whole Being is transformed. There are some truths that cannot be explained logically. Logic can only explain events in the outer world, not in the inner world. Some truths can be explained through experience alone. With experience, you know the Truth without doubt.

We need to understand why we assume a body. Out of fear, greed, guilt and pain collectively called samskaras (engraved memories), we create the body. We not only work out the samskaras that we bring into our life, we also take on other desires from other people in society. This is the reason why we have a shortage of energy. It is believed that we bring in exactly the amount of energy we need to work out our samskaras, but because we accumulate more, we have a shortage of energy.

Advertising agencies know that anything related to sex will touch your muladhara chakra, (root center) and will be recorded in your system. When it gets recorded, it goes deeply into your Being. It compels you to buy the product associated with it. You automatically act upon the idea. It expresses through you.

Karma means a desire that has not been fulfilled. If we don't fully experience something, we create a samskara. A samskara is a living energy. It has the power to compel you to do the same action again and again, and the more you do it, the more deeply ingrained it becomes. It is our samskaras that determine our lives. All the decisions are made by your Consciousness about the life you will live based upon the samskaras that you have collected.

Even sense-enjoyments were taught to us at an early age. They are learned responses, not innate to our Being. There is an African tribe which does not experience any sense related pleasures or pain. I lived amongst them for several months and observed how they lived. They fully sense everything but they are not conditioned to experience pleasure or pain. Not a single person experiences depression among these people. Women give birth, alone in a simple hut, without any doctor or attendant and the process takes just half an hour. They do not experience any pain during childbirth. Women also do not experience any menstrual pain or problems during menopause. The reason for this is, women are deeply honored. They are never disrespected. The moment a girl experiences her first menstrual period, the tribe falls at her feet and they receive healing from her. It is honored as a sacred healing experience.

It is our social conditioning that makes us experience pleasure or pain. Our mind is conditioned by whatever we think of as ideal. So when we choose a new life, we will be attracted to the life that will allow us to live out whatever dominant samskaras there are in our Being. If we enjoy eating, we will be drawn to the life that allows us to experience this.

A small story: One guy goes to his doctor and says, “Doctor please examine me. I don't feel like doing anything. I feel so dull. Tell me in plain English what is wrong with me.” The doctor says, “If you ask me, in plain English, you are lazy.” The man says, “Now tell me in medical terms, so I can tell my wife.”

Understand that you spend energy just being lazy. You get tired even from sleeping eventually. Your energy becomes tamas. When you die, you can only live three kshanas without a body and mind. A kshana is the gap between two thoughts. If you have experienced existence without a body and mind, you have experienced thoughtless awareness. This is known as samadhi. This is pure Consciousness without thoughts, witnessing Consciousness: where you just observe what is going on inside you and around you. All spiritual practices are to either indirectly or directly experience this Consciousness.

If you have not achieved one glimpse of samadhi, thoughtless awareness, you haven’t accomplished anything in life. If you have not lived even a single moment of this, you will rush into the next body and mind that are available; you will not choose consciously. Very rare souls choose families that do not disturb their spiritual practice. If you have taken a conscious birth in this way, it is known as yoga prashta.

We need to understand exactly what happens when we leave the body. Essentially we go through all seven layers of our Being: physical, pranic, mental, etheric, causal, cosmic and nirvanic. When we first leave the body, we undergo tremendous pain at the physical layer. It is described as a thousand scorpions stinging us all at once. I do not mean to scare you, but it is better to know the Truth now when we can do something about it. The body is either exhausted or injured at the time of death. Either way it can no longer host our Being. When we experience this pain, we fall unconscious. Then, we can’t choose our next birth consciously.

The pranic layer is about desire. Prana or breath and desires are closely related. If you change your prana, your whole mind will change.

The mental body houses all the guilt. Guilt is nothing but emotion renewed in your Being with updated intelligence. At the age of seven, you had a certain amount of intelligence. Now it is updated. You have more data and more intelligence to process the data. You now have more software. If you feel bad now about how you were at the age of seven, you create guilt. You can never become a better person through guilt. It is just a burden upon your Being. First, society teaches us guilt, then we master the art of guilt.

A man says: “Dropping smoking is easy. I have done it many times!”

Guilt creates a similar rut. Know also that all immoral behavior is because you don't have enough energy. You feel you will get energy through that action. When you run after sense-pleasures, you are just running after energy.

In the etheric layer, you have all the painful experiences stored. If you keep these first four layers clean through meditation, you will not experience the state of hell. Just one glimpse of samadhi, one moment of thoughtless Consciousness, of witnessing Consciousness will act like a torch and you will go through all these layers smoothly at the time of death.

When you die, the most intense experience of your life will come up. If you have had thoughtless awareness at least once, then this will come up in color and everything else will be in black and white. The tape will freeze at this point. All the rest, all your karmas will be erased. Don't think your mind is intelligence. It is just a software program. Thoughtless Consciousness is like a virus that erases all samskaras, engrams.

If you experience life fully with thoughtless Consciousness, you will not feel the need to come back and live through a body and mind. When you have witnessing Consciousness, your whole life becomes a leela, a drama, and you know the script. You can practice this at all times. Just witness how when you are talking to someone, you are already preparing what you are going to say next. Immediately, you observe all the pain, guilt and suffering in your life. The moment you create a gap between you and your Being, all suffering disappears.

Don't be calculating about it. Don't think, ‘For the next twenty-four hours I will do this’. You will become frustrated and fall into guilt. Once you have a taste of thoughtless Consciousness, you will naturally return to the same mood because it is so blissful. You will relax so deeply in your body and Being.

Krishna is inspiring us to enter into the ultimate state of Thoughtless Consciousness, Eternal Bliss - Nithyananda.