Bhagavad Gita Commentary–Twenty
by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Wisdom About the Wise
In the last essay I spoke of how utterly monstrous individuals in both East and West are given a free hand to devastate the minds and lives of others just because they bear the title of “guru” or “avatar.” This is because of a complete miscomprehension of the nature of enlightenment and how it manifests in the consciousness and behavior of the enlightened. Krishna tells us everything we need to know–and which we should ever keep in mind when encountering supposedly enlightened people–in response to Arjuna’s question: “Krishna, how can one identify a man who is firmly established and absorbed in Brahman? In what manner does an illumined soul speak? How does he sit? How does he walk?”
Krishna will take eighteen verses to give Arjuna and us the total picture. Here are the first eight of them.
Without “wants”
“He knows bliss in the Atman and wants nothing else. Cravings torment the heart: he renounces cravings. I call him illumined.” Nothing could be easier to understand: an enlightened person wants nothing, finding total fulfillment in the Self–both individual and Universal.
Therefore when we see people with even “spiritual goals” such as “serving God in others” or exhibiting a veritable passion about a “world mission” or “saving” or “enlightening” others, we can know they are not illumined, and therefore incapable of doing any of those things in a real manner, however fine the exterior machinery might appear.
A true spiritual teacher has no expectation of others whatsoever, much less foisting demands on them. Knowing that all growth comes from within, never from an outer factor–including him–the worthy teacher knows that it is his duty to teach, and that is the absolute end of the matter. From then on it is up to the student to either follow the teaching or not. If he asks for help or advice from the teacher, it is the teacher’s duty to give the requested assistance and then leave the matter alone. In spiritual life as well as material life there is a division of labor that should be adhered to. Under the guise of “love” or “devotion” there should be no violation of spiritual law. And no authentic teacher will ever break any law.
In contrast
It is virtually impossible to find any popular “guru” that does not live like “the jewel in the lotus”–both materially and socially. Although there is a pretence that their disciples are insistent upon it, it is really the guru that demands continual adulation and material accoutrements that would have been considered extreme even for a Di Medici monarch. One guru in India has himself and his wife weighed every year and given their combined weights in gold. And the palatial living quarters of the gurus are like overdone satires of the houses of the most vulgar noveau riche.
At the bottom of this outrageous aggrandizement on the psychological and material levels is a profound sense of insecurity and discontentment–and often self-loathing–on the part of the super-guru. I have had experience of this firsthand when visiting their ashrams and conversing with them. The pathology of the situation is truly terrible. Let me give a single example.
Once I was the guest of a super-guru after having spent several days at a yoga retreat sponsored by his organization. I had spoken to the retreatants several times during those days, and was being rewarded by being invited into the August Presence. (I had already been asked to sign a legal document stating that I would not be asking the institution for money in the future as payment for my speaking. I had refused–and never asked them for money.)
As we sat at the table, being served by anxious, hushed, and devoted “gopis,” Super-G began to tell me about the well-known rock groups that had asked him to come speak during their concerts both inside and outside the United States. Having hated all popular music from my birth (especially loathing rock music), and being aware of the utterly vile moral character of the groups he was naming, I was listening with a mixture of horror and disgust. And then I got the idea: he was trying to make me jealous! Did he really think that, having lived with great masters in India and having received the grace of so many other great saints, I would be impressed by a listing of these aberrant drug-addicted pandemonium peddlers?
More was to come. Since I did not swoon at the listing of the rock groupies, he passed on to speaking tours. He had been invited to speak in the Soviet Union! And also in a host of other gruesome places where there could not possibly be a genuine spiritual interest. This list was peppered with the names of celebrities who would either be sponsoring or accompanying him.
That left me unaffected, so he moved on to the subject of living accomodations. First I got a recounting of what ashrams were engaged in providing luxurious living accommodations for him, even stocking a complete set of his tailor-made silk clothes so he would never need to travel around the country with luggage. I dislike travel and being away from our ashram, so that moved me not.
Finally he resorted to real estate. First of all, a road for his exclusive use was being made into a local forest where some disciples had managed to purchase a large tract of land so he could be totally isolated. (No matter how “loving” and “giving” the super gurus are, they like to have inaccessible retreats away from their disciples, some of them–usually the Americans–even doing some kind of “early retirement” so they will not have to have contact with their adoring devotees. Some of them claim to need solitude so they can “write,” though little or nothing is ever published. However one super-guru emerged every week from his state of retreat to travel some hours to a major vacation-playground to take saxophone lessons from a well-known jazz musician.)
After the road was put in, a renowned architect was going to come and study the land and design a house specifically to fit in with the landscape and (of course) the ecology of the forest. Then the house would be built by “the devotees”–or at least by their money.
He had come to the end of the line. I was not impressed. I was appalled. He was miffed. I was glad to get out of there to never return. Fortunately I had many memories of simple, even barren, rooms in which I had sat with great saints in India, rooms where they stayed in joyful contentment, living the simplest of lives. Before going to India I had seen the two tiny rooms in which Paramhansa Yogananda, head of a world-wide spiritual organization, had lived for over a quarter of a century, as well as the simple little kitchen where he had so often cooked for his beloved students.
“Cravings torment the heart: he renounces cravings. I call him illumined.” I had seen Krishna’s words verified in the lives of the true yogis.
Free!
“Not shaken by adversity, not hankering after happiness: free from fear, free from anger, free from the things of desire. I call him a seer, and illumined.”
“The kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Living in the inner kingdom of infinite peace and joy, the enlightened are not affected by fortune or misfortune, for nothing can change their spiritual status. “He rests in the inner calm of the Atman, regarding happiness and suffering as one.” Even for us, “Only that yogi whose joy is inward, inward his peace, and his vision inward shall come to Brahman and know Nirvana.”
Fear, anger, and desire are manifestations of what we may justifiably call “raw ego.” Other emotions are further removed from the source and their character not so easy to detect. This unholy trinity is thoroughly intertwined. They are ego-based responses to stimuli of differing character. Fear arises when we feel endangered, anger arises when we are mistreated or thwarted, and desire arises when we think something external can change our inner or outer status for the better (or at least more enjoyable). All other responses are permutations of these three, their “offspring.” In some instances they may even appear to be manifestations of egolessness. The enlightened is free of them.
Please be wary of those who pretend that when they manifest these passions they are “just lilas,” “mere appearances,” “writings on water,” etc., etc., etc. How can they benefit you by deceiving you or causing you pain and confusion by their seeming negative behavior? Lesser teachers may do so, erroneously thinking it is the only way to help you–as a kind of psychological shock treatment. But a truly illumined person will do no such thing. Their very presence can work in you the necessary changes. I have both experienced it and witnessed it.
Broken bonds
“The bonds of his flesh are broken. He is lucky, and does not rejoice: he is unlucky, and does not weep. I call him illumined.”
The enlightened is no longer under the influence of the body or the world to which it connects his consciousness. At first this is because he has ascended beyond the reach of physicality. But in time he is no longer material at all, his body itself transmuted into spirit-consciousness. So much so, that those who see what appears to be a body are actually seeing spirit with their eyes. That is why Jesus said: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” and why the very sight of such great beings transforms the consciousness of the beholders. Such masters need never even speak. Merely seeing them awakens spiritual consciousness and unfolds it. Their immortal being is no longer hidden in the tomb of the body, but has been resurrected and revealed in the “flesh.” Of such a one it is said that “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
His flesh can no longer bind him for the simple reason that he is no longer flesh but spirit.
Blessed
“He is lucky, and does not rejoice: he is unlucky, and does not weep.” For nothing can be added to him or taken away. He is no longer capable of being lucky or unlucky: he is eternally blessed. For him “pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, are all one and the same.” “What God’s Will gives he takes, and is contented. Pain follows pleasure, he is not troubled: gain follows loss, he is indifferent.” “He has nothing to gain in this world by action, and nothing to lose by refraining from action. He is independent of everybody and everything.”
Blessed, indeed.
Living within
“The tortoise can draw in its legs: the seer can draw in his senses.” This is not referring to just control of the senses in a mechanical way, but to the fact that the enlightened person lives thoroughly within himself. Although we usually think of “the senses” as the material organs of perception, in reality the senses are astral and causal, and their main purpose is to “see” in the spirit. So the liberated person truly lives “according to nature” on all levels. Seeing with the inner eye, hearing with the inner ear, etc., he sees and hears “true.”
Desires
“The abstinent run away from what they desire but carry their desires with them: when a man enters Reality, he leaves his desires behind him.” How much is said in this simple sentence!
The truly enlightened are not simply “free” from desire, but have become incapable of desire. This is extremely important to know. We must apply this to ourselves, and not foolishly think that just because we avoid the objects of desire and thereby experience no desire, that we are truly desireless. And again, being without desire is not the same as having passed into the realm of consciousness where desire cannot exist.
The senses
“Even a mind that knows the path can be dragged from the path: the senses are so unruly. But he controls the senses and recollects the mind and fixes it on me. I call him illumined.”
People get fooled in relation to the senses, too. I think somewhere I have told about a little girl I knew whose parents tried for years to keep her from sucking her thumb. Even in the primary grades she sat around with her thumb in her mouth. One day, when she was visiting our house, she was watching television with thumb in mouth. At one point she pulled out her thumb, called to my stepmother who was in the kitchen: “I don’t suck my thumb anymore!” and put it right back in. Business as usual.
It is amazing to see the difference between the ascetic approach of Christianity and that of Hinduism and Buddhism. Christian spiritual writers blame everything on “demons,” claiming that every evil thought and impulse comes from evil spirits. The yogis, on the other hand, understand that these negative thoughts and impulses come from within us–that we are totally responsible for the folly that foams up in our minds. Christian ascetics wear themselves out battling and driving away demons. What can they achieve by living out this fantasy? Certainly negative spirits exist, but what can they do to us in the final analysis? It is the enemy within–our own ego and its ignorance–that really harms us and none other.
A religion that does not teach its adherents to recognize and deal with their own culpability is right to be obsessed with sin, for what else can it produce? No wonder that Jews, Christians, and Moslems welter in fixation on sin and evil in contrast with the Hindus and Buddhists who focus on innate holiness and perfection. There was a great saint in the West–a Pope, actually–who tried to bring some darkness into the light of Christian sin-consciousness, but instead was condemned for heresy. Poor Pope Pelagius is immortalized only in Christian fulminations against the “Pelagian heresy” that man is essentially good and capable of holiness. Frankly, Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus unintentionally gives an insight on this. Under the heading of “obsession,” the first entry is “attraction.” There you have it. Obsession with sin is attraction to sin; preoccupation with holiness is attraction to holiness. You get what you want.
It is the same with the senses. They are treacherous, undoubtedly, but only because of our susceptibility to them. Moreover, it is not enough to merely “control” the senses. We must also, as this verse indicates, recollect the mind and fix it on God. Mere control means nothing of itself. It is only a prerequisite for the real thing: immersion of the mind in Divinity.
“Om is the bow, the arrow is the individual being, and Brahman is the target. With a tranquil heart, take aim. Lose thyself in him, even as the arrow is lost in the target.”
Read the Bhagavad Gita online: The English text of the Gita posted on this Web Site is arranged according to the meter of the original Sanskrit text so it can be sung–as it is done every morning in our ashram and in most of the ashrams of India.
1) Bhagavad Gita 2:54
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2) Bhagavad Gita 2:55 [Go back]
3) Bhagavad Gita 2:56 [Go back]
4) Romans 14:17 [Go back]
5) Bhagavad Gita 14:24 [Go back]
6) Bhagavad Gita 5:24 [Go back]
7) Bhagavad Gita 2:57 [Go back]
8) John 14:9 [Go back]
9) I Corinthians 15:54 [Go back]
10) Bhagavad Gita 2:38 [Go back]
11) Bhagavad Gita 4:22 [Go back]
12) Bhagavad Gita 3:18 [Go back]
13) Bhagavad Gita 2:58 [Go back]
14) Bhagavad Gita 2:59 [Go back]
15) Bhagavad Gita 2:60, 61 [Go back]
16) Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.4 [Go back]
