The Answers, my Friend, are blown in the Wind

Even sincere seekers feel many a time, "What am I supposed to do after reaching God? I go on looking at Him for eternity, by eating nothing, sleeping nowhere, and having nothing to do. What a drab kind of life!"

Bhagavadgita  

 

That is why I question, what am I suppose to do after reaching him and after he said engaged? If that is only my mind, okay. Why not, it is my mind that means my mind forces me to think constantly about duty, reading the Bhagavadgita is great if we look at it out of our own situation and it seems somehow he created that situation and it is possible to see it as insider, we don't just read a book but we participate in that war.

Therefore, do I go on now for eternity by questioning and not getting the right answer and nothing to do but asking question?

It feels nearly the same, isn't it? Only in the Bhagavadgita we get some answers. 

This is also a very serious point that may arise even in the best of us, what to talk about novitiates, because the thing you call God is not so easy to understand. It is not supposed to be understood at all under the circumstances we are placed, rationally or psychologically.

What is the conclusion? They way I feel about that background I should think thrice before taking a step in that direction. And why I do not think trice, because he said 'engaged'. He makes me not only think it over, but he makes me see it, because I followed that duty and therefore, I was not aware of it. That means I should also like Arjuna put the weapen down, but I didn't. I thought it was the right thing to do because Baba took a letter.

 

Hence, now comes a very important conclusion. "Under these circumstances of a doubtful background of my very idea of taking to this path, I think I have to think thrice before taking a step in this direction. I shall do nothing; it is enough," said Arjuna and he threw his weapon down, giving up all effort whatsoever in the direction of doing what he was expected to do.

   

Spiritual dedication makes us too open so that someone can take advantage of it. Only after that has happened I am there and said enough is enough, no more.

He said inside if there is a blue light, I could go on and I followed the blue light. What is that frightens us? That others take advantage of it, that frightens us and in that sense we seem to be the same too.  

Now the question arises: What is it that you are expected to do, which frightens you so much, as it frightened Arjuna? The battle that we speak of in the epic is only a metaphor; it is an insignia of the conditions of life as a whole.

 

Should we realize the battle in our own life?

 

Every question is a battle; you have to face it in order to answer it. Every moment of our life there is a question before us: What am I to do, and in what manner have I to do, and for what purpose have I to do, etc.?

 

This are the questions. I constantly ask, what am I to do, and in what manner have I to do it? And what is the purpose of it?

What can we know and what can we not know?

What I know now is that if relationship got lost, I cannot know to whom I belong. That is really lowest level that the relationship got lost, but I have lived in it oblivious of that reality for such a long time.

What can we know? It took a long time to get aware of it. And whatelse can we know? I thought it was part of it and that yoga had to be like that. We thought it was on soul level.

We cannot know what is kept secret, and we cannot know if it is not out culture. What can we hope for this world?

Can we hope that the world get's enlightened by a not right path?

There was a great thinker in the West who wrote a large thesis in answer to three questions: What can we know, what are we to do, and what can we hope for in this world?

These are three questions before us, and the great thinker wrote three books in answer to these three questions. What can we know finally in this world, which also implies what we cannot know? What are we supposed to do here? What can we expect finally here in this world?

 

We are supposed to do our duty, but to know our duty, we have to know to whom we belong.

We can know that we should not go for the result. If he 'engaged' me to you, is it about you or about the devotees? It is about being the 'same', because it is the same for both of us, it is about being devotees or also being taken advantage of. 

There was not that level of sameness in the TM-movement, there were differences and 'personal staff' it made it different, but somehow it was only possible to solve that issue when we were on the same Level, therefore, Baba said inside 'personal staff' and put me on the same level. If there is a heirarchy, there is no sameness. If there is unity, it is the same. With Baba outside is a difference, but inside not.

If our knowledge is tarnished by a not right path or sense activity, it will be in the light of that contamination and the duty will be colored in that light and conditioning.   

 

These are philosophical questions – you may say spiritual questions – because what you have to do as a duty is connected with what you can know, and if your knowledge is tarnished by the error of a contamination of sense activity, to that extent your knowledge of what you have to do in this world also will be contaminated.

Your idea of duty will be inadequate to the extent of your inadequacy of the understanding of life itself. So Arjuna did not know what he was supposed to do, as he had decided in a wrong manner not to do, since to do would mean a great suffering to himself as well as to others. To reach God, to enter the kingdom of heaven is a suffering to you in one way, and also is a suffering to others with whom you are related in this world; and you know very well why it is and why it should be so.

And here begins the instructions of Krishna, because he makes him aware of what is missing. What is missing that is discrimination.

Arjuna, you have no samkhya-buddhi," says Sri Krishna. "You are unable to discriminate between the real and the unreal, the true and the false, which means to say you have no right understanding, and samkhya is right understanding."

What is samkhya? What is knowledge? What is right understanding?

It is not easy to have right knowledge when we are not having sufficient information regarding things, and the information conveyed to us by the senses is not ultimately reliable. We cannot wholly rely upon what the senses are telling us. Therefore, the knowledge which is based on these reports of the senses may not be entirely reliable.

Hence, our understanding of the world may not be regarded as adequate to the purpose. Thus it follows that we cannot know what we are supposed to do in this world. One cannot know what one's duty is because knowledge of things is based on understanding, which we lack, since we are sensorily conditioned and not so very rational, purely, as we may sometimes imagine ourselves to be.

It means basically it is different than it seems and different than we think it is, because our knowledge is based on senseperception, we think since we have been a child that this is no issue, because we think we know and that means we are not Aware of it, because it has never been put in question. Sense knowledge is what we know since we are born.
 

The whole of the Samkhya philosophy is a system of cosmology; it is a description of the way in which things evolve from the ultimate reality. 

I will tell you in what way they are acceptable and in what way they are not acceptable. The supreme being is called purusha in the Samkhya. The essential nature of this purusha is pure consciousness, awareness, brilliance, light, intelligence, self-awareness. The purusha is an infinite being, and not something that is in some place; it is not an individual person.

 

There is the problem that experience is in the senses and we have a subject and an object. Everything is object, whatever can be conceptualized is object, the subject is not a matter of experience.

So, there are two realities: consciousness and matter – the subject and the object, as you sometimes call them. When the subject comes in contact with the object, there is knowledge of the object. So knowledge is a product. Knowledge in the sense of knowledge of objects is a product of the coming together of consciousness with this principal material-stuff called prakriti.

 

It means without subject we have no object and the subject is the cause, the source of the object and so is the experience and that is why we are on our own battlefield.

It is an indeterminate, all-pervasive principle called prakriti; actually the word prakriti in Sanskrit means 'the origin of materiality'. The original ethereal form of matter, the finest condition of matter, is called prakriti. The natural state of affairs is prakriti. When this Infinite Consciousness, purusha, comes in contact with the infinite prakriti, there is a consciousness of one's being there as an "I am that I am".

There is no consciousness of an individual object outside, because it has not yet been manifested – it is to take place further on. There is a universal feeling of "I am" – so, the feeling "I am", even in universal sense, is a step down in the process of creation, while the pure purusha is not even an "I am". It is something more than that – indescribable 'That Which Is'. This cosmic "I am" is, in its general form, called mahat; and in a more particularised, emphasised form is called ahamkara. So, we have purusha, prakriti, mahat, and ahamkara. These are cosmical levels.

 

This is the level of 'I am that' and we were on that level the same, it means it is insight in the dream state of being the same 'I am that'. Now we can go on questioning 'that'. Here we find the same principle in the Bhagavadgita. And we have to listen carefully, because something happens, the real creation starts between the subjective side of consciousness and the objective side of world and matter.

What we learn to know is space and time.

 

Now, you have to listen to me more carefully, because something happens – the real creation starts now onwards.
This concretised, universal self-consciousness, known as ahamkara, is split into the objective side and the subjective side by some miracle of the creative will. Thus it is that we are seeing a world outside, as if it is totally external. Space and time introduce themselves. So, the first conceivable form of the world may be said to be what you call 'space and time', or in modern language you may say 'space-time complex'.