Question 2

QUESTIONER: YOU EXPLAINED TO US KRISHNA'S CHOICELESSNESS. THE GEETA, HOWEVER, SAYS THAT ONE WHO DEPARTS FROM THIS WORLD WHEN THE SUN IS ON HIS NORTHWARD PATH ATTAINS TO LIBERATION. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ONE WHO DIES WHEN THE SUN IS ON HIS SOUTHWARD PATH? AND HOW DOES KRISHNA'S STHITAPRAJNA, ONE WHO IS SETTLED IN HIS INTELLIGENCE, COMPARE WITH HIS DEVOTEE WHO IS ON THE PATH OF LOVE? KRISHNA DEFINES STHITAPRAJNA AS ONE WHO REMAINS UNPERTURBED AND STEADY IN THE MIDST OF BOTH HAPPINESS AND PAIN. BUT THIS STATE CAN ALSO LEAD TO UTTER INSENSITIVITY. AND WILL YOU CALL IT HUMAN IF SOMEBODY DOES NOT TAKE PLEASURE AS PLEASURE AND PAIN AS PAIN?

This statement of Krishna's is very profound and meaningful. He says sthitaprajna is one who remains unperturbed and steady in the midst of both happiness and misery. And your question is equally relevant: that if someone does not feel happy in happiness and miserable in misery will it not destroy his sensitivity?

There are two ways of remaining unperturbed in the midst of happiness and suffering. One way is to kill your sensitivity. Then you will cease to be happy in happiness and miserable in misery. If your tongue is burned you will cease to taste both the sweet and sour. If your eyes are blinded you will know neither light nor darkness. A deaf person is insensitive to every kind of sound -- pleasant and unpleasant. Insensitivity is the simplest way of achieving evenness of mind in both pleasure and pain.

And it is not surprising that by and large Krishna's followers have chosen the way of insensitivity. Most of those who are known as sannyasins, renunciates or recluses, do nothing but systematically destroy their sensitivity so they become dead to the experience of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. But this is a travesty of what Krishna really means.

Krishna's meaning is very different. He says a sthitaprajna remains unperturbed in pleasure and pain -- he does not say he is insensitive to them. He means to say that a wise man goes beyond happiness and sorrow, he transcends them -- not by killing his sensitivity but by attaining to a higher state of consciousness, to superconsciousness. An unconscious person, one under the influence of drugs, is insensitive to pain and pleasure but he cannot be said to have transcended them. He has rather fallen below the normal state of consciousness. In that way every dead person is insensitive. Transcendence is entirely different.

And I interpret this aphorism of Krishna's very differently. In my view, Krishna's way of transcending happiness and sorrow is different and unique. If someone experiences happiness fully, if he is utterly sensitive to pleasure, if he lives it so totally that no. thing remains to be lived, he will soon transcend it. Then he will be unperturbed and steady in every situation of pleasure and happiness.

Similarly if someone experiences pain and misery totally, if he goes into it with all his being, without trying to escape it in the least, he too will go beyond pain; he will never again be disturbed by suffering. Krishna does not ask you to kill your sensitivity; on the contrary, he wants you to heighten your sensitivity to its utmost, so it becomes total. Krishna stands for sensitivity, and total sensitivity at that.

Let us understand it in another way. What do I mean by total sensitivity? For example, someone insults me and I am pained. If I know, if I think that I am in pain, it means that I am not fully in pain. I am yet keeping some distance from pain. In that case I say I am in pain, I don't say I am pained. Even when I say that I am pained, I am not totally in pain, I am still keeping a distance from my pain. I never say that I am pain itself. And unless I know and say it truly, the distance between pain and me will remain. The truth is that when I am pained, I am not separate from pain, I am pain itself. The distance that I keep from pain is my way of resisting it, escaping it, not meeting it totally.

This thing needs to be understood in depth. We divide everything in life, and this is not a right thing to do. Life is really indivisible. When I say to someone "I love you," the statement is linguistically correct, but existentially it is all wrong. When I am in love with someone I really become love itself in respect to that person. Then I am wholly love; no part of me remains outside of love. Even if there is a fragment in me that knows or says I am in love, it means I am not totally in love. And if I am partially in love I am not in love at all.

Love cannot be fragmentary, partial; either I love or I don't. Fragmented love is not love; fragmented happiness is not happiness. But the way we are, we divide everything into fragments. And that is our problem, that is our misery. When one says he is happy, know well that he has ceased to be happy. Happiness might have visited him without his know. ing, and he might have been really happy in that split second. But the moment he comes to know he is happy is the moment when happiness has left him. Who is the one who knows he is happy? It is certainly the unhappy part of his being which knows and recognizes happiness. To know happiness some unhappiness is always needed.

If one is integrated and total in himself, then there will be no one to know or say that he is happy or unhappy. Then he will not be happy, he will be happiness itself. Then he will not be unhappy, he will be unhappiness itself. Then and only then his sensitivity will be alive and total. Then sensitivity will be at its highest, at its peak.

In such a state of total sensitivity, every fiber of my being, my total being will be happy or unhappy, loving or hating, quiet or restless. Then there will be no one to be disturbed about it, or even to know it. If I am totally in happiness or unhappiness, if I am happiness or unhappiness itself, then I don't evaluate it or compare it. I don't identify myself with it or condemn it, I don't cling to it or resist it. Then I don't even name it.

When sensitivity is total, the question of being agitated or disturbed does not arise. Then there is no reason why I should not be settled in my intelligence, steadied in my wisdom.

A friend visited me the other day and said that he was very worried about his addiction to smoking. I told him, "It seems you have divided yourself into two parts, one of which is addicted to smoking and the other addicted to worrying. Otherwise how is it possible that you smoke and worry together? You either smoke or worry. But since you smoke and worry together, it is obvious there are two 'yous', two selves in you -- one of whom goes on smoking and another who keeps repenting it, condemning it, cursing it. And the problem is, the one that smokes will continue to smoke till the end of life and the other part of you will continue to repent all along the line. The repenter will go on taking vows and pledges again and again to quit smoking, and the smoker will go on breaking those vows and pledges with impunity one after another.

So I said to him, "You should do only one thing: either smoke without repenting, or repent without smoking. If you do both things together you will always be in hell. If you smoke, become a total smoker, don't be a partial one. Be totally involved in smoking without sparing an iota of your being. Don't allow even a small fragment of your being to stand aloof like a judge condemning smoking or justifying it."

And then I said, "If you can become integrated and whole in smoking, then a day will come when the whole man in you can quit smoking, and quit it effortlessly and completely. The one who smokes totally can quit smoking as totally. He will never live perpetually in conflict whether to smoke or not to smoke; to be or not to be. And he will enjoy both smoking and non-smoking."

A fragmented person is neither here nor there. He is neither fish, flesh nor good red herring he is perpetually in conflict, in misery, in hell. He is miserable when he smokes, because his other part condemns him as a sinner. And when he quits smoking, the smoker in him asserts, saying he is missing a great pleasure and luxury. There is no need for this man's misery; he is disturbed, restless and miserable in every condition. Whatever he does he cannot escape conflict, restlessness and misery. He can never be unperturbed and steady.

He alone can be unperturbed and steady who is integrated and total. Because then there is no part of him left to be disturbed and unsteady. One who is complete, who is total, who becomes one with any and every situation that comes his way, such a person ceases to be a witness; he transcends witnessing. Witnessing is a means, not an end. Krishna is not a witness, although he exhorts Arjuna to be a witness. Krishna is total, he has arrived. Now there is no alienation between the subject and the object, between the observer and the observed. Now there is only observing, a process of observation. And this observation is total

The witness, the observer, divides the world into subject and object, into the witness and the witnessed. Therefore as long as there is a witness, duality will continue. Witnessing is the last frontier of the dual world, after which the non-dual begins. But one cannot reach the non dual without being a witness. To be a witness means that I now give up dividing the world into many. Instead I will divide it into two -- the witness and the witnessed. And when I have reduced the many fragments of the world to two, it will not be difficult to come to the complete unity of existence when duality will disappear, when the observer and the observed will become one and the same. If one succeeds in becoming a witness he will soon have glimpses of the one without the other, when there is neither the witness not the witnessed, but only witnessing.

For example, if I love someone there is one who loves and another who is loved. But if love is real, then moments will come when both the lover and the loved one will disappear, and only the energy of love will abide between the two, connecting them. There will be moments when lovers disappear and only love remains. These are the moments of adwait, the non-dual, moments of unity -- the one without the other.

In the same way there are moments of unity in witnessing too, when subject and object disappear and only the witnessing consciousness remains, like an ocean of energy bridging two formless entities -- the witness and the witnessed -- like two distant sea-shores. The near shore is called the "I" and the distant shore the "thou", one is the observer and the other the observed. Such moments will come and go.

And when this state achieves its fullness it will abide forever, and then even witnessing will disappear. Then one is settled in intelligence, steadied in wisdom; one is whole. He is the awakened one,

Krishna is not a witness. Of course he asks Arjuna to become a witness, but he is all the time aware that witnessing is only a means, a transitory phase. So he also talks of moments when even witnessing will cease to be. Krishna explains both to Arjuna -- the means and the end, the path and the goal. And when he speaks about being unperturbed and steady, he does not speak about the means but the end, the goal itself -- although most interpreters of the Geeta think that he is talking about the means, the witness. They think if someone remains a witness in happiness and pain without experiencing it, without indulging it, he will attain to the state that is unperturbed and steady.

But in my view, this is a wrong approach. If someone only witnesses without living it, this witnessing will become a kind of tension, disturbance, restlessness for him. Then he will always be on the defensive, trying to protect himself from happiness and pain.

To be undisturbed, to be relaxed and peaceful, it is essential that one is not at all conscious of happiness and pain. If one is conscious it means a kind of disturbance is happening, a kind of agitation is alive and there is a separation between the two -- the observer and the observed. This consciousness, this separation is subtle, but it is there. So long as one continues to know this is happiness and that is pain, he is not integrated and whole. And he is not settled and steady in himself; he has not attained to equilibrium and peace and wisdom. He is not a sthitaprajna.

To me, the state of unperturbed and steady intelligence and the way to it are altogether different. My approach is one of total involvement in the experiencing of pleasure and pain, love and hate, or whatever it is. I don't want you to be a distant watcher, a mere spectator. I want you to be an actor, fully involved in your role, in your acting, I want you to be totally one with it.

All duality, every division between the actor and the act, between the experiencer and the experienced, the observer and the observed, has to disappear. I say that if a river drowns you it is because you are separate from the river. If you become one with the river, if you become the river itself, then the question of being drowned by the river does not arise. Then how can the river drown you? Who will drown? And by whom? And who will shout for help? Then you are one with the moment -- totally one. If you can be totally one with the moment at hand you will have learned the art of being one with another moment that is on its way. Then you will be one with every coming moment.

And then a miracle will happen; both pleasure and pain will chasten you, enrich you, add to your beauty and grandeur. Then both happiness and misery will be your friends and they will have equal share in making you. And when your time to leave this world will come, you will thank both in tremendous gratefulness.

The truth is that it is not only light that creates you, darkness has an equal hand in your creation. Not only happiness enriches you, pain and suffering have an equal share in building your richness. Not only life is a moment of rejoicing and celebration, death also is a great moment of bliss and festivity.

It is possible only if you can live each moment totally, if you can squeeze out every drop of juice the moment possesses. Then you will not be able to say that happiness is friendly and pain is inimical. No, then you will gratefully accept that happiness and misery are like your own two legs on which you walk, and that now they are together available to you. Then you will realize how you have tried impossibly all your life to walk on one leg alone -- the leg of happiness.

It is interesting to know that when you raise your right leg you are wholly with your tight leg, and when you raise your left leg you are completely with the left leg. In the same way you have to be whole when you speak, and you have to be whole when you are silent.

Disorder begins when we choose. And when the chooser is separate the world of choices is unending. Therefore witnessing is not a very lofty stage of being, it is just in the middle. It is, however, a higher thing than the doer, because a doer cannot take a jump into the non-dual -- the one without the other.

Witnessing is like a jumping board from where a plunge into the rivet of oneness becomes possible. But in one respect the doer and the witness are alike: they are holding on to the rivet's bank, neither of them is in the river yet. It is true that while the doer is away from the rivet, the witness is at a point close to it from where he can easily take a jump. But as long as they are out of the rivet, they are on the same land, in the same trap -- the trap of duality. Only after a leap into the rivet can you be out of duality, you can be one with the one.

When Krishna talks about an unperturbed and steady state, he really talks about adwait, the non dual state, where there is no one to be disturbed. So I hold that Krishna's vision does not violate sensitivity; on the contrary, it is the attainment of total sensitivity.

So fat as Krishna's reference in the GEETA to the northward and southward movement of the sun is concerned, I think it has been grossly misconstrued always. It has nothing to do with the sun who makes our days and moves northward and southward the year round, and who presides over our solar system. It is not that one dying during the sun's northward move. ment attains to liberation and another dying during his southward trip misses it. The whole thing has nothing to do with our planet and the sun; it is a different matter altogether. It is really a symbolic statement, a metaphor.

Like the sun on the outside, there is an inner sun, a sun of consciousness inside us which has its own ways and spheres of movement. And as we divide our earth into northern and southern hemispheres, so we divide our inner sky into similar hemispheres. Inside us too there is a movement of the sun, or light or truth or whatever you call it, and a network of centers which can compare with the stellar system on the outside.

If in this inner world a particular space is lighted at the time of one's death, he attains to liberation, otherwise not. This subject is important, but needs to be explained at length, so it is better to take it up another time. For the present, it is enough to know that Krishna's reference to the sun's movement in the Geeta is not concerned with the outer sun.

Each one of us, in our interiority, is a miniature universe with our own inner suns and moons and stars and their movements. It has its own spatial movement of light or consciousness or truth or whatever you call it. The Geeta says that if someone dies when his inner sun is on its northward movement he is freed from the cycle of birth and death. It is like we say that water turns into vapor when it is heated to one hundred degrees temperature. Short of a hundred degrees -- even at ninety-nine degrees -- water remains water.