Bhagavagd Gita - Session 24- Track 2408

Now, let us continue our analysis. The most important element in the analysis that Sri Krishna and our Indian philosophy have pointed out is that there is a most powerful enabling factor in this process. And Sri Krishna has said: “uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ(VI, 5), by your Self raise your self”. Apart from all the stages that we have discussed so far, the most important element comes now: create a will in you to lift your self. The more you put this will, the more will be the favourable circumstances. Now, this is a great secret that the Bhagavad Gita tells us.

As I said in the beginning, every human being is confronted with a circumstance; and with regard with that circumstance one either wants to escape from it, or wants to change it, or to modify it, or wants to continue it. What is the secret by which you can really do what you want? Sri Krishna’s answer is: ‘will’. There is in you a Purusha, which has the key to the circumstance. There is no circumstance in your life, which is given to you arbitrarily: if a circumstance is given to you, it is a result of what you have willed at one time or the other, in one situation or the other. In other words circumstances are always a result of what you have willed.

If you had not willed ‘ignorance’, ignorance would have not come to you. If you had not willed failure, failure would not come to you: now, these are very important statements, which are controvertible, because we normally think that, “I don’t want failure” and yet failure comes; “I want success”, and yet success does not come. And yet Sri Krishna says that the secret of all circumstances is in your ‘personal will’: what exactly you will. But, when you say, “you will” means: not your superficial self willing; not artificial self willing; not a casual self willing. It is not merely, “oh! My child should pass”: that is a casual will. You must really will that your child must pass; as a result of which what does it mean? You have to work so hard; if you really will it, you have to work at it; the moment you begin to work at it, the result will come correspondingly.

The key to the whole process of liberation is a decision on the part of Purusha to become liberated. As long as you like the bondage, the bondage will continue. And of course people will say, “but we don’t like bondage and yet we are in bondage”; but it is casually that you do not like it; it is not that ‘really’ you do not like it. How much we hug our attachments! How much we like our own successes! How much we like our own pride! How much we like when we succeed! How much we enjoy, we actually go out of the way, to be in that very condition in which we find ourselves to be very comfortable. It is when in our own consciousness… “Go deep and will from the depths!” It is what Sri Krishna means: “uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ”, your ‘self’, which is lower, which is casual, you lift it by your higher will, deeper will, wider will. Discover your deeper truth, deeper will, strengthen it, and bring it up.

“nātmānam avasādayet(VI, 5)”

“You should not allow the lower being to take you down.”

So, both the thing you do: do not allow your self to be brought down and always allow your self to be lifted up: these are the two answers that Sri Krishna has given.

Then of course, Sri Krishna has given many answers also, which are deeper and deeper, depending upon the state in which you are, and the highest level is the level where you reach to the very nature of Jiva. At present our Jiva has been overpowered by the state of Purusha, which has consented to be in the bondage: we are in bondage because at one stage we have consented (if we had not consented this would have not happened). There is a relationship between Purusha and Prakriti. Prakriti is nothing but ‘the will of the Purusha’ in the process of execution. This is the very nature of Prakriti, according to the Bhagavad Gita. According to Sankhya it is different. But according to the Bhagavad Gita the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti is that Prakriti is a process of execution of the will, which has come from Purusha. So, Prakriti is always executrix; she is the executive officer of the Purusha who is the commander: this is the relationship, always.

If you find in a given situation today, there must be something in you, which has consented to it. The moment you say, “I don’t consent”, you will see immediately the situation changing: you make an experiment; this is not a dogma. Sri Krishna’s teaching is not a dogma; Gita is not a dogma: it is a book of experimental psychology. It tells you that, “these are principles of psychology”, that all that is happening to you, all your circumstances are products of Prakriti; and these products of Prakriti are entirely because of the will, either in the form of ‘a consent’, or in the form of ‘a wish’, or in the form of ‘desire’, or in the form of ‘a real will’: whatever may be the form, in one way or the other it has produce where you are now.

If you therefore do not want it, do not escape from it: this is a very important statement of the Bhagavad Gita, ‘do not escape’. Usually people like to run away. Arjuna wanted to run away from the battlefield! Sri Krishna tells him that you have come to the battlefield because of your own will. Now, when the situation becomes difficult, you want to run away from it, do not run away from it. How will you do it now? Discover what is the right will; lift yourself from where you are. You are today gripped by anxiety, you are gripped by doubt; you are gripped by despondences. In that situation discover “that” will, which can lift you up.

And the whole of the Gita may be regarded, as the supplying of “that” will. Sri Krishna discovers, by digging Arjuna’s consciousness little by little, and presence to him, “that” will by which he can be lifted up; so that at last Arjuna says: mohaḥ naṣṭo, ‘my entire exclusive concentration of consciousness, which was there in my escaping is now gone, naṣṭo mohaḥ, (XVIII, 73), all the doubts are dissolved’, and then he says, “now I am ready to fight”. Even when Sri Krishna says: yathecchasi tathā kuru, (XVIII, 63), ‘now you do what you like’: He has expounded everything, then left everything to Arjuna saying: ‘now you do what you like’. But by that time the real will had arisen; he does according to the real will and he really meets the situation, and comes out of it.

So, Prakriti according to Sri Krishna is always an executrix of the will of the Purusha. Therefore, if you want to have liberation from bondage, then there is only one important element apart from all the things that I have said just now: “will, will that you want to be liberated.”