Bhagavagd Gita - Session 40- Track 4006

…this is because there is a fundamental connection between action and silence. The two may seem to be opposites, but they reach a point of union, then you can do both: remain silent and be active. There is a fundamental connection in the very nature of things. Nature of Reality is such that the two are not opposite although they seem to be opposite to us, ‘to be silent is to be devoid of action’, ‘to be active means to be devoid of silence’, but that is true at a very lower level of consciousness where we are hardly silent and we are hardly active. So, in that kind of a balance…

Comment: Like Nataraja.

Yes, if you can really reach that stage of Nataraja, then there is a complete stability and a complete movement, and that is the great secret described in the 15th chapter, where Sri Krishna says, this is what we read last time but we will read again:

dvāv imau puruṣau loke kṣaraś cākṣara eva ca |
kṣaraḥ sarvāṇi bhūtāni kūṭa-stho ’kṣara ucyate ||16|| (XV)

“dvāv imau puruṣau, there are two Purushas; loke, in this world; kṣaraḥ ca akṣaraḥ eva ca, the mobile and the immobile, action and silence. There is a Purusha which is mobile and there is a Purusha which is immobile, or there are two statuses of the same Purusha, the same reality, so that reality is at once mobile and immobile.

This is a kind of a digest of the Isha Upanishad, where the Isha Upanishad says:

tadejati tannaijati(Isha Upn. 5): it moves, it moves not. That is the real Reality; that is the very nature of Reality. If you really become completely silent, you will see automatically the will of action will start, unrestrained, the most omnipotent action will flow from the tremendous silence. Or if you become highly active, intensely active, what is called a ‘master act’, if you are able to do a master act, you become completely silent, but the action must be a ‘master act’.

Question: But people who opt for the total silence why don’t they return to activity?

Because it is not complete silence, there are many stages, layers and layers of silence. You don’t attain to the point where it meets action: just in our activities also we do lot of activities, we also feel we are very active, but we don’t reach the point of ‘master act’. If you reach the master act, you will find the supreme silence.

Comment: Is it the same as naiśkarmaiya?

Yes, absolutely, when you have the master act, you attain to the non-action, you don’t feel the burden of action at all, you don’t feel that you are acting at all, it’s like carrying a feather in your hand. You may be commanding the whole world of the armies, but the consciousness in which you live is like if you are carrying a small feather, you are completely silent.

That is the mark of the ‘sthitaprajña’. A sthitaprajña is one who is completely in equilibrium and yet he is fully active. Like Sri Krishna when He was in the war, what was His condition of consciousness? Even when Arjuna, his great instrument of the action refuses to act, He smiles, rebukes him, He does not say anything further, it is such a tremendous silence in His consciousness! That is one of the important thing to be noted in the whole Gita: the consciousness of Sri Krishna with which He expounds the whole Truth; He does not get tired, He does not say ‘now the time is up’, finish your questions.

Question: But in that condition you become omnipotent?

Yes, quite true, that is true, that is right, that is…the omnipotence is a condition of silence.

Therefore it says: puruṣa kṣara akṣara. The two are simultaneous, it is not as if they alternate: even in kṣara, there, akṣara is present fully.

So, that is why: dvāv imau puruṣau loke kṣaraś cākṣara eva ca |

kṣaraḥ sarvāṇi bhūtāni: all the things that you see are mobile; kūṭa-stho ’kṣara ucyate, but that which is absolutely silent, kūṭa-stho, niṣkriya, is akṣaraḥ, is immobile.

But then this is not enough (XV, 17):

uttamaḥ puruṣas tv anyaḥ: anyaḥ: another than these two, is another status,

paramātmety udāhṛtaḥ: that is the Paramatman,

yo loka-trayam āviśya bibharty avyaya īśvaraḥ ||17|| (XV)

“Who, having entered all the 3 worlds, bibharty avyaya īśvaraḥ; bibharty means ‘breeds’, he breeds that is active, avyaya, which is not active. He is īśvaraḥ, He is the Lord, who is at once bibharty and avyaya, who is un-expendable, who is inexhaustible, who remains permanent.

Then, in the 18th:

yasmāt kṣaram atīto ’ham akṣarād api cottamaḥ |

“I am greater than kṣara, I am greater even than the akṣara, therefore uttamaḥ, I am supreme.”

ato ’smi loke veda ca prathitāḥ puruṣottamaḥ ||18|| (XV)

“That is why, ato means ‘that is why’ asmi loke veda ca prathitāḥ puruṣottamaḥ, therefore in this world, as also in the Veda, I have been described as Purushottama.”

And then Sri Krishna says:

yo mām evam asammūḍho jānāti puruṣottamam |
sa sarva-vid bhajati māṁ sarva-bhāvena bhārata ||19|| (XV)

“He who knows Me, asammūḍho means ‘fully awaken’; one who becomes fully awaken and one who knows Me as Purushottama, jānāti puruṣottamam, who knows Me as the Purushottama, sa sarva-vid he becomes the all-knower, and worships Me; sarva-bhāvena bhārata, O Bharata, O Arjuna, māṁ bhajati sarva-bhāvena…he does not say ‘therefore he sits quietly’…māṁ bhajati sarva- bhāvena, in every activity, in every movement, in every emotion, in every feeling, in every thought, sarva-bhāvena, there is nothing that he avoids, he is not polluted by anything, no action he abhors sarva-bhāvena bhajati māṁ.

And then the last is:

iti guhyatamaṁ śāstram idaṁ uktaṁ mayānagha |

In this way, O anagha, O sinless, maya guhyatamaṁ śāstram idaṁ uktaṁ: I have now told you the guhyatamaṁ…(the 9th chapter was already rājavidyārājaguhya, it was already the supreme, but still, this was still left out as it were, so it is now expounded fully)… guhyatamaṁ śāstram, I have now told you the profoundest secret. This idea that the silence and activity are united in the Purushottama as a result of which all that is a corollary of it, if you put all this together, that is the meaning of omniscience: you become sarvavid, then you become the knower of all things.

etad buddhvā buddhimān, having known this, the one who is intelligent,

syāt kṛta-kṛtyaś ca bhārata ||20|| (XV)

“He becomes capable of the fulfilment of the highest possible action, he does not sit again quietly, kṛta-kṛtyaś ca, he becomes master of action and all actions are accomplished in totality.

So once again the message is a message of action, but action which is based upon a complete silence, one who combines in himself total silence and total activity.

Now, once you know this, this chapter describes the entire process of bondage and liberation and perfection, the three words: ‘bondage’, ‘liberation’ and ‘perfection’.