First Be – In Gita Verse 3.16 My dear Arjuna, one who does not follow in human life the cycle of sacrifice thus established by the Vedas certainly leads a life full of sin. Living only for the satisfaction of the senses, such a person lives in vain.
Krishna says to Arjuna, Human life is given to you by the existence to grow in consciousness. Only human beings in this existence have the capacity to become self-alert.
By all the enlightened people there is only one message in different words is Grow in Consciousness. Because only Human beings can grow in Consciousness.
I would like to start with what Buddha said – One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, ‘What can I do to help the world?’
Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, ‘You cannot do anything because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don’t think of the world. Don’t think of how to serve the world, how to help others.’ Buddha said, ‘First be – and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it becomes compassion. Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.’
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, ‘Don’t ask me what to do. You cannot do anything, because to do something first you will be needed. And you are not there, so who will do it? You can think about doing, but you cannot do anything.’
These techniques are to help you, to bring you back; to help you to create a situation in which you can meet yourself. Much will have to be destroyed – all that is wrong, all that is false. Before the real arises the false will have to leave; it must cease. And these are the false notions – that you are.
These are the false notions – that you are a soul, atma, you are Brahma. Not that you are not, but these notions are false.
Gurdjieff had to insist that there is no soul in you. Against all the traditions he insisted, ‘Man has no soul. Soul is simply a possibility – it can be, it may not be. It has to be achieved. You are simply a seed.’
And this emphasis is good. The possibility is there, the potentiality is there, but it is not yet actual.
And we go on reading the Gita and the Upanishads and the Bible, and we go on feeling that we are the soul – the seed thinking that it is the tree. The tree is hidden there, but it is yet to be uncovered.
And it is good to remember that you may remain a seed, and you may die a seed – because the tree cannot come, the tree cannot sprout by itself. You have to do something consciously about it, because only through consciousness it grows.
There are two types of growth. One is unconscious, natural growth: if the situation is there, the thing will grow. But the soul, the atma, the innermost being, the divine within you, is a different type of growth altogether. It is only through consciousness that it grows. It is not natural, it is supernatural.
Left to nature itself it will not grow; just left to evolution it will never evolve. You have to do something consciously; you have to make a conscious effort about it, because only through consciousness it grows. Once the consciousness is focused there, the growth happens. These techniques are to make you more conscious.
Universe can provide you only the circumstances you have to grow from those circumstances by your self-consciousness. If you act and respond to those circumstances through your self-consciousness then you grow.
Krishna is saying to Arjuna this Vedas, scriptures only can help you if from your self-consciousness you fight this war. Fight Without Enmity. When Arjuna will fight Without Enmity he cannot bring the past while fighting and no expectation of future will help him. Just only Self-Consciousness. This is the key for all of us.
Tags: First Be
