Turning In – In Gita Verse 4.8 To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.
Krishna says that to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants – he only says that when again the human being becomes self-unconscious I come to remind him regarding his self-consciousness.
Don’t take the words literally. He is talking to every individual. He himself knows that even by taking birth by him he cannot destroy those who are miscreants. But definitely he can again wake up a few individuals towards their self-consciousness.
Look into the life of Krishna when he took birth he didn’t destroy all the evils or all the miscreants. What he did was whoever was ready to come back to their self-consciousness he worked with them. In that it includes Putana. Kansha, etc and also Pandava. He gave his presence differently to everyone. In his presence they drop their self-unconsciousness.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 3.26, I wrote regarding Krishna and Putana. There were so many devils there, when Krishna took birth, how many miscreants he killed. Only a few of them. Why? Because only they were ready to drop their self-unconsciousness. And they knew that on their own they would not be able to drop it. So Krishna just through his presence helps them to bring back to their self-consciousness, become watcher and witnessing so that they can connect themselves to their own divinity.
In many of my blogs I have written that we got the body from our parents and life from the universe, soul, divine. God is not anywhere else but he is within us.
This is the reason that all the enlightened people, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna don’t correct us, they only say Turn In.
Turning inwards is not a turning at all. Going inwards is not going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration. That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring – maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire.
If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards. All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inwards? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears, when desiring is no more clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not turning at all, it is simply not going out.
But in language it is always a problem to express these things.
Once the energy is not moving anywhere… Remember, I repeat again, turning in is not moving in. When the energy is not moving at all, when there is no movement, when everything is still, when all has stopped – because seeing the futility of desire you cannot move anywhere, there is nowhere to go – stillness descends. The world stops. That’s what is meant by ‘turning in’. Suddenly you are in. You have always been there, now you are awake. The night is over, the morning has come, you are awake. This is what is meant by Buddhahood – to become aware, awake, of that which is already the case.
Remember Hakuin’s saying: From the very beginning all beings are Buddhas. From the very beginning to the very end. In the beginning, in the middle, in the end, all are Buddhas. Not for a single moment have you been anybody else. But the emperor is having a nightmare of becoming a beggar, and is tortured by the nightmare.
From your own life, recollect an incident when you have not guided the other person by correcting them, but gave them hints by which they recollected their own wisdom and acted in their circumstances, how much relaxed you were and joy of being with that person was there. Most of the teachers who have passed through this experience when they give homework to their student before that just give guidelines through their teaching and in full trust in their student they give them homework. Next period when they come with their homework and question what satisfaction and joy you have. As you have not taken students responsibility but through your guidance when they can do even little things you have guided them towards themselves and their responsibility.
We all are children of the universe, it never leaves us but wants us to grow in self-consciousness.
When Krishna says that to deliver the pious only means he has taken the birth to guide us to turn In.
Tags: Turning In
