Bhagavad Gita Verse 4.9

Be Ordinary – In Gita Verse 4.9 One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.

Krishna tells that when you turn in and immediately you find me over there. You realise the transcendental nature of the universe. Means change of form nothing else. Whether you understand through science or by turning in, you will find something which cannot be destroyed but only it changes the form. You will find your own eternity.

Life has no beginning and no end. It is eternity, and that is God’s gift. God has given himself in the gift, because life is God. All that is needed is a certain awakening in your heart so you can see it, feel it, taste it, touch it. The gift has been waiting and waiting for you for thousands of years, but you have been asleep, as everybody has been.

One has to become an awakening. One h…as to be nothing but a great effort to wake yourself up. Nobody else can do it for you. If you don’t cooperate there is no possibility. Somebody can shake you but you can go on sleeping, you can turn over. Somebody can shake you but you can start dreaming that somebody is shaking you.

Unless you want to wake up, unless an intense longing to wake up arises in you, no possible help can be given from the outside. But if you want to be awakened then all possible help is available. It cannot be imposed on you; your freedom cannot be interfered with. With your cooperation the thing is very simple… so simple that I say: Snap your fingers, slap your face, and wake up!

Just as an experiment, let us try and move our hand with awareness. We will immediately realise that the particular moment was full of grace. The unawareness or sleep is gone, we are now fully awake, and this aware state is what the Buddha called ‘wakefulness’, and it is this wakefulness that is the way to living life.

Buddha’s emphasis was on two very important aspects – life and awareness. And, if life is our goal, if living life to its fullest is the ultimate aim, then awareness is the only highway to reach there. I have tried to depict the state of this continuous presence that ‘we are’, through the routine life, Awareness. When we walk, sleep, or even perform any mundane activity with awareness, it becomes meditation and the centring, of our being begins. This centring, leads to crystallisation and is very important for the birth of our being.

When you are eating, just be aware of your eating, and when you are angry, just be aware that you are angry. This constant remembering of the self creates a subtle energy in you and you begin to be a crystallised being. Kabir’s poems beautifully describe this awareness in his rustic but beautiful language. Many of his poems are a call to acknowledge and live in this awareness, which he termed as Jatan. He says, “Man Gorakh, man Gobind, man hi Aughad soy, Jo man raakhe jatan kari, aape karta hoy.” Kabir says that the body is not doing anything; the entire activity is governed by the inner world of awareness. We only need to be aware of ourselves and the rest will follow.

This is the most significant phenomenon that will light our inner consciousness. In his poems, Kabir describes ordinary village women returning home from the river with vessels full of water carefully balanced on their heads. They never use their hands to support the pots even when they are deeply engaged in talking to each other, or while singing a song in chorus. Kabir wonders how they manage to continuously retain the pots on their heads without ever spilling a drop of water. He himself answers it by saying that it is because of pure awareness – a watchful inner guard. Kabir tells us that we should all live, work and walk just like those women who – with precariously balanced pots on their heads – reach home without even spilling a drop of water.

There is a very thin line between forgetfulness and unawareness. Kabir has more to say on Jatan, awareness: “Das Kabir jatan kar odhi, jyon ki tyon dhar deeni chadariya.” Kabir says he draped the subtle yarn of awareness around him, and returned it just as he received it from the lord himself. This is what awareness is all about – living our life, maintaining a constant remembrance and witnessing ourselves totally.

Krishna tells Arjuna that to find your eternity you have to wake up. Once you know your own eternity which has not been taught by anyone then all your objective world, material world will drop, with that your attachments, anxiety, expectations, etc everything will drop out. The only way to wake up is be ordinary, bring your awareness in all your routine acts.

Tags: Be Ordinary