Be Lotus – In Gita Verse 4.18 One who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is intelligent among men, and he is in the transcendental position, although engaged in all sorts of activities.
Just beautiful. Krishna says that in the middle of the world how to not get affected by others and from ourselves also. From others means we should not become anyone’s followers and from ourselves means from our identity, judgements, anxiety, opinions, etc. We are not only living in the outer world but also our inner world of our identity, judgements etc.
We need to learn to live with others and with ourselves also. Unless we live with others we will not be able to understand our connection with the universe and unless we live with ourselves we will not be able to experience ourselves as part of the universe. Live like Lotus.
Let’s understand this verse through the Tantra approach: Tantra – to transcend their sexual energy they are with each other and with their sexual energy, full of lust, desire. But unless they melt with each other and find intangible connections with each other, they are not allowed to make love. Once they melt with each other they are able to raise their own sexual energy. In the process they find their own godliness.
The Indian Tantra is very scientific. It is the science of how to transform sexual energy into spiritual energy; how to create the dynamo that changes, transforms, transmutes energy; how to move from the lower to the higher; how to move from the earth to heaven. It is a way from sex to superconsciousness. It is all very technical.
The greatest training that is involved and the most difficult problem that arises is that Tantra allows a man to make love to a woman only when man has lost all sexual attraction towards the woman. There is no sexual attraction at all. That is the whole process. The woman becomes almost a mother to you or a sister to you, a goddess. She has to be worshipped. In the Tantra ritual the woman has to be worshipped as a goddess. And for months together one has to practise that worship.
The woman sits naked in front of you on a throne and you worship and you bow down and you pray to her and you create the idea in the deepest core of consciousness that she is just a representative of all womanhood, motherhood. She is a goddess.
Day by day, gradually you lose all carnal interest in her. You become auto-hypnotised with your own idea. The day you lose all prurient feelings for her and you can look through her and her body no longer excites you and no notice her body she then becomes luminous, she is just a presence only then does the Master allow you to love her. Now this love will have a totally different quality. There is no sensuality involved in it, no attraction involved in it, no physicality involved in it. It is absolutely spiritual – a meeting of two souls.
Now read the above para again and again to understand what Krishna is saying through this verse. The above para says that till the time you give up all the attraction towards woman you are in action, doer, when you have dropped all the attractions you are in inaction. In the Tantra they give practical experience of even when your body action is not there, still you are acting, acting through your desire, your attraction, you are in other words aggressive. In that moment whatever you do will be actions. May not or may make love to your woman but still you are in action. When you have dropped your attraction and then allowed to make love means your act is of Inaction.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 4.17 blog I have written in detail regarding Inaction. Once you become self-conscious and then respond in the present moment is Inaction. So when Tantra allows the man to make love only after they drop all the attraction towards the sex that is Inaction of self-consciousness.
Krishna is saying that unless you transcend everything regarding any act, don’t act, once you have transcended act. In that activity you will know bliss, love, ecstasy, and expanded states of consciousness.
Tags: Be Lotus
