Renounces Knowledge – In Gita Verse 5.8-9 A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, or opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them.
When Krishna tells that a self-realized person also does the same activity, what we do but they are total in their action so they remain aloof from their body action. His action through the body is by renouncing the knowledge and acting from his wisdom. He has used his wisdom to renounce the knowledge. It’s like this: we eat food to get energy for the body. We don’t reject the food, but we eat and food gives us energy. Same way we don’t have to reject knowledge but we have to use it in such a way that action comes from wisdom.
Means he who renounces knowledge is really renouncing something. Your self comes from the past: you are nothing but accumulated experiences. So one who renounces the self is renouncing something. All your desires and all your hopes and all your expectations – they all come from the past. One who renounces his past renounces his desires, renounces his hopes, renounces his expectations.
Now you will be just like an emptiness. A nothingness, a nobody. Now you are going into no identity, into nobodiness. So this is the last decision of your mind. With this the past is closed, the identity is broken. Now you are not continuous. The continuity is not there. You are new, you are reborn.
Everyone who is alive is qualified. Everyone who is alive is qualified to know this living in insecurity. If one has to live, one has to live in insecurity. Every arrangement for security is renouncing living. The more secure you are, the less living. The more dead you are, the more secure, also. For example, a dead man cannot die again so he is death-proof. A dead man cannot be ill so he is disease-proof. A dead man is so; in security that those who go on living may seem foolish to him. They live in insecurity.
If you are alive at all, then you are insecure. The more insecure, the more alive.
So the alive person is not going to be disorderly. As far as he himself is concerned – as far as his inner consciousness is concerned – now there will be no order. That does not mean there will be disorder, because disorder is always a part of order. When there is order, there is a possibility of disorder. When there is no order, there is no disorder. You become spontaneous. Moment to moment you live, moment to moment you act. Each moment is enough unto itself; you do not decide for it. You make no decision on how to act. The moment comes to you and you act. There is no pre-determination. There is no pre-plan.
The moment comes to you, you happen to the moment, and whatsoever comes out of you, let it come. The more you are spontaneous, the more you will feel a new discipline arising in you – a moment-to-moment discipline. It is a very different dimension, so it will be better to understand it clearly. When you decide beforehand what to do, you do not think about your consciousness enough to act in the moment, spontaneously. You are not self-confident, that is why you decide beforehand.
But still you are deciding. And if you cannot act in the moment, how can you decide beforehand? On the contrary, you will be more experienced when the moment comes. You are less experienced: if I decide today for tomorrow, tomorrow I will be richer. And if I cannot believe in the “me” of tomorrow, how can I believe in the “me” of today? When I have to decide, it carries no meaning to decide beforehand. It will only be destructive.
I decide today and I act tomorrow: everything has changed, everything is new. Only the decision is old. I am new, the moment is new and the decision is old. So if I do not act accordingly, there is guilt. So all those who teach; deciding beforehand, create guilt. If I do not act, then I feel guilty. And if I act, then I cannot act adequately; frustration is bound to follow.
So when Krishna says you are not committed to any decision, you will be free. Let each moment come to you, and let your total being decide in that moment. Let the decision come as the act happens. Never let it precedes it, otherwise the act can never be total.
And one more thing: when you decide beforehand, you decide intellectually. Your total being can never be in it because the moment has not come. If I love someone, and I decide that when I meet him or her I will act “this way,” I will say “this thing,” I will do this and will not do that – this can only be intellectual, mental. This can never be total because the moment has not arrived. The moment has not arrived, so the total being is not challenged. So how can the total being act?
And when I have decided beforehand and the moment comes, then too the total being will not be able to act because the decision will be there. So I will only imitate – follow, copy – the decision. I will be a false man. I will not be real because I will not be total. I will have a blueprint to act on, so I will act on it. Again this will be a mental act. Not with your total being. So either you succeed or you fail. In both cases you have failed because the total being could not be in it. You will not feel the love.
So, let the moment come, let the moment challenge you, and let your total being act. Then the act is total. Then your total being comes to act. Then you are – total in it. And the best that is possible will come out of the total, never out of decision. So seeking means living moment to moment with no commitment to the past.
Krishna tells Arjuna that this moment’s challenge is not to come from the past and respond to the demands of the present moment to fight the war. If you will be self-aware, self-conscious then you will fight the war but you are aloof from your body.
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