Empty Person – In Gita Verse 5.25 Those who are beyond the dualities that arise from doubts, whose minds are engaged within, who are always busy working for the welfare of all living beings and who are free from all sins achieve liberation in the Supreme.
Krishna tells Arjuna that the person who has transcended duality, they live in the objective world from their subjectivity. When the person has transcended duality all their actions are for existence they don’t live for their desire but as per existence’s will.
First let’s understand duality – Life exists through duality. The very process of life depends on polar opposites. Life is like a river: for the river to exist, two banks are needed. The river cannot exist without two banks to support it, just as the bird cannot fly without two wings and you cannot walk without two legs.
Life needs duality. Everywhere you will find it, till the ultimate arrives. The ultimate, the absolute, or call it God, transcending duality. But then life disappears. Then you become invisible. Then you have no form, no name. Then you have gone beyond – that is nirvana.
When the person transcends duality and goes beyond, through their body whatever they do is for the welfare of others, existence. Take the example of Krishna, he has transcended everything and is still living in the body. He participated in everything whether in Gokul, Mathura, Dwarka or in Mahabharat war. He was living for the welfare of all living beings. Look at Guru Gobind Singh. To save humanity from the conversion of religion, compulsory by Aurangzeb, he fought with him. His fight with Aurangzeb was not as an individual but for the welfare of all living beings. These people when they act they are free of all the sins and achieve liberation in the Supreme. They live for existences.
As we are now we need to understand two things. Life cannot exist without polar opposites. Life is a dialectical process between man and woman, between darkness and light, between life and death, between good and bad. Life cannot exist without this duality. Manifestation is not possible without duality.
Hence, another vision becomes possible to be understood. If duality disappears, life as you know it disappears. Life in time and space disappears. Then another door opens. You move to another plane – the plane of the invisible, the plane of the mysterious, the plane where there is no form, no name. All remains, but unmanifest. That is called nirvana, moksha, the ultimate state of samadhi where all disappears.
If duality is the way of life, then nonduality is the way of religion – because religion is nothing but an art of transcending the manifested form and going into the unmanifest, going to the original source from where we come and for which we long – because we belong there. Wherever we are, we cannot feel at home; something remains unfulfilled. We go on missing the original source because rest is only in the source.
Let’s meditate over each word of Hakim Sanai: The pure man unites two in one; the lover unites three in one.
The Gnostic tradition says there are two paths to transcend duality, to transcend multiplicity, to transcend this constant conflict between life and death. The first path is called via purgativa by the Gnostics, “through purity”; and the second path is called via unitiva, “through unity.” The first is the path of meditation, the second the path of love. The first is Zen, the second is Sufism.
On the path of meditation, one has to eliminate, one has to empty oneself totally. On the path of love, just the reverse process has to be followed – one has to become more and more full. One has to become so full that one starts overflowing. On the path of meditation, one has to become so empty that nothing remains within, one is just a pure nothingness.
This is what Hakim Sanai says: The pure man unites two in one… The observer and the observed. The pure man means the man of meditation. The pure man means one who has been trying the path of purgativa; who has been simply emptying himself of all that is foreign, and who goes on eliminating all that is not his essential self. And then nothing is left in the hand.
Krishna tells Arjuna the person who has transcended duality is so empty that nothing is left in his hand. He is the vehicle of the universe to act for the welfare of all living beings and who are free from all sins achieve liberation in the Supreme. So when you fight war as an empty person, then your act will be for the welfare of the living being and in that there is no sin.
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