Material Desires – In Gita Verse 6.4 A person is said to be elevated in yoga when, having renounced all material desires, he neither acts for sense gratification nor engages in fruitive activities.
Krishna is saying – I want you to drop all games – worldly games, spiritual games, games that the whole of humanity has played up to now. These games keep you retarded. These games hinder you from growing into consciousness, into your own ultimate flowering. I want to cut away all this rubbish that prevents you.
I want to leave you alone, absolutely alone, so that you cannot take anybody’s help, so you cannot cling to any prophet, so that you cannot think that Gautam Buddha is going to save you. Left alone – utterly alone – you are bound to find your innermost centre.
Move to the innermost centre of your being…
Raman Maharshi used to give only one meditation to everyone, whosoever would come to him: just to go on and on pondering, observing, watching, witnessing one thing – to let this question become so utterly your existence that it persists even when you are asleep – Who am I?
And it has not to be repeated like a mantra. If you repeat it like a mantra you will have missed the point; it is not a mantra, it is an inquiry, and the greatest inquiry there is.
It has not to be used as a meditation technique, it has to become your very life. Walking, let the inquiry be there – ‘Who is walking?’ Listening right now, let the inquiry be there – ‘Who is listening?’
And finally the inquiry has to penetrate to such profound depths that when you ask ‘Who am I?’ The inquiry is there – ‘Who is asking this question?’
Move to the innermost centre of your being. This inquiry is a movement with the inwards. And this single question can solve all the problems; it is a master key: it unlocks all the locks.
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise.
From outward things, what’er you may believe.
Your belief is not going to change the nature of things.
Who Am I – is a contentless consciousness. The mind is empty but watchful, alert. In that peaceful state the door to truth opens. It is only in emptiness that truth is realised, and as a result one’s whole life is transformed.
We reach this state of emptiness, this enlightenment, through meditation. But what is generally understood as meditation is not really meditation. That too is a process of thinking. Maybe the thoughts relate to the soul or to the divine but they are still thoughts. It makes no difference what the thoughts are about. In fact thought by its very nature pertains to the other, to the outer. It relates to what is not the self. There can be no thought about the self because for thought to exist, two are needed. That is why thought does not take you beyond duality. If one is to move into and know non-duality – the self – then meditation is the way, not thinking.
Thought and meditation go in totally opposite directions. One is outward going; the other, inward going. Thought is the way to know the other; meditation, the way to know the self. But generally thought, contemplation, has been taken for meditation. This is a very serious and widespread mistake and this is a fundamental error.
What Krishna says – your inner emptiness is vast. It cannot be filled by money, power, prestige, respectability. You may have all and still you will feel the same emptiness. In fact, the more you have the more you will become aware of the emptiness, and then arises a tremendous anguish.
But if your meditation is going deep and you will feel love showering on you from nowhere… It can shower only on a meditator.
Only love in a meditative consciousness gives you the feeling of fullness, and after fullness comes overflowing, and that overflowing takes away all your material desires.
It is the emptiness that creates material desires; it is overflowing love that takes it away. The material desires are only a symptom of emptiness. It won’t last much longer because you are aware of receiving and you are grateful for receiving; you are opening up and becoming more and more available. You need not be worried about material desires. Soon you will find you are overflowing, sharing yourself with others.
The only real sharing is the sharing of your being: not your money, not your house, not anything else, but only of your being because only that belongs to you. Everything else is not authentically yours.
Krishna says you were born only with your being: that is yours. And then you accumulate many things, but they are never yours and the day you die you cannot take them with you. You lived in an illusion that they are your possessions. The fact is that they possessed you; they were not your possessions.
Tags: Material Desires
