Face The Real – In Gita Verse 6.24 One should engage oneself in the practice of yoga with determination and faith and not be deviated from the path. One should abandon, without exception, all material desires born of mental speculation and thus control all the senses on all sides by the mind.
Krishna says that Yoga Can Teach You again how to Be Here and Now.
Right now Arjuna is frustrated and For Yoga a total Frustration is Needed. So Krishna is speaking regarding the path of yoga.
One can enter Yoga, or the path of Yoga, only when he is totally frustrated with his own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, Yoga is not for you. A total frustration is needed – the revelation that this mind which projects is futile, the mind that hopes is nonsense, it leads nowhere. It simply closes your eyes, it intoxicates you, it never allows reality to be revealed to you. It protects you against reality. Your mind is a drug. It is against that which is. So unless you are totally frustrated with your mind, with your way of being, with the way you have existed up to now, if you can drop it unconditionally, then you can enter on the path.
So many become interested but very few enter, because your interest may be just because of your mind. You may be hoping that now, through Yoga, you may gain something, but the achieving motive is there – that you may become perfect through Yoga, you may reach the blissful state of perfect being, you may become one with the Brahman, you may achieve the satchitananda. This may be the cause of why you are interested in Yoga. If this is the cause then there can be no meeting between you and the path which is Yoga. Then you are totally against it, moving in a totally opposite dimension.
Yoga means: “Now no hope, now no – future, now no desires. But I am ready to know; what is? I am not interested in what can be, what should be, what ought to be. I am not interested! I am interested only in that which is.” Because only the real can free you, only the reality can become liberation.
Total despair is needed. That despair Buddha called dukkha. If you are really in misery don’t hope, because your hope will only prolong the misery. Your hope is a drug. It can help you to continue, but where are you moving? It will help you to reach only death and nowhere else. All your hopes can lead you only to death; they are leading.
Become totally hopeless – no future, no hope. It is difficult; it requires courage to face the real. But such a moment comes to everyone, sometime or other. A moment comes to every human being when he feels total hopelessness. Absolute meaninglessness happens to him. When he becomes aware that whatsoever he is doing is useless, wheresoever he is going is going to nowhere, and all life is meaningless, then hopes drop. Future drops, and for the first time he is in tune with the present, for the first time he is face to face with reality.
Unless this moment comes to you, you can go on doing asanas, postures, but that is not Yoga. Yoga is an inward turning, a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the future, not moving toward the past, then you start moving within yourself, because your being is here and now, it is not in the future. You are present here and now, you can enter this reality. But then the mind has to be here.
You don’t need any belief to practice Yoga. As Yoga is, pure science. And Patanjali is the greatest name in the world of Yoga. This man is rare; there is no other name comparable to Patanjali. For the first time in the history of humanity this man brought religion to the state of science. He made religion a science; a religion of pure laws, no belief is needed.
Right now where Arjuna is he can turn towards him where no belief is required. This is the reason that right now out of many practices Krishna speaks to Arjuna about Yoga. Where Arjuna is right now he is loaded with doubts.
Science says, “Don’t believe, doubt as much as you can,” but also, “Don’t disbelieve” – because disbelief is again a sort of belief. You can believe in God, you can believe in the concept of no-God. You can say that God exists with a fanatic attitude and you can say quite the reverse, that God exists not, with the same fanaticism. Atheists, theists, are all believers, and belief is not the realm of science. Science means to experience something, that which is; no belief is needed.
The second thing to remember is that Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental; no belief is required, no faith is needed. Only the courage to experience is needed, and that is what is lacking.
Krishna is giving courage to Arjuna to face reality.
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