Consideration To Act – In Gita Verse 8.2 Who is the Lord of sacrifice, and how does He live in the body, O Madhusūdana? And how can those engaged in devotional service know You at the time of death?
Recollected from your own life incidence whenever we have any consideration to act we will try to ask very convincing and intellectual questions. If you can recollect incidence then it will be very easy for you to understand that how Arjuna wants to run away to take any action and want to throw the responsibility on Krishna by getting the approval that yes if you will run away from the war you will be called wise person who is engaged in devotional service.
We are also in the same bus as Arjuna is. We don’t want to do anything which requires our own intelligence and wisdom. If we act through our intelligence and wisdom then the whole responsibility is our own. This is the reason why we are always seeking approval from others. Don’t seek approval if you really want to know the potentiality of human beings. I simply say that if you question yourself instead of others, what potentiality I have, as a human being. You will simply turn towards yourself. You will find peace within you.
Arjuna is not peaceful at this moment because he is asking the question and nothing is wrong in that but after asking he is not turning towards himself what Krishna is guiding him. Arjuna is seeking approval by which he can run away from the battlefield, he is not ready to know himself.
To know ourselves – The Sufis have a very beautiful saying. They say, “God is not found by seeking, and never found by those who don’t seek.”
First a man has to seek and then he has to surrender his seeking too – because in the seeking the seeker goes on existing. The seeker is the ego. Of course if you never start seeking, you will never find it. You have to be thirsty for God. You have to start moving, groping in the dark. But don’t become addicted to your groping.
A moment comes when you start feeling that your will is not succeeding. But that moment comes only through will, effort, arduous effort. A moment comes when you start feeling that your will has failed, that you are utterly defeated. In that utter defeat is the victory. In that utter defeat you surrender. In that utter defeat you start crying. In that utter defeat you say, “Now I cannot do any more. I am finished. Whatever I could do I have done.” In that moment when you have this total failure, this feeling of utter defeat, you disappear. You are no longer there. The seeker has disappeared through seeking.
To seek God is to seek the impossible. By seeking you cannot find it. If you can find God by your seeking then God will be something that you can possess, then God will be in your fist, then God will be your property – then God will not be greater than you. That which you can seek is bound to be smaller than you, it cannot be bigger than you. The lower cannot seek the higher and the smaller cannot seek the bigger.
You cannot possess the infinite, the eternal – that is absurd. But to understand that this is absurd, one has to start seeking. You will not know it in any other way. One starts longing for God and that means that one is moving, desiring, longing for the impossible. That’s why religion is the passion for the impossible.
One day or other, defeat is absolutely certain. In that defeat something transmutes, transforms. In that defeat the seeker disappears, the will disappears – surrender happens. You cannot surrender without that defeat. How can you surrender? Deep down you will continue thinking, “I could have succeeded.” Or you may even think that this surrender is something that you are doing – that you are the doer of the surrender too. But then it is, not surrender. Surrender can happen only in utter defeat. Only utter defeat prepares you to surrender – not a single hope remains, not a single ray of light in the dark night of the soul. You have put everything at stake, now nothing is left. You are empty.
In that emptiness…surrender. That emptiness flowers into surrender. In that emptiness you are not, something new arrives. The seeker is no longer there, the will has disappeared, but the seeking is there, the longing is there – even more so, because the energy that was involved in the seeker has also become longing. Now you are simply thirsty, knowing perfectly well that you cannot do anything. That moment of utter despair brings grace – that’s what Sufis call baraka, what Hindus call prasad.
When you have fallen flat and you cannot move even a single inch on your own, when you have again become a small child and you are crying and screaming for your mother, the mother comes. But you have to become helpless again.
In the beginning it is a matter of will. Each journey toward God starts in will but never ends in will. The first step has to be of will – and will take you a long way toward your utter defeat. Half the journey is done by willpower and the other half is done in surrender. Will lead to surrender.
This will look paradoxical to you. Will flowers; ultimately into surrender because it is will that makes you aware that on your own you cannot do anything. You have done it. You have seen it fail. So the first step is in will; half the journey is in will. And when will has disappeared there is blessing, prasad, baraka.
So if we ask whether it is will or surrender, it is both and neither. Will and surrender are like two wings of a bird. They both help, they complement each other. Even while they are opposed to each other they complement. Their very opposition creates movement. It is just like your two legs – they are opposed to each other. Through their opposition, energy is created and you can move. Will and surrender are opposites but deep down part of one whole.
Every seeker starts in will and ends in surrender.
Tags: Consideration To Act
