Total Consciousness – In Gita Verse 9.31 He quickly becomes righteous and attains lasting peace. O son of Kuntī, declare it boldly that My devotee never perishes.
Krishna says that those who become blissful will become immortal.
People are cowards; don’t be worried about them. Go on your way, go on your way dancing. Remember only one thing: whatsoever feels good is good, whatsoever feels beautiful is beautiful, and whatsoever makes you joyful, gay, delighted, is truth. Let that be your only criterion. Don’t be bothered by others’ opinions. Let this be your only touchstone – whatsoever makes you happy is bound to be true. Ananda, bliss, is the only criterion of truth.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 5.23, blog I wrote There are only two things which are the greatest illusions in the world: one is the ego and the other is death.
Only successful people know how tiring success is. Only rich people know how utterly disappointed they are – but they cannot even say so, because to say so seems to be even more foolish, people will laugh. They have wasted their whole lives accumulating wealth and now they say that it is stupid.
Mahavira and Buddha, who renounced their kingdoms, must have been really courageous people. It needs courage to renounce. It needs courage to recognise the fact, “This was all stupid and we have been living a stupid life up to now.” The ego does not want to do that; the ego wants to go on keeping the illusion. So on the surface you go on smiling, but deep down there are tears and nothing else, deep down there is anguish.
Whenever ego is fulfilled, you feel happy – bliss is not happiness but a totally different phenomenon. It is not pleasure because it is not physiological. It is not happiness because there is no ego fulfillment. On the contrary, it is dissolution of the ego, it is dissolving your separate entity into the whole. That’s what meditation is all about, merging, melting into the whole, totally forgetting that you are separate, remembering your unity with the whole. That’s why Gurdjiff used to call his meditation process “self-remembering”; it is really a remembering. Buddha used to call his meditation, “right remembering.”
We are one with the whole, even though we think we are separate. We are inseparable. Just by thinking we are separate, we cannot become separate. All that is needed is a remembrance; all that is needed is dropping this false notion that we are separate. In those rare moments when you can put aside your ego, your personality, your body – mind complex, and you are just a watcher, a witness, a consciousness, you know the first taste of meditation. And with that, immediately great bliss comes, it rushes toward you from all directions, from all dimensions. All your inner emptiness is immediately fulfilled. It becomes a lake of bliss. That is the end, and the method and the means is meditation. There is no other method, there is no other way.
Hence one has to learn to imbibe the spirit of meditation. However long it takes, whatsoever cost one has to pay for it, one has to be ready. Once you are ready to have it at any cost, then it is not difficult. That very readiness makes you worthy of it, and things become very simple.
Once you melted into the whole, you became conscious of yourself.
The moment one becomes conscious of himself, he is no longer a mortal; he becomes an immortal. He has always been an immortal but because of his misunderstanding, he degraded himself into being a mortal, into someone who is going to die. Although the life within you and the consciousness within you is eternal and immortal, still you go on being afraid of death because you see somebody dying every day. And everybody’s death reminds you of your own death.
The poet sings, “Never ask for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee.” In Christian villages, it is an ancient custom that when somebody dies, the church bell starts tolling, informing the whole village, the people who have gone to the farms, or the people who have gone to the orchards, or the people who have gone to their wine presses, to come back; somebody has died.
The poet is saying, “Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it always tolls for thee.” He has some truth to convey to you. Every death is symbolic. It shows that you are standing in the same queue and the queue is becoming shorter and shorter. Every day you are coming closer and closer to death. In fact the day you were born was not the day of your birth; it was the day you started dying. And since then you have been dying every day. Every birthday, your death has come one year closer.
It is an absolutely certain fact that people die, animals die, trees die, birds die. How can you avoid the fact that you are also going to die – maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow? It is only a question of time.
Krishna says – But still, those who are aware of their being know that nobody dies. Death is an illusion.
Everyone is searching for happiness, but because they are looking in the wrong direction – outside – no one ever really finds it. Real happiness, bliss, can only be found inside, by learning the knack of dis-identifying with the mind.
Person who is dis-identifying with mind will become immortal. In Krishna’s words – He quickly becomes righteous and attains lasting peace.
Tags: Total Consciousness
