Ultimate Opulence – In Gita Verse 10.18 O Janārdana, again please describe in detail the mystic power of Your opulences. I am never satiated in hearing about You, for the more I hear the more I want to taste the nectar of Your words.
We all have experienced being affluent which is inside of us. Whenever we are authentic towards ourselves we have found that miracles happen. Not only Arjuna but we also unconsciously have tasted the nectar of Whole. As Arjuna has tasted it unconsciously he came up with this desire to taste it consciously.
Without this experience the whole of life is a waste. And to attain this experience is to attain that ultimate opulence which never comes to an end. Then you can share it with both your hands, but you cannot exhaust it. It is this state of opulence, affluence, that we have called godliness in India. Our word aishwarya for opulence comes from the word Ishwar for godliness. Such a meaning given to godliness does not exist in any other language of the world.
Let me repeat it, so it remains in your memory.
The first thing: what you see as “understanding of the intellect” is not even that.
The second thing: what you are thinking to be very difficult is very easy, very natural. You have just never tried it.
Your entire education and teaching, your whole society, your conditionings, teach you to run after others. They teach you ambition for wealth, for position, for status, for fame. It is our misfortune that so far we haven’t even been able to create a society that teaches you some of the secrets of how to know yourself. And there is no higher dignity than that, and there is no higher longing than that.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 9.32, blog I wrote regarding Satyakam and Jabala. When Satyakam inquired regarding his father, Jabala taught her to be authentic. When you are authentic you will find the impossible thing or the mystery will be experienced. Which is much more precious than miracles. He was accepted in the Gurukul even without his father’s name. We think affluent only in terms of material wealth. But we forget material wealth will follow you if you have learned to be authentic towards yourself. To live our life fully we need the affluents of many kinds. It includes education of science and learning to be authentic towards ourselves. They are our two wings. If we really want to experience ultimate opulence, then both the wings are required. If you are authentic towards yourself then you have tasted your truth and you cannot act against it, once you have tasted it. To live in the world we need all the information and education of science in the objective world.
It is a very strange world. Here, people carrying an emperor within are moving around as beggars. The very people meant to be emperors are wandering around, carrying begging bowls in their hands. Just a little effort… But your society and your conditionings scare you. They say to you: “Knowing oneself? That takes lifetimes. That happens only once in a while, in the life of some incarnation of God, in the life of some tirthankara, in the life of some messiah, some prophet, some son of God. You are just a poor, ordinary man. You need not fall in this trap. You need not take up this trouble in your hand. It is beyond you.”
I say to you, this is your birthright, and it does not require your becoming a tirthankara. Of course, when this phenomenon takes place in you, you become a tirthankara. It does not require being a messiah. Of course, when this phenomenon takes place in you, you become a messiah. To be a messiah is not the initial requirement. It is the final outcome.
I ask for just an hour from you – and you can’t be that poor and helpless that you cannot give one hour out of twenty-four. Nobody is that poor. And I do not ask you to go to the temple or to go to the mosque, because as I see it, the temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras have proved dangerous. They have created the idea that godliness is not in your house. I say to you that godliness is wherever you are, so wherever you sit is a holy place. Just sit a little silently, sit a little calmly, and if it takes a little more or a little less time, do not become impatient.
And people are so full of impatience. For an ordinary education that leaves them at the most a clerk in some office, they are ready to spend one third of their lives. And after wandering through universities and colleges for twenty-five years of their lives they will now wander through offices. And yet people do not consider that I am asking for only one hour – and that one hour’s experience will take you to that point, to that experience of the immortal nectar, to the eternal, for the attainment of which, this very world is a school.
Tags: Ultimate Opulence
