Boats Sail – In Gita Verse 12.8 Just fix your mind upon Me, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and engage all your intelligence in Me. Thus you will live in Me always, without a doubt.
Krishna through this verse says that listen to my words but immediately turn into your Emptiness.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 12.6-7, I wrote, Your mind will ask you to listen to what Krishna is saying, but the reality is that whatever is significant cannot be said. All words in themselves are empty, in themselves they have no value.
Silence and words both are present when Krishna says anything but like – The old woman will not be visible when you are looking at the young one; and when you catch sight of the old woman you will lose sight of the young one. Both are present, but you will be able to find only one at a time. Your mind will ask to catch hold of the words, because the mind lives only on words; words are its food. The mind grows larger through words, the mind is enriched by words, the whole of the mind’s wealth is words; and if the word disappears then the mind disappears. Let the words go, and the mind will go too. So the mind will persuade you, “Catch hold of the words, they are valuable. Memorize every word, all truth is contained in them, don’t miss even a single word, absorb them all!” This is what the mind will tell you – this is what it has always been telling you.
You have learned the scriptures – you may have learned the Gita, the Koran, the Bible by heart, and still you have not the faintest notion of truth. Even if Krishna’s words penetrate you and crystallize within you, you will not experience a single trace of truth.
Krishna is not going to be able to succeed where the Gita and the Koran fail. No word can ever succeed. Your mind will drink in the words and be further strengthened by them. Don’t listen to the mind.
If you listen to Krishna’s advice, catch the emptiness, drink in the silence. Do not bother about what Krishhna is saying – Krishna doesn’t bother about what Krishna is saying. Krishna is not concerned today with what he said yesterday, and tomorrow he will not be concerned with what he is saying today.
This creates a great difficulty for many people. They say, “Yesterday Krishna said one thing, today he is saying something else. Which one shall we follow?” Krishna can understand their problem. They are catching hold of only the words. Speaking has no value at all for Krishna, only the empty spaces in between all that Krishna says are valuable. Yesterday Krishna used one blackboard, today he is using another. The blackboard is not the thing that matters; it is the white mark on it that matters.
Yesterday he opened the door to his emptiness through certain words, today he is opening it through different words. For him, what is relevant is that emptiness which comes between the words. Whether the doors are made of wood or gold or silver, whether they are carved with leaves or flowers, whether they are simple or highly ornamental is all meaningless. All that matters is that open door, that empty space, through which you can enter into Krishna and Krishna into you.
One who listens to his words will find many inconsistencies in them; sometimes he says one thing, other times he says something different. Certainly they are right, there are inconsistencies, but that is not the point at all. For him the words are only instrumental to open the emptiness, and the one who looks for the emptiness will find that he is highly consistent. The emptiness that was opened yesterday is the same as the emptiness that has opened today, and it is the same that will be opened tomorrow too. The doors will change – and they should change. There is a function in the changing of the doors. If he uses the same words today that he used yesterday – and even the day before yesterday – and again if the same words are going to be used tomorrow and the day after, you will go to sleep and your internal talk will begin.
This is why people go to sleep when they are hearing the scriptures being narrated in the temples – the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. There is a reason for it, and the reason is that they already know the story, there is nothing new worth listening to, so why stay awake? They know that Rama’s wife Sita is stolen, they know that she is stolen by Ravana. They also know the end of the story – that Sita is going to come back, that war is going to take place, that Rama is going to win the war – everything is known. It has been heard so many times that now there is nothing worth hearing; and when there is nothing new to be heard, sleep overtakes you.
Repetition of the old invites sleep. Mothers know this, even if you don’t. When they want to send their babies to sleep they sing them lullabies, and they sing the same lines over and over again. The baby hears it, and after a short time, hearing it again and again and again, he gets bored and goes to sleep.
The mantras that are given to you for meditation do the same thing. You are sitting, and you go on chanting, “Rama, Rama, Rama…” and the drone catches hold of you. How long can you go on listening to “Rama, Rama, Rama”? – The same thing again and again. First you become bored, then the boredom takes you into drowsiness, and the drowsiness leads you into sleep. If Krishna tells you the same thing in the same words every day you will start dozing, and Krishna is here trying to awaken you, not to send you to sleep. So Krishna will go on changing the words every day. For him they are meaningless; there is no question of any consistency or inconsistency in them.
Krishna is not interested at all in what Krishna is saying. His interest is in the gaps which Krishna leaves between the words: those gaps are his invitation, and if you miss them, you have missed everything. You can learn all his words by heart; there is no sense in that, they will just add to your load. And already your load is ample; already you know much more than you need to know; already your knowledge is killing you. These words will add to your knowledgeability further; you will become a great word spinner. You will be able to make others understand with your clever argumentation, you will be able to change others’ attitudes, you will be able to shatter their intellects. Nobody will be able to defeat you, but you will remain as you are – sick, diseased, one who has not reached anywhere.
Krishna says – Wherever you find your mind has disappeared, wherever you find you have been able to hear the silence between words, those are the points where you need to dive deep; those are the junctures from where you go across to the other shore. Those are the points from which all the boats sail for the other shore.
Tags: Boats Sail
