Unattached And Untouched – In Gita Verse 16.16 Thus perplexed by various anxieties and bound by a network of illusions, they become too strongly attached to sense enjoyment and fall down into hell.

After reading this verse of Krishna, immediately we have a question – How can one attain non-attachment?

In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 5.7, blog I wrote – non-attachment is embedded in the very nature of a human being, in his very being. Non-attachment is our basic nature, our original face. So the real question is how one deviates from his nature. We don’t have to practice non attachment, we don’t have to do something to come to it. We have only to know how we have gone astray from our nature. This is our basic question.

Non-attachment is our self-nature, we are born with it. So it is strange that in life, we all become victims of attachment and aversion. Non-attachment is our very nature. If attachment is our nature, we cannot manage to be averse to anything. If aversion was our nature, we could not fall prey to attachment. For example, a branch of a tree sways westward with the westerly wind and eastward with the easterly wind. How is it that the branch sways with the winds? Because it is neither in the east nor in the west; it is just in the middle.

Let us take another example: when we boil water it becomes hot, and when we cool it it becomes cold, because water in itself is neither hot nor cold. If water was intrinsically hot it could never become cold; it could never be heated if it was basically cold. Water’s own nature transcends both hot and cold, so we can easily heat or cool it as we like.

If attachment is our self-nature, there is no way to be repelled by anything. But we are easily repelled.

If clinging was our self-nature we could not give up anything, but we do give things up. In the same way, renunciation was our self-nature. we could not cling to a thing, but we cling like leeches. It simply means that neither attachment nor aversion is intrinsic to our self-nature. Therefore we move in both directions – we now become attached and then averse to something. Because our innate nature transcends both these states of mind, we can move conveniently into them.

Let us take yet another example. We can open and shut our eyes whenever we like, because basically our eyes are neither open nor shut. If being open was the very nature of the eyes, we could never close them. And if they were inherently closed we could never open them. Eyes can be both opened and closed at will because their self-nature transcends both states, they are beyond them.

Opening and closing is external to them; really it happens because of the eyelids. In the same way our consciousness is essentially non-attached; it is only its eyelids, its coverings that get attached or repelled by something.

So the first thing to understand is that non attachment is our self-nature; we are born with it. It is our original face.

Secondly, we have to understand that it is only our self-nature that we can attain; we can never attain that which is alien to our self-nature. Really we can achieve only that which we already are at some deeper level of our beings. A seed grows into a flower because it is already a flower in its depth. A rock cannot grow into a flower, because never mind its depth, not even its surface has anything to do with a flower. If you sow a rock in the soil like a seed, it will ever remain a rock; it can never turn into a flower. On the surface both rock and seed look alike, but if you sow them together the seed will turn into a flower, while the rock will always remain the same. So we can say that a seed becomes a flower because it is inherently a flower.

It is one of the fundamental laws of life that we can become only that which we already are at the center of our being; what is hidden at the center becomes manifest at the circumference.

Therefore non-attachment is our self-nature – not attachment or aversion. That is why sometimes we get attached to a thing and then are repelled by it.

And we can return to non-attachment because it is our essential nature: that is to say, the seed can grow into a flower.

It is not that non attachment is the nature of a few; it is everybody’s nature. Wherever consciousness is, it is always beyond attachment and rejection. Our highest intelligence transcends both clinging and aversion. It is a different matter that in its behavior, consciousness attaches itself to something or rejects something else. But that is its behavioral side; it is like the eyelids open and close whenever they have to.

If I am left exclusively with my consciousness, will I be attached or detached at that moment? I will be neither. Attachment and aversion invariably happen in relationships with others. If I say Mr. X is attached, you will immediately ask, “To whom?” or “To what?” How can one be attached without the other? In the same way, if I say that Mr. Y is averse, you will soon ask, “To what?” or “From what?”

Because aversion too, is possible only in relation to someone or something. Both clinging and rejection reflect our relationships; they belong to our behavioral side. In ourselves we are neither.

It is very important to understand the behavioral side of self-nature. And since it is a question of behavior, I can be attached to a person today and can reject him tomorrow. Because it is behavioral, if I am averse to someone today I can be attached to him tomorrow. And the irony is that I can be both attached and averse to someone or something at the same time. It is quite possible I can be simultaneously attached to one aspect of his personality and averse to another. We are often in conflicting relationships with the same persons or things – attached and averse together. But one thing is certain: attachment and aversion belong to our behavior, not our self-nature. Behavior means that one enters into some relationship – with another person or thing or thought – but the other is essential. Behavior is not possible without the other. It is impossible when you are alone.

Krishna says self-nature means that which is all alone. Aloneness is the intrinsic quality of self-nature. Self-nature is aloneness. If I am left utterly alone, away from men and things, from ideas and images; if I am in total aloneness, will I be attached or averse in that state? No, both attachment and aversion are utterly irrelevant to aloneness, because they are reflections of relationship. Once I am out of all relationships I am all alone – unattached and untouched.

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