The Absolute Truth – In Gita Verse 17.26-27 The Absolute Truth is the objective of devotional sacrifice, and it is indicated by the word sat. The performer of such sacrifice is also called sat, as are all works of sacrifice, penance and charity which, true to the absolute nature, are performed to please the Supreme Person, O son of Pṛthā.
Krishna says the truth exists now. But there are two kinds of people; both go on missing the truth. One is past-oriented, the other is future-oriented; and truth exists now, neither in the past nor in the future.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 11.34, blog I wrote – Withdraw yourself from the past and the future.
This is real renunciation, this is sannyas: withdrawing yourself from past and future; not by effort.
Remember, if you withdraw yourself by effort you will be deceived. If you withdraw yourself by effort, if you say, “I will withdraw myself from the past so that I can be in deep meditation,” then your deep meditation is a future project. Then it is neither meditation nor deep. You have already moved from the past to the future. If you say, “If I withdraw from the past I will attain nirvana,” now you have only substituted the past with the future. Both are the same, both are non-existential. It does not make any difference.
If you withdraw from your future, you say, “I will not desire the future because I have to attain nirvana, to enlightenment, to satori” – but this is the future. You cannot withdraw by effort, because in effort you will always be motivated. There will be a desire, there will be a goal.
Then how to withdraw? One withdraws only by understanding the situation that the past is not, it is futile; not that it is going to lead you into the world of truth if you withdraw from the past, no.
Just seeing the futility of the past – that this is all memory, dust that has gathered on the mirror of consciousness; it is just useless – you wash it away, with no motivation; just seeing the futility of it, you drop it. Not that you drop it for something else; if you drop it for something else the future has entered in. You have deceived yourself.
And when you drop your past seeing the futility of it, how can you go on living in the future? – Because the future is always based in the past. Whatsoever you want tomorrow is nothing but all those beautiful things that you had yesterday. You want a repetition – maybe modified, a little bit better, refined – but it is the past again. When the past is dropped seeing the futility of it – for no other reason – just out of this understanding that it is futile it drops out of your hands, with it the future also disappears. Future is the shadow of the past. You had been with a woman yesterday and you would like to be with the woman again tomorrow – that is the future. Yesterday you went to a restaurant and the food was delicious; tomorrow you are again thinking of going there. Your tomorrow is nothing but a reflection of your yesterday. When yesterday disappears, reflections disappear.
With the past, in the same package, the future is also dropped. And then there is the present. Not that you had asked for it or you had longed for it or you had desired and worked and practised for it, no; because the past and future are no more there, then the present is. The same space that was occupied by the past and the future is now empty. In that emptiness one feels the present.
And to be in the present is to be in truth. Then you have depth, you have fallen into the vertical dimension. You have heights, heights which are higher than Everest and depths which are deeper than the Pacific. Then your life has a grandeur, a splendour.
This is what is called Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, or whatever you will.
There are people who are past-oriented, there are people who are future-oriented – both go on missing. The orthodox, the conformist, is past-oriented, and the revolutionary, the rebel, is future – oriented; there is not any difference between them. The orthodox think the Golden Age was in the past, “the Garden of Eden”. The revolutionary, the so-called communist, the fascist, the socialist – he thinks the Golden Age is to come. It is in the future, the utopia, the classless society where everyone will be equal, the world of freedom where exploitation will have disappeared and paradise will descend on earth. But paradise is right now, here.
Krishna says beware of these two traps. You need not go into the past to search for truth. You need not go into the scriptures, because scriptures belong to the past; and you need not go into imagination, logic, because all that logic can do is create utopias in the future. You need not go anywhere, neither in the past nor in the future. You have to be just here.
And the utter beauty of the moment, and the utter blessedness of the moment.. and one is transformed – not by doing anything, but just by being here.
Allow yourself this fall into the present more and more. And you will be afraid, because it is really a fall. You will be going into depths, and those depths are abysmal; there is no bottom, and we have become accustomed to floating on the surface. For many lives we have been just swimming on the surface; we have forgotten the depth of the ocean, of this reality. So when you start falling into depth you will become afraid, you will have a very deep, frightening, scary experience; you will be in panic.
That is the moment when you need a Master to say to you, “Don’t be worried, there is nothing that can be lost, and that which can be lost is not worth keeping. That which is essential will remain with you, only the non-essential will be gone – and it is good that the non-essential go.”
The man of awareness becomes the man of the essence. Personality consists of the non-essential.
Krishna says The Absolute Truth is in this moment.
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