Strange Prayer – In Gita Verse 18.14 The place of action [the body], the performer, the various senses, the many different kinds of endeavor, and ultimately the Supersoul – these are the five factors of action.
Krishna is saying that your action is a combination of all these five factors. If you become self-conscious and aware towards yourself then only you will know the combined effect of all. So never reject anything but in acceptance of all with awareness you will be in the middle.
Let’s understand from Upanishad.
Upanishad says – Matter and mind are two states of one thing, of one phenomenon: asleep it is matter, awakened it is mind.
So for the UPANISHADS there is no duality between body and consciousness. So he prays that, “my senses should be strengthened to become more mature, more strong, more sensitive, more penetrating.” Why? – Because if my eyes can become more penetrating, I can see the divine even in matter, in a tree, even in a stone I can see it. If I am not seeing it, there are two reasons. One, the stone is asleep; second, my eyes are not so penetrating that they can reach even into its sleep and know it. These are the two reasons.
Matter is consciousness asleep, and I cannot feel it because my eyes are not so penetrating. My senses are not even so alive that I can feel the consciousness asleep in the stone. So there are two possibilities: either the stone must become, must flower into consciousness, then I can know – or my eyes must come to their perfection, then I can penetrate. And then even if the consciousness is asleep, I can know and feel.
The UPANISHAD prays, “Let my senses be strengthened, so I can penetrate your mystery.” Your mystery is here but I cannot see it, my eyes are weak or just blind. My eyes are blind, they don’t see you, they don’t feel you. Wherever I see, wherever I feel, only matter comes to my knowledge. My feeble senses are not capable of feeling you. Make my senses more alive, more strong, more acute, so I can go deep in your mystery, which is all around.
This is a strange prayer and a very beautiful one. Strange, because we have been fed a very wrong conception that the senses are your enemy. So kill the senses, destroy them. With a deadened sensuality, with a dead body, you will be more spiritual. This has been given to us, fed into our minds, this totally wrong conception. It is a very pathological conception towards life – ill, diseased, neurotic.
The UPANISHADS are very healthy, life-affirmative. They say one is not to be dead in the body; rather, more alive. If you are more alive, more and more alive, then you will not feel the body at all. A moment comes when the body is totally filled with aliveness – every particle of the body alive, awakened – then there is no-body at all. You become just energy, just consciousness.
So this is a transformation, not a suppression. The prayer is not for suppression. The rishi is not praying, “Let my eyes be weak or blind so I cannot see that which must not be seen.” On the contrary, he is praying, “Let my eyes be so strong that I can see that which cannot be seen. The unseeable, the unknowable are not seen; so give me strength, give me more energy, more consciousness to my senses.” He is praying, “Let me come down, down to my body, to every fiber of my body. Let me be deep down into every particle of my body, so alive, so full of energy, so full of consciousness and sensitivity, that I can know you and I can feel your mystery.”
Really, those who have ever felt the divine mystery were basically the most sensitive minds in the world.
Our so-called ascetics – who are just trying to deaden their bodies, trying to destroy the instrument of knowing – may come to a point where they become just an enclosed stone. The body has become completely dead, and now they are just enclosing themselves. They can become very perfect egos, but never souls, never enlightened ones.
They can be perfect egoists, because the more you are closing yourself the more you are self-centered, and the self is strengthened. You become a monad, completely enclosed and dead in yourself. Then you can live in your illusions, then you can live in your dreams, then you are in a coma. You are broken from the whole by your own effort. This is a spiritual suicide. Really, this is suicide; all else is just changing from one body to another. This is a spiritual suicide.
The rishi is saying quite the contrary, “Let my body be more alive, let me come down to my body. Let my fingers be my soul, so when I touch something, it is not only that I am touching, with my fingers, but I am touching and fingers are dissolved. I become prominent, significant, I go THROUGH my fingers, and then only, I can touch something which cannot be touched.” If I take your hand in my hand, and if I can move with my whole consciousness through my fingers, only then I am touching YOU, not your hand. Then your being is touched, and then your mystery becomes something alive to me. Then the doors of your mystery are open to me; then I begin to participate in your existence.
Then a window opens and we are not two.
Krishna says this can happen with the whole of existence, and when this happens only then one can achieve total freedom.
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