Right Sequence – In Gita Verse 18.15 Whatever right or wrong action a man performs by body, mind or speech is caused by these five factors.
In this verse Krishna says, five factors are given to all. But how they use it is what gives the end result. If body, mind and speech are aligned with universal law then it is right action and if body, mind and speech are aligned with ego then it is wrong action.
In KAIVALYA UPANISHAD it has been explained in a very practical way.
THE SAGE ASVALAYAN APPROACHED THE LORD PARAMESHWAR, THE CREATOR BRAHMA, AND SAID, BHAGAVAN, TEACH ME BRAHMAVIDYA, THE HIGHEST SCIENCE OF REALITY, THE PATH TREADED ALWAYS BY THE GOOD PEOPLE, WHICH IS EVER A HIDDEN SECRET TO A MAN. DUE TO WHICH, DISCARDING ALL THEIR PAST SINS, THE WISE MEN REACH THE HIGHEST PURUSHA, THE BUDDHA-SELF.
TO HIM, THE GRANDSIRE, PITAMAHA, BRAHMA SAID, “KNOW THIS BY MEANS OF FAITH, DEVOTION, MEDITATION AND YOGA.”
The KAIVALYA UPANISHAD begins with an enquiry into the ultimate. What is the ultimate BRAHMAN? How can it be known and achieved? Not only known, but ACHIEVED. Knowing is secondary, being is primary; and the basic enquiry is concerned with being, not with knowing.
But the disciple who is asking, who is enquiring, is not an ordinary man. He is a great rishi, a great scholar, a great so-called knower. He knows, still he enquires because whatsoever he knows has not become a transformation to him. The knowing has remained just knowing, it has not changed his being. His being has remained the same, has remained unconnected, unrelated to his knowing, to his knowledge. Knowledge has become something else – a growth in itself – and the being has remained untouched.
Many times in life we also have similar experiences. We know but we are not able to act from that.
What is the difference between us and this disciple is only one thing: he is authentic towards himself. He accepts that his being has remained untouched to his knowledge. But we don’t accept it and we are not authentic towards ourselves.
The disciple is not an ordinary one; the disciple is extraordinary. He knows everything that can be known about brahman; but he doesn’t know the brahman itself. He knows ABOUT, he knows everything about, but to know ABOUT brahman is not to know brahman. You can know everything about, and still the brahman remains absolutely untouched, absolutely unknown. Knowledge can be gained without knowing, knowledge can be accumulated without knowing.
It means, if your being is not transformed simultaneously with knowing, it is worthless. You can become a person who knows, but you will be a person who is untransformed. A deeper mutation is asked for.
This wise man, this well-informed man, this well-learned man, comes to the teacher enquiring how to to be transformed into brahman. How to achieve the being of the cosmos? How to be one with the centre of existence?
It is not an intellectual enquiry at all; it is existential. And unless an enquiry is existential, it is not religious. One can go on enquiring philosophically, and one can go on ad infinitum, but one reaches nowhere. Knowledge can go on growing infinitely, it reaches nowhere. It CANNOT reach. It is intrinsically impossible because knowledge grows in memory, not in being.
There have been persons who were absolutely ignorant in the ways of knowledge, but they had, being, they WERE being; they had something more substantial, more inner, more authentic. They cannot tell you anything about the brahman, but just being near them you feel something. You are in contact with a live wire. You are in contact with something alive.
In a way intellect is just a dead thing. Memory is just past. The moment you know something, it has become a past, dead thing – it has become material. The moment you know it you can accumulate it – it has become a gross thing. The moment you have experienced something, it has become part of your memory.
But the being is always alive. It is life itself. Being must have a growth, an explosion; only then, you know authentically, only then you are wise. Unless that happens your wisdom is just a hidden ignorance.
So this wise man comes to the teacher to ask how to achieve that being, that oneness with the ultimate, with the substratum, with the centre of existence.
The teacher says that you come to know through four things. KNOW THIS BY MEANS OF FAITH, DEVOTION, MEDITATION, AND YOGA.
This is the right sequence: to begin with the cosmic, then to come to the self, then to the mind, then to the body.
The cosmic, the brahman, is the absolute centre of existence. Second comes the individual soul, the self; then the third circle. The third concentric circle is the mind, the thinking soul, and the fourth concentric circle is the body, the embodied soul – from the cosmic to the material.
Begin from the within and then come to the without; start from the centre towards the periphery and then everything becomes easy. Everything becomes so easy and so spontaneous that one begins to feel that it is effortless.
Krishna says this sequence cannot be told to anyone; it was told to a very extraordinary disciple. Ordinarily one has to begin with the body, then go to meditation, to devotion, and then to faith, because ordinarily we are so asleep that only at the body are we a bit aware. Everything else is in darkness, deep darkness. And then it is difficult, very difficult.
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