What Is Inside – In Gita Verse 18.33 O son of Pṛthā, that determination which is unbreakable, which is sustained with steadfastness by yoga practice, and which thus controls the activities of the mind, life and senses is determination in the mode of goodness.
Krishna says if your determination is total, you need not go to truth, truth will come to you. You just have to be silent enough to receive it. You have to become a host so that truth can become a guest in your heart.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 1.46, blog I wrote – When we are total in anything, it allows us to drop. Like fruits when they are ripped they drop on their own. Similarly when we are total, even our unconsciousness will drop.
Right now the whole world is living in beliefs. That’s why there is no shine in the eyes, no grace in people’s gestures, no strength, no authority in their words. Belief is bogus; it is making castles of sand. A little breeze and your great castle will be destroyed.
Truth is eternal, and to find it means you also become part of eternity.
In India there is an ancient story.
Ten blind men pass through a stream. The current is very forceful, so they hold hands. Reaching the other side, somebody suggests, “We should count ourselves. The current was so forceful and we cannot see – somebody may have gone with the wind, gone with the river.”
So they count. Strangely enough the counting always stops at nine. Everybody tries, but it is always nine. One man sitting on the bank of the river starts laughing – it is hilarious! And those ten blind people are sitting there crying, tears in their eyes because they have lost one of their friends.
The man comes to them and he says, “What is the matter?”
They explain the situation. He says, “You all stand up in a line. I will hit the first person – he has to say ‘one.’ I will hit the second person – he has to say ‘two,’ because I will hit twice. I will hit the third person three times; he has to say ‘three.’”
Strangely enough, he finds the tenth man who was lost. They all thank him, they touch his feet; they say, “You are a god to us. We were thinking we had lost one of our friends. But please, can you tell us…we were also counting; all of us tried, and the tenth was not there. How has he appeared suddenly?”
The man says, “That is an ancient mystery which you will not understand. You just go on your way.”
What is the ancient mystery in it? One tends to forget oneself. In fact, one lives his whole life without remembering himself. He sees everybody, he knows everybody; he just forgets himself.
Meditation is the only method in which you will start counting from yourself, “one.”
The first thing in life is to know who you are, where you are. Then everything in your life starts settling, moving in the right direction.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 2.67, blog I wrote – The fear is of knowing oneself. It is the greatest fear in the world. It is because you have been so immensely condemned by everybody for the smallest things – for the smallest mistakes, which are absolutely human – that you have become afraid of yourself.
What Is The Fear Of Knowing Oneself?
The fear is that perhaps one is a bad person. The fear is that we may discover that we are a bad person after having cultivated an image of being a good person. We appear to be a good person – we are saintly, we are innocent, we are authentic, we are truthful. Our fear is that we may realise that inside we are inauthentic and false. We are afraid of finding out that we are irreligious, complicated, cunning, hypocritical, unsaintly. The fear is that the image of ourselves – what we think ourselves to be – may turn out to be false.
We do not have the courage to have a direct and simple encounter with ourselves.
A person who is afraid in this way can never encounter the mind. It is very easy to go into the forests, it is easy to go into darkness, it is easy to sit fearlessly in front of wild animals, but it is very difficult to stand fearlessly in front of the wild man that is hidden within you. It is very arduous. It is not at all arduous to stand for years in the sun, any fool can do that. It is not difficult to stand on your head, any idiot can be taught such circus games. And it is not very difficult to lie down on thorns – the skin adjusts to the thorns very soon. If there is one thing that is really arduous, it is the courage to have an immediate knowing of however one is within, whether bad or mad, however one is. So the first thing is to drop fear and to get ready to see oneself courageously.
One who does not have this courage is in trouble. We are interested in attaining the soul, we are interested in knowing existence, but we do not have the courage to have a direct and simple encounter with ourselves. The soul and existence are very far away. The first reality is our mind, our brain. The first reality is the thought centre with which we are most closely related. One has to see it, know it, recognise it, first. The first thing is the effort to know one’s own mind in aloneness, without fear.
For at least half an hour every day, give your mind a chance to express itself as it is. Close yourself in a room, like an emperor, and give total freedom to your mind. Tell it, “Whatever you want to think, to contemplate, let it happen.” Drop all the censoring of yourself that has prevented things from surfacing – drop all that. Give your mind the freedom to allow whatever arises to arise; to allow whatever appears to appear. Don’t stop or suppress anything. You are ready to know what is inside.
Krishna says if you have the courage to be with yourself then you will be total in your determination. Then everything else will be moving in the right direction.
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