Science of Bhagavad Gita with Acharya Prashant ‪@ShriPrashant‬

Personal Connection with the Bhagavad Gita

[00:00] Bhagavad Gita has been very close to me. So when I was a child, my grandmom, she actually knows Sanskrit and she used to take Gita classes in our native place in Kerala. So I used to attend Gita classes with her when I was 8, 9 and after I finished my MBBS,

[00:20] I decided that I have one year to study for my entrance exam and I took up reading Bhagavad Gita every Sunday almost as a you know, help me study better and my grandma only took

[00:40] me through that again. So that was the second time I read it and during the pandemic I read it a third time. What was very interesting was every time I read the Bhagavad Gita, I would understand it very

[01:00] It almost felt like it was a completely new book, which makes me wonder that the last time I read it, I was 33. I am now 36. I wonder if every 5 years I read it,

The Ever-Changing Interpretation of the Gita

[01:20] it for the rest of my life, will it always be a different book? It will be and the more it changes and the more speedily it changes, the better. Because you see, it is a

[01:40] very special book where the words have been addressed to the ego, to the ego, with a view to convince itself of its non-existence.

[02:00] Which means that the very purpose of the book is to change the reader. Right. The very purpose of the discourse is to change the reader. I pick up the book and I think I

[02:20] am somebody and if I am honest with the reading, then the reading will convince me that I am not what I think of myself. That is the first leg of the… The second part is the principle

[02:40] that what I read, what I think, what I construe as the reality is a function of who I am. The same words will mean something to you and something else to me.

[03:00] I mean, very basic, but somebody writes here, okay, this is a goat, this is a goat and you might think of it as a pet, I might think of it as food, right? Depends on who you are, depends on who I am.

[03:20] words, here is a goat. These words mean very different things to you compared to what they do to me. So, if you change, the meaning of those words will change and the very purpose of those words is to change you. So,

The Purpose of the Gita – Changing the Reader

[03:40] those words exist to change me, change you. I am talking about the Gita. Those words exist to change you. And when you change, the meaning of any words you read will change, which means that if the Gita is successful upon you, you will find its meaning evolving. Therefore, I said

[04:00] that I wish that the change happens with a greater speed. That makes sense. And I will add one more point which is, it is likely that you will open the Gita at a time when you are maybe going through some conflict, which means that you are

[04:20] more in your ego at that point, which means the change would be even more stark. See, it's like this. I have some eye condition. I cannot see properly. Somebody gives me a particular

[04:40] tube, some ointment or something or some drops. Given my eye condition, can I read what's there on the label? No. Or can I read those micro words that are usually there on such tubes and bottles? I can't. But it has been given and for some reason, I decide to apply it.

[05:00] I do not know what really it is. Maybe I can read what is there in big and bold. Beyond that, nothing. So I have some idea of what it is and using that idea, I apply it. And when I apply it, what happens? My eyesight gets better and then I can see more of what I have just applied.

[05:20] And if I can see more of what I have just applied, I can read the instructions there and next time I apply it in an even better way and if I apply it in an even better way, then I am able to read the whole thing even better. So, I get into a virtuous cycle. You see, we are not talking of the tube, we are talking of the tube.

[05:40] Gita. But the analogy is perfect because we are talking of seeing. Seeing. We are talking of seeing. Yes. One thing I really liked about the Gita the last time I read it was for the first time, I noticed how the first chapter began.

Conflict in the First Chapter – A Metaphor for Life

[06:00] begins with a conflict. And the stage, the setting of the story is so beautiful that Arjun is in the middle. And on the one side is all the people who rely on him, other side is the

[06:20] is the enemy, but they are also his family. And he is now conflicted that should he fight, should he not? And the rest of the book is about resolving that conflict. Now, in this case, the conflict seems to be a very big one, war. But conflict is something that we go through

[06:40] Every day, every minute, should I call up my friend or not, should I order Swiggy or not, whatever, everything is a conflict. And I had never noticed it before, but it suddenly felt that, oh, this is a very practical book, very practical book, that it begins with a conflict. Right. You know,

[07:00] Chapter 1 that you mentioned. See, Krishna does not utter a single word. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

[07:20] Even in chapter 2, it's after a few verses that Shri Krishna comes in. So, chapter 1 is us, you and me. Right. Chapter 1 is there to bring us into the picture. Everybody is talking.

[07:40] Dhrithraj is talking, yes. Sanjay is talking, yes. Duryodhana is talking. Arjuna is talking. Sri Krsna is not talking. Chapter 1 is about us. That battlefield is our own lives. Right. People from all different places and

[08:00] He is going to Bhishmana saying, you know, we need to protect him. He is saying, look at that side, they appear mightier than us. Apprehensions, greed, attachments, everything is there. And Arjun, especially, very remarkable is this chapter 1.

[08:20] It comes up with two things. One, they are my friend's skin kit. How do I fight them? They are related to me by blood. So, that is physical conditioning. You know, even an

Physical and Social Conditioning in Arjuna’s Dilemma

[08:40] Animals have that. They usually don't want to attack their own pack, their own tribe. Second thing that Arjun talks of is social conditioning. If this war happens, then all the kshatriyas

[09:00] might be killed and then what happens to our women? Probably the women will go to those who do not belong to our world and our caste. And then what will happen? Arjun goes on explaining. He says, you know,

[09:20] The kids that will be born out of such illicit relationships, they will not be qualified to offer the right rituals to our dead ancestors and then their souls will suffer in various kinds of healths.

[09:40] So, now this is, all this is religious dogma. All this is religious dogma. Social conditioning. Urgion is heard of all these things from somewhere. They are not coming from the body. It is all coming back. First of all, it has come to Urgion from the society. It is not an arising from the body, you know.

[10:00] that there are higher castes and lower castes, and that there are souls somewhere in the sky, and that if you offer the right kind of rituals, then those souls are appeased. So, that's social conditioning. That's religious dogma. So, two kinds of things Arjun is suffering from right in the first chapter.

[10:20] One physical conditioning, how do I kill my own brothers out there? That is physical conditioning. The second is social conditioning, higher caste, lower caste and the status of women. You know, they are our women. How do we let our women go to the other side? And what about the kids that will be born also?

[10:40] all kinds of… that sets the stage for what's going to come now. What is going to come now is a demolition of physical and social conditioning. I call it freedom from Vritti and Sanskriti.

[11:00] Vritti as in the physical tendencies, Sanskriti as in the social culture. And that's what Krishna goes on to very successfully deconstruct. That's beautiful. So, that's what the entire Bhagavad Gita is devoted to. Freedom from the conditioning of the body

Anxiety and the Psychological State of Arjuna

[11:20] and the conditioning of the mind. And it is not at too many places that Sri Krsna directly exhorts Arjuna to fight. That happens only rarely. Gita is about letting Arjuna know who he is.

[11:40] He is. In a very liberal way, Krishna says, if you realize who you are, then you will know what to do. I do not need to instruct you, I do not need to command you or school you. That's for kids.

[12:00] So, Arjun is not even being motivated, let alone being instructed. He is being illuminated. And that illumination enables him to do what he must. I had this thought that

[12:20] because of that conflict, Arjun is going through an anxiety attack. And there is a phrase that the hair on his skin is standing, his mouth has gone dry, typical symptoms of an anxiety attack, specifically shivering,

[12:40] weakness, limbs are weak. So, full sympathetic crisis, his adrenal gland is really active, cortisol levels have gone up, he is now in that state of mind, he is panicking and because of that, he is catastrophizing. He is only

[13:00] imagining worst case scenarios. He is spiraling and you can see that. So, it is almost like you are listing the symptoms of an anxiety attack in chapter 1 and later on what comes in the next chapters like you said is an exercise in how to deal with

[13:20] somebody who is going through an anxiety attack. Yes, Krishna does not immediately say, hey, get over it. Or just get up and fight. Just get up and fight. Just do your job. It's not that straightforward. So I thought also, what a great framework to deal with somebody who is going through a mental

[13:40] In fact, the way the mind is classically defined is that it is an aggregation of objects and structures around your sense of self. So it is me, the I, at the center.

[14:00] You could say the linchpin. And me being who I am, I accumulate a lot of stuff around myself like one does in his home. And that, all that accumulation, that aggregation and those relationships, that entire network is the mind.

[14:20] So, any crisis of mind is actually a crisis of the one who accumulated the mind. Because mind is just objects and objects in themselves are not conscious or sentient. Objects do not know anything.

[14:40] So, it is never the mind that is agitated. The agitation of the mind is a symptom, not the central cause. It is the self that is not restful. And the only thing that makes the self not restful is

Understanding the Ego and Its Role in Conflict

[15:00] absence of self-knowledge. So, when the self, the ego is not at rest, the mind will be agitated. The ego cannot be seen, but the mind can be experienced as the brain and there can be very tangible and physical symptoms. Nobody has ever seen the ego. But the

[15:20] mind is more tangible and the brain as we know, the brain is the body, it is very tangible. So, we say the mind is agitated just because we cannot see the ego at the centre of the agitation. So, if the mind is not the root cause of agitation, if the ego

[15:40] is at the center of vegetation and if this diagnosis can be done, then the treatment of mind must begin with the treatment of the ego. For the ego to be treated, first of all, the disease has to be known or the condition has to be known at least. The condition of ego is

[16:00] of lack of self-knowledge. That is the very definition of ego, not even the condition. The ego is the self that does not know itself. So, because the ego does not know itself, it is sick. It is a

[16:20] cultivated sickness. It's a fake sickness actually. The ego is not really sick. It's a sickness that it has just superimposed upon itself. It's the ego is struggling with lack of unity with, you see, it's like this. I think of

[16:40] myself as a bird. And now I am anxious that I cannot fly. The thing is, you are not a bird at all. The moment you realize that the anxiety is gone. So, lack of self-knowledge can lead to all kinds of anxieties. If I take myself to be what I am not, I will expect myself to do things

[17:00] that I cannot. And in today's world of social media, our identity has never been more fluid. You see somebody with a fancy car, you suddenly assume the identity of someone with a fancy car and now not having a fancy car gives us sadness. And the problem with this fluidity is that it is

[17:20] an imposed fluidity born out of helplessness of the one it is being imposed on. What does this fluidity mean? It physically means that you can come and affect my identity in one way. Now you leave and somebody else comes and my identity becomes dependent on that one.

[17:40] This is the fluidity we are talking of. It's a state of helplessness. I am not in charge of who I am. Anybody comes and starts determining my sense of self. My state of mind. Why? Because I do not know who I am. If I do not know, let's say, my own name and you come and address me as AB, then I am AB

[18:00] for the while, then that one comes and calls me CD. I become CD again for a while. So, that is fluid identity, fluid identity. And it is a state of great slavery, helplessness and powerlessness just because I do not know who I am. But if I know that

[18:20] my name is something. Why? Why? You can come and address me the way you want. I won't even mind. It will be a nice joke. He too can address me the way I, he pleases to and I won't even mind and there will be no crisis within.

[18:40] does not know Himself. He is a victim to both these conditionings, the social one and the physical one, as we all are. So, advise my students, first of all, see that you are Arjuna, because the Gita

[19:00] was instructed to Arjuna. Only an Arjuna can be rightful recipient of Gita. If you are not Arjuna, the Gita will not help you. First of all, you should see that you are the victim of multiple identities and all kinds of conditionings, just as Arjuna is.

[19:20] And then step by step, verse by verse, there will be some resolution, as you said. So, that is the reason the Gita is so useful and also became so commonplace because the very setting is of familiarity.

The Structure of the Bhagavad Gita and Its Relevance

[19:40] Unlike the Upanishads where the entire setting is idyllic and far removed from the usual householder's life, the setting of the Bhagavad Gita is extremely relatable. Everybody can relate to the Bhagavad Gita.

[20:00] and the Gita, they carry exactly the same message. They form part of the core of Vedanta. But still, the Upanishads are not as famous, not as relatable, but they carry the same message. They carry the same message. In fact, the Bhagavad Gita

[20:20] is called the very essence of Upanishads. And Vedanta is supposed to be having three legs just to explain it. Not legs exactly, not stomach exactly, but the audience would understand it this way.

[20:40] That is called prasthanthray. The three pillars you could say. One of the pillars is Upanishads and one of the pillars is the Bhagavad Gita. And then the third one is the Brahmasutra. So the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, they belong to the

[21:00] same bracket of scriptures, much the same. Yet, Gita is far more famous than the Upanishads because of the packaging and the relatability quotient. There is feeling, there is emotion, there is drama, there is bloodshed and there is history.

[21:20] It is a part of the Mahabharata and the Mahabharata has so much that fascinates us. So, the Gita became far more famous. Which is better scripting over time. Much better scripting as well. Yes. One analogy that I observed and I do not know if this is true or not is that the entire story is written from the

[21:40] perspective of a blind king being told what is happening with somebody with second vision. Yes, yes, yes. I wondered if there is a metaphorical explanation to this, which is that it is not easy to look inside our own conflict.

[22:00] Was I reading too much into it? No, no, you are not. Everything there has layered meanings. And the more we get unlayered, the more the layers upon the core meaning

[22:20] Also, just remove when the core is uncovered. You could very well say that the blindness of Dhritharastra is metaphorical and indicative of

[22:40] deeper inability to see when the second chapter starts. That's where we get into the... or we start getting into the meat of the Matthew, of the conversation. Now, the way the advice goes through the different yogas,

[23:00] karma yoga and the sannyā. Why is it arranged in that specific order? Why is it karma yoga first, sannyāsā yoga? Arrangement is not really original. Okay. The arrangement came later. Oh. The division of chapters in this particular way and particularly the naming

[23:20] of the chapters that came later. So, we need not read too much into why one particular chapter is named in one particular way. But what I find interesting there is that the war lasted 18 days and there are 18 chapters.

[23:40] That is true. So, was it one per day? Just, you know, cute little things to keep us engaged and pointers and reminders that there is still something more to it. But one must not read too much into these things.

Karma Yoga and Nishkama Karma – Action Without Desire

[24:00] Otherwise, one will miss the central message. I want to talk about the three main yogas in the Bhagavad Gita. So, let's talk about the Karma Yoga first, which is, put it in a nutshell, what I have understood is action takes precedence over energy.

[24:20] everything else. But is that the right interpretation? See, as we were saying, Gita comes from the legacy of the panachinists. In fact, very

[24:40] Strictly speaking, the Upanishads are placed higher than the Gita. The Upanishads form part of what is called the Shruti Literature, revealed Literature, Literature without an author, Literature without a human author, Aparu Shaya Literature.

[25:00] So, so, Upanishads come from there. Gita forms part of Smriti literature where the scripture is the product of an author, a human author. It's a human creation. So, the Gita forms part of Mahabharata and Mahabharata is attributed to Vedayas.

[25:20] So, very, very strictly speaking, because Upanishads are Shruti and Gita is Smriti, the Upanishads are in some sense above the Bhagavad Gita. So, that is not practically how it is accepted and it is also not useful to put it this way.

[25:40] But it is important to see that it is the message of the Upanishads that will reverberate through all the chapters of the Gita. It has to. The Upanishads are Jhana.

[26:00] What is Gyan? Gyan not in the sense of knowing about the world and this and that. Aatm Gyan, self-knowledge. So the core message of Gita too is self-knowledge. Arjun, please understand who you are.

[26:20] So, what is Karma Yogdhan? Focus not on the karma, but on the karta, the doer. Know who you are. If you focus too much on the action, you will be deluded. Look at the actor. If the actor is right,

[26:40] You need not think about the action. The action will fall in place on its own. That's Karmayog. I like to put it this way. Chapter 2 comes before chapter 3. Chapter 3 is Karmayog, chapter 2 is Gyanog. Got it.

[27:00] So, the best thing was served to Arjun first of all. That began. But Arjun was still reticent. You know, Krishna, I have my doubts. In fact, at points, he is kind of accusing Krishna of misleading him.

[27:20] That is the extent, you know, attachment and delusion can delude you. So, after a kyanya, which is sankhyog, then there is karm, karm sannyas and all the things that follow. So, karma. Whenever Sri Krishna says karma,

[27:40] It is nishkama karma. Whenever Sri Krishna says jnana, it is atma jnana. So, karmayoga is actually nishkama karmayoga. Nishkama karm means action that is not coming from a desirous self. Action that

[28:00] is not coming from a desirous actor. And if you do not know the actor, the actor will remain desirous because we are born incomplete. Where there is incompletion, there is desire, desire to be complete. If I do not know myself, I will remain incomplete and therefore, all my actions

[28:20] will be full of desire. Therefore, the only way karma can be nishkam is through atmagan. You cannot have nishkam karma without atmagan. Otherwise, your nishkam karma will be very superficial. On the surface, you might feel you are acting without desire, but there will be some lingering desire within that you might even not

The Nature of Desire and Its Influence on Action

[28:40] know of because you do not know yourself. And that desire is not something that can be fulfilled by just achieving the next target. No, no, it never gets fulfilled. It never gets fulfilled. It can get fulfillment only through getting negated.

[29:00] So, today in my heart there are desires. There are things that I want to achieve in medicine, in social media or whatever. Now I cannot say that I will let go of these desires after I have achieved say one

[29:20] million on YouTube. There is nothing like that. No, no, no. Nishkama Karma is not about not having desires. Nishkama Karma, I repeat, is about not having desires coming from a point of incompletion. It is about the actor, not about the action. It is about the desirous one, not about

[29:40] You can have desires, but your core must be desireless. Then your desire will not be for your personal self. Then your desire will actually be auspicious for the entire world. Nishkamkarm is not about not having desire.

[30:00] Execution does not use prescriptive language. No, do not desire, just go and fight. No, not that way. So, we said it is not about the action, it is about the actor. It is not about the desire, it is about the desirous entity.

[30:20] So, it is about the desirer's entity. Nishkamkar means the one who used to have desires has now known himself. And after you have known yourself, all the evil within is dropped, disappears, vaporises. The only evil within is lack of self-knowledge.

[30:40] Once I know myself, I am clear about who I am. It is not as mundane as I am making it sound to be. But once you have known yourself, there is nothing called one knowing yourself. There is no end to it. But for the purpose of this conversation, I am putting it in simplicity.

[31:00] So, once there is that, what could I call it? Purity within? Clarity. Or clarity within? Then in some sense, you are entitled to desire. You are not even entitled to desire, you are obligated to desire. You are not even obligated to desire, you are free of all obligations.

[31:20] Now go ahead. Right. And just play. For instance, if my identity is an F1 car driver and through and through my identity is that, I will desire to win the race because that is my identity. But your

[31:40] saying that I can do that as long as my core self is detached. The entire wisdom literature is absolutely silent of what you can do, what you cannot do. It's totally silent on that.

[32:00] It's not prescriptive. It's not an instruction manual. I feel we are at the crux of something here because if you crack this. So, it's not about whether you can want that, whether you can achieve that, whether you should do this, whether you should do that. Is that allowed in your religion? No, no, no. We don't do these things. We are Jews.

[32:20] We are Christians, we are Buddhists or Hindus. No, no, that's not the way of wisdom. What you do, what you wear, what you eat, how you marry, whether you marry, we are not going to get into that. That's not the way of wisdom. We want to look at who we are.

[32:40] You want to look at who we are. And after that, whatever happens is auspicious. Fine. Who am I to tell you how to live? But yes, if you are struggling, I would probably come to you and throw some light on the way. You know, you are struggling, you are stumbling, you are falling, you have hurt your knees.

[33:00] say, friend, here, here, here is a torch, there is some light, but you have to use your own eyes. And whether you want to use the torch is again your discretion. I am not going to impose it on you. You have to do it yourself. So, all wisdom literature is about enabling you to see

[33:20] See what? First of all, who you are. And what does that mean? Because if you repeat that phrase too often, it becomes very cliched and who I am, who I am appears so mysterious, one gets lost in it. It is not about seeing who I am. It is about seeing who I am not and yet have become.

[33:40] I am not this and yet I have become this. Many times you find yourself in situations where you almost feel like you are acting. You are acting because you have been trained to act. Yes. You have been conditioned to act. You know.

[34:00] Now that the fellow has arrived, you are supposed to smile and greet. Now the fellow says, oh, I lost my job. You are supposed to offer some kind of commiseration. Correct. So, I am not that. But something happened in the process of my journey through life.

[34:20] And I just got indoctrinated, conditioned to do that. So, Jnan is about freedom from what you are not and yet have been forced to become. It is freedom from becoming. Becoming that came to you in the past and becoming that pulls you

[34:40] to the future. What does future mean to us becoming right? I want to become such a thing in the future and all this becoming associated with the future is actually a residue of the past. Pushing you. You cannot have desires for the future devoid of pure experiences of the past. If you remove everything that has happened to you in the past.

Freedom from Conditioning – Breaking the Cycle of Past and Future

[35:00] Yes. What will you do? There is no desire for the future then. You cannot have dreams and aspirations then. So, we remain entangled in all that and the net result is suffering. So, wisdom then with the way Krishna is imparting it to Arjuna is about seeing what Arjuna is not. Arjuna

[35:20] you behaving this way? You know where your action is coming from. Arjun, can you see where your action is coming from? Therefore, there is a tremendous lot of negativa the Gita deals in. So, you look at the construction of the very world,

[35:40] First, drop hope, nirashi bhava. Drop ownership, the sense of possession, niramam bhava. You see how the very word is constructed? Hope is towards the future, ownership is from the past. Drop these things. Drop these things.

[36:00] the entire repository of words that you find in the Gita, they themselves tell you what Sri Krishna is attempting. He is saying just drop it, just drop it, just drop it. And if you do not drop that, then you will drop the Gandiv. So, pick up the Gandiv and drop the nonsense. Right. Because when you think

[36:20] about motivation, why are we doing anything, we are most likely being either pushed by something in our past or pulled by something in our future. I am doing this hoping that something will come in the future or I am doing this because I have committed to something that I have told myself. Actually, there is not even an or in between. As you stand, as you

[36:40] stand, as you stand, there is the past that you think is behind you. And the future is but a mirror. What you look at as the future is nothing but a reflection of your past. Here I am and there is a mirror there and what I see in the mirror

[37:00] is stuff that is actually behind me. So, there are no new dreams actually. Right. What we are dreaming of is actually just the stuff of the past repackaged. Things that you can see other people do. Things that you see other, you have seen other people do. Again,

[37:20] from the past. Again in the past. Correct. Yes. Because what can you dream of in the future that has not happened? Can you think of anything that has not been in your experience so far? No. Even imagination is dependent on the repository of experiences. So all hope and optimism

[37:40] is just projected past. And that's what the Gita is attempting to rid origin of. In psychology and even in neuroscience, when it comes to motivation, there are these terms called external motivation and internal motivation. So, all external motivation is motivation influenced by things that are

[38:00] happened around us to us and internal motivation is one that comes from within. And there is a lot of discussion whether is there an internal motivation, is not everything external motivation? In the world of Gita, first of all, the external and the internal motivations become one.

[38:20] Secondly, both become redundant. Krishna is not motivating Arjuna. Krishna is illuminating Arjuna. In fact, the very core of Gita is motive-less action. I will put all motivational speakers out of business. Oh, they hate me.

[38:40] What do I do? Nishkhaamkarm is motive less action. What do I do? You are trying to motivate. Sri Krishna is saying motivation is nonsense. What do I do?

[39:00] Knowledge leads to action. The Ganyoga leads to Karma Yoga. After that is renunciation. Actually, it's not even that. Knowledge does not lead to action.

[39:20] Knowledge makes action superfluous. In knowledge, you cease to bother about action. It is not that if you have the right knowledge, then you will do the right action. No, no, no, that's not the framework. Once you know who

[39:40] you are, you need not keep an eye on yourself. Because action still assumes will. Now there is no will, there is just a certain very peaceful completion and after that you can allow yourself to just play and flow. That's Advaita Vedanta.

[40:00] Go play. So, if you gain the knowledge that you are water, you will flow. If you gain the knowledge that you are a rock, then you will be done. And if you understand you are nobody, then there is no need to have prescriptive checks on yourself.

[40:20] Why else would you want to determine your action in advance? Why would you want to plan your action in advance? Only when first of all, you have a model of things to be free of ignorance, to be free of all models. Now you can act freely. Now you can act in ways that even you have not thought of.

[40:40] Now, this kind of freedom as you hear it, as you hear of it, does it not terrify you? It's scary. It's scary. That quantum of freedom, that immensity of freedom where even you do not know what you are going to do next. Yes, it's horrible.

[41:00] And that's the reason why the real thing could never become messy. That's why India, in spite of being the mother of these things, Indians could never partake the benefit, at least not the bulk of Indians. Because even when we talk of this freedom, we are talking of freedom from self.

Surrender and Bhakti – Understanding True Devotion

[41:20] Because what we identify as self is that person who is acting. We still associate freedom with freedom of choice. Freedom of choice. And here you are saying that once you have that level of knowledge, there is no need for choice. There is no choice. Because there is no chooser. There is no chooser. There is nobody to choose. Correct.

[41:40] In a way, that is death. That is death. Wonderfully put. And that death is something that wisdom literature sings so beautifully and so just tugs at your heartstrings. If you hear the saint singing of death

[42:00] inner death. Just marani says, jagdare, mero man anand, kabam mariham, kabh betiham, puran paramanand. He is saying, you know, the world is afraid of death and that's what gives me joy. I want to die. And of course, he is not talking of physical death. He is talking of the inner death, the mahamritti. That must come to you before the

[42:20] body falls apart. Ego death. The ego death and that's the purpose of life. There is a term that is used in psychedelic literature called ego dissolution and all psychedelic effects are measured on a scale of five parameters. So there is one called oceanic boundlessness, there is one called

[42:40] There are four or five others. And ego dissolution is when you feel your ego dissolving. Who is there to feel? That's the question mark. All that is maya. To feel that you are not, who is the one feeling?

[43:00] It is like saying, I am silent. Then who is speaking? Who is there to utter that you are silent? Which reminds me of this conflict which is there in monotheistic religions about going to heaven. How will you go to heaven? See, that is a question that religious people so often fail to ask.

[43:20] Who is going to heaven? Who? To whom? Whose? All those questions. But don't ask. Tell me about Bhakti. Love. Is it the same as surrender?

[43:40] Surrender to whom and by whom. I see I am not what I must be if I am to live in peace or fulfillment or joy, whatever word we choose. So I surrender this suboptimal self.

[44:00] surrender. To what? To my greatest potential. You could call it the complete being, total being, absolute being or equally you could call it non-being. So that's love. That's bhakti. You are not surrendering to external entity. No, never. So when people

[44:20] People stand in front of a photo or an idol or a book or anything and they surrender to that entity. Is there a difference? See, there is a choice then. You cannot, the only problem is that it becomes infeasible. Surrender becomes infeasible when you are surrendering to somebody outside of you. Why?

[44:40] Because now there is a choice. You chose to surrender to that. You did not choose to surrender to this. So, the one making the choice is keeping himself intact. So, how is now surrender complete? Partial surrender will happen and partial surrender is no good. Therefore, any kind of surrender to any external entity

[45:00] will never be complete. It will not deliver the goods. Okay, I would push back here saying, maybe it is not equally good, but does it come with some benefits? There are some benefits. It can be a preparatory thing. Yes. It can be a provisional thing. Yes. Because the benefits of prayer and even partials are

[45:20] to the brain is still noticeable. But you have to understand that unless you graduate just at the right time, you run the risk of rotting in that state of partial

[45:40] in that state of partial surrender and that partiality can become addictive. You know, it's a very comfortable spot that you have acquired for yourself, where the ego gets the pleasure of being called a surrendered ego. It also gets the pleasures

[46:00] that come with all the things that you do there obviously are some mental benefits to that and then you do not want to move from that state. You think of that state as the final one. So, there is a great problem there. So, it is something okay to begin with, but very

Approaching the Bhagavad Gita as a Personal Journey

[46:20] Soon you must graduate ahead of it. So, any proclaimed enlightened soul who is still in public talking about how they are enlightened, is it fair to raise a question mark on their enlightenment? There is no need to even raise a question mark. A question mark is when there is uncertainty.

[46:40] It is certain that they are fooling themselves. So, there is no question. Because anyone who has truly reached that, it does not exist anymore. To reach there is to disappear. Now, who is there? We can never to claim the credit. Now, who is there to make the declaration?

[47:00] I am enlightened, as long as you are, you cannot be enlightened. It's like saying, I am dead. Exactly. I come and say, I am dead. Sir, if you are dead, who is talking? Exactly. So, by the very act of declaring one's enlightenment, one has actually certified that he is not. They are not.

[47:20] Okay. Practical Bhagavad Gita. To a 25 year old student or young working professional in India, they have never explored it before. Practical Bhagavad Gita, how would they start? What should they do? Do they need to read it?

[47:40] Yeah, obviously, they do not need to read it. Obviously, the reading has to be there. I mean, it is a book. It is a book. It is a book. So, you have to read it. One must stay with the verses for long, very, very long.

[48:00] One should not be lazy with the interpretations because it is a famous scripture. There are just too many commentaries. One should first of all try to get into a person

[48:20] personal relationship with the speaker, the author, creator, original, Krishna. First thing, there should be no need, no primary need for an intermediary.

[48:40] An intermediary should be called in only when there is a genuine obstacle. You know, I cannot proceed any further or this part is something I just cannot get any clarity with or I have some clarity with this. Yet, I think there is something more to it. Only then you should call for assistance.

[49:00] it should be an intimate thing between you and Krishna. Which also means that if you pick up a book, you should not be too eager to jump on to the elaboration, the bhach, the commentary. There is the verse. See what you can make of it. When Krishna was speaking to Arjun, there was nobody in

[49:20] between serving as a middleman. It is not as if Kṛṣṇa was speaking to some guru and the guru was then elaborating it to Arjuna. There was a direct communication. Arjuna had to struggle to understand just like you the reader will struggle to understand. You should avoid partisan interpretations.

[49:40] has to be a love affair. I mean, you cannot look at it like a textbook. You have to carry it wherever you go. You have to read one verse many times. Then you go back and forth. You return to a particular verse. You play with

[50:00] One of the memories that I have from my childhood, I am sleeping, I have fallen asleep with the Gita on my chest and it is open and some of the pages, they either get dog eared or

[50:20] little and then in the morning I get a bit of scolding, what have you done to the Gita. In fact, I hardly followed any prescriptive way. It was a love affair between me and Gita, between me and Krishna, where

Scientific and Neuroscientific Perspectives on the Gita

[50:40] I actually did not want a middleman. I actually got slapped once, was having my dinner with the book open by my side. So, little bit of dal and that is something that you

[51:00] don't allow in a Hindu family. Where is the reverence? There is a reverence. First of all, you are not supposed to read it when you are eating. And I was doing that. And then to make something, some food item fall on the pages of the Bhagavad Gita, that is just not permissible. How you got it?

[51:20] I am not advising that, but that just came to my mind. What I am trying to highlight is that there was a very genuine relationship. Try to get an essence of what I am saying. Like kids carry their dolls wherever they go. Sometimes they do.

[51:40] So, it should be a friendly learning. It was a friendly learning. And I was grappling, wrestling, doing all kinds of things with it, arguing, arguing, not accepting it easily. Yes, I have argued endlessly with Krishna. Not that I have given in easily. No, no way. And that was not again the case with only this.

[52:00] There are so many other books that I have grappled with. There is this thing in Salesmen where there is a book called Never Split the Difference. They talk about negotiation tactics and one of the lessons is that if you are selling

[52:20] something to somebody and if they say yes, that makes you a bad salesman. Their first response should be no because that means they heard you. People will say yes just to get out of a difficult conversation. Yes, yes, I'll buy it. But if you can elicit

[52:40] it a no, that means you actually have their attention and then you have to convince them. So, I like that you argued because that means it hit. You see, how can there be surrender without struggle? Without struggle, exactly. You are giving up the most

[53:00] All that I have is me. You want to have me, the totality of my existence and I will just give in without a fight. No way. It's not a real giving in. No way. Correct. Where is the violence? I think that makes a lot of sense.

[53:20] Over the next 1 or 2 years, I'll read it again now after this conversation. Wonderful. And I'll be talking about this and I'll be bringing in wisdom that I've gained from this. What I would eventually like to do is to bring in wisdom.

[53:40] more of a scientific lens to what the verses have said because there is a lot of biology, there is a lot of what is happening in your body. It talks of senses, it talks about levels of senses, it talks about levels of pleasure and maybe 50, 100 years ago, the pleasure networks were not discovered.

[54:00] described in neuroscience. But now they are. So now when there is a worse on pleasure, I can compare with pleasure networks in the brain and understand, oh, is this what it was meant for? In fact, I would like to possibly contribute with

Deep Study of the Gita – A Lifelong Exploration

[54:20] all the instances where Sri Krishna is referring to something that corresponds to neuroscience. He talks of, for example, Nirmalendriya. He distinguishes even between sense and sense. He says there is one kind of sense and then

[54:40] Then there is another kind of sense. Now what does that mean in the terms of whatever happens in the neurons is better obviously understood by you and man, yes, the mind, the relationship of the mind to the brain, the Gita goes into all that in length.

[55:00] It was very fascinating for me the last time, but I have since become more engrossed into it. So, there is an open invitation here that we can do that at a deeper level. Definitely, definitely. My pleasure.

[55:20] I do that all the time. I mean, that's my life. One verse, every single verse, we spend hours and hours on it. And these books that you see, in fact, they don't even contain

[55:40] all the verses. This is not even 10% of the work. And still, in spite of whatever I might have done, there is so, so much more that still needs to be done. So, I would be happy.

Final Reflections and Gratitude

[56:00] It would be an honour. Acharya G, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation. Most welcome. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. It has been a learning opportunity. Thank you.