Episode 197 - Gita - Chapter 18 verses #16 thru #18

Hello friends, welcome. This is the last episode of 2021. So happy new year to all of you and hope this coming year is full of health and happiness and prosperity and success and mental peace and spirituality for all of you. Lou, I have to thank you for a wonderful year so far. Thank you very, very much. This has been great and all of this is possible only because of you. And I thank you for that. That thank you goes the other way because it has been such a great journey and we're learning so much and it's helping me personally and I here I see all the notes that we get on Facebook and otherwise and you know you're we're helping a lot of people and that's fun and exciting too. So now thank you for a great year because you're producing all of this. So we're headed towards episode 200 which I'm excited about. This is episode 197. Chapters 18 versus 16 through 18. So please do listen in order to get continuity to episode 196 and the ones before that. So you know where we're headed. But what we talked about last time was the five causes of every action. Five causes and those were the the body. We need a body, gross body, subtle body, a causal body. We need the doer, the me, the eye that's doing it, the karta, the instruments to do it. Our own body, our arms, our legs, our mind, our causal body, et cetera, intellect. Those are the instruments and anything else. We need a pair of shovel, a spoon, pair of scissors, et cetera. That's those are the instruments you need. And then you need a life force, Prana. Without that life force, you can't do anything. And lastly, you need the Lord, God, without God, without gravity. I said as an example, you can't walk. You may think you can walk but without gravity, you just float off into space, without the sun, without light. You can't see, there's many other things without oxygen, without humidity, temperature. You can't function. So you need the Lord. So those are the five causes. Atma, the self, very important. The one within us, the consciousness, who we think is the one that did it. You know, we say, oh, the soul made me do this, the soul. Atma made me do it. No. The soul doesn't make you do anything. Atma, the self is without a second, without a second. There's only the Atman. It is different from these five, these five, the ones that I just mentioned. In the presence of Atman, Brahman, all actions take place, but the Atman is not the performer, right? The Atman doesn't cause it to happen. It appears that the doer, me, you, is the Atman, but it's not, right? The doer is not the Atman. It's a conditioned form of the consciousness, which is presenting in a certain way, it's presenting as a body. Next body I take in the next life will maybe looking totally different. I may be a woman. I may be white. I may be blarar brown. I may be yellow. I may be black. I may be anything. But I am not the Atman. It's just a conditioned form of the Atman. There's no movement of Atman. Atman doesn't move. Atman is stationary. There's this fallacy that when we die, our soul comes out of our body and leaves. No. That's the Atman, you think, sort of flying away. The Atman never moves. The Atman, there's no movement of existence, bliss or happiness or consciousness. Those are the three things. Such it on an existence, bliss and consciousness. I think in my last episode, I forgot one of them. That's what happens when you get to be my age. So I said there were three things that do these actions, right? The body, the mind, and verbalization. Those are the three through which actions take place. Talking, walking, doing. You think I am doing it, but it is not the one that's doing it. It is those five actions. Important thing to remember, because you think I'm the doer. The five constituents of the actions are again made up of the three Gunas. Fascinating. You say, well, yes, I've got a body. I've got my body is doing this, but your body is made up of the three Gunas, Satvik Guna, Rajasik Guna, and Tamasik Guna. Your mind is made up of that. The instruments that you use are made up of that. All of these things are made up of the Gunas, Satva, Rajas, and Tamas, which we've talked about, add infinite of throughout these last 200 episodes. The three Gunas function in the three Gunas. That's a hard concept to understand. Let's put it aside for now. According to the laws of nature, there's a whole, just like these laws of physics and chemistry, there's a laws of nature, right? I won't go into that. But according to the laws of nature, all action happens in the prakriti. We talked about the prakriti. In the Gunas, but you don't know this. You think you're doing it. No, it's the prakriti, it's the Gunas doing it. It's complicated to understand because you think you are the doer, and I'll try to explain it, but it's difficult. And don't worry if you don't get it, it'll come. You are not the doer. The five factors that we talked about, the five causes are the doers, not the atman, not the brumman. Brumman doesn't do anything. Just is a witness, watching everything. If a person still thinks that I am the doer, Krishna says, you are, put it nicely, not smart. You have not been enlightened. It's the way he puts it. You are ignorant. Your intellect hasn't developed. You don't see the truth as it is. That word, by the way, is called links, LYNX. The ability to see the truth to be enlightened is called links in Old English, LYNX. That is why the animal links is called links because his eyes are very luminescent, links his eyes. And when you see a links, their eyes are bright. Not that he can, the links cannot see the truth, but the word links means the ability to see the truth. And so these five factors are not the doers, not the gunas, the donas are the ones, not the atman. But you think you are ignorant. You have not seen the truth. You have not had the links to see the truth. So you think you are the doer. Atma is the consciousness, the awareness, the witness. For example, when you're asleep, the atma is just the witness of the dream that's going on in the dream state. He thinks, Atma is just watching. You think, oh, I'm running. I'm catching this thief. I'm running after the tiger is running after me. You truly believe that you are the doer in that dream. Atma is just watching you throughout all of this. No action is really happening other than your deep breathing because you're nervous or you're tossing in your bread because you're nervous. Atma is watching all of that. But when you wake up, you say, oh, thank God, that was just a dream, right? Now what has happened is you say, oh, that was just a dream. I am the watcher. I am the doer. I'm watching this. Similarly, you think, now is I'm awake. So this is what's really happening. I'm sitting here in front of a camera in front of a microphone. I'm speaking. No. Again, is this just like a dream? The Atman is watching. So when you're awake, the Atman experiences the waking state. No action is happening. You think action is happening, right? You think I picked up a donut from there. I walked over here. I did this. I gave this lecture. I talked. No. Everything is being done by the Gunas. You are only observing, but you're identifying with the action. So you think you're doing it. When you become self-realized, you become liberated from this body and from this feeling that you are the doer. You are realized. You realize that it is nothing that you yourself are doing. Important thing. It's way beyond me or us at this time. Otherwise, you wouldn't be listening to this if you were self-realized. You wouldn't be wasting your time. The self-realized person is way beyond any of this, but it's just a matter of interest to let you know this. The main sign of a realized person is that he or she knows very firmly, I am not the doer. For action to occur, change is required. You have to change. If Atma were involved, it would have to modify or change. And since the Atman we know, Brahman never changes, never modifies, that with changes is not real. And the Atman we know is real. Atma is changeless. It is real. So it is not involved in change. So it is not involved in action. Simple logic behind it. Atma really means eye, but not the small eye, the large eye. Just like when you are doing, my son put up a zipline in his house. His house is on a slope. So his kids hold on to the zipline and they go sliding straight down at a high speed. I did that. And when you are on this ride, when you finally touch the ground, oh my god, thank god. When you are up on that zipline, streaming down, you think you are part of the action. When you touch the ground, you say, okay, that action is separate from me. Same thing when you are on an amusement park ride, when it is a scary ride. Similarly, Atman is separate from all of the doings of the world, right? It is a, if you are a grandfather, I have grandchildren running around. I may be sitting there watching one grandchild come past me, run past me and go and hide. I am looking the next grandchild comes. He goes to a different hiding place. I am watching all this. It is happening in front of me. I am not doing it. You are sitting in a balcony watching the cars going by left, right, left, right, different cars, red, white. You are watching all this. The Atman is just watching. Lou, would you do me a favor, give me a sense of time as every so often? We are at 11 minutes. Okay. Okay. Verse 17, "Free from the notion of I, me and ego, he with the capital H is free from his intellect being burdened or bound." He tells Arjuna, Krishna tells Arjuna that even if he kills his kitten kin, even if Krishna kills his kitten kin on the battlefield, he has not really killed. A little bit difficult to understand. The word Sanskrit word which is used in many Indian languages of ahankar, ahankar means arrogance, pride. I did it. I am the greatest. Ahankar doesn't actually mean pride the way most of us in India understand it. Ahankar comes from the word Aham, karta. Aham, karta. Aham means Aham Brahma, Sme means I am Brahma. Aham is me, I. Karta is doer. Aham karta is the word which the two words that really create ahankar, which means I am the doer. I am all actions. You feel I am doing it. Seeing you think I am seeing. I am hearing. I am good. I am a man. I am a woman. I, I, I. Ahankar is part of nature, property, the three gunas. It is not part of the Atman, as we said before. As you become self-realized, the self-realized person realizes that he is not a doer. I am a man. I am a Brahmin. I am old, etc. All false. You are none of that. You are Brahman. We have said this again and again. I am Brahman. Aham Brahma is me. That is the only thing that is true. Action without the eye and me will not bind you. If you don't have the eye and me, it won't bind you. You'll just do it naturally. When you're dreaming, you think this is me going through the scary event, the tiger chasing you, etc. When you wake up, you no longer feel that you're in that scary dream. You are sitting in your garden. You say this is the real me, not the one in the scary dream. No, not even that person sitting in the garden is you. The reality is you are Brahman. You are pure consciousness. When you're doing surgery, if you're a surgeon, doing surgery, you know, whatever you do, you're not the one that's doing it. It is your gunas that are doing it. The other thing to keep in mind, like when I was a youngster in my teens, I lived in Mumbai in a large apartment building and they were wide marble stairs that made of marble, tree real marble, going from the top floor all the way down. There were five stories in my building and I remember that I didn't even have to hold the banister. I would just run down the steps, two, three steps at a time, going fast all the way down without holding anything. Those were the days when you were younger. You could do those kind of things. But at some point, somebody told me, you know, when you think about where are you stepping, you'll see that you get all messed up. If you do it unconsciously and just put your mind to say, it'll do it, you come down very fast. You don't have to even think about it. But when you start thinking about what you're doing, then you will trip and fall and it did happen. I think if you were to try that, so essentially it's the same thing as leaving everything to God, saying, I'm not the one that's doing it. God is doing it. Just do it. And it comes out so much easier because you realize that you're not the doer. It's just the gunas that are doing it. Another example that I like is the one about taking a photograph. Somebody says, oh, I'm taking a camera, especially if they say, ready, one, two, three, that kind of stuff. You put on this false sense of a smile, which is so artificial that you don't look like yourself in the camera, in the photograph. But if you just were natural, it would be totally different. That concept of doing and just leaving it to God is the similar thing. Don't be self-conscious. All of that is because why? Because you say, I'm going to take a photograph, be conscious of you are now conscious of the result. I want the photograph to look nice. So you put on this artificial smile on your face and your eyes are looking dull. That's not you. Why? Because you think of the result. If you think of the result, the object, the action is not going to be correct. I hope that's clear. We can readdress it, revisit this concept at another time. Verse 18 says, the three-fold impulse to action are nyanah, which is knowledge, nyanam, neyam, which is the known, and pari nyata, which is the knower. The knowledge, the knower, and the knower. And the three-fold constituents of action are instrument, the action itself, and the actor. Okay. For every action to happen, you need those five factors. Remember, body, the doer, which is the karta, the instruments, the life force prana, and the lord. So why is a reaction different then? Not every action is the same, even though you may think it's the same. Why? Because every person doing it is different. The knowledge that one has, the doer himself, the object of the knowledge, the outside known world, that which is known, and the knower is all different. So it's all going to be different. For example, when I came to this country, I hated the fact that it got dark at 3.34 o'clock in the afternoon. I said, I'm going back to India. I don't like it here. It's gets dark at 3.30 in the afternoon, and the sun didn't rise till 9 o'clock in the morning. What is this? I'm going back to Mumbai, where this, you know, nice warm sun, 70 degrees, etc. I had some good friends at the time, and one of them said, you know what? You should get used to the winter. If you start doing skiing, which I did, I loved it. If you do ice skating, if you do tobogganing, and going down the slopes on your sled, you'll have so much fun. You love winter. And he said, let's make an ice boat. And just that doing it, doing that ice boat will give you something pleasant to look forward to. Now, I didn't know what an ice boat was. You know, no? I don't. No, I'm curious. Ice boat, if you look it up on Google friends, an ice boat is a boat, but you need water for a boat to go on. An ice boat has just like ice skates. It has blades of metal on the bottom. Okay, yeah. And you go on to a lake, for instance, that's completely frozen. The blades go on the ice, and you have a sail there, and the wind pushes the boat, and you glide forward on those things. So he's saying here that you need to have that knowledge. If you don't know what is an ice boat, you're not going to be able to make it. You need to know somebody tells you, you know, build an airplane, but you were born in a jungle. You don't know what an airplane is. You never saw an airplane. Never sat an airplane. You're not going to be able to build it. So he's saying the knowledge, the known, the object of knowledge, which is the outside known world, that which is known, and the knower all determine how your action is going to turn out. If you don't know what something is, if I tell you to make an Indian food stuff that you don't know what to say, you're not going to be able to do it. Naya, that which is known, the outside known world, nyanam, the knowledge as words, or as an impression, not just words, as an impression in your mind. You know, you have so many experiences in this life and in previous lives. Your mind sets it up as a vritti, as an impression. It's there forever, even from previous lives. Like when we talked about, before we started talking about the Gita, these 197 episodes that you're listening to today, Lu and I did a series of a few episodes called Memoirs of a Psychiatrist. And it didn't have to do with the Gita. It had to do with my work as a psychiatrist. And at that time, one few of the episodes we spoke about how I did hypnosis to solve crimes. And under hypnosis, you would, I don't want to go into it right now, but the most amazing memories would come out from the mind. Now these are vrittis that are available to you during this lifetime. And you may be able to, there have been written records of people having vrittis that they can bring out from previous lives. And I talk about that in the Memoirs of a Psychiatrist. So your mind sets up these things. We're talking about the second one, which is Neyam, which is knowledge, which is set up as an impression in your mind from the present life, as well as from previous lives. Your mind may not remember consciously, but it is there. It's stored there. The response is there from previously. These impressions keep coming up as desires, as words, as wishes, as responses to the outside world. What is the response? I had an impression, this guy with a mustache and a beard that looks like this gave me a hard time. That response next time I see another guy who may be a very sweet guy, but because I see the same beard and he looks similar to that guy, I say, I have a response to him that is not appropriate, because I say, he reminds me of that other guy. You see a thing, you have a response, or because of your impressions, your Neyam, your knowledge from previous things, good or bad. Thousands of others would have different responses. Somebody else said, "Oh, my grandfather used to have a beard and mustache like that. He was a very loving person. I love this guy, whereas I had a negative response." Impressions in our subconscious mind come from previous lives and from this life, so that is the knowledge, the nail, that which is known, the outside world, this is an ice boat, this is Indian curry, the knowledge that you've got as impressions, the knower, which is mean. Action does not take place. Even if you have all those five causes that we mentioned before, if all three of these are not there, if you don't have knowledge of how to do it, you don't have the knower, you don't have the nail that object of the knowledge action isn't going to take place. Now last, what constitutes an action? What constitutes a karma? The constituents of an action he says are the same as those five that he mentioned before except that the first one and the last one are missing. So he says, "Karanam," which is all instruments of action. Our body, our sense organs, our mind, our intellect, all of these as the instruments, plus the spoon or the tongs or the shovel or the spade, whatever you use it, all the instruments. Second, the action itself, which is the karma. And the last is the doer of the actions, which is the karta. These are the middle three of the five constituents of action that we mentioned previously. The seat which is the body is missing, he doesn't mention the seat here. What constitutes an action, he doesn't talk about the body, and he doesn't talk about the Lord. He's saying that that doesn't constitute an action. The boat maker is the doer of the action. The boat that we talked about, the ice boat, that's the karta. The karanam is any and all instruments needed to build that boat and the karma, which is the action itself, the actual making of the boat, all three go together to make an action. And in order to do that, you have to have the knowledge of how to do it, you have to have the knowledge of the outside world or what it exists, and you have to have the doer. So friends, I rushed through this. It's a little complicated and heavy. You need to be able to go back, listen to it again. If you think it's important for you, everybody thinks a different versus important and make notes and contemplate it. Any questions, write to me, I'll be happy to answer those that I can. I've been inundated, believe it or not, by messages. So actually lately I've been writing and saying, I'm so sorry, I can't answer your questions here, but I'll try and address it in the episodes. And as I'm speaking, I have been giving certain answers to some of your questions. Lou, I hope I have not kept you from your appointment. I hope we're good. We're good. We're good. Great episode, as always. And we've got several left in chapter 18. So and we're coming up on 200. It'll be a hundred soon. So happy new year friends. I hope you celebrate safely and wisely and have a great new year. Have a lot of health, prosperity, success and peace of mind. All my best wishes to all of you. And to you Lou, have a good time wherever you go. Yeah, thank you, you too.