The Bhagavad Gita: Masterful Guide for Everyday Spiritual Living

Welcome to this episode of the Wisdom of Paramahansa Yogananda brought to you by Self-Realization Fellowship. Where each week you can receive inspiration and guidance from Paramahansa Yogananda's Kriya Yoga Teachings. The subject of this episode is the Bhagavad-gita, masterful guide for everyday spiritual living. By our revered President, Brother Chittinanda. Good evening, everyone. Enjoy to be with so many old friends again. And greetings to you in the Pasadena room downstairs, where I'm forgetting you. You know that this class tonight is by request. Brother Paramahansa told me that many, many people had asked for, please give us a talk, give us a convocation class on our Guru's interpretation of the Bhagavad-gita. All right, brave souls. I always like to start with a thought from our Guru Paramahansa Yogananda said this, "You can overcome delusion if you tune in with the thought of God and hit the nail of delusion with the hammer of right thoughts of truth." So I think of his interpretation of the Gita as a sledgehammer. Sledgehammer have divine truth. And you know, I think probably all of you will agree that one of the reasons that people have almost an instinctive or intuitive sense, that the times we live in right now are so challenging, so confusing in so many ways, that they are wanting to understand more and more about the Gita. And by the Gita, when I say the Gita, I mean our Guru's interpretation, God touched with our Junah, because there's a sense that only such a powerhouse of truth like this can help us through these times. And you know, as the world gets more and more into this turmoil and confusion, and the, it seems like the pace of life, all of the things that are coming at us, that merely inspiring books that uplift us, that remind us it's just not enough, we need a powerhouse of truth. And let's be honest, the Kuru's are very much in command in the world today. Now, when I say Kuru's, or you're laughing, that's good. That's a good, that's one of the weapons. The Kuru's, of course, in the story of the Bhagavad Gita, is the war against the Kuru's, the wicked clan that usurp the throne from the good clan, the Pandavas, the war against the Kuru's and the Pandavas. And symbolically speaking, of course, just to set up what we're going to be talking about tonight. Our Guru explained that the Kuru's represent, or they symbolize all of the energetic or mental psychological spiritual forces of the ego. The ego identified with the physical body, with material consciousness, with the senses, ignorance and desire and bad habits, all of those sorts of things. And the Pandavas, the good side, that represents the higher consciousness of the soul. In other words, the spiritual qualities, self-control, willingness to meditate, desire to meditate, ability to meditate, calmness and attunement through intuition. So the Kuru's, the wicked ones, the bad ones that we're fighting against and the Pandavas, that we are aligning ourselves with and drawing on in this battle of everyday life. So, as I was saying, when we look at the world around us, we have to be frank, we have to recognize that at the moment it seems like the Kuru's are well ahead of the game, isn't it? And it isn't just those of us in self-realization fellowship, this is a sense that spiritual traditions of all types of all spectrums are aware of this. Let me just give you one thought. This was actually from a Christian monk who lived in India for many years. And father B. Griffiths, maybe you've heard of him, very wonderful man who did a lot of bridging or interfaith work between the Indian spiritual traditions and the Christian Hindu traditions. And he said, it cannot be too strongly affirmed that these, meaning these Kuru's, these forces that we're fighting against, that these are real powers which act on the unconscious. That is, on the lower levels of consciousness, bringing man into subjection to the powers of nature, in other words, to Maya, to delusion. The fact that modern man does not recognize them is only one of many signs that he is under their control. It's a powerful thought, isn't it? Because we have to recognize them in order to overcome them. Alright, now don't get too discouraged. I'm not going to spend the entire class dwelling on this, in fact, just setting the stage. Because actually, this is a very encouraging time if we understand it properly. And our Guru talked about this. He said, you know, there's these great cycles of time, great cycles of history, that the eternal wheel of time first goes down, then the cycle goes up, then down, and then up. And he said, now, despite all appearances to the contrary, we are actually in that ascending phase. In the beginning of that ascending phase, things are going to get better, things are going to get more spiritual. And the Bhagavad Gita, from thousands of years ago, has a most powerful, most beautiful answer to times such as this. The Lord, speaking through Krishna, says, "Whenever virtue declines and vice predominates, I incarnate as an avatar. Invisible form, I appear from age to age to protect the virtuous." That means you, all of us, to protect the virtuous and to destroy evil doing in order to establish righteousness. It's a powerful thought. And our Guru took his hammer of truth and hit the nail of delusion on the head. He publicly said in 1948, he said, no matter how dark, listen to this, you're so encouraging these words. He says, no matter how dark you think the picture is, do not be too discouraged. I make one prediction now, he said, the world is not going down to destruction. So don't be frightened. Believe in your Father. He will protect you if you remember his ideals. If you keep faith in him, we are moving upward. And then, just a little bit before that, he said something else that ties in with this, which is again so encouraging, so something we can really hold on to. He said, trust those who manifest God's light. That light is my guide. That light is my love. That light is my wisdom. And he tells me how his virtue is winning and shall ever win. So don't be too afraid of what's going on. Understand it. There's these cosmic forces, cosmic forces that are pushing our world into a higher age. That's all that's going on. For a few generations, there's this turmoil, there's this resistance by all of those entrenched mindsets in religion, in society, in culture, but it's nothing more than that. And all of these, especially in religion, you know, the old Kali Yuga, the dark age we're leaving behind, now moving up into the Dwapara Yuga, the higher age, the electrical age, higher spiritual age. That those old Kali Yuga concepts of religion, practice of religion, all of that has to be left behind as well, left aside, as we moved into the higher age. And the problem is, one problem anyways, is that people tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. You know what I mean is that in the name of breaking free of all of the wrong concepts of religion, they throw everything out, morals, ethical standards, all of the standards of right action and purity and behavior. All of it gets discarded because there's so much wrong with the lower age expression of religion. But don't throw out the baby with the bath water. And because of that, there's this tremendous confusion right now that our world is in. People say, how do we live? How should we live? How should we raise our children? There was a professor who, and this was in an article in our magazine some years ago, and I loved the way he put it. He said, in these times, we need access to some source of inexhaustible security to get our bearings in this confusing world. And to face the storms, we will certainly sail into when we decide to go against the conditioning of our times. Have you experienced that? When you decide to go against the conditioning of our times, and you know, all of you are really, you're on the front lines. And I have to just pause here and say that if you could only know how much those of us in Guruji's Auschwims, how much we admire and respect what you are doing with your lives. In the face of this conditioning, in the face of all of the turmoil, it's tough. And you're making a stand. You're saying, I will meditate. I will align my life, attune my life with those spiritual truths, those higher truths. So this professor went on, he said, our culture is lack of a recent tradition of meditation and related disciplines, and meditation is nothing if not a discipline is therefore critical. Reliable experience and information about how to deepen our interior lives has become, though we do not quite realize it yet, one of the most vital resources of our time. And that's what gets me so enthusiastic, so excited as I know it does you about the SRF teachings, because what Guruji has brought to us in these techniques and teachings is really a model of what spirituality will look like after the world makes this transition into that higher age. In other words, we can live in that higher age now by modeling our lives, by molding our lives after what Guruji has taught. Just some examples of what his teachings give to us right now, and that we can expect to see, you know, as the whole world completes that transition into higher age. One of the morality, but without guilt, isn't it? That's what our Guru enables us to have by right understanding faith and truth, but without dogma. Tradition, but without blindness and inflexibility, loyalty, but not with exclusiveness, a scientific understanding without throwing out religion, material prosperity, but without materialism, and universality without being afraid to commit steadfastly to one path. And last but not least, he makes the whole process a lot of fun. You know, normally we don't give advice to people on what spiritual path they should follow, but I always have no hesitation in saying stay away from any spiritual path that doesn't enable you to develop a highly refined sense of humor. Alright, getting into the Gita, Paramahansaji wrote this summarizing in one sense. He said, "A grasping for ever more money, a plunging deeper into more prolonged work with attachment or blindness will produce misery, yet mere outward renunciation of material things, if one still harbors an inner attachment to them leads only to hypocrisy and delusion. To avoid the pitfalls of the two extremes, renunciation of the world or drowning in material life, man should so train his mind by constant meditation, that he can perform the necessary, dutiful actions of his daily life and still maintain the consciousness of God within. Krishna's message in the Bhagavad Gita is the perfect answer for the modern age and any age, that yoga of dutiful action of non-attachment and of meditation for God realization, meditation plus right activity." That's the message of the Gita. In the classes that have already been given over the last few days, meditation has been covered very beautifully, but what about right action? What about right activity? What does, how do we get an understanding, a handle on that? I have to confess when I was thinking about this talk, it was in 1996, 1995, 1996, that those two volumes of our Guru's Gita interpretation were published, 1200 plus pages. Maybe we got a sense or some people expressed, "Well, 1200 pages, how do you begin to internalize that?" So just one year ago, 2007, we tried putting it down into a little book, Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, you've probably seen that, only 200 pages. But then came this convocation and everybody wants that covered in 59 minutes or less. That's all right, we're game. And what we'll do is we'll condense that Bhagavad Gita down into the actually smallest package you can possibly have. You know what that is? The now. Right now. Because it's not how much we know, that's so important, but how much we know right now. Or as Guruji put it in his inimitable way, to do the things we ought to do when we ought to do them. So often we make a big mistake or somebody comes up to us or we say to ourselves, "How could you do that? What were you thinking?" And you say, "Oh, yeah, I forgot." I don't know, I wasn't thinking of that. You know, we know all of these things, but how to bring them into the present moment is a completely different proposition, isn't it? And the Gita explains that. The Gita says, "At birth or Junah, all beings are immersed in delusion at birth." You know what that means? "At birth means that very first breath that the baby takes." Very first breath, because this is where Guruji gives us such beautiful and precise scientific understanding, that the breath is the key to the spiritual life, is the key to mastering states of consciousness. And from the very first breath that consciousness is going outward from that innermost cerebral spinal axis, what Yoga calls the sushumna, we'll get into that more a little bit later. And into the flowing outward and activating the senses, activating the outer faculties, the outer instruments of consciousness that completely hypnotize us into thinking that all of this is real. So, why can't we remember in the now, what's the right thing to do? Why we, you know, you walk into any bookstore and there's shelf upon shelf of books that will tell you things like the seven laws of not doing the ten things that you shouldn't do to completely mess up your life. And these are obviously speaking to a need, but what we're talking about tonight is not about a book. It's not about a book, because Bhagavad Gita, masterful guide to everyday spiritual living, in order to really understand that, think about what does, what does that mean? Bhagavad Gita, and Guruji again puts it so concisely, this is on the very first page of the introduction, very first page, very first paragraph. He says, Bhagavad Gita means the song of the Spirit, the divine communion of truth realization between man and his creator, the teachings of Spirit through the soul, that should be sung unceasingly. And then he goes on and says, "Victory is assured to the devotee who, through undescribable practice of the divine science of yoga meditation, learns like Arjuna to harken to the inner wisdom song of Spirit." That's the whole secret of right action. Let me just tell you a story. This made such an impression on me. It was told to us by Miramata, who was some of you may remember her long time, very loyal, very close disciple of our Guru, who was in charge of the Hollywood Ashram Center for many years. And in the early days of the Hollywood Temple, before there was the whole Ashram, before there was the India Hall there, there used to just be the temple, and then they sold the books there in the back of the temple. And one day, Guruji called Miramata, and he said to her, "I'd like you to find someplace else to sell the books. I don't want them there in the back of the temple anymore." And she said, "Okay, fine master. What would you like me to do?" And he said, "That's your problem." And she didn't know what to do, and she thought about it, and he wasn't giving her any more information about it, so she said, "All right, I have to get to the bottom of this." So she said, "One day I just sat down, I began to meditate, deeper and deeper, and just praying to the Guru inside, saying, "Master, I'll do anything you want, but you have to show me what you want. I'll do anything that you have in mind, but you have to show me what it is." And she went on like this, deeper and deeper, refusing to give up. She said, "Just this little glimmer of a mental image came before her in her gaze of this little, eight-sided structure." And she drew a little diagram of it and took it to Master and said, "Well, how would this be? If we made a little book room out there in the courtyard outside of the temple, and we can have all the books on display, people can go in there after they come out of the services." And Master looked at her and said, "That is exactly what I had in mind." And Mirama, if you knew her, she was very spirited, she always said, "Well, Master, why didn't you tell me?" And he looked at her and said, "I was telling you all the time." And she said, in telling this to all of us, she said, "After that, after she learned that lesson, she said, "Over the years, I got far more guidance from the Guru inwardly in meditation than I ever had in all my years of working with him outwardly." When I was in India last year, somebody asked me, "What is your favorite verse from the Bhagavad Gita?" And I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I realized that actually there were two that always come back over the years would come back into my mind at different times. And one of them is exactly what Mirama was expressing here, because it's in the very beginning of the story when Arjuna has looked around at the battlefield, he knows what he has to do, but he really can't bring himself to do it. He's so confused, he's so distraught at the thought of engaging in the battle. And he turns to Krishna, his Guru and says, "With a mind and bewilderment about duty, I implore thee to advise me what is the best path for me to follow. I am thy disciple, teach me whose refuge is in thee. I am thy disciple, teach me whose refuge is in thee." So in the very beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most powerful weapons, one of the most powerful helps that we can get is ask for help, ask for help. And the second one, the second one that I'm thinking about that have meant so much to me personally over the years, is almost an answer to that question when Arjuna says, "Teach me whose refuge is in thee." And then later, actually nine chapters later, and Krishna gives this, he says, "On me fixed thy mind, be thou my devotee, with ceaseless worship bow reverently before me. Having thus united thyself to me as thy highest goal thou shalt be mine own. On me fixed thy mind." You know, in talking about guidance for every day living, how many times we've read and heard our beloved President Sri Daya Mata tell the stories of how when she would go to our Guru, you know, with all the responsibilities that he gave her, all the projects and all the things that he put on her shoulders, and she would go to him with problems or questions and say, "Well, how do I do this, and what should I do about that?" And again and again, his answer was, "Just keep your mind here. Just keep your mind on God. Just keep your mind here at the Christ center." What was he training her? You know, again, this is something that this is almost the entire battle that the Gita is describing is between the lower mind and the higher mind. Keep your mind here. Keep your mind on God. Learn to operate from that higher mind. The Gita talks about it in terms of there's the lower mind. We have to just get this concept clear. The lower mind called Manas, which is the mind working through the senses. That's the mind of the ego. That's the Kuru's. That's that outward going mind that tells us that material creation is real, and that I want this, and I should want that keeping us completely involved in the drama. But there's a second mind, the higher mind that the Gita calls Bodhi. It means the discriminative intellect, the discrimination in tune or open to that wisdom of the soul, that wisdom of spirit, that wisdom of God and Guru. That's symbolized by the Pandavas who had chosen Krishna to be on their side of the battle. This is so beautiful aspect of understanding the Gita. Actually, we have to go back just a little bit before the Gita dialogue even begins, even in the story of the Mahabharata that the Gita is a part of. It all began when war was becoming inevitable, and it was clear that the Kuru's were not going to give up the kingdom that they had us served, and that all of Krishna's negotiating and efforts to broker or compromise it wasn't going to work. He let it be known that he wasn't going to favor one or over the other per se, but he was going to give them a choice. That one side could choose him alone, and he said, and I will not fight, I will not raise weapons, and the other side could have the armies. All of Krishna's armies, there's hundreds of thousands that he said that were all equal to himself in the arts of war. And of course, the Arjuna, the Pandavas side, unhesitatingly chose Krishna, and that was the basis for the entire victory, was starting off by saying, I choose you, and then let come what may. You know, the Kuru exemplified this so beautifully in his own life. You know, so many of the things that he went through, that the way he lived his life, the things that he had to confront, they're just, each one of them is a lesson, is a scripture almost for us, his whole life, of how to deal with life and on this plane of delusion and how to live victoriously. Because he had, you know, his whole life, if it was marked by, if nothing else, it was marked by this complete and utter surrender, complete and utter dedication to God. And he said this, you know, who, speaking even as someone who was completely liberated, who had that cosmic consciousness, and he said, I don't claim, I don't claim in this mortal consciousness, in this mortal body, this mortal role that I'm playing. I don't claim to be perfect, and I don't say I never make a mistake, but I do say I have given my life everything to God, and because he had that attunement, then he could say, even if I make a mistake, God always comes to my aid and makes it right. It's a very powerful statement, isn't it? We don't need to demand of ourselves that we never stumble, that we never make a mistake. But if our lives are constantly being brought back to that goal, brought back to that yearning, brought back to that desire, then he comes to our aid and he makes it right. Now, the Gita, as we know, is a story that takes place on the battlefield, and here Arjuna has asked Krishna to drive his chariot in front of the two sides, in front of the two armies, so he can see what it is that he's going to have to contend with. And Guruji says that throughout the Gita, and this is what he brings out in those 1200 pages, throughout the Gita, that dialogue between on the surface between Krishna and Arjuna, but deeper between the soul, between spirit and the devotees consciousness, that dialogue is telling us, here's what you do to win the war. Here's what you do to win that war, to live in a victorious way. And I want to talk, I want to just dwell on briefly two of the skills, as Guruji put them, these are, this is what enables us to learn what he said was the art of victorious psychological warfare. And the first one is introspection, self-analysis. And we find that in the very beginning, the very first verse of the Gita, where it starts off, it says, gather together on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the evil forces of the Kuruks, the good forces of the Pandavas facing each other, what did they do this day? Who won the battle this day? And Guruji, just beautifully, he went on, he went on in a most comprehensive explanation of that science of introspection. In fact, introspection, we've talked about this in many of our different talks and classes this year and in past years, introspection is a miracle tool for changing ourselves. Introspection, in other words, to every day, at the end of the day, just to sit quietly, to review the events of the day, how we reacted, how we responded, how we could have done better, what we learned from the different reactions and things we went through. It's a miracle tool, but the thing is, why does it work for some people and that other people really have a hard time with it? Have you ever thought about that? Have you found yourself unable to really embrace this as a tool of victorious psychological warfare? I think it really is a very simple thing, is that it comes down to the attitude with which we introspect. On the one hand, there's some of us who use it as a means of picking ourselves apart, you know, of discovering every little flaw and saying, oh, you know, how terrible I am, how, how could I have been so stupid and so on and so forth? That completely misses the point of introspection and it's no wonder if that's the attitude that we're taking into introspection, it's no wonder that it's something that we put off on the shelf and don't take advantage of. The other side are those that look at their actions, look at their attitudes, look at their habits, the course of their lives, from the point of view of the divine potential that's within all of us, and say, what can I do to bring this out? What can I do to remove the obstacles so that I can live in that great joy, that great love, that great wisdom, that great sense of security and peace to remove those obstacles? It completely changes how we introspect. So I would make one suggestion to master this or to use this art of introspection. First of all, it doesn't have to be complicated. All it is really is to have on a piece of paper, something that's very personal to you, that you can make right down the things that you're trying to accomplish spiritually and psychologically in your life, even materially, your goals, the qualities you're trying to cultivate. The things that you're really making an effort to build into your daily life, meditation and all the other different serviceful attitude, kindness, right attitude toward other people, all of these things. Whatever it is for each of us, it's going to be different. We just make a list and we just review it once a day. That's all. It's not esoteric, it's not complicated. There's other things that you can do with it, you can then go and study what Master said about these different things, you can work with an affirmation perhaps. But even if you do nothing else, even if all you do is just look over the list once a day, just to remember, just to remember, you're fighting delusion and you're improving and you're changing yourself. Someone once said it's not the things that the saints do that is so extraordinary, it's that they do it all the time. We don't need a course necessarily in what we should do, we all know that. We all have a sense of what the way we want to live our life, it's just a matter of remembering. So, introspection, daily self-analysis, just a few minutes after meditation in the evening to go over the list. And then we come to the second skill of victorious psychological warfare. And it's this, inner renunciation, inner renunciation. It's one of the greatest weapons that we can have against delusion. This is also on the very first page of the of the Gita commentary. And I want to just read our Guru's words on this, let me give you this quote because I'm going to read it slowly because there's so much that's packed into this. Just try to listen and then we're going to talk a little bit about how to apply this skill of inner renunciation. So Master said, the main theme throughout the Gita is that one should be an adherent of sannyas. Sannyas is a Sanskrit term, it means renunciation. One should be an adherent of sannyas, a renouncer of egoity, of the ego that's ingrained in us through ignorance within the physical self. By renunciation of all desires, springing from the ego and its environment, which cause separateness between ego and spirit. And by reunion with the cosmic beloved through ecstatic yoga meditation, man detaches himself from and ultimately dissolves the compelling forces of nature that perpetuate the delusion of separation between self and spirit. That's a lot packed into a few sentences, isn't it? But just get the spirit of what he's talking about by renouncing ego. We renounce, what are we really renouncing? We're renouncing that delusion of being separate from God, that we are this small frail mortal being with a bundle of likes and dislikes and wants and desires and habits and so on. Rather than that pure ever joyous immortal soul. Roger C. John a Kananda, great disciple of Guruji, expressed it this way. He said, "When the ego steps out, God steps in." When the ego steps in, God steps out. Very simple. The problem is that these chorus, these forces, these psychological forces of the ego, of the senses, they have a hypnotized. They have a completely wrong attitude about desires. That delusion makes us think that when confronted with a desire or something that appears very attractive, something that is calling for us to indulge in, delusion makes us think there's only two possible courses, either expression or suppression. But the Gita teaches, and Guruji shows us how to accomplish this. There's always a third option, and that is what he calls transmutation. It doesn't have to be, if it's a wrong desire, if that booty, discrimination, intelligence, that little voice of conscience within us is saying, "better not go there." We don't have to think that the only option is either express it or we become psychologically repressed or suppressed or leading to all these different kinds of neuroses and difficulties and psychological illnesses. We can learn to transmute. Now there's a science, there's an art, there's a learning process, you might say, that we can use to learn how to use this most excellent art of transmutation, and there's two aspects of it. First thing is, we have to remind ourselves what it is that we really, really want. And by that I mean not the lower self, not the ego, not the lower mind, but that higher mind, what the higher mind really wants is one thing, isn't it? It's God. It's that joy, that unlimited communion, moment by moment, awareness of the great consciousness, the great joy, the great love of God. And our Guru gave a very, very powerful reminder about this. This is one that, one passage that I find myself coming back to, again and again over the years, in terms of reminding ourselves what we really want. This was what he said to the monks, almost the very last thing, one day before his passing, March 6, 1952, almost like in the Gita, you know, you get to the end of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna and Krishna says, "Take my last word, my utmost meaning have." Well, this is what our Guru, you can almost sense, he was saying, "Take this, my last word, the most important thing." And he said, "The most important factor is to have that desire for God." He said, "No one can give you that desire. You have to cultivate that yourself. The Lord Himself cannot give it to you. Learn to want Him. Don't intellectualize and rationalize, and never doubt that God will come to you. Love Him, cry for Him. What does anything matter so long as you find Him? Throw yourself into God and be filled with His love and joy." And then he said, "If you could feel even a little bit of the bliss that I know, you would understand the magnitude of what you are missing." You know, remind ourselves of what we want. I took that one that last sentence and I had it for years. I had that as a card. I had it right in my room where I would see it all the time every day. If you could feel even a little bit of the bliss that I know, you would understand the magnitude of what you are missing. We have to remind ourselves. We have to keep ourselves in that consciousness of what do I really want. That's the first aspect of mastering the science of transmutation. And the second thing, the second part is related to it. It's to use the wisdom of the higher mind, the discriminative mind of buddhi. Use it to reason with ourselves. Think of it like this. Think of it like this. You know, why do we have a desire for something even though we know it's going to be harmful for us? Ask ourselves that. What's behind this desire? And if we really think about it calmly and go deeply, we'll see it isn't so much that that particular object or that particular thing that we're yearning for is really going to do it for us. We have that desire because there's some emptiness. There's some hole within us, some void within us. That's what we have to take a look at and honestly, introspect and say, "What's behind this desire? What am I missing?" And then to remind ourselves that all of that inner emptiness, no matter what it is, comes from one thing because we don't have God's love, God's joy within us. It completely turns around the focus of our efforts. If we can just spend a little time just to step back and go through that discriminative reasoning process. The lower mind that monasts is very, very, very skillful and it always makes everything appear so reasonable. It seems like, yes, I'm being rational, I'm being logical, I'm being very reasonable. Somebody told me this story of how they determine who needs to be admitted to a mental hospital. A man went into a hospital and was interviewing the director and said, "Well, how do you know when somebody really needs to be committed?" He said, "It's very simple. We have this test. See, we have this bathtub here. We fill it up with water and then we have sitting on the edge. We have on the one side a teaspoon and a tea cup. Then we have a big bucket. The person has to empty the water out of the bathtub." The man said, "Oh, I see. You mean a normal person, of course, would use the bucket." He said, "No, actually the normal person would just pull the plug out and let the water drain out. Would you like your bed by the window or by the wall?" Guruji made us all laugh like that. We're in this mental hospital of delusion. Fortunately, we have these yoga techniques to get us out. But this idea of transmutation, it's learning to reduce every desire, every habit that we have. When we sit to introspect every day and that's one of the things we can ask ourselves, what are the strongest desires that are motivating my actions? And to reduce every desire to its roots, a desire for God. In metaphysical meditations, Guruji gave this one affirmation, one prayer, which really exemplifies this. He said, "All desire for love, I will purify and satisfy in sacred divine love for thee." See, this is the principle. This is transmutation. This is taking, it's not denying or pretending like we don't have a desire, but it's acknowledging that the real fulfillment, the real satisfying of that desire, is not going to be through all of the material means that that manas, the kuru's, the lower mind is trying to tell us that it is, it's through experiencing that higher reality of God's consciousness. And this is something we can apply. This is a tool that I would venture to say that all of us in Guruji's ashrams have learned this in one way or another as a survival skill over the years that you can take this and apply this to any desire. Whether it's, he gives it all desire for love, I will purify and satisfy, it can be for anything. All desire for, you know, fill in the blank. I will transmute into, and then you fill in the blank, some higher quality that I want to experience, I want to commune, I want to feel that higher joy in my life. And it's not a negative thing, it's not something it's, you know, renunciation has such a connotation of denial or something that we're depriving ourselves of. And this is where the Gita is so beautiful and where Guruji explains it, yes, if you think of it that way, then you are going to feel deprived. But if you think of it not as deprivation, not as renouncing or renunciation, but as transmutation, then you see it's an incredibly powerful tool. If something you're just, you're taking the energy away from these harmful desires away from the outward going material consciousness, but then you don't stop there, you use that energy to fuel those desires for higher achievements, higher goals, spiritual goals. Master used to say, many people strive unsuccessfully for a material goal, all their lives, failing to realize that if they had put forth one tenth of that concentration into an effort to find God, then they could have had fulfillment not only of some, but of all their hearts desires. So introspection, and then taking the fruits of that introspection and applying this psychological tool of renunciation, transmutation of desires. And then we come to the last point, the last tool that the Gita is really holding in front of us, offering to us in this war against delusion. And that is Kriya Yoga. Kriya Yoga is really what makes all of these other things that we've talked about, renunciation, knowing who we are, knowing what we really want. It's what really makes them all possible, and what really, it gives us something that we can apply on a daily level to actually experience what the Gita is talking about. And we may think, we may ask ourselves, why should we look to a 3,000-year-old or many thousand-year-old book for guidance and what to do right now? And one of the things that Guruji does so beautifully, so inspiringly in the book, is he explains to us how this is a science, this is a science from a higher age. And for all those thousands of years, humanity didn't even have the vocabulary, didn't even have the conceptual tools to really understand those deeper truths. Now that we're on the way back up, now because of the scientific understanding that in the language of one of the things that modern science has done is to give this understanding of the concepts. Guruji used this throughout autobiography of a yogi throughout the Gita to explain these deeper truths that had been lost sight of. And one of them that I think he would get some mileage out of is Velcro. You know what Velcro is? You know it holds the two things together with those hooks and the loops and you put them together and then it just sticks and you have to go to pull it apart. Well, I saw an article where this year 2008 is the 50th anniversary of Velcro, and I thought, you know, Guruji would really get some use out of this. Because isn't that exactly, isn't that exactly how the mind works? That they're these on the one side and our nervous system, they're these hooks. And then on the other side of those worldly objects, they're those little fine loops and you put them together and latches us, it just latches us onto the world. And it's a good analogy for the way the mind works, because what they've just been discovering over the last decade or so are these, this idea of that throughout the brain, not only the brain, but throughout the whole body, there are these neuroreceptors, these cells that they're actually just exactly like that one side of the Velcro. And the other side are these chemicals, the hormones or things that come into it from our environment, from that the body releases and it latches onto those neuroreceptors cells and completely governs how we feel, how we react, what we want even, what we think is logical. You know, there's this one of the neuroscientists who discovered this, had this to say about it. Someone asked her, is the brain in the driver's seat, you know, and we think, well, I'm basically in control of my life, I choose what I want to do and I do it. And she said, absolutely not, everything that we believe originates in the brain, especially emotions, actually begins in the body and moves up to the brain through these chemicals, these neurotransmitters, they call them latching on and then telling the brain, this is what you want, this is what you're going to do, this is what you should do, this is what you want to do. That is science discovering the existence of the corrus. And luckily, hopefully it won't be too much longer before they discover the other side, that yoga discovered thousands of years ago, because that's just the physical side of the material side, is that, you know, we basically in material consciousness, we are a puppet. We think that the brain is in control and we don't realize to what degree that we're being, I mean, there's no other word, we're being manipulated, we're being manipulated, very subtly, in a way that we, that's not even, not even visible until we turn within and get a look. But yoga explains that there's more to the picture, fortunately, that, you know, those physical neuro receptor cells, the physical expression of the brain, these is only an externalization of those patterns of subtle prana, patterns of subtle energy. And that, when that energy is flowing outward, then those cells are receptive, they're there saying, all right, world, come to me, tell me, you know, give me what I want. Yoga tells us how, if you work not on the physical level, but if we work on that level of those underlying flow of energy that's externalizing in those cells and turn it back in, then we begin to develop mastery. Then we begin to develop self-control, then we begin to develop spiritually. That's the whole analogy of this spiritual battle of the Gita is between the forces going outward to the world and those that are trying to gain control and pull it back inward. Remember earlier in the talk, we were discussing about, at birth, oh, our Juna, all beings are immersed in delusion with that first breath, with that going outward from the inner centers of consciousness, that that life energy by the breath is made to flow in those outer channels. And Kriya Yoga, of course, is reversing that process. Kriya Yoga, by using the mind, using the breath, using the concentration and life force, creating that magnet in the inner most part of the spine, where that energy then gradually retires. It's away from outer consciousness, away from all of those forces, the domain you might say of the kuru's, of material consciousness of ego. As the Gita says, "When the yogi, like a tortoise withdrawing its limbs, can fully retire his senses from the objects of perception, his wisdom manifests steadiness." That's Kriya Yoga. Guruji said, "Get in the spine, then I can help you. Get in the spine, then I can help you." That's what Kriya Yoga gives to us. It's a science, it's universal in the Old Testament. We find an exact parallel to this in the book of Ezekiel, where there's this description where the God is saying to man. Thou hast been in Eden, the Garden of God. Eden, meaning, of course, that inner paradise of divine perception. Thou hast upon the holy mountain of God, in other words, the pinnacle of divine consciousness in the brain, in the spiritual center in the brain. Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire, those spinal centers, spinal chakras. Thou hast perfect in all thy ways, from the day that Thou were created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise, in other words, that commerce of the senses with the material world, they have filled the midst of thee with violence. Therefore, I will cast thee out as profane from the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee from the midst of the stones of fire. This is a very, as the Old Testament has, it really puts it in black and white terms, but this is exactly what talking about the science of Kriyoga. That we can get that, we can get back to that pinnacle of divine consciousness to the mountain of God, where we walk up and down in the midst of the stones of fire, those cerebral spinal centers. This is so, Gorgi says, this is the whole key to winning that battle that the Gita talks about, because he says, every time you practice Kriya, every time you are able to take the concentration, take the consciousness, take the life force out of those, or withdraw it from those outward channels and into that inner spinal passageway through Kriya. In each one of those, there are these divine powers that represent how the Chorus were representing that outward-going forces of the senses and the ego, and that inside the spine, there we find the Pandavas, the divine consciousness, the forces that are going to help us win the battle of life, the battle of spiritual life. And he says, even the novice meditator quickly finds he is able to draw upon the spiritual power and consciousness of the inner world of the soul and spirit by practicing Kriya Yoga. The more a Dapti becomes, the greater the divine influence. Kriya Yoga is really what sets our Guru's Gita interpretation apart from all other ones. He transforms it, really, from being just a book to having that inner conversation, to having that inner listening, that inner awareness, that inner attunement with that moment-by-moment attunement of the wisdom song, the wisdom guidance of spirit within us. And that's why Kriya is so important, because I think as we've seen tonight, it doesn't take place, it can't take place on the level of the senses or the lower mind or the intellect. It has to take place on a level of higher consciousness. Because until we make that leap through meditation, through living a spiritual life, until we at least begin to try to put ourselves on that level of higher consciousness, we are really not able to hear that guiding voice of spirit. And by applying the things that the Gita teaches us, and all those 1200 pages, and then narrowing it down into what we can do in our daily lives, meditation, practicing that art of introspection and self-analysis, and then practicing this art of transmutation, and most of all Kriya Yoga. That's what is going to give us this divine victory. And you know, we think, well, is that all there is? That's all that's necessary. What about devotion? Yes, devotion is necessary, but as there was a very great sage once said, "Kriya Yoga, Kriya Yoga is the cry of the soul for reunion with God." "Kriya Yoga is the cry of the soul for reunion with God." There's no higher devotion than that, and a devotee shared with me a story that I want to pass on to you just in closing. Because he had gone through a real dry period, he was worried that his spiritual life had completely stagnated because he said, "I feel no devotion. I feel no sense of connection. I feel no sense of enthusiasm. My spiritual life seems to have dried up." And he couldn't feel an even the interest in searching for God. So one day he resolved, he said, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going to confront this. I'm going to do what I can to overcome it." And he decided to spend the whole day in silence, in meditation, deep practice with Kriya Yoga, again and again, for meditating for many hours, 108 Kriyas. And then he said, "Suddenly my spine came alive. My spine came alive. I could feel it sucking the energy in from the senses, from those outer instruments into the spine." And with each Kriya, he said, "I felt such joy in the spine. The greatest joy I had ever felt, it was supremely enjoyable." And then after he had finished practicing Kriya, he said, "He just sat there in the silence, enjoying that feeling of joy, enjoying that feeling of God's presence." And after a while he began to talk to the Guru within to ask questions. He said, "Gurji, why was I feeling so dry? How can I feel a greater desire for God?" And he right away he said the answer came. He said, "Just as if there was a voice communicating in his soul." And he said, "You remember that joy that you felt during the practice of Kriya? Do you think that joy is a result of just doing a breathing exercise?" No. That was a first glimpse of what I am. That is a first glimpse of what it feels like to draw close to me, to be in my presence. And instantly he saw how desirable, how supremely desirable it is to have that relationship, to have that connection, that nearness with God and Guru. And that resolve, he said, from that day on he resolved to draw closer to God and Guru by going in that meditation, just as Arjuna did asking those questions, anything that we need, any problem that we are having, any difficulty, or anything we need help with, taking those to God and Guru in meditation, having that living dynamic in the now, in the moment dialogue between our soul and that divine one within us. That's how God becomes more real, becomes ultimately supremely real. So just to close with Guruji's words, summing it all up, he says, "As God talked with Arjuna, so he will talk with you." "As he lifted up the spirit and consciousness of Arjuna, so will he uplift you?" "As he granted Arjuna supreme spiritual vision, so will he confer enlightenment upon you?" So divine soul, like Arjuna, forsake this small weak heartedness of mortal consciousness, arise before you is the royal path, Jai Guru. And don't forget to read the book. God bless you. This has been a production of Self-realization Fellowship, a non-profit organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. For more information about Self-realization Fellowship and Paramahansa Yogananda, please visit Yogananda.org.