Freedom From Desire, Action, and The Vedas
Acharya Prashant: The direct path having failed on Arjun, Shri Krishna is being extra cautious now. It is notable that the kind of warning or caution that was never sounded out to Arjun in the beginning, or after the first chapter, or at the beginning of the second, is being delivered now, right in the middle of the Gyan -centered discourse in chapter 2.
The reason is simple, obvious. The best, simplest, most direct, most obvious treatment has failed. Shri Krishna tried to take Arjun directly to the center of all being and doing, with being coming prior to doing, and that didn't succeed on Arjun.
So, Shri Krishna is doling out precautionary advice in advance now, anticipating a similar kind of resistance as Arjun displayed when Shri Krishna was talking self-knowledge to him. So now Shri Krishna is about to tell Arjun the possible reasons why he is likely to fail, why he is likely to not get Shri Krishna, why he is likely to miss out on the obvious message.
And what applies to Arjun applies to everybody.
If you find that the Gita is not succeeding on you, If you find yourself disinterested or sleepy, If you find that something within you continuously conspires to keep you away, to keep you busy, enclosed, secured in your cave, on your bed, with your meals, in your patterns, in your humdrum life — Then these are the reasons.
Rarely do we find in the Bhagavad Gita, reasons for failure so descriptively elaborated as in these verses. This is anticipatory. Shri Krishna is saying, "Even if I deliver the best that a teacher can to a taught, yet what I will give you will not stay with you." These are his exact words: "What I will give you will not stay with you."
And who are the kind of people, and what characteristics do they display? What is it that keeps them away from the Gita, in spite of an able teacher like Shri Krishna delivering it in the most profound manner possible? The reasons are being elaborated here. These are six, seven, or eight points and as we said, they apply not only to Arjun, but to each of us.
If you sometimes wonder, "Why do I just forget everything in spite of receiving it?" Here are the reasons. This is right in the tradition of negation — Neti-Neti. Shri Krishna is telling Arjun: "Yes, I will start speaking to you in another way. I will start instructing you through another route. But it will fail again if you do not take care of these things." So, first of all, these reasons — these factors need to be removed — negation. Remove these things, and only then what I say will stay with you.
Shri Krishna is not saying that the words, the message, the import is not reaching Arjun. He’s saying it is reaching, but not staying there. It is not being received. Something can come to your doorstep, right? A parcel, a courier — somebody has sent something. It has reached, but it also needs to be received. Reaching is not sufficient. The receiver has to be ready.
Shri Krishna is telling us the characteristics of the unready receiver. Who is the one who is not yet ripe, not yet willing, not yet choosing Shri Krishna? Shri Krishna might be right there on the chariot, standing, sitting right in front of you. Still, to get him, you have to choose him. How do we know the person who will not choose Shri Krishna?
Here we go:
One: Those whose intellect follows the ego — Alpabuddhi. We touched on it last time as well. Alpabuddhi does not mean low intellect. It means an absence of intelligence. Intellect and intelligence are dimensionally different. You can have a deep intellect, and yet you might not be very intelligent. Intelligence is freedom from ego. The intellect has no such choice.
The intellect is an instrument of the ego. The intellect is a resource. Intelligence is a quality. Intellect is a resource that can very easily become subservient to the ego.
The ego uses everything, does it not? Anything that it can put its hands on, anything it can lay claim over. The intellect is one such thing, one such resource. The ego uses the body, does it not? The ego uses the senses, does it not? The ego uses the memory, does it not? And if the ego has some control over the world, the ego definitely uses the world to satiate itself, does it not?
Similarly, the ego uses the intellect. You will find egoistic persons coming up with great arguments, great excuses, great theories, just to defend the ego.
Intellect — sharp intellect — in the service of ego becomes very lethal.
And mind you, there is no freedom that intellect possesses on its own. Intelligence sanctifies the intellect. Otherwise, the intellect has no freedom of its own. There can be vast intellect and yet no freedom to the intellect. A lot of intellect is just the brain, body, physicality, gray matter and biology. And just as people are prepared to sell their body for, let's say, money — don't we do that? Think of labor, physical labor. One is selling his arms, his legs, his muscles, so that he may earn some money, right? He says, "My limbs will do what my master orders." Who is the master? Who pays you? "My limbs will follow the commands of my master so that I get paid."
Similarly, the brain is the body. Somebody could say, you know, "My brain will follow the dictates of my master so that I get paid." And one could have an IQ of 170, and one could be selling it for very petty gains. The intellect is very sellable. It has no freedom of its own. That is one reason why the world is in such a poor condition today.
People with very sharp intellects, they all stand sold to very despicable kind of masters just because those masters are good paymasters. Think of a college campus, a college you gain admission to after passing through the most rigorous kind of entrance test. Obviously, the students there will be high on intellect, right? The average IQ of that campus will probably be 20-30-40% higher than the average IQ of the general population.
And yet, see who comes there to hire, to recruit — some companies selling fizzy drinks. The fellow has an IQ of 160, and he's extremely happy getting a job offer from an organization that sells sports shoes. He says, "You know, this is the gift that I got from Prakriti." What is the gift? The brain. And what am I going to use this brain for? To sell shoes, or sell sweetened water, sell fizzy drinks. Oh, they pay you really well. They are big MNCs. So that's the intellect for you — slave of the ego. One of the problems with our culture, the global culture, is that it respects the intellect too much.
Somebody can come up with great arguments, thoughts, theories. We say, "Wow, he's so intelligent." No, he's not intelligent. Intelligence is freedom. Whereas the intellect has no freedom. We give undue reverence to intellect — also to knowledge, also to memory. Somebody is knowledgeable — we stand in awe of him, don't we? "Oh, he knows so much." What's the point? Just like intellect, knowledge too is a vassal to the ego. No? And are these not woven together — intellect, knowledge, and memory? Can there be one without the other?
These really have very little importance of their own, because they are just resources, stuff to be used, stuff to be used by the ego. The ego could use the stuff for its preservation or for its liberation? Chances are it will use everything for self-preservation. And that's what intellect is used rather misused for: self-preservation.
In that sense, having a sharp intellect is a bit of a misfortune. The sharper you are, it is possible, the more difficult it is for you to be free of yourself. You will use your own sharpness against yourself. The ego will use the intellect to remain in bondage. Right? If this were not true, we would have found that things are very linear, very arithmetical and very straightforward.
We know what the average IQ of the population is, right? Around 100. So, those with IQs in excess of 125 — the probability of spiritual liberation would have been higher, and progressively higher. 125 — 'Oh, now this fellow has a good chance of being liberated.' 135 — the chance increases. The probability is progressive and goes on increasing with IQ. Does that happen? That does not happen. No. We do not find any positive correlation there.
So there is a great chance that this phrase here can be misinterpreted. Alpabuddhi. Alpabuddhi does not mean low IQ. If Shri Krishna is saying that those with low intellect cannot get the Gita, then the corollary is that those with high intellect will get the Gita. Right? We have no evidence of that. There is no evidence at all that those with high IQ are more suited to the path of wisdom. No.
There is no evidence to the contrary either. We are not saying that those with low IQ are more suited to the path of wisdom. No, no. Else all the asses would have been liberated by now. And if you are born dumb, then there would have been great celebrations — "The fellow has no brains at all, he is automatically liberated!" So, high IQ — no guarantee of liberation. No IQ — again, low guarantee. Right?
Because intellect does not matter really, in that sense. What matters is what you do with your intellect, and that is not decided by the intellect. Making the right decision with respect to your resources, that is intelligence. And that decision, as to what to do with the intellect, cannot come from the intellect.
The TV cannot decide what you are going to watch. Can the TV? The TV cannot decide the channel you're going to watch. The intellect is like the TV. The remote is with you. Intelligence is to use the remote properly. Intellect is when you have a wide range of channels available to watch — Oh, 402 channels! That is intellect. So much is there — great knowledge, great diversity. Whatever you want to see is available, that is intellect. "I know so much, and I can calculate and I can argue," all that is?
Listeners: Intellect.
Acharya Prashant: But no television can decide on its own what you must watch for your welfare. Even if you program the TV in a way that it will display something to you, that is just programming. There can be no wisdom in programming. There can be no freedom in programming. Programming by definition is anti-freedom. Are you getting it?
So what does Alpabuddhi mean? And that is just the first point Shri Krishna is going to enumerate. What does *Alpabuddhi*mean?
Listener: Lack of intellect.
Acharya Prashant: The one whose intellect is tethered to, submitted to the ego.
What is Alpa? The ego is Alpa — nālpe sukham, the Upanishad says. We have very clear verification from Shruti itself, Yo vai bhūmā tat sukham, nālpe sukham asti (यो वै भूमा तत्सुखं, नाल्पे सुखमस्ति). Grand is the truth, the *Atman*and Alpa limited is the ego.
That's the fundamental quality of the ego: “No, I am limited and that’s why I’m restless.”
First is this, Arjun, if you have decided to use your past, your powers, your relationships, your memory, your intellect to not listen to me, then just as my words hitherto did not succeed on you. Whatever I am going to say next, that too will fall flat.
The warning has been sounded out: I cannot penetrate your defenses, Arjun. And everything can be used by the ego in its defense. Most importantly, the buddhi. What is buddhi? How do we define buddhi? Intellect? How do we define it?
Listener: Ability to understand.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. But how do we define it? When do we say somebody has intellect? It is the ability to make sense of Prakriti. right? So why do we say that a madman, or a kid, or animals — their intellect is not as deep or wide or sharp as that of a normal human being? Why do we say that? Because we can see patterns. If we want to reach somewhere, we can figure out a way. But the intellect cannot tell you where to reach. Right?
If you are given a puzzle, intellect will help you crack the puzzle. But the intellect cannot tell you which puzzles to choose and which to ignore. If you give a Sudoku to a chimpanzee, it's very unlikely to succeed. Human beings probably will. That's intellect. Are you getting it? So all these are products of your intellect. The gadgets that you see around you, all the stuff, all that comes from there. But the intellect itself has no freedom. It cannot tell you what to do with those things.
So, Arjun understanding is first of all a decision. The decision has to be very clear. The decision is to understand. I want to understand. You cannot stand before the teacher with a wall of resistance and then say, "Oh, but I don't understand." You don't understand because you don't want to. You don't have to be positively inclined towards understanding. No, that is not needed. You just have to remove the barriers against understanding. Yes, that is very much needed.
You don't have to say, "Oh, I'm so eager and available. I want to understand. I have opened my heart for you, dear master." All that is not needed. In fact, it's likely that all that might be another form of resistance. But you certainly have to look at yourself and ask, am I sitting here to learn or to resist? What am I here for? To look at myself with the courage and intention to clear away the internal nonsense? Or am I here to secure myself and silently fight the teacher?
I often say, it's a war between Shri Krishna and Arjun in the first place. The other war that the Mahabharat stands for, that's secondary. The primary war is between Shri Krishna and Arjun. And Arjun makes all the attempts to resist Shri Krishna as much as he can. And Shri Krishna is intimating him in advance: Your resistance is your choice. By the virtue of being a human being, you enjoy that choice. That choice is not optional. That choice is your defining characteristic as a human being.
As long as you're alive, you'll have that choice. And I'm helpless in that matter. If you choose not to understand what I'm saying, then even the best of my discourses will fall flat. Nothing is going to happen, Arjun. And Shri Krishna has solid reasons to suspect that nothing is going to happen, because the best, the deepest, the purest lesson has already been delivered by him, and it hasn't worked. Shri Krishna is doubly cautious now.
So, when we are enumerating the points, point one is:
Do not use your internal resources to defend the ego.
And defending the ego and resisting the teacher are the same thing. We are smart people. We won't open our mouths. But internally we are arguing, are we not? Internally we are quarreling, are we not? Externally we are such nice, peaceful, silent people, sitting almost in submission, you see. But that's just the facade. Internally, you are quarreling, you are wrestling. Shri Krishna is saying, I will never win that wrestling bout — not because you are stronger, but because you are the referee. You are fighting me, and you will decide the winner. I will never win, Arjun.
When you are arguing against someone, who decides whether your argument has merit? You do. Therefore, you always win. You always have an argument, and in your eyes, the argument always has merit. No? Whatever you want to do, you have an argument in favor of it. How do you know that the argument has any worth at all? Because you are the tester of the argument. You certify. You pass. You allow it. You judge.
I am the player. I am the competitor. And I am the referee. I am the judge. Obviously, you're never going to lose. And if the ego doesn't lose, the teacher cannot win. Are you getting it? Point number one.
Next point: “Those who are enamored with the desire-centric deeds mentioned in the Vedas ...” The Vedas have two parts. The first part deals with gaining satisfaction through fulfillment of desire, that is the karmakand part — gaining satisfaction by fulfillment of desire. The second part is about gaining fulfillment by understanding desire.
The first part includes actions towards getting what you want. And how do you get what you want? By praising the world from where you want so much. I want a lot from you. You are the world. What is the most effective, the least expensive way of getting stuff from you? If I am smart, how do I get things from you? By just praising you.
Please understand how it starts. First of all, I have a desire. That is the defining thing of the ego. And I have a desire towards the world. How do I get stuff from the world in the least expensive, least effortful way possible? By praising the world.
So that's the way of the initial part of the Vedic literature. Praise the forces of nature and praise them no end and say: I am praising you so much, now kindly give me some milk and honey. I'm praising you so much, kindly ensure that there is better yield in my fields. I'm praising you so much, kindly ensure that I get more fertile wives, who can beget me more sons. I'm praising you so much, kindly destroy all my enemies. May there be a great fire or a great flood, and they may be annihilated.
That's broadly the tone and tenor of karmakand. That part too has certain jewels containing deep insights, but they are few and far between. Mostly, it is about praising Prakritic deities to fulfill your desires.
And then the Vedas just graduate. There is a quantum jump. The very orbit changes. The very dimension changes. Suddenly, from the Mantra-Samhita and the Brahman part, you come to the Upanishads, and this part is unrecognizable from the previous one. As if there is no similarity at all. As if a great U-turn has occurred.
The Upanishads undo everything that has been done till now. They say, no, no, no — fulfillment of the ego, appeasement of the ego is not the goal at all. The goal is dissolution of the ego. The very discourse changes. The very objective changes. The Vedas assume a great height. Instead of praising the forces of prakriti, nature, the Upanishads are now saying: You don't have anything to do with prakriti.
All the Vedic gods are forgotten in the Upanishads — no Indra, no Varun, no Surya, no Agni. The Upanishads don't talk about them. Even if they do, it's very sporadic — here or there, somewhere. You might have some odd mention, but that is not central at all. The Upanishads are saying: I don't have anything to do with prakriti, and I don't have anything to do with my desires. And these two go hand in hand.
The more you are full of desires, the more you will have engagement with the world. The Upanishads are saying, no, no, no, it's not about fulfilling my desires, and it's not about engaging with the world for my benefit, my profit. No. The deities, the gods are gone, and instead, we have Brahma — the absolute truth. Nobody is being praised at all. Instead of praise and such things, there is inquiry, investigation. The very game changes, everything is different now. Are you getting it?
So different are the Upanishads from the previous part of the Vedas and the Gita belongs to the category of Upanishads. The Gita is Vedant, pure Vedant. So Shri Krishna is saying here something very beautiful, very drastic, very bold, and also quite offensive to those who want to hold on to their desires.
Shri Krishna is saying — if you are attached to the deeds and desires part of the Vedas, Arjun, you will never understand what I'm saying. And it's not without reason that Shri Krishna is delivering this warning in chapter 1. Arjun has given him sufficient reasons to see that, Arjun is quite in awe of, quite besotted with the whole game of personal and social desire.
Shri Krishna is saying, no. If that part of the Vedas is what you really respect and value, then you will not value the Upanishads. You'll have to drop all that — worshipping forces of nature, asking for favors, sycophancy in the name of prayers, with your own desires being projected as the deity — all that takes you nowhere. Drop that if you are to understand what I'm going to say next, because my job is not to fulfill your desires. And what I am going to say will strike at the very root of your desires.
You must also see that your desires do not help you. It is not just unfulfilled desires that are a problem. Even fulfilled desires do not help you. The desirous one remains desirous even after fulfillment of the desire. Hence, I'm going to strike at the very root of the desire. The very root of desire is called the ego.
For most people, religion is about desire fulfillment, is it not? Yeah. If you have desire, go towards religion — go to a temple, go to a baba, to a guru, to a holy place. We don't go there to be liberated. We go there to be ingratiated. I wanted something, so I have come to this holy place or this holy man. Surely, he will give me what I want. This is religion, is it not? This is what goes by the name of religion commonly, right? Lok dharm. This is what it is. Nothing — nothing more than that. No complications.
I want something, so I'll visit that particular temple, or mosque, or church, or whatever in a gaug. And if I want a more human kind of blessing, then Guru Ji is there.
When I ask for something in a temple, there is no assurance, because there is nobody there to give a response. But Baba Ji is far more reassuring. You ask him something and he says, "Obviously you are going to get it." Not only that, if he is an astrologer, he will also predict the time and place where you will get what you want.
Many times, questions relating to astrology come to me, and I would have said something. So I don't remember that in the last few months I've spoken on that topic, but kudos to our publishing team. The most controversial kind of material keeps getting published and republished in the form of short videos, and that keeps pinching and offending people again and again. Republishing means reoffending.
So there was this short video on astrology that these people have — or might have, I'm guessing — recently published. So one fellow comes there and says, "You know, how can you say that all that is a sham? I work in the Gulf, and I am childless — me and my wife. So my wife went and consulted a * Baba Ji,* and I work in the Gulf, and you know the power of astrology. Baba Ji predicted the exact date when she will get a kid, and she got that! And I'm in the Gulf, and this foolish Acharya, he's saying astrology and all is just a sham!"
It's not that it doesn't work. You need to have the right Baba-ji, and anything can be made to work. Getting it? That's religion for you. That's wisdom for you. Shri Krishna is saying — if that is your definition of wisdom Arjun, my words will fall on deaf ears. I'll keep trying. My efforts will go in vain. Do you want to fulfill a desire, or do you want to fulfill the desirous one? Choose. Getting it?
Third point: we are enumerating the candidates who will never understand the Gita, right? We are listing their characteristics.
The third characteristic is, “those who think that wisdom or religion or spirituality are about securing a great afterlife, they will never understand the Gita.” Essentially, those who believe in the concepts of heaven and hell and personal soul and reincarnation — they will never understand the Gita.
Shri Krishna is saying, “those who have a mind that there is nothing higher than the deeds, the religious karmakand that leads to heaven — they will not get me. They will not understand my words. This is related to desire. You see that heaven is a desire. You're saying — "I'm doing the right things so that I can get a favorable result tomorrow." The most favorable result is heaven.
If religion or wisdom to you are these things — result, fulfillment of desire, transmigration of soul, reincarnation, the ultimate resting place full of goodies and pleasures called heaven. If this is what religion means to you, then the Gita will be lost on you. Anybody who has this kind of concept of religion is definitely going to miss the Gita. Either miss Gita or misinterpret Gita.
People don't usually miss Gita — because that's a taboo. Especially if you are a Hindu, you cannot say, "You know, I don't know Gita. What is the Gita?" So ostensibly nobody misses the Gita, but we miss Gita by misinterpreting it. So that's a clear characteristic of those who are going to miss the Gita. They will have some concept of afterlife, life after death, and something that remains after the death of the human being. Because you cannot have heaven without the soul, right? If there is no soul, who is going to reach heaven?
So if Shri Krishna is dismissing heaven, he's also dismissing the soul. Obvious.
If Shri Krishna is dismissing heaven, he's also dismissing desire. He's also dismissing what you call as the personal reincarnation — transmigration. Today here I am, and based on my deeds, I become something, right? So people are afraid, "You know, I'll become an ugly dog or something."
I was just reading a book by the noted Hindi satirist Harishankar Parsai this evening itself, and I would recommend that book. It's in Hindi — Vaishnav Ki Fislan. So it's a satire on religion. But religion in India is mostly Vaishnav ka religion. So that entire book is devoted to assaulting bhakts. Every chapter, there is one new variety of baba, and Parsai JI kills him — grips him and rips him. That's his way.
So he talks of — we're talking of swarg here — so he talks of one man who is extremely benevolent in the sense that he doesn't care for you as long as you are alive. In fact, when you are alive, he almost plans to get you killed. But the moment you are dead, he is the first one to reach your place and do the Maut Mitti rituals, the karmkand that's associated with the last rites — Maut Mitti.
So he will prepare the Arthi and do all those things, and also he'll carry the Arthi. And you understand the arthi, what is the Arthi?
Listener: On which dead body is…
Acharya Prashant: Right. So he'll carry it, and he will also shed tears and do all those things. Now this is very intriguing. He in fact mentions a case where the story, the incident, belongs to the 60s, when telephones were not so common. So a boy comes running to this man's place and says, "I need to call the doctor. You have the telephone. The father, Chaube Ji, is seriously ill. Can I use the phone?" He says, "No, the phone is dead."
And Parasai Ji says, "I very well know that the phone is not dead. Why is he not allowing that kid to use the phone to call the doctor to take care of Chaube ji?" He says, "I don't understand what's going on." And obviously, Chaube ji dies.
And when Chaube Ji dies, this man is the first to beat his chest and reach his house and participate in the rituals. So one day, Parsai Ji grabs him — his ways — grip him and rip him. He says, "You tell me what's going on." And then, in the flow of the conversation, he unwittingly divulges that one pundit has told him that if you assist the final rituals of 100 men, then you are guaranteed heaven.
And Parsai Ji says, whenever I would look at this man, I was actually afraid because he would be seen only when there is death around. So he would say, I would look at him and feel as if I'm going to die — otherwise why would he come to me? He goes only to those who have either died or are close to dying. And if they're close to dying, this man ensures that they die.
So, having known that, he asks him, "How many so far?" He says, "99." Parsai Ji says, "Fine." And then one day, Parsai ji hears that he got his 100th. And then he says, "Now the fear has gone out of my chest, because this man does not care for anybody's death now. He has done his 100. His seat in heaven is now guaranteed." The pandit told him, "If you do 100, you reach heaven straight away."
So, that's the kind of — you know, when you have such a great relationship with heaven, then you have no relationship with this world. Right? All your energy, all your respect, all your engagement, everything flows just towards heaven. And then you become very cruel towards this world. You are so much in devotion to something of the beyond that you are left with no compassion for what is around you. Getting it?
And the Gita is about fighting a war here, not in heaven. And if you're thinking all the time of heaven — if religion to you means attaining some heaven, some desire, some result, some pleasure, then how will you understand Arjun, what I'm going to say to you?
You have to be dismissive of any talk of the afterlife. Only then the Gita will make sense to you. Those who have a battle at hand, those who are living in matters of the moment, those who are engaging deeply with the world as it is right now — present to them — they are the ones who will find the Gita useful, indispensable rather.
But those who are-ing in thoughts of this and that — "You know, in my internal universe, yeah, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. If I do this, I will attain great results. I don't have to do anything proper in the world. I don't have to struggle with the challenges as they are present. I simply have to go and sit at the feet of the deity, and I will be delivered."
Is that not what popular religion is about? Simply go and sit at the feet of the deity and you'll be delivered. Let your neighbor cry and die. All your feelings are reserved for only your deity. No feeling for the world.
If that's your concept of religion, Arjun, then you will not get what I'm going to say. Right? As we said, there are 6 or 7 characteristics that Shri Krishna is going to enumerate. We have reached only little three now, and we'll take the rest in the next session.
