*The Secret of Success*
This is to summarise the essential features of the knowledge that you have
gained for success in your life. Success in every aspect of your life is
your aim; you do not wish to be defeated anywhere. Everywhere you are first
and foremost. In the last verse of the Bhagavadgita, the way to success is
told to us in an epic fashion. *Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho
dhanurdharaḥ, tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama* (18.78):
Under these conditions, there is sure to be happiness, prosperity, success
in every undertaking, and firm policy. But what are the conditions referred
to here? It is where Sri Krishna and Arjuna stand together in a state of
union, placed in one chariot. The whole of the Gita is here in one *sloka*.
What do these words mean to us finally? What is the significance of Sri
Krishna and Arjuna having to be together? Is Sri Krishna alone not
sufficient? Why should there be Arjuna? Sri Krishna is the master of yoga;
he is all in all, and there is no need of Arjuna. But yet, it is mentioned
there that the twin forces should act in unison for the purpose of welfare
and success in every field of life. The idea is that the Bhagavadgita is
not a message for ancient times. It is not someone that spoke to someone
else under a given condition. It is the All-Being that spoke to everyone
for all time to come. The Bhagavadgita is an eternal message for eternal
mankind, because it came from the eternal Source.
What is the secret of success? It is the union of Arjuna and Krishna.
Everywhere in our life, we find there are twin forces operating. There is
the twin force of the relation between you and the world outside, there is
the operation of the twin force of your relation with God, there is the
twin force of your relation with humanity outside, and there is the twin
force of your relation with your own inner constitutional setup. You have
got four kinds of relation, and everywhere you are present. Arjuna is
everywhere, and Krishna also is everywhere in this description of the
relations that constitute human life. If this twofold manifestation of
force is set in tune in a most harmonious manner, without creating any
jarring noise between the two, a third element fructifying in your life
will arise from this achievement. That third element is success.
Achievement, attainment, success, prosperity – whatever you call this
fulfilment of the aim of your life – is all a fourfold action taking place
simultaneously, because in the present state of affairs, we seem to be
living in a fourfold relation of this kind. There should be no clash of the
inner constituents of the factors of life. The factors of life, as I
mentioned briefly, are fourfold. Most of us have inner tension. The
constituents that make up your personality are not in a state of alignment.
There is disturbance in the mind. Though you attribute all disturbances to
the wrong actions of other people in the world, this attitude is not
entirely justifiable, because trouble arises from yourself first. That is
the 'eye of the hurricane', as they call it. The centre of the problem is
yourself only, and not somebody else.
You are not set in tune with your own self. There are various types of
distress harassing us. Do you wake up in the morning with a pleasant mood,
a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of completeness? Do you think everything
is all right with you? Each one of you should close the eyes for a few
minutes and think: “Is everything all right with me, or is something
wrong?” Be a judge of your own self. It is easy to judge other people, but
you cannot easily judge yourself because in other types of judgment, such
as in the social field, the client is different from the judge; but here,
you are the client and the judge. This is the difficulty. Or to bring the
old analogy once again, the higher Self is the judge, and the lower self is
the client. Hence, you yourself are the client and the judge, in two strata
of your own being.
Your feeling for the world outside is not always set in harmony with your
feeling for the salvation of your spirit. It is not easy for you to bring
about a reconciliation between two ideas working in your mind. You want
final spiritual attainment, God-realisation as it is called, but you do not
wish to be disturbed by the world, which is also there solidly in front of
you. That is to say, the transcendent aim of yours, which is the salvation
of the soul, does not seem to be properly set in tune with your practical
experience of a perception of the world, which is solidly gazing at you.
You do not know what to do with this world when your aim is something which
seems to be totally different from what you experience in this world. Are
you going to reject this world, or are you going to take this world with
you when you reach God? You have to do something with it. Are you going to
throw it away as redundant, and then independently, individually, reach
God? Nor can you bundle up the whole world and take it with you when you
reach God. This is something intriguing.
Go to Gurus and put these questions: How am I going to deal with this world
of my daily experience, together with my aspirations for God? How am I
going to deal with people around me, which are millions in number,
populating this whole Earth? What is my duty towards these people around
me, if at all there is a duty?
The people around you impinge on your very skin. You cannot say that you
have no duty towards them. Your very consciousness of the presence of
people outside is a call for your duty in respect of people outside. If you
have no duty towards anybody, you need not even feel that they are existing
at all. But the people around are so solidly present and concretely
presenting themselves before your experience that you cannot reject them,
and you have to put up with them in compromise and harmony. I mentioned to
you that you have to be in harmony with your own self also.
The last verse of the Bhagavadgita is the solution for all these questions.
You have to plant the presence of God at the foundation of your endeavours
of any kind – either towards people outside, or towards the world of
sensory perception, or in regard to your own individual personality also.
How do you attain this? How do you manage to get on with this situation? Do
you feel that you are in a position to accommodate the thought that there
is such a thing called God, and It is all-in-all? You might have heard this
said a hundred times, and you may accept it also – yes, God is all-in-all.
But the consequence of this acceptance is not properly noticed. Some
results follow from your acceptance that God is all-in-all. That is,
everything has to be interpreted in the light of the presence of the
All-in-all – your own self, society outside, and also the world of
perception. Then success follows. As a matter of fact, if you think about
it properly, the thing that you call God is the power which sustains the
organism of the whole cosmos; and in comparison, and by way of an analogy,
if you are to bring before you the organism of your own individuality, you
will realise that all the functions of your body are centralised in the
harmonious operation of a principle of life which is within yourself, and
also transcending your bodily encasement.
The principle of life is first, and every other activity of the personality
comes afterwards. Any activity of yours, or work that you perform, should
not contradict the maintenance of the organismic integrality of your being.
There is no use doing a lot of work if it is going to affect the
integrality of your personality. You cannot break yourself and then become
whole with the world outside. You have to be whole first, and then only
your relation with the world will be a whole. You should not be a torn
personality, with a segment of emotion on one side and a segment of
intellect and rationality on the other side.
Great professors, intellectual geniuses lecturing in universities, have
family problems. They are wretched in their homes, but great masters and
scientists and mathematicians in the universities. They would not like to
go home and look at the face of their wife because she is a termagant,
abusive, and says all kinds of negative things to the great man who is a
professor. He is torn between two sides. Now, which is the reality of this
person? Is the home experience the reality, or the professorial side? You
cannot say either of them is unreal. The problem is that the man has not
been able to bring about a harmony between these two aspects. His emotions
have not been trained to the same height as his intellect. He is a puny
little nothing as far as his emotions are concerned, but a mighty giant in
his professorial knowledge.
Sometimes we are torn personalities, as I mentioned, and here is an example
of that splitting of personalities: one thing in your bedroom, kitchen and
bathroom, and another thing in public life. This will not work. You have to
be the same thing in your house that you are in the ministerial or
presidential level you may occupy. You cannot have two things in yourself.
Do you want to become two people? You are one person, and therefore, in all
your experiences you must be one person. You are as mighty and great in
your kitchen as you are in the field of work in this world. You are not a
soldier only in the battlefield, and a poor nothing in your kitchen; that
should not be. The world is made in such a way that there are no kitchens
and bathrooms here. It is one integrated, spread-out arena of mighty
operation of cosmic forces. There is no bathroom in this universe. It is as
great as a temple and university, etc.
To give an example from the Mahabharata, Sri Krishna is great in all ways.
The greatest yogi you can think of is Bhagavan Sri Krishna. Nobody – not a
Sannyasin, not a sage, not a saint – can stand before him in the knowledge
of yoga. And he is the greatest warrior. You cannot imagine how a great
saint can become a warrior. No general can stand before him in the
battlefield. And he is a perfect householder, and a perfect Sannyasin. No
Sannyasin can equal Bhagavan Sri Krishna. He had palaces, he had retinue,
he had everything which is royal, but the renunciation which is associated
with a person like Sri Krishna is far, far superior to a Sannyasin's
renunciation. A Sannyasin renounces things which are really existent, as
unreal things need not be renounced, but forgets that real things cannot be
abandoned: *nā 'sato vidyate bhāvo nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ* (Gita 2.16). This
is no good. Sometimes Sannyasins fail due to a wrong notion of renunciation.
How can you renounce a tree? It is a poor thing, standing there in its own
capacity, and you say, “I will renounce a tree,” “I will renounce a
mountain.” What are you renouncing? A thing that is not there need not be
renounced. That which is really there cannot be destroyed and, therefore,
cannot be renounced. Many concepts of sadhu-hood and Sannyasi-hood may have
to be properly re-orientated in the light of the Bhagavadgita gospel if you
have rightly understood its meaning.
Greatest Sannyasin, greatest householder, greatest warrior, and greatest
yogi – how will you combine all these things in one person? Really, there
are no warriors, no Sannyasins, no householders, nothing of the kind; there
is only one Being existing. Can you call God a Sannyasin, or a householder,
or a soldier? What kind of thing is God? That concept, let alone the
attainment itself, will rejuvenate you to such an extent that you will be
the same person in all fields of life. In the railway station, in the bus
stand, in the vegetable market, in your temple and your tutorial institute
– wherever you are, you are the same person, and you think in the same way
in all places. You will speak to the vegetable vendor with the same majesty
and goodness that you speak in a parliament, and will not speak down to
him. This bifurcation wrongly made between one thing and another thing, one
experience and another, is the malady of your life.
You are the same person everywhere; you are the same greatness manifest in
yourself – which is possible of attainment only if you are able to see one
thing in all things. Arjuna has to see Sri Krishna everywhere. The might of
Krishna enters Arjuna; that is, the cosmic force enters into you, and you
work like a whirl operating through it. Sometimes, we say we are world
citizens; but we are not merely world citizens, we are embodiments of the
world itself.
I have already mentioned how this could be achieved by being perpetually in
the state of meditation. Meditation does not mean something that you will
do afterwards: “Now we are listening to somebody saying something, and
afterwards we will go for lunch, and later on we will sit in a corner and
meditate.” This kind of foolish thinking must be avoided. Death is nobody's
friend, and no notice will be given to you about the next moment. Even
before you sit for meditation, the order may come to you in the dining hall
itself.
Again, to repeat, you are the same person everywhere, and whatever you are
in the state of meditation, you are in the dining hall also. You will be
wondering, “How I can meditate on God when I am eating food?” You are not
eating food, really speaking; you are performing a cosmic action there also.
You cannot contain this thought in your mind, as the meaning behind the
personality of an Incarnation such as Bhagavan Sri Krishna cannot be
understood. He is All-in-all, both the greatest and the very humblest you
can think of. In the Rajasuya sacrifice of Yudhishthira, Sri Krishna was
the receptionist. Why should he take up this minor work of a receptionist
in that mighty conference? Could he not be given some better function? He
was receiving people, but not merely receiving with words. He was washing
their feet, pouring holy water on the auspicious people, the blessed ones
that came, and seating them in a proper place. He was serving food to all
people. Was he a suitable person to serve food? Was there nobody else who
could do that? And when the feeding was over, he removed all the leaves and
cleaned the whole place. Such a mighty person, at whose name the world
shudders, took upon himself this work of cleaning up after the feeding was
over. He could have said, “You are giving me this kind of work? Do you know
who I am? I am a yogi, an Atman, a renunciate, a Sannyasin, a God-man. You
want me to sweep?” Would you like to be given this job? Ask any Sannyasin
to do this work. He will say, “I am a Mahatma, Mandaleshwar. You want me to
do this kind of work? This is why you invited me?”
It is poor, empty souls that require respect from other people. A great
being does not expect respect, or even a good word of thanks from anybody.
The smaller you are, the more you expect respect from other people. The
larger you are, the less you would like to be recognised. Who will
recognise you? You are yourself complete in yourself. And if you trust
really the presence of God – not merely treat it as a word in the
scripture, and not something that you have heard from your Gurus – if you
really trust it and plant that feeling in yourself, you will wonder at the
miracles taking place in your own life.
Don't have any kind of despondency in your mind. There might be a doubt:
“These are all very big things. I am not meant for it. I am a poor fellow.”
You are not a poor fellow. Do not have doubts. There are things called
traitors, who deceive you and put you out of gear, and the greatest traitor
is doubt. Doubts are our traitors. Do you have a doubt about the capacity
of God to protect you, or that this is actually possible? Even if you are a
sinner, and have done many wrong things, if your heart has changed and you
have become a different person today, who knows? Even a great Sannyasin or
yogi of today might have committed many blunders in the previous life, but
those blunders do not pursue this person due to the transformation that has
taken place in this birth.
Thus, you have to take rebirth. Unless you are reborn, you cannot enter the
kingdom of God. This is what Jesus Christ said. To be reborn does not mean
taking another birth in a mother's womb. That is not the meaning. To be
reborn is to be reborn into the spirit of the universe. Confidence in
yourself is necessary. You must be confident: “I am perfectly all right,
and I can understand what is good for me.”
The order of Sri Krishna was the final gospel to Arjuna. Whatever Sri
Krishna said was final. If Sri Krishna said, “Don't do anything,” Arjuna
will not do it, even if he felt it was necessary. “Do it,” means Arjuna
will do it, though he felt that it is not proper to do so. Place in your
mind a picture of this Great Master Bhagavan Sri Krishna, or anyone like
that, such as Vasishtha, Vyasa, Suka, or any great saint and sage. The
thought of a thing influences you. If you think of garbage, dirt, and
rubbish, even the utterance of these words influences your mind. If a holy
mantra can bring about a positive effect in you, a dirty word can bring
about a contrary effect in your mind. See for yourself. Go on uttering the
word 'mango, mango, mango', and see what you feel; 'temple, temple,
temple', what do you feel; 'police station, police station, police
station', what do you feel; 'war, war, war', what do you feel? Do you see
what happens to you when you utter these words? Go on shouting to your own
self: “Almighty God, Absolute Being, Almighty Absolute!” Do not chant any
mantra or anything. In your own language – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, or
English, whatever it is – repeatedly utter these words: “the Absolute, the
Supreme Being, the Absolute All-in-all.” Utter these words; do not do
anything else. Only the words will do. Your heart will slowly start melting
with even the words you utter. Words have such power.
The Word is God, it is said. It is the Logos or the ultimate intelligent
principle; that is the Word – the sound principle, the *sphota sakti* as
they call it. That is why every word has such a meaning – the *mantra*, as
it is called. Take the name of a great person, the greatest that you can
think of in the history of mankind. Go on chanting that person's name. You
will feel a shake-up of your personality. Whether you are able to properly
concentrate the mind or not, shout loudly this great word 'Absolute Being',
and your sin has been destroyed. *Api ced asi pāpebhyaḥ sarvebhyaḥ
pāpakṛttamaḥ, sarvaṁ jñānaplavenaiva vṛjinaṁ santariṣyasi* (Gita 4.36). You
may be the worst of sinners. A sinner is a person who isolates himself from
this notion of God, and lives contrary to it. You should not think these
words are mere instructions. They are injections given to you with a
potency of a high vitamin, which will strengthen you. Not only should you
think like this, but you must feel like this; your heart should well up
with this acceptance, and you will find the touch of Sri Krishna on Arjuna
everywhere. Wherever you are, in any difficulty, somebody is there behind
you to push you in the right direction. “At every critical juncture, I
manifest Myself,” says the Lord in the Gita: *saṁbhavāmi yuge yuge* (Gita
4.8). *Yuga* means the age, such as Krita, Treya, Dvapara, Kali. It may be
that. But also *yuga* means a coming together of two things; we may call it
a crisis. At every critical moment, a divine spark manifests itself. The
very proximity of your thought to the Being of that Perfection will splash
forth an illumination and an enlightenment which will strengthen you at the
same time. What you are going to acquire is not knowledge of something, but
acquaintance with the Being that you yourself are, in tune with the Being
of all things.
Therefore, you should make it possible in your daily life to keep God
first, world next, and yourself last, as Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to
say. In every enterprise of yours, the first thing is not yourself. The
first thing is the Supreme Being, and it will charge your enterprise with
the world in any manner whatsoever, and place you in a proper context with
the world. Wherever Arjuna was, Sri Krishna was behind him. Otherwise, the
Pandavas would not have succeeded in the Mahabharata war. It was an
All-Being flooding energy into the Pandavas. You do not require many things
in this world. You require only one thing – the force that is everywhere.
The many soldiers of Duryodhana could not stand before that one person,
just as millions of splashed water drops cannot equal one ocean. The ocean
is only one, and the water drops are countless. Let them be countless;
number does not mean anything here. It is the qualitative comprehensiveness
that is more important.
Your greatness lies not in the accumulation of facts that you may have
achieved. You have got a lot of baggage of information, but it must enter
into you and make you not a professor of knowledge, but a possessor of
knowledge. The knowledge has entered into you, and you are the knowledge
itself. Knowledge is Being; Being is Knowledge. That strengthens you. This
is the reason why the Bhagavadgita's last verse highlights the necessity of
our collaboration with the Universal Principle in all the enterprises of
our life.
Never think that you can do everything yourself. This egoism and
self-assertiveness should leave you. When the Mahabharata was over and Sri
Krishna left this world, Arjuna became a poor non-entity. He who could lift
the mighty Gandiva-dhanush and thunder before millions of soldiers could
not lift a walking stick because the energy of the universe was withdrawn.
The extent to which the soul permeates your body, to that extent you are
healthy and happy. If the soul is crying inside and only the body is
becoming robust by eating and exercise, it will not suffice.
Human effort is to be set in tune with this universal power in such a
manner that there ceases to be a difference between the two – as, for
instance, with a high voltage electric wire. When you touch a high voltage
electric wire, are you touching electricity, or touching wire? In a similar
manner, you may look like a human being, like an electric wire on which you
can hang a wet cloth for drying, but if that high voltage power of the
Universal Being is charged, you do not become merely a wire or a medium for
the communication of that force; you yourself stand representative of that
power. An Incarnation, an Avatara, is nothing but a human personality
charged with the energy of the whole cosmos; and you can also be one
such. The Srimad Bhagavata Purana says that endless are the Incarnations.
Every one of you can be that, provided this little wire that you are is
charged with the high voltage force of the Universal Existence.
Every day you must find time to think like this. Do not waste your time
gossiping and chatting with people and going here and there. Until you
attain success in this art of living, give first preference to meditation,
and give it as much time as possible. When you are seated in meditation,
what do you feel? “The world is coming inside; it is liquefying itself; it
has entered my blood cells; the particles of my personality are getting
energised; the sea of force which is the universe has entered me; I am
feeling that I have become hard like steel, strong like a hill, radiant;
everything is within me.” The world is very rich in its resources. It is
not poor in any manner. If the resources and energies and powers of the
world enter you, you become a world individual. Sri Krishna was a world
individual; the whole world was inside him. That was the Visvarupa, as we
are told.
You are also like that. Don't think that this is not for you. It is for
you. You are not a poor individual. God has not created any
poverty-stricken individual in thought. Monetarily, in the sense of
possessing the objects of the world, you may look poor in comparison with
millionaires, but is thought also an object of poverty? Can you not even
think great things? The ideas of your mind move the whole world.
The whole world is only Idea, finally. As Plato said, Idea is the Ultimate
Reality. Think, and you can shake the Earth. You do not require bulldozers
and machine guns; a thought is enough. Idea is the Ultimate Reality – the
Idea, which has concretised itself in the form of these physical elements
that you are beholding in front of you.
“The world is my idea.” This is a sentence with which Schopenhauer begins
his great wonderful thesis, *The World as Will and Idea*. You will be
shocked; what is Schopenhauer saying? “The world is my idea”; that is the
first sentence of the great work. And that is what Plato said, that is what
the Upanishads say, that is what the Bhagavadgita says. Ultimate Reality is
Idea. Idea means consciousness, Universal Thought, *chit*, which is
All-Being; this is the Ultimate Reality. Bring your mind to the focus of
this kind of feeling even when you are walking on the road or speaking to
people. Do not cut yourself off from the underground foundation of this
thought.
You cannot forget what you are even when you are very busy. You cannot say,
“I don't know what I am, because I am very busy these days.” Whatever be
the business, you will not forget what you are. In a similar manner,
whatever be the activity that you are engaged in, you cannot forget the
vitality of your life which sustains you, which will make you deathless in
the end, and blessedness will be your destination also. Swami Sivanandaji
Maharaj will guide you. He is present even now. The whole ashram is charged
with his immanent presence. Those who come here are blessed. The more you
stay here, the better for you. The air is charged with his presence, and it
is charged by all the sages and masters who have lived in this area,
Muni-ki-Reti, which means 'the sand trodden by the masters'. Vasishtha,
Vyasa, Rama, Laxmana also happened to come here. Who knows how many masters
trod this very sand on the bank of the Ganga, on which you are also
treading? Blessedness is before you. You have come here, and that is a
blessedness. It has become possible for you to come here.
Beautiful is the experience. The moment you cross Brahmananda Ashram, pass
the police station and enter this place, you are in a blessed atmosphere.
You are secure. Something is vibrating here. Something is speaking in a
different language. You feel wonderful, happy, and would like to come
again. Why do these ideas arise in your mind? It is because mighty sages
have thought these ideas, and they have left them here reverberating
through every sand particle of this place. So, be blessed. {KRISHNANANDA}
K RAJARAM IRS 18824 19824
On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 at 18:36, Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]>
wrote:
> "Success is not in a particular quantity of money or position that you are
> holding, but in how you walk through life."
>
> N Jambunathan Rengarajapuram-Kodambakkam-Chennai-Mob:9176159004
>
> *" What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you
> become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a happy life, tie it to
> a goal, not to people or things "*
>
>
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