Illusion Is Gone, Space Is Remembered

Nashto mohah smritirlabdha twatprasadanmayachyuta
Sthito’smi gatasandehah karishye vachanam tava

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter XVIII, Verse 73

There is one verse in the Gita, almost the last verse, chapter eighteen, verse seventy-three. After all the talk that Krishna gave to Arjun, Arjun became assured and now he speaks. Krishna had finished by saying: “What have you got? Express it.”

All the years you have been listening, you have been hearing Krishna all the time. You have never heard anybody else on earth. Krishna means sound and sound you heard. Before sound is Krishna. Then before Arjun you are Krishna, which means before sound you are, before the form of Arjun you are.

Each one is born with form and sound. Before you took birth there was no form and no sound. That is why with sound and form you became Arjun. You became forgetful. But Krishna was never born.

Even the story is like that. When Krishna appeared in Devaki, his mother, she was in jail, because nine months before she had been captured. She was kept in jail so that Kans, the demonic king, could cut the head of any child of hers. So she was readily available because she could not run anywhere, not to any hospital. Nine months later, Krishna appeared in the jail with four arms, a diadem and all the things like that—you must have seen the pictures. Vasudev, his father, and Devaki were both surprised: “I did not have a big stomach or anything, where did you come from?” Krishna said, “Don’t tell anybody, let me become a little child and take me from here in a basket.” It was heavy rain on that day, twelve o’clock midnight, the River Jumna was in flood and nobody could come or go. Vasudev said, “How will I cross?” And Krishna said, “Don’t worry, you just walk and the river will give you the space.”

To us, it all seems to be fictitious. Why? We are all born Arjun.

You are hearing the sound of Unborn. Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum is the space of Krishna, who is never born, thus, he never dies. Yet for a human being who is born, the world is, childhood is, youth is, the senses are, and in front of his eyes are many friends, many people and parents and they have to live.

But suppose you have become aware of the awareness that is Self-Realization, Atma Gyan, Krishna Consciousness, or not form, not name. After hearing, you become that, but as soon as you don’t hear or don’t repeat whatever you have known, you become A, B, C, D, E, F, G—all kinds of things.

Krishna said to Arjun, “Why are you upset?” Arjun said, “I am overwhelmed and I really can’t do anything. I have to fight the war and in the war all my relations are there. Seeing them pitted against me, something happened to me that I can’t kill these people.” His grandpa is against him and his acharya, his archery teacher, and many uncles and cousins. They are all against him. Such a terrible scene! All of you understand this. He had to wipe them out. And then as a warrior he thought, “I will kill them and win.” So he got into his ego sense, I sense, individual power, and declared war because others had perpetrated atrocities.

I didn’t ask you to continue reading eighteen chapters, because you have read it. For the past forty-five years, you have listened to the sound. Sound you are listening to, but you are knowing a person creating a sound, and you are thinking that you are listening—that a listener has been created by your mother. So you are a person and I am a person. But before you were born and I was born, why did you not see the person? Because the person was not made with eyes, not made by ears. If a human being is unconscious and his senses are not working, where is the human being?

It is siddhant kaal. Siddhant kaal means time and space has not made you. In time and space, a jyotish, or astrologer, sees all the events of your life. But now, at this time, Space alone is left. There is no Krishna in the chariot. There is no Arjun in the chariot. Arjun turned out to be Space.

The mind—moh, agyan, illusion, bhavana, thinking—is with you. And when it is not with you, that is the Space. If that is the Space, then these ten sense organs and the mind are not there—all eleven are not there. When those eleven are not there, it is not that you have killed your body or shot it. Space. When Space is there, then body is not there. When Space is there, then body and relations are not there.

You have not gone anywhere. Yet you forgot the oldest one, the ancient one. Krishna is ancient. Ancient means no name, no form, no birth, no cry, no action. As soon as you are born, you see three things: sound, action and form. But they are not three—one became three, it became trio. Just because you forgot, you have to keep maintaining that forgetfulness. It is not that you were born. Forgetfulness has taken birth and it continues. That is why it is not possible for human beings en masse to know this. Therefore, you are unique.

You are born and you continue hearing the sound, saying that it is mother speaking—that is forgetfulness; saying that father speaks, forgetfulness; saying that chums speak, forgetfulness; that teachers speak, forgetfulness.

Whatever experience you have gone through, it is all forgetfulness. In English, forgetfulness is termed ignorance. In Hindi, it is agyan, moh, mamata (meum), ahankar (ego), and chaytan, gyan, buddhi, which are parallels, to some extent, of ego, intellect and mind. But if chaytan, sentience, is not there and you are born dead, from where will ego, intellect come? So chaytan is first. Chaytan-born is agyan. Consciousness—in Hindi we say chaytan—becomes against jar, unconscious.

Gyan, knowledge, turns into agyan, ignorance, and agyan remains. But your ignorance turns into “knowledge”—you call it knowledge. This “knowledge” is agyan. This is not the path of knowledge. In Sanskrit, it is said that now you are a human being, please walk on the path of knowledge. We wrote a song about walking on the path of knowledge. All of you have been walking on the path of knowledge, not on the path of action, not on the path of bhakti, devotion, not on illusion, not on ahankar, ego.

All these years you have been walking on the path of knowledge—but retaining agyan. You are hearing me all the time, you are getting knowledge but retaining agyan.

That agyan, or moha, is nashto—delusion is dispelled. Today, I’m telling you, because many of you will go and not come back, many of you will go and come again, again and again. But it is the final beatitude that all of you are hearing. Hearing nashto moha, if your agyan is gone, your illusion is gone or ahankar is gone, then smritih labdha, your Space is remembered, you came to know, you realized. Smritih labdha: Self Realized.

Twatprasadan mayachyut: “Delusion was not gone up to this time, but now because you have been speaking, speaking, speaking, you have given me the prasad, this knowledge. Mayachyut, my dear friend, Achyut, Krishna, who is not born.” He, Arjun, came to know only now. “That is where my ignorance is also gone: Nashto mohah smritih labdha twatprasadan mayachyut. Because of your knowledge speaking all the time, at this moment, my agyan, my illusion, my meum, my “I am this body” is gone.”

He could not say more than these words. “I am You, you are Me.” You that is not born. Me that is not born. As long as he was having “me born” and “you Krishna born,” that was agyan. But it is gone.

Arjun says: Nashto moha smritih labdha twatprasadan mayachyut. “Now you say I am established in You, sthito’smi. I am established in that Me that is you and me, which is unborn.” Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum, Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum.

And he says what happened: Gatasandehah, “My doubtful intellect, which never knew That was me—rather it doubted, saying That was not me, this is me, who is born—that doubtful intellect is gone,” gatasandehah.

Karishye vachanan tava: “Now I am sitting; you tell me what to do and I’ll do that.”

Then Krishna said, “Well, these millions of relations were never there and they will never be there. I have shown you the virat swaroop, the cosmic vision, but you were not convinced even then—because you saw the forms. But what I am talking about is formless, nameless.”

And Arjun now became convinced that name and form is the world. “I have come to know that which is Krishna, which is Space,” he said, “not born and no name and no sound.” When all of you meditate, that is the Space.

If you do not get convinced or identify with that Space, you will always be holding name and form and acting. The other persons with name and form act. Then you are left with no alternative, but to do that too.

But if you have come to know, then being established in the Space and having your bags in your hands and money in them, buying and selling continues, relations continue and indriyas, the senses, continue. All that continues and you are never going to die. Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum.

Close your eyes and have some meditation.