Transcription
Your mind is completely open, open for the ideas that you receive from the teacher. But don’t have a closed mind. Surrender doesn’t mean whatever the teacher is going to tell he is going to accept with blind faith, that you should not question; no that’s not surrender. Surrender is understanding with the openness of mind, receive the ideas. That’s why in the second portion, pariprashna, prashna and pariprashna, questioning to the fullest extent, questioning, questioning, questioning is the characteristic of a student. If you don’t question you are not fit to come into the region of Jnana Yoga. You must question and question and question to the fullest extent. You must tear your teacher into pieces through your questions, brilliant questions, sharp questions, fundamental questions. And that doesn’t reduce your respect for the teacher, seva. Seva is the aspect of service, service to the teacher, service to the institutions, service to the organization to which you belong. So the respect for the teacher, respect for the learning, respect for the education has to be shown through service. Therefore the three qualities pranipatha, pariprashna and seva, these are the three aspects that are very key for progressing Jnana Yoga. What about the teacher? What are the qualifications? He should be very well versed in all shastras, shotriyam brahma nishtam. Jnanam jnaninaha tatvadarshinaha. Jnaninaha means people who have the Jnana, who have the knowledge, who have the understanding, who have the wisdom of all that is told in the prasthanatreya, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita and the brahma sutras, in all that whatever wisdom is contained is well understood and is being taught essentially. That is the first quality of a teacher, theoretical knowledge. That is not adequate. In other fields it will be adequate. But here in the field of Yoga, in the field of the Jnana Yoga this is not adequate, very very important dimension having the realization of the truth. Tatvadarshinaha, they should become darshinas. That means they should be able to realize the truth, they should be having that innate experience, experience of what they teach is very very essential. And the great jnanis, the great teachers and the masters of the masters, they have complete attunement to that brahmatva. Brahma nishtam, it is said. That people completely tune themselves. So therefore practice and theory go hand in hand in the field of Yoga. So this is the quality of the teachers and students. With that you start fathoming the dimensions. What is the content of the Jnana Yoga. It says that we all are born of an ultimate reality, that which does not change at all. There is an unchanging entity called self at the base of all that is changing, that which is changing all the time. Therefore there are two aspects, one is the unchanging reality, unchanging absolute, unchanging eternity which is beyond time, space and causation. And that’s our original state. That is from where all of us are born. Then there is an ever changing dimension. Look at the body, a trillion cells getting created everyday, a billion cells getting destroyed everyday. And if you take one cell, three trillion activities going on in every cell. Since you came to this hall already the bodies of all of us have changed. There is a tremendous change going on in the so-called solid body that we possess. What to talk about the emotions and the mind and the intellect, knowledge base, everything changing, changing, changing. So the Srishti or the creation is featured by change. Without change there is no creation, therefore there is an ever changing dimension and there is the unchanging gaze, unchanging source. Therefore these two form the core of our personality. All of us have those two things, but we normally only look at the changing dimension, we look at the body but we do not fathom the higher dimensions at all. So what Krishna is telling is what is being killed is only the one that is changing, what you can destroy is only the body. But we are not just a body. There is an unchanging dimension. And changing of the body is like changing clothes. When the clothes become old you change that. In the same way you change your clothes, you change your bodies and you have the new bodies that come again and again. So birth, death and again taking birth. This goes on and on in our lives. That is the concept of rebirth that has been talked about here. Therefore the whole essence of Jnana Yoga is to go back to the source in that unchanging entity. That is the essence of the Jnana Yoga
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