Quest Magazine

Printed in the Fall 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "Presidents Diary" Quest  100. 4 (Fall 2012): pg. 154-155.

The focus for the month of April was travel. My own travels took me to visit some of our groups in the west and one of our groups near to Olcott. I began by driving up to visit with the folks in Detroit. The group, which meets just outside of Detroit, has been an active, high-functioning group for decades. They have a variety of members and hold public programs most days of the week. I have visited them almost every year for the last twenty. It has gotten to the point that they set the date for my visit, then tell me about it.

Later that month I was headed west. The trip began with Santa Fe, New Mexico, where a small group of members have been meeting for a few years. Carmelo de los Santos, a second-generation Theosophist from Brazil and a world-class violin recitalist, is very active in that group and in one that is forming just down the road in Albuquerque.

From Santa Fe, it was on to Las Vegas for a lively meeting with about thirty members and nonmembers in the area. My host was Terry Hunt, a longtime Theosophist who actually was on the Olcott staff back in 1981, when the Dalai Lama visited and stayed with us. He has a number of first-hand stories about that visit.

Next was Denver, where western national board of directors member Kathy Gann is secretary for the group. We had a couple of days together with a group that is a refreshing combination of young and senior members.

The month's travel closed out in Phoenix, where we had an all-day workshop with members from as far away as Tucson and Sedona. This has been a dedicated and focused group for many years and is blessed with members with a deep exposure not only to the teachings but to the history and context of Theosophy.

Tim and Lily Boyd with attendees at the gathering in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

May was another month for travel and visits. My travels took me to Puerto Rico and North Carolina. I had been scheduled to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for many months. The purpose of my trip was to attend a relative's wedding. While there I thought it would be nice to connect with Magaly Polanco, a friend and head of the TS in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I thought dinner would be nice. Of course, it ended up with me speaking at the lodge first, then dinner with Magaly and her husband, Eladio, after. The group is devoted and spirited. Even though my Spanish is somewhat less than basic, we talked into the night.

At the end of the month I traveled to Hendersonville, North Carolina, for the Mid-South Federation conference. About forty members attended from the area comprising Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The theme was "Theosophy in Nature," and the location for the conference was matched to the theme. It was North Carolina beauty at its best, with rolling hills, forests, and a lake. Dr. Scott Olsen from Central Florida College was a featured speaker and gave a challenging presentation on "The Divine Proportion." My wife and I traveled on to Raleigh and spent a relaxing two days with Betty Bland, past president of the TSA, and her husband, David.

In between trips we had an extended visit from Elinore Detiger, who hails from the isle of Iona in Scotland. She spent several days with us helping in the library and sharing her bountiful spirit. Elinore is one of those quiet people always working in the background. She is deeply involved in significant projects on more than one continent.

		Toward the end of May our international president, Radha Burnier, made a long-expected visit. When I was in India for the General Council meeting in December, I had invited her to come. It had been six years since her last visit to Olcott. She combined her stay with us with a world tour that took her to Krotona, London, and the Netherlands. During her stay here she had a chance to meet with some old friends and coworkers—John Kern (adviser to The Kern Foundation), Floyd Kettering (secretary for the Theosophical Investment Trust, and newly treasurer for the TSA), Ruben Cabigting, and others. She also spoke to a gathering of staff and volunteers. More meaningful to me personally was the opportunity for several wide-ranging conversations with her about the TS internationally, its past, and its future.
Diana March of the Quest Book Store (left) converses with Tim Boyd and Radha Burnier.

The month of June began with the graduation/moving up ceremony for the Prairie School of DuPage. By now most of you should be aware of the young school, which has been operating on our Olcott campus since January of this year. The ceremony was held in our third-floor auditorium and was attended by parents and by a number of our staff who have grown quite close to the kids and teachers. It was a joyous mix of playful drama, music, ceremony, and a short speech or two.

Over the Father's Day weekend the Order of the Round Table held its annual campout. Mark Roemmich, head of our grounds and maintenance department, and his wife, Kim, lead the group. All in all about thirty kids and parents were on hand for the campfire, storytelling, s'mores, and a midnight thunderstorm that capped the night's activities.

The library got an upgrade during the month. For some time now Dan Smolla, our head librarian, has been increasing the level of resources for children. Our fledgling children's section has grown, and he has incorporated children's activities into the library. With all of this in mind, Dan and my wife, Lily, got together and developed a plan to make the physical space in the children's section of the library more inviting. They asked artist and recent TSA member Jiana Waddell to paint a mural across the twenty-foot wall at the back of the library, where the children meet. What she conceived and executed over the next few weeks was an idyllic and playful wooded scene. It gives the impression that the back wall of the library has disappeared and you are looking out into the meadow. It was a substantial gift of time and expertise.

Finally, something you will be hearing more about: on July 1 a sudden, powerful storm passed through the Wheaton area. In the fifteen minutes that it raged it knocked out power to over 250,000 people in the area and downed trees, fences, and power lines in every direction. The type of storm is called a "derecho," or "straight wind" storm. This one had winds clocked at more than one hundred miles per hour. Fortunately, on our campus no one was injured, and miraculously none of the buildings were harmed, but seventy-two large trees were either uprooted or snapped in two. It was painful to survey the damage. Going forward, the destruction has motivated us to be more proactive in caring for the grounds and renewing our trees.

Tim Boyd

Printed in the Fall 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Editor's Desk" Quest  100. 4 (Fall 2012): pg. 122.

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness," we read in the Sermon on the Mount. All of us have heard this innumerable times, and we tend to take it as a metaphor. But what if it has a more literal force than we usually believe? What if we hunger after justice because it is a vital nutrient, something we need to stay alive just as we need food and water?

 Sometimes justice is more important than food and drink, as we are reminded by the slogan of the Tunisian revolution of 2011, the harbinger of the Arab Spring: "Dignity before bread!" Tunisia was not in an economic crisis when the revolution struck: the nation's economy had grown at a respectable 2"“8 percent per year over the previous two decades, according to Foreign Policy magazine. Libya, whose authoritarian regime also toppled last year, was not hurting economically but was reaping the advantages of a boom in oil prices. Perhaps the best explanation of these events comes from Roza Otunbayeva, the president of Kyrgyzstan, who wrote in March 2011: "The Almighty provided us with such a powerful sense of dignity that we cannot tolerate the denial of our inalienable rights and freedoms, no matter what real or supposed benefits are provided by "˜stable' authoritarian regimes."

Thus it is not mere metaphor to speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Over and over history has shown that people will sacrifice basic needs if they feel that justice and human dignity are at stake. These qualities are not luxuries; they are as vital to our existence as oxygen and protein.

So radical is this need for justice that people will sometimes forge a kind of imaginary justice if the real thing does not seem to be available. This occurs with many personal disasters. Struck with misfortunes"”which so often seem mysterious and inexplicable, so much at odds with any apparent justice"”people will search for faults and misdeeds in themselves that supposedly explain what happened. "I didn't love my daughter enough, so she was taken from me." "I must have been a bad person, because I came down with cancer." Many people who have gone through major tragedies have tormented themselves with thoughts of this kind.

A question then arises: does our need for justice correspond to something that is objectively real? Or are we projecting our own human concepts of right and wrong onto a blind and mechanical universe?

I believe the human thirst for justice corresponds to something real and fundamental in the cosmos. We do not, after all, have needs for things that do not exist. The fact that we must have oxygen in and of itself serves as evidence for the existence of oxygen. Similarly, the acute need we feel for justice attests to a cosmic order that is built on justice. This cosmic order has gone by many names in the world's spiritual traditions: it was known as Ma'at to the ancient Egyptians, and the Hindus call it Dharma.

The mechanism by which this cosmic justice operates is known as karma. You will often see "karma" defined as the law of cause and effect. This is not sufficiently precise. The concept of karma not only holds that specific causes have specific effects, but that the effect is like the cause in some fundamental way: good begets good, and evil begets evil.

It is this intuitive recognition of the existence of karma that, I believe, forms the basis for our deep-seated hunger and thirst after righteousness. Granted, this law doesn't always work the way we think it should: the wicked often prosper while the innocent suffer. Eastern traditions have devised a number of complex and ingenious solutions to explain why this should be so, speaking, for example, of "seeds of karma" that can take many lifetimes to bear fruit.

I myself don't know whether these theories are right. But even apart from them, the law of karma clearly plays itself out in an enormous number of cases, and it's probably safe to say that most people most of the time get exactly what they deserve. Sometimes it even seems that we blind ourselves to this fact by focusing on apparent injustices"”perhaps out of an unconscious fear that we too have scores to settle that we would just as soon avoid.

But all teachings about the law of karma insist that it is inexorable; it cannot be eluded. What sort of attitude should we take toward life, then, since we all know we have done wrong? Should we simply cower in terror of the sword of vengeance that dangles over our heads?

There is, it would seem, only one way out, and it too is indicated in the Sermon on the Mount: "Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" (to translate it literally from the Greek). Forgiveness is the way to turn the law of karma on its head, because if we forgive, it inevitably follows that we too are entitled to have our karmic debts wiped out. Although forgiveness is frequently admonished, this reason for it has often been overlooked. In the world as we know it, the law of karma has no exceptions, but it does have a loophole.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the Fall 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bakula, Joan S. "Earth Mind, Sun Mind, Sky Mind: A Meditation" Quest  100. 4 (Fall 2012): pg. 147-151.

By Joann S. Bakula 

The earth, the sun, and the sky are like three layers of reality that make up the world we live in, our shared environment uniting us experientially as one life. Can the mind be a reflection of this simple everyday picture of earth, sun, and sky? The earth is a world of countless varieties and a myriad of forms, which the sense-processing mind of earth processes. The sun is the distant and single life-giving point, like the heart, but visible to us only some of the time. And the sky is ever-present and mostly empty, the space in which all else lives; it is formless and limitless. Each is dependent upon the next in one living whole.

Visualizing these within as three levels of mind, each with a different nature and function, can be a powerful yet simple meditation. The function of earth mind is to register the myriad of sensations. Sun mind is the power that radiates, giving all life, and sky mind is formless and limitless and contains all else. Visualizing and meditating on these three levels of reality is simple to do, yet can yield a depth of understanding and experiencing that can become a lifelong study and practice.

The writing of this meditation began when I taught courses on transpersonal psychology; death, dying, and grieving; and existentialism to college students. I searched for metaphors from nature, rather than mysticism, that would suit secular students as well as those studying the meditation traditions of a particular religion. Much was inspired by the practical psychological aspects of Sogyal Rinpoche's the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Recently I gave a seminar at Krotona Institute of Theosophy called "Stories from the Ultimate Edge" on these subjects, including what it is like to die as reported by those who have had near-death experiences, and on the first two bardos of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The course included a version of this meditation, which was quite popular and which Quest readers might also find useful. The version here has been rewritten so that the language is inclusive of some Western religions and may also be appealing to those who are primarily secular in philosophy. 

The Near-Death Experience 

Whether we care to philosophize about them or not, the states before birth and after death are experientially unknown to most people. Today, however, we are aware of the near-death experience (NDE), in which a person has been declared clinically dead, is revived, and has memory of the sequence of events that occurred. Accounts of such experiences have been famous since Plato's time. According to his account in the last pages of the Republic, the warrior Er was thought to have been killed in battle, but after some days he came back to life with a memory of what he had experienced. He told of his incredible journey through the afterlife, where he saw the whole process of life, death, and rebirth in two streams of being, one passing away and the other coming in to be reborn on earth. Er's account was more descriptive of the bardo experience or deep NDE than of the basic NDE experience, but serves to anchor speculation both about life after death and about rebirth in the Western tradition.

Plato's myth is known as the first near-death account, but today the large numbers of recorded NDEs give us the opportunity to investigate the phenomenon scientifically. Since Raymond Moody's first book, Life after Life, opened up the field in 1975, the International Association for Near-Death Studies, or IANDS, has published accounts of NDEs in its journals. A summary of research has also been published in Bruce Greyson's Handbook of Near-Death Experiences. The largest cross-cultural study ever done has also been published in Jeffrey Long's Evidence of the Afterlife. Long's Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) has a Web site in many languages. Here people who have had NDEs may fill out a forty-eight-question form, from which statistical analyses are made. The results of this research are available on the Web sites www.iands.org and www.nderf.org.

The Spacious Mind of Buddhism 

What is it really like to die? This age-old question arouses fear in most people. Many of us feel, as Woody Allen said, "I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens!" This is not the case in Buddhism, where much has been written on this subject. Indeed Buddhists begin their spiritual path with the recognition of impermanence and the acceptance of death as a natural occurrence. They have written some of the world's finest commentaries on the mind in meditation and in the life/death process. They see these two as one mind.

From the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of meditation we learn phases like "spacious mind" and "sky mind," which figure in commentaries on the Bardo Thadol (better known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead) and the Kalachakra initiations of the Dalai Lama as well. Perhaps we already may have the intuition that, as H.P. Blavatsky wrote, "space is an entity." The basic Buddhist worldview is often portrayed as a wheel of life and death called the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. Ignorance of suffering is the first cause, followed by ten links progressing around the wheel and ending with the conditioned existence resulting in birth and death. When the two meet and life becomes death, there is a dissolving of awareness of the phenomenal world, called "natural liberation." This can be compared to entering the sky mind, clear and free of all sensory apparatus and phenomenal perception, with no boundaries or separateness. This is called naked awareness.

Tibetan Buddhism teaches techniques for the psychological dissolution of awareness, in which phenomenal, conventional reality fades into nothingness, yet something permanent remains. What is it? Lama Chagyam Trungpa, in his commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, described the experience of the first bardo (after-death state), the chikhai bardo, as immortal light. It is also called the "primary light" or "mother light." The Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism calls this layer of mind rigpa, the ground of reality, naked awareness, the limitless space in which all else has temporary existence. What remains after the dissolution of ordinary, conventional reality is this ultimate reality, luminous and open.

"You will die successfully, I promise you!" says lama Sogyal Rinpoche. "You will all die successfully no matter what you do." This is often the way Rinpoche opens his seminars, evoking a chuckle from his audiences, and cutting through the fear surrounding the topic. From a detached point of view, we can entertain the possibility of meditating on the mind beyond death, psychologically preparing ourselves by exploring the layers of mind that are with us here and now. 

Esoteric Initiations 

In addition to meditation, ancient myths, and near-death research, we have a similar process described in the psychological initiations of consciousness familiar to esoteric groups. There are notable similarities between the process of natural life and death and the ending of an old value system and a rebirth into a new perspective.

Transpersonal psychologists love to look at this process of death and rebirth in consciousness. One of first of these was the Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade, who observed: "Initiatory death provides the clean state on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new man...This new life is conceived as the true human existence, for it is open to the values of spirit" (Eliade, xiii-xiv). The process of initiatory death wipes the slate clean so that a new chapter in the book of life may begin fresh, open, and unprejudiced by old cultural and social values and views. Initiation breaks down old patterns of behavior. It allows people to begin again and to see with new perception. The new values become the principal values of the new life.

At each initiatory death and rebirth we begin with a new view from a higher elevation. We see more, know more, and can relate to whole systems more readily. Seeing and accepting life as a process of birth/death instead of regarding life as the opposite of death is an initiation into reality. This allows for a greater vision of what life and nature are. The Dalai Lama has said, "The dissolution of all ordinary appearances in a manner that mimics dying is necessary for rebirth on new principles," and the "subsequent life is formed, not out of distorted knowledge of nature, but out of distortionless knowledge of the nature of things" (Dalai Lama, 1999, 487-88). The initiate sees nature as it is, as opposed to the distorted view of the previous perception. Consciousness works both ways: toward truer perception of both beingness and nature. It sees within and without. As the Buddha reminds us, ignorance is the main cause of samsara, the wheel of life, or rebirth in this world. Initiatory rebirth is the road to freedom from yesterday's limits and distortions.

 In an effort to extract something useful for both the casual and the serious student of meditation, and for people of any faith or none, I hope that this brief meditation might serve to reveal something of the incredible nature of the mind, imagination, and intuition. This visualization relates the natural world, the mind, and nonphenomenal reality in the metaphor of earth, sun, and sky as universal, observable, empirical realities. It seeks to see the macrocosm of the universe reflected in the microcosm of the human mind.

 A Meditation 

Begin by turning the data-perceiving mind around to examine the nature of mind and the subjective world within. Take refuge in the teaching, the teachers, and those meditators who have found wisdom and compassion for use in world service. Buddhists take refuge in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the dharma (teaching), and the sangha (community). Christians may take refuge in the Christ. Western seekers, including those in the Theosophical tradition, may take refuge in the truth that runs like a golden thread through all the traditions, in the Masters or enlightened ones, and in the community of spiritual seekers.

We can experience something of the three minds or levels of reality now by using this visualization and meditation. Realization may take place at any time. 

Earth Mind. Starting where we are in the world of appearances, we see the myriad of forms, from our time and place of seeing, from our point of view and perspective. We are the subject registering objects.

This is my world, my life, my things, my roles. Fear and desire. The mask of persona. The consumer. Habits. The everyday world. The world of natural living. This is the flat world; the sun revolves around us. This is the data storage mind. Calculating mind. Taking care of business. This is the earth world. The outer world. The subject-object awareness dominates.

Sun Mind. We see a point of warm sunlight, its rays reaching out into us. We are that sun and those rays. We are consciousness, the warmth and radiance around which our outer life revolves. We are the deep consciousness that resulted in birth. We are the sol and soul in calm abiding. We are the face behind the mask. We are the heart within the soul.

We are integral consciousness, the next higher holon of life. This is the systemic mind. We are the sun to the planets of our body, feelings, mind, perception, persona, and consciousness. Intuition. Direct perception.

This is the center of radiant mind. Contemplative mind. The inner world of Being directed to the world.

Sky mind. Beyond earth and sun is the vast spacious Reality in which both exist. We are that spacious mind, the womb of all phenomena and qualities. All forms that exist are within our space, yet we have no form. We are void, limitless, spacious, luminous Reality. Boundless, lucid, timeless.

There is no separate existence; all other states are contained within this mind.

We are rigpa, the pristine naked awareness, the primordial true nature of mind; we are the ground of reality, lucid and clear. We are the indivisibility of space and awareness.

We are neither existence nor nonexistence. We go beyond relative mind to no mind. Mind beyond the subject-object dichotomy. Nothing exists outside. There is no inner world nor outer. One vast reality remains.

We are peaceful, silent Being. Inner, outer, other are all one.

We are the spaciousness of all there is. Nondual. Synthesis. Being. Space Mind. Life. Void. Pristine lucid awareness. Luminosity. The one Reality.

Conclude by turning the mind back to the world of sentient beings, retaining the sky or space mind in which all else takes place, and shedding the light of the luminous heart mind onto all sentient beings in the world, as the radiant sun shines on all.

Sources 

Bailey, Alice A. The Rays and the Initiations. New York: Lucis, 1960.

Bakula, Joann S. Stories of the Ultimate Edge. Audio CD. Ojai, Calif.: Krotona Institute of Theosophy, 2011.

Besant, Annie. A Study in Consciousness. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1938.

Blavatsky, H.P. An Abridgement of The Secret Doctrine. Edited by Elizabeth Preston and Christmas Humphreys. Wheaton: Quest, 1966.

The Dalai Lama XIV. Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 2000.

———. Kalachakra Tantra Rite of Initiation. Translated by Jeffrey Hopkins. Boston: Wisdom, 1999.

Eliade, Mircea. Rites and Symbols of Initiation. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Ellwood, Gracia Fay. The Uttermost Deep: The Challenge of Near-Death Experiences. New York: Lantern, 2001.

Evans-Wentz, W.Y., ed. and trans. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York: Oxford University Press, 1927.

Fremantle, Francesca, and Chagyam Trungpa. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston: Shambhala, 1975.

Greyson, Bruce. The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2009.

Kalu Rinpoche. Luminous Mind. Boston: Wisdom, 1997.

Leadbeater, Charles W. The Masters and the Path. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969.

Long, Jeffrey. Evidence of the Afterlife. New York: Harper Collins, 2011.

Maslow, A.H. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 1971.

Moody, Raymond. Life after Life. New York: Bantam, 1975.

Nicholson, Shirley J. The Seven Human Powers. Wheaton: Quest, 2003.

Padmasambhava. Natural Liberation: Padmasambhava's Teachings on the Six Bardos. Commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche. Translated by B. Alan Wallace. Boston: Wisdom, 1998.

Ring, Kenneth. Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. New York: Quill, 1982.

Sogyal Rinpoche. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992.

———. Living and Dying Today. Audio cassettes. Roqueredonde, France: Rigpa, 1997.

Wangyal, Geshe. The Door of Liberation. New York: Maurice Girodias, 1973.

Joann S. Bakula, Ph.D., is a transpersonal psychologist who specializes in end of life awareness, meditation, and near-death studies. Semiretired now, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses for twenty-five years and is still on the faculty of Akamai University (online). She continues to give seminars and is review editor of the Esoteric Quarterly, a peer-reviewed on-line periodical. She has written many articles for esoteric periodicals, including "How Death Changes Life" (Quest, Fall 2009), and is the author of Esoteric Psychology: A Model for the Development of Human Consciousness.

Printed in the Fall 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kezwer, Glen "The Bhagavad Gita: Action and Meditation" Quest  100. 4 (Fall 2012): pg. 143-146.

By Glen Kezwer

Just as a mountain of ice melts and becomes water, so the mind will melt into the subtlest aspect of thinking through meditation. It will become so superfine that it will permeate the whole universe. At that time it will not be called mind; rather it will be known as the Self.

—Swami Shyam

Although the exact age of the Hindu sacred text known as the Bhagavad Gita is uncertain, it dates back at least 2000 years. While the world has changed dramatically since the Gita was written, one constant remains in human affairs: the mind of a human being. Whatever a present-day person has to deal with, he or she does so with the thinking processes of his or her mind. The same was true of people living at the time of the creation of the Gita, and indeed of all people throughout the history of humankind. The enduring factor is the mind. How we live our lives and maneuver through the various parts of our day, and whether we are able to achieve happiness, success, and joy all depend on how and what we think. Here all the ups and downs of our existence are decided. Even our mental attitude towards physical pain and disease determines, to a certain extent at least, how much we suffer from these ailments. The fear of death too is ultimately rooted in our thought processes.

Can we ever be free from the vicissitudes of our thoughts? Consider this: we actually are totally free from our thoughts for approximately one-third of our life, namely when we are asleep. Very little importance is generally given to sleep as a state of absolute freedom. Although in this state our entire physical and mental apparatus is still intact, we experience no pain or suffering, and for that matter no joy or happiness. Thus we as human beings do have the innate ability to enter a state of complete rest and peace. Of course I am not advocating that we simply sleep our lives away. Rather I am indicating that there is another state of mind which, like sleep, is free of all troubles, worries, fears, and tensions, but at the same time is more than sleep in that it is a state of freedom plus total awareness. This state is meditation.

The Gita's teachings essentially deal with how to handle our minds to achieve the maximum success, happiness, and spiritual fulfillment in our lives. This can be done through various means, which include the paths of knowledge, action, devotion, and meditation. Which path a particular person follows depends on his or her personal inclinations, nature, and proclivities. In fact, many people pursue a combination of paths rather than restricting themselves to one specific technique. In the present article, I am going to focus on meditation, both because I have personally practiced it for more than three decades and because its use is widespread.

 The Backdrop for the Teachings 

To reflect the fact that all persons must act throughout every day, the story of the Gita unfolds upon a stage of the most extreme action: a battlefield during a time of impending war between two opposing clans, the Pandavs and the Kauravs. The two characters involved are Krishna and Arjun. Arjun, the commander-in-chief of the Pandav army, decides to take one last look at the enemy ranks before leading his troops into combat. According to the Gita, 3,936,600 soldiers—1,593,900 in the Pandav army and 2,405,700 on the Kaurav side—fight at the great battle of Kurukshetra, the backdrop for its teachings. Along with this staggering number of soldiers (approximately equivalent to the entire population of Oregon marching onto the battlefield) are 393,600 elephants, an equal number of chariots, and 1,180,980 horses. And if this isn't enough, the air at the battlefield is rent with the horrific sounds of countless conches and bugles, accompanied by the war cries emerging from millions of angry throats.

To his utter dismay, Arjun discovers that he is going to engage an army filled with many of his nearest and dearest friends, companions, relatives, and mentors. Many of his kith and kin and highly respected teachers have taken up arms against him, and Arjun realizes that in order to win the war he will have to slay or be responsible for the deaths of countless men who are central to his life. The idea of killing them is abhorrent to him. Yet at the same time he is certain that the cause for which he is fighting is just in every moral and ethical sense, and he knows that it is his sworn duty as a soldier and leader of men to pursue the fight until victory is achieved.

Caught on the horns of this dilemma, Arjun is distraught. He has no ability within himself to find a way out of his predicament, and instead of wielding his mighty bow and leading the charge, he collapses weakly in the back of his chariot. Uttering the words, "I will not fight," he turns to his charioteer, Krishna, and begs for guidance. Now Krishna is more than just a part-time charioteer. He is also a fully enlightened being whose wisdom and consciousness are supreme and all-encompassing. Clearly Arjun has turned to the right person for help. Up to this point, the Gita has taken fifty-six verses to set the stage and pose Arjun's question to Krishna. The remaining 644 verses comprise Krishna's answer. 

The Immortal Self 

Surrounded by the tumult of war, Arjun has sought Krishna's counsel. With life and death hanging in the balance, Krishna describes—among other things—the technique of meditation. He talks to Arjun about sitting quietly in a clean spot on a seat which is neither too high nor too low and is covered with grass as an insulating material. Holding his body and head erect, Krishna tells Arjun, he should close his eyes and focus on the center of the space that appears in his field of perception.

Would such instruction not have been more appropriate for a living room, a temple, or—perhaps anachronistically—a yoga retreat? Is a battle to the death a time to talk about a process of sitting still, closing one's eyes, and perceiving the inner stillness? Yet here is Krishna, under these dire circumstances, telling Arjun about the benefits of meditation. He certainly is not directing Arjun to go and find a grass mat, sit on it, and close his eyes at that particular moment in time. But he is emphasizing the importance of meditation in preparing one's mind to handle all of life's predicaments. Most of us seldom, if ever, are required to act in such severe circumstances as those encountered in a war. The fact that the Gita is set on a battlefield indicates that the teachings it gives are of the utmost importance. In the midst of a war the consequences of Arjun's actions are crucial. They can mean survival or extinction for his side.

To me this is an emphatic statement of the importance the Bhagavad Gita places on meditation, not just for the purposes of relaxation or attaining peace of mind, but for dealing with all of life's contingencies. Krishna wants Arjun to understand that his own inner being or Self and the Self of one and all are beyond birth and death and can neither kill nor be killed. This knowledge will free him from doubt and inaction, and allow him to act effectively in the world in all situations.

Chapter six of the Gita, alternately entitled in Sanskrit "Dhyan Yoga" ("The Yoga of Meditation") or "Atma Sanyam Yoga" ("The Yoga of Complete Concentration on the Self"), presents both the theory and the practical aspects of meditation.

The message of the Gita is that all human beings have within themselves the power to live life and perform actions in the light of the highest knowledge. Simply put, this knowledge is that the source or underlying reality of every being is one and the same Brahm (absolute existence), Self, or Atma, which is beyond birth and death and cannot be destroyed. A person who lives in a manner that is consistent with this wisdom is able to live happily and effectively and have a peaceful mind, free from worry and tension. The Gita's teachings are not restricted to one period of time, a particular culture or group of people, or a certain geographical location. They are for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

At first glance it may sound easy to live a life of happiness, but in actual fact it is not. As human beings, we are subject to the whims and fancies of our minds, which can—and usually do—take us on a roller-coaster ride from morning to night. We live each day in an environment of constant action, endlessly doing things which involve us throughout our waking hours. Of course, this is simply called life. But to pursue life to its fullest, with a sense of joy, satisfaction, and balance as well as compassion for those around us takes effort and a special type of understanding. The Gita provides just that.

First and foremost, Arjun must act: "Every human being is helplessly driven by the force of nature to perform some kind of action, for without acting man cannot live even for a moment." (Bhagavad Gita, 3:5).

In order to act decisively and successfully, Arjun needs to understand the fundamental nature of existence. Here Krishna starts with the most profound wisdom: The Self—the essence of each and every human being—is not subject to birth and death.  "Arjun, the Self, which pervades all beings in the universe, is an indestructible substance. No one has the power to destroy it"  (Bhagavad Gita, 2:17).

The Self is infinite, unchanging, eternal, unfathomable, and self-illuminating. It cannot be destroyed by even the mightiest of weapons, nor can it be burned by fire, made wet by water, or dried by the wind. It is not touched by the multitude of events that transpire in the world, but is rather like the space of the sky, which is vast and encompasses all, yet remains free. The Self is the inner essence of, and one and the same in all human beings, including the soldiers on both sides of the battle. Ultimately this Self is ineffable. Words can only point our thinking in the direction of a true understanding of the Self, but can never take us fully there. To proceed further we need meditation.

The mind is the vehicle that blocks our access to higher knowledge, yet at the same time it can be transformed to bring us to that knowledge. If we grant the mind and its thoughts too much importance, then we are subject to the ups and downs, happiness and suffering, worry and easiness that they produce. But if we can change our perspective and observe the mind, or somehow step back from it, then we can better understand its functioning. This allows us to ultimately become the master of the mind rather than remaining a victim to its whims.

Arjun realizes that he needs a still, tranquil, even mind in order to think clearly and see the way out of his current dilemma, but he also knows that the mind is "turbulent, powerful and obstinate" and "as difficult to control as the wind." What chance does a person with such a mind have of attaining success in meditation? In answer to this, Krishna reassures Arjun, telling him that, despite the mind's tenacity, it can be made as steady as a candle flame in a windless place that does not flicker even slightly.

Krishna advises Arjun, and thereby all of humanity, to achieve stillness of mind by practicing the proper technique of meditation: Sit in a clean, comfortable place, close your eyes, focus your attention and begin to perceive what happens. You will notice, he tells Arjun, that thoughts will come and go in the mind. There is nothing wrong with this. Meditation does not mean stopping the thoughts or forcibly trying to control the mind. It means observing the thoughts without becoming involved in them, just as you would listen to children playing in a nearby schoolyard, hearing them but not being disturbed by their chatter. You should put your attention on the Knower or Seer of the thoughts, which is at all times free and uninvolved. Stillness or tranquility means identifying with this Knower who is observing these thoughts. Then, whether they appear or not, you are not bound by them. The Knower is the indestructible Self, your inner being. By fixing your attention on the source, your consciousness becomes infinitely vast, encompassing all that there is. Then you will know the Self by the power of the Self, content in the existence of the Self alone.

As you meditate, you will perceive an inner space behind your closed eyelids. This space is the source from which the waves of the mind emanate. It is neither form nor formlessness; it is indivisible, absolute Brahm. Watch the Knower-space and remain alert throughout your meditation. Sometimes the mind will wander and your concentration will wane. Because of this, it is helpful to use a mantra to focus the mind. If you find that at some point you have lost focus of the mantra, this is not a problem. Simply return your attention to it and continue watching the inner space, knowing at all times that that space is you, your own true nature.

What happens to the yogi in meditation is poetically and beautifully described in verse 6:25 (my rendition):

The meditator should meditate with full faith in his practice and observe with alertness as peace and tranquility gradually settle in his being. He should know that his consciousness has become established in the Self through the power of that very same Self alone. All division will dissolve as he realizes that his thought power and perception are faculties of the field of Pure Consciousness. Nothing else exists but That [Self].

With a peaceful mind, you can solve problems more effectively. Your vision is not clouded. You can watch your thoughts more dispassionately. The practice of meditation leads to the highest bliss, the state of endless happiness. Your mind attains a state of serenity, stillness, and oneness which rests in the Self, knowing that the Self is perceiving itself by its own power. Even the deepest of sorrows do not touch you. Enjoying this state of inner stillness, you able to act skillfully and effectively in the world, knowing all the time that the Self is present in all beings and all beings exist in the Self.

Unless otherwise noted, quotations from the Bhagavad Gita are taken from Swami Shyam, Bhagavad Gita, International Meditation Center, 1985.

Glen Kezwer is the teacher of "The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita." a course on the educational Web site www.transformationmeditation.com, as well as the auhor of the book Meditation, Oneness, and Physics. He has practiced, written on, and taught meditation since the early 1980s. He can be contacted at  gkezwer@gmail.com.