The Gunas and Causation
Let me begin with a quote from Plutarch: "All becoming has two causes, of which the most ancient theologians and poets chose to turn their attention to the stronger only, pronouncing over all things the universal refrain: 'Zeus first, Zeus middle, all things Zeus', while they never approached the necessary or physical causes. Their successors, called Physikoi (the physicists), did the very reverse; they strayed away from the beautiful and divine principle and refer all things to bodies, and impacts, and changes, and combinations." I want to talk about both kinds of causation. Swami Ashokananda once said that Vedanta is like a great department store. There are all sorts of items for sale there, items to suit almost every need. You go; you buy what you need. It is not required that you buy everything in the store. But there are certain things that have been, in my opinion, dishonestly advertised, and I feel that the shelf displays need some touching up, and among those items which have been wrongly represented are the three Gunas and the Five Elements. But first I need to present the problem.
Suppose we just consider the present situation. You see somebody here, an embodied being, moving and talking, and the question is: Of what are these bodies made? Of what is all this made? Well, the chemists will give you a real quick answer. They are made of a very few ingredients. There are only about 92 things out of which this visible world is made, and these bodies are made of only a handful of those 92. Really not an awful lot of things; hydrogen and oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and a few other things in smaller amounts. Now where do they come from? They come from the stars. That is to say, all except hydrogen are derived from hydrogen in the bellies of the stars. Hydrogen falls together by gravity in a star like our sun — well, let’s take a larger star, not one like our sun. Let’s consider a larger star because the other chemical elements that get scattered around here, out of which these bodies are made, are not made in stars like our sun. Our sun will make helium out of hydrogen, and carbon out of helium, and that’s probably as far as it will go. But larger stars make a whole lot of other things, larger chemical nuclei up to the size of iron, and when the centers of those stars are iron, those centers collapse by gravity and the outer portions are blown away by the energy released in the collapse. Out of those things we are made, that is to say, out of those things our bodies are made, and all of those things were made out of hydrogen by what we call transformational causation. The hydrogen goes to helium, the helium goes to carbon, the carbon goes to oxygen then to neon, magnesium, and so forth, and all of this is transformational causation, and we understand it very well. It is governed by the conservation laws; for example, in any transformation, the energy at the end is never more than the energy at the beginning. But the hydrogen does not arise by transformational causation. It cannot arise by transformational causation. Hydrogen is made of energy, and energy cannot arise by the transformation of energy. Hydrogen is made of electrical particles, and those particles do not arise by the transformation of something else. The electrical particles fall together by gravity, and the gravity does not arise by transformational causation. And the electrical particles have inertia, and the inertia does not arise by transformational causation.
Now this, really, is the big problem in human knowledge. We have understood for a long time how transformational causation goes. We start with certain ingredients and end up with something else.
The sun begins as hydrogen and ends up as carbon. The great question is: How do the original ingredients arise? Now instead of taking the materials out of which all this is made, let’s take the energies. It’s obvious that I’m moving around, and my lips are moving. All this is done on some kind of energy. And when we look at the kind of energy, we find that it is chemical energy. It comes from eating. There’s a story on that. Swami Shantaswarupananda, when he first came to this country, wouldn’t eat well. He just ate the teeniest amounts, like Swami Pavitrananda, and I was supposed to feed him you see, and to see that his diet was properly nutritious, but he wouldn’t eat it. And so, Swami Ashokananda was upstairs to scold him one day and said, "All energy comes from food. Spiritual energy also comes from food. The more you eat, the more spiritual you are." (Laughter.) Well, this energy by which we move these bodies around is actually canned sunlight. It is chemical energy now. We get it by eating potatoes and wheat grains and corn and various other things and by drinking milk and by eating cows and chickens and various things, but the energy that they have comes from the sun. The energy changes from one form to another without any change in the amount. The plants hold out their hands and catch the sunlight. They pick up carbon dioxide with their hands, and water with their feet, and there are a few minerals thrown in, but that’s not where the energy comes from. The energy comes from the sun. So when we eat all those things, we oxidize them back to carbon dioxide and water. When the plants got them they were carbon dioxide, water and sunlight. After we’re through with them, they’re once again carbon dioxide and water, and we run around on the canned sunlight. So all this that you see moving here is moving on canned sunlight. Even these lights that burn here are burning on canned sunlight. The sun puts water up into the sky, we catch it in the mountains, run it down through those big turbines, and we cause the electrons to flow through these wires. But it’s canned sunlight. Now where does the sun get its energy? Now you see, we are tracing it back. We’re tracing it back to its source. It’s chemical energy here, that’s electromagnetic energy. But formerly it was radiational energy coming from the sun. Before that it was kinetic energy in the sun. The energy that the sun radiates away, in the state before it is radiated away, is kinetic energy. But how did the sun get its kinetic energy? How did it get so hot? It got hot by falling together by gravity. Now, once again, this is all transformational causation. We start with certain ingredients and end up with something else, something which looks very different, not by any change in the amount of energy but only by a change in form. From gravitational energy it goes to kinetic energy then to radiation then to electrical and magnetic energy and we move around. All this is transformational causation. The energy changes in form but not in amount, and these other forms of energy come from gravitational energy by this transformation. But the gravitational energy does not arise by transformation. Now there is the problem, you see. All the chemical elements besides hydrogen arise from hydrogen through this kind of causation, and all these other energies arise from gravitational energy by this kind of causation, but neither the hydrogen nor its gravitational energy can arise in that way.
Now these five kinds of energy that I just listed are the Five Great Elements of antiquity and they need to be properly dusted off and re-translated into English.* The present translation, which is probably in all the books on these premises, including the Sanskrit dictionary, has Akasha translated as ether. But the notion of ether left physics in 1905, and it is high time somebody noticed that and redid the translation. Ether will not do. There is no such animal. Now to translate that fine Sanskrit word as ether is, in my opinion, dishonest advertising. And if we are to be honest, in this department store of Vedanta, we should advertise the wares satisfactorily.
Now the notion that there are five great forms of energy is an old, old idea. In the Upanishads we find the statement that "From Brahman arises Akasha. From Akasha arises Vayu. From Vayu arises Tejas. From Tesas arises Ap and from Ap arises Prithivi." These are the Five Great Elements of antiquity, usually translated ether, air, fire, water and earth. You may skip all those translations. The first energy is gravitational energy. It goes to kinetic energy, that goes to radiation and that goes to electricity and magnetism, which were said to be twins. They really are twins. Those people had it straight — very, very straight — and a very long time ago. Now those five energies are said to be perceived by our five senses. Akasha is said to be perceived by the ear. The ear has three kinds of sensations and the oldest one, the saccule, senses our orientation in the gravitational field. Now in all our books, the first element will be translated as sound. But the universe does not arise from sound. Not only that, but sound arises by transformation and not by the first cause or Prakriti. By the first cause (from Brahman) Akasha arises. It is gravitational energy. From that arises an energy, Vayu, which is perceivable by the skin. That is kinetic energy. Temperature is a measure of kinetic energy. From that arises Tejas, 'that which shines'. It doesn’t mean fire, it means that which shines. It means radiation, some of which is perceivable by the eyes. From that arises Ap and Prithivi are electricity and magnetism, perceivable by the tongue and the nose. Protons taste sour. The raw ingredients of this universe, that is to say the heavy ones, the protons, the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms, taste sour. Nothing else in this universe tastes sour. So electricity is what we taste with the tongue. The nose perceives molecular configurations, and that’s a magnetic problem. That’s complicated and I’m not going to go into it, but the magnetic pairing of the electrons is what holds the molecules together; so the structures are really magnetic structures and those structures we perceive by the nose.
Now you see this is really our problem. We can trace the material of these bodies and the materials of all this stuff that we see with our eyes back to hydrogen. It is perfectly easy; we know all the details now. But we have no way to get the hydrogen, the original material. It cannot arise by transformational causation. And we can trace all these energies back to the energy of gravitation, but we have no origin for the energy of gravitation. We have no origin for the electrical particles which make up the hydrogen, no origin for gravitation and no origin for inertia. Now this problem, the problem of the first cause, was handled a long, long time ago by some physicists in Northern India, probably some 5,000 years ago. Probably somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 B.C., these things were thought out very carefully in North India - -but not by the Aryans. We think, you see, when we think of India that it has been inhabited by Aryans all along. That’s not so. This was done probably by the people who planted rice. Now the rice people, the people who invented the planting of rice, were in India long before the Aryans came, and there is another batch of people called the Pre-Aryans. They also came before the Aryans. So these old, old people, the Proto-Australoids, probably Rama’s people, were there some time around 3,000 B.C. planting rice, and apparently they invented this worship which we do with five ingredients — not the Aryans. It was much older than that, and they apparently discussed these different kinds of energies and noticed that there are five different kinds associated with our five senses of Perception. It is perfectly straight physics, perfectly straight astronomy. There’s only one other kind of energy that we know about in this universe and that is nuclear energy, but that’s a very different kind of energy; it has to do with the uncertainty principle. Ordinary energies are five, and we do perceive them with our five senses. Not only do we perceive them. Even one-celled organisms perceive them, and the atoms themselves perceive them, that is, the atoms themselves respond to these same five forms of energy. There’s no use saying, suppose we had another sense then the universe would appear differently — no, we have the right number now. That’s all the energies there are to see. We don’ t have to fool around with more dimensions, either. That’s not the problem.
The problem is to understand how this hydrogen arises, and it does not arise by transformational causation. Now the notions that are current in the minds of a people when their language becomes codified get embodied in the language, and Sanskrit was codified in India. It comes from that line of languages called the Indo-European languages, related to Greek and Latin and a whole lot of other languages, but Sanskrit was codified in India. The reason we know that is because of the animals that are associated with the early language. When you hear about peacocks and tigers you understand that you are in Bengal. You’re not in Greece; they didn’t have peacocks. (Laughter.) It’s the same as Little Black Sambo. You see, when I was a boy, I thought that Little Black Sambo was an African boy. It wasn’t until I was quite grown up that I noticed that he was associated with tigers and melted butter. Now tigers and melted butter are in India and Little Black Sambo is little black Shambhu. Shambhu is a name of Shiva, and it is not an African story at any time. You see I had to be quite grown up to notice this. We take things for granted. Now we know that the Sanskrit language was codified in India and in that language we now have those ideas from the Proto-Australoids who grew rice and did all these worships and studied the Five Elements and all those interesting things. What happened, apparently, was that the Aryans entered India, probably some time around 2,000 B.C., gradually fell deeply in love with what they found there when they came, put it into Sanskrit, and by diligent efforts of memory lasting several thousand years, they have passed it down to us. Some of it has been passed down so long that the meanings have been lost. For example, the entire Indian nation thinks that this universe arises from sound. But that is wrong. They’ve even designated the sound: it’ s Aum.
But the energies of this universe do not arise from sound. Sound arises by transformation. The energies of this universe are first gravitation, then kinetic energy, then radiation, electricity and magnetism. And the important point to notice is this — that the first cause, which we are here to discuss, gives rise to gravitational energy. That is, as the Upanishad says, "From Brahman arises Akasha." All the rest of the arisings are by transformation. But from Brahman to Akasha cannot be by transformation. Now those old notions were put into Sanskrit and passed down to us largely in the form of the Upanishads. There may be some older texts in the Vedas than the Upanishads, but mostly these things are passed down in the Upanishads. And later on, people had to see if they could systematize the teachings of the Upanishads and that’s where these famous six systems of philosophy arose — Sankhya and Yoga, Vaisheshika and Nyaya or Purva Mimamsa and Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta. All these things arose in an effort to put the teachings of the Upanishads in order. Those hooks are very disorderly. They consist of the blurtings of people who saw things — that’s all. "Na tatra suryo bhati na chandra tarakam . . . ." "Not there the Sun shines nor moon nor star, there the lightening does not flash, how could this fire? . . ." — like that. They are just simply sudden statements of somebody seeing something. "Those who know the high Brahman, the Vast, hidden in the bodies of all creatures and alone enveloping everything as the Lord, they become immortal. I know that great Purusha of sunlike lustre beyond the darkness. A man who knows Him truly passes over death, there is no other path to go." It does not sound like a school book. Nobody sat down there and tried to organize this stuff. They simply saw things, experienced things, and let them come out through the mouth, and somebody heard it and memorized it. Somebody heard it and, fortunately for us, memorized it and taught it to their children, and their children, and their children, for several thousand years. Now we have them printed up. They’re not in such danger of being lost. But whole hosts of those things got lost. Probably we have saved not more than a few percent of those things that those old Rishis said. We don’t even know who they were. We know something about what they saw and what they said.
Now Sankhya is considered to be the first systematization of those Upanishads, of the thoughts that have been passed down in the Upanishads. But the Sankhyans taught entirely transformational causation. They did not have the basic understanding by which they could even understand the language of the Upanishads I don’t like to insult people like this, but is a very important point. We are here talking about Gunas, and the whole notion of the Gunas is completely disconnected from transformational causation. It is probably wrong to think that the Sankhyans used the Gunas First. They occur in the Upanishads, and in their proper context, but in Sankhya they think of the Gunas as things and they do chemistry with them — a little bit of this and a little bit of that and we’ll make something; and a little bit of this and a little bit more of that and we’ll make something else. No! That is not what the Gunas are about. The Gunas are about some entirely different kind of causation. Now the Sankhyans say that Prakriti is the first cause. The word means first cause. It comes from Pra, first, and Kri, to do. And they say that the first cause is made of three Gunas. So far, they’re perfectly right. But what is the nature of this first cause? By what kind of causation can you get from Brahman to hydrogen dispersed in space and falling together in its gravitational field? You see, it is really a very hard thing to understand. From a completely formless, completely changeless, infinite, undivided Brahman, you get what we see. Quite a bit divided — divided into atoms. Quite a bit finite — teeny, weeny electrical particles. And quite a bit active — falling together by gravity into galaxies and stars. Now you see, when we say that Brahman is changeless, we say it because we see things in time. And what we mean is that Brahman is not in time. And when we say that Brahman is infinite, we mean that it’s not in space. What we see is in space.
Now this business of seeing things in space and time is wrong. We know it now from our physics. Since 1905 we have gradually come to understand, even from our physics, that the notion of seeing things away from us in space and backwards in time is wrong. The universe appears in such a way that we see the whole thing in the past. We cannot see anything when it happens. It is only by seeing events late that we are able to see them away from us. The equation of separation in Einstein’s relativity theory puts the separation between the perceiver and the perceived at zero. We see events away from us in space by a trick — we see them backwards in time. And if you’re talking about an event of your perception, and the event that that event perceives, then the separation between those two events is zero. Suppose you see a flash of light from a star. We’ll call that an event. And your perception of that event we’ll call the second event. The separation between those two events is zero. If you can see the event there-then from the event here-now then the separation between those two events is zero, because in that case, always, the distance away is exactly balanced by the time in the past. And, because space and time are opposites, if the distance away is exactly equal to the time in the past, the total separation is zero. If the money you put into the bank is exactly equal to the money which you take out of the bank, then the change in your bank balance is zero. If the number of positive electrical charges which you have in a box is exactly balanced by the number of negative electrical charges which you have in that same box, then the total electrical charge on that box is zero. That’s what we mean by opposites, two things that are identical and yet in some sense opposite, so that if you have the same amount of both it’s like having none of either. Now space and time are opposites in that sense. They’re both dimensions and they both come into the equation of separation. Relativity theory has pointed out in completely unambiguous terms that a distance in space is not a real thing. It’s not objective. People disagree on distances in space according to how fast they’re going by. And lengths of time are also not objective. There’s no such thing as an hour. What you call an hour and what an astronaut flying by in a spaceship at a speed close to the speed of light will call an hour are very different things. What relativity theory pointed out is that it’s the combination of space and time which has some semblance of objectivity. If you want to see the universe as objective, that is to say, as independent of the observers, then you must see it in four dimensions — three dimensions of space (right and left, front and back, up and down, perpendicular to each other) and one dimension of time. Now the equations say that space and time are opposites in that very interesting sense; so that between two events, say between here-now and there-then, if the distance between here and there is equal to the time between now and then, then the total separation between the event here-now and the event there-then is zero. It’s a very important point because every event that you see, you see as away from you in space and backwards in time, and in every instance the distance is equal to the time so that the total separation, the four-dimensional separation, the objective separation, between the perceiver and the perceived goes to zero. Now if we ask what is behind this, if we ask, from our physics, what is behind what we see, then it says right away that what is behind it is beyond space and beyond time. That is what we mean when we say undivided, infinite and changeless. Undivided means that it couldn’t be in space. With space you can see things as divided. Without space you cannot see them as divided. With space you can see things as small. Without space you cannot see them as small. With time you can see things as changing. Without time you cannot see things as changing. Now when we say that the nature of the reality is infinite, we don’t mean that it’s bigger than space. (Laughter) We mean that it has nothing to do with space. Space is simply a mistake in our perception. And when we say that the nature of the reality is eternal, we don’t mean that it lasts longer than time. What we mean is that the reality is completely devoid of our concepts of space and time. So when we go to describe the reality, Brahman, we find it is totally indescribable, so we grope. From the standpoint of space and time we point the finger. We say if- it’s beyond space it’s undivided. If it’s beyond space it’s infinite. And if it’s beyond time it’s changeless.
That much description of Brahman we can get from physics — that what is behind this universe of physics is changeless, infinite and undivided. Now we see it as divided — very finely divided into atoms, and nobody ever understood why. And we see it squeezed down to these minute electrical particles and nobody ever understood why. Einstein said, "We cannot understand, theoretically, why matter should appear as discrete electrical particles." And we see this thing as changing, and, once again, no one ever understood why. By no one, here, I mean no modern physicist has ever understood why what we see should be divided into atoms, made of discrete electrical particles, moving, falling together by gravity, and yet resisting every change in its state of motion. You see how crazy it is. It wants to fall together by gravity, it wants to fly apart by electricity, and it wants to remain totally stationary. (Laughter.) Well, you laugh, but you’re no different. We do exactly the same thing. We want to be totally in love, totally free, and totally alone. (Laughter.) We fall in love; we get married. Then we find that our freedom is gone, and we want out. And once again we’re lonely. And we want in, and we get out, and all the time we say, "Leave me alone!" The universe is made out of frustration. There is nothing accidental about it. It is made out of frustration because we see the universe by a mistake. We see it as in space and time by a trick — by a mistake. Now those old people, either the Mohenjo-Daro people or, more likely, the earlier Proto-Australoids, probably had this figured out. We don’t know how long ago it was figured out that this whole thing is seen by a mistake. The kind of causation by which we see this thing is a causation by mistake — what we call apparitional causation — the kind of thing that you do when you mistake a rope for a snake. Nothing happens to the rope. But when you mistake a rope for a snake, three things are necessary. First, you fail to see rope rightly. This is the veiling power of Tamas. Secondly, you see the rope as something else. Now this else is the projecting power of Rajas. And then, thirdly, you saw the rope in the first place, otherwise you could not have mistaken it for a snake. You didn’t mistake some other thing for the snake. You mistook the rope for the snake, because you saw the rope. This is the revealing power of Sattva. The mistake is not made at midnight and it is not made at noon. In the Sanskrit books it is specified that it is done in the twilight, as probably you are all aware. Why? Because you do have to see the rope, but you mustn’t see it rightly. Now the veiling power of Tamas, the projecting power of Rajas, and the revealing power of Sattva — that is where the notion of the Gunas arises, in connection with the first cause, Prakriti, or Maya. The Vedantins say that Maya is made of three Gunas. The Sankhyans say that Prakriti, the first cause, is made of three Gunas. But the notion of the three Gunas arises here, and not in transformational causation. Sankhya took the whole thing the wrong way. They went all the way down through their entire cosmology building everything out of the Gunas. Nothing is built out of a Guna. Nowadays you find in most of the Sanskrit literature that Rajas is activity. No. There is no mention in the Sanskrit dictionary of any activity in relation to Rajas. It is an impurity, the notion of an impurity, like smog. If you’re talking about the sky, smog is there, that is Rajas. If you’re talking about a field and it’s all grown with grass that’s fine but if you plow it and make it all dusty that has to do with Rajas. If you have nice, clear water that’s fine, but if you put something in it, that’s Rajas. It’s an impurity. - It’s seeing something else. I even hear such extravagant notions as matter is Tamas, energy is Rajas and consciousness is Sattva. Erase! Erase! No such animal. Matter is made out of energy. Matter is energy. We learned that from relativity theory. There are not two different things called matter and energy. It is just, once again, a mistake in our perception. So there’s no use trying to use the Gunas for things like that. The Gunas arise in apparitional causation. When you mistake one thing for another, you fail to see the thing rightly because of the veiling power of Tamas. You jump to a wrong conclusion because of the projecting power of Rajas. But first of all you did see the thing, by the revealing power of Sattva. For instance, if you mistake a rope for a snake, you do see the length and diameter of the rope, but you see it as the length and diameter of a snake. Now the curious thing is this, that if you mistake the changeless, the infinite, the undivided for the changing, the finite and the divided, you had to see the changeless, the infinite, the undivided first, last and always. Because really there is nothing else to see. And the changeless, the infinite, the undivided has to show up in our hydrogen, just as the length and diameter of the rope must show up in the snake. If you see the reality as divided into atoms, the atoms will all come back together like a stretched rubber band, by gravity. Gravity is the undividedness seen in the divided. Electricity is the infinitude seen in the finite. Inertia is the changelessness seen in the changing. The more squeezed down into tiny electrical particles you see it, the more electrical energy those particles will have. The more spaced out those particles appear, the more gravitational energy those particles will have. And, finally, the faster you see the particles moving, the more inertia they will appear to have. Now this is what the universe consists of. We see it as divided into atoms but falling together by gravity. The undividedness has been seen. We see this as made of minute particles and yet every one of them is electrical; it wants to become infinite. As Swami Vivekananda said, "The whole universe is not big enough for even one particle." Everything tends toward infinite dispersion. Everything tends toward infinite condensation, and everything tends to resist every change in its state of motion. Now everything in the universe runs toward the changeless, toward the infinite, toward the undivided. There are no other goals. There is no mechanical universe driven from behind. No. The whole thing is driven from the front. Hydrogen is driven toward all other hydrogen in the universe because the reality is undivided. The electrical particles are driven toward infinite expansion because the reality is infinite. And all matter is driven toward resisting every change in its state of motion because the reality is changeless. Now hydrogen atoms are very direct. If you let them go, they’ll fall straight toward the closest blob of matter — no fooling around. (Not that anything comes of it. Nothing reaches the goal through transformational causation.) But unlike the hydrogen, we are indirect. We have egos which are genetically invented and genetically misprogrammed to run in roundabout ways. We run after the undivided, the infinite and the changeless, not by directly falling to the ground and such things, but instead we run at the dictates of the genes to undertake transformational actions --actions by transformational causation — to do the bidding of the genes. That is, we do actions which give rise to viable offspring. We are programmed that way. The whole notion that this is a building, that these are lamps — these are genetic notions. Our ego itself is genetic and the programming of the ego is genetic. We are identified with a piece of matter called the body, and the whole thing goes on from there. But you see, it is not possible to get anything out of it. It’s made out of frustration, and you can never get anything out of it. If we had gotten into this dilemma by transformational causation, we could get out by transformational causation. If we had gotten into this by walking too slowly, we could get out by walking a little faster. We didn’t get in by walking. If we’d gotten into this by talking naughty things, we could get out by sweet talk. We didn’t get into this by talking. We didn’t get into this by any action whatsoever. All actions are transformational in nature and they arise only within the domain of the apparition.
Now this kind of causation that we’re talking about now, this apparitional causation, is called, in Sanskrit, Vivarta. That means you mistook one thing for another. Nothing happened to it. Nothing has happened. You’re still perfectly good. Nothing has happened. The other kind of causation which we’ve been talking about, transformational causation, is called, in Sanskrit, Parinama. Now the Sankhyans were Parinama-vadins; they believed in transformational causation. The Advaita Vedantins are Vivarta-vadins. They believe that the first cause is apparitional. After that, you can do whatever you like. (Laughter.) But the first cause is apparitional. Nothing has happened. Nothing whatsoever. That’s why Advaita Vedanta has this notion of Anatavada, complete non-birth. No birth has happened. Nothing has happened. Now you see the problem. Since we are genetically programmed, the problem is to countercheat the genes. The genes have us programmed to run after the undivided in a way which will never beat fruit. It bears offspring, but it will never get you to the undivided. The genes have us programmed to run toward these three goals through transformational causation, and the whole thing is just as frustrating as trying to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. You’ll never get it done, you see. The whole universe is like that. We are programmed to run in wrong directions. You see even the hydrogen can’t get it, and it’s not even misprogrammed. But through space and time it is not possible, by transformational causation, to reach that which is beyond space and time. So our problem is to countercheat the genes. Essentially there are two ways. Either re-direct the genes or tell them to go to blazes. Just don’t cooperate. Just tell them to go to, and simply discriminate between the real and the transient. You remember the Vedantins say that there are four things that you have to have if you’re going to succeed. "Nityanitya vastu viveka", discrimination between the real and the transient. "Ihamutra phalabhogaviraga," renunciation of the enjoyment of the fruits of action. Then there are the six treasures and, finally, Mumukshutvam, or the yearning for liberation. "Ihamutra phalabhogaviraga," renunciation of the fruits of action. You see what that means? Don’t get caught in transformational causation! Fruits of action means you did something by transformational causation and you want something back. You wait for the mailman. (Laughter.) You wrote a letter and now you wait for the mailman. Don’t wait for the mailman! If you don’t expect anything, you’re out. It’s nice and simple. We sit around here waiting for mailmen. Okay? That’s what the game is. You do something and wait for the fruits. So, "Ihamutra phalabhogaviraga" means, don’t wait for any fruits. That’s what keeps you here. Expectation keeps you here. Nothing else keeps you here. We’ve got the wool pulled over our own eyes and we hang onto it tightly. Someone would have to cut off our hands to get the wool off our eyes, we hang onto it so tightly. So there are four things. First, discrimination between the real and the unreal. We got into it by an indiscrimination, we get out by discrimination, not by action. Second, we have to give up the notion that we’re going to get out by action. You seer we have mistaken the rope for the snake and become snake fanciers. First is to discriminate between the rose and the snake. Second is to cease being snake fanciers. Then the next problem is the mind. It’s going to be done by the mind. It’s not going to be done by somebody else, like your hands or your feet. So you have to have the mind in good shape. Therefore, the third is these "six treasures." You’ve got to be able to control you senses and keep them under control, you’ve got to be able to put up with heat and cold and the faults of others — all these things — and you have to have Shraddha, this tremendous enthusiasm that you’re going to get the job done. It’s translated as faith, but faith is not a very good translation of Shraddha. It means a tremendous spiritual enthusiasm that you’re going to get the job done now. Fourth, and finally, you have to have Mumukshutvam. That is to say, yearning for liberation.
Now if you look carefully, you’ll find that these four things are your four Yogas. Jnana Yoga is the discrimination between the real and the unreal. Karma Yoga is doing your actions in such a way that you don’t wait for the mailman. Raja Yoga is control of the mind -- that’s your instrument, that’s the boat in which you’re going to cross the sea; keep it caulked. And Mumukshutvam, yearning for the reality, that’s Bhakti Yoga. You see, it doesn’t matter how you look at this, they’re always saying the same thing. Whether they speak of these four things that you have to do as part of Jnana Yoga, or whether they speak of the four Yogas, you see that all the four Yogas are there. It doesn’t matter, you see, what way you look at it, we got into this by an indiscrimination; we’ll get out by discrimination. Now in Bhakti Yoga what we do is to countercheat the genes. If you like to pick flowers, you don’t pick them for corsages. You offer them in the worship. If you like to cook, you offer it in the worship. All of the things that you do, you offer in the worship. You see, that is countercheating the genes. Worship, rightly done, is simply a countercheating device for channelling your actions toward discrimination. The actions which you do in the worship couldn’t possibly bear fruit. The genes have us persuaded to run after things through transformational causation. Your trick is to countercheat back and do those same actions that are dictated by the genes in such a way that they do not get the genetic job done but contribute, instead, toward your discrimination. Well, what else is there more to say? If we had gotten into this by transformation, we could get out by transformation. We got in by apparition, we’ll get out by undoing the apparition. But this notion of the Gunas, you see, arises there. It would never have arisen in transformational causation. So if, by any chance, you think, or sometimes read, that the Sankhyans invented the notion of the Gunas — no. They not only did not invent the notion of the Gunas — they never had a handle on it. It’s the Advaita Vedantins that have it. Now I myself am very fond of cartography. I myself feel that if I’ll told how I got into this, I’ll know what to do about it. I like to know how I got where I am. Once there was a lady in a store, and she asked the clerk if he could please help her out. And he said, "Certainly, Madam, how did you get in?" (Laughter.) If you tell me how you got in, I’ll tell you how to get out. But we have to understand, you see, that through transformational causation we didn’t get in, we don’t get out. Now not only is there no action by which you could get out, but there’s also no action by which you could get in. One place in the Upanishad, it says, about a man of realization, "Such thoughts certainly do not distress him, why I did not do the right, why I did what is sinful." In another place it says, "If the killer thinks that he is killing, or the killed that he is killed, neither of them knows. That neither kills nor it is killed." The reality behind this is completely beyond space and time. Our whole notion of seeing a universe within space and time is simply a mistake.
Dehabhisane galite vijnate paramatmani Yatra, yatra manoyati, tatra, tatra sanadhayah
"When body-consciousness has melted away, and the Supreme Self has been realised, Where, where the mind is sent, there, there it gets Samadhi."
*Akasha, usually translated as ether, is the gravitational energy of matter dispersed in space. The word also means space. The gravitational energy is in the space of the dispersion. Our orientation in the gravitational field is perceived, through the saccule in the ear.
Vayu, usually translated as air, is kinetic energy. dispersed in space, falls together by energy is converted to kinetic energy. as temperature, through the skin.
Tejas, usually translated as fire, is that which shines. The excess kinetic energy (heat energy) of a condensing star is lost to the surrounding space as the energy of its radiation. It is radiation which is perceived through the eye. Ap and Prithivi, usually translated as water and earth, are electricity and magnetism.
The presiding deities of Ap and Prithivi were said to be twins. Electricity and magnetism go together. You cannot have one without the other. Electricity and magnetism are perceived through the tongue and the nose. Protons taste sour, and the molecular configurations perceived through the nose are magnetic.