February Verses - 3.28

I said I had some thoughts on this verse. And I do.
Hopefully I'll be able to express them.

Here's the verse:

28. But those who know the truth, O Arjuna, understand the relationship between the gunas and action, and are not attached.

Or from Mascaro:

28. But the man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions, sees how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and becomes not their slave.

We'll have to excuse the 'man' references. Genderless pronouns are not very comfortable in the English language.

So, 'the man who knows the relation beween the gunas and action'.

This is quite strong stuff. In these two verses (this and verse 27) is the denial of free will, and the statement that it is the belief in free will that causes suffering (attachment).

"the man lost in selfish delusion thinks that he himself is the actor"

So says verse 27. So, to believe oneself the actor is delusional. But, if I am not the actor, then what is the actor?

in fact all actions are carried out by the [...] qualities of nature.

All actions are carried out by the qualities of nature. Not by me.

...some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature...

So, action, or change, is just forces of nature acting upon each other. No mention of conscious decision. Because, from the perspective of the Gita, so called conscious decision is just another action. And so it comes about by the acting of forces of Nature upon one another.

In other words, there is no conscious decision. A 'decision' is just a consequence of the interacting forces of Nature. The idea that we can decide anything, is delusional. The idea that we act.

So all of existence, including our own actions, and the delusion that we ourselves take those actions, is merely the ebb and flow of cause and effect. It is the eddying of the flow of karma.

And it is by not realising this that we become involved in the world. We believe we are making our own decisions, and we believe we are making our actions, and when things turn out other than we expect, we get unhappy. And when things go as we wish, we get happy. We either become attached to what is, or we become attached to what is not.

If, on the other hand, we see material existence as simply the interplay of the forces of nature, and we understand that we (or what we perceive as 'we') are just a leaf floating on the eddies of karma, then we can avoid attachment. We can float through life without being battered against the rocks.

So we don't change anything by our actions. Because our actions are not our actions. Whatever we do, no matter how much we agonise over it, that's what was always going to happen, and he only thing we achieved by agonising over the decision was the creation of agony. Or rather, the illusion of agony, in our illusory minds.

The Bhagavad Gita needs a word. Unfortunately, the word was not invented until about 1960. That word is 'grock'. Grock is a martian word.

The Gita says:

28. But those who know the truth, O Arjuna, understand the relationship between the gunas and action, and are not attached.

Well, I know that truth. But I'm not liberated. But that's because the Gita meant to say 'those who grock the truth'.

Robert Heinlein invented the work grock. It means to know. Not just to know, but to REALLY know. To have something so fundamentally in your knowingness that it goes beyond mere knowing, and is fundamental to your truth.

For example, I am Phil Lewis. I grock that completely. There is nothing anyone can say or do to convince me I am actually someone else. I breathed in just now. I don't just know that: I grock it. It's so fundamentally true to me, that the knowing that I just inhaled goes beyond mere knowing.

And that's how we get free. Not by merely knowing that we are leaves on the wind of karma, but by grocking it.

Baba Neeb Karori grocked it. He grocked it in public.

So, one day in the morning, he told the people at the house where he was staying to prepare dinner for an extra 18 people.

In the afternoon, Ram Dass and his party were driving along, and they had to decide. Should they go straight to Maharaji (who nobody had told they were coming), or should they divert to Khumb Mela. In the late afternoon, they made their decision. They went straight to Baba. They were all astounded (as were the hosts) when the amount of food prepared was perfect, and the 18 people in the bus arrived just as it was being served.

But it's very simple to explain. Nobody decided to skip visiting Khumb Mela. Nobody decided to go straight to Maharaji. They always were going to Maharaji, and there was no decision to be made.