What is Dhruva? That which is ever-fixed, which is a certainty, that which undergoes no metamorphosis, no change, is called dhruva. That is, dhruva is that which is not subject to mutation or decay, which does not change its position, which does not deviate from its original stance.

All the objects of this universe – crude and subtle, physical and psychic – are always on the move, there is an inherent dynamism in them. This universe originates under the eternal inspiration of Kaośikii Shakti and the constant impetus of Bhaeravii Shakti.⁽¹⁾ Hence every object of this quinquelemental world is always moving, mobile. Everything is basically dynamic, nothing can be static. Whether microcosmic minds like it or not, they will have to keep moving – mobility is a universal phenomenon. And for the entities that reside within the scope of time, place and person, staticity means annihilation. Hence movement, or mobility, is essential, movement is a must.⁽²⁾

The beauty that is writ large on the sweating body of a person who is on the move, has no comparison. Even Indra, the king of the gods, longs to have such a person as his companion. He prefers to move in step with such an industrious person. Therefore, O human beings, move on.

Since movement is the very characteristic of the universe, a person who will move as much as he or she can is destined to be victorious. As long as a person keeps lying in the darkness of delusion, that person’s fortune also continues to lie asleep. When the person sits up, the person’s fortune also sits up. When the person stands, his or her fortune also stands. And when the person starts moving, his or her fortune also starts moving. Therefore, O human beings, move on, move on.

As long as a human being lies inert in staticity, that is, remains engrossed in the worship of mundane things, it is said to be the Kali Yuga of that person’s life. When on waking from sleep the person realizes that he or she has to get up, this awakening or awareness is compared to Dvápara Yuga in his or her life. When the person gets up from bed, about to start moving, that is compared to Tretá Yuga in his or her life. And when he or she starts moving, he or she is said to be entering into Satya Yuga.⁽³⁾ O human beings, move on.

Hence moving ahead is the dharma of time, is the dharma of yugas, is the dharma as well of place and person. As everything in this universe is moving ceaselessly, this world is called jagat. The root verb gam plus the suffix kvip make up the word jagat, which literally means “that whose very characteristic is constant mobility”. A synonym is saḿsára, which is derived sam – sr + ghaiṋ. Saḿsára also means “that entity whose very characteristic is relentless or unceasing movement”.

As everything in this universe is always in a state of motion, nothing is dhruva, everything is adhruva. Even what we call the dhruvatárá [polestar] is not dhruva, because it is not really fixed. Thus this entire creation is adhruva. The only entity which is dhruva is Parama Puruśa, who is the creator of this dynamic creation. Whatever you witness in this universe is only that aspect of the creation which is within the scope of time, place, and person, that is, within the three strands of relativity. The only entity which remains beyond time, place, and person, is the impersonal entity Parama Puruśa.

Whichever way we look, we see only the external dynamism of everything, and as we witness this external dynamism, we feel pleasure when we get something, we feel pain when we lose something. If we try to discover the ultimate reality hidden within the apparent reality, we shall feel neither the momentary pleasure of gain in the mundane world, nor the sorrow of loss in the mundane world. The Supreme Entity which is neither to be obtained nor to be lost will remain always with us, and we shall remain absorbed in the eternal bliss of the companionship of that Supreme Entity. Now, this unmoving Entity alone is dhruva; all other entities, all of whom are searching for that Supreme Entity, are adhruva.

Now the question arises why all persons do not attain this dhruva entity. The answer is, in order to attain this dhruva entity, three things are required – jiṋána [knowledge], bhakti [devotion] and karma [action].

Jiṋána – Understanding

Suppose you see ice floating on sea water. If you look at the situation from the analytical point of view, you will say that ice is floating on water. But if you look from the synthetic point of view, you will say that water and ice are basically the same. Both are made from hydrogen monoxide. So knowledge is a necessity. And how do people attain knowledge about different entities?

First, there is some difference between knowing and understanding. Whatever information regarding some object we gather through the medium of the sense organs is what we “know” about that object. But when the basic or ultimate nature of the object is fully subjectivized, then we “understand” the object. When you ask somebody if they know Mr. So-and-so, they will say, “Yes, I know him” – but it may not be so easy to understand Mr. So-and-so. To understand that man, one will have to enter into his mind. So when human beings try to get some object under the guidance of their external propensities, the result of that sort of endeavour will be an instance of simple knowing, nothing more than that. The sense organs will move in an external direction, and what they will sense in the external world will all be adhruva.

Now we know from above that if the indriyas [sensory and motor organs] run after external mobile objectivities, it follows that they are running after adhruva objects of the world. They will utterly fail to attain the Dhruvasattá [Unchangeable Entity]. When you look at a big star, since that star is a moving object, you will not get the unmoving Supreme Entity. You will get the moving star, but you will simply know it, you will not understand it.

To know the dhruva we have to merge the indriyas into the citta [objective mind]. That is, the indriyas should move inwardly, not outwardly – should be introverted, not extroverted – and in the process of introversion, all the faculties of the different indriyas will be merged in the citta. Because if the indriyas move inwardly, they will find only one thing. If externalized, the indriyas will find the diversified world, but if internalized, the indriyas will find only citta and no second entity.

There are some people who have the mistaken notion that when the indriyas are internalized and directed towards the citta, that may lead to the death of the indriyas, because the very nature of the indriyas is to associate with the outer world. This is a defective idea. True, the indriyas always need some kind of object. But if, for example, the eyes do not perceive a physical elephant in the outer world, they may visualize an internal elephant – that is also a kind of object for them. So in any case there is an object.

When indriyas are engaged with an external object, they lose their own identity. For instance, when our eyes see an elephant in the external world, the [tanmátras, or inferential vibrations] from the physical elephant strike the optical nerves, and as soon as the optical nerves become vibrated in this way, their original nature becomes lost to some extent. The vibrations of the optical nerves become nothing but the reflected [inferential vibrations] coming from the elephant in the outer world. Likewise, when the indriyas are engaged with the objects of one’s internal world, they become vibrated with the vibrations of the internal objects. It can be compared to a railway engine being placed in the rear instead of in front. So the indriyas get merged in the citta, and at the next step the citta becomes merged in the ahaḿtattva, the “I do” feeling. Thereafter the ahaḿtattva will become merged in the [mahattattva, or] existential “I” feeling, and the mahattattva, the existential “I”, will merge in the átmá [pure cognition]. This is átmajiṋána [self-knowledge]. In order to attain this self-knowledge, one is simply to divert the extroversial movement of the indriyas towards the inner world.

Thus when, in the process of introversion, all the faculties of the indriyas become pinnacled to their last point, the realm of the citta begins. Similarly, all the faculties of the citta will also get pinnacled or apexed, and that will be the last point of the citta, as it merges into the ahaḿtattva.

All the faculties of the ahaḿtattva will reach their last point, and the mahattattva will begin. In the same way the pinnacled mahattattva, or “I” feeling, will reach its last point and merge in the átmá. The last point of the mahattattva is called the agryábuddhi [pointed intellect]. Through this pointed intellect, spiritual aspirants can come in closest proximity to Iishvara [the Supreme Entity as Controller]. That is, human beings attain Iishvara through their pointed intellect. Iishvara means the Dhruvasattá [the Unchangeable Entity]. As the indriyas run after external objects, they virtually run after the adhruva; to attain the Dhruvasattá, people will have to move inward.

So in Sanskrit, an object which the indriyas find in the outer world is called viśaya (which may also mean “place” or “country”). And the object which the indriyas attain in the final process of introversion is called aviśaya. There is only one aviśaya, and that is Paramátmá, the Dhruvasattá. Thus in the scriptures it has been said,

Eśa sarveśu bhúteśu gúd́ho
Átmá ná prakáshate;
Drshyate tvagryayá buddhyá
Súkśmayá súkśmadarshibhih.

[In all objects the Supreme Entity lies covert; usually It is not visible from outside. Only by dint of subtle pointed intellect can one visualize It.]

When human beings channelize all their indriyas extroversially only, and want only to see, taste, smell, eat or drink things, they will never attain the Dhruvasattá.

If ever a person decides that he or she wants to see the Supreme Entity with open eyes, this is based on a mistake. He or she will have to look within. If a person has not tried to introvert the extroversial propensities of the indriyas, he or she will never attain the Supreme Entity. So the question naturally arises, who is in fact capable of knowing the Supreme Entity? The answer is, the one who moves introversially and develops his or her pointed intellect. Only through that pointed intellect can one hope to attain Iishvara. Therefore spiritual practice is nothing but a sustained endeavour to develop that pointed intellect.

Those who are lacking in proper philosophical knowledge may think that once the extroversial tendency in life is curbed, human life may be difficult to live. This is also a defective notion. Even certain ancient rśis [sages] made some wrong statements which have caused harm to society. I will give you an example. There is a shloka in the Upanishads,

Paráinci kháni vyatrńat Svayambhústasmát
Paráun pashyati nántarátman;
Kashciddhiirah Pratyagátmánamaekśad
Ávrttacakśuramrtatvamicchan.

[It seems that the Self-Created Lord has killed the extroversial indriyas. They run after external objects, not the internal One. Only those wise persons who seek immortality, withdraw their senses from external objects and realize the Supreme Entity lying covert within.]

The shloka argues that the indriyas, as a general rule, have a natural tendency to move outwards, whereas to attain Iishvara the indriyas must move inwardly. From this it may appear that Svayambhú, the “Self-Created” Lord, the Supreme Entity, does not at all like the indriyas. That is, that in evolved human beings the indriyas should be annihilated – that this is what Svayambhú wants. But this is not true. The underlying spirit [of the shloka] is that the indriyas should move inwardly, not outwardly, as I already explained.

Mortality and Immortality

But those who want amrtatva [immortality], what will they do? They will just reverse the movement of their indriyas. A question may be asked here: what is amrtatva? But before that we should explain what marańa [mortality, death] is.

Marańa means change. Death is nothing but a change. A five-year-old child is transformed in due course into a fifteen-year-old boy. In ten years the child becomes the boy. Thereafter you will never be able to find the body of the five-year-old child. So the child’s body has certainly died. So marańa means change. Because of the physical transformation, the earlier body has become difficult to trace. Likewise, after another ten years, the boy will be transformed into a youth; after some time more, the same youth will become a middle-aged man. And still later he will become an old, infirm man. The same one entity has moved through a series of transformations, and in the process every earlier form has undergone change, metamorphosis, some kind of death. When finally the physical body of the old man undergoes a still more radical transformation, he will be reborn as a new baby. This stage of radical transformation we call death. The previous changes we did not consider death, because we could link the earlier stages to the later stages. We could say that the fifteen-year-old adolescent had grown up into a twenty-five-year-old youth. We could find the link. But when an old, infirm gentleman becomes reborn as a child, we cannot find the link. That is why we give the last change of the body of the old man the name “death”. The rest of the changes we do not call death; but in fact all the changes qualify as death.

And this is not all. You know what death is; death means the total cessation of all the vibrations of the human body. The heart has ceased to function, the lungs have ceased to function; the veins, the arteries, in fact every organ of the physical body, has stopped functioning, pulsating, vibrating. Every organ has stopped vibrating. The afferent nerves and efferent nerves have stopped receiving any order or sensation. This is a kind of pause, which in common parlance may be called death.

But if it is considered death, then we will come to see that human beings are dying every day, many times a day. All the movements taking place in us in life – movements in nerves, veins, arteries, the brain – are always systaltic. That is, speed is followed by pause, which again is followed by speed. The movement is not continuous.

When you walk along a road you never walk ceaselessly. While you lift one foot, the other foot is on the ground. There is a slight gap between the placing of one foot on the ground and the lifting of the other foot. There is a time gap between the two. During that intervening period you remain in a motionless state. Thus while you are walking you are not walking all the time. Similarly, when you are running, you are not running all the time. You are running and pausing, running and pausing. When both your feet touch the ground, that is a state of motionlessness. And if not for a similar brief motionlessness, nobody could hop on one foot. When we see somebody hopping on one foot, we will see that after that foot has come down, there is a pause before it comes up again. So no motion is unbroken. It is always broken by certain gaps.

In the case of respiration also, after human beings inhale, they do not immediately exhale. They retain the breath inside for a while, and then they exhale. Similarly, after exhaling, they do not immediately inhale. They stop for a little while, and then only do they inhale. So in both cases there is a pause for a short while. The first pause, after inhalation, is called púrńa kumbhaka, and the second pause, after exhalation, is called shúnya kumbhaka. These are states of pause, not of speed. A state of pause is nothing but a state of death, because in that state of pause every function is suspended, every vibration is suspended. At that time the vibrations of all objects of this universe remain in you in seed form, but not yet fully accepted or assimilated. The vibrations have no doubt reached you in seed form, but the understanding of them, that is, the acceptance of them, will come later.

Every day, every human being dies approximately twenty-four thousand times. The breath is taken in but not released, then it is released but not taken in. So everyone dies about twenty-four thousand times a day. But in what we actually call death, what happens is that once the breath has been released, it comes back again after an interval of one year, or one month, or one day, or one hundred thousand years – instead of one second. This is the only difference. So death means a kind of change. And through the extroversial movement of the indriyas we perceive only that world which is changeable.

But those who want to realize the unchangeable, the immortal, must transcend these winds of change. Only the Entity which undergoes no change is the immortal Entity. In philosophy we know that any object coming within the scope of relativity, that is, within the scope of time, place, and person, is subject to change. What is the Entity which is beyond the scope of time, place, and person? That Entity is Paramátmá. So except for Paramátmá, all objects of this universe are mortal. So to be established in immortality, what will one have to do? One will have to awaken one’s pointed intellect, and in due course that awakened pointed intellect will merge into Supreme Consciousness, Parama Caetanya. This is the state of attainment of immortality. And one who attempts to attain this supreme immortal stance is called a dhiira. Dhiira means one who introverts his or her indriyas for the purpose of attaining the highest goal. Dhiiras are the only really intelligent people, not others.

Freedom from Saḿsára and the Death Noose

It has been said in the scriptures,

Krśńa nám Harinám baŕai madhur;
Ye jan Krśńa báje, se baŕa catur.

–Narottamdas

[The name of the Supreme Lord is very sweet, very elevating. Those who take His holy name are very clever indeed.]

Those who take the name of the Lord are really intelligent and clever, because thereby they accelerate the speed of their spiritual progress. Those who do not do so, continue to move in the vicious circle of lives and deaths. This cyclical order of movement from life to death to life again is called the saḿsára cakra.

Atha dhiirá amrtatvaḿ viditvá
Dhruvamadhruveśviha na prárthayante.

[Wise persons, knowing the path of immortality, seek only the dhruva – not the adhruva – entities.]

What will be the fate of a person who directs all his psychic propensities towards crude materiality? He or she will be caught again and again in the serpentine noose of death. According to the scriptures, the mrtyupásha [death noose] consists of three-and-a-half coils.

The first occurs just after birth. The baby has undergone great trouble in its mother’s womb. As its birth approaches, it becomes more and more anxious in its heart to get out. And when it finally does issue forth and experiences the light and air of the world, its reaction on the one hand is, “Ah, I’m saved, I’ve come to a nice place.”

Yet on the other hand, in spite of the suffering the baby [underwent in the womb] for such a long time, tears come to its eyes at having to leave all that behind. The situation is likened to that of a dog when it chews a dry bone. The bone contains nothing – no marrow, no flesh, nothing. While chewing that dry bone, its lips get cut and blood oozes out, and when the poor dog tastes the blood, it thinks that it is tasting blood from the bone, and licks even more. If you forcibly snatch the dry bone from the dog, the dog will whimper, because it will feel that its food is being taken away. The dog fails to understand that actually you have done something good for it. The suffering of birth is like the suffering of the dog at that moment.

The second coil is the suffering one undergoes throughout one’s life. There is some pain, some clash, hidden in everything. In your own life you will experience very few days which are free from mental pain, few days in which there is not at least a little sorrow, a little suffering.

And the third coil is the suffering of death. There are many people in the world who have never seen days of happiness at all. And yet they do not want to die.

So we have the affliction of birth, the affliction of life, the affliction of death; when people recognize the affliction, yet are unwilling to part from it, that attachment is the last half coil. These three-and-a-half coils constitute the mrtyupásha. Pásha means “that which binds”.

Parácah kámán anuyanti bálaste
Mrtyoryanti vitatasya pásham.

[Unintelligent people run after extroversial objects. Thereby they fall into the all-entangling death noose.]

Those persons who are dhiiras by nature know where immortality lies, and as such they know how to distinguish the dhruva from the adhruva. They never run after transient objects, discarding the supreme eternal treasure.

This world of ours is adhruva, yet some human beings aspire to amass huge fortunes. They want to have fat bank balances. They expect all these transient objects to be their permanent treasures. But these things are all fleeting and temporary. How can human beings possess them permanently? It is foolishness to think they can possess them permanently.

Another person wants permanent name and fame. The person will build a huge building and have his or her name engraved on a marble slab, saying that Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so has donated the building. Maybe that so-called donor is the descendant of bandits or robbers, smugglers or black marketeers. Yet that person wants to see a few words engraved, hoping that his or her name will live on forever in letters of gold. But maybe one day that building will collapse. Nothing will last long.

The ruthless hands of time will ravage everything. Yet some foolish people will buy costly garments and ornaments. They may use those things once or twice in a year, though a lot of money has been invested therein. They wrongly think that those commodities will remain with them forever.

Dhiiras will always keep their minds away from the adhruva and direct them towards the dhruva Entity which resides within. So the best course is to seek only the dhruva, not the adhruva.⁽⁴⁾

Footnotes

(1) In the Cosmic Cycle, the energy of the Cosmic Operative Principle at the stage of “homomorphic evolution” (before the actual expression of the Operative Principle) is known as Kaośikii Shakti. The same energy in the first stage of actual expression is known as Bhaeravii Shakti. –Eds.

(2) The author here quotes a shloka, of which only a fragment is audible on the tape of the discourse. As the book goes to press, research is still in progress to reconstruct the whole shloka. Some of the text that follows refers to the shloka. –Eds.

(3) In mythology, the four ages occur in the order Satya Yuga (Golden Age), Tretá Yuga (Silver Age), Dvápara Yuga (Copper Age), and Kali Yuga (Iron Age), and correspond step by step to a decline of morality and spirituality. –Eds.

(4) The tape of this discourse ends with these words. It is possible that the actual discourse was slightly longer. –Eds.