I AM GITA

This sounds great, but how do we bring about this alignment?

That is the journey the Bhagavad Gita takes us on. For Deep Trivedi the first chapter of the Gita teaches us that we are all struggling with our own battles. The first step therefore is to recognise our own brain (Arjuna), ego (Duryodhana), witness (Krishna) struggle.

·       The brain’s cleverness, attaching importance to logic, that invariably mires us in confusion and stops us from connecting to truth and wisdom.

·       The ego’s stubborn disregard for what is right and wrong, it’s fondness for power that leads to trouble for ourself and others.

·       And the witnesses, often unheeded, quiet assessment and right decision-making based on the greater good.

Once we have accepted our inner struggle we then need to recognise the barriers we might have to confront to overcome them, such as;

·       Our preconceived ideas and beliefs.

·       Assumptions on what truth is (eternal truths, time and context based truths, or person-specific truths).

·       Seeing things in isolation of the overall.

·       The 3 dimensional theory of everything (in this case; Krishna, the all-knowing oversight; Arjuna, and his deep-seated animosity; and the Mahabharata, the collective mentality of the era).

Tantra Yoga

The whole gist of tantra yoga is the journey to overcome these barriers and our inner struggle to come into alignment with the witness (our higher self – universal consciousness – oneness).

What I find interesting in Deep Trivedi’s reading is that there is no judgemental approach, which I too often hear expounded in spiritual circles, around our wants and desires. Desire in itself is not problematic, indeed the greatest vibration is this desire for oneness. The issue is the timing of the desire. If the timing is wrong, then “your doom is certain”, but if the timing is right then you should “engage in fulfilling it with all your heart.”

This desiring mentality continues as we become more and more desirous of that which is. This is akin to taking on an attitude of abundance, where we feel gratitude for all that we have, and focus wholeheartedly on the task in front of us. There are strong connections here to queer theory, such as the philosopher Gilles Delueze’s statement that true thought (action) is the ‘ascetic power of letting yourself be chosen’.

This takes us from vikarma, that which is at variance to our inner truth, to karma, which we do with an expectation, to akarma, which is in full alignment and unison with consciousness; where we start to open up the possibility for the cultivation of a more impersonal self, an ascesis, that is, the spiritual exercise of self-fashioning.

At this point we mature and start letting go of our old habits. For Deep Trivedi this is where we “expunge all differentiation and discriminations” seeing everyone and everything as the Supreme Soul, ie, part of the divine. This is where we truly start to let go of our identities, our ego, our self-deceptions; to work through our distorted constituted subject.

From this point we start to eliminate all selfishness, the root problem of life.

You would expect at this point in the story that Arjuna would recant and return to the fight. However there are another 12 chapters before Krishna eventually convinces Arjuna to fight. And yet even at this point Arjuna is still attached to his “desire for fruits.” Showing us that Arjuna indeed fulfils his karma, but not akarma. The whole thrust of the Gita then appears to be that we should not be like Arjuna, missing our chance to perform akarma, by merely consenting to perform our karma.

Bringing it all together

Until we stop attaching importance to the mind (logic which invariably mires us in confusion and stops us from connecting to truth and wisdom) and the ego (our stubborn disregard for what is right and wrong, and our fondness for power) we are always going to be at odds with the witness (and its quiet assessment and right decision-making based on the greater good).

But, as Arjuna shows us, this is no easy journey, and definitely not one destined to succeed. It is not surprise then that the Bhagavad Gita recognises the two key aspects of doubt and faith. This aligns well to neo-tantra stance that everything is an experiment. And I have to say, it is when we divorce dogma and a fixedness from our spiritual practices, and introduce the element of questioning and experimenting, that spirituality starts to speak to me more fully, offering me the potential to perform akarma.

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