Refreshing One’s Dharma – Part One

Refreshing One’s Dharma – Part One

[00:45] Spontaneous Right Action

Thank you for watching and listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knowles. Jai Guru Deva.

Let’s talk for a little while about dharma. Dharma, D-H-A-R-M-A, dharma. Dharma has so many, when you look it up online or in your Oxford dictionary or whatever, it has so many different meanings attributed to it, but I’m going to tell you what it really means.

Dharma is spontaneous right action. Spontaneous right action. That which, doing, makes you relevant to the process of evolution. What is it that is your personal role in the evolution of everything?

And by the way, although most of us crave an answer like, “Okay, my dharma is to be a carpenter,” or, “My dharma is to be a singer,” or, “My dharma is to be a…,” and we’re usually talking about professions, or a career.

But actually, dharma has a far deeper meaning than that, because to be able to live life in spontaneous right action, we have to bring up another Sanskrit word. We have to have kṛiya. Kṛiya, K-Ṛ-I-Y-A, is related to another word, kaṛma, K-A-Ṛ-M-A. Everybody’s heard of kaṛma. You go to buy a coffee at your local coffee shop, and there’s the kaṛma jar for putting tips in. So, kaṛma is a very well-known word in the West.

But kaṛma is also very grossly misunderstood. Both the words kṛiya and kaṛma come from a common root, kṛ, K and Ṛ with a dot under it. And that Ṛ with a dot under it gives us the signal to do what we call a one-tap roll. Rr, like that, rr. Kṛ, K-Ṛ, kṛ. Kṛ can then depart into either activity or action.

And when it departs into activity, we have kṛiya, and kṛiya gives us spontaneous right action. And this is a very interesting concept, and we’re going to spend a few minutes on it. 

We’ll leave kaṛma aside for the moment. We’ll put a tip in the jar later, but just for now, I want to talk about kṛiya, spontaneous right action.

[03:19] It’s Very Simple

This is something which we’re confronted with minute by minute. What is the right thing to be doing if I’m… for example, when I was driving here to make this recording, somebody got behind me who was offended at the fact that I was driving at the speed limit.

And so, they tooted their horn and flashed their lights and whatnot. And then, at the earliest possible opportunity, went over the double yellow lines and overtook me and went around and, I think they shouted something out the window like, “Jai Guru Deva,” or something.

What’s the spontaneous right action? Do you speed up? Do you stay going at the same speed? Do you get angry and now there’s two angry people in the world instead of just one? You know, what’s the right action? And we actually are confronted minute by minute in life with what is the right thing either to be doing, or omission of action, which is also considered to be an action?

In the Vedic worldview, not acting is as powerful as acting. And so, to what extent do we not act? Do we not act but just faintly act? Or do we act a lot? You know, how much? How little? 

This activity of being spontaneously in tune with the evolutionary need is not something you can decide upon. If you say, “My dharma,” remember dharma, your personal role in the evolution of things, but now we’re going to start looking at this thing in increments of seconds, seconds at a time. What is your personal role in the evolution of things?

So if we’ve read the word dharma somewhere in a book or we’ve heard at our local yoga studio, our yoga teacher saying, “I guess it was just my dharma, man, to be a yoga teacher. So, like, that’s what I’m doing. Let’s go get a latte.”

Then, you think, “Well, what is my dharma? Am I a film producer? Which side of the camera am I on? Am I this? Am I that? What do I do? What is the thing which doing is going to really be my role?”

But the fact is, you don’t have to figure that out if, spontaneously, you have kṛiya, the kṛiya flow. Kṛiya means spontaneous right action. And how do we arrange for kṛiya, spontaneous right action, to be our reality? It’s very simple actually.

[06:14] There’s Only One Thing

Every time we practice Vedic Meditation, and for those listeners and viewers who’ve not yet learned Vedic Meditation, click on my site and make arrangements to learn it, because during the practice of Vedic Meditation, the mind settles down and effortlessly steps beyond thought into pure Beingness, pure Being.

Being, as opposed to thinking and action, means arriving into a consciousness state which is the least excited consciousness state, that state of consciousness where it is you minus all the thoughts. And so then, let’s talk about what that is.

Anybody can stop thinking by just going to sleep, but what if you were to retain full consciousness and have a moment, even a moment, of no thought? The implication of it is dramatic.

In quantum field theory, in quantum physics, there is a notion which is uncontroversially accepted. The least excited state of any system is the Unified Field itself.

The Unified Field. What is that? The one indivisible whole field out of which all forms and phenomena issue forth. The one indivisible whole field that is the basis of all of the particulate nature of the world and all the relationships between the particles.

And consciousness exists. All things, all forms, all phenomena are properties of the one indivisible whole field. Since consciousness exists, it must also be conscious, because it can’t be that there are conscious things and non-conscious things. If there’s only one thing, because there are no things plural. This is the surprising result of physicists studying the nature of our universe from the microscopic to the macroscopic. The ultimate discovery is that there’s only one thing, but it behaves as if it’s many things.

So the one thing is conscious. What are you experiencing during Vedic Meditation when the mind settles down and steps for a moment beyond thought? The individuality experiencing a thought-free state of being conscious has merged with the Unified Field itself.

[09:02] What is All of This?

The Unified Field constantly is yielding up into manifestation forms and phenomena that are necessary for evolution to happen. Evolution means progressive change. There should be more sophistication with each given moment of our Universe. So when we see evolution occurring, what we see is the movement from less sophisticated capability, less sophisticated repertoire, to more sophisticated capability, more sophisticated repertoire.

Sophistication, here I’m using not in any kind of cultural way, but as a scientific term. When you have lots of complexity all compactified into integrated forms and phenomena that yield up a useful experience or product, then you have sophistication.

I love to use the wristwatch as an example of this. 323, I happen to know on this particular watch, 323 moving parts, which, if you’re a watchmaker, they all fit together in perfect balance, and they tick, tick, tick together, and all the little wheels are turning and all of that, second by second. And this particular watch doesn’t lose more than one second in two years in terms of its accuracy of time.

And the problem is, you cross time zones all the time, so you’re constantly having to change the time on it. But that aside, compared with taking all of those little wheels and all of those little balancing agents and whatnot, if we scattered them out on a table and just looked at it, those are the components. It’s not yet sophisticated.

When we take the recipe, which is the recipe, the ingredients are all the pieces, if we take the ingredients and put them together in a particular sequential elaboration, we end up with a sophisticated timepiece.

And basically what it’s telling us is, where is the Sun at any given time? Is the Sun on the other side of the Earth? Midnight? Is the Sun straight up? Is the Sun over here or over there? Here in Los Angeles, from where I’m recording right now, we’ve just shifted to daylight savings, so we have our clocks tricking us into thinking that 12 o’clock, the Sun is straight up, and it’s not anymore for another six months.

That aside, sophistication, to move forms and phenomena into place, which gives an elegant form or structure. And what is that? It gives us knowledge, a thing that gives us knowledge, greater knowledge and insight into what the heck is going on. What is all of this?

[12:03] What is the Relevance of Consciousness?

Think of a human brain. 100 billion neurons. If we count all the neurons that are not cranial—the cranial neurons something like about 50 billion—but if we include the entire central nervous system, we have about 100 billion nerve cells. These are called neurons.

When assembled together in this sophisticated form and sitting inside of their armor, which is the skull, the cranium, then the Universe is able to look out through the human eyes and see itself. It’s able to have a look at itself.

I remember once my master, Maharishi, was asked about the relevance of consciousness. What is the relevance of consciousness? And he turned the question around the other way. He said, “Without consciousness, the Universe itself is irrelevant.” The fact of its existence is not even a fact because a fact requires consciousness. So you know, existence is made relevant by virtue of consciousness.

So consciousness is the relevance-creating thing. And you’re conscious. You’re a conscious being.

[13:25] The Agenda of the Universe

For what purpose are you conscious? There are two purposes. One is to be the means whereby you take in what already is manifest, all the forms and all the phenomena and how they’re relating with each other. And that information is feeding into your deep inner Self, which is the Unified Field itself.

The Unified Field is responsive by channeling through your individuality that which is going to be needed to put your individuality into kṛiya, into spontaneous right action, to bring about greater sophistication, to move from less sophisticated to more sophisticated.

This is what the agenda of the Universe is, to move from less sophisticated to more sophisticated. And the process occurs first in the form of thoughts. But yesterday’s thoughts are not relevant to this moment right now. The thoughts of ten minutes ago are not relevant to this moment right now.

Every moment the whole Universe has gone through dramatic change. Every moment. And what is the individuality to do in that given moment? What’s the individuality to do? Do nothing. That’s a possibility, by the way. Stay out of the way of everything. Or do a little something, or do a little bit more than that, or do more than that, or do a lot.

A lot of doing, all the way down to simply witnessing. That’s the range of potential duties in every given moment.

When we practice our meditation technique, we settle down beyond the now-irrelevant thoughts. Remember, even ten minutes ago, those thoughts are irrelevant now. You know, the now-irrelevant thoughts, to say nothing of the thoughts from ten months ago or the thoughts from ten years ago.

We go into the thought-free Unified Field state, and we unify with Unified Field. And then we come out of meditation refreshed. And what gets refreshed is our dharma. That is to say, what is it you’re supposed to be doing right now? It rearranges your thinking.

[15:56] Vedic Meditation – Awakening the Relationship Between Individuality and Universality

Now, when we practice Vedic Meditation, in our beginning days of it, we have this refreshing occurring every morning for 20 minutes, because that’s the period of time for which we sit easily, comfortably, close our eyes, and allow the individuality to merge with Universality. 

That’s one very fancy way of putting it,  to allow the mind to de-excite and to experience the least excited state. That happens in the morning. And then we typically do it again in the afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, refresh the whole Unified Field experience.

But as we continue practicing each day, morning and evening, what happens is we begin to awaken the relationship between individuality and Universality such that we start to be able to experience that Universality, that underlying field, that consciousness field, starts to be able to be experienced non-conditionally.

In the beginning days of learning meditation, it’s conditional. “I can experience oneness with Unified Field to the extent that I close my eyes, sit in a chair comfortably, have my back supported, have my technique in mind, and then practice the technique which takes me beyond thought.” Very conditional.

And as you practice morning and evening, morning and evening, you awaken a relationship between your individuality, the thinking mind, and the Universal Field, that Unified Field of unmanifest pure potentiality, such that you start to experience a backdrop.

[17:50] Neuroplasticity

Now I’m going to teach you a little bit of neuroscience. In neuroscience, we have a function known as plasticity. Plasticity has to do with, not with the substance plastic that you know, you put your vegetables in when you have a bag of fruit from Safeway. Plasticity in this instance means malleability. A thing that’s malleable means it’s moldable. It can be molded.

And our brain exhibits the capacity to be plastic. That means it can mold itself, it can mold itself to forms and function. This is why when a child is a little toddler, they may be able to walk, but they can’t yet take their younger sibling on their back and also walk. Or they can’t walk and be eloquent simultaneously.

But gradually, the demand on the brain to be able to do multitasking trains the brain to develop those inter-neuronal connections that allow simultaneity. Simultaneity of walking and carrying. Simultaneity of walking and talking. Simultaneity of everything.

And in order to become a fully functional adult, we have to have lots of simultaneity going on. You know, the ability to speak with a degree of articulation even while driving a car, which we all do. We do it — if we have a passenger, or even if we’re just listening to something while we’re driving, we’re processing information.

The brand-new driver of a car hasn’t yet developed that neuroplasticity. “I can drive the car, but please don’t talk to me.” “I can drive the car, but please don’t ask me to listen to Beethoven’s Ninth.” “Let’s turn off the radio. I have to focus and concentrate and exclude. To focus means to exclude, so I can’t be all inclusive. I have to be exclusive, please, while I’m remembering to look in that mirror and that mirror and that mirror, and watch the speed and listen to the engine and wonder what to do about that car that just overtook me, while they shouted, ‘Jai Guru Deva’ through their window.”

The degree of plasticity hasn’t grown yet. But when you continuously subject yourself to the challenge that says, “See what you can add onto this,” then gradually the brain develops the inter-neuronal connections to multitask.

And so this is due to neuroplasticity. Neuro means brain, plasticity means malleability, the ability of the brain to mold itself to form and function.

[20:46] A Cocktail of Bliss Chemicals

As a meditator, because it’s very pleasant, in fact, sometimes we describe it as bliss, not to be confused with ecstasy, but a state of supreme inner contentedness is attained when the mind goes into that least excited state. And our brain wants the bliss, and importantly, it wants the bliss chemicals.

Our brain produces a cocktail of bliss chemicals every time we meditate and we go into that state. And the brain, desiring more of that continuation, will begin to make arrangements. It will make the inter-neuronal connections occur that allow a backdrop of Unified Field to be present and experienced while simultaneously one is thinking.

Now, what’s beginning to happen in the meditator is a spontaneous and continuous refresher of what is dharma, because it’s contact with the Unified Field that yields up that which is dharmic, to put it into an adjective. That which is dharmic, that which is in accordance with the need of the time, needn’t be refreshed only twice every day as a result of practicing Vedic Meditation.

And as a year passes, two years pass, three years pass, a growing capability, a growing trend of being able to have continuously refreshed dharma at every moment.

There comes a stage where there is a perpetual sense of, “I am both experiencing Unified Field and I’m engaging in action.” Not alternating anymore, back and forth between the two, but experiencing both of these simultaneously.

And when we can experience that simultaneously, just by virtue of morning and evening practice, then we are in perpetual refreshed dharma. Dharma is being refreshed, perpetually. It’s not like, “Hold on a minute. Somebody just shouted at me. I have to decide how to act. Let me pull my car over. Let me go into my least excited state. Let me see what my deep, inner, Unified Field expects for me to do. Oh, absolutely nothing. Okay, great,” start the car again and drive off.

Rather than there being this alternating back and forth, one gets into a condition of, on the level of Knowingness, one spontaneously knows whether to act, how much to act, incremental action, for how long incremental action. And it’s not intellectual knowledge. This is spontaneous right action.

[23:42] Established in Being, Perform Action

The spontaneity of it yields up another way of talking about this. In one of the ancient scriptures of the Veda, one known as the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is a central chapter of a massive epic called the Mahabharata.

One of the masters in this epic is known as Krishna, and Krishna is approached by his cousin, who’s also his student, who asks him, “Tell me decisively, what’s the right thing to be doing in this complex situation I find myself in, where whatever decision I make is going to have massive effects generationally? And I have to know right now.”

And Krishna replies to him in Sanskrit and he says, “Nistraigunyo bhavarjuna.” Nistraigunyo means, step beyond all of this relativity. And then he says to him, “Yogastha kuru karmāṇi.” Yogastha kuru karmāṇi means, established in Unified Field consciousness, then perform action. From that Unified Field consciousness, perform action.

Now, when we take a very microscopic look at this instruction, it’s fascinating: from Being, act. From the state of Being, act. He doesn’t say, “From the state of Being, give it some good, hard, long thought and create a pros-and-cons list and figure it out intellectually and then act on the basis of your conclusions.”

From the state of Being, act. And this is what tends to happen in the meditator. We find after a few years of practice, and by a few, I mean a handful of fingers’ worth of years of practice, we start to find that, spontaneously, action is coming out straight out of the field of Being, and it turns out to be the right action. The exact perfect action.

We have those grades of, from inaction — from no action at all — to massive activity. The exact right proportion of action, style of action, and so on, emerges out from that inner state of Beingness, which is now becoming a perpetual reality of one’s backdrop.

So the backdrop of Beingness is generating spontaneous right action, and we’re living dharma, refreshed second by second by second by second. Refreshed dharma.

And this is really the state. This is the state. When we’re doing this, we have kṛiya. Kṛiya.

[26:44] Complete Freedom

Now let’s step back to kaṛma for a few moments; get some pennies out of the kaṛma jar. Kaṛma, what’s this? What is kaṛma? Kaṛma is that which you experience when you’re not doing kṛiya.

When you are living in pure, spontaneous, right action, there’s no after-effect from your action. There’s complete freedom, freedom from the binding effect of any action. Actions have a binding effect if you overdid something or you underdid something.

When you overdo a thing, or you underdo a thing, then in order to complete everything, you’re going to have some bondage to that, either inaction or that action. You get bound by it. It ends up having knock-on consequences, consequences that continue into the future, past the moment of having made a decision about whether to act, how much to act, and so on.

So when there are consequences that one has to continuously deal with, which, had we lived in kṛiya in that moment, there wouldn’t be any consequences, but now there are consequences. That is kaṛma.

So kaṛma is basically the way in which we are learning how to come back into kṛiya. It’s the curbs on the highway. If you go a little too far this way, you’re hitting the curbs. Over this way, you’re hitting the curbs on this side. And the middle zone, where you have the frictionless flow, that’s kṛiya. And when you hit the curbs on the side, you have repercussion. You’re going off the path of evolution.

Kaṛma is there to stop us from going off the path of evolution. And it’s noisy, and it’s repercussion, and it is bondage to the past, and it is designed to remind us how to live life in full attunement with what the laws of Nature are requiring of us at the moment.

And so from kaṛma, we move to kṛiya, and when we live a life in kṛiya, we don’t have kaṛma anymore. Kaṛma. So to transcend kaṛma is the whole purpose, really, of our practice.

[29:20] Nishkam Kaṛma Yoga – Activity Hardly Done

In ancient India, our practice is referred to as nishkam kaṛma yoga. That’s what we call Vedic Meditation. Nishkam kaṛma yoga means union with Unified Field attained through activity that’s hardly done at all. Because Vedic Meditation is effortless, you’re doing that effortlessness.

Nishkam kaṛma means no kaṛma, no action. No action is engaged in. Minimizing activity of the mind and experiencing Absolute. And letting go of this severe tendency we have to be non-Absolute all the time, we allow ourselves, spontaneously, to settle down into our inner true nature.

But one of the aspects, one of the products of nishkam kaṛma yoga, is that nishkam kaṛma also removes the bondage to past actions. It gives us liberty to live life in kṛiya, in spontaneous right action. And then we’re living a life of dharma, perpetually refreshed dharma.

Not waiting for our dharma to get refreshed. Not even waiting an hour, not waiting three hours, but continuous backdrop, refreshment of it. Refreshed dharma. And that’s all I have to say about that. 

Jai Guru Deva.