You are born with trapped energy, need to release it!
By Vivek Sharma
Anything that you hold to yourself is going to crystalise as memory, which will be the format of your whole life thereafter.This crystalisation means nothing but trapping of some energy into the unit of memory called karma. This trapped energy propels you to act out what you have stored. Actually this energy is working itself out. But, since we associate with it as the owner, our ego experiences itself as the doer. It suffers when the results don’t fall into the format and it exhilarates when they do.
If you want to tap into the universal source of energy, then the first law is don’t hold on to yourself anything, be it the result of action, action, experience of action or anything which makes the energy to get stocked up for future conditional manifestation—a situation is nothing but a conditional manifestation of this trapped energy, called memory. The Sanskrit term Drona exactly explains this. In fact, experience of action is born out of our will to expect results! You are bound to expect a particular result as your ego is in play, however, it is the trapped energy which is working itself out! You don’t know about it, but yogis do.
What Krishna says
Krishna says this energy gets trapped in four major forms. (1) Association (2) love (3) hate (4) The desire for a result. What a threadbare analysis of the human brain, the seat of trapped energy! He says the perfect manifestation of the Universal energy is possible only when these conditional barriers are removed. The moment it is done, the energy resumes its course and assumes its universal dimension again. Wherever this event happens, there karma becomes the manifestation of Universal energy and not trapped energy. Trapped energy only expresses through association, love, hate and desire for result. However, when the trapped energy resumes its universal dimension, the person gets anchored into the centre of it all, called Intelligent Energy.
So what to do
That is a genuine question. We all are born and hence have stocked up trapped energies, which if not carefully manifested will only lead to situation after situation and keep us away from our universal dimension. Krishna gives us the clue in Shloka 23 of Discourse 18.
नियतं सङ्गरहितमरागद्वेषतः कृतम्।
अफलप्रेप्सुना कर्म यत्तत्सात्त्विकमुच्यते।।
Two words need attention here. They have been smartly used by Krishna to guide us to the deeper dimension of the truth He mentions. They are नियतं and सात्त्विकमुच्यते. नियतं means what you are born with and you can’t change. It also means Shastraniyatam. It doesn’t contradict the meanings given by Adi Shankaracharya and the rest. But, yes it takes you to the real dimension of it all. What is shastra? It is nothing but an outward extension of verified memory. A few great souls realised certain principles, verified them and made them mandatory for the rest. That is called niyatam. But, for a change take the meaning you are born with, can’t be changed, that is memory. सात्त्विकमुच्यते has many meanings. But, the core meaning is released in natural dimension of energy. मुच्यते means that if we take मुच् as its root. Even if we take उच्यते, it means the same. It traditionally means कहा जाता है। That is perfectly all right. But, the word has come out of उच् root, which means to enjoy, to be one with, to lift etc. Reading the whole word then would mean ‘lifted to the natural dimension of energy’.
The whole shloka means:
The one who lets out karma energy (trapped energy) by not associating with it, by not conditioning it with liking and hating, that person who expects no result, karma consequently (तत्) becomes the pathway ( यत् the channel) to release energy to its natural dimension.
Now you know why Krishna talks of doing karma without expecting results or without holding on to yourself anything. It is a complete science. We need to understand it and then our life will be a huge karma to manifest Intelligent Energy.
Well, in the yogic parlance this event of releasing the trapped energy is called समाधान (the state of resolution) and the state is called समाधि। Krishna is talking about the science to be in समाधि —which is nothing but turning our karmas into the channels of Energy manifestation (ref to Beejankuri: The Seed of Bhagwad Gita, Chapters, 11 onwards). This science can be applied to resolve our day-to-day problems too. Are you ready?