The Chidakasha Gita

Introduction

Paramhansa Nityananda was born in India sometime around 1896. He was found as an infant in a jungle by a woman collecting firewood. She had her own family, so she gave the infant to a friend who had a barren daughter, who named the baby Ram. A well known astrologer concluded that he was a Siddha Purusha, a perfectly enlightened being. From the age of ten to sixteen, he wandered in the Himalayas, where he was renowned as a great yogi. At this time he was given the name Nityananda by a devotee.

After this, Nityananda wandered far and wide and is said to have been in Ceylon, Rangoon, Singapore, and Burma before returning to spend time in the south of India. During World War I he was forcibly drafted into the army. He later laughed as he told of being examined for his physical. The doctor could not hear any heartbeat nor find any pulse and so rejected him as unfit.

At this period of his life, Nityananda was in his early twenties. He traveled in southwestern India and lived quite simply. He had no possessions or home and wore either a simple loincloth or nothing at all. His presence was unpredictable and he had an uncanny knack of turning up unexpectedly somewhere whenever people in the area would gather and express the desire to see him. Often he would disappear in one place and appear up to fifty miles away and nobody could explain how he had covered the distance so quickly. In time Nityananda had a very large following of devotees and people whose lives he had touched in some way.

In 1936 he moved to the Ganeshpuri area outside Bombay. For the most part his travels were behind him, and was to remain there until leaving the body.

Nityananda was renowned for two outstanding traits: his utterly miraculous way of life and his great compassion on all suffering humanity, especially the poor and helpless. Even today, nearly fifty years after his leaving the body, hundreds are fed daily in his name.

Once a long-time devotee asked Nityananda if he could see God. He replied: “More clearly than you can be seen.” Another time a Swami came to the ashram to ask Nityananda some questions. He said: “Why do they call you God?” and Nityananda replied: “Everyone is a God here including yourself and all the ones who are seated here.”

Late in the evening of August 7, 1961, Nityananda was alone with one devotee, and he told him that he would be leaving the body the next day. The next day towards noon he took a few deep breaths and then one very deep breath so that his chest was fully expanded. He straightened his legs, put his hands over the abdomen, and then was not seen to move anymore. Though he had shed the body and the point of contact on the physical plane was no more, his devotees continue to have experiences that he is still looking out for them.

The Chidakasha Gita is a transcription of random teachings of Nityananda, given when he would walk unannounced into a house, sit down, and begin speaking. Though the devotees did the best they could, writing frantically in hope of keeping up with his words, the resulting records are often disjointed and sometimes make no sense since something is missing. This of course is a defect of the transcribers and not of Nityananda who was speaking spontaneously in spirit consciousness without interest in polished expression. Nevertheless, a devotee collected these fragments and had them printed under the title of Chidakasha Gita. They have been translated into several Indian languages as well as English.

At first I attempted to separate the text into subjects and comment on it, but it proved to be less frustrating to go through the text “as is.” However some things I will skip over because of the obscurity of the text.

May Sri Nityananda be aware of and approve and bless my efforts.

– Swami Nirmalananda Giri

Commentary on the Chidakasha Gita

1. Jnanis are mindless. To jnanis, all are the same. They have no slumber, no dreams, nor sleep. They are always in sleep. The sun and the moon are the same to them. To them, it is always sunrise. The glass of a chimney lamp, when covered with carbon, is not transparent. Similarly, the carbon of the mind should be removed.

Jnanis are mindless.

This statement actually means two things, according to the level of the jnani’s attainment.

First, it means that the jnani has gone beyond the need for the discursive, thinking, sensory-based mind (manas).

Second, it means that, as Sri Ramana Maharshi frequently pointed out, through diligent tapasya the jnani’s mind has become transmuted into the Self and literally no longer exists in its old form. Rather, the mind has become–or resolved back into–the Chidakasha, the Etheric Consciousness. This is the highest meaning of the definition of yoga: chittavritinirodha–there are no longer waves (vrittis) in the mind-substance (chitta) because it has ceased to exist and is now the Chidakasha itself.

To jnanis, all are the same.

All are the same to the jnani because the jnani sees all as The One Reality. Where others see multiplicity, the jnani sees truly, sees the Divine Unity.

They have no slumber, no dreams, nor sleep.

Jnanis have passed beyond the three “normal” states of waking, sleep, and deep sleep and become established in the turiya state of pure consciousness–the Self.

They are always in sleep.

By “sleep” Nityananda means Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra has several meanings: 1) a state of half-contemplation and half-sleep; 2) light yogic sleep when the individual retains slight awareness; 3) a state between sleep and wakefulness; 4) the state in which the yogi experiences pure consciousness within the state of dreamless sleep, when he is neither awake nor asleep in the usual sense; 5) the state in which the three “normal” states of waking, sleep, and deep sleep have become transmuted into the turiya state of pure consciousness and the yogi remains “asleep” in relation to those three lesser states. This latter is his meaning in this sutra.

The sun and the moon are the same to them.

The jnani abides in the Light of the Self, of which the Gita says: “This is my Infinite Being; shall the sun lend it any light–or the moon, or fire? For it shines Self-luminous always.”1 That is, the jnani is ever swayamprakash–self-illumined. Therefore the sun and the moon are only incidental to him who can say: “The light that lives in the sun, lighting all the world, the light of the moon, the light that is in fire: know that light to be mine.”2 For it can also be said of the Self: “Light of all lights, He abides beyond our ignorant darkness; knowledge, the one thing real we may study or know, the heart’s dweller.”3

To them, it is always sunrise.

This is a most interesting statement. Yogananda described the experience of God as “ever new joy,” implying that enlightenment is not a static condition, but is ever new. Here Nityananda tells us that it is not a matter of remaining in a condition of full light forever, a condition that might even be boring. But because the Self is not an object that can be either ever-changing or never-changing, It possesses a perennial newness, it is always sunrise, always looking forward to new heights and new depths. Just how this is, or how it can be, is for us to find out by experiencing It ourselves.

The carbon of the mind

“The glass of a chimney lamp, when covered with carbon, is not transparent. Similarly, the carbon of the mind should be removed.”

It is not the nature of glass to be black and opaque, but clear with nothing obstructing the passage of light. So it is with the Self. Yet the mind obstructs the manifestation of the Self as soot inhibits the light from shining through the glass of the lamp chimney.

Whether Nityananda means that the mind becomes sooted and needs cleansing or that the mind itself is soot that needs to be purified and assumed into the Self is not clear. Both views will be helpful to us if we pursue them by means of intense sadhana.

2) Bhagavad Gita 15:12 [Go back]

3) Bhagavad Gita 13:17 [Go back]

New India Video! Temple Elephants in India – In recent trips to India we have seen the temple elephants of some of the larger temples in south India: the Sri Rangam temple in Trichy, the Arunachaleshwar temple in Tiruvannamalai, and the famous Krishna temple in Udupi, to name a few. This two minute video features wonderful footage of these elephants blessing devotees, including Andar the elephant from Sri Rangam being fed the cookies which we bought for him.
Watch the temple elephants here.

(The Video is in Quicktime format, so some PC users might need to download the latest free version of Quicktime for it to view properly.)

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Coming Soon – In the coming weeks, new articles will posted on the Gita Commentary and the Dhammapada Commentary, as well as the Odes of Solomon, the Aquarian Gospel, and the Chidakasha Gita.