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Q: Guruji, I have been told that a human soul can often take one to two
million years to find liberation. Is it true that by doing Kriya and
meditation every day, this liberation can be obtained even in one lifetime?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Everything works with some strange karma. You must
lift your eyes and look into this realm. There is a beautiful couplet that
says, ‘This world has all the wealth, all that is needed, but one who has
no karma, cannot get it.’ So, whether you get something or you don’t, it
all works with some strange karma. Recognition, money, power, relationship,
health; everything depends on some law in creation. When good times come,
your worst enemy starts helping you, and when bad times come, even your
best friend behaves like an enemy. All these things happen due to some very
strange karma. An intelligent person doesn’t get caught up in all this. He
still keeps putting in his effort, and keeps moving on. You do whatever is
needed to put in an effort, and then you leave it. Do you know Lord Krishna
went three times to stop the Mahabharata (narrative of the Kurukshetra War)
war?

When someone asked Lord Krishna, ‘If you knew that the war was going to
happen anyway, why did you go three times for peace negotiations? All three
times your peace negotiations failed, then why did you go?’ That is a very
valid question. Lord Krishna said, ‘If I had not gone, then the question
would have come that you could have done peace negotiation, why didn’t you
do it?’ You have your duty towards your karma, whatever you need to do, you
do it! Suppose the peace negotiation would have succeeded, then the whole
Mahabharata would have finished, and the Gita would never have come! The
immortal song of the Divine (Bhagavad Gita) would never have come into
existence! So, very well knowing that the Gita had to come, and the war had
to happen, still Lord Krishna went for peace negotiations. This is because
it is in our dharma, our nature. We should keep putting in our efforts and
not get attached to the consequences or the results.

Do you get what I am saying? This is very subtle because the mind gets
sucked into maya in some form or the other. Yesterday, some of you painted
some designs on the wall. After five or six years, this wall will need
painting again. So another painting will come on all the designs that you
did. Similarly, when you grow something in your garden, weeds also grow
along. You go and weed it out. Again, when the weeds grow, you cannot say,
‘Oh, I just cleaned the garden, and weeds have come again!’ This is nature.
The nature of the body is to get dirty. After you take a shower, you can’t
say, ‘I have taken a shower for the whole year!’ You have to keep taking
showers, again and again. Similarly, the mind needs to be hammered into
knowledge. It can easily slip out of these four pillars of knowledge,
Viveka (discrimination), Vairagya(detachment), self-control, and honoring
what you have (not grieving about what is not). And then, wanting
liberation! So keep on hammering the knowledge back, again and again!
Suddenly, you will find it is all there, anyway. Now, when you slip, then
also remember that is another level.

Knowing all this, suppose you still get caught up (in maya), then don’t
feel bad that you got caught up; even that is part of nature. Don’t say,
‘Oh, I did not apply knowledge!’ or ‘Either someone else is wrong, or I am
wrong!’ This tendency has been in our society, in our life, for a long
time. We need to snap out of it. Many times you snap out of it, and
sometimes you get caught in it, right? Snap out of it and see things as
they are! In this moment, that is how it is, because this moment is all
that is! In this moment, whether unpleasant things are happening or
pleasant things are happening, I am a witness to it. And my mind is getting
caught up in it, even that is a part of the happening; I am witness to that
also.

This is how you rise above the situation! Maharishi Patanjali, who founded
the yoga sutras, said, ‘You have to practice pranayama, meditation and
knowledge for a long time’. The whole life itself is a practice, and when
you practice with honor, then this knowledge becomes well-founded in you.