Excerpts from Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.
mayyāveśya mano ye māṃ nityayuktā upāsate (12.2)
Upasate means one who comes near, sits near, understands. When there is a distance, there is always a chance for miscommunication, misunderstanding. And the distance is from your own mind, not from others. If you feel distant from someone, whether Guru, God, it is not a mistake of Guru, God – it is yours, because you are mentally not doing upasana. Upasana means what? Sitting close, coming close – it is one-sided. Usually, we say love is two-sided; no, here it is only one-sided. From your side you feel close, that’s it, period. There are no words to explain that. The response from the other side does not matter. Upasana means from your side, you feel close and that’s it. You don’t question whether I am close or not.
Nitya Yukta means what? Everyday, every moment united; feeling that unity all the time. Shraddhaya – having faith. Because faith is something that can get shaken, and the faith that doesn’t disappear inspite of being shaken is the real faith. The faith that disappears with a little shaking is no faith at all. Shraddhaya parayopethaha – steadfast.
When engineers construct a building, they have a process called load testing to check if the roof can take the load. (roof only or foundation can take load??) They put weight to see whether the building is strong enough or not. In the olden days, when they erected the Sthambu thambus, pandal, they would shake the poles hard to see whether any pole was shaking.
Life poses many situations where your faith could be shaken. Faith in yourself, faith in the Divine and faith in the goodness of people around – all three types of faith could be shaken. When faith gets shaken, do you lose yourself, do you slip into depression? Then that is no faith at all. Then your faith is just for your convenience. When, in spite of being shaken, faith continues to grow stronger, then you are on the right track, the mind is on the right track.
That is maiyaveshya manohema – with your mind immersed in Me, connected with Me, synced with Me. When your mind is in sync with the universal mind, with Divinity, then everything flows, and that’s what your intuition is all about; it never fails. Nithya yuktha upasathe shraddhaya parayopethaha teme huktatamamataha – that person is one who is really connected.