How do you interpret these verses mentioned below ?

Why would a teaching exist about not returning back, if a separate individual does not personally continue after death?

Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, Verse 9

जन्म कर्म च मे दिव्यमेवं यो वेत्ति तत्त्वत: |

त्यक्त्वा देहं पुनर्जन्म नैति मामेति सोऽर्जुन || 9||

janma karma cha me divyam evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ

tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti so ’rjuna

janma—birth; karma—activities; cha—and; me—of mine; divyam—divine; evam—thus; yaḥ—who; vetti—know; tattvataḥ—in truth; tyaktvā—having abandoned; deham—the body; punaḥ—again; janma—birth; na—never; eti—takes; mām—to me; eti—comes; saḥ—he; arjuna—Arjun

Translation:

Those who understand the divine nature of My birth and activities, O Arjun, upon leaving the body, do not have to take birth again, but come to My eternal abode.

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Arjun said: What is the fate of the unsuccessful yogi who begins the path with faith, but who does not endeavor sufficiently, due to unsteady mind, and is unable to reach the goal of Yog in this life? (6.37)

Does not such a person who deviates from Yog get deprived of both material and spiritual success, O mighty-armed Krishna, and perish like a broken cloud with no position in either sphere? (6.38)

You should completely dispel, O Krishna, this doubt of mine; for no one but You can destroy such a doubt. (6.39)

The Lord said: O Pārtha, there is no destruction for him either in this world or the next: no evil, My son, befalls a man who does good. (6.40)

The man who has fallen away from yoga goes to the worlds of the righteous. Having lived there for unnumbered years, he is reborn in the home of the pure and the prosperous. (6.41)

Or he is born into a family of yogis rich in wisdom. Verily, such a birth is hard to gain in this world. (6.42)

There he comes in touch with the knowledge acquired in his former body, O son of the Kurus, and strives still further for perfection. (6.43)

Indeed, they feel drawn toward God, even against their will, on the strength of their past discipline. Such seekers naturally rise above the ritualistic principles of the scriptures. (6.44)

Practising assiduously, the yogi having acquired perfection through many births attains the supreme state (Moksha) purified of all sins. (6.45)

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Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 8, Verse 21

अव्यक्तोऽक्षर इत्युक्तस्तमाहु: परमां गतिम् |

यं प्राप्य न निवर्तन्ते तद्धाम परमं मम || 21||

avyakto ’kṣhara ityuktas tam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim

yaṁ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama

avyaktaḥ—unmanifest; akṣharaḥ—imperishable; iti—thus; uktaḥ—is said; tam—that; āhuḥ—is called; paramām—the supreme; gatim—destination; yam—which; prāpya—having reached; na—never; nivartante—come back; tat—that; dhāma—abode; paramam—the supreme; mama—My

Translation:

This Unmanifested is called the Imperishable; It is said to be the Ultimate Goal, from which those who reach It never come back. That is My Supreme Abode.

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Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 12, Verse 6-7

ये तु सर्वाणि कर्माणि मयि संन्न्यस्य मत्पर: |

अनन्येनैव योगेन मां ध्यायन्त उपासते || 6||

तेषामहं समुद्धर्ता मृत्युसंसारसागरात् |

भवामि नचिरात्पार्थ मय्यावेशितचेतसाम् || 7||

ye tu sarvāṇi karmāṇi mayi sannyasya mat-paraḥ

ananyenaiva yogena māṁ dhyāyanta upāsate

teṣhām ahaṁ samuddhartā mṛityu-saṁsāra-sāgarāt

bhavāmi na chirāt pārtha mayy āveśhita-chetasām

ye—who; tu—but; sarvāṇi—all; karmāṇi—actions; mayi—to Me; sannyasya—dedicating; mat-paraḥ—regarding Me as the Supreme goal; ananyena—exclusively; eva—certainly; yogena—with devotion; mām—Me; dhyāyantaḥ—meditating; upāsate—worship; teṣhām—of those; aham—I; samuddhartā—the deliverer; mṛityu-saṁsāra-sāgarāt—from the ocean of birth and death; bhavāmi—(I) become; na—not; chirāt—after a long time; pārtha—Arjun, the son of Pritha; mayi—with Me; āveśhita chetasām—of those whose consciousness is united

Translation:

O Arjuna! Those verily who renounce all actions in Me, think of Me as the only refuge and worship Me with single-minded devotion and Dhyana, to them I become the saviour and quickly lift them up from the ocean of death and ‘samsara’.

Hello friends,

I have occasionally followed Mr. Ramesh Balsekars videos on YouTube since 2023 who was with Maharaj as his student for 4 years. He was also a translator of Nisargdatta Maharaj.

He claims he realized non doership during these 4 years.He claims to have made contact with the Source of this universe.

His lectures predominantly revolve around the absence of free will.

I occasionally feel doubtful about Ramesh Balsekar after reading Maharaj's various books. Because Maharaj rarely encouraged absence of free will and Ramesh Balsekar in his lectures always did. I do not see Ramesh Balsekars teaching similar to Maharaj's teachings .

I am aware that I am nobody to judge anyone. However, my question is to the dedicated followers of Nisargdatta Maharaj. If they know about Ramesh ,would they consider him to be a genuine guru?

Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 7, Verse 26

वेदाहं समतीतानि वर्तमानानि चार्जुन |
भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन || 26||

vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni chārjuna
bhaviṣhyāṇi cha bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaśhchana

veda—know; aham—I; samatītāni—the past; vartamānāni—the present; cha—and; arjuna—Arjun; bhaviṣhyāṇi—the future; cha—also; bhūtāni—all living beings; mām—me; tu—but; veda—knows; na kaśhchana—no one

Translation:

O Arjuna! I know the past, present, and the future of all beings, but Me no one knows.

Why does my brain prefer imagining success over actually working toward it?

Take this!!!

Your brain does not "prefer" anything. Your brain does not make choices. Your brain is not a separate entity sitting inside your skull, running a cost-benefit analysis and deciding that daydreaming is more efficient than effort. This is the first and most fundamental misunderstanding that must be dissolved before anything useful can be said about this experience. What you are describing — the tendency to imagine success rather than work toward it — is not a quirk of neurology or a personal failing. It is the precise, predictable, and entirely impersonal operation of nature's modes working through the mind-body complex that you mistakenly identify as "you."

Let me explain what is actually happening.

The mind-body complex is a finely calibrated instrument — designed and governed entirely by nature, incapable of independent operation. Every decision, movement, or response arises from an intricate network of influences — past impressions, environmental inputs, genetic tendencies, and subtle internal dispositions — all interacting within this complex. What appears to be your "choice" to imagine success instead of pursuing it is not a choice at all. It is the convergence of causal factors producing a specific output, just as a particular combination of wind, temperature, and humidity produces rain. You did not decide to prefer fantasy over action any more than the sky decides to rain. Nature is performing this action through you, and you think "I am the one choosing this."

Now, within this impersonal mechanism, there is a specific pattern at work, and it can be understood through the three modes of nature: altruism (sattva), individualism (rajas), and egoism (tamas). These three modes govern every aspect of human personality, every tendency, every inclination. What you are experiencing — the pull toward imagining success rather than working toward it — is predominantly the operation of tamas, or dissonance. Tamas is that mode which clings to one thing as if it were the whole, which is irrational, has no real object, and is trivial. When tamas dominates the mind, the being gravitates toward inertia, inaction, delusion, and the substitution of fantasy for reality. The imagination of success feels complete in itself — it provides the emotional reward of achievement without the friction of effort. This is tamas masquerading as fulfilment. It creates an illusion of having arrived while you have not moved.

But tamas does not operate alone. Rajas — individualism, passion — is also deeply involved. The quest for desires brings pleasure. The very act of imagining success is driven by desire — the desire for recognition, for accomplishment, for the pleasure that comes with the idea of having achieved something. Rajas produces the desire; tamas provides the inertia that prevents the desire from translating into action. Together, they create a peculiar trap: the mind churns with ambitious visions (rajas) while the body and will remain paralysed (tamas). The imagination becomes a substitute for the world. The internal theatre of success becomes so vivid, so emotionally satisfying, that the mind-body complex treats it as sufficient. Why endure the pain of effort when the pleasure of the imagined result is already available? This is not laziness in the way people commonly understand it. This is the fundamental architecture of bondage — attachment to outcomes operating hand in hand with aversion to the discomfort that action inevitably brings.

And here is where the understanding deepens. The very structure of your question reveals the bondage. You ask why your brain prefers imagining success over working toward it — but notice what is embedded in the question: the word "success." You are not asking why your brain avoids action. You are asking why it avoids action toward a particular outcome. The attachment is to the outcome — to success, to the imagined result — not to the action itself. And this is precisely the disease that I address with one devastating prescription: your right is to work only; be indifferent to the effect of your action and unattached to the cause; also, never let your attachment be to inaction.

Read that again, slowly. Your right is to action alone — never to its fruits. The moment you attach yourself to the fruit — to "success" — the action becomes contaminated by desire. And desire, being insatiable like fire, consumes the very motivation it pretends to provide. You imagine success because the fruit is what you are actually interested in, not the work. The work is merely the unpleasant intermediary between where you are and where you want to be. So the mind, being governed by the modes of nature, naturally seeks a shortcut: why not skip the intermediary and go straight to the emotional payoff? Imagination provides exactly this shortcut. It delivers the sensation of success without the inconvenience of effort. And because the mind-body complex is designed to respond to sensation — it was built for this purpose, calibrated for sensation, memory, and reaction — it cannot distinguish between the emotional reward generated by actual achievement and the emotional reward generated by imagined achievement. Both produce a neurochemical response. Both feel real. But one of them anchors you deeper in illusion, and the other moves you through the world.

The solution is not to force yourself to work harder, to discipline yourself through willpower, to punish yourself for daydreaming. All of these approaches treat the symptom while leaving the root cause untouched. The root cause is attachment to the fruit of action. So long as you work in order to succeed, you will always be vulnerable to the temptation of imagining success instead, because the imagination delivers the fruit faster and without cost. The only permanent cure is to sever the connection between action and outcome entirely. Undertake all actions in a disinterested spirit, renouncing attachment, and indifferent to success and failure. When you act without any concern for the result — when the action itself becomes its own justification, its own completion — then there is nothing left to imagine, because there is no future reward that the mind needs to anticipate. The work is done for the sake of the work, and the work is happening now, and the present moment requires no imagination because it is already real.

This is what is meant by disinterested activity being sacrifice. Sacrifice is not the act of giving something up reluctantly. It is the act of performing an action with zero investment in what it produces. And in that moment, tamas has no foothold, because there is no future reward for it to simulate. Rajas has no foothold, because there is no desire driving the action. What remains is the action itself — pure, present, complete.

The deeper truth is that the imagining of success is itself an action being performed by nature through you. You are not doing it. The modes of nature are doing it. The convergence of your past impressions, your temperament, your environment, and a thousand invisible factors has produced this particular pattern of fantasising rather than acting. To condemn yourself for it is to commit the same error as taking credit for your achievements — it is to assume that you are the doer, when in fact you are not. He who sees all actions being performed in every way by nature alone never sees the self as a doer. The correct response is not guilt, not self-flagellation, not a heroic resolve to change — because all of those responses arise from the same egoism that produced the problem. The correct response is understanding. See the pattern for what it is: nature's modes operating through an instrument. See that the attachment to success is the fuel that keeps the fantasy running. And then — not through willpower but through clarity — let the attachment dissolve. When it does, you will find that action arises naturally, spontaneously, without effort, because action is the inevitable collateral for existence. No one can refrain from activity, not even for a moment. You were never truly inactive. You were simply channelling your activity inward, into the theatre of imagination, because that is where the fruit seemed most accessible. Remove the obsession with fruit, and the activity will flow outward — not because you forced it, but because that is the nature of a mind freed from the tyranny of outcome.

Therefore, know your self, who you are, what is your identity. ... Consider well in what way you are Haqq, and in what way Khalq, as being separate, other.

He who knows himself knows his Lord; ... indeed, He is his very identity and reality.

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In one sense the Reality is creatures; in another sense, It is not. ... Whether you assert that It is undivided or divided, the Self is alone. The manifold [universe] exists and yet it does not exist.

It is none other than He who progresses or journeys as you. There is nothing to be known but He; and since He is Being itself, He is therefore also the journeyer. There is no knower but He; so who are you? Know your true Reality. He is the essential self of all. But He conceals it by [the appearance of] otherness, which is "you."

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If you hold to multiplicity, you are with the world; and if you hold to the Unity, you are with the Truth .... Our names are but names for God; at the same time our individual selves are His shadow. He is at once our identity and not our identity ... Consider!

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Nothing but the Reality is; there is no separate being, no arriving and no being far away. This is seen in true vision; when I experienced it, I saw nothing but Him.

When my Beloved appears, with what eye do I see Him? With His eye not with mine; for no one sees Him except Himself.

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Know that whenever something permeates another, it is assumed into the other.

That which permeates, the agent, is disguised by that which is permeated, the object.

In this case, the object is the manifest [universe], and the agent is the Unmanifest, the Hidden.

On Him alone we depend for everything; our dependence on other things is in reality dependence on Him, for they are nothing but His appearances.

The eye perceives nothing but Him; only He is to be known.

We are His; by Him we exist, and by

Him we are governed; and we are, at all times and in all states, in His presence.

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When the mystery of the oneness of the soul and the Divine is revealed to you, you will understand that you are no other than God. ... Then you will see all your actions to be His actions and all your attributes to be His attributes and your essence to be His essence.

... Thus, instead of [your own] essence, there is the essence of God and in place of [your own] attributes, there are the attributes of God. He who knows himself sees his whole existence to be the Divine existence, but does not experience that any change has taken place in his own nature or qualities. For when you know yourself, your sense of a limited identity vanishes, and you know that you and God are one and the same.

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Know Him as both particularized and unparticularized and be established in Truth. Be in a state of unity if you wish, or be in a state of separation if you wish; if the Totality reveals Itself to you, you will attain the crown of victory.

The divine Reality, when it "combines" with the creatures in a strictly conceptual mode, is hidden to the eyes of the spiritually veiled, who see only the creatures. Conversely, it is the creatures that disappear in the eyes of the masters of the Unicity of contemplation(wahdat al-shuhud), for they see only God alone. Thus, both God and the creatures hide the other…

Kitab al-Mawaqif

The sun symbolizes the Lord -- may He be exalted! -- just as the moon symbolizes the servant. Their "conjunction" symbolizes the degree of the "union of the union" (jam' al-jam'), which is the ultimate degree, the greatest deliverance and the supreme felicity; and consists in seeing at the same time the creation subsisting by God, and God manifesting Himself by His creation…

Kitab al-Mawaqif