Every thought, every desire you have is a commitment you have given to yourself. Every thought you complete is a word you have given to you. You have to honor it. You cannot entertain any thought of fear or greed, doubt or denial because you are literally sitting under a kalpataṛu, a wish-fulfilling tree, all the time!

Completion means feeling empowered, feeling powerful, without any hangover, without feeling powerless, during and after every situation in your life!

There is a beautiful story.

Once a traveler was resting under a tree in a forest, without knowing that the tree was a Kalpataṛu.

Suddenly he had a desire, ‘If somebody brings me some food now, how nice it will be! I am so hungry.’

Immediately the food appeared before him! The man was overjoyed and happily ate the food.

Then he thought, ‘If somebody gives me a cot, it will be so nice. I could lie down and sleep peacefully.’

Immediately a cot with a soft bed appeared!

The man lay down happily on the cot to rest.

Suddenly he had the thought, ‘Oh, God! Whatever I am thinking is happening! But it is getting dark now. What if a tiger suddenly appears and attacks me? What will happen?’

You know the rest of the story!

Understand, it was not only that man who was sitting under a Kalpataṛu tree, all of us are always under the Kalpataṛu, the wish- fulfilling tree. Every thought we give to ourselves will be honored if we don’t complete with it.

Now I know, everyone has a fear—Oh God! I have had so many negative thoughts. What to do?

Listen, there is nobody alive who has not entertained the thought of suicide at least once! All of us have fear. What do we do if all the words which we gave to ourselves now start getting fulfilled? You don’t have to worry; you just have to complete them. Sit and declare to yourself consciously that you are not going to honor all the negative words you gave to yourself, and you are dropping them, completing them.

So listen. You cannot entertain any desire in you leaving it incomplete. It will continue to chase you as the tiger and will not let you be complete with anything you do and experience. Only when you complete, integrity, the power of words starts expressing through you.

Start creating the right inner software, the right inner space, by bringing integrity as the principle of life. Integrity means not just fulfilling, but honoring the words you give to others. The first step to integrity is completing with all the negative words you created within you about you and life, and completing all of them.

Listen. Completion means feeling empowered, feeling powerful, without any hangover, without feeling powerless, during and after every situation in your life! If you are powerful, you won’t be violent. You will not be in guilt, fear or carry incomplete desires.

Kṛṣṇa reveals that to be truly complete, joyful, to be eternally blissful, is to cognize the truth that you are indestructible, that your spirit lives on, and that life and death are but a mere passage. When you cognize this truth and start living it with integrity and authenticity, you will be living death. If not, you will be dead living. I have seen people who are dead living and I have seen people who lived death.

Death is not an end; it is a passage of sorts. The truth is that the spirit is not satisfied with mere material pleasures. However much you please your senses, you cannot achieve satisfaction, you cannot achieve completion. The more you enjoy through your senses, the more the need for enjoyment. It never stops. Discontentment with material pleasures alone is hardwired into the human psyche.

Spirituality is the total understanding and cognition of completion with life – materially, physically, emotionally, relationally and in all senses without any incompletion and responding to life with the four tattvas, spiritual principles of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching. These tattvas arise out of the space of completion.

Completion makes you integrated; completion makes you authentic; completion makes you responsible; completion makes you enrich yourself and others. This completion arises out of our ability to be complete with the present moment. The present moment is the only moment when we are truly alive, awake.

Whether one believes in God or not, and accepts the inner divinity within oneself or not, is irrelevant to how one understands life after death. If, instead of believing in God, we choose to believe in science, we still need to accept that there are no answers to what we were before we were born and what we will be once we are dead. It is still unmanifest at both ends; it is still a mystery before and after, with no answers. This understanding can only come with the understanding that we live on in spirit.

Kṛṣṇa declares to Arjuna, ‘O Bhārata, whatever is permanent and real was unmanifest before it became manifest in the middle – avyaktādīnī bhūtani vyakta-madhyāni bharāta and again it will become unmanifest –  avyakta-nidhanāny eva. Therefore, what is the need to lament, tatra kā paridevanā (2.28).’

Everything is in a state of becoming something else. At every moment we die and are reborn; millions of cells in our body-mind system die every day and are reborn. Yet, through all this change there is continuity. There is a continuity that we cannot see, touch or feel. What we see as manifested, as this body and mind, hides from us the process of constant change that happens within us, as well as the continuous thread that holds the whole process together.

source: chapter 2, Bhagavadgita Decoded