Next Kṛṣṇa makes an important point. Kṛṣṇa says: Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow this teaching faithfully with authenticity, without envy,

ye me matam idaṁ nityam anutiṣṭhanti mānavāḥ I

śraddhāvanto ‘nasūyanto mucyante ‘pi karmabhiḥ II 3.31

Here you need to understand two things. He says, ‘according to My instructions, My words, ye me matam idaṁ nityam’. It means when you enter into your being, whatever your being says is Kṛṣṇa’s words. When He says My instructions, He means the instructions from the ātman, the being.

Your life is going smoothly in spite of you, not because of you!

When you complete and drop the goals and fall into your being, the Divine will guide you and you will become an instrument in His hands. If you become a hollow bamboo without any blockages inside, you will become a flute in the hands of Kṛṣṇa. Dropping your purposes or dropping your root pattern is what I call becoming a hollow bamboo. If you are a solid bamboo, you will be used only to carry dead bodies. But if you drop the root pattern and fall into the being, you will become an instrument in the hands of the Divine; a divine flute. When you become a flute, the air that enters into you comes out as music. Your words become mantra, sacred words that enrich people, your actions become tantra, sacred techniques to realize the Divine, and your form becomes yantra, sacred form, you become Divine.

Here, He says, ‘Those persons who execute their responsibilities according to My injunctions, according to your inner consciousness…’

Understand, as long as you follow the goals set by society, you will be carrying a social conscience. The moment you drop social conditioning, the purposes taught to you by society, you will drop conscience and start living with consciousness. Please listen, conscience will become consciousness the moment you bring responsibility to it. Conscience means struggling with do’s and don’ts, guilt and desires. Consciousness means the pure flow of life. As long as you do not take the responsibility, you will be struggling with goals, with do’s and don’ts. If you live with goals, you will carry a social conscience in your life. If you realize the beauty of purposelessness you will carry spiritual consciousness in your life.

‘The man who lives according to his consciousness, believing in and having śraddhā towards these teachings…’

Why does Kṛṣṇa ask for śraddha here? This is the first time Kṛṣṇa says ‘śraddha. Why? Śraddhā cannot really be translated as faith. It means faith plus the courage of authenticity to execute the highest level of possibility. In English, there is no equivalent for śraddha. I will describe śraddha as authenticity, but authenticity is not all-encompassing translation of śraddha. The courage of being established in the peak of your capability, and responding to life from who you perceive to be for yourself, who you project yourself to be for others, what others expect you to be for them and what you expect them to be for you is what is called śraddhā, Authenticity. Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘śraddhāvanto ‘nasūyanto,’ the man who executes the teachings with śraddhā, with the courage of authenticity to the peak of his capability.

Why do we need courage of authenticity?

A small story:

A man born blind goes to the doctor and asks, ‘Doctor, will you help me gain my eyesight?’ The doctor says, ‘Don’t worry, I will perform an operation. You will get your vision and after that you can walk without your stick.’

Blind people always carry a stick to feel their way around. The doctor tells him that he will be able to walk without the stick.

The blind man asks, ‘Doctor, I understand you will do an operation. I understand I will have my eyesight restored. But I don’t understand how I can walk without the stick?’

By and by, the blind man had forgotten that his stick was just an aid. In the same way, just live without the mind. Just live without purpose and goals, you will be able to walk without the stick. The stick is nothing but your planning and worrying. By and by, worrying has become a part of you, an incomplete default cognition for you.

When I say you can live without worrying, you will say ‘No! How can it be possible? If I don’t worry what will happen to my children, my house? What will happen to my property, my lawsuits?’ Your life is going smoothly in spite of you, not because of you!

Courage is the fragrance of authenticity. When you have the courage of authenticity, śraddha towards living these teachings and start living without purpose, only then will you realize that you don’t need the stick to walk. That is when you become authentic to your peak possibility. Once you enter into the depths of your being, you will enter into a totally different dimension. Whatever you think now as spiritual life or material life both lose their meaning and you will enter a new dimension of life. You will be established in authenticity, in the space of possibility.

For example, can you explain life to a four-year-old child? He can understand only toys. Once he becomes older, naturally he will be able to understand what life is. Automatically toys and dolls will leave him. Do you miss your toys? Do you feel you have renounced your toys? When you grow, you start experiencing a different dimension of your life and the toys simply fade away. Similarly, dropping smoking is not important, smoking dropping you is important.

When you enter into your being, when you experience the purposelessness of life, the so-called material life and spiritual life both drop you and you enter what I call ‘Quantum spirituality’ or Eternal Consciousness. You are then in eternal bliss. Only then you will understand you don’t need worries to live. You don’t need your mind. Until you reach the being, you need to have śraddha. Until you gain your vision, you must have śraddha and lie on the operating table. You need to allow the doctor to work on you as per his expectation from you. That is the reason Kṛṣṇa says, ‘śraddhāvanto anasūyanto’.

The next word is a beautiful word: ‘anasūyanto,’ which means ‘without envy.’ This is important. We all think, ‘My brother has purchased two houses. My sister is getting a big new car. How can I live like this?’ The moment you get such thoughts, ‘He has that, she has this,’ what happens? All your spirituality, all your authenticity, all your purposelessness, everything just disappears. You are again in the same rat race. If your neighbor buys a new air-conditioner, the temperature in your house shoots up.
Kṛṣṇa says, ‘anasūyanto, without envy.’ Envy is the parasite pattern that puts you back in the same rut of inauthenticity. The problem with the rat race is this—even if you win, you are still a rat!

source: chapter 2, Bhagavadgita Decoded verses – 3.30 to 3.32