Gita 3.27

Sadhak: "Wait—if I'm not the doer, then who is making decisions right now? Who chose to listen to this teaching? It feels like I did."

Guru: "Yes, it feels that way—that's exactly the illusion Krishna points to. Examine closely: when a decision 'happens,' can you actually find the decider? A thought arises, conditions favor it, action follows. You call this 'my decision,' but that naming happens after the fact. Even the thought 'I should examine this' arises spontaneously—you didn't choose to have that thought. The decision-maker is always receding before investigation, like trying to see your own eyes directly."

Sadhak: "This is disturbing. If there's no doer, then we're all just puppets of nature. Where's the meaning in that?"

Guru: "Puppets implies someone else pulling strings. What if there's no puppeteer either—just the dance itself? The disturbance you feel is ego defending its territory. Meaning was never provided by the illusion of personal doership; meaning comes from connection, from beauty, from love—and these don't require the ego's supervision. Actually, ego often blocks meaning with its anxious self-referencing. When self-concern drops away, meaning becomes more vivid, not less."

Sadhak: "But the gunas are part of Prakriti, material nature. Aren't you just replacing one kind of determinism with another? Instead of 'I choose,' now 'nature chooses'—what's the difference?"

Guru: "Excellent observation. Neither 'I choose' nor 'nature chooses' fully captures reality. Choice and determinism are both concepts that presuppose the separation this verse dissolves. What remains when the ego's claim is released isn't a deterministic machine but undivided happening—neither free nor unfree in the ego's terms. You're trying to understand this through the ego's framework; the teaching is pointing to what's seen when that framework falls away entirely."

Sadhak: "If ego is deluded about being the doer, what exactly is ego? It feels very real."

Guru: "Ego is a process, not a thing—'I-making' as the Sanskrit says. It's the continuous activity of constructing a separate self from thoughts, memories, preferences, and body sensations. It feels real because the activity is continuous; there's always fresh construction happening. But when you look for the ego directly, you find only the construction activity, never a constructor. It's like searching for the 'dancing' apart from the dance movements. The ego is what we call the activity of self-construction, not a separate entity doing the constructing."

Sadhak: "If there's no real doer, what about criminals? They can claim 'I didn't do it, the gunas did' and escape responsibility."

Guru: "This teaching isn't a legal defense strategy. At the conventional level, actions have consequences and societies need accountability. A criminal body still goes to prison regardless of philosophical views about doership. The teaching is for inner liberation, not social evasion. In fact, someone who truly realizes non-doership wouldn't commit crime because crime requires ego: desire for what isn't mine, fear of being caught, hatred of obstacles. Without ego, the motivation for harmful action disappears."

Sadhak: "How do I practice this? I can repeat 'I am not the doer' but still feel like the doer."

Guru: "Don't start with 'I am not the doer'—that's a conclusion. Start with investigation. When action happens, inquire: where is the doer? Before a decision, watch how it forms. You'll notice thoughts arising from nowhere, preferences appearing without choice, action emerging from the confluence of conditions. Keep watching, without forcing conclusions. The realization that there's no doer isn't believed into being; it's discovered through honest observation."

Sadhak: "Sometimes I have glimpses of what you describe—where action just flows without a sense of 'me' doing it. But then ego rushes back in."

Guru: "Those glimpses are crucial—they show you know this directly, not just conceptually. Ego 'rushing back' is just more guna activity, not a failure. Don't fight ego; that's ego fighting ego. Simply notice: 'Ah, self-making is happening again.' Even that noticing isn't done by 'you'; it's awareness illuminating its own contents. Over time, the glimpses become more frequent and the ego-intervals less solid. Not because 'you' are progressing but because the pattern of guna-activity is shifting."

Sadhak: "This is hard to hold onto. The world constantly reinforces 'you did this, you should do that.'"

Guru: "Yes, social reality speaks the language of doership because it's useful at that level. You don't need to correct everyone's language or refuse to say 'I.' The teaching is about inner recognition, not linguistic reform. Externally, continue speaking normally. Internally, hold the recognition lightly. 'I am doing this' becomes something like 'this is happening, called "my doing" by convention.' The outer form stays; the inner grip releases."