The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : Ch-11. Part-19.

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Chapter 11: God Present Within Us :

Part-19.
God incarnates Himself from time to time, for the solidarity of mankind, for the establishment of righteousness and the abolition of unrighteousness. Dharma-samsthapanarthya sambhavami yuge yuge. At every juncture or crucial moment of time, God’s incarnation takes place. It does not mean that God takes incarnation only some times, in some centuries, and not always. There is an eternal manifestation of God. As God is eternity, His manifestation also is timeless. It is not only merely a historical occurrence that takes place some time in history. It is a timeless advent of an eternal reality, and therefore it can be regarded as a perpetual support in this world of mortality. God is the only friend of man, truly speaking, because perishable individuals cannot be regarded as true friends—they pass away. How can you live in this world by relying upon that which passes away? Suhrdam sarva-bhutnam jnatva mam santim rcchati, says the Gita. “Knowing Me as the true friend of all beings, people shall attain peace.” We have to realise that God is our true friend. He is a friend who shall not forsake us at any time. He shall stand by us at the hour of doom. We must realise God as the true friend, as incarnate divinity, as a presence which is perpetually before us, guarding us and taking care of us in every respect, providing us with everything that is required at any moment of time. Contemplating God in this manner, we realise His presence even in society.


So here, in these two verses at the beginning of the eighth chapter, the great Master of the Gita gives a reply to the queries of Arjuna, all amounting to this sum and substance with which I began today, namely, the necessity to conceive God as a totality and comprehensiveness and not merely as an external object bereft of relationship with the subject and human society. Such yoga is supposed to be the means of the liberation of the spirit from this mortal tabernacle, and the eighth chapter busies itself with the eschatology of the processes through which the soul passes in its journey through the layers of the cosmos.

 END.

 Next : Chapter 12: The Entry of the Soul into the Supreme Being

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....

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