Bhagavadgeeta : ( 26/11/2012. )

  Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory -13. The soul of this universe is God—aham atma gudakesa sarva-bhutasaya-sthitah—the essence of things is God Himself. The substance of things is not atoms and electrons, as scientists tell us, but it is God’s glory that is the essence of all things. Electric energy is not the constituent of the universe. Quantum particles or waves of light are not the essence of creation. Space-time coordination and the continuum of energy are not the essence of creation. The spiritual flood of God’s Being, manifest in various degrees of intensity as avatara vibhuti, is the essence of creation. God Himself is creation, and therefore God has not created the world—He has appeared as this world. This is what we are gradually going to be told, to our consternation. Aham atma: “I am the Soul of all beings,” says the great Teacher of the Bhagavadgita. We know what the ‘soul’ means. The soul is anything and everything that is of meaning in

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory -12. Here is the masterstroke that the Bhagavadgita deals when it moves on to the delineation of the glories of God as constituting the essence of creation, which is the subject of the tenth chapter. The world consists of the glories of God, and not of physical objects or friends and enemies, etc. As the ocean consists of waves of water, large and small, swirls and eddies, currents and circles, etc., various manifestations of God, in various degrees of intensity, constitute this creation. We are nearing a dangerous border where we shall not be able to breathe satisfactorily because of it becoming necessary for us to accept that creation does not exist at all. Creation is not there, and there seems to be something quite different in the place of that which we regarded as creation, as a world of friends and foes, as a universe of values, of things and relations, pleasurable or otherwise. We will be stunned to be told furt

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory -11. First of all, as I have mentioned, creation does not consist merely of human beings. This is an idea that we have to give up, gradually. Secondly, it does not consist even of things, objects, substances or even the five elements—it consists of relations. The whole universe is nothing but a set-up of relations, and not of things or objects. There is an disconnectedness of values, so that we may say that the world is a value, finally, and not even a scientific relation. It is not a world of human beings; it is not a world of things, objects and physical elements; not even a world of conceivable physical scientific relationships, but of values. Truth, goodness and beauty are regarded as values these days, but these are all, again, conditional values. They become more and more rarefied and ethereal as we go further and further, so that we cannot say what this world is made of finally. It is not made up of anything

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory -10. Otherwise we will be established in a shakable yoga, not in an unshakable yoga. We are all shakable yogis, because at any moment we can be blown off by a little logic of somebody else. If another person argues with a more forceful logic, it is enough to pound our entire load of knowledge and we run away. The unshakability of the intellect implies the establishment of the whole understanding in a complete acceptance of every aspect of creation. This is possible only when we are able to fit in properly all the conceivable aspects into the framework of completeness. The whole of creation is to be regarded as an orderly arrangement of values. Swami Krishnananda  To be continued  ....

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory - 9. And there is relevance, as I mentioned, to the present framework of space-time relation. When anything fits into this framework, we regard it as necessary and acceptable. But when it is does not fit in, somehow or other, to the present set-up of space-time relations—which implies the fitting into our personal individual existence and also society—we regard it as bad, ugly, undesirable, hellish and evil. But the cosmos is a blend of positive and negative forces, whether we like it or not. Our likes are not the criterion for the perfection that creation has to be. So in this characterisation of the definition of the various principles that go to constitute creation in these verses that I mentioned—buddhir jnanam asammohah, etc.—every blessed thing is mentioned as having a concern with the wholeness of creation. Etam vibhutim yogam ca mama yo vetti tattvatah, so’vikampa yogena yujyate natra samsayah. Only if we are prepa

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory - 8. We do not believe that God creates evil, for instance, but we accept that evil exists. So we have a peculiar dichotomy or duality of philosophical concept in our acceptance of the principle of creation. If evil exists, it must be created by somebody, and if it is not God’s creation, it must be our creation, and we are not prepared to say that it is ours. Then whose creation is it? We cannot say that it is not there; we cannot say it is there—so we jumble up ideas. The difficulty arises because we have a conditional idea of relevance and meaningfulness in things. Whatever is pleasant is regarded as good, and even our idea of evil is a prejudiced idea. It is not really an acceptable notion, because we are phenomenal beings, which means to say we are limited to the present set-up of space-time relations. Swami Krishnananda  To be continued  ....

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory - 7. Our idea of creation is not like this, generally speaking. We have our own queer notions of the perfection of God’s creation. Every blessed thing—every Tom, Dick and Harry—cannot be included in this omnibus of God’s creation; that would be a pell-mell idea. We have a system of scientific thinking that acquiesces only to the acceptance of certain particulars which are regarded as necessary to form a perfection we regard as creation. But perfection is not necessarily what we regard as perfect. Our idea of perfection is that which agrees with the present pattern of our mind’s thinking. Whatever we regard as good is that which has some relevance to the requirements of the human mind. If there is no relevance to the aegis of mental requirements of the present set-up of human thinking, then it cannot be regarded as good. Therefore the ethical good or even the metaphysical good, for the matter of that, is a conditional goo

Chapter 16: The Essence of Creation is God's Glory - 6. Now the creation of God is explained in greater detail, with further emphasis, in the tenth chapter. Not merely do objects and things, persons and visibles constitute what we call creation, but even the relations that exist between things or subsist among objects are the creation of God. Not merely the things, but even the ideas and the thoughts of people are also part of the creation of God. Buddhir jnanam asammohah ksama satyam damah samah, sukham duhkham bhavo’bhvo bhayam cabhayam eva ca. Ahimsa samata tustis tapo danam yaso’yasah, bhavanti bhava bhutanam matta eva prthag-vidhah. Unthinkable are these attributes. Good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly—everything proceeds from God. Swami Krishnananda  To be continued  ....