The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-20.7.

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23/12/2017

Chapter 20: We are the Fruits and Leaves of the Cosmic Tree -7.

VERY IMPORTANT, FOLLOW CLOSELY:

All these concepts are not a part and parcel of the education of the ordinary human being. We are brought up in families and societies and atmospheres which are given to the technique of physically counting things and associating particulars in solid manners and not abstract, philosophical ways.

But when the Ultimate Being, God Himself, is finally equivalent to the supreme state of consciousness, chaitanya, and His sole existence cannot permit the externality of any object outside Him, it amounts to saying that any kind of detachment to be practiced as a yoga for the purpose of the realisation of God should be a tendency of consciousness to withdraw from the insistence that objects are outside.

Here is a divine element that is introduced into the practice of yoga, apart from its physical aspects or psychological manouevers. The sum and substance of the significance that seems to be hidden behind this great analogy of the tree as the creation, in toto, seems to be this much.

It was mentioned that God, the Supreme Being, operates in three ways—sattva, rajas and tamas. This point is brought up again in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita, where it is stated that God, as purushottama, is superior and transcendent to kshara and akshara prakritis.

The perishable and the imperishable are both like the arms, again to use the same comparison, of the one indivisible God. He is the supreme purusha, consciousness par excellence—purushottama.The so-called jiva, the individual, and the world outside are both included within the all-pervading Being of God, and at the same time God is transcendent.

So we as persons here, human beings, are therefore finally inextricable in our relationship with the world outside, and both these are inviolably related to God’s super-personal purushottama state.

The state of purushottama is often compared to the jivanmukta condition by many interpreters of the Bhagavadgita, though it is difficult to say whether that is the intention of the Gita when it speaks of the purushottama, because God’s personality seems to be emphasised here for the purpose of contemplation and meditation.

To be continued ...
Swami Krishnananda

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