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Showing posts from March, 2018

The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-21-8.

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31/03/2018 21.The Lord Dwells in the Hearts of All Beings- 8. I cannot even be aware that you are sitting in front of me unless the Universal is operating between you and me. Neither can I speak to you, nor can I understand that you are in my presence, nor can you know that I am here. All knowledge is a manifestation of Universality. Every experience is Universal in its nature. There is nothing anywhere except the Universal ultimately; the particulars are not. One who knows this truth cannot appropriate agency to oneself. That action that is free from the agency or the commitment of personality in the performance of activity is sattvic. Anything else is rajasic or tamasic—motivated by egoism, personal esteem, and selfish desire, or performed with an intention of harming others in some way or the other, covertly or overtly. The eighteenth chapter is something like a catalogue or an index of several things that have been discussed in greater detail in the earlier chapters, t

The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-21-7.

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15/03/2018 21.The Lord Dwells in the Hearts of All Beings- 7. Actions which are motivated by personal agency are erroneous actions, and who can avoid this feeling of personal agency in action? Everyone knows and feels, “I do, and I have to do”, not knowing that many factors are contributory to the production of a result. As we have already noted, all that goes to constitute the personality of the individual, no doubt, is a group of factors contributory to the result of the action. But this is not all. The outward world also has a part to play in the production of the result. Every event is a collision of the subject and the object, and a spark splashes forth, as it were, in this impact which is the result often attributed to the subject and often attributed to the object. But neither is the truth, because the experience of a consequence is the interference of the third element, as was pointed out earlier, namely, one degree of the Universal operating in the midst of the pa

The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-21-6.

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06/03/2018 21.The Lord Dwells in the Hearts of All Beings- 5. Likewise is the classification of will, emotion, action, etc. which is elaborated in the eighteenth chapter. When we decide, we are exerting our volition—the will is operating. It is sattvic volition or will which is able to restrain the senses and stabilise the mind and the intellect in the direction of harmony with all things. Rajas is that which confuses one thing with another other and is unable to bring about this harmonising feature among the various types of experiences we have in the world. Tamas is that which adheres to a prejudiced affirmation of will. Feelings are the expressions of emotion. They are the premonitions of a desire for pleasure, satisfaction, or happiness. We require immediate happiness—comfort at once, and not tomorrow. This inclination or instinct of the mind by which one seeks immediate satisfaction and pleasure, whatever be the consequences following, is a misguided attitude,