The Tree of Life 1-7. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, October 14, 2022. 06:30.
Discourse 1: The Twofold Character of Cosmic Life - 7.

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Chapter 15 – Purushothama yogam :
The Yogam of the Supreme Divine Personality : 
Lessons from the Analogy of a Banyan tree :

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We are told by the Upanishads and scriptures of this character that the One willed to be many; the seed intended to become the tree. This intention of the seed to become the tree is the desire of life. What we call desire is nothing but the urge of the seed to become the tree. 

Why does the seed wish to become the tree? 

Why should it not exist as a seed alone? 

What is wrong with being merely a seed? 

And what does the seed gain by becoming a tree? 

The whole of the Bhagavadgita is an answer to this question.



Why should we not keep quiet as a seed? Why do we want to become a tree? Why do we peep into nature through the skies and look at the sun for light and air? Why does the tree desire this? Why should we come out of our rooms or peep outside the window to see who and what are there? Why should we want to know? How can we explain this curiosity in our lives? Why is it that we feel like fish out of water within our rooms, and want to go out to other places? Why is it that we are so restless?

Well, the seed is restless. It has to become the tree. We cannot curb its force. Our movements from place to place are nothing but our seed of the mind moving as the branches of the tree of our own experiences. Nobody can rest quiet: na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api jātu tiṣṭhaty akarmakṛt (B.G. 3.5). We will go crazy if we are locked up in one room, just as the seed will struggle to burst forth in some way or the other when circumstances for it become favourable.

Unless we are able to know what this mysterious urge is which keeps us always on tenterhooks and never gives us anything, we will not be able to live happily in this world. We may go to any doctor, any Guru, but we will be the same person. Nobody is going to help us unless the light comes from within us, because our conviction is our guide. Our faith, our stability and logical conclusiveness of approach in life are the satisfaction. Gurus and physicians may show us the way, but they cannot walk for us. We have to walk.

The sorrows of life are the outcome of our subjects to this urge of life to ramify itself into branches of experience and keep us unhappy nevertheless. If we are to seek for a concrete example of an experience between the devil and the deep sea, here it is before us. To live in this world in this condition is to be exactly between the devil and the deep sea. We cannot keep quiet. We are forced to run out of ourselves in search of various things. That is the deep sea on one side. But after searching for all the things in life, we are still in sorrow. That is the devil on the other side. Not to be seeking for things is sorrow, and not to find anything after the search is another sorrow, so always there is sorrow. Oh, what is this? We do not know whether to exist or not to exist. To be or not to be, is the great question. We cannot live, we cannot die, because to live is great sorrow, and to die is worse than that. We do not know which to choose between these two.

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To be continued ..


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