The Tree of Life 2-1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, October 22, 2022. 06:00.

Discourse 2: The Search For Wholeness-1.

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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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The mystery of life is explained, as we noted yesterday, in the first five verses of the Fifteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. The mystery lies primarily in the fact that the way in which this tree of life grows is a little different from the way in which human minds work. This is the reason why human comprehension cannot fathom the depths of the extendedness and the functioning of the movements of this cosmic tree. Just as the branching of the various limbs of the tree is conditioned by the power that is inherent in the seed which gives birth to the tree, all knowledge and work in this world is preordained and channelised in a given shape by the Original Will which is the seed of this cosmic tree.

The world experience is knowledge and action combined. The whole of life can be summed up in knowledge and activity, the understanding and the putting of it into practice in the daily vocations of people. The outlook of life is the knowledge that is behind the way in which people work. 

A very significant word is used: chandāṁsi yasya parṇāni (B.G. 15.2). 

The leaves of this cosmic tree are the Vedas, or to put it in a more general manner, all knowledge in its extendedness. Many a time the word chandas is understood to be the knowledge of the Veda, and a significant note is struck by this particular kind of analogy in this slokam.

The knowledge that operates in this world has a twofold feature embedded in it. It is outwardly limited to the form in which it is expressed by way of perceptions, cognitions, etc., through the mind and the senses. Our knowledge is limited in the sense of the ocean waters getting limited when they are channelised through a river or a canal, etc. The vast oceanic expanse can be conditioned by a canal, through which it can be diverted in any given direction. The ocean gets conditioned because of the limitation of the banks of the canal through which the water, the ocean, flows. Likewise, the cosmic urge, which is present in the seed of the tree of life, gets channelised through the senses and the mental operations of individuals whether they are subhuman, human or superhuman.

But this water that flows through the canal is the ocean water, and not anything else. The conditioned character of the water of the ocean is due to the limitation of the bank of the canal through which it flows, but the force with which the water flows belongs to the ocean itself. The pressure of the water comes from the ocean, but the limited way in which this pressure moves is because of the limitation of the banks.

Some such thing can be taken as the analogy of human experience. We are on Earth and in heaven at the same time. This is the reason for the mystery of life. If we had been totally on Earth and stuck to the ground with our feet, with nothing of the heavenly in us, that would have been something to our satisfaction, at least empirically. But we can never be satisfied with anything in this world. Though we are conditioned entirely by whatever the world gives us, we are not wholly in this world. That particular aspect of our being, or that part of our personality which lifts us above the Earth, keeps us restless and unhappy. That which we have gained may make us happy, but that which we have yet to attain keeps us unhappy.



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To be continued ..

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