Bhagavadgeeta : ( 26/11/2012. )

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-19. But this religious, spiritual or mystical requirement on our part will take us beyond religion itself. As long as we are dogmatic in our adherence to a fanatical theological doctrine of this ‘ism’ or that ‘ism’, as long as we fight over languages and kin, and stick to our prejudices of nationalities and various cultures, to that extent we are far from God. The Bhagavadgita, in a super-national gospel, gives us this great caution, asking us to transmute ourselves into super-national individuals not belonging to any nation. In our spirit we are super and exist above these limiting shackles of wealth and power, of distinctions of umpteen types and, in a sentence, we may say that the Bhagavadgita’s gospel is a gospel of the universalisation of the individual. Towards this great goal the Teacher takes us in the further chapters. Chapter-8. ENDS Swami Krishnananda Next : Chapter-9: The Unity of the Lover and the ...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-18. There are many students who think that the- " sixty-sixth slokam of the eighteenth chapter" is the sum and substance of Gita— "Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja, aham tvm sarva-papebhyo moksayisymi ma sucah." Well, this is the sixty-sixth slokam of the eighteenth chapter, and it has been told only towards the conclusion of the entire teaching which has passed through various stages. We too have to pass through the emotional turmoil through which Arjuna passed in the first chapter, and we will also find ourselves in the same condition of utter misery and helplessness in which he found himself emotionally. We will have to find ourselves in this condition, if we have not already done so. The spiritual seeker has to face a fire in which he has to be burnt and burnt. The demands that God makes upon us are hard indeed, harder and more inconceivable then the demands of a hard-boil...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-17. All things are existent in some form or the other, ultimately, in their archetypal Creator, in God the Almighty. This is the way in which we are introduced to teachings of the next six chapters of Bhagavadgita, from the seventh to the twelfth, for the purpose of giving us a complete knowledge of the cosmology of creation with the intention of introducing us into the Being of God Himself. The terrible encounter had to be faced even by a great man like Buddha. “You have chosen this path in error; you are wrong. Your sadhana, the meditation that you are attempting, are false attempts,” Mara says to Buddha.  Christ’s temptations that are spoken of in the New Testament are the mystical stages through which everyone has to pass. Everyone is a Buddha and everyone is a Christ, one day or the other—if not today, tomorrow. Everybody has to pass through the same series of stages, and all have to undergo the same...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-16. These difficulties that we made reference to, which we have to face in the study of these divine and sublime subjects, are because of the persistence of certain weaknesses in our individualities. The weaknesses are nothing but the affirmations of our own selves. There is an inveterate impulse in every one of us to assert ourselves, and the biblical story of the fall of Satan, Lucifer, is a commonly accepted doctrine of the original fall of man. That is the original fall, and the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree is the assertion of individuality by a sudden awareness of good and bad, good and evil. We are told that Adam and Eve had no idea of good and evil—they did not even know that they were naked. This idea itself was not there; there was no consciousness of it, because they were communed to the whole creation. The eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree is the desire to grab objects of sense for the sa...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-15. So, when this selectiveness in perception is overcome by the intuitive character of comprehension which is the vision of God, it is not a sensory perception. God does not see the world with eyes as we see, but He has an intuitive, instantaneous, transcendental comprehension, at one grasp, at the totality of creation. And here, the distinctions that appear to our minds do not exist at all—they get transmuted into a single wholeness of indivisibility. When the great Creator is said to be inclusive of all things in the world, of every character, desirable or undesirable, necessary or unnecessary, pleasant or otherwise, we cannot understand. We cannot think as God thinks, because we have no intuitive comprehension of things. We have only sensory organs. We see, hear, taste, smell, and touch—but God is not like that. His existence is His Self; His perception is inseparable from His Being. His existence is Hi...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-14. They are arranged in such a pattern in the cosmic set-up that there seems to be the sattvica, rajasa and tamasa, as they appear before our eyes. This is another great revelation here. Before the eyes of God the world stands transfigured, and it does not stand as it stands before us. Before God, the world does not exist as an object to be confronted every day, as it does with people. We have to confront the world; we have to face it; we have to attack it. Sometimes we are subjugated by it, and those are our sorrows, because our minds accept certain characteristics of the world according to the capacities of comprehension with which the mind is endowed, and what it cannot accept is rejected by the mind, just as a certain spectrum of colour in the leaves of a tree absorb a particular ray of the sun, and appear to us as green color. The green colour of the leaf, for instance, is the effect of an abstraction. A...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-13. These answers, given by the Teacher, raise further questions of the relationship between the thread and the beads and so on, because the thread is not the beads, and the beads are not the thread. Again a doubt will come that God is not the world, and the world is not God. So we are not going into these details now in this chapter—it will be taken up further on. For the time being we are told to satisfy our initial curiosity that God is present in all things, and we need not be under the impression that He is far away, unreachable as a so-called transcendent. Yet, when God is taken as a Creator and as a thread passing through all the beads of things in the universe, the subtle misgivings of the transcendence of God persists, inadvertently, willy-nilly. However, keeping this question aside for the time being to be answered later on, we are told that everything in this world, whatever be the variety that we see, is co...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-12. Recap : For the question ( If creation is not outside Him, where is it? ) in  part-11. Answer follows  under-( Read part-11, and connect this part of the blog ) We cannot say where it is, if it is not outside Him. We will be surprised that we are given an answer which raises further questions of a more difficult character. So, an initial answer is given to an initial question that may arise in the mind of a student. As beads are sewn on a thread, and all the beads are connected by a single thread that passes through all of them in a necklace or garland, whatever it is, so is God present continuously through all the various particulars of the world. Just as a thread passes through all the beads and is continuously present without any break in the middle, it is indivisibly present throughout, entering into every bead throughout, so also God, the great Creator of the universe, is present in ...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-11. Now, we do not know how God is related to this world. Is God outside the world, or is God inside the world? If He is outside the world, what is the connection between Him and the world? Is there a gap of emptiness between the world and God? If so, then He cannot be regarded as omnipresent, all-pervading; He is only somewhere, like a large personality. To remove all these misconceptions at one stroke the Teacher of the Bhagavadgita says: 'Mattah parataram nanyat kincid asti dhananjaya' : “Nothing outside Me can exist. So don’t argue glibly that the world is outside Me.” This answer is not a final answer; it is a tentative answer, but a very important answer. The final answer comes later on in another chapter; it has not come yet. To remove the doubt at the very outset, to nip the doubt in the bud, the Teacher says: Mattah parataram nanyat kincid asti dhananjaya: “Outside Me nothing can be, ...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-10. Why are there these differences in the theological doctrines of creation? The reason is the variegated concepts of the relationship of the universe to the Creator. We have our own ideas about the relationship of the creation to the Creator, and these variations in the concept are the products of the various theological precepts. What are these implications that have given rise to these differences? The implications are very subtle, very deep and difficult to probe into. How God is related to this world is a question that cannot easily be answered. A child’s concept of God’s relation to the world is simple, and we are also thinking in a child-like manner. We cannot escape the subtle prejudice of the imagination that God is somehow or other outside the world. Logically, by mathematical arguments, we may accept that God cannot really be outside the world. But sentimentally, emotionally and by social go...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-9. What are the characteristics of God? They are creation, preservation, destruction. Now these are the primary attributes, together with the great attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. God creates, God preserves and God destroys. But this theological concept of God being the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer has many subtle implications which have created the huge science of theology, which also creates the subtle differences in theological doctrines of the various religions of the world. If we read the theological dogmas of various religions, we will find they differ, one from the other. Every religion describes the process of creation in a peculiar manner of its own. Swami Krisnananda To be continued  ...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-8. But there is a higher prakriti, beyond the phenomenal, transient, changing forms of the lower prakriti. Apareyam itas tv anyam prakrtim viddhi me param: “By My own force of an all-including comprehensiveness and of My integrated Being of universal character, I sustain the lower prakriti as the whole universe.” Everything has come from these forces. Etad yonini bhutani sarvanity upadharaya: “Whatever you see in this world anywhere, in all directions, are modifications, combinations, permutations of these eight things mentioned, or particularly speaking, only five things—earth, water, fire, air and ether. There is nothing but this.” Aham krtsnasya jagatah prabhavah pralayas tatha: God is the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer of all things. This is a great subject in theology, whether it is Hindu theology or Christian theology, whatever it is. The great relationship of the universe to the Creator...

8. In Harmony with the Whole Universe  : Part-7. There are many immediate causes. Hydrogen, when combined with oxygen in a certain proportion makes water, but while hydrogen and oxygen are the immediate causes of water, they are not the ultimate causes, because a question be asked as to the cause of hydrogen, and so on. In the same way, we require an ultimate cause, beyond which we cannot think. A causeless cause has to be demanded—that is what we call the Creator. It is a cosmological argument, as we call it in philosophy. For this there is a Creator, and if the Creator is not to be there, we cannot explain this world. Inasmuch as an explanation is necessary, and the mind cannot be quiet without receiving a logical answer to this question of the creation of the world, the Creator has to be accepted. So the Teacher of the Bhagavadgita, who has taken this stand for the psychology of the student, says the world consists of five elements. Bhumir apo’nalo v...