Bhagavadgeeta : ( 26/11/2012. )

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-10. Such is the profundity of meaning that is hidden in these simple terms that we generally pass by them when we study or read the Bhagavadgita. Te brahma tad viduh krtsnam : Brahman, or the Absolute, has to be understood in its entirety, not in its partiality. Krtsna is completeness; integrality is krisattva. So the Absolute or Brahman has to be comprehended in its integrality, totality, unity, in its blendedness and completeness—not merely in transcendence, but also in immanence and inclusiveness of everything. This concept of God is difficult for the simple reason that the thinker also is involved in this thought. The adhyatma is not isolated from the adhibhuta or the adhiyajna or the adhidaiva. The thinker being involved in the very process of the thinking of God, such a thinking becomes difficult, because we are usually accustomed to think of things as externals, outside objects which we have to judge in a particular...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-9. God is present as the superhuman element in the human individual, and minus that, the human individuality vanishes into an airy nothing. The root of our personality is God Himself, and the root of anything, for the matter of that, is this Being. The gods in heaven, the angels in all the superior realms, all human beings, everything created in this universe, all objects and all subjects, everything blended together gives us a picture of the supreme unity of Godhood. If this idea could be entertained, if it could be practicable for any human being to think like this at the time of passing, liberation is certain. "Prayana-kale’pi ca mam te vidur yukta-cetasah" : "The mind has to be united with God—this is called yoga. Ultimately yoga means union with God. It can be union with anything from the point of view of the vision of God. It is ultimately a union with the essential essence of any particular thing in the wo...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-8. So, to come to the point again, these one and a half verses towards the end of the seventh chapter tell us how we have to build our personality, which has to be integral and not partial. We are to be supermen ultimately and not remain merely as men, mortals, individuals—one among the many. We are empirically individuals, one isolated from the other, but we also have an element within us which brings us together. We have a super-social personality in us, transcending our social individuality. We are units of human society, no doubt, but we are not merely that. We are not just single units or individual citizens of a nation—an Indian citizen, a British citizen, an American citizen, etc. This is a poor definition of a human being. We are that, no doubt—we are passport holders, we have visas, we are fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, we are this and that. This is the lowest concept of individuality of a person. Bu...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-7. There are two kinds of extremes in thinking—the empirical and the transcendent. While we emphasise the transcendent aspect of God, we are likely to ignore the world and human society and become austere monks, desert fathers, cave dwellers and monastic hermits with an absorption of consciousness into a transcendence of values, which may border upon a complete bifurcation of oneself from the external experiences in the form of the world—adhibhuta, and society—adhiyajna. This is something very important to remember. The Supreme Being is no doubt the eternal object—adhibhuta, but inclusive of the thinker, the subject—adhyatma, inclusive also of the whole of society—adhiyajna, and inclusive of all the gods that one can imagine—adhidaiva. All the gods of religion are included in this Supreme Godhead. The angels and the divinities that we speak of in religious parlance, the dwellers in the higher heavens, paradise, the ethereal be...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-6. So this controversy was another kind of catastrophe that got introduced into human thought. From somewhere we have gone to some other place, not knowing the direction at all. The intention of the originators of the great thoughts and the sages of divine experience were all wonderful. But, time has its own say in every matter and things slowly get diluted as time passes on. The pure gets adulterated until it loses all content, meaning and reality. The worst mistake that we can do in anything is to go to the extreme in it. Even in a good thing, we should not go to the extreme. Then it ceases to be a good thing and becomes a bad thing. Even truth can become untruth, when it is taken to the extreme. Ahimsa can become Himsa when it is taken to the extreme. Virtue can become vice when it is completely taken to the breaking point. So all these good thoughts which are necessary as reformations in the history of man, go...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-5. The whole field of sociological relationships is comprehended within the Being of God, so that social existence in not outside God’s existence. Many of us, theologians and spiritual seekers, are prone to commit the mistake that society is different from God, or at least isolated in its character from God-being, so that social workers, social welfare thinkers and humanists are likely to ignore the principle called ‘God’ as an irrelevant interference with the human concern called ‘social activity’ or ‘welfare’. Not so is the truth. The adhiyajna or the field of activity, service and relationship of any kind is one of the manifestations of God Himself, so that the concept of God includes the concept of human society, and it cannot exclude it. So social welfare, social thinking, the humanistic approach is incomplete without the introduction of the divine element into it. Also, vice versa—the concept of God in a purely theolog...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-4. Every object has infinite relationships, but this infinitude of relationship is incomprehensible to the mind of the observer of the object. The object is taken as an isolated, localised something, cut off from all other objects, and this idea that the object is absolutely independent of all other objects, especially independent of the observer himself, is the basic defect in the knowledge process. This is usually called ‘the fallacy of simple location’. That objects are simply located in a particular place is a fallacy, and this fallacy is at the root of all our knowledge. While we extend our knowledge to the supreme object, God, who is supposed to be the object of our contemplation and meditational processes, we no doubt try our best to free this object, which is God, from the common defects of the usual empirical perceptional process—but still God stands before us as a tremendous object. The Bhagavadgita  endeavou...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-3. The important terms that we are referring to in this context in these verses are adhyatma, adhibuta, adhidaiva, and adhiyajna. These four terms occur in these one and a half slokam-s : "Te brahma tad viduh krtsnam adhyatmam karma cakhilam. Sadhibhutadhidaivam mam sadhiyajnam ca ye viduh." We read the Gita, repeating these slokam-s and understanding their grammatical meaning, but grammar is not the only way of scriptural interpretation. There is a philosophical and metaphysical aspect in the wisdom that the scripture gives us, apart from the linguistic surface in which it is cloaked, and to confine our knowledge of scripture only to its linguistic aspect or grammatical dictionary meaning would be to partially understand its profundity. The thought of God is the most difficult thought. As a matter of fact, any thought is difficult when it is attempted to be made comprehensive. The difficulty is not in the fact...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us : Part-2. The limitation that is imposed upon the knowledge process by the interference of spatial extension and temporal succession tells upon our concept of God also, so that we think of God as we think of a cow, an empirical object, notwithstanding the fact that we try our best to make this idea of God as vast as possible and as inclusive as practicable. But whatever be our endeavour in making our concept of God comprehensive, the limitations that interfere with the knowledge process also affect our concept of God. The Bhagavadgita warns us about this in a few words in two verses at the end of seventh chapter. These terms are well known phrases in the philosophy of the Vedanta and Samkhya, but their connotation and significance is hard to comprehend unless we go deep into their interrelationship. "Jara-marana-moksaya mam asritya yatanti ye, te brahma tad viduh krtsnam adhytmam karma cakhilam." " Sadhibhut...

Chapter 11: God Present Within Us Part-1. There is a system of thinking known as ‘field theory’ in science, which attempts to bring together the various perspectives of observation of any given object, whereby the observation is supposed to be complete. If the field of operation in the process of observation is partial, then the result is not expected to be a correct picture of the object of observation. The most difficult thing in the process of perception is to make this perceptional process a comprehensive method of the acquisition of true knowledge. Our observations and perceptions are mostly partial, one-sided; and this defect or limitation that is imposed upon the process of perception gives us a wrong picture of the object—even if it be God Himself, the supreme object of knowledge. The Bhagavadgita, towards the end of seventh chapter, takes up the point of what we may call the field of comprehension. The thought of God has to be entertained in the mind of ...

Chapter 10: The Imperishable Among All that is Perishable : Part-20. The Upanishads speak of it, and the Bhagavadgita also speaks of it in this very chapter. The stages of the ascent usually go by the names ‘the Northern Path’ or ‘the Southern Path’, as you all very well know—the uttara marga or the dakshina marga, the path of light and the path of darkness. The path of light is supposed to be the path of liberation which the soul pursues on account of the yoga that it has practiced in this life, and which is practiced even at the moment of passing. The Bhagavadgita says, “Concentrating oneself on the point between the eyebrows, chanting the mantra Om with deepest feelings welling from the heart, devote oneself entirely to the supreme purusha.” Kavim puranam anusasitram anor aniymsam anusmared yah, sarvasya dhataram achintya-rupam ditya-varnam tamasah parastat, says the Bhagavadgita—beyond the darkness of the ignorance of the universe, It shines like a brilliant ...

Chapter 10: The Imperishable Among All that is Perishable : Part-19. An honestly led life of divinity and charitableness, of devotion to God, purity and dedication of spirit to the highest aim of life, purushartha moksha, will take care of itself. When your whole personality is that concentrated, you can be a yogi in a moment. Anta-kale ca mam eva smaran muktva kalevaram, yah prayati sa mad-bhavam yati nasty atra samsayah. The eighth chapter gives a little description of the yoga that one practices at the last moment, the anta-kle yoga. Bhishma was supposed to have practiced this when he was on a bed of arrows. He withdrew himself from all external awareness after the long gospel that he delivered to Yudhishthira in the Shantiparva of the Mahabharata. He withdrew himself after a magnificent prayer that he offered, which goes by the name of Vishnuswaraja in the Shantiparva. So do all yogis depart, and so can you also depart from this world, and so can anyone dep...