The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita :13-5.

Chapter 13: Centring the Mind in the Heart-5.

This is not the only method of yoga, there are other methods also, but this is one specific technique that is precisely mentioned here in these two verses, apart from the various other instructions that we find in different places elsewhere in the very same scripture.

Perhaps the intention of this admonition is that our reason and feeling should go together in the act of concentration on God.

We should not be purely rationalistic individuals, minus feeling; nor should we be merely emotional, sentimental, feelingful people, without understanding.

The two have to go together, and this again is a very difficult feat.

We are driven by emotions or dry logic, with a preponderance of this or that at different times, and rarely do we become integrated personalities where our rationality combines with feeling, which is the deepest essence in us, psychologically.

Intuition, in a way, may be said to be a blend of understanding or reason, and feeling.

If you feel what you understand, and understand what you feel, you become a complete being.


But normally this is not done.

We generally keep these two apart, with no intimate relationship between them, so that it is not necessarily true that we feel what we understand or even understand what we feel.

There are irrational instincts, as we call them—our deepest feelings, which, like a cyclone, blow over us and drag us in the direction they move, like a tempest or a tornado, and the rationality behind them is beyond us.


Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ..