The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-21-8.

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31/03/2018

21.The Lord Dwells in the Hearts of All Beings- 8.

I cannot even be aware that you are sitting in front of me unless the Universal is operating between you and me. Neither can I speak to you, nor can I understand that you are in my presence, nor can you know that I am here. All knowledge is a manifestation of Universality. Every experience is Universal in its nature. There is nothing anywhere except the Universal ultimately; the particulars are not. One who knows this truth cannot appropriate agency to oneself. That action that is free from the agency or the commitment of personality in the performance of activity is sattvic. Anything else is rajasic or tamasic—motivated by egoism, personal esteem, and selfish desire, or performed with an intention of harming others in some way or the other, covertly or overtly.


The eighteenth chapter is something like a catalogue or an index of several things that have been discussed in greater detail in the earlier chapters, tending towards a summing up of the supremacy of God—the absoluteness of the Universal element in all experience. Isvarah sarva-bhutanam hrd-dese’rjuna tisihati. Ishvara is the heart of all beings. That means to say, as I mentioned, the Universal is also the Self, and everything is determined by the purpose of this Supreme Will that is known as all this creation. The surrender of oneself to the intentions of this Universal is the gospel, ultimately, of the Bhagavadgita.


The coming into utter abolition of oneself in the recognition of the All-Being of God is what is known as sharanagati or the surrender of self. The surrender of self is the last sacrifice that one can do, and the hardest of sacrifices that one can conceive. Whatever books we read or efforts that we make, this last sacrifice would be withheld for anyone, because sacrifice is generally regarded as an offering of possession. However, the highest sacrifice is not a giving up possession, but the giving up of the possessor himself, which is unthinkable on earth. How can one surrender the personality of one’s own self, which is the source of the surrendering act or performance? How can the doer abandon himself? How can the sacrificer sacrifice himself?

To be continued ..
Swami Krishnananda with his Guru Swami Sivananda 

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