The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 10-3: Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 29, January 2025, 09:30.

The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity:10-3.

Chapter 10: The Need for Sankhya-2.

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 

Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti

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Sometimes another illustration is brought out to make the matter clear. You must have seen a potter's wheel. Potters have a wheel by which they manufacture an earthen pot. The wheel is turned with the power of the hand. It is pushed with a particular momentum, and once it is pushed, it shall spin for some time. Now, the time for which it will be independently moving without being touched by the hand will depend upon the intensity of the push given to it. In a similar manner, the length of life that we will live in this world will depend upon the push that has been given by our desire to exist in this world. So, in a way, we wanted to live in this world. We wanted to live in this world only, and not in some other world. This is another argument why we should not make complaints. We have not to make complaints, because we wanted to come to this world only. We should not ask, “Why did God create this world?” because if we had no desire to come to this world, we would not have come to this world.

However, the physical body is subject to destruction, inasmuch as it had a beginning, and it shall have a rebirth. This is again something very interesting to note: A death of the physical body need not necessarily mean the death of desires, because the desiring principle is not the physical element. It is the mind, the psyche, that desires.

We have a very beautiful analysis of the psychic pattern of desires in our ancient scriptures, namely, the potentialities, the storehouses of desires in the deepest recesses of our being. For our convenience we may call them the unconscious level of our being – karmas which are like a large heap in a godown of a grocery shop. A lot of things are kept there, out of which something is brought out for retail sale by the shopkeeper. He does not bring everything outside; he brings out as much as is necessary, as is required for the day. There is a storage of commodities inside in the main godown, and when he brings things outside for retail sale and finds that the godown is getting exhausted, he will replenish it by adding further commodities to it.

Now, this godown which contains all the stuff is what is called in Sanskrit sanchita karma, the accumulated potentiality of all the desires collected from eons and heaped up like thick layers of cloud, which makes us unconscious at that time. The retail commodity which is brought out by the shopkeeper is this prarabdha karma. Prarabdha is the tentative allotment of a certain quantum of goods taken out from the original godown for the purpose of experience; it is a doling out, in terms of daily experience. This physical body, this physical life, this physical existence of ours here in this particular kind of world is a portion allotted out of the more potential and deeper possibilities already existing within us, and these potentialities are not visible. They are locked up inside us.

Now, we may sometimes be afraid that this inner stock may be exhausted, so we go on adding to it by performing new actions every day. We have to be very careful living in this world. We commit blunders many a time, adding forces of bondage to our mortal existence. How do we do that? By projecting further and further, more and more desire-filled actions. If the allotted portion is going to be exhausted little by little, and nothing more is to be added to the original stock, it is likely that it can be exhausted sometime. But we are not so wise. Desires are like leeches which cling to a person and will not leave that person free. The more we experience pleasure out of sense contact, the more is the impression created for further repetition of that contact. The more we enjoy, still more is the want; the more we want, the more is the desire, the more is the impression, the more is the potentiality for further longing, more action, and so on. In this manner we add to the existing stock, and the cycle of birth and death never ends.

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Continued

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