The Three Types of Discipline of the Bhagavadgita 3. Swami Krishnananda

06/04/2019
(Spoken on September 18th, 1974.)

3.
In this consciousness that we have of our own self, we have an integrated feeling of a totality that we are, and not an isolated makeup of bits of essentially isolated characters. It is very difficult to conceive what a human personality is. I mentioned that, psychologically at least, we seem to be made up of various phases of inner conduct, character and understanding. But all these various aspects of our conduct, feeling and understanding, etc., are brought together into a harmony of function, and it is this intelligence which brings the faculties into a harmonious function. It is this that goes by the name of the human individual.

Though there are millions of cells in our body, all different from one another, and though each thought of the mind may be said to be different from other thoughts, and every limb can be separated from every other limb, our consciousness does not feel this isolated location of the parts of the personality. We are a total, we are a whole, we are a completeness. This is an inviolable law of consciousness operating in every person right from childhood up to old age, even up to the event of death.

Now, the Bhagavadgita expects us to discipline ourselves in the sense that these faculties of the human individual should be harmonised so that they do not war among themselves internally. What is this war that is likely to take place within ourselves? This war is what is called psychological aberration, a subject for study in abnormal psychology. Psychological problems are generally the consequence of a war that takes place internally between or among the faculties in the subjective individual. How can a war take place inside our own personality when we are one single complete compact individual?

To be continued ..