Srimad Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-15. Introduction.

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Tuesday, August 04, 2020. 4:51.AM.

Srimad Bhagavad-Gita

Chapter-15. Purushothama-yogam

Introduction-1.

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The Fifteenth Chapter Begins – The World as an Inverted Tree.

We are now face to face with a very important section of the Bhagavadgita, known as the Purana Purushottama Yoga Chapter, the Fifteenth Chapter. It is considered very sacred, and people chant it every day before they take their lunch because it glorifies God. It describes what God is in respect of this world and individuals, how we are related to the world, and related to God, finally. This subject is briefly touched upon in a very short chapter of only twenty verses, but these twenty verses are very, very important.

This world, this creation is, to put it in modern language, something like the a force running away from its centre to its circumference, or periphery, and becoming less and less connected to the centre. It loses its soul, as it were, more and more as it runs away from the centre, until it reaches the very edge of the periphery and remains like a rock, without any sensation whatsoever. Inanimate life is the lowest category of existence that we can conceive. But as the movement is in the other direction, from the periphery to the centre, there is greater and greater consciousness of one’s Selfhood. As one realises one’s greater and greater nearness to the centre, there is also a larger comprehension of the dimension of one’s being.

This world is a topsy-turvy presentation, as it were, like an inverted tree. 

The manner in which souls descend from the highest region of Godhood is compared to an inverted tree; the sap of the inverted tree moves downward from its root through the trunk, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, etc., and the lower the sap goes, the greater is the ramification of its movement. 

That is to say, this sap, the vitality of the tree, is highly concentrated in the root, slightly diffused in the trunk, diversified in the branches, and becomes more adulterated as it gets subdivided further into the minor branches, reaching the little tendrils and leaves, where only a modicum of the vital essence of the tree remains.

This vast creation, this whole world, is like a peepul tree which has its roots above and branches below. 

The downward gravitational pull of space and time is the reason for the externalisation and the ramification of the original power, original vitality, which is the root of creation. 

The root contains everything that the tree has, but the tree’s branches do not have everything that the root contains. 

A little bit of the essence of the original root is distributed in different proportions among the branches, which are thick or thin, as the case may be.

The distance between the world and God is not actually measurable as we can measure the distance between the root of a real tree and its branches. Here is a tree whose length cannot be measured by any yardstick of the world, in the same way as we cannot measure the distance between childhood and old age. There is a distance, of course, between the time when a person is a little baby and the time when he becomes old, but we cannot take a ruler and measure the length of the period that has been covered, because it is a time process that is responsible for the concept of distance between childhood and old age. There is a distance between the knowledge of a little child in kindergarten and a person studying in higher classes, but it is not measurable by a ruler or a yardstick. It is a conceptual distance, a logical distance, a very important distance indeed—more important than a measurable distance. We may say that such distance is the distance between us and God. He is very far, and yet that far distance which appears to be there between us and God is not in any way comparable to spatial measurement or even to temporal measurement of duration.

Otherwise, it is very frightening to conclude that millions of light years may be the distance between us and God and we do not have the appurtenances to reach Him at all, while the fact is that God is so close to us that there is absolutely no spatial distance at all. It is an immediate experience. Hence, some distinction must be made in understanding the analogy of the inverted tree in this sloka. It is an analogy, and we should not stretch any analogy to the breaking point. It should be taken in its spirit.

There is no necessity to deal with God. The only thing that is required is to be aware that such a thing called God exists. The mere awareness of the existence of such a thing called God is sufficient for the liberation of the soul, and no activity is called for here. The unconsciousness of there being such a thing called God is the reason why we are indulging in all the wondrous binding activities of the world and are busy eating the delicacies which this world is yielding for us.

Some people try to give examples to convince us in some way, in a feeble manner. It is like going to the waking condition from the dream world. Would we like to go back to the dream world once again? Yesterday we had a good dream or a bad dream, and then we woke up. Now we have a very clear waking consciousness. Do we grieve that we have woken up from that dream, that we have lost our dream kingdom? We were Akbar Badshah or Caesar in the dream world, and now we have woken up as ordinary mortals. Which is better—being Caesar in the dream world or this perspicacious consciousness of waking?

This waking consciousness includes everything that we saw in dream. Not only the dream perceiver, not only the seer or the observer of the dream, but the entire space, time and objects—the whole universe of dream—are contained in the waking mind. That is to say, this wondrous universe to which we are so attached, from which we are afraid of leaving, is contained in that thing which we are attaining and from which there is no point in returning—as there is no point in returning from waking to dream once again.

This  universe  of  plurality  in  continuos  ever  present  evolutionary  activity  fully  sustained  by  the  Supreme  only  : 

Our ignorance  and  lack  of  awarenes  of  this  Truth,  are the  cause  of  all  our  miseries,  this  is  confirmed  by  Gita.

In  the  thirteenth  chapter,  'the  kshetram' and  'the  kshetranjan,'   both  are  clearly  explained.

From  "Kshetrajnan"  if  "Kshetram" is  removed  the  balance  remain  "Supreme  Lord" only,  this  is  fully  clear.  

The  content  of  this  chapter  is  the  discussion  of  this  Truth  only.

Introduction Ends.

To be continued  ....

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