The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 9.3. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday,March 01,  2021. 10:10. AM.
Chapter 9: The Divine Incarnation and God-oriented Activity -3.

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We need not be disappointed that we are weaklings and that we cannot understand. More than understanding is an acceptance of this feeling for God, the Presence of God. Faith transcends reason in a way, and religion is finally a faith of the soul, a spirit, a surrender of one’s self, which shall be the final message of the Gita when it concludes in the Eighteenth Chapter—a total submission of ourselves to the Presence of God by a wholehearted acceptance of His being, from our soul. This is the highest religion, and God’s Grace shall be bestowed upon us as a matter of right, and we need not be in a mood of melancholy or dejection of spirit.

Now, with this solacing religious message which is offered us in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter, we are also introduced into the need for activities in consonance with this message, with this state of religious living. The emphasis that we find laid everywhere throughout the chapters of the Bhagavadgita is that we should not suddenly imagine that we are in the topmost level. We have to be cautious in recognising where we stand at any given moment of time. And the Gita makes it clear that, according to it, Yoga is the establishment of harmony in all the levels of being. There is nothing superior or inferior in this world. Everything that God has created has a value in its own level, or stage. And the level in which we are now is also equally valuable, and its value has to be recognised by us; we cannot reject it as if it is not there.

Our action, our conduct, our movement, our behaviour in the particular atmosphere in which we are placed has to be one of harmony with that atmosphere. This is Yoga, and the need to understand the way in which we can conduct ourselves in harmony with the atmosphere is stringent. And what is this action which has to be performed in such a manner that it is in harmony with the movement of things outside in the given atmosphere? When the harmony is established between ourselves and the environment outside, our actions cease to be actions; they become movements of Cosmic Power.

Action, then, becomes non-action; one can see action in non-action and non-action in action. Our intelligence has to rise to that level where we should be able to recognise inaction in action and action in inaction. When our action is set in tune with the movements of things outside, action becomes non-action. It is as if we are doing nothing, because we are moving in harmony with the whole pattern of the environment outside, with which we are connected, and of which we are a part, organically. When we are in union with the laws of the universe, our actions are not our actions. They are laws operating in themselves in an impersonal manner.

To be continued ...

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