The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - 7.6. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, March 15,  2021. 10:45. AM.
Chapter 7: Meditation – A Discipline of Self-Integration-6.
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Then, the crucial point comes in – the nature of the object of meditation and the way in which you have to adjust your consciousness to that location and structure of the object of meditation. Here you are face to face with a problem. The earlier stages may look simpler – asana, pranayama and pratyahara even may be regarded in any way, the outer court of yoga. When you come to meditation proper, you are in the inner court. Here, initiation is necessary; mere book reading may not be insufficient. Whatever may be your study, however vast it be, that may not be sufficient because here you are facing a difficulty which cannot easily be explained in textbooks. You may study the biology, the anatomy of a lion, but you will not be able to face it though you are a master of anatomy. You know what the lion is made of, its psychology also is known to you if you have studied a lot about it, but you cannot go near it, in spite of all your knowledge of how its body is made and how it thinks etc. So, likewise, any amount of academic knowledge here may not be adequate to the purpose. A professorial understanding is one thing, and a practical ability to handle the situation is a different thing altogether; like rowing a boat even – you may know the art theoretically, but you cannot row the boat in the water.

So, here comes the necessity for a spiritual initiation by a competent Guru. Any amount of study is not sufficient; and you have to be very honest here, and don't merely pat yourself, imagining that you can stand on your own legs. That is not possible, because you will face such difficulties that you will not even be able to understand them. The initiation process is not merely a teaching which you receive from your Guru, but it is something more. The Guru does not merely give a lecture to you when he initiates you; he also infuses into you an energy of his own will. This is something very important to note; there is a difference between a Guru initiating a disciple and a professor lecturing in a college – there is no connection whatsoever. You are not merely receiving some information from the Guru – you are receiving something deeper, vital and living; and here the will of the Guru may be said to be operating in your own will, and, in a very important sense, the Guru thinks through a disciple. Sometimes this process is called shaktipatha – the descent of Guru's power into the personality of the disciple. Any amount of teaching verbally was not enough for Arjuna. There was a higher need felt later on, and you know what happened and what Sri Krishna had to do.

The art of meditation is the final touch you give to the whole process of spiritual practice. Which object are you going to concentrate upon? Normally, this object is chosen for you by the Guru. Are you going to meditate on God when you are here for meditation? No one can conceive God – ordinarily. But I may remove this fear from your mind by giving you a lesser and easier definition of God, for practical purposes. Whatever God be as He is Himself, whatever the Absolute be as It is in Itself, that need not deter you from embarking upon this fruitful art of meditation. Actually, for the purpose of yoga which is a psychological technique, the object of concentration – which you may consider as your God, of course – is a thing outside which nothing has to be, can be, or ever is. God is something outside which nothing exists – this is a simpler definition of God. You know the story in the Mahabharata, in the Adi Parva, wherein there is described the tournament which Dronacharya conducted for testing the students – the Kauravas and the Pandavas – and he hung a little wooden bird on the branch of a tree and he asked these boys to shoot the eye of the bird. He asked everyone, "Look, what do you see?" Someone said, "I am seeing a tree with many branches, and a bird kept there with a dot on its eye, of blackish colour. The acharya said, "You're unfit, get out! You are seeing so many things." And another said, "I am seeing the bird tied on a branch and also I see the black spot." "No good, get out!" he said, "You are seeing so many things." Then another he stood up and said, "I am seeing the bird." "Oh, no good, go!" It was Arjuna who said, "I am seeing nothing, only the spot; I am seeing only the black spot. I see nothing else," he said. "Here you are, start. Go ahead, attack!" he said. So, the concentration of the mind of Arjuna was so intense that his consciousness got united with that particular spot of concentration and he was not aware even of the bird, let alone the branches and the tree and the many people around.

Now, for the purpose of your spiritual meditation, the God of your meditation is 'that something' which is the whole reality for you. Remember this here again: a God for you is that which is the entire reality – it is a total substance. It is that which includes everything that you want in this world. This is, again, an emotional aspect which you are to infuse into this object, because you cannot concentrate on an object which you cannot love emotionally. Again I mention to you this is not a machine that you are operating, but an organising of your own total being that is surging forth in the direction of the object, and not merely an object. It is a soul-filled ideal. A compilation of whatever is desirable in this world will have to be seen in that object. This object, whatever be that object, is my God, whom I have chosen for the purpose of my meditation; it is not merely something among many other things that I have taken. When you love a thing whole-heartedly, it is not any more one thing among many things – it is the only thing. Intense lovers see the total reality in their objects, and no other objects exist there – that only exists, and you die for it. Unless the whole of reality is concentrated in that object, you cannot concentrate on it, you cannot love it – so love and concentration go together. You cannot concentrate on a thing for which there you have no love; and it is not a mere ordinary love. It is a love where the passion of the spirit gets roused to such an extent that it is inundated by itself and it sees itself wholly in the object.

So, the object of your meditation should have a double characteristic. One: outside which nothing can be, nothing has to be – it is the only thing before you. Secondly: it is the object of your emotional satisfaction. "I love it, and I cannot love anything else. It is the dearest object for me. I will die for it." And all lovers die for their objects, because they see the total reality there and nothing else exists for them. This is your God. Now, a psychologically conceived totality of reality becomes a necessity in the earlier stages, though the ontological reality is far off from you. As these subjects will be dealt with by our Professor Yavdekar, I don't touch upon these things. There is a distinction between ontological reality and psychologically-conceived infinite, which also is an essentiality in the earlier stages, for the purpose of spiritual meditation.

End.

NEXT : Chapter 8: Creation and Life After Death.

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