The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 10.2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday,April   02,  2021. 11 : 57. AM.
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Chapter - 10: Forms of Sacrifice and Concentration-2.
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All these are yajnas, or sacrifices, or a tapas, and therefore they are Yoga. Study of scriptures with concentration and a holiness of spirit is also regarded as a sacrifice, because concentration is involved there. But we are admonished that sacrifices which require physical material are lower than those forms of sacrifice where the mind alone functions and any physical appurtenance is not necessary. A feeling of charitableness, for instance, is an act of the mind, which is superior to the physical expression of it by way of parting with any external material when the inward feeling is absent. It is the feeling that counts, and it assumes a significance only when it is genuine, when it becomes a tendency to rise above one’s lower self to the higher Self, which includes the person or persons towards which one expresses the charitable feelings. Any kind of austerity by which the senses are restrained and the ego is overcome in any percentage is superior to material sacrifices. And the highest sacrifice, or the loftiest concentration, the greatest form of Yoga is the centring of consciousness in the Consciousness of a larger dimension. “Dispelling all doubts by the awakening of knowledge, and converting or transforming every action into Yoga, root yourself in your higher Consciousness,” are the concluding words of the Fourth Chapter, which message is continued in the Fifth and Sixth Chapters with certain other forms of detail.

Knowledge and action are not two different things. Samkhya and Yoga are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. Therefore, renunciation of any kind is impossible unless the separatist tendency in one’s self is overcome to the extent necessary. We always feel that we are separate from the world and from creation as a whole. This tendency to the isolation of oneself from everything outside is the opposite of Yoga, and if Yoga is a gradual movement towards the affiliation of one’s self with all things, aiming at union with things finally, if Yoga means that, renunciation of any kind is impossible without this Yoga; because renunciation, at least in the spirit of the Bhagavadgita, does not mean a physical dissociation from objects or persons, but a withdrawal of the consciousness of the externality of things, so that renunciation becomes a function of consciousness and not an activity of the body. Hence renunciation, which is the essence of Karma Yoga, cannot be dissociated from the forms of concentration and meditation which are normally known as Yoga.

Meditation and action are the same, if they are to be defined in the way we have stated. When the senses move among objects, a desire is not moving; that is the caution we have to exercise when we perform actions in the world. Mostly, when we cognise or perceive things, this process is charged with a desire, a motive within. When we gaze at things or look at objects or hear things or perform any sense function, we would realise, if we are properly investigative, that there is some kind of impulsion from inside in the direction of a self-satisfaction in the lower self, and a desireless perception is unthinkable for us. However, Yoga is not the repression of sense-activity but the freeing of sense activity from involvement in desires which usually propel the activity. All activities get infected with some desire concerned with the ego sense. And Yoga is a gradual freedom that is to be attained in this activity of the sense organs by means of the dissociation of the same from this disease called desire. Activity is permissible, and the Bhagavadgita tells us that it is unavoidable, but it also insists at the same time that we have to be careful to see that desire is not going there side by side or parallelly with the activity of the senses. It is not necessary that activity should always be with some desire. In fact, the most noble form of action is desireless action. And a desireful action is really culpable, ultimately.

When one realises that the impulsion of the senses in the direction of objects is a cosmic function, a thing that was explained in detail in the Third Chapter, one begins to be inwardly happy in a higher sense on account of the attunement of oneself with the great forces of the universe, which are the real agents of actions and whose movement is the reason behind the movement of the senses towards the objects. As we have already noted, it is not the senses that move towards the objects; the gunas of prakriti move among the gunas of prakriti. Prakriti is moving towards prakriti. The forces of Nature commingle with the forces of Nature, so that there are no sense organs and there are no objects of the senses. There is a continuity of movement which has neither a beginning nor an end in the entire cyclic motion of cosmic activity, and we do not come into the picture there as individuals. Rather, we do not exist. What exists is the universal force. Prakriti-shakti manifests itself as sattva, rajas and tamas. We will not feel at that time that we are doing anything at all, just as when a vehicle is moving, in which we are seated, we do not feel that we have made any contribution to this movement. We are taken by the force of the movement of the vehicle.

To be continued ...

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