A Study of the Bhagavadgita - Chapter 7.3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, August 2, 2021. 7:52.PM.
Chapter 7:The Entry of the Absolute into the Relative - 3.
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Now, the Third Chapter of the Bhagavadgita is long, and I am briefly mentioning the essence of it: that you have to live in this world like a Super-man, but a Super-man in the sense that you are motivated by the consciousness of the adhidaiva only. You are a transcendent person always; you are not one in the multitude. A person who is rooted in the adhidaiva consciousness does not belong to himself. You are not yourself. You are not another. What are you, then? The Super-man’s character is a transcendent element which intervenes in between the so-called yourself and the other thing, which apparently conditions you as society.

A Super-man is not a man in the ordinary sense. He is not a human being at all. You should not call him a man. ‘Super-person’, or some such thing with a capital, may be the designation applied to this principle of self-transcendence, for want of better words in language. A Super-person is not a person, because that person has risen above himself in the consciousness of that which is between himself and the other, so that he is ranging in the world as a master, and not as a slave or a servant.

When you become a Super-person, you do not belong to yourself. You have already sacrificed your personality for the sake of that thing which is above you, and you have sacrificed yourself for the other thing also; both you and the other thing are transcended by this interconnection, namely, the adhidaiva.

The whole world runs, therefore, by the operation of God. It is not working because of its own self. Neither nature nor society nor yourself are independent individuals. Nothing works independent of that universal interconnecting link, which is God operating through all His media of interconnection.

There are endless connections of this type. The relationship of adhyatma and adhibhuta is involved in an infinite variety of degrees of ascent and descent. This imperative of the presence of a consciousness between adhyatma and adhibhuta in various degrees is the reason why you sometimes feel there are many gods. Sometimes the question arises: Are there many gods, or only one God? There is only one God, the Absolute, but inasmuch as it manifests itself as an interconnecting link between subject and object through millions of degrees of ascent and descent, it looks as there are millions of gods. It is as if there are millions of governments merely because there are millions of officials in a centrality of administration. 

There is only one central government which connects everyone together into a cohesive whole, though it works through degrees of provincial, district and many other operations through individuals who look like individuals. They are actually connected to the Centre, and therefore look like little gods. Each official is a government in itself, yet it is simply a modicum, a miniature degree of a centrality of operation which has many degrees below it, and also many degrees above it. So if you can say that many officials in the government are many governments, then you can say there are many gods also. But if you say they are not governments, then gods also do not exist. It depends upon your viewpoint.

To be continued ....

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