A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 8 - 7. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, December 9, 2021.7:00. PM.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 8 - 7. 
Chapter 8 : The Stages of Yoga -7.

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Brahmaiva tena gantavyah : The aim, the purpose, the destination of this kind of cosmic sacrifice is the attainment of God only. 

God, through the performance which is also God, reaches God through the sacrifice, which is also a movement of God within Himself. This is the drama of God in this world which is Himself, where He is the director and the actor, the arena and the light, the audience and the performance. This is the cosmic drama that God seems to be playing for His own pleasure, and not for your pleasure, because you cannot have any pleasure unless this pleasure is there behind you, animating your existence.

Brahmaiva tena gantavyah brahma-karma-samadhinh. This kind of sacrifice as mentioned is a kind of communion that you establish with God. Brahma-karma-samadhi is the inner communion cosmically attempted by your so-called individuality. Samadhi is communion, equilibration of consciousness, an establishment of total harmony between the subjective and objective universe so that no one knows who is seeing what – whether the world is seeing you or you are seeing the world. They coalesce into a single existence. 

That is called samadhi. And in this consciousness of the sacrifice of yourself in God-consciousness, you are entering into a veritable samadhi condition while you are actually working in the world. Sahaja samadhi is also the name given to this kind of experience. Varieties of samadhi, or divine communion, are described. In one state of samadhi there is an obliteration of your existence, a consciousness of a flood inundating you from all sides, and an experience of Being as such; in the other state of samadhi you see the variety of the world, and yet you are in the state of the Infinite.

Are you not seeing the variety of the limbs of your body? 

So many fingers, so many toes, so many limbs, so many kinds of operation in the alimentary canal, in the respiratory system, in the blood circulation; but are you different things? You are one single, indivisible entity in spite of the multifarious activities that seem to be taking place in your organism. The unity consciousness is pervading the diversity of activity even in the physical organism. So is the experience that you will have in one kind of communion where you will see the whole world lit with the light of God. 

Trees will be scintillating with radiance, mountains will be shining like diamonds, the sun will pour forth rays of nectar, the moon will be inundating you with beauty, and you will not actually know whether you are in hell or in which place. This is the penultimate samadhi, as some people call it. Some of the Upanishads go into great details about this. The Yoga Vasishtha, the great mystical text, is very expanded in its exposition in these matters of the gradational consciousness of the seeker in communions which come one after the other, which are all designated by different words.

To be continued ....

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