A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 9-2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, January 03, 2022.6:00. PM.

Chapter : 9. The Yoga of Meditation.2.

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That is to say, you are not independent because you always define yourself in terms of something with which you are associated. You feel you are rich, you are poor, you are male, you are female, etc. These definitions that you unwittingly foist upon yourself tell you that you are not independent, and cannot be regarded as free. To the extent you are dependent on feelings, instincts, social contexts and relations, to that extent you are a bound soul.

But meditation is the art of the achievement of freedom. Perhaps it expects you to achieve the highest kind of freedom – untrammelled not only by external relations, but by conditions given by space and time. Such kind of absolute freedom is your expectation through spiritual meditation. So a seeker of this highest freedom in the spiritual self will analyse and assess the category of selfhood in which he is, or to which he belongs. How do you define yourself?

The Bhagavadgita says, in one or two verses, that you have to raise your lower self by the power of the higher Self. You should not be always a physical self, an instinctive self, a desire-filled self, a sensory self or a social self. The Self cannot be so described as something conditioned by other things. The very meaning of Self is unconditionality, indivisibility and self-sufficiency. If the self of yours is inadequate in some way, you cling to certain associations outside, as I mentioned, so that you look like an adequate self. But the Self cannot be made adequate or self-sufficient by any accumulation of external factors. Society, objects of sense, or even the satisfaction of the physical body cannot make the Self a better Self because the Self cannot be associated with anything other than its own Self.

The meaning of Self is non-objectivity. It cannot be externalised in any manner whatsoever, and it cannot be related to anything. The Self cannot be a relation of somebody else, and somebody cannot be a relation of the Self. As long as you feel that you are related to something – to property, to selfhood, to family relation, to position in society, whatever it is – your self is not unconditioned. It is a grieving self, limited self, finite self, dependent self, a slavish self. This is the lower self. The Gita instruction is that this lower self has to be purified and raised to the level of the higher Self. Uddhared ?tman?tm?na? (Gita 6.5): By the higher Self you raise the lower self.

As we have studied earlier, the higher Self is the adhidaiva, the conscious transcendent principle of divinity ranging above yourself as an individual, as well as above the outside thing with which you are related.

To be continued.....

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