A Study of the Bhagavadgita :11.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

 ===============================================================

===============================================================

Friday, May 20, 2022. 19:40.

Chapter 11: Beholding God as He Beholds Himself-6.

===============================================================

Here in the Eighth Chapter, during the enunciation of the possibility of the soul attaining God after death, the point is that you will reach God only after death, and not when you are alive. This also keeps God at a distance, especially in your practical life. But it is in the Ninth Chapter that God comes down to your level. There is a diminution of the distance between God and man as the Gita proceeds higher and higher, from the Seventh Chapter onwards. God is a transcendent creative principle, the judge of the cosmos, very far from you; you cannot see Him. This idea may enter into you when you reach the Seventh Chapter, where it briefly touches upon the creative process. Even this idea of liberation being possible only after death, and that nothing is possible in this life, may enter into you when you reach the Eighth Chapter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But in the Ninth Chapter it says God is your friend. You cannot expect a friend to be millions of light-years away. He is very near you. He is a comrade and a well-wisher. He is your bosom friend, alter ego, and He is at your service, as it were, whenever you need Him. In a pendent verse of the Ninth Chapter, a masterstroke is struck in enunciating the meaning of the religious consciousness when it is told that God provides every need of the human being. 

"Ananyash chintayanto mam ye janah paryupasate

tesham nityabhiyuktanam yogakshemam vahamyaham."(Gita 9.22). 

The great promise is made by God: "Whoever contemplates Me undividedly without any other thought in the mind, absorbing the mind in the thought of God only, such a person will lack nothing." Everything is at your fingertips. All commodities will be thrown at you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I heard an interesting story about this. There was a Brahmin priest who was very fond of this verse. He said, "Oh, I have no problem now. I am a devotee of God. God has promised. See the promise: 'Whenever you think of Me undividedly, I shall be at your service, and all your needs will be supplied to you.' When the demand comes, the supply also comes." He was a poor fellow. He was living on alms, begging, and every day he would go from house to house and collect a little rice and some grains, and maintain his wife and children. Yet he was satisfied. "After all, God is kind to me. He has given me all that I want. What do I want, except a little food that He has given me in the form of alms?" Even with that wretched life, he was satisfied. He attributed it to the grace of God.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But one day it so happened, alms would not come. He went all places; nobody gave anything. He came back in the evening and said, "I have got nothing." His children were crying. They were starving. They said, "Papa, give us some food." But what food? There was no food. The mother also said, "Okay, all right." The next day also this happened.–It was terrible. He came back with nothing in the evening of the third day also, and they were dying, that's all. Starvation. He got annoyed. "This promise is not a real promise! I thought God is kind and He would keep His promise, but He has not." In those days, scriptures were written on palm leaves. In anger he took a nail and struck that verse, tearing it. "We are dying in spite of our prayer to God." He threw it down, and ran from the house. He did not want to sit there and hear the cry of his little children, who were almost dying.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a few minutes of the departure of this old man in wrath, some boy suddenly came with a big bag on his back, threw it on the veranda of the house and yelled to the mother, "Here are the rations for you." She came out. He was bleeding from the tongue. She asked, "What is the matter?" "Your husband has sent all these grains." "Why are you bleeding?" "Oh, I came a little late. He was so angry with me, he cut my tongue," he said. "Oh what an idiot! He is so bad. How can he tear your tongue like that? Poor boy!" She cursed her husband. The boy vanished.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After some time the Brahmin came home, and she said, "Are you a fool? Have you no sense? You sent some grains, rice and dahl, etc., with a boy, and you tore his tongue because he was a little late." He was flabbergasted. He said, "I have not sent any grain. I have not seen any boy. I have not torn the tongue of any person." "But I saw him. Here are the grains," said the mother. The old man closed his eyes for a few minutes and understood what it could be. He wept. And it appears he actually touched the feet of his wife, saying, "You are more blessed than I because you had darshan of God Himself." 

Well, this is the story of this great slokam : 

"Ananyash chintayanto mam ye janah paryupasate tesham nityabhiyuktanam yogakshemam vahamyaham."

There are those who always think of Me and engage in exclusive devotion to Me. To them, whose minds are always absorbed in Me, I provide what they lack and preserve what they already possess.

God is at your beck and call, as it were.

******

To be continued ....

===============================================================