Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 26-1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, September 16 2022. 06:00.
Chapter 26: Being Spiritually Alone to Oneself-1.

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The yoga of Self-realisation adopts the method of self-restraint, and the restraint of the self leads to the realisation of the Self. This would mean that an uncontrolled self is not a realised Self. The realisation of the Self is the Self becoming aware of itself. When the Self knows itself, we call it Self-realisation. If restraint of the self is necessary for the Self to become aware of itself, it will follow from this instruction that a self that is not restrained is not aware of itself. This unrestrained self, which is not established in itself and therefore not aware of itself, also is aware of something. The unrestrained self is also aware of something, but it is not aware of itself. It is aware of that which is not itself. The self is aware of the not-self in uncontrolled states. What is it that the uncontrolled self is aware of? Anything other than itself.

The world is the object of the unrestrained self. The world becomes an object of the unrestrained self by way of an externally communicated attachment artificially creating in that object of attachment a sense of secondary selfhood, so that in all our objects of attachment we are secondarily present, not primarily. The lover is present in the object of love in a sense which is not natural, because one cannot be present in another. We observed that the self cannot be the not-self at any time. Hence, the unrestrained self's longing for what is not itself is a sickness of spirit. It is the opposite of the state of yoga. Yoga is the union of the self with the Self, establishment of the Self in itself, and being aware of itself only and nothing else, not because there is something else of which it is not aware, but because really there is nothing of which it is expected to be aware.

There is no necessity for the Self to be aware of anything other than itself. Truly speaking, this is the truth of the matter, the reason being that outside the Self nothing is. Inasmuch as the externality that is characteristic of all attachments cannot be in any way associated with the true nature of the self, all attachments are unspiritual. Every craving, every prejudice, every desire, every emotion outwardly motivated in the direction of external objects is irreligious, unspiritual, unnatural – we may even say morbid. It is a kind of sickness which has descended on the self itself, such kind of sickness that is equivalent with mortality. Death is the punishment meted out to this unrestrained self which attaches itself to that which is really not there, as if it is giddy, out of its head and totally topsy-turvy in its perception. It sees the movement of objects outside as a giddy brain sees mountains revolving. Therefore, the restraint of the self is necessary for the self to be really healthy.

Hence, the outer self has to be restrained by the inner self. The inner self should be restrained by the universal Self. The lower self should be restrained by the higher self. The lower self should be subordinate to the regulations and principles of the higher self. The outer self should be conditioned by the principles and regulations of the inner self, and the inner self should be regulated by the law of the universal Self. So the movement from the outer to the inner, and from the inner to the universal, is also a movement from the lower to the higher.

While we are in states of attachment, sentiment, emotional longing, etc., we are living in a world of the externalised self. But the Self cannot be externalised, so the world of perception by the externalised self is, in a way, an illusion. Perhaps, there is a point in some masters telling us that the world does not exist. It cannot exist because the Self cannot be other than itself, and the world cannot exist unless the Self becomes another, quite different from itself. Thus, the world is a contradiction. Hence, it cannot be real. And for any kind of self to imagine that this contradictory experience of this world is real, for that self the fate is that of the enemy who opposes a higher regulation, a higher authority and a higher Guru. The outer is manifold in its nature. All sense objects may be considered as an outer form of selfhood. The yoga here described is a withdrawal of the self from this artificial location of itself in objects of sense. This is practically tantamount to what we call in common parlance pratyahara, restraint or withdrawal.

To be continued ....

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