Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 25-3.Swami Krishnananda.

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Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF)

08.09.2022 

The joyous spirit of Onam festivities is indeed infectious and we at CIF look forward to it every year! 

The entire staff, resident Swamins and Brahmacharins, along with the Vedanta Sadhaka Course (VSC) students joined the festivities with great enthusiasm and joy. 

The colourful athapookalam with the glorious colours of nature's best was beautifully laid out in the morning. 

Dressed in festive attire, everyone eagerly welcomed the cultural presentation in the Chidvilas auditorium. 

Swami Sharadanandaji inaugurated the programme with a short message on the cultural significance of the Onam festival invoking the grace of Vamana Bhagavan (Lord Mahavishnu). 

Indeed the performances that followed showcased the hidden talent of all those who participated, be it the melodious rendering of Onam folk songs, or the well synchronised Thiruvathirakali and other dances performed by the women staff. 

Br. Sudheer Chaitanya coordinated the fun activities and games, encouraging everyone to drop all inhibitions and give into the festive fervour. 

The celebrations concluded with the sumptuous Onam sadhya that everyone enjoyed, their hearts full of gratitude to the Lord.

HAPPY ONAM TO MEMBERS & FAMILIES

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Thursday, September 08 2022. 07:00.
Chapter 25: The Lower Self and the Higher Self-3.

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It is generally believed that a self is that which is identical with itself. Philosophically speaking, metaphysically conceived, a self is a non-alienable indivisibility. It is impossible to alienate it into something else. The thing that cannot become another is the self. I am what I am, and I cannot be you. A is A; A cannot be B. That law of self-identity is the law of the Self. That which knows but cannot be known is the Self. That which sees and hears but cannot be seen or heard is the Self. That which is responsible for every kind of experience but cannot itself be experienced is the Self. It is the subject which can never become the object, which means to say, it cannot be encountered in any manner. This is to have a philosophical, up-to-date notion of what we may call a metaphysical Self.

But the Bhagavadgita is a practical guideline for our day-to-day life. The Bhagavadgita is not teaching an academic, armchair philosophy. It is not a professor speaking in a university. It is a friend speaking to a friend, a parent speaking to a child, a physician speaking to a patient. Therefore, there is immense practicality down to the core of it in the instructions we have in the Bhagavadgita, though it does not mean that the teacher of the Bhagavadgita is not metaphysically awakened. Life is nothing but practice. Life is nothing but living. It has no meaning if it is not living. You have to live it and be it, and it cannot be explained in more explicit terms. That which you are is your life, and therefore, that is the most important thing for you. The way in which I am conceiving myself to be, the way in which I live, and the way in which I act and behave and conduct myself, the way in which I think and feel, this is my life. What is the use of telling you anything unconnected with this greatest of realities? The greatest reality is yourself, and anything unconnected with you has no reality for you.

So what are your feelings in regard to the self? A layman's self, a poor man's self, a rich man's self, an involved man's self, a detached man's self, a man's self and a woman's self, this self and that self, an individual self and group self, a social self and a political self, a family self, a world self – you can have concepts of these selves also, with certain definitions attached to them, and so it is possible to have many selves. That there are many selves may be taken as an accepted fact under strict supervision of precision of thinking.

Though the Bhagavadgita has no quarrel with the notion of a multiplicity of selves, it does not wholly agree with any of the schools of thought which hold such extreme ideas of the self. The notion of the self has to be flexible. It is malleable, it is ductile, or whatever we may call it. It can be moulded into any shape, and because it can be moulded into any shape, it can have many shapes. Now, that which can be moulded into many shapes may look like many things, and yet it need not be many things. We can cast a substance into many shapes by melting it into a crucible, and yet the substance has not become other than what it is. Molten lead is lead, whatever be the shape it takes. We can make an idol of it. It can be square, it can be oblong, it can be round, it can be any blessed thing. These are the forms of the substance which is cast into these shapes because of the mould through which it is interpreted, conceived and understood. So in a way there are many gods, many things. Are there not many things in this world? Yes, certainly. There are many things, countless things, but really they are not many things. They are many faces of a single substance.

Thus, manifold is the self, and one's self may look different from another's self. But what is the kind of self that the Bhagavadgita is thinking when it speaks in this manner that we have to raise the self? The self has to be lifted by the Self. Now, while we are engaged in understanding the meaning of this very, very important verse, the crux of the whole matter, we have to carefully carry with us a caution that together with the provision of there being a multiplicity of selves under different conditions, the Bhagavadgita is maintaining throughout, from the beginning to the end, the supremacy of the ultimate Self. Because there is one absolute Self in the end, therefore, there is one Self even in the beginning, and even in the middle, in adi and madhya and anta, which is the beginning as well as the end. That conviction is carried relentlessly throughout the teaching, right from the very outset. Mattaḥ parataraṃ nānyat kiṃcid asti (BG 7.7): Nothing superior to Me, nothing outside Me, nothing higher than Me can ever be. This great ‘I am what I am' is asserted there. But together with it there is this intriguing passage which says that the self can be the friend of the Self or it can be the enemy of the Self, and how it can be the friend and how it can be the enemy also is explained very precisely: The conquered self is the friend, and the opposed self is the enemy.

Now, in what way can we oppose it and convert it into our enemy? In what way can we befriend it so that it supports us? It is difficult to logically explain all these things; analogically we may be able to understand something. There is a higher dimension of everything which includes all the lower dimensions. A dimension is something which is to be understood by us. We can take, for the purpose of a homely illustration, the dimension of management. There is a higher type of management and a lower category of management. There can be many little managements within a large circle of a single management. Many villages are sometimes headed by a chieftain. It is a kingdom by itself. A village is a kingdom by itself, headed by one single person we call the headman, the pradhan, and so on. This little village is a self-identical completeness by itself; it is an integration. It is one single concept of management, and yet this little self, this little management is subsumed entirely by a larger circle of administration which we call a tehsil or a taluk or a district. Now, that district also is a self by itself. It is a single administration headed by one principle of administration called a District Collector, or in the case of a tehsil, it is a tehsildar, and so on.

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To be continued ....

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