Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 27-3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2022. 08:30.

Chapter 27: The Practice of Meditation-3.

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What kind of seat can we have? 

It is plainly said in this verse that it should be a three-layered seat. We can have a deerskin, we can have a grass mat, we can have a piece of cloth. It is mentioned that on the top there may be a cloth, then there may be a deerskin or some such thing, then a grass mat. The kusha is a sacred grass, and a mat made out of it is referred to here. The idea behind this statement is esoteric, namely that the seat should be such that it is not a conductor of electricity. It should be a non-conductor of electricity. Why is this specific caution? When we meditate, an energy is generated in the body. If the meditation is carried on properly, sincerely, for a protracted period, there will be a concentration of force in one's personality, in the whole physical system, and the earth is a good conductor of electricity. Hence, if there is nothing between one's body and the ground, the energy accumulated in the system during meditation is likely to be consumed by the earth underneath. This is one of the reasons behind brahmacharins walking with wooden sandals. Wood is a non-conductor of electricity. Anyway, these days we have varieties of non-conductors of electricity. The particular thing mentioned in this verse refers to an ancient condition of living, and we can use our common sense here and be seated on anything which is comfortable and is helpful according to our own choice in our meditations. This is just a preliminary caution, some instruction regarding the physical posture and the seat on which one can sit for meditation.

Now comes the main task, which is the responsibility of the yogin. What are we going to do while sitting like this? 

This is a very difficult thing to understand, but the Bhagavadgita, to repeat once again, is a graduated ascent. It has been very systematically rising from level to level, and we are not suddenly told to sit for meditation without any background of thought being provided to us. What is the background? There is a vast ocean of background of thought already provided to us in the earlier chapters. Just as we do not forget the existence of a foundation being already laid and a superstructure being there when a roofing is struck, and so on, we are not merely thinking of what is told us in the Sixth Chapter here; we think it only in relation to whatever we have heard earlier right from the beginning, from the First Chapter itself. We gather the entire harvest of the earlier lessons and get concentrated in the manner required in the light of the teaching that has already gone earlier, and so the question “What shall I do by sitting in this posture?” should not be raised, really speaking. Everyone who has received the lesson properly and digested its intentions will be able to select the particular form of conceptualisation in the practice of meditation.

According to the lessons we have received, in the light of the picture of the whole of creation that has been placed before us by the Bhagavadgita in all its chapters, what are we expected to think? 

In this world in which we live, this world which is of that nature which has already been described, into whose mysteries we have been introduced, what are we supposed to think? That is the object of meditation. However, there is still a great concession given to us in these little phrases of the verses of the Sixth Chapter. We do not seem to be required to suddenly lift ourselves to that grand picture of this world, this creation and God, with which we have been acquainted during our studies. We can go to that level of conceptualisation by moving very slowly from the lowest level of physicality. The mind should be moving very slowly from the lowest level of physicality. 

The mind should be fixed on one spot. 

Ekgraṃ manaḥ kṛtvā (BG 6.12): 

On one thing only should the mind think, and it should not think two things. Why should the mind think only one thing and not two things? What is the purpose of this kind of concentration? Why this insistence that the mind should be fixed on a single object? The reason is, again, a subject of psychology.

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To be continued ..

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