Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 29-3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, December 04, 2022. 07:00.

Chapter 29: The Yoga of the Bhagavadgita -3.

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Then there are other tricks of the psyche which tell us that we have attained to a satisfactory stage of spiritual enlightenment. “I have visions. I have seen colours and heard sounds which come from the denizens of the higher heavens.” These visions are not considered to be illusions. They are regarded as satisfactions, so that the effort may be stopped somehow. The mind will not be able to concentrate on that point anymore. It will flit here and there and move about. In the earlier stages, due to the pressure of the effort exerted upon it, which acted like the whip that goads the horse to pull a vehicle, it did concentrate. But how long will it move like this with the power of a whip? Then the mind gets exhausted. It falls down, and the concentration ceases. However much you may try to fix your mind, it will not be possible.

Therefore, here is a benign word of blessing. Vigatabhi: Have no fears of this kind. Let all these fears be shut out because there is a time and also a manner of the coming of the divine grace. It comes at the proper time, and it comes in a proper manner. We have to expect it in the manner it will come, and also at the time it can come, and not at any time that we may call it. Submissively we have to expect it, no matter the length of time it may take to visit us.

Brahmacārivrate sthitaḥ, manaḥ saṃyamya. The senses are turbulent, and the needs of the human personality are galore. Countless are our needs. The physical body needs food. Every sense organ requires a food. The ego also requires a food, and our emotions require a food. Our logical understanding, reason or intellect also asks for its own food. Now, this is the manner in which they are sustained by their own requisite diets, and brahmacharya is the way of the universal existence. Brahma is completion, it is the plenum, it is the total, it is self-sufficiency, self-completeness, and to move as a whole is to be in a state of brahmacharya. For our practical purposes, Brahma may be considered as that which is integrated. 

To live an integrated life is to be a brahmacharin, and to dissipate one's energies in any channel of sensory activity would be the opposite of it. Enough has already been said in the earlier chapters of the Gita of what it means to be a whole person. We need not comment on it once again, as it would be an unnecessary repetition. It is necessary for us to maintain ourselves as wholes, and not fractions. We are not subordinates of any circumstance in this world. We are not slaves of any condition. We want nothing. We do not want anything because we have everything in us. We have everything in us because we are wholes. We have to bring into our minds what was told us in the Third and Fourth Chapters of the Bhagavadgita that is it possible for us to satisfy ourselves that we are a sort of completeness of selfhood.

God should be our ideal, finally. Yukta āsīta matparaḥ: devoted to Me only as the Supreme Almighty. Here in this devoted and dedicated betaking of oneself to the supreme Godhead, one has to maintain a certain attitude. Where is this Godhead? The God that you are seeking for communion in yoga – where is this God seated? In every experience through which you pass there is an element of God because anything that you are forced to regard as real in some sense partakes of the reality which is ultimate. The ultimately real is present in some measure in the relatively real, because even to enjoy a relative reality there must be at least a little of the ultimate in it. Hence, our problems must be real in order that they may harass us. Unreal problems cannot give us trouble. So even a problem has a reality, and nothing can be real unless there is a jot, at least, in it of that which is absolutely real. 

Even that which is passingly real, transitorily real and relatively real – real as a phantasm even – must have some shadow of the ultimate Reality. To the extent anything is impossibly real, even if it be a little insignificant so-called ‘something' of the world, insofar as it enjoys a reality of its own, it attracts our attention and it calls for our obedience to the law that operates in its circles. Hence, the Bhagavadgita will tell us that we should be moderate in our attitudes, and not go to extremes in a supremely idealistic sense minus all realism in it. The ideal of spiritual realisation is not bereft of the real element in it. The ideal is also real. Generally we make a distinction between the ideal and the real, but such a distinction is uncalled for. The ideal has no meaning unless it has a reality. An unreal ideal is not going to bring us anything.

VIDEO : The Glory of the Lord is unlimited! Let us learn to recognize it and feel His Divine presence around!

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To be continued

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