Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 29-4. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, December 08, 2022. 07:00.

Chapter 29: The Yoga of the Bhagavadgita -4.

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Hence, in a proportionate measure it is necessary for us to recognise elements of reality even in the lesser circles of environment in which we are unavoidably placed, as it were, and which we are helplessly forced to consider as real. When a cold wind blows, it is real. When a hot air blows, it is real. When hunger pinches from inside, it is real. When there is illness, it is real, and when there is agitation of the mind, it is real. They are not unreal events taking place.

Now, to compare them with an absolute Reality and hold that they are not real would not be a wise attitude towards them because in our ascent to the Absolute, or the supreme Reality, comparisons are not allowed. We cannot compare one thing with another thing. Each has to be taken from its own point of view and from the status which it occupies. Everyone is important in this world. There is no unimportant person, and everything has a value. Totally valueless things do not exist. The very fact that they exist should be enough proof that they have some value, and therefore it is up to us to give them sufficient regard to the extent of the value that we evince in them. There is no beggar bereft of all value. Nothing in the world is a beggar of that type; hence, in all the levels of ascent in yoga, in all degrees of rise from selfhood to selfhood, we have to pay tax at every toll, and these tolls are nothing but the gates of the different levels of reality.

What are the levels of reality? They are as many as we encounter. Therefore, any kind of excessive attachment to an unrealistic ideal should not be the motivation in yoga. There is some element of reality in the world to the extent that the consciousness permits such reality, and an austerity which does not want to take notice of the existent reality in the relative values of life will have to pay the penalty of that ignorance of the law of the lower level. So the yoga of the Bhagavadgita is a balance of attitude outwardly as well as inwardly, horizontally as well as vertically.

Nātyaśnatas tu yogosti na caikāntam anaśnataḥ, na cātisvapnaśīlasya jāgrato naiva cārjuna; yuktāhāravihārasya yuktaceṣṭasya karmasu, yuktasvapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkhahā (BG 6.16-17): The yogin, the student of yoga, is not a peculiar person. The yogi is a normal person. The yogi looks like any other person. The yogi does not have two horns and four eyes. He looks like anybody else. There is no necessity to put on faces or to be queer in one's behaviour. Normalcy, freedom of expression and utter relief of every tension is the characteristic of a yoga student. The difference between a yoga student and an ordinary person is freedom from attachments and emotional involvements of every kind.

Yoga permits us to work, as is the case with work in a factory or on the roadside. Outwardly, all work will look like a uniform behaviour of people, but yoga is not an outward behaviour; it is an inward attitude. It is a detached consciousness that speaks the nature of yoga. The outward relationship is the form of one's empirical existence in this world, but the inward meaning in it is to be seen in the attitude of consciousness. There is an element of universality present in the work that a yogi does, and that is the unselfishness about it. The dispassionate performance of work, which is the special feature of any performance of a yogin, is due to an element of universality present there which distinguishes it from all other works involved in personal attachments, involved in the desire for fruits of what one does, binding action. Na karma lipyate nare (Isa 2) says the Isavasya Upanishad: Action does not bind.

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To be continued

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