Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity :31.1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, January 05 2023. 07:00.

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Chapter 31: The Message of the Sixth Chapter-1.

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The Bhagavadgita, which is an intensely practical message, is wholly concentrated on self-discipline for the sake of dhyana, or the meditation which the self within has to carry on for union with its own higher nature. Various aspects of this discipline have been mentioned briefly in several of the verses, and nothing has been left unsaid. All necessary details in this regard have been emphatically touched upon in their proper context, leading up to a succinct narration of the inner constituents of spiritual experience which supervenes when the higher self engulfs the lower self.

Here, at the end of the message, there is a promise, as it were, given by the invading higher self as God speaking to man, or the Absolute giving a promise to all that is phenomenal and relative. Wherever the higher is, which is the determining factor of the life of the lower, there shall be peace prevailing everywhere, and security will be the blessedness of the self that has surrendered itself entirely to the higher.

yo māṃ paśyati sarvatra sarvaṃ ca mayi paśyati,

tasyāhaṃ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati (BG 6.30).

sarvabhūtasthitaṃ yo māṃ bhajaty ekatvam āsthitaḥ,

sarvathā vartamānopi sa yogī mayi vartate (BG 6.31).

ātmaupamyena sarvatra samaṃ paśyati yorjuna,

sukhaṃ vā yadi vā duḥkhaṃ sa yogī paramo mataḥ (BG 6.32).

To see or behold the uniformity of selfhood in the entire jurisdiction of one's experience would be to live in a state of non-objectivity because the perception of selfhood is, at the same time, a union established between oneself and one's whole environment. The higher self, or the larger self spoken of here, is the environment of the lower self, which ordinarily looks like an external world which has to be contacted through the sense organs and the mind. The world we look at and encounter in our daily life is our larger self. When it appears as a coordinated system of individual units, we regard this larger self as a society, which outlook of ours impels us to carry on social welfare work, for instance, an impulsion which is actually the motivation from the selfhood that is ingrained in the so-called multitude of individuals forming this social world of external experience.

The sympathy that we feel for people, the charitable nature we would like to extend in respect of others, is basically a spiritual impulse. It is the larger self summoning the smaller self. It has not become intensely and wholly spiritual as yet. Hence, a socially sympathetic attitude is a mild form of spiritual outlook of life inasmuch as it is, at the same time, diluted with the perception of isolated units. One's own larger self is this world of human society, and even the world of nature which attracts us, impels, compels and requires of us to develop an attitude of harmony with it. This compulsion arises on account of our inwardly being living participants in the working of this whole world of our so-called external experience. If this were not to be so, if our world, natural or social, were not to be a part of our essential nature, there would be no impulsion from within us to be in a state of harmony with it. We would not have anything to do with a world of which we are not a part – a part really, livingly, vitally, and not as a mechanised part.

Hence, the call of the self is irresistible. It manifests itself as our attitudes of coordination such as family bonds, love and friendship, sympathy, mercy, helpfulness, and a feeling for others. These are psychologically manifest actions of the still-deeper reality of a unitary being, which is our true self, which appears as a large atmosphere outside. Yo māṃ paśyati sarvatra sarvaṃ ca mayi paśyati, tasyāhaṃ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati: He who beholds the Self in all the things which otherwise appear as external objects and persons, he who beholds all things in this widely spread-out Self and, at the same time, conversely, beholds the one Self in all beings, is never forsaken at any time, because who will forsake you except that which is outside you? It may be an outsideness felt even in our own false personality.

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To be continued 

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