The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 5.4. : Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission : 

Swami Swaroopananda enthralled the residents of Ernakulam between 6 - 10th February with a practical series of talks on Life Management Techniques based on the Man of Perfection as enumerated in Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 Verses 54 - 72. 

The event was inaugurated by Hon. Justice Sri. Devan Ramachandran, the High Court of Kerala, and started with prayers and lighting the lamp. 

The gold medal distribution for Toppers of Std XII in 2022 was also held during the event.

Overall, the series of talks provided practical guidance on how to manage one's life effectively by following the principles outlined in the Bhagavad Gita. 

The teachings focused on the importance of managing one's expectations, dealing with distractions, managing one's senses, and realizing that true happiness cannot be obtained from external objects.

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Monday, February 13,  2023. 07:30.

Chapter 5: The Mortal and the Immortal-4.

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Now, destruction is the total negation of what is, and what is, is called the real. When something really exists, it cannot be called a phenomenon or a passing phase. A real thing cannot pass away, and that which passes away cannot be called the real. The real has to ‘be', and, therefore, it is called the real. The unreal cannot be, and there is no necessity to entertain any kind of fear or doubt in regard to it. Either that which dies is real or it is unreal. We cannot have a third alternative to imagine. Something dies, or someone dies. Is that thing or that person real, or unreal? We have to be clear in our minds when we consider this process of arguing. If we say that the thing that has died was real, then we are contradicting ourselves, because, if it had been real, it could not be destroyed; there is no death for it. It is already declared that it is real, and the real cannot not be, and the unreal cannot be. Thus, that which is, that which is real, cannot be regarded as destructible. If we say that the thing that has died is not real, that it is unreal, then there is no question of its death; it has already been dubbed as unreal. The destruction of a non-existent thing is unthinkable. And a destruction of an existent thing, also, is equally unthinkable because that which is existent cannot be destroyed, and that which can be destroyed cannot be regarded as existent. Then, what is it that dies?

The phenomenon of death is visible before our eyes because of a mixing up of standpoints. This mixing up is called adhyasa in philosophic language, a superimposition of one thing on another thing. We read one meaning in another and that meaning in this, and so on. That which exists is not that which dies. And that which does not exist is not that which dies. Therefore, one cannot say what dies. The process of death is one of transition, and is not a ‘destruction' of anything. A change of condition is what we call death, which is a change that is required by the law of the evolution of the universe.

In fact, we die every moment. Every cell of our body changes constantly, and it is opined by biologists that after every seven years we become entirely changed personalities, physically. All the cells of the body renew themselves in such a manner that we are new beings after many years. Not merely that, every day there is transformation as we grow. We have grown from babyhood to this adulthood of today. But we have never seen how we have grown. This process of growing was imperceptible. And, if growth is nothing but change, how is it that it could not be perceived? We never knew that we are becoming something else every moment. All change is perceptible, visible, recognisable. But in our own case of growth, for instance, we never knew, we never recognised, we never felt that we are changing; all this because there is something in us which does not change. That character of this mysterious entity in us which does not change is the real reason behind the fear of death and the love of life.

Change is only a condition, and not a substance; it is not a thing. It is, therefore, not a reality. But it appears as if some tremendous event takes place at the time of death, for all our practical purposes. We are horrified at the very name of death. The horrific nature of death is due to the identification of characters belonging to two levels of our being, the spiritual or the metaphysical getting transferred to the temporal or the transitional, and vice versa. We see two things at the same time, imagining that it is one thing and that the experience is not constituted of two different things. There is a procession of events, a continuous change of process charged with a unitary invisibility of being which is our basic essentiality. We call it the Atman, the soul, the self, consciousness, etc. There is an indestructible element in us, and that has got mixed with the condition of change which infects everything that is finite. We are imbued with the world of finites, of the bodily individuality of ours, and even the psychic isolation of ours is a character of our finitude. The finite struggles to align itself with the Infinite, to which it really belongs, and this struggle of the finite to move towards the Infinite is the whole story of evolution.

Any change, any transformation, any movement whatsoever, anywhere in this world, at any time, is a consequence of this impulse from the finite in the direction of the Infinite; and no one can remain for ever as a finite, inasmuch as the finitude of being is an unnatural state of being. The unnatural cannot always be; it tries to overcome and transcend itself and expand itself into the higher stage which moves gradually towards an infinitude of realisation.

This tendency of the finitude in us towards the Infinite that is really there is the reason behind transmigration, birth and death. What we call birth and death, or rebirth, transmigration, metempsychosis, etc., is a necessary obligation on the part of everything that is finite in the light of the all-comprehensiveness of the Infinite. We cannot maintain our individual personalities continuously intact. As a matter of fact, we cannot be the same individuals even for two seconds together. Every moment we change and move and urge in the direction of a larger achievement. But, because of the fact that our consciousness is tethered, somehow, to the finitude of body and mind, it appears as if the whole of our ‘being' has changed. And when the change becomes so intense as to make it impossible for the mind to contain it within itself, when the change that is to take place for this purpose becomes marked in the sense of a total change in the form of this finitude, it appears as if our essential being itself has undergone a process of destruction.

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To be continued