The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 8.7. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, May 05,  2023. 07:30.

Chapter 8: The Yoga of Action -7.

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But we are hardboiled ‘persons' demanding total independence of our individuality. This is perhaps the meaning of the Biblical story of the Fall of the angel from the Garden of Eden. It is the assertion of the individuality; Lucifer became Satan. The angel has become the individual with a flint-like egoism asserting independence from God and claiming equal rights with God Himself. This is the travesty of affairs in the history of the individual. One who knows this secret cannot be bound by action. But people have no awareness of the inner meaning of action.

In the slokas of the Third Chapter we have the basic principles of Karma Yoga stated, how we have to conduct ourselves in this world. We have to move in the world not as human beings at all. A true Yogi, in the sense of the Bhagavadgita at least, is not a human being. A spiritual seeker conceived in the light of the Bhagavadgita is a spark from the divine conflagration of God-Being, seeking union with its universal Selfhood, or absolute comprehensiveness, and our conduct has to be in consonance with this great purpose of our existence here. Our existence in this world is teleologically conditioned by the purpose of the cosmos, and we are here for the fulfilment of this great purpose, the divine design that is behind the entire panorama of Nature.

I do not exist for myself, and you do not exist for yourself. Nothing exists for itself. Everything exists for everything else. This consciousness of the fact that we exist for everyone, and that everyone exists for everything else, is perhaps the height of the consciousness of the democratic administration prevailing in the universe. When everything is for everything else, and nothing is only for itself, where, then, comes the binding character of activity? The question does not arise. Neither is it possible for one to sit inactive, doing nothing, for the reasons already mentioned, nor can action bind one if one is truly awakened and has an insight into the meaning of existence.

“Why are we worried, then?” asked Arjuna. “What sorrows us? Why does one commit sin? How are we anxious at every moment of time in spite of this great truth that is revealed by you, Krishna? What is the mystery of this sorrow? What is the secret of the grief of anyone, notwithstanding this universal fact of all things?”

Desire is the secret behind the sorrow of the individual. We have no other enemies in the world; our desires are our enemies. We attract enemies from outside on account of the magnetic activity of our own desires inside. As a magnet pulls iron filings toward itself, a particular distracted form of the psyche attracts positive or negative reaction from outside. Our friends and foes are the inward conditioning of our own psychic fluctuations, they are not outside us. Unless desire is subdued, sorrow cannot be averted. How can we overcome desire? This question is answered in a precise manner in two important slokas.

To be continued

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