The Tree of Life: 3.5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 12 Aug 2025, 06:00.
Shrimad Bhagavad Gita
The Tree of Life: 3.5.
Discourse: 3. Severing the Root of this Tree of Life:5.
Swami Krishnananda. 

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Any image or form can be taken out from the block of stone by a sculptor. From the block of stone the sculptor can carve a tiger, a Jesus Christ or a Bhagavan Sri Krishna. He can carve a donkey or a monkey. Everything is present in that block of stone. Any thing, any form, any structure, any pattern can be said to be present in this impersonal block of stone. In the same way, every type of universe is present in the Divine Mind. Any universe of any kind of experience can be extracted out of it. This is not the only world that can be created by the will of the Supreme Being. This is why God is sometimes called Ananta Koti Brahmanda Nayaka—the Lord of infinite crores of universes. How many crores are there, nobody can know, just as we cannot say how many crores of images are there inside a block of stone.

The forms of experience which are the objects of the mind are the bondages which confine everyone to the processes of life called samsara, which is equated with suffering. This is the tree which the Bhagavadgita expects us to cut at the very root—the tree of phenomenal experience. Asanga is supposed to be the methodology to be adopted. We should not be attached to anything.

Leaving aside the other more intricate teachings of the systems of yoga for the time being, we may take for our present consideration what this anasakti means. It appears to us that this is hammered into our minds again and again by the Bhagavadgita. We cannot detach ourselves from anything unless we are simultaneously attached to something else. The mind cannot be in a vacuum. We cannot ask the mind to lose everything, and give nothing to it. This is not possible. Therefore, to imagine that we can vacate the mind of all thoughts and keep it absolutely blank is a foolish idea. We cannot keep it absolutely blank. If someone asks us what we are thinking, we may answer, “Nothing. I am thinking nothing.” The idea that we are thinking nothing is itself a thought, so how can we say that we are not thinking anything? Even when we say we will not do anything, we have already done something because the very idea of not doing is an action of the mind. So na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api jātu tiṣṭhaty akarmakṛt (B.G. 3.5): No one can exist for a moment without some kind of action. Everyone is psychologically engaged in action, which is real action. Physical action is no action if the mind is detached from it.

Hence, to be detached, to be anasakta, to be able to sever the root of this tree of life, a positive method has to be adopted. Unless we are sure that we have gained something superior, or at least there is a prospect of gaining something noble and high, we will not be able to withdraw ourselves from something else. We cannot expect to lose everything and be nothing. That is an impossibility.

Therefore, the Bhagavadgita, being conscious of this psychological secret at the base of human nature, says tataḥ padaṁ tatparimārgitavyaṁ (B.G. 15.4): You have to pursue this great goal simultaneously; yasmin gatā na nivartanti bhūyaḥ: having reached which, there will be no return to the sorrow of phenomenal life. Once we wake up from our dream, we need not experience it again. We are happy that we have woken up. Who would like to enter into the sorrows of the dream world once again? A tiger might have been attacking us there. Well, the tiger is gone, by God's grace, because the experiences in dream and waking are so constituted that while the one inheres in the other in the degree of their expression, they differ from each other.

The thought of God is the real axe that strikes at the very root of this tree of phenomenal experience. We cannot find any other axe to cut at the root of this tree. Axes made of steel or iron will not be able to cut this tree. Because this tree is not physical, a physical axe will not work here. It is a cosmic tree. It is a tree that is spread out everywhere, and perhaps its roots are also everywhere. Inasmuch as this is the situation, the weapon that we have to employ in laying low this tree of life should also be equally powerful.

It is not possible to overcome this illusion of phenomen-ality. Daivī hyeṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā (B.G. 7.14): It is impossible of crossing and impossible of handling. With the furthest stretch of imagination and the greatest of effort conceivable, it is beyond us. But, mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te: The resort of the mind to God is the positive step which will at once annul all movement of the mind in the direction of objects of sense. The love of God engulfs the loves for everything else in the world.

How does the love of God swallow every other love? This is another problem for seekers of Truth. There have been complaints and complaints that even after meditation on God one has not been able to sever oneself from affection to things. It is our daily experience that when we think of God, our mind goes to a shop, to a bazaar. It goes to a club. It goes to anything. Why does it go like this? Because we have, unfortunately, limited God-thought to an object-thought. For us, God also is an object like any other object. Maybe He is a larger object, but nevertheless He is some kind of existence somewhere, to concentrate upon which we have to exert much. And the mind, being aware that there are also other things external to the ideal of God on which we are trying to meditate, seeks immediate satisfaction. The mind wants immediate satisfaction; it is not satisfied with remote promises. The immediate hunger of the mind is its prominent concern just at this moment. We have been told many a time that religion cannot be taught to hungry stomachs, and this psychology applies here. The mind is hungry, and we cannot fill its stomach with a remote God-thought which is religion.

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Continued

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