The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - 1.1. Swami Krishnananda

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31/12/2019.
Chapter 1: This Drama of Life
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1.

When you come to a place like this, you have to re-orientate your minds, to a large extent, to an appreciable extent. There is a specific purpose for which you have come here to this Academy, to this Divine Life Society Ashram. To some of you, the purpose of your coming here and attending these classes may be clear; to some, it may be nebulous – not wholly perspicuous. There is something which this Academy is endeavouring to cater to the minds of people like you.

This 'something' which this Ashram, this Academy, is trying to furnish you with, is perhaps what you actually need in life. You may be under the impression that there are thousands of things that you need in life. This is a thorough misconception which has to be removed from the mind – you are not in need of one thousand things in this world. And the difficulties that you face in life are also not caused by one thousand things.
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2.

There is a little error in the very way of our thinking into which we have been born, right from our babyhood. Conditions of society, circumstances of family, and the weaknesses of personality, combined together, prevent us from undergoing the necessary educational discipline which is essential for you to know where you really stand in this world. We take generally things for granted – we are sons and daughters of somebody, we are nationals of a particular country, we are working in some office; we have this problem and that difficulty.

This is a natural human way of thinking, but a human way of thinking itself is not a remedy for human problems. A human way of thinking, is not a remedy for human problems – is a sentence we ought to underline – because human problems can be tackled only by a power of understanding which is superior to the ordinary human way of thinking. A medicine which is of the same character as an illness may not be able to set right the illness one suffers from.

There is a specific influence which the medicine administered into your body exerts upon you, due to which you seem to be recovering from your illness. A friend of the illness that have cannot be a remedy for the illness. The medical treatment cannot be an associate of the disease; it is a rectifying factor and, therefore, it differs in the function and constitution from the illness you suffer from. The problems of human life are a sort of illness, which cannot be rectified by a purely human way of understanding, as this human way of thinking itself is the cause of human problems.

So there is a necessity to lift yourself up from this so-called 'human outlook of life' and visualise the whole of life from a viewpoint or standpoint which is, in a way, superior to what you call 'the human way of thinking'. This art, this science, this system of living is, very very unfortunately, not known to many people in the world because of the fact that most people are sunk in this routine of ordinary thinking, which you usually call 'the human way of thinking', and you know what the human way of thinking is.
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To be continued ...

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