Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita-2.5 : Swami Krishnananda

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16/02/2020.
2. The First Chapter – Vishadha Yogam, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit-5.

Post-5.

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1.

#This is not the problem of a beginner in spirituality. It is the problem of an advanced person in spirituality. The world is not afraid of a beginner; it knows that he is a fly, so it does not care. An elephant does not care about a fly sitting on it, but if a lion comes in front of it, it will be conscious of the lion. 

##Similarly, the world will not care to recognise even ten or fifteen years of japa, meditation, etc., because these japas are not going to touch even the skin or the fringe of the reality of life. But if we are determined, the world begins to feel that we actually mean to encounter it. Then it will show its teeth and claws, and will stir up the emotions which had been buried inside, and the renunciation that we resorted to will irrationally sink down into the sentiments of unfulfilled subconscious potentialities, and petty desires will manifest themselves. 

###A person may be a well-to-do individual, coming from a rich family, and he may have renounced that for the sake of the pursuit of God. But after thirty or forty years of meditation, he may feel so starved and his appetite will increase so much that he will eat much more than he had eaten when he was with his family, and petty desires will arise for things like a wristwatch or a radio. He had been a well-to-do man, the son of a big landlord, but that does not matter because individual sentiments manifest themselves only when the social sentiments are suppressed.

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2.

#When we are well placed in the midst of society and everybody respects us, we cannot know what kind of persons we are. Society should reject us or we should reject society, either one or the other, and then we will stand by ourselves. At that time, what we are in our basic subconscious will surface, and we will be neither rich nor poor; we will be just sentimental individuals like anybody else. 

##Then the doubts arise: “This is not for me.” “I have made a mistake in choosing the Guru. I will have to go to another Guru.” “My meditations must have been wrongly maneuvered.” “What happens to me? When I die, I lose all things. This world is lost for me.” “I have a father and a mother who love me.” The little affection of those parents and relatives will sting like a scorpion when everything is cut off and there is nothing for us to stand upon. 

###And, as I mentioned, silly desires, most irrational instincts, will take possession of the individual when he totally cuts himself off from society and becomes an itinerant monk or an austere individual, starving his sentiments. 

*“What is the guarantee that I will attain God in this birth? 

**It may be a great hope, but from what has happened to me over the last fifty years, I realise that I have achieved nothing. I have not taken even one step in the direction of God-realisation.”

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3.

#The sentiments, the inner subconscious forces, take possession of the individual, and finding the weak point of the individual sentiment, they take the opportunity to ambush and attack him, and the advanced spiritual seeker becomes a petty individual who is practically helpless : 

##“God has not come; the world has gone.” At a particular time we will either feel that the world has left us or that we have left the world, but God has not come. That is the situation in which we find ourselves—neither this nor that, as if in a vacuum—and it is at that time that we can develop a neurosis or have a breakdown, or develop a peptic ulcer or peculiar illnesses where the brain malfunctions and the mind becomes deranged. I have seen one swami who kept shaking his head. 

###He said, “I have done meditation on the great truth of the presence of consciousness everywhere. I began to see consciousness in objects. This made me very happy. I went on concentrating on the presence of consciousness in everything. One day I suddenly got a bolt from the blue, as it were, and now I am feeling like this. 

*Is there any remedy that you can think of?” 

**I gave him some remedy which helped him, satisfied him.

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To be continued ...

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