The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 4.9. Swami Krishnananda

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27/04/2020.
Chapter 4: The Struggle for the Infinite - 9.

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1.

#The universal has to be implanted in the particular. God has to descend into the heart of man. At least as a little iota of reality, a spark of that Fire should be present in us. Then we can be said to be set on the spiritual path. What we call the spiritual way of living is the way of God, the way of the Absolute, the way of the Tao, as they call it. 

##Though we might have not achieved it, contacted it or understood it fully, we should be sure of moving in that direction, rightly. Even if we move only one inch in the direction of Badrinath, it is an achievement in that pilgrimage. But if we move in the direction of Delhi, it cannot be called a movement in the direction of the shrine.

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2.

#Though it may not be easy to comprehend all the requirements of spiritual life, there should at least be a satisfaction in us that we are after the Goal. 

##It is, therefore, necessary to make a thoroughgoing search of our own psychic nature, the world of desires which has various layers of manifestation, only the uppermost one being visible and intelligible to us in some partial manner. The lower layers are not known to us. Psychologists and psychoanalysts have tried their best to understand the deeper levels of the human psyche. 

###These are the worlds of desires. The predominant desire working in the conscious level may make it appear that the underground world does not exist at all, but it does exist and will thrust forth its tentacles one day, and decide everything.

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3.

#This is one of the reasons, evidently, why psychoanalysts like Freud thought that the religions of the world are an illusion. If religion is only a complacent attitude manifest by the underground world of desires in its outer form of social piety and external adjustments of values, religion would remain an illusion, no doubt. 

##But if religion means an entry of even the least percentage of the universal into this particular existence of ours as individuals, that would be true religion, and it has no connection with the world of desires or the psyche.

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4.

#So, there is a popular religion of the masses, the so-called pious that live in the light of human relationships, and there is the true religion of God, which is the subject of the Bhagavadgita. 

##This is the reason which will explain why I said at the beginning that the message of the Gita is not meant for the ordinary man. 

###It requires a great alertness of our personality, the total being, to grasp its message because the message is supposed to have been delivered by the Cosmic Form which included within itself everything existent everywhere, at any time, and we have to tune ourselves to that situation if we are to absorb its implications and its proper significance.

Chapter Ends.

Next : The Mortal and the Immortal

To be continued ..

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