Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Discourse 4.2- Swami Krishnananda

Monday, June 15, 2020.

Discourse 4: The Second Chapter Continues – How to Live in the World-2.

The Atman, or the soul of man, is not in space and time. The soul is not in space and time because it can know that there is space and time. The knower of an object is itself not the object. The consciousness in us, which is the Atman basically, is aware of the existence of such a thing as space and time; therefore, the knower, which is consciousness, cannot itself be involved in space and time. 

The knower of space is not in space. The knower of time is not in time. Hence, basically, essentially, the soul within is spaceless and timeless—avināśi and tatam—spread out everywhere, wider than space and more durable than time. 

This soul, which is deathless, is encased, as it were, in a perishable body. The human being is partly in the world of death and partly in the world of the immortals. We are involved physically, and to some extent psychologically, in space and time. We know very well that we have a location in space; we cannot be spread out everywhere. Also, there is a movement of our life in the process of time. We are born, we grow, we decay, and one day we perish. 

Therefore, this psychophysical organism, which is the human individual, is itself subject to destruction, notwithstanding the fact that it is a tabernacle of this deathless soul.

2.

We think in two ways. We think in terms of space, time and objects, and we also think in terms of an aspiration for eternal existence. We know very well that we cannot live long in this world. Everybody has to pass away. 

Nobody can deny the fact that one day everybody has to go. In spite of this knowledge of the surety of the death of this body—the negation of this psychophysical individuality—we fear death. We do not want to die.

3.

Who is it, actually, who does not want to die? 

The body cannot aspire for deathlessness because it is involved in the very process of dying, which is time. And the mind, which is psychophysical, is also perishable on account of its transitory nature. 

So why do we fear death? 

Who fears death? 

Is it the body that fears death? 

#Body is not even conscious; it is a physical substance. 

There is something in us which does not want to die. 

The desire not to die cannot arise in something which is subject to death in any way whatsoever. 

desire not to die implies the possibility of not dying—hence, our aspiration for deathlessness. 

The fear of death implies the existence of such a thing as immortality. We cannot fear death unless we do not want to die, and the desire to not die cannot arise in the physical body or in anything in this world; it has to arise from something which is superior to all physical matter. 

That is to say, we have a root in eternity, which is the cause of our aspiration that takes us beyond all extension in space and duration in time. We would like to possess the whole world. We would like to become masters of the entire space, and we would like to live as long as time itself. 

#This desire cannot arise in time. It cannot arise in space. It arises in something which is not in space, not in time, and which is not an object.

To be continued ....