The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 5.8 Swami Krishnananda

Tuesday, June 16, 2020.

Chapter 5: The Mortal and the Immortal-8.

Any change, any transformation, any movement whatsoever, anywhere in this world, at any time, is a consequence of this impulse from the finite in the direction of the Infinite; and no one can remain for ever as a finite, inasmuch as the finitude of being is an unnatural state of being. The unnatural cannot always be; it tries to overcome and transcend itself and expand itself into the higher stage which moves gradually towards an infinitude of realisation.

This tendency of the finitude in us towards the Infinite that is really there is the reason behind transmigration, birth and death. What we call birth and death, or rebirth, transmigration, metempsychosis, etc., is a necessary obligation on the part of everything that is finite in the light of the all-comprehensiveness of the Infinite. We cannot maintain our individual personalities continuously intact. As a matter of fact, we cannot be the same individuals even for two seconds together. Every moment we change and move and urge in the direction of a larger achievement. But, because of the fact that our consciousness is tethered, somehow, to the finitude of body and mind, it appears as if the whole of our ‘being’ has changed. And when the change becomes so intense as to make it impossible for the mind to contain it within itself, when the change that is to take place for this purpose becomes marked in the sense of a total change in the form of this finitude, it appears as if our essential being itself has undergone a process of destruction.

There are two kinds of change: that particular series of changes which we pass through every day as in the case of our growth, for instance, from baby-hood to adulthood, etc., and the other one which we usually call death. While the constituents of our finitude change in the manner of a growth in a new form, we do not feel this transformation or change in a marked manner because this complex we call the body in this space-time world somehow maintains its particular form of complexity, and as we are living in a world of senses, and the senses regard this body as the self, we do not feel that anything serious has taken place to us in this frame of space-time. As long as this form is maintained we feel ourselves intact, but when the conditions of the process of evolution require a change in the very form of this finitude, and we are to be shifted from one space-time order to another space-time realm, it appears that there is a total annihilation of personality.

To be continued ...