Study of the Bhagavadgita : Chapter-3 : Post- 6. - Swami Krishnananda.

Saturday, December 19, 2020. 09:45. AM.

Chapter 3: The Transmigration of the Soul - 6.

In our act of perception of the world in respect of the object or the world outside,–this position that we, as the adhyatma or the subjective side, occupy can be explained by nothing else than an intervention of something between us and the object outside. I cannot know that you are sitting in front of me unless there is a link between us. This link is the adhidaiva consciousness, the superintending divinity. We cannot see it with our eyes. I can see myself and I can see you, but we cannot see anything that is between us, notwithstanding the fact that without the positing of that third thing we cannot explain or account for the act of perception itself.

You may ask me why it is that we are not able to see it. Because it is neither a subject nor an object, no one can see it. It sees only itself; therefore, we call it transcendent. If you understand me and whatever I say has actually entered you, you will have great peace of mind. You will become a different person after one hour if it has entered your bones, because it is something serious, something which affects you every minute, something which will reform you, transmute you, make you super-individuals, divinities – God-men, I may say – if this has actually entered your mind.

So this transcendent consciousness, which is imperative as a correlative link between the subjective and objective sides, is a divinity known as adhidaiva. I mentioned three different words which are in the Eighth Chapter of the Gita – the adhyatma, the adhibhuta, the adhidaiva: the subjective, the objective and the transcendent. Inasmuch as our very perceptive existence is conditioned by a transcendent, deathless consciousness, we may be said to be entirely conditioned by it, and in that sense we are deathless. Our subjectivity is linked to this transcendent element between the subjective and objective sides in the same way as the objective side is also connected with this transcendent. Two sides of the balance are placed in a position of harmony, as it were, by a third thing that is hanging on top. It is like the apex of a triangle which holds in position the two bases.

Therefore, Arjuna, there is no death, finally. Who dies when somebody seems to be dying? It is the same thing that happens in the process of evolution. You cast off the shell in which you are enclosed, which is redundant now, and put on a new coat, as it were, for the purpose of further evolution. Consciousness, which is universal, gets individualised when it becomes a personality, and the impulse behind the entry of a universal into individuality is called a desire.

To be continued ....

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