Study of the Bhagavadgita : Chapter-3 : Post- 7. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday, January 12, 2021. 11:03. AM.
Chapter 3: The Transmigration of the Soul - 7.

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It is not possible to know why desire arises at all unless we reach the state of the Transcendent Being. We have to take it for granted that desire is the cause of the delimitation of the Universal Consciousness as an individual, so-called, a person. Desire is actually a wish of consciousness to be something and to do something. Inasmuch as something is not everything, it becomes only something for the purpose of achieving something. You are what you are; you cannot be another person. Though the same Universal Consciousness is pervading you and everybody, the wish of that Universal to be only something, for the sake of achieving something, has limited itself to one person, as if there is no connection of one with the other. This is because the wish is for only certain things, for the purpose of achieving certain things only. This limitation of the wish in a guarded fashion cuts off consciousness from its own face on the other side; it forgets its universality, and enters into this darkness of involvement in the predicament of pure individuality, and becomes one person only.

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Now, the desire, even if it be for getting involved in one form only, arises from the universality of consciousness, so there is an impossibility of fulfilling any desire. There is a blunder that consciousness seems to be committing in wanting to achieve only something, to the exclusion of something else. All desires arise from the Universal Being but, because of the universality behind this desire, it is impossible to fulfil it. Unless you get everything you want, you will not fulfil your desire. But as you have already counteracted that possibility by wishing to be only something and wanting to do only something, you cannot fulfil your wish.

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In this world, therefore, no one can fulfil their wish entirely. No desire of yours can be fully accomplished. There is a basic blunder at the very thought of fulfilling the desire because, on the one hand, it is impossible to fulfil it on account of the universality that is at the back of it; and secondly, there is an insistence of this part of the universality to be only something. So what happens? As this little body that is manufactured by the wish of consciousness to be individual finds it impossible to fulfil all its desires, it is cast off as a worn-out garment. When you find that an instrument is of no longer of any use, you throw it away and get a fresh instrument –to continue your work.

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Thus, birth and death actually mean casting off the redundant sheath of the individuality for the sake of assuming a new sheath in order to see if the desire can be fulfilled through the new one, which is rebirth. Hence, rebirth – entering into a new body, the evolutionary process of becoming something else – is, again, a futile attempt to find the universal in the particular. The Universal is universal; the particular is completely different from the universal. Therefore, to be an individual, and wanting to be an individual for all time to come, and yet trying to fulfil all desires universally, is not a worthwhile attempt.

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To be continued ....

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