The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 10.4. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday, March 31, 2021. 10:13. AM.
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Chapter - 10 : The Need for Sankhya -4.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
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We have a very beautiful analysis of the psychic pattern of desires in our ancient scriptures, namely, the potentialities, the storehouses of desires in the deepest recesses of our being. For our convenience we may call them the unconscious level of our being – karmas which are like a large heap in a godown of a grocery shop. A lot of things are kept there, out of which something is brought out for retail sale by the shopkeeper. He does not bring everything outside; he brings out as much as is necessary, as is required for the day. There is a storage of commodities inside in the main godown, and when he brings things outside for retail sale and finds that the godown is getting exhausted, he will replenish it by adding further commodities to it.

Now, this godown which contains all the stuff is what is called in Sanskrit sanchita karma, the accumulated potentiality of all the desires collected from eons and heaped up like thick layers of cloud, which makes us unconscious at that time. The retail commodity which is brought out by the shopkeeper is this prarabdha karma. Prarabdha is the tentative allotment of a certain quantum of goods taken out from the original godown for the purpose of experience; it is a doling out, in terms of daily experience. This physical body, this physical life, this physical existence of ours here in this particular kind of world is a portion allotted out of the more potential and deeper possibilities already existing within us, and these potentialities are not visible. They are locked up inside us.

Now, we may sometimes be afraid that this inner stock may be exhausted, so we go on adding to it by performing new actions every day. We have to be very careful living in this world. We commit blunders many a time, adding forces of bondage to our mortal existence. How do we do that? By projecting further and further, more and more desire-filled actions. If the allotted portion is going to be exhausted little by little, and nothing more is to be added to the original stock, it is likely that it can be exhausted sometime. But we are not so wise. Desires are like leeches which cling to a person and will not leave that person free. The more we experience pleasure out of sense contact, the more is the impression created for further repetition of that contact. The more we enjoy, still more is the want; the more we want, the more is the desire, the more is the impression, the more is the potentiality for further longing, more action, and so on. In this manner we add to the existing stock, and the cycle of birth and death never ends.

Anyway, this physical body has a beginning and an end. However much we try to guard it by our imagined state of non-action, it will not survive. So why be so greedy about this body? Mrityu, death, should not deter us from entering into the field of duty, whatever that duty be as sanctioned in accordance with our stature in this world of nature and of human society.

To be continued ...

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