The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 14.1- Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, November 22, 2021. 8:00. PM.

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita-14-1.

Chapter-14. The Glory and Majesty of the Almighty-1.

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A powerful religious impulse permeates the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Chapters of the Bhagavadgita. The religious consciousness reaches its culmination by certain specific stages in these central chapters. The presence of God becomes a more intimate affair than it was in the earlier stages. God does not any more remain merely as a Creator, a transcendent Father, capable of attainment, perhaps, after the shedding of the physical body. In the Eighth Chapter, and even in the earlier ones, we do not seem to have been given any hope of God being capable of contact in this particular life. It seemed that the chances are remote, and even when it looked that there is some possibility, it also appeared that this possibility is only after death, and not in this life.




But God is not a future reality, He is an Immediate presence. The awe-striking distance that the soul maintains between itself and God converts God into a future possibility and not a present existence. Every one of us must be having an idea in the mind that God can be contacted only tomorrow or the day after, after some years, or perhaps at the end of several births, and not just now. This difficulty is purely psychological, and it is based on a notion that the soul has of its own independent structure. However much we may be told that God is All-in-All, it does not easily become possible for the mind to accept that there is a timeless immediacy in God's Presence even in this particular life itself. God is a ‘Here' and a ‘Now'.




We cannot imagine what is timelessness. When we conceive of God, or the attainment of liberation, we consider it as a fag end in the time series, and the notion of time does not leave us. The idea that we are in space and time has become part and parcel of our consciousness and existence. And, if we are in space, and God also is in space, there is therefore a distance between us and God. And if we are in time, we cannot extricate the presence of God from the time series; God becomes a future possibility, and not an immediate realisation. Not so, is the fact emphasised here. God is the Supreme Inclusiveness which enfolds into its being all souls, all things, all individuals, everything that exists, in any manner. There is nothing on earth or in heaven which is not finally rooted in God's being, so that nothing can ever be, if God is not to be.




universe (Prithaktvena), and as every particular thing in the world (Bahudha). Omni-faced is the Supreme Being. He is Immortality (Amrita) and Death (Mrityu), Existence (Sat), as wellBut the Bhagavadgita tries its best to teach the eternity of God, and not merely a durationless extension of God's existence. Whatever was, whatever is and whatever shall be—all this is engulfed in God's Infinitude. He is the Cause of all causes, and a Cause existing not outside the effect but inseparable from all effects. In a way we may say that God is the Cause as well as all the effects. He is the Creator and also the creation. Knowing this truth, blessed souls adore Him and worship Him, sing His names as the one Absolute (Ekatvena), as the manifold  as Non-existence (Asat).




To be continued ...




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