Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 24-4.Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, August 27, 2022. 06:00.

Chapter 24: Sannyasa and Yoga are One -4.

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What has gone? A kind of self has been in a state of affairs which is inexplicable to that experiencer. The loss of a property looks like the loss of selfhood; the loss of respect looks like the loss of selfhood. We have varieties of selves, and these are the selves that give us trouble. Money-self, wealth-self, respect-self, property-self, son-self, husband-self, wife-self, daughter-self, land-self, building-self – these are all selves only. They are the self because anything that happens to them appears to happen to one's own self. There is a trouble of the self and the whole building cracks, or the land goes, or there is a cataclysm which wipes away everything. It looks as if the self of the person has gone, and great sorrow descends. This is an externalised self, an artificial self, a concocted self; nevertheless, it is a self, and we are living in that self only. This is a binding self, a grief-giving self which has to be restrained gradually; and even the bodily self and the psychological self is not the real self, because it is oscillating, it has a wavelike motion. All these selves have to be restrained for the sake of establishment in another self altogether.

There are gradations of the dimension of the self; there are degrees of self. There is an external self, an internal self, and finally there is the universal Self. The only dependable self is the universal Self. All other selves are tentative walking sticks; they are crutches on which we seem to be hanging somehow, but they are not ourselves. The crutch is not me, the walking stick is not I, yet it appears as if we have some connection with these.

The Gita will tell us in a further slokam that the self is the friend of the Self and the self is also the enemy of the Self. All these will have to be understood in a very, very subtle implication that is embedded in these verses. These short sentences are filled with immense metaphysical meaning and psychological suggestiveness. Hence, when it is said that one is in a state of yoga, or establishment in the Self, it has to be understood that there is a rootedness in one kind of self. But the kind of self with which one is associated at any given moment of time is to be properly encountered in the manner it is associated. This is to be in a state of harmony with all things. It was mentioned to us that yoga is also a state of harmony in every sense of the term. We never are at loggerheads with anything due to any particular degree of reality or level of being; we are in a state of harmony. There is a gradual rising from the lower condition of self to the higher condition of self, from the lower state of health to the higher state of health. “I am improving in health,” people say. He has not really become entirely healthy. “How are you, my dear friend?” “Improving. Better. My health is better,” he replies. The betterness of health is one degree of health. It is better than the condition which was yesterday. The lesser condition of health which was yesterday was also a kind of illness. Today I am better, which means I am in a higher state of health today than I was yesterday. Now, when I use the word ‘better', it means it is one degree of health and not the whole of health, which means though I am in a higher state of health today, still an element of illness is persisting; otherwise, I should say I am totally all right, not simply better. So these are some of the ways we can understand the manner of establishing oneself in the state of selfhood as we establish ourselves in a state of health gradually.

Now, the lower condition is to be set in harmony with the higher condition. We are not moving from one enemy's kingdom to another enemy's kingdom. It is a graduated ascent of intensified forms of friendship. Lesser friendship becomes more intensified friendship, and more intensified friendship becomes inseparable friendship. Finally it becomes one entity only, not even two persons. So it is a movement from one level of harmony to another level of harmony. In every degree of reality we are set in a state of equilibrium; we are friends. Yoga is a state of friendship with all things, and the intensity and degree of friendship depends upon the extent of distance maintained between oneself and the other, whatever the other be. The distance gets diminished as we go inward more and more, and then the friendship becomes more and more intense until the word ‘friendship' is no more applicable, and it is total communion.

Hence, one condition of self is to be abandoned for the sake of another condition of self. This also implies that sannyasa and yoga go together. Sannyasa is the abnegation of association with a lower condition of selfhood for the purpose of a higher inclusive state of self, which includes everything that was earlier. Hence, a person who has renounced has not lost anything. Here, again, we have to bear in mind that we have not lost anything by abandoning. We have not lost anything by renunciation, because we do not lose the lower state of health when we are in a higher state of health. When we are in a higher state of health, we do not say we have lost our lower state of health, because the lower is transcended in the higher. Hence, yoga and sannyasa are the same, renunciation and establishment in the self are identical, tyaga is not different from yoga. Very carefully we have to maintain this in mind: Sannyasa and yoga are one.

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Next-Chapter 25: The Lower Self and the Higher Self

To be continued ....

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