The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita ; 9.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission 

Chinmaya Mission Philippines recently held a conference on Artificial Intelligence and Spirituality. Inspired by the notion that Gurudev was at the forefront of his time, this conference aimed to explore the impact of AI, a cutting-edge technology, on our spirituality. Six sets of speakers from various age and occupational groups shared their experiences with AI in their lives and engaged in discussions about how applications like ChatGPT, Dasha AI, Otter AI, and Notion AI influence their lives, perceptions, options, habits, and productivity. They explored the positives and negatives, examined the influence of AI on their thinking processes, and questioned whether human thinking might become obsolete.

Brahmacharini Satarupa, the resident teacher for Chinmaya Mission Philippines, brought all the insights together by emphasizing Gurudev's message: "May Thy grace and blessing flow through us to the world around us." The conference highlighted that just as AI is a product of human intelligence, human intelligence is a product of nature's intelligence. Recognizing this connection helps us realize our true identity.

Overall, the forum affirmed that while AI provides tools for powerful and efficient information retrieval, memory, summarization, and analysis, it cannot replace the human heart, spirit, and the individual user's intelligence. Important human qualities such as introspection, meditation, mindfulness, discernment, judgment, and decision-making are beyond the reach of AI.

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Friday,  26  May,  2023. 07:00.

Chapter 9: The Divine Incarnation and God-oriented Activity - 2.

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Religion in this sense is the working of God within us consciously, though, unconsciously, He works even now, in everything. We are asleep to the function of God in us. When we become awake to this working of God in ourselves, we have become religious. An unconscious movement is not to be regarded as religious action. It must be a conscious, purposeful movement of the soul towards God, and a recognition of His presence in all things, as His Incarnations.

Whenever there is a crisis in the world, God is supposed to incarnate Himself. This is a ringing message of the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, in verses which are often quoted by spiritual aspirants and religious practitioners. The responsibility of God over the universe is much more than our responsibility in regard to anything. And He is perpetually active, timelessly putting forth effort for the redemption of the universe into His Being.

What we are required to do is only to accept the Presence, ask for God, seek Him from the recesses of our being, and we shall find Him. We require faith rather than logic. And when faith is firm enough, when our search for God is sincere, when we believe in God wholeheartedly, and do not merely give lip sympathy to His Presence, when we cease to be professors of religion, but become embodiments of the religious consciousness, when our whole being accepts that God is, which is another way of saying that we should have faith in the working of God, religion takes possession of us, and this stage, where we become truly religious in the proper sense of the term, is the condition of the Saint, the Sage.

Here we have the highest religious message given to us in a few verses in the Fourth Chapter, touching upon the compassion of God upon humanity, the universe in its entirety, the mercy that God showers upon every being, and the instantaneous action of God at moments of crisis, suffering and extremist movements in the wrong direction, away from the centre of God's Being. Whenever such a catastrophic direction is discovered anywhere in the world, God takes an instantaneous action in a timeless manner. That is how an Incarnation works.

We need not be disappointed that we are weaklings and that we cannot understand. More than understanding is an acceptance of this feeling for God, the Presence of God. Faith transcends reason in a way, and religion is finally a faith of the soul, a spirit, a surrender of one's self, which shall be the final message of the Gita when it concludes in the Eighteenth Chapter—a total submission of ourselves to the Presence of God by a wholehearted acceptance of His being, from our soul. This is the highest religion, and God's Grace shall be bestowed upon us as a matter of right, and we need not be in a mood of melancholy or dejection of spirit.

Now, with this solacing religious message which is offered us in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter, we are also introduced into the need for activities in consonance with this message, with this state of religious living. The emphasis that we find laid everywhere throughout the chapters of the Bhagavadgita is that we should not suddenly imagine that we are in the topmost level. We have to be cautious in recognising where we stand at any given moment of time. And the Gita makes it clear that, according to it, Yoga is the establishment of harmony in all the levels of being. There is nothing superior or inferior in this world. Everything that God has created has a value in its own level, or stage. And the level in which we are now is also equally valuable, and its value has to be recognised by us; we cannot reject it as if it is not there.

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To be continued

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