The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 6-3 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday,  27 May, 2023. 07:00.

Chapter 6: Self-Restraint and the Nature of the Self-3.

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Secondly, there is anxiety attending upon the desire to enjoy or possess the objects of sense. There is restlessness of mind before one comes in contact with the object of one's longing, distress regarding the possibility or otherwise of one's success in obtaining one's objective: "Will I succeed, or will I not succeed?" This is the agony and the anguish that attends upon the desire to come in contact with an object. But once the contact is established and there is a conviction that the object is under one's possession, there is another anxiety – namely, "How long will it be with me? I may be dispossessed of it." Because subconsciously we know that no object can be possessed by us for a long time, much less forever, there is a subtle, distressing feeling at the root of our personality, even during the process of the so-called enjoyment of the object of sense. So there is no unadulterated happiness even when we are apparently enjoying the so-called imagined happiness by contact of the sense of sensory objects. There is sorrow at the root of all things, even at the base of this apparent, momentary satisfaction. Such a joy is compared sometimes in our scriptures to the cool shadow that we may enjoy under the hood of the cobra. It is cool no doubt, and we also know many other things about it; such is this world. There is anxiety before, and anxiety during the so-called possession of the object, and we need not mention our condition after we are dispossessed of the object; we are in hell. "Oh, there is bereavement, there is loss and there is destruction. I am done for!" So, we were not happy earlier, we are not happy in the middle, and we are not happy afterwards. So in past, in present and future, desire keeps us in tender-hooks, though there is no joy in this world. 

There is also samskara-dukha, mentioned by Patanjali in one of the sutras. The impressions created by the fulfilment of a desire will be enough to cast us, hurl into rebirth, because the samskaras, vasanas, or the grooves formed in the mind by the erroneous notion that joy is in the object. These grooves will become conditioning factors of the future destiny of the individual, and they will go on playing the same tune like a gramophone record, so that we will never forget an earlier enjoyment. They will be harassing us even in our dream, and they can persist even after the shedding of this body. Rebirth is caused by unfulfilled desires. The frailty of this body and the fickleness of our social relationships are such that all desires cannot be fulfilled in the short span of life. Hence something always remains as a residue unfulfilled, which rockets forth our subtle body to that particular condition in space-time, where these unfulfilled longings can materialise; this process is called rebirth. Thus, the agony continues even in the future life – samskara-dukha.

Fourthly, there is a philosophical or a metaphysical reason behind the impossibility to come in contact with real happiness in this world, that is, the perpetual rotation of the very constituents of prakriti: sattva, rajas, and tamas. What we call happiness is the preponderance of sattva, the equilibrating power of nature – which we rarely pass through in experience in life on account of our being mostly under the pressure of a desire which is unfulfilled, which is nothing but rajas acting, distracting our attention. There is a perpetual other-consciousness, an awareness that things are outside, which keeps us in a rajasic mode. Rajas is a condition of consciousness where it is forced to be aware of things other than its own self – duality-consciousness, separation-consciousness, object-consciousness – and all these things attending upon this consciousness come under the activity of rajas which separates, dissects, cuts off one thing from the other, especially the subject from the object.

The movement of prakriti, the rotation of the wheel of this natural process consisting of sattva, rajas, and tamas, never allows us to be in a permanent condition. Like the movement of a wheel which is in motion, conditions of prakriti are perpetually moving for the fulfilment of their own purpose, which is not necessarily our individual purpose. When there is a momentary cessation of rajasic activity – a flash of a second as it were, when we come in contact with an object – there is a preponderating feeling that the need for the movement of our mind towards the object ceases. When we are in possession of an object of desire, the need for the mind to be conscious of the object as an external something ceases, rajas does not operate for the flash of a moment, and the cessation of rajas is also a cessation of this other-consciousness, object-consciousness, which is tantamount to self-consciousness. We turn to our own Self for the split fraction of a second, as it were, and consciousness which is the essence of our Atman or the Self, tastes its own Source, licks the bliss of its own essentiality and finds itself in a state of ecstasy, because the more we are in union with our own Self, the more intense is the satisfaction we feel, the rapture that we are in, the delight that we experience. All ananda, all joy, is a union of the subject with its own Self.

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To be continued

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