The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 10.3 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday,  27  Jun,  2023. 07:20

Chapter 10: Forms of Sacrifice and Concentration-3.

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The contact of the senses with objects outside has to be severed. This is the first instruction. Here we are likely to make a mistake in understanding the meaning of this statement. The objects have to be severed from their contact with the senses. Generally, what we understand by this suggestion is that we should run away physically from the objects. Geographically there has to be a movement from place to place, from where the objects are located. We move to go to other places where these objects are not available. This is the crudest and the lowest form of renunciation.

But we have been cautioned in one place, in the Second Chapter, that physical isolation need not necessarily mean absence of desire for things. The mind may not be dissociated from its contemplated objects, while physically there may be a distance between the body and the objects. The severing of the senses from the objects of their perception means here, in this context, not merely a physical distance to be maintained between ourselves and the objects, but the extrication of our consciousness from the clutches of externality or objectivity, and coming to a realisation or experience that the objects are not really externally placed.


To come back to the theme of the Third Chapter, again, we have to be convinced at the bottom of our being that the objects are not placed externally in space and time. This is a mistaken view of the mind. If they are not really external to us, there cannot be any sensory contact with them and, therefore, there is no question of a desire for them. The whole thing drops at one stroke. This is true renunciation, and this is abiding, and this is the significance of this admonition that there should be a severance of the senses from the objects of the senses.

The gaze or the attention is to be fixed in the centre, where the mind is located. This is a little bit of psychic instruction. Esoteric psychology holds that the mind has a certain location. In the waking state it is supposed to be functioning through the brain, and its root is supposed to be the point between the two eyebrows. In the condition of dream, the mind is said to be moving through the nerve centre located in the throat, or the region of the neck, and in the condition of deep sleep the mind goes down into the heart, and that is the ultimate seat of the mind.

Here, in the verses referred to in the Fifth Chapter, we are told that the mind has to be concentrated on the point between the two eyebrows. The gaze has to be fixed on the ajna-chakra, as it is called, by which what is implied is that the mind has to concentrate itself on its own seat. Thereby, it becomes easier to control the mind than when it is moving away from its centre. Neither should we close the eyes completely nor should we open the eyes fully, which appears to be something like looking at the tip of the nose. The idea is not that we should actually concentrate on the tip of the nose, though that is one form of concentration people generally try sometimes. What is implied is that there should be a half-closed posture of the eyes, by which we neither close them wholly and get induced into a mood of sleep or torpidity, nor do we open them completely and be distracted by the presence of objects outside.

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To be continued

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