The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 17.7. - Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Chinmayananda :

To waste our precious lifetime in the pursuit of all non-essentials and never taking up seriously the study of the greatest of sciences, which alone can save man from the thraldom of imperfections, is being condemned in this verse of Bhaja Govindam. 

While living here, man’s greatest endeavour is to understand and master the secret of life, the Reality behind it and to gain his perfect identification with It. 

He must be able to meet death not as a moment of utter annihilation, but as a springboard to rocket himself into an eternal Existence, peaceful and divine.

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Tuesday 27,  Feb  2024  07:50. 

Chapter 17: The Play of the Cosmic Powers - 7.

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Towards the end of the Seventeenth Chapter we are given the cryptic message of 'Om Tat Sat', a term with which we are all familiar, but the meaning of which is not always so clear. It is said that this is a very holy expression and it has to be employed in every religious performance. We conclude all pious acts with the utterance  Om Tat Sat, which appears to be an invocation of God at the end of a performance. The meaning of these words is not clear, and no commentary on the Gita will perhaps be an aid to us in understanding what these three terms actually signify. We merely say  Om Tat Sat. We do not know what it means.

Well, we may go a little deep into its significance from the point of view of the Bhagavadgita itself, in the light of the great message that has been given to us through its various chapters. And in this light if we look at these terms, it would appear that the three seeds, Om,  Tat, and  Sat signify the total comprehensiveness of the nature of Brahman, ranging beyond the concepts of Reality in the form of transcendence and immanence.

Generally, a remote thing is referred to as Tat, in the Sanskrit language. 'That' is  Tat. We refer to God as  Tat,  It, etc., as a super-transcendent inaccessible something.  Sat is the very same transcendent Reality that is hidden and present as the Divine immanence in all things. God is transcendent and also immanent. He is above us; He is also within us. He is far, and he is near; he is outside, and he is inside. Now, these ideas of transcendence and immanence— Tat Sat, the notions of God being outside as well as inside— are also to be transcended in a larger grasp, which is Om.

Here, in this mystical significance of the well-known symbol of Om, we are given a further transcendence of both the transcendent aspect and the immanent aspect of the Absolute. It is, in the language of the Upanishad, the  Bhuma, or the Plenum, the completeness whereby we cannot look upon it either as something above us or as something within us. To that supreme completeness, there are no outward and inward differences. There is no such thing as going above and being within, because it is everywhere, at all times, without the limitations of space, time and objectivity. Such an incomprehensible significance is embedded in this mystical formula of  Om. Naturally, it is a holy expression, which is unutterable, beyond understanding but signifying everything that is blessed and supreme. Such is  Om, which grasps within itself all that is real everywhere, the transcendent and the immanent.

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So, God is all, the Absolute is everything. The invocation of this Symbol, Om Tat Sat, in our experience, in our own consciousness, a remembrance of it at the sacred conclusion of any kind of performance, religious or otherwise, is regarded as a completion of that performance. God completes everything, and everything is incomplete where God is absent. The only thing that is full is God, and so He has to be invoked always.

End.

Next

Chapter 18: The Yoga of the Liberation of Spirit

Continued

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