A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 51 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 23, September 2024, 07:20.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita:
Chapter 9: The Yoga of Meditation - 1.
Swami Krishnananda
Post-51.

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The Yoga of meditation is the subject of the Sixth Chapter of the Gita. At the very beginning, the Lord tells us that the art of Yoga is a system of raising oneself by oneself. In meditation you qualitatively improve yourself and do not merely carry on a quantitative process for a long time. Many days, several months, are occupied with the act of meditation, but it is not just that you have been doing something for a long time. Also you have improved yourself; you have become a better person through meditation. The betterment is the qualitative aspect of it.

We have a Self; everybody has a Self, usually called the Atman. “My self has been engaged in the work of meditation.” This is what you generally say. This self of yours is one kind of self. It is one layer of a possible long series of different layers of the same self. These layers of self are the determining factors of the quality of your being. What sort of person you are as far as your quality of existence is concerned will be decided by the level of selfhood that you are rooted in.

There is, for instance, the instinctive self, the sensory self, the physical self, the involved self, the social self, and so on, all which mean that the self of the person – the you, the I, or whatever it is – is not existing for itself independently but is conditioned by certain associations such as sensation, instinctive desire, social relation, and the like. Mr. so-and-so is a particular kind of self. That self is decided upon qualitatively by the kind of social relation that the self is maintaining, and you know what the social relation is.

You are something in human society – something important, something unimportant, something responsible, something not responsible, something recognised, something unrecognised. The society has something to say about you, and that depends upon what kind of position you occupy in the social setup. Your social position very much influences what you are. When you think about yourself, you will also think – and perhaps only think – in the sense of your involvement in society. Suppose you are an official in the government; you will be thinking only that you are a magistrate. You will not think that you are the son of your mother. Though you are perhaps that, you will never forget that you are a magistrate self. The magistrate self has become so much involved in your being that you are only that. This is an example of the social self, which everyone is, in some way or the other.–Your involvement in external society in any manner whatsoever will condition you and make you a social self.

That is to say, you are not independent because you always define yourself in terms of something with which you are associated. You feel you are rich, you are poor, you are male, you are female, etc. These definitions that you unwittingly foist upon yourself tell you that you are not independent, and cannot be regarded as free. To the extent you are dependent on feelings, instincts, social contexts and relations, to that extent you are a bound soul.

But meditation is the art of the achievement of freedom. Perhaps it expects you to achieve the highest kind of freedom – untrammelled not only by external relations, but by conditions given by space and time. Such kind of absolute freedom is your expectation through spiritual meditation. So a seeker of this highest freedom in the spiritual self will analyse and assess the category of selfhood in which he is, or to which he belongs. How do you define yourself?

The Bhagavadgita says, in one or two slogas, that you have to raise your lower self by the power of the higher Self. You should not be always a physical self, an instinctive self, a desire-filled self, a sensory self or a social self. The Self cannot be so described as something conditioned by other things. The very meaning of Self is unconditionality, indivisibility and self-sufficiency. If the self of yours is inadequate in some way, you cling to certain associations outside, as I mentioned, so that you look like an adequate self. But the Self cannot be made adequate or self-sufficient by any accumulation of external factors. Society, objects of sense, or even the satisfaction of the physical body cannot make the Self a better Self because the Self cannot be associated with anything other than its own Self.

Continued

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