A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 52 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 29, September 2024, 04:50.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita:
Chapter 9: The Yoga of Meditation - 2.
Swami Krishnananda
Post-52.

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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.

The meaning of Self is non-objectivity. It cannot be externalised in any manner whatsoever, and it cannot be related to anything. The Self cannot be a relation of somebody else, and somebody cannot be a relation of the Self. As long as you feel that you are related to something – to property, to selfhood, to family relation, to position in society, whatever it is – your self is not unconditioned. It is a grieving self, limited self, finite self, dependent self, a slavish self. This is the lower self. The Gita instruction is that this lower self has to be purified and raised to the level of the higher Self. 

Uddhared atmanatmanam (Gita 6.5): By the higher Self you raise the lower self.

As we have studied earlier, the higher Self is the adhidaiva, the conscious transcendent principle of divinity ranging above yourself as an individual, as well as above the outside thing with which you are related.

Now, the higher Self, this adhidaiva, also has various degrees of manifestation, and these degrees depend upon the kind of relation that you have between yourself and the world outside. There are layers of creation; there are realms of being, degrees of reality. This earth plane – this physical space-time complex – is one degree of the manifestation of reality, and in this particular material field, we establish one kind of relationship with the objects outside. Therefore, this transcendent adhidaiva will operate in a particular manner, taking into consideration the physicality and the nature of the type of world in which we are living.

But there are higher worlds. There are prapanchas – Bhuloka, Bhuvarloka, Svarloka, Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka, as they say. Seven realms of being are described in the scriptures. As you rise higher and higher from one realm to another realm, the adhidaiva also becomes more and more transparent, more expanded and wider in dimension, so that the distance between you and the object outside gets diminished.

Now the object is very far away from you; the world does not seem to have any kind of living connection with you. One person has no relation to another person; each person is standing outside like a planet in the sky, apparently not having anything to do with another. That I have no connection with you, that the subject has no relation to the object, that the world is totally outside, is apparent. In this physical world, there seems to be a total disconnection of the subject and the object. Things can be lost, there can be bereavement, and it is difficult to possess anything.

Continued

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