A Study of the Bhagavadgita :60 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday 19, December 2024, 06:10.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita:
Chapter 10: The Hidden Meaning of the Seventh Chapter of the Gita-1
Swami Krishnananda
Post-60.

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Chapter 10: The Hidden Meaning of the Seventh Chapter of the Gita-1.

The first six chapters of the Bhagavadgita stand by themselves as unique teachings on the integration of the human personality, which process was described gradually right from the First Chapter. The Gita, as a very good psychologist and a master teacher to students, takes its stand on the level of the student, and endeavours to gradually raise the mind of the student from that pedestal on which the student stands. Though the student is Arjuna in this particular context, the student is every one of us, humanity in general.

Arjuna finds himself in a highly non-aligned and disturbed circumstance of conflict of every kind, with difficulties galore. This is described in the First Chapter; and you know how the mind was gradually raised to higher and higher levels by the theoretical teaching of the Sankhya cosmological doctrine and by the practical teaching of the implementation of this Sankhya doctrine in the actual performance in life, called Yoga. A further confidence was infused into the mind of the student-disciple in the Fourth Chapter when it is told that God Himself incarnates as the rectifying medium whenever any critical situation arises; and in the Sixth Chapter we were told how it is possible to align the layers of our personality in an integrated act of meditation.

So up to this time, until the end of the Sixth Chapter, the emphasis is on the human individual, the perfection of man, the bringing together of all the forces that constitute individuality, as a soldier is worked up into perfection and order for the action that he has to embark upon in a field of battle. In every way he has to be prepared. He girds up his loins, as they say, but not in an unprepared manner. In every way he is prepared. At one whistle or one stroke, he is ready to strike with all his might and main. But on what will he strike? This is another subject altogether which will take us to the chapters from the Seventh onwards, right up to the Eleventh – which form another unit, with which we can club the Twelfth Chapter also as an appendix thereof.

While the human individuality is to be perfected by integration, alignment of layers through the constituents of the meditational process, the human individual is also to be aligned to a cosmic setup – a macrocosmic integration, as it is called. The microcosmic endeavour of the human personality has to be set in perfect tune with the macrocosmic order, law and system, so that gaining individual perfection is only a preparatory process for its perfect alignment with the cosmic perfection. So there is an element of cosmology and macrocosmic operation even in the act of meditation, and it is not an isolated individual effort.

Therefore, it is now clear that when you sit for meditation, you are preparing for some onslaught, and it is not an end in itself. Meditation, dhyana, leads to samadhi, communion with reality. The nature of reality has not been properly touched upon in the chapters that we have covered up to this time. There was excessive emphasis on the nature of the psychological individual, but the metaphysical cosmos has not been explained in sufficient detail, except here and there by way of vague reference.

When we were discussing the Sankhya doctrine of the Second Chapter, we had occasion to digress into the details of Sankhya cosmology. This detail is not to be found in the Second Chapter; only the word 'Sankhya' is used, and it is said that Sankhya is essential. Arjuna was lacking knowledge of Sankhya, on account of which he could not be an expert in the Yoga of action. But it is good to have at least some idea of the outline of the entire process of cosmic creation, which you remember as it has been told to you.

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Continued

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