Commentary on the Bhagavadgita: 3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 08, January 2025, 12:20.
Commentary on the Bhagavadgita: 3.
Discourse 1: The Colophon of the Bhagavadgita-3.
Swami Krishnananda

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Who can encounter the Absolute? Who can talk with God, unless we are flaming and blazing forth in the purity of our spirit as God Himself is? Unless we have transcended the limitations of flesh and bone and the limitations of the psyche which are conditioned socially, politically, etc., unless we are able to lift our consciousness above these limitations, how will we converse with God? Who can dare approach God, when there is no communicating medium between ourselves and God? The wavelength of our individuality and the wavelength of God are in such contrast that there is no mingling of these two factors. The radio station of God is sending messages. We are unable to receive any message from God because our receiving sets here have a very feeble wavelength and, therefore, no message is received. The Yoga Shastra, or the practice of yoga, is nothing but the tuning of the wavelength of our receiving sets to the wavelength of the message that comes from God's broadcasting station.

This is Yoga Shastra; and the purpose of this is to contact God directly. There is no use of thinking God, praying to God, feeling God, and imagining that one day we will realise God. It is necessary to confront Him every day, if it is true that He is present in every atom, as they say. In every atom He is vibrating, as the sun is vibrating in the solar system. If that is the case, He is to be contacted just now. God is a here and a now, and not an afterwards or a somewhere or a someone. He is without these limitations of the concept of space and time. Contact with God is contact with timelessness, with eternity, with just-ness, now-ness and here-ness. Such is the import of the final teaching of the Bhagavadgita, where the soul communes with God in its realisation of the perfection that it has to achieve finally through the Yoga Shastra. This is the practice of the discipline necessary in this world in the light of the knowledge of Brahma-vidya, which is the theoretical education that we receive of how the world is made, finally.

First, we have to know, then we have to do, and then we have to realise. A similar reference is made in the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. It is not enough if we merely see and know, but we have to enter into it. It is necessary for us to enter into God in our daily life. It is not enough if we are merely thinking as a kind of outer whitewash on our body. Then it will remain like a whitewash outside only, and it will not be part of our structure.

The entry into God's existence every day is the living of the divine life, and we should not think that this is a very hard thing. Who can enter into God every day? Where is God? Is He in some unimaginable infinity? It is nothing of the kind. Sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṁ tat sarvatokṣiśiromukham, sarvataḥ śrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati (13.13); mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti (7.7): Outside God, nothing exists. If that is the case, what is the distance between us and God? Distance is abolished. It is a distanceless, timeless contact. That is possible for us, provided that we open the gates of our personality, open the windows to the sunshine of the Supreme Being that is illuminating us perpetually, and melt our egos, which affirm that “I also exist together with God”. The biblical fall of Satan is nothing but the story of the affirmation of the ego in the presence of God: “If you are there, I am also there.” The devotee says, “God, Thou art, but I am also there to contemplate You.” That devotee should not be there at all. Let that devotee melt, and then God possesses him. The ocean enters into the rivers, and the world melts into the consciousness which is a now and a here.

The Bhagavadgita is a Brahma-vidya, a Yoga Shastra, Srīkrisharjunasamvada. It is a theoretical understanding of the structure of the cosmos, the practice of yoga, and the daily contact with God in our practical affairs, which is true divine life.

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Next

Discourse 2: The First Chapter – Visada Yoga, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit

Continued

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