The Tree of Life: 2.5. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday 20, May 2025, 09:50.
Shrimad Bhagavad Gita
The Tree of Life: 2.5.
Discourse 2: The Search for Wholeness - 5.
Swami Krishnananda. 

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Who can know the whole of this Earth, what to speak of other things beyond the Earth? No one can imagine what is in the skies and above. We are very much conditioned to this little place, Muni-ki-reti or Rishikesh; or the farthest expansion of our mind may be to India or the Earth. This is not to look at the whole of the tree but to see only a little of it—and that, too, wrongly, as an externalised form. Even this little knowledge that we seem to have is erroneous knowledge and wrongly directed. But the mystery creeps into this horrid picture of life because of the presence of the great unifying absolute power of God. This unifying presence keeps us somehow or other hoping for the best, happy under every condition, and seeking to save ourselves even in the midst of the ocean in which we are being drowned. We try to catch a little straw in the flooded river, hoping that we can be saved. That hopefulness of continued existence and the seeking of significance in existence is due to the presence of God in us, the presence of the vitality of the seed in every part of the tree of life.

The mystery is here, that God in His unified comprehensiveness is in us; He is wholly present, not only partially, in spite of the fact that we are partial expressions. The part contains the whole in wholeness. This is the mystery. We cannot understand how the wholeness of the whole can be in a part. We never see such a feature anywhere in this world. No drop in the ocean can contain the whole ocean. But the whole of us is present in every cell of our body, though biologically, physically, physiologically, anatomically, each cell is only a part of the whole of the body. The body that we speak of is a comprehensive, living, vital power. That comprehensiveness of the vitality in us is present in each cell of the body, so that by seeing one cell we can know the whole person. So is the completeness of perfection present in the partial limitedness of forms. That is why we are hoping for God-realisation as a possibility, a practicability and a surety. We are not weeping as though nothing is possible and everything has gone mad. Thus, there is a double feature in human experience, a complete chaotic presentation of an apparent externality of experience which keeps us restless and unhappy, simultaneously with a hope for ultimate perfection and a capacity in us to achieve it.

This tree of life is, therefore, a beautiful analogy. But the Bhagavadgita gives us a caution at the end of this analogy that we should not be busy eating the fruits of this tree, an analogy going further into a mantra in the Veda and a passage in the Upanishad where it is said that in this vast tree two birds are perched, perhaps on different branches. One bird is enjoying the beautiful berries, the fruits of this forbidden tree, and is sorrow-ridden, while the other bird is merely looking at the beauties of the various fruits of this tree and eating not. The mantra of the Veda says the blessedness of this indulgent fruit-eating bird lies in the turning of its attention towards the other bird—merely looking at it, gazing at the presence of the bird which eats not, participates not, does nothing whatsoever, but merely is. To give another analogy, it is just as the success, greatness and power of Arjuna lay merely in being conscious that Krishna was seated there in the chariot; but if Arjuna were to forget it, woe unto him.

There is also another beautiful analogy which might have missed the attention of readers of the Srimad Bhagavata. In the great story of Daksha Yajna, which occurs in the Fourth Skanda of the Srimad Bhagavata, Virabhadra is said to have rushed to the sacrificial ground of Daksha and attacked him, wanting to sever his head, but he could not do it. However much he tried, he found that it was not possible for him to sever the head of Daksha. Then he remembered Lord Siva who sent him, and at once he succeeded. There was an individuality-consciousness, as it were, a confidence in his own power, which defeated the very purpose for which he had gone.

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Continued

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