Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita - 6. Swami Krishnananda.
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Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita - 6.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on February 24th, 1973)
Post-6.
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This itself is not sufficient. These qualifications, viveka, vairagya, shad-sampat, etc., are supposed to be only preparatory for the reception of the higher knowledge which is classified under what we call the sravana, manana, nididhyasana process. Even mere discrimination will not do. A mere attempt at self-control is not sufficient because spiritual knowledge is not the negative repression or the control of the senses merely, but a positive realisation of higher values.
We are a positive personality when we grow, not merely a transcendence of lower values. Merely giving up something wrong, bad or evil is not enough. We want to achieve something positive which is good, which is proper and which is just. How can we rest merely in a negative personality of having avoided something? As health is not merely absence of disease, spirituality is not merely control of the senses, but the positive achievement of a superior state of existence and perception and knowledge. Therefore, it is a state of freedom and bliss. We cannot have freedom and bliss merely by having avoided something or got out of some clutches. Positive is spirituality, positive is yoga, and in the earlier stages it is combined with a negative withdrawal from the limitations of sense and the pure rational approach.
This is the sum and substance of the fundamentals of yoga practice – their philosophy and methodology. This has to be applied in our life daily, because every day is a link in the chain of the development of our personality into spiritual life. Every day, every minute, every moment of our life is a link in the chain of our development, and every link has to be strong enough. If one link breaks, the whole chain will be broken, so every moment, every second, every minute of our life is a very strong link in this long chain of development which we call spiritual evolution.
Therefore, it is necessary to build up strong seconds, strong moments and strong minutes of our life. It should be positivity proper. This can be achieved by satsanga, the company of the wise, and meditation, which has a very wide meaning. Meditation means fixing our attention on all those necessary characteristics of a higher form of life, which includes svadhyaya, which includes japa, which includes self-control, which includes seclusion, which includes purity, which includes truthfulness, and so on – all characteristics of that which is higher.
The higher we go, the more we are freed from the clutches of sense and body. The lower we are in the evolutionary process; the more is the control of the senses over us. Senses become very uncontrollable when we live merely a bodily existence. We have a very strong appetite of the senses when we live a bodily existence only. The hunger of the senses becomes uncontrollable when the consciousness is dependent on the bodily processes. The more does consciousness get freedom from the clutches of bodily processes, the more does it also gain freedom from the activity of the senses.
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