The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita- 5.3 -Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, March 08, 2022. 06:00. 

Chapter-5.God is Our Eternal Friend - 3.

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Every event is felt everywhere in the cosmos, just as a little prick on the sole of our foot is felt throughout our body, due to the connectedness of the system. This secret is to be known, and whoever knows this is not reborn into this world, we are assured. Janma karma ca me divyam evam yo vetti tattvatah, tyaktva deham punar janma naiti mam eti. 

We will not be reborn into this world of suffering, mrityu loka, having known this secret of the perpetual manifestation, incarnation of divinity in this world. Having known this, we become assured of a perpetual friend with us. We are not lost souls; we are not orphans, as many a time we feel in this world of wilderness. It may look that we have no succour in this world of various types of sorrow, but we have a friend who is always ready to help us in our needs. He is a friend who will never forget us, though we forget Him. We perpetually ignore His existence, deny it in every act of our perception, assert ourselves arrogantly, negate His very existence and try to blot Him out of the picture. This is the gratitude we show to God for the blessings that He bestows upon us. What a state of affairs, what a pity. But God is immeasurably kind; even million of mothers will not equal one God. Such is the compassion that God has upon people. Our insults upon Him are not taken seriously, and our denial of Him is not punished. Always, like the tree that gives fruit even if it is struck with an axe, like nature as a whole which fills us with bounty in spite of our disregard for its laws, God helps us.

Such is the glorious message that is inherently present in the fourth chapter of the Bhagavadgita. When we are awakened to this fact, we are blessed not merely with knowledge, but also with a power that is not of this world. What are the blessings that this yoga of meditation and awakening into God-consciousness brings us? The blessings are these: equanimity of perception (samatva), dexterity in action (karmasukaushalam) and the capacity to see that which is between us and the world, that which works secretly in the midst of visible things, unknown and undiscovered.

Yoga-sannyasta-karmanam jnana-sanchinna-samsayam, atma-vantam na karmani nibadhnanti dhananajaya. This is the final touchstone of the grand message of the fourth chapter. One who has renounced by yoga and dispelled all doubts by jnana and is possessed of the Self—such a person is not bound by action. This is a difficult passage, but it has a profound meaning. The renunciation that we practice should be an outcome of yoga, and not a result of frustration or weak-heartedness, a cowardly attitude, or the ‘sour grape attitude', as they call it. The renunciation that the Bhagavadgita speaks of is an automatic consequence of yoga. That is why a person who is in this state is referred to as yoga sannyasa dharma. Actions are renounced by establishing oneself in yoga. The type of renunciation of action that is referred to here as a result of one's steadfastness in yoga is not the abandonment of the form of the action as such, but the spirit of the action. Action is an attitude and not the form that the movements of the limbs of our body take. The renunciation of action, as the result of steadfastness in yoga, is nothing but the ability to rise above the very consciousness of one's doership in anything in this world.

God is the doer of all things. His hands operate through every individual. As we are told again, all heads are His heads, all eyes are His eyes, all hands are His hands. He walks through all the legs, thinks through all the brains, sees through all the eyes and performs actions through all the hands. So to whom does the credit of action go? Who is the agent of action, who is the performer of deeds? Not I, not you, not he, she or it. It is the rumbling of the powers of the whole cosmos that we call a total action. All action is a total action; there is no such a thing as individual action. When this awakening takes place, there is an automatic renunciation of the attitude of personalistic action, the agency that one feels in regard to oneself in performance of any deed. “I do it and therefore I have to appropriate the fruit thereof.” This is a wrong notion of one's own self being the sole performer of deeds, contrary to the truth that the whole world is active at the manifestation of any event anywhere. This awakening is yoga-sannyasta-karmanam.

We are filled with doubts in our minds—we can prepare a dictionary of all our doubts—they are endless. Everywhere we have a suspicious attitude about the world, about things, about people, about ourselves, about the past, about the present, and about the future. These doubts cannot be dispelled until knowledge arises, and we know what knowledge means, an insight into which we have been given in the second chapter of the Gita. Knowledge is the knowledge of God ultimately, and as a result, knowledge of the nature of the world in its reality, as mentioned in the third chapter. This is true knowledge, and when we are awakened to this real knowledge, all doubts get dispelled. Then what happens? Atmavantam—we become truly possessed of the Self that we really are.

We are people who have lost ourselves and are in pursuit of things outside. Yes, this is what has happened; we have grasped the world and lost our own selves, and we are in search of our own selves in the things that we are trying to possess in the world. And this Self that has been lost can be possessed truly only when this twofold measure of yoga is taken—the renunciation of the notion of agency in individualised action, and the dispelling of all doubts concerning things, through jnana. These things take us to true self-possessness, where we begin to behold ourselves in all things. “You will see the Self in yourself as also in Me. ” says Sri Krishna. The Self will not only be seen in only yourself or myself, but it will be seen as the principle of truth inherent in the form of the world.

This is a complete philosophy before us, and yoga in a nutshell. When this is properly effected, we live a life of universal renunciation. It is not the renunciation of the monk or the monastic hermit in the social sense; it is the rising above the very consciousness of dualistic perception, and that state, which is called the state of yogayukta, brings further wonderful results.

End.

NEXT- Chapter 6: Universal Action.

To be continued .......

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