Commentary on The Bhagavad Gita (2)
The second in a series of four lectures by Sti Chinmoy
at Vanderbilt Hall, New York University, New York
Chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita is entitled Samkhya Yoga — “The Yoga of Knowledge.” Arjuna’s arguments against war are very plausible to our human understanding. Sri Krishna read Arjuna’s heart. Confusion ran riot across Arjuna’s mind. The unmanly sentiment in his Kshatriya blood he took as his love for mankind. But Arjuna was never wanting in sincerity. His mouth spoke what his heart felt. Unfortunately, his sincerity unconsciously housed ignorance. Sri Krishna wanted to illumine Arjuna. “O Arjuna, in your speech you are a philosopher; in your action, you are not. A true philosopher mourns neither for the living nor for the dead. But Arjuna, you are sorrowing and grieving. Tell me, why do you mourn the prospective death of these men? You existed, I existed, they too. Never shall we cease to exist.”
We have just mentioned Arjuna’s philosophy. Truth to tell, we too would have fared the same at that juncture. Real philosophy is truly difficult to study, more difficult to learn, and most difficult to live.
The Sanskrit word for philosophy is darshan, meaning ‘to see, to envision’. Sri Ramakrishna’s significant remark runs: “In the past, people used to have visions (darshan); now people study darshan (philosophy)!”
Equally significant is the message of the Hebrew Bible: “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”
Arjuna for the first time came to learn from Sri Krishna that his human belief concerning life and death was not founded on truth. He felt that he was distracted by illusions. He prayed to Sri Krishna for enlightenment: “I am your humble disciple. Teach me, tell me what is best for me.” For the first time, the word ‘disciple’ sprang from Arjuna’s lips.
Until then, Sri Krishna had been his friend and comrade. The disciple learned: “The Reality that pervades the universe is the Life immortal. The body is perishable; the soul, the real in man, or the real man, is deathless, immortal. The soul neither kills nor is killed. Beyond birth and death, constant and eternal is the soul. The knower of this truth neither slays nor causes slaughter.”
Arjuna had to fight the battle of life and not the so-called Battle of Kurukshetra. Strength he had. Wisdom he needed. The twilight consciousness of the physical mind he had. He needed the sun-bright consciousness of the soul’s divinity.
Sri Krishna used the terms ‘birth’, ‘life’ and ‘death’.
Birth is the passing of the soul from a lower to a higher body in the process of evolution, in the course of the soul’s journey of reincarnation. The Samkhya system affirms the absolute identity of cause and effect. Cause is the effect silently and secretly involved, and effect is the cause actively and openly evolved. Evolution, according to the Samkhya philosophy, can never come into existence from nothing, from zero. The appearance of ‘is’ can arise only from the existence of ‘was’. Let us fill our minds with the immortal utterance of Wordsworth from “Intimations of Immortality”:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Here the poet carries us into the mystery of the soul’s eternal journey and reminds us of the perennial Source.
What is life? It is the soul’s only opportunity to manifest and fulfil the Divine here on earth. When life begins its journey, Infinity shakes hands with it. When the journey is half done, Eternity shakes hands with it. When life’s journey is complete, Immortality shakes hands with it. Life lives the life of perfection when it lives in spirituality. When life lives in spirituality, the Breath of God, it stands far above the commands of morality and the demands of duty.
God says to the human life, “Arise, awake, aspire! Yours is the goal.” The human life says to God: “Wait, I am resting. I am sleeping. I am dreaming.” Suddenly, life feels ashamed of its conduct. Crying, it says, “Father, I am coming.” Throbbing, it says, “Father, I am come.” Smiling, it says, “Father, I have come.”
Life, the problem, can be solved by the soul, the solution; but for that, one has first to be awakened from within.
He who lives the inner life knows that death is truly his resting-room. To him, death is anything but extinction. It is a meaningful departure. When our consciousness is divinely transformed, the necessity of death will not arise at all. To transform life, we need peace, light, bliss and power. We cry for these divine qualities. They cry for our aspiration. They are equally anxious to grant us everlasting life. But until our body, vital, mind, heart and soul aspire together, the divine power, light, bliss and peace cannot possess us.
The body dies, but not the soul. The body sleeps; the soul flies. The soul-stirring words on death and the soul in this chapter of the Gita, let us recollect:
Even as a man discards old clothes for the new ones,
So the dweller in the body, the soul,
Leaving aside the worn-out body,
Enters into a new body.
The soul migrates from body to body.
Weapons cannot cleave it,
Nor fire consume it,
Nor water drench it,
Nor wind dry it.
This is the soul and this is what is meant by the existence of the soul.
Now we shall be well advised to observe the existence of death, if there is any, in the momentous words of Sri Aurobindo, the founder of the Integral Yoga. “Death,” he exclaims, “has no separate existence by itself. It is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time, it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death are not inevitable.”
What we call death is nothing short of ignorance. We can solve the problem of death only when we know what life is. Life is eternal. It existed before birth and it will exist after death. Life also exists between birth and death. It is beyond birth and death. Life is infinite. Life is immortal. A seeker of the infinite Truth cannot subscribe to Schopenhauer’s statement: “To desire Immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.” There is no shadow of doubt that it is the ceaseless seeker in man who is Immortality’s Life, for his very existence indicates the Supreme’s Vision that illumines the universe, and the Supreme’s Reality that fulfils creation.
Arjuna the disciple further learned: “Do your duty. Do not waver. Be not faint-hearted. You are a Kshatriya. There can be no greater invitation than that of a righteous war for a Kshatriya.”
A Kshatriya’s (warrior’s) duty can never be the duty of an ascetic. Neither should an ascetic perform the duty of a Kshatriya. Also, a Kshatriya must not follow the path of a world-renouncer. Imitation is not for a seeker. “Imitation is suicide,” so do we learn from Emerson.
A warrior’s duty is to fight, fight for the establishment of Truth. “In his victory, the entire earth becomes his; in his death, him welcome the gates of Paradise.”
Sri Krishna unveiled the path of Samkhya (knowledge) to Arjuna: “Arjuna, take them as one, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, gain and loss. Care not for them. Fight! Fighting thus, no sin will you incur.”
The Teacher had already revealed the path of knowledge. Now he wanted to teach the student the path of action (Karma Yoga). Arjuna surprisingly learned that this path, the path of action, the second path, is fruitful and also will bring him deliverance. The truth sublime is: “Action is your birthright, not the outcome, not the fruits thereof. Let not the fruits of action be your object, and be not attached to inaction. Be active and dynamic; seek not any reward.” We can simultaneously kindle the flame of our consciousness with the lore of the Isa Upanishad: “Action cleaves not to a man.”
We have already used the term ‘Yoga’. What is Yoga? “Equanimity,” says Sri Krishna, “is Yoga.” He also says: “Yoga is skilful wisdom in action.”
Arjuna’s inner progress is striking. He now feels the necessity to free himself from the desire-life. Sri Krishna teaches him how he can totally detach himself from the bondage-life of the senses as a tortoise successfully withdraws its limbs from all directions. Sense-withdrawal, or withdrawal from the sense objects, by no means indicates the end of man’s journey. “Mere withdrawal cannot put an end to desire’s birth. Desire disappears only when the Supreme appears. In His Presence the desire-life loses its existence. Not before.”
This second chapter throws considerable light on Samkhya (knowledge) and Yoga (action). Samkhya and Yoga are never at daggers drawn. One is detached, meditative knowledge, and the other is dedicated and selfless action. They have the self-same Goal. They just follow two different paths to arrive at the Goal.
To come back to the sense-life. Sense-life is not to be discontinued. Sense-life is to be lived in the Divine for the Divine. It is the inner withdrawal, and not the outer withdrawal, that is imperative. The animal in man has to surrender to the Divine in man for its total transformation. The life of animal pleasure must lose its living and burning breath in the all-fulfilling life of divine Bliss.
The Katha Upanishad declares the rungs of the ever-climbing ladder:
Higher than the senses are the objects of sense,
Higher than the objects of sense is the mind,
Higher than the mind is the intellect,
Higher than the intellect is the Self,
Higher than the Self is the Unmanifest,
Higher than the Unmanifest is the Supreme personified,
Highest is this Supreme, the Goal Ultimate.
We have seen what happens when we go up. Let us observe what happens when we muse on the sense-objects. The Gita tells: “Dwelling on sense-objects gives birth to attachment, attachment gives birth to desire. Desire (unfulfilled) brings into existence the life of anger. From anger delusion springs up, from delusion the confusion of memory. In the confusion of memory, the reasoning wisdom is lost. When wisdom is nowhere, destruction within, without, below and above.”
The dance of destruction is over. Let us pine for salvation. The disciplined, self-controlled aspirant alone will be blessed by the flood of peace. Finally, the aspirant will be embraced by salvation, the inner illumination.
Published in The Oneness of the Eastern Heart and the Western Mind, part 2
Simplicity, Sincerity, Purity and Divinity
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at the Melbourne Assembly Hall, Melbourne, Australia
Dear seekers, dear sisters and brothers, let us try to be simple. Simplicity is a simple word, but everyone knows how difficult it is to become simple in life. Each time a seeker becomes simple in his life-activities, in his life-achievements, in his life-successes, he feels that he has achieved self-discovery. And each time he becomes complex or complicated in his nature, he feels that God-realisation is a far cry. A simple heart runs fast, faster, fastest towards the Goal. In the seeker's list of life-desires, when one item is removed and the list becomes more simple, the seeker gets an abundance of inner illumination.
Let us all try to become sincere. Sincerity is unparalleled in the spiritual life. Each time a seeker tells a lie, in order to justify the lie he will tell ten more lies. And each time he tells a lie he consciously gets an additional burden on his shoulders. The seeker has to run fast, faster, fastest towards his destination. If he is carrying something heavy on his shoulders, he can never go fast. Sincerity expedites our journey. Sincerity shortens the road. Sincerity offers us a short cut to our Goal. He who is sincere is bound to discover his Reality-Self infinitely sooner than the person who is not sincere.
A child's sincerity conquers the heart of all human beings. A sincere heart conquers the length and breadth of the world. A sincere seeker sees, feels and realises that God-realisation can never remain a far cry. There are people who say that spirituality is nothing short of mental hallucination, nothing but building castles in the air. But a sincere heart knows and feels that spirituality is something spontaneous and natural, for the Source — the Ultimate Source which is God — is natural and simple. Therefore, at every moment, right from the journey's start, the sincere heart feels that his is the way and his is the Goal, the destined Goal.
Let us all try to become pure. Purity is nothing short of self-expansion. It is inside our purity that we see the real Self of all. Purity expands and enlarges our consciousness. The whole world we can claim as our own, our very own, when we have a pure heart. If we do not have a pure heart, we can never claim anything as our very own. Inside our purity-existence we see our oneness-light, our universal oneness. When we do not have purity, we feel a sense of separativity. Each time we are wanting in purity we feel that there is nothing on earth that can satisfy us. But when purity enters into us, we feel that our entire being is surcharged with light. There is no darkness either within or without. Our whole being is flooded with Light and Delight.
He who has purity feels God's loving Breath at every moment, and his life's multifarious activities offer him fruitful realities. He opens his eyes, he observes the beauty of nature and he adores it. He closes his eyes and in the inmost recesses of his heart he observes the inner beauty. With outer beauty he fulfils the outer realities. With his inner beauty he fulfils the inner realities. It is he who sees the world of illumining Vision and fulfilling Reality. God's Silence-Life and God's Sound-Life he claims as his own, very own.
The seeker then dives deep within and enters into the world of divinity. There he sees God as Soul-Reality; there he sees God in His infinite manifestations, which are both Sound-Life and Silence-Life. In this world of divinity the seeker accepts everything as a form of God's manifestation. Today's world is far from perfect. But inside each material object, each creation of God, he sees and hears the message of ultimate perfection. The seeker who sees divinity in unmistakable terms inside each creation of God notices the sea of perfection in each human nature, in each human life.
Divinity is the Source. When the seeker is fully aware of his Source, he feels like a running river going towards the universal Sea of aspiration. The seeker's divinity makes him constantly conscious of the promise he made to the Absolute Supreme before he entered into the world-arena. At that time he made a solemn promise that he would manifest the Absolute Supreme here on earth. Realisation, revelation, manifestation and perfection: these divine achievements are what the seeker of the highest Absolute Truth achieves in the course of time. In the process of his own evolution, at God's Choice Hour he embodies, reveals and manifests God here on earth.
As he learns many things, the seeker of the Highest Truth also unlearns many things in the course of his journey. What are the things that he unlearns? He unlearns fear, doubt, anxiety, jealousy, insecurity. He unlearns the teachings of the earth-bound life, of the sophisticated mind with its disproportionate ego. He unlearns everything that the physical world has taught him. He comes to realise that the physical mind, which is full of doubt and suspicion, has taught him quite a few things which are standing in the way of his God realisation. Each time he uses his mind he sees clearly that the mind is creating an additional obstacle on his way. Therefore, he tries to unlearn everything that the physical mind has taught him and he uses an illumined mind.
This illumining and illumined mind comes into existence in his life only when he becomes a loving and aspiring heart. In his loving and aspiring heart he sees the effulgence of his soul. The soul's effulgence illumines his heart totally. Then the heart brings this effulgence of light into the mind and illumines the mind. When the seeker's mind is illumined, the seeker receives and achieves peace in boundless measure. This boundless peace the mind brings into the vital, strengthening the vital. There comes a time when the illumined mind is successful in transforming the restless, destructive vital. The illumination of the mind changes the aggressive vital into the dynamic vital. Then, the illumining and revealing vital enters into the lethargic physical body, the body that enjoys wallowing in the pleasures of lethargy, darkness and ignorance. For countless years this physical existence of ours did not care for the inner light. It wanted to remain with ignorance-life and swim in the sea of ignorance. But after some time, the illumining and illumined vital enters into the emotional physical. Slowly, steadily and unerringly our physical existence is transformed and illumined and becomes a perfect instrument of God. When the body-existence of the seeker's physical reality becomes a perfect instrument of God, God-manifestation becomes an elevating, illumining and fulfilling experience in the seeker's body. The seeker's very presence illumines and inspires those who happen to be around him. At this point, the seeker realises that each thought of his reality-existence is a world of its own. Previously, when he was living in the desire-life, he was not aware of thought-power. But now he sees that when he was in the desire-life, each thought destroyed a real divinity in him. Each thought was a form of destruction, conscious or unconscious. Each thought wanted him to maintain a sense of separativity or wanted him to lord it over others. Each thought made him feel that his was the life of superiority, his was the life of supreme authority.
Now the seeker sees in each thought a world of divine creation, a world of illumination a world of perfection. Each thought creates in him a world of progress, a world of satisfaction. And each time he grows into the satisfaction-tree, he feels the ultimate Absolute Lord, author of all Good, showering His choicest Blessings upon his illumined mind, aspiring heart and self-giving life.
Simplicity, sincerity, purity and divinity.
With sincerity the seeker starts his journey and with divinity the seeker completes his journey. But the journey never ends; the Goal is an ever-transcending reality. Each time the seeker reaches a Goal, that Goal becomes the starting point of a higher, brighter, more illumining and more fulfilling experience and reality.
The seeker starts with simplicity and goes along the road of sincerity, purity and divinity. Inside divinity, at every moment he realises a Goal, a Goal that is constantly transcending its own Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.
Published in My Heart's Salutation to Australia, part 2