SRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA CHAPT.8(Gita.8)
https://youtu.be/VRoVEMJatfM
Adhibhootam cha kim proktam adhidaivam kimuchyate.
Prayaanakaale cha katham jneyo’si niyataatmabhih.
Bhootabhaavodbhavakaro visargah karmasamjnitah.
Adhiyajno’hamevaatra dehe dehabhritaam vara.
Yah prayaati sa madbhaavam yaati naastyatra samshayah.
Tam tamevaiti kaunteya sadaa tadbhaavabhaavitah.
Mayyarpitamanobuddhir maamevaishyasyasamshayam.
Paramam purusham divyam yaati paarthaanuchintayan.
Anoraneeyaamsam anusmaredyah;
Sarvasya dhaataaram achintyaroopam
Aadityavarnam tamasah parastaat.
Bhaktyaa yukto yogabalena chaiva;
Bhruvormadhye praanamaaveshya samyak
Sa tam param purusham upaiti divyam.
Vishanti yadyatayo veetaraagaah;
Yadicchanto brahmacharyam charanti
Tatte padam samgrahena pravakshye.
Moordhnyaadhaayaatmanah praanamaasthito yogadhaaranaam.
Yah prayaati tyajan deham sa yaati paramaam gatim.
Tasyaaham sulabhah paartha nityayuktasya yoginah.
Naapnuvanti mahaatmaanah samsiddhim paramaam gataah.
Maamupetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate.
Raatrim yugasahasraantaam te’horaatravido janaah.
Raatryaagame praleeyante tatraivaavyaktasamjnake.
Raatryaagame’vashah paartha prabhavatyaharaagame.
Yah sa sarveshu bhooteshu nashyatsu na vinashyati.
Yam praapya na nivartante taddhaama paramam mama.
Yasyaantahsthaani bhootaani yena sarvamidam tatam.
Prayaataa yaanti tam kaalam vakshyaami bharatarshabha.
Tatra prayaataa gacchanti brahma brahmavido janaah.
Tatra chaandramasam jyotir yogee praapya nivartate.
Ekayaa yaatyanaavrittim anyayaa’vartate punah.
Tasmaat sarveshu kaaleshu yogayukto bhavaarjuna.
Daaneshu yat punyaphalam pradishtam:
Atyeti tatsarvam idam viditwaa
Yogee param sthaanamupaiti chaadyam.
SWAMI SIVANANDA.
Commentary on the Bhagavadgita
https://youtu.be/VRoVEMJatfM
SRIMAD BHAGAWAD GITA CHAPTER 8
अथ अष्टमोஉध्यायः ।
अर्जुन उवाच ।
किं तद्ब्रह्म किमध्यात्मं किं कर्म पुरुषोत्तम ।
अधिभूतं च किं प्रोक्तमधिदैवं किमुच्यते ॥ 1 ॥
किं तद्ब्रह्म किमध्यात्मं किं कर्म पुरुषोत्तम ।
अधिभूतं च किं प्रोक्तमधिदैवं किमुच्यते ॥ 1 ॥
अधियज्ञः कथं कोஉत्र देहेஉस्मिन्मधुसूदन ।
प्रयाणकाले च कथं ज्ञेयोஉसि नियतात्मभिः ॥ 2 ॥
प्रयाणकाले च कथं ज्ञेयोஉसि नियतात्मभिः ॥ 2 ॥
श्रीभगवानुवाच ।
अक्षरं ब्रह्म परमं स्वभावोஉध्यात्ममुच्यते ।
भूतभावोद्भवकरो विसर्गः कर्मसञ्ज्ञितः ॥ 3 ॥
अक्षरं ब्रह्म परमं स्वभावोஉध्यात्ममुच्यते ।
भूतभावोद्भवकरो विसर्गः कर्मसञ्ज्ञितः ॥ 3 ॥
अधिभूतं क्षरो भावः पुरुषश्चाधिदैवतम् ।
अधियज्ञोஉहमेवात्र देहे देहभृतां वर ॥ 4 ॥
अधियज्ञोஉहमेवात्र देहे देहभृतां वर ॥ 4 ॥
अन्तकाले च मामेव स्मरन्मुक्त्वा कलेवरम् ।
यः प्रयाति स मद्भावं याति नास्त्यत्र संशयः ॥ 5 ॥
यः प्रयाति स मद्भावं याति नास्त्यत्र संशयः ॥ 5 ॥
यं यं वापि स्मरन्भावं त्यजत्यन्ते कलेवरम् ।
तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भावभावितः ॥ 6 ॥
तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भावभावितः ॥ 6 ॥
तस्मात्सर्वेषु कालेषु मामनुस्मर युध्य च ।
मय्यर्पितमनोबुद्धिर्मामेवैष्यस्यसंशयम् ॥ 7 ॥
मय्यर्पितमनोबुद्धिर्मामेवैष्यस्यसंशयम् ॥ 7 ॥
अभ्यासयोगयुक्तेन चेतसा नान्यगामिना ।
परमं पुरुषं दिव्यं याति पार्थानुचिन्तयन् ॥ 8 ॥
परमं पुरुषं दिव्यं याति पार्थानुचिन्तयन् ॥ 8 ॥
कविं पुराणमनुशासितारमणोरणीयंसमनुस्मरेद्यः ।
सर्वस्य धातारमचिन्त्यरूपमादित्यवर्णं तमसः परस्तात् ॥ 9 ॥
सर्वस्य धातारमचिन्त्यरूपमादित्यवर्णं तमसः परस्तात् ॥ 9 ॥
प्रयाणकाले मनसाचलेन भक्त्या युक्तो योगबलेन चैव ।
भ्रुवोर्मध्ये प्राणमावेश्य सम्यक्स तं परं पुरुषमुपैति दिव्यम् ॥ 10 ॥
भ्रुवोर्मध्ये प्राणमावेश्य सम्यक्स तं परं पुरुषमुपैति दिव्यम् ॥ 10 ॥
यदक्षरं वेदविदो वदन्ति विशन्ति यद्यतयो वीतरागाः ।
यदिच्छन्तो ब्रह्मचर्यं चरन्ति तत्ते पदं सङ्ग्रहेण प्रवक्ष्ये ॥ 11 ॥
यदिच्छन्तो ब्रह्मचर्यं चरन्ति तत्ते पदं सङ्ग्रहेण प्रवक्ष्ये ॥ 11 ॥
सर्वद्वाराणि संयम्य मनो हृदि निरुध्य च ।
मूर्ध्न्याधायात्मनः प्राणमास्थितो योगधारणाम् ॥ 12 ॥
मूर्ध्न्याधायात्मनः प्राणमास्थितो योगधारणाम् ॥ 12 ॥
ओमित्येकाक्षरं ब्रह्म व्याहरन्मामनुस्मरन् ।
यः प्रयाति त्यजन्देहं स याति परमां गतिम् ॥ 13 ॥
यः प्रयाति त्यजन्देहं स याति परमां गतिम् ॥ 13 ॥
अनन्यचेताः सततं यो मां स्मरति नित्यशः ।
तस्याहं सुलभः पार्थ नित्ययुक्तस्य योगिनः ॥ 14 ॥
तस्याहं सुलभः पार्थ नित्ययुक्तस्य योगिनः ॥ 14 ॥
मामुपेत्य पुनर्जन्म दुःखालयमशाश्वतम् ।
नाप्नुवन्ति महात्मानः संसिद्धिं परमां गताः ॥ 15 ॥
नाप्नुवन्ति महात्मानः संसिद्धिं परमां गताः ॥ 15 ॥
आब्रह्मभुवनाल्लोकाः पुनरावर्तिनोஉर्जुन ।
मामुपेत्य तु कौन्तेय पुनर्जन्म न विद्यते ॥ 16 ॥
मामुपेत्य तु कौन्तेय पुनर्जन्म न विद्यते ॥ 16 ॥
सहस्रयुगपर्यन्तमहर्यद्ब्रह्मणो विदुः ।
रात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां तेஉहोरात्रविदो जनाः ॥ 17 ॥
रात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां तेஉहोरात्रविदो जनाः ॥ 17 ॥
अव्यक्ताद्व्यक्तयः सर्वाः प्रभवन्त्यहरागमे ।
रात्र्यागमे प्रलीयन्ते तत्रैवाव्यक्तसञ्ज्ञके ॥ 18 ॥
रात्र्यागमे प्रलीयन्ते तत्रैवाव्यक्तसञ्ज्ञके ॥ 18 ॥
भूतग्रामः स एवायं भूत्वा भूत्वा प्रलीयते ।
रात्र्यागमेஉवशः पार्थ प्रभवत्यहरागमे ॥ 19 ॥
रात्र्यागमेஉवशः पार्थ प्रभवत्यहरागमे ॥ 19 ॥
परस्तस्मात्तु भावोஉन्योஉव्यक्तोஉव्यक्तात्सनातनः ।
यः स सर्वेषु भूतेषु नश्यत्सु न विनश्यति ॥ 20 ॥
यः स सर्वेषु भूतेषु नश्यत्सु न विनश्यति ॥ 20 ॥
अव्यक्तोஉक्षर इत्युक्तस्तमाहुः परमां गतिम् ।
यं प्राप्य न निवर्तन्ते तद्धाम परमं मम ॥ 21 ॥
यं प्राप्य न निवर्तन्ते तद्धाम परमं मम ॥ 21 ॥
पुरुषः स परः पार्थ भक्त्या लभ्यस्त्वनन्यया ।
यस्यान्तःस्थानि भूतानि येन सर्वमिदं ततम् ॥ 22 ॥
यस्यान्तःस्थानि भूतानि येन सर्वमिदं ततम् ॥ 22 ॥
यत्र काले त्वनावृत्तिमावृत्तिं चैव योगिनः ।
प्रयाता यान्ति तं कालं वक्ष्यामि भरतर्षभ ॥ 23 ॥
प्रयाता यान्ति तं कालं वक्ष्यामि भरतर्षभ ॥ 23 ॥
अग्निर्जोतिरहः शुक्लः षण्मासा उत्तरायणम् ।
तत्र प्रयाता गच्छन्ति ब्रह्म ब्रह्मविदो जनाः ॥ 24 ॥
तत्र प्रयाता गच्छन्ति ब्रह्म ब्रह्मविदो जनाः ॥ 24 ॥
धूमो रात्रिस्तथा कृष्णः षण्मासा दक्षिणायनम् ।
तत्र चान्द्रमसं ज्योतिर्योगी प्राप्य निवर्तते ॥ 25 ॥
तत्र चान्द्रमसं ज्योतिर्योगी प्राप्य निवर्तते ॥ 25 ॥
शुक्लकृष्णे गती ह्येते जगतः शाश्वते मते ।
एकया यात्यनावृत्तिमन्ययावर्तते पुनः ॥ 26 ॥
एकया यात्यनावृत्तिमन्ययावर्तते पुनः ॥ 26 ॥
नैते सृती पार्थ जानन्योगी मुह्यति कश्चन ।
तस्मात्सर्वेषु कालेषु योगयुक्तो भवार्जुन ॥ 27 ॥
तस्मात्सर्वेषु कालेषु योगयुक्तो भवार्जुन ॥ 27 ॥
वेदेषु यज्ञेषु तपःसु चैव दानेषु यत्पुण्यफलं प्रदिष्टम् ।
अत्येति तत्सर्वमिदं विदित्वायोगी परं स्थानमुपैति चाद्यम् ॥ 28 ॥
अत्येति तत्सर्वमिदं विदित्वायोगी परं स्थानमुपैति चाद्यम् ॥ 28 ॥
ॐ तत्सदिति श्रीमद्भगवद्गीतासूपनिषत्सु ब्रह्मविद्यायां योगशास्त्रे श्रीकृष्णार्जुनसंवादे
अक्षरब्रह्मयोगो नामाष्टमोஉध्यायः ॥8 ॥
==
https://youtu.be/j9aaz0LzmHw
https://youtu.be/j9aaz0LzmHw
VIII
The Yoga of the Imperishable Brahman
Summary of Eighth Discourse
Lord Krishna explains how those who attain Him do not have to come again into this impermanent world of sorrow and pain. All beings, including even the gods, come again and again into this created universe from the state of unmanifest being wherein they remained at the end of an age-cycle. But the Lord exists even beyond this unmanifest being. That radiant, imperishable Divine Reality is the highest goal to be attained. Single-minded devotion of our heart is the means of attaining this highest blessed state.
Even though there are auspicious and inauspicious circumstances of departing from the physical body and journeying forth, yet if one steadily abides in the Lord through firm devotion and faith, then these conditions do not matter. By always remaining in tune with the Lord through pure love, everything is made auspicious, if one can ever remain united with the Divine through deep devotion, constant remembrance, regular meditation and continuous communion, then all times, places, conditions and situations become auspicious and blessed. This is the secret of invoking His Grace and attaining Him and becoming eternally free and blissful.
Arjuna here asks Lord Krishna about the meaning of the different terms referred to by Him in the last two verses of the previous chapter. He wishes to know what is the Supreme Being, what is Karma or action that He refers to, and what is the meaning that pertains to this spirit, the elements and the centre of all things within this human body.
Beyond all things manifest and unmanifest, beyond these names and forms, there is the Supreme Being—Brahman. He indwells this body as the centre of all things, including even our own self (individual soul). We are a spiritual being residing in this body and supported by the Silent Witness within—the Supreme Antaryamin. Prakriti or Nature is the being pertaining to the elements. Worship, prayer and offering to the gods with faith and devotion constitute actions that lead to blessedness.
The secret of reaching the Divine Being and thus freeing oneself forever from birth and death and the pains and sufferings of this earth-life, is to constantly practise unbroken remembrance of the Lord at all times, in all places and even amidst one’s daily activities. If one practises such steady remembrance through regular daily Sadhana, then he will be rooted in His remembrance even at the time of departing from this body at death. Thus departing, he will go beyond darkness and bondage and attain the realm of eternal blessedness.
One must practise sense-control. The senses must be well disciplined and gradually withdrawn from outside objects. The mind should be centred within upon God, by uttering Om or any Divine Name. By such steady practice daily the Lord is easily attained.
Arjuna Uvaacha:
Kim tadbrahma kim adhyaatmam kim karma purushottama; Adhibhootam cha kim proktam adhidaivam kimuchyate.
Arjuna said:
1. What is that Brahman? What is Adhyatma? What is action, O best among men? What is declared to be Adhibhuta? And what is Adhidaiva said to be?
Adhiyajnah katham ko’tra dehe’smin madhusoodana; Prayaanakaale cha katham jneyo’si niyataatmabhih.
2. Who and how is Adhiyajna here in this body, O destroyer of Madhu (Krishna)? And how, at the time of death, art Thou to be known by the self-controlled one?
COMMENTARY: In the last two verses of the seventh discourse, Lord Krishna uses certain philosophical terms. Arjuna does not understand their meaning. So he proceeds to question the Lord.
Sri Bhagavaan Uvaacha:
Aksharam brahma paramam swabhaavo’dhyaatmamuchyate; Bhootabhaavodbhavakaro visargah karmasamjnitah.
The Blessed Lord said:
3. Brahman is the Imperishable, the Supreme; His essential nature is called Self-knowledge; the offering (to the gods) which causes existence and manifestation of beings and which also sustains them is called action.
Adhibhootam ksharo bhaavah purushashchaadhidaivatam; Adhiyajno’hamevaatra dehe dehabhritaam vara.
4. Adhibhuta (knowledge of the elements) pertains to My perishable Nature, and the Purusha or soul is the Adhidaiva; I alone am the Adhiyajna here in this body, O best among the embodied (men)!
Antakaale cha maameva smaran muktwaa kalevaram; Yah prayaati sa madbhaavam yaati naastyatra samshayah.
5. And whosoever, leaving the body, goes forth remembering Me alone at the time of death, he attains My Being; there is no doubt about this.
Yam yam vaapi smaran bhaavam tyajatyante kalevaram; Tam tamevaiti kaunteya sadaa tadbhaavabhaavitah.
6. Whosoever at the end leaves the body, thinking of any being, to that being only does he go, O son of Kunti (Arjuna), because of his constant thought of that being!
COMMENTARY: The most prominent thought of one’s life occupies the mind at the time of death. It determines the nature of the body to be attained in the next birth.
Tasmaat sarveshu kaaleshu maamanusmara yudhya cha; Mayyarpitamanobuddhir maamevaishyasyasamshayam.
7. Therefore, at all times remember Me only and fight. With mind and intellect fixed (or absorbed) in Me, thou shalt doubtless come to Me alone.
Abhyaasayogayuktena chetasaa naanyagaaminaa; Paramam purusham divyam yaati paarthaanuchintayan.
8. With the mind not moving towards any other thing, made steadfast by the method of habitual meditation, and constantly meditating, one goes to the Supreme Person, the Resplendent, O Arjuna!
Kavim puraanamanushaasitaaram Anoraneeyaamsam anusmaredyah;
Sarvasya dhaataaram achintyaroopam
Aadityavarnam tamasah parastaat.
9. Whosoever meditates on the Omniscient, the Ancient, the ruler (of the whole world), minuter than an atom, the supporter of all, of inconceivable form, effulgent like the sun and beyond the darkness of ignorance,
Prayaanakaale manasaachalena Bhaktyaa yukto yogabalena chaiva;
Bhruvormadhye praanamaaveshya samyak
Sa tam param purusham upaiti divyam.
10. At the time of death, with unshaken mind, endowed with devotion and by the power of Yoga, fixing the whole life-breath in the middle of the two eyebrows, he reaches that resplendent Supreme Person.
Yadaksharam vedavido vadanti Vishanti yadyatayo veetaraagaah;
Yadicchanto brahmacharyam charanti
Tatte padam samgrahena pravakshye.
11. That which is declared imperishable by those who know the Vedas, that which the self-controlled (ascetics) and passion-free enter, that desiring which celibacy is practised—that goal I will declare to thee in brief.
Sarvadwaaraani samyamya mano hridi nirudhya cha; Moordhnyaadhaayaatmanah praanamaasthito yogadhaaranaam.
12. Having closed all the gates, confined the mind in the heart and fixed the life-breath in the head, engaged in the practice of concentration,
Omityekaaksharam brahma vyaaharan maamanusmaran; Yah prayaati tyajan deham sa yaati paramaam gatim.
13. Uttering the monosyllable Om—the Brahman—remembering Me always, he who departs thus, leaving the body, attains to the supreme goal.
Ananyachetaah satatam yo maam smarati nityashah; Tasyaaham sulabhah paartha nityayuktasya yoginah.
14. I am easily attainable by that ever-steadfast Yogi who constantly and daily remembers Me (for a long time), not thinking of anything else (with a single or one-pointed mind), O Partha (Arjuna)!
COMMENTARY: Constantly remembering the Lord throughout one’s life is the easiest way of attaining Him.
Maamupetya punarjanma duhkhaalayamashaashwatam; Naapnuvanti mahaatmaanah samsiddhim paramaam gataah.
15. Having attained Me these great souls do not again take birth (here), which is the place of pain and is non-eternal; they have reached the highest perfection (liberation).
Aabrahmabhuvanaallokaah punaraavartino’rjuna; Maamupetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate.
16. (All) the worlds, including the world of Brahma, are subject to return again, O Arjuna! But he who reaches Me, O son of Kunti, has no rebirth!
Sahasrayugaparyantam aharyad brahmano viduh; Raatrim yugasahasraantaam te’horaatravido janaah.
17. Those who know the day of Brahma, which is of a duration of a thousand Yugas (ages), and the night, which is also of a thousand Yugas’ duration, they know day and night.
Avyaktaadvyaktayah sarvaah prabhavantyaharaagame; Raatryaagame praleeyante tatraivaavyaktasamjnake.
18. From the unmanifested all the manifested (worlds) proceed at the coming of the “day”; at the coming of the “night” they dissolve verily into that alone which is called the unmanifested.
COMMENTARY: Coming of the “day” is the commencement of creation. Coming of the “night” is the commencement of dissolution.
Bhootagraamah sa evaayam bhootwaa bhootwaa praleeyate; Raatryaagame’vashah paartha prabhavatyaharaagame.
19. This same multitude of beings, born again and again, is dissolved, helplessly, O Arjuna, (into the unmanifested) at the coming of the night, and comes forth at the coming of the day!
Parastasmaat tu bhaavo’nyo’vyakto’vyaktaatsanaatanah; Yah sa sarveshu bhooteshu nashyatsu na vinashyati.
20. But verily there exists, higher than the unmanifested, another unmanifested Eternal who is not destroyed when all beings are destroyed.
COMMENTARY: Another unmanifested Eternal refers to Para Brahman, which is distinct from the unmanifested (primordial Nature), and which is of quite a different nature. It is superior to Hiranyagarbha (the creative Intelligence) and the unmanifested Nature because It is their cause. It is not destroyed when all beings from Brahma down to a blade of grass are destroyed.
Avyakto’kshara ityuktastamaahuh paramaam gatim; Yam praapya na nivartante taddhaama paramam mama.
21. What is called the Unmanifested and the Imperishable, That they say is the highest goal (path). They who reach It do not return (to this cycle of births and deaths). That is My highest abode (place or state).
Purushah sa parah paartha bhaktyaa labhyastwananyayaa; Yasyaantahsthaani bhootaani yena sarvamidam tatam.
22. That highest Purusha, O Arjuna, is attainable by unswerving devotion to Him alone within whom all beings dwell and by whom all this is pervaded.
Yatra kaale twanaavrittim aavrittim chaiva yoginah; Prayaataa yaanti tam kaalam vakshyaami bharatarshabha.
23. Now I will tell thee, O chief of the Bharatas, the times departing at which the Yogis will return or not return!
Agnijyotirahah shuklah shanmaasaa uttaraayanam; Tatra prayaataa gacchanti brahma brahmavido janaah.
24. Fire, light, daytime, the bright fortnight, the six months of the northern path of the sun (northern solstice)—departing then (by these), men who know Brahman go to Brahman.
Dhoomo raatristathaa krishnah shanmaasaa dakshinaayanam; Tatra chaandramasam jyotir yogee praapya nivartate.
25. Attaining to the lunar light by smoke, night-time, the dark fortnight or the six months of the southern path of the sun (the southern solstice), the Yogi returns.
Shuklakrishne gatee hyete jagatah shaashwate mate; Ekayaa yaatyanaavrittim anyayaa’vartate punah.
26. The bright and the dark paths of the world are verily thought to be eternal; by the one (the bright path) a person goes not to return again, and by the other (the dark path) he returns.
COMMENTARY: The bright path is the path to the gods taken by devotees. The dark path is of the manes taken by those who perform sacrifices or charitable acts with the expectation of rewards.
Naite sritee paartha jaanan yogee muhyati kashchana; Tasmaat sarveshu kaaleshu yogayukto bhavaarjuna.
27. Knowing these paths, O Arjuna, no Yogi is deluded! Therefore, at all times be steadfast in Yoga.
Vedeshu yajneshu tapahsu chaiva Daaneshu yat punyaphalam pradishtam:
Atyeti tatsarvam idam viditwaa
Yogee param sthaanamupaiti chaadyam.
28. Whatever fruits or merits is declared (in the scriptures) to accrue from (the study of) the Vedas, (the performance of) sacrifices, (the practice of) austerities, and (the offering of) gifts—beyond all these goes the Yogi, having known this; and he attains to the supreme primeval (first or ancient) Abode.
Hari Om Tat Sat
Iti Srimad Bhagavadgeetaasoopanishatsu Brahmavidyaayaam
Yogashaastre Sri Krishnaarjunasamvaade
Aksharabrahmayogo Naama Ashtamo’dhyaayah
Iti Srimad Bhagavadgeetaasoopanishatsu Brahmavidyaayaam
Yogashaastre Sri Krishnaarjunasamvaade
Aksharabrahmayogo Naama Ashtamo’dhyaayah
Thus in the Upanishads of the glorious Bhagavad Gita, the science of the Eternal, the scripture of Yoga, the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, ends the eighth discourse entitled:
“The Yoga Of the Imperishable Brahman”
SWAMI SIVANANDA.
https://youtu.be/736vl-h2XOU
==
Commentary on the Bhagavadgita
by Swami Krishnananda
Discourse 23: The Eighth Chapter Begins – The Different Facets of the Supreme Being
In the Seventh Chapter certain terms are used which are highly technical; and in the beginning of the Eighth Chapter, Arjuna raises a question regarding the meaning of these terms. These technical terms constitute the nomenclature of the aspects of God that make the Total—which have to be in our consciousness at the time of passing. The world is outside, but it is also inside. Therefore, we think of the Ultimate Being in our consciousness, as we cannot afford to limit God to something that only permeates the outside world.
Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (Isa 1), etc. We have heard that God pervades all things. When we speak of God’s immanence in all things, we are likely to commit the mistake of thinking that ‘all things’ means all things that we see with our eyes. This delimitation of all things that we see to an external world is an error of concept because we ourselves are also one of the things of the world which God indwells. Hence, the adhibhuta prapancha, which is the externally perceived world, should not be taken as merely the world which God indwells. God also indwells the adhyatma prapancha, which is the inward reality of our own self. Our inner reality is also indwelled by the God who indwells the world of objective perception; but we will not be able to easily blend these two aspects in our mind. When we think something, do we think of the total—the merging of both the subjective and the objective sides? Now I am seeing you sitting here: somebody is sitting. Can I, in ordinary circumstances, convince myself that the object that I see seated in front of me is organically inseparable from my existence here where I am seated? Normally this kind of thought is not possible and, humanly speaking, nobody in the world can think in this manner; the object and the subject cannot be taken together. But do we expect a cheap liberation? We have to pay a heavy price for it.
That heavy price is not only the concept of the blend of one’s own self and the object that we perceive, which is the world. There is something more. Adhidaiva prapancha is also to be taken into consideration. There is something midway between the perceiving subject and the world of objects perceived. It was indeed difficult enough for us to conceive a blend of ourselves and the world outside. Now things are made even more difficult by it being said that we have also to think of a third thing, not merely the two things. The third thing is the consciousness that enables us to know that there is a blend between us and the world. The world cannot know that it is connected with us in any manner. Physically speaking, we also cannot know that we have any vital connection with the world outside, because we are independently sitting here. But there is a third person operating between us, as the individual perceiver, and the world of objects outside, whose preponderance in our mind causes an inference that it is not possible to have consciousness of an object outside unless there is a third element, a connecting link which is transcendent. This transcendent element is called adhidaiva. At the time of death, we are supposed to meditate on the total concept of an inclusiveness of ourselves, the world outside, and also the transcendent superintending principle—adhidaiva.
Other things are also mentioned. There is a thing called adhidharma, which brings into a focus of cohesion all these three principles mentioned. It is not that I am here, the world is outside, and consciousness, the third thing, is hanging as a no-man’s land. This idea should also be removed from our mind. The connecting link mentioned between the subjective side and the objective side is not a third element to be contemplated independently, because that third thing is a union of both the subjective side and the objective side. There is no subject and object in the third element; it is like a single body feeling the unity of the right hand and the left hand. For the physical consciousness, the right hand and the left hand are not two objects. In a similar manner, the transcendent individual—the adhidaiva mentioned—is not a separately existing third entity, in the same way as the body is not a third principle for the right hand and the left hand. It is an inclusive principle wherein the right and the left are subsumed. By thinking hard, we must be able to conceive this in our mind. This unifying principle is called dharma, the total ruling force of the cosmos. In Vedic terminology it is known as rita or satya. Te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam; sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ, prayāṇa-kāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ (7.29-30).
So many difficulties will harass our minds at the time of meditation. We will begin to think that God is creating the world, or God has created the world. The word visargaḥ that is used here implies the force which generates the world and causes the emanation of the world from God. Sometimes we are unable to free ourselves from this idea that the world must have been created by God, and yet we are not be able to bring about a relationship between God and the world. Is God outside the world, is God inside the world, or is the world identical with God? God cannot be outside the world because if that is the case, nobody in the world can reach God. Nor can the world be outside God because if that is the case, it is an external object with no substance, no existence whatsoever. This is because only God can be existence, and if the world is totally outside existence, it is non-existence.
We connect the cause with the effect—the cause which we have imagined as God, the Creator, with the world as the effect. These ideas must be shed, particularly when we think of the Total Reality, because the idea of the Total excludes the concept of causality. The relationship between cause and effect, the relationship between subject, object and the transcendent, all these ideas are removed at one stroke by an entry of consciousness into a peculiar kind of Self which the Upanishads call Vaisvanara, and is portrayed as the Visvarupa in the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.
“Whoever can conceive this Total in the mind—Brahman as the Absolute, which includes the adhibhuta prapancha, the adhyatma prapancha, and also the connecting link of adhidaiva—and removes from the mind the idea of the causality of God in terms of the world, such people are really able to think of Me in the proper manner at the time of passing.” It is better we not pass so easily, because this kind of thinking is not humanly possible. Lord Krishna is trying to extract this idea with a heavy wage. For the gracious gift that we expect from the Almighty, we have to pay that price through hard effort of sadhana in this manner described.
jarāmaraṇamokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti ye te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam(7.29) sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ prayāṇakāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ(7.30)
With this tremendous, earth-shaking gospel given in two verses at the end of the Seventh Chapter, we are now introduced into the Eighth Chapter. It is indeed earth-shaking, because Arjuna himself was confused about what the Lord was saying.
Arjuna asked, “What is this that You are speaking? You said there is Brahma, the Absolute; then You said there is adhyatma; then You said there is karma; then You said there is adhibhuta; then You said there is adhidaiva; then You said there is adhiyajna. I cannot understand what all this is, and You want me to bring them together into a total focus?”
Kiṁ tad brahma (8.1): “Which is that Supreme Absolute that You are speaking of, O Lord?” Kim adhyātmaṁ: “Which is that subjective self?” Kiṁ karma: “Which is that action that You refer to?” Adhibhūtaṁ ca kiṁ proktam: “Which is the objective world that You are speaking of? What does it actually mean?”
Adhiyajñaḥ kathaṁ ko’tra (8.2): “Which is that transcendent element which You spoke of as being between the subject and object? You refer to adhiyajna as an activity that You are performing in the cosmos. What does it mean, Bhagavan Sri Krishna?”
The last question was: “Also, how am I to think of You at the time of death?”
These are philosophical, mystical, spiritual questions, no doubt, but they point to a final aim in our mind: how to quit this world honourably, and not be forcefully dispatched. Prayāṇakāle ca kathaṁ jñeyo’si niyatātmabhiḥ: “How do people with a restrained mind and senses contemplate You at the time of death?”
There are so many questions in this Eighth Chapter. Firstly, what is Brahman? Secondly, what is adhyatma? Then, what is karma? Then, what is adhibhuta? Then, what is adhidaiva? Then, what is adhiyajna? And lastly, “How to think at the time of death?” Arjuna raises seven types of queries for one answer to all these diversified questions, because it was pointed out in the concluding verses of the Seventh Chapter that these so-called diversities have to be put together into a pattern of singleness for the purpose of total liberation.
Śrībhagavānuvāca: The Lord answers these questions one by one. The indescribable, eternal, timeless and spaceless Absolute is called Brahman: akṣaraṁ brahma paramaṁ (8.3). It exists everywhere, and yet it appears to be nowhere. It exists everywhere and, therefore, everything lives and exists. It appears to be existing nowhere because it is not the object of the perception of anybody’s sense organs. Inasmuch as the world is an object and the Absolute Brahman is not an object, the world appears to exist and the Absolute does not appear to exist anywhere at all.
Asad vā idam agra āsīt (T.U. 2.7.1): “Non-existence was there in the beginning” is a statement that is sometimes made in the Upanishads. The negation of all causes of duality and multiplicity—non-existence of every conceivable name and form, and non-existence of even the thinkers of the names and forms—ends in a tremendous positivity, and the so-called void becomes the complete plenum. Bhuma is the word used in the Chhandogya Upanishad for this utter perfection; such is the Absolute. Akṣaraṁ brahma paramaṁ: Eternal space and time—eternal reality, which is indivisible—that is Brahman.
The adhyatma that I spoke of is the svabhava, or the natural characteristic, of an individual person. The word svabhava has been used in several contexts when dharma, or duty, was described in the previous chapters, and it also will be mentioned in subsequent chapters, especially in the Eighteenth Chapter. The natural disposition of the individual is his svabhava. This disposition—the contour, the behaviour, the pattern of our movement, psychologically or even socially—is conditioned by a peculiar action of the soul on the structure of our psychophysical personality. That kind of peculiar individuality, conditioned by the mind and the body, differentiates one individual from the other—just as one house can be differentiated from another house, not because of the building bricks which may be the same in all cases, but because of the different shape given by the architects. The permutation and combination of the physical elements and the psychic components differ in different individuals, though the soul that charges these components with life and intelligence is one and the same. The different individual disposition that each one has on account of a preponderance of a different permutation and combination of sattva, rajas and tamas is called svabhava. In that, there is also an indwelling principle called adhyatma.
Bhūtabhāvodbhavakaro visargaḥ karmasaṁjñitaḥ (8.3). The word ‘karma’ that is used here represents the power or the energy with which the whole cosmos emanates from the Absolute. Everything rushes out, as it were, from the bosom of the Ultimate Reality—the Mahat Brahma, as it is called. This great force, this complete potentiality rushing outwardly in the direction of space and time, is the originally conceived karma. This total karma, we may say, which is the action of God that causes the emanation of the world, gradually descends into lower categories of activity until it becomes an ordinary action of a human individual. In the process of the coming down of the intensity of this action, which was originally cosmic, it delimits itself into lesser and lesser dimensions of personality so that finally it becomes a very little individual. In the beginning, it was a cosmic action, then it became a space-time vibration, then it became akasa, then vayu, then agni, then apa, then prithvi, and finally it became the individual bodies. All these are karmas in different densities and areas of action.
But original action is the will of God. The Supreme Purusha’s original will is the first action. The Purusha Sukta makes reference to this original dharma. That dharma subsequently conditions every other kind of dharma in the world by delimiting the process of creation through the tanmatras and the five elements, etc. The original dharma is the will of God. But that will of God, which is the originality, also permeates all the other lesser wholes that act as the media of action, including our own selves. Even our will, which prompts us to act, is actually a reverberation, as it were, of the original will. But, unfortunately, we are unable to believe that our will is acting under the impulsion received from the cosmic will, so we get caught by the selfishness of wrongly thinking that our will is confined to our body, while actually it is a propulsion from a cosmic existence. It is said in the earlier chapters that no action is individual; every action is God’s. So karma is defined here as the propulsion of the Cosmic cause for the purpose of the emanation of the effects in various degrees of descent, until the lowest atom is created.
Adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ (8.4): The perishable world is the adhibhuta prapancha. All the world of names and forms, including this body, is perishable. It is under mutation; it is a flux. It is a continuity of a succession of events, and no object in this world can be said to be existing individually or independently even for a second. Persons like Buddha have highlighted this aspect by saying that the world is like a flowing river, where we cannot touch the same water the next moment. Like a flame that is burning and every minute, every second, there is a new set of atoms of fire rushing forth, the world is not a total indivisibility, but a movement. As a flame is a movement, as water in the river is a movement, the world is a movement. Therefore, it is perishable because when it moves, it is conditioned at every minute into bits of process. Similarly, this kind of concoction of matter into the form of this so-called physical world is cut into pieces—into little processes which are like links in a long chain—and so it cannot be regarded as imperishable. It is perishable. Adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ: All the perishable nature that we see in this world, including our own body and the entire structure of space-time-object, is adhibhuta prapancha.
Puruṣaś cādhidaivatam: There is a Supreme adhidaiva who brings everything together into a hierarchy of divine operations, even when the different gods act. Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Surya, Agni, Devi, Narayana, Vishnu, Siva, Ganesha—all these divinities represent facets of the Supreme Absolute—or, we may say, the fingers of God operating; and they have to be put into a pattern of harmonious action so that one will not do something which would contradict what the other does. Gods do not contradict themselves. Siva does not contradict what Ganesha does, nor does Ganesha contradict what Narayana does. There is a harmony of principle in the mode of behaviour and action of these gods. They are all conditioned by a supreme constitution of the Absolute, and that is the adhidaiva. The constitution of the government is the adhid
aiva that rules the entire governmental system, and this adhidaiva comes down in lesser and lesser degrees until it becomes a little connecting link between you and me.
Adhiyajñoham evātra dehe dehabhṛtāṁ vara: “The adhiyajna that I mentioned, which is the field of action, is nothing but Myself becoming intensely active through the forces of rajas and sattva for the purpose of the evolution of the cosmos.”
=
In the Seventh Chapter certain terms are used which are highly technical; and in the beginning of the Eighth Chapter, Arjuna raises a question regarding the meaning of these terms. These technical terms constitute the nomenclature of the aspects of God that make the Total—which have to be in our consciousness at the time of passing. The world is outside, but it is also inside. Therefore, we think of the Ultimate Being in our consciousness, as we cannot afford to limit God to something that only permeates the outside world.
Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (Isa 1), etc. We have heard that God pervades all things. When we speak of God’s immanence in all things, we are likely to commit the mistake of thinking that ‘all things’ means all things that we see with our eyes. This delimitation of all things that we see to an external world is an error of concept because we ourselves are also one of the things of the world which God indwells. Hence, the adhibhuta prapancha, which is the externally perceived world, should not be taken as merely the world which God indwells. God also indwells the adhyatma prapancha, which is the inward reality of our own self. Our inner reality is also indwelled by the God who indwells the world of objective perception; but we will not be able to easily blend these two aspects in our mind. When we think something, do we think of the total—the merging of both the subjective and the objective sides? Now I am seeing you sitting here: somebody is sitting. Can I, in ordinary circumstances, convince myself that the object that I see seated in front of me is organically inseparable from my existence here where I am seated? Normally this kind of thought is not possible and, humanly speaking, nobody in the world can think in this manner; the object and the subject cannot be taken together. But do we expect a cheap liberation? We have to pay a heavy price for it.
That heavy price is not only the concept of the blend of one’s own self and the object that we perceive, which is the world. There is something more. Adhidaiva prapancha is also to be taken into consideration. There is something midway between the perceiving subject and the world of objects perceived. It was indeed difficult enough for us to conceive a blend of ourselves and the world outside. Now things are made even more difficult by it being said that we have also to think of a third thing, not merely the two things. The third thing is the consciousness that enables us to know that there is a blend between us and the world. The world cannot know that it is connected with us in any manner. Physically speaking, we also cannot know that we have any vital connection with the world outside, because we are independently sitting here. But there is a third person operating between us, as the individual perceiver, and the world of objects outside, whose preponderance in our mind causes an inference that it is not possible to have consciousness of an object outside unless there is a third element, a connecting link which is transcendent. This transcendent element is called adhidaiva. At the time of death, we are supposed to meditate on the total concept of an inclusiveness of ourselves, the world outside, and also the transcendent superintending principle—adhidaiva.
Other things are also mentioned. There is a thing called adhidharma, which brings into a focus of cohesion all these three principles mentioned. It is not that I am here, the world is outside, and consciousness, the third thing, is hanging as a no-man’s land. This idea should also be removed from our mind. The connecting link mentioned between the subjective side and the objective side is not a third element to be contemplated independently, because that third thing is a union of both the subjective side and the objective side. There is no subject and object in the third element; it is like a single body feeling the unity of the right hand and the left hand. For the physical consciousness, the right hand and the left hand are not two objects. In a similar manner, the transcendent individual—the adhidaiva mentioned—is not a separately existing third entity, in the same way as the body is not a third principle for the right hand and the left hand. It is an inclusive principle wherein the right and the left are subsumed. By thinking hard, we must be able to conceive this in our mind. This unifying principle is called dharma, the total ruling force of the cosmos. In Vedic terminology it is known as rita or satya. Te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam; sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ, prayāṇa-kāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ (7.29-30).
So many difficulties will harass our minds at the time of meditation. We will begin to think that God is creating the world, or God has created the world. The word visargaḥ that is used here implies the force which generates the world and causes the emanation of the world from God. Sometimes we are unable to free ourselves from this idea that the world must have been created by God, and yet we are not be able to bring about a relationship between God and the world. Is God outside the world, is God inside the world, or is the world identical with God? God cannot be outside the world because if that is the case, nobody in the world can reach God. Nor can the world be outside God because if that is the case, it is an external object with no substance, no existence whatsoever. This is because only God can be existence, and if the world is totally outside existence, it is non-existence.
We connect the cause with the effect—the cause which we have imagined as God, the Creator, with the world as the effect. These ideas must be shed, particularly when we think of the Total Reality, because the idea of the Total excludes the concept of causality. The relationship between cause and effect, the relationship between subject, object and the transcendent, all these ideas are removed at one stroke by an entry of consciousness into a peculiar kind of Self which the Upanishads call Vaisvanara, and is portrayed as the Visvarupa in the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.
“Whoever can conceive this Total in the mind—Brahman as the Absolute, which includes the adhibhuta prapancha, the adhyatma prapancha, and also the connecting link of adhidaiva—and removes from the mind the idea of the causality of God in terms of the world, such people are really able to think of Me in the proper manner at the time of passing.” It is better we not pass so easily, because this kind of thinking is not humanly possible. Lord Krishna is trying to extract this idea with a heavy wage. For the gracious gift that we expect from the Almighty, we have to pay that price through hard effort of sadhana in this manner described.
jarāmaraṇamokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti ye te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam(7.29) sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ prayāṇakāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ(7.30)
With this tremendous, earth-shaking gospel given in two verses at the end of the Seventh Chapter, we are now introduced into the Eighth Chapter. It is indeed earth-shaking, because Arjuna himself was confused about what the Lord was saying.
Arjuna asked, “What is this that You are speaking? You said there is Brahma, the Absolute; then You said there is adhyatma; then You said there is karma; then You said there is adhibhuta; then You said there is adhidaiva; then You said there is adhiyajna. I cannot understand what all this is, and You want me to bring them together into a total focus?”
Kiṁ tad brahma (8.1): “Which is that Supreme Absolute that You are speaking of, O Lord?” Kim adhyātmaṁ: “Which is that subjective self?” Kiṁ karma: “Which is that action that You refer to?” Adhibhūtaṁ ca kiṁ proktam: “Which is the objective world that You are speaking of? What does it actually mean?”
Adhiyajñaḥ kathaṁ ko’tra (8.2): “Which is that transcendent element which You spoke of as being between the subject and object? You refer to adhiyajna as an activity that You are performing in the cosmos. What does it mean, Bhagavan Sri Krishna?”
The last question was: “Also, how am I to think of You at the time of death?”
These are philosophical, mystical, spiritual questions, no doubt, but they point to a final aim in our mind: how to quit this world honourably, and not be forcefully dispatched. Prayāṇakāle ca kathaṁ jñeyo’si niyatātmabhiḥ: “How do people with a restrained mind and senses contemplate You at the time of death?”
There are so many questions in this Eighth Chapter. Firstly, what is Brahman? Secondly, what is adhyatma? Then, what is karma? Then, what is adhibhuta? Then, what is adhidaiva? Then, what is adhiyajna? And lastly, “How to think at the time of death?” Arjuna raises seven types of queries for one answer to all these diversified questions, because it was pointed out in the concluding verses of the Seventh Chapter that these so-called diversities have to be put together into a pattern of singleness for the purpose of total liberation.
Śrībhagavānuvāca: The Lord answers these questions one by one. The indescribable, eternal, timeless and spaceless Absolute is called Brahman: akṣaraṁ brahma paramaṁ (8.3). It exists everywhere, and yet it appears to be nowhere. It exists everywhere and, therefore, everything lives and exists. It appears to be existing nowhere because it is not the object of the perception of anybody’s sense organs. Inasmuch as the world is an object and the Absolute Brahman is not an object, the world appears to exist and the Absolute does not appear to exist anywhere at all.
Asad vā idam agra āsīt (T.U. 2.7.1): “Non-existence was there in the beginning” is a statement that is sometimes made in the Upanishads. The negation of all causes of duality and multiplicity—non-existence of every conceivable name and form, and non-existence of even the thinkers of the names and forms—ends in a tremendous positivity, and the so-called void becomes the complete plenum. Bhuma is the word used in the Chhandogya Upanishad for this utter perfection; such is the Absolute. Akṣaraṁ brahma paramaṁ: Eternal space and time—eternal reality, which is indivisible—that is Brahman.
The adhyatma that I spoke of is the svabhava, or the natural characteristic, of an individual person. The word svabhava has been used in several contexts when dharma, or duty, was described in the previous chapters, and it also will be mentioned in subsequent chapters, especially in the Eighteenth Chapter. The natural disposition of the individual is his svabhava. This disposition—the contour, the behaviour, the pattern of our movement, psychologically or even socially—is conditioned by a peculiar action of the soul on the structure of our psychophysical personality. That kind of peculiar individuality, conditioned by the mind and the body, differentiates one individual from the other—just as one house can be differentiated from another house, not because of the building bricks which may be the same in all cases, but because of the different shape given by the architects. The permutation and combination of the physical elements and the psychic components differ in different individuals, though the soul that charges these components with life and intelligence is one and the same. The different individual disposition that each one has on account of a preponderance of a different permutation and combination of sattva, rajas and tamas is called svabhava. In that, there is also an indwelling principle called adhyatma.
Bhūtabhāvodbhavakaro visargaḥ karmasaṁjñitaḥ (8.3). The word ‘karma’ that is used here represents the power or the energy with which the whole cosmos emanates from the Absolute. Everything rushes out, as it were, from the bosom of the Ultimate Reality—the Mahat Brahma, as it is called. This great force, this complete potentiality rushing outwardly in the direction of space and time, is the originally conceived karma. This total karma, we may say, which is the action of God that causes the emanation of the world, gradually descends into lower categories of activity until it becomes an ordinary action of a human individual. In the process of the coming down of the intensity of this action, which was originally cosmic, it delimits itself into lesser and lesser dimensions of personality so that finally it becomes a very little individual. In the beginning, it was a cosmic action, then it became a space-time vibration, then it became akasa, then vayu, then agni, then apa, then prithvi, and finally it became the individual bodies. All these are karmas in different densities and areas of action.
But original action is the will of God. The Supreme Purusha’s original will is the first action. The Purusha Sukta makes reference to this original dharma. That dharma subsequently conditions every other kind of dharma in the world by delimiting the process of creation through the tanmatras and the five elements, etc. The original dharma is the will of God. But that will of God, which is the originality, also permeates all the other lesser wholes that act as the media of action, including our own selves. Even our will, which prompts us to act, is actually a reverberation, as it were, of the original will. But, unfortunately, we are unable to believe that our will is acting under the impulsion received from the cosmic will, so we get caught by the selfishness of wrongly thinking that our will is confined to our body, while actually it is a propulsion from a cosmic existence. It is said in the earlier chapters that no action is individual; every action is God’s. So karma is defined here as the propulsion of the Cosmic cause for the purpose of the emanation of the effects in various degrees of descent, until the lowest atom is created.
Adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ (8.4): The perishable world is the adhibhuta prapancha. All the world of names and forms, including this body, is perishable. It is under mutation; it is a flux. It is a continuity of a succession of events, and no object in this world can be said to be existing individually or independently even for a second. Persons like Buddha have highlighted this aspect by saying that the world is like a flowing river, where we cannot touch the same water the next moment. Like a flame that is burning and every minute, every second, there is a new set of atoms of fire rushing forth, the world is not a total indivisibility, but a movement. As a flame is a movement, as water in the river is a movement, the world is a movement. Therefore, it is perishable because when it moves, it is conditioned at every minute into bits of process. Similarly, this kind of concoction of matter into the form of this so-called physical world is cut into pieces—into little processes which are like links in a long chain—and so it cannot be regarded as imperishable. It is perishable. Adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ: All the perishable nature that we see in this world, including our own body and the entire structure of space-time-object, is adhibhuta prapancha.
Puruṣaś cādhidaivatam: There is a Supreme adhidaiva who brings everything together into a hierarchy of divine operations, even when the different gods act. Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Surya, Agni, Devi, Narayana, Vishnu, Siva, Ganesha—all these divinities represent facets of the Supreme Absolute—or, we may say, the fingers of God operating; and they have to be put into a pattern of harmonious action so that one will not do something which would contradict what the other does. Gods do not contradict themselves. Siva does not contradict what Ganesha does, nor does Ganesha contradict what Narayana does. There is a harmony of principle in the mode of behaviour and action of these gods. They are all conditioned by a supreme constitution of the Absolute, and that is the adhidaiva. The constitution of the government is the adhid
aiva that rules the entire governmental system, and this adhidaiva comes down in lesser and lesser degrees until it becomes a little connecting link between you and me.
Adhiyajñoham evātra dehe dehabhṛtāṁ vara: “The adhiyajna that I mentioned, which is the field of action, is nothing but Myself becoming intensely active through the forces of rajas and sattva for the purpose of the evolution of the cosmos.”
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Discourse 24: The Eighth Chapter Continues – The Thought at the Time of Death
As we noticed yesterday, several questions were raised by Arjuna regarding certain technical terms that the Lord used at the end of the Seventh Chapter. Every one of us is required to present ourselves before the Supreme Godhead in a total fashion—not partially; and in that connection, questions were raised as to what is Brahma, what is adhyatma, what is karma in the cosmic sense, what is adhibhuta, what is adhidaiva, and what is adhiyajna. Yesterday these were all explained as representing the different facets of the Supreme Being, all of which have to be taken into consideration at the same time in the final meditation, in which we have to engage ourselves daily, and especially at the time of leaving this world. The last question of Arjuna is: “How are You to be contemplated upon at the time of passing?” Prayāṇakāle ca kathaṁ jñeyosi niyatātmabhiḥ (8.2): “How are we to know You at the time of quitting this body? What sort of awareness are we to entertain? What is the consciousness that has to envelop us at that time?”
Bhagavan Sri Krishna has already described what akshara is, what Brahma is, etc. Now he takes up the very important subject of the departure of the soul from this body, and the art of meditation that has to be our principle occupation at that time.
You may ask me, “How do I know when I will pass away? Should I think that I will pass away just now, and collect myself in tremendous earnestness? Or should I be at ease with myself because I may not die so quickly, because I have a long tenure of life—for ten, twenty, thirty or forty years more, as the case may be? So are you telling me that I can postpone this meditation to later for consideration, and now I can be merry in this world?” Not so is the case. We cannot expect to have that blessing of concentration at the time of passing from this body unless we have cultivated that habit even earlier throughout our life. If we have lived a dissipated, indulgent life during our normal tenure here, our span of life, do we think some butter will come by churning water? Butter comes only by churning milk.
So it is necessary to expect that certain other factors also may prevent us from thinking of God at the time of death. We do not know what kind of physical ailment we may have at that time. Not everybody has physical illness at the time of death. Many pass away suddenly after a good meal; they sit on a chair, and just go. But one cannot say that it is always the case. Many are bedridden for months together and suffer; and at that time, what are they going to think in the mind? What is the use of postponing the concentration on God until the time of death? At that time, we may not be able to speak. Our minds may be disturbed, or we may be delirious. We may be in a coma. Anything is possible, although we need not expect all those unfortunate situations. So let our minds enter God’s lotus feet now itself, and not later on when it is possible that we may be afflicted with physical illness and mental delusion. The whole of life is a preparation for death. The whole of the time process is a preparation for eternity. All our activities are a worship of God, and every step that we take in this world is a movement in the direction of the final liberation of the spirit. So there is no question of postponing this great duty on everyone’s part to a future date, which may not come at all.
Antakāle ca mām eva smaran muktvā kalevaram, yaḥ prayāti sa madbhāvaṁ yāti nāsty atra saṁśayaḥ(8.5): “Whoever contemplates My Glorious Being while leaving this body will be inundated with that Being after death.” This is because the shape that the mind takes at the time of death will be the shape into which it will enter after death. Thus, the pattern of our future life in the other world is laid at the time of our passing from this body, depending on the state of thinking in which the mind is lodged.
“Whoever contemplates on Me only”—you may ask what this ‘Me’ is. Yesterday we had occasion to note this total vision that we have of God. The Supreme Being is a total blend of all the aspects of possible concepts—the adhyatma, adhibhuta, adhidaiva, etc. It is a timeless conceptualisation of an eternal possibility, whose details were briefly stated in the last two verses of the Seventh Chapter; and that is the kind of ‘Me’ on which we have to concentrate.
The Universal Being is telling us: “Concentrate on Me.” The Universal Being shall reveal itself completely in the Eleventh Chapter. Now it is preparing the way for it. It is gaining momentum; the tempo of the teaching is gradually rising. The heat is rising, as it were, in the very manner of the exposition, until it reaches the culmination in the Visvarupa Darshana. Therefore, it is this Universal Visvarupa, the Total Existence, that is the object of our concentration. “That is Me, and on Me (that type of ‘Me’) you concentrate yourself.” We should attempt to bring our mind to that point of meditation when we depart from this body. That is the antakala, or the end period of our life. If we think that any moment is the end period of our life, it will be good on our part to be meditating like this always. There is no loss in getting engaged in this meditation day in and day out. We will not lose anything by thinking of God.
Antakāle ca mām eva smaran muktvā kalevaram, yaḥ prayāti: “Whoever departs while deeply brooding over Me in My essential nature attains to the blessed abode, reaching which there is no return. There is no doubt about this.” God says: “There is no doubt about it. You will certainly reach it.” Do not have the apprehension that perhaps it is not possible. It is certainly possible. Nāsty atra saṁśayaḥ: No doubt.
Yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram, taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tadbhāvabhāvitaḥ(8.6): We will become after death whatever we have been thinking in our life now. This is the way we can know what we will become after death. We need not consult astrologers and palmists. Our conscience will tell us what kind of person we are. If we are a good person, to what extent are we good? Otherwise, to what extent are we something else? What is the percentage of our involvement in God-thought? What is the extent of our wanting God in our life? Is it an absolute necessity, or is it a need that we may consider sometime later? What sort of attitude do we have towards God? This concept of God will determine our future. Those who meditate on a particular deity by doing mantra purascharanas and daily ritualistic worship, etc., are supposed to reach only that particular deity. They will reach the world of Ganesha or Devi or Siva or Vishnu, or whatever it is; but there is a return. Even if they go to the abode of the Creator, they are likely to come back even from that stage, inasmuch as creation is involved in space and time: ābrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartina(8.16).
Whatever is our interest, whatever it is that we are attracted to, the life and death issues of our existence, whatever we brood on the whole day, day in and day out—the basic fundamental background of our thinking—that is what we are actually thinking. It is not that we are thinking only one thought every day. There are varieties of thoughts. We have workaday thoughts of the business of life; but behind that, there is a background of thought which we cannot forget, and it is that background of thought that will determine our future life. Whatever be our business, whatever be our office-going, whatever be our secular occupation, that is not important. What is important is what we are, basically, when we are absolutely alone to ourselves. In our kitchen, bathroom and bedroom—when nobody sees us—what are we thinking? Are we thinking only of the office? Or do we have a little time to brood and go deep into our own aloneness? Religion is supposed to be that which one does when one is alone. It is the aloneness into which we enter. Religion is a kind of aloneness of spirit where we are isolated from all relationships which are secular, mortal, and relative.
Whatever be the thought that we have been entertaining in our life, that will be the pattern of our life in the next world. Hence, everyone can know to some extent what they will become in the next life. How much greed, how much anger, how much desire for wealth, property and position, how much prejudice, how much competitiveness do we have? If these things are inundating us, and our very fibre of existence and our very flesh and blood are made up of these prejudices alone, we can well imagine what we will be in the next birth.
The Chhandogya Upanishad tells us what our fate will be if that is the way we live in this world. However, here is a brief theorem laid down before us for a further elucidation through its corollaries: Whatever we think in our mind, whatever we brood upon, whatever our interest is, whatever our deepest love and longing is, that shall materialise into a shape in the next realm of being which we enter. But if our pattern of thinking has always been universal and never relatively construed, and we have been judging all things from the Universal point of view, we will enter into the Universal when we leave this body. Inasmuch as the Universal is not here and there, it is not now and afterwards, it is not in space and time, the question of rebirth does not arise—because the Universal cannot be reborn. Eternity is our blessedness.
Tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu mām anusmara yudhya ca, mayyarpitamanobuddhir mām evaiṣyasyasaṁśayaḥ(8.7): “Therefore, I tell you: be constantly devoted to Me day in and day out, and engage yourself in your prescribed duty.” The word yudhya is used here, which means ‘fight’. In that particular historical context of the Mahabharata war, the instruction was: “Resort yourself to Me, surrender yourself to Me, completely rely on Me, and then fight.” It may apply to any kind of fight. The confrontation that we feel in our life, the opposition that we have to face, the duties that we have to perform, the obligations which are incumbent upon us are actually the yuddha, the war in which we are engaged in this big battlefield of God’s creation. “Resorting to Me completely, engage yourself in this duty that is incumbent upon you.”
Sarveṣu kāleṣu. Lord Krishna said, “Think of Me at the time of death.” Now He says, “You must think of Me always.” This is because He was conscious that if He said to think of Him after many years, Arjuna would not worry about Him at all, and go on postponing until it is too late to do anything. Therefore, a proviso is added by the great Master: “It is not enough if you think that you will meditate on Me at the time of passing. Every moment you must be with Me, in Me, and in a state of total surrender to Me. I shall protect you and take care of you.” Sarveṣu kāleṣu mām anusmara.
Mayyarpitamanobuddhiḥ: “If your mind, intellect and reason are totally dedicated to Me, you shall certainly reach me. There is no doubt.” Asaṁśayaḥ: Here also it is declared that there is no doubt about it.
Abhyāsayogayuktena cetasā nānyagāminā, paramaṁ puruṣaṁ divyaṁ yāti pārthānucintayan (8.8): The supreme resplendent Purusha, the Absolute Being, is our goal. By the constant practice of the yoga of meditation, and not allowing the mind to flicker hither and thither, absorbing ourselves entirely in this practice of total concentration on the Universal Reality, we shall attain to that supreme Sun of all suns—paramaṁ puruṣaṁ—and we shall be most blessed. Eternity and infinity shall be the fruits that we gather by this hard effort of meditation on the Universal Existence of God Almighty.
Kaviṁ purāṇam anuśāsitāraṁ aṇor aṇīyāṁsam anusmared yaḥ, sarvasya dhātāram acintyarūpaṁ ādityavarṇaṁ tamasaḥ parastāt (8.9): For the purpose of enabling us to picture that Supreme Being at the time of death—or always, as the case may be—we are told what kind of person that Supreme Being is. That Being is All-knowing—kavi. There is nothing that we can hide from that Almighty Being. That Supreme Being is most ancient—purāṇa—because it was there even before creation. Before there was space, before there was time, before there was anything, it was there. Therefore, it is the purana purusha, the adi purusha, the most ancient one; the all-knowing ancient one: kaviṁ purāṇam.
Anuśāsitāraṁ: It is the ruler of all the worlds, the ultimate destiny of everything, the final authority of all things, and the great God of creation.
Aṇor aṇīyāṁsam: It is subtler than the subtlest. Atoms, electrons and energy cannot be seen except in a mathematical fashion as points, but even such conception is not possible here. It is subtler than the subtlest, because of the fact that it is pure subjectivity. The grossness characterising objects of sense cannot touch this pure subjectivity. It is deeper than our ordinary physical subjectivity as Mr. So-and-so, etc. It is deeper than our psychological subjectivity as learned persons, great persons, etc. It is deeper than even the causal personality of individuality. It is an unconditioned, deepest essence and, therefore, it is the highest subjectivity. The highest subjectivity means free from any kind of externality of space, time and connection. Therefore, it is called subtle—the subtlest of all—and not even the subtlest space can be compared to it.
Aṇor aṇīyāṁsam anusmared yaḥ: Whoever can contemplate this Mystery of mysteries. What kind of mystery? Sarvasya dhātāram: The father and the grandfather of all people, the great protector of all beings, the final resort of everyone.
Acintyarūpaṁ: Unthinkable is that Being. Our eyes will be blinded, we will become deaf by the vibrations that it produces, and our sense organs will simply melt into the liquid of an experience that can best be described as spiritual realisation—acintyarūpaṁ.
Ᾱdityavarṇaṁ: Solar light is the brilliance of that goal. The sun is like a shadow before that light. Thousands of suns cannot stand before it. Na tatra sūryo bhāti (Katha 2.2.15): The sun does not shine there. The rays of the sun, the light of the sun is like darkness before it—pitch darkness—because of the excess of light. When light increases in frequency, it becomes darkness. Because of a commonness of frequency between the apparatus of our eyes and the light of the sun, we are able to see it; but if the level of the sunlight’s frequency is raised or lowered, we will not see the light at all, just as radio waves cannot be heard unless the radio’s frequency is the same as the frequency in which the waves are being broadcast by the radio station. Hence, the solar description is symbolic and does not mean that God is merely like a sun. Millions of suns will be darkness before that light of all lights—jyotiṣām api taj jyotis (13.17); light that is beyond all lights, light that is tamasaḥ paraṁ—beyond the darkness of the ignorance of people. Ᾱdityavarṇaṁ tamasaḥ parastāt: The whole world is darkness in comparison with that light of all lights. We think we are in daylight, but it is pitch darkness before that utter luminosity. Can we contemplate on that? We must contemplate on that at the time of passing: prayāṇakāle (8.10).
Manasācalena: Without allowing the mind to go hither and thither, but getting absorbed in all love and affection and endearing feeling; pouring ourselves on that, and allowing it to pour itself on us without allowing the mind to flicker; full of devotion for that, and wanting nothing else, and crying for it always.
Bhaktyā yukto yogabalena caiva: Full of devotion to it, but at the same time we are highly determined to see that we get it. “Now or never! Let this flesh melt and the bones crack. I shall not get up from this place until I get it!” was the resolution of Buddha. If we have that resolution with a devotion that surpasses all understanding, we are really blessed. Bhaktyā yukto yogabalena caiva: Yogabala is the power of the will of concentration.
Bhruvor madhye prāṇam āveśya samyak is one type of concentration that is prescribed here: concentration on the point between the eyebrows because of the fact that in the waking condition the mind is supposed to be actively operating in the ajna chakra, which is located there. In the dream state, it is in the throat, as it were; and in the sleep state, it is in the heart. Inasmuch as we are mostly in the waking condition and the mind is already in the point between the eyebrows—which is its svasthana, or its own abode—it is profitable for us to concentrate on that point instead of dragging the mind from its abode to some other direction. So it is said to concentrate the mind on the point between the eyebrows and raise the prana to that point—because wherever the mind is, there the prana is. The prana rushes to wherever we are concentrating our mind, and even the bloodstream moves in that direction. Sa taṁ paraṁ puruṣam upaiti divyam: By this practice, we shall reach that Parama Purusha, Purushottama, the Being of all beings, the Supreme God, Whose realisation is our be-all and end-all.
Yad akṣaraṁ vedavido vadanti (8.11): “I shall now tell you a secret—that imperishable secret which is known to the knowers of the Veda, the students of the three Vedas. There is a secret which is known to them, and I shall tell you what it is.” Viśanti yad yatayo vītarāgāḥ: “That secret which I am going to tell you is the quintessence of Vedic knowledge, and is that abode into which restrained tapasvins and yogins enter.” Yad icchanto brahmacaryaṁ caranti: “The longing for the union of which, people practise continence, and restraint of the senses and the mind.” Tat te padaṁ saṁgraheṇa pravakṣye: “Briefly I shall tell you what this imperishable seed is on which you have to meditate always, and at the time of passing.”
Sarvadvārāṇi saṁyamya (8.12): “Close all the gates of your body.” The five senses of perception, these avenues which are the windows of knowledge, are closed completely. Do not see, or hear, or touch, or smell, or taste; and do not allow any agitation of the other active limbs such as the hands and the feet, etc. Neither the sense organs of knowledge, nor the organs of action should be active at that time. These principles of action are withdrawn completely into the mind, in which case the mind becomes intensely potent. Usually the mind is weak because more than fifty percent of its energy is depleted through sense perception—through the sense organs of knowledge and the activities of the other karmendriyas, or organs of action. A little knowledge is there, and that is also distracted by the activities of the senses. But when the activity of the senses is withdrawn, the holes through which the energy goes out in the direction of space and time are blocked. This is called sarvadvārāṇi saṁyamya: Blocking all the holes which are the ten sense organs.
Mano hṛdi nirudhya ca. It was said that the mind is to be concentrated on the point between the eyebrows. Now it is being said that the mind will be concentrated in the heart. In deep sleep, in death, and in the samadhi state, the mind goes to the heart; but at other times it moves in the throat or the brain. In deep meditation, transcending the consciousness of the concentration that we are practising on the point between the eyebrows, we go deeper into the heart. When the mind is made to slowly descend to the position of the heart, it ceases from externalised ways of thinking, and settles in its true abode. The final abode of the mind is the heart. As the Upanishads tell us, in the state of deep sleep it is supposed to be lying in the puritat nadi.
Mūrdhnyādhāyātmanaḥ prāṇam āsthito yogadhāraṇām: A very difficult technique is placed before us here. The pranas have to be raised to the centre of the head. At the same time, it is said that the mind has to be concentrated on the heart. This seems to be a very difficult injunction. The idea is that our reason, feeling, understanding and emotions should get blended together so that what we think through the brain—the concentration that is active through the reason—is blended together with our deepest feeling. We are not merely in a state of understanding or feeling; we are in a state of intuition, which is a direct grasp of the total essence of things. Therefore, it is an injunction for two things: concentration on the centre of the head, which is the abode of the activity of rationality, and concentration on the heart, which is the abode of feeling.
Ᾱsthito yogadhāraṇām: Thus being absorbed in the highest mood of yoga meditation; om ityekākṣaraṁ brahma vyāharan (8.13): chant Om. When we chant Om, we will feel that it finally becomes soundless. The matra of the pranava, or omkara, becomes amatra, or soundless vibration. The message that we receive from the broadcasting station is not a moving sound. It is a vibration which is converted into sound waves in our receiving set. In a similar manner, the sound that is articulated in the form of chanting Om, or pranava, becomes rarefied into a soundless universal equilibrium of energy wherein we get lodged as the Soul of the cosmos. Om ity ekākṣaraṁ brahma: The eternal Brahma it is, in His form of vibration. Vyāharan: Chanting like this, uttering this great pranava, and deeply concentrating on My Being; yaḥ prayāti: whoever departs from this body; yah prayati tyajan deham: whoever leaves this world quitting this body; sa yāti paramāṁ gatim: he reaches the eternal abode.
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As we noticed yesterday, several questions were raised by Arjuna regarding certain technical terms that the Lord used at the end of the Seventh Chapter. Every one of us is required to present ourselves before the Supreme Godhead in a total fashion—not partially; and in that connection, questions were raised as to what is Brahma, what is adhyatma, what is karma in the cosmic sense, what is adhibhuta, what is adhidaiva, and what is adhiyajna. Yesterday these were all explained as representing the different facets of the Supreme Being, all of which have to be taken into consideration at the same time in the final meditation, in which we have to engage ourselves daily, and especially at the time of leaving this world. The last question of Arjuna is: “How are You to be contemplated upon at the time of passing?” Prayāṇakāle ca kathaṁ jñeyosi niyatātmabhiḥ (8.2): “How are we to know You at the time of quitting this body? What sort of awareness are we to entertain? What is the consciousness that has to envelop us at that time?”
Bhagavan Sri Krishna has already described what akshara is, what Brahma is, etc. Now he takes up the very important subject of the departure of the soul from this body, and the art of meditation that has to be our principle occupation at that time.
You may ask me, “How do I know when I will pass away? Should I think that I will pass away just now, and collect myself in tremendous earnestness? Or should I be at ease with myself because I may not die so quickly, because I have a long tenure of life—for ten, twenty, thirty or forty years more, as the case may be? So are you telling me that I can postpone this meditation to later for consideration, and now I can be merry in this world?” Not so is the case. We cannot expect to have that blessing of concentration at the time of passing from this body unless we have cultivated that habit even earlier throughout our life. If we have lived a dissipated, indulgent life during our normal tenure here, our span of life, do we think some butter will come by churning water? Butter comes only by churning milk.
So it is necessary to expect that certain other factors also may prevent us from thinking of God at the time of death. We do not know what kind of physical ailment we may have at that time. Not everybody has physical illness at the time of death. Many pass away suddenly after a good meal; they sit on a chair, and just go. But one cannot say that it is always the case. Many are bedridden for months together and suffer; and at that time, what are they going to think in the mind? What is the use of postponing the concentration on God until the time of death? At that time, we may not be able to speak. Our minds may be disturbed, or we may be delirious. We may be in a coma. Anything is possible, although we need not expect all those unfortunate situations. So let our minds enter God’s lotus feet now itself, and not later on when it is possible that we may be afflicted with physical illness and mental delusion. The whole of life is a preparation for death. The whole of the time process is a preparation for eternity. All our activities are a worship of God, and every step that we take in this world is a movement in the direction of the final liberation of the spirit. So there is no question of postponing this great duty on everyone’s part to a future date, which may not come at all.
Antakāle ca mām eva smaran muktvā kalevaram, yaḥ prayāti sa madbhāvaṁ yāti nāsty atra saṁśayaḥ(8.5): “Whoever contemplates My Glorious Being while leaving this body will be inundated with that Being after death.” This is because the shape that the mind takes at the time of death will be the shape into which it will enter after death. Thus, the pattern of our future life in the other world is laid at the time of our passing from this body, depending on the state of thinking in which the mind is lodged.
“Whoever contemplates on Me only”—you may ask what this ‘Me’ is. Yesterday we had occasion to note this total vision that we have of God. The Supreme Being is a total blend of all the aspects of possible concepts—the adhyatma, adhibhuta, adhidaiva, etc. It is a timeless conceptualisation of an eternal possibility, whose details were briefly stated in the last two verses of the Seventh Chapter; and that is the kind of ‘Me’ on which we have to concentrate.
The Universal Being is telling us: “Concentrate on Me.” The Universal Being shall reveal itself completely in the Eleventh Chapter. Now it is preparing the way for it. It is gaining momentum; the tempo of the teaching is gradually rising. The heat is rising, as it were, in the very manner of the exposition, until it reaches the culmination in the Visvarupa Darshana. Therefore, it is this Universal Visvarupa, the Total Existence, that is the object of our concentration. “That is Me, and on Me (that type of ‘Me’) you concentrate yourself.” We should attempt to bring our mind to that point of meditation when we depart from this body. That is the antakala, or the end period of our life. If we think that any moment is the end period of our life, it will be good on our part to be meditating like this always. There is no loss in getting engaged in this meditation day in and day out. We will not lose anything by thinking of God.
Antakāle ca mām eva smaran muktvā kalevaram, yaḥ prayāti: “Whoever departs while deeply brooding over Me in My essential nature attains to the blessed abode, reaching which there is no return. There is no doubt about this.” God says: “There is no doubt about it. You will certainly reach it.” Do not have the apprehension that perhaps it is not possible. It is certainly possible. Nāsty atra saṁśayaḥ: No doubt.
Yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram, taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tadbhāvabhāvitaḥ(8.6): We will become after death whatever we have been thinking in our life now. This is the way we can know what we will become after death. We need not consult astrologers and palmists. Our conscience will tell us what kind of person we are. If we are a good person, to what extent are we good? Otherwise, to what extent are we something else? What is the percentage of our involvement in God-thought? What is the extent of our wanting God in our life? Is it an absolute necessity, or is it a need that we may consider sometime later? What sort of attitude do we have towards God? This concept of God will determine our future. Those who meditate on a particular deity by doing mantra purascharanas and daily ritualistic worship, etc., are supposed to reach only that particular deity. They will reach the world of Ganesha or Devi or Siva or Vishnu, or whatever it is; but there is a return. Even if they go to the abode of the Creator, they are likely to come back even from that stage, inasmuch as creation is involved in space and time: ābrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartina(8.16).
Whatever is our interest, whatever it is that we are attracted to, the life and death issues of our existence, whatever we brood on the whole day, day in and day out—the basic fundamental background of our thinking—that is what we are actually thinking. It is not that we are thinking only one thought every day. There are varieties of thoughts. We have workaday thoughts of the business of life; but behind that, there is a background of thought which we cannot forget, and it is that background of thought that will determine our future life. Whatever be our business, whatever be our office-going, whatever be our secular occupation, that is not important. What is important is what we are, basically, when we are absolutely alone to ourselves. In our kitchen, bathroom and bedroom—when nobody sees us—what are we thinking? Are we thinking only of the office? Or do we have a little time to brood and go deep into our own aloneness? Religion is supposed to be that which one does when one is alone. It is the aloneness into which we enter. Religion is a kind of aloneness of spirit where we are isolated from all relationships which are secular, mortal, and relative.
Whatever be the thought that we have been entertaining in our life, that will be the pattern of our life in the next world. Hence, everyone can know to some extent what they will become in the next life. How much greed, how much anger, how much desire for wealth, property and position, how much prejudice, how much competitiveness do we have? If these things are inundating us, and our very fibre of existence and our very flesh and blood are made up of these prejudices alone, we can well imagine what we will be in the next birth.
The Chhandogya Upanishad tells us what our fate will be if that is the way we live in this world. However, here is a brief theorem laid down before us for a further elucidation through its corollaries: Whatever we think in our mind, whatever we brood upon, whatever our interest is, whatever our deepest love and longing is, that shall materialise into a shape in the next realm of being which we enter. But if our pattern of thinking has always been universal and never relatively construed, and we have been judging all things from the Universal point of view, we will enter into the Universal when we leave this body. Inasmuch as the Universal is not here and there, it is not now and afterwards, it is not in space and time, the question of rebirth does not arise—because the Universal cannot be reborn. Eternity is our blessedness.
Tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu mām anusmara yudhya ca, mayyarpitamanobuddhir mām evaiṣyasyasaṁśayaḥ(8.7): “Therefore, I tell you: be constantly devoted to Me day in and day out, and engage yourself in your prescribed duty.” The word yudhya is used here, which means ‘fight’. In that particular historical context of the Mahabharata war, the instruction was: “Resort yourself to Me, surrender yourself to Me, completely rely on Me, and then fight.” It may apply to any kind of fight. The confrontation that we feel in our life, the opposition that we have to face, the duties that we have to perform, the obligations which are incumbent upon us are actually the yuddha, the war in which we are engaged in this big battlefield of God’s creation. “Resorting to Me completely, engage yourself in this duty that is incumbent upon you.”
Sarveṣu kāleṣu. Lord Krishna said, “Think of Me at the time of death.” Now He says, “You must think of Me always.” This is because He was conscious that if He said to think of Him after many years, Arjuna would not worry about Him at all, and go on postponing until it is too late to do anything. Therefore, a proviso is added by the great Master: “It is not enough if you think that you will meditate on Me at the time of passing. Every moment you must be with Me, in Me, and in a state of total surrender to Me. I shall protect you and take care of you.” Sarveṣu kāleṣu mām anusmara.
Mayyarpitamanobuddhiḥ: “If your mind, intellect and reason are totally dedicated to Me, you shall certainly reach me. There is no doubt.” Asaṁśayaḥ: Here also it is declared that there is no doubt about it.
Abhyāsayogayuktena cetasā nānyagāminā, paramaṁ puruṣaṁ divyaṁ yāti pārthānucintayan (8.8): The supreme resplendent Purusha, the Absolute Being, is our goal. By the constant practice of the yoga of meditation, and not allowing the mind to flicker hither and thither, absorbing ourselves entirely in this practice of total concentration on the Universal Reality, we shall attain to that supreme Sun of all suns—paramaṁ puruṣaṁ—and we shall be most blessed. Eternity and infinity shall be the fruits that we gather by this hard effort of meditation on the Universal Existence of God Almighty.
Kaviṁ purāṇam anuśāsitāraṁ aṇor aṇīyāṁsam anusmared yaḥ, sarvasya dhātāram acintyarūpaṁ ādityavarṇaṁ tamasaḥ parastāt (8.9): For the purpose of enabling us to picture that Supreme Being at the time of death—or always, as the case may be—we are told what kind of person that Supreme Being is. That Being is All-knowing—kavi. There is nothing that we can hide from that Almighty Being. That Supreme Being is most ancient—purāṇa—because it was there even before creation. Before there was space, before there was time, before there was anything, it was there. Therefore, it is the purana purusha, the adi purusha, the most ancient one; the all-knowing ancient one: kaviṁ purāṇam.
Anuśāsitāraṁ: It is the ruler of all the worlds, the ultimate destiny of everything, the final authority of all things, and the great God of creation.
Aṇor aṇīyāṁsam: It is subtler than the subtlest. Atoms, electrons and energy cannot be seen except in a mathematical fashion as points, but even such conception is not possible here. It is subtler than the subtlest, because of the fact that it is pure subjectivity. The grossness characterising objects of sense cannot touch this pure subjectivity. It is deeper than our ordinary physical subjectivity as Mr. So-and-so, etc. It is deeper than our psychological subjectivity as learned persons, great persons, etc. It is deeper than even the causal personality of individuality. It is an unconditioned, deepest essence and, therefore, it is the highest subjectivity. The highest subjectivity means free from any kind of externality of space, time and connection. Therefore, it is called subtle—the subtlest of all—and not even the subtlest space can be compared to it.
Aṇor aṇīyāṁsam anusmared yaḥ: Whoever can contemplate this Mystery of mysteries. What kind of mystery? Sarvasya dhātāram: The father and the grandfather of all people, the great protector of all beings, the final resort of everyone.
Acintyarūpaṁ: Unthinkable is that Being. Our eyes will be blinded, we will become deaf by the vibrations that it produces, and our sense organs will simply melt into the liquid of an experience that can best be described as spiritual realisation—acintyarūpaṁ.
Ᾱdityavarṇaṁ: Solar light is the brilliance of that goal. The sun is like a shadow before that light. Thousands of suns cannot stand before it. Na tatra sūryo bhāti (Katha 2.2.15): The sun does not shine there. The rays of the sun, the light of the sun is like darkness before it—pitch darkness—because of the excess of light. When light increases in frequency, it becomes darkness. Because of a commonness of frequency between the apparatus of our eyes and the light of the sun, we are able to see it; but if the level of the sunlight’s frequency is raised or lowered, we will not see the light at all, just as radio waves cannot be heard unless the radio’s frequency is the same as the frequency in which the waves are being broadcast by the radio station. Hence, the solar description is symbolic and does not mean that God is merely like a sun. Millions of suns will be darkness before that light of all lights—jyotiṣām api taj jyotis (13.17); light that is beyond all lights, light that is tamasaḥ paraṁ—beyond the darkness of the ignorance of people. Ᾱdityavarṇaṁ tamasaḥ parastāt: The whole world is darkness in comparison with that light of all lights. We think we are in daylight, but it is pitch darkness before that utter luminosity. Can we contemplate on that? We must contemplate on that at the time of passing: prayāṇakāle (8.10).
Manasācalena: Without allowing the mind to go hither and thither, but getting absorbed in all love and affection and endearing feeling; pouring ourselves on that, and allowing it to pour itself on us without allowing the mind to flicker; full of devotion for that, and wanting nothing else, and crying for it always.
Bhaktyā yukto yogabalena caiva: Full of devotion to it, but at the same time we are highly determined to see that we get it. “Now or never! Let this flesh melt and the bones crack. I shall not get up from this place until I get it!” was the resolution of Buddha. If we have that resolution with a devotion that surpasses all understanding, we are really blessed. Bhaktyā yukto yogabalena caiva: Yogabala is the power of the will of concentration.
Bhruvor madhye prāṇam āveśya samyak is one type of concentration that is prescribed here: concentration on the point between the eyebrows because of the fact that in the waking condition the mind is supposed to be actively operating in the ajna chakra, which is located there. In the dream state, it is in the throat, as it were; and in the sleep state, it is in the heart. Inasmuch as we are mostly in the waking condition and the mind is already in the point between the eyebrows—which is its svasthana, or its own abode—it is profitable for us to concentrate on that point instead of dragging the mind from its abode to some other direction. So it is said to concentrate the mind on the point between the eyebrows and raise the prana to that point—because wherever the mind is, there the prana is. The prana rushes to wherever we are concentrating our mind, and even the bloodstream moves in that direction. Sa taṁ paraṁ puruṣam upaiti divyam: By this practice, we shall reach that Parama Purusha, Purushottama, the Being of all beings, the Supreme God, Whose realisation is our be-all and end-all.
Yad akṣaraṁ vedavido vadanti (8.11): “I shall now tell you a secret—that imperishable secret which is known to the knowers of the Veda, the students of the three Vedas. There is a secret which is known to them, and I shall tell you what it is.” Viśanti yad yatayo vītarāgāḥ: “That secret which I am going to tell you is the quintessence of Vedic knowledge, and is that abode into which restrained tapasvins and yogins enter.” Yad icchanto brahmacaryaṁ caranti: “The longing for the union of which, people practise continence, and restraint of the senses and the mind.” Tat te padaṁ saṁgraheṇa pravakṣye: “Briefly I shall tell you what this imperishable seed is on which you have to meditate always, and at the time of passing.”
Sarvadvārāṇi saṁyamya (8.12): “Close all the gates of your body.” The five senses of perception, these avenues which are the windows of knowledge, are closed completely. Do not see, or hear, or touch, or smell, or taste; and do not allow any agitation of the other active limbs such as the hands and the feet, etc. Neither the sense organs of knowledge, nor the organs of action should be active at that time. These principles of action are withdrawn completely into the mind, in which case the mind becomes intensely potent. Usually the mind is weak because more than fifty percent of its energy is depleted through sense perception—through the sense organs of knowledge and the activities of the other karmendriyas, or organs of action. A little knowledge is there, and that is also distracted by the activities of the senses. But when the activity of the senses is withdrawn, the holes through which the energy goes out in the direction of space and time are blocked. This is called sarvadvārāṇi saṁyamya: Blocking all the holes which are the ten sense organs.
Mano hṛdi nirudhya ca. It was said that the mind is to be concentrated on the point between the eyebrows. Now it is being said that the mind will be concentrated in the heart. In deep sleep, in death, and in the samadhi state, the mind goes to the heart; but at other times it moves in the throat or the brain. In deep meditation, transcending the consciousness of the concentration that we are practising on the point between the eyebrows, we go deeper into the heart. When the mind is made to slowly descend to the position of the heart, it ceases from externalised ways of thinking, and settles in its true abode. The final abode of the mind is the heart. As the Upanishads tell us, in the state of deep sleep it is supposed to be lying in the puritat nadi.
Mūrdhnyādhāyātmanaḥ prāṇam āsthito yogadhāraṇām: A very difficult technique is placed before us here. The pranas have to be raised to the centre of the head. At the same time, it is said that the mind has to be concentrated on the heart. This seems to be a very difficult injunction. The idea is that our reason, feeling, understanding and emotions should get blended together so that what we think through the brain—the concentration that is active through the reason—is blended together with our deepest feeling. We are not merely in a state of understanding or feeling; we are in a state of intuition, which is a direct grasp of the total essence of things. Therefore, it is an injunction for two things: concentration on the centre of the head, which is the abode of the activity of rationality, and concentration on the heart, which is the abode of feeling.
Ᾱsthito yogadhāraṇām: Thus being absorbed in the highest mood of yoga meditation; om ityekākṣaraṁ brahma vyāharan (8.13): chant Om. When we chant Om, we will feel that it finally becomes soundless. The matra of the pranava, or omkara, becomes amatra, or soundless vibration. The message that we receive from the broadcasting station is not a moving sound. It is a vibration which is converted into sound waves in our receiving set. In a similar manner, the sound that is articulated in the form of chanting Om, or pranava, becomes rarefied into a soundless universal equilibrium of energy wherein we get lodged as the Soul of the cosmos. Om ity ekākṣaraṁ brahma: The eternal Brahma it is, in His form of vibration. Vyāharan: Chanting like this, uttering this great pranava, and deeply concentrating on My Being; yaḥ prayāti: whoever departs from this body; yah prayati tyajan deham: whoever leaves this world quitting this body; sa yāti paramāṁ gatim: he reaches the eternal abode.
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Discourse 25: The Eighth Chapter Continues – Types of Liberation
In the beginning of the Seventh Chapter we are given a brief statement on what true religion can be, and ought to be. In the Eighth Chapter, we are taken further into the necessity to know the relevance of our present life in the future life. Religion is lived in this world for the sake of transporting us into a new realm of being, which is called after-death. The Eighth Chapter discusses what philosophers generally call eschatology, or the question of life after death. The kind of religion that we live in this world, of course, is a matter of this life; and it has been well described in the Seventh Chapter how we have to be truly religious, truly spiritual, in an unbiased and impersonal manner.
Now, what will happen to us after leaving the body? That question is very important to us because we will not be living in this world for an indefinite period of time. If a very good man—very religious, highly spiritual, practicing yoga—quits this world, what happens to him? The manner of conducting oneself inwardly at the time of passing has been described with poetic beauty, in a touching style, in the verses that I recited yesterday. It was pointed out that intense concentration has to be practised on a point which is a blend of the understanding and the feeling, wherein we enter into an insight to reality which will take us to that integral vision after death. We must chant Om while leaving the body, and that will create a vibration of cosmic impetus: om ityekākṣaraṁ brahma vyāharan mām anusmaran, yaḥ prayāti tyajan dehaṁ sa yāti paramāṁ gatim (8.13).
Ananyacetāḥ satataṁ yo māṁ smarati nityaśaḥ, tasyāhaṁ sulabhaḥ pārtha nityayuktasya yoginaḥ (8.14): “I am very easy of attainment. Don’t be under the impression that I am unapproachable, that it is difficult to reach Me. I am very easy of approach.” But the Lord puts several conditions in order that He may be easy of approach. What are the conditions? Ananyacetāḥ: “One who is undividedly absorbed with his whole mind and soul in Me.” Satataṁ: “And this absorption is not only for a minute. He must be constantly absorbed in Me always, and he must be engaged in this meditation on Me daily. Such a person who is eternally and permanently united with Me in his mind and soul, to such a person I am very easy of approach.” Whether He is really easy of approach or not, we can find out from this condition that He has laid. Under so many conditions, everything will be available to us. This is a moot sloka. Devotees chant it something like a mantra: ananyacetāḥ satataṁ yo māṁ smarati nityaśaḥ, tasyāhaṁ sulabhaḥ pārtha nityayuktasya yoginaḥ. We can go on chanting this.
How kind God is, provided we are kind to Him! How can we expect Him to be so concerned with us if we are not equally concerned with Him? The whole point is that. He is not putting unnecessary conditions, like a lawyer. That is not what is intended here. It is a necessary equilibration of consciousness that we have to establish between our soul and the Universal Soul. The Universal Soul can respond only to an element of universality in us. Dissimilars cannot act and react with each other. There must be a content in us which is equal in kind to the universality that God is. Hence, these conditions are nothing but an instruction on the necessity to remodel ourselves into an element of universality—a little universality, and not a particularity. It is the whole of God that we are aspiring for; and in that case, He also wants the whole of us—not our possessions, assets and legacies. These things we cannot offer to God. We have to offer that which is dearest and nearest to us. The most dear thing in us is ourselves. If we can offer that, then we shall be flooded with that great joy that we are expecting as God-realisation.
Mām upetya punarjanma duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam, nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ(8.15): You shall not return from God. Is it worthwhile to go there if you cannot come back? Ninety percent of devotees have a question of this kind: “What good is there in reaching God if I cannot come back?” Sometimes they galvanise this desire to come back after plunging into God by saying that they will be able to do better social work in this world and be endowed with a greater capacity to transform the world. “Now I am a feeble man with little understanding and a frail body, but when I plunge into God-experience and then return, I shall be a master in this world for the benefit of all people.” But the Lord says we will not come back. Then, what good is there? If we are not going to come back to see our own brothers and sisters here, and see this great world which has supported us, educated us, taken care of us, fed us, are we going to desert this world?
This question, this doubt, is not a foolish question. It is a question and doubt that will arise even in the most intelligent of persons. Most learned philosophers, highly educated, will have this question: “Am I deserting this world in my desire to plunge into God? And what good is this desire of mine to plunge into God when many other people are suffering in deep ignorance here in this world? Should I not work for their welfare?” Have we not heard people saying that they shall not attain God until the last man leaves this world and attains God? These are very touching sentences, which stimulate our emotions: “It would be good to postpone the idea of going to God until the time when the world is transmuted completely into the gold of God-consciousness. Until heaven descends to this earth, until the physical body itself becomes immortal, until every ant and crawling insect also is transformed into a divine superman, until the last individual reaches God, I shall not.” This would be a so-called unselfish declaration of the charitable mood of a great saint and sage, but it is repudiated at once by the statement that we shall not come back after reaching God.
No impure mind can understand what this means. The impurities of the mind are social, physical, sentimental, and biological. They are limited to family and community—limited to the human species. Are we not thinking only of mankind, as if that is the only thing that God has created? When we say “work for the world”, we mean work for only the human species. We are not interested in lions, tigers, snakes, scorpions and mosquitoes. We behave as if they do not exist at all, and do not care if they perish. “My species,” the frog says. “My species,” the snake says. “My species,” man says. Thus, there perhaps is a little bit of idiocy at the back of this so-called pious aspiration of people to come back from God and work for the welfare of humanity, as if humanity is the only thing that God has created.
The Almighty Himself has told us that if we go to Him, we will not come back; and if we want to come back, we need not go to Him at all. He is not compelling us to go to Him. But our attitude is like a double-edged sword. On one side we say, “I’ll reach God.” On the other side we say, “I’ll come back to work for my fellow humans.” We decide which is good for us before thinking deeply.
Mām upetya punarjanma duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam: “After reaching Me, you shall not enter this impure, perishable abode of sorrow because I shall absorb you into the timeless state of eternity, and not send you back to the time-ridden, space-limited world of sorrow and death.” Nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ: They have reached utter perfection. Having attained Supreme Perfection in the Almighty Universal, the question of coming back does not arise. It is as if we want to go back to the dream world after having woken up. In the world of dream we had friends, relatives, large assets, money, and the goodwill of people. When we woke up, what happened to all those people? Have we not committed a deeply treacherous, selfish act by waking up and leaving all our relations in the condition of dream? If we think that we have done a treacherous, selfish act in waking up from dream, we will do the same thing when we reach God. Remember this.
Ᾱbrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartino’rjuna, mām upetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate (8.16): Even if we reach Brahmaloka, there are certain conditions in which we may have to come back; but after reaching the Absolute, we will not come back. Many a thing is said regarding Brahmaloka in the Brahma Sutras and in certain commentaries on the Bhagavadgita. It is said in the Upanishads that after having reached Brahmaloka, there is no coming back; and anāvṛttiḥ śabdādanāvṛttiḥ śabdāt (B.S. 4.4.22) is the last verse of the Brahma Sutras. But the Gita says that we will come back.
The only person who has clarified this point is Madhusudana Saraswati, in his commentary. Mostly people go glibly over this sloka, and repeat what the original says: “Even after going to Brahmaloka, we will have to come back; but after reaching the Almighty, we need not come back.” They do not try to reconcile the so-called conflict, as it were, that seems to be there between the Upanishads saying that there is no coming back after reaching Brahmaloka and the Bhagavadgita is saying that we do come back.
There are no contradictions. Both the statements are correct. The concept of Brahmaloka is to be clarified first. What do we mean by Brahmaloka? The concept of Brahmaloka that is in our mind is what will decide whether we will come back from there or not. Generally, Brahmaloka is something like our idea of the Universal Being: it is spread out everywhere as an all-pervading, brilliant, divine existence into which we enter, where we stay and abide in the glory, beauty and grandeur of that kingdom.
There is a kind of mukti, or salvation, called salokya mukti. We are liberated when we enter the kingdom of God. That kingdom of God seems to be something like a huge, expanded dimension where God rules like a president or an emperor; and a person living in a country need not necessarily have the privilege of an audience with the king or the president. Nevertheless, we have the contentment and satisfaction of being a citizen of the kingdom of that particular emperor. This is one kind of Vaishnava devotion, or even Saiva and Sakta devotion. Among many other types of liberation which people imagine, one lower kind of devotion giving us a passport to a lower kind of experience is the permission to stay in the kingdom of God—a kingdom conceived as a vast world, as this world is, but scintillating with beauty, grandeur, and deathless immortality.
There is another kind of mukti, which is called nearness to God. We live near Rashtrapati Bhavan or near the White House, etc.—just next door. Even then, there is a satisfaction that our president is next door. Even though we may not see him at all, there is a satisfaction that he is next door. Nearness to God, though we may not see Him at all, is samipya.
Higher still is sarupya. We assume the same power, same glory, same authority, and same dignity as God Himself, but we are not God. That is, we are empowered with the ability to do all the actions that the president can do—just as during a war the field marshal is sometimes given all the powers of the president of that country, and he can use his discrimination. With all the powers of the president of the country or the king himself, the field marshal is veritably, for all practical purposes, the be-all and the end-all of all things. He can do anything he likes at that time, yet he is not the king, and not the president. That is the kind of mukti, or liberation, that people sometimes expect—where they assume the same form as God, and have the same authority, but are not God Himself.
Sayujya is entry. We become the king himself, the very president himself, and we are not merely a deputy who has been appointed for a particular purpose. Sayujya is entry into God. If we enter into God, we cannot come back. Because God is not at a distance, and God is not in time, the question of returning back should not arise. What do we mean by coming back from God? Is God an object, a place, a location? Is God somewhere in space and time? Spaceless and timeless existence is such that the coming back from it would be like coming from eternity to time—as the entry from waking into dream. Hence, there is a great point in the enunciation that we cannot return from God, and that we will not be a loser by merging in God.
The Brahmaloka that is conceived by us has two characteristics: a universal in which we find our abode, and a universal that is we ourselves. Are we going to live in Brahmaloka as residents of that place, due to the tapas we have done? If that is the case, when the effect of the tapas is over by the exhaustion of the momentum thereof, we will come back. So, in a way, there is a possibility of our coming back from Brahmaloka if we have attained it with the power of our meditation on objective universality—a vast kingdom of heaven, yet a kingdom into which we have to enter as individuals, with the prerogative of participating in the joys of that realm. If that is the case, we will come back. But if we identify with Brahmaloka as the essence of what we ourselves are—because Brahmaloka is universal, we cannot be outside it—the question of staying there as a citizen cannot arise. We have a very funny idea when we imagine that we can go and stay in Brahmaloka as a resident, as a guest, etc. Such a thing is not possible because Brahmaloka is all-pervading and inclusive of all things. If that is the case, we are also inside it, so how will we come back from Brahmaloka? We ourselves are Brahmaloka. The largest dimension of our soul is Brahmaloka. If this is our meditation, we will not come back; we will be lifted up in the Supreme Absolute. But if we think it is a kingdom which is vastly spread out, like this world, and we are only residents there, we will come back.
So, ābrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartino’rjuna: Even if we reach that abode of the Creator as an abode where we will reside, we will come back because it is in space and time; it is an extended kingdom. Because it is an extended kingdom, it is characterised by spatiality and temporality. That is the reason why when we enter there, we will have to come back.
Mām upetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate: “You will not be reborn after having attained Me.” Would we like to be reborn? If so, we will have freedom to be reborn as we like. But if we enter that which is not capable of coming back into space and time, we will enjoy that eternal beatitude.
Some cosmological information is given to us here in the succeeding verse, as a preparation for something more that is going to be told to us regarding the departure of the soul after leaving this body. The manner of going out of this body, and ascending upwards, is described through the paths called the northern and the southern. In that context, we are told that Brahma’s life is for one hundred years, and we have to imagine what kind of one hundred years it would be.
There are four yugas—called Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali. These are the time cycles or ages, as we say. We are said to be in Kali Yuga, the worst age, where there is conflict. The age of conflict is called Kali Yuga. This age is supposed to extend for 432,000 years. The duration of Dvapara Yuga is double that, the duration of Treta Yuga is triple, and Krita Yuga is quadruple. The total of all these figures is called one thousand divine years; but according to us, it is a multiple of several thousands of human years. Imagine what it means: 432,000 multiplied by 2, then multiplied by 3, and then multiplied by 4. That total is the duration of one day of Brahma. One day of Brahma is as long as this computation of the years of the four yugas, and one night of Brahma is equally long. This the is twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night of Brahma. What is the night? The pralaya, or the dissolution of the cosmos that will take place at the end of the yugas, is the night of Brahma.
There are two kinds of dissolution. There is dissolution of all life everywhere, but not dissolution of the elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. They remain. The dissolution of all life takes place after one day of Brahma; and then he sleeps. When Brahma wakes up, he creates beings—gods, celestials, angels, men, beasts, etc.—once again, as he has done previously. But there is another kind of dissolution, which dissolves everything. The whole cosmos, including the five elements, is dissolved. After one hundred years of Brahma, the entire universe is dissolved, and Brahma also gets dissolved. He enters the Absolute.
Sahasrayugaparyantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ (8.17). One day of Brahma is one thousand years for the gods but, according to the human concept, it is many millions of years. Rātriṁ yugasahasrāntāṁ te’ahorātravido janāḥ: The length Brahma’s night is the same.
Avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyaharāgame, rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyaktasaṁjñake (8.18). When the day of Brahma commences, activity starts in the universe, just as we start our business after we get up in the morning. And, we do things today in the same way that we did them yesterday. Yatha purvam akalpayat (R.V. 10.190.3): Brahma created this world in the same way that he created it in earlier cycles of time. Avyaktād: When Brahma goes to sleep, all beings, including us, merge in the avyakta prakriti. It does not mean that we will be liberated. Just as in deep sleep we are not liberated, similarly, in this avyakta prakriti, or the unconscious universal where Brahma is in deep sleep, we too enter and sleep with Brahma; and when he wakes up, we also will wake up. The cosmic sleep does not mean liberation. This is referred to in Patanjali’s Sutras as prakriti laya, etc. Cosmic ignorance absorbs us in the same way that individual ignorance absorbs us in deep sleep.
Avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyaharāgame: From the unconscious, unknown, cosmic equilibrium of darkness which is the sleep of Brahma, arises the day of Brahma; and all creation sprouts forth, as plants rise up from the earth when it is raining. But when the day concludes, everything is withdrawn, and all life goes into sleep. Rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyaktasaṁjñake: We are helplessly driven back to the cosmic sleep of Brahma in the same way that we helplessly go to sleep as individuals.
Bhūtagrāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (8.19): Endless is creation, and endless is dissolution. How many times we have come, and how many times we have gone! In all the eighty-four lakhs (8,400,000) of species through which we have to pass, as they say, we are now at the human level. Perhaps we have passed through all these eighty-four lakhs of species. Many a time we have come, and many a time we have gone. Endless is creation, and endless is destruction. There is no beginning and no end for it. Bhūtagrāmaḥ: The total of all living beings enters and sinks into unconsciousness, and rises from unconsciousness, and again sinks into it, and rises up. Just as we sink into sleep and rise up to waking, and again sink into sleep and rise up to waking, etc., the same process also takes place in the cosmos: bhūtagrāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate, rātryāgamevaśaḥ pārtha prabhavaty aharāgame.
Beyond that entanglement in prakriti’s ignorance, beyond that creativity and destructive process of the universe, there is the transcendent luminosity which is the Supreme Godhead—paras tasmāt tu bhāvo’nyo’vyakto’vyaktāt sanātanaḥ: Eternal radiance, light that shines beyond the darkness of the ignorance of the three gunas of prakriti.
Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo’nyo’vyakto’vyaktāt sanātanaḥ, yaḥ sa sarveṣu bhūteṣu naśyatsu na vinaśyati(8.20): If all people die, that Eternal Being will not die. Even if millions of Brahmas come and go, that unblinking Eternal is aware of all that is happening. In the Yoga Vasishtha, it is said that within the time that a great being like Vishnu or Siva closes his eyes and opens his eyes, millions of Brahmandas, or cosmoses, come and go. This is the mystery of the relativity of the cosmos.
Avyakto’kṣara ityuktas tam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim (8.21): The Supreme Abode of eternal beatitude is beyond even this cosmic ignorance, and that is the goal of all beings, including Brahma himself. Te brahma-lokeṣu parāntakāle parāṁṛtāḥ parimucyanti sarve (M.U. 3.2.6): Together with Brahma, we merge into the Absolute at the end of time. Avyakto’kṣara ityktas tam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim, yaṁ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama: Again it is said that after reaching That, we will not come back. Tad dhāma paramaṁ mama: “That is My abode.”
Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā (8.22): That Supreme Abode, the great brilliance which is God Almighty, can be attained only by unconditioned devotion. This is only a repetition of the idea that has already been mentioned—that unconditioned devotion is the only way to God-realisation. Unconditioned devotion means wanting God only, and wanting nothing else at any time. Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā. Ananya bhakti is a dispassionate devotion to God which cares not for the values of anything else in the world. Anya bhakti is an adulterated kind of devotion which has love for something else also—vyabhicharini bhakti. Avyabhbicharini bhaktiis totally concentrated devotion on one thing only, to the exclusion of any other possibility. Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā, yasyāntaḥsthāni bhūtāni yena sarvam idaṁ tatam: That transcendent thing beyond all concepts of even Brahmaloka is also here, just now. Do not be under the impression that it is a long journey in the process of time, for millions and millions of years, as if we are going to reach a distant star. It is nothing of the kind. It is a timeless experience and, therefore, it is an instantaneous experience. It is not dying and, therefore, it is not above us; it is also within us.
After the passing from this body, how do we approach the realms of being that are above us? Do we suddenly enter God as if we are shaken up by a kick, or do we move to God gradually, stage by stage? The stage by stage ascent to God is called krama mukti—a graduated ascent to the Supreme Being. The sudden illumination is called sadyo mukti—immediate dissolution in God. Immediate dissolution is like a drop on the surface of the ocean sinking into the ocean; it does not have to travel any distance to go into the ocean. Krama mukti is like reaching a distant place by trudging along a long road and having many experiences on the way.
What kind of path it is that we are going to tread after the dispatch of the soul from this body? The coming verses describe to us the process of krama mukti, or gradual ascent through various stages—just as when we go to Badrinath there are so many choultries (halting places). We halt in one place and then move on, and halt in another place, and so on, until we reach our destination. We take rest in the choultries and resume our journey in the morning, and when it is sunset we halt at another choultry. We take rest there, have a little refreshment, and then continue onwards.
Similarly, there are various stages in our movement towards God. We do not suddenly jump like a rocket and rise to the topmost level. How are we going to ascend? What are the stages of the ascent? Here the ascent is to be taken in the sense of the ascent of a purified soul on the way to God. It is not an ascent to hell, or to a nether region, or treading the path of rebirth, etc. That is not described here, because after death we may tread the path of ascent towards God, or we may tread another path of coming back to this world through rebirth, or we may even go to hell; that is also possible. But that is not the subject here. The subject here is in connection with the purified soul who is going to reach God, and not the soul who not so purified as to deserve the instantaneous merging but has permission to go gradually by a self-purification process that takes place slowly, step by step.
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In the beginning of the Seventh Chapter we are given a brief statement on what true religion can be, and ought to be. In the Eighth Chapter, we are taken further into the necessity to know the relevance of our present life in the future life. Religion is lived in this world for the sake of transporting us into a new realm of being, which is called after-death. The Eighth Chapter discusses what philosophers generally call eschatology, or the question of life after death. The kind of religion that we live in this world, of course, is a matter of this life; and it has been well described in the Seventh Chapter how we have to be truly religious, truly spiritual, in an unbiased and impersonal manner.
Now, what will happen to us after leaving the body? That question is very important to us because we will not be living in this world for an indefinite period of time. If a very good man—very religious, highly spiritual, practicing yoga—quits this world, what happens to him? The manner of conducting oneself inwardly at the time of passing has been described with poetic beauty, in a touching style, in the verses that I recited yesterday. It was pointed out that intense concentration has to be practised on a point which is a blend of the understanding and the feeling, wherein we enter into an insight to reality which will take us to that integral vision after death. We must chant Om while leaving the body, and that will create a vibration of cosmic impetus: om ityekākṣaraṁ brahma vyāharan mām anusmaran, yaḥ prayāti tyajan dehaṁ sa yāti paramāṁ gatim (8.13).
Ananyacetāḥ satataṁ yo māṁ smarati nityaśaḥ, tasyāhaṁ sulabhaḥ pārtha nityayuktasya yoginaḥ (8.14): “I am very easy of attainment. Don’t be under the impression that I am unapproachable, that it is difficult to reach Me. I am very easy of approach.” But the Lord puts several conditions in order that He may be easy of approach. What are the conditions? Ananyacetāḥ: “One who is undividedly absorbed with his whole mind and soul in Me.” Satataṁ: “And this absorption is not only for a minute. He must be constantly absorbed in Me always, and he must be engaged in this meditation on Me daily. Such a person who is eternally and permanently united with Me in his mind and soul, to such a person I am very easy of approach.” Whether He is really easy of approach or not, we can find out from this condition that He has laid. Under so many conditions, everything will be available to us. This is a moot sloka. Devotees chant it something like a mantra: ananyacetāḥ satataṁ yo māṁ smarati nityaśaḥ, tasyāhaṁ sulabhaḥ pārtha nityayuktasya yoginaḥ. We can go on chanting this.
How kind God is, provided we are kind to Him! How can we expect Him to be so concerned with us if we are not equally concerned with Him? The whole point is that. He is not putting unnecessary conditions, like a lawyer. That is not what is intended here. It is a necessary equilibration of consciousness that we have to establish between our soul and the Universal Soul. The Universal Soul can respond only to an element of universality in us. Dissimilars cannot act and react with each other. There must be a content in us which is equal in kind to the universality that God is. Hence, these conditions are nothing but an instruction on the necessity to remodel ourselves into an element of universality—a little universality, and not a particularity. It is the whole of God that we are aspiring for; and in that case, He also wants the whole of us—not our possessions, assets and legacies. These things we cannot offer to God. We have to offer that which is dearest and nearest to us. The most dear thing in us is ourselves. If we can offer that, then we shall be flooded with that great joy that we are expecting as God-realisation.
Mām upetya punarjanma duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam, nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ(8.15): You shall not return from God. Is it worthwhile to go there if you cannot come back? Ninety percent of devotees have a question of this kind: “What good is there in reaching God if I cannot come back?” Sometimes they galvanise this desire to come back after plunging into God by saying that they will be able to do better social work in this world and be endowed with a greater capacity to transform the world. “Now I am a feeble man with little understanding and a frail body, but when I plunge into God-experience and then return, I shall be a master in this world for the benefit of all people.” But the Lord says we will not come back. Then, what good is there? If we are not going to come back to see our own brothers and sisters here, and see this great world which has supported us, educated us, taken care of us, fed us, are we going to desert this world?
This question, this doubt, is not a foolish question. It is a question and doubt that will arise even in the most intelligent of persons. Most learned philosophers, highly educated, will have this question: “Am I deserting this world in my desire to plunge into God? And what good is this desire of mine to plunge into God when many other people are suffering in deep ignorance here in this world? Should I not work for their welfare?” Have we not heard people saying that they shall not attain God until the last man leaves this world and attains God? These are very touching sentences, which stimulate our emotions: “It would be good to postpone the idea of going to God until the time when the world is transmuted completely into the gold of God-consciousness. Until heaven descends to this earth, until the physical body itself becomes immortal, until every ant and crawling insect also is transformed into a divine superman, until the last individual reaches God, I shall not.” This would be a so-called unselfish declaration of the charitable mood of a great saint and sage, but it is repudiated at once by the statement that we shall not come back after reaching God.
No impure mind can understand what this means. The impurities of the mind are social, physical, sentimental, and biological. They are limited to family and community—limited to the human species. Are we not thinking only of mankind, as if that is the only thing that God has created? When we say “work for the world”, we mean work for only the human species. We are not interested in lions, tigers, snakes, scorpions and mosquitoes. We behave as if they do not exist at all, and do not care if they perish. “My species,” the frog says. “My species,” the snake says. “My species,” man says. Thus, there perhaps is a little bit of idiocy at the back of this so-called pious aspiration of people to come back from God and work for the welfare of humanity, as if humanity is the only thing that God has created.
The Almighty Himself has told us that if we go to Him, we will not come back; and if we want to come back, we need not go to Him at all. He is not compelling us to go to Him. But our attitude is like a double-edged sword. On one side we say, “I’ll reach God.” On the other side we say, “I’ll come back to work for my fellow humans.” We decide which is good for us before thinking deeply.
Mām upetya punarjanma duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam: “After reaching Me, you shall not enter this impure, perishable abode of sorrow because I shall absorb you into the timeless state of eternity, and not send you back to the time-ridden, space-limited world of sorrow and death.” Nāpnuvanti mahātmānaḥ saṁsiddhiṁ paramāṁ gatāḥ: They have reached utter perfection. Having attained Supreme Perfection in the Almighty Universal, the question of coming back does not arise. It is as if we want to go back to the dream world after having woken up. In the world of dream we had friends, relatives, large assets, money, and the goodwill of people. When we woke up, what happened to all those people? Have we not committed a deeply treacherous, selfish act by waking up and leaving all our relations in the condition of dream? If we think that we have done a treacherous, selfish act in waking up from dream, we will do the same thing when we reach God. Remember this.
Ᾱbrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartino’rjuna, mām upetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate (8.16): Even if we reach Brahmaloka, there are certain conditions in which we may have to come back; but after reaching the Absolute, we will not come back. Many a thing is said regarding Brahmaloka in the Brahma Sutras and in certain commentaries on the Bhagavadgita. It is said in the Upanishads that after having reached Brahmaloka, there is no coming back; and anāvṛttiḥ śabdādanāvṛttiḥ śabdāt (B.S. 4.4.22) is the last verse of the Brahma Sutras. But the Gita says that we will come back.
The only person who has clarified this point is Madhusudana Saraswati, in his commentary. Mostly people go glibly over this sloka, and repeat what the original says: “Even after going to Brahmaloka, we will have to come back; but after reaching the Almighty, we need not come back.” They do not try to reconcile the so-called conflict, as it were, that seems to be there between the Upanishads saying that there is no coming back after reaching Brahmaloka and the Bhagavadgita is saying that we do come back.
There are no contradictions. Both the statements are correct. The concept of Brahmaloka is to be clarified first. What do we mean by Brahmaloka? The concept of Brahmaloka that is in our mind is what will decide whether we will come back from there or not. Generally, Brahmaloka is something like our idea of the Universal Being: it is spread out everywhere as an all-pervading, brilliant, divine existence into which we enter, where we stay and abide in the glory, beauty and grandeur of that kingdom.
There is a kind of mukti, or salvation, called salokya mukti. We are liberated when we enter the kingdom of God. That kingdom of God seems to be something like a huge, expanded dimension where God rules like a president or an emperor; and a person living in a country need not necessarily have the privilege of an audience with the king or the president. Nevertheless, we have the contentment and satisfaction of being a citizen of the kingdom of that particular emperor. This is one kind of Vaishnava devotion, or even Saiva and Sakta devotion. Among many other types of liberation which people imagine, one lower kind of devotion giving us a passport to a lower kind of experience is the permission to stay in the kingdom of God—a kingdom conceived as a vast world, as this world is, but scintillating with beauty, grandeur, and deathless immortality.
There is another kind of mukti, which is called nearness to God. We live near Rashtrapati Bhavan or near the White House, etc.—just next door. Even then, there is a satisfaction that our president is next door. Even though we may not see him at all, there is a satisfaction that he is next door. Nearness to God, though we may not see Him at all, is samipya.
Higher still is sarupya. We assume the same power, same glory, same authority, and same dignity as God Himself, but we are not God. That is, we are empowered with the ability to do all the actions that the president can do—just as during a war the field marshal is sometimes given all the powers of the president of that country, and he can use his discrimination. With all the powers of the president of the country or the king himself, the field marshal is veritably, for all practical purposes, the be-all and the end-all of all things. He can do anything he likes at that time, yet he is not the king, and not the president. That is the kind of mukti, or liberation, that people sometimes expect—where they assume the same form as God, and have the same authority, but are not God Himself.
Sayujya is entry. We become the king himself, the very president himself, and we are not merely a deputy who has been appointed for a particular purpose. Sayujya is entry into God. If we enter into God, we cannot come back. Because God is not at a distance, and God is not in time, the question of returning back should not arise. What do we mean by coming back from God? Is God an object, a place, a location? Is God somewhere in space and time? Spaceless and timeless existence is such that the coming back from it would be like coming from eternity to time—as the entry from waking into dream. Hence, there is a great point in the enunciation that we cannot return from God, and that we will not be a loser by merging in God.
The Brahmaloka that is conceived by us has two characteristics: a universal in which we find our abode, and a universal that is we ourselves. Are we going to live in Brahmaloka as residents of that place, due to the tapas we have done? If that is the case, when the effect of the tapas is over by the exhaustion of the momentum thereof, we will come back. So, in a way, there is a possibility of our coming back from Brahmaloka if we have attained it with the power of our meditation on objective universality—a vast kingdom of heaven, yet a kingdom into which we have to enter as individuals, with the prerogative of participating in the joys of that realm. If that is the case, we will come back. But if we identify with Brahmaloka as the essence of what we ourselves are—because Brahmaloka is universal, we cannot be outside it—the question of staying there as a citizen cannot arise. We have a very funny idea when we imagine that we can go and stay in Brahmaloka as a resident, as a guest, etc. Such a thing is not possible because Brahmaloka is all-pervading and inclusive of all things. If that is the case, we are also inside it, so how will we come back from Brahmaloka? We ourselves are Brahmaloka. The largest dimension of our soul is Brahmaloka. If this is our meditation, we will not come back; we will be lifted up in the Supreme Absolute. But if we think it is a kingdom which is vastly spread out, like this world, and we are only residents there, we will come back.
So, ābrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartino’rjuna: Even if we reach that abode of the Creator as an abode where we will reside, we will come back because it is in space and time; it is an extended kingdom. Because it is an extended kingdom, it is characterised by spatiality and temporality. That is the reason why when we enter there, we will have to come back.
Mām upetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate: “You will not be reborn after having attained Me.” Would we like to be reborn? If so, we will have freedom to be reborn as we like. But if we enter that which is not capable of coming back into space and time, we will enjoy that eternal beatitude.
Some cosmological information is given to us here in the succeeding verse, as a preparation for something more that is going to be told to us regarding the departure of the soul after leaving this body. The manner of going out of this body, and ascending upwards, is described through the paths called the northern and the southern. In that context, we are told that Brahma’s life is for one hundred years, and we have to imagine what kind of one hundred years it would be.
There are four yugas—called Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali. These are the time cycles or ages, as we say. We are said to be in Kali Yuga, the worst age, where there is conflict. The age of conflict is called Kali Yuga. This age is supposed to extend for 432,000 years. The duration of Dvapara Yuga is double that, the duration of Treta Yuga is triple, and Krita Yuga is quadruple. The total of all these figures is called one thousand divine years; but according to us, it is a multiple of several thousands of human years. Imagine what it means: 432,000 multiplied by 2, then multiplied by 3, and then multiplied by 4. That total is the duration of one day of Brahma. One day of Brahma is as long as this computation of the years of the four yugas, and one night of Brahma is equally long. This the is twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night of Brahma. What is the night? The pralaya, or the dissolution of the cosmos that will take place at the end of the yugas, is the night of Brahma.
There are two kinds of dissolution. There is dissolution of all life everywhere, but not dissolution of the elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. They remain. The dissolution of all life takes place after one day of Brahma; and then he sleeps. When Brahma wakes up, he creates beings—gods, celestials, angels, men, beasts, etc.—once again, as he has done previously. But there is another kind of dissolution, which dissolves everything. The whole cosmos, including the five elements, is dissolved. After one hundred years of Brahma, the entire universe is dissolved, and Brahma also gets dissolved. He enters the Absolute.
Sahasrayugaparyantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ (8.17). One day of Brahma is one thousand years for the gods but, according to the human concept, it is many millions of years. Rātriṁ yugasahasrāntāṁ te’ahorātravido janāḥ: The length Brahma’s night is the same.
Avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyaharāgame, rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyaktasaṁjñake (8.18). When the day of Brahma commences, activity starts in the universe, just as we start our business after we get up in the morning. And, we do things today in the same way that we did them yesterday. Yatha purvam akalpayat (R.V. 10.190.3): Brahma created this world in the same way that he created it in earlier cycles of time. Avyaktād: When Brahma goes to sleep, all beings, including us, merge in the avyakta prakriti. It does not mean that we will be liberated. Just as in deep sleep we are not liberated, similarly, in this avyakta prakriti, or the unconscious universal where Brahma is in deep sleep, we too enter and sleep with Brahma; and when he wakes up, we also will wake up. The cosmic sleep does not mean liberation. This is referred to in Patanjali’s Sutras as prakriti laya, etc. Cosmic ignorance absorbs us in the same way that individual ignorance absorbs us in deep sleep.
Avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyaharāgame: From the unconscious, unknown, cosmic equilibrium of darkness which is the sleep of Brahma, arises the day of Brahma; and all creation sprouts forth, as plants rise up from the earth when it is raining. But when the day concludes, everything is withdrawn, and all life goes into sleep. Rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyaktasaṁjñake: We are helplessly driven back to the cosmic sleep of Brahma in the same way that we helplessly go to sleep as individuals.
Bhūtagrāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (8.19): Endless is creation, and endless is dissolution. How many times we have come, and how many times we have gone! In all the eighty-four lakhs (8,400,000) of species through which we have to pass, as they say, we are now at the human level. Perhaps we have passed through all these eighty-four lakhs of species. Many a time we have come, and many a time we have gone. Endless is creation, and endless is destruction. There is no beginning and no end for it. Bhūtagrāmaḥ: The total of all living beings enters and sinks into unconsciousness, and rises from unconsciousness, and again sinks into it, and rises up. Just as we sink into sleep and rise up to waking, and again sink into sleep and rise up to waking, etc., the same process also takes place in the cosmos: bhūtagrāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate, rātryāgamevaśaḥ pārtha prabhavaty aharāgame.
Beyond that entanglement in prakriti’s ignorance, beyond that creativity and destructive process of the universe, there is the transcendent luminosity which is the Supreme Godhead—paras tasmāt tu bhāvo’nyo’vyakto’vyaktāt sanātanaḥ: Eternal radiance, light that shines beyond the darkness of the ignorance of the three gunas of prakriti.
Paras tasmāt tu bhāvo’nyo’vyakto’vyaktāt sanātanaḥ, yaḥ sa sarveṣu bhūteṣu naśyatsu na vinaśyati(8.20): If all people die, that Eternal Being will not die. Even if millions of Brahmas come and go, that unblinking Eternal is aware of all that is happening. In the Yoga Vasishtha, it is said that within the time that a great being like Vishnu or Siva closes his eyes and opens his eyes, millions of Brahmandas, or cosmoses, come and go. This is the mystery of the relativity of the cosmos.
Avyakto’kṣara ityuktas tam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim (8.21): The Supreme Abode of eternal beatitude is beyond even this cosmic ignorance, and that is the goal of all beings, including Brahma himself. Te brahma-lokeṣu parāntakāle parāṁṛtāḥ parimucyanti sarve (M.U. 3.2.6): Together with Brahma, we merge into the Absolute at the end of time. Avyakto’kṣara ityktas tam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim, yaṁ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama: Again it is said that after reaching That, we will not come back. Tad dhāma paramaṁ mama: “That is My abode.”
Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā (8.22): That Supreme Abode, the great brilliance which is God Almighty, can be attained only by unconditioned devotion. This is only a repetition of the idea that has already been mentioned—that unconditioned devotion is the only way to God-realisation. Unconditioned devotion means wanting God only, and wanting nothing else at any time. Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā. Ananya bhakti is a dispassionate devotion to God which cares not for the values of anything else in the world. Anya bhakti is an adulterated kind of devotion which has love for something else also—vyabhicharini bhakti. Avyabhbicharini bhaktiis totally concentrated devotion on one thing only, to the exclusion of any other possibility. Puruṣaḥ sa paraḥ pārtha bhaktyā labhyas tvananyayā, yasyāntaḥsthāni bhūtāni yena sarvam idaṁ tatam: That transcendent thing beyond all concepts of even Brahmaloka is also here, just now. Do not be under the impression that it is a long journey in the process of time, for millions and millions of years, as if we are going to reach a distant star. It is nothing of the kind. It is a timeless experience and, therefore, it is an instantaneous experience. It is not dying and, therefore, it is not above us; it is also within us.
After the passing from this body, how do we approach the realms of being that are above us? Do we suddenly enter God as if we are shaken up by a kick, or do we move to God gradually, stage by stage? The stage by stage ascent to God is called krama mukti—a graduated ascent to the Supreme Being. The sudden illumination is called sadyo mukti—immediate dissolution in God. Immediate dissolution is like a drop on the surface of the ocean sinking into the ocean; it does not have to travel any distance to go into the ocean. Krama mukti is like reaching a distant place by trudging along a long road and having many experiences on the way.
What kind of path it is that we are going to tread after the dispatch of the soul from this body? The coming verses describe to us the process of krama mukti, or gradual ascent through various stages—just as when we go to Badrinath there are so many choultries (halting places). We halt in one place and then move on, and halt in another place, and so on, until we reach our destination. We take rest in the choultries and resume our journey in the morning, and when it is sunset we halt at another choultry. We take rest there, have a little refreshment, and then continue onwards.
Similarly, there are various stages in our movement towards God. We do not suddenly jump like a rocket and rise to the topmost level. How are we going to ascend? What are the stages of the ascent? Here the ascent is to be taken in the sense of the ascent of a purified soul on the way to God. It is not an ascent to hell, or to a nether region, or treading the path of rebirth, etc. That is not described here, because after death we may tread the path of ascent towards God, or we may tread another path of coming back to this world through rebirth, or we may even go to hell; that is also possible. But that is not the subject here. The subject here is in connection with the purified soul who is going to reach God, and not the soul who not so purified as to deserve the instantaneous merging but has permission to go gradually by a self-purification process that takes place slowly, step by step.
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Discourse 26: The Eighth Chapter Concludes – The Journey of the Soul After Death
The Eighth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita deals with the subject of life after death. The Puranas, the Upanishads, the Yoga Vasishtha and the Bhagavadgita contain many varieties of descriptions of the condition of the soul after it leaves this body. The Puranas, especially, go into a detailed, lurid description of the condition in which the soul finds itself—particularly if it has not done any merit, or if the merit it has done is so negligible that the wrongs it has committed outweigh the good or are on an equal footing with it.
The stories in the Garuda Purana and such other scriptures, even in the Bhagavata, are really frightening. When the soul departs from the body in the case of these lower, unpurified and negligibly religious souls, it is taken away by the messengers of Yama and placed before the Lord of Death for judgment.
It is said that Yama asks the soul, “What have you done?”
Ordinarily, it cannot remember anything. It will say, “I don’t know.”
The shock of separation from the body removes all memory, and it cannot remember what it has done in the previous life. It is said that then a hot rod, called a yamadanda, is kept on its head, and immediately it remembers its entire past. It knows every detail of the actions that it did, both good and bad.
The soul says, “I have done a little good, but have also made many mistakes and performed so many erroneous actions.”
Yama asks, “What do you have to say about it now?”
The soul replies, “I have got relatives. They will expiate them for me. They will conduct yajnas, charities, worship, sankirtans, bhajans and meditations in my name, and I shall be free from the consequence of the sins that I have committed or the mistakes that I have made.”
“Go then!” says Yama, “And see what they do.”
Apparently, it takes ten days for the soul to be brought back, so some ceremony is usually done on the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days. The soul hovers around, observing what the relatives are doing, and Yama’s messengers stand behind like policemen to see what is done. If an expiatory ceremony is done in the name of the soul, such as the Bhagavata Saptaham, the Rudra Yaga, the Narayana Bali and the Vishnu Yajna, and varieties of charities are done, and all those things that were dear to the soul are also given in gift, the effect of these good deeds is credited to the account of the soul and it is exonerated to that extent.
But suppose this is not done and, like modern boys, the relatives do not believe in these observances: “If our father died, let it go, that’s all. We won’t bother about it,” and there is no charity, no goodwill, and they behave as if nothing has happened; or, they do not even believe that something happens after death because they think that there is no life after death. If that is the case, the soul is dragged back. When the policemen know that someone is a culprit, and it is confirmed, they deal with him very severely. If they know that he is going to be released and nothing is going to happen to him, they do not bother much about it. But if his relatives have done nothing, it is certain that he is going to be punished, so for one year they drag the soul to the kingdom of the Lord of Death. At first they brought it within ten days because they wanted to know what was happening. When it is certain that it is going to be punished, they drag it, pull it, scratch and beat it, and it will be hungry and thirsty and bleeding. That is why another ceremony is done after one year; it takes one year for the soul to return to the abode of Yama. The varshika (annual) ceremony is very important. If nothing has been done on the tenth to thirteenth days after the passing of the soul, at least something should be done on the anniversary so that some mercy may be granted by Lord Yama before the sentence is passed.
If the soul has no merit at all, it will be sent to the land of punishment, whatever the punishment be. In the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, the Garuda Purana, etc., the type of punishment and difficulties that the soul has to undergo are described in such gory language that we would not like to be born into this world again.
When the soul is expunged of all its sins by suffering in the prison of Yama’s hell, it is released. It is said that then it is sent to Rudraloka, and will not be allowed to leave. To release the soul from Rudra’s clutches, Rudra Yajna is done. Then it is sent to Vaikuntha, so Vishnu Yajna is done; and after many, many years, the soul attains moksha. This is how a bad person gets purified in a very painful way, and then finally attains blessedness.
Or, if the soul has a tremendous attachment to relations and to wealth, it can be reborn into this world. A Muslim gentleman lived near a house in which a Hindu family had a little baby. The baby was very beautiful. The Muslim wanted to fondle it, sit it on his lap, but the Hindus would not allow the Muslim to touch the baby, which greatly disturbed him. The child grew up, and then the Muslim died. This child, which had grown up, started talking in Persian.
They asked, “What is this matter? Who are you?”
He replied, “I am that Muslim gentleman who wanted to caress this child, and you didn’t allow it; and now I am possessing it!”
This is the effect of attachments. And very intense attachments, which do not even give the soul time to take birth in this world, convert it into a ghost. Preta yoni is the outcome and, as described in the Bhagavata Purana, it hovers around in space, hungry and thirsty.
Here the Bhagavadgita describes the more glorious paths to the higher realms. Those who are not spiritually awakened but have done immensely good deeds reach a lower kingdom called Chandraloka, the realm of the moon, where they stay invisibly and enjoy the fruit of their good deeds. When the momentum of their good deeds, charitable deeds, etc., is exhausted, they come back into this world. But if a person is spiritually awakened and is not merely a good man—not merely a charitable or a philanthropic person—then the path is different. These two paths are called the northern path and the southern path.
Yatra kāle tvanāvṛttim āvṛttiṁ caiva yoginaḥ, prayātā yānti taṁ kālaṁ vakṣyāmi bharatarṣabha (8.23): “I shall now tell you,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna, “about that path treading which one returns, and that path treading which one does not return. These two paths I shall describe to you now—uttaramarga or jyotirmarga, and dakshinamarga or dhumamarga, as they are called.”
Agnir jotir ahaḥ śuklaḥ ṣaṇmāsā uttarāyaṇam, tatra prayātā gacchanti brahma brahmavido janāḥ (8.24): Everything is filled with light, everything is filled with divinity, and everything is superintended over by a divinity. The fire of cremation—that is the agni, the physical fire, which has a divinity of its own—assumes a divine form in the case of a person who is to rise up to the celestial realms. Then there is a divinity superintending over the daytime, in contrast with the night. If a person passes away during the daytime, and during the bright half of the lunar month, and during the northern movement of the sun, he shall reach the solar orb—Suryaloka. From there, he will be taken up further.
The Upanishads describe many more stages than the ones mentioned here. And at a particular stage beyond the sun, a superhuman entity is supposed to come and take the soul by the hand. Up to the solar orb, or even a little beyond, is called the realm of lightning. That is, beyond the sun, the lightning of Brahmaloka flashes forth. The individuality consciousness of the soul slowly gets diminished at that time, and it is not aware of any self-effort. It does not know that it is moving at all, inasmuch as the ego is almost gone. It is said that at that time an amanava purusha deputed by Brahma himself comes down in a luminous form, and leads the soul to the abode of Brahma, the Creator. This is the path of krama mukti, or gradual liberation, in which the soul is supposed to be glorying in Brahmaloka until Brahma himself is dissolved at the end of time—at the end of a hundred years of his life—and then the Absolute Brahman is reached.
But there is a possibility of immediate salvation without passing through all these stages—a hundredfold promotion, as it were. It is the dissolution of the soul in the supreme Brahman at this very spot. The soul need not have to travel in space and time because it is a jivanmukta purusha, one who has attained to a consciousness where there is no distance to be travelled. For him, there is no solar orb or anything else. He has spread his consciousness everywhere, in all beings: sarvabhūtahite ratāḥ (12.4). He is the soul of all beings, like Suka Maharishi, Vyasa, Vasishtha, etc. When his soul spreads itself everywhere in the cosmos, where is the question of moving? Na tasya prāṇā utkrāmanti(B.U. 4.4.6): His pranas do not depart, as is the case of other people. Brahmaiva san brahmāpyeti: They dissolve here, just now. That is, the moment the soul departs the body, it enters the supreme Brahman, the Absolute, then and there, without having to pass through all these stages. But in the case of krama mukti, the graduated steps mentioned in the Bhagavadgita, it is different.
The divinity of fire, the divinity of daytime, the divinity of the lunar month’s bright half, and the divinity ruling over the northern movement of the sun will take care of the soul and bring it up. In the Moksha Parva of the Mahabharata there is the story of a great ascetic who rose up from his body, and a little flame rising up through the sky could be seen. It rose higher and higher until it reached the orb of the sun, where a divine being emerged from the solar orb and received it. According to our tradition, the sun is not a material substance. It is a divinity—hiranmaya purusha—in which a golden-coloured Narayana is seated. Just as a human being is not a body, the sun is also not a body; and just as we see only the body of a person and do not see what the person is on the inside, we do not see divinity of the sun. We see only its outer appearance, which we call helium, atomic energy, etc., in just the same way as we call a person bone and flesh, nerves, blood, etc.—which is not a correct description. So there is something beyond the human concept here. Divinities are everywhere in the cosmos, in every atom, which is also controlled and enveloped by the universal God. If God is everywhere, why should He not be in every atom and in everything? In the case of such a realisation, there is immediate dissolution.
Dhūmo rātris tathā kṛṣṇaḥ ṣaṇmāsā dakṣiṇāyanam, tatra cāndramasaṁ jyotir yogī prāpya nivartate (8.25). There are those who have not spiritually awakened themselves, have not done spiritual meditation, and have an insufficient devotion to God. Even if they are very good people, highly charitable and humanistic in their approach, they will not be allowed to move along this northern path to the sun. They will not go to Brahmaloka. They will go to a lower realm, called Chandraloka. The smoke which rises from the fire during cremation will be their guiding principle. The dark half of the lunar month, and the southern movement of the sun, signify a deficiency in divine powers and a lesser chance of the soul going up along the path of brightness. It will reach Chandraloka, where it will enjoy the fruits of the good deeds it has done. Whatever good deeds were done will have their effect. Every action produces a reaction. Any good, charitable deed will bring the soul an abundance of joy in Chandraloka; but the soul will come back, because anyone who has not realised the universality of God will come back. Only a soul who is totally devoted to God will gradually pass through these stages of divine ordinances to the Ultimate Being. But if we are united with God here itself, we will immediately merge into God.
Śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hyete jagataḥ śāśvate mate (8.26). Broadly speaking, these are two paths of the soul after death. Either we go that way or we go this way, according to our karma and our spiritual status. Śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hyete jagataḥ śāśvate mate, ekayā yāty anāvṛttim anyayāvartate punaḥ: By the one path, one does not come back to this world; by the other path, one returns.
Naite sṛtī pārtha jānan yogī muhyati kaścana, tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu yogayukto bhavārjuna (8.27). Having known clearly that these are the two paths, who would like to tread the lesser path? “Therefore, be a yogi, O Arjuna, and try to tread the upper path.” Whoever knows the merits and demerits of these two paths will certainly pursue the path of merit rather than the path of demerit. It is the lack of knowledge that prevents us from working for our own salvation. But if we know that such a thing exists, and that even after death our karmas will pursue us wherever we go—that even if we go to the nether regions, we will be caught by the nemesis of our actions, the results of what we have done, because there is a law which punishes us—we will obey the law. And if we know that there are these two paths, and there is a chance of our entering into the lower one, we will certainly work to attain the higher one. Knowing this, we will certainly become wiser and, therefore, work for a state of establishment in yoga—union with the divinities in the various graduated scales of development, or with the Supreme Absolute itself, whatever the case may be. Either way, one will be a supreme yogi who is united with the Absolute now, or one will be a graduated yogi who will move systematically through the stages mentioned. Anyway, knowing this, one will not come to grief. Tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu yogayukto bhavārjuna: “Therefore, become a yogi, Arjuna!”
Vedeṣu yajñeṣu tapaḥsu caiva dāneṣu yat puṇyaphalaṁ pradiṣṭam, atyeti tat sarvam idaṁ viditvā yogī paraṁ sthānam upaiti cādyam (8.28). These discourses that you are hearing now as satsanga—the knowledge of these wonderful things beyond this world that you are gaining—is greater than all the good deeds that you do by way of charity, and all the sacrifices that you perform. All the merits that you will accrue by doing charity, good deeds and even the study of scriptures like the Vedas, and by doing austerity and living an abstemious life will bring you some good results. But this phala of satsanga, the blessing of this highly purifying training that your soul is undergoing by listening to these glorious eternal realities, certainly has a greater capacity to produce an effect than all the charities, studies and scriptures, etc. It transcends even the Vedas, and you attain to that place, that abode, which is the Ancient One. With this, we conclude the Eighth Chapter.
The Eighth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita deals with the subject of life after death. The Puranas, the Upanishads, the Yoga Vasishtha and the Bhagavadgita contain many varieties of descriptions of the condition of the soul after it leaves this body. The Puranas, especially, go into a detailed, lurid description of the condition in which the soul finds itself—particularly if it has not done any merit, or if the merit it has done is so negligible that the wrongs it has committed outweigh the good or are on an equal footing with it.
The stories in the Garuda Purana and such other scriptures, even in the Bhagavata, are really frightening. When the soul departs from the body in the case of these lower, unpurified and negligibly religious souls, it is taken away by the messengers of Yama and placed before the Lord of Death for judgment.
It is said that Yama asks the soul, “What have you done?”
Ordinarily, it cannot remember anything. It will say, “I don’t know.”
The shock of separation from the body removes all memory, and it cannot remember what it has done in the previous life. It is said that then a hot rod, called a yamadanda, is kept on its head, and immediately it remembers its entire past. It knows every detail of the actions that it did, both good and bad.
The soul says, “I have done a little good, but have also made many mistakes and performed so many erroneous actions.”
Yama asks, “What do you have to say about it now?”
The soul replies, “I have got relatives. They will expiate them for me. They will conduct yajnas, charities, worship, sankirtans, bhajans and meditations in my name, and I shall be free from the consequence of the sins that I have committed or the mistakes that I have made.”
“Go then!” says Yama, “And see what they do.”
Apparently, it takes ten days for the soul to be brought back, so some ceremony is usually done on the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days. The soul hovers around, observing what the relatives are doing, and Yama’s messengers stand behind like policemen to see what is done. If an expiatory ceremony is done in the name of the soul, such as the Bhagavata Saptaham, the Rudra Yaga, the Narayana Bali and the Vishnu Yajna, and varieties of charities are done, and all those things that were dear to the soul are also given in gift, the effect of these good deeds is credited to the account of the soul and it is exonerated to that extent.
But suppose this is not done and, like modern boys, the relatives do not believe in these observances: “If our father died, let it go, that’s all. We won’t bother about it,” and there is no charity, no goodwill, and they behave as if nothing has happened; or, they do not even believe that something happens after death because they think that there is no life after death. If that is the case, the soul is dragged back. When the policemen know that someone is a culprit, and it is confirmed, they deal with him very severely. If they know that he is going to be released and nothing is going to happen to him, they do not bother much about it. But if his relatives have done nothing, it is certain that he is going to be punished, so for one year they drag the soul to the kingdom of the Lord of Death. At first they brought it within ten days because they wanted to know what was happening. When it is certain that it is going to be punished, they drag it, pull it, scratch and beat it, and it will be hungry and thirsty and bleeding. That is why another ceremony is done after one year; it takes one year for the soul to return to the abode of Yama. The varshika (annual) ceremony is very important. If nothing has been done on the tenth to thirteenth days after the passing of the soul, at least something should be done on the anniversary so that some mercy may be granted by Lord Yama before the sentence is passed.
If the soul has no merit at all, it will be sent to the land of punishment, whatever the punishment be. In the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, the Garuda Purana, etc., the type of punishment and difficulties that the soul has to undergo are described in such gory language that we would not like to be born into this world again.
When the soul is expunged of all its sins by suffering in the prison of Yama’s hell, it is released. It is said that then it is sent to Rudraloka, and will not be allowed to leave. To release the soul from Rudra’s clutches, Rudra Yajna is done. Then it is sent to Vaikuntha, so Vishnu Yajna is done; and after many, many years, the soul attains moksha. This is how a bad person gets purified in a very painful way, and then finally attains blessedness.
Or, if the soul has a tremendous attachment to relations and to wealth, it can be reborn into this world. A Muslim gentleman lived near a house in which a Hindu family had a little baby. The baby was very beautiful. The Muslim wanted to fondle it, sit it on his lap, but the Hindus would not allow the Muslim to touch the baby, which greatly disturbed him. The child grew up, and then the Muslim died. This child, which had grown up, started talking in Persian.
They asked, “What is this matter? Who are you?”
He replied, “I am that Muslim gentleman who wanted to caress this child, and you didn’t allow it; and now I am possessing it!”
This is the effect of attachments. And very intense attachments, which do not even give the soul time to take birth in this world, convert it into a ghost. Preta yoni is the outcome and, as described in the Bhagavata Purana, it hovers around in space, hungry and thirsty.
Here the Bhagavadgita describes the more glorious paths to the higher realms. Those who are not spiritually awakened but have done immensely good deeds reach a lower kingdom called Chandraloka, the realm of the moon, where they stay invisibly and enjoy the fruit of their good deeds. When the momentum of their good deeds, charitable deeds, etc., is exhausted, they come back into this world. But if a person is spiritually awakened and is not merely a good man—not merely a charitable or a philanthropic person—then the path is different. These two paths are called the northern path and the southern path.
Yatra kāle tvanāvṛttim āvṛttiṁ caiva yoginaḥ, prayātā yānti taṁ kālaṁ vakṣyāmi bharatarṣabha (8.23): “I shall now tell you,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna, “about that path treading which one returns, and that path treading which one does not return. These two paths I shall describe to you now—uttaramarga or jyotirmarga, and dakshinamarga or dhumamarga, as they are called.”
Agnir jotir ahaḥ śuklaḥ ṣaṇmāsā uttarāyaṇam, tatra prayātā gacchanti brahma brahmavido janāḥ (8.24): Everything is filled with light, everything is filled with divinity, and everything is superintended over by a divinity. The fire of cremation—that is the agni, the physical fire, which has a divinity of its own—assumes a divine form in the case of a person who is to rise up to the celestial realms. Then there is a divinity superintending over the daytime, in contrast with the night. If a person passes away during the daytime, and during the bright half of the lunar month, and during the northern movement of the sun, he shall reach the solar orb—Suryaloka. From there, he will be taken up further.
The Upanishads describe many more stages than the ones mentioned here. And at a particular stage beyond the sun, a superhuman entity is supposed to come and take the soul by the hand. Up to the solar orb, or even a little beyond, is called the realm of lightning. That is, beyond the sun, the lightning of Brahmaloka flashes forth. The individuality consciousness of the soul slowly gets diminished at that time, and it is not aware of any self-effort. It does not know that it is moving at all, inasmuch as the ego is almost gone. It is said that at that time an amanava purusha deputed by Brahma himself comes down in a luminous form, and leads the soul to the abode of Brahma, the Creator. This is the path of krama mukti, or gradual liberation, in which the soul is supposed to be glorying in Brahmaloka until Brahma himself is dissolved at the end of time—at the end of a hundred years of his life—and then the Absolute Brahman is reached.
But there is a possibility of immediate salvation without passing through all these stages—a hundredfold promotion, as it were. It is the dissolution of the soul in the supreme Brahman at this very spot. The soul need not have to travel in space and time because it is a jivanmukta purusha, one who has attained to a consciousness where there is no distance to be travelled. For him, there is no solar orb or anything else. He has spread his consciousness everywhere, in all beings: sarvabhūtahite ratāḥ (12.4). He is the soul of all beings, like Suka Maharishi, Vyasa, Vasishtha, etc. When his soul spreads itself everywhere in the cosmos, where is the question of moving? Na tasya prāṇā utkrāmanti(B.U. 4.4.6): His pranas do not depart, as is the case of other people. Brahmaiva san brahmāpyeti: They dissolve here, just now. That is, the moment the soul departs the body, it enters the supreme Brahman, the Absolute, then and there, without having to pass through all these stages. But in the case of krama mukti, the graduated steps mentioned in the Bhagavadgita, it is different.
The divinity of fire, the divinity of daytime, the divinity of the lunar month’s bright half, and the divinity ruling over the northern movement of the sun will take care of the soul and bring it up. In the Moksha Parva of the Mahabharata there is the story of a great ascetic who rose up from his body, and a little flame rising up through the sky could be seen. It rose higher and higher until it reached the orb of the sun, where a divine being emerged from the solar orb and received it. According to our tradition, the sun is not a material substance. It is a divinity—hiranmaya purusha—in which a golden-coloured Narayana is seated. Just as a human being is not a body, the sun is also not a body; and just as we see only the body of a person and do not see what the person is on the inside, we do not see divinity of the sun. We see only its outer appearance, which we call helium, atomic energy, etc., in just the same way as we call a person bone and flesh, nerves, blood, etc.—which is not a correct description. So there is something beyond the human concept here. Divinities are everywhere in the cosmos, in every atom, which is also controlled and enveloped by the universal God. If God is everywhere, why should He not be in every atom and in everything? In the case of such a realisation, there is immediate dissolution.
Dhūmo rātris tathā kṛṣṇaḥ ṣaṇmāsā dakṣiṇāyanam, tatra cāndramasaṁ jyotir yogī prāpya nivartate (8.25). There are those who have not spiritually awakened themselves, have not done spiritual meditation, and have an insufficient devotion to God. Even if they are very good people, highly charitable and humanistic in their approach, they will not be allowed to move along this northern path to the sun. They will not go to Brahmaloka. They will go to a lower realm, called Chandraloka. The smoke which rises from the fire during cremation will be their guiding principle. The dark half of the lunar month, and the southern movement of the sun, signify a deficiency in divine powers and a lesser chance of the soul going up along the path of brightness. It will reach Chandraloka, where it will enjoy the fruits of the good deeds it has done. Whatever good deeds were done will have their effect. Every action produces a reaction. Any good, charitable deed will bring the soul an abundance of joy in Chandraloka; but the soul will come back, because anyone who has not realised the universality of God will come back. Only a soul who is totally devoted to God will gradually pass through these stages of divine ordinances to the Ultimate Being. But if we are united with God here itself, we will immediately merge into God.
Śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hyete jagataḥ śāśvate mate (8.26). Broadly speaking, these are two paths of the soul after death. Either we go that way or we go this way, according to our karma and our spiritual status. Śuklakṛṣṇe gatī hyete jagataḥ śāśvate mate, ekayā yāty anāvṛttim anyayāvartate punaḥ: By the one path, one does not come back to this world; by the other path, one returns.
Naite sṛtī pārtha jānan yogī muhyati kaścana, tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu yogayukto bhavārjuna (8.27). Having known clearly that these are the two paths, who would like to tread the lesser path? “Therefore, be a yogi, O Arjuna, and try to tread the upper path.” Whoever knows the merits and demerits of these two paths will certainly pursue the path of merit rather than the path of demerit. It is the lack of knowledge that prevents us from working for our own salvation. But if we know that such a thing exists, and that even after death our karmas will pursue us wherever we go—that even if we go to the nether regions, we will be caught by the nemesis of our actions, the results of what we have done, because there is a law which punishes us—we will obey the law. And if we know that there are these two paths, and there is a chance of our entering into the lower one, we will certainly work to attain the higher one. Knowing this, we will certainly become wiser and, therefore, work for a state of establishment in yoga—union with the divinities in the various graduated scales of development, or with the Supreme Absolute itself, whatever the case may be. Either way, one will be a supreme yogi who is united with the Absolute now, or one will be a graduated yogi who will move systematically through the stages mentioned. Anyway, knowing this, one will not come to grief. Tasmāt sarveṣu kāleṣu yogayukto bhavārjuna: “Therefore, become a yogi, Arjuna!”
Vedeṣu yajñeṣu tapaḥsu caiva dāneṣu yat puṇyaphalaṁ pradiṣṭam, atyeti tat sarvam idaṁ viditvā yogī paraṁ sthānam upaiti cādyam (8.28). These discourses that you are hearing now as satsanga—the knowledge of these wonderful things beyond this world that you are gaining—is greater than all the good deeds that you do by way of charity, and all the sacrifices that you perform. All the merits that you will accrue by doing charity, good deeds and even the study of scriptures like the Vedas, and by doing austerity and living an abstemious life will bring you some good results. But this phala of satsanga, the blessing of this highly purifying training that your soul is undergoing by listening to these glorious eternal realities, certainly has a greater capacity to produce an effect than all the charities, studies and scriptures, etc. It transcends even the Vedas, and you attain to that place, that abode, which is the Ancient One. With this, we conclude the Eighth Chapter.
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