The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 30: Communion with Eternity

yadā viniyataṃ cittam ātmany evāvatiṣṭhate,
niḥspṛhaḥ sarvakāmebhyo yukta ity ucyate tadā (BG 6.18).
yathā dīpo nivātastho neṅgate sopamā smṛtā,
yogino yatacittasya yuñjato yogam ātmanaḥ (BG 6.19).
yatroparamate cittaṃ niruddhaṃ yogasevayā,
yatra caivātmanātmānaṃ paśyann ātmani tuṣyati (BG 6.20).
sukham ātyantikaṃ yat tad buddhigrāhyam atīndriyam,
vetti yatra na caivāyaṃ sthitaś calati tattvataḥ (BG 6.21).
yaṃ labdhvā cāparaṃ lābhaṃ manyate nādhikaṃ tataḥ,
yasmin sthito na duḥkhena guruṇāpi vicālyate (BG 6.22).
taṃ vidyād.h duḥkhasaṃyogaviyogaṃ yogasaṃjñitam,
sa niścayena yoktavyo yogonirviṇṇacetasā (BG 6.23).
saṅkalpaprabhavān kāmāṃs tyaktvā sarvān aśeṣataḥ,
manasaivendriyagrāmaṃ viniyamya samantataḥ (BG 6.24).
śanaiḥ śanair uparamed buddhyā dhṛtigṛhītayā,
ātmasaṃsthaṃ manaḥ kṛtvā na kiṃcid api cintayet (BG 6.25).
yato yato niścarati manaś cañcalam asthiram,
tatas tato niyamyaitad ātmany eva vaśaṃ nayet (BG 6.26).

Here, in a capsule, is a description of the blessedness of yoga experience. When the mind subsides, it is like the child returning to the lap of its mother. It finds its own source, rejoicing in the ecstasy of having possessed what it had lost, like the returning of the prodigal son in the biblical story. Squandering all the wealth of the loving father, the foolish son wanders far, far away from the source of protection and replenishment. The wealth that is God-given is squandered by mortal enjoyment. When all the wealth is exhausted and there is nothing to call one's own, there is a sense of weariness and a sense of enough. One sees to the corners of the earth and finds that in its dark caves of promised joy there are only cups of poison hiddenly kept for the enticement of the desiring soul. Knowing this, the mind comes back like a tired bird that flies higher and higher in search of its prey, going above in the skies throughout the day and returning to its own little place of rest in the night.

It is unbelievable that our thoughts are far, far removed by an incalculable distance from the source which they are really seeking. The mind is searching for the very same thing from which, at the same time, it wants to run away. A contradictory attitude has the human mind – every mind, I should say. It is in search of perennial satisfaction that the mind runs; but in this running, it is moving away from the very thing from which it expects satisfaction. This is something the mind itself cannot understand. That which it seeks in the sorrow of the wilderness of this earthly existence it finds not, because in all the searches of the mind in terms of the senses, it is running after the shadow of things, keeping itself away from the original which has cast the shadow. All the promises of joy in the objects of sense are upside down shadows of an original that is far, far away.

Plato, in his great work The Republic, describes an analogy of the cave to illustrate the kind of bondage in which we are. Imagine that prisoners are shackled in a dark cave, their hands and feet and neck tied firmly by iron chains so that they can see only a wall on which is cast the shadows of objects moving behind them outside in the world of sunlight. They cannot see the objects, but only their shadows, because of the fixity of their necks. They get accustomed so much to the reality of the movement of the shadows on the wall that they imagine that real life is present in the shadows, because they move. Anything that moves must have life, and shadows do move; therefore, they must have life. The prisoners read significance and meaning and all value into the movements of these shadows. These prisoners may live a family life in this condition. They may have children, all born in this dark cave, but conditioned to live in a dungeon of darkness, forced to see only the shadows and never allowed to turn their heads back to the light of day. Ages may pass like this when it is impossible for anyone to imagine that there can be anything anywhere except these movements. And they are in the realities. They speak, they dance and they gesticulate. They have life, and these are the denizens of the cave. But suppose after ages they are released from the prison; their shackles are loosened and then they are brought back to the reality of waking life and they see the originals. Will they not be surprised? They will not know what they are seeing. Their eyes cannot see the light. They will be dazzled. They would not be able to recognise the people who were casting the shadows in the cave. They will think they are in a new world altogether which they cannot recognise, appreciate or understand. Long is the description; I am briefly stating the meaning of this illustration.

We are the prisoners in the cave of this world where all that we see before us is the dancing of the shadows, and the movements of objects in front of us is actually the movement of reflections cast by the originals. The originals are not in this world. We are only shadows, you and I included. That is very important to remember. It is the shadow seeing the shadow. The originals are not in this world.

We can extend this interesting analogy to conceive the extension of our visualising pictures on a screen in a cinema hall. Suppose, with a stretch of your imagination, you place yourself in the screen itself. Do not be one person in the audience outside the screen. Imagine you are also one of the pictures in the screen. Would you not be in a real world? Real world indeed! And all are shadows, nevertheless. The grandeur and the three-dimensional solidity of pictures, which are nothing but two-dimensional shadows, become more enlightening and educative if we ourselves become their friends. In case we ourselves are part of the dramatis personae appearing there as shadows dancing on the screen, that would be the world in which we are living.

There is not one substance in this world that can be called real, nothing that is original. The original is somewhere. All thoughts are reflections of original motivations in the higher realms. Every event is a shadow of volitions of the denizens of higher degrees of reality. It has been said that marriages take place in heaven first, and their reflections are seen later on. Wars take place in the heavens first. Perhaps diseases also originate internally in the system before they manifest themselves outside in the physical body. The fruit ripens from inside, and it takes time to appear ripened on the surface.

We have to exercise a special mental effort to appreciate this position in which everything in the world is only a shadow of originals, including the perceptive media, the perceiving individual like me and you, so that the whole world is a theatre of shadows, puppet movements whose strings are pulled by originals which are undetectable by the eyes of the shadows because the puppets cannot turn back and see the strings.

The mind is happy. We are all rejoicing in this world with all the wealth and the glamour of possession. Everyone seems to be very secure, but as secure as the idiotic shadow. It is difficult to understand the blunder that we have committed in coming to this earth. It is a headlong movement into samsara, with head down and legs up. The word 'headlong' is mentioned in the Upanishad, to make matters very clear. It is sinking into the pit of suffering when we entered the womb of the mother, and when the Upanishad makes out that we have fallen headlong, as it were, into this sea of mortality, it also suggests, at the same time, that we are afflicted with hunger. Hunger and falling headlong go together.

Appetition is our nature. There is a craving from every cell of our body. Every part of what we are is hungry for things. And what are the things for which it is hungry? It is a grabbing attitude of the derelict mind, that which has lost sense completely. It is raving, as it were, in the agony of separation from the original from which it has fallen. The fall is beautifully described in Genesis, and it is also described, in a more dramatic fashion, in the Upanishads. Yet, we seem to be ruling in hell because we do not want to serve in heaven. We think that ruling in hell is better.

So the lords of the earth, the kings and emperors and potentates and the rich men of the world are these wondrous shadows, these reflections, lifeless automatons that seem to be full of life due to the energy that is borrowed from an original which is at the back but cannot be discovered due to the outward movement, like a projectile, of the actions of the mind. Parāñci khāni vyatṛṇat svayambhῡs tasmāt parāṅ paśyati nāntarātman (Katha 2.1.1). Before Plato told this analogy of the cave, the Kathopanishad had already envisioned it. Outwardly turned are the senses and the mind; shackled is the consciousness of the mortal. Therefore, there is a compulsion to see only the outside, and never can you have a moment's rest and the occasion to sink down into yourself and see what is at the back. We have no eyes at the back of our heads. We have only eyes at the front, which see only what is external. Therefore, the inward original, the archetype, is never seen. But in yoga there is an occasion of the coming back. The shadow enters the original. The reflection goes back to That from where the reflection arose. Then what happens? That is what is described here in these verses.

When the mind that is controlled returns to the Atman, it enjoys a bliss which is unthinkable – unthinkable because it is not an object of the senses. It also cannot be cognised by the mind. This bliss of the Atman, this experience in yoga which is a merger into the universal bosom of all things, cannot be thought by the mind because it is not outside the mind. It is prior to the very origin of all thinking process. It cannot be seen with the eyes, it cannot be touched by the hand, and it cannot be sensed by any means we have because this bliss is non-spatial, non-temporal. It is not in the world of spatial distance and temporal succession. Therefore, it is unimaginable. Because it is unreachable by the powers of the mind and the senses, we are not attracted by its presence. The mind can be pulled only by that which it can conceive. The senses can move only to that which they can cognise, perceive, contact. But here is something which the mind cannot think, the senses cannot contact. Therefore, we cannot even believe that it can exist. We doubt even the existence of it. Such is the tragedy that has befallen mortal man.

But when the consciousness stands steady, unmoving like the flame of a lamp in a windless place, there is a universal communication being received from all the corners of creation. Tributes follow from every direction, as it were. Sarvā diśo balim asmai haranti (CU 2.21.4), says the Chhandogya Upanishad. When you are placed in this uniformity of communion with every particle of creation in yoga meditation, tribute follows from every corner of the earth. As vassals come with offerings to their master who is the king, directions, which are the quarters of the whole of creation, bend down before this emperor, as it were, offering their tribute, and unimaginable miracles take place. Non-living so-called entities, which we call matter, inorganic substances, assume life. Stones will speak, trees will bend, as it happened, they say, when the great master Suka moved. Trees shook in obeisance to the great yogin, the son of Vyasa, and the leaves of the trees began to communicate messages, indicating his presence in every leaf. Vyasa summoned his son, “My dear boy, where are you?”

“Here am I, Father,” is the response that came from every leaf of the trees around, because he was not anybody's son and he was not living in a particular place. So friendly did even the leaves of the trees become.

The world may look like a vanishing phenomenon, as we do not know what happens to night when the sun has risen, where night has gone. Such a terrific dark spectre, which is the blinding night through which we pass, vanishes when the sun rises; so shall the world vanish before this vision that is spiritual. But where has the night gone? Where is it sitting now when the sun has risen? No one knows where the night is sitting. It shall come after some time. From where does it come? And where has it gone now during the coming of the sun in the day? As the night shall vanish to a place which is nowhere, the world shall also vanish to a place which is nowhere because it never existed, and therefore there is no question of its coming and going. There is no such thing as darkness; it is not an existent substance. It is a negation of light. It is an abstraction. It is not an entity, and therefore its going and coming are unimaginable to us. Yet the night looks intensely blinding, solidly real before our eyes. Such a solid earth shall melt into liquid when the mind returns to the Atman.

When the mind has settled itself in this condition of union with the Atman, there shall be no further effort of meditation because here all effort spontaneously receives its fructification, its fulfilment. All movement, all project, all adventure finds its culmination here. All the rivers of human aspiration commingle in this sea of fulfilment. Therefore, there is calmness, quietude, the prasanta state. The stability of this existence can be compared only to the width of the universe.

The mind, in this state of stability on the Atman, does not find itself placed in any particular locality. The Atman is not a locality. It is not something. Nor should it be imagined that the returning of the mind to the Atman is a kind of subsidence of our thoughts in a particular luminous spot in our body. The Atman is not inside the body, it is inside all things. The returning of the mind to the Atman, or the Self, is the returning of all objectivity into universality, externality into the supreme transcendence. It is not something moving to something else. It is not like a drop which is the mind going to another flame that is the Atman. Neither is the mind a drop, nor the Atman a flame of light. The mind is a force of objectification, a projection of consciousness outwardly in space; therefore, in a way, the mind can be said to be as vast as space itself. It is conditioned by space and time, so our longings are as vast as space, and shall continue for as long a time as time itself continues. This entire objectivation has to return to its originality. It is not one man's mind – your mind, my mind. It is the force of external projection of consciousness subsiding into the original which is the Atman, meaning thereby the soul and the Self of all things, which is not present in one or two things only, but in all things.

The inner status, the substantiality and the root of Being, the Self-sense of everything, is called the Atman. Inasmuch as this Self-sense is universally, ubiquitously present in all – the Atman is not in me or you or some people, it is that inviolable selfhood present in everything, every person, and also in every kind of relation between persons and things – to such an inconceivable universality the whole force of objectification returns. This is why such dramatic phrases are used here in these verses of the Gita, because language is impotent here. What happens in this spiritual communion cannot be expressed in the words available to us. It is the whole cosmos merging in Godhead, the entire creation entering into the Creator. This is what happens in yoga samadhi. It is not a little act that you perform in the corner somewhere inside your room. It is not my meditation; it is not your meditation. In the beginning it looks as if a person is seated for meditation, but as the progress continues, you become wider and wider in your comprehension. It begins with a person, as it were. I or you begin to sit in the posture mentioned, with this discipline described; yes, it is so, of course, but this is only the initial picture of meditation.

As we advance further and further, the little individuals – you or me – begin to get expanded in their comprehensiveness; large does the self become. The higher self occupies the position of the lower self. Remember the words 'higher self' and 'lower self' used in the earlier verses here. When the higher self is the experience of the lower self, the lower vanishes into the higher, and in the next higher stage of meditation the little individual, which is you or me, gets liquefied, as it were, into the larger self. The larger self again rises into the still larger one, the little general becomes the larger general, the little universal enters into the wider universal. These are the stages of samadhi and samapatti described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, to which he gives his own terms: vitarka, vichara, ananda, asmita samadhis, and so on. All these words make no sense to us. We do not know what they actually mean. We have to stretch our imagination with great effort to understand some iota of the significance of these statements.

In the beginning it may look like some individual is meditating. The individuality merges into the selfhood of the person, which is nothing but the total wholeness of the consciousness of the individual. Here, when we speak of a person meditating, we should not think of the physical body merely. It is the self that tries to unite itself with the Self. And the Self is not a physical location, it is a permeating consciousness. In the beginning it is a sort of localised selfhood, as it were, but this location of the self becomes expanded in dimension when it unites itself with the larger selfhood in meditation. As I mentioned, it goes on like this, higher and higher, until all-self becomes all-Self. Every self is everywhere. This is only to speak in a figurative, metaphorical way. There is no 'every self' there. All rivers become the ocean, and there are no rivers in the ocean. There is the ocean; there ends the matter.

Having reached this state, one attains the goal of life, a goal which is everywhere, not only in the future. The ideas of location of personality and the futurity of experience vanish here because the location of personality is a spatial dogma, and the futurity of the possible experience of Godhead is a temporal dogma, and these two dogmas vanish. Neither are we spatially located as a little self, nor is the experience to be in the future, sometime in coming periods of the temporal process. These obsessions caused by the intervention of spatial location and temporal process vanish in toto. Eternity inundates us, and we are bathed, as it were, in the sea of bliss. So goes these verses of the Bhagavadgita.

After a temporary bathing in this nectar of experience, it is possible for the mind to cool down in its ecstasy because it cannot be said that one can be always in this state throughout the day and the night. The condition of yoga comes and goes. These ecstasies are not perennial and permanent accompaniments of our life. There are moments of sudden exaltation into the spirit of experience, as mentioned here, but sometimes it becomes an intolerable experience for the mind, as in epic language we are told that it was not tolerated even by Arjuna himself when it became possible for him to have that blissful cosmic experience. But the mind has to be brought back once again to that source which it experienced, but from which it may get separated gradually by the pressure of old karmas. Therefore, the mind has to gradually be brought back, with great effort. How will you bring it back? By bringing to memory the delight, the nectarine joy, the sweetness of this experience which it tasted once. If we remember the taste of a past experience, we shall try to have it again.

So śanaiḥ śanair uparamed buddhyā dhṛtigṛhītayā, ātmasaṃsthaṃ manaḥ kṛtvā na kiṃcid api cintayet: By the effort of understanding, the mind has to be subdued and fixed in the Self. Then there is nothing for you to do afterwards. There is no question of doing anything afterwards, because all doing is fulfilled here in its attaining all value and all meaning, all significance, eternity itself. Again, human thought, which is accustomed to think in no other way than the acquisition of property and the living of a cosy individual life, will not be able to even remember this. Even the memory fades. Even if we gorged ourselves on a very delicious dish some days back, we may not be able to remember every detail of it today. The memory fades. Even happy experiences in this little life cannot be remembered always, because memory becomes feeble as time passes. Hence, even such exaltations may not always remain with us.

Whenever the mind moves, let it be brought back to its source. Yato yato niścarati manaś cañcalam asthiram, tatas tato niyamyaitad ātmany eva vaśaṃ nayet: As and when the mind moves outwardly, bring it back from that place immediately.

In one of the minor Upanishads we have a suggestion, an instruction how we can bring the mind back to the Self. Let the mind move, but the mind moves to the Self only. It does not, and it cannot, move to any other place. Wherever you cast your eyes in the middle of the ocean, you will see water and water, and nothing but that. Let the eye be cast long distances ranging beyond the conceivable limit. It will see a mass of water everywhere. Let the mind soar higher and higher. It will see space and more space, nothing but empty space everywhere. It is space everywhere; it is water everywhere. So may the mind move anywhere. Do not control the mind. Let it not be restrained. Let it be given a long rope to meander and graze in the garden of this creation of God, because it will see nothing but the face of God everywhere. It will not be able to find anything else except the Self, or the Atman, because all things, even the grass in the meadow, has a selfhood of its own.

Every tree, every stone, every pebble, every sand particle, every atom is a self by itself. So when the mind moves, where does it move? It moves to the Self. It does not move to an object. There are no objects in this world. They are little selves. Why do you call them objects? Where are the objects? Are you an object? If you are not an object, how does it follow that another is an object? There are no objects, no sensorily contactable things in the world. Everything maintains a status of its own. Everything is a self by itself. Everything is an 'I am I'; everything is an 'I am what I am'. Therefore, if the mind moves, it moves to the selfhood of all things. The mind moves to the I in all things. Therefore, even when the mind apparently moves to a so-called object, earlier called a sense object, really it is moving among the selves of the cosmos. This is a higher form of meditation where restraint of the mind is not at all required, because from what will you restrain the mind? There are no things in the world from which the mind has to be withdrawn. It need not be withdrawn; let it go anywhere. But that everywhereness and everyoneness of the movement of the Atman is wrongly imagined as the movement of the mind. The mind is nothing but a concentrated point of the Atman itself. Therefore, even when the mind moves among the so-called sense objects, the Atman is moving in the Atman. The infinite is moving in the infinite. All desires are the summoning of the infinite for the infinite. That is why desires are insatiable, cannot be satisfied. Who can satisfy the infinite? Therefore, endless is the longing for the endless that is the infinite. Even the desires of the mortal individual are propelled, finally, by the infinitude that is at the back, and also this infinitude of longing is for the infinitude of possession. So in all desires again, the infinite is asking for the infinite.

The whole world, the entire creation, looks like a dance of the Atman within itself. Therefore, let the Atman dance in this world which it has created for its own pleasure. There is no need of self-control. This is a wider, larger, deeper kind of meditation where the Atman rejoices and finds itself even in that which it sees outside as an external to itself. As a baby may dance in the middle of a reflection that it sees in the mirrors kept all round, the Atman rejoices even in the midst of objects of sense. They are no more objects of sense. They are a replica of its own Self.

Thus, the whole of creation is God's beautiful expanded form. Every atom is an eye of God, and every head is the head of the supreme Purusha. This is what the Bhagavadgita tells us subsequently. Sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṃ tat sarvatokṣiśiromukham, sarvataḥ śrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati (BG 13.13): Everywhere you find the ears of God, everywhere you find the eyes of God, everywhere you find the limbs and the hands and the fingers and the feet and the heads of God. Where will the mind go?

Thus, in this blissful merger, union, samadhi, attainment, communion with eternity, the infinite embraces the infinite, the eternal communes with the eternal, the whole of creation enters the bosom of the Almighty. This is the goal of life.