(Dec 10,2013 ) Spiritual Message for the Day –The Great Spiritual Conquest

The Great Spiritual Conquest

Divine Life Society Publication: The Doctrine of the Bhagavad Gita – To Thine Own Self Be True by Swami Krishnananda

 

Uddharedatmanatmanam natmanamavasadayet;
Atmaiva hyatmano bandhuratmaiva ripuratmanah.
Bandhuratma'tmanastasya yenatmaivatmana jitah;
Anatmanastu satrutve vartetatmaiva satruvat.

"One should exalt the self by the Self.

One should not deprecate the Self, for the Self alone is the friend of the self, and the Self alone is also the enemy of the self.

The Self is the friend of him whose self has been conquered by the Self.

Where the self remains unrestrained, the Self would behave as its enemy, as an external foe."

The whole of the sixth chapter is here in these two verses. The Yoga of meditation is the art of the higher Self pulling up with tremendous force all that our lower self is. We have to raise our self by our Self. What does this mean?

The individual personal self has to be melted down, like a lump of ice, before the blazing sun of the knowledge of the higher Self. But where is the higher Self?

There is no physical distance between the higher Self and the lower self, between God and man. They are touching each other, not as two fingers meeting each other, but as the higher thought includes the lower thought, the higher knowledge transcends the lower knowledge, the higher education engulfs the lower education, the greater wisdom absorbs the lower wisdom.

This higher Self, this God-driven Self which is our own Self, is our true friend, from which we can draw sustenance at any moment of time. It exudes veritable honey. But when the lower egoistic self asserts its independence and behaves not as a lower degree of the higher dimension of its own self, it will become its own enemy and thwart all its efforts. It is always well said, "To Thine own Self Be True."

Says the Taittiriya Upanishad, "If space itself were not the field of great joy, who would breathe?" If breath itself is not a joy, who would be wanting to live? The breath would burn your nostrils. The akasa, space around us is also a field of joy only. That is why we want to enjoy it by looking at it and inhaling the breath emanating from it. Existence, accommodation, is itself the highest freedom and bliss.

Sometimes we say that man proposes while God disposes. This, because the self is opposed to the higher Self, it looks as if the higher Self is disposing of everything which one is proposing, but it will not behave thus if one is friendly with it. Who is the person of whom the higher Self is a friend? What kind of person can regard himself as the friend of the higher Self?

A particular kind of person that you are, alone, can regard yourself as the friend of the higher Self. Every kind of personality that you are is not capable of being a friend of the Self. You cannot shake hands with a highly placed dignitary unless you are also placed on an equal pedestal in some way. You want to shake hands with the higher Self; for that, you have to develop certain qualities which are required for that purpose. What are those qualities? The conquering of the self: atma jaya.

This question arose sometime in the context of the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata, where Dhritarashtra raises a question before Sanjaya: "Can I see that great messenger of the Pandavas who seems to be coming to meet us in our assembly? Can I have a vision of him?"

Sanjaya, the wise minister of Dhritarashtra, says, "You are asking me a question: whether you can see him. The Akritatman cannot behold the Kritatman that is Sri Krishna." The Kritatman is one who has totally subdued the self. The Akritatman is one who is a slave of the lower self. The person who is a slave of desires, befuddled in the midst of sensory attractions, cannot behold the great Being that is Krishna, who is a complete master of the self. The Eternal is irradiated through his Person.

The restraint of the sense organs is the means of subduing the self. We are now living in a world of sensations and the self that we are is ridden over by the potentialities of sense contacts, sense perceptions, sense desires. They have to be melted down into a liquefied menstruum of the power of the higher Self. "You must know that the One that is coming is All-in-all, and all your children, and all the henchmen behind them are nowhere behind this one Person," said Sanjaya to Dhritarashtra.

Many are the beauties and the powers and the joys of this world but the higher Self is standing singly by Itself. That one Being is greater than all the many things that are in this world. Therefore, Duryodhana made a mistake in choosing the army of Krishna, while Arjuna was wise enough to choose only one thing, who was Krishna. That One was greater than the multifold apparently strong soldiers of the army.

In the Mundakopanishad there is a similar analogy. Two birds are perching on a single tree, sitting on the same branch. There is a bird which is looking at the beautiful delicious fruits, but never eats them. The other one is very much engrossed in eating the delicious fruits – so much engaged in eating that it is not even aware that there is a friend sitting nearby. When the eating subsides, when the bird that is enjoying the delicious yield of this tree of life gets fed up with it and turns its gaze on the one who is silently witnessing only and not eating anything, it’s liberation takes place.

As long as Arjuna was looking at the army only, he was frightened. When he turned his eye to Krishna, energy entered him. When facing in the front, there was agitation in the heart and a valorous attitude manifested itself to fight the forces and attack them. But then he looked at the charming blue Man sitting, doing nothing. And that Nothing indeed was doing everything. Man does many things; God does nothing. That One who does nothing actually does more things than the many things apparently done by people in this world.

All our activities throughout history fade into a valueless nothingness before the tremendous activity of God. Who can say that the sun in the sky does nothing at all? He does not speak or proclaim himself. He minds his business silently locating himself in the blue sky. That silent existence itself is sufficient to make everything alive in this world. We run about, but the sun does not run about in that manner, while causing everything to run.

This higher Self is single; it is we, ourselves, in one lower position of ourselves, who feel we are multifold. We have many kinds of business, many things to do, many relationships. We have all sorts of engagements in the level of our lower selves, but in the higher one, there is nothing for us to do. We have only to be. When you just feel satisfied merely by your existence in the form of the higher Self, you have done everything; all the so-called needs for doing cease.

Conclusion

From the seventh to the eleventh chapter of the Gita is an ascending order of the rise of the consciousness of reality gradually revealing itself by stages. In the beginning one feels like a distant thing, away from God; afterwards we appear to come closer, then inseparable, then identical. God becomes our own Self, as in the Vishvarupa-darshana, the Cosmic Form extolled in the eleventh chapter.

Then, the following chapters tell us how this knowledge is to be applied in our daily life, in our day-to-day practical affairs, so that the Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita is seen as a masterpiece of superb techniques by which one can blend together God and creation, the here and the hereafter. This life that we are living here is the very life that we are going to live transfigured in eternity. Here is before us the solacing message of the Bhagavad Gita, which everyone has to study with an in-depth understanding of its teaching. "Where the Absolute and the relative melt into each other, death becomes life, all is seen in the All, and there is ever prosperity, victory, happiness, and established polity."

Excerpts from:

The World Is The Field of Battle:  The Doctrine of the Bhagavad Gita – To Thine Own Self Be True by Swami Krishnananda
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