God Present Within Us
Divine Life
Society Publication: - The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and theBhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda
The Field of Comprehension
Our observations and
perceptions are mostly partial, one-sided; and this defect or limitation that
is imposed upon the process of perception gives us a wrong picture of the object—even
if it be God Himself, the supreme object of knowledge. We may call it the field
of comprehension.
The thought of God is the most
difficult thought. As a matter of fact, any thought is difficult when it is
attempted to be made comprehensive. The difficulty is not in the fact that the
object here is God—the difficulty is in the structure of the mind itself. There
is a common defect present in all perception. The object is looked upon as an object
only and bereft of any other implication in its existence. That objects are
simply located in a particular place is a fallacy, and this fallacy is at the
root of all our knowledge.
We cannot think God. Our minds
are not so made as to enable us to contemplate God as He is in Himself. But the
Bhagavadgita insists that liberation is impossible until and unless meditation
becomes practicable on the true God.
And who is this true God?
We are not merely mortals,
individuals, but we have a superhuman element within us, and this is the
deepest adhyatma in us. That is God present
within us. The root of our personality is God Himself. The mind has to be
united with God—this is called yoga. Ultimately yoga means union with God.
The Absolute or Brahman has to
be comprehended in its integrality, totality, unity, in its blendedness and
completeness—not merely in transcendence, but also in immanence and
inclusiveness of everything. The adhyatma (subject)
is not isolated from the adhibhuta (object)
or the adhiyajna or the adhidaiva.
The adhiyajna or the field of activity,
service and relationship of any kind is one of the manifestations of God
Himself, so that the concept of God includes the concept of human society, and
it cannot exclude it. So social welfare, social thinking, the humanistic
approach is incomplete without the introduction of the divine element into it.
“How then are we to contemplate the Supreme Being?”
The imperishable, eternal is
called the Absolute—aksaram brahma paramam.
Inasmuch as everything is perishable, the tendency of the whole universe is to
overcome this perishable character of itself and attain the imperishable
Brahman. The adhyatma is the essential nature of
an individual. Your essential nature is
naturally not what appears on the surface of your personality.
The innermost essence and the
basic rock bottom of the individual is adhyatma, and it
is inseparable from the imperishable Brahman. The atman
is Brahman; kutasta is the same as the
Absolute. Just as the root of the wave in the ocean is the ocean itself, the
root of personality, the Overself, the kutastachaitanya,
is Brahman, the Imperishable. All activity which forms part of the field of adhiyajna is called karma in a cosmical sense. There is
only one activity ultimately, and that is the movement of the cosmos towards
its ultimate end. All actions, the so-called activities of individuals, are
facets of cosmic activity. This is the supreme yajna
and is called adhiyajna—the transcendent purpose
behind all activities.
The principle of karma gets transformed into yoga,
known as karma yoga, when all actions are realized
as expressions of cosmic activity. There is no such thing as my activity or
your activity. They are only outer manifestations, through the individualities
of persons, and there is only one agent behind action—God Himself—and neither
are you the doer, nor am I the doer. If the actions do not belong to you, the
fruits thereof also cannot belong to you. That is why the Gita again insists
upon our abandonment of the fruits of action. If, by any kind of egotistic
affirmation of yourself, you assert your agency in any kind of action, there
would be a nemesis following from this false notion of action—a reaction set up
by this individual notion of activity or personal agency. This nemesis or
reaction is what is known as karma bandhana,
or the bondage of karma, which
becomes the source of sorrows of various types, including transmigration. So
the creative impulse, which is the source of all forms of action in this world,
is the ultimate karma. This alone can be called
real karma, and all other karmas are included in this supreme
karma.
The perishable form of the
world, the objectness that is present in objects is called adhibhuta. There is a reality
hidden in appearances, and this appearance aspect is called adhibhuta, while the reality that
is responsible even for the appearance is the imperishable Brahman. Their
essential nature is eternity and infinitude, but their name-form complex, which
is in space and time, is the perishable aspect—this is called adhibhuta.
The adhidaiva is the presiding
principle behind all individuals, the supreme consciousness that is at the base
of all individualities—not the mind, but consciousness. The element within you,
the superhuman principle, the divinity implanted in the heart of all
individuals, ruling your destiny, guarding you, protecting you, directing you
in the proper way is the adhidaiva.
The divine incarnation is the adhiyajna. The blessedness of
humanity rests in the extent to which it is able to be guided by the divinity
that is immanent in human society. Human individuals cannot achieve ultimate
success merely with the power of their hands and feet. Success is a name that
we give to an achievement which is of a permanent nature. That which is today,
but shall pass away tomorrow, cannot be called a victory.
Today we are looking up with
dazed eyes as to what is going to happen to us in the future, because we are
always depending on the strength of our arms, the power of our understanding or
intellect, the ratiocinating faculty minus the divine element in us. Man minus
God is a corpse, and a corpse cannot be expected to win any victory or achieve
success. God creates the world and also takes care of it. He is the Creator and
also the Preserver, and He preserves the world that He has created by means of
His incarnations. Anything in this world that is superb, magnificent and beyond
the ordinary in power, in knowledge and in capacity of any kind should be
regarded as a divine manifestation.
God incarnates Himself at
every juncture or crucial moment, for the solidarity of mankind, for the
establishment of righteousness and the abolition of unrighteousness. There is
an eternal manifestation of God. As God is eternity, His manifestation also is
timeless. God is the only friend of man, truly speaking, because perishable
individuals cannot be regarded as true friends—they pass away. We must realize
God as the true friend, as incarnate divinity, as a presence which is
perpetually before us, guarding us and taking care of us in every respect, providing
us with everything that is required at any moment of time. Contemplating God in
this manner, we realize His presence even in society.
Hence the necessity to
conceive God as a totality and comprehensiveness and not merely as an external
object bereft of relationship with the subject and human society. Such yoga is
supposed to be the means of the liberation of the spirit from this mortal
tabernacle (residence, dwelling place).
Excerpts from:
God Present Within Us - The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and theBhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda
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