Bhagwad Gita - Post 103

THE YOGA OF THE KINGLY SCIENCE & THE KINGLY SECRET

Summary of Ninth Discourse

The Ninth Chapter is something like the Seventh Chapter. Practically, the Ninth Chapter is a continuation of the very same theme that we had in the Seventh Chapter, with the Eighth Chapter in between with its message of it being necessary for us to know what will happen to us after death even if we are highly religious people. The Ninth Chapter is a highly religious scripture by itself.

Observing that Arjuna was a qualified aspirant and endowed with faith, Krishna declares to him the sovereign knowledge and sovereign secret that is to be known by direct experience. He adds that without faith in this knowledge man fails to reach God and is reborn to suffer.

Now the Lord proceeds to describe His nature as the eternal, all-comprehensive Truth. He is everything that is invisible and visible. He pervades everything that exists. He creates everything, sustains everything, and when final dissolution takes place, absorbs everything into Himself. He manifests them again when the next creation begins. 

All beings who are ignorant of this knowledge are caught helplessly in the cycle of birth and death. In the midst of this creation, preservation and dissolution of the universe, the Lord stands as a silent witness, unaffected and unattached. He is the sole director, sustainer and supervisor of His Cosmic Prakriti.

Ignorant beings are not able to recognize the Lord in one who has realized Him. Although these cruel beings assume a human form, their nature is that of demons. The God-realized Mahatma, on the other hand, is a man of knowledge, and perceives Him indwelling all beings and creatures. He beholds the underlying unity of existence in all names and forms. 

The Lord’s divine protection is assured to all those who take refuge in Him. Whatever path a devotee follows, he ultimately reaches Him. He is the goal of the various methods of spiritual practice. Devotion, Sri Krishna emphasizes, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. If this supreme element is present, then the devotee is freed from bondage. 

The Lord observes the motive and degree of devotion. Even the most sinful and diabolical man, if he takes a radical turn towards the path of righteousness and truth, reaches the Lord. Whatever vocation one follows, one can attain the Lord if one seeks earnestly and with loving devotion. The essential thing is to fix the mind on the Lord and dedicate everything unto Him—one’s body, mind, actions, emotion and will.

Love.

Bhagwad Gita - Post 102

Verse 19

Bhootagraamah sa evaayam

Bhootwaa bhootwaa praleeyate;

Raatryaagame’vashah paartha

Prabhavatyaharaagame.

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!

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 (84,00,000) 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.

One must always be conscious of the truth that God is present  everywhere. He is the transcendental entity from whom the universe issues forth and into whom the universe finally dissolves.  And still beyond, He is the supreme eternal, absolute one from whom everything is derived. 

Verse 20

Parastasmaat tu bhaavo’nyo’vyakto’

Vyaktaatsanaatanah;

Yah sa sarveshu Bhooteshu

Nashyatsu na vinashyati.

But verily there exists, higher than the unmanifested, another unmanifested Eternal who is not destroyed when all beings are destroyed.

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. 

This  changing world of the unmanifest must have one changeless substratum, "that which is not  destroyed by the destruction of all beings (bhutas)." the principle of pure consciousness, itself unmanifest, in as much as it is not perceivable by the sense organs or comprehensible by the mind and intellect - is indicated here as the changeless substratum of all, when the lord declares, "beyond this unmanifest, there is the other eternal existence, the unmanifested."

After completing the expose on the impermanence of all material worlds, Lord Krishna elucidates in this verse and the next on the eternal nature of the spiritual worlds which exist beyond the unmanifest and which is never destroyed when all the material worlds perish. 

Let us go back to our example of the movie projector where the light that illuminates the film strip identified itself with a character in the movie. How does that piece of light get liberated? By knowing that the identification with the movie character is false, and the identification with the light is real. The light in the projector remains constant regardless of how many times the movie is shown and rewound. It transcends the movie.

Similarly, Sri Krishna informs us that there is something beyond this cycle of creation and dissolution, something that transcends time and space. Unless we realize that everything that we think will give us happiness is subject to destruction sooner or later, we will never become aware that there is something beyond our materialistic pursuits.

Readers are requested to go through Post 12 titled Essence of Vedanta under the theme “Vedas and Vedantas”.

After reading the above post, readers will get  more clarity on THAT which is beyond manifest and unmanifest, as per the following tabulation explained in that post clearly.

	SANKHYA	BHAGWAD GITA/ VEDANTA	PANCHADASI
Primal cause, beyond Manifest and un-manifest	Not explained	Purushottama/ Prabrahman	Pure canvass/ Purusha
Un-manifest cause	Purusha	Purusha and prakriti	Stiffening of canvass- Iswara
Manifest cause	Prakriti and Mahat	Hiranyagarbha	Outline of Drawing-Hiranya garbha
Manifest creation	Ahankara and all Subsequent tatwa	Same as Sankhya	Inked Drawings- Objects created in the universe

Love.

Bhagwan Gita - Post 101

Verse 16

Aabrahmabhuvanaallokaah

Punaraavartino’rjuna;

Maamupetya tu kaunteya

Punarjanma na vidyate.

(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!

Sri Krishna says here that 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.

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.

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. 

The theory of gradual liberation (Krama Mukti), accepted in Vedanta, says that ritualism (Karma), accompanied by meditation (Upasana), takes the ego to the realm-of-the-Creator (Brahma-loka) where, at the end of the Kalpa (the cycle of creation and dissolution), it merges with the Supreme. 

Even in Brahma-loka it is necessary that the ego must, through self-effort, live strictly all the spiritual directions of the Creator, and through constant contemplation upon the Self (Atma-Vichara) come to deserve the total liberation, by ending all its connections with "ignorance." Those who have not reached the realm-of-the-Creator, may not come to enjoy the Supreme merger.

They will, at the end of the Kalpa, have to come back and take their manifestation in embodiments, ordered by their remaining vasanas. 

This principle is kept in mind when Krishna says that rebirth is for everyone, even to those who have attained any high plane up to Brahma-loka.

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. That is the reason why when we enter there, we will have to 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. 

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. 

To  those who have awakened to the rediscovery of their essential, Eternal Nature and realized themselves to be the One, All-pervading Self --- "AFTER ATTAINING ME" --- to them, thereafter, there is no return to the plane of limited-existence. 

Love.