Gita - Chapter VIII, Verse 15 and 16- Freedom from Death

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

I would like to share some ideas from the Bhagavad-Gita concerning

the cycles of birth and death. These slokas are taken from the

chapter called "The Imperishable Absolute: Beyond the Cycles of

Creation and Dissolution." We sometimes talk about finding freedom in

dying, but true freedom, as we know, takes much more than just dying.

Dying is but a sip of divine nectar. It is the rest and learning of a

different vibration than the earthly existence. In the Gita, this one

being the interpretation by Paramahansa Yogananda, it is explained

just how much work we actually must do to find true and final freedom

from rebirths. We have but begun the journey, and there is much work

to be done. Giving love, seeing love in everyone, and giving that

love to all is a sure method of beginning to overcome likes and

dislikes. We are our own jailors. We have the key to our own cells of

imprisonment in delusion. Meditation is the first step to controlling

those pesky ego-motivated actions, and the attachments and desires

that call for our attention night and day.

 

My noble devotees, having obtained Me (Spirit), have reached supreme

success; they incur no further rebirths in this abode of grief and

transitoriness.

 

Supremely successful yogis are the high-souled perfected beings who

in ecstasy or the after-death state have achieved the ultimate union

with the transcendental Spirit. Their souls escape the karmic bonds

of all three bodies and no longer dream the dreams of desires and

attachments of mortal existence. Rebirths in the temportal, sorrow-

fraught realms are no longer imposed upon them. They are awake in the

cosmic dream of God and in the dreamless blessedness of Spirit.

Striving yogis should pragmatically view this world as a school. The

highest lesson set for each man is the realization that he is not a

mortal, beset by pain and mutability, but a free son of God. The good

student who is successful in the tests of earthly life and who passes

the "final examination" has no need to return for further instruction.

He has earned the divine Ph.D.

~Chapter VIII, Verse 15~

 

Yogis not yet free from the world revolve back again (to the world)

even from the high sphere of Brahma (union with God in samadhi). But

on entering into Me (the transcendental Spirit) there is no rebirth,

O son of Kunti (Arjuna)!

 

Elaborating on the previous verse, Krishna points out that merely

reaching the abode of Brahma, Spirit, may not in itself assure

complete liberation. Even though the yogi may attain in ecstatic

meditation high states of God-union - merging the consciousness in

Aum in the vibratory dominion of Brahma, experiencing His omniscience

in omnipresent Kutastha or Christ Consciousness, and even reaching

the highest Brahma sphere of Cosmic Consciousness - he cannot remain

in those states but must revolve again to bodily consciousness if

there persists within him any mortal desires or karmic bonds. If

death occurs in this imperfect state, he will be reborn on earth or

in some high astral realm with a new opportunity and the spiritual

potential to free himself.

In meditation, the yogi gradually ascends his consciousness and life

force upward through the spinal centers of divine awakening,

experiencing expanded Self-realization with each higher step. He who

attains union with the triune manifestation of Brahma as the Cosmic

Aum vibration or Holy Ghost in the medulla, as the Krishna or Christ

Consciousness in the Kutastha center, and as Cosmic Consciousness in

the thousand-petaled lotus in the cerebrum, still will have to return

to limited mortal consciousness if he has not broken all karmic

bonds, desires, and attachments and consciously ascended from all

three bodily encasements - physical, astral, and causal. The more the

yogi is able at will to gain the elevated states of consciousness,

and the longer he is able to hold on to them in meditation and after

meditation, the more he diminishes his binding karmic reflexes and

dream delusions. When these are vanquished, the yogi dissolves the

body-consciousness ego into the soul and takes his soul and causal

body out of the astral body; and, finally, his soul ascends from the

causal form and merges into the transcendental Spirit, from which

there is no compulsory return to the vale of distressing dualities.

 

~Chapter VIII, Verse 16~

 

This causal body that we must also give up, is one mentioned by some,

wherein it, being reached in deep meditation, may frighten the

devotee, due to the loss of "identity with body" who then instantly

drops back into the lower consciousness. This attainment of

unshakable fearlessness, and absolute transcending of all three

bodies, this and this alone guarantees freedom from rebirth in this

world or another. We have much work to be done in this life to attain

what Krishna taught Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita. The battle at

Kurukshetra is the symbolic battle of our ego and our soul. The

reading of the Bhagavad-Gita brings so much light into the devotees

mind, and also it gives great peace if the slokas, or verses, are

meditated upon. Having read many versions of the Gita, and without

prejudice, I have found the interpretation by Yogananda, the very

best and most helpful of all the versions in print. It is called "God

Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad-Gita - The Royal Science of God-

Realization." They have half-price volumes at half.com. In Chapter

VIII, Verse 5, it is all about the yogi's experience at the time of

death. It is well worth reading. Now that it looks as though I'm

stumping for Guruji's interpretation, I finish with this quote from

the Gita:

 

A part of God's consciousness (Tat) - undifferentiated, and Itself

unmanifested - is reflected in Nature, the worlds of becoming, in

which He dreams eternally the cycles of evolution and involution. But

in His essential nature He is the Unmanifested One, beyond all

vibratory realms of cosmic dreams, Sat or Eternal Being, Existence

Itself.(I just love this line: "Existence Itself.")

 

With Love, Always Love,

Mazie