The Eternal Transcendant Being and Self-Knowing...

[Guest guest]

The Eternal Being...

 

Having been told that Krishna had taught Yoga to the most ancient of human

beings, Arjuna asks: " Vivaswat was born long before you. How am I to believe

that you were the first to teach this yoga? " 1 Krishna replies most directly and

simply: " You and I, Arjuna, have lived many lives. I remember them all: you do

not remember. " 2 Buddha taught that remembrance of all our past lives occurs at

the time of enlightenment. However, some believe that recall of all previous

lives can occur even before that.3 Whichever it might be, the idea is that every

moment of our previous lives remain embedded in our subtle bodies and can

influence and even determine our present lives.

 

Yet, we are something more than a story–we are being itself, waves of the ocean

of Infinite Being. Krishna, as the " mouth " of that Being, begins telling Arjuna

of what he really is, and the truth of his relation to the world:

 

" I am the birthless, the deathless, Lord of all that breathes. I seem to be

born: it is only seeming, only my Maya. I am still master Of my Prakriti, the

power that makes me. When goodness grows weak, when evil increases, I make

myself a body. In every age I come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin

of the sinner, to establish righteousness. He who knows the nature of my task

and my holy birth is not reborn when he leaves this body: he comes to me. Flying

from fear, from lust and anger, he hides in me his refuge, his safety: burnt

clean in the blaze of my being, in me many find home. " 4

 

Transcendent being...

 

I am the birthless, the deathless. Being completely outside of time, space, and

all relativity, God (Brahman) is beyond birth and death, and any change

whatsoever. The rest of us come and go, come and go, but Brahman abides forever;

there is no coming or going for Him. Never must we consider God as being

conditioned in any way by Relativity. This is not easy for us in the West who

have lived from birth in an assumption that God perpetually reacts to us–that it

is we who determine the state of God far more than He determines our state–and

that we can control God's " moods. " We have thought that our words, thoughts, and

deeds will determine God's relation to us and how He thinks of us and cares or

does not care about us. This is a tremendous error. However choppy the waves may

be, the ocean remains stable and constant. It is the same with our tiny,

tempestuous minds and lives in contrast to the utter Changelessness of God.

 

Lord of all that breathes. Yet, He has the most intimate connection/relation

with us as our Lord (Ishwara), our inmost Self (Antaratman) and Ruler

(Antaryamin). How can this seeming contradiction be? The illusive power known as

Maya. Therefore Krishna continues:

 

Only seeming...

 

" I seem to be born: it is only seeming, only my Maya. I am still master of my

Prakriti, the power that makes me. "

 

God is " born " in His creation, yet He is not born at all. Rather, through His

power of Maya, He " dreams " creation and shows those dreams to us, enabling us to

enter into His dream and dream along with him the dreams that will culminate in

our awakening into His own Consciousness and Being, nevermore to forget

ourselves in a dream body in a dream world. We, too, are ever unborn, though

dreaming innumerable births and deaths. Why? Because each life we dream is an

exercise in consciousness, a means of developing (evolving) our scope of

consciousness and understanding (jnana). We suffer because the dreams get out of

our control, but once we master our dreaming all confusion, doubt, weakness, and

ignorance will cease and we will be " born again " into perfect spiritual

awareness, into the ultimate liberation for which we were destined before we

first entered into relative existence–or appeared to enter, for it was all a

series of educational dream-movies in the cosmic school of God Consciousness.

 

Why and wherefore...

 

Puzzling over the purpose of life is a challenge and a torment to every thinking

human being. So Krishna encapsulates its purpose in the next two verses: " When

goodness grows weak, when evil increases, I make myself a body. In every age I

come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to establish

righteousness. " 5

 

From age to age we see the advent of Divine Consciousness in the world.

Sometimes this takes place in the form of spiritual revelation to purified

individuals who can perceive the divine revelation and convey it to others. But

sometimes beings of such high consciousness and power come among us that they

seem to be manifestations of God Himself. Whether these Great Ones are direct

manifestations of God in mayic human form, or are perfect, liberated beings who

have long ago transcended the human condition and evolved upward unto total

unity/identity with God, really has no relevance to us. What matters is the

light they shed into our darkness and their teachings which, backed by Infinite

Will, are truly " spirit and life. " 6 Our obligation is not to define these holy

messengers, but to scrupulously follow their teachings.7 For " whosoever shall do

and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. " 8 For

they lead unerringly to the kingdom of Infinite Life.

 

We, too, come back in each life to purify and evolve ourselves, to reveal that

which is holy and innate in us, and to dispel the sin and ignorance into which

we have strayed, finally establishing our consciousness in the Consciousness

with which it has ever been one. Here, too, it is a sleeping and a forgetting

until we awaken, remember, and say with the Psalmist: " When I awake, I am still

with thee. " 9 The dream of separation and limitation is over forever. The purpose

of life is Liberation.

 

Self-knowing...

 

" He who knows the nature of my task and my holy birth is not reborn when he

leaves this body: he comes to me. Flying from fear, from lust and anger, he

hides in me his refuge, his safety: burnt clean in the blaze of my being, in me

many find home. " 10

 

Knowing that the advent of Divine Light in the world has our enlightenment as

its sole purpose, if we live accordingly we shall transcend the need for birth

in any relative world and live in God fully. Rising above all passions rooted in

the ego–and above the ego itself–we stand forth in the purity of being that is

God. (Bhagavad Gita Commentary–Thirty-three–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri)

 

http://www.atmajyoti.org/hi_gita_commentary_33.asp