Look Within – Talks on the Bhagavad Gita by Swami Venkatesananda.

[Guest guest]

What is the primary nature of God? (God being infinite consciousness or

infinite consciousness being God)

 

There is a superior or primary nature, and that is consciousness of the

highest purest type – unmodified consciousness.

 

This unmodified consciousness also exists in us as the living soul.

 

What is soul?

 

When you repeat the words soul and cell, they appear to be very close to

each other. If you visualise yourself standing somewhere in outer space

heading towards mars in a capsule, you see thousands and thousands of

stars.

 

If you can visualise all these millions of stars and yourself millions

of miles from earth, you wouldn't even see a thing here.

 

You wouldn't know where earth was. The whole earth looks like a

mustard seed, so where is your home town? That is one aspect.

 

The other aspect is another interesting phenomenon which I saw in the

planetarium in Johannesburg.

 

Someone was explaining to us some of these constellations. By merely

drawing a line from one star to another, he produced the figure of a

lion – the constellation called Leo.

 

He produced the head of a goat – the constellation called Capricorn.

 

If this is possible, I just close my eyes and visualise enormous number

of stars – billions of them – and maybe it is true that this

colossal number of stars, when they are put together, have some kind of

form like the statue of lord Venkatesa you see there.

 

May be that is god! May be that is god, and maybe all these stars are

really and truly cells in the body of god! May be.

 

It raises my consciousness far beyond this puny little consciousness,

and enables me to feel that all this is nothing.

 

This room and all of us sitting here look large and formidable only

because we are sitting so close.

 

Even if I am flying in a Boeing, this room would already not exist.

 

If I am having the cosmic vision that Krishna showed Arjuna in the

Bhagavad Gita, probably what you call the soul is but a cell in the body

of God.

To be continued..