1. Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘I have told this many times earlier but since this is so very important, I shall repeat it once more. I am not only the beginning and the end of everything but in fact everything!’
2. ‘I sent man to this world to yearn for Me and to Love Me. Instead, he has diluted and indeed even polluted My priceless gift of Divine Love into worldly desires. Instead of yearning for Me, he has developed yearning for worldly pleasures and all kinds of trivia not worth talking about.’
3. ‘Arjuna, take it from Me, if you pine for Me, you will for sure come to Me. Once you come to Me, you will always be with Me. Once you are with Me always, you would be eternally happy, naturally.’
4. ‘I am your Real Home, and it is from this Home you have gone out into the world. Should you not come back Home sometime? Do you want to keep putting that off? What for? What do you have in that transient world except misery, cleverly sugar-coated with occasional pleasures?’
5. Arjuna asks, ‘Krishna, You say that once man goes out into the world, he gets lost there. How exactly does this happen?’
6. Krishna replies, ‘I certainly shall explain and you must listen carefully. To start with, you must understand that man is a composite of three entities that are strikingly different. They are 1) the gross body, 2) the Mind which is a subtle entity, and 3) the Atma, which is super subtle! This three-in-one complex has a special name, the Jivatma, sometimes shortened to just Jiva. In short, you are a Jivatma.’ |
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7. Arjuna asks, ‘Krishna , are You also a Jivatma?’
8. Krishna smiles and replies, ‘Of course not!’
9. A puzzled Arjuna then asks, ‘In that case, what are You?’
10. Krishna replies, ‘I am Paramatma or God in totality!’
11. Arjuna is surprised and says, ‘Krishna , that is strange! I can’t see any difference between You and Me. And yet You say that You are Paramatma while I am just a Jivatma. How come?’
12. Krishna gives the answer. He says, ‘Arjuna, your difficulty neatly pin-points man’s main problem. You are comparing yourself with Me purely on the basis of external vision. Is that correct? Go beyond the body and examine. Are you and I the same?’
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13. ‘Arjuna, you are well below the senses whereas I am far beyond the senses and even the mind! You are below the Gunas, and that is why you are a Jivatma or a spark of the Divine. As for Me, I am far beyond the Gunas and that is why I am Paramatma or God in totality. In principle you also are God but not in practice! But I am God in principle, in practice and any other way you choose to look!’
14. ‘The differences don’t end here. When a Jivatma gives up the body, the gross body is returned to the elements while the subtle body goes in search of a new body. Even as the wind carries the scent of flowers from place to place, the current of Destiny sweeps the subtle body from one gross body to another, in accordance with the rhythm of the cycle of birth and death. This is what I described earlier in terms of dress change. My case is entirely different; I come and go as I please!’
15. ‘The Jivatma has to go through many cycles of births and deaths because of all kinds of unfulfilled desires. Let us say a Jivatma desires something and cannot get it. It gets a fresh chance to attain that in the next birth. So you see if you want to get out of the rut, you have to put a ceiling on desires. And this is where sense and mind control enters the picture.’
16. ‘Lack of self-control breeds desires, desires cause mind pollution and delusion, and delusion traps the Jivatma in the cycle that I referred to.’ |
17. ‘This is where the example set by Yogis becomes very important. The Yogis see things very clearly. Thanks to their power of sharp discrimination, they can clearly distinguish between the unreal and the Real. They summarily reject the unreal and focus entirely on the Real or Reality as some refer to it.’
18. ‘That Reality is Me! Wherever the Yogi turns, he sees only Me. You look up in the sky and say, “Ah, the Sun is shining brilliantly.” The Yogi looks and he also sees the same Sun but his words are different. He says, “I see Divine Glory radiating there as the Sun!”’
19. ‘Everything in the external world so-called, the five elements, the Sun, Moon, stars and whatever else you can see, is nothing but Me and Me alone! Do you ever get that feeling? Never but that is how the Yogi always feels! He sees only God everywhere and all the time!’
20. ‘The Yogi sees God within also. He sees God seated in his Heart, he sees God functioning as the Pranaa or the vital life-force, he sees God doing the digesting, he sees God doing the blood-circulation and all the rest of it. In short, the Yogi is fully conscious that it is I who provide the basic life-force, the basic creativity, the basic intelligence, and so on.’
