Basudeb GitaSense

Mind That Attains Bliss: Gita & God 44

2011-02-25T11:33:00.000-08:00

As I go on doing all that my inherent properties (gunas) make me do, can I get rid of the habit, cultivated by the Illusive Maya, of desiring the fruits of whatever I do so that I become both Sannyaasi (Saakhya yogi) and a Yogi (Karmayogi).How can I renounce all thoughts of worldly sensual pleasures?
Performing the all actions without selfish motivation of enjoying Worldly sensual pleasure is the means to establish myself in Yoga and to God-realization. If and when I cease to have any attachment to all objects of senses and all actions (Karma) and renounce all subtle desires of the world, I will be in the perfect state of Yoga. I will have conquered lower self by the higher self. I go beyond the perishable I to experience the infinite I.

My mind would be perfectly serene and unperturbed by any distinction of pairs of opposites like love and hate, like and dislike, cold and heat favorable and unfavorable, joy and sorrow, and honor and dishonor. My mind would be in complete equanimity, perceiving well-wishers, friends, foes, neutral persons, mediators, the hateful, the relatives, saints and sinners, foes as one and the same - all alike.

How do I prepare my mind to get to that stage? I seat in whatever my mind considers as clean, unpolluted and level place that the mind finds neither too high nor too low (covered by Kusa-grass, a deer skin and a cloth, one over the other) and then control my thinking faculty (Citta) and the senses by firmly holding my body, head and neck straight and steady and fixing my gaze at the tip of his nose, without looking in other directions, and then concentrating on meditation on the Infinite I or God. Only that order of perfectly disciplined mind can attain the everlasting peace consisting of Supreme Bliss, abiding in God (Nirvana) and thereby remove of any perception of any kind of suffering.

To get my mind disciplined, I need to eat and drink whatever things and as much quantities - not too much, too little, and also rest and sleep just enough so that my mind is not disturbed by any physical inconvenience. As a light of a lamp does not flicker but burns with a steady flame in a windless place', my disciplined mind shall be in steady, undisturbed meditation on the Self. Initially my mind may be restless and unsteady and may wander away, but I need to pull it back from all such material objects, actions and desires by repeated efforts to concentrate my thoughts on Self or Atman or God. Holding the intellect firmly, progressively my mind transcend from the world and my intellect) stops thinking of anything other than Atman or God. As I go on practicing this, one day my disciplined mind will hopefully becomes tranquil and be able to behold and merge my contented existence with the Self (Atman. It is then that I go beyond my lower self existence to live the existence of the Truth of the Atman. I will then hopefully see
Supreme (Sattvika) happiness certainly filling my pure, calm mind bereft of any passion (Rajo Guna) and I become one with Brahma. Can I practice this Sankhyayoga or Dhyanayoga that enables the mind look at all with an equal eye, sees me present in all beings and all beings present in me? Once my mind get to attain that, all my previous existences vanishes and the only existence that becomes permanent and everlasting is the oneness with everything and all things in the Universe and beyond. Having established a sentiment of oneness with all beings, I may still be engaged in all forms of activities without any bondage or attachment.

Sacrifice through different Yoga Paths: Gita & God 43

2011-01-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

In Gita's Chapters 5 & 6, Krishna shows the equivalence of all sacrifices under various paths of Yoga.

All paths aspire to reach the same Goal: become the knower of Knowledge, Truth and God Almighty and merge with that Knowledge, Truth and the God. The one who has mastered his senses, is exclusively devoted to spiritual practices attains Knowledge (wisdom) with complete faith in the Ultimate Truth that one is pursuing to know and realize, gains that knowledge and attains the supreme peace.

On the way to this Realization, the person sacrifices all differential relationships (equanimity), become detached from all actions and their consequences, removes all doubts arising from ignorance to fill the heart and establishes oneself in Karmayoga. Sannyasa (Sankhayoga/ Gyanjoga's pusuit of Knowledge) and Karmayoga (discipline of action) both lead to salvation (supreme bliss), though beginning with 'Karmayoga' is relatively easy as compared with starting with 'Sankhyayoga'.

Ultimately, the Yogis following these different paths will know not to hate anyone, desires anything from anyone, and will have risen above all dualities (pairs of opposites. The one who is well established in either path, gets the fruit of both (God realization). In real terms, Sankhyayoga and Karmayoga are one and the same, entailing the same fundamental sacrifices and yielding the same benefit. Sankhyayoga is difficult to practice without Karmayoga. The sage adept in Karmayoga, quickly attains to the Gyan/ Knowledge of the Absolute Truth. One whose mind is freed from all bondages/ attachment of ego, sensual pleasures, desires, distinction between good and bad or favorable and unfavorable, has achieved all these by controlling his/ her body, subdued his/ her senses and by perceiving and treating his/ her own Self in the Selves of all beings.

The Sankhyayogi ultimately comes to realize the truth that all of his/ her actions/ activities like seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, walking, sleeping, breathing, speaking, answering the calls of nature, grasping, opening and closing the eyes, are really not his/ her activities and disassociates himself/ herself from the movement and attachment of senses among /to the sense objects'.

Similarly, the Bhaktiyogi offer all actions to God, performs actions abandoning all attachment while he Karmayogis, having shaken off attachment, perform actions with senses, mind, intellect and body simply for the sake of self-purification that allows Knowledge to reveal the Truth to himself/ herself.

All these Yogis following different paths come to realize and behave consistent with the Truth that neither the sense of doership nor the nature of actions does the Lord determine for the world, nor does He link actions with their fruits : to the All-pervading Lord there is no virtue or sin committed by anyone: all beings act deluded by ignorance anyone; as knowledge is enveloped by ignorance and illusion that obscures the True knowledge/ wisdom. With their mind and intellect completely absorbed in God, the realized Yogi remain constantly established in identity with and become one with God. To all such realized Yogis, a learned and humble Brahman, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a pariah (lowly, out caste) and also God are all the same. The realized souls of a Gyan Yogi, a Bhaki Yogi and a Karma Yogi are filled with the same understanding and none of them rejoices on obtaining what the senses would regard as pleasant or feel perturbed on meeting with the events or beings the senses may regard as unpleasant. They realize early that the pleasures that are born of contact with sense objects, are simultaneously and the only sources of pain, and therefore detach themselves from thoughts and activities that senses would be naturally inclined to pursue. They find happiness and bliss from whatever happens and goes on because they come to realize that all events that happen and all that what goes on is nothing but part of God even though God is unaffected by them.

He who discharges his duties without desiring its fruit, is both a Sannyaasi (Sankhya / Gyan yogi) and a Karmayogi. He is not a Sannyaasi (renounce), who has merely renounced the sacred fire and is not a Karma yogi, who has merely stopped all actions: none becomes a Yogi without renouncing thought of the world (i.e. without giving up subtle worldly desires).

The contemplative Yogi seeks perfection in desire-less Karmayoga (Samtaa or equanimity) and performs the duty without selfish motive. The Bhakti-Yogi or the Karma-Yogi derives the same Knowledge through sacrificing all desires and finally sees God in every thing, every phenomenon and every one.

When the Yogi succeeds in becoming free from attachment to any thing and any one whether the objects of senses or for the actions (Karma) and has completely renounced all subtle desires, he / she has conquered his/her (lower) self by the (higher) self: he has replaced the enemy implicit in the lower self by the friend resident in the higher self. Being in perfect serenity in the midst of pairs of opposites, such as cold and heat, favorable and unfavorable events, joy and sorrow, and honor and dishonor, the Yogi remains in constant communion with God, treating alike all- the well-wishers, friends, foes, neutral persons, mediators, the hateful, the relatives, saints and sinners. That is the essence of Sacrifice in Yoga.

Sacrifices for Effective Meditation: Gita & God 42

2011-01-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

Meditation by its very nature, as anyone can observe, involves sacrifices. Sacrifice means here withdrawal from every thought other than the thought about God Almighty and suspension of all actions that is consistent with God as the doer of everything. So, in Chapter 4, what does Krishna advise us to sacrifice for effective Yogic meditation? He recommends sacrificing attachment to: Ego and sense of doership, Desire, All objects of sensual pleasure, and Free functioning of the senses.

Yogi in meditation and through meditation 'frees all undertakings from "Sankalpa" (mental resolve) and desire,fully controls mind (inner faculties) and body, renounces all forms of hoarding even while performing actions for the maintenance of the body, remains completely devoid of attachment, establishes the mind in the knowledge of Self and works for the sake of sacrifice alone. Some Yogis offer hearing and all other senses as sacrifice into the fire of restraint; while others offer sound and other objects of senses into the fire of the senses. Still other Yogis offer sacrifice with the functions of their senses and those of the life-breath (vital energy), into the fire of Yoga of self-restraint, (Samadhiroop-yoga), kindled by knowledge. Many such forms of sacrifices (yajna) have been described in detail in the Vedas. Know them all to be born of actions and knowing these by performing these sacrifices, one will be liberated from the bondage of action."

This is extraordinarily difficult and seems impossible to do.
But says Krishna that He himself is always in this State of meditation. Though He is unborn, imperishable and Supreme Lord of all beings, He has to incarnate Himself through His Meditation on divine potency, keeping His Nature (Prakriti) under control: whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an upsurge in unrighteousness, He manifest Himself (in human or other form to restore Balance. In other words, Man being nothing but a manifestation of God can emulate Him and Meditate on Him, sacrificing all other things from mental or sensual recognition to remain the balanced state of peace and bliss.

Simple Truth About Meditation: Gita & God 41

2011-01-23T04:53:00.000-08:00

Meditation is so normal and common in human life that one does not need a Gita to elaborate for understanding. It is only incidental that ancient Indians had observed this so minutely as a Truth some 4000 plus years ago. We know that when we are fully engrossed in a particular thought (thinking about the beloved or solving a mathematical problem or drawing a sketch or composing a poem or cooking a particular dish, we do not get to know what is happening elsewhere in the surrounding environment and never get to know how long we have been focused on a single thought and involuntarily skipped meals, drinks, smoke, nature's call, other appointments and responsibilities. That is the State of Absolute Concentration that Meditation seeks to be in. In Chapter 6 of Gita, Krishna says:

1. Be seated in a proper posture (asana) in a clean, unpolluted and level place, neither too high nor too low [covered by Kusa-grass, a deer skin and a cloth, one over the other : not to be taken literally as kusa- grass or deer-skin are not commonly available now as 4000 years ago].
2. Concentrate the mind, controlling the thinking faculty (Chitta) and the senses.
3. To firmly hold body, head and neck straight and steady and fix the gaze at the tip of the nose and not to look at any other point or direction.
4. To shut out all external objects from mind and senses, and to fix the mind on the point between the eyebrows. having
5. To regulate breathig evenly with the Prana (outgoing) and the Apana (incoming) breaths flowing through the nostrils
6. To mediate now only on the concept of God Almighty as the Supreme Goal of life.
7. Constantly and continuously meditate in this way, the Yogi of disciplined mind attains the everlasting peace and Supreme Bliss,and finally reaches the State of Nirvana or Salvation in the midst of God.
8. To facilitate progress in meditation be moderate in food intake, do not eat too much or too little, does not sleep too much or too little, do not act under impulse and do not get into much recreation.
10. To facilitate progress in effective meditation, the one needs to free oneself from all desires including those for sense enjoyment and pleasure. The goal of meditation or DhyanaYoga with a steady and resolute determination in mind is disconnection from the union with all worldly pains and pleasures.

Can I be one such?: Gita & God 40

2010-11-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

They read Gita. They discuss Gita and they quote from Gita. Many try to practice Gita in life. For me the point is Can I practice Gita and test Gita? My hypotheses are: (a) One can practice Gita every moment of life through practice and (b)One gets what Gita promises, Salvation or permanent and unceasing happiness if one succeeds in pracising Gita. But how do I test these hypothses and prove to myself if the hypotheses are Tur of False? The most appealing method is by just citing an example that I have experienced. How do I obtain such an example? The best example that I can consider is to experiement with myself.

1. Can I go on doing whatever I happen to do without desiring any benefit / fruit from whatever I do? Can I be in complete renouciation and yet be in all kinds of action that I undertake or happen to undertake?
2. Can I make my mind totally unperturbed and perfectly serene in the midst of all kinds of and pairs of commonly regarded opposites, such as cold and heat,
favorable and unfavorable, joy and sorrow, honor and dishonor, plearure and pain, success and failure? Rather, can I lose all sense of good or bad, favourable and unfavourable or such other distinctions and comparisons and percieve all happenings as equally value-free?
3. Can I cease to have any attachment, either for the objects of senses or for the actions and lose all sense of gross or subtle desires?
4. Can I perceive every one and every thing as the expression of the Same - all sourced in the One even as I go on contemplating and performing actions that I happen to perform without any desire whatsoever for fulfilling any selfish or selfless objective or goal?
5. Can I do all the above even forgetting and renouncing the objective of hypotheses testing that I had initially set myself on the experiment?

So far I have not been able to successfully do the experiment. But I have tested that it is possible, though that would mean that the phenomenon others describing me as mad or funny or escapist or irresonsible or fatalist or heartless or selfish or stupid or incompetent to become a humaan being would cause in me any repercusions. But that is only so far as hypothesis (a) is concerned and I can continue with my experiement so that it becomes the way of life for me. What about (b)? Unless experiment (a) is complete and I remain continously in that State that gives the answer to all the five questions as YES, I cannot conclude if I had reached the State of Salvation, though once I reach that State that is supposed to bring me Salvation, I know, I would have lost any sense of the meaning of the world/ concept of Salvation. The only thing that I can perceive now that if I were to have no desire, no attachment, no anger, no distiction among things and events as being of more or less positive or negative value and no agitation in the mind for failure or success and pleasure and pain, I shall be free from all these bondages and yet I shall be in actions that get performed by me without any direction or control by my ego, intellect, mind and senses. There would be nothing that rules my behaviour and actions now will be ruling me any longer or even if they continue to rule, I shall not be attached to or subservient to those rulers.
My experiement therefore can only be an exploration. I can only say I started off practising Gita and then I do not know what happened to my experiment.

Viswaroop Darshan - Vision Beyond Eyes: Gita & God 39

2010-06-09T05:15:00.000-07:00

In Gita, Arjun had wished to see the True form of God as expounded by Lord Shree Krishna. The Lord gave Arjun the power to envision the True form of God for a temporary period. And, Arjun did behold the True Form ofGod. This clearly seems to be an unnatural event: something mystical, magical.

But is that so? Not really. It was simply a natural phenomenon. What would have been unnatural was Arjun being able to see God's True form with his eyes. Human eyes have limitation: they cannot see 360 degrees at the same time. They cannot see things at far distance. With the help of modern cameras, the human eyes can see photos/ images taken and transmitted by sattletites and unmanned ships traversing in the distant space. Three-dimension instruments can make the pictures closer to the reality. Yet, with all these, the human eyes cannot see all that is in the entire Universe through all times all at the same time.

The human mind, however, is capable of seeing things that the eyes cannot behold: that is a separate, special kind of vision that powers human beings to do things that would seem impossible till such things are actually performed by a human being for the first time.
Not every human mind is capable of drawing the diagrams of the n-dimensional space or understand them within the limitation of two dimensions. But talented and trained astronomers can envision and understand them. Arjun needed a similar but far superior capability of the mind to see through the True form of God even if partially. Lord Krishna helped Arjun to develop this faculty/ capabilty for a glimpse of what the Lord referred to as the True Universal form of God.
With the help of such a mental vision, Arjun could see a glimpse of the entire Universe on a single mental screen.

What vision did Arjun have? He just could see what was going on in the Universe over time. He saw
the Universe as simultaneously containing the following and more:
1. Innumerable known ad unknown faces of human beings that existed in the past and were present at that time or in infinite time , and their their eyes,
2. Numerous physical bodies like the stars, planets ans suns in the space,
3. Uncountable arrays of powerful objects that looked like weaponry,
4. Fire, air, brilliant lights, water of infinitely larger or greater dimensions than he had seen with his human eyes.
5. All kinds of various powers and forces that human beings had named as various gods and goddesses,demons and the like.

And, he saw all these or more in contiously and limitlessly expanding mode and space. The entire sceme that he had a vision of was so expansive and widespread that it did not have a beginning or centre or an end. He was unable to tolerate the glow of thousands of burning suns that were simultaneously appearing in his vision. He saw everything that he saw to be in a state of helplessness and bondage of an enveloping, limitless container.

This is a broad and brief description of Viswaroop darshan elaborated in Chapter 11, slokas 7 through 49 in Gita (for ready reference see Chaper 11 at http://senland.blogspot.com/).

This was nothing but simply some knowledge about the entire Creation or the Universe that modern science has established as Truth through application of mind and scientific methods of exploration through centuries' efforts in search of Knowledge. This is the Knowledge that Arjun gathered through what has been referred to as Viswaroop Darshan. The entire Creation was thus possible to be envisioned as the Creator or God. The access to this simple knowledge is even now possible only for the learned and educated.

There is nothing so magical about Viswaroop Darshan. It is only a simple natural phenomenon that trained human minds are capable of envisioning through simple logic. That the entire Creation is the Creator God is such a simple Truth after all!

Rationale of Seeking God: Gita & God 38

2010-03-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

Irrespective of whether God exists or not and what form does God takes, God-seeking programs are self-serving programs in most human beings. Some people hate to believe in doing things that have no scientific basis. Some people love to do things that make them feel better. Some play cricket because they feel better: some peope just love cricketrs playig cricket because they feel better during that time. Some people go on top of mountain peaks at great pains to see the Sun set or rise because they feel better although they know the phenomenon is the result of the earth's revoultion.

Some persos listen to music to feel better. Some people just sing to themselves to feel better. Some compose poetry and feel better. Some people indulge in day dreaming to feel better. Desiring God is a similar activty. Most people desire God because they feel better when they do so. God-seeking programs in human toys are internally consistent: the program makes a human being to feel better and helps the program to run efficiently than otherwise. People pray and worship God to feel better; they discuss about God because they feel better by doing so. The more a God-seeking program human toy is under stress and strain, the more it gets relief by desiring God. They do not orry whether God exists or not: they just believe in God and dvelop faith and devotion on what thay have not found proof of existence.

God seeking may seem to be a kind of addiction or blind faith supersition. It is just similar to people believng in the power of the national army to defeat the army of the eemy natin's army. It is hust like the blind faith that revolution led by the Communists will soon end the oppression of the poor by the rich. It is just like the supersitions that the Government is powerful enough to eradicate economic recesion, unemployment and inflation. It is just like the small chld's belief that its father is the most powerful in the World. It is just like the scientists' dream that one day human beings can destroy and recreate the Universe.

Irrespective what notion a human toy has about God, the desire to be with or without God - however superstitous or scientific - is an integral elment of the software progrm that runs the human toys. By praying to God, some human toys get peace of mind. By praying to God, some people get confidence in themselves. By singing prayers, some peole enjoy both peace and happiness. Concentrating on God helps some to forget all worries and problems. Some people come out of fear by desiring God to protect them. Some love god to enjoy the plasure of loving one who does not reject love or want some gift of love. It is so simple to Trust God because one knows that God will reveal your secrets to others. When one feels bad because one has done something one would not have liked to do, one finds relief in seeking pardon of God. Seeking God helps one to forget failure in discharging responsibilities assumed by one. It is so simple to derive benefits out of God-seeking. Human toys software therefore often has this God-seeking element to enable other parts of the software to remain active. And, because of its prevalence, God-seeking it appears to be the most popular concept in human beings. If God really existed and asked for rating, God would have recived overwhelmingly dominating rating. Just try taking a few repeated large sample surveys asking people to rate, on an unanynomous basis, God and many other popular things in the world including sex, nation, soccer, any government on a 10-point scale. God's popularity can be measured empirically.
It may look surprising that a concept over which there is no agreement, something whose existence has not yet been scientifically established is so popular. But, it would not remain a surprise if this God-seeking program is the most widely found element in human software.

Most people seek God because God-seeking guna is the most common genetic inheritance. Yet, getting God seems to be the rarest of events among human being. To realize God all the time as an infinite, ceaseless source of all things in creation, as something inherent in each infinitsimal part of the creation, and as both both contained in and container of creation is perhaphs beyond the sensual and mental capability of human toys. The probabilty of this part of the human toy software getting activated appears to be as close to close zero as possible. Gita says that this realization is the ultimate objective worthy seeking. The method is Yoga, something almost impossible to practice with perfection.

All god-seeking is desirable but the best is when that ends in becoming unceasing, infinte, ego-less desire-free, action-less, unperturbed existentence of equanimity.

Why Desire God?: Gita & God 37

2010-03-08T01:30:00.000-08:00

Man believes in/ wants/ does something or the otherdepending on what the properties he has genetically inherited make him belive, make him want/ desire and forces him to do. Ultimately Man does not do anything beyond what the God-sent message implanted in him(through His creative and transformation process) enables and directs him to believe, think and do. Each being is a toy manufactured and operated by a self-suffiecient Guna-filled software. Man has no independent status: a toy is the slave of the properties and gunas that makes the toy. Only some toys have software that makes them desire God. Desiring God is not an independent decision of a toy but the result of genetically inherited guns software responding to the external impulses activating the software.

The question is what does God want by creating toys such as Man or other things?
God's Creation evolve and behave in the variety of ways and since He is desire-free, ego-free and attachment-free, He can have no want. He just witnesses, by being everywhere and in every thing, the drama that the illusive properties of desire, want, ego and attachment and etc, enact in the process of infinite existence and transformation of His Creation.

It is for the same reason of differential guna properties inherited and the external impulses, one Man wants to know what Man really wants, while another Man does not see any purpose of trying to know that. The first man may perhaps come to know one day the answer, the second man may also come to understand the answer without the urge to know: the chances of any Man knowing the entire thing however is very low - just about zero.
Still, the software and the external impuses, forces some people to desire God, some others to desire knowing God and still some others not worry about God while a few to preaqach that since God does not exist, there is no need to try knowing or desring God. Different toys do different things.
Let us assume that God does not exist and hence the toys were not made by God but the result of some chance factors which are unknown as yet or unknowable (so far no one and no scientist has been able to claim full knowledge of who created these so-called toys that compose the entire Creation). Some toys therefore can just call that that unknown factors or the unknowable factors as nothing but a single God. It is just a term for the ultimate source of or cause of all that is in the Creation. So, simple an idea: God is the yet Unknown or the Unknowable ultimate cause/ source of everything that science is trying to find out without success so far.

Thus, if the Unknown or the Unknowable exists, God exists. If something exists, it is possible that some toys may desire to know the Unknown or the Unknowable. The scientist toys as a group are programmed to do that ceaselessly and the method they follow is the method of science. But there are some other toys which are programmed to believe that the scientific methods may not succeed in knowing the ultimate Unknown or the Unkowable (since no scientists can provide a scientific guarantee to that effect, even though Science has discovered many Truths that were not known earlier and some celebrated scientist had admitted about a century ago that he knew very little of the what all has to be known). So, some "non-science" toys try to know the Truth/ Unkowable by alternative methods like faith or meditation and the like. But to know or desire something these toys needed some definition of what they are to desire or like to know. Different God-seeking program toys have different definitions.

All who desire God to start with generally have ego, desire and functioning senses. That's common to those who do not desire God. The desire for God is often a subsidiary desire. First, the desire may be to avoid fear of adverse things to happen: by desiring God and praying the fear goes. Ruling out adverse situations is the primary desire, getting over that fear and desire to get God's help is the subsidiary desire. Second, some people desire to see beutiful and amazing things. The subsidary desire is to pray and thank God who creates such beautiful and amazing things in the Universe and in life so that He gives or continues the boon of satisfying the desire to enjoy beatiful and amazing things. Third, some people has the primary desire to acquire some powers from the Almighty infintely powerful God: the subsidiary desire is to get in touch through some subsidiary desire to get in touch with God like prayer and good deeds so that God gives the power to do great things and achieve success. Fourthly, there are some persons who desire to have peace and bliss that they think only God can give: the subsidiary desire is to try to get into God's fold by prayer, austerity and good deed. Fifth, some persons just want to know God and desire to merge with God for no other reason. Many people have more than one of these desires, depending on the software of ego-guna-sense combination they inherit and the external environment they happen to face at different points of time.

The 'non-science" toys are programmed to desire God/ the Ultimate Unknown: from a scientist' point of view this may appear unscientific and meaningles. But these toys exist in reality among our midst: they include rich and poor toys, educated and uneducated toys, men and women, children and parents, scientists, engineers, medical doctors, politicians,and so on. God in Gita says such 'God desiring programmed toys' of various types exist and this is empirically verifiable hypothesis. Gita says all such toys have programs that are desirable but the best or the rare programs are those seek God as the Single and the Ultimate aim. This also is an empirically viable hypotesis that can be tested. And, the rarest realizes that aim of realization of God. But what is the utility of such god-seeking programs inserted in the human toys?

Desirelees Vegetable Life: Gita and God 36

2010-03-05T22:05:00.000-08:00

Someone pointed out: without desire or ambition one becomes a vegetable and do not remain a human being. If one classifies human beings as those creatures which have desires, then the desireless creature is not a human being. Everyone would have to agree with him, given his definition. But does that mean that desireless creatures are vegetables? No, because if vegetables are desireless then, so are the rocky mountains fish. So a desireless entity maybe a fish also. We seldom think logically but think that we are great at logic.
Does vegetable mean useless or worthless? Vegetables are useful to human beings. If Krishna who spoke Gita to Arjun was desireless, he was a vegetable and yet useful to Arjun, a human being with desire.

Are not desires common to all beings. The desires work independently through the Gunas in the body cells, DNAs, RNAs, etc. Animals show desires. Vegetables also have desires to grow operating through the working of their cells when live
and deire to get rotten sometime or when cut out from plants for human and animal food intake. Human beings with desires and ambitions are therefore some from of animals and vegetables.

What may distinguishes a human from animal or vegetble is that the human has also cells inside that can work against desire. The human being often does not act against one kind of desire - like to enjoy sex or food or comfort and allow the desire to know the Creaor, the Creation and the creative proces. Those who have such strong desires to know may become scientists, and, when they give up all sensual desires but the only desire that remains is to know the Creator, they become
superhuman beings. And, when such superhuman beings realize the god, they cease to have any more desire. They do everything without beng connected to desire. They become one with the Creator and God. Vegetables do not
become one with the God, nor do animals.

Try being vegetable: a human would not become an attractive vegetable. By giving up desires and ambitions, a human being will become more attractive to other human beings and will enjoy greater peace and many other things (that other human beings desire and may or may not get fulfilled) without desiring them.

The oint is not whether a person without desire is a vegetable or animal. The point is why to pursue a goal of becoming desireless? Onle very small percentage of population try to become desireless for the rest of their lives. Most rate is a person who has given up all desires. Let me see one and find out if such a person is more like vegetables or something better than a human being. I do not think that I will ever get such a opportunity to be near or in the company of a desireless person.

Gita is a science. It defines a learned and wise man as one who strive to be always in the path of Yoga to realize the Self or God. Gita defines Salvation as the state of a human being who is ego-less,desire-less and merged in equanility and therefore totally unaffected by whatever goes on his body or the external environment.

How to achieve that State? Should achieving that State desirable? Can everyone achieve that State? These are the questions Gita seeks scientific answers to. But these issues need to be exlplored in detail.

Seeking God- A Selfish Desire?: Gita & God 35

2010-03-05T21:27:00.000-08:00

Gita prescribes giving up ego and Desires and recoomends pursuit of Salvation or the Bliss of Liberation. But isn't pusuit of Salvation or Liberation or God a Selfish Desire? Some brilliant minds wonder, struck by the words we use and their different connotations.

Liberation/ Salvation/ Moksha/
Merging with God are all selfish, even if believers of Gita may
object to the use of the term desire and selfish pursuit with these great objectives of life. Words have different connotations and different persons do not like all these conotations.
That Salvation is a desire and a selfish desire does not
in any way create problem for me. All desires are desires and
all desires are looking forward to self satisfaction from the fulfillment of desire. But there is a great difference. The path to liberation and the attainment
of liberastion is of a different class/ category than all other desires/ objectives of
human beings. When one is on the path of liberation, any other desire is a constraint. All other desires are for sensual pleasures. Striving for
liberation calls for giving up all sensual desires. All other desires when fulfilled satisfies ego. When liberation takes place ego vanishes. The path to liberation is to shed ego and submit to God Almighty.

Desire for Salvation requires giving up all other desires. Those who have one or more sensual desires may also have desire for getting God's power to
some extent atleast in order to be able to satisfy some other sensual desires. All other desires are driven by ego: desire foir salvation requires
driving out ego. When one is trying to drive out ego, he is being anti-Selfish.
The desire for Salvation is calling one to give up self-interest or self-satisfaction through enjoyment of sensual pleasure through actions driven by ego and the gunas/ properties of the body, mind and ego. Even when someone is worshipping God, or giving alms to the
poor or helping the weak or tryinng to be perfect in his work or praying for protection / comfort, he may be doing this to satisfy his ego and enjoy the sensual pride of being a great
man or a pious man or a famous man or a man accumulating Punnya or wealth. But this
is not the desire for Salvation or liberation or achieving God. Only when someone is worshipping God, or giving alms to the poor or helping the weak or tryinng to be perfect in his work only and exclusively for the sake of trying to concentrate on the thought of God, as actions to live a life of equanimity,
as step to give up all desires, is he treading the path to fulfill the desire for Salvation.
It is clear and simple to understand this essential difference between the ego-driven, sensual desire- killing objective of Salvation and all sense- gratifying, ego-bolstering objectives.

It does not really matter whether I call the objective of Salvation (in the sense that it has been defined in Gita) as a selfish pursuit of desire. Words can confuse. If I happen to know the difference, I am fortunate. Gita says those who travel the path of Salvation is rare: those who attain salvation is even much more rare. Rarity does not signify common selfish desire as we usually understand.

Alloting Time for God: Gita & God 34

2010-03-05T09:56:00.001-08:00

Minds bring in new questions and new ways of looking at God. One common question is: ‘How can I develop intense longing for God or the Self? I want to become totally restless for getting God?’ Once this question is explored, one could come to a conclusion: continue to explore the question, continue to search for God or stop thinking about longing for God.

One is not seeking to attain the state of intense longing for God or restlessness in search of God. One is seeking God. If the objective and goal is only God, why try seeking restlessness. Restlessness is not the objective - getting God is the objective.

If I find myself restless for many other things, I would not be able to concentrate thoughts continuously on God. Without the help of God one cannot reach either God or avoid restlessness for other things. I can only pray to God continuously for helping me to remove all other thoughts from my mind and concentrate my mind on God. I can do whatever I do but simultaneously and continuously thinking that God is making me do all these things. I can continuously explore what is God is all about even as I do other things. I can fill my mind and ego with only the desire to get God, irrespective of whether it is feasible or not.

One way to reach the state of intense longing for God is to follow the paths of those who had experienced such state and pray to God for His grace. Without His grace, I cannot develop intense longing for Him. I heard stories of what Mirabai did or Shree Chaitanya Mahaprbhu did and about so many others great Sadhaks. If I so wish I may follow their path and experiment as a scientist does to explore what happens as one tries to and, if successful, able to submit all of one's moments exclusively to Him and not use any moment thinking of anything else other than God. Maybe I will reach that stage of intense longing for God. Mabe not.

The past and current life has been expended swimming in the deep waters of Maya and sensual desire fulfillment. Maybe in future, I may feel that I am gasping for breath swimming without any destination to reach. Maybe then only I may start seeking God with progressively greater intensity so as to be able to get out of the water and achieve liberation from this bondage. Maybe I will continue to be in the delusion of life of sensual pleasure and pain with God as a spare time recreation. I do not know the future for certainty.

But I know that I will cherish the idea of being with God for moments together if He exists and allows me that chance. That is the gain so far.

Right to Experience Yoga Path - Salvation Not Assured: Gita & God 33

2010-03-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

Before I realize God's, all of a sudden sadhna ends abrupty just before death. Like Maharaj Bharat, I remember a Deer that I killed, I lose all the benefit of my sadhana and get born as a Deer. What is the use of all sadhna activities if I am going to have a miserable result for not being careful enough? Who guarantees my salvation through Sadhna or Yoga.Gita seems to say that the thoughts at the time just before death affect the nature of future birth. If I think of God at that time, I get liberated. If I happen to think of evil and sensual desire, I have to struggle again in the next birth to get salvation. This may continue birth after birth. Since there is no guarantee that I would get liberated, why should I try again and again in vain? This is a valid and legitimate question that arises in the mind? I should answer to this question.
First, I recognize that no one can guarantee fulfillment of desire even if the desire happens to be one of attaining salvation or merging with God. God says in Gita that I do not exist except in delusion. God says that Self / Atman never dies and never born. He says Self is always in the state of realization in the sense of being in God Himself. Then, why should He say that I will have problem if I happen to think of something else than God? God in Gita is obviously not a child or an ignorant person. He cannot say what I interpret as having said. The only meaning of what he has said about thoughts at the time just before death could be that he is saying that a person following and practicing Yoga can slip very easily from the path of Yoga. And that could happen even just before death. This highlights the great difficulty in remaining steady on the path of Yoga. The objective of Yoga is to remain on the path till the last moment that one can be in Yoga, i.e., the moment one leaves his breath and then dies. This is the only interpretation that is consistent with the essence of Gita;s lessons. The God in Gita could not been illogical person to say inconsistent things.

Human population or the life form has been growing all the time. There is birth of a new life form every moment. Each of the new born has God contained in that life in the body, mind, ego and the Self. It does not mean that some specific body, or specific mid/ intellect/ sense/ ego or Self has to be born again. It only refers to the continous cycle of creation, maintenance, destruction and transformation. The purpose of Yoga is to experience in the live body the complete unison of the ego, intellect, mind, thoughts, actions and senses with the Self (that is always in Realized State). When that experience of unison is in its complete state, the ego vanishes, the mind becomes still and thought-less, desires disappear and senses work without desire. It is such a state that there is no experience of pleasure or pain and no experience of action or death.

Maybe my interpretation as described above is wrong. But still I have to question the question. If I am so interested in salvation with intensity increasing over time, why should I be afraid of slipping from the path of Yoga any time at all? Yes, there is great probability of deviating from the path of Yoga due to influence of the Maya influenced Gunas. But that is exactly what I am fighting to overcome and win over. I do not go to War just thinking that I may get defeated. God has told me that I have the right only to action/ work/ performance but not the consequences of such action/ performance. My only desire is Salvation and nothing else. My only work for that is to perform Yoga and be in Yoga. If I am in Yoga continuously, even the desire for salvation will vanish and I am in bliss. I want to experience that. State. When I am in that state I have no further desire and I remain there ad infinitum. Where is the question of being in vain?

Finally, assuming that I get defeated by the Gunas and they make me fall out of the path of Yoga, what do I lose? I have already experienced the quality of living on the path of Yoga. That should encourage me to come back to the path of Yoga to fight again with the Gunas influence with greater resolve. Failures are the pillars of success.

No one can guarantee salvation. Even if one is not successful in realizing God, the progress one makes towards that goal makes the person achieve a different life. He/ She may be satisfied with this life-time achievement or he/ she may not.
If he/she is satisfied, it does not matter whether or where he/she is born in the next birth. Even for believers in rebirth, the next birth is a different try/ attempt one has to make to realize God. It is said that the Purva Samskriti (the inheritance of the Stavuic gunas that one developed in the previous birth) could help him / her to continue the progress to the realization of God. Of course, much will determine what he actually happens to do in the next birth. Whether this is true or not does not matter. If in this birth, a person has been able to attain a fair degree of equanimity, he/ she would not be at all upset by the possibility of his/ her next birth being as deer or pig or mosquito or tiger or poor beggar in a poor country: for he/she would have realized that every being in this Creation is the same and one should be indifferent to the type of next birth.
If one is not satisfied with his/ her progress towards the path of realization of the Self/ God, he could be still be happy with the progress that he/she has made in this life and would look forward to the next birth to continue to the progress towards the ultimate goal.
Those who are interested in Bhog and wants just to keep themselves fit through practicing Yogic methods of sadhana can at best achieve that goal. The goal of self-realization cannot be achieved through partial devotion to that goal while pursuing material goals in life. There could be such Sadhaks who want to develop some mystical / magical powers through Sadhana. They may achieve only that.
The possibility of any thought other than God arising in the mind of a Sadhak arises only if one is still not focused on the single goal of realization of the Self and God. Even when peopole get into accidents, they pray to God before they die. The sadhakas are likely to think of God all the time even while they are eating, discussing, bathing, reading newspaper: so they are unlikely to get into trouble of unwanted rebirth because at the time of death they were sleeping or discussing politics or property. Because at the back of their mind, the thought of God is expected to remain. For example if at the time of death, a person was reading about a criminal's life or the the beauty of a deer, the sadhak is only thinking of these as the Creation of God. If he/she is thinking about investment in property, he is thinking that God has been guiding him/ her to take a decision. If he is thinking of eating fish, he is thinking of God instructing him to eat fish. Thus, he has lost his ego to God. The thought of God remains all through. Why should he be worried about what his/ her next life could be.

If a Sadhak is serious in continuing along the path to Salvation, he shall at least be prepared to continue his/ her efforts in the next birth. That resolve is always in the back of his/ her mind. He/ she does not have to worry about what his next birth would be if he happens to think of a jackal or a thief or a murder or a rape incident. Even if he/ she happen to be angry at the moment of death, a Sadhak is aware that this is God's play. He/ she has completely submitted to God.

Old Age is Yet the Golden Age:Gita & God 32

2010-03-03T12:53:00.000-08:00

How old was Krishna and Arjun when the later gave the former a lesson on Yoag just before the Kurukshetra War? That would be any one’s guess. Probably Krishna and Arjun were of the same age group. Krishna treated Yudhistira as elder. When the Krukshetra war took place, Krishna was already in Dwarka, after having spent the childhood and adolosent period in Vrindavan. He must have been around 18 when he killed Kangsha. Then, he married and spent time in Dwarka as a potential leader of the Oligarchic Yadav Kingdom. Then he attended the Sawambar of Druapudi. Arjun won Draupadi but Krishna did not contest. So at that time Arjun and Krishna might have been between 19-22. Arjun spent lot of time in exile – 14 years. The Krukshetra war started after that. Krishna’s son fought bravely in the War. He must have benn around 15-16 years’ old. So, at the time of War Krishna and Arjun must have been in the age group 35-40. Not after too long a time after the War, Yudhisthir and his brothers went for, in a sense, real vanaprastha. So, Arjun and Krishna could have been close to 50 at the time of war.

Why am I concerned about their age at the time they were discussing Yoga? They were not children or in the prime of their youth. They have lived through much of their Gruastha. So, they were old. Old age is golden period for Yoga.

It happens that many start seriously thinking of Salvation, Self. Atman, God and Yoga when they become old. They might have been praying and worshipping God religiously with a view to living more peaceful, comfortable lives and face little problem with God’s blessings. But only few thought of death, after death, and salvation. But they worry about the constraints in the form of PHYSICAL AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCIES at that stage of life.

Certainly, with age and retirement from income earning activity, it may be a great problem to live life in Wanaprastha and Sanyas stage, unless, of course, one and in most cases, both husband and wife together, prepare for that life. The only preparation that is needed is complete submission to God. Old age is the most ideal and convenient stage for all this. Once a person or a married couple submits to God, by definition, they no longer rely on their limbs or income / wealth, they no longer fear ill health, disease, weakened limbs, senses, organs and approaching death: they no longer need to long for food and drink or clothes or even bed or shelter. In such a state, worries need not arise. On the other hand, persons who reach such a stage find food, drink, clothing, shelter, help, medicines, assistance, etc just flow to them even from quarters they had never anticipated earlier. God seems to take care of those who submit all worries to God and just become intensely keen to merge with God.

True, such persons are rare. What do the others do? Old age problems are bound to come and would have to be faced. There is no way out. One can only try to forget about these problems or bear with these problems by continuous praying to God for relief, protection and liberation, and by giving up ego, anger, opinion, expectations, desire and attachment to personal habits and tendencies of the past. Tolerance and endurance is the only valuable attribute of old age - the greater the tolerance, the better the life is. People do all these to various degrees and make their living better to that extent comfortable. Those who continue to try to manipulating others, emotionally or otherwise, to live more comfortably, almost always fail and suffer all the more.

There was an illiterate old man whom I knew would not go to a doctor even if he had fever for a few days. He would say that he had to bear the discomfort and pain as these are the result of his prior karma or fate. In old age, there is no way to do fresh Karma to avoid suffering resulting from past Karma.
I cannot do anything if I get lung or other cancer now having been a smoker for over 40 years. I cannot get back my perfect eye sight whatever I may do. My digestation ability powered by the micro-biological cells and atomic sub-particles within me, can only worsen: I need to adjust my food habits. I have to enjoy now a different life than when I were younger: the only thing that I can do is to prepare myself to tolerate or endure the old age physical and mental pain and suffering. I can only endure what I cannot cure. I can, if I so wish, simultaneously pray to God to forgive me, protect me and liberate me. I can look at diseases, hunger, suffering and death as God Himself. I can also stop thinking bad about others and stop criticizing others. If I do these, I hope God will take care of me through some means. Even if God does not, my suffering would reduce because of my higher degree of tolerance/ endurance and zero degree of disappointment with my situation.

Probably, it would have been easier for me to live Wanaprastha and Sanyas, had I realized all this when I was in Brahmacharyya and Gruhastha. That was the period when I could have started building up my capabilities to deal with Wanaprashtha and Sanyas, that is the period from when I should have learnt to give up anger, disappointment, fear, expectation, desire, greed and tendency of manipulating others: I should have learnt to pray to God with all of my heart rather than ritually, learnt to avoid smoking, spending away money and give up habits that would be difficult to give up later. I did not do much then. Fine, but it is better late than never. I try now and learn to live with weak / malfunctioning aids like eyes to see, hand and feet to do, ears to hear, mouth and teeth to eat, memory to recall, mind to think, hearts to pump, etc. I will do now whatever I can do to keep these going as long as they can to help me. Maybe one day God, if He exists and is capable, will finally take care of me. There are many people who suffer from birth until death at old age: can I be one fortunate enough to minimize that suffering at this old age. I do not know. But I can try. Sorry, I cannot preach any solution that I have not experienced as satisfactory.

If Arjun and Krishna had lives that ended pathetically after a phase of old age, great loss of relatives and friends, as perceived by common standards of evaluation, why should my life at this end-phase be any better? Rather, this is the time, if God allows my mind to work logically and scientifically and my heart becomes bereft of anger, ill-will and fear, my ego will progressively decimate to allow the Realized Self to takeover from me.

Transforming "I": Gita & God 31

2010-03-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

Why is the resistance to accept the Truth that all that is here and there and everywhere is nothing but God (Vasudeva Sarvam). Exalted souls show symptoms of this realization,seemingly having taken refuge in / merged in God by loosing their existence (I-ness). Why can’t I?

God is everywhere and in everything and everything is in God (Basudeb Sarbam in
Bengali and Vasudeva Sarvam in Sanskrut) is the Truth so easy to
understand and prove. I may have no scientific or intellectual resistance to
accepting this Truth. (I accept the Truth that Cigarette smoking is injurious to health, but I resist any thought or contemplated action to quit smoking. Similarly, I fail to live every moment of my life in accordance with this Truth. Gita says only rare is a person showing symptoms of living this Truth.

The resistance comes from the illusion/ delusion (Maya) that gives birth to ego (‘I’ as distinct from others) and desires and actions to fulfill desires.
Yoga (Karma, Gyan and Bhakti) is the only method to overcome this illusion, says Gita.

But it is so difficult to practice Yoga. Even as I write this, my mind subconsciously says that I am writing, I do not exist in the phenomena of thinking, desiring, acting, enjoying and suffering that is produced by certain operating gunas of the cells in what I call as my body and mind and the gunas (properties) of the cells surrounding my body.

I do not exist and hence I do not think or act and hence I am not writing this out. This composition is destined to take place and has nothing to do
with my belief that I exist or do not exist. I agree. But it is the habit from Childhood that I believe that something in this body named Basudeb Sen thinks, decides and does things
independently and in response to some impulses from the external environment.

This habit is the resistance, this habit is the difficulty. This moment I decide that I have no existence, the next moment I think that I am doing
something. Reason: to give up the illusion of my existence, I am under the illusion that I exist at least to give up the thought I exist. This is the crux of the issue.

An alternative is to imagine “I’ being merged in God Almighty (I am that) and witness the fool in the body called Basudeb Sen thinking that it is doing something and therefore it exists. Even then the thought of ‘I’ still persists as the particular one merged in God. So long as thoughts and actions for anything including giving up ego or desire or anger and/ or in pursuit of being merged with God is identified as
emanating from a particular identified body or force, ‘I’ persists. It is probable that the moment there is no
identified source/ cause/ owner of thoughts or actions; ‘I’ vanishes because all thoughts and actions lose their identitities as well. When boiled rice gets crushed under the teeth, no grain of rice gets distinguished. All identities and distinctions get lost. When water flows along the river or floods submerge lands, individual hydrogen molecules are not distinguishable. Individual atoms or cells do not have names: they are there everywhere but
no distinction, no identity. Electric power lights all homes but no distinction which kWh unit powers which home or which bulb. Neutrinos pass through everything in this Universe but no particular identified neutrino is distinguishable.All this is Vasudeva Sarvam.
I can get lost if all other things also lose their identities. That is only a state or phenomenon: the state of Self Realization - it is not my self realization.
So, I cannot achieve Self-realization by definition. The question of why can’t I practice Vasudeva Sarvam or live a life of equanimity does not arise. It is not what Gita prescribes for me. Gita just says that Yoga may lead to the emergence of such a state of equanimity as a phenomenon associated with the behavior of a living body. I cannot realize the Self: the Self is always in a realized State. A rare body may give expression to or exhibit the symtoms of such Self Realized State where "I' does not exist.

Why should I try to get rid of ‘I’ if the attempt is more or less guaranteed to fail: maybe the quality of 'I' changes in the process and that may be a gain to 'I'. But that is a separate issue.

Doer's Imaginary Existence: Gita & God 30

2010-03-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

Gita says that since no body is a real doer to think that ‘I am/ you are or he doing’ is delusion or illusion. The mind is not the doer, the intellect is not the doer, the Self is not the doer. Man is not the doer. Then, who is the doer? Is is all mystery?
It is a perfectly valid question. And, one should if possible and to the extent one is capable must explore this mystery.
To start with, best is to forget what Gita says. Just observe a phenomenon and ask who does something to create this phenomenon. Sun rises in the East. Does the Sun rise? Really speaking the Sun does not rise. We assume that the Sun, Moon, Clouds, Ocean Water, Trees do not have mind or intellect or Self. Sun burns and gives light, the Earth moves round the Sun, Moon reflects Sunlight, Clouds burst and transforms into rain, Ocean water churns and evaporates to form clouds. Burning takes place, so do earth’s orbiting, rains’ falling and water’s evaporating. These things do happen. But we only say that certain things do certain things as doer. But do they really do anything? They do not do anything. It is the property/ guna/ nature of these things that they seem to be associated with certain events and phenomena. These things happen but no body does: none is the doer of these things.

The Truth is that there does not have to be doer to explain the observed action of doing. The concept of doer is a convenient imaginary product of mind and intellect. In reality doer does not exist and does not need to exist for any phenomenon and event to take place. The human race and the Universe would continue the same way it has been doing even if we assume that there is no Doer. The concept of “Doer” is consistent with all that happens but is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to explain whatever happens. The cocept of the existence of a ‘Doer’ therefore is a superstition and matter of faith.
To explain all that happens in the Creation/ Universe, the assumptions that are needed are various properties or gunas that lead certain objects including life forms like human beings to behave in certain manner under certain conditions. A car runs but stops if there is no fuel. Car does not do anything. The phenomenon of car running happens given the properties of the car and certain properties of other objects in the environment of the car. A man eats at certain times if food is available. Man eating is a phenomenon that results from the properties / gunas/ nature of the man and other objects surrounding the object man. Similarly, it is not necessary to really believe that a man acts or does: the phenomenon of man's behaviour occurs. There is no doer.
The concept of doer is an illusion. We do not need a door for the Universe, Creation and the processes that continue in the Creation. Thus, the basic question as to who is the doer just does not arise. The answer to that question is simply that no body does: doer does not exist. Things happen without any doer. Since this is the Truth, Gita says remove the ego of doing.

But I am a scientific man. I need more than the above logic to prove the non-existence of ’Doer’. I should be able to empirically test that ‘Doer’ does not exist. So, better I collect and use empirical evidence on the existence of ‘Doer’. How? If I can show that a particular human does indeed behave differently under the same internal and external conditions, I would have some reason to suspect that the a ‘doer’ may exist. If my suspect ‘doer’ does the same thing every time under the same set of internal and external conditions, I would tend to doubt the existence of ’doer’: for, this man acts exactly as the car does when running: same road, same traffic, same driver, same passenger, same fuel, same traffic, same temperature, leads to same behavior and performance by the same car. Man becomes just like another car that has no ‘Doer’. ( I am not confused with the driver being a ‘doer’ because the driver is an external condition).
Unfortunately, seldom does the same person remain in the same external and internal condition over time. The internal and external conditions change. So, the behavior also changes. Even if I observe a child trying to learn walking, it learns from the first few failures and then succeeds to balance and walk. The behavior changes over time due to change in internal conditions: increased learning and experience. What is the alternative way to test for the existence of ‘Doer’ in Man? A somewhat less rigorous but scientific approach would be to do control experiments over many people. This is the method the psychologists follow. I select two samples of people. One group I treat with some information and training, keeping the other group as it is. Then I put the groups into an experiment. If the behavior of the controlled group and the other group differs statistically significantly, it would tend to cause worry to me as training and information becomes the cause of behavior rather than the existence of ‘Doer’. On the other hand, if I have chemical/ biological/ cellular statistics on the individuals and make my control groups formed on the basis of similarity of characteristics based on such diagonistic/ laboratory clinical test data and then observe that groups behave differently under given problems to solve/ external conditions to respond to, I would suspect that my suspect ‘doer’s in different persons are nothing but chemicals/ cells, proteins, acids and DNA/ RNA, etc. Then, the concept of ‘Doer’ loses relevance. I do not any more need the concept of ’Doer’ to explain variations in behavior of people: I can directly explain that the cause of behavioral differences are the properties of the biological and atomic composition of different persons. The ‘Doer’ vanishes because it does not anymore serve my scientific inquiry.

Gita is based on such empirical methodology of science: the’ Doer’ essentially is an imaginary artifact that is nothing but a bonded slave of the Gunas. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that emerges is that no one is a doer. If I remain steady and settled in that Truth, I will identify myself with an identity of non-doer. As non-doer, all are the same - equanimity follows automatically. That non-doer cannot logically have any desire and therefore any action to satisfy any desire. My body, mind and intellect may still be part of the phenomenon of satisfying desire through certain behavior. Just like the Sun burns but the Sun is not the doer of burning. The phenomenon of burning of a type is what we call burning: that is the guna of Sun. I do not do anything nor does he or she : none is a doer. The gunas play them out.

One that realizes this Truth every moment is the Self: But the Self also does not do - it is not a doer of realization of Truth. The Truth realized state is named Self or Atman or Paramatman or God.
Self is not like a grand old man who cannot work / do and therefore is thinking of God all the time. Self is not a man or woman or animal or a physical object: it is the state or realized truth as against the state of slavery of Gunas. Both exists simultaneously - the first never changes and continues indefinitely while the later changes virtually every moment and transforms and at some stage just disappears. The first is not observable by the senses, the second is an observable phenomenon for the senses.

God's Desire: Gita & God 29

2010-02-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

The creation they say is the desire of God. Whatever happens in the Creation is God's desire. Naturally people would want to know why is that the God desires in the way He does? Why does he desire Sun to burn, Moon to reflect light, Universe to expand, have a Big Bang, one to become a murderer and another saint, Sunami and earth quakes to occur, Indian to remain poor and large in numbers, Americans to remain too rich for long, Chinese to be sghort, and so on and so forth. Why did he not desire differently?
These questions are valid. By pursuing them, Man realizes that the questions are irrelevant.

Desire is observed to be a characteristic/ property of beings. Suna and moon and stars do not have desires. Languages do not have desires. Probably trees do not have desires. Desires are actually seen to be arising with the existence of ego, intellect, mind and senses.
But Gita's God by definition, though all pervasive and contains everything in the Creation, itself has no ego, no mind, no intellect, no emotion, no senses. God is not like another human being of super capabilty. God is the source and container of everything but has no desire. Desire affects those which are afflicted by desire. God is not afflicted or affected or impacted by anything. Thus there is no way that God can have desire.

God by definition is the Supreme who is complete by definition: there is no scope for Him to desire or wish. Desire or
wish arises from incomopleteness. If there is completeness, there is no scope for a wish or desire to arise for seeking completeness. The Supreme has every thing in Him and never feels inadequate. Without any inadequacy, the Supreme has
no need to wish or desire. The Supreme who is complete has everything: He
contains everything in the Creation and is in existence in each and everything
in the Creation. All wishes and desires of everything/ everyone are contained in
Him and He exists in all wishes and desires possible in all creatures. So the
Supreme does not need any desire or wish of His own. That His Creation functions
the way it has been doing and will continue, fully satisfies Him. With nothing
remaining to be satisfied, the Supreme has no scope for any wish or desire of
His own. Any thing / any one even a little less than Supreme and less than Complete can only have a wish or desire.

To put it differently, all that happens in this creation is nothing but His wish and desire getting fulfilled! That is how people see God's desire in everything that happens. It is just like saying that the Sun desires to light the Earth.

Soul Searching: Gita & God 28

2010-02-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Soul (often referred to as Atman) is a term in Upanishads and Gita that helps generate confusion. The greater the confusion the better - no one knows. Everyone has the right to discover the meaning of soul. Some in search of the nature of soul ask questions and seek answers to them. That is the scientific way. For example:

What happens to a soul when one commits suicide ?

Soul is immortal. Soul does not die. Death is meant for the body and its organs. Death can come due to age, disease, accident, murder, legal punishment, or suicide. Irrespective of how death occurs, soul is unaffected. Suicide is the result of a disease or accident resulting from the interaction of properties/ gunas of objects and forces in the creation. Soul is not concerned with such things.

Attempt to suicide need not always result in death. Even if it does, the soul is not involved. It is only an illusion to think of soul suferring: suffering is possible for those things that have appropriate gunas to experience suffering. Soul does not have such property or guna and hence cannot experience sufferring. Sufferring is experiened by one or more of this: body, mind, intellect and ego.

Then who gets rebirth? Body or mind or intellect or ego? That question has no meaning and irrelevant. Every thing transforms over time. Nothing remains the same. There is nothing that needs to take birth or rebirth. Day and night takes rebirth roughly every 12 hours? That is silly, we know. These are phenomena resulting from interaction of certain forces in the creation. So is life and any particular life form. Just as 25th March night does not get reborn after 365 or 366 orbits of the Earth around the Sun, nothing gets reborn. Soul does not.
But any life that is born have soul/ atman. The soul being indestructible, infinite and indivisible, it is inconsistent with the defnition of soul to identify as soul of this person or that person.

Gita's soul is Atman or paramatman or God. It is not the term that is used to praise John because he is/ was a great soul. It has nothing to do with the term soulmate.
Terms like Soul, Atman, Pramatman, Self and God may have different connotations and meaning depending on usage. But for Gita all these are one and the same. It is waste of time to differentiate them for any analytical or spiritual purposes.

Gita's theory of God is consistent if one accepts these terms as Synonyms or exact equivalents.

Prove God: Gita and God 27

2010-02-28T05:24:00.000-08:00

Man asks questions and seeks answers to them. They discover and gather useful knowledge only through this process. They discover Truth in this way and later on discover that the Truth they discovered was either not the Truth or not the whole Truth. They are in continuous pusuit of getting to the Ultimate whole Truth. They discover and find proof of the existence of Gita's God in the same way.
The following is one possible way how Gita's God was discovered by Man:
1. Where can God be seen?
You cannot see God with your eyes. God being infinite, you cannot photograph him within the frame of any camera either. You could get sense of some picture of the God when you can take a picture of the entire Universe: however you would still not get the full picture of God as there exists things like knowledge, feelings, concepts that have no images to be captured in a film..
2. Who has seen Him?
No one has seen HIM. He is not an object to see.
3. How is He? Can we describe Him?
He is incomprehensible, unknowable, infinite, ceaseless, unperturbed, always working, desire-less, ego-free, anger-free, unattached, not limited by physical dimensions and beyond gender classification (use of He is equally good as use of She or It when referring to God)
4. If I don't know how eaxctly God is, how do I accept HIM?
I accepted my Mother even before I knew that she was my Mother and what exactly was she. I do this. So, what is the problem with accepting God.
I accept the impact of recession on me but I have neither seen nor known recession clearly.As a human being, I do not see many things and concepts, I do not comprehend them. But still I accept them if I find that useful to my life. If concept of God is useful to me, I can accept it if so choose. If not I need not accept. It does not matter to the existence of God.
5. Has the term / concept of God been coined by to put moral chains to so
that people practice goodness?
The concept of God arose much before the concept of morality evolved. Therefore, God is unperturbed by goodness or evil. Rather, He is the creator/ source of all good and evil. By definition therefore God has caused man to coin the term/ concept of God. It was no man's independent decision to coin the term.
6. What is the basis to presume that God exists?
The basis of presuming God's existence is the assumption that anything that exists must have a source. Tracing back chronologically in time, one tries to reach the ultimate source of anything and all things in the Creation. But the efforts to go back is an infinite and end-less process. If one assumes that one has reached the end of the process, one has still to seek the source of that end-point. So, one assumes the existence of the Ultimate source even if that remains unidentified. It follows that this ultimate source has always been there. This may be named God. God therefore is in existence since Man assumes that there exists an Ultimate source / cause of the entire Creation. Big Bang is not the source as there must have been a source of the Big Bang.
7. Why then it is said that God exists everywhere and in every thing? Then God must be seen every where and in every thing.

In Search of Rebirth: Gita & God 26

2009-12-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

The best way to search for Rebirth is to ask who would be re-born. Atman or Self being indistinguishable part of the never-born, never-dead Paramtman or God will reamian there always and can go through rebirth. The Self or Atman or Paramtman being the only source of everyting is inhererent in everything and everything including the dead body is contained in the Self or Atman. So, the body when dead is still in Atman even as it transforms into ashes or into other elements in the grave. Though the body may not have the gunas / properties to rea,lise the Self or Atman. The body transforms after death and cannot have rebirth the way I wish to see a rebirth.
It is in a live body that the Self may be realized. But for that the mind must become still, the mind and the intellect must meditate on the Self and the ego must go. Then the Self appears and a person may merge with the Self or Atman or God. But who is this person who merges with Atman. He is not the body. He is not the ego or the intellect. He is not the mind because mind becomes still when the Self is realized. Then who is this person who merges with Self and detaches from all gunas, intellect and ego? Yes, I am That (Self). But who is that I that merges in That Self? Is it that the ego unable to use the intellect and mind and therefore the senses becomes unable to give expression to the Gunas? And, therefore ego is that which ultimately dies to merge in the Self? Before that happens, Ego is what I am ! Or, there is a third person who is the I. This I is influenced / captured by guna-combination-personality-illusion (GCPI) and when I overcome the GCPI through Yoga that I realize the Self?
It does not matter however who I am so long as I do not realise the Self or Atman.
But I or the Ego or the GCPI are something that this Universe contains and hence must exist in Atman or God. Therefore , the Self or Atman or God must exist in I and the Ego or the intellect or the mind or the GCPI. But these being only the derivative of God or Atman or the Original source must be susciptble to change just as the body changes or transforms. We know how the body transforms after death. But what happens to I or Ego or Mind or Intellect after body's death? Do they also die and transform or they do not die and yet transform? If they transform, they must be always there and cannot ever die or be born again.

If therefore nothing we can identify other than the Self/ Atman/ God / the Orginal indestructible, immutable source of everything, then everything has to be under transformation. If they transform, they are never really dead - only a particular form may disappear and yield place to another form. That exactly what even the body does while it has life and when it does not have life. If we say the body is dead because there is no life inside it, then every other thing which does not have life in it must be dead.
When does the ego lose the life or does it have a life at all or is it always alive. The Gita and the Upanishads do not consider these questions are relevant. Because, these are part of Apara Vidya and not Para Vidya . Para Vidya is the knowledge by which you know the essence of all other knowledge of science and arts. The question that Para Vidya seeks to answer is where does everything come from? The answer is that it comes from Atman or Paramtman or the Self, the God Almighty. How do we prove or know that. The method to know is Yoga and the ultimate state of Yoga is when the mind has become still, the ego is lost, all desires have gone. It is then when the knower knows the answer by merging with that what is to be known, the original source. The knower, the known and the knowledge bcome the same. The knower has lost any other identity at that stage; he sees every things in himself and him in everything else. This is a rare of state to happen within a ive human body and rare is a human body that experiences this state. It is the state of bliss that no one has described anywhere for another person to understand or feel. So, the probability of such a state arising in any human body like that of mine is in the infinitsimal distance of zero, even if the method of Yoga is taken recourse to.
Whether there is rebirth of anything or not is immaterial to this scientific theory of God.

Preparing for Rebirth: Gita & God 25

2009-12-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

With the current birth having been with Hindu parentage, the threat of almost certain re-birth has been a thought nurtured from very childhood, questioned during the college and university education days of romance with scientific methods, almost forgotten during working career life before it started looking up at the face when one is much closer to death. Whether you have reasons to worry about re-birth or not, you like exploring the idea. At many places in the Gita, Lord Krishna talks about re-birth, though one could surmise that the relevant verses re-birth were grafted into Gita by believers other than the original composers of the verses in the Gita.

How far is the concept of Re-birth consistent with the concept of God in Gita? To explore this, one needs to ask the question: who is going to have a re-birth? My existing physical body will not have rebirth: this seems almost certain.Unless of course there is some way to use my body for a thorough repair and surgical reconfiguration. But that would not be a real re-birth: it would be re-conditioned body. So, what will bet rebirth?. My memories of the past? But the relevant brain cells will go dead when my body yields to deathb or even before that. So my memory cannot have rebirth. Even assuming that memory some how lives after my death and gets into a new born babies brain when it is born and after my death, the rebirth of my memory will not be accessible to the new born baby as it grows with accumulating new memories not consistent with the ones that my body had accumulated earlier. I could have written a detailed dairy of events in my life and got it published and a reader could get thatin to his memory but that would not have made a rebirth of I>

Will my ego or intellect that drove my body and mind so far could have rebirth? I have to identify my rebirth with a new born human child or a babd mosquiti or bird or animal as my rebirth. It will have developed its own ego and intellect: how would at the sametime operate with my ego and intellexct. Even if I assume that my ego and intellect can after my death hang in the air for a while before entering into a new born baby, how can this be my rebirth?

My ego and my intellect were fully developed ones: how will it operate as myself in a new born baby? Why does these have to enter the new born baby and not a fully matured adult are some others I have to find answers to.
Can my soul of self or atman be subject to getting reborn after I lose my existing body? Yes, that would seem to be a poosibility because atman has no ego in itself and no personality so it would have no difficulty in getting into another body. But Atman iis unborn and indivisible as is Paratman which is never born and never dead. How can therefore Atman be ever born or dead or therefore have a rebirth. My Atman, I learn, is unattached and covered by the illusion of Maya, which I have to overcome through Yoga to reach this Atman of mine that is not attached to anything. When I reach my Atman, I do not any longer exist but mege in Atman that is indivisible part of Paramatman.

It is only an illusion that I think that I have a soul or Atman that is different from the Atmans of other beings: when I discover my own self or soul, I am supposed to realize that all souls are nothing but the same indivisible, indestructible, ever presesny, never-born, never died, and infinite Paramatman. Atman is thus a mere concept that helps us realize that God exists in all beings and non-beings in this Creation and all these beings exist only in God. That is how God = Creation = Creator.
Atman or Self therefore cannot have rebirth by definition.

Then who can have rebirth? I can have rebirth only as Maya or Illusion that pervades the body, mind, intellect and covers the Self or Atman of an individual being. Illusion is a common property of human beings and it is the combination of three Gunas of varying strengths that work in the environment of Illusion, the Maya. The Guna properties are what are either solely in the body cells or partly in these cells and partly in the mind- intellect and the ego. In a new born baby, the body is genetically/ biologically determined and hence my existing body after death can in no way impart the new baby's genetic code or cells (unless the baby is biologically related to me. But the guna properties that my mind, intellect and ego are enriched with may be hanging somewhere like invisible soundwaves after my bodily death and before being captured / absorbed by or getting attached to a new body. That is the only way something can have rebirth - a kind of continuity of a particular guna-combination personallity of illusion (GCPI) from one body to another. Whether or not there is any correspondence between particular new body genetically imparted with certain guna property combination attracts particular GCPI or not may be a matter of detail and not relevant here.

This GCPI is under continuous transformation while it uses a body and then gets into another body. By composition, each GCPI in each body will be different and under continuous development. Maybe at some stage, a particular GCPI under its continous path of transformation lose all the strength of Gunas and shed the illusion while being attached to a body: it is at that time the body's atman is realised in its true form and the Paramatman is realised even in a physical body.

GCPI drives my body, mind, ego, intellect: GCPI is my false identity. On the death of my body, my GCPI may become attached to another body for continuation of its transformation. But that is not my rebirth. I am always there as Atman to be realised in a body one day by demolishing the GCPI. I have no rebirth - I am always there to experience and witness and once in a while experience the realisation of my own nature while remaining attached to a body.

The GCPI is subject to some kind of rebirth but I am not. This GCPI trabnsformation possibility may be consistent with Gita. The rest of rebirth theory may be designed by some preachers of religions for the purpose of influencing the common people to do good deeds and get better rebirth than worse rebirth (Rebirth & Karma relationship theory.

Hypothetical Unified Existence: God & Gita 24

2009-12-06T11:41:00.001-08:00

Let us experiement in a Hypothetical living of Unified Existence of Gog. This living is by a particular agglomeration part X in the Creation. How would X be in perception and reality ?
He would find his entire body and mind as a small part of his existence in the same way he would find evrything else in the Creation as part of his existence. He would find Himself existing in and acting thruough everything: the differenmt human beings, all the non-human living creatures, the entire inanimate world - the breeze, the rain, the storm, the moon, the sun, the planets and stars, the limitless spece, the infinite time - past, present and future, and so on. By definition he would have all knowledge - all that ther was, is and will be to be known, He will simultaneously exist in everything, in every thoughts and actions and behaviour of evrything. He will find everyone in conversation and debate as his own converstion within himself. He would experience all this as one whole existence and would not have to desire anything, attach himself to anything that goes on happening: he will be just a mere witness to all that goes on and on. And, yet he will perceive as reality what X or Y or any Z does as his own action and behavior. He would then become completely one with the entire Creation and the Creator even if he acts in the form of X as a particular human being, as Krishana or Arjun - all at the same time. X would thus be different from normal, would show no fear, no disappointmenr and no anger. He will do anything that he would do without desire and ego. He would excel in whatever he is found to be doing. This is the concept of the person in unified existence.
This is what Lord Krishna has been characterised as and this is what Arjun sees of Krishna as Viswaroop Darshan. This is the Hypothetical Unified Existence. Such an existence is beyond any suffering or attachmenmt or obligation or performance and ever lasting, infinite and what we would call blissful. How did Krisna get into such unified existence. It is stochastically destiny outcome that a rare agglomeration form X would have the properties necessary to have that experience: it is only that rare outcome which we call Krishna by chance.
How would most others would have viewd the hopthetical person X. He would be perceived as one who excels in evry thing. He would by definition attract attention of others and others would be influenced by his thoughts and actions. He would be admired, praised, respected and followed by most others. That is the concept. Each person is different in external behavior because of the stochstically determined combination of Guna-doses facing stochastically determined external environment he / she fasces. X is just one such possibility which has the probability close to zero That is the concept.
Whether Krishna really existed in history or not is not the issue. The issue is the posibility of X, a human outcome with close to zer probabilty, that is identified with God/ Creator/ Creation. X is the concept of God that human mind can describe. That is why X is the incernation of God or God in living form. There are many other possibilities with low probabilities(though higher than the probability of X): these possibilities are X1, X2, X3, ... etc. forsome i and j, Xi = Xj but the equaivalence isnot true in general. These Xi and Xj s are different Avatars, Godly men like Buddha and Crist, saints like Ramkrishna, Chaityana and Mahavir or Nanak or Kabir, some great personalities like Mother Terressa, Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, and so on.
Each person is just a stochastica outcome. So are the the persons named earlier. Of these X (or Krishna) depicts the stochastic outcome that is the close to the concept of a person being in complete unified existence as the Crerator and with everything in the Creation - a concept developed in the Upanishads and illustrated in the Gita.
After being in search of God or Brahmah in sound, in light, in the air and in the space, the Upanishads described God as not 'coarse,fine, short, long, glowing, adhesive", as without 'measure, inside, outside,shadow, darkness, air, fear, stickiness,odor, taste, eye, ear, voice, wind, energy, breath, mouth, name' , as 'unaging, undying, immortal, stainless, not uncovered and not covered(Aranyaka III: 8:6- Yagyavalkya) that is the "origin, sustenance and dissolution of the Creation" and therefore the only sat (being), chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss). In Gita, thsi is illustrated by and thruough the character of Krishna: human being in complete unified existence.

Advaita Vedanta

The Rare Agglomeration In Unified Existence: God & Gita 23

2009-11-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

The rare being in complete union with the Ultimate source

The rare possibility is an agglomeration that has the properties, gunas and dharma to experience complete union with the source material. How would such a person behave. He would have no desire to satisfy, would never worry about what to do and what not to do, would be fearful of nothing, would not be ever tired, ever worried or ever in dilemas,would be unattached to any particular form of agglomeration of the source material,would be unmoved by any happening or incidence. He would see everything as equal and remain indifferent to any choice except that he would do only that what his gunas/ dharma forces him to do. He would have no anger or personal self-interest. He would be in complete knowledge of all arts ad sciences the human society has developed, and skillful in using knowledge.

Any example of such a rare being? Not one that I have come into contact with. But there a few instances in epics of the Hindus that closely resembles this particular agglomeration of the ultimate source material. One that readily comes to mind is Sri Krishna.

This character in the Hindu scriptures is painted as one without desire, with out fear, without ego and in complete equanimity. He showed tremedous affection and love and yet seemed unattached from everything and detached from worldly affairs. He was full of knowledge in various arts and sciences and extremely skilled in the application of knowledge. He had done nothing in his life that was driven by self-interest. He was beyond praise and yet merciful to others. He was never seen to abuse his powers and knowledge to meet his own self-interest as he had no such interest.

Only such a person can be in unision with the ultimate source material and live a complete unified existence. It was natural that the discourse in Gita came from his mouth.

How would such a person appear to others. It would be different to different people depending on the nature of agglomeration of the source material that each person would represent. The selfish and the greedy would look for his friendship on exclusive basis but would not get and hence would despise him. The weak and the poor would seek his help and get it. The people who would love him will develop intense love for him. The leaned will regard him as the most learned. The skilled would would like to regard him as the model. His personality would be so pleasing and attractive that most people would be his fan and would worship him as God. Yet he would live a life that is simple.

The people who were advanced on the path of various kinds of Yogas would regard him as the ideal and perfect Yogi. It is no surprise that Arjun who was his astute devotee and friend would see him in God's Viswaroop (all encompasing, entire creation). Arjun's Viswaroop Dharshan is not magical event: it is the visualisation of the concept of the ultimate source material generating various agglomerations and transformations through the infinite inner power and dynamics of the source material. The ultimate source material is ever-lasting, infinite, indestructible and present in each and every infinitsimal section thruoghout the Creation ( Universe). There is nothing in the Creation that is not the ultimate source material in various agglomeration and transformation state. So, it was easy for Arjun to see that in Krishna Himself since Krishna reprsented the rare agglomeration of source material that was transparent enough to reveal the true nature of the Universe. All that Arjun saw is that all forms - big and small, dark o and illuminated, beautiful and ugly gushing into Krishna's mouth: symbolic of the the uniqueness of the source material of everything in the Creation.

I may not live an unified existence. But I have to recognise that the Unified Existence is the basis of any concept of physical or meta-physical universe or Creation. A rare type of agglomeration of the ultimate source material as embodied in Krishna is nothing but the miniature representation of the infinite Universe of densely woven source material just like the Ocean of water.
So long as the concept of Unified Existence seems a possible outcome, I , as will others, long to experience that existence. I enjoy seeing the video-film of a past event or a current event in which I am filed: how enjoyable would be to see myself as the source material cutting across the veil of my separate individual existence with a proper or common noun.

Experiencing Or Living Unified Existence: Gita & God 22

2009-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

That I am unable to live an unified existence is only because of the properties/ gnas/ dharma imparted in the particular agglomeration of the ultimate source material that I represent. But some other shapes or forms of agglomeration that I may identify as X or Y may live a life of some sort of Unified existence with the source material at some time points and periods. Not all soils of the earth grow coconut trees but some do. Not all coal blocks have the same calorific value or ash content. Not all human beings can mother a child, but some do. Some human beings represent particular agglomerations of the original source material that have properties or gunas or dharma that may induce living of unified existence with the source material. They are therefore destined to live such lives. The saints get a chance to live such a life. Mother Terrassa represented an agglomeration of the source material that implied thoughts, feelings and behavior of love for the weak and the needy. Many agglomerations of source material turns out to live a saintly life: some had to become preachers of one religion or other. Ramkrishna Paramhansa was once such agglomeration of source material that lived a great part of life in union with the source material he termed as the Holy Mother Kali. His wife Sarada Devi did not mother a child but was a mother to many and lived a life of unified existence however partial. So did Swami Vibekananda and host of Hindu Sadhaks, Fakirs and clergy men and nums. Buddha and Jesus lived even higher degree of existence in union with the source material.
Their behavior was certainly different from the general folks. All these men and women represented certain types of agglomeration of the original source material that represented certain properties, gunas and dharmas that forced them to be in search for, to understand, to believe in and to behave in a manner conducive to experiencing unified existence in various degrees.

If these saints and holy men and women are possible agglomeratons of source material that were dstined towards searching and experiencing unified existence, then there is also the rare possibility of a particular agglomeration of the source material that forces the agglomeration to live in complete union with the source material continously from birth to death.
How would such an agglomeration of the ultimate source think, believe and behave?

Meaning of Living Unified Existence: Gita & God 21

2009-11-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Living Unified existence in thought, feeling and action

What would living an unified existence mean? Can I as an indivivual entity live as if I have no separate distinguishable entity. It does not seem possible at least in the literary sense. But there is one possibility. Living is in understanding, belief and behavior. First, can I understand and believe that I have really no separate existence as an individual just like a wheel fitted on an automobile does not have a separate existence of its own. I am just an integral part of the whole Universe (Creation) and is composed of the same original/ ultimate source from which everything including the parts that constitute me like the molecules or DNA/ RNA, or sub-atomic elements. This is easy to understand in two ways through meditation and scientific investgations. I need not be a scientist to understand the details but all sciences like physics, molecular biology and genetics are all the time in search of the ultimate source of everything: so far they have gone ahead in a never ending process of identifying infinitesimal things that make up the bigger and bigger size things. So, science is directed towards finding the ultimate source that makes up the DNAs or their constituents, the electrons and their source, the cells and their source. So, it is not difficult to believe that there exists an original and ultimate source that explains existence of everything. Simple meditation and logic convinces that there is an ultimate source. So, it is easy to believe that at the source level everything is same. So, I can live by believing that the sole source is what exists in me and everything else. I visualize that the entire Universe is nothing but that source material. So is my existence. At this level of thinking and belief, I live an unified existence as the source material transformed into a particular shape of aggregation of the source material. I have got the scientific knowledge that the ultimate source has to be one for everything else. Once I have proved that to myself, I start belieiving that as a matter of fact and faith: I develop an urge to connect with the source - I develop bhakti (devotion) towards the source material. At this belief and faith level, I therefore live in union with the source and hence entire Creation or the Universe that is nothing but the agglomeration of the source material. This is my knowledge and I live the knowledge of Unified existence that denies separation of any thing in the universe: all things are composed of the same source material. The drops of water in an Ocean lives an existence of the whole unified ocean and no two drops of water have any separte existence. I can live with this knowledge all my moments.

But knowledge, understanding, belirf and faith may put me in the path of Gyan (Knowledge) and Bhakti (Devotion) Yoga, but I also live doing things or acting other than thinking. How do I live the unified existence in my action and reaction. I have to be on the path of Karmya Yoga to realize the unified existence as well. How do I do that? I do that simply by applying the same knowledge and Bhakti: I know that the particular agglomeration of the original source material that I am composed of, will have properties or gunas and dharma and therefore will act, react and behave in a particular fashion. Depending on their relative locations in the ocean, some drops of water evaporates, while some form the waves and some remain calm and still. I therefore find that I do nothing that I decide but what my inherent properties/ gunas/ dharma make me do in the face of changing/ different agglomerations of the same source material, other than what I refer to as I. Thus the actions and reactions and behavior of me no longer remains my behavior: they become the outcomes of the interaction of various agglomerations of the same source material. I start living an existence that is mere witnessing of the play of the source material. I do what my duty is: rather all duties are actually performed without my having to decide and do: all that I seem to be doing just happens like evaporation of water in the Ocean or the waves near the beach. I am in Karma Yoga because I witness what is just happening. Again, I started living a working life of an unified existence with the entire universe seeing the play of actions and interactions of various things that have originated from the same, sole source material.
But I do not have the understanding, the belief and the faith that is complete; I have not yet lost my ego as a doer of things. So, I have not attained the state that is the ultimate goal of the Gyan Yogi, or the Bhakti Yogi or the Karma Yogi. So, I continue to live a a disintegrated existence.

In Search of Living Unified Existence: Gita & God 20

2009-11-18T01:33:00.000-08:00

Living One Whole Unified Existence

Gita and Upanishads suggest that God exists in each of us and we exist in God. God is the Creator and the entire Creation itself. But how do we live these concept in our individual existence?

I live an existence of isolation most of the time: I live what I percieve as my experience of living as an entity as contrasted with other entities. Most of the time:
(a) I live an existence separately from the existence of the parts that make my existence possible, and
(b) I also live an existence separately from the existence of those that I am part of.

How is the experience of (a)? It is what I have been doing since my birth as far as I remember. As a baby I learned to see myself as different from my limbs and parts of the body inside. I had no knowledhe about what was inside me. Much later I came to know that I breate air inside to supply oxygen to my heart and exhale some air that contains things elements that should go out to keep my body functioning smoothly. Over the time, my knowledge about myself improved further. I came to know my senses and my sensitivities, my hunger and thirst, my limbs and their uses, my names and surname, my body parts and mind, and my emotions and sentiments, my feelings and my moods, my discomfort in the body and the mind, my anxieties and tensions, my tastes and preferences, my idiosyncracies and attitudes, my talents and aptitudes, and my strenghts and weakneses.
While I have been living my existence with all these that I cam to know about as mine, I have thought that I lived separately from them. Momemts of my life have been largely filled with them but they seemed to be separate components of which I am made of but they still did not fully capture my existence as an unique entity. A little knowledge about anatomy, biology, physilogy, chemistry and physics reduced all these to atoms, molecules, cells, DNAs, RNAs and the like. I have never lived my existence as an entity in continous, conscious awareness of these infinitsimal entities.
Can I try to live an existence that is a conscious awareness of the cells and sub-atomic particles that are within me? Is it possible to live like that. How would living such an unified existence of my self, my components and their sub-components differ from the existence I have been living so far? Does this thought make sense? How do the molecules, atoms and their ingredients make this useless thought arise in me?
Who would help me in my quest to fid answers to these questions.

There are similar questions associated with (b). As a baby I was clinging to my mother as a part of her physical, emtional and intellectual existence as n entity. Later, I found my own identity separate from her. Later I came to know that I am a part of the family with parents, siblings and our descendnts, that I am a descendant of my forefathers, that I am a part of the locality or group - my neighborhood, my class, my school, my social an business groups, my city, my state and my nation. We fell for each others' heart and became an integrated unit through marriage. I would soon myself as a part of the humanity and could shape humanity. I would be part of all the living beings, of the environment and of the Nature and the entire Universe or the Creation. But I had so far never lived an unified existence of the bigger and bigger entities of which I were just a small part. Why could not I try living that way?
Can I live an unified existence as an entity much larger in scope than what I thought of myself as an entity? Is such an existence possible? Does that have any meaning? How would it differ from my current existential living? Why dies this thought arise in me? Why cannot I have help in my quest to find answers to my questions?

So, the hypothesis is that I try to live an unified existence of the entire Creation - both known and unknown, continously and consciously aware of all the sub-atmoic particles and sub-cellular entities, their dynamics, fission and fusion, and their agglomerations and aggregates in the form of various living beings and non-living entities from a piece of metal, a drop of water, a flick of light, a wave of sound and a tinge of blood to a human body, a glacier, a storm, the Sun, the galaxies and the vast space in the Universe.
The questions are: how, in what sense and with what implications?

Experiencing Unision with God: Gita & God 0019

2009-02-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

Comprehending God: BiswaRoop Darshan
At one stage in Gita, God appears in His Universal, Unified form. Arjun was dumb-struck and could not bear for this form long, requesting Krishna to get back to his human form.
What is this mystical event? How is this consistent with the Scientific Theory of God in Gita? Can we explore this myth?

Gita of One's Own: Gita and God 0018

2009-02-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

One's Own Gita
Many words used in Gita have the same or similar in meaning. But one can assume that
Gita is trying to reach us to the ultimate realization of the Truth of Oneness with the Ultimate indestructible infinite Cause of all in the Creation. If that is so, one needs to interpret Gita/s words and expressions in one’s own way consistent with the Ultimate Truth and the consistent with the path towards realization of the Truth. This may imple different interpretations and different paths. So long as people do not try to establish that their interpretations or paths are the correct or the best one’s, and instead concentrate on their own interpretations and paths, there is no difficulty as the destination or goal remains the same: Akshara or OUM or Oneness or InfinIte. Some may happen to
get distracted by the various similar words used. Some may in the process of trying to find out the correct interpretations get busy in differentiating definitions and the meanings of various words used in Gita in a societal context of over 3000-8000 years ago that may have no relevance to the societal context in the 21st century.
A simple alternative for an individual to choose his own words and meanings that he/ she thinks consistent and helpful to him/ her in understanding the ultimate truth of Infinite, indestructible Oneness of each and everything in the Creation. " Everything arises from and remains in the process of transformation in the medium of that Infinite, indestructible Oneness. Call and realize this as Param (the Ultimate), Aksharam
(the Oneness) and Brahman (the Indestructible Infinite Mind).”
Similarly, “ All individuals and anything else in
this Creation that one knows of and do not know, originates from and
transforms in the Adi (the unique, all comprehensive Ultimate Source), contain AdiBhootam (Origin/ Source) and reflect Adivaidaivatam (the ultimate source, the ultimate God).”
With such simple statements as one’s own Gita, an individual may just like to remain alert to these statements as many moments of life as one can and see his life alive to this Reality of Infinite, Indestructible Oneness with as many constituents of the Creation.

Life Reading Gita: Gita and God 0017

2009-02-28T03:59:00.000-08:00

Utility of Reading Gita Again and Again
The utility of reading any scripture varies from individual to individual. For some, it is an aid to thinking about God, for some others it is about memorizing, for some it is for preparing to give lectures and participate in debates and discussions, for some it is for trying to find what Gita says and probably means, for some it is to show off to others, for some it is an habit, and so on.
For the one more interested in knowing the Ultimate Truth or Knowledge expressed in Gita and in applying the lessons from Gita in day-to-day life, the sloka number or chapter number or the words used in Gita are immaterial. He may read Gita with a critical mind trying to find whether he believes in the following:
1. Anything in this Universe is the manifestation of the same indestructible, all-powerful, infinite unique element that always exited and exits.
2. Therefore, there is ultimately no difference among any pair of things, ideas, living being, and non-living being. All are the same.
3. There is no choice or freedom for any element or collection of elements, physical bodies, living beings, non-living beings to pursue any time path of transformation: whatever happens happen due to the laws/ principles/ properties of the ultimate unique element. Whatever any of us do or think or do not do or do not think are all determined by those properties/ laws / principles embedded in the ultimate unique element.
4. Therefore, all discussion in a community, the terrorist attack, the recession, the financial crisis, the global warming, everything that is happening is just a process over which no one can exert any deliberate control or influence irrespective of whatever emotions, desires, objectives we might think we are pursuing through independent choice / decision. The idea that any individual can change/ decide to do nothing is a myth and illusion: but that illusion itself drives all the activities of each element and all happenings in the universe.
5. When one realizes all the four above fully, he stops thinking about himself or 'I' since these do not exist beyond the fraction of a second.
6. So, it is rational that 'I' lose 'I' and get absorbed in the laws / principles / properties embedded in the Ultimate element. Because that is truly what all 'I' s are. And yet an individual find it difficult to lose one’s 'I'.
7. So, one cannot practice the steps to realization by one’s own volition. It is again the principles/ laws/ properties that determine what one practices. An individual merely happen to know that the individual’s practicing anything is the result of the operation of the ultimate principle through him or her.
8. A person who has no anger, no jealousy, no envy, no enmity and no ego is a person in practice of the ultimate realization.
9. An individual also happen to know, as a result of operation of the ultimate principle through me, that different persons are forced by the ultimate law / principle/ property of the ultimate element to practice love, bhakti, gyan or yoga of various kinds and in various measures of intensity. Those who happen to be transformed into best practioners of all love, bhakti, gyan or yoga of various kinds and in various measures of intensity really attain the ultimate knowledge that makes them lose "I” by the sheer operation of the laws/ principles/ properties of the ultimate unique element.
10. But an individual does not know, at least till one happens to reach the fully realized Truth state, why different persons happen to practice different types of things: he merely knows that all these are determined by the operation of the ultimate principle that is unknowable.
11. One happens to feel good by thinking again and again about 1 to 10 and progressively become continuously happy, without fear of anything to be lost and without being worried what is happening here or there.

The Gita is so cool and simple. And, yet the operation of the ultimate principle that is the unknowable omni-present God, forces people go round and round discussing Gita again and again. The same principle drives so many billions that would never know that there never know of the existence of Gita.

Gita Beyond Discussion: Gita and God 0016

2009-02-27T22:18:00.000-08:00

Utility of Discussion
The more we discuss the meaning of different words, the more we get into confusion. Actually, what Gita says is so simple that anyone can understand it if one thinks on his own. No amount of discussion and debates with words will ever make one necessarily understand Nature of God. All thoughts including the concept of God, all words in Gita or any other words, all physical bodies, mind, work, life, names ---all arise from, are contained in, are manifestation of and contains the SINGLE ORIGINAL SOURCE that we refer to variously as GOD or PARA or PARAATMAN or NATURE 0r CREATION or CREATOR. The different forms/identities that we see or recognize are all APARA or the various reflections of PARA the single original source. PARA is the REAL source that eludes us while all that we deal with in life are APARA and the great diversity of APARA keeps us tied to the illusion of you, I, they, mine, our, your, etc. We are all slaves of APARA nature that has been created by the mother source nature of PARA. There is nothing more to know or discuss. All that is manifestation and subject to transformation process and all of us experiencing life, exist / live in Apara. Yet being in Apara it is easy to see that there must exist some source Para, the source, cover, and container of all Apara. The process that moves an individual t from a sense of different identities (APARA) to single identity (PARA) has been named as Sadhana. Such Sadhana process has been observed to take place among some individuals with varying intensities and durations. This does not mean an individual decides to practice Sadhana: one just happens to be under the transformation process called Sadhana. Those who happens to be under the process of Sadhana for long are observed to live in the illusion of differences and diverse identities and yet at the same time constantly being aware of the single source from which everything arises and is contained in. But it is seen that some among those who get interested in discussing and debating over the various concepts and terms, happens to fall under the grip of the Sadhana process. So, discussions and debates may not be an indicator of an individual falling victim to Sadhana process at a later point of time. Again, some people have been observed to fall into Sadhana process without having to go through a process of debates and discussions over spiritual matters, terms and concepts. Utility of discussion and debates thus varies from persons to persons: for some discussions/ debates happen to prove to be the beginning of falling into the trap of Sadhana transformation process while for some others these happen to prove to be another addiction or entertainment.
[Ego = Differentiating one from all others in existence = Doing all with that one does as one identifies one as different from others = Apara = Maya = Illusion = Finite = Destiny= No Choice = Slavery to Diverse Identities = Duty whether desirable or not.
Consciousness= Conscience = Chaitanya = Bayragya = Rising above individual identities = Realization of Brahman = Para = Infinite = Indestructible = imperishable = all pervasive, all inclusive
Apara is what I do and think: Para is the source from which Apara arose and gave me separate identity recognition.
Apara is the concept of I, you, they differentiation that I have to live with while Para is the loss of differentiation and merging of all identities into the single source.
Para creates and contains all Apara: Apara distances from Para or sometimes approaches towards Para but never realizes that.
If Water is Para, ocean, seas, rivers, rains, clouds, ponds, urine, etc are all parts of Apara.]
Discussions and Debates are manifestations and subject to transformation process. Transformation processes may include discussions and debates. The process of discussions and debates have different consequences for different individuals inheriting different mixes of the three Gunas. One does not decide to discuss and debate or participate in the discussions/ debates. It just happens.

Change Amidst God: Gita and God 0015

2009-02-27T22:09:00.001-08:00

Change And Development
How does the concept of God consistent with change and development? God is indivisible, indestructible, infinite and yet unchanged, unaffected, unperturbed: but Manifestation of God changes forms through a transformation process that is driven by a Principle that is universal and unchanged. The nature may look like changing over the seasons and over millenniums, but the core source or principle that causes these changes remain unaltered. Gita explains everything in this Universe including change.
The Creation is not static: there is continuous transformation of each element/ body/ thought all the time - though all changes may not be perceptible all the time. Every moment some thing is changing or under process of change in the entire Universe and in each of us. So, change is the essence of Creation. Whether we try or not we are changing. Despite all this change we observe, the source of ultimate origin of all things in the universe remains the same and is unchangeable. That source is what we call GOD, Paramatma or Para. The changing Universe and all its constituents is Apara and is the manifestation of the infinite, imperishable, incomprehensible Para. If all changes and forms are the manifestation of God/ Para, there is nothing best or better or worse. Everything / everyone is the manifestation of the same God / Para.
To know this is easy. To accept this as part of life is difficult because of differences and changes are the essence of the manifestation of Para in the various forms of Apara. To realize the oneness among innumerable varieties of people and things is extremely difficult.
To be really one with everything is virtually impossible despite all Sadhanas. Although we may know that all persons are manifestation of God, we continue to think that someone is better than the others. That is the way the Apara works even if Apara arises from Para. Whether we like or not, some people will hate others while a few people will see and recognize God in everyone and everything.
Gita is all about life. The illusion of Maya keeps us attached to all changes and development in the external environment and our individual lives.
What Gita sayings amount to in this context is:
1. The change and development that we see around is not under our control and will happen irrespective of what we wish or desire.
2. There is no alternative but to accept all changes and developments instead of wasting time and energy about whether the change/ development is desirable or not (that Arjun had no option but to fight in the Kurukshetra War, if necessary with Lord Krishna playing the role of a guide to see Arjun through a suffering from depressed mental turbulence).
3. The only reason that may give comfort to one about what he is forced by circumstances to do, is the call of duty to play one's part as per own’s instinctive property (as a born/grown warrior, Arjun's instinctive dharma was to fight war as all others in the Kaurava side were doing).
4. One's duty is nothing but what one is compelled to do as per the great design of manifestation of God. One's response to change is ordained by the internal properties (dharma) and influence of internal properties ( the mixture of the the three Gunas - Satva, Rajas and Tamas).
5. Whether one is proud or confident or diffident or sad, one has no alternative but to do his duty.
6. While one's duties may have some ex-ante objectives/ goals and one's actions may have good/bad consequences, the duties have generally been observed to be better performed when they happen to be done without thinking about desired objective to be realized or the likely consequences.
7. The persons who happens do his duty with detachment from the desires to be fulfilled and consequences of one's own doing, have been found to contribute more effectively to the mission that the manifestation process always achieves.
8. Changes are things that are certain: realization of goals/ objectives/ desired consequences are only probabilities.
9. So, one feels better when one participates in the change / development with detachment and performs duties as per one's own properties - inherent or imparted by the environment.
10. Even God almighty has to participate in the change/ development (Sambhavami Yuge Yuge and cycle of excessive oppression and justice and equality are all but part of the very nature of Maya-dominated world).
11. Despite all the changes and developments that Maya forces us to observe and get temporary happiness or sadness), there is no change in the Fundamental Realty of absolutely No Change in the inner core of the Creation. All forms and differences that appear under the influence of separate ego/ identity is the influence of Maya. In the ultimate reality, all these are nothing but one - split into slices of different kinds/ forms and recomposed in various permutations and combinations to create the illusion of differences in identities.
12. Thus all changes – natural, environmental, physical. mental, material, spiritual and social etc. are all illusion: the reality is the continuous transformation of the same single constant that is infinite, indestructible and indivisible power – the concept of God in the Gita or the Upanisgads.
13. Participate one will, without any free choice, in the developments and changes in this great, continuous transformation process. For, all forms and identities are nothing but temporary, transient snapshots of the same single core.

God Created Science: Gita and God 0014

2009-02-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

Science Content in Gita
Many persons with educational background in physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences seek to find expressions and concepts in Gita that corresponds to or resembles concepts of modern sciences. This is a normal human tendency: if one has a strong faith in some sacred text as being the source of all scientific knowledge, one tends to believe that text must contain something that explains all that modern science has discovered.
Science has progressed much ahead in time from the days Gita was composed or the thoughts in Gita evolved over time in the minds of the Indian sages. There is no point in trying to identify scientific concepts in Gita now, Gita is based on a scientific approach to acquiring knowledge - the basic nature of scientific investigations has remained the same. Gita is based on as much scientific methods of investigations as is possible today: observation, imagination, conjecture, axioms, refutable hypothesis, deductions, inductions and empirical verification, though today we have much advanced instruments to make scientific experiments/ investigations.
If we are really interested in Gita as scientists let us try to find out what is that indivisible, invisible, indestructible and infinite container of the entire creation that simultaneously is contained in any infinitesimal part of the Creation. What is beyond neutrinos and invisible matter or invisible consciousness that fills each and every infinitesimal point in the Universe Space including each and all physical bodies? If we are serious, let us do modern statistical sample surveys to measure the three Gunas in different individuals and the variation of attributes of the Yogis and common people of different backgrounds. Let us calculate the probability of an individual becoming a Yogi of particular variety, or remain Yogi for n number of years without fall and probability of an individual to obtain salvation. Let us, if we happen to be so interested, try to do such empirical studies and see whether we can confirm Gita's findings, whether we can progress further ahead in spiritual knowledge than get stuck in interpreting, reinterpreting and praising Gita, and whether the essentials of Gita can be disproved or not.

Poor God: Gita and God 0013

2009-02-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Gita For the hungry and shelter-less
Can one struggling to find even a single meal during the day and without a roof to sleep under at night find Gita of any use? This is what bothers some intellectual brains. And, they may also perceive that Gita is for killing time for those who do not have to worry about food and shelter.
The question and the perception are very natural but are essentially meaningless. Gita in this World is relevant to (a) those who happens to seek the Ultimate Truth or (b) get pleasure in showing off that they are spiritual and (c) those who think Gita is useless. The nature of relevance varies among the groups (a), (b) and (c). As per Gita people differ in their attributes / behavior depending on differences in their mix of the three Gunas. Not all people are interested in political rights or social justice. That does not mean politics or social / economic equality and freedom. But that does not mean politics or social / economic issues do not exist or not relevant. Gita is as much relevant to the Creation as anything else in this World. E = mc^2 is part of and hence relevant to the Creation.
Living a spiritual life and ensuring meals and shelter are not mutually exclusive options. We have the empirical scientific evidence that many spiritual leaders of the past did not have to work/ find meals and shelter. We would not have got Buddha had Prince Siddarth been worried about food and shelter. Sri Ramakroshna concentrated on thinking about God and trying to establish relation with God: food and shelter came to him without any effort. Those who use Internet can be spiritual without having to worry for food and shelter. There are many who have assured food and shelter does not try to be spiritual. There are many in this world that do not worry about food and shelter but food and shelter come to them whether or not they are spiritual. Aged people often require very little food or very little shelter - many of them let God to take care of their needs and God indeed does so. So, there are various possibilities.
No one is forced to become spiritual: those who try to be spiritual try on their own irrespective of whether they have assured food or shelter. The test of spirituality lies in how far one has submitted to God to take care of the needs. One, who loves God and wants to reach Him through spiritual discussions, does not care whether he fails to live for want of food and shelter. When spiritual tendencies takes over, a person tend to forget about food and shelter. Many Sanyasis had joined Ramakrisna Mission or the Order of the Church not because they were assured of food and shelter. Those who are really spiritual do not need shelter or food yet food and shelter come to them without their effort to get food and shelter.

Superman God: Gita and God 0012

2009-02-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

Response to Critique of SuperMan

Some may or may not believe in God but they believe that Mankind has a purpose and Man can independently decide to change the World given Man’s intelligence. Man can bring in prosperity to all, can overcome to Nature’s forces and change social order for the good. Any concept of God therefore is either a rival to Manhood or a separation of powers between the God and Man. And, Gita’s concept of makes everything including Man as a servant/ machine driven by Maya induced desires and self-ego, and the three Gunas. The believers of SuperMan cannot accept Gita’s God that makes each man or woman as a toy created by a stochastic process of transformation / manifestation of God.
The obvious answer from Gita is that is natural: the believers of SuperMan reflect a particular set of combinations out of all possible infinite combinations or mixes of the three Gunas. The Sun gives light to the earth but Sun has no freedom to choose any option for its future other than it is destined to day: burn in simple language. But Sun can enjoy, if it had any mental ability, pride in its great power to illuminate. So, both Sun and Man’s son can bask in their own glory. We know both are but the chance outcome of God’s manifestation process. The lion is the ruler of the jungle and so Man is the ruler of its expanding reach from the Earth to the farthest point in the Universe space Man can send to / receive back signals to/ from, if not the farthest point Man can just imagine.
And, this view is what God as per the abstract concept or the theory of God in the Gita propounds. Gita considers it empirically valid that quite a dominatingly large proportion of human individuals are imparted (through the operation of the three Gunas and the Maya illusion associated with God’s manifestation process,) the property of strong will, self-ego, desire and capability to master, rule and change the Universe. So, those who believe in SuperMan need not worry that the concept of God is does not allow for the validity or utility or the meaningful purpose of the SuperMan: rather, the existence of the SuperMan is an integral part of the theory of God in Gita. Gita accepts the dominance of the SuperMan tendency in human beings because it was empirically true in ancient ages and even now. All SuperMan however need not have to have strong desire or ego or attachment. Gita also says that there could a few among the human individuals with the capability to and indeed in action to master, rule and change Man’s Kingdom who happens to show the characteristics of desire-free, ego-free and attachment free activity and thoughts. Some Yogis may transform the whole World or human civilizations by their desire-free, ego-free and attachment free actions. Some great scientists, technologists, social thinkers/ reformers and philosophers may really have shown the characteristics of a KarmaYogi or a GyanYogi.

God of Alternative Choices: Gita and God 0011

2009-02-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

Response to Critique of Believers in God

Those who believe in God, especially personal God, may not like the idea of the abstract concept God of Gita since the abstract God does not seem to be one, being unperturbed by any thing or any event and in a desire-free, ego-free state of ceaseless activity, who would respond to devotees worship and prayers, and one with whom it does not seem to be possible to communicate with. They would prefer a God who can respond and with whom communication is possible even if He is mysterious, one who may have a name or his representative as a human being and who can be visualized in some form that a human being can imagine. An abstract God who is incomprehensible, unexplainable and unfathomable through human senses and imagination is not who can be endeared and communicated with. If God was just Fire or Sun or Gravitational force, or who has sent his human emissaries to humans would me more acceptable.
If we explore the abstract Concept of God in Gita a little more deeply, we shlall realize see that we can get the God of our choice. The abstract concept and theory of God in the Gita is so comprehensive that it allows different individuals to choose the God they like. There is no problem with the abstract concept of God at all.
First, as per Gita God is everywhere inherent in any manifestation that we can or cannot see, touch, feel, smell, perceive or imagine. So, one can easily choose any concept or name or form of God one prefers.
Second, one has to choose a form, concept or name of God because of the effect of the three Gunas. And, this applies to all non-believers as well. One who does not believe in God has to say what is that which he does not believe in or whose existence he does not accept. Even if for example one says he does not believe in any kind of God, he is effectively saying that he believes in Nothing like or as God God. But as per the abstract concept of God in Gita, the thought of Nothing is a manifestation of God. If the non-believer says that the concept of God does not exist, this saying or that thought behind this saying itself is a manifestation of God.
But we are not dealing with non-believers here.
And, we see no difficulty of devotees of God of any type. Since God is infinite/ limitless, there is no problem with infinite identities of God the concept of God. Any God will have some or all the properties ‘ characteristics of the God defined in Gita.
One may still ask, how does one communicate with an abstract God as a devotee, as a worshipper. Gita has the answer, different people can perceive different images / perceptions of God but if they happen to continue to incessantly to try communicating with God and succeed, at some stage all of them will come to same realization of God – a God that is abstract because they then merges in the abstract definition of God. That is what the empirical analysis of human (including Yogis and Sanyasis) over the years in ancient times gave rise to the theory of Abstract God explained in the Gita. Gita and Gita’s God are sacred not because it captures Lord Krishna’s discourse to Arjuna, but because this discourse was based on, at least at that time the most, scientific study of the Creation and human behavior. Gita is not an imagination of Lord Krisna, or Sanjay the narrator or Vyas the author of Mahabharata.
Yogis have followed different concepts of God that they can meditate upon (GyanYogi), worship (all Yogis), pray to (all Yogis), love / serve (BhaktiYogis), work selfless for submitting the consequences of actions to God (KarmaYogi) and practice mental and physical methods of flowering the inherent powers of God in human beings (RajaYogi). They can have different concepts of God with different names or images or thoughts. But when the Yogis reach the final stage of merging with the God they all transit to the abstract concept of God. Even non-Yogi common people follow the Yogis path in a small way – at certain times of the day worshipping various Gods. If they one day happen to make a transit to Yogi state, they follow the different Yogic paths and those who finally happen to succeed realize the God in the most abstract concept to common people. If you happen to reach Godhood, you have complee knowledge and nothing is abstract to you any longer.

Godly Critique of God: Gita and God 0010

2009-02-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

Response to Science-Monopolizers' Critique

It is in the nature of the Three Gunas to combine sometimes in a manner to impart the strongest possible scientific aptitudes to some human beings and strongest possible attachment to anything counted as scientific to many others. Both types of followers of science are manifestation of God. It is in the natural transformation process that these persons would need to assurance that the essence of Gita (SenGita here) is scientific.
Of course, the Concept of God is nebulous. But it is not nebulous to science. Science deals with abstract concepts. The concept of God in Gita / SenGita is one of the simplest among all abstract scientific concepts. In the Universe, man has observed that anything can be traced to a source or origin. That is how human civilization has over time arrived at atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles, neutrinos and unobservable (dark) dusts or whatever. It is easy to get through induction from effect to cause and from derivatives to source in successive sequence backwards to the Ultimate Source of anything and everything in this Creation. That Ultimate Source is named as God. It is a definition that is as scientific as the definition of Science.
Some will ask for proof of existence of God. This is a perfectly valid demand. It is as good as asking for the proof of existence of the Ultimate Source. Let us assume that there exists no ultimate source. Then the cause and effect sequence has to break and scientific enquiry into what resulted in what has to stop somewhere that Science would not know. Alternatively, the sequence of derivatives to sources at some stage has to form a circular chain that admits of derivatives becoming the source of the source at some point (water to vapor to clouds to rain to water). In that case, the cause and the effect become the same thing. That is what Gita says: the Creator and the Creation are all the same. Manifestation is the cause of manifestation and manifestation is the source manifestation. As a result, everything in the Creation is one and the same inherently and therefore God is by definition indivisible. And, if something is indivisible and inherent in everything, it must be all pervasive, omni-present. That is what Gita says.
But assume that the Ultimate Source exists. Then, it must be inherently there in any and all successive transformations and manifestation including in all transformation / manifestation processes from any source to its derivatives. Whether the Ultimate source exists or the Source-derivative chain is circular, the entire process chain exists. The process is then the Ultimate Cause / Source. Since it exists, God by definition exists.

The Ultimate Source (or, the Process Chain) by definition is Unique and one. One does not have to prove that One as a number exists. Science is based on Axioms whose proof lie in the validity of the deductions made from the Axioms.
The Ultimate Source is infinite. If the number of points on any straight line that is smaller in length is infinite, the Ultimate source will be as infinite as the infinite numbers you can use in the Creation. So, God is limit less.

The Ultimate Source is indestructible and ageless because that explains all transformations and transformation processes. If it were destructible, the Creation would have ceased to exist in finite time. Science is yet to prove that Creation would come to an end in finite time or countable infinite time. So, by definition God is indestructible, ageless, never born and never ceased to exist.

The Ultimate Source is ceaseless in its activity of transformation / manifestation without being affected in any way by the transformation processes and the outcomes. God therefore is a desire-free and ego-free
Karma Yogi. The Ultimate Source has the complete knowledge of the transformation processes and their outcomes (Ultimate Source of everything is also the Ultimate Source of all knowledge by definition). So, God is also in Gyan Yogi state.

Fine, these are only connected to definition of God. But from where do the concepts of the three Gunas, desire, the Grand Illusion or Maya and the Yogis come from? These have not come from outside the system or the Creation. These are based on innumerable observations of the characteristics, psychology and behavior of large sample survey of individuals. The methods of empirical investigations that gave rise to classifications of the Gunas, the tendency to experience self-ego, desire, sense driven actions, the tendency to forget the existence of the Unique Ultimate source of everything in the World (and, hence suffering from the Grand Illusion of Maya), the tendency to love others and sacrifice for others, the varying characteristics of Yogis, their experiences, successes and failures – all these have come out of scientific empirical research. We do not know if they had different statistical, sampling, questionnaire- based response gathering, psychometric tests/ methods than the methods modern social, medical, psychological and behavioral sciences deploy.

In any case, Gita’s conclusions on human behavior is stated in forms that are testable / verifiable/ refutable hypotheses. That is what Science is all about. Any social scientist can arrange to test Gita’s statements concerning human traits, psychology, characteristics, tendencies, inclinations, perceptions, experiences and behavior to find out if these Statements are valid or not and if valid, to what extent. That would be the scientific approach to criticize or praise the essence of Gita. Unfortunately neither the Scientists- breed intellectuals nor the Gita-follower intellectuals care to adopt scientific methods to criticize or praise Gita. This however is natural: the Three Gunas and their self-ego prevents them from doing such a massive empirical testing exercise. For the Yogis, the attempt to prove or disprove is immaterial: for them proof of the pudding is eating.

Devotees' Disbelief in God: Gita and God 009

2009-02-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Response to Gita Monopolisers Critique

SenGita (Gita and God 0001- 0007) is far removed from the various original version of the real Gita and distorts the latter is a plausible criticism. The criticism is valid but irrelevant. First, there is no true real Gita available. Even the ones that are available have many slokas that are grafted into Gita from time to time (see Bankim Chandra Chattapadhyay’s essay on SreMadBhagwat Gita) and often contradictory to the main theme and superfluous. So, there may not be any undistorted Gita at all. The translations can always be called distorted whether SenGita or any other translation. Yes, SenGita does not cover translations sloka (verse of Gita) by sloka and covers only a selection of slokas. But this is neither a distortion nor misleading in terms of the essential theme and message of Gita. SenGita cover a selection of slokas that are together more than adequate to capture the essence of Gita and many slokas are not covered because they are either repetitions in some sense or superfluous elaboration and therefore not necessary for understanding the essence of Gita. The Truth and knowledge can be expressed much more cogently and precisely than the mass of sloka renderings of Gita in various so-called authentic/ comprehensive versions. SenGita does not concern itself with the sanctity of each sloka and all slokas: its purpose is to get the essential concepts.
True, the various versions of Gita do not talk about empirical evidence on Yogis. But the words uttered by Lord Krishna are not coming out of the blue: He clearly talks about the learned/ wise men and various types of Yogis as real-life illustrations. So, Gita’s concepts, classification and theory is based on both logical reasoning and study of empirical evidence/ observations on human psychology and behavioral patterns. The dialogue form of question and answer between Lord Krishna and Arjun is unable to hide the fact that the discourse is based on logic, reasoning and empirical validation. Clearly, Gita was not written in a modern text-book form: it adopted the practice of teacher answering questions to a pupil, prevailing in distant ancient times 5000 to 10000 years Before Christ.
Gita also does not preach Yoga for everyone. It specifically recommends Arjun to concentrate on the War without the desire to achieve certain favourable outcomes. Lord advises Arjuna to understand what the Yogis have learnt and act in the battle-field with Yogi-like desire-free, anger-free, fear-free and attachment free state of existence. Arjun might have already known about the Yogis. In any case, battle field was no place to practice Yoga to reach salvation but to act with Yogi-like characteristics by keeping mind, intellect and thoughts concentrated on the concept of God and acting like God who is unperturbed, unattached and free of desire and self-ego, in complete knoweledge of the Creation and Manifestation process and yet always incessantly in action as per His own Dharma / property that is not captured by the three Gunas and the Grand Illusion of Maya. Lord is assuring Arjuna that he will be able to do what he is destined to do. It is only a rare outcome that a warrior will fight like a warrior without getting confused and realizing that what he is doing is only a manifestation of God. The chances of living such a life even in the battle-field while fighting a war is very low but it is going to materialize in the case of the phenomenon of Arjun as the manifestation of God at Kurukshtra. It is the stochastic destiny process that creates all phenomena as manifestation of God,the ultimate source of everything, contained in everything and container of everything including Arjuna, his co-fighters and his enemies in the battle field. It is only a matter of chance that Lord Krishna happens to be charioteer and adviser to Arjuna and that other warriors did not have that chance materializing in their case.

Lord did not need to preach religion or Yoga to Mankind or Arjuna. He was only answering questions to Arjuna. His answers were based on knowledge already available with Mankind through the Yogis / learned / wise people and Lord Krishna was aware of. Lord Krishna was always in the state of Yoga doing what He had to without any desire or attachment. Rather he was referring to religious rituals of worshipping God as something that the Yogis generally did not practice.

Gita is therefore fundamentally grounded on the reality of psychology and individual and social behavior of human beings, rather than trying to cultivate any mysticism about God and preaching religion on that basis. SenGita is true to the essence and fundamentals contained in the Gita without any distortion and does not mislead. But getting misled or confused is a general property of human beings and that cannot be avoided except by chance

Unacceptability of Universal God: Gita and God 0008

2009-02-12T05:32:00.000-08:00

Responding to Critique of Gita 0001 to 0007

There are at least four different perspectives to criticizing Gita as expressed in Gita 0001 to 0007 (call this SenGita)
The first is from the perspective of the experts and devotees of Gita. They would find SenGita far removed from the Real Gita they know of, distorted and misleading, casual and simplistic and even outrageous in the contention that Gita did not preach any religion or practicing Yoga to Mankind.
The second perspective is of the seekers of scientific proof of anything about God whether in Gita or in SenGita or anywhere else. They would contend that concept of SenGita is nebulous, devoid of adequate proof of existence of God enunciated in SenGita and that the entire Sengita or the original or authentic versions of Gita is nothing but glib talk.
The third perspective is of the believers of God defined differently from SenGita and particularly those who believe in personal God. They would find the concept of God both abstract and nebulous and something that cannot have any operational significance in terms of worshipping or praying or obtaining blessings from God – the almighty.
The fourth perspective is that of the believers in Man as an intelligent being with a meaningful purpose and freedom to change the world and the society as contrasted to SenGupta’s concept of each human as a chance occurrence of a phenomenon of particular set of properties, tendencies, inclinations that by definition has no free will or independence to decide. To them a fatalistic concept of man as a transient toy that acts only as per the properties imparted into each specific toy as elaborated in SenGita is devoid of any meaning and simply unacceptable.

All these criticisms are valid insofar as they easily are explainable by the concept of God and Human being elaborated in SenGita. Criticisms are nothing but responses that each human being as a particular phenomenon of properties, tendencies and inclinations imparted by the Gunas in the process of manifestation of God.. The same is equally true of Sengita: it is a chance occurrence of such phenomenon of manifestation. God is as much inherent in SenGita as in the criticisms. But that is only one way of response to criticisms from an embodied existence by ignoring the criticisms. There is the more common human phenomenon of responding to criticisms by accepting a criticism or by demolishing or embarrassing a criticism by reasoning or feeling or biased/ blind beliefs. We can just do that now.

In Essence: Gita and God 0007

2009-02-11T03:37:00.000-08:00

Summing Up Essence of Gita

Before we begin with a critique of Gita and God 0001-0006, it may be desirable to make a summary of the essence of Gita.

1. God is the ultimate source and cause of all creations and God is present in everything and everywhere of this Creation. The Creation is entirely contained in the Creator and is essentially God’s various manifestations. Thus, God is indestructible, indivisible, infinite and permanent (limit-lessly old who is never born and never ceases to exist), while all that is in the creation as His manifestations are transient and temporary, even if they have long durations.

2. God’s manifestations include all physical bodies, all forces, all energy, all atoms and molecules, all forms of life, all shapes and designs, all natural and man-made processes and phenomena, all planets and their movements, all properties, tendencies, inclinations, natural laws, senses, instincts, mind, intellect, all thoughts, ideas, imaginations, perceptions and concepts including the concept of God, religions, castes and creeds, classifications, logic, reasoning – every thing including all dimensions, time and space. While all these may differ in forms, properties, characteristics, they have two things in common: (a) all of them are transient / temporary embodied or sense-perceived existences and (b) God as defined in 1 is inherently present in each of them as well as contain all of them and hence are inherently indistinguishable from the divine and permanent, unique, indivisible, indestructible, infinite and ceaseless existence.

3.Thus, the transformation process imparts two things in any transient manifestation like human being: (a) an urge to enjoy as a false separate identity of an independent "doer" with free will, individual self-ego, desires, and senses-driven dynamics of actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings, perceptions and relationships with other embodied existences, and (b) the urge to know, realize and enjoy the oneness of divine, indivisible existence inseparable and indistinguishable from other embodied existence.

4. The relative strength of the two opposing forces of 3(a) called the Great Illusion or Maya and 3(b) called Divinity in different individuals varies widely depending on the how the manifestation process imparts the three Gunas (Satva, Rajas and Tamas) in various combinations to each manifestation and the varying external environment that each manifestation happens to face at different points of time. It is all these Guna- combination mixes and the differential environments that explain why human behavior varies across individuals, groups, space and time.

5. Empirical evidence shows that despite the differences among individual behavior, the most dominant behavior is the one completely or largely influenced by the manifestation process of Maya. In the case of only a few individuals, the influence of the Divinity manifestation process is stronger at least at some points of time.

6. Evidence also suggests that the few individuals in whose case the Divinity
process is stronger than the Maya process, show certain common characteristics. They tend to practice certain methods called Yoga's of various types and generally love people, willing to sacrifice for others, do penance, most of the time engaged in worshiping God, praying to God, have faith in God, long to merge with God, mediate over God, control senses, work/ act/ think without any desire, give up ego and the sense of being a doer, show less of anger, fear, rivalry, jealousy, attachment. These people re called Yogis or learned or wise because they happen to be under the strong influence of Divinity process.

7. Some of the yogis makes considerable advance over time towards the path of liberation/ independence from the influence of Maya process while some are recaptured by the Maya process. While some Yogis stop further progress towards liberation and remain at the stage where they are with Maya process able to exercises very little influence on them, a very rare lone Yogi may attain the final stage where he/ she is no longer influenced by the Maya process and completely merged in the Divinity process. Such a Yogi has attained Godhood in the sense that the Yogi is fully liberated from the being driven by senses, desires and external embodied existences and the Yogi shows the characteristics as exhibited by God, namely a self ego -free, desire-free, anger-free, fear -free, unperturbed individual merged in and enjoying oneness existence of indestructible, indivisible, ceaseless God. He is no longer enamoured by the separate identity of embodied existence of worldly pleasures, pains and ambitions.

8. The empirical evidence therefore suggests that given the nature of God's manifestation process, the probability of an individual to become a Yogi is very small, the probability of remaining a yogi is even smaller and the probability of attaining Godhood or come close to that stage is virtually zero. It all depend on the stochastic process of transformation and manifestation of God imparting various Gunas in varying mixes and the exposure of individual embodied existence to other embodies existences resulting from the Grand, Stochastic and Continuous manifestation/ transformation process whose parameters are as incomprehensible as the concept of God.

9. Gita does not preach any Yoga or religion but explains a simple but abstract concept of God, the Creator and the Creation that is based on the empirical evidence of the behaviour of humans in general and the Yogi's in particular. If you happen to be a Yogi, it is not because of your choice but because of the manifestation transformation process. If you do not become a Yogi, that is not because of your choice but the result of the incomprehensible Grand, Stochastic and Continuous Manifestation Process of God, the Ultimate Source, Origin, Creator of and inherent in all of the Creation.

10. All these from 1 to 9 are what make Gita the most interesting aid to the pursuit of knowledge about the nature and operation of the entire Creation and Creator and about all our questions in this regard. The main features of Gita are its comprehensiveness, its logical reasoning and empirical evidence-based findings, its consistency as a theory of god and human life, and finally its universal applicability to understand individual and group living in ever-increasing complexity of the World.
Now we are set for the Critique of Gita.

Implications of the Concept: Gita and God 0006

2009-02-08T23:49:00.000-08:00

Implications of Gita's Concept of God

1. Everything and all that is / may be in the Creation – every and all elements, bodies, nature, thoughts, processes, transformation, actions/ reactions, karma, ego, life phenomena, instincts, senses, mind, atoms, genes, desire, forms, properties, gunas, forces, pleasures, pains, ideas, knowledge – scientific, spiritual, or others, the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, the imaginable and the unimaginable, all the universe and its components, the concept of God - everything and every possible / probable thing, is contained in the God and manifestation of God that is limitless, infinite, indestructible, ceaselessly in existence and unaffected, unperturbed, desire-free and in complete peace of what goes on in the Creation.

2. All that has been mentioned in 1 above have ultimately originated in God and hence God is the ultimate source. As the ultimate source God is present all the time in all that is mentioned in 1. So, everything in that sense is divinely equal even if they are distinctly separate and dissimilar by their features, behaviors, patterns, colors, forms, actions, reactions, effects or their immediate past origin or source. God is all pervasive and hence in that sense all that exists and mentioned in 1 above including the concept of God, are God or rather God’s manifestations. All manifestations are equal in the sense that they are manifestations of the same ultimate source.

3. But manifestations of God are not God Himself/ Itself/ Divine-self. God is the one that manifests: God’s actions are reflected in His diverse and infinite manifestations. God manifests in infinitely varying ways and forms and without any desire, without any attachment or illusion, fear or pleasure or pain but with full and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of what, when, why and how of all manifestations and their interrelations. This knowledge may be partly known to the manifestations that have the property to understand these parts.

4.Both the concept of God and the how, why etc of His manifestations are not fully comprehensible to the human minds (otherwise, they would have disproved the existence of God as defined in Gita by either comprehensively explaining the entire Universe and all that has been mentioned in 1 or proving that there was nothing to more explain and seek answers to, in this and in regard to this Creation of all that has been mentioned in 1. God has remained an abstract Cocept as an Ultimate origin/ souce of all that is in the creation.

5. The Ultimate source, God, is therefore unalterable and permanent while all the manifestations of God are transient / perishable as observed by human beings, though some manifestations may have been in existence for pretty long durations that human beings are capable of measuring or not capable of measuring.

6. The abstract God exists in all manifestations throughout and therefore in every human being. But being part of the manifestations of God can any human being also come to reflect the State or Characteristics of the unalterable God. If the God that is never tired, never exhausted, never in pain or pleasure of transient nature, never frustrated, never attached to the manifestations and yet continue to act incessantly without any self-ego or desire? This is the question that Gita asks and tries to answer.

7. Gita’s answer is simple: there is some, though very insignificantly small probability of an individual to reach the State of Godhood. The answer in the affirmative is based on empirical evidence among humans. Rarely has an individual achieved this State and only a few have been observed to reach a stage where they have reflected some weak symptoms of getting closer to the Godhood State of being

*desire-free,
*ego-free,
*unperturbed by external environment and internal properties and the consequences/ outcomes/ happenings at any point of time- past, present or future,
*seeing himself and the God in everything in the Universe,
*loving everything else in the Universe as much as loving himself, *completely jealousy-free, fear-free and anger free
*completely and always satisfied and contended.
*complete faith in the concept of God

8. Why are the chances so low for individuals to reach such Godhood State and how even the rare things happen? This is the question that Gita tries to answer by using the concept of God and citing empirical observations/ evidence. First the Gita explains the basic properties imparted to human beings in the form of combinations f desires and the three Gunas and then illustrates how the chances are low by classifying the various Yoga practices observed by different groups of people who have achieved different measures of progress to get to the stage of Godhood or attained Godhood.

9.The three Gunas of Satva, Rajas and Tamas are an integral part of the manifestation of God. It is these Gunas that help develop self-ego in human minds. These three basic properties are observed empirically in humans in the way the humans behave: desire, feel, know, explore, act, react, imagine, think, experience and change using their senses / instincts, in the face of the external environment and objects they are exposed to at different points of time. But the combination of these three properties differ from one human being to another and the impact of these combinations on individual human behavior may change over time due to changes in the strength of the senses with age, impact of past experiences and changes in the external environment that may take place. (The Gunas may be interpreted as something akin to broad genetic sequence classifications referred to in modern science.) The Gunas help classifying human behavioral patterns in terms of inclinations, propensities and tendencies. But, more importantly, the operation of Gunas as a form of manifestation of God in human beings, determine individual behavior: both internal and external behavioral differences noticed among various individuals arise from differences in Guna combinations and the differences in exposures to external environment. These Gunas give rise to individuality and a sense of separate embodied identification as a doer in each individual. In the process the knowledge of the Truth of divine equality in the Creation is lost in human mind. As a result, for most of the time, an individual human being (or other being) identifies himself / herself as separate from all other individuals which in turn gives rises to individual taste and preferences, likes and dislikes, jealousy, rivalry, anger, fear, aggression, disappointment, pains and pleasure. The natural addiction / inclination therefore sustains the concept of the individual embodied existences as distinct from transient, varying manifestations of God. This, therefore, creates a veil over the mind, intellect and other senses to hide the fact of oneness of Divine, indivisible permanent existence that the concept of God implies for all manifestations of God including individual humans. This is referred to as Illusion or Maya – manifestation of God. This illusion is so strong that humans in general cannot cross the barrier of self-ego and desire. This explains why there is a very infinitesimal chance of a human being even seriously trying to come out of the illusion/ Maya of individual embodied existence. This also explains why the probability of an individual human being is even lower than an individual trying to get out of the illusion of transient, separate individual embodied existences.

11. The above findings of the Gita are based on empirical evidence on (a) the proportion of human individuals trying through various methods called Yoga’s to attain Godhood, (b) the proportion out of (a) that reach Godhood and remain in that State never to return within the fold of the Illusion. The essence of all Yoga methods / practices observed to be followed by different Yogi’s (practicing Yoga) and (c) the proportion of individuals spending practically their entire existence in the embodied existence under the complete influence of Maya or Illusion of separateness. Of the two opposing forces: one of Maya-induced proclivity to experience separate and transient / temporary individual embodied identities and the other Divine proclivity to experience the existence of being merged in the unique, indivisible, indestructible, ultimate source / origin called God.in permanent peace. The Guna combinations imparted through the transformation process continuously to the individual embodied existence is so structured that the former Maya-induced force remains overwhelmingly strong and dominating over the other force and therefore the proportions referred to in (a) and (b) while dynamically oscillating within a range but the range always remaining infinitesimal as close to close to zero as possible.

12. All the above points to the hypothesis that the state of individual embodied existence at any point of time is an outcome of an unfolding stochastic process whose parameters and probability-distribution properties are not known. Whether a person would try to be a Yogi or the kind of Yoga to which a particular Yogi be trapped by, or whether a particular Yogi will achieve some measure of success on the progress towards Godhood or attain God hood – are all a matter of chance determined by the transformation/ manifestation process giving rise to various combinations of Gunas and varying environmental exposures to different individuals. No body decides to become a Yogi and no body decides to reach Godhood. All this just happens to a few individuals as a matter of unknown probabilities.

13. Gita thus does not tell all the people to seek Salvation through Yoga but tells you that if the odds happen to be in your favor you may become a Yogi and even attain Godhood. And, the chances are indeed very low. You will try to become a Yogi for as much time as your chances favor you and you may attain Samadhi or Godhood if the probability of success materialises in your case.

Actionable Knowledge of Devotion: Gita and God 0005

2009-02-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Equivalence of Yoga’s Seeking Godhood

Since attainment of Godhood is the ultimate destination of all Yoga’s, at some stage along the path all Yoga’s get merged. With Karma Yoga at one stage the wise person concentrates on work as worship of God that leads him think about the God and he moves towards the knowledge or Gyan. The same is true of Dhyan Yogi who concentrates on the God through deep meditation. Raj Yoga helps prepare body and mind to sustain meditation on God. A gyan Yogi needs at some stage to make all his acts desire-free and hence adopts the same stance as the Karma Yogi. A Bhakta Yogi seeks to develop intense love for the God forgetting every other thing in the World: he becomes desire-free, destroys his ego through complete submission to God, thus getting over anger, jealousy and selfish motives. As intense love fills the Yogi, he is no more bound by Karma and is tuned to realization of Gyan, the ultimate knowledge. A Gyan Yogi at some stage learns to love God and hence everyone and everything. That helps him realize God and walk the final steps to Godhood.
“The wise Yogi who sees himself as equal and same with every other entity/ element/ body or thought or phenomenon is the Greatest among the Yogis.” (V.32)
“The one who does not depend on the effects of Karma to motivate him to Karma and yet carries out all Karma is both a Karmas Yogi and a Gyan Yogi. No Yogi can give up Karma until he reaches the stage when he/she is permanently and continuously in God-realization stage. Even then some acts continue without his conscious involvement or attachment.” (VI.1)
“ When the Yogi reaches a stage when his heart, mind, intellect and senses can no longer make him aware of sensual pleasure or pain, when he has become completely free of all possible desires, he is close to the final destination og Godhood.” (VI.18-19)
“When the embodied existence is permanently free of any connection with any desire, pleasure or pain and hence his mind, thoughts and intellect are permanently and solely established in the knowledge of God, the Yogi has attained Yoga-Samadhi.” (VI.23-26)
“For types of Yogis are found to worship God: those who are in difficulty and seeks relief from the God, those who seek fulfillment of their earthly sensual desires through God’s help or blessing, those who are seeking ultimate knowledge by concentrating their thoughts on me and those who have realized the ultimate knowledge. It is the last category of yogis who are in complete knowledge are the ultimate Gyanis or Tatwa Gyanis who have reached Godhood.” (VII.16-18)
“ The worshipers and Yogis get what they want from God since they concentrate their thought on the God with some desire or the other. If they desire wealth, they concentrate on one of the God’s images (Laksmi) and they get wealth. Those who worship to get education and/ or knowledge, they also get what they want through Yoga and meditation on my image of Education or Knowledge (Saraswati). Those who worship me to obtain physical and mental power superior to those of the ordinary beings, get what they want as they concentrate on one of God’s various images (Shiva/ Kali).”(VII.20-23)
“ The illusive power of the three Gunas makes most Yogis fail to concentrate on the full and comprehensive concept of God and therefore they are unable to reach Godhood. Those who succeed have the same knowledge as God is defined by” (VII.25-26)
“ Those who wants and strives to free themselves from the bondage of the nexus of Gunas-Desires –Senses, completely submits to the whole concept of God and ultimately realizes full knowledge about God and attain Godhood” (VII.29)
“The Yogi who reaches the ultimate stage of complete knowledge about God (the Creator and the Creation) goes beyond the ideas of the infinitesimal sub-atomic particles to an idea of formless all pervasive enlightened existence, merges with such divine existence of God” (VII. 9-10)
“The Yogi who mediates on the concept of God with complete single-point, focused concentration and faith all the time, easily transits to divine existence of God.” (VIII. 18)

For a Yogi who has reached Samadhi state, is always in God and hence work or no work, karma or no karma, rituals or no rituals, prayer or no prayers – all are immaterial to him. Till one reaches that blissful state, practice of Karma, or Bhakti, or meditation, yearning for Gyan or sacrifing for others or helping others, etc. , only keep him on the path towards godhood. He cannot really give up work or Karma. As different Yogis who began on the path of Yoga successfully reach close to the ultimate destination of Godhead, they show similar characteristics- desire-free Karma, completely sub-merged in love with or in prayer or worship of God, in meditation on the ultimate Gyan, love for all, unperturbed by external objects, events, outcome, seeing him in everything in this creation, virtually no disappointment, no pain or pleasure, no fear, no anger, no excitement, no self-ego. The equivalence of Yoga of different types is meaningful only in this perspective.
However, there would be many Yogis who will not show one or more of these charateristics : they are yet to reach closer to the ultimate destination.

All these are findings from empirical observations on those who practices Yogas. This is not to suggest that one can freely chose to decide to be a Yogi or remain in the path of Yoga.

God in Knowledge: Gita and God 0004

2009-02-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

Application of God Concept: Gyan Yoga

All applications of the Concept of God is aimed at the possibility of an individual human being attaining Godhood. The different Yoga’s are illustration of the characteristics of different "learned"/ "wise" / "knowledgeable" individuals who have advanced along the path towards attaining Godhood or actually attaining Godhood (implying attaining the characteristics of the God as defined in the Concept of God in Gita and God 0001 & 0002). Clearly, these individuals coming closer to Godhood through different yoga’s ultimately would reflect almost the same characteristics by definition, as the characteristics of God are unique.

1. "The 'learned' / 'wise' individuals worship God (i.e. to become God) in various ways: they may just think about God all the time and seek to be with Him, they may love God and crave for the love of God to unite with Him, they may control and rein in senses and instincts, they may go being self-ego to shun drop the idea of identifying themselves as doer of action they do, they may sacrifice for others, they may give away alms, they may help others, they may give up all physical ad mental desires, they may practice various physical exercises to concentrate on their breath and feel the vibrations going on inside the different parts of their bodies, they may renounce domestic life and all comforts, they may do lot of penance, thy may study about God and meditate on God, they may offer prayers to God in front of an idol or symbol or they may do many other such acts. They are all seeking to free them from the bondage of embodied worldly existence. This freedom is attained by those "wise" persons who are able to do all these acts they do with complete detachment from such acts and their consequences. Once this freedom is attained the "wise" individual no longer remains the individual embodied existence but become God with full knowledge of what goes on in the Creation. Once this freedom is attained, the identification of existence with human body, senses, mind, intellect and ego gets lots and the clouds of desire perpetrated by the illusive powers of the three Gunas of Satva, Rajas and Tamas working out through the senses completely disappear. Being God implies Full Knowledge of how the Creation works and its dynamics. The seeker of Knowledge now is in Full Knowledge and therefore transforms into Knowledge (God) Himself. At that state the individual leaned/ wise person sees God in everything: work, work matter, work process, work consequences, the work consequence victims- in all and everything including those things that others cannot see, the wise Brahma gyani sees God only. Because God sees everything that way." (IV.22- 35).
2." The Brahma Gyani is completely happy and at peace with whatever he happens to get or meet, does not suffer from any conflict or doubt or contradictions or differentiation, finds gains and losses as equally irrelevant, acts without any attachment of such actions, is not connected to any desire that cause his senses to work, does not see himself as the doer of any of his acts/actions/work effort or work. Therefore he remains free from the bondage of slavery to desire motivated work done through the senses propelled by the Gunas." (IV.22- 23).
3. " The learned/ wise person who has given up all desires, controlled his senses and mind from binding his existence to their actions/ operations and is no longer attracted by material goods, comes to acquire Gyan / Real Knowledge (of the Creation and the Creator) that helps to act and work without being involved as a doer of such acts/ actions but merely to allow his embodied existence to continue with its transient existence as long as it happens to last. Always satisfied, irrespective of external environment, and completely desire less, his embodied existence show actions with which he is completely detached and is not involved as the doer of such actions. " (IV.20-21)
4. " Long and sustained efforts of individuals practicing Karma Yoga have been observed to reach the state of Bramha Gyani as the desires and ego get lost allowing the knowledge of the God to flow in freely. The person who has faith in the concept and able to control and rein in all desires and attachment, can arrive at Gyan (knowledge) that brings him all peace. Such a person who is in engrossed in Yoga in the pursuit of God is able to resolve all conflicts and doubts and he can no longer be enslaved by any doings/ actions his embodied existence may be required to perform till the transient embodied existence lasts." (IV.38-42)
5. " The One who does not envy, is never angry and no longer seek or long for any thing, has risen above all conflicts of happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain and therefore he remains free from the bondage of pleasure and pain / happiness and sorrow. Practice of Karma Yoga, Sanyas (KarmaThyaga) Yoga and Gyan Yoga are ultimately equivalent: at some stage along these paths different paths, the learned and the wise show the same or al most indistinguishable characteristics and behavior. At some stage, Sanyas Yoga cannot advance without Karma Yoga. When Karma Yoga complements Sanyas Yoga, the progress along Gyan Yoga or Brahma Yoga is speedier. Karma Yoga helps one win over senses and instincts, in the process clears the way to see the light of the Real knowledge of Brahma Gyan as the attachment to all desires and work performed by senses disappear. The wise Gyani, remaining always firm in the realization that he is not the doer of anything and yet sees, hears, smalls, eats, moves, sleeps, talks, gives, takes, blinks the eye lids, breathes without getting attached to or involved in all such work his senses and instincts happen to perform or get attracted by sensual objects. The wise see the nature function through his embodied existence but he is not attached to such performance as God is not attached to all that happens in his creation. To the Gyani, a learned person, another Gyani, cow or n elephant, the dog or the vagabond - all are same. Having overcome all illusion created by the three Gunas, the Gyani is no longer excited or worried about any thing or any happening or the giving and taking of any thing or any interactions with the environment including all embodied existence and forms in his neighborhood. The Gyani's only pleasure is in being in full knowledge of the Creator and Creation as defined by the concept of God. The Gyani is in the realization that he is now in the ultimate Godhood existence, being friend of everything without any discrimination and completely satisfied and peace, unaffected by any of the happenings in the Creation." (V.3-29)

God in Action: Gita and God 0003

2009-02-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

Karma Yoga: An Application of the Concept of God

The simple, abstract concept of God of the Gita evolved over time to as the other concepts of God were found wanting in two ways: Other concepts of God were either (a) not internally consistent, and/ or, (b) unable to consistently explain the Creation, its relationship with the Creator and the evolution of human society. The concept of God arose in the minds of human beings due to many reasons. Incidence of strange and unknown or unpredictable events had led to the belief that strange and unknown events occur in individual or group life because of the will of various Gods. If particular God was worshiped, he would arrange for events that would cause pleasure and happiness. Such good gods were given particular names. Similarly, out of the fear of bad happenings, various Gods of evil were identified and worshipped. These thoughts did not come out of the blue. There were always leaders of groups/ families who loved and cared for others and sacrificed for them while some other leaders were selfish, cruel and used their physical and knowledge powers to oppress others. Both kinds of leaders had their followers. Transforming such leaders as role models for various Gods had not been difficult. This was especially so because in ancient times through observations over long time human race had identified natural powers of Sun giving light or drying up fields that grow food, the wind that soothes the body or uproots trees and destroys shelters, the Rains that help vegetation and quench thirst as well as cause floods that damages shelters and crops. Therefore, the Nature, the Natural phenomenon and the objects in the sky provided a good source of creating different Gods. All such concepts of Gods did not explain the ultimate source of all these gods. Nor, did these concepts help explain, in any comprehensive manner, the life of human beings or the progress of civilization in terms of powers of these Gods. Some great thinkers at a later age arrived at the concept of Single, Unique, Ultimate God as the elaborated later in the Gita, This concept or theory of God helped unify all the god concepts developed earlier and provided a comprehensive and internally consistent explanation of the Creator, the Creation and their inter-relationship. How did this theory achieve this in the Gita? It did by explaining the various properties and states of individuals (and consequently of groups).
The main pillars of the explanations in the Gita are:
(a) the concept of God as explained in the Gita 0001 and Gita 0002,
(b) the concept of three Gunas (basic, broad classification of properties of any human being or element or entity in the Creation,
(c) the behaviour of recognizable individuals of certain specific types and the characteristics of the states of comfort within each such individual.
One general category of individuals is called “learned” or “wise”. Some characteristics of the learned are given in various slokas:
1.”The learned are not bewildered, nor enchanted, nor enamored nor perplexed by nor attached to the experience of the embodied existence involving continuous transformation of a physical body and mind through adolescence to youth to old age. In the process the learned successfully avoid experiencing the succession of numerous transient happiness and sorrows that are the result from the natural connection of the senses to the objects around through desire.” (II.13-14)
2. “The learned equip themselves with the ability to endure the experience of the embodied existence with patience and detachment, The learned and the wise men have realized that all such transient phenomenon of their embodied existence are unreal and not relevant to their permanent, indestructible non-embodied Real existence. The learned are solely interested in their Real existence that is permanent, everlasting and beyond the physical-sensual existence filled with transient pleasures and pains.” (II.16-21)
3. “The leaned practice, through Shankhya Yoga, to ignore all the transient phenomenon of pleasures and plain of the embodied existence and concentrate on their work without attachment. They can thereafter be in the state of practicing Karma Yoga that helps enhances the Knowledge of learned. Even little practice of Karma Yoga can increase knowledge and wisdom” (II.39-40)
4. “ Those who show skills in giving commentary or speeches with sweet words or verses (slokas) that attract the attention of the audience and luring others into activities that would bring worldly happiness or practice rituals that may produce desirable outcomes are not learned people simple because they cultivate desires, promote selfishness and attached to objects of desire” (II.42-44)
5. “ One with complete devotion to the concept of God can be as much learned through the practice of Karma Yoga with perfection as another who has studied all the different parts of the Vedas”. (II.46)
6. “Practising Karma Yoga involves only the right to work and the right to the consequences of work, involves working/ acting/ doing/ thinking/ inhaling/ eating drinking etc. without the accompaniment of any desire to derive any result or gain from suck work. One cannot stop work (karma) merely because there is no desire to derive benefits from work. It is impossible to be without work for a human body and mind. Embodied existence is filled with work even without the knowledge of the body and mind. The learned work with perfect application of the full knowledge of desire-free work: this technique of performing work is Yoga. The person that performs Karma Yoga perfectly is detached to the consequences of his work and attains Godhood. God works all the time through His creation, maintenance, destruction and transformation process without any attachment to the consequences of the work He does because He is always in the State of perfect KarmaYoga. (II.47-50)
7. “ The wise disowns any relationship with the results/ consequences of his work (even if he is aware what work can lead to what consequences) and become free of the bondage to the burden of work. When the learned person’s intellect crosses the boundaries of desires and the identification of work-performer with the physical being, complete indifference to worldly affairs develops and the desire=free state emerges.
When a person is stable in such a desire-free state, he is indeed immersed in the state of Yoga,” (II.51- 53)
9. “ A person in the desire-free state, he is not at all perturbed or disturbed in any way by any incident/ event nor does he feel the happiness or sorrow from any incident/event/ outcome, he does not seek any happiness, he is no longer angry with any thing or anyone. He is without any fear, likes or dislikes. He is indifferent and unattached to and not attracted by any event or any consequences of any event. He has completely withdrawn from all desires and instincts and made his senses insensitive to sensual objects. This is when his intellect is firmly established in the Knowledge of the Ultimate, Unique, Indestructible, and Infinite God. Even this state, desires may still be hidden and then erupt suddenly with great force to overpower the senses and dislodge the learned who have made sincere efforts over a long period of time to attain the desire-free state. Thus, it is the one whose all desires have gone away and whose instincts, senses, mind have been completely under reins so that sensual objects do not drive them to be powered by desire again, is the one who has achieved the state of stable equilibrium in Yoga. (II55- 61).
10. “ One who has successfully renounced all desires, successfully put all his senses including the mind insensitive to sensual objects and desires, and has become stable in his complete indifference to all types of events and outcomes, he is the person who is in complete peace. And, yet all pleasures shorn of all pains flow into such a person who has also given up his self-ego and he is the one who enjoys in full measure without the use of the senses that are completely disassociated with desires and sensual objects” (II.70-71).

Thus, Gita uses the abstract concept of God to explain how one group of learned and wise men lead their lives through the practice of Karma Yoga and attain the attributes of God.

We will explore similar applications of the concept later

Logic of God: Gita and God 0002

2009-01-30T21:44:00.000-08:00

Gita: Identifying the Creator

Gita’s simple and abstract concept of God did not reveal itself suddenly one day during 2500-5000BC. It quite probably evolved through centuries of quest by the thinking men and women. They were awed by the great diversity of inanimate objects and living beings in the environment around in the land, water, fire breeze, storm, sky, day and night, hunger and pleasure, peace, conflict and rivalry, sun, moon and the stars, the mountains, the trees and woods, the rivers and the seas as also the continuous change in the environment including the climate and the temperature. They wanted to know who would have created all this. Their quest for knowledge about the Creator through observations and application of logic led them to the following conclusions about the Creator:
1. Unique Creator (multiple Creators would have led them to search for the Creator or Creators; so single creator would be the ultimate)
2. The question of who created the Ultimate Creator was illogical therefore by definition (the word ultimate stops one from going beyond)
3. If the concept of Ultimate Single Creator is accepted, then no one created the Ultimate Creator: hence He is ageless, limitlessly old, was never born, was never dead, never ceased to exist, therefore He is inexhaustible, indestructible and always present.
4. Since observations showed that all new things that emerge owe their origins to some one or more source/s (seeds grow into plants), the properties of any part of the creation must have been imparted by the source/ origin (fish cannot start swimming, birds cannot start flying, drops of rain cannot stop falling mid-way in the sky, the Sun cannot stop emanating light unless these properties were inherent in the source from which they came into being). If everything did not come out of nothing but emerged out of something through transformation from one or more sources that existed before, the transformation process would have passed on the properties of old source/s to the new one that they gave rise to. Thus the ultimate Creator being the Ultimate Source, the Creator must have contained all the properties of all that is in the Creation (including all transformation/ creative/ destructive processes) that we come to know or yet to know.
5. If the Creator as the Ultimate Source contains all the properties of all that is and will be in the Creation, the Creator is present in all parts of the creation and hence everything contains Him in this sense, though we cannot identify Him separately in each of his creation. Each part of the creation therefore contains Him: even if each part is further decomposed in to smaller parts, He still exists in each of the smaller parts. So, the Creator is in this sense indivisible even if the Creation has so many parts, elements and processes.
6. If the Creator is present in each of the infinitesimal parts of the Creation, this amounts to accepting that the entire Creation is contained in the Creator.
7. Apparently, 5 and 6 seem contradictory. But given the assumptions of (a) the Ultimate-ness of the Creator and (b) transformation of properties from source/ origin to the transformed new creation (new parts at any point of time – like a human at birth or the clouds and rain or a new species or a new thought, a new weapon, an invention), both 5 and 6 are mutually consistent. God as the Creator is contained in us and all of us are contained in the Creator. So, God is all-pervasive.
8. Given the instruments of scientific testing of Truth that the thinkers had during 2500BC to 10,000 BC (and probably even now), there was no way to test the Truth contained in 5,6 and 7 empirically. If the assumptions held good, the theory contained in 5,6 and 7 held good as well by logical deduction and induction.
9. The parts in the Creation are numerous, uncountable. This was easily testable empirically. If the Creative and Destructive processes were part of the overall Transformation process that relates all origins/ sources to their transformed output and the transformation process did not seem to end, the Creator is Infinite to the human senses.
10. Since the Creator is infinite, so is the Creation as the entire Creation is contained in the Creator and the Creator is present in each part/ component/ process/ element/idea of the Creation and as of the time when Gita had been uttered by Lord Krishna (who is Krishna is a separate issue) there was absolutely very little knowledge of the diversity and dimensions of, and the processes that goes on in the Universe, the Creator was incomprehensible and unexplainable (Science has progressed much since the days of Lord Krishna and yet the Universe is far from being comprehensible and explainable in the entirety: there are more questions to which answers are being sought by scientists today to explain the Universe than the number of questions that occurred to human being at any point of time in the past).

We have got some idea as to how the abstract concept of Unique, all-pervasive, omni-present, infinite, ceaseless, inexhaustible, indestructible, everlasting, incomprehensible, unexplainable, unalterable God evolved through scientific pursuit of the knowledge about the Creator and the Creation through observations and logical reasoning.

The Question that arises now is to what use did the Gita put this simple, abstract concept of God, especially when competing theories of God already existed in that ancient ages ? That is what we may try to explore next.

Concept of God: Gita and God 0001

2009-01-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

Concept of God

God is defined and interpreted variously. All may be acceptable as there is no scientific criterion available to test which concept of God is correct or incorrect. It is meaningless to debate over the various concepts of God. Each concept of God is relevant only to the application of the concept to various uses. Here we first try to find out the definition of God from select veses contained in Shrimad Baghwat Gita and then explore its applications and uses.
Gita does not define God as one would find any definition given in a standard textbook. The concept is to be extracted from a few relevant verses dispersed in various chapters of Gita. The simplest way to pick up the concept of God in Gita is to read the verses (slokas) where God is described in some way or the other. Let us select the following (translated in to English by me from translations into Bengali from Sanskrit by others: take care my translations are word for word and are influence by my own understanding):

1. God (Atman) “ encompasses the entire universe (creation), pervades all phenomena, matter and elements – everything in the universe: God is all pervasive, indestructible and ceaseless.” (II.17)
2. God is “ ever present, ceaseless and unlimited infinite: God never destroys anything or gets destroyed.” (II.18 -19)
3. God “was never born and never ceased to exist: God is ever present, permanent, agelessly old and never disappears even if the forms in which God is manifested may be transient and transform continuously.” (II.20)
4. God “cannot be cut into pieces by any weapon, cannot be burnt by fire or become wet by pouring water on it, nor can God become dry because of air or breeze. God is not exhaustible, not inflammable, not penetrable, not containable, God is static, is everywhere, in everything, incomprehensible, unexplainable, inexpressible, unimaginable, unalterable and original. (II.21-24)
5. God also “exits in all forms, independent of the form, shape and body.” (II.30)
6. God has “never been born, is inexhaustible and is ever present in every being, every thing. God appears in varying forms as a result of God’s own nature. At one level, God takes form as land, water, fire, wind, air, sky mind, intellect and ego. At another level, God is not apparent and formless and yet holds and sustains the entire universe or the entire creation.” (IV. 6)
7. “God’s illusive power is reflected in all things: Land, Water, wind, fire, Sky, mind, intellect and ego. But all these and all life forms and materials arise from God as the source. God is the cause of all creation, destruction and transformation. There is no other ultimate source than God: everywhere everything is ultimately related to me as the source. God is the essence of everything, of water, of light provided by the Sun and the moon, all words and sounds and of all the power of human beings. God is the fragrance in everything, the heat produced by fire, life of all living beings and the power of sacrifice, meditation and renunciation. God is the seed of everything, the wisdom of the wise and the strength of the strong; God is the source of power gained from renunciation as well as the strength of all desires of human beings. God is the desire, attachment, and anger in all beings. All different kinds of characteristics, tendencies and properties of different beings and things arise from God: God does not depend on these properties or characteristics but completely controls these instincts and natural tendencies and properties exhibited by living beings and all other things.” (VII. 4-12)
8. “ God is formless but is in all forms. Formless God is not discernible to the human faculties and senses. God fills the entire universe/ creation. That senses do not perceive or discern my presence is also the result of God’s power to keep them in illusion. God in everything All life and matter exists in God, yet God’s existence in not limited to all forms of life and matter nor limited to the known and the knowable.” (IX. 4-7)

It is clear from the above that the concept of God in Gita is very simple, even if abstract. God is not conceived as a known, identifiable physical or extra-physical form nor is God perceived as a known or unknown power or force. God is conceived as something enveloping, encompassing, all pervasive, incomprehensible, and unimaginable and the ultimate source of the entire creation – known or unknown, and perceived as always there even when time might not have existed. Yet God’s presence is perceived in all elements of matter and life everywhere, every moment of time and beyond time ans space. God seems to be the creator and the creation as well.

It is a clear admission that God is indescribable, if not unknowable, source of all that we know or do not know and is defined as such. Why has God been conceived and defined in this way some 2,500 or 5,000 years ago? Why is this God not named? How is such an abstract concept or definition useful and applied in human life?

We shall explore this soon by looking at other verses of Gita itself.

Thy Will Thy Flag

2009-01-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

ALL MOMENTS MANIFEST THY WILL

You make us feel free to choose
Our destiny, we think we decide and do.
We aim at gains, never to lose.
Pride we take in successes we make;
For failures to blame there’s You too.
Yet, we seek Your blessings, and we pray,
Your injustice makes Luck skip our way.
That’s Your design; it’s Your principle
Working each moment to manifest Your Will.

All in Your team are to try, You only identify:
One Bill Gates, and his mates,
His charity others to embrace.
One Bin Laden, a few to die for him
And some others to fall victim.
Two to fight each other,
One heart to love another,
Many to lose wealth in stocks
Scribes to earn selling scandal shocks,
Our moments to restore peace,
And the moment we pierce it with ease.
You sequence moments to follow :
Life and happiness, death and sorrow.

Whose Flags Fly High

The Towers of the Rich crumble,
Thousands die and millions cry.
Whose flags fly and rise high?
Champions of the deprived, the poor?
Super-minds of religious adventure?
Wonder if, this can ever ensure
That poverty dies with the rich and the martyr!
And, wonder if religions make us humble!

Winning power to control others’ lives –
Is a cherished goal that drives
The jealous hearts cast in stone.
Hiding failures to create on their own,
They destroy what others have grown.

As leaders of the innocent, gullible mass
They sell hatred to the poor, illiterate class
At prices that make this business gain.
Buyers must struggle for hatred to sustain.
Through the ages, fluttering in the sky,
Bloodstained flags of hatred rise high,

When Terrorism Wins!

Find fault with others, if you fail to compete.
And the competent you cannot hope to beat.
Building competencies takes time too long,
Past legacies stand as a burden too heavy,
Entry barriers prove difficult to cross over.
But for the one in-a-hurry to become strong,
Impatience grows, seeking ways to be ready
To snatch the comfort of peace with violence
From those not yet tired of their tolerance
Of the extant order where the proficient thrives.

But does terror bring justice and lies re-write
History? Lies breed lies, fear begets fright.
Violence multiplies. Terrorism grows.
But, it’s power to terrorize weaken with time
whose healing touch quietly sows
the seeds of change in the hearts of men
Like fire. Then it loses steam,
It continues to kill and destroy
Only to burn itself out. To let life enjoy
Diversity and difference as hearts in pain
Pump tolerance back again.
Terrorism wins in its demise
As truth, honesty. peace and love rise
To fill hearts and intellect.
And, nothing seems incorrect, imperfect.