THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 4, JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE, VERSE NUMBER 05

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 4

JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE:

VERSE NUMBER 05

Text in Transliteration:

Many are the births taken by me and you, O Arjuna, I know them all while you know not, O Parantapa.

Text in English:

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Incarnations are all the personifications of Iswara. In the ocean of sat-chit-ananda a wave rises up in one place at one time and it is called Krishna. Another wave rises at another place some time later and it is called Christ.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

You have no intuitional knowledge. The eye of wisdom has not been opened in you on account of your past actions. So your power of vision is limited and therefore you do not know your previous births. But I know them because I am omniscient.

Comments of the blogger:

Arnjuna, despite his greatness as a student, is one of the Jeevatma or created being. But the Lord can create Himself due to his own Maya Shakti or power of illusion. And owing to His omniscience He knows all of His incarnations and what He did in the previous incarnations. But Arjuna’s intuitional power has been shadowed like the smoke hides the fire even in the cases of Satvic people.

That apart, once again we must dwell on the Hindus’ staunch belief in reincarnations and the ordinary men and women have had innumerous births and deaths.

Because it is a very vital point on the basis of which the western people either accept it or deride it—and derision comes most often without much of an education. Jesus Christ speaks of His Secon coming. For this there is absolutely no doubt in the devout Bible readers. And even here some learned preceptors give their own intuitional interpretations, and this is as follows: the second coming was spoken by the Lord Christ in an allegorical way; that the second coming of the Christ must happen in the minds of His followers. That they must realize the truth, and when that happens Christ’s second coming will have happened in every mortal’s soul rendering him or her as people who have attained the personal salvation.

We are deviating.

With regard to the countless rebirths and deaths almost every Hindu Sage has spoken of from personal intuitional as well as practical knowledge.

Let us view the point in practical terms:

Take the case of Samsara and samskaras. Samsara is the mighty ocean namely the worldly life into which every being is tossed by God’s prakriti or Nature. God in Gita states elsewhere that all being are in him and he is not in them, in the sense having an umbilical relationship with them. Indeed God created the Prakriti or Nature and it is the Nature which takes care of the human beings in the matter of schooling them and makes them earn their individual salvation. So it is the Prakriti and not God who oversees the mutations of the ordinary beings into the saintly beings fully freed from Prakriti or Nature at some point of birth.

My question to those ladies and gentlemen who finds it difficult to believe in rebirths is this: just see this world; turn everywhere; how many attractions and pitfalls are there. Even when you close your eyes you see in the inner eye various shapes and shows that simply enthrall you. The world is full of countless attractions. The world is filled with sensuous as well as sensual things. And then what about the wealth and enrichment one always keeps one’s mind hitched upon? We may say one need not covet for smart phones and gadgets and he could be content with his soul. Is it really possible?

Shankarar says this world is an Ocean with mighty waves. It contains illusion, desire, and karma; and the helpless human beings are simply tossed into it. The moment the baby is born it sees itself as an individual person. There arises the illusion. It is not an individual person. He is one more expression of God. But the baby feels it is an individual person. Then arises the desire for its mother’s milk. And when it is suckled, the second karma or action begins, the first one being its protest and cry.

The baby, as it grows, sees the whole world filled with desires and karma. It is the illusion of the Prakriti or Nature. Everywhere it turns there are sense objects and the baby is a fast learner, and learns to love all the sense objects. And this apart, one baby is beautiful and another ugly. As the baby grows into the adulthood the mother of all attractions comes in sensual waves to attack it. The young man and woman find it simply unavoidable to deny themselves the sensual pleasures. Then the desire for money, wealth and gold and land; what will the simple man and woman do? If it is, that is, the human birth, his or her first, what sin he or she has done to merit this?

Shankarar says this world as samsara has illusion or maya, desire or kama, and action or karma. We are tossed into such a worldly ocean and come here with illusion which makes us forgetful of God absolutely. All the world’s Scriptures are not of avail in make us see our Maker eye to eye. So this illusion continues. We see ourselves as individuals and are subject to desire to enjoy and hold and the desire tosses into constant karma or actions, whereas our Atman has no action whatsoever!

Thus we are bound to do and commit so many mistakes and sins which are natural. And when the day of reckoning comes after our death the Lord asks us why did you commit this and that sin and tosses us into the Hell’s fire!

Just think my friends if you would do it to your own sons and daughters. Wouldn’t you give them countless chances and good advice and counsel to do this and that and to not do at all this and that? What infinite care you take on behalf of your children! But God just tosses us into this ocean called Samsara and there are basic units of measurement called Samskara with which Nature or Prakriti measures the merit and demerit of our even passing thoughts besides concrete actions! And on the day of reckoning,we are judged on the basis of our actions in this world into which we are tossed only once, meaning we are given only one chance as believed by the Bible readers and the Quran readers!

Take it from me, dear friends, God is countless times more loving than a human mother and father. He is infinitely caring. That is why He gives us umpteenth number of rebirths and by gradation makes us turn our eye and heart to various pulls of the illusion of this world, and that is the purpose he has created the Prakriti or Nature. Nature takes care of us through our countless births and deaths.

And the Scriptures exert stronger pull on us as we progress in births and deaths, and we start to turn toward God at some time.

Even the Test Match cricket game has two innings. Would God give us but one innings in this world of illusion and aske us to behave! Never!

Having created the prakriti or nature, God withdraws and it is prakriti which oversees us and evaluate us through our thousands of births and deaths!