THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 07
JNANA VIJNANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE AND REALIZATION:
VERSE NUMBER 26
Text in Transliteration:
vedaa ‘ham samateetaani vartamaanaani chaa ‘rjuna
bhavishyaani maam tu veda na kaschana
Text in English:
I know, O Arjuna, the beings of the past, the present and the future, but no one knows Me.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
Iswara is the Lord of maya or illusion, having complete control over it. The appearance, stay and dissolution of the beings are all acts of maya. Time also exists in maya. The Lord being all-knowing, the destiny of all of these is within His ken. The beings that were in the past, that are in the present and that are to be in the future are all known to Him. But the individual souls do not know anything worth while about themselves; how then are they going to know about Iswara, the Cosmic Soul! The devotees, however, do not come within this limitation. They constantly adore the Lord and choose to be in His proximity. So they understand Him to some extent. The others neither adore nor understand Him.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
It is possible for the swan to separate milk from water and partake of the former only. The other birds are unable to do this. Iswara is mingled with maya; He is non-dual with it. The ordinary people cannot distinguish Him from maya. But the Paramahamsas—the men of perfection—are able to cognize Iswara to the exclusion of maya.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Persons who are deluded by the three qualities of Nature do not know the Lord. As they lack in the knowledge of His real nature, they do not adore Him. But the Lord knows through His omniscience the beings of the past, the present and the future. He who worships the Lord with single-minded devotion knows Him in essence. He has knowledge of His real nature.
Comments of the blogger:
If the Lord happens to not know the beings of the present, past and future, we can have no hope of salvation or Soul Realization.
Why and How?
It’s really very simple. If the Lord does not know us in our present state, it would mean He is blind to the present. Then who would reward the virtuous and punish the wicked?
Hello, the Delhi rapists and we cannot be measured and determined on the same scale, ok?
It is God’s knowledge about our present attitude, action and even thinking and imagination, that safeguards our future. Otherwise, people can behave in any way and there would be nobody to question us.
Then How Does the Great Lord Master weighs our even passing thoughts or imagination?
He has the very very minute unit of measurement. And it is called SAMSKARA. It is different from Samsara. Samsara is the worldly life. And Samskara is the basic and very accurate unit of measurement. When we see a leper and our heart melts, it is certainly taken into consideration. If we see a person suffering in life and pity him that is taken into account. If this is the case, what would be the case of a Mother Teresa? She cleaned the obnoxious festering wounds of the lepers! For her, those wounds were the wounds placed on the holy body of Her Saviour, Lord Jesus. Once a newly recruited nurse asked the Mother if she did not feel nauseated when cleaning the wounds of some suffering man, she, the Mother answered, “If you could put yourself in his position and feel the pain, your suffering would go and you would become a mother to him!
We are digressing. And I’m sorry.
Samskara is the basic unit of measurement.
This is why and how even our most private thoughts are either rewarded or punished.
The Lord knows our present state, and how we lead our life. So our future is safe in His ineffable Hands.
And of course, the Lord knows our past. Because past is in the present, as T.S. Eliot says.
What is present now becomes past in our next birth, OK?
So the immutable everlasting Lord knows our past, present and future.
But you shouldn’t be afraid of Samskara.
You shouldn’t moan, “O my Lord. Yesterday, I passed a beggar and he was very horrible to look at and without even a feeling of pity, I hurried to my office. I was already late by ten minutes.
No this kind of thing should never happen to us.
While the power of the Lord in having devising the most accurate measurement, Samskara, to measure even the passing thought of us, the Lord keep it elastic.
Elastic in the sense, if I pass by a suffering dog on the street, and hurry to my office, then when I sit for my daily prayer, I can always pray for the suffering people and the negative Samskara would be turned into a positive Samskara.
So, as I have said time and again, the key for us is prayer! Daily Prayer at the altar of the Lord burns up the daily accumulation of all the negative Samskaras into positive ones. So we should open our heart to the Lord, at the end of the day every day and beg the Lord’s mercy. That one thing will save us from many passing acts of unkindness we might have been party to during the day.
We all must be in possession of three books, at least. Number one is the Bhagavat Gita. Number two is Tiruvasagam or some book equal to it. And number three we must have a fine copy of Ramayana. The Lifco publishers have published a two-volume edition of Ramayana in English. We must have all these three books. We must make a holy study of these books apart from our daily prayer.
There is a tendency among youngsters that while Ramayana could be read after retirement, Bhagavat Gita is for those who want to take to Sanyasa!
Never!
Nothing could be more preposterous. Ramayana and Gita must be learnt while we are still young.
Once again we’re digressing.
The Lord knows our past, present and future.
While I was a small student, (I went to a school run by the Jesuit Brothers). And the Reverend fathers there would say, don’t think you could do anything behind the back of the Lord. He knows all. He has the know-how to tell exactly how many hairs are there on your head.
Well, now I am 57 and I only have a few hairs left on my head. But at that stage, I used to muse if God didn’t have a better job to pass His time, instead of enumerating our hairs on the head?
I have always been a critical thinker.
That’s why some eighteen years ago when I first read Git the great discourse between Arjuna and the Lord appealed to me immensely. All the questions are answered in the Gita.
So the Lord knows our past, present and future.
And what about Himself? Is he subject to Time?
While the prakriti or nature itself is an illusion for those knowing guys, how could Time be the essence for the Lord. Albert Einstine has proved that Time can be stopped and along with it our aging if we could invent a machine that can travel at the speed of Light!
If the machine is there, all we have to do is to get into it with our family and travel in it for about a hundred years and then come back to earth. All would have gone. But we would be none the worse for the passage of a hundred years!
So Time itself is an illusion, see?
And the Lord created Light and so He is the author of Time.
There is a name for Lord Eshwara; kaalaatheeshwara. That is one who is the master of Time.
So we are safe in the hands of our Lord Master so long we pray and make a study of the three books mentioned by me. I would even say and go to the extent of saying that if we are so very busy that we cannot make a regular study of the holy books, then at least we must allot time for praying the Lord who is watching over us during our millennial journey.
{Dear Readers, apart from this blog, I’m writing four more, and they are:
kaviriyinselvan.blogspot.com
myresourcefulaunt.blogspot.com
raguramramayanaforchildren.blogspot.com
raguramkarikalanandthetimemachin.blogspot.com
and Please strengthen my hands by visiting those sites too.}
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