C L Kaloo
The Bhagavat Gita in Adhyay 12th reveals about the eternal transcendental nature of the soul and exploring that we must forsake the ignorant double life-that is-talking like the wise and acting like the ignorant.
This duality must be avoided by acting wisely as well as speaking like the wise. A devotee should not be stirred by the restless changes of life not fearful of the momentary calmness of so called death (suspension of Physical activity)
The lord in 2nd Adhyay Shloka 11, in the above context, said as under: – (2:11 BG)
“asocyan anvasocas tuam – prajna vadams ca bhasase
gatasun agatasums ca – nanusocanti panditah”
Means: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for living nor for the dead.
The lord took the position of the teacher and chastised the student, calling him, indirectly a fool and said, “you are talking like a wise man(learned), but you do not know that one who is learned one who knows what is body and what is soul-does not lament for any stage of the body neither in the living nor in the dead condition” The purpose of this shloka spoken by the lord refer to a devotee who speaks like the wise and behaves like the ignorant which appears to be contradictory. The devotee under the influence of delusion, experiences the state in which he can utter words of wisdom even while he is acting like a simpleton! Beginners in yoga may speak as if they were calm with wisdom while they are motivated by restlessness. One ought not to be a hypocrite in anything. There should be a connection of equality between one’s life and the expression of one’s thoughts. Thus, this duality, as explained above, must be avoided by acting wisely as well as speaking like the wise. The wise do not indulge in grief for things that are inevitably changeable and fading and those who always weep and complain their life is filled with bitter things to reveal the nervousness of the minds. In god’s consciousness, all worldly things are trifles, because they are not eternal. The distressful changes in life and death seem real because of man’s sense of possession- “my body, my family, my acquirements”. This is God’s world; death reminds us that nothing belongs to us except what we are as souls. To be identified with the body and its surroundings is to meet time and again with the unexpected-the frightful changes that bend one down in unwilling submission. The state of constant calmness (neutralization of restless thoughts) is attained by the continuous practice of meditation and by keeping the attention fixed at the point between the eyebrows. In this state of calmness, man witnesses the thoughts and emotions and their workings without being disturbed at all, reflecting in his consciousness only the unchangeable image of spirit. Those who look at the surface of the sea must behold the birth and death of waves but those who seek the depths of ocean behold one invisible mass of water. Similarly, those who acknowledge “life and death” are tossed by sorrow while who live in the illimitable super consciousness, behold and feel the one ineffable bliss. In the words of Sri Sri Paramhansa Yogananda, “Attainment of oneness with God in cosmic consciousness bestows the ultimate perception in which all the differences of dream life melt into one Everlasting joy!” This sage of the highest order and spiritual scientist further conveys, in context of the above shaloka “Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! Forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! Control the present! Live supremely well now! It will white wash the dark past and compel the future to be bright! This is the way of the wise.” Now, the Lord says about the law of incarnation in Adhyaya 2nd-Shloka 12th (2:12 BG) that we have bloomed before in the garden of life with buds of our reincarnated souls. This shaloka reads as under: –
“natuevaham jatunasam – natvam neme janadhipah
nacaiva na bhavisyamah – sarve vayam atah param”
Means: It is not that I have never before been incarnated, nor those other royal ones(kings)! And never in all faturity shall any one of us not exist!
In similarity to what the lord says in the said shaloka William Wordsworth (Ode – intimation of immortality) has in his own poetic words, also written, as quoted here under: –
“Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life star,
Hath had elsewhere its settings;
And cometh from afar,
…………………………………………….
…. from God, who is our home”
The purport is that not only has man existed in some form from an inderterminate past but, so long as he is ignorantly identified with his body, he will continue throughout an indefinite future to reinhabit fresh bodies. Thus, reincarnation signifies not only a change of residence(setting) by the soul from one body to another body, but also a change in the composite expression of the ego from one state of consciousness to another state of consciousness within our life time. Thus, the lord points out that all mortals who appear “now” to be separate individuals (one’s self and one’s contemporories) are mere cause-and-effect expressions in bodily form of desires carried over by the ego from the past (previous lives). The lord asks the devotees to rise above the law of causation and mortal desires, which chain a man to a series of inherently painful incarnations, and to become established instead in the internal freedom of his immortal soul. There is a harvest of eternal ever new peace, if we concentrate on the immortal spirit through meditation. Thus, concludingly it is brought out that in the transient realm of time and space, there is constant change or cessation, in form and expression. Everlasting is the soul of man (the true self) and the soul of the Universe-the krishna consciousness or the cosmic consciousness- the ever awake consciousness uninterrupted by depth. The truth is that man lives on “Eternal now” and the mortal man experiences the eternal now through a punctuated series of lives whose settings, alternatively, are the physical world and the astral world.
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