Bhagavagd Gita - Session 25- Track 2507
Now, this statement is extremely important because very often people ask this question: what is the best way of helping mankind? Particularly today, when mankind has become a very important ideal, ‘service of mankind’, the question is often raised: in what best way can I serve mankind? And very often people who have lot of wealth and lot of capacities, they begin to spend their time in building hospitals, in building activities of charity of various kinds. This is of course not to be discouraged, but the point is that, merely this, minors the real work, namely: to raise people to the divine consciousness. If you minors this out, then it will only help people to become more and more sick; because now sickness is being tendered, and being tendered is welcomed by hospitals.
Therefore as somebody said: if you become very charitable, you encourage poverty because you will have no business if people do not remain too poor. If you are charitable all the time, and your whole business is to help others, if others become rich you become useless: you have nothing more to give to others. So, this statement is extremely important because while serving people, you should see whether you are really serving to uplift them to divinity. It is in serving man to realise the divine within and in all that the highest service to mankind can be tendered.
“For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded side-tracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine.” The Synthesis of Yoga (pages 419&420, 425&426)
I think these two statements give you a complete idea of the state of Moksha, and also by implication, ‘the perfection’.
Now, having stated this, we now come back to the 7th chapter. The rest of the chapter is not as difficult as these two last verses were. These two verses that we discussed just now are the key verses, and until you come to the last two verses of this chapter, these verses are more or less easy to understand. In fact up to verse n°15, we have the description of the reality of the supreme Being of the Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti; and from n°15 to 28 is the method by which this supreme Reality can be known, this Para Prakriti can be known, and in this process how both Knowledge and Devotion can be combined together: this is the substance of this chapter. The description of the supreme reality of the Para Prakriti, of the Jiva, the description of the Apara Prakriti of ignorance, the relationship between the two: this is the substance from verse n°1 to 15. From verse n°15 to 28 is the description of the method by which this knowledge can be attained. First is the description of the knowledge, but then how this knowledge can be attained is given from verse n°15 to 28.
The n°29 & 30, these two verses are extremely difficult. And we shall not touch these two verses today; we shall leave them because also these two verses are connected with the 8th chapter. So, during the 8th chapter, we shall take up these last two verses. But now, what comes here is much easier, and we shall rapidly path through.
etadyonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇīty upadhāraya |
ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagatah prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā ||6|| (VII)
“I am the beginner, prabhavaḥ’ I am the beginner, I am the creator; pralayas, of the dissolution: I am the beginner and the dissolver of this world. And all that is here in this world, you realise it is nothing but that which comes out of these two Apara Prakriti and Para Prakriti”.
So, I am the originator; this Apara Prakriti is lower than Para Prakriti. Para Prakriti belongs to Me, and everything therefore in this world is circumscribed within these three terms: Myself, the Supreme; Para Prakriti and Apara Prakriti. If these three things are known then the whole world is known.
mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanañjaya |
“Beyond Me, there is nothing else.”
mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva ||7|| (VII)
Now, this sentence is one of the most important sentences in this chapter, (just like the 4th & 5th verses), this one: mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva.
If there is Para Prakriti and if there is Apara Prakriti, and they are two different things, then how are they united? What is the connection, what is the link between the two? So, Sri Krishna says: “I am the link between the higher and the lower, just as if you have a garland of pearls, then these pearls are all woven together by a thread, and therefore they become united, similarly by My Presence, both Apara Prakriti and Para Prakriti are united.”
Now, Sri Krishna explains this in detail: “in what way am I present, even in the Apara Prakriti how I am present”. So, He says (VII, 8):
raso ’ham apsu: “you take all the liquid things and you look at the rasa: that rasa I am”. Therefore, even rasa, which belongs to the Apara Prakriti, but in Apara Prakriti there is rasa: “that rasa is Myself”; and without rasa waters don’t exist; therefore: “without Me Apara Prakriti cannot exists”.
raso ’ham apsu kaunteya: “O Kaunteya, I am rasa in all the waters.”
prabhāsmi śaśisūryayoḥ: śaśi is the moon; sūrya is the sun. These belong to Apara Prakriti, “But in them is prabhā, is the light, that light is Myself.”
praṇavaḥ sarvavedeṣu: “Among all the Vedas,(if you want to find the real link between Me and the Vedas), it is praṇavaḥ, it is the ‘AUM’”.
śabdaḥ khe: “In the Akasha, in the ether, if you want Me to see where I am, the sound, I am the sound.”
pauruṣaṁ nṛṣu: “If you want to see the manhood of man, men are all Apara Prakriti, but if you want to see Me there, pauruṣaṁ, without which pauruṣa cannot exists, therefore pauruṣaṁ is Myself.”