Atmeeyam : ( 22/10/2012. )

                                                     Swami Krishnananda Srimad Bhagavadgeeta : Chapter 15-Purushothamayogam- Part -2.( Aswatham)  The mystery of life is explained, as we noted yesterday, in the first five verses of the Fifteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. The mystery lies primarily in the fact that the way in which this tree of life grows is a little different from the way in which human minds work. This is the reason why human comprehension cannot fathom the depths of the extendedness and the functioning of the movements of this cosmic tree. Just as the branching of the various limbs of the tree is conditioned by the power that is inherent in the seed which gives birth to the tree, all knowledge and work in this world is preordained and channelised in a given shape by the Original Will which is the seed of this cosmic tree. The world experience is knowledge and action combined. The whole of life can be summed up in knowledge and activity, the understandin

                                                                             Swami Krishnananda. Srimad Bhagavadgeeta : Chapter-15. Purushothamayogam:- Part-1. ( Aswatham) Sadhakas and seekers of truth from various parts of the country come to this holy abode in search of a mysterious something, the acquisition of which is considered as a rectifying factor or a remedy for the various illnesses of life. They have not come here for nothing. It is taken for granted that their search is for a light, and not a substance or object. They seek an enlightenment, a torch to illumine the path which they have to walk in the various fields of their activities. There are doubts and difficulties, problems galore, so that it becomes difficult to take even one step ahead on account of a pitch darkness throughout the horizon that appears to be hanging heavy before our eyes, which is apparently a common fact in the life of each and every person. It does not appear that we are asking for an

Before considering further how devotion to duty helps us in our spiritual progress, let me place before you in a brief compass another aspect of what we in India mean by Karma. In every religion there are three parts: philosophy, mythology, and ritual. Philosophy of course is the essence of every religion; mythology explains and illustrates it by means of the more or less legendary lives of great men, stories and fables of wonderful things, and so on; ritual gives to that philosophy a still more concrete form, so that every one may grasp it — ritual is in fact concretised philosophy. This ritual is Karma; it is necessary in every religion, because most of us cannot understand abstract spiritual things until we grow much spiritually. It is easy for men to think that they can understand anything; but when it comes to practical experience, they find that abstract ideas are often very hard to comprehend. Therefore symbols are of great help, and we cannot dispense with the symbolical me

                                                    Sri Ramana Maharishi WHEN ASKED: `HOW DOES A GRIHASTHA (householder) fare in the scheme of Moksha (liberation)?' Bhagavan said, `Why do you think you are a grihastha? If you go out as a sannyasi (ascetic), a similar thought that you are a sannyasi will haunt you. Whether you continue in the household or renounce it and go to the forest, your mind goes with you. The ego is the source of all thought. It creates the body and the world and makes you think you are a grihastha. If you renounce the world it will only substitute the thought sannyasi for grihastha, and the environments of the forest for those of the household. But the mental obstacles will still be there. They even increase in the new surroundings. There is no help in a change of environment. The obstacle is the mind. It must be got over whether at home or in the forest. If you can do it in the forest, why not at home? Therefore, why change your environment? Your

Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us. Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when persons do evil actions, they become more and more evil, and when they begin to do good, they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good at all times. This intensification of the influence of action cannot be explained on any other ground than that we can act and react upon each other. To take an illustration from physical science, when I am doing a certain action, my mind may be said to be in a certain state of vibration; all minds which are in similar circumstances will have the tendency to be affected by my mind. If there are different musical instruments tuned alike in one room, all of you may have noticed that when one is struck, the others have the tendency to vibrate so as to give the same note. So all minds that have the same tension, so to say, will be equally affected by the same