Wednesday, April 3, 2013

VII: 12

Chapter 7, Verse 12

"Know that all states of being,
Whether marked by Sattva, Rajas or Tamas,
Proceed from me.
They are contained within me,
But I am not in them.

Paramahansa Yogananda:

A workhorse, performing its duties pleasurably or grudgingly, is not subject to the law of Karma and the triple modes of Nature, because there is no free choice.  The horse is instinct-bound.  However, a businessman, toiling to make a profit willingly or unwillingly, is shackled to the Karmic effects of his actions, because he does have free choice either to work for God and the welfare of others and become emancipated, or to work for the satisfaction of his own selfishness and thus remain in bondage.

A snake is impervious to its own poison, but the venom is harmful to a person who is bitten.  In the same way, the poison of Maya does not affect God, though it is his manifested form, which is known as Prakriti.  It does, however, affect all of those in Karmic bondage.  To remedy the situation, the discerning ones remove themselves from evil company [just as one way to deal with poisonous snakes is to stay away from them].  Poisoned from birth by Maya, they will strive to associate with good persons, follow virtuous ways and practice Yoga.  Through the cumulative effects of regular Sadhana, they will learn how to remain calm and watchful.

Had God not created the triple qualities that pleasurably, excitingly and painfully affect humans, his cosmic drama would be meaningless.  By this triple strand, he tests his children, and by such tests guides them in the right use of their free choice so that after successfully playing their parts in the cosmic drama, they might find their way back to him.

Sri Aurobindo:

In a sense, the Divine must be in the becomings and the forms of the lower nature.  Otherwise, they would not exist.  What is meant is that the true and supreme spiritual nature of the Divine is not imprisoned there.  They are only phenomena in his being created out of it by the action of the ego and the ignorance.  The ignorance presents everything to us in an inverted vision.

We imagine that the Self is in the body, but it is the body that is in the Self.  We think of Spirit as a small part of us, the Purusha who is no bigger than the thumb, in this great mass of material and mental phenomena.  In reality, the latter for all its imposing appearance is a very small thing in the infinity of Spirit.

In much the same sense, these things are in the Divine rather than the Divine in these things.  The lower mind, which creates so false a view of things, is a Maya, a power of illusion, by which is meant not that it is non-existent nor deals with unrealities, but rather that it bewilders our understanding and conceals from us the truth that we are infinite and imperishable Spirit.  If we could but see that the Divine is the real truth of our existence, all else would change to our vision, and our actions would be in accordance with the law of the divine nature.

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