Thursday, April 18, 2013

VII: 14

Chapter 7, Verse 14

"How hard to break through is this, my Maya,
My mysterious cloud of appearance,
But those who take refuge within me
Shall pass beyond the world of shadows."

Father Bede Griffiths:

Maya is the power which both creates and "measures" the world.  It is very often translated as "illusion," but Maya really is Nature perceived as the manifestation of God.  If we see Nature alone and do not see God in it, then we are under an illusion.  Then Maya deceives us.  It depends on our point of view.  When we perceive that the world is a filter through which God is manifesting, then the world becomes a means to know God.

This is the crux of it: either the world is a sign and means to realize God, or it is a blanket which hides God.  Everything turns upon whether we make this world into an illusion or into a sacrament, a sign of God's presence.  Once our trust is placed wholeheartedly in God, there is no more deception.

Sri Aurobindo:

Not only wisdom and selfless action are now demanded of the aspirant, but Bhakti also, devotion to the Divine, love, adoration and the soul's longing.  This demand, not explicitly made until now, was prepared when Krishna laid down, as a necessary element of his Yoga, the conversion of all action into worship with its culmination the giving up of all action into the Supreme Self whence originates all our will and power.  What was implicit is now made explicit, and we begin to discern Krishna's purpose more fully.  The aim is not inaction and immergence in the Eternal Impersonal, but union with the Purushottam, the Supreme Self, as personified by Krishna.

By combining the tranquil impersonality of the Self with actions done as worship, by this double key we escape from the clutches of the egoistically inclined personality and grow into the fullness of our authentic nature, becoming free Jivas in the supreme nature.  Then we are no longer perplexed by the apparent dichotomy of the One Immutable Self and this always changing nature as two opposing entities.  We rise rather to the very embrace of the Purushottam discovered simultaneously through both of these elements of our being.  All three are of Spirit, and the two which are apparent opposites, like the head and tail of the same coin, are only complementary faces of the third which is the highest truth.

A friend:

Even though it is possible to grasp the Creation through our senses, it is impossible to understand fully with our limited minds.  Scientists do their best to elucidate the mysteries of Nature, the Lila of God that follows certain patterns from microcosm to macrocosm.  In the middle, we human beings are part of Nature and loaded with existential doubts.  Krishna and Jesus Christ came to dissolve these doubts, encouraging us to grow into our full potential and teaching us the way.

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