Wednesday, January 1, 2014

VIII: 21

Chapter 8, Verse 21

"What is called the everlasting
Is the highest end supreme.
This is my supreme abode.
Those who reach it
Are not reborn."

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

In meditation, you travel inwardly, beyond the frontiers of time and space, to discover your true home.  This is a journey to the land of light.  To visit this land, you do not have to reserve a seat, get a passport or visa.  All you have to do is offer up your biggest piece of baggage, your selfishness.  Then, wherever you go, from Iceland to Australia, you will find yourself in the kingdom of heaven.

Sri Aurobindo:

You might easily imagine that this eternally unmanifested Being must be the ever undefined and indefinable Absolute, and the proper way to reach it is to rid yourself of all that you have become in the manifestation, not to carry up to it your whole inner focus in a combined concentration of the mind's knowledge, the heart's love, the yogic will and the vital life force.

However, Krishna will insist in the next verse that although this reality is supra-cosmic, still it is to be won by Bhakti (devotion).  In other words, the supreme Self is not an entirely relationless Absolute, but the Seer of the worlds.  It is by knowing and loving this Seer as the one and the all that we seek and find the supreme consummation, the absolute release.

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