Chapter Eight: The Yog of the Eternal God (Akṣhar Brahma Yog )
Turning Gears Of Existence. Plus: Don’t Die In October.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores
Sacred Texts (Bhagavad Gita).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through
the Bhagavad Gita, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as
literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2XAch2A
For the online Bhagavad Gita that I use, see here https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/
And now:
Akṣhar Brahma Yog
“Arjun said: O
Supreme Lord, what is Brahman (Absolute
Reality), what is adhyātma (the individual
soul), and what is karma? What is said to be adhibhūta, and who is said to be Adhidaiva? Who is Adhiyajña
in the body and how is He the Adhiyajña? O Krishna, how are You to be known at the time of death by those of
steadfast mind?”
You may have the same questions as Arjun after the last
chapter, where we were introduced to some more Sanskrit technical terms.
Fortunately, Krishna provides some nice straightforward answers – “The Supreme
Indestructible Entity is called Brahman; one’s own self is called adhyātma. Actions pertaining to the material
personality of living beings, and its development are called karma, or fruitive
activities” and “the physical manifestation that is constantly changing is
called adhibhūta; the universal form of God, which presides over the celestial gods in
this creation, is called adhidaiva; I, who dwell in the heart of every living
being, am called Adhiyajña, or the Lord of all sacrifices”.
I’m still a little unclear as
to the last, but the Adhiyajña
seems to be a kind of bridge between the mortal adhibhūta and the
immortal adhidaiva.
Which seems to be a pretty uncontroversial concept, I think.
The
main theme of this chapter is that if a person has God on their mind/in their
heart when they die, that’s where they’ll go, to the highest of the realms that
is above the cycle of rebirth, of manifestation and dissolution (of which see
below). So the wisest of yogis learn to keep God in mind at all times, because
“One
who departs from the body while remembering Me, the Supreme Personality, and
chanting the syllable Om, will attain the supreme goal”. There’s some more meditative practices about fixing “the prāṇ (life airs) between the eyebrows” and (confusingly) “fixing the mind in the heart region, and
then drawing the life-breath to the head”.
In effect, then, with
practice one can achieve a state whereby, should one die, one is guaranteed to
gain the best form of existence.
Krishna then goes on to
explain the great cycles of Brahma – “One
day of Brahma (kalp) lasts a thousand cycles of the four ages (mahā yug) and his night also extends for the same span of time”. During a
Brahman “day”, “all living beings emanate
from the unmanifest source” while during “night” “all embodied beings again merge into their unmanifest source”. It’s
not clear from this is this is happens on a cosmic or individual scale. At the
end of a Brahman night, all living things become dissolute before being reborn
again in the next Brahman dawn, and so the cycles continue. I like the idea,
here, of some grand cosmic dissolution at the end of an age, but it also seems like
this cycle is happening to each individual life as they die and are reborn in
the next life.
I also like the concept, a
bit like Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, of this Brahman realm with its cycles
being a kind of transcendent realm affecting the physical realm. But also,
above the cycles of Brahma “yet another
unmanifest eternal dimension. That realm does not cease even when all others do”,
which is sort of the background, baseline existence within which the cycling
existences occur. It’s almost like, I have in my mind here, that you could
conceive of many different layers of cycling existences, all turning at
different rates like gears of different ratios – the fast cycle of mortal life-spans,
the slow turning of years, the slower turning of millennia, and eventually the
base upon which they all sit. I don’t know if that’s anything like how I’m
supposed to think of this idea, but I’m nicking it for my own purposes.
There’s one glorious passage
wherein Krishna describes how one can either attain the highest level of the
Supreme Divine Personality, or be trapped in the cycles – “Those who know the Supreme Brahman, and who depart from this world,
during the six months of the sun’s northern course, the bright fortnight of the
moon, and the bright part of the day, attain the supreme destination. The
practitioners of Vedic rituals, who pass away during the six months of the
sun’s southern course, the dark fortnight of the moon, the time of smoke, the
night, attain the celestial abodes. After enjoying celestial pleasures, they
again return to the earth. These two, bright and dark paths, always exist in
this world. The way of light leads to liberation and the way of darkness leads
to rebirth”.
A light and a dark side,
classic stuff! I wonder here if these times are metaphorical or not. It seems a
bit of a bummer if you’ve practiced these yog
all your life, and fixed your prana
between your eyes, and then die in October, under a waning moon.
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