Bg 15.11
yatanto yoginaś cainaṁ paśyanty ātmany avasthitam
yatanto ’py akṛtātmāno nainaṁ paśyanty acetasaḥ
Bg 15.12
yad āditya-gataṁ tejo jagad bhāsayate ’khilam
yac candramasi yac cāgnau tat tejo viddhi māmakam
Translation
11. The seekers striving (for Perfection) behold Him dwelling in the Self; but, the unrefined and unitelligent, even though striving, see Him not.
12. That Light which is residing in the Sun and which illumines the whole world, and that which is in the moon and in the fire --- know that Light to be Mine.
Commentary
Those who are successful in their attempts at stilling their mind and cleaning their intellect of its disturbing attachments and desires, come to recognise the glory of the Self and experience Its Infinite Beatitude. But it is also true that all those who mechanically put in plenty of self-effort (Yoga) do not necessarily succeed. Hundreds are those who complain that though they were regular in their spiritual programme for years, no appreciable amount of self-development has come to them. One may wonder why this should be so.
This moot point is being answered here very logically. "THOUGH STRIVING, THOSE OF UNREFINED MIND AND DEVOID OF WISDOM, PERCEIVE HIM NOT." Two conditions are unavoidable if meditation is to ultimately yield its promised result: (a) The purification of the mind is generally defined as removal of agitations (Vikshepa) created by one's false ego-centric attachment to sense-objects; (b) Also, the intellect is to be tuned up properly to a correct understanding of the nature of the Self, and thus all doubts of the misty mind (Avarana) that veil its right perception are also to be removed through study, reflection and practice. If these two adjustments are not properly accomplished, through practice of devotion (Bhakti-Yoga) and service (Karma-Yoga), all attempts at meditation in the "Path-of-Knowledge" can only end in failure.
In short, the stanza emphasises that those whose minds have not been properly regenerated through practice of self-control of the senses, and who have not renounced and abandoned their evil ways of looking at things from limited ego-centric standpoint, whose pride has not yet been subdued --- such seekers, however sincerely and ardently they may meditate, have little or no chance of unfolding themselves into their diviner possibilities; THEY BEHOLD HIM NOT. Though the Self is the nearest, and therefore, most easily perceivable, yet, all do not see Him, because of their complete slavery to the enchantments of the sense-objects.
So far the Self has been indicated as: (1) That, which cannot be illumined by the known phenomenal sources of light, such as the Sun, the Moon and the Fire; (2) That having reached which, none returns from that State of Perfection; (3) That, of which the individual entities (Jivas) are as though only a part.
Hereafter, in the following four stanzas the Immanence of the Lord --- (a) as the All-illumining Light of Consciousness, (b) as the All-sustaining Life, (c) as the subjective warmth of Life, in all living organisms, and (d) as the Self in all the hearts --- is being described.
TO SHOW THIS VERY GOAL AS THE ESSENCE OF ALL AND THE REALITY BEHIND ALL THESE EXPERIENCES, KRISHNA PROCEEDS TO GIVE A SHORT SUMMARY OF THE LORD'S IMMANENCE, IN THE FOLLOWING FOUR VERSES:
We, who are familiar with the modern scientific observations must necessarily get rattled a bit when we read the meaning of the stanza. But without losing our balance, if we were to quietly ruminate over the statement, we shall realise that our confusions are only because of the limitation of our own intellect --- which we have cultivated by the study of intellectually limited sciences. In the early classrooms we are told, very scientifically, that the earth is a portion of the Sun that has got detached from it and got held within the web of mutual attraction of the planets, and which has now cooled to its present temperature. But if we ask the question where the Sun itself came from, the teacher of science is not only uncomfortable, but also positively tickled to a justifiable bad temper! Science can move only in a field where it can gather the necessary data to calculate and to prove.
But philosophy seeks to satisfy the questionings of the human intellect regarding the Ultimate Source of all things, even if the necessary scientific data for such an attempt may not be available in the laboratory. There is a definite frontier at which the intellect and its observations, its logic and conclusions, its reasoning and assertions, must necessarily exhaust themselves and cry halt. And yet, the question is not fully answered, for we find an honest intellect still left wondering: Why! How!! What!!! There science is silent. Where science has fulfilled itself, and from where onwards its light fails to illumine the path, there philosophy starts its pilgrimage towards the Absolute Satisfaction.
Here, the stanza says that the very light which emerges from the Sun and which illumines the whole world, is the Light that is emerging from Me, the Infinite Consciousness. Nay, the light that comes from the moon, the light that emanates from the fire, are all expressions of the Infinite Reality, when It expresses through the moon and the fire.
The manifestations are different because the equipments are different: the LIGHT in the bulb, the HEAT in the furnace, the MOVEMENT in the fan, are all indeed different manifestations, because the bulb, the furnace, and the fan are dissimilar equipments; but the energy called electricity is one and the same. In brief, Consciousness expressed through the Sun manifests sunlight, expressed through the moon is the moon-light, and expressed through the dry fuel is the fire --- and yet, all of them are, in reality, nothing but the Infinite Itself, in Its varied glorious manifestations. The Infinite manifests Itself in order to create the conducive environment, in which alone the world can exist, and wherein, as the Lord, He can come to express Himself and play His game of plurality!!
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
yatanto yoginaś cainaṁ paśyanty ātmany avasthitam
yatanto ’py akṛtātmāno nainaṁ paśyanty acetasaḥ
Bg 15.12
yad āditya-gataṁ tejo jagad bhāsayate ’khilam
yac candramasi yac cāgnau tat tejo viddhi māmakam
Translation
11. The seekers striving (for Perfection) behold Him dwelling in the Self; but, the unrefined and unitelligent, even though striving, see Him not.
12. That Light which is residing in the Sun and which illumines the whole world, and that which is in the moon and in the fire --- know that Light to be Mine.
Commentary
Those who are successful in their attempts at stilling their mind and cleaning their intellect of its disturbing attachments and desires, come to recognise the glory of the Self and experience Its Infinite Beatitude. But it is also true that all those who mechanically put in plenty of self-effort (Yoga) do not necessarily succeed. Hundreds are those who complain that though they were regular in their spiritual programme for years, no appreciable amount of self-development has come to them. One may wonder why this should be so.
This moot point is being answered here very logically. "THOUGH STRIVING, THOSE OF UNREFINED MIND AND DEVOID OF WISDOM, PERCEIVE HIM NOT." Two conditions are unavoidable if meditation is to ultimately yield its promised result: (a) The purification of the mind is generally defined as removal of agitations (Vikshepa) created by one's false ego-centric attachment to sense-objects; (b) Also, the intellect is to be tuned up properly to a correct understanding of the nature of the Self, and thus all doubts of the misty mind (Avarana) that veil its right perception are also to be removed through study, reflection and practice. If these two adjustments are not properly accomplished, through practice of devotion (Bhakti-Yoga) and service (Karma-Yoga), all attempts at meditation in the "Path-of-Knowledge" can only end in failure.
In short, the stanza emphasises that those whose minds have not been properly regenerated through practice of self-control of the senses, and who have not renounced and abandoned their evil ways of looking at things from limited ego-centric standpoint, whose pride has not yet been subdued --- such seekers, however sincerely and ardently they may meditate, have little or no chance of unfolding themselves into their diviner possibilities; THEY BEHOLD HIM NOT. Though the Self is the nearest, and therefore, most easily perceivable, yet, all do not see Him, because of their complete slavery to the enchantments of the sense-objects.
So far the Self has been indicated as: (1) That, which cannot be illumined by the known phenomenal sources of light, such as the Sun, the Moon and the Fire; (2) That having reached which, none returns from that State of Perfection; (3) That, of which the individual entities (Jivas) are as though only a part.
Hereafter, in the following four stanzas the Immanence of the Lord --- (a) as the All-illumining Light of Consciousness, (b) as the All-sustaining Life, (c) as the subjective warmth of Life, in all living organisms, and (d) as the Self in all the hearts --- is being described.
TO SHOW THIS VERY GOAL AS THE ESSENCE OF ALL AND THE REALITY BEHIND ALL THESE EXPERIENCES, KRISHNA PROCEEDS TO GIVE A SHORT SUMMARY OF THE LORD'S IMMANENCE, IN THE FOLLOWING FOUR VERSES:
We, who are familiar with the modern scientific observations must necessarily get rattled a bit when we read the meaning of the stanza. But without losing our balance, if we were to quietly ruminate over the statement, we shall realise that our confusions are only because of the limitation of our own intellect --- which we have cultivated by the study of intellectually limited sciences. In the early classrooms we are told, very scientifically, that the earth is a portion of the Sun that has got detached from it and got held within the web of mutual attraction of the planets, and which has now cooled to its present temperature. But if we ask the question where the Sun itself came from, the teacher of science is not only uncomfortable, but also positively tickled to a justifiable bad temper! Science can move only in a field where it can gather the necessary data to calculate and to prove.
But philosophy seeks to satisfy the questionings of the human intellect regarding the Ultimate Source of all things, even if the necessary scientific data for such an attempt may not be available in the laboratory. There is a definite frontier at which the intellect and its observations, its logic and conclusions, its reasoning and assertions, must necessarily exhaust themselves and cry halt. And yet, the question is not fully answered, for we find an honest intellect still left wondering: Why! How!! What!!! There science is silent. Where science has fulfilled itself, and from where onwards its light fails to illumine the path, there philosophy starts its pilgrimage towards the Absolute Satisfaction.
Here, the stanza says that the very light which emerges from the Sun and which illumines the whole world, is the Light that is emerging from Me, the Infinite Consciousness. Nay, the light that comes from the moon, the light that emanates from the fire, are all expressions of the Infinite Reality, when It expresses through the moon and the fire.
The manifestations are different because the equipments are different: the LIGHT in the bulb, the HEAT in the furnace, the MOVEMENT in the fan, are all indeed different manifestations, because the bulb, the furnace, and the fan are dissimilar equipments; but the energy called electricity is one and the same. In brief, Consciousness expressed through the Sun manifests sunlight, expressed through the moon is the moon-light, and expressed through the dry fuel is the fire --- and yet, all of them are, in reality, nothing but the Infinite Itself, in Its varied glorious manifestations. The Infinite manifests Itself in order to create the conducive environment, in which alone the world can exist, and wherein, as the Lord, He can come to express Himself and play His game of plurality!!
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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