Excerpts from "The Essence Of The Bhagavad Gita" 2.0 - Wisdom from The Bhagavad Gita

Namaste Wonderful Souls,

As promised; here I am with the II parts of excerpts from “The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita” Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda, as remembered by his disciple Swami Kriyananda.

I consider it as my moral responsibility to specify this with due respect and honesty, that I have not done any tempering with the original material and putting the excerpts as it is which I have taken from the holy book.

– Happiness lies in being centered calmly in one’s self. One who is inwardly calm is able to see things as they are.

– Important to an attitude of being “even-minded and cheerful” is to confront a thought Krishna raises in Bhagavad Gita: the natural fear of death and dying. All must die, sooner or later. Life itself is a preparation for death’s “final exam”. It would be helpful to face this event matter-of-factly, not morbidly.

– For the freer you feel in yourself, the happier you will be!

– Live in the self: be centered in it as your abiding reality. Everything else is simply a dance around the “maypole” of that inner Self. Don’t be caught up by anything. Whatever you do, be free inside. Inner freedom may be described as the highest of all moral virtues.

– What is the Ego? Imagine the moon reflected in many vessels of water. Each vessel contains the same reflection, yet seems, in each of them, to be individual. However, we see that the reflections are all of the same, one moon. At the same time, they may also differ from one another, for example, if the water in one vessel is agitated, or if it contains floating debris, or is coloured differently. The soul of every human being reflects the same bliss of Spirit, but because that bliss is reflected in the individual ego, its appearance and character may seem greatly altered.

– Spiritual progress consists not in actually achieving anything but in simply removing the distortions obscuring the nature of reality.

– God doesn’t really have a human form: He is pure, absolute Bliss- infinite, eternal, and ever- conscious.

– Self- preservation is the deepest instinct of life. It cannot be, and indeed is not, founded on a delusion, for if it were, how could delusion itself arise out of total non – awareness? The very idea defies all logic.

– The Gita, Krishna says, warns against the desire even for an astral Heaven as the reward for living a holy life on earth. One who desires any “Heaven” short of oneness with God – the one supreme Source of Absolute Bliss – is in delusion. The Bhagavad Gita teaches the very highest truths.

– What Krishna teaches in Gita is a truth beyond duality – a truth to which there is no opposite, no possibility of a future fall, and no limitation in ego- consciousness of any kind, but absolute freedom in the Infinite Self.

– “A chronic wanderer in the path of theology seldom tastes even a sip of the pure, divine water of truth. He craves only newly flavored, ideational concoctions! This desire for untried novelties merely leads one into a desert tract of intellectual doubts.” The God thirsty seeker busies himself with imbibing the nectar of Absolute, infinite bliss.

– The Vedas teaches that the universe is a mixture of three basic qualities or gunas. Your duty is to free yourself from all three, as well as from the dualities of Nature. The way to this achievement is to remain ever calm in the Self, free from any thought of either acceptance or possession.

– Between the opposites of duality there is a middle state, which either divides or unites them. Every ocean wave has a crest, a base, and a middle part. The middle part divides, but it also unites. Large waves produce towering crests: Such are the egotists of this world, boasting of their prowess, striving to out-do all others, and combating one another in fierce competition.

– The primary need on the path to wisdom is to overcome the ego’s urgency to declare outwardly, and affirm inwardly, its own, separate individuality. It requires that one seek his answers primarily within himself. Scriptures itself is no substitute for Self- effort.

– Those who sincerely want Him ask for nothing in return, but pray selflessly only for His love!