Gita 06.42 – Having past spiritual impressions reinforced in a present life is extremely fortunate

Reservation thank you so here Krishna is telling about the destination of the yogi who is unable to attain perfection on the path of yoga and Krishna has given two possible trajectories the previous verse gave one trajectory that such a person who has done some little yoga practice will go to heaven and then come to earth to be born in a family where the yogi can continue yoga practice in a prosperous or in a brahminical family now Krishna says alternatively what can happen for the yogi the yogi takes birth in in a very intelligent family very spiritually advanced family dhi refers to intelligence and in the context which is going on over here it refers to spiritual intelligence kule bhavati dhi matam so kula refers at large to dynasty so kule bhavati dhi matam means that he is born in a very spiritually advanced family lots of spiritual intelligence such is this is not just not only rare extremely rare there is superlative over here that in this world such a birth is extremely rare such a birth is rare so essentially Krishna states that the yogi can alternatively take birth in a family of way of those with great spiritual intelligence such a birth in this world is extremely rare so our behavior in general is shaped by various factors which can be classified broadly into five one is our past life karma which manifests in many ways as our genes then there is our upbringing then there is our association the kind of people we associate with then there is of course our free will and there is God's grace which can manifest in extraordinary ways so our behavior is influenced by all these things of course we always have free will and the free will can counter the effects of past life karma of this life upbringing or even this life association but these are strong forces which do shape the way in which we tend to use our free will and the way we use our free will can be drastically altered by the practice of bhakti which invokes the grace of God Krishna's grace is omnipotent so now in this world to make spiritual advancement to attain yogic perfection essentially requires that we consistently choose spirit over matter we choose the things which help us grow spiritually without succumbing to worldly temptations and what can ensure that we make such a choice Arjuna has been asking about a yogi who is not able to persevere with such a choice lifelong and the yoga from the path of yoga the mind went away in another direction so Krishna says that in the next life the advanced yogi will be born directly in a advanced spiritualist family and the advantage is that the upbringing will be very spiritual and that upbringing has a huge influence on the way we are able to bring ourselves up later in life so if a child gets a very if a son is born into a particular family is born in a family that has very serious spiritualist as parents then the parents will give spiritual impressions right from the childhood to the child and that will help the child grow develop a culture of choosing spiritually and this will be extremely auspicious for the child's spiritual career in that life many times if our upbringing has been materialistic then we have to fight against the force of our past impressions to be able to practice bhakti but if our upbringing has been spiritual then we don't have to fight against those impressions rather those impressions will work in our favor and thus in our inner territory when we try to move towards Krishna we won't be moving against against the current of the inner river rather the inner river will be moving us towards Krishna quite often in our inner world we are traveling we are trying to swim upstream the normal default desires of the of our consciousness of the mind tend to go downwards towards matter and material gratification and we strive to counter that by pulling ourselves upwards so it's like swimming upstream and this downward flow of our desires happens because of the past impressions that we have either from our past association from our upbringing or from our past life karma and gradually as we become practice bhakti more and more steadily and for a long time then the inner current will get reversed because our desires will get purified and we will start moving towards Krishna but this takes a long time for happening and if somehow we had inner territory where we were moving towards Krishna where our inner flow of consciousness is naturally moving towards Krishna and that would be very fortunate so that is what happens for a soul who is born in spiritual family so in the spiritual family the upbringing is such that the soul doesn't get the soul is not in the child's body the infant's body the soul doesn't get any materialistic impressions in this life that have to be reworked later so in this way soul's spiritual prospects are assured by understanding that our free will can be used positively and the support for getting the free will for proper use of positive will comes when we are born in a spiritual family and in this way we can actually take advantage of the positive inner current and keep moving steadily onwards towards spiritual perfection now Krishna says that dhimatam kule dhimatam birth in a spiritual intelligent family is durlabhadra is extremely rare, why is that? we can say in the next chapter 7.3 that that among people in general among thousands few endeavour to know Krishna and among those who endeavour few actually know him in truth so in this way those who know Krishna are actually few in number and that's why those who are spiritually advanced they are also few because that is a general pattern as compared to humanity most human beings are not interested in spiritual life few are interested Krishna says and even among those who generally are endeavouring for the higher perfection of life, those who come to know Krishna are even fewer so because such people are rare so naturally birth in such a family is extremely rare so those who have the opportunity for being born in such families are extremely fortunate and they can use the opportunity for marching steadily onwards towards Krishna now how the spiritual journey continues in this life after having got a conducive birth that will be talked about in the next verse thank you.