Gita 08.06 – Our emotional disposition becomes our physical position
And that is what is being reassured in this verse. Thank you. yam yam vapisvaram bhavam Whatever is the bhava, whatever is the nature that we remember, whatever is it that we remember, yam yam, whatever it is, yet we take the leveram at the time of death.
tam tam evaiti kaunteya That we will attain. tam tam evaiti kaunteya sadatat bhava bhavitaha Always. tad bhava bhavitaha So the word bhava comes in this verse thrice.
First is smaran bhavam, yam yam vapisvaram That is in the A part, the first line of this verse. sadatat bhava bhavitaha It comes again in the last compound word of the last line. Now, herein, we see So bhava, which occurs three times, is significant.
The first two occurrences of the word bhava simply refer to nature. Bhavitaha means to become, to attain that nature. So, whatever is our whatever is our emotional disposition becomes our physical position.
Position in the sense that we become positioned in a corresponding physical body. And this is an aspect of the merciful arrangement of the Lord. That we live in the world, we choose to do various things depending on our psychophysical nature.
And everything we do affects our disposition because what we do not only creates actions in the external world it also creates impressions in the inner world. And often from our long-term perspective, from the long-term consequence on us the impressions we create in our inner world may be far more consequential than the actions we do and the consequences in the external world. So, for example, if we indulge in selfish, self-centered, sensual gratification then such gratification creates impressions that bind us to the body and they shape our conception of enjoyment.
They make us think that such activities are enjoyable even if the amount of enjoyment we get through them is not much. Still, the fact that we have got some enjoyment that creates an impression in the mind and that impression forms an attraction to that particular sense object which offered that little enjoyment and thus we become attracted to the sense object. Now, this is something which we all experience.
Say, for example, if an alcoholic drinks alcohol once, twice, thrice then in future, whenever the alcoholic passes by a bar there is a rope, it seems to be like a rope which drags that alcoholic towards the alcohol. So, similarly, whenever we indulge in some enjoyment we are attracted to the sense object. What we need to understand at a certain level is that the attraction is not just to the sense object the attraction is to the whole process of sense gratification and sense gratification involves the sense object as well as the sense.
So, when we have developed a particular conception of enjoyment then at a certain level our consciousness gets attracted towards the corresponding arrangement for that kind of enjoyment. The corresponding arrangement means for sense gratification we need the sense objects as well as the senses. So, as per the desires that we have cultivated as per the indulgences, as per the pleasures that we have indulged in and accordingly as per the impressions that we have created they shape our next life's body because the body provides us the senses by which we can enjoy the sense objects.
Krishna describes this further in the 15th chapter in the 9th verse when he states shrotram chakshuh sparshanam cha prasannam ghranam eva cha adhishthayam manaschayam vishayan upasevate shrotram chakshuh sparshanam cha shrotra is the ears so Krishna is talking about the five senses over here shrotram chakshuh sparshanam cha the ears, the eyes, the sense of touch, the skin prasannam ghranam eva cha the tongue and the nose adhishthayam manaschayam they are all centered around the mind they manifest through the mind we could say they are grouped around the mind just as the fingers are grouped around the palm and initially just an appendage for the hand appears and then on the appendage for the arm the fingers appear we are talking about how the process of growth takes place within the embryo of the womb in the embryo in the womb just as from the appendage of the hand which initially is a saplex appendage moving onwards then the fingers grow like that from the mind the senses grow so right now depending on the kind of the mind that we are cultivating accordingly we are also cultivating a body that we will get in our next life shariram yadavapnoti yachyapyutkramatishvara grihitvaitani sanyati vayurgandhanivasayat so gandha vayu the soul leaves one body and gets another body and the process, subtle process of transmigration that does this is centered on the principle of that's not exactly bhakti here bhakti determines how we will get an eternal spiritual body and attain Krishna's abode but this is dependent on the principle of bhavabhavitaha that whatever is our mental disposition will become our physical location our physical position our physical situation so our desire for sense gratification will be facilitated thus by material nature for some simple example that if a person likes to eat flesh the desire which is being cultivated to eat flesh there is some facility for us to do that in the human body because we have some canine teeth but those are not capable of ripping apart the flesh from a carcass leave alone catching and ripping apart a live animal so if we cultivate that kind of desire to enjoy eating of flesh then our consciousness will be attracted towards that kind of body which will provide us the senses to enjoy the kind of sense objects that we are craving for and in that way we will continue in the cycle of birth and death so this verse is general principle of the verse which says that if we remember Krishna we will attain Krishna so it is not just so it is not an exception it is the culmination remembrance of Krishna is the culmination of the principle of remembrance leading to the determination of our next life existence.