Gita 08.26 – Disinvest emotion from matter before it crashes
Thank you.
shukla krishna gatiya ete jagata shashvate mate ekaya yatya anavrttim ekaya yati If one goes by one way, anavrttim, one doesn't come back. Anyaya, if one goes the other way, vartate punaha one comes back again. So shukla krishna gatiya ete Krishna is telling here that the dark and the light.
Krishna is the dark, shukla is the light. The destination, when one departs at these times jagata shashvate mate From the material, shashvate mate Shashvate here refers to the Vedic scriptures which give us eternal opinion, lasting opinion, shashvate mate. So according to the enduring opinion from the time-honored scriptures, it is said that one destination is obtained when one departs in light and another when one departs in the darkness.
So ekaya yatya anavrttim When one departs in light, one doesn't return. Anyaya vartate punaha Otherwise one returns. So what exactly is the point? Krishna has already talked about the devyan and pitrayan in the previous verses.
And here we can see that this verse is a clear statement, as clear as we can ever get, that all paths do not lead to the same goal. Krishna is stating here that by one path one will come back, by the other one will not come back. Of course, the sequence is the other way.
But the point is there is this whole connection. So how do we deal with the situation wherein we recognize that our post-mortem destination is not just a matter of playful or idle armchair speculation. Of course, most people are not playful when they are thinking about their post-mortem destination.
They are often quite serious. But still the point remains that it is not something which can be straightforward dealt with. It needs to be dealt with in a sober and sustained way.
We need to cultivate the right consciousness. And to the extent we cultivate that consciousness, to that extent we can attain the proper destination. So destination is a function of cultivation, not just of intention.
Once we have some preliminary understanding of the Vedic worldview, then we understand that this world is a place of misery. Sooner or later we will run into bigger and bigger miseries. As we run into those miseries, as we move towards old age, disease and death, these are enormous miseries and there is no easy way out of these miseries.
So for us to be able to find our way to a level of consciousness where we transcend misery, we will need to purify our consciousness from its attachment to matter. And as long as our consciousness is attached to matter, it's like a child is playing with a toy and somebody comes and breaks the toy. As soon as somebody sees the child's toy is broken, at that time we'll see that the child will be heartbroken.
But if we, on the other hand, recognize that that's just a toy and a child has grown up to be an adult and the adult has no much, no such fanciful investment of emotions in that toy, then the child will not be agitated. The child who has now grown into a man will not be agitated when the toy is broken. So there has to be a disinvestment of emotions from the material and investment of emotions in the spiritual.
Suppose somebody knows that a company is crashing on the stock market. At that time, that person, if they get the information as the stocks are growing down, people will immediately disinvest. And then even if the company crashes, still people will not be disturbed because they will know, they will know that our money has been taken out.
It's safe now. It's not going to sink with this company, with the shares of this company. So just as disinvestment of our money from a sinking company can protect us financially, similarly disinvestment of our emotions from the perishable body can save us spiritually.
How will it save us? Because it will enable us to connect with Krishna, to disinvest our emotions from worldly things. Just disinvestment of emotions is not enough. You also need a reinvestment of emotions in the spiritual.
To the extent we can reinvest our emotions in higher spiritual reality, to that extent we will be emotionally fulfilled because Krishna is the all attractive, all loving supreme person. And as we learn to love him, as we invest our emotions in him, we start finding that our life becomes more and more fulfilling, more and more joyful, more and more relishable. And it is this relish that Krishna wants to provide us.
It is for providing us this relish that he descends to this world and he offers us his mercy in a variety of ways. Of course, this specific verse is not directly talking about Krishna. It is talking about the broad principle.
There is one path which leads to liberation and another to, you could call it re-entry in this world. But irrespective of whatever the specifics of the path, the important principle remains that we will be able to move onwards towards Krishna if we just stay focused in trying to cultivate our consciousness. Just as there is intention and there is cultivation.
First of all, if we find that the stocks of a particular company are going down, we have to have the intention that, okay, now I have to take the money out of it. But taking out our emotions is not just a matter of intention because we have developed an attachment and that attachment will prevent us from taking out our emotions. So we will have to cultivate, we will have to practice redirecting our emotions towards Krishna.
And to the extent we succeed in redirecting our emotions towards Krishna, to that extent, we will attain the destination of going beyond the bondage of this world. We will attain eternal liberation. Otherwise, we will come back to this world.
Of course, here Krishna is talking about not the supreme liberation in him. He is simply giving broad contours of the two paths. And we have, for our analytical purposes, taken that framework further so that it becomes not just a discussion of two paths, but a discussion of two principles.
Emotions invested in matter means we return back to the world of matter. Emotions disinvested from the world of matter and invested in the Lord of Spirit, that means we attain liberation. Thank you.