After a brief detour from our original discussions on Bhagavadgeetha, let us come back. In a previous post we saw that at the culminating stage of meditation one attains ‘universal identity’. What is this universal identity?
It is easy to oversimplify it by saying that ‘universal identity is seeing everything as self’ . But there are quite a few confusing issues here.
If I am seeing everything as myself then who is this ‘me’ who is involved in the act of seeing? And what is that ‘everything’ that is being ‘seen’ by ‘me’?
Universal identity is the core concept of ancient Indian scriptures. Different philosophers have explained it in their own way. When one gets into minute details of fundamental issues, words become hazy and descriptions appear to be vague. Mind you, we are getting into the realm of things beyond the mind and still trying to understand them using the mind!
Bhagavadgeetha tries to resolve this problem in two stages – one that speaks in terms of perceptible things. And the other one that talks in terms of abstract and difficult to comprehend terms.
Anyone who has studied the Upanishads, finds a similar approach when it comes to ‘explaining’ the in-explainable! Depending on one’s level of understanding and ‘visions’ he probably had, one restricts himself to one of these two stages. That is why there are varieties of philosophies – Advaita, Vishista Advaita, Dwaita, Dwaitadvaita, and so on, that ensued in later times.
Bhagavadgeetha tries to cater to all these variations in comprehension.
We will see some of these in subsequent posts.
Based
on Bhagavad Geetha, one of the most quoted and widely translated of
the ancient Indian scriptures, believed to have been composed by
Vyasa as part of the great Indian Epic Mahabharata, 5000 years ago.
The interpretation of the verses and audio recital are by Dr.King
(Copyright © 2018 Dr. King)
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