VIII: 15

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 8, Verse 15

 

“Reaching Me, the great soul

attains the supreme wholeness

and no longer is reborn

in this fleeting world of sorrow and pain.”

 

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

 

Krishna is telling us that until we become united with the Lord, all of us have to keep coming back into our old context, exactly where we left off at the time of death.  This places the responsibility for our life in our own hands.

 

You and I are responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves.  Instead of blaming anyone for it, we can take our life in our own hands, practice meditation, learn how to reduce our selfishness, a create a better life now, as well as for the next time around.  (If there is a next time…)

 

Whatever context we find ourselves in is a suitable one in which to overcome our problems and grow to our full height.

 

Without making a reasonable amount of mistakes in life, most of us cannot learn how to improve.  On the path of Yoga, even past mistakes can be made into powerful assets if we have learned something by making them.

 

Paramahansa Yogananda: 

 

The supremely successful Yogi is the high-Souled perfected being who in Ecstasy, or the after-death state, has achieved the ultimate union with the transcendental Spirit.  His Soul escapes the Karmic bonds of all three bodies and no longer dreams the dreams of desires and attachments of mortal existence.  Rebirths in the temporal, sorrow-fraught realms are no longer imposed upon them.  They are awake in the Cosmic Dream of God and in the Dreamless Blessedness of Spirit.

 

Striving Yogis should pragmatically view this world as a school.  The highest lesson set for each person is the realization that he is not a mortal, beset by pain and mutability, but a free son of God.  The good student who is successful in the tests of earthly life and who passes the “final examination” has no need to return for further instruction.  He has earned the Divine Ph.D.

 

Sri Aurobindo:

 

The condition to which the soul arrives when it thus departs from life is acquired by a comprehensive aspiration through knowledge, works and love towards the Master of works and the Friend of all beings.  Thus the soul satisfies its divine urge to escape permanently from the transient and painful conditions of our mortal being.