A common space for harmonic peacemakers

VIII: 23

Chapter 8, Verse 23

"Hear now of a time
When Yogis die and are reborn,
Or die never to return."

Sri Aurobindo:

To anticipate the turn by which Krishna will close this section in verse twenty-seven ["Therefore, at all times be in Yoga, Arjuna."] is to understand what is essential, that is, to make the whole being one with the Divine, so entirely and in all ways one as to be naturally and constantly fixed in union, and thus to make all of the life, not only thought and meditation, but action, labor and battle a remembering of God.

"Remember me and fight" means not to lose the ever-present thought of the Eternal for even one single moment amidst the clash of the temporal which normally absorbs our minds. This seems sufficiently difficult and well nigh impossible.

It is entirely possible, indeed, only if the other conditions have been satisfied. If we have become in consciousness one self with all, one self which is always to our thought the Divine, so that even our eyes and other senses see and sense the Divine everywhere, making it impossible for us at any time at all to feel or think of anything except as God concealed and manifested in every form. Moreover, if our will is one in consciousness with the Divine Will, and every act of mind and body is felt to come from It and to be Its movement, then that which Krishna describes can be integrally accomplished.

Remembrance of God becomes no longer an intermittent act of the mind, but the natural condition of our activities and, in a way, the very substance of our consciousness. Jiva, the individual soul, has become possessed of its right, natural and spiritual relation to the Purushottam, the Eternal Soul, and all of our life is a Yoga, an eternal oneness.