The Essence of Dharma-22.

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13/02/2018
Spoken on February 11th, 1973)

What is moksha? It is the liberation of the consciousness from the notion that it is outside the being of the universe. This is moksha. Moksha is, at the same time, freedom from bondage, contact with Reality, oneness with the universe, performance of one’s duty, and the realisation of the highest bliss. For us, moksha is everything. There is nothing except moksha that one can ask for.

Moksha is not a future attainment which will come to us tomorrow: “Today I will be a brahmachari, tomorrow a grihastha, the day after tomorrow a vanaprastha, the fourth day a sannyasi, and then I will think of moksha.” We have an idea that God is a future tense and a thing of the future, while He is eternal presence. He appears to be a future realisation on account of there being a concept of the gradation of reality. I am deliberately using the words ‘concept of gradation’ because reality by itself has no gradation. There are no degrees in reality. There are degrees only in the concept of reality.

So dharma, the duty of man, the subject with which I began speaking today, is that attitude of consciousness by which we gradually attune ourselves to the being of the cosmos. I have spoken sufficiently about what this being of the cosmos is. It is wonderful. Nothing can be more wonderful than that. And the Bhagavadgita is a grand masterpiece of text as a teaching on the nature of this reality.

The more I read the Bhagavadgita, the more I am wonderstruck because I continue to realise how little I know about it. This discovery concerning the four conditions of being occurred to me only yesterday. After thirty-five years of reading it, this idea struck me. It contains many more treasures which even in a hundred years we cannot discover. It was spoken by the Virat. How can we have any measure of the extent of the knowledge of the Gita?

So I appeal once again that everyone study the Gita thoroughly – not like a parrot, but with tremendous devotion toward the word of God that is before us.  So are the words of the Bhagavadgita. They are flesh and blood, vitality, knowledge flowing as nectar in front of us. Such is the Bhagavadgita. So may I appeal to you all to learn the Bhagavadgita thoroughly by heart, and study its meaning with reverence so that the mystery of it will be known for our ultimate spiritual benefit.

To be continued ...
Swami Krishnananda

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