Hari om everyone,
We started our class as usual with meditation and chanting. After chanting geetaa dhyaanam and ch. 1, we learnt until verse 30. Below is the recording for practice.
Our learning segment for the day started with learning about the first 6 questions Arjuna asked at the beginning of the 8th chapter. He asked the Lord to explain to him the concepts of
- brahman
- adhyaatma
- karma
- adhibhoota
- adhiyajna
- adhidaiva
The 7th question was - how can the Self-controlled one make sure to remember the Lord at the time of death which we discussed in detail during last class. (Through incessant practice alone one can achieve this goal).
We tried to understand the concept of brahman in its real essence. Our thinking and reasoning fall short in understanding brahman. We can only imagine as we cannot compare it to anything we know already. If He was like anything else, that would make two of His kind :) and would contradict the fact that He is One and Only.
When did God or brahman come into existence? When did He fiiiiirst come into being? The very fiiiiirst time, where was He residing, before He created the world? Now, how do we understand these concepts?
- See..., to create the very 'time'..., He has to have come to exist. If He has to exist at a certain point of 'time' then time must have been already defined/created!!
- For Him to be residing at a particular 'place', that place must have been created. To create that 'space' He should be existing...
That's a catch 22 situation! How do we solve this quandary? We have to understand that He is defined as 'beyond Time and Space'. We said He is 'in and through' everything that exists anywhere and everywhere at all times. This is something our mind and intellect cannot fathom!
We compared it to the concept of 'infinity'. Infinity is not physically writeable or comprehensible number. It is a concept. It is not a linear representation of where the number ends. Come to think of it, even the symbol for infinity is a loop which has no beginning and end. It is cyclical just like the concept of time and space!
We discussed a representation of it in the movie 'Interstellar'. It wonderfully represents the non-linear, cyclic nature of time. At the beginning of the movie, an astronaut is getting ready for space travel. His daughter sees some inexplicable dust storms, etc., indicating something bad will happen to her dad. Based on that, she wants to stop him from the expedition. But he goes anyway... After various twists and turns of events, the father gets trapped in a time capsule and loses his path in space. Long story short, he somehow makes it back to his home, still trapped in the capsule. He creates the dust storm (that happened at the beginning of the movie), giving an insight to his daughter about the impending disaster for her father!! The question here is, how did the astronaut warn his daughter even before he left for the expedition?! So, time is NOT a linear thing as we perceive.
If we really observe deeply, there is so much vedaanta in Sci-Fi movies that we will be amazed! Some of the movies we highly recommend are - Inception; Matrix series; Star Wars series; Interstellar and the like. Metaphysics wanders in these territories but without accepting the concept of God, it fails to explain certain questions. Where science stops, spirituality begins.
These are very deep concepts and it will take us a lifetime to fully comprehend the magnitude of these words. We will keep working at understanding these a little better every time.
Every week, we have been practising two verses from Ch. 1 with Swamiji's recording on the TV. We have been doing this all along and it helps us revise and perfect our learning.
We then ended the class with prayers and went to the auditorium for aarti.
There is a small change in the Bala Vihar calendar for the upcoming weeks. Please take note of that and mark your calendars accordingly - Sun Feb 23 (Cancelled) - Makeup class: March 15th
See you all on Sunday. Until then, happy contemplating!
Regards,
Rashmi and Kishore.
Rashmi and Kishore.
