Siva Prasad

(The writer is a senior IAS officer in the Punjab Government. This column on spirituality appears every Sunday).

Gita Acharan

A small change in the trim tab attached to the rudder changes the course of a large ship. Similarly, a nudge to study the Gita can reorient our course in life. Time available due to the current COVID-19 lockdown can be utilised to dive into the Gita.

The Gita is an eternal text book from Kindergarten to Post Graduation, for internal realization and it is likely that in the first reading, very few concepts are understood. They can be easily understood if we approach from the view point of manifested, which is within the realm of our naked senses (including the scientific instruments built to extend these senses) and un-manifested, which is beyond our senses.

The story of manifested goes from Big Bang to the formation of stars to fusion/cooking of atoms of higher chemical elements in the core of these stars to spread of these elements in explosion of stars to formation of planetary systems to appearance of intelligent life. It is an accepted fact by the scientific community that these manifested life forms, planets, stars and even the universe, have a definite time frame of existence. Though the estimated time scales may vary.

Our understanding that we exist from birth to death, is correct from the manifested point of view. As per the Gita, from the un-manifested point of view, we exist before birth and after death. With this clarity at the back of our minds, we can easily understand the relationship between them as explained in the Gita to attain the goal of realizing the un-manifested(Moksha).

While the ahankaar is the obstacle, the amount of ananda (joy) one gets filled with, irrespective of pleasure or pain outside, is an indicator of the distance traversed, to reach the un-manifested.

— The writer is a senior IAS officer in the Punjab Government

Source: http://epaper.dailyworld.in/Details.aspx?id=74720&boxid=78364&uid=&dat=2020-04-05