In The Mystery: The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 28

Join us as we explore the Bhagavad Gita. This week, we will be diving into Chapter 2, verse 28. In these weekly lectures, we focus on specific ancient teachings that we can all apply to our day-to-day lives and personal spiritual journey!

Transcript

So today we are reading from the Bhagavad Gita, And we are reading chapter 2, Verse 28. So we are in the chariot with Arjuna and Krishna. Arjuna still is not sure about how he can possibly fight, How he can possibly engage in this war. And Krishna is trying to help him reframe his ideas. He's trying to help him see the world differently than he has up until this point. And he's sort of gone through all kinds of different ways of trying to explain it. So for example, He says, The self is called the inconceivable, The unmanifest, The unchanging. If you understand it this way, You have no reason for your sorrow. Even if you think that the self is perpetually born and perpetually dies, Even then, Arjuna, You have no reason for your sorrow. Death is certain for the born. For the dead, Rebirth is certain. Since both cannot be avoided, You have no reason for your sorrow. Now this is the verse we're going to look at today. Before birth, Beings are unmanifest. Between birth and death, Manifest. At death, Unmanifest again. What cause for grief in all of this? I'm going to read a couple other versions here. The beginning of all creatures is veiled. The middle is manifested. And the end again is imperceptible. Oh Arjuna, Why then lament this truth? This is what Maharishi Mahesh sees it as. Creatures are unmanifest in the beginning, Manifest in the middle state, And unmanifest again at the end. Oh Arjuna, What grief is there in that? This is a really interesting one. The number one thing I really want to talk about today is how dangerous our imagination can be. We like to imagine that we understand where we come from, Or what happens to us after we die. But we don't know. We have no idea. The only thing we know is that we're here now. Everything else is made up. It's not true. Even something like reincarnation. It's just a form or a map. Maybe. But how we imagine reality to be our essence, The cosmic field that we come from and return to, Or whatever, It is so far beyond our comprehension. So any map that we create, Whether it's the Christian heaven and hell, Whether it's reincarnation, It doesn't matter what it is. Whether we believe that we come in from a distant star through the vortex of the uterus, And then we return to the galaxy. It doesn't matter what we say with our mouth. It's like a sketch, Like a two-dimensional picture of a multi-dimensional reality. It isn't true. It isn't truth with a big T. It's an idea. And if the idea helps, If the idea helps us handle life, Or it helps us be better people, Or live our dharma, Brilliant. But the point of this, One of the points of this sutra, Is that the problem is, Here we are, Like we're alive. We're in the middle state. Creatures are unmanifest in the beginning, Manifest in the middle state, And unmanifest in the end. It's curious that the middle state isn't enough. The middle state is all we can fathom, And yet we are like, Where do we come from? What happens after we die? And you know what's really interesting, And I don't know what you guys think, But I wonder whether all those ideas came from religion. And I don't just mean like just Abrahamic religions, Like Christianity or Judaism or Islam. I mean, It's weird that we were always told a story about where we came from and where we go when we die. It's like we've normalized that there's a story. But if we were never told a story, Would we expect a story? Would we even wonder? And I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But this idea of a story is really strange, And it can be very damaging. Like it's kind of like you imagine we live here in the middle state, The alive state. Beyond the beginning and the end is absolutely unknown. Like it is absolutely unknown. And it's not just unknown. It's unknowable. Like it's not even a thing. And as long as we're playing in our mind about, Oh, Well, You know, When we die, This is what happens, And then this happens, And then this happens. So it gets almost like an ego trip that we feel so powerful that we understand life and death and everything to do with it because we are so powerful. When I was in university, I studied a lot of philosophy and stuff and a lot of religious studies and things like that. And I really figured I knew what I was talking about. I really figured, You know, I had taken all of the great religions and boiled them down to their essential truths. And I knew something about life. And when I was 22, This was when my mom was sick with cancer, I was sitting by her bed one day. It was interesting because at the end of her life, She was actually very afraid of death because she was raised in the Christian church. And, Of course, The teaching was that you had to go to church every Sunday, And da-da-da-da-da, And if you weren't a, Quote, Good Christian, That you would burn in eternal hell. Well, Ironically, My mom was about the kindest person you could have ever met. Like, She was one of those people that if you didn't like my mom, There was something wrong with you because she just, You know, She could have used to be a little bit mean once in a while because she was just so kind. But we didn't go to church. My grandfather was a minister, And my dad was so angry at the politics and how my grandpa was treated by the upper cardinals and bishops, And it was just really bad. So we never went to church, Just, You know, Easter, Christmas, Stuff like that for grandpa. And in my mom's final days, This was really bothering her. Like, Would this mean that she was gonna go to hell? Like, And she was really, Really afraid. And I sat there, I think I was about 22, And I sat there, And I held her hand, And I looked into her eyes, And I said, Mom, It will all be just fine, Or something. Something that, And I was so sure of myself. Like, I was so sure. And to truly understand that my mom never said anything negative to anyone. That's what I mean. Like, In my heart, I think she would have actually had a lot happier life if she could have said no to people, And she could have actually pulled people up when they said stupid things and stuff. Like, She never, Ever, Ever did. And I say this thing to her, And she looks right at me, And she said, How do you know? And it was a formative moment in my life. It was a formative thing. It was like, I sat there, And I stared at my mom, Who was actually beginning to die. And all of a sudden, That whole ego trip in my head was instantaneously gone. And I swore that from then on, I would never pretend that I knew what happened after we died. What's interesting is, We're studying the Gita, And they're talking about reincarnation and everything, And I'll talk about it, But it's a topic. It's an idea. It's a way of understanding the world. It's a way of understanding that it makes sense, And I have a lot of friends who have memories of past lives. That's cool. Do I really understand it? No. Because even something like reincarnation, Theoretically, In reincarnation, You live one life, And then another life, And then another life, And you keep, You know, One after the other. But time is an illusion. Time is a construct of maya. So are these lifetimes really consecutive? Or are they all happening right now, Only in different dimensions, Which is why sometimes we feel pulled in funny ways, Because maybe we're actually acting in all dimensions all the time. And maybe when we make a change in this dimension, In this life, Maybe we actually make the change in all the lives. And I'm not saying what I'm saying is true, But what I am saying is we don't understand it. We have no idea. At best, I am playing in my imagination right now. So imagine not torturing ourselves with the stories of before and after, Or placating ourselves. What if we just focused here, Just here where we live right now? But to do this, We have to be okay with the unknown. We have to be okay with saying, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. What do you think happens when we die? I don't know. And the thing about I don't know is, It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. It just means I don't know. We have no idea, And you can't put on a fear, You can't put anything, Because it's just, The world is an infinite, Multidimensional, Unfathomable space. I don't know. And we even can take it another step and say that we can't know. It's impossible to know. That our brain, And the language that we were taught to try to map the world around us, Is designed for a three-dimensional world. This brain that we have was designed to say, Ah, This is yellow. Aha, This is blue, And quite heavy. Ooh, I'm tired today. That's what the language we have is. Even if we're talking about quantum physics and stuff, They're honestly just making stuff up and saying, Okay, When I say this, This is what I mean, But we know that it's more than that because we can't really describe what we want to say, Because our language isn't good enough. And our brain actually isn't designed to fathom this. So that's also interesting, And this is a little humbling. It's a little humbling to kind of say, I'm not even capable of understanding it. It's not my job. I'm supposed to focus today. I'm supposed to focus on what I'm doing today. And it becomes a real inner question, Like, Am I okay with that? Am I okay with not knowing? Because if we're not okay with not knowing, We are in trouble, Because we're just going to keep making things up, Or we're going to keep latching on to the new story and then latching on to this new story, But none of them are real. So it's interesting. It's almost like a maturing into our infinite self, And we can say, I know that I am an infinite being on some level in some dimension. In this incarnation, In this body, In this mind, I am Katrina Boss. I can conceptualize this much. I can understand this world. I understand trees, And I understand love, And I understand people, And I understand rain, And I understand a warm bed. But there are things in this world that I don't know. I cling for safety, But there's nothing there. So an interesting part of this is beyond simply saying, Well, I don't know what happens before we live or after we die. Think of this in our everyday life. Think of the things that are born and then end. It could be a job. It could be a relationship. It could be a thought pattern, A habit. And the idea of leaving that job, Ending that relationship, Giving up smoking or sugar or starting a new exercise program or whatever, The idea of ending one way of being and starting anew, What if we brought the same ideas into that? The truth is we don't know what it'll be like afterwards. If you're in a tough relationship right now, You don't know what it'll be like to leave. You don't know what it'll be like afterwards. At best, You might make something up, But what you make up will simply be based on what you've known in the past. It'll be some version of all the pieces of your life before, And that's extremely limited. I remember I got married when I was 23. My husband was 24, And we were married for 20 years, And in those 20 years, I formed a lot of opinions about what men were like. I was pretty clear about the nature of all men. Or at least the vast majority of men. I had pretty strong opinions about relationships, Marriage, Parenting, In-laws, Because that became my whole life, And I adapted and molded myself to that particular world. The idea of ending that was terrifying, Not to mention it was a huge ego problem for me, But anyway, That's a whole other story. But it was terrifying because my world had become so small and so edited to fit our two particular personalities. Leaving it, It almost felt like I was just going to be blank. But what if we always knew that the end of something meant that we had no idea what was coming next? No idea. That this world is an infinite place. Crazy things are possible. And even like, Let's say you want to get a new job or something, But you've been with this job for so long, And blah, Blah, Blah, And so you finally decide you're going to quit. There's a chance that you might think, Oh, Well, I only want to get another job like the last job I had. Because honestly, Your brain has just been so set in this limited pattern. But that, Again, Is this weird idea that you know what you want it to be like after. Like you're actually creating the post-reality while you're already in the job. And that is so limiting. What if instead you say, You know what? I know that this job slash relationship isn't right for me. I've tried all I can. It's not going to actually do what I want. It isn't the life I want. I'm going to allow it to close. And I'm going to be open to the possibilities. Because I have no idea what's out there. Can you imagine the difference? In all things. You know, I have a lot of friends who have been in AA. And one of the real challenges is that once they stop drinking, They have to find new friends. Because all of their friends are drinkers. And it's a wild thing to actually get out of that world. Because if you just think about stopping drinking, It's like, Oh, So now I have nothing. No, There's a whole world out there. There's a whole world of joyful, Fun, Dopamine hits that have nothing to do with alcohol. But imagine you're kind of like, Well, If I quit, Then what am I going to do, Nothing? No, Because you don't know. There's just something magical about allowing ourselves to not know. So now let's imagine in our life, We have this lovely brain that can know things. There are things we know. There are things that we can plan. And there are things that we can do. But imagine there is also mystery in your life. There is also mystery that you allow mystery in your consciousness right alongside everything you know. How expansive is that? What does that feel like? And I'd love for you to share in the chat. What does it feel like to actually allow part of your consciousness to be what you know and part of it to be ever-changing mystery? Is it scary? Is it fun? What does that feel like for you? Bliss. It's so freeing. It feels like dancing with fire, Literally. It can be liberating and exciting and scary for me at the same time. Hard, Because I want to know. Exciting. And these are all true. All of them. It's like in our last series, We studied the Radiant Sutras. And the Radiant Sutras is a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. And Bhairava is the essence of life. And Bhairava is God, Is essence. And one of the translations of it is terror. Because it should be all the things. It should be exciting and freeing and terrifying and frustrating and all. Because that's what actually life is. That's what keeps us alive and keeps us on our toes and keeps us really in the game. Exciting and a bit shaky at the same time. Adventurous. What's interesting about mystery is in the dynamic of the masculine and feminine. And I'm talking about universal dynamics, Not gender. The masculine is the known and the feminine is the unknown. The masculine is order. The feminine is chaos. Mystery lies in the feminine. And in a patriarchal energy, We repress all things feminine. Physically, It'll show up like repressing women, Children, Constituents, People by those in power. But energetically, We repress all things like mystery, The unknown. And in a patriarchal domination paradigm, They would rather make something up and tell you that this is what the answer is. Then let you wonder. And it's interesting because I got thinking about this before class about, I wonder why? What would happen if we were left to trusting mystery? What if the powers that be didn't make up stories? Because to truly understand they are all made up stories. I don't care whether it's religion. I don't care whether it's reincarnation. They are all fabricated and then taught. And again, I appreciate a lot of them. I appreciate the stories of reincarnation, Things like that, Because it fits into my life and I can kind of understand things. And it's all good. I don't get too attached to it, But it's interesting. But to truly understand that we don't have a right story. And even if somebody had a near-death experience, It still is an experience they had that their brain has manifested. People who have had NDEs, Near-death experiences, Many of them are very similar. But whatever it is they're all experiencing is the best guess that their brain can put together. And the funny thing is it still doesn't change anything. We still have to live today. It doesn't matter what they discovered beyond. We still have to live today. But I got thinking about what would happen if we were left with the mystery. And we'd never gotten into the habit of making a story up for what would happen afterwards. And again, You can think about this in any way. You can think about this in terms of life and death. You can think about it in terms of leaving a relationship or a job or a way of life or a habit or a thought process. What if we always embraced mystery and said, Well, I don't know what's going to happen, But I'm here for it, Whatever it is. I was thinking, You know, And I'm interested in what you guys think, Because the question in my mind was, Why would they do that? Why would they create these ideas? And on the one hand, You know, Maybe they too just having a story in their mind made them feel better. You know, In all the research from my book, And I'm looking back, You know, 5000 years when they kind of made up all these stories. They're pretty superstitious people, Pretty frightened. Maybe they just made stuff up, Right, To make themselves feel good. But on a later note, I think it's actually very empowering to live in mystery. Because when we live in mystery, We have to stay engaged. And when we live in mystery, Some other aspect of who we are engages. Do you know what I mean? It's like, When we're living according to the world, We have certain skills that fit the world. But as soon as we're not living in the confines of that structure, We have to discover new parts of ourselves. Let's say I was in a relationship. And I decided, You know what, This relationship is done. I'm going to end this relationship. So I end the relationship. And I'm not pretending I know what's going to come next. So I'm sitting with it, You know, And I cry and I grieve and I do whatever I've got to do. And then I sit quietly. And I'm now in chaos, Right? I'm now in the unknown. And maybe a little voice in my head says, Maybe I'll travel the world. Maybe I'll. . . You know, The irony is I actually, When I started this story, I wasn't planning on telling my life story. But the funny thing is, This is what I did. After I divorced. So I divorced in 2013. So it was until 2018 that my kids were all, My daughter was in Ireland, My son was in Sault Ste. Marie, I was divorced. And all of a sudden I felt completely compelled to give away everything I owned, Get down to a backpack and travel the world. And just go wherever I was led. And that's what I did. I stayed with families who wanted to learn English. I stayed with students. I taught. Sometimes I just traveled alone. And that's what I did. I could never have fathomed that when I was still in the relationship. That wasn't on the docket. But what if I didn't allow for new things? Like we just have no idea. We have no idea what's coming. And anybody I know, Like even like one of my sisters, She just got a severance package from someplace that she'd been for like 35 years. And of course she's all devastated at the beginning obviously. And now she's just like breathing. She's actually breathing and she's like, I could do anything. Like she has this whole new perspective on reality. Which is very cool. That anything's possible now. And the reason that, So the original text is, Before birth, Beings are unmanifest. Between birth and death, Manifest. At death, Unmanifest again. What cause for grief in all this? Because to understand that any grief or emotional charge about it is 100% made up by the stories in our mind. And that's what Krishna's trying to say like, You have to get these stories out of your mind. And the other big problem with it is, He's having all of this energy focused in some unimaginable future that is unfathomable. You can't understand it anyway. Instead of engaging with what's right in front of you. The only thing we can do is engage with what's right here, Right now. We waste our life focusing in some unknown in the future. I was thinking that stories are like a container. You may not be able to see without boundaries. And sometimes stories are awesome. Sometimes stories can be used for teaching and sharing ideas or concepts. You know, That's all good. But we just have to remember that they're stories. Why do you think we're so desperate to know everything? Why do you think it's hard? Fear. We think knowing will keep us safe. Isn't that curious that we assume the unknown is dangerous? I think we do forget that they're stories. And we're so busy trying to convince each other that our personal stories are correct. I agree, Staying in the mystery keeps us engaged. It's funny, Eh? And there's something for me, And I don't even know if I can articulate it properly. But there's something about reality and illusion. There's something really important about this. That the only reality is right here. I'm not talking about infinite reality and all that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about in our conscious day-to-day life. To even think about everything else. It's an illusion. Even tomorrow. You know that whole thing that they talk about? There is no such thing as tomorrow or yesterday. Because when you get there, It's always today. It's like all we really need to do is have faith in ourselves. That we will respond in the moment, In truth. And then we will see where the world takes us. Like we've been taught a false sense of order. Or a false sense of control. Because we've lived maybe in these top-down controlling societies. That says, Ah yes, You're safe because you are under our control. But we're not safe under someone else's control. And we're not safer out there. Believing something that's not true. The best thing we can do is actually be right here, Right now. It's just interesting. It's an interesting thing to actually just allow ourselves to just live here. What do we want to do right now? In the next five minutes? In the next hour? What do I want to do right now, In the next hour? It's taking a risk, A chance for a change, A new perspective. It's because it's all the scary, Scary movies. But seriously! For embracing mystery as we weave it into our consciousness of what we know. I think it's very exciting. Just having no idea. It's like suddenly even something that's coming up, We don't really know how it's going to turn out. We can kind of just like, Huh, I have some idea, But I don't really know. You know, Again, It keeps us engaged. It keeps us fully in the game. Well, Thank you guys all for being here today. I hope you have a wonderful week. And we'll see you soon.

Reviews

So wonderful to be able to listen to one of your sessions and reflect on this concept and how it has been true for me~~~🙏 thankyou♡