Thoughts on Bagavad Gita (Volume 1); A Series of Twelve Lectures Read Before the Branch Theosophical Society, Kumbhakonam

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1893. Excerpt: ... law of life and if action has a karmic effect towards fixing a man in the phenomenal network, how then can man escape from bondage? To this the teacher says not all action is bondage. No Karma done unselfishly to promote Yagna, can be a source of bondage. The couplet in which the Teacher says this, is worth committing to memory. He says DEGREES wA #%*? p DEGREESfr: Otto n The world is fettered by karma other than to serve Yagna and so do karma 0' Arjuna unselfishly (to serve that Yagna) I think I have said enough on the subject of Yagna and need not say more here. Yagna is cosmic evolution progressing according to the law and every act done to promote that yagna must be an act done to benefit the world at large and keep it in a state of harmony. Even here a double aspect is quite possible. The ancient philosophers divided yagna into Nishkama and Sakama, or non-kamic and kamic. The nonkamic yagna is the process by which alone a man can attain purity and work towards release. It is the expression which the eternal thought pouring into him and illumining his being, assumes, in its trial to establish itself in him. But if the yajamana or the human ego that conducts the yagnam is tainted by the remotest smell of Kama to have the fruit, the yagna becomes kamic and the ego reaps as a consequence the fruit of that yagna and goes after death to lokas of bliss established in the yagnic body. After a proportionate enjoyment, the ego returns again to the physical world for further action and trial and this process is continued until the ego attains a state of being so magnificently described in the closing portions of the Seven Portals of H. P. B. The attainment of that state of being is the goal that is pointed to by Sri Krishna the Genius of that plane symbolized. All these lokas of bliss that li