Class summary for Jan 20, 2026 - BG Chapter 7 - shlokas 14-16 discussions
Summarized by Yamini:
Chapter 7 14,15,16,17
Para -> Chetana and apara-> achetana. Nirguna and nirvikara, saguna and savikara.
Steve jobs wearing same clothes everyday to eliminate unnecessary chores
Discussion about relating para prakruti to screen and apara prakruti to the movie.
Eshwara is known and unknown.
Eshwara has no form that we can feel. Just like we can describe an event or experience as much as we want , but until we go through the same experience, we cannot understand the true feeling.
How Krishna describes the problem with humans, how maya hinders them from realizing him.
Trying to look for permanent happiness in the impermanent is apara prakruti.
Types of people - Asuras are the lowest form, Sukritin are the punyawan that acknowledge eshwara-
Types of Sukritin- arthi bhakta, (prays in times of need)
artharti bhakta ( prays in want of something)
Jignasu (seeks knowledge)
Jnani ( the realized)
Karma yoga helps reduces desires
Maya is the trick of the mind . But if you completely surrender to God you can dispel maya.
We have negative and positive tendencies in us. We need to choose the positive to achieve higher self.
Example of a Rich man who buys his child a wooden horse and in the end buys him a real one.
Similarly God lets us exhaust all our desires before giving us what we really seek.
Tamasic are lazy, they want to offer something and ask for a lot of things.
Satvik people are the jignasu
Rajasic are active and want to do many things.
Jnani is none of the above and has realized God.
Topic:Sachin ji: Bhagavan, Eshwar and Brahman are not all the synonyms
Eshwara is saguna and Brahman is nirguna.
All god have eshwar as suffix, and they all help us realize brahman within us
Bhagavan is one who has 6 attributes - yashas, kirti, wealth and so on.
Ram, Krishna are also bhagavan, but they are both saguna because they have attributable properties
Topic : Asha Ji-Rajasic people will not be able to understand because they are distracted
-They go into deep study and only try to understand, but not necessarily actually understand.
Better than tamasic people who do not try at all.
Professional satsang goes can be considered Rajasic. They are trying to get this knowledge, but because they are not able to focus, they are not able to attain the knowledge.
But all these are better than those who do not believe in god at all.
All 3 properties exist in everyone. Some might be prominent based on the true nature and the temperament at that point of time.
Those who do not think of me at all are the worst.
We all have been taught to be arthi bhakta when we were asked to pray before exams.
When we progress in life, we become artarthi bhakta, when we pray in a new house or new year to be good. We are always looking for happiness in material pursuits.
When you go beyond and become jignyasu, when the realization hits us, we change our goal for praying. We realize God is not the crutch , he is the goal
Next step is gyani, when you realize we and Brahman are the same.
No matter what kind of bhakta we are, God loves and accepts our devotion the same.
Kamsa, Sishupala are also considered as bhakta by God because even through hatred they kept remembering God. He gave them salvation at the end after they surrendered.
But desires are never ending. We have to do sadhanas to exhaust these vasanas.
We are talking about different bhaktas in bhakti Yoga. We need to focus on bhakti.
Topic: Anuji- We all fall under these categories of bhaktas. We should all be in the same level based on where we are currently in life?
We might be in between the gradient of artharthi and jignasu.
Intensity of where on the gradient (bhaktaness) we fall also depends on where we are - home, office or temple.
It is dependent on the current state of mind.
Even when you are in a satvik state, if someone cuts you off on the highway, all your satvik-ness goes away.
When someone dies, we go into smashana vyragya and you think nothing in the world has any meaning or desire, but 2 days later you will be cribbing about giving money to the priest.
Sucheta ji mentioned how she prayed to god when her son had an injury, in a certain moment, how we become artharthi. FIR is a good test to see how fast we recover from that.
Saiji was coming back from the temple, and got a call from son that he had a fever. How he was contemplating changing plans. A lot changes in a split second. The ability to recover is important.
At the end of the day, even when we are trying to do all the right things, if we do not supplement with the sadhana package, we cannot go forward in this journey.
Emphasize on the mananam part. Sravanam can happen anytime. But mananam needs concentration. Nidhidhyasanam becomes easier once mananam is done regularly.
If we are constantly getting distracted and not able to concentrate, that means the vasanas are influencing us and we need to exhaust the vasanas.
Karma Yoga is a good way to exhaust them.
Moms of differently abled kids have so many demanding responsibilities that they don’t have time to chant even for a minute. They would rather take a nap if they get a few minutes. But if they can arrange to do chanting or meditation even for 5 min, by taking turns with other parents, it gives them the calmness and rejuvenation needed to go on with their duties.
No one size will fit all. We have to find our way to do it;
Although all the moms need to do is feel that serving them as serving god, in the exhausted state it is hard to make that switch.
What seems easy to us might be very hard for others.
Offer everything to god at the end or beginning of the day.
Give more to others you, family, group, community, country based on your ability and strength.
Your package might change based on changes in your life, eg: retirement
Start with karma yoga, then do sravanam, mananam and nidhidhasanam.
Topic:
Should we surrender our bad karma to God.?
We submit all our doing to the lord because you are an instrument in his hand.
But we should not surrender our deliberate mistakes to God.
Duryodhana cannot surrender all the actions to God.
Story: A criminal goes in front of a judge. He thinks he is being very smart and he says “ I have not done anything. Whatever I did is because God made me do it”. The Judge smiles and reads his judgment. When the criminal gets mad, he says, “It is the lord who made me give the ruling.”
By surrendering your deeds to the Lord, will help us correct it at a subconscious level.
A drunkard wanted help to quit drinking. Ramakrishna gave him an idea to think of him whenever he drank, When he kept doing it, he slowly gave up.
When we are surrendering, we need to truly and whole heartedly surrender to God and not superficially.
So, surrendering to God in whatever we do, we will ultimately attain moksha.
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