172. Bhagavad Gita | Chapter 15, Verses 1-4 (Contd.) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

so an amazing description of Samsara as a tree but a very strange tree it's upside down its roots are above and its branches and leaves and flowers and fruits they're all below and then describing samsara like that and the problem of samsara, the suffering and the release from samsara, freedom, moksha, salvation, whatever you call it.

A very beautiful way of describing it.

Sublime verses.

One should then inquire after that ultimate reality reaching which the wise ones, the enlightened ones do not return again to this tree of samsara.

All right.

We had talked about verse number one, which starts the description of the tree of samsara.

The roots are above, the branches, leaves, everything is below.

Above means it is in Brahman, in God, in the transcendent, beyond time, space, causation, in Satchitananda, existence, consciousness, bliss.

That is the root.

Root means that's why this world exists.

But down below is the samsara, the five elements, this physical universe, sentient beings like us, heavens and hells and worlds, the world of karma, this tremendous dynamism, action, all of this is going on, this struggle, this existence, birth and death and rebirth and going on and on, this cycle of life, this is the roots and branches and fruits, flowers, everything which is below, which we experience here.

And it says here, the branches are spread below and above.

Who are the branches? The commentators help us here.

They say the Jeeva, the sentient beings, we are the branches, big and small of that tree of Samsara.

They are above and they are below.

One of the commentators says, So, above and below talks about, in this sense, higher and lower, not physically higher and physically lower, not above there in the stratosphere, which would be very uncomfortable.

Heaven would be a pretty uncomfortable place, you know.

Or below, under the earth, not like that.

In various ways you can understand this above and below it could be subtler and more gross so physical this existence is the lowest Higher than this above.

This is our mental existence subtle existence above This is what's called the causal body above that is pure consciousness in that sense one can think about it I It's above and below.

We always think God is above, so going above means becoming more and more spiritual.

And it's true.

In the Himalayas I saw, the higher you live, the more spiritual you are likely to be.

So if you live at 5,000, you're spiritual.

If you live at 10,000, more spiritual.