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Atma-Siddhi
171
Obstacles to Soul Liberation
(Verses 2-8) In these verses the author states that during present time the path to liberation has practically disappeared. Some people are engrossed in barren knowledge and others in lifeless rituals and they regard these to be the paths to liberation. These are the people with confused discretion and attracted only to external activities. Some people even say that both bondage and liberation of soul are illusions. These are the people whose knowledge and conduct are full of delusions. Renunciation etc. is fruitful only in association with soul knowledge and those who do not have renunciation at heart cannot be with soul knowledge. Preoccupation with external activities makes one lose sight of the ideal of self-realization. The signs of a soul-seeker are that whatever and wherever he sees something worth adopting, he tries to know and puts that into practice.
Four main points have been made in the above paragraph: 1) a concern has been expressed about the disappearance of liberation path, 2) a concern is there about the people who take externalities to be the path to liberation, 3) the place of renunciation in soul-liberation has been pointed out, and 4) the signs of a soul-seeker have been mentioned. Different incarnations of God, prophets, and saints of earlier times and belonging to different traditions have expressed similar concerns and made similar points. Lord Krishna begins the rendering of Bhagavad-Gita with these two main concerns: that the path to soul-liberation during his time had practically disappeared and that the people with demonic nature had started predominating the affairs in the world. Buddha, Mahavira, Christ, and Mohamed had expressed similar concerns and they tried to counteract the faith of people in externalities as path to liberation. Renunciation also has been mentioned as a key requirement to soul-liberation in all religious traditions. Different religious traditions also point out how to separate soul-seekers from non-seeker of soul in terms of their qualities and characteristics and Bhugavad-Gita is full
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