The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 3-6. Swami Krishnananda

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Sunday, August  02, 2020.4:44.AM.

Chapter 3: Samkhya – Right Understanding-6.

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1.

Now, again I come to the point of cosmology, which explains our relationship with the world with everything that is around us. From this narration of the story of the descent of man from the higher realms, right from mahat and ahamkara, we learn that our personality – this individuality – is constitutionally not separate from the structure of the world or the universe outside. The substance out of which our individuality is made is not different from the substance of which the world outside is made. Bring back to your memories these principles of descent I mentioned to you – I will repeat it once again if you have not been able to note down these. There is the mulaprakriti, the original material out of which the whole cosmos was formed, something like the space-time of modern physics – or something subtler even than that – from which descended the tanmatras: sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha – the principles of sound, touch, colour, taste and smell, which concretised themselves into a greater density of substance by a sort of permutation and combination, and became the solid substances you see here as the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. These things are the building bricks of the cosmos, physically speaking – everything material is nothing but a formation of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether – this body, this building, this tree, this everything.

2.

Now, here is an introduction given to right understanding. The mulaprakriti that I mentioned is constituted of three forces called sattva, rajas and tamas. We have heard in modern science words like ' statics' and 'kinetics', 'inertia' and 'action'. What you call ' statics' is something like inertia; we may equate it with tamas, non-action – and kinetics is rajas, movement, distraction, etc. But there is no such thing as sattva in the scientific language of modern times. There is either statics or kinetics – there is nothing else. But there is a third thing which is the balancing of the two. That is called sattva in the language of Indian philosophy; the condition of true being is called sattva. In Sanskrit, 'sat' means existence, being; and the condition of being is called sattva. The characteristic of being is sattva, and the characteristic of being is equanimity – not isolation, distraction and separation.

To be continued ...

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