The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 9.4. Swami Krishnananda.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday,March 08,  2021. 07:20. PM.
Chapter 9: The Divine Incarnation and God-oriented Activity -4.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But there are other actions which appear to be non-actions while they are really actions. For instance, people are often under the impression that when they can keep quiet, doing nothing, they are in an inactive state. We have referred to this matter earlier on another occasion. There is no such thing as keeping quiet as long as we are individuals. As long as we have a feeling, a conviction that we are a body, a psychophysical entity, the universal is far away from us, and we are cut off from the atmosphere, we have a desire of some kind or other. We are human beings, and we cannot convince ourselves that we have any kind of organic connection with things outside. Under such conditions, inaction is impossible. Even when we keep quiet, imagining that we are doing nothing, we are doing something, because the mind is acting, and mental action is real action, and that is the source of bondage as well as freedom.

But when action is performed as a yajna, or sacrifice—we have to recall to our memory what sacrifice is—then all our efforts and movements become sacrifices of the self in the knowledge of this unity of ourselves with things, performed as an adoration of the Deity which superintends over our actions as a transcendent principle existing between us and the atmosphere outside. Such action is sacrifice, and such action is no action; it melts like a piece of snow or ice-ball before the blazing Sun. The so-called binding noose of action breaks, as if it had not been there at all, and is burnt in the fire of knowledge.

This is knowledge wherein the individual that performs the action, the end toward which it is directed, the process of the action—all these appear to be one continuous movement of a single Reality, like the dashing of the waves in the ocean, one colliding with the other, the waves and the process of their collision and that which is connecting them together, all being one mass of water and the very force of this water. The action is dedicated to the Absolute, and we ourselves as individuals, as the source of action, are a part of that Absolute, and the process of the offering of ourselves through the medium of action is also a working of the Absolute itself—Brahman. The aim or the objective of this action is also the Absolute. It is all a movement of the universal force of God-Being within itself, as every movement of the waters in the ocean can be regarded as the single movement of the root of the ocean itself. This is the yajna described in the Fourth Chapter as compatible with action in this world. Knowledge-based action is Karma Yoga.

So, there is an exposition in this chapter of the way of the combination of action with knowledge. It was told in the Second Chapter that knowledge is necessary and action has to be rooted in it. The imperative was declared there. And how actions are really not our actions was mentioned in the Third Chapter. Now, how this action can really be rooted in knowledge, how this performance has to become a practical day-to-day affair in our life, is explained in the Fourth Chapter. This particular section emphasises the necessity to behold a unity between activity and knowledge.

To be continued ....

=========================================================================