The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - 8.4. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday, April 17, 2021. 10:45. AM. 
Chapter 8: Creation and Life After Death -4.

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Now we are introduced into the cosmological principle of creation and the Creator, which theme was essential in the earlier stages of mere discipline of the personality which culminated in dhyana, in the sixth chapter. God Is! And when we are passing through a mere disciplinary process, such things need not be told us. When we are in the earlier stages of our schooling, we do not even know who is ruling our country, we do not know that there is a government at all, because we need not be concerned with such things which are beyond our heads and which do not constitute part and parcel of our education in the earlier stages. Later on, we begin to study geography and history and political science, civics, and then we come to know something more about the environment and the ruling powers, and so on. 

So in the first six chapters we are in a preparatory stage, and so we were not introduced into that higher area which is cosmology, theology, and so on – to which we are now introduced, from the beginning of the seventh chapter. But there is something higher than these five elements. 

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Slokam :5, Ch-7, Gita.

"Apareyam itas tvanyam prakritim viddhi me param

jiva-bhutam maha-baho yayedam dharyate jagat."

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Slokam by Words meaning :

aparā—inferior; 

iyam—this; 

itaḥ—besides this; 

tu—but; 

anyām—another;

 prakṛitim—energy; 

viddhi—know; 

me—my; 

parām—superior; 

jīva-bhūtām—living beings; 

mahā-bāho—mighty-armed one; 

yayā—by whom; 

idam—this; 

dhāryate—the basis; 

jagat—the material world

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Translation : BG 7.5 -

 "Such is my inferior energy. But beyond it, O mighty-armed Arjun, I have a superior energy. This is the jīva śhakti (the soul energy), which comprises the embodied souls who are the basis of life in this world."

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Commentary : 

Shree Krishna explains that beyond the eight-fold prakṛiti, the material energy, which He says is inferior; there exists another that is far more superior. This energy is completely transcendental as compared to the lifeless matter. It is His spiritual energy, the jīva śhakti, which includes all the living souls of the world. Now, He has moved from explaining material science toward the spiritual realm.

Many great philosophers of India have given their perspectives and described the relationship between God and the jīva, the individual soul.  For example, the non-dualists state: jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ “The soul itself is God.”  But this concept gives rise to several questions, such as:

How can the soul itself be God? God is most powerful, and Maya is His subservient energy. The souls are always overpowered by; Maya. Then is Maya stronger than God?

The individual soul is always; gripped by ignorance and misery. It needs a continuous reminder from the saints and scriptures, even about its existence and purpose. How can God, who is all-knowing, be considered a soul which is subject to ignorance?

The Vedas repeatedly state that God is all-pervading in this world and beyond. Similarly, individual souls should also be able to exist anywhere at any given time. Then what about the question of going to heaven or hell after death?

There is only one God, but the souls are countless. If the soul itself is God, then there should be many Gods. Therefore, the claims by non-dualistic philosophers that the soul itself is God are inconclusive.

The dualist philosophers’ state that the souls and God are separate. Even though it may answer some of the above questions, yet it is still an incomplete philosophy in light of what Shree Krishna states in this verse. He says that the soul is a part of jīva śhakti God’s spiritual energy. And as explained earlier, Maya, the material energy, is also His subservient. 

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Thus, God is supreme; He is the governor of both the lower material and the higher spiritual energies. Now let us see what the scriptures and various saints have said:

eka-deśha-sthitasyāgnir jyotsnā vistāriṇī yathā

parasya brahmaṇaḥ śhaktis tathedam akhilaṁ jagat  (Viṣhṇu Purāṇ 1.22.53) : 

“Just as the sun resides in one place but its sunlight pervades; the entire solar system. Similarly, there is one God, who by His infinite powers pervades the three worlds.” 

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There is a subtle organising power behind the physical elements. The universe is not dead; it is not constituted of inanimate matter as it may be told us in the earlier stages of our study. There is nothing dead and insentient in this cosmos. Everything is vibrant with energy, everything is moving, everything is flowing, everything is living. In some form or other, in some incipient potentiality of consciousness, it manifests living characteristics. The Soul of the Universe vibrates through even the minutest atom and the electron, which perhaps explains the purposiveness that we recognise in the movement of even the littlest of things in the world. There is a teleological movement of everything in the world, there is a purpose in everything – it is not a dead mechanism that operates, though that appears to be our interpretation of things from purely a spatio-temporal point of view. Thus, the existence of God becomes a necessary postulate in earlier stages – a hypothesis, you may say – to explain the purposefulness in creation and the nature of the very evolutionary process of the cosmos.

To be continued ...

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