The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 12- 3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday,August 13,, 2021.7:57. PM. 
Chapter -12. God and the Universe - 3.
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There is, again, the ahamkara, the Cosmic Self-Sense. The mahat, the Cosmic Understanding, or Intelligence, is above the ahamkara, according to the Samkhya, and beyond that the indescribable continuum, the avyakta, as it is called, the prakriti of the Samkhya, beyond all which is the Supreme Resplendence of the Absolute—call it purusha or by any other name according to the schools of thought. These are, broadly speaking, the constituents of the entire layers of the cosmos. These are the eight forms of prakriti, according to the Bhagavadgita, though the Samkhya classification differs here in the manner of the gradations and specifications of these principles.

Beyond all these forms of prakriti there is a Higher Element which regulates the operation of these lower elements, which is the Principle of God Himself working in a mysterious manner. Though everything is caused by the permutation and combination of these principles mentioned already, they are regulated and operated by the will of a Superior Principle, which, in religious or theological parlance, we call the Power of God; the Shakti of the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, the Energy of the Absolute. Nothing outside this Being can ever be. Everything is subsumed under this Great Reality, so that the Samkhya of the Bhagavadgita overcomes the difficulties of the dualism of the classical Samkhya. The purusha and the prakriti of the Samkhya are subsidiary to the Supreme Being of the Bhagavadgita. They are like the Attributes mentioned by Spinoza in his metaphysical theology of the Supreme Substance. They are spiritual categories and not merely qualities in the ordinary empirical sense. This is the All-in-All Being.

The “I-Am-What-I-Am” is God in Himself, and not God as He appears to us. He cannot appear to anybody because He is not an object of anybody’s cognition or perception. The Bhagavadgita is emphatic that God is all-in-all and He is not limited in any manner whatsoever by anything outside Him, because nothing can ever be outside God. The movement of the soul towards God, therefore, becomes an inexplicable process under the circumstances of this peculiar definition of God. 

The idea of movement gets ruled out in the context of the Omnipresence of the Supreme Being, and yet it has to be explained. It does not appear that the movement of the aspiration is in a horizontal manner through space or even in time. It is not a covering of distance as on a road; it is, rather, an ascent from the lower degrees of concept and being to the higher ones. When we travel from dream to waking, we are not moving on a road by sitting in a vehicle, yet we travel; it is true. The travel is a psychological movement, more properly explicable as an ascent or rising from the lower to the higher than a travel or movement in a particular direction in space.

To be continued ....

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