The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - 10.4. Swami Krishnananda.
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| KARMA YOGAM |
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Sunday, August 8, 2021. 7:46. PM.
Chapter 10: The One Supreme Absolute Alone Is -4.
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So, karma, bhakti, yoga, jnana – these seem to include every possible approach of man to God. The Bhagavadgita seems to have told us everything – there is nothing further to tell us. The theory and the practise of yoga, the philosophy and the application of it in life, is here complete for our practical purposes at least. There are those who imagine, think and conclude that the Bhagavadgita is over, here, and there is nothing further to be told. Some think that it is over with the eleventh chapter itself, because once one has had a vision of the Supreme Being, there is nothing further to be told.
But this is one view, of some people – not the generally accepted view, because there are internal references in the Mahabharata itself which seem to suggest that the Bhagavadgita is not complete with the eleventh or the twelfth chapter – it goes further; and we may follow this tradition that the Bhagavadgita is not over with the eleventh or the twelfth chapters. Arjuna has some questions, or perhaps he has no questions, because the beginning of the third chapter is sometimes with a query from Arjuna, sometimes without a query, according to different readings.
The general reading is a direct speech from Sri Krishna himself, but some extraordinary editions add one extra verse, posing a question from Arjuna as to what prakriti is, purusha is, etc. However, whatever the truth of the matter be, it is immaterial for our purposes. There is some context, evidently, due to which the thirteenth chapter has become a necessity, and inasmuch as great masters like Jnaneshwar Maharaj have gone into great detail in their discourse on thirteenth chapter, etc., and we cannot set aside the views of a great master like Jnaneshwar Maharaj who was supposed to be a God-realised being, it would be wise on our part not to go to extremes of historical analysis, and accept that there is a great point in the Bhagavadgita continuing from the thirteenth chapter onwards – for some important reason which we shall see.
We have practically understood the essentials of religion and spirituality with this long discourse, right from the beginning of the Gita till this present level we have reached now. But the vision of the All-Being – Vishvarupa, if it remains mainly a vision which passes, and it actually passed in the case of Arjuna, we have to conclude that he did not enter into it and dissolve himself there, because he was still there as an individual. He had a flash, he had an intuition, he saw with the third eye, but he did not conduct a pravesha into it.
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"Bhaktya tv ananyaya shakya aham evam-vidho ’rjuna
jnatum drashtum cha tattvena praveshtum cha parantapa." (Gita 11.54) :
Arjun, by unalloyed devotion alone can I be known as I am, standing before you. Thereby, on receiving my divine vision, O scorcher of foes, one can enter into union with me.
– the three words are mentioned towards the end of the eleventh chapter. He knew it and he saw it, but he did not enter into it, evidently.
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Whatever it is, these are very hard things to understand. There is a persistent assertion on the part of every seeker that there is a universe outside. With all our practices and our philosophical affirmations, we cannot gainsay the presence of a world outside us, sometimes even people around. We cannot easily identify the objective universe with the consciousness that conceives it, beholds it, perceives it, comes in contact with it. A persistent distinction is there between consciousness and matter, which are called purusha and prakriti. The whole bodily encasement of the individual and the entire creational structure is supposed to be a conglomeration of the constituents of what we call prakriti – the original matter, we may say.
Matter is more than what we sense with our gross organs – it is a subtle potentiality for objectivity. Even according to modern physics, matter is not actually the hard brick or the solid mango that we touch. It is something very unintelligible, transcending even conception by the mind; something which cannot be described even as ethereal, yet existing as a very subtle transcendent potentiality for manifesting externality. Matter is externality. The power of externality is matter and therefore it is something more than solidity, and we cannot identify it with solid objects. Somehow, something is there. This something which is there, and not here, is the so-called prakriti or the object, and the one cannot be identified with the other easily.
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But the verse at the very beginning of the thirteenth chapter, in a very subtle way, seems to solve this difficulty for us when it says :
Sri-bhagavan uvacha -
"Idam shariram kaunteya kshetram ity abhidhiyate
etad yo vetti tam prahuh kshetra-jna iti tad-vidah." (Gita 13.2) :
The Supreme Divine Lord said: O Arjun, this body is termed as kṣhetra (the field of activities), and the one who knows this body is called kṣhetrajña (the knower of the field) by the sages who discern the truth about both. ( -I am the Knower in all the fields which are known." )
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The multiplicity of perceivers and a real external universe seem to be ruled out by the suggestion given here that there is a single ruling consciousness as a kshetrajna, which is the perceiver, true cogniser, knower behind all the bodies. If a body or a material structure is to be considered as that which is constituted of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air, and ether – and if there is a uniform kshetrajna or a knowing principle behind all these bodies, it is difficult to believe how the universe can be outside this consciousness.
To be continued ...
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