Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 1 - Swami Krishnananda

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Friday, November 5, 2021. 8:215.PM

Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

Discourse 40

The Thirteenth Chapter Concludes – Understanding Purusha and Prakriti

POST-1.

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In the Thirteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, we have covered the theme which touched upon the kṣetra and the kṣetrajña, individually as well as cosmically, and the relationship between the individual and the cosmic. We also went through the list of virtues, qualities that characterise a spiritual seeker—amānitvam, adambhitvam, etc. Then there was a grand description of the Supreme Brahman—anādimat paraṃ brahma (13.12): The Supreme Absolute pervades all things, existing everywhere, and also existing as the heart and the soul and the self of everybody.

Iti kṣetraṁ tathā jñānaṁ jñeyaṁ coktaṁ samāsataḥ (13.18): 

“So now I have told you everything that is required to be known: the object which is the kṣetra, the pure Universal Subject that is the jneya, paramatman, Brahman, and the knowledge—amanitvam, adabhitvam, etc. Briefly I have told you of kṣetra, jnana, and jneya. After knowing this thoroughly and establishing oneself in the practice of these great truths delineated in the verses mentioned, one gets established in Me.” Madbhakta etad vijñāya madbhāvāyopapadyate: “One becomes fit for entry into Me after having known this in Truth—known it not merely as scriptural knowledge, not as linguistic or verbal knowledge, but knowledge that has become part and parcel of one's own being.”

This great knowledge, which is the subject of the first sixteen or seventeen verses, is the quintessence of every kind of wisdom; and the life of a person has to be a manifestation of this wisdom. This knowledge is not something that is understood by the intellect. It is something that has become an insight into the nature of truth, and the whole personality scintillates with the radiance of this knowledge.

Here, in the context of spiritual experience, knowing and being are one and the same, whereas in ordinary secular knowledge, in the arts and the sciences, being is different from knowing. A professor of philosophy has his knowledge in the books and in the college, but his personal life has no connection with this knowledge. His being is different from the knowledge that he has got; but here, that is not the case. The being of a person is identical with the knowledge of that person, so that one can say the person himself or herself is knowledge. After having known this in this fashion, one becomes fit for entry into God's Being: madbhakta etad vijñāya madbhāvāyopapadyate.

To be continued ...

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