The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, December 06, 2021. 6:00. PM.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16-2.
(The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita )
Chapter-16. Understanding the Essence of the Mind - 2.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

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We have heard in our earlier considerations that the world is not made up of people. It is a constitution of the forces of prakriti. To understand what an action is we have to understand the world as a whole, because it is in the world that an action is performed. Even when we do something inside our house, it is in the world also at the same time. The house is not outside the world. But what is the world, in which an action is performed?

We have seen to some extent what the world is made of. This universe is an arrangement of the three properties or gunas of prakriti – sattva, rajas, tamas – but they are not three poles on which the world is supported. They are the warp and the woof, and the very substance of all phenomena. The three gunas of prakriti – sattva, rajas and tamas – are not three different individual operations. They are, rather, the three conditions of a single operation. This is something more difficult for us to stomach: three different positions, as it were, assumed by a single force that the universe is made of. Hence, they are not three properties.

What do we understand from this conclusion? The world is made up of a single stuff, and that stuff is not a substance of the type of a solid object. It is best described as energy, force, potentiality, or latency to act. These are, again, some words we are struggling to manufacture for the sake of making the matter intelligible. Language is poor. We have not yet such an advanced type of linguistic operation by which such subtleties can be expressed. Our language has a poor vocabulary, so we use the well-known terms like energy, force, potentiality, and so on, but we cannot make much sense out of these words. Some sense we can make out, but not the entire meaning. 

By the words ‘force', ‘energy', ‘potentiality', etc., which we employ in connection with the understanding of sattva, rajas, tamas, we are forced to conclude that the world is not a solidity, because the conception of solidity involves the location of objects, and the concept of force frees us from this unfortunate notion. The world is not a solid object, and it is not made up of little bits of things scattered in a space with which it is not connected. The Sankhya is the philosophy which originally tried to explain the operation of the three gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas. When it brought out this doctrine of these forces of prakriti, it also understood at the same time the implied meaning that there cannot be even space and time unless the three gunas operate.

A particular dividing capacity present in the force called rajas is responsible for the phenomenon of difference, distance, which we call space. Space is the distinguishing feature in our experience of anything. That which distinguishes, segregates, cuts off one thing from another, divides, distracts, is rajas. So rajas is responsible, finally, in a cosmical manner, for the apparent perception of dividedness of things, and it need not necessarily mean that there are divided objects. It is one function of the three gunas. It is a manner of the presentation of things by the operation of these three forces, but it is not the only manner in which they will operate.

To be continued ....

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