The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16.4 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, December 11, 2021. 7:00. PM.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16-4.
(The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita )
Chapter-16. Understanding the Essence of the Mind - 4.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

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Now, we too seem to be in a similar position of just saying something without properly considering the pros and cons of the matter. What do we mean by saying that the mind is propelling the body to act? Is the mind inside the body? 

No. The Sankhya cosmology, with which many of you must be familiar, and which we had occasion to consider in detail some time back, mentions these three gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas. Again, we should not forget that they are not three different persons, or three different locations, or three different things. They are three different conditions of a universal operation. For the purpose of language we have to use these words sattva, rajas and tamas bearing in mind, at the same time, that they are not three different isolated things. 

These three properties – sattva, rajas and tamas – congeal, as it were. ‘As it were' is the phrase we have to use. They do not really congeal; it looks as if this happens. They become violent forces, very energetic performances, vibrations. They say the universe started with a vibration as a cyclone blowing in many directions. But this terrific movement of the powers of prakriti – sattva, rajas and tamas – as a vibration originally responsible for the coming into existence of this phenomenal world, this vibration was not a mindless, chaotic cyclone blowing in any direction, but a well-intentioned movement. 

The universe is a purposive creation. This is a great subject that is discussed in all philosophical systems: Is there purpose in nature? In all texts in philosophy we will find one chapter: Where is the purpose in nature? If there is a purpose, what is it?

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There is a well-governed intention behind even the vibration, into which form the properties of prakriti cast themselves in the beginning of creation. 

These vibrations condense themselves into a fivefold preparation to act, and this fivefold preparation is, again, designated in the language of the Sankhya by words known to us already: shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha. The object of hearing: sound; the object of seeing: colour; the object of smelling: odour; the object of touching: sensibility or tangibility, which is the worst thing that we have because it creates the impression that there are solid things in the world; and the sensation of taste, which makes us feel that objects outside have certain characteristics such as sweetness, etc. 

There is no sweetness or otherwise in things. These sensations are only reactions produced by certain structures in our own physiological system in respect of operations outside, and they need not be anything we call sweet, bitter, etc. There is nothing like colour also. There is nothing like sound. But they take this form and impression when they are received by the particular formations of our system we call sense organs.

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So the three gunas – sattva, rajas and tamas – operate as a wind that blows in a fivefold manner, not this physical wind but a powerful, subtle wind like electrical wind. You have heard of solar wind. By solar wind, we do not mean air that blows. It is a term which is to be understood in a different sense altogether. This is a wind, no doubt, but a wind which is something like the blow of an electric current, we may say, for the purpose of our present understanding. It is subtler than even electricity because electricity is much more gross. 

The gunas cast themselves into this form of shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha – subtle tanmatras, potentials behind the physicality of objects. The potentials become the originators of all things that are subtle, including the mind itself.

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It is said that these operations of the gunas as shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha have again, within themselves, the threefold character of transparency, opaqueness and distraction, comparable to sattva, rajas, tamas again – children born, as it were, to the mother sattva, rajas, tamas. The transparent aspect of this subtle formation – shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha – concentrates itself into what we call the psychic substance, the mind.

To be continued .....

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