The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16.5 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2021. 7:30. PM.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 16-5.
(The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita )
Chapter-16. Understanding the Essence of the Mind - 5.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

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Here is the crux of the whole matter. 

We were wanting to know what the mind is. 

We thought that our actions, physically motivated, are actually willed by the mind inside, and in that connection it became necessary for us to know what the mind is. Now we seem to find that this mind in us is a little concentrated form of cosmic energy. It is not your mind; it is not my mind. Now we are in a very dangerous position. We do not know where we are actually standing. Where am I standing? Where am I seated? Which is the world I am occupying? Where is my location? We will find that our body, and even our mind, cannot be said to be in any particular place. The drop in the ocean is not in any particular part of the ocean, because the ocean has no drops. It is only a concept in our mind. The whole ocean is one drop only. We can imagine that there is a drop, but all the drops are connected to every other drop because they form one mass of existence called the sea, or the ocean. There are no divided objects in the world; not only are there no divided physical objects, but there are not even divided minds. 

We do not seem to have many minds, because the mind, so-called, apparently related to individual personalities and things, seems to be points in this cosmic operation – shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha. These things cannot be easily translated into the English language. I have feebly tried to translate it as the potentialities for hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, etc. Even then, the things are not very clear. We cannot understand what these potentialities are. There are cosmically spread-out potentialities which make it possible for us to sense things in this manner as sound, taste, colour, touch, etc. They are not in one place, they are everywhere; and one aspect of the transparent character of the five forces – shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha – becomes the psychic organ.

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The psychic organ is a very difficult thing to understand. What is it? 

We say that we have a mind, we have an intellect, we have an ego, and nowadays we have words such conscious, subconscious, preconscious, unconscious levels, and the like. All these are names given to certain functions of what we may safely call the psyche, for want of a better word. In the yoga psychology of Patanjali the word chitta is used, and we have to take it in the proper connotation in which it is expressed. We use the word ‘psyche' because we have no other word in English. We have to use that word only. 

This word ‘psyche' has to be understood as the total operation of our internal being. Your intelligence, your egoism, your feeling, your willing, your memory – whatever you may consider as your interior operation – should be regarded as one of the functions of the mind, or psyche: chitta, manas. Antakarana is a very safe term sometimes used in the Vedanta philosophy. Antakarana simply means ‘internal organ'. 

Where is it situated? Where are you living? 

There it is situated. Where are you? 

Everywhere in your body, you are. You are not in the head or the fingers or the nose or the ears. And wherever you seem to be, there the mind also is. When you say “I am”, it is the mind that speaks, it is the internal organ that speaks, it is the chitta that speaks, it is the psyche that speaks. 

Like fire entering a red-hot iron rod or an iron ball, converting itself into the shape of the iron rod or the iron ball, making it impossible to distinguish between the fire and the iron, the psyche has entered this physical form, this body, and we cannot distinguish between ourselves and this body. 

When I say “I am here”, it is difficult to know exactly what I am saying. The fire is saying “I am here” when it has heated the whole iron rod. 

We cannot see the iron there; it is only the fire we are seeing, though the iron is there. 

We can assume it is there because it has become red-hot. The whole body has been energised with intelligence, as it were, by the operation of the psyche, and it is saying, “I am.” Fire is saying, “I am.” It is not the iron rod that says that, but we cannot distinguish the rod from the fire because the fire has entered into every particle of this thing we call iron.

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So the body has become the mind, and when I say “I am”, it looks as if the body is saying “I am”. It is not the body that says that. 

A thief has entered your house, and he is saying, “This is my property.” Something like that has happened to us, and the mind is saying, “This is my body.” 

You cannot know that this has taken place because there is a complete hypnotisation of the entire personality by the action of the psyche. I have given this illustration that is available to us in Vedantic texts of fire entering an iron rod or iron ball. You do not know where the iron ball is, where the fire is. They look one and the same. 

You are the body and the body is you. Just as the fire is different from iron, your mind is different from your body.

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Now, in what way they are different we shall see sometime later. 

For the time being it is enough if we conclude that the mind that propels us to act in terms of the physical limbs is not inside the body in such a simple way as we understand it to be, like children. The fire is not inside the iron ball. We cannot use that word. In that way, the mind cannot be said to be inside the body. It has become the body. It is you that has assumed the shape. Not merely that, there is something more about it. 

Your mind is not merely this body, it is a congealed spatiotemporal pressure exerted by the vastly spread-out properties of prakriti – sattva, rajas and tamas – which have become shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha, in one aspect of which the mind has assumed the form of the psyche. The very same shabda, sparsha, rupa, rasa, gandha become the active organs. They also become the substance of the body. Then you will be startled beyond your wits when you try to know who you are, what you are made of. 

You seem to be made up of nothing but that which is everywhere, and you are now placed in this context by a little bit of our analysis. Now tell me, who is acting and whose action is any action at all? Then you will be able to know what is right action, what is wrong action, and what is inaction.

Chapter 16 : Understanding the Essence of the Mind : Ends here.

Next : Chapter 17: The Meaning and Purpose of Sacrifice :

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To be continued .....

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