Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 16.4 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, February 02, 2022. 19:30.

Chapter -16. The Supreme Person - 4

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The Supreme Godhead is Purushottama, in the language of the Bhagavadgita. The purusha is consciousness, the principle with which we are acquainted in terms of the Samkhya philosophy, the seeing and knowing subject that is apparently counterposed with prakriti, or the world of matter. There are two realities, or two principles, normally considered by us as existing by themselves: the purusha and the prakriti, the Knower and the Known, consciousness and matter, the observer and the whole universe outside, called respectively here as the akshara or the imperishable, and the kshara or the perishable. But, transcending both, and comprehending both, absorbing both in itself, is the  Purushottama, the Supreme  Purusha above the purushas or empirical consciousness that are visible here as the isolated individuals in the form of yourself, myself and everybody. All this universe is pervaded by the  Purushottama. 

There is, finally, only one  Purusha in the whole universe, whose heads are all the heads, whose eyes are all the eyes, and whose ears are all the ears. Everyone's head is his head, all thoughts are his thoughts, all deeds are his deeds. No one does anything other than he, and no one can think, or even exist, except this marvellous Being. “Whatever was, whatever is, and whatever shall be, whatever can be anywhere under any circumstance is the  Purusha alone,” is the ancient and eternal proclamation of the Seer of the Veda. Into it all other purushas melt as rivers join the ocean, and there is neither the individual nor the world of matter, neither the subject nor the object in that All-Being. There is the one indivisible, oceanic experience of all-comprehensive existence. One who knows this  Purushottama is liberated at once. And knowledge is the same as liberation.

It is difficult to know what kind of knowledge it is that we are referring to here. When we speak of knowledge, generally, we are likely to identify it with learning, with the sciences and the arts of the world, with literature, with music, with mathematics, with physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy. These are the types of knowledge we are acquainted with in this world. But these are only names given to mysterious realities that are hidden behind these forms of learning. All learning is only an acquaintance that we try to develop with the forms outside. The things, as they are in themselves, are outside our comprehension, and therefore, our knowledge is a shell rather than a fact. We catch the husk, and call it the wisdom of the world. We have only a phenomenal contact with the outer forms of ‘something' which seems to be there, but of which we have no correct grasp, and into which we cannot enter in reality.

Even the formal knowledge we have of the things of the world is not a reliable knowledge. Firstly, we do not have the knowledge of the thing-in-itself. We have only an acquaintance with the form, the name and the complex, or the bundle of relationships of which the external features of an object are composed. But even this acquaintance is, in the end, fallible, because it is conditioned by the structural patterns of our sense organs, the mind and the intellect, and so even this formal knowledge is inadequate. Thus, we can be safely said to have no knowledge at all of anything worth the while. We grope in darkness, in utter ignorance, imagining that we are worldly-wise, but knowing nothing at all. And this is not the knowledge we are speaking of when it is said that knowledge is liberation or freedom of the spirit.

Knowledge is the same as the knowledge of God. Knowledge is being, as such. It is the entry of our true nature into the being of all things. There is the union of the seer and the seen in such a manner that the being of the seer is the same as the being of the seen, and vice versa. God enters us, and we enter God, as the rivers enter the ocean, and the ocean embraces rivers, so that one cannot know which is the river and which is the ocean. Such is the destination of the soul when it reaches the  Purushottama, the Supreme Person above all personalities and forms. Knowing this, one is liberated forever. There is no chance, or trace, of bondage any more.

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Next-Chapter 17. The Play of the Cosmic Powers

To be continued ...

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