Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 18-4. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, February 05, 2022. 19:00. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter 18: Reconciling Knowledge and Action - 4.

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The personal existence of the origin of knowledge, the learned man, is different from the knowledge. This is again a matter of personal investigation and self-analysis. The knowledge of the academic type, the bookworm type, the informative type, which is called the modern educational process, has no direct connection with the existence of the person. His existence is like anybody's. He is like a beggar as far as the person is concerned. He can be threatened by even a little mouse moving in his house. His knowledge is vast, but the knowledge has not become his being. Philosophy is supposed to be love of wisdom, but it is much more than that. It is possession of it.

The knowledge that we are contemplating has a connection with its content. Knowledge means ‘knowledge of something'. It is an awareness of something, an acquaintance with something, a connection with something in our consciousness, but what sort of connection? That is the crux of the whole matter. Knowledge as we have it today in the form of learning is an external relationship of consciousness with its content. We have no possession of the content of knowledge. We are only theoretically acquainted with the structure of that object. Therefore, knowledge does not help us. We do not seem to be really happy with our knowledge.

We have been told that knowledge is power, knowledge is virtue and knowledge is happiness. Each learned person may close the eyes and brood over himself or herself: “I am a learned person. I am a person with knowledge.” Can you be sure that today's embodiment of knowledge is also an embodiment of power? You will find that power does not go with knowledge, it does not go with virtue, it does not go with happiness. The learned man today is not necessarily a happy man, not necessarily a powerful man, not necessarily a virtuous man. That means to say, the characteristics of knowledge are totally absent in present-day knowledge. Here we refer to another kind of knowledge which is identical with its content. It is possessed of its object.

To be continued....

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