Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 18-5. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, February 10, 2022. 20:00. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter 18: Reconciling Knowledge and Action - 5.

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Yoga is said to be the identity of knowledge with being, consciousness with its content, subject with object, man with God, and the percipient with that which is perceived. This knowledge which is vitally related to its content is also a master of that content. Knowledge becomes power because of the fact that its content is not dissociated from it, as is the case in ordinary learning. Hence, knowledge is superior to external performance and material relationship. Any kind of thing that we do with an instrument outside is inferior to that which we do merely with thought. Thought moves the whole world. Ideas are behind every performance. We are today not in a position to understand the secret of this great doctrine of ideas being superior to material possessions because our materially involved mental process has not extricated itself from the clutches of matter and the bodily weight so that it may appreciate the apriority of a subtle non-material power conditioning operations of even material bodies. Even a mountain, even a solar system can move by the internal force which is the conditioning factor behind it, and which is not at all material.

Therefore, the Lord says: Knowledge sacrifice is greater than material sacrifice, social sacrifice, or any other kind of sacrifice that requires externalised relation. The highest kind of sacrifice is universal relation. Hence, it is a force that can destroy the adverse results of actions which are otherwise binding. Sarva? karm?khila? p?rtha jñ?ne parisam?pyate: All binding reactions cease to operate when knowledge arises, because action cannot produce reaction in a given condition. In other conditions, every action produces a reaction. What we call karma-phala, or the nemesis of action, is the reaction produced by action, and the reaction is nothing but the reverberation produced by the external atmosphere in respect of a content which is the subject thereof, which imagines that it is dissociated from its external environment. The conditioning factor in respect of an individual performer of action arises due to the imagined situation that this condition is outside. The world is external, and the percipient thereof is a content inside.

Then there is the nemesis of the action, but action will not produce any result and there will be no reaction to the action if you yourself are the action. The action is not something that proceeds from you as an external emanation or exudation. It is you yourself operating. Yesterday I mentioned that in our day-to-day actions, generally we do not operate. We are hard-boiled individuals maintaining our self-identity in the same manner that we were earlier, even during the performance of action. So we are not wholly unselfish in our performances. We maintain our individuality. But in unselfish actions, we lose our individuality. We become the action itself. How can a person become the action?

To be continued ...

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