Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 18-8. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, March 02, 2022. 20:00. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter 18: Reconciling Knowledge and Action - 8.

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Our problem is the question of relation. In what way am I connected with you? Please tell me. You will not be able to give an answer. You cannot say that there is no relation, nor can you say what sort of relation it is. Do you possess me, or do I possess you? Are you outside me, or am I outside you? Is the world inside you, or is the world outside you? It does not appear to be inside, it does not appear to be outside, and any kind of conceivable relationship between one and another does not seem to satisfy the logical inquisitive attitude of man. This is so because of the fact that the question of relation arises on account of our thinking in terms of space and time.

I have mentioned to you something about the quandary of relation on an earlier occasion, which I shall repeat in a few words now for the purpose of your remembrance. It is impossible to solve the question of relation because a relation is that which connects the subject with the predicate in logical propositions, or any thing with any other thing. Now, the connection that we call the relation between A and B has to be different from both A and B. If the relation between A and B is identical with A, then there would be no relation between A and B. If that relation is identical with B, then also there will be no relation between A and B. This peculiar thing called relation cannot belong to A, and it cannot belong to B. Therefore, it must be some independent thing altogether, neither connected with A nor connected with B. If that is the case, it cannot connect A and B. Then how can we think of a relationship between A and B? What is my connection with you? Nobody knows, because we cannot understand what a relationship is. But why do such difficulties arise? These difficulties are imaginary, and they are conceived in our mind due to an involvement in an impossible position, namely, that there is such a thing called connection at all. It does not obtain.

The relationship of one thing with another thing is a question that arises on account of thinking in space and time. Now, space and time is the ultimate relationship of all things. But we forget that our thought itself is conditioned in space and time. There is no such thing as thinking space and thinking time. You cannot conceive space in your mind because to conceive space in your mind, you have to convert it into an object or a content of your thought. It cannot become a content or an object of your thought because thought operates only on the basis of there being such a thing called ‘space'. The very thought operation is conditioned by space. Therefore, space cannot be thought by the mind, and space and time go together like brothers. Where the one is, the other also is.

Hence, the thing called relation cannot be imagined by the mind. It cannot be so because all relation is spatiotemporal, and to think of relation or to imagine, to attempt to understand what relation is between one and another, we are trying to understand what space and time are. That is not possible because even our thought is conditioned by space and time. The mind that tries to understand relation in terms of space and time is already conditioned by space and time. Therefore, no one can understand what relationship is. The world of relation seems to be an illusion. This is what some great philosophers concluded finally, and we have reverted to this theme sometime earlier: how the world is an inexplicable concatenation of causes and effects where each cause seems to be an effect and each effect seems to be a cause because of the organic structure of things.

Such is the great subject with which the Fourth Chapter ends, and which becomes the initiator of a question by Arjuna as to how we can reconcile knowledge with action. I gave a little answer how this can be reconciled. Whatever I spoke a few minutes ago is the answer to the question of how knowledge and action are reconcilable, and they are one and the same thing. This the Bhagavadgita will tell us in the coming chapter.

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Next : Chapter-19. Knowledge and Action are One

To be continued ....

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