Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 29 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, April 16, 2022. 19:00.

Discourse 43: The Fifteenth Chapter Concludes – The Greatest Secret Revealed :

POST-29.

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( BG-15-16.)

"Dvav imau purushau loke ksharash chakshara eva cha

ksharah sarvani bhutani kuta-stho ’kshara uchyate." 

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Translation :

BG 15.16: There are two kinds of beings in creation, the kṣhar (perishable) and the akṣhar (imperishable). The perishable are all beings in the material realm. The imperishable are the the liberated beings.

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Commentary :

There are two realities in this world, one being imperishable, the other being perishable. Which one is perishable, and which one is imperishable? All visible objects, including all jivas, are perishable.

Yaddrsyam tannasyam is a brief sutra of Acharya Sankara:

Whatever is visible is perishable. This entire world is visible and, therefore, it has to be considered as kshara, or perishable.

This is cosmically true as well as individually true. But there is a kutastha Atman inside us which transcends the five koshas, which is beyond the annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya and anandamaya koshas. Beyond the physical, subtle and causal bodies there is a transcendental light shining within us; that is our real Self, that is the Atman, that is the kutastha chaitanya. It is the imperishable in us. 

Thus, we have an imperishable essence as well as a perishable embodiment.

 As physical bodies—or, rather, any kind of body—we are perishable in nature; but as the kutastha Atman inside, we are imperishable. Hence, we seem to be living in two worlds at the same time. We live in the phenomenal world of cause and effect, bondage, suffering, destruction and, in the end, death. The subjection to the time process is one kind of experience that we have to pass through. 

But there is something else in us which is immortal, and it eagerly asks for perpetual existence. While the body perishes, the person inhabiting this body does not want to perish. That is why even while knowing that this body will go one day or the other, there is a longing for eternity and immortality. 

From where does this desire arise if we are just the body, which is certainly going to perish after it is cast away? How could it aspire for immortality? The very nature of the body is contrary to the immortal. We should say, therefore, that the desire to be immortal, the aspiration for infinitude, arises not from the body that we appear to be, but from the real Atman that we actually are.

The two realities are the empirical reality and the eternal reality, the visible reality and the invisible reality, the external reality and the universal reality, the material reality and the spiritual reality. These are the contrasts that are made here by the words ‘kshara’ and ‘akshara’: 

All that is perishable is kshara, and all that is imperishable is akshara. And, as I mentioned,

this analogy can be extended to any realm of being—to externality, materiality and sensibility on the one hand, and internality, universality, consciousness, etc., on the other hand. Thus, there appears to be a twofold reality in this world, almost amounting to the peculiar relationship between the purusha and the prakriti of the Sankhya. 

Here the Bhagavadgita scores a point above the Sankhya  when it says there is something above both purusha and prakriti. For the Sankhya, there is nothing above purusha and prakriti. According to the Sankhya, there are only two realities—consciousness on the one side and matter on the other side—and everything can be explained by the juxtaposition and the interaction of purusha and prakriti. So why should we want a third thing? Actually, we cannot conceive of anything in the world except consciousness and matter, the perceiver and the perceived. Is there anything else in this world? What else can be found, other than the seer and the seen? But, interestingly and very specially, the statement is made here that there is a Being transcending this so-called prakriti, and it is above even the purusha. 

The perceiving consciousness and the perceived object are transcended in a universal consciousness that absorbs both into its original essence. The purusha and the prakriti of theSankhya can be said to be like a universal subject and a universal object; but we cannot regard a subject as being conscious of an object unless there is a mechanism which makes it possible for purusha to be aware of prakriti. As prakriti is totally jada and inert, it cannot act on purusha; and as purusha is wholly consciousness, it cannot act on prakriti. 

Therefore, there is no question of there being any kind of connection between purusha and prakriti; they are total dissimilarities. If that is the case, creation cannot be explained. With allkinds of manipulated analogies, the Sankhya tries to explain how they act, though they cannot act, because of the original  assumption of the Sankhya that the two have different qualities. But they appear to be acting, like the right and left hands acting in harmony. The two hands have no connection other than through the body, of which both are parts. It is here alone, in the Bhagavadgita, that a transcendent opinion is held that there is an Absolute beyond the seeing or witnessing consciousness and the witnessed world. God is not simply consciousness; He is not simply an object of perception in the form of the whole universe. 

“Unthinkable Reality, Supreme Transcendence, Purushottama am I.”

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Next Uttamaḥ puruṣas tvanyaḥ (15.17): 

To be continued ....

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