Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 19-5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, April 02, 2022. 20:24. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter-19. Knowledge and Action are One - 5.

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But in our daily existence we find awareness is not possession. If we are aware that we have a hundred dollars, we do not possess a hundred dollars. This is the case because of the isolation of our awareness from the content of awareness. But here is a meditation taking place simultaneously with action, and karma yoga is at once meditation. It is contemplation and action combined. It is the soul operating when karma yoga is being performed, and the soul is the greatest satisfaction. All satisfaction is the operation of the soul from inside. The more is the soul active, the more are you happy. But most of our souls are dead, or they are asleep at least. They are not working at all, and hence, we are never happy. We are scrambling for a little bit of satisfaction in the darkness of ignorance where we grope for satisfaction but we cannot find it because the souls are asleep. Why are they asleep? Because they are shrouded by the thick clouds of unfulfilled longings – the karmas, as they are called, sanchita, etc., unfulfilled longings lying embedded as thick layers of the psychic accumulations we call in the language of psychology the unconscious, and so on. These act like thick curtains over the radiance of the soul, and it does not appear to operate at all.

All joy is the manifestation of the Atman from inside. Joy, satisfaction, does not come from material objects. Even when we seem to be possessed of a satisfaction in terms of a material possession, it is actually the soul that is operating from inside. We have the old example of a dog licking a bone with some splinters, which cause a wound in the tongue of the dog, and blood oozes from the wound. It licks the blood more and more, thinking that it is coming from the bone and not from its own tongue. That is how we feel attracted to objects outside, imagining that the satisfaction is in the objects though it has actually emanated from our own selves, as a dog imagines the blood to be oozing from a bone while it is dripping from its own tongue that is torn by the splinter. These are difficult things to imagine for a consciousness, a state of mind, which is embodied in this physical tabernacle.

So sankhya and yoga are not two different things where yoga is karma yoga, and not merely ordinary action. The ordinary action that is of a binding nature is that which has a result outside it. The karma yoga is that kind of action which has the result inside it, so that there is no question of the karma yogin expecting a result coming from outside. The moment the concept of outside arises, exclusiveness takes place in consciousness instead of inclusiveness. The universal element is cut off from that concept of action where the end result is outside the action. There is exclusiveness of the result of the action in ordinary binding action, whereas in liberating action, which is karma yoga, the result is included in the action itself.

However much we think this, we will find it is hard for us to imagine. How could I be in my action? We have to be in the action in order that it may give meaning. The painter has to be in the painting in order that it may look beautiful. The poet has to be in his poem in order that it may be meaningful, significant, absorbing. Even in architecture and sculpture, the artist is wholly present in his soul, and that is why it gives beauty. If niggardly, half-heartedly, cursingly we do an action, it produces no good result. Even charity done niggardly is no charity. Our soul is outside the action, so the action is dead action; therefore, a living result cannot follow from it.

Hence, sankhya and yoga are identical in one sense of the spiritual concept of the Universal being present in karma yoga, divinised action, but in other actions which are of an embodied nature, they are two different things. So Arjuna's question has a point, and Sri Krishna's answer also has a point.

To be continued ...

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