The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 17.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 12,  Feb  2024 07:30. 

Chapter 17: The Play of the Cosmic Powers - 4.

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The difficulty in the understanding of the nature of the stage in which one is placed at any given moment of time is great indeed, and towards the end of the chapter, the great Teacher tells us that our guide on this path is the scripture, the revelation, the intuition of the sages. It is not easy for us to understand what is the means of right knowledge. Philosophers have been struggling since ages to discover the means of knowledge or a proper understanding of things as they are in themselves. Is it sensory perception? Is it logical deduction, inference? Is it comparison of one thing with another thing? Is it apprehension? Or is it scriptural testimony? What is the way of knowledge? Religions have held that the authority is scripture and no other thing can be ultimately reliable. By scripture, what is meant is not merely a printed book, but the weight which revelation has. Again, by revelation we mean an intuitional flash whereby the whole truth is revealed to a faculty which rises as the total substance of our personality. One cannot easily reject the authority of the scriptures, for reason is often unbridled and can be susceptible to prejudice.

But a doubt arises in the mind of Arjuna. “Well, sir, it is true that revelation is the supreme authority. But is there any value in faith by which the heart longs for a certain achievement or a meaning, though it is not based on any kind of scriptural revelation?”

It appears from what we gather in the Seventeenth Chapter that the mysterious thing we call faith has a great part to play in our walks of life. We do not always refer to scriptures when we work in the world. We are people belonging to various professions and vocations, having many types of duty to perform, and when we choose the kind of duty that we have to execute in life, or do anything for the matter of that, we do not go to the Sermon on the Mount, the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita for consultation, though these are great authorities, indeed. We have something in us which seems to guide us, independent of any scripture. That is the faith that we have in our own selves, a confidence that we entertain in our own capacities, the conscience, as it is usually called.

Yes, Krishna tells that faith is a great criterion and standard of judgement indeed, but there are faiths and faiths. All created beings have some sort of an instinct, and they have their own methods of evaluation of things. There is a subhuman level, there is a human understanding, and there is a superhuman faculty of knowing. So, when we speak of faith, we do not refer merely to any sudden impulse which rises on the spur of a moment, but to a considered judgement which springs from the whole nature of our being. Our nature decides the kind of faith that we entertain in our life. And natures, again, are classified as threefold: sattvika, rajasika and tamasika. Every one of us has some kind of confidence, faith and understanding and feeling. Everybody believes in something. But that belief varies in quality, character and intensity in accordance with the root from which it arises: sattva, or rajas, or tamas.

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Continued

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