A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 22 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday 10, Apr 2024 06:40.

Chapter 6: Sankhya – The Wisdom of Cosmic Existence - 1.

Post-22.

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From the point of view of the values of life based on our ordinary perception of things, it would appear that there is very little chance of the cosmical view entering into the normal modes of perception. We never look at things from a cosmical point of view. Everything seems to be at some place only, and perhaps for some time. Something is here, something is somewhere else, and there is apparently, from the perceptional point of view, no vital connection among things. We seem to be living in a world of values based on our sense perceptions which cannot embody anything that we can consider as universal or cosmic. There is nothing to prove in our daily life that cosmicality operates in us consciously. Every act of ours, every thought and every engagement or conscious relationship is sensorily bound, physically related and socially conditioned. Where is the cosmicality behind our daily life?

The contrast that seems to be there between the fact of life – which is universal inclusiveness – and the way of life we are living through the sense organs is brought about in an interesting slogam towards the end of the Second Chapter of the Gita: 

ya nisa sarvabhutanam tasyam jagarti samyami, yasyam jagrati bhutani sa nisa pasyato muneh (Gita 2.69). 

For us, this world of sense perception looks like bright daylight with every kind of clarity before it, and all things seem to be very well with us; but actually, we are in darkness in view of the fact that the truth of the universe is not as it is presented to us through the sense organs. The daylight of the sense organs is the darkness of the spirit. The true spirit, which is universal, is sleeping, as it were, while the senses are awake and are active in the daylight of their activity.

The cosmic vision sees our sensory world as a kind of darkness, while we, living in a sensory world, consider the cosmic world as darkness. The Universal is completely obliterated from our vision, as if it does not exist at all. It is pure darkness before us. But the world of sense perception is obliterated from the vision of the cosmic saint and sage, to whom this world is darkness. While we are awake in the world of the senses, the spirit is sleeping. When the spirit awakes to its own universal inclusiveness, the senses will sleep. Sri Krishna was born in the midnight of the sense organs. All the guards were sleeping. It is in that pitch darkness of the sense world that the light of the spirit awakens itself.

So the daylight of clarity of perception, so-called, to us, is really a mass of ignorance that is before us – darkness to the spirit. And to us who rejoice in the perception of things through the sense organs, God Himself does not seem to exist. Who is conscious of the existence of God? He is non-existent to the sense organs; and to God, the sense organs do not exist. This is a contrast, an interesting difference, a distinction drawn between spiritual universal existence and diversified sensory existence. 

Ya nisa sarvabhutanam tasyam jagarti samyami, yasyam jagrati bhutani sa nisa pasyato muneh.

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Continued

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