Commentary on the Bhagavadgita: 1.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 14, October 2025, 20:07.
Commentary on the Bhagavadgita: 
Swami Krishnananda
Discourse 1: The Colophon of the Bhagavadgita-2.
Post-2.

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We are human beings, and we are not animals. Our not being animals is a conditioning factor even if we are individual human beings. The existences that are outside us are not actually outside us. They influence us. What I mean finally is that in the concept of this Total, or the Absolute, it is not enough if we just look at it as if it is clear to us. We have to probe into the structural pattern of the object in its relation to atmospheric conditions outside also, which determines it in quality as well as in quantity, so that to think in an Absolute fashion would be to recognise the total structure of the universe even in an atom, and to see the whole government in a single official. We can summon the entire government, if necessary, though no official can be called the government. In a similar manner, any object can draw sustenance from everything in the universe.

Brahma-vidya is the art and the science of educating oneself in the manner of correctly perceiving the world as such, including one's own self, in the totality of relations, so that no partial vision of things can be regarded as a passport to the concept of the Absolute. Mostly—or always, I may say—our perceptions are partial. They are limited to certain conditions. It is a condition related to a marketplace, a railway station, a bus stand, an office, a factory or a house. These are the things that limit our thoughts, but we do not rise above the apparent outwardness of these conditions and go inside to the relationship of these things to other things.

This is a very difficult thing to maintain in the mind, because the human mind is sensorily restricted. It is externalised in its nature, and total perception is neither externalised nor internalised. It is a blend of the external and the internal, so that we stand in the middle, between our perceiving capacity and the object that is perceived. In a total perception of things, we are not in ourselves; we have transcended ourselves. Nor are we in the object; we have transcended the object. We are in the middle as the blend—a blending consciousness which brings about a harmony between the seer and the seen, or between any two faces of reality. In all situations, there are two aspects: the cause, or the causative factor, and the effect upon which the cause seems to have an impact. It is very difficult for us to see the relation between cause and effect. Mostly we see the cause as one thing and the effect as another.

Brahma-vidya is an intricate subject. It is not just repeating some words of the Upanishads or the Brahma Sutras or even the Gita. It is the entry of the consciousness into the very import of the teaching, which is suggested in many of the verses of the Bhagavadgita itself. Mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti (7.7); aham ātmā guḍākeśa sarvabhūtāśayasthitaḥ (10.20); paśya me pārtha rūpāṇi śataśo'tha sahastraśaḥ (11.5); divyaṁ dadāmi te cakṣuḥ paśya me yogam aiśvaram (11.8); jñeyaṁ yat tat pravakṣyāmi yaj jñātvāmṛtam aśnute, anādimat paraṁ brahma na sat tan nāsad ucyate (13.12); sarvataḥ- pāṇipādaṁ tat sarvato'kṣiśiromukham, sarvataḥśrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati (13.13): The Total has eyes everywhere, has feet everywhere, has hands everywhere, because it is neither a subject nor an object. In the total perception of things, we are not ourselves, nor are we other than what we are. We are something beyond both what we are and what is other than what we are. This is the final import, as it were, of the Brahma-vidya aspect of the Bhagavadgita.

But, as I mentioned, theoretical physics has to lead to applied physics. What is the use of merely knowing things? This knowledge has to be applied in practical life. In a similar manner, this Brahma-vidya, which is the knowledge of the integrality of things, has to be put into daily implementation in our teacups, in our fountain pens, in our angry gestures, in our prejudices, in our desires, in our attractions, in our repulsions. In every situation, this Brahma-vidya has to be there. We have to be total and whole persons always. We cannot be whole only at some time, and a fraction at some other time. Will we be whole persons in our offices, and only a percentage in our houses? We are whole everywhere, but if we behave in different ways at different times, and convert ourselves into fractions of human personality, as it were, we are not living a wholesome life. It is not a holistic approach to things.

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