Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Discourse 3.4 - Swami Krishnananda

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20/04/2020.
Discourse 3: The Second Chapter Begins – Sankhya Yogam -4.

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1.

#Sankhya calls the objective character of perception as prakriti, and the subjective consciousness which perceives is called purusha. So the Sankhya divides reality into two phases, or blocks of power—consciousness and matter, subject and object, purusha and prakriti. 

##Experience is supposed to be engendered by a contact of consciousness with prakriti. Purusha comes in contact with prakriti. It is very interesting to notice here that there can be contact between two dissimilar things. Consciousness is never an object; prakriti is never a subject. The contradiction between these two principles is obvious. 

*How can we bring about a rapprochement between the subject and the object, which stand poles apart? 

**How does the mind, or the individual consciousness, experience that such and such thing is there, or the world is there?

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2.

#The analogy of the Sankhya is well known. Consciousness never becomes an object. It never actually enters the object. It appears to perceive as if there is some object—such as, a crystal that is perfectly pure looks as if it is coloured when a coloured object is brought near it. Pure crystal is colourless. It is resplendent pure light, as it were; and if a red flower, for instance, is brought near it, it will appear as if the whole crystal is red. It looks as if the crystal has become red. 

##This analogy from the Sankhya extends to the field of the explanation of human perception—how the world is seen as such by the individual consciousness. The world is never correctly known at any time, just as there is always a dissimilarity between the coloured flower and the crystal, notwithstanding the fact that the crystal has apparently assumed the character of the object. A red-hot iron rod looks like fire, not like iron. It is glowing white with heat, yet that glow which is white heat is the fire; and there is something there which is not the fire—namely, the iron rod.

###The impact of the heat on the iron rod is such that the rod has ceased to be there practically, though it is there really. In a similar manner, objects assume a reality, as it were, though there is no reality in them; they are pure transitoriness.

To be continued ...

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