The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 3-3. Swami Krishnananda

Thursday, June 18, 2020.

Chapter 3: Samkhya – Right Understanding-3.

1.

Now, we are lifted to a higher level of thinking when the word 'samkhya' is used in the second chapter of the Bhagavadgita, meaning thereby an understanding of the true relationship that obtains between you and everything that is around you, and not merely that which appears to be around you. Though it may appear that there is nothing around you except people to whom you are concerned positively or negatively, by means of like and dislike, etc., there are more important things that condition our existence than the existence of other people like us. 

This was revealed to us to some extent by our study of the cosmology of the Samkhya. The very existence of human beings as individuals or isolated personalities is due to an event that has perhaps taken place in the process of the creational or the evolutionary activity of the whole structure of the universe.

2.

You may have to remember what I told you last time; I need not repeat it once again. The individuality, the so-called 'me', is the subjective side that has arisen as a result of the split of the cosmic ahamkara – these terms you may remember for purpose of understanding what is going to follow further on. A cosmic self-consciousness is called ahamkara – not the ahamkara or the ego of man, but an impersonal metaphysical reality, which is the "I Am What I Am" of mysticism and religion that manifested itself, as it were, as the objective universe of perception and the subjective individuality which are the jivas, in the Sanskrit language. 

That which beholds the world as something outside is the jiva or the individual; it may be human or even superhuman, or otherwise. That which looks at the world as an external something is called the jiva. This jiva, this individual, is constituted of certain building bricks, which I narrated last time as the bodily structure of five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether; and the internal components: the pranas, the senses, the mind, the intellect and the large reservoir of what we call the 'unconscious' in the English language, but something larger than what the psychologists call 'unconscious' – the potentiality of every future eventuality, and even rebirth, that is there at the root of our individuality. 

Transcendent to all these layers of our individuality is the 'Light Supernal' which is the Absolute peeping through our reason, through our mind and even the senses, and animating every cell of our body, making us feel "We are", "I am", etc.

To be continued ...

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