Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Discourse 6.3. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday, December 11, 2020. 10:41. AM.
Discourse 6: The Third Chapter Begins – The Relation Between Sankhya and Yoga -3.

Post-2.

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We are involved in the world in a very, very mysterious manner. This involvement is actually the determining factor behind our correct way of approaching things. The involvement in the world is such that, as we have noted earlier, we are partly action bound on account of our psychophysical personality being constituted of the three gunas of prakriti. The mind is constituted of the tanmatras, and the physical body is constituted of the physical elements, so both the mind and the body are, in a way, tools in the intentions of prakriti, which is cosmic activity. Therefore, whoever has a mind or a body cannot totally abstain from action. It will be forced upon him because when the world moves, everybody in the world also moves. When the railway train moves, whoever is sitting in the railway train also moves. But yoga does not mean merely performance of action in a blind manner without understanding the rationale behind it. Reason is the philosophical aspect of action, and action is the implementation of reason. Both have to go together as complimentary aspects of a daily routine of our existence.

We have to pursue the course of prakriti, which moves in a process of evolution from lower stages to higher stages with the intention of producing the best species possible. Modern biologists and anthropologists tell us that prakriti—or nature, as they call it—is experimenting to find the best species possible. Nature experimented with the earlier, rudimentary forms of species. There were amphibians, there were aquatic animals, there were wild beasts, there were mammoths, there were dinosaurs, and there were wild human beings. With none of these was nature satisfied. There is a gradual intention of prakriti to produce the best product which, at the present moment, seems to be the human individuality.

It is generally accepted that man is the apex of creation and his intelligence represents the final point that one can reach in the understanding of things. Yet, man has to become superman. The intention of prakriti is not to allow man to be only man forever. The superhuman character implicit in human individuality has to be manifest through further processes of evolution—births and deaths; and in this work of prakriti of producing higher and higher forms of species, it is incumbent on us to participate. The Taittiriya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads tell us that the higher species of beings, which are invisible to our eyes, denizens of higher realms which are above the physical realm and, therefore, remain invisible—the Gandharvas, the Devas, Indra, Brihaspati—live in a larger dimension of consciousness. Their power is equally great, and their happiness is a millionfold greater than human happiness. Hence, participation in the work of prakriti is actually our participation in the work of educating ourselves in the direction of a larger knowledge that is available to us and which is our heritage, one day or the other.

Therefore yoga, when it is interpreted as a compulsory activity imposed upon the individual, becomes a necessary participation on the part of the individual in the work of prakriti for the evolution of higher and higher forms of existence. But, human individuals alone are capable of practising yoga. Subhuman species cannot understand Sankhya or yoga because there is a peculiar privilege, as it were, that is bestowed upon the human individual—namely, the worth of reason. There is a kind of mind instinctively operating in the lower animals also, but logic or reason is available only in the human being. That is, human reason can draw conclusions from existing premises, but animals, which are instinctive, cannot draw such conclusions.

To be continued ....

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