The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 10.6. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday, April  20, 2021. 06:37. PM.
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Chapter - 10 : The Need for Sankhya -6.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
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You cannot have access to the field of right action unless you are equipped with right knowledge first. All right action is based on right knowledge. Understanding always comes first, and behaviour comes afterwards. You cannot move a finger unless you know how to move it, so it is theory first and practice afterwards, as it is in the case of our secular sciences also. The methodology is to be clear first. The technology has to be appreciated in the beginning. We have to be trained well in the theoretical side, the logical side, the scientific side; then we will come to the practical side. So in one way we may say that the word ‘yoga’ used in the Bhagavadgita, especially in the earlier stages, say from the beginning of the Second Chapter, may be considered as indicating action rightly performed; and sankhya is knowledge.

The word ‘sankhya’ is to indicate the nature of the knowledge that is necessary to live in this world. Many explanations have been offered by teachers and exponents to make out the meaning of the word sankhya. Sankhya means ‘number’. Categorisation, classification, numbering, counting – all these mean sankhya. And originally the system of philosophy known as the Sankhya was mainly concerned with the categorisation or the classification of the principles of cosmic evolution. From that system which was engaged in this work of the classification of the basic principles of the cosmos, the word ‘sankhya’ may have got identified with the word ‘knowledge’, jnana. Sankhya and jnana mean the same thing. We may consider sankhya as right understanding of the operation of nature, the structure of things and the character of the whole of creation. This you lack. 

Therefore, you go on blabbering something, saying whatever you like, and imagining that what you said is correct. If you had an insight into the basic components of the world, you would have also known your relationship to it, and you would not have said anything. You would have known everything clearly, as in daylight. Why should anybody tell you that something is there in daylight? You can see it for yourself. But your eyes are blind; therefore, someone has to tell you something is here, something is there. Your eyes have not been opened. Sankhya is not here.

Now, what is sankhya? Without going into the metaphysical details of the classical Sankhya system, which is not essential for the present, we see what meaning we can have from the verse of the Bhagavadgita itself. The word ‘prakriti’ is used in the Bhagavadgita, which is one of the terms that occurs in the Sankhya system. The whole world is made up of prakriti. This prakriti is the substance of the whole world. By ‘the world’ we do not mean only this little Earth. The entire cosmos, the universe, is an expression of prakriti. This prakriti is constituted of certain forces, and these forces are called sattva, rajas, tamas. Tamas is the inert condition of this force, rajas is the active condition of this force, and sattva is the harmonised condition of this force. In these three conditions the world can exist, and does exist.

Now, inasmuch as everything in the world is made up of these forces only, as a rope which is made up of three strands is identical with the strands, and the strands constitute the rope, similarly, the forces mentioned constitute every person and every thing in the world. Everything is just these forces. There are no persons, no things in the world. Everything is just a permutation and combination of these three forces, sattva, rajas, tamas. In some proportion these are mixed. The proportion in which these gunas, or properties of prakriti, are mixed, and the intensity in which they are manifest, will decide the kind of thing that anything is. It may be a body of a living being, or it may be an inanimate substance.

To be continued ....

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