Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 19-4. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, March 27, 2022. 21:30. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter-19. Knowledge and Action are One - 4.

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So in that state where freedom is complete and unlimited, you cannot imagine action which is towards some other end. The Universal is a name that we give to that condition of inclusiveness where ends and means are identical, work is worship, action is existence, the means is the same as the end, and the performance is the same as the result.

Now, the satisfaction of having understood this doctrine in our daily life will be also to the extent of our having made that doctrine a part of our daily life. To the extent we are ego-ridden individuals, and in the magnitude of our affirmation of our bodily individuality, we cannot but think in terms of actions bringing some results from somewhere else. The fruit comes from outside because there is something called ‘outside' to an action that we perform.

Yesterday we briefly thought that in our actions we do not actually enter wholly into it. We do not melt into the action; we do not become the action. Our soul is not in the action; therefore, it cannot be called an unselfish action. And therefore, it brings a result which is extraneous in its nature. Work can be a satisfaction by itself only if it is the expression of yourself, if it is not a commercial dealing. You do not expect anything from your own self. You may expect something from outside, but an unselfish action is not action done by outside means and ends; rather, it is a movement of yourself, so that you expand your dimension. The field of activity is the area covered by your own larger self, so that you are moving within yourself, as it were, in performance of unselfish action. 

“See yourself in the deed, see the Self in people, see the Atman in the whole atmosphere of action.” This is what the Bhagavadgita tells us, and in that sense you see yourself in the deeds that you perform. You are happy because you are there in what you do. Therefore, you do not want anything else from the action that you perform, in the same way as you do not expect anything from your own self. How hard is this doctrine, hard because we have never seen what universality is. 

We can never conceive what it can be because we cannot believe there is any reality outside the body. “All reality is within me, in this little body only; I am what I am as this little puny individual, and every satisfaction of this localised bodily individuality is all that matters for me. Let the world go to hell.” This is what any man would think when he is driven into a corner. But the Bhagavadgita is a solacing message of healthy living, not this morbid existence of a bodily individuality.

So here again we come to this point of sankhya and yoga. It is knowledge, and that knowledge is the same as action. Sankhya is not different from yoga. 

"sankhya-yogau prithag balah pravadanti na panditah

ekamapyasthitah samyag ubhayor vindate phalam." (BG 5.4): 

sankhya-yogau prithag balah pravadanti na panditah : Only unlettered, untutored, illiterate persons speak of sankhya and yoga as two different things. Wise ones do not say that. But who are the wise ones? Those who are established in the Universal. And here we may be charitable enough to accept that all those may be said to be also in the Universal even when they are moving towards the Universal, just as we say a person is educated whatever be the state of his education, whatever be the degree of his enlightenment. Whatever be the class he is studying in, he is in the process of education. Likewise, you may say you are living a spiritual life whatever be the degree of the universality that has become part of your daily life.

But to the extent it has not become part of your being, action looks like something different from knowledge. Therefore, knowledge and action are different in one state of consciousness, but they are not different in another state of consciousness. Where are they not different? They are not different where knowledge includes the field of action, where knowledge is not merely an acquaintance with facts as a sort of information but the imbibing of the very substance of the content of knowledge, where knowledge is Being and not merely knowing something outside, where Chit is the same as Sat, to put it in a more technical way. Chit is Sat, Sat is Chit. Ananda is said to be the name of perfection. That means to say, Chit is Sat. Consciousness is Being; knowing is the same as Existence; to be aware is to possess.

To be continued .....

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