A Study of the Bhagavadgita :12.8 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, July20, 2022. 20:00. 

Chapter 12: Communing with the Absolute through the Cosmic Tree - 8.

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These gunas are described in the Fourteenth Chapter, suggesting thereby that they constitute the be-all and end-all of everything. To remove the idea of tangibility and solidity, substantiality, etc., an additional chapter is devoted, which is the Fourteenth, where we come to know that the entire world which looks so hard, so solid and charged with gravitations of every kind is, after all, not so constituted. Appearances are deceptive. Things are not what they seem. The world is not solid. We feel the solidity of a table or a chair when we touch it with our fingers; but we are told today it is due to the electrical impulses created between the molecules constituting our fingers and the molecular content of the object called the table or chair. There is a repulsive activity taking place, a colliding of atomic principles, the molecular forces that form the object into a shape of wood or steel or any object on the one hand, and on the other hand they operate through the sensations of our fingers, etc. Actually, what we touch is not an object, and that which touches cannot be regarded as a finger; it is a sensation. If the sensation is not from the finger, the touch will not be there. If we cannot have the sensation of seeing or touching or hearing or smelling or tasting, there will be no world before us. Therefore, the world is sensory, sensational, which means to say, it is non-solid. It is liquid, as it were, a non-substance, and it fades into airy nothing.

God actually created the world out of nothing, because there was no material substance before God. Either we should say God created the world out of Himself, or we should say that He created it out of nothing. To say that God created the world out of Himself is to say the world does not exist except God; and to say that God created it out of nothing is again to say God only is, and nothing else exists. Prakriti, the gunas and the Sankhya doctrine, and the adumbration of all these properties that we are discussing, finally lands us in a negation of all particularity, externality, and the very world-consciousness itself.

In the Fifteenth Chapter we are taken to a height of a different type altogether where the cosmological theory is brought before our eyes once again in a new fashion. Ūrdhvamūlam adhaḥśākham (Gita 15.1): This universe can be compared to a tree with its roots up and its branches down. Usually the roots of trees are below and the branches shoot forth above in the sky, but here is a cosmic tree which is of a different nature. All this world seen with our eyes, the entire presentation of phenomena, should be regarded as the branches, the twigs, the leaves, the flowers and the fruits of this mighty tree of creation, of which the roots are above in the Absolute Creative Will. Ūrdhvamūlam: the root is above; adhaḥśākham: the branches are below.

Aśvatthaṁ prāhur avyayam: The tree is compared to an aśvattha, a holy tree, the sacred peepal tree. Aśvattha also means 'that which will not last until tomorrow'. Transitory is this world. It will not last until tomorrow, not even until the next moment, because every new moment is the creation of a new form and a shape of the structural pattern of creation. So the world is transient, momentary, a fluxation, and it is not a solidity. That is why it is called aśvattha – na śvaha tha. Aśvatthaṁ prāhur avyayam.

Chandāṁsi yasya parṇāni yas taṁ veda sa vedavit: All the Vedic knowledge, all knowledge whatsoever of any kind, should be regarded as the leaves of this mighty tree. The knowledge of the world is also a manifestation of this tree. Sankaracharya, especially in his commentary on this description of the inverted tree in the Katha Upanishad, goes into great details of beautiful enunciation of the problems we feel in our life and the manner in which we are connected to the Ultimate Being.

The root sustains the whole tree; therefore, if you manure and water the root, you will be feeding virtually the whole tree. If you want to see that the leaves are green and luscious, and there is flowering and that the tree yields fruit, you water the tree and put manure. But you will not manure and water the leaves, though they are actually what are in your mind. Although you are not interested in the root of the tree as much as the fruit and the leaves, still when you tend the tree, you tend the root because the leaves and branches are automatically nourished spontaneously by the nourishing of the root.

Mūlaḿ hi viṣṇur devānāḿ, yatra dharmaḥ sanātanaḥ (Bhagavatam 10.4.39): The Supreme Being is the root of all things. If you serve God, you serve entire humanity. On the other hand, if you serve all the leaves and allow the root to dry up, you have virtually done no service. So you may do any kind of service to your brethren and your family members, and even to the whole world of people, but you have done nothing at all if the root is forgotten. If the root withers and dries up and your love is not there, if your concentration is diverted from the root's welfare and goes to the leaves and the branches, then your service is nil. You have to learn the art of moving from the leaves, the twigs and the branches to the root, through the stem.

That Great Being is to be sought after, says the Fifteenth Chapter, by withdrawal of sense organs and humility of practice. The process is gradual ascent. We are down below in the form of these manifested shapes of the tree as leaves, flowers, fruits, branches, twigs, etc. We have to go gradually through these processes to the trunk, and then touch the root. Having gone there, we see the whole tree present in an incipient form.

You will find the entire universe in God. In the root, in the seed, you will find the whole banyan tree. The little seed of the banyan, so minute in its contents, that tremendously insignificant little particle of seed, contains within itself this tremendous expanse of the banyan which can give so much shade. So is this invisible Reality looking like an abstraction and no substance at all, a non-entity for us. God is a non-entity because He cannot be seen with the eyes. He cannot be contacted because He is non-objective. Such a non-objective, so-called abstraction of intellect is the very reality of all things. As this solid, mighty banyan is in this insignificant, invisible seed, the so-called invisibility of God will become the substantial visibility when you see the cosmos present in everything. When baby Krishna yawned, the entire ocean, the entire sky and time were seen inside his mouth.

So this mighty tree is only an allegorical description of the creative process which was otherwise described in earlier chapters. This world is one aspect of the manifestation of this tree which is there before us as an object, and ourselves as subjects of perception also stand there as another aspect. And a third aspect is Purushottama. Dvāv imau puruṣau loke kṣaraś cākṣara eva ca, kṣaraḥ sarvāṇi bhūtāni kūṭasthokṣara ucyate (Gita 15.16); uttamaḥ puruṣas tv anyaḥ paramātmety udāhṛtaḥ, yo lokatrayam āviśya bibharty avyaya īśvaraḥ (Gita 15.17). Kshara and akshara are the perishable and imperishable aspects of creation. The perishable aspect is the adhibhuta, the imperishable aspect is the soul in the adhyatma or individual. Transcending both is the Purushottama, the Supreme Person. Reaching and having known Him, you will remain perfectly blessed, says the Fifteenth Chapter.

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Next -Chapter 13: The Positivity and the Negativity of Experience

To be continued .....

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