A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 3-9: Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, 23 Jan 2024 06:25.

Chapter 3: The Transmigration of the Soul:8.

Post-9.

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Sankhya is the wisdom of life. This is a word that philosophers are acquainted with. It is one of the schools of philosophy. Among the six schools – Nyaya, Vaisesika, etc. – Sankhya is one. Now we are entering into a little difficult subject, the principle of Sankhya, which is actually the doctrine of the evolution of the cosmos. Unless you know where you are actually placed in this life, you cannot know what to do in this world. You are standing somewhere. You have to do something – move in this direction, or do something, or speak in a way to somebody – but nothing can be done unless you know where you are standing. Where are you, actually? Unless you know the atmosphere of your location, you will not be able to take even one step in any direction. So duty, the fulfilment of your obligations in this world in any work whatsoever, cannot be attempted unless you know where you are actually placed. The knowledge of your placement in the midst of this cosmos is the Sankhya.

Are you in Rishikesh, are you on the Earth planet, are you in the solar system, are you in the sky? Do you know that you are in a spaceship? This Earth is a spaceship rotating, revolving in space. You are in an airplane, as it were. It is really so. Every second, it covers some thousands of miles. You are thinking you are in Rishikesh, but you are not in Rishikesh. You are in mid-space.

This is the way in which it becomes necessary to know in a larger dimension where we are actually placed. We are in the solar system, not in India, not in Delhi or Rishikesh, or Uttar Pradesh or Dakshin Pradesh. We are in the solar system, conditioned by the great ruling force Suryanarayana, the Sun, and the galaxies, and the entire space-time complex.

Sankhya is the enumeration of the categories of evolution. 'Sankhya' is a Sanskrit word which means computation. The computation of the categories of the cosmos is the Sankhya doctrine. Firstly, it has been accepted that there is a consciousness. Whatever I have been telling you up to this time amounts to this: there is a consciousness. And I have been telling you all this time that this consciousness is eternal, the Soul Supreme, infinite, indefinable, indivisible consciousness. The Sankhya calls it Purusha. The supreme directing principle of the whole universe is called Purusha, the Supreme. As it is uncontaminated by externality or relativity, it is Absolute. You can call it Absolute Existence, Absolute Consciousness.

The universal force that causes the delimitation of this Universal Consciousness and entry into a particularity or an individuality is called Prakriti. So there is Purusha and there is Prakriti. This Prakriti is a name that we give to the blending of the three forces called sattva, rajas and tamas. Rajas is kinesis, dynamism, and tamas is stasis. In the language of physics we may call it dynamics and statics, but in science there is no third thing equivalent to sattva. 

We have only dynamics and statics; there is no equilibrating factor in science. Sattva is the equilibrating force between dynamics and statics, between action and no action, between moving and not moving, between doing and not doing. Between stability, fixity and motion, there is a harmonising element. That is called sattva. These three forces are the constituents of what is known as Prakriti, the cosmical motivation behind the wish of the Universal Consciousness to enter into an individuality.

Today we shall close with this apparently difficult subject.

End of Chapter-3,

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Next

Chapter 4: The Total Picture of Creation

To be continued

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