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Thursday 09, January 2024, 13:00.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita:
Chapter 10: The Hidden Meaning of the Seventh Chapter of the Gita-3
Swami Krishnananda
Post-62.
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Our knowledge is a kind of walking stick. It has the power to give us some assistance like a torch when we are walking in darkness, but it cannot suffice in the end. Nobody can understand the great mystery of this form that we have seen just now. No tapas, no austerity, no effort of any kind even in the spiritual field can make us fit to behold this form. This is what that Cosmic Form spoke to Arjuna in the Eleventh Chapter. Our efforts are of no avail. A superior, different kind of effort may be necessary to behold that Form – not through the physical eyes, but through an eye which is different altogether.
Briefly, the cosmological statement is here in these three verses. It will be touched upon again in two verses in the Third Chapter. But the point is that it is an affirmation of the same detail covered earlier, that the Supreme Absolute, God Almighty – you may call Him Parabrahman, Purusha, Purushottama – is everything. This is the doctrine of the Vedanta which distinguishes itself from the Sankhya to some extent, especially from what is called the graphical Sankhya. According to the Sankhya, the Purusha and the Prakriti are totally different entities; both are realities by themselves. Though the Sankhya says that the Purusha does not pervade Prakriti, yet it says that Purusha is all-in-all and infinite. Infinite are the Purushas, numberless are they, and yet each one is infinite. This is a peculiar logic of the Sankhya which has been transcended by the universal philosophy of the Vedanta where Prakriti does not stand as a contradiction to Purusha; it is not an object of consciousness, it is a manifestation of the Infinite itself. Otherwise, Purusha cannot make the statement “I am all”, because the Purusha of the Sankhya is all in the sense of its being infinite, but it is not all in the sense that there is a Prakriti in front of it always.
Hence, the Vedanta doctrine is adumbrated here, in addition to the acceptance of the principles of the Sankhya. The Vedanta takes the whole philosophy of the Sankhya with a pinch of salt, and accepts it with some reservation. The evolutionary process described by the Sankhya is perfectly all right; the Vedanta accepts it. Yet there is a 'but' before it, that the Purusha is not infinite in number. There is only one Purusha possible because there cannot be two infinities. Infinity is one only. Even if you try to pile up infinities over infinities, you will have one infinity only.
Therefore, there can be only one 'I' behind the cosmos, not many I's. Many I's cannot say, “We are the creators of the cosmos and we are all things,” because two things cannot be all things. So here is the supremacy of the Godhood that speaks in this strain as 'I': “I am.” That is all. You cannot say anything more. You can only say, “it is.” Astīti bruvato'nyatra kathaṁ tad upalabhyate (Katha 12), as the Upanishad says. You can know God as Existence. It is, that's all. You should not say anything more about God except that He is. What He is, you should not say, because there is no quality, no attribute that can be associated with Him, inasmuch as He is the All. If He is the All, there can be no external attribute. I am all things.
It is incumbent on the part of the spiritual seeker, as mentioned, to commune himself with this great Reality which is the beginning and the end of all things. The Universal should engulf, as it were, the individual. The waves should subside in the ocean. The little I of the finite individual should get merged in the Infinite One I.
The feeling of the seeker of Truth at the time of his attempt to commune himself with the Almighty is called bhakti or devotion in the language of the Gita. Whoever is devoted to God is also a Yogi. In all practices there is an element of devotion, a longing for something higher than one's own self. You are a devotee of the higher Self. You are a devotee of God. You are a devotee of the infinite Purusha. You are devoted to it in the sense that you want it. Whenever you want something, you become a devotee of that thing.*****
Continued
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