Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 3. Swami Krishnananda

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Thursday 17, April 2025, 11:00.

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Scriptures

Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 3. 

Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on February 24th, 1973)

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Well, drawing a conclusion on the logic of this process, we cannot avoid the irresistible urge to conclude that spirit should overcome matter ultimately. While evolution is the attempt of the spirit to overcome the barriers of matter, the pinnacle or goal of this evolution should be the complete victory of spirit over matter wherein matter is absorbed into spirit and spirit reigns supreme, wherein there is the realisation of the Absolute Spirit. This is the goal of evolution, which is very pointedly mentioned in these three verses of the Eighteenth Chapter of the Gita.

The Bhagavadgita, as I may have mentioned, is a fund of all varieties of wisdom. We will find science, evolution, biology, and physics in the Gita. Every blessed thing is in the Bhagavadgita, if only we have the eyes to see it through the lines of the Gita. And when we reach this sattvic type of knowledge wherein the basic reality is recognised as the source of the variety that we see through the senses and understand through the intellect, we reach the goal of our life. Yadā bhūtapṛthagbhāvam ekastham anupaśyati: When we recognise the rootedness of all variety in the One; tata eva ca vistāraṃ: as the basis for the proceeding of all the variety; brahma saṃpadyate tadā: that itself is the realisation of Brahman. This knowledge is identical with the realisation of God. God is knowledge. The Absolute is consciousness. The realisation is the same as this wisdom. Sat is chit is ananda, as we call it. This existence of the Absolute is the consciousness of the Absolute. Spirit supreme reigning beyond the limitations of sense and understanding is the goal of life, towards which we are moving.

We have grown slowly from the lower stages of life, from matter to the vegetable kingdom, from there to the animal, and now we have come to the human level. This is not the end of evolution, but we are likely to mistake this for the complete achievement of consciousness. We, in our scientific prejudice, are likely to imagine that human knowledge is the final knowledge and that it is complete by itself. This is, unfortunately, not the truth. If human existence were to be the final achievement possible, we would not have an urge to grow further, to achieve more things, to be happier.

Why are we so miserable in our human existence? Because human life is incomplete. Human life is not the goal of knowledge, and there are further stages of the evolution of the universe, of which the human level is only one link in the long chain of this process. What pushes us forward and urges us onwards is the existence of a higher principle beyond us. We become restless merely because of the fact that there is something higher above us. The very existence of something higher is enough to push us onwards.

The unconscious urge of the lower to realise the higher is evolution. When it is consciously maneuvered, the process is called yoga. Unconscious movement towards the higher is evolution; conscious movement towards the higher is yoga. Yoga is nothing but conscious evolution wherein we do not contradict the evolutionary process but become aware of what is happening and are conscious of every bit of this process, and instead of blindly struggling against odds of which we have no understanding whatsoever, we consciously cooperate with this unavoidable process called evolution. That is yoga. So science and philosophy coalesce. Spirituality and scientific discovery are not opposed to each other, provided each one knows its own province of activity and understanding.

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Continued

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