Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita - 1. Swami Krishnananda

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Article
Scriptures
Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita - 1. 
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on February 24th, 1973)

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Human perception causes the kind of knowledge which takes things in their isolated and disconnected capacity, on account of which there is attraction and repulsion for them. The philosophy of this sort of perception is given in the Bhagavadgita: Yat tu kṛtsnavad ekasmin kārye saktam ahaitukam, atattvārthavad alpaṁ ca tat tāmasam udāhṛtam (BG 18.22). The Bhagavadgita regards this sort of knowledge as the lowest type of knowledge. That kind of knowledge which regards things in their individual capacity alone and takes the part for the whole, mistaking each entity for a complete substantiality and truth and thus giving rise to likes and dislikes in the mind, is the minimum of knowledge, the grossest of perceptions and the crudest type of understanding.

But unfortunately, we think that this is the only kind of knowledge available to us. For us, every person is complete by himself or herself. Everything is individually a whole, on account of which there is a like for the possession of certain things and a dislike towards other things we wish to avoid. This means to say, the philosophy itself is unfounded, basically erroneous, and as psychology is based on philosophy, our ideas and values regarding things are founded upon this fundamental mistake which we take for a correct perception. It is taken for the whole of truth. When a mother loves a child, the child is the entire truth for her. It is not a partial truth. When a miser loves his money, it is a whole truth for him. When a vainglorious egoist loves his position, that is the entire thing for him. Everything becomes entire.

This character of entirety is foisted upon a particularity. The attribute of completeness is superimposed on an individual which is really incomplete. Everything in the world is incomplete, whether it is a person or a thing. It is the incompleteness of a thing that is responsible for the evolution of that thing into higher forms of existence. Organic and inorganic evolution is the tendency of an incomplete something to grow into a more complete structure of its own existence. Every finite thing grows higher and higher in its tendency to become wider and wider.

Restlessness is the character of the finite object. Change is inseparable from finitude. All individuality is incompleteness. Nothing that is seen as an isolated object can rest in itself for more than a single moment of time. The momentariness of things, the transitoriness of objects, the changeful character of the world is proof enough of the fact that no isolated part can rest in itself for a long time. Yet, we mistake the impermanent for the permanent, the individual for the universal, the particular for the whole, the external for the Absolute.

Well, this is tamasic knowledge, the lowest form of knowledge. Yat tu kṛtsnavad ekasmin kārye saktam: The knowledge that is attached to a particular effect alone and is taken for the all-comprehensive whole is the lowest kind of knowledge, which is our knowledge, scientific knowledge. The knowledge that is scientific and logical, of which we are so proud today, is in the eyes of the Bhagavadgita the lowest kind of knowledge. It is not a proud achievement but a folly on our part.

The earlier types of discoveries in science and in philosophy were all restricted to this type of knowledge. They pin their faith on bits of matter and forms of objects, basing their conclusions on these perceptions which were slowly, in the passage of time, given up for higher discoveries. Today we have scientific doctrines and theories which have risen above this crass perception of bits of matter called molecules, chemical substances and the like, and they are rising to a higher relativity of things mentioned in another verse of the Bhagavadgita, which is rajasic knowledge. The rajasic type of knowledge is higher than the tamasic type.

While the tamasic knowledge takes an individual for the whole, and each individual as complete by itself, the rajasic knowledge rises above this concept and recognises the interconnectedness of things and observes the relative character of this interconnectedness. Pṛthaktvena tu yaj jñānaṁ nānābhāvān pṛthagvidhān, vetti sarveṣu bhūteṣu taj jñānaṃ viddhi rājasam (BG 18.21): Varieties are perceived. This is the higher type of knowledge when we see variety. In the lowest kind of knowledge we do not see even variety; we see only one thing. “My child is everything. There is no other existence anywhere except my child,” says the mother. “This is my house, my property, my field, my position, and I am concerned only with this that is mine, and I do not even know whether anything else exists in the world.” That is tamasic knowledge. “My condition is the only thing that concerns me. The condition of other people, I am not concerned with. Their existence or non-existence does not affect me.” That is a tamasic appreciation of values. 'Each for oneself' is tamasic knowledge. One is not concerned with the other. But when one is concerned with the other and there is a mutual appreciation of values and a cooperation with others, that is rajasic knowledge. Here we have risen above the individualistic particularity of perception to the cooperative relativity of things. Though this is a higher kind of knowledge, the Bhagavadgita is not satisfied with it. Mutual cooperative activity, though higher than individualistic selfishness, is not the highest kind of knowledge. While the lowest is the crass materialistic perception of the senses, the second, higher one, is the intellectual perception of the relativity of objects.

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Continues

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