Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday 05, February 2026, 07:00.
Article
Scriptures 
Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 2.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on February 24th, 1973).

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Here is the distinction among these knowledges. The lowest type of knowledge is tamasic which sees only individuals, each by itself and for itself. The higher knowledge, which is rajasic, is the mutual relationship among things: I am concerned with you, and you are concerned with me. This is a socialistic type of knowledge, to which we have risen today, but we have not yet risen to the higher type of knowledge which is sattvic. The fundamental basic unity of things has not yet been perceived. The jungle type of living follows the law of the fish, as they call it, the larger one swallowing the smaller one. Though today we are gradually rising from the law of the jungle where each one flies at the throat of another and swallows the lesser one and have come to a socialistic kind of understanding of mutual appreciation of individual values, we are still far away from that highest type of knowledge which the Bhagavadgita designates as sattvic.

While the lowest is sensory knowledge, the next higher one is intellectual, rational knowledge, and the highest is spiritual knowledge. So the three types of knowledge are sensory, intellectual and spiritual. We have not yet risen to the spiritual level of things. We are still in the rational and intellectual level only, though to a large extent we may be said to have risen above the sensory animalistic perception: sarvabhūteṣu yenaikaṃ bhāvam avyayam īkṣate, avibhaktaṃ vibhakteṣu taj jñānaṃ viddhi sāttvikam.

Also, in another context the Bhagavadgita says: 

"avibhaktaṃ ca bhūteṣu vibhaktam iva ca sthitam, bhūtabhartṛ ca taj jñeyaṃ grasiṣṇu prabhaviṣṇu ca." (BG13.16); 

"yadā bhūtapṛthagbhāvam ekastham anupaśyati, tata eva ca vistāraṁ brahma sampadyate tadā." (BG13.30). 

These are all interconnected verses of a similar connotation wherein the mutual dependence of objects, the relativity of things, is observed to be rooted in the rock bottom of the Absolute. While the multiplicity may be there, it is seen to be based on an indivisible unity, and when we interpret righteousness, goodness and all values of life in terms of the existence of this Absolute, we are supposed to have a spiritual perception of things. The judgment of values has to be spiritual; only then can it be said to be correct perception. Otherwise, it is faulty, and any kind of faulty knowledge will breed its own consequence of suffering.

We are not happy in spite of our education, notwithstanding that we have risen above the animal level of perception and come to what we call the human level of understanding. It only means that human understanding is not complete understanding. The level of humanity in the process of evolution is not the acme that evolution can reach. Evolution is an unending process, as it were. We do not know where it will reach finally. According to Henri Bergson, a great vitalistic philosopher, evolution is a universal process of things, which has neither a beginning nor an end. How it began, no one knows; where it will end, no one can say. In the words of Bergson, it is an unending process of the attempt of consciousness to overcome the barrier of matter. Matter obstructs the movement of spirit in the form of objects of sense, and there is a struggle against the spirit of obstructivity of matter. This is the tendency of what we call evolution. Where does this tendency reach, Bergson cannot say, but he has been wise enough to discover, at least, that spirit overcomes matter in its struggle for higher and higher forms of perfection, which is called evolution.

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.

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Continues

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