Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 5. Swami Krishnananda.
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Sunday 24, May 2026, 19:35.
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Spiritual Evolution According to the Bhagavadgita: 5.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on February 24th, 1973).
Post - 5.
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How is it that we know that something is good and righteous? Because we are capable of having an envisagement of an existence slightly higher than our present lot. This is, therefore, in one sense, a linkage between the divine and the animal. While the divine transcends this complexity of doubt in the mind between divinity and animality, and while the animal is completely engrossed in the bodily consciousness, the human consciousness is midway between the divine and the animal so that we have animal instincts on one side and divine aspiration on the other side. While we are subject to the weaknesses of flesh and the ravages of the body like the animals, we are at the same time restless with our present lot and we seek a higher state of existence. Thus, we are lower than the celestial and the divine, and yet higher than the animal.
This analysis should open our eyes to the fact that it would be folly on the part of any person to be satisfied merely with human perception, though it be a scientific perception, because as in the verse of the Bhagavadgita which I quoted, to mistake the particular for the entire, the individual for the whole, is gross knowledge, the lowest knowledge, and the cause of our pain. Bereavement, suffering, sorrow of every kind is the outcome of this sort of belief, which engenders this attachment in the form of mineness: “This is my brother; he should be happy. Pray for his health and long life. If another's brother may die, I am not worried.” This is the lowest kind of knowledge. Why should someone else's brother die and our brother live? We pray for our children, our relations, for the prosperity of what belongs to us. This is tamasic knowledge. Where we pray for all, that is rajasic knowledge, but that is not enough. Higher than that, there is something which is the recognition of the Selfhood of things, atmatva. This is the final gospel of the Bhagavadgita, towards which we have to strive, which is the practice of sadhana.
The Bhagavadgita is a Brahma-vidya and a Yoga Shastra. It is the doctrine of the Absolute and also a description of the methodology of approach to this reality by way of practice. This practice is yoga. What is yoga? It is the adjustment of consciousness to the law of the Absolute. This is yoga. Or, if we would like to put it more mildly, it is the tuning of our consciousness to the next higher reality so that we go higher and higher, from the lesser to the wider.
Now, the tendency of consciousness to grow to a higher state of existence implies a restriction of those tendencies in us which limit us to the bodily existence and the perception of the particulars, the individuals; this restriction is called atma-vinigraha, or self-control. If we persist in entertaining animal tendencies, how can we be called human beings? So to be human implies automatically the necessity to control those tendencies of the animal. If the animal tendencies are to be given a long rope, where comes humanity in us? We do not attack people like a tiger or bite like a snake, though subconsciously these tendencies are still in us. We check these tendencies so that we may be human. This checking of the lower tendency is called self-control, sense-control.
In the same way as to be human we have to control the animal tendencies by putting a check over them, in order that we may be divine and godly we may have to transmute even the human qualities. Just as the animal instincts look unbecoming in the eye of a human consciousness, the human tendencies which look all right today are also very unbecoming and untrue from the point of view of divine perception. While evil and selfishness are bad from the point of view of the human perception because they are animal tendencies, what we call goodness and social life is also a limitation and to be outgrown in a higher divine consciousness.
So this is the way we have to constantly bring home to our mind that there is a higher purpose in our life so that our very restlessness in life becomes a fillip and a push to take us higher into the knowledge of that which transcends us, and we maintain ourselves by the hope of the achievement of a higher purpose. The higher pulls us towards itself. This irresistible urge of the pull of the higher is evolution, as I mentioned. That is why we cannot keep quiet even for a moment because the higher is pulling us. If the higher were not to pull us, we would be satisfied with our present state of life. We would not ask for anything. Desire, which keeps us restless and unhappy in life, is the blind groping of consciousness for the higher existence, for the higher form of life.
Desire is a blind groping; it is not a clear perception of things, yet it gives an indication that something is wrong with us. When we open our eyes to the meaning behind these desires and urges, we are said to be endowed with viveka or understanding, discrimination. This is the first prerequisite of spiritual enlightenment. Viveka, vairagya and shad-sampat – this understanding of the higher purpose of life and an automatic detachment from the lower instincts, together with self-control, constitute the base sadhana for spiritual life.
This itself is not sufficient. These qualifications, viveka, vairagya, shad-sampat, etc., are supposed to be only preparatory for the reception of the higher knowledge which is classified under what we call the sravana, manana, nididhyasana process. Even mere discrimination will not do. A mere attempt at self-control is not sufficient because spiritual knowledge is not the negative repression or the control of the senses merely, but a positive realisation of higher values.
We are a positive personality when we grow, not merely a transcendence of lower values. Merely giving up something wrong, bad or evil is not enough. We want to achieve something positive which is good, which is proper and which is just. How can we rest merely in a negative personality of having avoided something? As health is not merely absence of disease, spirituality is not merely control of the senses, but the positive achievement of a superior state of existence and perception and knowledge. Therefore, it is a state of freedom and bliss. We cannot have freedom and bliss merely by having avoided something or got out of some clutches. Positive is spirituality, positive is yoga, and in the earlier stages it is combined with a negative withdrawal from the limitations of sense and the pure rational approach.
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