The Tree of Life: 2.2 -Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday, 31 October 2026, 05:00.
Books
Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Tree of Life: 1.4. 
Discourse 2: The Search For Wholeness -2.
Swami Krishnananda

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Discourse 2: The Search For Wholeness- 2.

The avarana, as it is called in Vedantic parlance, is a screen over the reality which keeps us out of touch with it. That is what is known as ignorance. We are not only screened away from what is there but are presented with what is not there, so that we are made a double fool. Not only are we ignorant of the presence of God, but we are conscious of the presence of a world outside, so we are deceived in two ways. There is a double deception taking place at the same time. Not only are we completely cut off from the vital root essence, the parent of all things, which is sustaining us here—mātā dhātā pitāmahaḥ (B.G. 9.17)—but we are completely forgetful of this great sustaining power. Well, that one thing is bad enough; but a worse thing is that we are clinging to what is not there, an externalisation of that which is universal.

The tree of life is a universal manifestation and not an externalised form, as it may be made to appear before us. The world is not an object, but it presents itself as an object. Na rūpam asyeha tathopalabhyate nānto na cādir na ca saṁpratiṣṭhā (B.G. 15.3): It has no form whatsoever, but we see the world as if it has a form. The power of the senses is such that they give a form to what is formless, just as a sculptor can give shape to a shapeless block of stone. The visualisation of the pattern of the statue inside the block of stone is in the idea of the sculptor. He can see the required form of the statue within the block of stone, out of which any form can be engraved or carved out. But the block of stone itself is not a form, although any form can be extracted out of it by the manipulation of the idea of the sculptor.

The tree of life is not like the tree that we see in front of us. Therefore, a magnificent, uncanny, veiled comparison is chalked out in the expression of the verses of the Bhagavadgita here. Adhaś cordhvaṁ prasṛtāstasya (B.G. 15.2); na rūpam asyeha tathopalabhyate (B.G. 15.3): It is there, above and below; it is in all directions everywhere. Because it is everywhere, it cannot have a form. To have a form is to be in some place, and to be everywhere is naturally not to have any form. But the senses carve out the figure of a form as the sculptor carves out a figure from a block of stone. The ink and the canvas have no picturesque conditioned form, but a form is given by the painter who utilises the ink which he splashes over the canvas according to the manner of the working of his mind.

The mind and the senses work together in collaboration to picture a formless being as a formed content of human experience. The world that we see, the various objects, men and various other things, are carved-out figures from the figureless block of stone of the ocean of life. In the Yoga Vasishtha life is compared to a block of stone, from which any form can be taken out by the power of the mind which seeks expression in a particular form. The forms of life, which are the contents of experience, are the carved-out figures extracted by the mind of an individual from the unconditioned block which is the whole of mulaprakriti constituted of a vast expanse of sattva, rajas and tamas. The mind not only carves out a form from this formless unmanifest being, but also projects it externally in what we call space and time.

Now we are entering into a new section of analysis of this totality of experience called the tree of life. Yesterday we had occasion to observe that the sap of the tree of life grows in the form of the tree, and the seed will not be content to remain as a seed. The baby grows into the adult, etc. We were wondering why this expression should be there at all. Why should there be growth and evolution and movement in any direction? It is the intention of the Original Will to find itself as the one in the many. The oneness is present, and the manyness is also there. The presence of the oneness of the Original Will of the seed of life keeps these varieties of forms in unison, in collaboration with one another, just as the comprehensiveness of the tree keeps all the branches and the leaves, etc., in collaboration one with the other.

The variety and the multitudinousness of the leaves of a tree, for instance, is no bar to the relatedness among themselves in the form of this tree. So is this variety of life. The division and the difference, the gulf and the variety in the form of experience of objects, do not deter us from asking for a unity behind them. That is the reason why we ask for collaboration, unity, solidarity of people. We are urged towards working for a commonness of purpose. We do service, we have a feeling of affection, we feel for other people, we extend ourselves into another, all which can be explained only by the fact of the presence of an inexplicable oneness that is at the back of this apparent multiplicity of personality, objects and things. In the same way as a wholeness called the tree is present in the variety we call leaves, etc., God is present in the world. “He became the many, and He entered into every part of it,” says the Upanishad.

But we have to pursue this nature of the mystery of life still further so that the purpose that is behind the expression of this mystery may be clear to our minds. The knowledge of this tree is supposed to be true knowledge: yastaṁ veda sa vedavit (B.G. 15.1). If you know the whole of this tree, you are said to have true knowledge. But we do not have knowledge of the whole of this tree. We see only one leaf, or half a leaf, just as we look at some object or a group of objects in front of us.

Who can know the whole of this Earth, what to speak of other things beyond the Earth? No one can imagine what is in the skies and above. We are very much conditioned to this little place, Muni-ki-reti or Rishikesh; or the farthest expansion of our mind may be to India or the Earth. This is not to look at the whole of the tree but to see only a little of it—and that, too, wrongly, as an externalised form. Even this little knowledge that we seem to have is erroneous knowledge and wrongly directed. But the mystery creeps into this horrid picture of life because of the presence of the great unifying absolute power of God. This unifying presence keeps us somehow or other hoping for the best, happy under every condition, and seeking to save ourselves even in the midst of the ocean in which we are being drowned. We try to catch a little straw in the flooded river, hoping that we can be saved. That hopefulness of continued existence and the seeking of significance in existence is due to the presence of God in us, the presence of the vitality of the seed in every part of the tree of life.

The mystery is here, that God in His unified comprehensiveness is in us; He is wholly present, not only partially, in spite of the fact that we are partial expressions. The part contains the whole in wholeness. This is the mystery. We cannot understand how the wholeness of the whole can be in a part. We never see such a feature anywhere in this world. No drop in the ocean can contain the whole ocean. But the whole of us is present in every cell of our body, though biologically, physically, physiologically, anatomically, each cell is only a part of the whole of the body. The body that we speak of is a comprehensive, living, vital power. That comprehensiveness of the vitality in us is present in each cell of the body, so that by seeing one cell we can know the whole person. So is the completeness of perfection present in the partial limitedness of forms. That is why we are hoping for God-realisation as a possibility, a practicability and a surety. We are not weeping as though nothing is possible and everything has gone mad. Thus, there is a double feature in human experience, a complete chaotic presentation of an apparent externality of experience which keeps us restless and unhappy, simultaneously with a hope for ultimate perfection and a capacity in us to achieve it.

This tree of life is, therefore, a beautiful analogy. But the Bhagavadgita gives us a caution at the end of this analogy that we should not be busy eating the fruits of this tree, an analogy going further into a mantra in the Veda and a passage in the Upanishad where it is said that in this vast tree two birds are perched, perhaps on different branches. One bird is enjoying the beautiful berries, the fruits of this forbidden tree, and is sorrow-ridden, while the other bird is merely looking at the beauties of the various fruits of this tree and eating not. The mantra of the Veda says the blessedness of this indulgent fruit-eating bird lies in the turning of its attention towards the other bird—merely looking at it, gazing at the presence of the bird which eats not, participates not, does nothing whatsoever, but merely is. To give another analogy, it is just as the success, greatness and power of Arjuna lay merely in being conscious that Krishna was seated there in the chariot; but if Arjuna were to forget it, woe unto him.

There is also another beautiful analogy which might have missed the attention of readers of the Srimad Bhagavata. In the great story of Daksha Yajna, which occurs in the Fourth Skanda of the Srimad Bhagavata, Virabhadra is said to have rushed to the sacrificial ground of Daksha and attacked him, wanting to sever his head, but he could not do it. However much he tried, he found that it was not possible for him to sever the head of Daksha. Then he remembered Lord Siva who sent him, and at once he succeeded. There was an individuality-consciousness, as it were, a confidence in his own power, which defeated the very purpose for which he had gone.

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