The Right Understanding

(Samkhya)

Divine Life Society Publication: The Teachings of The Bhagavadgita by Sri Swami Krishnananda

The second chapter of the Bhagavadgita deals with what is known as Samkhya Yoga, which is the yoga of understanding – an understanding which was not adequately present in the mind of Arjuna at the time when he was very much confused as to the duty to which he was obliged under the circumstance in which he was placed.

One cannot know what one has to do unless one's position in this world is known to one's self. Your duty, your attitude, the functions that you have to perform – all these are determined by the location of your personality in a given atmosphere. Thus, the concept of duty may be regarded as something relative, and not absolute. Our duty in this world, what the world expects from us, is dependent upon what we are, what we know, what we are capable of – and again, all these things depend upon where we are placed.

One of the problems that arose in the mind of Arjuna was the limiting of his notions to his social relations, which means to say, the relations with other people.

Even to be a little good, and charitable in our feelings, we must be considerate enough to accept that the world contains more things than man. However, the effect or the impact of human relationship upon the human mind is such that it will not permit the operation of higher laws in the present state of human thinking. This was the point made out by Bhagavan Sri Krishna when he said, "Arjuna, you lack samkhya – right understanding."

"What do you mean by this right understanding? I cannot know what you are speaking," cried out Arjuna at the beginning of the third chapter. "You have confused me completely by telling so many things, nothing of which is clear to me." Here is a troubled mind speaking once again, at the very beginning of the commencement of the third chapter. "Is my relationship to the world a total unity, in which case I have to do nothing? Or, is it total separation, in which case also I have to do nothing? The question of duty does not arise in this world if I have a relationship which is totally organic or totally isolated. So my mind is confused about what you are speaking. Be more explicit, please," so speaks Arjuna. "What is it that you are expecting me to do by asking me to have samkhya, right understanding, poised mind, calm attitude, expertness in action? I cannot understand the meaning behind these terms you are using."

The third chapter is a very important section of the Bhagavadgita. It is perhaps the whole gospel of human action. There is no necessity for me to dilate upon this theme in a very large measure inasmuch as I endeavoured to explain this theme in the text called The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita. The third chapter of the Bhagavadgita is called Karma Yoga – the yoga of right action, or action as such in the light of correct understanding.

Now, I come to the point of cosmology, which explains our relationship with the world with everything that is around us. From this narration of the story of the descent of man from the higher realms, right from mahat and ahamkara, we learn that our personality – this individuality – is constitutionally not separate from the structure of the world or the universe outside. The substance out of which our individuality is made is not different from the substance of which the world outside is made. There is the mulaprakriti, the original material out of which the whole cosmos was formed, something like the space-time of modern physics – or something subtler even than that – from which descended the tanmatras: sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha – the principles of sound, touch, colour, taste and smell, which concretised themselves into a greater density of substance by a sort of permutation and combination, and became the solid substances you see here as the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. These things are the building bricks of the cosmos, physically speaking – everything material is nothing but a formation of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether – this body, this building, this tree, this everything.

Now, here is an introduction given to right understanding. The mulaprakriti that I mentioned is constituted of three forces called sattva, rajas and tamas. We have heard in modern science words like ' statics' and 'kinetics', 'inertia' and 'action'. What you call ' statics' is something like inertia; we may equate it with tamas, non-action – and kinetics is rajas, movement, distraction, etc. But there is no such thing as sattva in the scientific language of modern times. There is either statics or kinetics – there is nothing else. But there is a third thing which is the balancing of the two. That is called sattva in the language of Indian philosophy; the condition of true being is called sattva. In Sanskrit, 'sat' means existence, being; and the condition of being is called sattva. The characteristic of being is sattva, and the characteristic of being is equanimity – not isolation, distraction and separation.

So, the nature of reality or true being is neither inert existence and loss or absence of consciousness, nor is it activity in the sense of distraction. Pure being, sattvaguna, is not rajas; it is not also tamas. This sattva is a power that connects the two extremes of inertia and activity – rajas and tamas; and the whole of the world is nothing but this threefold activity of nature – sattva, rajas and tamas – which is the structure, the constitution, the basic substance of the tanmatras, the five elements, this body, and all things in the world. This means that our body, this prana, the senses, the mind, the intellect, etc. are all somehow or the other manufactured, in some way, by an admixture of these forces – sattva, rajas, and tamas in some proportion – and by another admixture, in another way, the world outside is made. We are made as the final substance, as subjects, as individuals perceiving the world, identical with the substance of the world outside. When the senses perceive the world, the gunas move among gunas, prakriti contacts prakriti – it is the right hand touching the left hand, as it were, of the same body, perhaps more intimately and vitally than merely a contact of one limb of the body with another limb of the body. In the third chapter, this point is brought out. In all perception, the individual is not contacting a foreign element like the world outside, but 'one's own mother' is embraced by the child – not an ordinary embrace but a longing for union with 'That' from which it has been isolated, from which it has fallen. So, in all sense-perception there is an internal craving to unite with things on account of the fact being that the substance of the perceiver is the same as the substance of that which is perceived – so there is a philosophy behind desire, and there is also an error involved in the desire.

The justification and the philosophical implication of the manifestation or the working of human desire in the form of sense activity and perception is that we are basically one with all things. This is the reason we are impetuously pulled in the direction of the things of the world. The error of our desires is that they insist on convincing themselves that the world is a foreigner, it is outside. There is a double activity going on in our mind in every perception. On the one hand, a love for things is impossible unless we are united with things. You cannot desire a thing which is totally isolated from you. All desire implies a basic unity with all things, and also at the same time, all desire implies that the world is outside of oneself. Thus every desire is a contradiction, a psychic schizophrenia in a philosophical sense at least. There is a morbidity, there is an un-justification finally, an inscrutability in the activity of every desire which acts on one side as an indication of the basic unity of things, and on the other side performs the opposite function of insisting on the duality, the separation, and the isolation of the subject from the object. So we are living in a world of contradiction, psychologically speaking, and every desire is a psychic contradiction. This is the reason why great questions of life cannot be answered by an intellect which is subservient to the emotions, which again work in the light of the knowledge received through the senses, which, to repeat again, are not reliable for reasons already mentioned.

The Right Understanding (Samkhya) - The Teachings of The Bhagavadgita by Sri Swami Krishnananda