Gita 03.14 – The principle of cosmic exchange is not pre-scientific but universal

Bhagavad Gita 3.14 Krishna is describing the process by which we get food so he starts by stating that annad all living beings subsist on food even those living beings which are carnivorous they also ultimately depend on food in terms of grains annad can refer generically to food specifically it can refer to food grains so the carnivorous animals get grains from get their food from the grains which are eaten by the herbivorous animals so ultimately they are dependent on the grains also for their subsistence and further we human beings also require grains in the Bhagavad Gita it speaks universal truths which apply to all living beings all over creation all of existence but at the same time the Gita also speaks to human beings especially because although all living beings are conscious and all living beings require food to survive but human beings alone have the higher consciousness they develop intelligence to perceive to contemplate where food comes from a dog may just think that my master provides me food but a human being thinks deeper and recognizes that food comes not just by my working at my job not just from nature in the fields it ultimately comes from the supreme being who is controlling nature that will be mentioned later but the philosophical point itself that here Krishna is talking to human beings पर जन्या तन्न संभवा that food comes from grains normally without grains we can't do anything without grains there is starvation not just because there is no water there is a little bit drinking water even if you don't try because of thirst there are no grains there cannot be any grains and then when we live in cities we often do not realize the value of grains we may not we may think of grains as something just created disturbance in our going to job or going out or whatever we do not realize that without grains we wouldn't live we often think that it is because of grains that my life schedules get interrupted but if there were no grains then we would not live and we would have no schedule that would get interrupted our very life would get interrupted and even terminated so till this point it is a matter of logical observation food grains living beings subsist on food grains, food grains comes from grains, then now he says यज्ञान भावति पर जन्या that यज्ञा produces grains now how exactly does this happen, sacrifices produce grains, is this some pre-scientific mythology where people did not know the mechanism of how the water is raised from the oceans by the sun in the form of clouds and then the clouds move because of wind and then the rains come there is a scientific mechanism by which rains come and there is no need for sacrifices over there we may think of it like that at one level we need to understand here that the scientific explanation and the philosophical or scriptural explanation are not necessarily contradictory they can very well be complementary that means at a particular level we may see nature working according to mechanical forces and mechanical laws of mathematics such as say particles and they may move according to the laws of motion or whatever but parallel to them is the influence from nature that means that just like if somebody is playing billiards then actually in the playing of billiards there are long sticks which are used to hit a ball and there is a good collection of balls and the balls have to be put into the holes so now putting the ball in the hole requires not just hitting with the right force if you just wanted to look at things from a mechanical point of view you could say oh this stick hit this ball with this force at this angle and then this ball hit that ball at that angle and because of that that ball went into that hole over there so all the movements on the billiards table can be explained in terms of the laws of mechanics and that is a correct explanation but it's not a complete explanation because beyond the mechanical forces and functions that describe the ball's motion there is a skill of the person of the player who hit the ball at a particular angle with a particular force so the personal and the mechanical are complementary over here in describing the play of the billiards play on the billiards table similarly where we using our gross material senses and our mind perceive the movements of particles and material things as per scientific laws and natural forces that is just like a observer looking only at the billiards table so what is seen over there is correct but it's not complete so where we see matter move in motion due to forces impersonal forces according to impersonal laws where there the more scriptural vision sees persons beings often of more evolved consciousness than us all working under one supreme consciousness they govern the mechanisms of nature so when we do yajna we basically harmonize with the beings who are controlling particular natural phenomena just as when we pay the water bill now if we are living in a say technologically developed country where we can just take our credit card and or we can have digital banking where we just type a few buttons on a computer and the money gets transferred from our bank account to the bank account of the electricity board that is supplying the power or we just put our credit card in a particular machine and then the money gets transferred like that whichever way it may be just sign something and then the money gets transferred and then the water keeps coming to us now unless we understand the sophisticated mechanism that is involved we may see no connection between what happened on some technological machine, some technological platform and the coming of water at our home a child may not be able to see the connection at all water is coming on its own what has that got to do with anything else like writing a cheque or something like that but the parents who have grown up they understand how the systems work they recognize the two are correlated in fact the bill is not paid then the water will stop so the principle of exchange wherein a citizen provides the bills and the government through its agents provides the utilities the principle of exchange is something which we can easily relate with although the means of exchange may vary from person to person from society to society from culture to culture so the principle which Krishna is talking about over here is that yajna is what we do to express the gratitude our gratitude to the higher beings in nature who provide us our necessities and then when we express our gratitude they provide us the necessities now putting something in the fire sacrifice may seem like utter waste of resources so you take some ghee you take some grains and you just put it in the fire sacrifice and it goes waste, it just becomes ashes but fire is agnidev and devanam avamo agni paramo vishnu tadantara parasarva devata so agni is considered lowest among all the gods and vishnu is the highest lowest and highest is in terms of accessibility so vishnu is transcendental so normally by material means is not accessible although by devotion is accessible and yajna which is the primary form of dharma in vedic culture through which agni makes himself accessible so that is the way we can access so agni is most accessible to us so all the sacrifices to all the gods go through agni so in that sense agni is the lowest means agni is the closest to us, the most accessible to us so rather than focusing on the form where we don't see how substance gets transubstantiated transformed and the offerings go to the devatas when we put them into fire we may not be able to see that but we focus on the principle that we are expressing our gratitude to the higher beings and ultimately to the supreme lord who is providing us necessities and in this age we can express that same gratitude by offering our devotional remembrance of god, our consciousness in the fire of the holy name so the yajna so when we chant the mantras the mantras are a form of god just as the sacred fire is also a form of the divine so when we offer our consciousness in the form of god we are also expressing our gratitude so yajna bhavati parjanya so when we offer our taxes in the form of sacrifice then what happens? rains come and yajna karma samudbhava so yajna fire sacrifice is in vedic culture enjoined as a part of our duties so karma refers to our actions but not just any and every action that we do but refers to our duties so in a culture that has proper philosophical understanding of life the duties are centered on a spiritual component wherein one recognizes that my activities are meant to be meant to culminate in sacrifice so yajna karma samudbhava so from karma yajna is born so we will discuss more of the cycle in the next verse here is essentially the point between our prescribed duties culminate in yajna, yajna leads to rains, rains leads to grains and grains enable our subsistence that is the gist of.