Gita 04.35 – Focus on the knowledge that fulfills the purpose of knowledge

Thank you. … … … … … … … Krishna is stating over here, … … There is no more delusion. … You will no longer be in delusion as you are presently.

O Pandava, O Arjuna, Drakshasya Aatmanya Atho Main Drakshasya means to see we will see Aatmanya we will see all living beings spiritually and not just spiritually Aatmanya as souls Atho Main and we will also see them as belonging to me as connected with me as mine This is the first verse in the Bhagavad Gita that talks about or this is the first time in the Bhagavad Gita that Krishna talks about points to his relationship with all living beings Today we live in a world where there is phenomenal expansion of knowledge and books have been written throughout history but in the past books were primarily written about fiction in fact the greatest works of literature are considered at least from the western intellectual traditions point of view works of fiction so for example authors might dream would in the past dream about writing the great novel the great American novel the great British novel which would give them a lasting legacy but especially after the after the turn of the world wars the second world war non-fiction as a genre became immensely popular simply because things were connectivity of people had increased and basically the point is books have been written on a large number of subjects so yes from the point of view of the Vedic scripture understanding of the Vedas themselves are a vast body of knowledge and their vastness is also mind-boggling and even that vastness also could lead a person to get confused that what is the ultimate conclusion and Krishna therefore clarifies by all the Vedas I have to be known so now there are some of the Vedic literature where some way down for example is primarily a book of praise and in that book one may not find much explicit reference to Krishna so if something doesn't even mention Krishna then how is that meant to help us know Krishna so so Krishna is talking about Gyan over here and knowing this will not go into illusion again so he is talking about the result of knowledge so there the result of Vedic knowledge Krishna says is to know me here Krishna says the result of Vedic knowledge is that is not just freedom from illusion but it's almost like an assurance against illusion that Krishna is giving a categorical assurance here that if you know this you will not fall into illusion again ye na bhutanya shesha and by this you will see all living beings spiritually and as connected with me so essentially the Krishna connection of all knowledge and indeed of all living beings that is what is stressed by Krishna in this text and that may not be easily apparent to most people because there is a progression in the dealing of the subjects and the Vedas are said to be a desire a desire fulfilling dream nigam kalpataru they are like a kalpataru kalpataru means that they fulfil the human desire in a reciprocal way what we desire there are corresponding rituals forms of worship sacrifice another observance is that it fulfils that desire now the very fact that they are a desire fulfilling dream means that the Vedas will reflect the the kind of desire human beings have just like if if the supermarket makes the claim that we also whatever you need whatever you desire will be available here then most of what is present in the supermarket will be will be what people desire or you say not a supermarket in general but it's a food market a super food market people say now most people want most people want say fast food or other such things how many people will want broccoli or health food yes there will be a few but there will be few naturally because they reflect the shop will reflect the people's desires similarly the Vedas being a desire fulfilling dream reflect human desire and reflecting human desire means that they focus on providing what what people want that's a major part of the world is karma it focusses on it focusses on I don't know for the sake of argument it focusses on achieving things by achieving material things by performing material religiosity this is not bad but it just undercuts it reduces if it is not understood in its proper context in its fullness it reduces dharma to just a material enterprise Krishna by showing us the connection of of the Vedas with their ultimate purpose helps us to fulfil the potential of the Vedas and our own potential as so and in this section in 4.35 Krishna is teaching Jnanatva now prior to this in the preceding section from 4.25 to 4.29 Krishna has talked about various types of yajnas and there in he has also talked about study in 4.28 he has said so he said sacrifice of money sacrifice of authority doing of yoga religious study in this way people endeavour with great determination so now the key in understanding this section is that Krishna is talking about knowledge not in terms of theoretical knowledge but in terms of transformational knowledge and he has talked about the process for getting this transformation in the previous verse in 4.34 in 4.34 when he stated serve him enquire for him be submissive to him give him knowledge knowledge is the production because they have seen the truth Krishna uses the plural over here not one teacher but several teachers and both 4.34 and 4.35 Krishna uses the words the word words connected with vision was there in 4.34 those who have seen the truth and 4.35 is you will see now what tattva is Krishna is elaborating he says they are seers of the truth now normally the result of education is the harmonisation of the vision of the student with that of the teacher if the teacher is truly competent truly learned then the student's vision becomes harmonised with that of the teacher just like a lay person on seeing a patient will not be able to understand what is wrong with the patient but a trained experienced doctor on seeing certain symptoms can understand and if there is a doctor is an apprentice or as it is called an intern now if the doctor the trained doctor is competent and the intern doctor is sincere then also having some basic competence then by the time the internship ends then the trainee will have a vision similar to that of the trainer so the result of education is the harmonisation of vision so tattva darshina is what describes the vision of the teacher and describes the vision of the student after this student has got education, not just education but he has got enlightenment so in this way through this example the enlightened vision is not just to see everyone as atma as atma tattva which is what people in general talk about or rather that's what we have talked about till now in the Bhagavad Gita in chapter 2 how we are not the body and the soul and after that the chapter basically talked about how one can act with attachment based on one's understanding of one's spiritual identity atmajna atho mayi the atho mayi part Krishna points to it again in the 7th chapter when he says rakasujivas as this prakriti apareyam tasvanyam prakritim viddhim param jivabhutam mahabhavo vedam dharyate jagat jivabhutam mahabhavo the jivabhutas the living beings mahabhavo they are they are my prakriti krishnas so arjuna you can be very powerful you may be mahabhava but actually you two are my energy and further krishna has most explicitly pointed to this in 15.7 when he said mamai vamsho jiva loke jivabhutam sanatana manaharshasthani dhriyani prakriti sthanika rishati mamai vamsho mamai vamsho all the living beings are my part vamsho jiva loke jivabhutam sanatana and they are eternally my parts so enlightenment enlightenment means having a spiritual vision it means having a devotional vision so spiritual vision means to see everyone as a soul devotional vision means to see everyone as connected with krishna as this verse makes it clear as what krishna is asking krishna is stating there is goes beyond just a spiritual vision to a devotional vision now of course the devotional vision is also spiritual no doubt but then in spirituality they have grace so spiritual can refer to just a level of realisation of atma of the individual identity as a soul and spiritual can also refer to the realisation of the super soul supreme spiritual being that is god so there is realisation of only one then one thinks that everything is one that means if one focusses only on atma and thinks atma is everything then atma is all that is realised one goes towards an impersonal realisation and similarly if one realises only the conception of god and one thinks that one's own existence is an illusion and then that existence has to be dissolved then that is also a misconception that needs to be countered and the bhagavad gita protects us from such illusions by its systematic explanation of the philosophy so we see the soul and we see the super soul and we see Krishna and we see their connectedness and this is where Krishna uses the word mayi not just in a generic sense that Krishna is stating it is not in a generic sense that Krishna is stating that they are connected with the absolute truth Krishna is saying that the living beings are connected with me that's how we should see so it is again indicative of a very strongly very vividly devotional vision now can there be a situation where there is no punar mohan where one can forever be free from all illusion is it even theoretically possible that one never goes into illusion again you may say that the living entity is always tatastha that is the edge of the coast so the land that is on the coast can either be wet or it can be dry it can be covered with water or it can be without water depending whether the water level is high or low in the case of the ocean whether there is high tide or low tide now if the living entity is always tatastha then is there a possibility that the living entity will not be will be beyond the reach of illusion yes when there is enlightenment when there is purification then there is not only the freedom from illusion but there is also a freedom from the tendency to go into illusion how does that work out the freedom from the tendency to go into illusion comes by ones practise of bhakti of spiritual path of yoga so diligently that one's very mentality gets changed right now we may try to cultivate a spiritual vision but habitually from our past habits over this and previous lives habitually our vision has been material and because of that habitual material vision even when we strive for a spiritual vision it's temporarily a spiritual vision but after that the vision springs back to the material and that is how things become problematic but that is because the impurities are still there Krishna is talking here of a stage of going beyond impurities and at that stage when there is nothing to cause that relapse then although the free will is there the internal misdirectors of the free will will almost be absent bhagwati tamashloka bhaktir bhavati naishtiki so naishti prayesho bhadreshu the impurities are referred to in this famous verse in the shloka by the word abhadra so anartha and abhadra they are related bhadra actually means good more in terms of auspiciousness that which brings auspiciousness the famous prayer from the vedas let there be auspiciousness for everyone so abhadra is that which brings in auspiciousness so that refers of course to the anarthas lust, anger, greed though they may seem to give some pleasure initially but in the long run they bring inauspiciousness in our life and that's why the wise person tries to avoid them now krishna states here that he is focussing on as he says by all the vedas i am to be known in 15.15 so his purpose is to convey ultimately this devotional vision this vision of the connectedness of all living beings with the ultimate reality and for that purpose his focus is on the absolute on progressing, progressively teaching people towards that state of the devotional redirection of the heart so the abhadra the material anarthas lust, anger, greed they are bhadra they are bhavadra, they are inauspicious but the desire to serve krishna is the supreme bhadra is nothing as auspicious as the desire to serve krishna and that desire that is systematically cultivated and kindled in the heart by the process of devotional purification there can be various kinds of purifications so even in the path of jnana there is purification, no doubt and that purification is more in terms of the rejection of the negative, which no doubt is important but along with the rejection of the negative there is also the need for the cultivation of the positive and the process of bhakti focusses much much more on the cultivation of the positive than on the rejection of the negative so in this way the process of bhakti takes us towards krishna so it takes us towards krishna by activating the positive within us and the heart itself is redirected towards krishna with love with affection with attraction for matter not just rejected but transcended by a far stronger attraction towards krishna then there is the most thorough purification of the heart that happens so Srila Prabhupada was asked once by Satsvarupa Maharaj can we go beyond can we go beyond can we attain a state of enlightenment a state of krishna consciousness from which we will not fall back and Srila Prabhupada said yes it's possible in fact that was encapsulated in the famous hippie adaptation of krishna consciousness where it says stay high forever so stay high but forever so this kind of attractive this kind of attainment of a state of of perpetual enlightenment of krishna also talks about this again in the samadhi verses in the in the 6th chapter when he says yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes one will not be deluded one will not be disturbed even by great distress so so and he says na chalti tattvataha that one will not depart from the viddhi yatra na chaivayam sthitas chalti tattvataha viddhi yatra having known this na chalti tattvataha one will not depart from this state of truth ever. Why? Because one has attained enlightenment. Now they started by this class by talking about how there has been a phenomenal expansion of knowledge.

For example, if you just go into physics, there are so many branches of physics and there is so much knowledge that is there not just in physics but you could say even in just one branch of physics. You could say there is a phenomenal amount of there are phenomenal number of papers published in just say quantum physics in just atomic physics and not just atomic physics. Even say if one particle, Higgs boson was discovered then what does that experiment mean? And just one particle whose existence itself is not say very clearly understood.

Even on that there is so much literature. What to speak of total creation. So with this kind of explosion of knowledge there can be one can get lost in knowledge.

So now the word lost usually has a negative connotation. But sometimes it can also refer to something positive. That means lost means one doesn't know the way.

Somebody may say I am lost. Can someone help me get here? So that means basically we don't know the way ahead. We don't know where we are.

But the word lost can also refer not to a sense of locationlessness or directionlessness or helplessness but it can also refer to a state of deep absorption. Like you may say he was lost in thought. So lost in thought means he is so absorbed that he is not aware of anything else and that way he was sort of lost to the world not aware of what was happening in the world due to a big absorption, a lot of absorption in one's own thoughts.

Now being lost in thought is not necessarily considered to be bad in any way. Being lost in thought is positive. It can be positive although of course if one is habitually absent-minded that can be a problem.

But the point is here one may think that I am lost in knowledge in the sense that oh I am studying this subject, I am studying that subject and I am studying that subject and all that is good. At one level at least a person is cultivating knowledge not say pursuing some self-destructive habits. That's definitely good.

But the knowledge also needs to be connected with its ultimate purpose. Otherwise knowledge can lead to not increase integration but increase fragmentation. Nowadays most serious studies that need to be done most nowadays there are people who are specialists and there are super specialists and specialisation means essentially to know a lot about little.

When we take a small small subject and we come to know about a lot and if you take it further super specialisation means to know a huge amount of something very little. So quite often scholars who are specialists it's good to be specialised but if one if that's one's interest but along with that for the scholars to be able to make a tangible contribution they also need to have an integrated vision where they can see their field in connection with the entire field with the broader pursuit of knowledge. So if a patient if a doctor say is a specialist in the heart not just in terms of a cardiac surgeon or cardiologist but among the cutting edge researchers in the field of heart study and heart medicine that can lead to the development of lot of insights which can treat people which can help treat and heal people but if the researcher who is also CSRV become so captivated with healing the healing the heart that the person forgets the connection with the whole body then the heart may be healed but in the process of healing the heart if say the nerves if say some important nerves get cut or some should we say if say the veins or arteries get cut then that may cause later damage so we see especially in the early part of the industrial technological age when there was indiscriminate exploitation of nature and often say machines which could cause rapid deforestation machines which could do rapid mining they were considered the signs of great progress just see how much power we human beings now have that we can so quickly so efficiently break things down so it is only later as environmental pollution started increasing and other challenges of the untrammelled exploitation of nature started becoming apparent that it was realised that we could not judge the success of human of a branch of knowledge just by the progress within that branch itself it has to be judged in the broader context of what is being said by of what are the effects on the whole society not just that say the not just those who are building deforestation or some industrialisation or whatever not just how they are benefitted but if the forest is say the livelihood for tribals then what is done for the rehabilitation of the tribals whose lives are disrupted by such a move that also needs to be taken into consideration for holistic development just as this applies to say scientific branches of knowledge that there has to be holistic not unidimensional development so similarly with respect to our spiritual growth also when there is unidimensional when there is focus only on the Atma without an understanding of the connectedness of the Atma with the rest of existence then it leads to counterproductive results it leads to problems such as people getting misled and inflated with the conception that I am God so you know the path of impersonalism also seems to lead to spiritual growth but just as there can be economic development that is balanced and there is economic development that is imbalanced so a focus on the Atma at the expense of the Paramatma or the exclusion of the Paramatma that can have that can lead to lopsided spiritual development where one starts thinking of oneself as the absolute and when one deprives oneself of the sweetness of devotion which is the highest happiness that the human heart can experience so Krishna's declaration here that is significant in that sense that Krishna is talking about an integrated state of knowledge not a unidimensional state of knowledge or focus of knowledge where one sees the connectedness of everything with Krishna and especially of ourselves and all living beings with Krishna so Arjuna had asked Krishna that in the first chapter he had asked O Arjuna, O Krishna why are you asking me to kill my own loved ones my venerable elders so Krishna is indicating here to Arjuna that Arjuna, when you acknowledge you will see that it is not that you alone are the well-wisher of your loved ones, actually I am also their well-wisher and they are connected with me also in fact they are connected first with me and then with you so our relatives Krishna cares for them more than we can care for them so they are first related with Krishna and then with us this understanding of their connectedness with Krishna can help us to know to put our faith in Krishna when things seem to be going wrong with them when something bad seems to be happening to a loved one then we may get that doubt, does Krishna really care but actually Krishna cares more than what we can ever care and this tells the way a surgeon acts may not always seem pleasant to a patient especially the patient who is undergoing surgery similarly Krishna's actions may not always seem intelligible to us but still the point remains that we can actually move onwards towards Krishna if we have faith in him and we can choose to put faith in him if we let our our perceptions our conceptions be guided by scriptural knowledge by revelation so scriptural revelation so Arjuna you are lamenting about what will happen to your loved ones but you know that I am their well wisher that I desire their good and by doing my will their ultimate good will emerge so how that will emerge that will require patience just like how a surgeon's actions are going to ultimately benefit the patient that may not be immediately visible in fact after the surgery is done and the patient comes out of anaesthesia then as the effect of the pain medicine starts waning the patient actually feel more pain temporarily and that may lead to the patient wondering have I actually have things improved or worsened so when such doubts come one is that one needs to have knowledge we are not just talking about blind faith in the surgeon but there is also knowledge of the process of surgery and how it works so in the process when we acquire knowledge then we will understand it's not just a matter of putting faith in Krishna yes there are religious traditions where where the spiritual identity of the self is not adequately emphasised so when people have a material conception of the self then it becomes very difficult for them to understand the goodness of God's will how exactly is God doing good when everything that is happening around me seems to be bad and without a higher spiritual conception of life then maintaining faith in God's goodness becomes very difficult just like a patient who does not have proper patient cannot be expected to be totally versed in medical knowledge but at least some basic understanding of how surgery works helps in protecting the patient from frustration or doubt about how the doctor's process is working similarly Krishna is stating that if you acquire knowledge then with that knowledge you will not come under illusion again for you will be able to see that I am I am the well-wisher of all the beings and I am your well-wisher also Arjuna I will lead you to a course of action that will cause you to fall into sinful activity and nor will I lead you to a course of lead others to something to an auspicious destiny ultimately I am the provider of auspiciousness for everyone and oh Arjuna if you patiently wait and cultivate knowledge then you will be able to see how what I am doing what I am telling you to do is the best for everyone involved that is what Krishna will gradually convey to Arjuna and we will see that Arjuna himself will come to this level of enlightenment then he will accept Krishna's words and he says in the end of the Gita in 18.73 that I have my illusion is gone what Krishna is telling over here Arjuna himself says that you will come to that level so Krishna Arjuna comes to that level when he states that Tad prasadaan maya chuta sito svigad sandeha karishe vachanam tabha that the result of knowledge is he is harmonised with Krishna's will and we too by our scripture study can aspire to become similarly harmonised.