Gita 13.05 Study matter for functioning and transcending

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journey to increasing, intensifying sweet connection with Krishna, that will continue forever. So here Krishna is talking about Sankhya, he speaks about the ways in which one can be elevated spiritually in terms of becoming activated towards seeking something higher beyond matter by analyzing matter into its elements, this is the specialization of Sankhya.

Krishna has referred to Sankhya earlier in seven chapters, especially 7.4 and 5, it's talked about the eight elements, the eight material elements which comprises separated energies, he's taking that analysis further here, analyzing into 24 elements, so he says here that so the Bhutani refers to elements, Maha refers to great, the five great elements, Maha Bhutani, then there's Ahamkara, Ahamkara refers to the intelligence or the arrogance actually, the ego element which makes people arrogant, Maha Bhutani, Ahamkara, so Bhuddhi is intelligence, Avyakta is the unmanifested, that refers to Pradhan, matter in the unmanifested state, Indriyani, the Shaikam, so the five knowledge acquiring senses, the five senses which enable us to learn to work, five earthly senses and the mind, all of them are combined away, Panchachendriya Gocharaha and then there are the five sense objects, so 5 plus 11 is 16, then Maha Bhutani is 5 again, that is 21, Ahamkara, Bhuddhi and Avyakta, these are three, so that it becomes 24 elements. The standard figure which Sankhya uses for analyzing elements is, material elements is 24, sometimes it uses more elements or sometimes it uses less also, the point is that it analyzes into 14 elements and then you take things forward from there, so the important thing, 24 elements is the standard figure and the point of analyzing 24 elements is to get the thought stimulated, to get the actions, so that one starts seeking actions for transcending matter. Once one understands that there is nothing really attractive at matter, then one can actually look for something beyond matter.

Now, if we look at the specific elements, there are, it is an interesting way of analyzing material nature. In modern science, we analyze elements based on their structural characteristics or rather we could say their constitutional characteristics, say we have Mendeleev s periodic table in which different visible elements have different numbers associated with them and that correspond in some ways to their atomic structure in some cases. So, basically the point is that based on how the elements appear to us and how they are made of, they are analyzed, but here if we see the analysis is more in terms of how we perceive, there are, if we look at this world, as science has analyzed more and more into say atomic physics or some other fields like that, it has gone deeper and deeper and has found so many complexities over there and these complexities beg the question, how are things to be ultimately understood, where is the end of this? Initially, Dalton thought that the atom is the fundamental individual particle, but then subsequently it has found that when the atom is divisible and there is much more that exists beyond the atom, so then what remains after that and how is that to be dealt with? So, overall the issue that came up is that then we had atom, electrons, now the physics of fundamental particles is itself a universe with hundreds of books and hundreds of papers being published and hundreds of researchers working on that, that one field alone, in this way overall things are not in any way easy to comprehend.

So, rather than getting into the technicalities of various elements, the Vedic epistemology focuses on analyzing things in terms of their functionality. Now, what is the role of what for our functioning and how best can it function? So, the important issue is that we need to move forward from studying the material things at the material level to studying things at the level of their purpose. What is their purpose? That ultimately, any ultimate element can be analyzed endlessly and that does not serve any constructive purpose, it is far more important that we learn how to function in this world, that is good, but beyond that we need to learn to function, how to transcend this world and now if you look at it, it is not just transcending, there is a functional level of knowledge is useful, it is valuable, just like when we work on computers, we need to know how to operate, open the files, how to basically understand the directory structure, we focus on the functional knowledge, not everyone needs a technical knowledge about computers for using computers.

So, the Sankhya approach at one level is functional, although there are a lot of technicalities which can also be studied by those who are interested, but there are the elements which we can perceive, we can see earth, water, fire, air, although ether we cannot perceive, but ether is considered to be an element which exists in nature. Again, it is about technicalities here, but then how do we function in this world? Now, we perceive the sense of objects over here. So, the sense of objects are also mentioned, that means, when we look at an object, we do not initially just measure it in terms of weight, we, when we look at an object, sometimes we may say, oh, it is heavy, but usually, we think of its length, we do not think of it in terms of necessarily its length, breadth, height or mass or something like that, we think of it more in terms of its color, its shape, its fragrance, we think of it in terms of sense of this, that is what is the primary source of appeal within that.

And that is how we move forward in our life. So, let us focus on that, that is the approach of Sankhya and what Sankhya does here is it analyzes the phi l, phi sense of objects and then it moves forward and looks at the phi u, at the senses, some senses we acquire knowledge, some senses we acquire functioning. And in this way, the focus is not to get into technicalities of Sankhya, but on functionality and to understand the functionality, so that we can function effectively in this world.