Gita 13.20 Matter is eternal, but material forms are temporary

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you So here Krishna is speaking and he says Bhagavad Gita 13.20 Bhagavad Gita 13.20 Krishna has actually talked about Arjuna had asked about six topics So Krishna has answered questions about two of them now two sets he has answered rather he has talked about Kshetra and Kshetra Gyan and he has talked just about Gyan and Gyan now he is continuing and he will talk about Prakriti and Purusha so what does he talk about here Prakriti and Purusha Prakriti and Purusha actually both he says are Anadi they are both eternal neither of them is actually temporary Vidya Anadiubhavati Vidya Anadiubhavati both of them are beginningless Vikaram Shukunam Shaivam and there are transformations within them and there are the modes of material nature Vikaram Shukunam Shaivam Vidhi Prakriti Sambhavan that they all manifest from material nature they are manifestations of Prakriti Sambhavan manifest from material nature so again let’s look at the points which are being talked about here step by step the first point being stressed here is that both of them are Anadi they are beginningless this is interesting when we consider in some creation in some traditions creation narratives it is said that the creation begins at a particular point and God creates God creates something out of nothing now of course such a thing can be anything can be attributed to omnipotence of the absolute truth it can be said that God can do anything but more pertinently more importantly actually what is it that is being talked about here that essentially the absolute truth is a person and as a person he is he is having energies matter and spirit and this is absolute truth is eternal his energies are also eternal so now normally we talk of matter as temporary and spirit as eternal and if you could say that Prakriti and Purusha so Prakriti is matter and Purusha is so Prakriti and Purusha now the soul is eternal that has been talked about clearly earlier especially in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna says and there he also says that before in 2.16 he has also said that that of the eternal that non-existent there is no endurance and of the eternal there is no cessation sometimes this is translated as the spirit never ceases to exist and the matter never endures the spiritual never ceases to exist the spiritual never perishes the material never endures so if that is the case then we can consider here the point that actually the how is it said that Purusha, Prakriti is also eternal over here the point is that actually Prakriti it’s matter but it’s not matter in the ordinary sense of the word it is matter in the sense of that which is it is the material forms that are temporary matter itself is eternal so actually speaking material forms are themselves changing but as we talk about the law of conservation of energy thereby actually the material forms so matter itself we say that energy is never destroyed it is simply converted from one form to another and that applies also to totality of matter matter is actually not destroyed matter is essentially it is conserved that something continues to exist forever and matter goes through stages of manifestation and unmanifestation it’s like we consider a building the building is manifested before it was manifested what the ingredients of the building, the components they existed as they existed as shall we say they existed as there could be sand and there could be cement and there could be iron and whatever things they came together as a building and if the building perishes for whatever reason then those ingredients will continue to exist in some other form so that is at our level of perception also we can see that matter itself is not destroyed so even when a very good looking person they die and their body is cremated or it is buried then as in the bible it says from dust to dust, from ashes to ashes in the biblical body of wisdom it is stated so that the body which is made of matter, that matter will return to some other material form or some manifestation of matter but the matter itself continues to exist and this applies to cosmic level also where in the universe it is manifested at times and it becomes unmanifested at times so when it is manifested it is seen to us, when it is unmanifested it is not seen to us so in that sense our problem is not because it is not that we are attached to matter it is we are attached to material things that exist in particular forms and we are attached to the forms and those forms are not going to endure they are going to exist today and they are not going to exist tomorrow so as long as we are attached to the forms to that extent we are caught in illusion, to that extent we are bound to stutter and suffer in our journey towards higher understanding, higher consciousness and in our spiritual evolution so importantly for us as souls if we recognize that Krishna is our lord and that we are his children then we can recognize that we are meant to be attached to Krishna whatever attractiveness the material forms possess, that attractiveness actually stems from that actually attractiveness stems from the spark of Krishna’s splendor and Krishna is actually beyond all this and Krishna always continues to exist and Krishna the spark cannot give us fulfillment the whole can give us the fulfillment and we should be attracted towards the whole that’s how both matter and spirit are eternal and then vikaramsya gunamsya eva so viddhi prakriti sambhavan the various transformations that matter goes through and it is when matter goes through particular transformation we are attracted to a particular manifestation of matter and that that particular manifestation is that particular manifestation is actually the that manifestation is what we are attracted to but if we understand this manifestation comes from Krishna it is meant to take us towards Krishna then we can move forward in our devotional journey and we can ultimately attain Krishna so recognizing that the specific form the transformation of material energy and that those forms are temporary we can redirect our vision towards the spiritual and thus attain the supreme spiritual reality Krishna