Gita 13.21 Material causality is not complete causality

Transcript

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and ultimately, progress in our journey towards going beyond this world.
Thank you. Purusha Sukha Dukhana, Bhoktrutve Hetu Richchate, Krishna speaks here and from text 20 onwards till round 27, he is going to speak about Purusha and Prakriti. And in this verse, he talks about the interrelation of various factors in this world.
So, he says, Karya Karana Kartrutve, in action, there is the action Karya and there is Karana, there is the impetus for the action, there is the cause of the action, Kartrutve, when these things happen, then Hetu Prakriti Richchate, the cause is material nature. That means, the cause effect chain occurs within material nature. Material nature is what impels the various actions in this world in terms of their causes and effects.
And Purusha Sukha Dukhana, Purusha, the soul, the consciousness, Sukha Dukhana, Bhoktrutve Hetu Richchate, amidst happiness and distress, there is the desire to enjoy, which causes the experience of happiness and distress, Hetu Richchate. Now, this is a profoundly philosophical verse and its meaning can be understood in different ways. First, in the analysis of Purusha and Prakriti, as done in Sankhya, the primary purpose is to help the soul to become detached from matter and that requires focusing on higher spiritual reality, focusing on Krishna, ultimately.
Intermediately, till one has not understood that it is Krishna whom I have to surrender, one has to use buddhi and even while practicing bhakti, buddhi is often of great help. So, here it is stated that, Kare Karanakar Trutve Hetu Prakriti Richchate, that in the material nature, things happen and material nature is the cause of them. In modern science, there is a principle of methodological naturalism, which presumes the causal completeness of the material world, of things in the material world, at the material level.
That means that, say, if, for example, in the medieval ages, when there was the Black Plague, so the idea is that, now the Black Plague, there were some people who believed that this was caused by some witches, by some demons, by some other kind of supernatural beings. But the scientific researchers, they held that no, actually it was caused by, it was caused by some material entity, which is reducible to its causes, to material causes and thus they found that, okay, it was caused by some germs. So, by looking for material explanations for material phenomena, we are able to move things onwards in our journey towards the Supreme Lord.
We are able to take things forward and enable the realization of a deeper understanding of the working of material nature. Of course, this is true and this is this principle of looking for material causes for material phenomena. That is operational even, for example, in Ayurveda, wherein it is understood that Ayurveda is not, Ayurveda, it certainly accepts belief in God at the same time, also understands bodily problems in terms of imbalances of the bodily fluids and corrects them by bodily substances, correct those bodily substances by proper dietary regulation and other such things.
So, material problems are looked for at a material level for solutions. Now, moving onwards in our life, the problem with the scientific approach is that it has been misutilized by atheists and they hold that actually there is nothing beyond matter. But the material and the non-material can act in parallel.
Just as, for example, when somebody cooks good food, now the reason for the food being good, we could say, okay, this ingredient was mixed with this ingredient, with this ingredient and because these ingredients are there, so this tastes good. That is true. But along with that, we can also say that actually this tastes good because it was cooked well, because it was, because it was, because the cook was expert.
So, the expertise of the cook and the precision of the mixing of the ingredients, these didn’t have to go in, they don’t have to be contradictory, they can, they are complementary. So, this is, of course, a very bare-bones kind of example. But the principle is that to look for material causes for material phenomena does not necessarily rule out the existence of non-material causes.
Both can go in parallel. And, of course, the stress here in the analysis of Sankhya is that whatever changes happen at the material level, we experience happiness and distress among those changes because of our attachment, because of our desire to enjoy. If we had not the desire to enjoy, we would not go through those ups and downs.
We would not experience the many dualities that we do experience amidst such situations. And the way to go beyond such dualities, the way to recognize life’s higher reality and to live in the light of that higher reality is through purification. So, when we give up the enjoying mentality, then all the material world’s action and reactions will go on.
It’s like there will be hunger in the stomach. That hunger is caused by some kind of inadequacy of certain chemicals and certain ingredients in the body, which makes us get the sensation of hunger. And so, the cause is at the material level.
And the result is also at the material level. We take in some food. Now, we could treat food as a fuel for the bodily machine or we could make food as the goal of our life and just focus on eating food 24 hours a day.
And that would be foolish. So, obviously, we may not eat 24 hours a day, but we keep craving for food 24 hours a day. That would be undesirable.
So, purusha-sukha-dukkhana bhog-tuttve hetu vichchate means that to the extent we identify with the food, this is going to give me enjoyment and I want to enjoy food. Then we may, if the food tastes good, we will enjoy. If the food doesn’t taste good, we will feel unhappy.
And this way, we will end up going through a panel of emotions which we didn’t have gone through. If we saw food functionally rather than as something, as a source of pleasure, and we got our consciousness caught and entangled in it, and to avoid such captivation and entanglement of consciousness, we need a higher object for our consciousness, which will be revealed in the Gita’s flow to be ultimately Krishna and his service. At this point, this verse, while talking about Prakriti and Purusha, acknowledges that the events that happen in Prakriti, they are happening because of the material cause and material effects.
But the pleasure and pain that we go because of these things happening, that is because of our desire to enjoy matter.