Gita 13.27 See beyond functional categorization to philosophical comprehension

Transcript

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Thank you Yogat tad viddhi bharat arshabha Krishna is continuing the description of the reality as is seen by those with the eyes of knowledge so Krishna is now more or less by the 26th by this previous verse he has answered the six questions that Arjuna had asked what is prakriti, purusha, kshetra kshetra, jnana, jnana and Krishna has said that that he has talked about how by seeing the how by understanding all this one can attain liberation and then he has talked about various processes in 25 and 26 by which one can actually perceive the spiritual reality and by this perception of spiritual reality one can attain liberation so here from this 28th verse to 35th verse Krishna will talk about that spiritual reality that vision the vision that leads to liberation the vision that comes by realization that is what is the subject of these verses and here in the 28th verse Krishna talks about the broad vision of reality sattva means existence so whatever exists in this world so often existence is classified in two ways that which is at one sthana that is sthavara, that is non moving and jangama is that which is moving so if you characterize all living beings into moving and non moving then whatever living being exists whether be they moving or non moving Kshetra Kshetragya Sanyogat that Kshetra and Kshetragya there is the body and the knower of the body we understand that they are a combination of the two Sanyogat Tadviddhi Bharatarshabhav Arjuna know it to be a combination of these two the word tadviddhi is used earlier also in the Gita for example in 4.34 when Krishna says tadviddhi pranipatena, know it by going to the spiritual master but now here Krishna is saying know this that this is what is reality, know it this way so know that whatever we see in this world actually it’s a combination of of matter and spirit of Kshetra and Kshetragya so now what is so special what is so significant about this understanding is that the human mind progresses towards comprehension by categorization the reality around us if you look at the nature, look at the world around us it’s so complex that unless we have some conceptual categorization in which to fit things we will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data that is coming in so for example when we meet a person there are for example if somebody is a if say we are in India in Mumbai and then we see somebody who is who is say from South India or from Maharashtra or from from America or from say Haryana now depending on this we may decide to talk in different languages, the North Indian we may want to talk in Hindi, with the Maharashtrian we may talk in Marathi, with the South Indian we may talk in English or with the American certainly we will talk in English so now the proper response of how we talk with someone that is determined by how we how we place that person in our conceptual categories so ok this person is a North Indian so let me talk with them in Hindi so based on the way we observe them may be the way they dress or the when they speak the accent of their speech or if you know their name, whatever based on certain perceptions or based on certain inputs that we have got, we place that person in a particular category and say if in India there is a non-Indian just the white skin itself the skin is actually not white but it is much fairer than what the Indian skin is, so it is called as white so that skin color itself this person is a non-Indian probably American or European or whatever and then probably the appropriate language of communication with them will be English so based on that single understanding we modulate our communication accordingly and we need to do this because without such appropriate modulation of communication we will not be able to move forward and decide how to take things forward how to behave properly so now to give you a more categorical example say if we see a dog and we see a tiger we see a cat and we see a tiger now if we were just to shift to biological characteristics we could say that cat and tiger are from the same feline family but then the level of threat from a cat is categorically lesser than is substantially lesser than the level of threat from a tiger or a lion so with this differentiation we will respond differently if we see a cat if we have some affection for cats we may go and pat the cat if we see a tiger or lion we will probably flee for our life so based on how we classify we respond so when we look at the totality of reality we often classify people as oh this person is my friend this person is my enemy this person is of this gender so depending on our gender we will be attracted to a particular person as a potential partner or based on our nationality we may say oh this person is an enemy so by such vision we will we will be vision may be required sometimes for functional purposes but the functional can often be can often block the perception of the ultimately real of the spiritual and if we just stay seeing people at the functional level we will not realize we may never rise to spiritual realization so this verse says that spiritual realization comes when we see that that actually whatever be their categorization essentially all of existence all living beings are simply a combination of Kshetra and Kshetra so there is a soul and around the soul there is a body now the the philosophical vision is not meant to reject the functional vision so it’s not that when I see that ok the tiger is a soul and a body that doesn’t necessarily mean that I decide oh the tiger is also soul like me so I will go and embrace the tiger no that’s not the point but at least we are having spiritual vision so the functional vision maybe is not just maybe is important for practical functional purposes but the philosophical vision is also important for moving towards higher realization and not letting the material decide all our actions and Krishna is guiding Arjuna towards rising to a higher level of consciousness when he is going to engage in the Kurukshetra war so in the next verse we will see about how a person who sees thus will see with equal vision but here this is an important point that we can try to assimilate that actually however people appear they are actually essentially similar to us they are essentially whatever and not just people human beings all living beings essentially they are combination of matter and spirit of Kshetra and Kshetra Gyan and this vision can take us beyond the bewildering variety that we see at the sensory level to the essential similarity that we all share with all living beings at the spiritual level