Gita 14.11 Illumination of knowledge regulates the input and output through the doorways of the senses

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you he is talking about the three modes of material nature in the previous text he talked about how these modes are in a state of competition and now he talks about how we can know which mode has gained an upper hand at a particular time so he states sarvanpare shuddhe he smin in all the doors of the body that are the senses dehe smin prakasham upajayate when they are illuminated by knowledge prakash jnanam yada tada vidya so there are two words jnana and vidya over here jnana refers to knowledge which comes to the which is connected with the point of the previous two lines in the verse that when all the doors of this body which are the senses are illuminated by knowledge at that time vidya at that time one should know we should be aware that at that time we can know that the mode of goodness has become elevated it has become it has become predominant now we see here the bhagavad gita again using an imagery that it developed that it introduced rather in the fifth chapter of the doors to the body in 5.73 it says that navadvare pure dehi naiva kurvanna karayan that navadvare pure dehi that one who lives in the city of nine gates navadvare pure so we have the if we look at the body it has nine holes we can say the two nostrils the two eyes the two ears the mouth and the two reproductive there are two excretory organs so Krishna talks about how one can stay as a non-doer while doing the actions of the body so he says that navadvare pure dehi sarva karma sannyasya te sukhambashi third fifth chapter Krishna talks about the nine gates to the body here he is focusing on the same theme that same imagery of gates which get us into the body and he says navadvare pure dehi prakasham upajayate sarvadvare the body has many doors and we let those bears let ourselves enter into the body through the doors let information enter let intention flow out as action through the doors in the senses it’s like if we are in a room which has firm walls if we want to see what is going on outside we ourselves want to go outside we need to use the doors or in some cases if they are big enough or if it’s an emergency we may use the windows generally we need some kind of way to go in and go out so Krishna says over here sarvadvare prakasham upajayate now if the door is open then we can have something happening when the door is open then and especially not just open but it is illuminated if the door is open and the power goes off then we would feel very insecure because we are vulnerable and we are unaware of danger so being vulnerable to danger is bad enough but being unaware of the presence of danger is even worse if we are going through a locality where there are a lot of thieves and there is possibility that we may be robbed then if you don’t even know about it just being in the locality is dangerous but if you don’t even know that we are in such a locality then that gives a whole different spin to the situation that makes things much more difficult for us so for us when we are soul situated in the body if we don’t know what information to take in through our senses if we don’t know what to look at what to do so for example we may look at things that agitate our minds so by so doing we actually make ourselves more miserable than we need to be we end up getting ourselves into unnecessary trouble because we don’t see the possibility we don’t see the situation that actually we are having an opportunity to elevate ourselves we are having an opportunity to choose actions which will say elevate our consciousness say for example if a person is blinded by desire desires can make the doorway to our senses dark in the sense that desire desires darken the doors of the senses this is a selective special kind of darkness where we it’s not that we can’t see at all but we see wrongly so when we see wrongly when we can’t do anything right we find ourselves overwhelmed being unable to do anything about the situation that we find ourselves in we end up acting counter productively so we may look at things in the hope of pleasure, getting some pleasure by looking at those things but actually instead of getting pleasure we only get more trouble we find ourselves agitated, exasperated overcome so for us as spiritual seekers it is very important that we regulate the input coming in through the senses and regulation requires illumination illumination in terms of knowledge if we want to regulate the volume of sound coming from a device then we need to know how the regulator works so similarly we want to regulate the information coming in through our senses we need to know what the regulator is and that knowing is through is knowing which comes in the mode of goodness which is the illumination provided by the mode of goodness by this illumination we can know this particular object will lead to pleasure, this particular object will lead to distress, will lead to misery and thus we may decide I will do this or I will not do that a person who is trying to diet if they the doors of their senses are not illumined they look at the objects that taste good and even if they are fatty they look at those objects get caught, captivated by those objects and thus they end up carried away they get carried away they end up becoming overwhelmed by the situation that they find themselves in and that situation is the situation which puts them in illusion so if we can for example push ourselves forwards and focus on so illumination of the senses requires perception that does not come from the senses so illumination of the senses requires information that does not necessarily come from the senses so for example food that looks delicious we may not know with our senses that this is actually dangerous, it may make us obese it may spoil our health so we need education, it will come not just through that particular sense of eyes, we may have to read some books or hear from some doctors and process that with our intelligence, so in the mode of goodness it is intelligence that monitors and that illumines the pathway of the senses so if a security guard at a vulnerable doorway has the capacity to see, has a good flashlight, then they can see if the person coming in is a friend or an enemy and accordingly he decides whether to allow that person in or not allow that person in the intelligence is that kind of guard the intelligence tells us that this is not good that looking at this or eating this is not desirable and thus that flashlight the intelligence doesn’t allow unwanted sense perception to come in unfiltered into our through our sensory gateways into our consciousness where it will agitate and torment and degrade us, now the illumination can work both ways also suppose it’s dangerous to go outside and if a child wants to go out into the dark to play, that’s dangerous and the child might just slip away but if there is a security guard who has proper illumination, say a torch they will not allow the child to go away so like that we could say we may end up speaking things for example some words may slip out of our consciousness of our mouths although we would not normally want to speak those words if our intelligence is strong then we will check our impulses so the illumination in goodness of knowledge helps us to regulate both the knowledge acquiring senses which determine what comes into our consciousness and the action into acting senses the Jnanendriyas and the Karmendriyas which do certain things for by which we do certain things so for example even if we are agitated disturbed even if our consciousness is penetrated by desire that doesn’t mean we have to become degraded or defeated because the knowledge acquiring senses can may somehow if there is a even if somehow we contemplate on certain things which are not desirable at that time also contemplation alone doesn’t cause degradation it is contemplation followed by captivation followed by the decision by the intention and the decision to act that is what causes degradation so if we can in a timely way resist the urge to act on our desires even if those desires start getting activated and that also requires the light of knowledge just because I feel like doing it doesn’t mean that I have to do it so we don’t have to see everything that looks attractive and we don’t have to do everything that feels pleasurable so at this illumination that our feelings are not always reliable that comes in the mode of goodness and so when we can see that we are discerning carefully when we are able to understand what is to be done and what is not to be done then the doorways of our senses are illumined by knowledge then we can understand the mode of goodness is prominent