Gita 15.12 We need the eyes to see what our eyes need to see

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you the sun whose effulgence illumines the universe the moon and fire that effulgence comes from me so Krishna is focusing here on the principle that we have more to our existence than that which meets the eye sometimes there is more to it than what meets the eye that means we can’t just see everything with our eyes so we could take that saying and we say that whatever meets the eye requires something beyond the eye so for example when we see especially in say youth we are attracted to good looking people we are attracted to sense objects and we try to pursue those sense objects in the hope that that will give us pleasure and while we are pursuing such pleasure we often don’t realize that that pursuit is something which we cannot do on our own that means that pursuit is something which requires perception and that perception requires something beyond us even if we are looking at the most attractive person most good looking person if there is no light we won’t be able to see them and that light doesn’t depend on us it depends on factors beyond our control it depends on forces which are actually beyond our capacity to process it depends on the reality that we alone don’t manage things we can’t see things there are hundreds of things that we actually can’t see and even among the things that we can see there is no point in our being able to see them unless we recognize that even to see what we are capable of seeing is based on things that are beyond our control so without some external source of light without the sun, without the moon without the fire some other external source of light even the most attractive objects we will not be able to see Krishna is referring to three three standards standard sources of illumination the sun, the moon and the fire and he is saying that their capacity to illuminate that comes from him that means his stress that actually we cannot face if we are not capable of dealing with life situations through our day to day interactions we need something more we need a higher vision that harmonizes our perception with what is required for that purpose perception now we need to we need the eyes to see what all is required for the eyes to see we need the eyes to see what all is required for the eyes to see so the eyes refers in the first sense to to knowledge and eyes to see means we need to appreciate intellectually what all is required for the eyes to see unless we see that we remain in ignorance so we may look at an attractive sense object and we start chasing that and we think I am going to enjoy life by getting this object or we may get frustrated because we are not able to get that object either way we are not recognizing the reality that actually we are not in control if there had not been a source of illumination we would not be able to see anything that source of illumination and our dependence on it becomes clear when sometimes at night suddenly the power goes off when the power goes off that time what do we do we realize that we can’t see anything we immediately need some other source of power we may need electricity we may try to turn on a flashlight in our phone which is another form of energy so in darkness we just start grouping we become helpless so at night if we do not have access to light then we become reduced to bungling and stumbling into things sometimes hurting ourselves hurting others if we stumble onto them so that is such an important factor for us to understand that actually we can’t see on our own and the factors that facilitate our vision are factors that are beyond our control that we depend on those factors we depend for factors beyond our control now even if we create devices which give us light as it may be street lights or our tube lights at home or the flashlights in our phones in all these situations actually it is the capacity to see it is still dependent on some source of energy beyond ourselves and in ultimate sense we can see that all forms of illumination are ultimately recycled sunlight most electric power is generated through say hydroelectricity say we could say that most of the energy on the earth can in some way or the other traced back to the sun and even if we point to certain sources of energy which we do not trace back to the sun say fossil fuels we can say that it is because of the fossilization because of the heat that has come from the sun and the heat that is present in the earth that fossilization of the materials happen and that’s how we got fossil fuels you look at nuclear power say which is present within the atomic structure we didn’t put it there so the key thing in this section is Krishna is making us aware of the fact that we do not exist in isolation that we need to move towards Krishna that at the very least even if we do not believe in God immediately and we do not want to perceive we are unable to perceive the spiritual reality at the very least we can begin by acknowledging that our very existence requires factors that are not in our control and that the very existence of coordinated factors like this can make us more open, more submissive to considering the existence of something beyond ourselves and that existence of something beyond ourselves is the beginning of Jnana Chakshu the beginning of spiritual knowledge the knowledge of Atma Tattvam the knowledge of the spiritual domain which will enable us to see the soul which will enable us to see God begins with the recognition that the material is not self-defined it’s not self-sustainable in terms of an origin of its operating principles and that with respect to illumination is talked about in this verse by Krishna