If consciousness is spiritual, then why is it said to a part of the material field in Chp 13 of the Gita?

From: Chandra

Consciousness is the property of soul but it is also one of the elements or part of subtle body. How to reconcile the two?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
A question from Chandra. Consciousness is the property of the soul, but it is also one of the elements or parts of subtle body.
How do we concile the two? Good question. In the 13th chapter, verses 6 and 7 of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna is talking about the composition of material nature and the interactions of material nature. At that time, he mentions consciousness is one of the interactions of material nature.
So there he mentions consciousness and this is one of the transformations of the field of material nature. So at the same time, Krishna also says that actually consciousness is the characteristic of the soul. In 13th chapter, in two examples, he gives in verses 33 and 34, where he says just as the sun pervades the whole universe with light, the soul pervades the whole body with consciousness.
So soul is the characteristic or the energy of the consciousness. And he says just as the ether element or the sky pervades all of space, similarly consciousness pervades everywhere in the body. So from the soul.
Consciousness is in that sense the property of the soul. So now we have to understand that this is referring to different aspects of consciousness. In the Sankhya, Sankhya is the branch of Vedic philosophy which deals with matter.
It deals with matter so that we can understand how to go beyond matter. So in Sankhya there are two concepts, there is chitta and chitta. So chitta refers to consciousness in its original or pure state.
And chitta refers to consciousness in its manifest stage in material nature. So to understand this, let’s consider an example. All of us have our natural consciousness say through sense perception and if we are sitting in a room we can look around the room and we can see who the people are there, what are the things over there.
But then that consciousness if we focus on a television or on a virtual reality setup, then our consciousness gets rooted through the television, the computer or the virtual reality setup into that particular device and into that artificial reality that is created over there. So imagine if we are going for a movie or a theatre and the whole room is dark, so at that time although we have the capacity to look at the people around us, our consciousness primarily gets reverted to the movie screen and it gets through the movie screen rooted into the events that are being depicted on that movie screen. So like that the soul is different from the body and the soul has its natural perception.
So the soul is like the person watching the movie and the original consciousness of the soul is called a chit. So this is the part of sat-chit-ananda that is the original consciousness of the soul. But along with that chit or when the soul becomes attracted to the body and the soul’s consciousness becomes caught and rooted through the body, then just as if a person is so absorbed in watching a movie that he forgets that there is anything around him at all and like that when a person is very attached materially which is how all of us are, then our consciousness gets rooted primarily to the body and through the body to the physical reality that we see around us.
So the bond, the extremely subtle and invisible bond that fixes our consciousness on our material body that is actually the false ego. The false ego is the bond between matter and spirit. So when the consciousness of the soul is rooted through the body to the external world that consciousness is called as chit and that consciousness is a transformation of material nature.
That consciousness is a transformation of material nature. So the 13th chapter verse 7 refers to chetana as a kshetra vikar as a transformation of material nature that is referring to this contaminated consciousness or consciousness expressed in matter. So this consciousness can be changed by the effect of matter.
So that’s why if we see a seductive poster suddenly our consciousness changes. If consciousness is transcendental how can matter have effect on consciousness? Actually because the consciousness has contacted matter and is now rooted through matter and in fact restricted to matter. At our present level we have no capacity to experience chitta.
What we are experiencing and through which we are experiencing the world is chitta. It is only when we practice spiritual sadhana and come to the level of samadhi then the original chitta awakens and then we can with our spiritual perception see Krishna present right next to us in our hearts. So at our stage chitta is what is accessible to us.
Chitta is the consciousness of the soul rooted through the body and this consciousness is affected by matter. It doesn’t originate in matter but it is affected by matter and that’s why it is said to be akshetra vikara transformation of the soul. when people people’s brain gets damaged certain parts of the brain has to be cut because of some tumor or some accident then some aspects of their personality also change.
So this change of personality not because the person has changed but the consciousness of the person as it is being rooted through the body and through the brain the root has been radically transformed and because the root has been radically transformed the expression also is radically transformed. Just like if we have a proper prism and sunlight is coming in one side through the prism and when it comes out from the other side it will be a beautiful spectrum but if the prism is damaged it is cracked then when the same sunlight falls then the light that comes out may not be a beautiful spectrum it may just be a distorted not so attractive medley of various colors so similarly brain damage may to some extent alter the personality of a person but that is because the chitta which was rooted through the material consciousness has now to take up a different root because the structure through which it was earlier rooted has been changed however the original chitta remains unchanged so Shri Bandevidya Bhushan one of our great acharyas in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutra talks about this that as mutual reality we find that consciousness is as it is but when the scripture says that consciousness is changeable that refers to chitta that refers to the consciousness as it is rooted through matter so basically our process of bhakti is meant to purify the chitta and detach it from matter so that eventually the it can get withdrawn out of matter and then we can awaken to our original consciousness which is spiritual devotional consciousness of Krishna so it’s basically the process of bhakti is trying to switch off the movie and to switch on the lights around us so the process of detachment from material nature is like switching off the movie and the process of attachment to Krishna is like switching on the light so when we do both things we do both things in parallel so what happens is as we start slowly switching off the lights then we start saying oh actually this sorry I start switching off the movie actually what is being shown in the movie is so insubstantial at one moment I get so worked up about it but maybe a few hours after that a few days after that nothing of it matters to me so it is not really having much substance in it and then as we switch on the outside lights we see oh there is a higher bigger reality and this seems so much more fresh and living and joyful so we do both these things in our practice of devotional service our chanting 16 rounds and doing sadhana and seva all that is like switching on the light and our process of following the 4 agreeable principles and minimizing other pleasures other materialistic pleasures is like switching off the movie so then our original chit will be awakened and experienced thank you