Inner Hierarchy Gita 3.42

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Indriyani Paranyaho, Indriya Paramanaha, Manasastu Parabuddhi, Yo Bhunde Paratastu Sahai. So, in this verse, Krishna is giving us the, inner hierarchy, the hierarchy within our inner world, and as you mentioned, this falls in a section about, the inner world, 36, 36 to 43, 36 was the question, then, 37 was the answer, in which, basically the identity of the enemy, and then, I’m repeating this section, because it’s important to think, because it’s important to understand, in context, what’s happening, the power, the scope, the reach of the enemy, that it, it, pervades, attacks all living beings, and its strategy, or its gravity, that, it covers our knowledge, and the eternal enemy, and 40th, was what we discussed, that boundaries, how vital they are, how helpful, and how vital they are, now, here, sorry, that was the 41st one, 41st for the boundaries, and 40th, was about, the hideouts, hideouts of the inner enemies, now today, we are in the 42nd text, here, we’re studying, that, in this inner hierarchy, what is the point of telling this, we consider a war is to be fought, then, there are multiple things to be done, okay, sometimes, we may fight against the foot soldiers, okay, but, now, ultimately, we need to fight against the, big persons, the people who are, at the top, the people who make the, who call the shots, so like that, knowing who is where, in the hierarchy, is helpful, and similarly, from our side also, so hierarchy can, we can have the hierarchy of the enemy, and the hierarchy of the defenders, so Krishna is focusing here, on the hierarchy of the defenders, and let’s see what he says, overall, that, this, this hierarchy, is so apt, that, this in one sense, this one image, you understand, this can summarize, the entire predicament, of material existence, there are sense objects in the world, and then there are senses, that are attracted towards those objects, above the senses, is the mind, now above the mind, is the intelligence, and Krishna says, above the intelligence, is the soul, so now we could say, this entire thing, is the self, of course the conditioned self, and earlier Krishna has said, that the contamination of lust, is present, in the senses, the mind, and the intelligence, so, I would say this particular thing, represents lust, so now, when Krishna gives this hierarchy, first thing, he has said in the previous verses, create some boundaries, regulate the senses, that means, have some boundaries, to protect yourself from, the, reflexive tendency, of the senses, to go towards the sense objects, so, we could say there is a, the whole self, it’s pulled down, by, it’s like something high above, it gets pulled down, this is the gravity, this gravity pulls us down, so gravity of, lust, and here there is a, word play, gravity, at one level, refers to the force that pulls us down, gravity, also refers to something, which is very grave, so yes, it is the force that pulls us down, and the force is also very, it’s a, it’s no laughing matter, it’s a serious force, so, now, after giving this hierarchy, in the next verse Krishna will talk about, what, what it implies, why is he giving us this hierarchy, but let’s explore this hierarchy a little bit, so, in this the senses, now we could say, at one level, it’s outside in, the senses are the most outwards, and the soul is the inner most, so, is that all that is there, but no, it’s not just this hierarchy, consider, the hierarchy is not just, outside in kind of hierarchy, it’s also, more like a bottom up, that means, who is higher, who is stronger, or at least, who in principle is meant to be stronger, so, the senses, they can run towards the sense objects, and they can be very powerful, generally speaking, the sense objects don’t come towards the senses, let’s look at this one by one, the steps in the hierarchy, so, at one level, the senses, are considered greater than the sense, the senses are higher than the sense objects, in the words, Krishna himself does not, explicitly mention the sense objects, he says, Indriyani Paranya Ahu, that senses are above this, and this, it is this material world, filled with sense objects, that Ahu or Iha, those words, are generic references to this, and that refers to this material existence, now, why the senses, consider higher than sense objects, because, generally, the senses move towards the sense objects, so, for example, if we have a fridge, and the fridge has, ice cream, the fridge does not open, and come, the ice cream does not come out of the fridge, right into our mouth, we, go towards the fridge, so, a person, and say, ice cream in a fridge, so, the idea is that, generally, the sense objects don’t come towards us, it is, a person goes to the ice cream, the ice cream doesn’t go towards the person, so, in that sense, the, greater agency, is in the person, and person means, in this case, the senses, their eyes look at the fridge, then their legs, move towards the fridge, then the hands open the fridge, then the mouth opens, and the ice cream goes into the mouth, so, it’s basically the senses, are considered higher than sense objects, because the senses, are the agency, they have agency, they are active, now, above the senses, the mind is considered to be, above the senses, now, why is that, because at one level, the senses may be inactive, so, it could be because, the sense objects are unavailable, you know, so, even the sense objects are unavailable, and the, senses are inactive, sorry, the mind can still be active, the mind can be triggered by, imagination, so, the mind is triggered, broadly in two ways, the activity comes from the senses, through perception, when it sees something, that can trigger it, but another trigger point for it, is also imagination, and imagination, does not require, the senses to be active, a person’s mind can be fantasizing, even when, there’s nothing going on, at the sensory level, and in that way, we could say that, if we create some boundaries for the senses, the senses can’t be active so easily, a person is put in a place, say for example, a person is put in an addiction center, wants to recover, in an addiction center, now, their senses, can’t get access to any, say drugs, the senses have no access to drugs, and yet, the mind can have, great access, to, to its own imagination, it may think that, oh, if I could just get this drug, and I would go so high, I would be so good, I could get one shot, and so much relief, the mind can be not just imagining, but it can be, on a wild imagination ride, imagination can be hyperactive, and in that sense, the mind, is above the senses, this also happens in dreams, our body is resting, our senses are also active, but our mind goes in various directions, now, this is relevant, specifically, in terms of, combating, lust, what Krishna is telling us, that the contaminant, okay, we talked about boundaries in the previous words, and that’s important, but boundaries alone, are not enough, along with the boundaries, we also need something else, and we need a multi-pronged strategy, so, that strategy Krishna talked about in the next words, but before that, let’s restart the hierarchy, Krishna has hinted at this also, that the mind being higher than the senses, in 3.6, when he said that, somebody may, regulate the senses, but their mind is contaminated with the sense of objects, and such a person, is a hypocrite, such a person is deluding himself, mind, is, imagining, contemplating, fantasizing, then, that person is, is a deceiver, they are deceiving themselves, they are deceiving the world, the same point Krishna is indicating, by talking about this hierarchy over here, the problem is multi-level, after that he says, that intelligence, is, higher than the mind, at one level, this is easy to understand, we all, if we associate the mind with, emotions, feelings, desires, then we understand that, a person who is too emotional, they can’t be very reliable, you can’t let yourself get carried away with emotions, intelligence is meant to be guided by reason, by logic, so, intelligence is higher than the mind means, that sometimes, our mind may be agitated, but, if we, crisis is important, suppose somebody is a firefighter, they come to a giant fire, their mind may be agitated, my God, what would we do with this fire, but they understand, I am in charge over here, I cannot show fear, I cannot show panic over here, everything will collapse, people are counting on me, so, that sense of responsibility, that is, that, is the intelligence aware of, that keeps that person, alert, that ensures, the person doesn’t get carried away, and ensure that person doesn’t crumble under the weight of, the problem, so, similarly, with respect to, fighting any kind of, temptation, also, this hierarchy, is in its own way important, that, the intelligence, is also a place, where a person, where the enemy can attack, Krishna has said, that, lust is also situated in intelligence, so, we’ll talk about how, what we need to do to deal with all this, so, now, interestingly, what he said about this, the soul, is above the intelligence, let’s try this out, so, now, the soul, is above the intelligence, what this means again, is that, the person, may, nothing has any agent, nothing has any power to act, without the consciousness coming from the soul, we remember that, the standard metaphor, the soul, subtle body, now, generally, I refer to it as soul, mind, and body, but you could say, the soul, the subtle body, the subtle body has two components broadly, the intelligence, and the mind, and the gross body, the physical body, now, everything is animated, by the consciousness, coming from the soul, so, neither the mind, nor the intelligence, can work, if the soul’s consciousness, or the radiating energy, is not coming out, so, the example we have to give for this is, that the soul is like the user of a computer, the mind is like the software, and, the body is like the hardware, now, the software controls the hardware, that is fair enough, at the same time, neither the software nor the hardware can work, if there is no user, so Krishna is saying, the soul is above all these, in this way Krishna is outlining, the inner hierarchy over there, now, the implication of the inner hierarchy, we will talk about in the next verse,