THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 13
VERSE NUMBER 02
KSHETRA KSHETRAJNA VIBHAGA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE KSHETRA AND THE KSHETRAJNA:
TEXT IN TRANSLITERATION:
kshetajnam chaa ‘pi maam viddhi
sarva kshetreshu bhaarata
kshetra kshetrajnayor jnaanam
yat taj jnaanam matam mama
SANSKRIT WORDS AND PHRASES AND THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH:
Kshetranam = the knower of the field: cha = and: api = also: maam = me: viddhi = know: sarva kshetreshu = in all the fields: bhaarata = O Bharata: kshetra kshetrajnayoh = of the field and of the knower of the field: jnaanam knowledge: yat = which: tat = that: jnaanam = knowledge: matam = is considered to be: mama = my.
TEXT IN ENGLISH:
And know Me as the Kshetrajna in all Kshetras, O Bharata. The knowledge of Kshetra and Kshetrajna is deemed by Me as true knowledge.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
Prakriti and Purusha are called respectively as Kshetra and Kshetrajna—the non-self and the self. The former is insentient and the latter sentient. The Purusha identifies himself with the Prakriti and fancies that its characteristics are all his own. It is like the colur of a flower which seems transposed to a crystal kept near it. That Purusha is called a Jivatman who identifies himself with the Prakriti that he handles.
The Cosmic Intelligence is Iswara. While He appears to be imbued with the characteristics of the Prakriti, He is actually untouched by it. He is the Innermost Self in all beings. The individual souls and the universe have no existence independent of Iswara. He is there the Ksherajna in all the Kshetraas. Though containing everything in Himself, He is eternally free, pure and blissful.
Jnaana or Knowledge is the true understanding of both—the Kshetra and the Kshetrajna. The knowledge pertaining to the Kshetra is classified as Apara vidyaa or the lower knowledge and that pertaining to the Kshetrajna as Paraa vidyaa or the Knowledge Superior. To be well-versed and versatile in the Vedas, the aagamaas, grammar, rhetoric, and the branches of science and arts—all these come under the lower knowledge. Brahma jnaana or the Self-knowledge is the supreme knowledge. Enquiry commences with a diligent study of Nature and culminates in Brahma Jnaana. Secular knowledge bereft of the sacred is therefore incomplete. The former is the stepping stone to the latter. True knowledge consists of wisdom pertaining to the phenomenon and the Noumenon.
A Puranic story illustrates this point. Ganesa and Kartikeya are the sons of the Lord Siva. It was once put to these valiant sons that whoever returned first after surveying the entire Existence, would get as a prize a celestial fruit brought by the Sage Narada. No sooner was this announcement made than Kartikeya dashed abroad on his speedy peacock. The plumpy Ganesa pondered over the terms imposed, moved slowly but surely on his tiny vehicle of a mouse, circumambulated his Father and Mother, and claimed the prize. But within a while came the younger brother also, successfully terminating his expedition. Both the brothers were wise in their own way. Kartikeya inquired into the manifest Prakriti and Ganesa into the Unmanifest Purusha. A harmonious combination of these two inquiries constitutes true knowledge. Knowing the one to the exclusion of the other is imperfect knowledge.
The scientific enquiry made by the modern man is a true search into the Prakriti. It has taken him very near the Purusha. As Kartikeya’s survey terminated in his coming back to the Divine, the scientist will very soon come to know that the manifest universe has its origin and sustenance in the Cosmic Intelligence.
SRIMAT SWAMI RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA AS QUOTED BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
One is not termed as rich by one’s merely owning money. There are signs of one’s being rich. His house would be well lit in all the rooms. Whereas a poor man cannot afford to have many lights.
The human body is the tabernacle of the Lord. It should not be kept in the darkness of ignorance. It should be lit with the lamp of wisdom. When you illumine your heart with this lamp, you will behold the benign Lord there. Jnana can be gained by one and all. There are in the human temple two entities—the little Jivatman and the great Paramatman. The former is dependent on the latter. As the electricity from the same source illuminates all the houses, the Paramatman gives light to all the Jivatmans. The Divine Knowledge illumines your body, yourself and the Paramatman in you, all at once.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
Shankara holds that the Supreme Lord seems to be samsaarin, by reason of the cosmic manifestation, even as the individual self appears to be bound by its identification with the body. The Fall, according to the Christian doctrine, is the forgetting of the image of God within man, which is freedom and lapsing into the external, which is a necessity. Man, essentially, is not a part of nature but is spirit that interrupts the continuity of nature.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI SIVANANDA:
The fields are different but the knower of the field is one. The individual souls (Jivatmas) are different but the Supreme Soul (Paramatma) is one. Wherever there is mind, there are life-breath, egoism and the individual consciousness or reflected intelligence side by side. He who has the sense of duality will take birth again and again. This delusion of duality can only be removed by knowledge of the identity of the Self and Absolute. “I am happy”, I am miserable”, “I am the doer of this action”, and “I am the enjoyer of this experience”—these are the experiences of all human beings. Therefore the individual soul is bound to Samsara and is subject to pleasure and pain, and the individual souls are in different bodies. But, the Supreme Soul is free from pleasure and pain. It is not bound to Samsara. It is eternally free. It is one without a second.
If there is only one individual soul in all bodies all should have the same experience at the same time. If Rama suffers from abdominal colic, Krishna also should experience the pain at the same time. If John experiences joy, Jacob also should have a similar experience. If Choudhury is stung by a scorpion, Banerjee also should suffer from the pain. But this is not the case. When Rama suffers, Krishna rejoices. When John is jubilant, Jacob is depressed. When Choudhury suffers from the sting of a scorpion, Banaerjee is enjoying his breakfast. Fields are different, bodies are different, minds are different and the individual souls are different from each other. But the knower in all these fields is one. Pleasure and pain are the Dharmas (functions) of the mind only. The individual soul is, in essence, identical with the Supreme Soul.
The knower of the field or the Self is not affected by pleasure and pain, virtue and vice. He is the silent witness only. Pleasure and pain are the functions of the mind. They are ascribed to the Self through ignorance. The ignorant man regards the physical body as the Self. He is swayed by the two currents of likes and dislikes, he does virtuous and vicious actions and reaps the fruits of these actions, viz., pleasure and pain, and takes birth again and again. But the sage who knows that the Kshetrajna or the knower of the field or the Self is distinct from the body is not swayed by likes and dislikes. He identifies himself with the pure, eternal Absolute or the Supreme Self and is always happy and ‘actionless’, though he performs actions for the welfare of humanity.
The disease of Timira (partial blindness) which causes the perception of what is contrary to truth pertains to the eye but not to the man who perceives. If the disease is removed by the proper treatment he perceives things in their true light. Even so, ignorance, doubt, pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, likes and dislikes, false perceptions as well as their cause belong to the instrument (the mind) but not to the silent witness, the knower of the field, the Self.
In the state of liberation wherein there is the annihilation of the mind, there is no ignorance and the play of the two currents of likes and dislikes does not exist there. If false perception, ignorance, pleasure and pain, doubt, bondage, delusion, sorrow, etc., were the essential properties of the Self, just as heat is the essential property of fire, they could not be got rid of at any time. But there have been sages of Self-realisation in the past like Sankara, Dattatreya, Jada Bharata and Yajnavalkya who possessed extraordinary supersensual or intuitional knowledge, who were free from false perception, doubt, fear, delusion, sorrow, etc. They were not conscious of Samsara but they had perfect awareness of the Self. Therefore, we will have to conclude that the Self is ever free, pure, perfect, eternal and that ignorance inheres in the instrument (the mind) and not in the Self.
Ignorance born of Tamas acts as a veil and prevents man from knowing his essential nature as the Existence-knowledge-Bliss Absolute. It causes the perception of what is quite the contrary of truth and causes doubt or non-perception of truth. As soon as knowledge of the Self dawns these three forms of ignorance vanish in toto. Therefore these three forms of ignorance are not the tributes of the Self. They belong to the mind, the organ of the instrument. The mind is only an effect or a product of ignorance.
The wheel of Samsara or the world-process rotates on account of ignorance. It exists only for the ignorant man who perceives the world as it appears to him.
There is no Samsara for a liberated sage. Any disease of the eye cannot in any way affect the sun (the deity presiding over the eye). The breaking of the pot will not in any way affect the ether or space in the pot. The water of the mirage cannot render the earth moist. Even so, ignorance and its effects cannot in the least affect the pure, subtle, attributeless, formless, limbless, partless and self-luminous Kshetrajna or the Self. Ignorance does not touch the Self. (Cf.X.20; XIII.32; XVIII.61)
Comments by the blogger:
What is knowledge? What is ignorance?
The true knowledge, according to Sri Krishna, is that whereby one understands the fields and the knower of the fields. Fields are the bodies in the limited sense and the Prakriti or Nature in the wider sense and the Knower of all the fields is Iswaran.
“The scientific enquiry made by the modern man is a true search into the Prakriti” says Srimat Swami Chidbhavananda, “It has taken him very near the Purusha...the scientist will very soon come to know that the manifest universe has its origin and sustenance in the Cosmic Intelligence.”
There has been much improvement in understanding the atom. The man has found out the God Particles. The God Particles appear to have no form of their own but give shape to other things. They give mass to the atoms. The man has found out that God particles are the reason for the atoms’ coming together to make things like the earth and various things of worldly nature. When Man’s quest ultimately leads to a fair understanding of the Atom on the one hand, and the triplication of the Big Bang and Man’s relentless search to imitate the big bang so that Man could understand the beginning and nature of the Universe on the other, Man shall have arrived at what is called by Sri Krishna in this sloka or verse as the true knowledge.
And when Man understands the origin of the Cosmos and the nature of the Prakrity or Nature not to mention Man’s true knowledge and understanding of the God Particles, Man shall have attained an exact knowledge. The personality of the world, the Universe, or Matter is the personality of the irreducible atom. Even during the later part of the 1940s, the atomic bombs were produced. Man found out the tremendous manifestation of Energy in the splitting up of the Atom. Now the world is poised to knowing the complete nature of the Atom. The understanding and a fair amount of knowledge about the Big Bang will lead Man towards the knowledge which has been dealt with in the exalted poetic language in the Principal Upanishads! (We will deal with all the 14 Upanishads in great detail once the Commentaries on Srimad Bhagavad Gita is over). There are, in all, 108 Upanishads. But only a handful of them have been designated as the Principal Upanishads, and it will not be out of place to note here that Sri Shankarachariya of the 8th Century A.D. has commentated on these Upanishads: thus the Principal Upanishads are: Isha, Kena, Katha, Mundaka, Mandukya (Maandookya), Aitareya, Taittiriya, Chhandogya, Prshna, Shvetashvatara and Brihadaranyaka.
In the Upanishads there are ‘Vidhyais’. Vidhyais are said to be more than a hundred. But what has come down to us are only 32 Vidhais. We will deal with the Vidhais also. And then we will go to the Brahma Sutras.
We can be assured that the Scientific Man’s last attainment will have been achieved when Man fully understands the Big Bang, the God Particles, etc., and when Man describes through various theories about the Practically Scientific Knowledge Man attained in an exquisite language, it will sound as though they were taken out of the above-said Upanishads! Or their language will sound as though taken out of the pages of the Principal Upanishads!
Vedantic Knowledge and modern scientific knowledge, and the way in which they will be related will validate the poetic language of the above-said Upanishads.
The Sadguru Juggivasudev has written in his Math’s or the Isha Yoga Centre’s Magazine, ‘Kaattupoo’, that when he had gone to the US, he had explained the principles of the Atom and thus Atomic Bombs in the Vedic and Vedantins’ language to a great scientist and the said Scientist stated that if what Vasudevji said could be re-told in Scientific Language, there would be a revolution! But, since the Sad Guru’s language was poetic than scientific the scientific world would not come forward to be lead by what he was saying!
Let us hope that a time will come when our Vedopanishadic Seers had understood the Prakriti or Nature fully and completely and their knowledge was the true Knowledge as held in this sloka or verse!
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