VERSE NUMBER 19 OF SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

HOLY GITA

CHAPTER TWO

SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

VERSE NUMBER 19:

Text in Transliteration:

ya enam vetti hantaaram yas chai ‘na manyate hatam

ubhau tau na vijaaneeto naa ‘yam hanta na hanyate

Text in English:

He who holds Atman as slayer and he who considers It as the slain, both of them are ignorant. It slays not, nor is It slain.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMY CHIDBHAVANANDA:

“I am ruined”, laments the man who suddenly loses his very much loved fortune. Though he is different from his wealth, identification with it drives him on to this deluded position. Attachment to the body makes one feel that physical death is death to the Atman. But the immortal Self remains unaffected by all bodily changes. As the sky is ever itself in the midst of clouds coming and going, the Atman is changeless while the bodies change.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

The author is discriminating between the self and the not-self, purusha and prakriti of the Samkhya.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMY SIVANANDA:

The self is  non-doer (Akarta) and as It is immutable, It is neither the agent nor the object of the act of slaying. He who thinks “I slay” or “I am slain” with the body or the Ahamkara (ego), he does not really comprehend he true nature of he Self. The Self is indestructible. It exists in the three periods of time. It is Sat (Existence).  When the body is destroyed, the Self is not destroyed. The body has to undergo change in any case. It is inevitable. But the Self is not at all affected by it. Verses 19, 20, 22 , 23 and 24 speak of the immortality of the Self or Atma. (Cf. Chapter XVIII, 17.)

Comments by the blogger:

He who slays and he who is slain, does or suffer the action, only in body and not in Self. For Self or Arman knows no action. But the body including the mind and discrimination added with the Ahamkara or ego, (the faculty of attachment of the Self or Soul with the body) identifies the Self or I- ness to be the doer or sufferer. The pure Atman is witness to whatever is going on in the mind and the body. And the universal self is witness to what is going on in the whole of the universe. And emancipation or salvation is all about the knowledge of one’s self which is part of the universal self! For this we have to take hundreds of thousands of births and die hundreds of thousands of times! Ahamkara or ego is different from what we ordinarily think by the term egoist or egotistical. Ahamkara is pure ignorance of identifying the body with the self.

Everything that happens in the body and mind has to be witnessed and taken into account. For that the Atman or Self inheres in the body. But, by its very nature, it is incapable of any action. The universal self also takes notice of the course of the planets and other activities. Nothing escapes the witness both in the body and the universe.

This is where the Rig-Vedic saints and sages and the sages of the ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome score over the modern scientists and their scientific knowledge. The universal self inheres and pervades the whole universe. The universe is in constant flux. And it is full of action. And what we want is there readily parcelled up to be delivered to us. All we have to do is ask. Asking is not just a transitory wish. The asking must be like the crying babies asking for its mother’s milk. If we can know the art of asking we can get the whole universe. The Rig-Veda is full of hymns and sacrificial tenets and the hymns eulogise various elemental gods. That is enough to make us prosper and wealthy and honest. They knew the art of asking. The universe is full of supplies and we are full of needs. We can literally ask for the moon and get it if only we know the art of asking. The worship of elemental gods is nothing short of pure genius. It is not superstitious action. Unless they got what they prayed for, that much stress on proper conduct of various sacrifices might not have been dealt with in such great detail and laid down for the benefit of the future generation. We are what we think. We get what we ask for. We live the life of what way we want. And when we know this, we would only ask for wealth and knowledge. Wealth will take care of this world’s needs, while knowledge will guide us toward self-realization.

The witness in the body is described in the “Mundaka Upanishad” as distinguished with the body with the help of a story: there are two birds in a tree. One bird is eating various fruits of the tree. Some fruits are sweet and the bird delights at the sweetness. And some fruits are bitter, and the bird suffers. But the bird goes on eating the fruits of the tree. But the other bird does not eat any fruit. It just WATCHES the eating bird eat and enjoy and suffer. This universe is the tree with fruits bitter and sweet, and this body is the bird that eats various fruits of the tree and suffers or enjoys them. And the non-eating and non-acting bird is our Arman or Soul or Self.

This universe is full of fruits of actions. Whatever we seek we can get. The only thing is we should ask. But to become one with the other, non-eating bird, we have to do various things: for those who are sentimental, there is bhakti yoga or the yoga of devotion, and for those who are action-oriented, there is karma yoga or the yoga of right action. In Bhakti yoga we not only pray to god, and supplicate before Him and offer as naivedyam or offerings various fruits and other things, we ultimately, at the acme of devotion, offer our own self to God! In the yoga of right conduct or action, the action oriented are indulging in actions preordained to them as self-duty or swadharma and carry out the all actions without any expectation of fruits thereof. For the people who have discrimination and power of inquiry is Gnana yoga of yoga of knowledge. They do not worship any form, like the Mohammadans. He worships knowledge and dedicates his life to inquiry. And those people who are non sentimental, there is Raja yoga, by which they meditate on that Single Being, the Causeless Cause and obtain wisdom to realize their self. Sri Krishna gives unto this world all these four kinds of actions to the people of the world according as their orientation and guna or bhava or preponderating nature.

We do these actions only with our body and bodily equipments like mind and discrimination. The Atman in us does not indulge in any action. It just watches our doings and even thinking and imagination and watch over and be the witness of our bodily actions, both voluntary and involuntary. While this being the nature of the body and self, O, Arjuna why do you hesitate to slay your enemies’ bodies only. By which act you cannot touch their Atman!