{"id":1409,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:37","slug":"11-sankhya-yoga-and-vedanta-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13\/11-sankhya-yoga-and-vedanta-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-11_Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nN<\/font><\/span>INE<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Sankhya,
\nYoga and Vedanta<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n 
\n<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nT<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\nwhole object of the first six chapters of the Gita is to synthetise in a large
\nframe of Vedantic truth the two methods, ordinarily supposed to be diverse and
\neven opposite, of the Sankhyas and the Yogins. The Sankhya is taken as the
\nstarting-point and the basis; but it is from the beginning and with a
\nprogressively increasing emphasis permeated with the ideas and methods of Yoga
\nand remoulded in its spirit. The practical difference, as it seems to have
\npresented itself to the religious minds of that day, lay first in this that
\nSankhya proceeded by knowledge and through the Yoga of the intelligence, while
\nYoga proceeded by works and the transformation of the active consciousness and,
\nsecondly, \u2013 a corollary of this first distinction, \u2013 that Sankhya led to entire
\npassivity and the renunciation of works,
\nsannyāsa<\/i>, while Yoga held to be quite sufficient the inner renunciation of
\ndesire, the purification of the subjective principle which leads to action and
\nthe turning of works Godwards, towards the divine existence and towards
\nliberation. Yet both had the same aim, the transcendence of birth and of this
\nterrestrial existence and the union of the human soul with the Highest. This at
\nleast is the difference as it is presented to us by the Gita. <\/p>\n

\nThe difficulty which Arjuna feels in understanding any possible synthesis of
\nthese oppositions is an indication of the hard line that was driven in between
\nthese two systems in the normal ideas of the time. The Teacher sets out by
\nreconciling works and the Yoga of the intelligence: the latter, he says, is far
\nsuperior to mere works; it is by the Yoga of the Buddhi, by knowledge raising
\nman out of the ordinary human mind and its desires into the purity and equality
\nof the Brahmic condition free from all desire that works can be made acceptable.
\nYet are works a means of salvation, but works thus purified by knowledge.<\/p>\n

\nPage 75<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Filled
\nwith the notions of the then prevailing culture, misled by the emphasis which
\nthe Teacher lays upon the ideas proper to Vedantic Sankhya, conquest of the
\nsenses, withdrawal from mind into the Self, ascent into the Brahmic condition,
\nextinction of our lower personality in the Nirvana of impersonality, \u2013 for the
\nideas proper to Yoga are as yet subordinated and largely held back, \u2013 Arjuna is
\nperplexed and asks, \u201cIf thou holdest the intelligence to be greater than works,
\nwhy then dost thou appoint me to a terrible work? Thou seemest to bewilder my
\nintelligence with a confused and mingled speech; tell me then decisively that
\none thing by which I may attain to my soul’s weal.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nIn answer Krishna affirms that the Sankhya goes by knowledge and renunciation,
\nthe Yoga by works; but the real renunciation is impossible without Yoga, without
\nworks done as a sacrifice, done with equality and without desire of the fruit,
\nwith the perception that it is Nature which does the actions and not the soul;
\nbut immediately afterwards he declares that the sacrifice of knowledge is the
\nhighest, all work finds its consummation in knowledge, by the fire of knowledge
\nall works are burnt up; therefore by Yoga works are renounced and their bondage
\novercome for the man who is in possession of his Self. Again Arjuna is
\nperplexed; here are desireless works, the principle of Yoga, and renunciation of
\nworks, the principle of Sankhya, put together side by side as if part of one
\nmethod, yet there is no evident reconciliation between them. For the kind of
\nreconciliation which the Teacher has already given, \u2013 in outward inaction to see
\naction still persisting and in apparent action to see a real inaction since the
\nsoul has renounced its illusion of the worker and given up works into the hands
\nof the Master of sacrifice, \u2013 is for the practical mind of Arjuna too slight,
\ntoo subtle and expressed almost in riddling words; he has not caught their sense
\nor at least not penetrated into their spirit and reality. Therefore he asks
\nagain, \u201cThou declarest to me the renunciation of works, O Krishna, and again
\nthou declarest to me Yoga; which one of these is the better way, that tell me
\nwith a clear decisiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe answer is important, for it puts the whole distinction very clearly and
\nindicates though it does not develop entirely the line of reconciliation.
\n\u201cRenunciation and Yoga of works both <\/p>\n

\nPage 76<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

bring
\nabout the soul’s salvation, but of the two the Yoga of works is distinguished
\nabove the renunciation of works. He should be known as always a Sannyasin (even
\nwhen he is doing action) who neither dislikes nor desires; for free from the
\ndualities he is released easily and happily from the bondage. Children speak of
\nSankhya and Yoga apart from each other, not the wise; if a man applies himself
\nintegrally to one, he gets the fruit of both,\u201d because in their integrality each
\ncontains the other. \u201cThe status which is attained by the Sankhya, to that the
\nmen of the Yoga also arrive; who sees Sankhya and Yoga as one, he sees. But
\nrenunciation is difficult to attain without Yoga; the sage who has Yoga attains
\nsoon to the Brahman; his self becomes the self of all existences (of all things
\nthat have become), and even though he does works, he is not involved in them.\u201d
\nHe knows that the actions are not his, but Nature’s and by that very knowledge
\nhe is free; he has renounced works, does no actions, though actions are done
\nthrough him; he becomes the Self, the Brahman,
\nbrahmabhūta<\/i>, he sees all existences as becomings (bhūtāni<\/i>)
\nof that self-existent Being, his own only one of them, all their actions as only
\nthe development of cosmic Nature working through their individual nature and his
\nown actions also as a part of the same cosmic activity. This is not the whole
\nteaching of the Gita; for as yet there is only the idea of the immutable self or
\nPurusha, the Akshara Brahman, and of Nature, Prakriti, as that which is
\nresponsible for the cosmos and not yet the idea, clearly expressed, of the
\nIshwara, the Purushottama; as yet only the synthesis of works and knowledge and
\nnot yet, in spite of certain hints, the introduction of the supreme element of
\ndevotion which becomes so important afterwards; as yet only the one inactive
\nPurusha and the lower Prakriti and not yet the distinction of the triple Purusha
\nand the double Prakriti. It is true the Ishwara is spoken of, but his relation
\nto the self and nature is not yet made definite. The first six chapters only
\ncarry the synthesis so far as it can be carried without the clear expression and
\ndecisive entrance of these all-important truths which, when they come in, must
\nnecessarily enlarge and modify, though without abolishing, these first
\nreconciliations. <\/p>\n

\nTwofold, says Krishna, is the self-application of the
\nsoul by <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 77<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n which it enters into the Brahmic condition: \u201cthat of the Sankhyas by the
\nYoga of knowledge, that of the Yogins by the Yoga of works.\u201d This identification
\nof Sankhya with Jnanayoga and of Yoga with the way of works is interesting; for
\nit shows that quite a different order of ideas prevailed at that time from those
\nwe now possess as the result of the great Vedantic development of Indian
\nthought, subsequent evidently to the composition of the Gita, by which the other
\nVedic philosophies fell into desuetude as practical methods of liberation. To
\njustify the language of the Gita we must suppose that at that time it was the
\nSankhya method which was very commonly\u00b9 <\/span>
\nadopted by those who followed the path of knowledge. Subsequently, with the
\nspread of Buddhism, the Sankhya method of knowledge must have been much
\novershadowed by the Buddhistic. Buddhism, like the Sankhya non-Theistic and
\nanti-Monistic, laid stress on the impermanence of the results of the cosmic
\nenergy, which it presented not as Prakriti but as Karma because the Buddhists
\nadmitted neither the Vedantic Brahman nor the inactive Soul of the Sankhyas, and
\nit made the recognition of this impermanence by the discriminating mind its
\nmeans of liberation. When the reaction against Buddhism arrived, it took up not
\nthe old Sankhya notion, but the Vedantic form popularised by Shankara who
\nreplaced the Buddhistic impermanence by the cognate Vedantic idea of illusion,
\nMaya, and the Buddhistic idea of Non-Being, indefinable Nirvana, a negative
\nAbsolute, by the opposite and yet cognate Vedantic idea of the indefinable
\nBeing, Brahman, an ineffably positive Absolute in which all feature and action
\nand energy cease because in That they never really existed and are mere
\nillusions of the mind. It is the method of Shankara based upon these concepts of
\nhis philosophy, it is the renunciation of life as an<\/p>\n

\nillusion of which we ordinarily think when we speak now of the Yoga of
\nknowledge. But in the time of the Gita Maya was evidently not yet quite the
\nmaster word of the Vedantic philosophy, nor had it, at least with any decisive
\nclearness, the connotation which Shankara brought out of it with such a luminous
\nforce and distinctness; for in the Gita there is little talk <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>The systems of the Puranas and
\nTantras are full of the ideas of the Sankhya, though subordinated to the
\nVedantic idea and mingled with many others.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 78<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n of Maya and much of Prakriti and, even, the former word is used as little
\nmore than an equivalent of the latter but only in its inferior status; it is the
\nlower Prakriti of the three gunas, traigunyamayī māyā<\/i>. Prakriti, not
\nillusive Maya, is in the teaching of the Gita the effective cause of cosmic
\nexistence. <\/p>\n

\nStill, whatever the precise distinctions of their metaphysical ideas, the
\npractical difference between the Sankhya and Yoga as developed by the Gita is
\nthe same as that which now exists between the Vedantic Yogas of knowledge and of
\nworks, and the practical results of the difference are also the same. The
\nSankhya proceeded like the Vedantic Yoga of knowledge by the Buddhi, by the
\ndiscriminating intelligence; it arrived by reflective thought, vicāra<\/i>, at right discrimination, viveka<\/i>, of the true nature of the soul and of the imposition on it
\nof the works of Prakriti through attachment and 
\n<\/span>identification, just as the Vedantic method arrives by the same means at
\nthe right discrimination of the true nature of the Self and of the imposition on
\nit of cosmic appearances by mental illusion which leads to egoistic
\nidentification and attachment. In the Vedantic method Maya ceases for the soul
\nby its return to its true and eternal status as the one Self, the Brahman, and
\nthe cosmic action disappears; in the Sankhya method the working of the Gunas
\nfalls to rest by the return of the soul to its true and eternal status as the
\ninactive Purusha and the cosmic action ends. The Brahman of the Mayavadins is
\nsilent, immutable and inactive; so too is the Purusha of the Sankhya; therefore
\nfor both ascetic renunciation of life and works is a necessary means of
\nliberation. But for the Yoga of the Gita, as for the Vedantic Yoga of works,
\naction is not only a preparation but itself the means of liberation; and it is
\nthe justice of this view which the Gita seeks to bring out with such an
\nunceasing force and insistence, \u2013 an insistence, unfortunately, which could not
\nprevail in India against the tremendous tide of Buddhism,\u00b9
\n<\/span>was lost afterwards in the intensity of ascetic illusionism and the
\nfervour of world-shunning saints and <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>At the same time the Gita seems
\nto have largely influenced Mahayanist Buddhism and texts are taken bodily from
\nit into the Buddhist Scriptures. It may therefore have helped largely to turn
\nBuddhism, originally a school of quietistic and illuminated ascetics, into that
\nreligion of meditative devotion and compassionate action which has so powerfully
\ninfluenced Asiatic culture.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 79<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 devotees
\nand is only now beginning to exercise its real and salutary influence on the
\nIndian mind. Renunciation is indispensable, but the true renunciation is the
\ninner rejection of desire and egoism; without that the outer physical abandoning
\nof works is a thing unreal and ineffective, with it it ceases even to be
\nnecessary, although it is not forbidden. Knowledge is essential, there is no
\nhigher   <\/span>force for liberation, but works
\nwith knowledge are also needed; by the union of knowledge and works the soul
\ndwells entirely in the Brahmic status not only in repose and inactive calm, but
\nin the very midst and stress and violence of action. Devotion is all-important,
\nbut works with devotion are also important; by the union of knowledge, devotion
\nand works the soul is taken up into the highest status of the Ishwara to dwell
\nthere in the Purushottama who is master at once of the eternal spiritual calm
\nand the eternal cosmic activity. This is the synthesis of the Gita. <\/p>\n

\nBut, apart from the distinction between the Sankhya way of knowledge and the
\nYoga way of works, there was another and similar opposition in the Vedanta
\nitself, and this also the Gita has to deal with, to correct and to fuse into its
\nlarge restatement of the Aryan spiritual culture. This was the distinction
\nbetween Karmakanda and Jnanakanda, between the original thought that led to the
\nphilosophy of the Purva Mimansa, the Vedavada, and that which led to the
\nphilosophy of the Uttara Mimansa,\u00b9 <\/span>
\nthe Brahmavada, between those who dwelt in the tradition of the Vedic hymns and
\nthe Vedic sacrifice and those who put these aside as a lower knowledge and laid
\nstress on the lofty metaphysical knowledge which emerges from the Upanishads.
\nFor the pragmatic mind of the Vedavadins the Aryan religion of the Rishis meant
\nthe strict performance of the Vedic sacrifices and the use of the sacred Vedic
\nmantras in order to possess all human desires in this world, wealth, progeny,
\nvictory, every kind of good fortune, and the joys of immortality in Paradise
\nbeyond. For the idealism of the Brahmavadins this was only a preliminary
\npreparation and the real object of man, true purusārtha<\/i>, began with<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>Jaimini’s idea of liberation is
\nthe eternal Brahmaloka in which the soul that has come to know Brahman still
\npossesses a divine body and divine enjoyments. For the Gita the Brahmaloka is
\nnot liberation; the soul must pass beyond to the supracosmic status.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page 80<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n his turning to the knowledge of the Brahman which would give him the true
\nimmortality of an ineffable spiritual bliss far beyond the lower joys of this
\nworld or of any inferior heaven. Whatever may have been the true and original
\nsense of the Veda, this was the distinction which had long established itself
\nand with which therefore the Gita has to deal. <\/p>\n

\nAlmost the first word of the synthesis of works and knowledge is a strong,
\nalmost a violent censure and repudiation of the Vedavada, \u201cthis flowery word
\nwhich they declare who have not clear discernment, devoted to the creed of the
\nVeda, whose creed is that there is nothing else, souls of desire, seekers of
\nParadise, \u2013 it gives the fruits of the works of birth, it is multifarious with
\nspecialities of rites, it is directed to enjoyment and lordship as its goal.\u201d
\nThe Gita even seems to go on to attack the Veda itself which, though it has been
\npractically cast aside, is still to Indian sentiment intangible, inviolable, the
\nsacred origin and authority for all its philosophy and religion. \u201cThe action of
\nthe three Gunas is the subject matter of the Veda; but do thou become free from
\nthe triple Guna, O Arjuna.\u201d The Vedas in the widest terms, \u201call the Vedas\u201d, \u2013
\nwhich might well include the Upanishads also and seems to include them, for the
\ngeneral term Sruti<\/i> is used later on, \u2013
\nare declared to be unnecessary for the man who knows. \u201cAs much use as there is
\nin a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas
\nfor the Brahmin who has the knowledge.\u201d Nay, the Scriptures are even a
\nstumbling-block; for the letter of the Word \u2013 perhaps because of its conflict of
\ntexts and its various and mutually dissentient interpretations \u2013 bewilders the
\nunderstanding, which can only find certainty and concentration by the light
\nwithin. \u201cWhen thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whorl of delusion, then
\nshalt thou become indifferent to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to
\nhear, gantāsi nirvedam śrotavyasya
\nśrutasya ca<\/i>. When thy intelligence which is bewildered by the Sruti,
\nśrutivipratipann<\/i>ā, shall stand unmoving and stable in Samadhi, then shalt
\nthou attain to Yoga.\u201d So offensive is all this to conventional religious
\nsentiment that attempts are naturally made by the convenient and indispensable
\nhuman faculty of text-twisting to put a different sense on some of these verses,
\nbut the meaning is <\/p>\n

\nPage 81<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

plain
\nand hangs together from beginning to end. It is confirmed and emphasised by a
\nsubsequent passage in which the knowledge of the knower is described as passing
\nbeyond the range of Veda and Upanishad,
\nśabdabrahmātivartate<\/i>.\n<\/p>\n

\nLet us see, however, what all this means; for we may be sure that a synthetic
\nand catholic system like the Gita’s will not treat such important parts of the
\nAryan culture in a spirit of mere negation and repudiation. The Gita has to
\nsynthetise the Yoga doctrine of liberation by works and the Sankhya doctrine of
\nliberation by knowledge; it has to fuse
\nkarma<\/i>
\n<\/a>with j\u00f1āna<\/i>. It has at the same
\ntime to synthetise the Purusha and Prakriti idea common to Sankhya and Yoga with
\nthe Brahmavada of the current Vedanta in which the Purusha, Deva, Ishwara, \u2013
\nsupreme Soul, God, Lord, \u2013 of the Upanishads all became merged in the one
\nall-swallowing concept of the immutable Brahman; and it has to bring out again
\nfrom its overshadowing by that concept but not with any denial of it the Yoga
\nidea of the Lord or Ishwara. It has too its own luminous thought to add, the
\ncrown of its synthetic system, the doctrine of the Purushottama and of the
\ntriple Purusha for which, though the idea is there, no precise and indisputable
\nauthority can be easily found in the Upanishads and which seems indeed at first
\nsight to be in contradiction with that text of the Shruti where only two
\nPurushas are recognised. Moreover, in synthetising works and knowledge it has to
\ntake account not only of the opposition of Yoga and Sankhya, but of the
\nopposition of works to knowledge in Vedanta itself, where the connotation of the
\ntwo words and therefore their point of conflict is not quite the same as the
\npoint of the Sankhya-Yoga opposition. It is not surprising at all, one may
\nobserve in passing, that with the conflict of so many philosophical schools all
\nfounding themselves on the texts of the Veda and Upanishads, the Gita should
\ndescribe the understanding as being perplexed and confused, led in different
\ndirections by the Sruti, śrutivipratipannā<\/i>.
\nWhat battles are even now delivered by Indian pundits and metaphysicians over
\nthe meaning of the ancient texts and to what different conclusions they lead!
\nThe understanding may well get disgusted and indifferent, gantāsi<\/i> nirvedam<\/i>, refuse
\nto hear any more texts new or old,
\nśrotavyasya śrutasya ca,<\/i> <\/p>\n

\nPage 82<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 and
\ngo into itself to discover the truth in the light of a deeper and inner and
\ndirect experience. <\/p>\n

\nIn the first six chapters the Gita lays a large foundation for its synthesis of
\nworks and knowledge, its synthesis of Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta. But first it
\nfinds that karma<\/i>, works, has a particular sense in
\nthe language of the Vedantins; it means the Vedic sacrifices and ceremonies or
\nat most that and the ordering of life according to the Grihyasutras in which
\nthese rites are the most important part, the religious kernel of the life. By
\nworks the Vedantins understood these religious works, the sacrificial system,
\nthe yaj\u00f1a<\/i>, full of a careful order, vidhi<\/i>, of exact and complicated rites, kriyāviśesa-bahulām<\/i>. But in Yoga works
\nhad a much wider significance. The Gita insists on this wider significance; in
\nour conception of spiritual activity all works have to be included,
\nsarvakarmāni. At the same time it does not, like Buddhism, reject the idea of
\nthe sacrifice, it prefers to uplift and enlarge it. Yes, it says in effect, not
\nonly is sacrifice, yaj\u00f1a<\/i>, the most important part of life, but all life, all works
\nshould be regarded as sacrifice, are yaj\u00f1a, though by the ignorant they are
\nperformed without the higher knowledge and by the most ignorant not in the true
\norder, avidhipūrvakam<\/i>. Sacrifice is the very
\ncondition of life; with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Father of
\ncreatures created the peoples. But the sacrifices of the Vedavadins are
\nofferings of desire directed towards material rewards, desire eager for the
\nresult of works, desire looking to a larger enjoyment in Paradise
\nas immortality and highest salvation. This the system of the Gita cannot admit;
\nfor that in its very inception starts with the renunciation of desire, with its
\nrejection and destruction as the enemy of the soul. The Gita does not deny the
\nvalidity even of the Vedic sacrificial works; it admits them, it admits that by
\nthese means one may get enjoyment here and Paradise beyond; it is I myself, says
\nthe divine Teacher, who accept these sacrifices and to whom they are offered, I
\nwho give these fruits in the form of the gods since so men choose to approach
\nme. But this is not the true road, nor is the enjoyment of Paradise
\nthe liberation and fulfillment which man has to seek. It is the ignorant who
\nworship the gods, not knowing whom they are worshipping ignorantly in these
\ndivine forms; <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 83<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 for
\nthey are worshipping, though in ignorance, the One, the Lord, the only Deva, and
\nit is he who accepts their offering. To that Lord must the sacrifice be offered,
\nthe true sacrifice of all the life’s energies and activities, with devotion,
\nwithout desire, for His sake and for the welfare of the peoples. It is because
\nthe Vedavada obscures this truth and with its tangle of ritual ties man down to
\nthe action of the three gunas that it has to be so severely censured and put
\nroughly aside; but its central idea is not destroyed; transfigured and uplifted,
\nit is turned into a most important part of the true spiritual experience and of
\nthe method of liberation. <\/p>\n

\nThe Vedantic idea of knowledge does not present the same difficulties. The Gita
\ntakes it over at once and completely and throughout the six chapters quietly
\nsubstitutes the still immutable Brahman of the Vedantins, the One without a
\nsecond immanent in all cosmos, for the still immutable but multiple Purusha of
\nthe Sankhyas. It accepts throughout these chapters knowledge and realisation of
\nthe Brahman as the most important, the indispensable means of liberation, even
\nwhile it insists on desireless works as an essential part of knowledge. It
\naccepts equally Nirvana of the ego in the infinite equality of the immutable,
\nimpersonal Brahman as essential to liberation; it practically identifies this
\nextinction with the Sankhya return of the inactive immutable Purusha upon itself
\nwhen it emerges out of identification with the actions of Prakriti; it combines
\nand fuses the language of the Vedanta with the language of the Sankhya, as had
\nalready indeed been done by certain of the Upanishads.\u00b9 <\/span>But still there is a defect in the
\nVedantic position which has to be overcome. We may, perhaps, conjecture that at
\nthis time the Vedanta had not yet redeveloped the later theistic tendencies
\nwhich in the Upanishads are already present as an element, but not so prominent
\nas in the Vaishnava philosophies of the later Vedantins where they become indeed
\nnot only prominent but paramount. We may take it that the orthodox Vedanta was,
\nat any rate in its main tendencies, pantheistic at the basis, monistic at the
\nsummit.\u00b2<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>Especially the Swetaswatara.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b2<\/font><\/span>The pantheistic formula is that
\nGod and the All are one, the monistic adds that God or Brahman alone exists and
\nthe cosmos is only an illusory appearance or else a real but partial
\nmanifestation.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 84<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

            <\/span>
\nIt knew of the Brahman, one without a second; it knew of the Gods, Vishnu,
\nShiva, Brahma and the rest, who all resolve themselves into the Brahman; but the
\none supreme Brahman as the one Ishwara, Purusha, Deva \u2013 words often applied to
\nit in the Upanishads and justifying to that extent, yet passing beyond the
\nSankhya and the theistic conceptions \u2013 was an idea that had fallen from its
\npride of place;\u00b9 <\/span>the names could only be applied in
\na strictly logical Brahmavada to subordinate or inferior phases of the
\nBrahman-idea. The Gita proposes not only to restore the original equality of
\nthese names and therefore of the conceptions they indicate, but to go a step
\nfarther. The Brahman in its supreme and not in any lower aspect has to be
\npresented as the Purusha with the lower Prakriti for its Maya, so to synthetise
\nthoroughly Vedanta and Sankhya, and as Ishwara, so to synthetise thoroughly both
\nwith Yoga; but the Gita is going to represent the Ishwara, the Purushottama, as
\nhigher even than the still and immutable Brahman, and the loss of ego in the
\nimpersonal comes in at the beginning as only a great initial and necessary step
\ntowards union with the Purushottama. For the Purushottama is the supreme
\nBrahman. It therefore passes boldly beyond the Veda  <\/span>and the Upanishads as they were taught by
\ntheir best authorised exponents and affirms a teaching of its own which it has
\ndeveloped from them, but which may not be capable of being fitted in within the
\nfour corners of their meaning as ordinarily interpreted by the Vedantins.\u00b2 <\/span>In fact without this free and
\nsynthetic dealing with the letter of the Scripture a work of large synthesis in
\nthe then state of conflict between numerous schools and with the current methods
\nof Vedic exegesis would have been impossible. <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita in later chapters speaks highly of the Veda and the Upanishads. They
\nare divine Scriptures, they are the Word. The Lord himself is the knower of Veda
\nand the author of<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>This is a little doubtful, but
\nwe may say at least that there was a strong tendency in that direction of which
\nShankara’s philosophy was the last culmination.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b2<\/font><\/span>In reality the idea of the
\nPurushottama is already announced in the Upanishads, though in a more scattered
\nfashion than in the Gita and, as in the Gita, the Supreme Brahman or Supreme
\nPurusha is constantly described as containing in himself the opposition of the
\nBrahman with qualities and without qualities, nirguno guni<\/i>. He is not one of these things to the exclusion of
\nthe other which seems to our intellect to be its contrary.<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage 85<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 Vedanta, vedavid<\/i> vedāntakrt<\/i>; the
\nLord is the one object of knowledge in all the Vedas, sarvair vedair aham eva vedyah<\/i>, a language which implies that the
\nword Veda means the book of knowledge and that these Scriptures deserve their
\nappellation. The Purushottama from his high supremacy above the Immutable and
\nthe mutable has extended himself in the world and in the Veda. Still the letter
\nof the Scripture binds and confuses, as the apostle of Christianity warned his
\ndisciples when he said that the letter killeth and it is the spirit that saves;
\nand there is a point beyond which the utility of the Scripture itself ceases.
\nThe real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; \u201cI am seated in the heart
\nof every man and from me is knowledge,\u201d says the Gita; the Scripture is only a
\nverbal form<\/p>\n

of
\nthat inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is
\nśabdabrahma<\/i>: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the
\nsecret place where is the seat of the truth,
\nsadanād rtasya, guhāyām<\/i>. That origin is its sanction; but still the
\ninfinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that
\nit alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins
\nsaid of the Veda, nānyad astīti vāāāadinah<\/i>.
\nThis is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures
\nof the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and
\nthe books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra
\nand the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars,
\nstill you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your
\nintellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That
\nis the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic
\nreligionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind
\nand God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth
\nwhich is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from
\nthe Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda. <\/p>\n

\n Page 86<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NINE  Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta   THE whole object of the first six chapters of the Gita is to synthetise in a large frame of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","wpcat-31-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}