An Atheist Explores the Bhagavad Gita Part Eight: Not The Parable Of The Sower (Yog through the Realization of Divine Knowledge (Jñāna Vijñāna Yog))
Chapter Seven: Yog through the Realization of Divine Knowledge (Jñāna Vijñāna Yog)
Not The Parable Of The Sower.
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Bhagavad Gita, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For the online Bhagavad Gita that I use, see here https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/
“I am the taste in
water, O son of Kunti, and the radiance of the sun and the moon. I am the
sacred syllable Om in the Vedic mantras; I am the sound in ether, and the ability
in humans.”
Krishna explains something of his nature to Arjun; how he is in all things (with that great verse above, and some others where he claims to be “the pure fragrance of the Earth, and the brilliance in fire. I am the life-force in all beings, and the penance of the ascetics” as well as, interestingly, “sexual activity not conflicting with virtue or scriptural injunctions”.
Later on, Krishna claims that his true nature is eternal, omnipresent and omniscient, but that most people don’t see this because they are confused by the illusions of the three states of material existence – goodness, passion, and ignorance. Later on Krishna talks of his “yogmaya”, his own kind of divine energy that veils his true existence, and perhaps (I’m not clear on this), this is the same as the three material states?
Anyway, there are four kinds of people that can hope to “find” Krishna truly, and these are “the distressed, the seekers after knowledge, the seekers of worldly possessions, and those who are situated in knowledge”. It’s interesting that seeking worldly possessions is seen as a pathway to the divine; normally holding too much to material things is seen as an obstacle to the spiritual. However, we later learn that those more interested in worldly things end up worshipping the “celestial” gods, not realising that they are merely a front for Krishna. They get to go to “celestial abodes”, but “the fruit gained by these people of small understanding is perishable”. So, although (I guess because Krishna is benevolent), these people get what they want, they miss out on the greater rewards.
It’s those who seek Krishna through knowledge that get to see through the yogmaya and “come to know Brahman, the individual self, and the entire field of karmic action”. Yes, we get some more Sanskrit terms. Ready? “Those who know me as the governing principle of the adhibhūta (field of matter) and the adhidaiva (the celestial gods), and as adhiyajña (the Lord all sacrificial performances), such enlightened souls are in full consciousness of me even at the time of death”
We also get the kinds of people that don’t get to recognise Krishna and never will, and these are “those ignorant of knowledge, those who lazily follow their lower nature though capable of knowing me, those with deluded intellect, and those with a demoniac nature”. I felt that there was an element of the Parable of the Sower to this, so I went back to Mark Ch. 4 (actually, I didn’t, I just looked up Parable of the Sower on Wikipedia), and the relevant verses read “The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold”.
It’s different enough that I’m going to go with assuming that these are convergent ideas rather than plagiarism. The “ignorant of knowledge” are kind of the stony ground people, or people that have never heard the word in the first place, the lazy people are kind of thorny ground people while the “deluded” are perhaps the stony ground. There are no “demoniac” people in the Christian version. It’s not a perfect fit, but the general message is that you need to be committed to the path to get the most out of it. Which is also how counselling and therapy work as well, and, really, a lot of other things. You’re not going to get fit if you keep coming up with excuses not to exercise, for example.
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