An Atheist Explores the Bhagavad Gita Part 14: Not Your Standard Dualism (Yog Through Distinguishing The Field And The Knower Of The Field (Kṣhetra Kṣhetrajña Vibhāg Yog))

 Chapter Thirteen: Yog Through Distinguishing The Field And The Knower Of The Field (Kṣhetra Kṣhetrajña Vibhāg Yog)

Not Your Standard Dualism.

 Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bhagavad Gita).

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 more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2XAch2A

For the online Bhagavad Gita that I use, see here https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/

 And now:

 Kṣhetra Kṣhetrajña Vibhāg Yog

“Arjun said, “O Keshav, I wish to understand what are prakṛiti and puruṣh, and what are kṣhetra and kṣhetrajña? I also wish to know what is true knowledge, and what is the goal of this knowledge?”

 The commentary points out that the Bhagavad Gita is divided into three sections of six chapters, that roughly correspond to the three different paths; chapters one through six deal with the path of work, the karm yog, chapters seven through eleven with the path of devotion, the bhakti, and now the last six chapters deal with the path of knowledge, the kshetra. Not that I’d picked up on this structure on my own

 So, Arjun asks for definitions of some more Sanskrit terms, which Krishna elucidates for us. More complex are the ideas of kṣhetra and kṣhetrajña. Kshetra is “the field”, but perhaps more properly could be understood as everything within the material universe. This includes the physical body, but also “the five great elements, the ego, the intellect, the unmanifest primordial matter, the eleven senses (five knowledge senses, five working senses, and mind), and the five objects of the senses”. So it also includes aspects of the mind as well – there’s no mind/body duality within the kshetra.

 Whilst we might think that the “Knower of the Field” would be, say, the mind and senses that detect the material world (as per, say Descartes or some kind of rationalist dualist), not so according to Krishna – “Desire and aversion, happiness and misery, the body, consciousness, and the will—all these comprise the field and its modifications”. The mind and senses are not the kṣhetrajña, the Knower. The kṣhetrajña is the soul, that is part and yet not part of the body, or indeed of the kshetra as a whole.

 But it gets more complicated than that, because just as the kshetra is the entirety of material existence, so the Knower is also Brahman, who “perceives all sense-objects, yet He is devoid of the senses. He is unattached to anything, and yet He is the sustainer of all. Although He is without attributes, yet He is the enjoyer of the three modes of material nature. He exists outside and inside all living beings, those that are moving and not moving. He is subtle, and hence, He is incomprehensible. He is very far, but He is also very near.”

 Brahman is the source of knowledge and understanding, the light that illuminates. And because He pervades everything, He is in everyone providing the Knower of the Field. As Krishna points out, the prakṛiti and puruṣh, individual instances of the physical and the spiritual, are illusions and are all part of the kshetra and kṣhetrajña. So my body is praktiri, an individual example of being, but it is in truth just a part of kshetra, Being as a totality. Likewise although I may think of myself as having an individual soul, the purush, it is in reality merely part of Brahman, the source of kṣhetrajña.

 At least, I think I’ve got that right. It’ll probably be expanded upon in the next few chapters.

 You may be wondering when we get to the bit about “Knowledge”. Well… “Those who perceive with the eyes of knowledge the difference between the body and the knower of the body, and the process of release from material nature, attain the supreme destination”.  But also earlier on we get a wonderful set of verses that claim “Humbleness; freedom from hypocrisy; non-violence; forgiveness; simplicity; service of the Guru; cleanliness of body and mind; steadfastness; and self-control; dispassion toward the objects of the senses; absence of egotism; keeping in mind the evils of birth, disease, old age, and death; non-attachment; absence of clinging to spouse, children, home, and so on; even-mindedness amidst desired and undesired events in life; constant and exclusive devotion toward Me; an inclination for solitary places and an aversion for mundane society; constancy in spiritual knowledge; and philosophical pursuit of the Absolute Truth—all these I declare to be knowledge, and what is contrary to it, I call ignorance.”

 Once again, there is an inherent contradiction within “knowledge”, just as there is within the concept of Brahman, and I quite like that.

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