An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra - 6.2.- Swami Krishnananda.

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Chinmaya Mission  :

Makar Sankranti Gayatri Havan was held in Chinmaya Sadhana Ashram in Vadodara. It was organised by global members from the UK, Kenya and Pune. They got the chance to perform Samishti Gayatri Havan. It was a wonderful day to receive blessings of Lord Suryanarayana.

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Monday, January 23, 2023. 06:00. 

Chapter 6: The Controversy Over Action and Knowledge-2.

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The perceiving and cognising consciousness is adhyatma and the object that is perceived is adhibhuta – the world. How does perception take place? It is effected by the action of an intermediary principle which is the transcendent consciousness known as adhidaiva. This adhidaiva is what you call 'god' and there are endless gods as there can be endless varieties of the relationship between a subject and an object.

People sometimes ask 'Why are there so many gods?' They are not so many gods as crude village folk may think; it is not like that. They are necessary interlinking processes of consciousness in every act of perception. If there are infinite types of perception of objects in the universe, there are infinite gods also, as there can be any number of triangles whose apex is like the god and the two points of the base are the subject and the object.

The varieties of perception are known to everybody. We do not perceive things in the world in a uniform manner, and added to this, there is another complication. There are degrees of the ascent of perception. We are now in the lowest and crudest form of the perceptional process of the physical world. We know only the physical world and nothing below or nothing above. But there are seven planes of existence mentioned in the Puranas and epics – Bhu-loka, Bhuvar-loka, Suvar-loka, Mahar-loka, Jana-loka, Tapo-loka, Satya-loka. These are all higher degrees of Reality, where perception continues in a more and more ethereal form reducing the distance between the subject and the object until the subject merges with the object in Brahma-Loka.

But until that state is reached, the perceptual process continues and this intermediary principle also continues to act and there are so many varieties of perception in varieties of levels of being. So, it looks as if there are endless gods.

However, the point made out by Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is that merely offering objectively some sacred stuff in the holy fire will not satisfy the gods. The gods will have to be invoked in the middle of the performance. 'I have to be grateful to the gods who are making it possible for me to perceive that you are sitting here.' Gratitude to gods is the greatest sacrifice. We cannot hear, we cannot sense anything, we cannot breathe, we cannot eat, we cannot even exist as individuals unless the gods co-operate with us.

The gods are the cosmic counterparts of individual functions. Meaningless chanting of some slokas and throwing some ghee into the fire does not mean sacrifice, according to Purva Mimamsa or even the Bhagavad Gita. The performer of the yajna should be conscious of the divinity which is being invoked in the offering. The offering physically in the form of charu, ghee etc., is symbolic of a prayer offered to the divinity which is the presiding principle over the mantras of the Veda. With this we can reach celestial freedom is the contention of the Purva Mimamsa.

But the great commentator Sankaracharya, during his exposition of the Brahma Sutra, while touching upon this subject, cautions us. Action can bind you and liberate you, also. The binding action is that which you do for the sake of somebody else, or one's own personal benefit.

People do not like work! 'Why should I do, unnecessarily, drudging for the sake of somebody?' That feeling of dislike for the performance of any kind of work which wrongly is interpreted as the work for somebody else is binding in its nature. But action is not always for the sake of other people. Actually, it is never for the other people because there are no other people in the world. This subject also we have been touching upon earlier on different occasions.

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To be continued

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