Skip to main content

Jnana in Gita

Knowledge, or wisdom rather, is a means of reaching the divine, according to the Gita. It is called Jnana Yoga. The previous two posts of this blog discussed Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga.

The wisdom that the Gita advocates is of the spiritual kind. It is essentially the realisation of the oneness of all reality and hence the divinity of all reality. You are divine. So is the guy next to you. So too are the flowers in your garden, the bees that come to the flowers, the water that sustains your plants, the insects, the stones... What greater religion can there be than the one which bathes you in an ocean of divinity, the same ocean in which all other creatures and everything else stand bathed?

Most humans don't reach such a stage of spirituality, however. We are driven by three gunas (attributes), Krishna tells Arjuna. These gunas control our actions.

Tamas or delusion is a predominant guna. It is a kind of delusion. It's a kind of darkness that veils the reality preventing you from seeing clearly. Your perception lacks logic and understanding. Laziness, fear, and such factors may play a certain role too in the production of that dark veil. A lot of common people live behind this veil of Tamas. They don't want to see any better too. They are happy to follow the herd, to swim with the current. Give them a slogan and they will shout it gladly for you as long as you can keep giving them some lollipops. They will rally around the leader without ever bothering to find out whether the leader is a pied piper. Give them lollipops and take their souls in return. The souls aren't worth much, and you know it. That doesn't matter, what will you do with souls? You need votes only.

Rajas is the second guna. Passion, that's what rajas is. The worldly successful people are all driven by rajas. Your pied piper and his corporate cronies are all driven by rajas which is characterised by ambition, greed, lust, arrogance, power, vanity, anger...

People driven by the guna of rajas may pretend to be spiritual and install the idol of their god in a palatial temple but their heart will continue to cling to the sceptre they have ensconced in their own palace. Such people don't hesitate even to kill fellow beings in the name of their god.

Passions don't carry you to god, however. Divinity is a different affair altogether.

Satva, the third guna, will take you to the divine milieu. Satva is harmony, balance. It is characterised by integrity. Satviks create harmony wherever they are, not division. The only real spirituality belongs to them. Jnana Yoga is their prerogative.

Jnana (gyan, as some dialects have it) or wisdom is the opening of an inner eye. You see a different reality once that eye opens. There is more light, a different kind of light. It's cool, that light is.

Let me end my personal reflections on the Gita with a quote from the divine song itself, 18.52-53, as translated and explained by Vishwanath Iyer.






Comments

  1. Liz A.March 1, 2024 at 2:38 AM

    It's like religion is philosophy in a way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 1, 2024 at 7:08 AM

      Religion as philosophy would make a lot of sense to intelligent people.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...
34 comments
Read more