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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

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