The World View Of The Gita

The Gita is over 2,000 years old. There is perhaps none other of the Hindu scriptures which, while it emphasizes the highest vision of Hindu philosophy, is yet so able to relate it to the everyday life of the Hindu. The Gita is not merely for ascetics, though the ascetics know no more than the Gita can tell of God. It is not merely for the plain man who is concerned with the practical way of life, though it gives him as definite a rule of life as any man may wish. The strength of the Gita is in its balance of wisdom and work, of self-realization and the loss of one's self in the Supreme Spirit. A work so comprehensive as the Gita was bound to base its teaching on a vision of the world as wide as it was possible for men to take when the Gita was written. I am here concerned in considering what was the world as the Author of the Gita saw it and whether that world view needs to be, and if so how, recast as a result of what men have learnt in the last 2,000 years.

Most of us view the world as our present-day teachers, learned in the learning of European science, bid us do. We look with tolerant understanding from our post-Copernican heights to men who, till but three centuries ago, did not know that the Earth moved round the Sun. Aryabhatta in the 5th century A.D. did go so far as to say that the Earth moved round an axis rather than that the whole world of stars moved daily round the Earth, but he was pooh-poohed even as the same idea was scorned in Europe. It is substantially true to say that, till Copernicus, the Earth was deemed to be the centre of a world which revolved daily round it. The Gita did not know Astronomy as post-Copernican men knew. The Gita is in that sense pre-Copernican.

The science we learn not only tells us of the configuration and movements of the heavenly bodies, it also carries out an analysis of mathematical structure which is Cartesian and tells us that the world is 3 dimensional, that it is of substance matter residing in space, moving in time.. Whether mind has a primary reality or is but a secondary quality is not of importance to science. Till recently, the space, in which matter is, has been considered to be absolute; the time, in which matter moves, has also been considered to be absolute. In the last two decades the idea has risen that space is not absolute, that time is not absolute, but a compound of the two which is not 3 but 4 dimensional is absolute. Under the world-view of Newton as supported by Descartes, the contributions of science to God are an absolute space and an absolute time. Under the world-view of Einstein, the contribution of science to God is an absolute space- time. On all views, God, if He be, is absolute. Space and time according to Newton, space-time alone according to Einstein, are somehow characteristics of God; they are part of His being.

The Gita is not only pre-Copernican, it is also pre-Cartesian in as much as it does not analyse the world on the simple Cartesian model which has furnished the framework for the enormous development in breadth and depth of scientific knowledge.

So much for the Gita as viewed from the ground of our modern knowledge of the world. Let me now analyse the vision of the world which the Gita had.

The Gita teaches men a three-fold path–of gnana–knowledge, of karma–action, and of Bhakti–devotion. This three-fold path is in a universe where there are three categories of existence–prakriti, purushas and Purushottama. The teaching of the Gita is purported to be given by the Purushottama for the release of purushas from the grip of prakriti. We are told that while prakriti holds purushas in its control, purushas are subjected to the delusion of the pairs of opposites and to the power of the three Gunas–Sattva, Rajas and Thamas. Each purusha suffers from a mind–manas–which is restless, hard to curb. Through the mind, it has contacts with matter which come and go; it undergoes reincarnation. The path of knowledge taught by the Gita is the path of Samkhya. Under the Samkhya view, so long "as mind and purusha are associated with each other, the sufferings (of purusha) will continue. Chitta (mind) must be dissociated from purusha." The path of action taught by the Gita is the path of Yoga. Mind has to be curbed by practice and dispassion. The Gita teaches that action without desire for the fruits of action is preferable to renunciation of action. He who endures the force born of desire and passion is harmonized. When mind free from the force of desire finds harmony with matter, purusha ceases to suffer from the grip of prakriti. Having, through knowledge and desireless action, been freed from mind, what else has purusha to do? It is to realise its true nature by losing its self in the Purushottama through devotion to Him. The true nature of purusha is therefore the nature of Purushottama. So then, we have on the one hand prakriti consisting not only of matter but also of mind, and on the other purushas who, through the grip of mind which is alien to the nature of purusha, are unable to realize their true nature, namely, the nature of Purushottama. Prakriti is spoken of as one unmanifested from which all manifested beings stream forth at the beginning of a world age. Purushottama of whom purushas are but parts is another unmanifested. What is the nature of Purushottama? In the tenth discourse, Sri Krishna gives illustrations of what Purushottama is. He is time, space, matter, motion, life, mind, knowledge, deities, all qualities including good and evil, the seed and container of all things. Elsewhere He tells us, "He is minuter than the minute, of form unimaginable"¹ and that the whole universe is "one fragment of Himself."² Again He says that, "all beings are rooted in Him but He is not rooted in them" and that "as air is rooted in the Ether (Akasa), so all beings rest rooted in Him". He is being and non-being. Thus prakriti is derived from Purushottama and yet it is different from Him. How are we to understand this Being who is also non-Being, who contains all space but is minuter than the minutest, who contains time and is yet timeless, who is all the manifestations of matter and mind and yet is manifested? Therefore the Gita tells us that the Supreme Spirit is "of form unimagmable". Vedanta tells us that the One Spirit is Neti, Neti–not this, not this. Sunyavada Buddhism tells us that beyond this, there is Nothing.

These are not the God and His Heaven that religions sprung up elsewhere than in India teach, where God is the Father of humanity and Heaven and Hell are located in a pre-Copernican space. Such a Heaven and Hell have been crowded out of space by Copernicus. It is a sign of the profound truth of the Gita that, while it too was pre-Copernican, it is not opposed to what Copernicus discovered. Purushottama of the Gita reigns as supreme in the heart of things and is the container of all, whether the Earth moves round the Sun or the Sun moves round the Earth, whether in the whole of space there is no Heaven or Hell which is not also to be found on Earth, or whether the Earth has a Heaven above and a Hell below. The Gita therefore–and Hindu philosophy in general–have studied Reality from a direction where Copernicus had no place. He is to be found on the other side of Reality from which we have approached.

But Reality with all its sides is one. Synthesis is as much a part of it as analysis. The synthesis of Vedanta needs to be reinforced by the analysis of Samkhya. The Samkhya tells us that mind is a part of prakriti and not of purusha. Prakriti is thus not matter as the word is, I think, mistakenly translated, but matter-mind. Samkhya regards mind as a substance. Matter-mind is thus a substance of more complex structure than matter which, on the Cartesian analysis, is 3 dimensional. Has Cartesian analysis led us to any structure which is more complex than 3 dimensional and yet contains the 3 dimensional as a part of it? That is just what has happened through the Relativity theory of Einstein. That theory has led to a 4 dimensional space-time being regarded as the absolute form of the world. Einsteinians do not recognize mind as part of it, but space-time has been constructed in order to eliminate the relation to the observer's individuality and it is not unreasonable to hold that mind enters the structure of space-time.

I present it as a hypothesis that prakriti which the Gita and Hindu philosophy in general speak of is a 4th dimensional world of matter-mind which also includes space-time, and that in that world there are three associated qualities each of which is opposed to the other two, in place of the two qualities of positive and negative in a 3 dimensional world. This hypothesis (of which I believe that the 2nd part can be derived from the first) is an extension of the results of Samkhya analysis. On the Samkhya view, prakriti is matter-mind. All manifestations from it are made up of three real elements–Sattva, Rajas and Thamas–as against all matter being made up of two opposite elements, positive and negative electricity. Sattva is opposed both to Rajas and Thamas. So also Rajas and Thamas are opposed to the remaining two respectively. Thus, if good and evil are the associated opposites in a world of matter, good, evil and what is both and neither are the three associated opposites in matter-mind. This involves a synthesis of opposites.

Prakriti and purusha as object and subject, as field and knower of the field, are both the same and yet different. In so far as they are the same, Purushottama who comprehends all purushas is also prakriti and therefore He is time, space, matter, mind, knowledge, all purushas including the ‘shining’ category of Devas. He is all that is illustrated in the tenth discourse and yet because He is different from prakriti, He transcends prakriti. No one–not even Einstein–has yet satisfactorily imagined the fourth dimensional world. Therefore Purushottama even in His lower ‘unmanifested’ form may be described as unimaginable. The three dimensional entities of heavenly bodies and all living things are "threaded on Him as rows of pearls on a string" ³ "All beings are rooted in Him but He is not rooted in them." ⁴ As "air is rooted in the Ether, so all beings rest rooted in Him". The reality of this three dimensional world that we see tends to be nil compared with the reality of the fourth dimensional world of which it is a section and therefore may be described as Maya, illusion. It is as if a volume made different patterns on the surface of water in which it floats. The patterns are unreal compared with the reality of the volume. They are impermanent.

I suggest to gentlemen who are learned in Hindu philosophy that they may take the hypothesis that I have presented as a working hypothesis and see if it is not substantially consistent with the world view of the Gita and generally of Hindu philosophy.

It is an irony of fate that, as observed from Das Gupta's History of Indian Philosophy, any important growth of Indian philosophy practically stopped at the middle of the 17th century,–that is to say, just when Newton was born. Yet Newton heralded the new era of human knowledge which is the era of Natura1 Science. Our philosophy therefore has yet not had the benefit of what men have achieved in knowledge and experience in the last 300 years. Leadership in thought and action in India has largely passed over from Sanskritists to scientists, and considering the powerful ing science has in the world which it could not have if it were not within its limits true, Sanskritic learning has to find a rapprochement with science. I have suggested to you a working hypothesis on which the rapprochement can be made. On this idea, how is the world view of the Gita to be re-presented?

The Universe consists of purushas coming from Purushottama, and functioning in a fourth dimensional world of prakriti as matter-mind. A purusha attaches itself to a mind part of prakriti and is then born in the world of matter. Salvation of the purusha is its release from the mind and this release comes through knowledge and desire less action and the loss of self in the Supreme Spirit through devotion. Hindus have studied prakriti qualitatively. If prakriti is a fourth dimensional world, its quantitative study remains to be achieved in the future, so that a passage may be made from Samkhya to physics.

Need the world be to us the same mystery as it was 2,000 years ago? Are we not entitled after two millennia of thought and action to know the reality a little more than we did? May not the mystery which hid the reality from us be due to a lack of mechanism of expression, which mechanism has, been supplied to us since through European science? Let us think of these matters with reverence and also with the confidence that is our responsibility.⁵

1 VIII (9)

2 IX (42)

3 VII (7)

4 IX (4)

5 The above is the substance of a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Samskrita Academy, Madras, in connection with the Gita Day celebrations.