The greatness of the “knowledge” contained in the chapter is not so much in its philosophical implications as in the benefit which is available to a seeker who diligently makes use of it. He who has realised correctly the deep significances in this chapter, can reach the State-of-Perfection; he shall “ATTAIN TO MY BEING” says the Lord.
Whenever Krishna uses the first person singular ‘I’ in the Geeta he indicated the State of Spiritual Perfection. The theme of the chapter, as we have already indicated, is a thorough study of the play of the gunas that bind us down to the lower plane of matter identifications, and therefore, to the ego-sense. When once we get away from the gunas and totally stop their play in our mental life, we get redeemed from our limited sense of individuality, and instantaneously, we shall experience our Absolute Universal Nature.
The sorrows of the dream — though very true to the dreamer while he dreams — cannot affect him the moment he wakes up. The joys and sorrows belonging to one plane-of-Consciousness cannot stretch their arms to throttle us in another plane-of-Consciousness. A seeker who has, through meditation, mastered his mind and has transcended it, and therefore, has reached beyond the ordinary realms of Consciousness, cannot thereafter have any sense of finitude and the consequent material sorrows, as in his earlier days of Matter identifications. He rediscovers himself to be the Omnipresent Reality, which knows neither Creation nor dissolution, in Its Absolute State.
This is indicated here: NEITHER ARE THEY BORN AT THE TIME OF CREATION — Creation is a trick of the mind and when we are no more expressing through the mind, and therefore, no longer conditioned by it, we cannot have the experience of any “Creation.” When anger conquers my mind, I experience and behave as an angry man; but when anger has receded and my mind is calmed, I can no longer continue to behave as a bad-tempered man. The tricks of the mind consist in projecting a world-of-Creation, thought by thought, and in feeling oneself irredeemably conditioned by one’s own imaginations. As long as one is drowned in the mind, the storms of the bosom must necessarily toss one about. On transcending the mind, we realise the Self and its Infinite Nature, and therefore, there is no Creation; nor shall we feel ourselves as having been born.
NOR ARE THEY DISTURBED AT THE TIME OF DISSOLUTION — The sorrows of destruction are the pangs of death. While dreaming one can go through the sorrows of a dream-death, and yet, if at that time one wakes up, one will at that very moment, laugh at one’s sorrows at the delusory death-pangs suffered in the dream. Having realised the Absolute Nature, thereafter in that State of Infinite Existence, one can no longer experience either the sorrows of death or the troubles of finitude.
But in order to conquer the mind, a seeker must know very clearly the tricks by which the mind generally hoodwinks him. A knowledge of the strategy of our enemies is an essential prerequisite to plan out our attacks successfully.
The stanza is, therefore, right when it declares that a thorough knowledge of the gunas will be helpful to everyone trying to master his own mind and reach the freedom from all its moral agitations and ethical imperfections.
THE FOLLOWING TWO STANZAS EXPLAIN HOW THE UNIVERSE IS EVOLVED BY THE UNION BETWEEN SPIRIT AND MATTER — Spirit enveloped in Matter is the pluralistic expression of Existence in the world. From the inert stone to the greatest Prophet-of-Wisdom, every existence is but the Spirit expressing through Matter-vestures. In an earlier chapter, we have already seen very clearly how the “Knower-of-the-Field” working in the “Field” and identifying himself with it, becomes the individualised “Ego,” extremely sensitive to the sorrows and tragedies, joys, and successes
of its environments.
THE LORD NOW PROCEEDS TO EXPLAIN, IN WHAT WAY THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN THE “KNOWER-OF-THE-FIELD” AND THE “FIELD” TAKES PLACE, AND HOW THE UNION COMES TO BREED OUR ENDLESS SORROWS:
