God and the Universe

By the time we reach the Seventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, we are touching a new realm of being and the whole perspective that was presented before us in the course of the earlier six chapters suddenly changes, as if a curtain has been lifted in the dramatic portrayal of the Gospel. There is an introduction of the soul of the seeker to the empyrean of the Creator, a subject which has not been adequately touched upon during the earlier course of the studies. There has been a particular emphasis laid in the first six chapters upon the individual, the duty of the person, the integration of the psycho-physical complex. There has been an admonition in the earlier chapters to the individual, or man as such, in his capacity as a soul which aspires for the realisation of higher values, so that this task of self-integration gets completed when we reach the theme of the Sixth Chapter wherein we place ourselves in the context of a total preparation of ourselves to leap into the beyond. The individual is suddenly set in tune with the universal in the Seventh Chapter. The great Master tells at the commencement of this section that this aspiration is a great blessing. And very few in this world can have the satisfaction of having received this divine blessing, viz., love of God, and a complete preparation of oneself in the direction of God. It is not that everyone will be fit even to contain the idea of the Absolute in one's mind, let alone have a direct contact with it or an experience of it. Even the entertaining of the notion of the Absolute is a grand achievement. It is a great achievement indeed if anyone of us can satisfactorily contain in our minds the nature or structure of the Supreme Being. That shall be regarded as an attainment in the practice of Yoga. A whole-souled aspiration for God even in its initial stage is superior to all verbal knowledge, intellectual acumen, or scriptural learning.

Very few will be inclined to turn to God. Most people are distracted in the direction of the objects of the senses. People are in search of satisfaction which is empirical, physical and egoistic. The bliss of God is not the concern of the ordinary man, it is impossible even for thinking and understanding. Not many have this endowment by which the mind will agree to turn to God in his reality. But even among those who are truly aspiring for the realisation of God, only some will really succeed in the attempt. It does not mean that everyone who files an application will be chosen, because success in this path of the Spirit is hard to attain in the case of the individual who is lodged in the body and limited to the empirical categories of the mind. With this cautious introduction the Teacher of the Bhagavadgita takes us to a picture of the cosmos which is concisely explained in a few words. The whole universe is constituted of the five Elements and certain phases of the universal consciousness, the Elements being grosser than the latter;- earth, water, fire, air and ether - the Mind, Intellect, Ego. And here the teaching resembles to a large extent the cosmological explanation offered by the Samkhya system. We have touched upon this theme earlier on some occasion. The lowest category of reality that we observe is the earth plane, physical matter, solid substance, gross objects, all which can be grouped under the category of the Mahabhutas, or the five elements. Anything that is perceptible to the senses is regarded as material. The five elements, so-called, are not five different substances as we might have heard it said earlier. These elements are rather five degrees of the density of the cosmic substance. It does not mean that there is a total distinction of one from the other. According to the cosmology of the Samkhya, and also their Vedanta, the effect can be resolved into the cause, so that, ultimately, it can be said safely that space is the container or the bosom of all things.

These physical elements - earth, water, fire, air and ether - therefore, form the sum and substance of the physical universe. But there are subtler realities which are not accessible to the senses of the individual. The higher we go, the more imperceptible does the object become because of the rarefaction of its constituents. The Samkhya tells us that beyond the five elements, subtler than the five elements, are what are called the Tanmatras, the subtle essences of the five elements; something like the electrical constitution of gross objects, though this analogy is not complete; only we cannot explain it in a better manner. The substantiality of the gross objects loses its accepted significance when we view it as an eddy of electrical force, or energy, which is co-extensive with the other parts of the universe, which are also constituted of similar waves of force. Thus, there being only a continuum of energy, we are bordering upon what the Samkhya calls Prakriti. All these details are not in the verses of the Bhagavadgita, but the reference made is certainly to these principles. Above the five gross elements, beyond the Tanmatras or the subtle essences, behind all these, is the Cosmic Thinking Principle. This is something which we cannot conceive and cannot perceive. From the practical point of view, the Cosmic Reality beyond the elements can only be an object of direct realisation and experience, and it can never become a spatio-temporal object. But we can infer the presence of the Cosmic Mind, by logical deduction from facts of present experience. It is certain that the mind conditions the objects in some manner. But it is not proper to say that an individual mind can condition the objects, though it is true that a large contribution is made by the mental structure in the perception of an object, so that it can be said that no object is seen as it is in itself. Yet, at the same time, we cannot be sure that any individual mind is the creator or a total conditioner of the object of perception. There is some sort of a reality in the object, not withstanding the fact that there is a conditioning of the object by the perceiving subject. What sort of subject is it that conditions the object? It is not 'my' mind or 'your' mind, and there seems to tie a Total Mind which extends far beyond the ken of the individual minds, not only in quantity but even in quality - a subject which is outside the scope of our present studies. This is referred to in the verses of the Bhagavadgita when the word "Manah" or the 'Mind' is mentioned in this context. The mind is superior to the physical elements. We would be surprised to hear that the mind is superior to the elements. And a little common sense will tell us that it cannot be 'our' mind that is mentioned here, because nobody can say that our mind is superior to the whole physical cosmos. Naturally, We have to identify this "Mind" with the Cosmic Mind. There is, then, the Buddhi, the Cosmic Intellect, known also as the Mahat in the Samkhya.

There is, again, the 'Ahamkara', the Cosmic Self-Sense. The 'Mahat', the Cosmic Understanding, or Intelligence, is above the 'Ahamkara', according to the Samkhya, and beyond that the indescribable continuum, the 'Avyakta', as it is called, the 'Prakriti' of the Samkhya, beyond all which is the Supreme Resplendence of the Absolute - call it 'Purusha' or by any other name according to the schools of thought. These are, broadly speaking, the constituents of the entire layers of the cosmos. These are the eight forms of Prakriti, according to the Bhagavadgita, though the Samkhya classification differs here in the manner of the gradations and specifications of these principles. Beyond all these forms of Prakriti there is a Higher Element which regulates the operation of these lower elements, which is the Principle of God himself working in a mysterious manner. Though everything is caused by the permutation and combination of these principles mentioned already, they are regulated and operated by the will of a Superior Principle, which, in religious or theological parlance, we call the Power of God; the Shakti of the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, the Energy of the Absolute. Nothing outside this Being can ever be. Everything is subsumed under this Great Reality, so that the Samkhya of the Bhagavadgita overcomes the difficulties of the dualism of the classical Samkhya. The Purusha and the Prakriti of the Samkhya are subsidiary to the Supreme Being of the Bhagavadgita. They are like the Attributes mentioned by Spinoza in his metaphysical theology of the Supreme Substance. They are spiritual categories and not merely qualities in the ordinary empirical sense. This is the All-in-All Being.

The "I-Am-What-I-Am" is God in himself, and not God as he appears to us. He cannot appear to anybody because he is not an object of anybody's cognition or perception. The Bhagavadgita is emphatic that God is all-in-all and he is not limited in any manner whatsoever, by anything outside him, because nothing can ever be outside God. The movement of the soul towards God, therefore, becomes an inexplicable process under the circumstances of this superior definition of God. The idea of movement gets ruled out in the context of the Omnipresence of the Supreme Being, and yet it has to be explained. It does not appear that the movement of the aspiration is in a horizontal manner through space or even in time. It is not a covering of distance as on a road, it is rather an ascent from the lower degrees of concept and being to the higher ones. When we travel from dream to waking, we are not moving on a road by sitting in a vehicle, yet we travel; it is true. The travel is a psychological movement, more properly explicable as an ascent or rising from the lower to the higher than a travel or movement in a particular direction in space.

Chapter XII

GOD AND THE UNIVERSE