Commentary on the Panchadasi

by Swami Krishnananda

Ātma-brahma-vicārākhyāṁ śāstrīyaṁ mānasaṁ jagat, buddhe tattve tacca heyam iti śrutyanu śāsanam (44). When we meditate on the relationship between ourselves and God, a function takes place in the mind. The thought of God also is a mental function, but it is a helpful function. It will not bind us. This particular salubrious ennobling function of the mind which is God-thought, though it is also a function of the psyche, is not binding. It is liberating.

Buddhe tattve tacca heyam iti śrutyanu śāsanam. But when we actually enter into God, the thought of God also ceases. So the particular mental function, though it was a function like any other function, has helped us in freeing ourselves from the bondage of life and enabled us to enter into God-consciousness.

All meditation in the beginning is a mental function. But the aim of meditation is to not continue the mental activity. The aim is to merge the subjective consciousness in the object. The mental function continues so long as the object is outside the perceiving subject. Even if we think of God as something outside us, the mind will be thinking as if God is some kind of object. But when identity takes place, in a state of samadhi or union of consciousness with the object (it may be any object or with God Himself), the mental functions cease. Until that time, these good vrittis or helpful functions may continue.

Śāstrāṇya dhītya medhāvī abhyasya ca punaḥ punaḥ, paramaṁ brahma vijñāya ulkāvat tānya thot sṛjet (45). Grantha mabhyasya medhāvī jñāna vijñāna tatparaḥ, palālam iva dhānyārthī tyajed grantham aśeṣataḥ (46). Tam-eva dhīro vijñāya prajñāṁ kurvīta brāhmaṇaḥ, nānu dhyāyād bhaūn chabdān vāco viglāpanaṁ hi tat (47). With these quotations, the author tells us how certain functions of the mind are helpful to us, like the learning of the Veda, the study of the Upanishads, the absorption of knowledge in the Bhagavad Gita or of any religious scripture which will lift our soul to the higher values of human life, and any kind of knowledge which illumines us, enlightens us, gives us intellectual strength and broadens our vision. These are all only mental operations, but they are very helpful ones. Study, education, and culture are all mental operations, but they are positive – very, very necessary for the progress of the individual soul.

But when the object is attained, the identity of consciousness with the final object is complete. There is no necessity for further study of scripture. We need not be in a school or a college for a lifetime. If the education is already over, then put it into practice. After the study is over, the books must be thrown away. They are not of any utility to us. They are only helpful for gaining knowledge in the beginning; afterwards, they become a burden, and we give all the books to the library.

As a person who takes the pith of a grain then throws away the husk and does not run after the husk, in the same way all study, learning, academic qualification, etc., should be finally abandoned as husk after we have entered into the very substance of that knowledge – where consciousness becomes the very aim or purpose of all education and study. Otherwise, endless study is a waste of energy. Vāco viglāpanaṁ: a waste of time and energy.

The Upanishad says, tam evaikaṁ vijānītha hyanyā vāco vimuñatha, yacced vāṅ manasī prājña ityādhāḥ śrutayaḥ sphuṭāḥ (48): Know that alone, and do not go on talking too much about it. Close your mouth for some time and be concerned with that great goal of life. On that let your mind rest, and speak not very much because energy is wasted by too much talking.

Yacced vāṅ manasī prājña ityādhāḥ śrutayaḥ sphuṭāḥ. The Kathopanishad tells us that the sense organs which are perceiving the world and are entangled in this perception have to be slowly withdrawn and settled in the mind. The mind is to be settled into the intellect; the intellect should merge in the cosmic intellect; the cosmic intellect should finally settle in Brahman, the Absolute.

Aśāstrīya mapi dvaitaṁ tīvraṁ mandamiti dividhā, kāma krodhā dikaṁ tīvraṁ mano rājyaṁ tathe tarat (49). Up to this time, we have been describing certain faculties or functions of the mind which are non-obstructive. They are helpful. Now we are being told there are certain obstructive faculties – functions of the mind which are deliberately harmful. They have to be abandoned. What are they?

These harmful functions also are of two kinds, intense and mild: tivram mandam. Very intense, harmful functions of the mind are desire, anger, greed, etc.; and the mild obstacles are building castles in the air, imagining something unnecessarily, moving in the skies with no purpose whatsoever. Both of these are obstacles. Neither should we be angry, nor full of passionate desire, nor have greed, nor should we build castles in the air. Even if the mind is not actively doing any destructive work by building castles, it is actually paving the ground for such activity later on.

Just because a person keeps quiet and does nothing, says nothing and thinks nothing, it does not mean he is a wise person. He is like an idiot from where the seed of harmful activities may emanate. People who keep quiet and do not do anything at all are dangerous persons. They must do some work.

Ubhayaṁ tattva bodhāt prāk nivāryaṁ bodhā siddhaye, śamaḥ samāhitatvaṁ ca sādhaneṣu śrutaṁ yataḥ (50). Both these vrittis have to be abandoned for the sake of knowledge of God. What are they? They are building castles in the air, and actual active manifestation of desire, anger, etc. Shama, dama, uparati, titiksha, sraddha, samadhana are certain virtues that have been adumbrated in the Vedanta philosophy, similar to the yamas and niyamas in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, as necessary methods that can be employed for restraining the mind both in its active harmful aspect as well as the mild harmful aspect. When by actual habituation to the process of deep meditation the knowledge arises, these faculties also will cease. Thereafter there will be nothing left in the world, in the mind.

Bodhād ūrdhvaṁ ca tadheyaṁ jīvan mukti prasiddhaye, kāmādi kleśa bandhena yuktasya na hi muktatā (51). Whatever be the remnant of the mind, even if it is very subtle and mild, it will cause some trouble one day, as a seed lying on barren ground may not be visible at all to our eyes; but when rain falls that barren ground becomes wet and fertile and the seed which was not visible to anybody’s eyes shoots up into a little plant and becomes a tree afterwards. A thing that is mild and is keeping quiet, not doing anything, is a tamasic condition of the mind. It is not sattva; it is not positive. Therefore, absence of mental activity should not be considered as wisdom.

Jīvan mukti riyaṁ ma bhūt janmā bhāve tvahaṁ kṛtī, tarhai janmāpi te’stveva svarga-mātrāt-kṛtī bhavān (52). Someone may say, “All these qualities that you are mentioning here – of absence of the mental vrittis which cause harm, etc. – are applicable to a jivanmukta purusha. What is the harm if they are there as long as I am alive, provided that I am assured of liberation after death?” This question, this point, is also meaningless, because nobody who has the least remnant of desire of any kind, even in a sleeping condition, will attain God.

It does not mean that we can live a free and abandoned life in this world and then attain God-realisation after death. It will not come because the kind of life that we live in this world is an indication of the kind of life that we will be living after death. It is not that another kind of tree will grow there, when one kind of seed is sown here. Whatever the seed is, that is the tree. This is the life we are living in this world, which is like a seed that we are sowing for a large plantation that will shoot up in the next birth. And whatever fruit will be attained and eaten in the next birth will be of the same nature as the seed that we have sown here.

Thus, our attitudes, our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, our outlook in this world will tell us what kind of person we will be in the next birth. So we must be cautious and live in this world in the same way as we would like to be received in the next world.

Kṣayā tiśaya doṣeṇa svargo heyo yadā tadā, svayaṁ doṣataym ātmāyaṁ kāmādiḥ kiṁ na hiyate (53). There are people who think that going to the heavenly world is also a kind of attainment, that it is good enough. The attainment of heaven is defective because it is like a bank balance which will not be eternally there and will get exhausted as long as we do not positively contribute something further to it.

The circle of heaven that we speak of is a realm of experience where we enjoy the desirable, happy fruits of the good deeds that we performed in this world. But all deeds have an end in themselves. Every work is perishable; therefore, the fruit that will be yielded by that particular action that we have done, even if it be good, will have an end one day. And then what happens? When the momentum of the good deeds that we have performed in this world ceases to produce its effect in heaven, we will fall back to this world again and be reborn here. So the idea of going to a heavenly world in the sense of an enjoyable field of comfortable existence should be given up. What we require is God-consciousness, God-realisation, and not merely joys, even in higher worlds.

Tattvaṁ buddhvāpi kāmādīn niḥśeṣaṁ na jahāsi cet, yatheṣṭā caraṇaṁ te syāt karma-śāstrā tilaṅghinaḥ (54). Desires persist even in a subtle form, even at the last moment of life. Sometimes we cannot even know that there are desires. Very subtle propensities continue, and sometimes they create impressions in the mind which are not necessarily compatible with the existence of God.

It is difficult for the mind to entertain the thought of God always, because God is not a heaven. He is not a realm. He is not a stage of life. He is not any kind of region which we have to reach. These ideas of reaching God, going to God, have to be first of all purified in the beginning itself because even when we think of God, sometimes we think like children, as if He is somebody sitting somewhere in a corner and there is a long distance between us spatially. The existence of God is nothing but the existence of what we call the Universal Principle. Inasmuch as it is everywhere – not only in some places – the reaching of it is a process of inward transformation, and not a movement in some direction.

When we reach the waking state from dream, though there is some sort of a distance between dream and waking consciousness, we do not have to travel by a vehicle. It is an inward transmutation of consciousness that is taking place, and suddenly we are in a different world. So is God-consciousness. It is an inner transmutation of consciousness from the lesser dimension to the highest dimension possible. This distinction should be drawn between actual God-thought and the imagined God-thoughts of most people.

Buddhā dvaita sva tattvasya yatheṣṭ ācaraṇaṁ yadi, śunāṁ tattva dṛśāṁ caiva ko bhedo’śuci-bhakṣaṇe (55). Bodhāt purā mano doṣa mātrāt kliśnā syathā dhunā, aśeṣa loka nindā ceti aho te bodha vaibhavam (56). The author here criticises the imaginary ideas of certain untutored minds, who are not properly educated in this line, who believe that the last thought may be enough to lift them to the state of God after death, and so in this life they may live in any manner whatsoever. The author says this is not possible because our thoughts are what we call life. Our life in this world is nothing but the way in which our mind operates. Basically, moving about is not life. The mental vrittis are the actual life.

What we think in our mind is the kind of life that we live and, therefore, if we believe that we can have freedom of choice in this world – which is completely unrestrained – and we can expect a fruit of complete discipline after death, this will be not possible. Otherwise, we will be like animals living in the world and expecting God-realisation after death. The mind which is completely unrestrained and given to abandon, and goes for things in the manner of an animal going for his grub or food – if that is the case with the mind of an ordinary human being, his fate will be the same as the fate of an animal. We do not expect a buffalo to reach God. Sudden change will not take place at the time of death. Sudden changes never take place. Nature always moves in a progressive way. It is evolution. Revolution does not take place in nature. It is a gradual, step-by-step movement.

So in the next birth we cannot be something totally different, entirely different from what we are. Just as tomorrow we will not be totally different from what we are today, in the next birth we will not be angels. How can we become angels in the next birth when we are animals in this birth? An animal does not become God. A gradual process of evolution takes place from animal to man, from man to good man, from good man to unselfish man, saintly man, God-man, and finally God Himself. These are the stages of development and, therefore, we have to undergo this spiritual education in the manner prescribed.