Commentary on the Panchadasi

by Swami Krishnananda

Paṭā dapyāntara stantuḥ tanto rapyaṁśu rāntaraḥ, āntaratvasya viśrāntiḥ yatrā sāvanu mīyatām (166). Internal to the cloth is the thread. Internal to the thread is the fibre. What is there internal to the fibre? Minute particles of cotton. What is there internal to the minute particles of cotton? Go on investigating like this into the deeper constitution of this cloth. Go on and on, investigating deeper and deeper into the original cause of this cloth. Where the intellect fails to go further and we have reached the last limit of our understanding beyond which our mind cannot go into the substance of the very cloth itself, there Ishvara arises.

Where intellect fails, religion commences, as they say. Religion begins when intellect fails. As long as intellect is active, religion is inactive; it won't work. So religion is nothing but the acceptance of God's existence from the bottom of one's heart. There ceases intellectual activity completely. The cause of causes, the ultimate impossible cause, behind which there cannot be any other cause – that is Ishvara, the All-knowing Being.

Dvitrānta ratvaka kṣāṇāṁ darśane’pyaya māntaraḥ, na vīkṣyate tato yukti śrutir bhyāmeva nirṇayaḥ (167). We will find that we cannot apply our intellect to finding out the cause of even the cloth itself. What is the substance out of which the cloth is made? We will find our brain ceases to work when we go on investigating into the ultimate cause of even the particles of fibre, which is the cotton of which the cloth is made.

What are these particles made of? We may say they are from atoms. What are the atoms made of? Nobody knows. They are certain energy constitutions. What is this energy made of? Nobody knows. We are arguing from effect to cause; but effect, however much it may try to touch the cause, it cannot touch it as long as it remains as an effect. That is to say, as long as we remain as individual observers and thinkers, independent of the cosmic whole, we shall not succeed in entering into the ultimate cause of things. Only scripture and higher reason are our aid here.

Paṭa rūpeṇa saṁsthānāt paṭas tantor vapur yathā, sarva rūpeṇa saṁsthānāt sarvam asya vapus tathā (168). Because of the fact that threads constitute the cloth, we say cloth is the body of the threads. Threads have assumed a form in the form of the cloth. In the same way, we may say, as God Ishvara constitutes the inner essence of all things, He exists in every form. We can say that the world is His body. As the cloth is the body of the threads, the universe is the body of Ishvara. Such analogy is very near what we can make out in regard to the relationship of effect and cause, world and Ishvara. There is something more about Ishvara than what we can make out from the illustration. Analogies are analogies, after all. They cannot be the ultimate truth; they give some symptom of what truth can be.

Tantoḥ saṅkoca vistāra calanadau paṭas tathā, avaśya meva bhavati na svātantryaṁ paṭe manāk (169). Whatever happens to the threads will happen to the cloth. The cloth has no independent existence. If the threads shrink, the cloth shrinks. If the threads expand for any reason, the cloth expands; and if the threads start shaking, the whole cloth also shakes. Whatever happens to the threads happens to the cloth. There is no independence for the cloth, it being totally dependent on its inner constituents.

In the same way, tathā’ntar yāmyayaṁ yatra yayā vāsanayā yathā, vikriyeta tathā’vaśyaṁ bhavateva na saṁśayaḥ (170). This analogy also applies to this world and Ishvara. The world changes only according to the change instituted by the will of Ishvara in the inner constituent of the forms of the world. The evolution of the cosmos, as we hear it said – the processes of human history, occurrences in nature, the coming and going of things, birth and death, joy and sorrow, every blessed thing in this universe – is something that happens to things in this world, just as something may happen to the cloth on account of the occurrences in the threads.

The will of Ishvara, which has the knowledge of past, present and future, decides that something has to take place in the interest of the total universe. Its interest is not only for particular persons. God does not exist for somebody's welfare and for the harm of somebody else. The interest of God is universal, as the organism of the human personality has the interest of the total well-being of the personality. There is no partiality in respect of any limb of the body, or the organism.

So tragedies and comedies, rises and falls of empires, kings going to dust, emperors vanishing into a condition of beggary tomorrow, unthinkable occurrences in the world, mysteries and wonders, thunderstorms and cyclones and droughts – nobody can imagine what kind of things these are, how they appear and why they appear. We cannot understand what is the cause behind all these things because we think in terms of space-time, and sometimes we think in such narrow limits of nation, community, village, family, etc. The whole of the universe is not before our eyes.

But Ishvara has the whole universe before Him. And in the interest of the stability of the cosmos, to maintain the organism of the structure which He has willed in His original concept of creation, He sees that the balance is maintained. And sudden shake-ups can take place in history – natural history as well as human history. There is no pleasure and pain, good and bad, necessary and unnecessary, etc. as we conceive them, in the mind of Ishvara because His thought is a total thought and, therefore, any kind of partial intervention from the social, economic or ethical side cannot apply to Ishvara.

Ishvara is not a social individual, He is not an economic unit, and He is not an ethical person. These laws apply only to human beings. He is a universal integration, to which we cannot apply any norm of human conduct. His will changes the whole cosmos as the change in the threads will change of the entire cloth.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord says, Īśvaraḥ sarva bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe’rjuna tiṣṭhati, bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni yantra rūḍhāni māyayā (171). This verse is bodily lifted here. Bhagavan Shri Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna. What does he say? “Hey Arjuna, Ishvara, the Lord, is within the heart of all beings. Operating from within the heart of everyone, He works the future and destiny of everyone, forcing all individuals to move as if they are mounted on a moving wheel. Compulsorily we are put under subjection to certain experiences in the world, as that which is caught up in the movement of a mechanical wheel has no independence whatsoever; and we move together with the movement of the wheel because we are stuck in the wheel.

Here the wheel is nothing but the will of Ishvara, and He mounts every individual on that machine, as it were, which is His will in such a powerful way that there seems to be no personal choice for jivas. They are stuck in it. Like a fly who is stuck in a moving wheel runs round and round with the wheel and cannot go out because of the force of the wheel, so we are stuck, as it were, in this wheel of movement of the whole structure of things, which is decided by the will of Ishvara. He does this work by being seated in the heart of everybody. From within us He is working and compelling us to think in a particular manner, and also forcing us to do certain actions in the way that they are necessary for the balance of the cosmos.

Sarva bhūtāni vijñāna mayāste hṛdaye sthitāḥ, tadupādāna bhūteśaḥ tatra vikriyate khalu (172). Within the intellect is Ishvara seated; and all individuals can be regarded as modifications of the form of the intellect. Our actions and our thoughts are the ways in which the intellect operates. Our life is controlled by the way in which we think and act. And our thoughts are decided by the intellectual illumination, the degree of illumination that we are endowed with. As this degree varies from individual to individual, the way in which people manifest their personality also changes; and everybody does not behave in the same way in the world, as we know very well.

Even the variety of this behaviour of individuals through their vijnana, or their intellect, is willed by Ishvara. If I behave in one way and you behave in another way, it is also willed by Him for a certain purpose. The purpose of God is beyond human reason. We cannot question why. Sometimes we do question why should this happen. "Why should the waves rise up twenty feet high and then destroy large areas of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa? This should not have happened." We say that; but God says it should happen, for some reason which is not our business to question. And He knows what it is.

Dehādi pañjaraṁ yantraṁ tadāroho’bhimānitā, vihita prati ṣiddheṣu pravṛttir bhramaṇaṁ bhavet (173). This wheel, this machine, is this body itself, actually speaking. Dehādi pañjaraṁ yantraṁ: He is working through this body of our individuality and He is sitting on it as somebody is riding on a horse; and as is the control exercised by the rider of the horse, so is the movement of the horse. Thus on this horse-like machine which is this body, the Lord seems to be riding and pressing forward the direction of the movement of this machine. And wherever the stirrups hit the horse, in that direction the horse moves. The reins are also controlled by the rider of the horse. He pulls the reins in a particular manner and the horse turns his neck and runs in that particular direction. We are like that. We may be horses on which God is riding, or we may call it a machine which is operated by God. In either case, we seem to be helpless finally.

Does God do bad actions and good actions? Nothing of the kind is applicable to God because goodness and badness are ethical concepts which are socially oriented to a large extent, which way of thinking is not applicable to Ishvara. Ishvara is a Unitary Being, and social laws cannot apply to God. Our constitutions of political government, etc., should not be applied there because these laws are valid only so long as we live as individuals in a social body. God is not a social body; He is an integrated existence. Indivisibility is the nature of God, whereas separateness is the nature of human organisations.

Therefore, don't apply any of our laws there. And it is better to keep quiet and accept what is happening, because our reason cannot plumb into the depths of the action of that which is totally integrated and indivisible, while we are accustomed to thinking only in terms of body and human relations – even going to such crude concepts as economics determining human values. There are philosophies in this world who conclude that the destiny of man is in economic conditions, which is the last step that wrong philosophy can take.

Vijñāna maya rūpeṇa tat pravṛtti svarūpataḥ, svaśaktyeśo vikriyat māyayā bhrāmaṇaṁ hi tat (174). The work of God through the intellects of people is a very peculiar mode of His operation. He does not contradict the potentials that are already present in the form of karmas. He only adds like sunlight, to give an example, which allows the actions in the world according to the potencies of different individualities – such as the growth of a plant from a seed, the movement of an animal in the forest, the work of people in the world, and any kind of activity in which we are engaged. Everything in the world is controlled by the light of the sun to a large extent, perhaps in every way, yet the sun does not directly interfere in the operations carried on by individuals, whatever be those operations.

In one way, without the sunlight, without any heat, without an existence, life itself would be impossible. Yet the modifications of individuals in the form of activity, etc., cannot be imputed to Ishvara – or to the sun, in the case of the analogy. In the same way, everything is controlled by the determining will of Ishvara operating through the intellect, vijnanamaya; yet, He stands apart. We will be given justice in the form of the desserts that we deserve.

Justice is the nature of God. He is not partial. He acts as an impersonal justice. ‘Impersonal’ justice is the word that is to be used in respect of God – no partiality whatsoever. He has no friend and no enemy and, therefore, we should not apply our human feelings of prejudice, like and dislike, etc., in the case of judging what is happening in the world through the will of God.