This chapter emphasizes the Self, the real Knower, is ever uninvolved in the shifting forces that play over the Field. Purusha is the Knower and prakriti the Field. There is no possibility of any individual being eternally lost for all beings partake of the immortal, pure nature of Purusha. Both prakriti and Purusha are essential to our experience of the world: nothing could exist without the spiritual basis of Purusha, and nothing could develop in a manifest form without the mind and matter of prakriti. By definition, nothing taking place in the realm of prakriti, can affect Purusha; but the exact nature of the interaction of the two is a profound mystery.
Sri Krishna compares the body to a field. The “Body” refers to the whole separate person with which we identify ourselves: …… not only body but personality.”
The inner Self, the divine within, our real Being, is the knower of this field. The field includes both the body and the mind. They are not separate, but two aspects of the same field. It includes all components of prakriti – energy, mind, ego. It is only our divine unitary Consciousness, the Brahman (Supreme spirit, higher Self), that knows the field. The Field is the object, the Knower is the subject. Krishna adds that He, in his real nature as the divine Brahman, is the knower of the Field; he is the Self in all.
Sri Krishna gives a detailed analysis of these two aspects of human existence. He starts by enumerating the material elements that encompass kṣhetra, the field of the human body. He calls the actions, feelings, emotions, etc., that arise in this field (body) as modifications. This functioning knowledge, at the physical and mental realms of the field helps us understand the existence of our higher Self, which is the kṣhetrajña or the knower of the field. Sri Krishna then starts describing different ways of understanding the divine Self, the supreme knower of the fields in all living creatures. Understand that the Knower is all-pervading in His creation, sitting in the heart of every living being yet a witness to the goings on in the field which are time limited, transitory, subject to birth, growth, decay and dissolution. Those beings who are able with spiritual wisdom to differentiate between the Knower and the field of samsara (earthly human existence), attain the nirvana of Brahman.
Chapter II.71 This is the state of Brahman, Arjuna Having attained which One is not bewildered. Being established in this, Even if only at The end of one’s life, One reaches The nirvana of Brahman
The Bhagavad Gita – Graham Schweig
Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate appropriate thoughts and actions in the field of our body and mind. We should be able to differentiate between kṣhetra, the field, and kṣhetrajña, the knower of the field.
“As long as we identify with the “field” – the physical, chemical organism that is the body – glands and hormones dictate our lives. “But there is a way to change our lives and that is to change our ways of thinking.
As Sri Krishna says in XIII.2: “I am the Knower of the field in everyone, Arjuna. To know the field and its Knower is true knowledge.”
“When Sri Krishna talks about the “field” he means more than simply the body. The whole of the environment is one field, in which we sow our actions and reap their consequences. It sounds simple, but the implications are vast. It means, in part, that the consequences of every action can extend the full reach of the field.”
To take the analogy of a field – “When you leave a field to itself, of course, it quickly reverts to weeds. Whatever grows best there takes over and crowds out everything else. The same thing happens to an untended personality: that is, to the ego. You can look at the ego as an abandoned lot of weedy samskaras. There are flowers there too, but they run a constant battle for survival against the thistles and dandelions and crabgrass” of our gunas and samskaras.
The ego, which is part of the field, usurps the role of the Self. Nevertheless, it is only a field, an assemblage of parts, a functioning process which coordinates the actions of the body, senses and mind but it is not the real Self.
The field is where the law of karma applies. The law of cause and effect.
Every act has consequences, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma.
We do not realize how far our lives reach, how many people are affected by our behavior and example. Once you begin to see this, you get some idea of how complex the web of karma actually is.
The physical side of karma is only the tip of an iceberg. To get an inkling of how far karma reaches, you have to look at the mind. Everything we do produces karma in the mind.
Karma in the mind is the most potent kind of all. It is more subtle than physical karma, but it is also much more powerful and longer-lived. That is why the body and mind are like a field. A thought is like a seed: very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, powerful, wide-spreading tree.
The real source of karma is the mind, which means that our unfavorable karma can be undone by changing the way we think. If someone gets angry with us and we respond with patience and compassion his anger may subside; he may not go on to spread it to other people. And our own mind and body benefit too.
When you act consciously, with equanimity, without attachment and aversion, you can draw on a limitless source of love, wisdom, strength, and inspiration. Words and actions from this depth have tremendous power to reach and help and inspire other people.
Now Krishna goes into the constituents of prakriti (the field). This is based on the Sankhya philosophy and is quite metaphysical. Very simply we are pulled in various directions within the field. These strong magnetic attractions based on our propensities, our latent tendencies, our habit patterns, our likes and dislikes, our attachments and aversions make us react in various ways as we navigate through life. The Gita says, these magnetic pulls have nothing to do with the Self, the Knower.
The purpose of Sankhya and Yoga, emphasize that the path for human spiritual evolution is to recognize that this physical world of diverse names and forms manifested out of unitary consciousness. Following that thread, we can retrace this manifestation and discover the unity that is the divine ground of existence.”
The stages of this spiritual evolution, are levels of consciousness. There is a level on which we are physical creatures; this is the level at which we are most separate. But it is only the surface. Beneath the physical universe are deeper and deeper strata of consciousness, until we reach a realm so deep that nothing of the individual personality can be found.
In reaching deeper into the mind through the various paths of yoga (karma, bhakti or jnana) we find our source in pure, unitary awareness.
XIII.11. This is true knowledge, to seek the Self as the true end of wisdom always. To seek anything else is ignorance.
Once we have realized experientially that the Lord dwells in us as our real Self, we see clearly that everything else in life is transitory. If, through our yogic paths we step outside our egocentric personality, we rediscover who we are: part of the eternal, immortal Reality that we call the Supreme Brahman.
The whole point of spiritual wisdom is to go beyond death. It is possible. It can be done, and it has been done, by cutting the nexus of identification with the body.
Chapter II.13 Just as in the body childhood, Adulthood, and old age Happen to an embodied being, So also he(the embodied being) acquires another body. The wise one is not deluded about this.
The Bhagavad Gita- Winthrop Sargeant
Again, the three terms used here are basic in Sankhya philosophy which is often associated with the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras by commentators. Prakriti is the field in its largest sense: energy, matter, and mind.
XIII.19. Know that prakriti and Purusha are both without beginning, and that from prakriti come the gunas and all that changes.
According to Eknath Easwaran’s Bhagavad Gita for daily living, “there are twenty-four cosmic principles of the field, prakriti is the first principle, the original undifferentiated stuff from which the perceptible universe evolved.
Purusha, which literally means ‘person,’ is the Knower of the field. Everything that can be an object of knowledge is prakriti; Purusha is the only knower. It is the Knower, the Self.
Guna, the third term. According to Sankhya, the evolution of consciousness begins when prakriti differentiates itself into three basic states or qualities of energy. These are the gunas. Every state of matter and mind is a combination of these three: tamas – inertia, rajas – activity, and sattva – harmony or equilibrium.
In its natural state, consciousness is a continuous flow of awareness. But through the distorting action of the gunas, we have fallen from this native state into fragmented, divided, sometimes stagnant awareness. In this sense we can think of the gunas as spectacles, trifocals, through which we look at life. They are fragmented, so we see things as separate wherever we look: separate selves, antagonistic interests, conflicts within ourselves.
Spiritual evolution, according to the Gita, is a progression to our innate state: pure, unbroken awareness. First we have to transform tamas into rajas – apathy and insensitiveness into energetic, enthusiastic activity. But the energy of rajas is self-centered and dispersed. It must be transformed into sattva, so that all this passionate energy is channeled into selfless action. There is great happiness in this state, which is marked by a calm mind, abundant vitality, and the concentration of genius. But even this is not the end. As long as we are wearing these spectacles of the mind, we cannot help seeing ourselves and the rest of life as fragments. The goal of yoga is to take these spectacles off, to still the mind. Then we rest in pure, unitary consciousness, which is a state of permanent joy. We go beyond the gunas and see no separateness anywhere; we see ourselves reflected in everybody, and everybody reflected in ourselves. This is seeing life as it is, indivisible and whole.
The Gita reminds us over and over that actions occur only within the field; thoughts take place only in the field; they interact and have consequences only in the field.
XIII. 29. They alone see truly who see that all actions are performed by prakriti, while the Self remains unmoved.
Sri Krishna reminds us, the Self remains untouched through all our thoughts and actions. When we truly understand this, it can lift from our shoulders the whole weight of past mistakes. We are not our body; we are not our mind. The body is matter; of its very nature, it has made mistakes in the material world. The mind, of its very nature, has made mistakes. These are interactions in the field: the karma of the body, the karma of the mind. But we, the Self, are not stained or diminished by those mistakes. All human beings, no matter what we may have done, have this core of purity and perfection in the depths of personality. Therefore, whatever our drawbacks and past errors, every stain on our personality can be wiped clean, leaving no trace behind.
XIII.33. As the sun lights up the world, the Self dwelling in the field is the source of all light in the field.
XIII.34. Those who, with the eye of wisdom, distinguish the field from its Knower and the way to freedom from the bondage of prakriti, attain the supreme goal.”
Numerous Excerpts From: Eknath Easwaran. “The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living.” and the Bhagavad Gita by the same author.
Helpfully, Rev. Stephanie Rutt in her “An Ordinary Life Transformed -Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita” encapsulates some of the key points of Chapter XIII.
Any being that is born, whether animate or inanimate, is born from the union of the field and the Knower of the field.
Whoever sees that all actions are performed everywhere by prakriti alone and that the real Self is not the agent, he sees things as they are.
The two expressions of our Self, the transient and the eternal enables us to be totally present to what is happening in the moment without personally identifying with any of it.
All cosmic nature and ourselves, our bodies, are brought forth by the interplay of the 24 aspects of the field, or prakriti.
The Knower observes the entire field of the cosmos just as we individual expressions of the Knower observe the field of our personal experience.
Using discernment all of life becomes a teacher.
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