The Eternal Message Of The Gita-The Seer And The Seen-III

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The consciousness of Being which is Existence and which never becomes non-existent,'impregnates' the dream, so to speak, in its totality, without any partiality in favour of the 'I' who is in no way its home. The same applies to the waking state where it is observed that the 'I', in fact, doesn't have any stability. The 'I' is nma-rupa, 'name' and 'form'; it belongs to the things that can be known. The 'seer' is not the mind; his vision is without beginning and without end, and does not belong to that element of the 'seen' which we call 'the ego'.

This imperishable 'seer' is the Eternal, the Kshetrajna (the Knower of the field) mentioned in the verse that we are studying. In this verse the approach is epistemological: What is true knowledge? We expect from this knowledge that it will solve all contradictions, in particular the primordial contradiction in which the 'I' is opposed to the 'non-I'. For it is not enough to have the intuition that this duality is false: We need to know how to remove it.

'Ignorance,' Shankara writes in his commentary on verse 13.2, 'comes from inertia (tamas) which carries us towards that which is contrary to the truth, raises doubt in us, and results in the non-perception of the truth.' It is the work of the intelligence, of the spirit of enquiry, which is to be used to put an end to the false attachments, to doubts, and to the non-perception of the truth. Through this search the active forces are brought into play in their greatest purity, resulting in the awakening of the higher reason or buddhi. The Gita teaches that, with the awakening of the buddhi, man obtains the Knowledge (jnna) which is a direct perception (pratyakshvagamam). Nothing can contradict this Knowledge, 'the most eminent of sciences, the most profound of mysteries, the supreme purification.' (9.2)

In the course of this investigation the buddhi has discovered that the ego is the source of all conflict. By claiming an absolute reality for itself, the ego appropriates the activity of the consciousness to itself. At once the many different representations of the world which the ego believes to perceive, come into existence—many, too, the different contradictions that follow. The power of ignorance (avidy) is such that it makes us believe that the ego is different from the objects known, that it is not an entity belonging to the 'seen'. This same ignorance causes us to transfer the properties of the 'seer' to the 'seen' and vice versa, so that the 'seer' who is eternal, is identified with the ego, and is believed to be perishable, while the qualities proper to the 'seer', such as permanence, are accorded to the object.This mutual transference creates the conflict that is the source of suffering.

Compare Shankara's commentary on verse 18.50 of the Gita: '... The Self is extremely pure, extremely clear and extremely subtle. But it is possible for the buddhi, being as pure, as clear and as subtle as the Self, to identify itself with that aspect of the Self which manifests itself as consciousness. The mind (manas) identifies itself with the buddhi, the sense organs identify themselves with the mind, and the physical body identifies itself with the sense organs. Thus is explained the common, frequent error which consists in considering the physical body to be the Self.'

About the author

Swami Siddheswarananda

Swami Siddheswarananda (1897-1957) was a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and for twenty years until his death, the spiritual head of the Centre Vedantique Ramakrichna at Gretz, France. This commentary of the learned Swami on the various themes of the Gita was orginally published in French in the 'Bulletin of the Centre Vedantique' during 1955-57. This article is the fifth instalment of a series of about a dozen articles, each independent in itself. English translation and editing was done by Mr. Andre van den Brink.

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