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

As long as man is possessed by his zest for life and for experience (by what Hubert Benoit calls 'the convergent aspect of life'), he will ignore the 'dance of Kali', the divergent aspect, identifying himself completely with the ego of the waking state. Thus he is unable to have access to the vision of the Real. However, a great discriminatory faculty is needed in order to see life as it is, without the least trace of emotion.

If we really want to distinguish the 'seer' from the 'seen', we shall have to accept a total discipline, and not a discipline that is developed progressively—a total discipline, because it is not aimed at certain things in particular, but at our very way of looking at things. Here we are concerned with nothing less than a transcendence of the states, with a synoptic view of the reality. There are thinkers who may be found to try, while staying within the limits of the waking state, to go beyond prakriti (Nature) with the help of thought: Such undertaking will always be doomed to failure, because thought, too, is prakriti.

As to the discipline to be followed, it is summarized in the verses 24 and 25 of chapter VI: 'One should abandon without reservation all desires born from imagination and, with the senses under control, acquire little by little tranquility by means of the reason, checked by the will. Let the mind remain in the Self and no longer think of anything else.' The state of samadhi (total awareness) is attained, when the attention has become without object and the consciousness without contents.

This consciousness which is not divided into subject and object, is intemporal; it is the metaphysical intuition. Even if we say that the operations of the consciousness contain asti (Existence), bhati (Luminosity), priya (Love), nama (name) and rupa (form), nothing would be more wrong than to see them as different entities. The Reality is not a totalisation of concepts and perceptions, but a Totality. The majority of seekers, however, cannot do without such distinctions in order to proceed towards the truth. Vedanta proposes that they distinguish a substratum, Brahman, which remains eternally, and superimposed upon this substratum an apparent, changing reality, Maya, made up of nama-rupa, 'name' and 'form'.

When the attention is detached from nama-rupa, as described in the Drig Drishya Viveka, the 'seer' (drig) has as its 'seen' (drishya) the whole of the three states: He is the 'seer' of the many different states of Being (avasthatraya sakshin). As to the mind, that factor of division, it will then lose its preponderance and prestige. In the realization of this 'fourth' state (turiya) the 'seer' who is non-dual, and the 'seen' which is equally non-dual, are found to be no different from each other in any way: Both terms indicate the same Reality. 'Whose realization?', one may ask. No answer will satisfy the one who is asking this question. Remaining attached to one state in particular (i.e. the waking state), he is incapable of seeing the whole of manifestation as being non-dual (advaita). To know the kshetra (the field) and the kshetrajna (the Knower of the field) at the same time—this is what constitutes true jnana, supreme Knowledge. To Be Continued

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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