Bhagavagd Gita - Session 31- Track 3105

‘All this is He’: He is Universal.

And then when He says, in the 11th verse: mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam, ‘I am also individual who is to be found in the body of the human beings’, He is also the ‘Individual’. So, this is also given here in the 11th verse. So, He is Transcendental, Universal, Individual. He is Supra-cosmic, He is Universal and He is Omnipresent, Individual. All right?

Now, having done this, describes the supreme Reality, now comes the application of this knowledge. So first Sri Krishna describes all those people who don’t apply this knowledge at all; so for them, Sri Krishna says:

moghāśā moghakarmāṇo moghajñānā vicetasaḥ |
rākṣasīm āsurīṁ caiva prakṛtiṁ mohinīṁ śritāḥ ||12|| (IX)

Those who don’t apply this knowledge in their life at all, their hopes are useless, vain, moghāśā; mogha-karmāṇo, all their activities are vain; mogha-jñānā, all what they call their knowledge is vain; they are entirely gripped, śritāḥ, they are all gripped; by what? By Prakriti, by nature which is mohinīṁ, which enchants, which keeps them engaged, and when they get engaged, they are gripped by rākṣasīm āsurīṁ prakṛtiṁ, the nature in which they begin to delve is rākṣasī or āsurī.

Once I had explained the distinction between a Rakshasa and Asura. The distinction is that Rakshasa is a desire which has many grades, from petty desires to world devouring desires, (like the desires of Hitler or Napoleon; they wanted to devour the whole world). So the desires for overpowering the whole world are a manifestation of the rākṣasī māyā, the desire which is Rakshasi in character. Asuri is not only a desire but which is guided by the mental operations. Rakshasa is not a mental being, the mind is not preponderant in the Rakshasa, he is a devourer, he is simply hungry, he wants to eat, devour everything. Asura is more cunning; he also wants to devour but uses the mental power, he is a trickster, gambler, designer, plotter, conspirator. His mind is utilised not for perceiving the Supreme but finding the means and ways by which the whole world can be devoured with cunning and with conspiracy.

So, these human beings who don’t apply this integral knowledge, for them Sri Krishna says very clearly, that all their hopes are in vain, all their actions are in vain, all their knowledge is in vain, they remain completely gripped in the desire and in the cunning that is used for desire in the largest possible terms. But those who apply, in the next verse, Sri Krishna says, those who apply this integral knowledge…

mahātmānas tu māṁ pārtha daivīṁ prakṛtim āśritāḥ |

…they are the real great souls who take resort to daivīṁ prakṛtim, who take resort to My divine nature; not the lower nature but My divine nature, not Apara Prakriti, but Para Prakriti, they take resort to Para Prakriti. In the analogy that I gave earlier was, ‘those who decide knowingly to sit in the aeroplane. So:

mahātmānas tu māṁ pārtha daivīṁ prakṛtim āśritāḥ |,

They decide to be gripped by daivīṁ prakṛtim, by the higher nature. And then what happens when they are in the grip of the higher nature…bhajanti, this is one word of devotion arises; this is the synthesis of knowledge and devotion.