Bhagavagd Gita - Session 36- Track 3605

Liberation may be freedom from lower nature. When you are able to come out of the snares of the lower nature, you may say you are liberated; there are degrees of liberation; there are kinds of liberation.

Then there is a synthesis of liberations, as a result of which one may attain to what we may call ‘perfection’. It is this perfection which goes beyond all Dharmas, when you renounce all Dharmas, then there remains only amṛtam dharma. That law of perfection is amṛtam dharma. There is no conflict in the manifestation of that Dharma, of that law and every action is a perfect action, masterly action, master act.

All that needs to be expounded, brought out to the fullness: all that is done in the last 6 chapters and that is the importance of these last 6 chapters. We are as it were now reaching up to the climax of the Bhagavad Gita when we ascend on these planes of these 13th to 18th chapters.

If you are a musician and if you want to compose music for the whole of the Bhagavad Gita, if you have a symphony as it were coming to the highest climax of it, it is in these 13th to 18th chapters that you get the highest climax of the symphony, starting with the small sad notes the beginning “viṣāda yoga” with which you can start and a very silent and quiet note of the second chapter, the description of “sthitaprajña”, and then a dynamic movement of action and the various processes of action and then rising up to a peak of knowledge little by little in the 9th chapter, the supreme knowledge is expounded and then a dynamic manifestation of that peak of knowledge in the 11th chapter, perception of the Divine as the “Destroyer”, the Divine as the “Time”, and the Divine in all His aspects.

And now the “drums” as it were which expound, explain all the small steps and the big steps of the Bhagavad Gita and ultimately rising to the complete complex and most harmonious symphony, ending, the big note where everything is to be renounced and only thing remains is the Divine in all the directions. So, this would be as it were a kind of musical composition of the Bhagavad Gita’s music. So, it is now these last 6 chapters that we begin.

And the first…Sri Krishna Himself expounds. Here there are no questions from Arjuna, because all the questions have been answered as far as we know as far as Arjuna is concerned. Only Sri Krishna knows what is still to be explained, because Sri Krishna has promised Arjuna in the 7th chapter: “I shall tell you both jñāna and vijñāna “aśeṣena”: nothing will remain after that, after knowing which there will be no further exposition needed, it is that promise that He is now fulfilling so that what still remains to be told is now repeated. So, Sri Krishna Himself starts. And He starts with a very important statement:

idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya kṣetram ity abhidhīyate |

etad yo vetti taṁ prāhuḥ kṣetrajña iti tadvidaḥ ||1|| (XIII)

“This body, O kaunteya, is called abhidhīyate, is named kṣetram, is called the field.” Now, you see the terminology is quite new, excepting in the beginning we are told, ‘dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre (I, 1)’, He sarts with kṣetra. Now, what is that kṣetra? It is explained now in the 13th chapter. This word ‘kṣetra’ does not appear anywhere afterwards; now, that is one thing which has remained to be explained. So, this chapter starts with that very concept:

idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya kṣetram ity abhidhīyate |

“This body, O kaunteya, O Arjuna is called kṣetra, is called the field.”

etad yo vetti taṁ prāhuḥ kṣetrajña iti tadvidaḥ ||,

“One who knows it as a field, one who knows the body as the field is called kṣetrajña, is known as the knower of the field.”

That is to say normally we do not consider our body as the field, we don’t even notice what body is, we take for granted as it were that ‘body’ exists: we feel healthy, we fill ill, diseased, but nothing more than that, we do not know that we have very important connection with it, that this body is not an accident.

Just as Sri Krishna points out that every thing is known by the Divine and as He says even destruction of the enemies is already accomplished, there is no chance, it is not as it were, something might happen, might not happen, the Divine has decided, similarly this body which is given to us is something to be noticed, to be taken into account. What is it? Therefore kṣetra is to be known, and one who knows the kṣetra, is kṣetrajña. There are two important facts which are called ‘indubitable facts’ in the world, which you cannot doubt at all. No sceptic can even doubt these two statements. One is that ‘there is a circumstance’. If you are simply told: ‘there is a circumstance’, it is a statement which cannot be doubted by anybody; secondly that this circumstance confronts us, for each one. Each one confronts a circumstance. Each one makes a distinction between circumstance and himself: circumstance is as it were outside him, he himself is the observer of the circumstance.

Now, these two statements cannot be doubted by any body because they are so indubitable, to doubt itself requires affirmation of these two statements: to doubt them requires affirmation of these very two statements; to doubt them is to affirm these very two statements. You cannot have doubt: what do you doubt? The doubt itself is a part of the knower. Who doubts? It’s the knower who doubts. Therefore you affirm it, and doubt about what? It’s about circumstance. If there is no circumstance, there is no question of doubting anything at all. So, ‘circumstance’ and the ‘knower of the circumstance’ are the two indubitable propositions. So, is you want to start any kind of exposition regarding knowledge, you should start with these two statements. And this is how this chapter starts with: it starts with a circumstance and with the knower: two indubitable statements.

And then now exposition of this: what is this kṣetra? What is this kṣetrajña? Here, first it is said only “idaṁ śarīraṁ”, this body is the kṣetra.

But now, Sri Krishna in the 3rd verse, He expounds it further:

tat kṣetraṁ yac ca yādṛk ca yadvikāri yataś ca yat |,

That body which is a kṣetra, is not only this body, tat kṣetraṁ, the totality of kṣetra, the whole world is actually your circumstance, not only this body, the body is only a microcosm of the totality which is macrocosm, and you get connection with this macrocosm through the microcosm and there is correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm.