Bhagavagd Gita - Session 37- Track 3702

In doing so, we have a very important concept which is also the theme of these last 6 chapters, the concept of mokśa, Mukti, liberation:

“ahaṁ tvaṁ sarvapāpebhyo mokśyiṣyāmi, if you surrender yourself fully to the Divine, Sri Krishna says, I shall then deliver you from all the sins, ma śucaḥ, (XVIII, 66)do not worry”. What is this Moksha?

So, relationship between amṛtam dharma, the immortal Dharma and this concept of mokśa, this is described in full and without this, one of the innermost question of Arjuna would have been answered. Because if you read the 2nd chapter, the first chapter where Arjuna describes his question…he says: “If I do not follow a path of action which in his case was the path of withdrawal from the battle, if I do not withdraw from the battle and if I become the agent of the war, then there is a danger of the ruin of the kuladharma, the entire Dharma of the kula will be destroyed and then he says that one who destroys or one who become the agent of the destruction of this Dharma, of kuladharma, he himself is destroyed and there is no hope for him of mokśa, of liberation.”

So, this question needs also to be answered in the terms in which Arjuna had raised this question of mokśa. Now, this concept of mokśa is also discussed in these last 6 chapters in detail. How to expound this? We ask again, how to expound this?

Sri Krishna goes back to the 7th chapter. If you remember 7th chapter is entitled “jñāna vijñānayoga”. It is the title where knowledge and vijñāna, not only Jnana but vijñāna, ‘knowledge in all the details, without remainder, having known which nothing more remain to be known’. In fact this entire knowledge without remainder is the subject of all the 6 chapters from 7th to 12th; but the starting point and the major point is given is in the 7th chapter itself, where Sri Krishna says: “The supreme Lord has two natures, the higher nature and the lower nature: the Apara Prakriti and Para Prakriti.”

Now it is with this concept that Sri Krishna starts His exposition in the 13th chapter and we have to keep in mind constantly this basic proposition: the supreme Lord has two natures: the higher nature and the lower nature. Now, in expounding therefore this proposition of the supreme Lord having higher nature and the lower nature, the starting point is the distinction between kṣetra and kṣetrajña: the field and the knower of the field. The Purushottama is the knower of the field and all the rest, the supreme Lord who presides over the higher nature and the lower nature, for Him this Prakriti is the field, is the kṣetra.

As we had seen last time kṣetra is described by Sri Krishna first in a very symbolic form and says: ‘This body is the kṣetra’. Then He moves forward and He says: ‘All that is known and done by the body is kṣetra’. And towards the end of the chapter He describes, there is a very important word ‘jñeyaṁ’: ‘That which is to be known’; ‘jñānam jñeyaṁ’: ‘The knowledge of that which is to be known’. And if you understand this argument, the kṣetra is not only this body but the entire world as we see it; and the entire world as we see it, through the body, is Apara Prakriti; but when we rise higher, then we see also the Para Prakriti. So, ‘that who knows’ and ‘that which is known’ and ‘that which is it to be known’, all the three together is the totality of existence: the supreme Lord, the lower nature, and the higher nature, all put together is the totality. This is the basic point in the 13th chapter.