Bhagavagd Gita - Session 39- Track 3904

This whole concept of Sachchidananda as the supreme Lord emerges out of this statement. He Himself ‘is’: that is, He is Sat; Sat is ‘to be’. That reality is that which is existent.

Now, ‘That which is existent’ is complex: It is Itself; It is other than Itself. It is existent and therefore immovable, it always exists: nanunaṁ asti no śvaḥ, He is neither today nor tomorrow, He is eternal therefore it exists, unchangeable, immutable. Yet it has a motion, abhisancarenyam: sancara is the movement. The Reality which is eternal, which is immutable still moves, it’s not incapable of motion: ‘the immutable that moves’. But moves anyasya cittam, moves by consciousness. In Itself It exists, but it is also other than existence namely it is consciousness also: It is not only existent, It is also conscious.

So, there is a distinction between ‘being’ and ‘consciousness’. The two are one, and yet there is a difference between being and consciousness and this is the mystery of the divine Reality.

You might say that this is an illogical proposition because it’s contradictory: It is Itself and It is other than Itself. The answer is that that is the wonder of it; that self contradiction somehow is the nature of the Reality, you cannot help it: such is the nature of the Reality. You examine your own personality; you find the same mystery about your own personality. You are yourself and in doing every action that you are doing you are other than yourself and yet, that other than yourself is also yourself.

Even in ordinary life, when you are busy with cooking, you are also looking after the child at the same time. Now, the action of cooking is yourself and yet it is possible for you to be other than yourself, you have to look after the child in the same time, simultaneously. It is one very simple example to show how you are yourself and yet you are other than yourself and yet the two are not different from each other: it is the same mother who is cooking, the same mother who is looking after the child, at the same time.

Such is the nature of Reality, therefore it is adbhutam, it is strange, wonderful, mysterious. A Reality which is itself and yet which is other than itself, a Reality which is immutable and yet it moves and moves by consciousness, therefore it is Sat and Chit at the same time. it not only moves, but the Purusha is capable of throwing Himself into that which is other than Itself, makes a ‘sacrifice of Himself’ into that which is other than Itself, namely Sat throws Himself into Chit and by this throwing Himself, the world is spun out…

sarvaṁ tatam idaṁ jagad sarvaṁ

…the whole world is as it were spun out of Him because of this act, the Purusha makes a sacrifice of Himself into Chit and that movement is a free movement. It is not that it is obliged to throw Himself into the other, there is no compulsion on Him, but He is capable of it, capable therefore He can always do it freely whenever He wants.

This freedom is what is called ‘Ananda’; therefore it is Sat-Chit-Ananda. The freedom by which He can throw Himself, into that which is other than Himself, which yet is Himself, and brings out the contents of Himself in the form of all the creatures of the world, such is the mysterious nature of the supreme Lord.

Now, this concept of God which is so much celebrated in India, in the Upanishads particularly and which actually explains the whole world most satisfactorily…there are many questions about the world such as for example the problem of evil, one of the most difficult problem of philosophy is: how evil arises in the world? It can be explained only on the premise that the Divine is Sachchidananda; if you take away that premise, then the problem of evil becomes insolvable. This is the uniqueness of the Indian thought, the concept of Reality as Sachchidananda.

So, when you say: do you believe in God? That can be many answers. The kind of God, the nature of God has to be so comprehensive that every problem of the world, the riddle of the world can be solved, and therefore this chapter, 15th chapter particularly, since it brings out this basic proposition very clearly, it is called ‘uttamam’, the supreme word of the Gita is explained in this chapter.

We will see verse n°16 in this chapter. He says:

dvāv imau puruṣau loke kṣaraś cākṣara eva ca |,

“There are two Purushas: the one is kṣara, the mobile, the other is akṣara, is immobile.” The same Purusha, the same Reality, is at once kṣara and akṣara, is at once mobile and immobile. This is also the description of the Reality in the Isha Upanishad. In the Isha Upanishad, describing the Reality, it says: tadejati tannaijati (Isha Upn. 5) ‘that moves, that does not move’, the same reality is at once static and dynamic.