English
An agent is called tamasa if he is careless, haughty, thoughtless, deceptive, arrogant, idle, procrastinating and melancholic. Understanding (buddhz) is said to be sattvika when it grasps how a man has to set himself in the path of virtue, how to refrain from vice, what ought and what. ought not to be done, of what one has to be afraid and how to be fearless, what is bondage, and what is liberation. Rajasa under- standing is that by which one wrongly grasps the nature of virtue and vice, and of right and wrong conduct. Tamasa understanding is that which takes vice as virtue and out of ignorance perceives all things wrongly. That mental hold (dhrtz) is called sattvtka which by unfailing communion holds together the sense-functions and bio- motor and mind activities. That happiness which in the beginning appears to be painful, but which is in the end as sweet as nectar, and which is the direct result of gaiety of mind, is called sattvika sukha. The happiness arising out of sense-object contact, which in the beginning is as attractive as nectar, but in the end is as painful as poison, is rajasa. That happiness which arises out of sleep, idleness and errors, and blinds one in the beginning and in the end, is called tamasa. So also the food which increases life, facili- tates mind-function, increases powers of enjoyment, makes one healthy and strong, and is sweet, resistible and delightful is liked by the sattvika people. That food is liked by rajasa people which is hot, sour, salt, dry and causes pain and brings on diseases. The food which is impure, tasteless, old and rotten is liked by ¢a@masa people. All this goes to show that the gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, are determinants of the tendencies of, or rather the stuff of, the moral and immoral, pleasurable and painful planes or characteristics of our experience. Sattva represents the moral and supermoral planes, rajas the ordinary mixed and normal plane, and tamas the inferior and immoral characteristics of our experience. Avyakta and Brahman. The word avyakta is primarily used in the Gita in the sense of ‘the unmanifested.” Etymologically the word consists of two parts, the negative particle a meaning “negation,” and vyakta meaning “‘manifested,” “differentiated” or ‘‘revealed.”’ In this XIV] Avyakta and Brahman 471 sense the word is used as an adjective. There is another use of the word in the neuter gender (avyaktam), in the sense of a category. As an illustration of the first sense, one may refer to the Gita, 11. 25 or vill. 21. Thus in 11. 25 the self is described as the unmanifested; unthinkable and unchangeable. In the Upanisads, however, it is very unusual to characterize the self as avyakta or unmanifested; for the self there is pure conscious- ness and self-manifested. In all later Vedantic works the seif is described as anubhiti-svabhava, or as being always immediately intuited. But in the Gita the most prominent characteristic of the self is that it is changeless and deathless; next to this, it is un- manifested and unthinkable. But it does not seem that the Gita describes the self as pure consciousness. Not only does it charac- terize the self as avyakta or unmanifested, but it dces not seem anywhere to refer to it as a self-conscious principle. The word cetana, which probably means consciousness, is described in the Gita as being a part of the changeable ksetra, and not the ksetra- jna‘. It may naturally be asked how, if the self was not a conscious principle, could it be described as ksetra-jva (that which knows the ksetra)? But it may well be replied that the self here is called ksetra-jna only in relation to its ksetra, and the implication would be that the self becomes a conscious principle not by virtue of its own inherent principle of consciousness, but by virtue of the principle of consciousness reflected or offered to it by the complex entity of the ksetra. The ksetra contains within it the conscious principle known as cetana, and it is by virtue of its association with the self that the self appears as ksetra-jna or the knower. It may not be out of place here to mention that the term ksetra is never found in the Upanisads in the technical sense in which it is used in the Gita. The term ksetra-jfia, however, appears in Svetasvatara, v1. 16 and Maitrayana, 11. 5 in the sense of purusa, as in the Giia. The term ksetra, however, as used in the Gita, has more or less the same sense that it has in Caraka’s account of Samkhya in the Caraka-samhita, u1.1.61-63. In Caraka, however, avyakta is excluded from the cemplex constituent ksetra, though in the Gita it is included within the constituents of ksetra. Caraka again considers avyakta (by which term he means both the Samkhya prakrti and the purusa) as ksetra-jna, whereas the Gita takes only the purusa as ksetra-jna. The purusa of the Gita is further 1 Gitd, XxiII. 7. 472 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. characterized as the life-principle (jiva-bhita, vil. 5 and xv. 7) by which the whole world is upheld. The Gita does not, however, de- scribe in what particular way the life-principle upholds the world. In Caraka’s account also the atman is referred to as the life-principle, and it is held there that it is the principle which holds together the buddhs, the senses, the mind and the objects—it is also the prin- ciple for which good, bad, pleasure, pain, bondage, liberation, and in fact the whole world-process happens. In the Caraka-samhita purusa is regarded as cetand-dhatu, or the upholder of conscious- ness; yet it is not regarded as conscious by itself. Consciousness only comes to it as a result of the joint operation of manas, the senses, the objects, etc. In the Gita purusa is not regarded as the cetana-dhatu, but cetana or consciousness is regarded as being a constituent of the ksetra over which the purusa presides. Thus knowledge can accrue to purusa as ksetra-jna, only in association with its ksetra. It may well be supposed that purusa as ksetra-jna and as a life-principle upholds the constituents of the ksetra, and it is probable that the purusa’s position as a cognizer or knower de- pends upon this intimate association between itself and the ksetra. Another relevant point is suggested along with the considera- tions of the nature of the purusa as the cognizer, namely, the consideration of the nature of purusa as an agent (kartr). It will be pointed out in another section that the fruition of actions is rendered possible by the combined operations of adhisthana, kartr, karana, cesta and daiva, and this doctrine has been regarded as being a Samkhya doctrine, though it has been interpreted by Sankara as being a Vedantic view. But both Samkhya and the Vedanta theories are explicitly of the sat-karya-vada type. Accord- ing to the sat-karya-vada of the traditional Samkhya philosophy the fruition of actions is the natural result of a course of unfolding evolution, consisting in the actualization of what was already potentially present. On the Vedantic sat-karya-vada view all operations are but mere appearances, and the cause alone is true. Neither of these doctrines would seem to approve of a theory of causation which would imply that anything could be the result of the joint operation of a number of factors. That which is not cannot be produced by the joint operation of a collocation of causes. It may be remembered, however, that the Gitd explicitly formulates the basic principle of sat-karya-vada, that what exists cannot be destroyed and that what does not exist cannot come into being. XIV] Avyakta and Brahman 473 This principle was applied for proving the deathless character of the self. It is bound to strike anyone as very surprising that the Gita should accept the sat-karya-vada doctrine in establishing the immortality of the self and should assume the a-sat-karya-vada doctrine regarding the production of action. It is curious, however, to note that a similar view regarding the production of action is to be found in Caraka’s account of Samkhya, where it is said that all actions are produced as a result of a collocation of causes— that actions are the results of the collocation of other entities with the agent (karir)}. The word avyakta is also used in the sense of ‘‘unknowability ” or “‘disappearance”’ in the Gita, 11. 28, where it is said that the beginnings of all beings are invisible and unknown; it is only in the middle that they are known, and in death also they dis- appear and become unknown. But the word avyakta in the neuter gender means a category which is a part of God Himself and from which ali the manifested manifold world has come into being. This avyakta is also referred to as a prakrti or nature of God, which, under His superintendence, produces the moving and the unmoved—the entire universe?. But God Himself is sometimes referred to as being avyakta (probably because He cannot be grasped by any of our senses), as an existence superior to the avyakta, which is described as a part of His nature, and as a category from which all things have come into being’. This avyakta which is identical with God is also called aksara, or the immortal, and is regarded as the last resort of all beings who attain their highest and most perfect realization. Thus there is a superior avyakta, which represents the highest essence of God, and an inferior avyakta, from which the world is produced. Side by side with these two avyaktas there is also the prakrti, which is some- times described as a coexistent principle and as the maya or the blinding power of God, from which the gunas are produced. The word ‘‘ Brahman ”’ is used in at least two or three different senses. Thus in one sense it means prakrti, from which the gunas are produced. In another sense it is used as an essential nature of God.