The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 12-2: Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 16, Sep 2025, 06:20.
Books: Bhagavad Gita
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 12-2: 
Chapter 12: Control of the Senses: 2.
Swami Krishnananda.

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We are said to be good only when we are in tune with Truth, and the percentage of our atonement with Truth is the percentage of our goodness. Truth is, in a way, an inwardness of fact. It is hidden in the cave of the heart. This is how we are sometimes told about it in the Upanishads and in other scriptures. The secret of dharma is hidden in the cave. The secret of virtue, righteousness, veracity, Truth or Reality is in the cave of the heart. The heart of things is the truth of things. The heart of a person is not the fleshy heart. We sometimes refer to 'the heart of the matter'. What is the heart of the matter? It is not the physical heart that we are referring to here. It is the centrality of operation, the secret, the basic route and fundamental essence of a thing that we call the heart of the matter, and in that sense also we have to understand the inwardness of things.

A thing becomes inward in the spiritual sense when it is in harmony with Truth, as I told you. So the indication of the character of Reality or Truth may be said to be the nature of the inwardness of approach. The more are you friendly with Truth, the more are you inward. Now, 'truth', the word, has to be borne in mind carefully. The truth of things is not inside anywhere. It is not inside something. It is a ubiquitous, all-pervading, operative existence. Inasmuch as it is an all-pervading, controlling principle, it is in the heart of all things. Now in this sense we have to understand the heart of the matter. That which is pervading all things is also in the heart of all things, but it is not inside things in the sense of there being nothing outside it. The question of outside does not arise here because Truth is not something contained in space. It is not to be contained in space, and also it is not outside space. The question does not arise here because it conditions even our understanding of space and time. So inwardness, when it is associated with the reality of things, is to be understood as the specific feature of an all-encompassing something.

Our minds are not so made to comprehend what this could be. A child's mind is indeed the mind of every one of us. Spiritually we are illiterate, though we may be very literate in a political, social or practical view of things. The understanding of spiritual circumstances, the appreciation of spiritual values, a gaining of insight into what spirituality means, is an education by itself. It is necessary to reorient our thoughts and entirely change the very framework of the operation of our understanding. We have to become different persons altogether, as it were. For some time it appears we have to cease to be what we are now in order to be what we ought to be in the light of Truth, and then we may be able to appreciate what it could be to be good and inward in one's evaluation of values, while it is at the same time a collaboration with the truth of the whole universe. This is how sattva operates as the reflection of divinity in all things. It is, in a way, the mirror in which is reflected the total picture of the truth of the cosmos. The whole truth is not capable of being contacted by any means available to us, but it is reflected in some way, in some degree, in some measure, macrocosmically as well as microcosmically.

So, this is a tendency present in everyone. Every one of us, every created being, has this basic tendency to motivate in the direction of the finality of things. At the very root of all roots, we may say, there is essentially goodness pervading in the cosmos. The quintessential basic fundamentality of things is goodness, not evil; therefore, it is impossible for anyone not to be good at least some time in the process of evolution. When it becomes possible under certain given circumstances to work in tune with this inwardness, out of which everything has come, we become good persons, saintly persons, sages, Godmen even.

But we have another tendency also. That other tendency is the outwardness characteristic of rajas. It is true that we are capable of being very good; why not? We have the capacity and the potentiality to be immensely, wonderfully good. But we have also the capacity to be wonderfully devilish. That is because we live in two worlds, as it were, at the same time. Again I will repeat the same words – the centrifugal world and the centripetal world are both our worlds. We are sometimes said to be in a world of empiricality. We say this is a phenomenal world. This is what philosophers many a time tell us. We say this is a relative world. Now, what do we mean by saying that this is a world of phenomena and relativity?

The meaning is twofold here again. There is nothing absolutely and permanently valid in this world. Everything seems to be justifiable under conditions only, and nothing can be justified unconditionally. There is nothing unrelated in this world. Everything is related to something else. There is a tentative permanence of everything. An absolute permanence of anything is not seen anywhere. Now, when we speak of things in this way, when we say things are relative, transient, impermanent, not long-lasting, we imply thereby that in our understanding of the relativity of things we have already made a reference to the nonrelative, without reference to which, even the relativity of things cannot be understood or noticed. Our observation of the relativity of things is possible only on the stand of a nonrelative reference. We have some connection with a non-phenomenal and non-relative reality. If that were not with us as a point of reference, a standard of reference, we would not have even known that things are passing. The phenomenology and the relativity of the world is recognisable with reference to something which is not phenomenal and not relative. So we are, in one sense, living in a relative world of space, time and causal relations, perishability, transiency and impermanency. This is very, very true. But we are also secretly, at the bottom of our being, rooted in something which is not transient, not relative, not phenomenal, not extrovert. So we live in two worlds: a world of invisible operations, and a world of visible activity.

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