The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad gita-21-4.

15/02/2018

21.The Lord Dwells in the Hearts of All Beings- 4.

Our understanding, our volition, our feelings and our actions are therefore sattvic, rajasic or tamasic. The gross understanding or the tamasic, objective-motivated understanding is that which clings to objects as realities in themselves and pours forth all one’s affection upon the objects, transferring oneself into them in some manner, so that there is a loss of personality in the love that one evinces in regard to the object of attachment.

This is the lowest kind of understanding of the nature of reality. For the mother, the son is all reality—there no reality more than that. She will die for her son. People die for wealth, people die for name, fame, honour and many other things of that kind. These are examples of how the self within is transferred to outside factors and features that are visibly substantial, or merely psychological or conceivable, and become objects rather than subjects.

When one, as a true subject, sell oneself as a belonging of an object outside and are contented to remain as an object rather than a subject, one is in a tamasic condition. This is the worst state of knowledge, where particular things are regarded as universals and one’s concentration goes entirely to these particular elements—whether property, family relations, wealth, name, fame, power, authority, and the like.

The higher understanding is the logical acumen that intellectual geniuses possess. By scientific investigation into the nature of things, they recognise the interconnectedness of all objects and realise that the world is an organism, completeness in itself, rather then a medley of scattered particulars.

For the lowest understanding, everything is confusion and nothing has any connection with any other thing, whatsoever. Everything is totally independent of everything else—this is the lowest type of knowledge. “I have nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with me, and no object in this world has anything to do with anything else.”

This is tamasic knowledge, the lowest type of understanding. So we think we can cling to anything or hate something with impunity, without any kind of nemesis or retribution following there from.
To be continued ...
Swami Krishnananda