Samkhya – Right Understanding :2.

The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita :


One of the problems that arose in the mind of Arjuna was the limiting of his notions to his social relations, which means to say, the relations with other people. Mostly, perhaps always, we are likely to think only in terms of other people in this world, which is called 'sociological thinking'. It appears from this limited view of thinking that the world consists of nothing but human beings; there is nothing anywhere in all creation except men and women – human beings. If it is true that we are mostly concerned with human affairs, and perhaps we are not concerned with any other affair anywhere, this was a question which troubled the mind of Arjuna and troubles the mind of everybody, even this moment here. But the 'world', using this word in a very, very large, expanded form of its meaning, is not exhausted by humanity only. Science, which is mostly physical, chemical and biological, has tried to lift the conceptualisations of mankind beyond mere political and sociological thinking, and demonstrated before man that there are laws and powers and systems of operation which cannot be exhausted by politics and sociology. The life on earth is not completely decided by what other people are thinking, or all people are thinking. The life of the earth, or life in general, is vaster than the concept you call political, social, communal – or, in any sense of the term, social. But there is a defect which infects human nature and infects every species you may say, dragging it to the level of that species only, and it cannot think in terms of any other species of existence - neither we are bothered about subhuman existences, nor superhuman levels of being. Let anything happen in the angel's kingdom, we are not bothered; we are also not worried about what happened in jungles, or in areas where humanity does not reside.

This is not a charitable way of thinking, to put it very politely. Even to be a little good, and charitable in our feelings, we must be considerate enough to accept that the world contains more things than man. However, the effect or the impact of human relationship upon the human mind is such that it will not permit the operation of higher laws in the present state of human thinking. This was the point made out by Bhagavan Sri Krishna when he said, "Arjuna, you lack samkhya – right understanding." From the point of view of a philosopher of history or a metaphysician of the process of human history, a pure political reading of human affairs may look merely puerile and almost childish. The process of human history is not the coming and going of kings and queens, or the wars that are waged, the births and deaths of people – this is not human history, from the point of view of a deeper study of the very process that underlies the current you call 'human evolution through history'. Likewise, from the point of view of an astronomer and a physicist, or even a scientist of any nature, political thinking will look very poor. It is not to the point, because the world is guided by forces which are not necessarily political or sociological.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued ...