The true message of the Bhagavad Gita, which seeks to remove the ‘materialness’ of man through a dialogic strategy of
sublimation of consciousness, cannot be known without delving into its
microcosmic roots. It is the recapitulation in poetic form of the ancient
philosopher-scientists’ insights into the mystery of conscious experience.
Realizing quickly that the external universe is
composed of dead matter, they abstracted it simply as the world of the
sense-objects and instead focused on the human body, its anatomy as well as
function. They inspected carefully the organs of the body and saw them for what
they are: mere instruments for a spiritual first principle known as the purusa (pure personality). Consciousness
is not a phenomenon that arises out of a mere collation of matter but an
essential characteristic of purusa.
This spiritual entity identifies itself so totally with the circuitry of the brain—its
neurological processes—that it has become almost a neural (sensory-motor)
entity. This causes purusa to
experience births and deaths and afflictions in an endless cycle of existences.
The solution then is to educate the purusa
regarding his true nature, the ontological category to which he really belongs,
which is the same as that of God (the supreme purusa), and to free him from the dharma of the senses by making him develop a “core consciousness”
which is rooted not in matter but in the supreme pure personality.
The ancient seers were not content with sketchy
outlines; they wanted to know how exactly purusa
experiences the taste of sense objects. A hierarchy of neural entities stretching
from the sensory receptors (vedas) upwards
to the brain was discovered. However these researches remained exceedingly
abstruse to the common man and they felt the need to make it both accessible
and interesting. So they introduced into this philosophical and scientific account
poetical elements like personification, etc.
There are three chief entities
of the microcosm: (a) the spiritual personality (Visnu) of the same essence as
God (b) the brain (Brahma) and (c) time (Siva). Above this trio however stands Krishna
(God) the cowherd, as it were, of the
sensory receptors. There has thus been a translocation of God to the neural
realm! The import is that he is the supreme innervating entity (paramatma), the supreme actuator of this
micro-creation. All those arrayed up against Arjuna, the jiva—purusa connected to brain—are
material personalities while he himself is purely spiritual in nature. The
grief that he suffers in this gripping dharmic
drama is also, in a sense, the grief of ontological confusion.
These material, neural
entities which emanate, from the (non-literal) causative point of view, from
the body of the supreme purusa, are
categorized into several classes based on property and function (guna, karma; Gita 4.13). To each is assigned a specific dharma.
The function of some of them is to acquire knowledge or sense-data; for
others, like the controlling nerves (devas)
of the ‘sun’ (trachea) and the ‘moon’ (oesophagus) and other structures, it is
to do motor-action and to subdue the visceral organs. Some engage specifically
in the keeping of ‘cows’, the sensory receptors, and the processing of their
sensory products; while for others the dharma
is to aid and serve the other entities. To digress, the view, therefore, that
the caste system of the external world is sanctioned by the Gita is a
misinterpretation of the most horrendous kind and is a potent example of how
deadly misinterpretation of scripture can be. Such an interpretation is not
only wrong, it also is diametrically opposite to the teaching of the Gita which
says that this kind of a material gradation among personalities is restricted
only to the world of matter, to the sphere of the neural entities.
Now, in this micro-universe, the
ignorant purusa works. He thinks
himself to be a ‘man,’ a neural entity, and engages in ‘work’ (karma) as dictated by the vedas or the sensory receptors. Moreover,
corresponding to his microcosmic ignorance, there is an equivalent ignorance
reflected externally in the realm of praxis. The path of karma then becomes a path of microcosmic emulation.
There is mimicry by the
material man of essentially two kinds of neuronal activity. In the first mode
known as pravritti, alluded to by Krishna
(3.14), there is a metaphorical sacrifice, a yajna, going on in the body. Krishna talks about anna sustaining all creatures and this anna, he says, is produced through rain which in turn is made possible by karma performed in yajna. This is
the purely autonomic loop that does not involve the spiritual personality. Here, the ‘oblations’ are the
transmitted signals; the channel (such as the spinal cord) through which these
ascend to the ‘heavens’ (the base of the brain) is the ‘fire,’ and the deva,
the activated nerve. The ‘rain’, of course, is oxygen and from it,
respiratory metabolism takes place (‘food’ is produced) and from this ‘food’, the
neural entities are further nourished.
But in the second mode, the ‘oblations’
of this internal yajna are offered to
the spiritual personality. This is the path of nivritti or niskama karma.
It is very clear from these microcosmic origins that the path of karma is purely material. Even in the second
variant, the purusa continues to
function as a material entity but does karma
by offering to the supreme purusa. None
of these reflects the true nature and function of purusa. As karma pertains
only to the material, non-conscious units and not to conscious personality, its
practice can be sustained only in the state of ignorance. The doer of karma—the neuronal man—must be instructed
to cultivate knowledge of spirit and sublimate his consciousness. It is for
this reason that the entire dialogic strategy of the Gita transitions from the karmic to the bhaktic. To the jiva,
it is recurrently told that he is not
a neural entity but an amsa (15.7) of
the supreme spirit, not ksara but aksara, immutable (15.16), that like the
‘knower of the field’, he is distinct from the mind, body and senses and that
for the one taking delight in atman,
there is no karma (3.17). The glory of paramatma is brought before him so that his consciousness becomes undeviatingly
rooted in spirit.
The great ontological crisis is thus lifted. However,
as soon as the jiva comes out of
material mode, his previous microcosmic emulations must also go for these dharmas which are rooted in the
philosophy of karma are no longer
compatible with his reclaimed status of spiritual personality. Therefore the final
call-to-action of the Gita is of sole-refuge (eka sarana) in God forsaking completely all veda-ordained dharmas (18.66).