Bhagavagd Gita - Session 17- Track 1707

So, if you now turn to 4th chapter, verse n°32, we can now read this more easily and rapidly without the need of any comment because all that is there is already easily understandable. Now, you can see 4th chapter, 32:

evaṁ bahuvidhā yajñā vitatā brahmaṇo mukhe |

armajān viddhi tān sarvān evaṁ jñātvā vimokṣyase ||32|| (IV)

“Thus from the mouth of Brahman all these different types of sacrifices have proceeded. Know them all to be born of Karma. Thus knowing you will become liberated.”

So, now the emphasis falls upon knowing: “Thus knowing you will become liberated.” You may know all yajñā(s), but if you are not aware if you do not “know”, then all your yajñā(s) are useless. At least it will not give that kind of liberation that is to be sought after: “Thus knowing you will become liberated”, so the key word is, ‘thus knowing’: evaṁ jñātvā vimokṣyase.

Now, the next one is an elucidation of this:

śreyān dravyamayād yajñāj jñānayajñāḥ parantapa |

sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate ||33|| (IV)

There are different kinds of yajñā(s): in some yajñā(s) you offer dravya, all material things. But greater than this kind of a sacrifice is jñānayajñāḥ. We are seating now today in a kind of a jñānayajñāḥ: this kind of yajñā is even greater than a sacrifice, in which you only do all kinds of offerings of material things. When you are all becoming aware of the Reality, we are participating in that great Knowledge that is much greater. And then Sri Krishna says:

sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate,

In any case, even if you do all kinds of actions, there is no end of actions, action leads you to action, and action leads you to action. If you want to come to a resting place, all action ultimately parisamāpyate, it attains to its highest resting place: jñāne, in the Knowledge. This one sentence is one of the famous sentences of the Bhagavad Gita:

sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate,

All action, sarvaṁ karma, all action, not only prescribed actions, not only good actions, not only bad actions: sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ, whatever paths you have, wherever you are, if you want a resting place, resting place is in jñāna.

Question: The knowledge here would mean the knowledge of the Divine?

Now, this is a multi-million dollar question, this is a very important question: what is the meaning of jñāna? Sri Krishna is a great teacher and little by little He expounds His knowledge, whatever He has to expound. In the first 6 chapters, the word jñāna is used and we, as docile pupils are supposed to understand what it means, although we really don’t understand. But you know, in the study of any subject, you cannot define all the terms at the outset: this is the difficulty of any process of study. Of course many people write down first of all, all definitions in the very beginning. But then if you examine these definitions, every definition will raise the question: what does this word mean? To understand which again you have to go to another definition, when you come to that definition, you have to go back again to another definition. So far as a good teacher He expounds with use of words (this is the difficulty of verbal exposition), you have got to use words, and you cannot explain everything at one breath.

Now, when you have raised this question: “What is that meant exactly by Knowledge?” the answer to this question comes only in the 7th chapter: what is jñāna? In fact 7th, 8th, and 9th, and 10th, these chapters are exposition of jñāna. At the present moment you can say jñāna here means: Knowledge of the divine birth, divine action and all of them starting of the divine: brahmaṇo mukhe, everything is from…in the Brahman. The giver is the Brahman; receiver is the Brahman. This awareness, this jñāna, is sufficient for us to understand the word jñāna here, for the present. But is you ask the question: what is jñāna? Then we have to read 7th, 8th, 9th particularly these 3 chapters.

Because there Sri Krishna says: “I will now expound to you Knowledge aśeṣeṇa, ‘without remainder’. So once you know this nothing more remains to be known.” And then He says: “I will expound to you jñāna vijñānena saha: I will tell you what is jñāna, and what is vijñāna; jñāna and also its vistāra: vijñāna means vistāra, that which is vistṛta; Knowledge and further Knowledge and the totality of Knowledge, all that I will tell you without remainder, and after knowing which there is nothing that you will not know”. Such is the great thing that Sri Krishna does in the 7th, 8th, 9th , 10th chapters, until this jñāna vijñāna comes to such a point…then in the 11th chapter Sri Krishna is obliged to manifest Himself and says: “This is…when you have seen this, this is Me”. And when he sees that Reality, Arjuna is bewildered, and he sees no beginning of it, no end of it, and he sees wonderful things, and hundreds of mouths and hundreds of things, and thousand of things coming and thousand going out: this awareness, this Knowledge is what Sri Krishna means here, although expounded latter on. But when you ask this question: what is this jñāna? This is the jñāna: “sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ pārtha jñāne parisamāpyate, all actions, O Arjuna, ultimately ends in Knowledge.”