Whatever it is, these are very hard things to understand. There is a persistent assertion on the part of every seeker that there is a universe outside. With all our practices and our philosophical affirmations, we cannot gainsay the presence of a world outside us, sometimes even people around. We cannot easily identify the objective universe with the consciousness that conceives it, beholds it, perceives it, comes in contact with it. A persistent distinction is there between consciousness and matter, which are called purusha and prakriti. The whole bodily encasement of the individual and the entire creational structure is supposed to be a conglomeration of the constituents of what we call prakriti - the original matter, we may say. Matter is more than what we sense with our gross organs - it is a subtle potentiality for objectivity. Even according to modern physics, matter is not actually the hard brick or the solid mango that we touch. It is something very unintelligible, transcending even conception by the mind; something which cannot be described even as ethereal, yet existing as a very subtle transcendent potentiality for manifesting externality. Matter is externality. The power of externality is matter and therefore it is something more than solidity, and we cannot identify it with solid objects. Somehow, something is there. This something which is there, and not here, is the so-called prakriti or the object, and the one cannot be identified with the other easily. But the verse at the very beginning of the thirteenth chapter, in a very subtle way, seems to solve this difficulty for us when it says: Kshetrajnam chapi mam vidhi sarvaksetreshu: "I am the Knower in all the fields which are known." The multiplicity of perceivers and a real external universe seem to be ruled out by the suggestion given here that there is a single ruling consciousness as a kshetrajna, which is the perceiver, true cogniser, knower behind all the bodies. If a body or a material structure is to be considered as that which is constituted of the five elements - earth, water, fire, air, and ether - and if there is a uniform kshetrajna or a knowing principle behind all these bodies, it is difficult to believe how the universe can be outside this consciousness.

The Bhagavadgita accepts the Samkhya principles of the dualism of prakriti and purusha, with a great proviso that there is something beyond these two principles which are like the two wings of the bird of the Supreme Being, but the wings themselves are not the bird. We have a similar thought in Spinoza in the West, who had a notion of the Supreme Being by way of what we call substance, with two attributes of space and time. The attributes of Spinoza are something like the purusha and prakriti of the Samkhya according to the Mahabharata, the Manu Smirti and the Bhagavadgita - not Kapila's or Ishvarakrishna's Samkhya. There is a practical utility in taking for granted that there is such a thing called purusha and prakriti. Whether they are really there in the last word is a different matter, but they have to be taken as existent, like an 'x' in an equation; it is not there, but it must be there because it has utility. Human beings, who can think only in this manner and cannot think in any other way, cannot obviate their involvement in this concept of the duality of the seer and the seen, and we cannot jump over our own skin.

But the philosophy of the Bhagavadgita, or any profound philosophy for the matter of that, is a study of the implications of experience, and not merely a study of empirical experience. Empirical experience may tell us that there are two realities - prakriti and purusha - but the implication is something deeper. The very knowledge of the fact that there are two things shows that there is a third thing which is other than the two things; otherwise, no one can know that there are two things. Prakriti cannot know there is purusha, purusha cannot know that there is prakriti, if they are totally different. The possibility of the one knowing the other, or one contacting the other, is acceptable only on the presence of a larger ground to which a subtle hint is given when the Bhagavadgita tells us, "I am the Knower behind all the things," - which means to say, the consciousness behind the whole material universe. Consciousness is the Knower of the whole cosmos. There is a single Seer - 'The Beholder of the Universe' that is God, who is brooding over the waters of creation. We need not go further, deeper, into the difficulties that we may have to face, in going a step beyond this conclusion that we have arrived at, because if we press this feature of the omnipresence of consciousness as immanent in all creation to its logical limit, we will be forced to conclude that matter does not exist, because consciousness can be omnipresent only if the so-called material object is a part and parcel of the existence of consciousness itself. This is to go too far, and we need not to such an extent at the present moment.

The thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita is thus: prakriti, purusha, viveka, kshetra, kshetrajna vibhaaga-yoga. This prakriti, this material - a metaphysical matter, we should say, not the ordinary matter of the carpenter, or the chemist, or the scientist as we know, the philosopher's matter - this matter is not a solid substance, but a constituent of forces, energies. There is no matter outside energy. This is what our science also says, and the Bhagavadgita says. These energies are called sattva, rajas and tamas. Sattva, rajas and tamas are not three substances. The idea of substance attacks us like a hobgoblin wherever we go; and whichever we try to contact in any manner whatsoever, the idea of solidity of objects and the externality of things is so hardboiled in us that we cannot understand how a mere force, an energy, can become a solid universe. The solidity of a substance is not the characteristic of the substance itself - it is a reaction set up by the contact of senses. Again we go back to that famous statement in the third chapter of the Bhagavadgita where it is said that the perception of the universe is nothing but the coming together, in contact with each other, of the constituents of the individual with the constituents of the cosmos - the gunas of prakriti colliding with the gunas of prakriti, an ocean of waves, dashing against one another, as it were, where there neither a seer or a seen, no subject or object. 'The Ocean of Being' is dancing within its own bosom!

So the prakriti so-called, the matter to which reference has been made in the thirteenth chapter, is constituted of three forces - sattva, rajas, and tamas - which is the theme of the fourteenth chapter. The idea that the universe is a solid, material, brick-like substance is removed from our mind by the teaching that the whole universe is force. Here we have a corresponding philosophy of German philosopher Leibniz - the universe is made of force - and this is also of modern physics. As we are told, all great men think alike, whether they are from the East or the West. When we reach the top of the mountain, we will see the same thing, whoever we are. So all these great men - Plato or whoever he is, they have reached an apex of perception of things, so they have the same explanation, finally, of the internal character of things. We have to overcome our subjection to the gunas of prakriti - this is a teaching towards the end of the fourteenth chapter. We are caught up by these forces, as it were, and we cannot easily understand how we are so caught. The grip of these forces upon us is such that we have lost consciousness of the way in which this grip has been affected upon us. We have been totally brainwashed - until madness - so that we cannot know what has happened to us. When we are indoctrinated into a particular system of thinking, by hammering into our mind the same thought, again and again, we may forget our original thinking. So the world has been effective in driving into our minds the falsity of an existence of an external, material, so-called universe; and we are indoctrinated into it - we think only in this manner. Thus it is that we are in a prison-house, imagining that we are in heaven. The teaching has been so very powerful that we have accepted it wholly - that this prison-house is the same as the heaven supreme. This body is delightful - it is made of gold and silver, it is perfumed, it is very delightful. We decorate the body as if it is a deity. We look at our own face in the mirror as if there is nothing more beautiful than that - our own face is the most beautiful thing. We take care of it more endearingly than our own firstborn child, but it is the dirtiest of things - the most awful thing, if we go into the structure of it. It will stink if you don't take bath for a few days, it will deteriorate for other reasons, and we know its fate finally - such is the glory of this body which we are considering as a temple of our so-called ideal. This is to say how far we have gone into erroneous notions about things; and even the fear of death is not a deterrent factor for us. We are not afraid of death, provided that we can taste the honey of this body. The Bhagavadgita goes far enough to remove this objection, this difficulty, this problem facing us and repeats again and again. There are repetitions of ideas many times, and these repetitions go to contribute to the effect they produce upon us, because a thing told once only is likely to be forgotten. So it is told again and again, hammered into our minds.

The world appears to be there as a prakriti outside, but it is not really outside there. It is immanently controlled by a Supreme Principle - the kshetrajna, the Knower of all things - and even this so-called outside object, this prakriti, is not a solid substance. It is a sea of turbulent energies which attack each other with the force of a cyclone blowing over the surface of an ocean. Above these gunas of prakriti, transcendent to the visible structure of all this creation, beyond the individual seer, is the Supreme Purushottama. The whole universe is guided, controlled, illuminated and ruled by this Supreme Purushottama. God is called Purushottama to distinguish the supremacy of God over the ordinary purushas which are the individuals. While the jivas are called purushas, there is a Supreme Purusha who is the best of all purushas - that is Purushottama.

The fifteenth chapter again describes the nature of this universe, with a different type of emphasis - the subject which was touched upon in the thirteenth and the fourteenth chapters already. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and the fifteenth chapters concern themselves with cosmological themes, creation, and the entire field of the levels of manifestation. God's role in this creation and man's relationship to God, the connection with the universe to the other principles, and so on, are all in varieties of ways mentioned in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth chapters. The fifteenth chapter has an importance of its own because it very poetic. It has its own majesty, and in a beautiful allegory it compares the whole of creation to a tree with its roots above and branches spread below. This allegory of a tree is also to be found in certain mystical scriptures of the West, like the Scandinavian myth of 'The Tree of Yggdrasil', as it is called - they compare the universe to a large tree. There is some point in taking this as a suitable comparison in for the way in which universe spreads itself out, because the universe is like a spread-out, large banyan tree - Asvatthavraksha, the peepul - the only difference being its roots are above and the roots are not below, as we have in the case of other peepul trees here. Urdhvamulamadhashakam - We have never seen a tree like that, where the tree's roots are above; they are fixed to the sky as it were.

But this is a very interesting analogy for us, for the purpose of meditation even. We know very well that we are always accustomed to this concept of the 'above' whenever we think of the higher realities, especially the Creator. Don't we look up when we pray to God? Do we look down on the ground? This is a symbolic inclination of the human consciousness - to recognise the transcendence of higher realities. And, whenever we speak of the sky, we look above, as if the sky is only above, though it is also underneath. If the sky is all around the earth, why should we say it is above? This earth is hanging in space, in mid-space - there is no below for the earth. But it is a notion of our mind on account of our inability to see the whole structure of this planetary system, and we cannot believe that we are a moving in a spaceship called this earth. We are not in a rocket, though it is so, perhaps, in some way. We are rushing, rocket-like, in some direction, but we think we are on the solid ground of the Earth. This habit of the human mind is to consider that it is on a low ground, and everything which is of a controlling nature and an administrative type, especially divine in nature is above because the world and everything connected to the world is considered as 'effect' which proceeds from a cause, and the cause being superior, is also transcendent. And we, like children, think that all transcendent things are above in a spatial way, and look up. But, it is above also in a logical sense. Logically, God is above us. To repeat what I told you earlier, He is above in the same way as the higher class in a school is above the lower class. It is not above in space - it is not a 'spatial aboveness'. We don't find the higher classes in a school or a college standing in the sky and the lower classes below - yet, we still say it is a higher class. So in what sense do we call it a higher class? You know very well - it is a 'logical, conceptual higherness'. In that sense we speak of the 'higher self' transcendent to the lower self. We conceive of the realities above the world as 'above' in a very very specific, psychic, psychological or philosophical sense, mystical manner. In this way, we have to conceive that the rootedness of the tree of this universe in the Transcendent Being - God the Creator, the Absolute, and the descending of this tree, and all the effects that you see here, spread out as branches of which we are all parts.