By seers it has been sung in many ways, in varied metres, severally.
And by the aphoristic words of the Brahma-sūtras as well—well-reasoned and conclusive.।। 4।।
The great elements, ego-sense, intellect, and the Unmanifest.
The ten senses and the one, and the five objects of sense.।। 5।।
Desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, the aggregate, awareness, steadfastness.
This Field, in brief, is declared with its modifications.।। 6।।
Geeta Darshan #2
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
ऋषिभिर्बहुधा गीतं छन्दोभिर्विविधैः पृथक्।
ब्रह्मसूत्रपदैश्चैव हेतुमद्भिर्विनिश्चितैः।। 4।।
महाभूतान्यहंकारो बुद्धिरव्यक्तमेव च।
इन्द्रियाणि दशैकं च पञ्च चेन्द्रियगोचराः।। 5।।
इच्छा द्वेषः सुखं दुःखं संघातश्चेतना धृतिः।
एतत् क्षेत्रं समासेन सविकारमुदाहृतम्।। 6।।
ब्रह्मसूत्रपदैश्चैव हेतुमद्भिर्विनिश्चितैः।। 4।।
महाभूतान्यहंकारो बुद्धिरव्यक्तमेव च।
इन्द्रियाणि दशैकं च पञ्च चेन्द्रियगोचराः।। 5।।
इच्छा द्वेषः सुखं दुःखं संघातश्चेतना धृतिः।
एतत् क्षेत्रं समासेन सविकारमुदाहृतम्।। 6।।
Transliteration:
ṛṣibhirbahudhā gītaṃ chandobhirvividhaiḥ pṛthak|
brahmasūtrapadaiścaiva hetumadbhirviniścitaiḥ|| 4||
mahābhūtānyahaṃkāro buddhiravyaktameva ca|
indriyāṇi daśaikaṃ ca pañca cendriyagocarāḥ|| 5||
icchā dveṣaḥ sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃ saṃghātaścetanā dhṛtiḥ|
etat kṣetraṃ samāsena savikāramudāhṛtam|| 6||
ṛṣibhirbahudhā gītaṃ chandobhirvividhaiḥ pṛthak|
brahmasūtrapadaiścaiva hetumadbhirviniścitaiḥ|| 4||
mahābhūtānyahaṃkāro buddhiravyaktameva ca|
indriyāṇi daśaikaṃ ca pañca cendriyagocarāḥ|| 5||
icchā dveṣaḥ sukhaṃ duḥkhaṃ saṃghātaścetanā dhṛtiḥ|
etat kṣetraṃ samāsena savikāramudāhṛtam|| 6||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
A friend has asked, Osho, the twofold distinctions of kshetra and kshetrajna (field and knower of the field), body and soul, prakriti and purusha are discussed; yet Krishna says that all is he alone. If all is one, then why is there division, disorder, and separation?
The division appears; it is not. It seems; it is not. Whatever appears need not be real, and whatever is real need not necessarily appear. Much is visible; in that visibility there is less truth and more of the seer’s own vision.
What you see gets mixed with you. The way you look becomes part of what you call your seeing. A suffering person finds suffering all around; even a full moon will not seem beautiful. A joyous person sees joy everywhere; even thorns can look like flowers. What appears depends on the one who is looking.
What we see is our interpretation. Understand this well, because the whole religious quest is impossible without grasping this basic point. Ordinarily we think what we see is fact. If you search and inquire deeply, you will find we never see facts; we see our interpretations.
Think from a few angles:
A face looks beautiful to you, and to your friend the same face may look ugly. Is beauty in the face, or in your way of seeing? If beauty were a fact in the face, everyone would see it the same way. Yet some see beauty, some don’t, some even see ugliness in the same face. So when you label the face, your interpretation is included; the fact gets lost and you impose something of your own.
A taste feels delicious to you and bland to someone else. Is taste in the thing, or in your interpretation? If taste were in the thing, everyone would find it delicious. Taste is in you; you donate taste to the thing. Your experience is your thought colored over reality.
Hence, one who looks beautiful today may look unbeautiful tomorrow; a friend today may look like an enemy tomorrow; what seemed pleasant may turn unpleasant. You will have changed; your interpretation changes.
What we experience is not truth; it is our interpretation. The experience of truth begins only when interpretation is dropped; before that there is no true experience. That is why none can reach truth without becoming a no-mind.
The distinction between kshetra and kshetrajna, soul and body, samsara and moksha, matter and the divine—these too are our interpretations. In the final moment when all interpretations fall, no division remains. Only when all interpretive overlays drop does non-division reveal itself.
Investigate practically wherever a division appears: is there truly a division?
We see a difference between darkness and light. Science says darkness is a form of light—technically, “lesser light.” Conversely you can say light is “lesser darkness.” Einstein fathered relativity and said it is naïve to declare absolute divisions such as “this is darkness, that is light.” They are relative. With keener eyes you would see even in “darkness.” With weaker eyes you wouldn’t see even in “light.”
If the eye’s power increases, darkness becomes light; if it decreases, light becomes darkness. There is no absolute gap.
Consider: if there were no eyes at all, what difference would light and darkness make? People think a blind person lives in darkness—mistaken! Darkness also requires eyes to be seen. Even darkness cannot be seen by the blind, because seeing itself requires eyes. When you close your eyes you “see” darkness; don’t conclude a blind person sees darkness. Closed eyes are still eyes. To the blind there is neither darkness nor light.
Look at the other extreme: if God had absolute eyes, he would see equally in “darkness” and “light.” For him there would be no difference—his sight is not relative. At both extremes, with no eyes or with perfect eyes, the difference dissolves. Difference appears only when we sometimes see and sometimes do not.
Hot and cold seem opposites. When heat blazes, a glass of cold water delights; Krishna may talk non-duality and Einstein may say heat and cold are forms of the same thing, yet practically we feel the difference—and Einstein too shifts to the shade in heat and lights a heater in cold! The ultimate truth is: they are forms of one energy. But to know the ultimate, ultimate intelligence is needed. Our intellect is relative; in its frame heat is heat and cold is cold.
Try a small experiment: keep a bucket of water. Chill one hand on ice, warm the other by a lamp. Then dip both into the bucket. One hand will report cold, the other warm, though the water is the same. Which is it? The hands contradict because each is reporting relative to its own condition. Thus hot and cold are not two facts but our comparative interpretations. So long as the mind measures and compares, divisions will keep appearing.
The world is full of divisions because “world” is the name of our interpretations. In the divine there are no divisions because “the divine” means entering where we arrive having left every interpretation.
Another image: a river flows with two banks—left and right. When the river enters the ocean, banks vanish. A river that has merged would tell other rivers: banks are incidental, not essential to river-ness; in the ocean there are no banks, yet the river remains. Rivers still confined by banks will protest: without banks how can a river be? When Krishna speaks, he speaks from where the river has entered the ocean. We listen from where the river is still bound to banks. Hence when Krishna speaks of non-division, it slips our grasp; when he speaks of division, we understand—because division is our art. Non-division is unknown—and dangerous, because to know it, the divider within must die.
Everything around seems bounded, defined. Existence is boundless. A tree looks limited: we can measure height, width, even weigh leaves. But can a tree exist without the earth? If not, then the earth is part of the tree. What we cannot be without should not be separated from us. The tree’s roots drink the earth; its life flows from it. Air is also inseparable; the tree breathes. Without the sun? If tomorrow the sun doesn’t rise, the tree dies. So where does the tree end? In space, it spreads to sun and sky; in time, it goes back into seeds on other trees and forward into seeds it will produce. In honesty, if you try to mark a boundary, you will have to include the whole cosmos. Where do you begin? Where do you end? There is neither beginning nor end; therefore we call the divine beginningless and endless. So are you, a tree, even a stone.
Yet we draw boundaries—they are useful. If I ask for your address in infinite terms—“Where does the beginningless, endless, formless one live?”—people will call me mad. A small card with your name and number finds you—useful, but not true. Utility is often falsehood; truth is dangerous. One who enters truth must drop utility. That is the meaning of sannyas: one who leaves the world of mere usefulness and chooses to know what is, even at cost.
So Krishna’s statement seems unintelligible: if all is one, why division? Because our small intellect cannot function without dividing.
Another image: a man always sees the sky through a window-frame; he never steps outside. The window’s frame is imposed on the sky, and he believes the sky is window-shaped. The senses are windows. We look through them, so existence appears broken and bounded. The eye cannot see the formless; it imposes form. The ear cannot hear the soundless; it imposes sound. The hand cannot touch the formless; it imposes shape. When one steps out from the doors and windows—that stepping out is meditation—then it is known: what I saw was my thought; what now is, is truth.
Meditation means seeing without the senses. Don’t look with the eyes; close the eyes and see. Don’t listen with the ears; go beyond the ears and listen. Don’t touch with the body; rise above bodily touch. When even a little is known beyond the senses, Krishna’s words prove true: no limits appear; birth and death are one; creation and creator are one. Even “one” is not right, for “one” implies perhaps there were two that have now united. Hence in our land we used not “one” but “advaita”—not two. The knower finds not “all is one,” but “there are not two.” Saying “one” turns it into a number, implying the possibility of two, three, four. “Not two” denies division without making a numerical entity. This understanding comes not by studying Gita or Brahma-sutras but by the capacity to look beyond the senses.
Thus Krishna first teaches division: “You are not the body, not the senses; you are not the field.” Paradoxical. He teaches division so that, through it, you can come to non-division. Step away from the house to see the open sky; then you will also see that what was seen through the window was still the sky, only framed by you. But one must step out once.
We would prefer that no talk of division be made at all. But whether spoken or not, we are stuck in division. We can convince the mind that friend and foe are one, but deep down we will still love the friend and dislike the foe. From where we stand, division is inevitable. Until we change, we cannot experience non-division. The first step in our transformation is to keep alive the discrimination between field and knower of the field.
What you see gets mixed with you. The way you look becomes part of what you call your seeing. A suffering person finds suffering all around; even a full moon will not seem beautiful. A joyous person sees joy everywhere; even thorns can look like flowers. What appears depends on the one who is looking.
What we see is our interpretation. Understand this well, because the whole religious quest is impossible without grasping this basic point. Ordinarily we think what we see is fact. If you search and inquire deeply, you will find we never see facts; we see our interpretations.
Think from a few angles:
A face looks beautiful to you, and to your friend the same face may look ugly. Is beauty in the face, or in your way of seeing? If beauty were a fact in the face, everyone would see it the same way. Yet some see beauty, some don’t, some even see ugliness in the same face. So when you label the face, your interpretation is included; the fact gets lost and you impose something of your own.
A taste feels delicious to you and bland to someone else. Is taste in the thing, or in your interpretation? If taste were in the thing, everyone would find it delicious. Taste is in you; you donate taste to the thing. Your experience is your thought colored over reality.
Hence, one who looks beautiful today may look unbeautiful tomorrow; a friend today may look like an enemy tomorrow; what seemed pleasant may turn unpleasant. You will have changed; your interpretation changes.
What we experience is not truth; it is our interpretation. The experience of truth begins only when interpretation is dropped; before that there is no true experience. That is why none can reach truth without becoming a no-mind.
The distinction between kshetra and kshetrajna, soul and body, samsara and moksha, matter and the divine—these too are our interpretations. In the final moment when all interpretations fall, no division remains. Only when all interpretive overlays drop does non-division reveal itself.
Investigate practically wherever a division appears: is there truly a division?
We see a difference between darkness and light. Science says darkness is a form of light—technically, “lesser light.” Conversely you can say light is “lesser darkness.” Einstein fathered relativity and said it is naïve to declare absolute divisions such as “this is darkness, that is light.” They are relative. With keener eyes you would see even in “darkness.” With weaker eyes you wouldn’t see even in “light.”
If the eye’s power increases, darkness becomes light; if it decreases, light becomes darkness. There is no absolute gap.
Consider: if there were no eyes at all, what difference would light and darkness make? People think a blind person lives in darkness—mistaken! Darkness also requires eyes to be seen. Even darkness cannot be seen by the blind, because seeing itself requires eyes. When you close your eyes you “see” darkness; don’t conclude a blind person sees darkness. Closed eyes are still eyes. To the blind there is neither darkness nor light.
Look at the other extreme: if God had absolute eyes, he would see equally in “darkness” and “light.” For him there would be no difference—his sight is not relative. At both extremes, with no eyes or with perfect eyes, the difference dissolves. Difference appears only when we sometimes see and sometimes do not.
Hot and cold seem opposites. When heat blazes, a glass of cold water delights; Krishna may talk non-duality and Einstein may say heat and cold are forms of the same thing, yet practically we feel the difference—and Einstein too shifts to the shade in heat and lights a heater in cold! The ultimate truth is: they are forms of one energy. But to know the ultimate, ultimate intelligence is needed. Our intellect is relative; in its frame heat is heat and cold is cold.
Try a small experiment: keep a bucket of water. Chill one hand on ice, warm the other by a lamp. Then dip both into the bucket. One hand will report cold, the other warm, though the water is the same. Which is it? The hands contradict because each is reporting relative to its own condition. Thus hot and cold are not two facts but our comparative interpretations. So long as the mind measures and compares, divisions will keep appearing.
The world is full of divisions because “world” is the name of our interpretations. In the divine there are no divisions because “the divine” means entering where we arrive having left every interpretation.
Another image: a river flows with two banks—left and right. When the river enters the ocean, banks vanish. A river that has merged would tell other rivers: banks are incidental, not essential to river-ness; in the ocean there are no banks, yet the river remains. Rivers still confined by banks will protest: without banks how can a river be? When Krishna speaks, he speaks from where the river has entered the ocean. We listen from where the river is still bound to banks. Hence when Krishna speaks of non-division, it slips our grasp; when he speaks of division, we understand—because division is our art. Non-division is unknown—and dangerous, because to know it, the divider within must die.
Everything around seems bounded, defined. Existence is boundless. A tree looks limited: we can measure height, width, even weigh leaves. But can a tree exist without the earth? If not, then the earth is part of the tree. What we cannot be without should not be separated from us. The tree’s roots drink the earth; its life flows from it. Air is also inseparable; the tree breathes. Without the sun? If tomorrow the sun doesn’t rise, the tree dies. So where does the tree end? In space, it spreads to sun and sky; in time, it goes back into seeds on other trees and forward into seeds it will produce. In honesty, if you try to mark a boundary, you will have to include the whole cosmos. Where do you begin? Where do you end? There is neither beginning nor end; therefore we call the divine beginningless and endless. So are you, a tree, even a stone.
Yet we draw boundaries—they are useful. If I ask for your address in infinite terms—“Where does the beginningless, endless, formless one live?”—people will call me mad. A small card with your name and number finds you—useful, but not true. Utility is often falsehood; truth is dangerous. One who enters truth must drop utility. That is the meaning of sannyas: one who leaves the world of mere usefulness and chooses to know what is, even at cost.
So Krishna’s statement seems unintelligible: if all is one, why division? Because our small intellect cannot function without dividing.
Another image: a man always sees the sky through a window-frame; he never steps outside. The window’s frame is imposed on the sky, and he believes the sky is window-shaped. The senses are windows. We look through them, so existence appears broken and bounded. The eye cannot see the formless; it imposes form. The ear cannot hear the soundless; it imposes sound. The hand cannot touch the formless; it imposes shape. When one steps out from the doors and windows—that stepping out is meditation—then it is known: what I saw was my thought; what now is, is truth.
Meditation means seeing without the senses. Don’t look with the eyes; close the eyes and see. Don’t listen with the ears; go beyond the ears and listen. Don’t touch with the body; rise above bodily touch. When even a little is known beyond the senses, Krishna’s words prove true: no limits appear; birth and death are one; creation and creator are one. Even “one” is not right, for “one” implies perhaps there were two that have now united. Hence in our land we used not “one” but “advaita”—not two. The knower finds not “all is one,” but “there are not two.” Saying “one” turns it into a number, implying the possibility of two, three, four. “Not two” denies division without making a numerical entity. This understanding comes not by studying Gita or Brahma-sutras but by the capacity to look beyond the senses.
Thus Krishna first teaches division: “You are not the body, not the senses; you are not the field.” Paradoxical. He teaches division so that, through it, you can come to non-division. Step away from the house to see the open sky; then you will also see that what was seen through the window was still the sky, only framed by you. But one must step out once.
We would prefer that no talk of division be made at all. But whether spoken or not, we are stuck in division. We can convince the mind that friend and foe are one, but deep down we will still love the friend and dislike the foe. From where we stand, division is inevitable. Until we change, we cannot experience non-division. The first step in our transformation is to keep alive the discrimination between field and knower of the field.
Osho's Commentary
“This kshetra and kshetrajna have been spoken of by the seers in many ways, in various metres, distinctly, and also by the well-reasoned statements of the Brahma-sutras.”
In truth, all religious aphorisms point only to kshetra and kshetrajna. Words and methods differ; the pointing is one. Krishna says: the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahma-sutras, and all the realized seers have said this in myriad ways. A small thing to hear—yet when realized, nothing is greater.
Science split the atom—the tiniest known thing—and unleashed immense energy. No one fifty years earlier imagined such vast power in so tiny a thing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed in a moment what that power can do. No eye has ever seen an atom; even scientists infer it. Without seeing it, they split it; and from the invisible atom, immense energy arose. Science reached a peak by splitting matter’s atom.
Religion performed another kind of fission. This kshetra–kshetrajna distinction is that alchemy. Religion split the atom of consciousness. Science split matter; religion split awareness: body and soul, field and knower. When these two are separated, a vaster energy is known—far beyond nuclear energy, because matter is inert while awareness is alive. When the seed of consciousness is cleaved—body and awareness disengaged—the energy that explodes is the experience of the divine. The energy of atomic fission produces death; the energy from consciousness-fission yields the nectar of immortality.
In you, two streams compose your personality: matter and awareness. Your river flows between these two banks. Matter forms the wall around; awareness is the center. If only you can separate them, the supreme experience happens.
All religions say the same. Krishna cites the Veda and Brahma-sutra not to exclude Bible or Qur’an; they were simply not present in his time. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Christ, Muhammad—the heart-formula is one: how to separate within us awareness and matter. Methods differ; conclusions are one.
Why so many religions then? Not because truths differ, but because approaches do. The foolish confuse variety of method with difference of realization. It is like many paths up one mountain. People fight so much over which path is right that they forget to climb. If we worried less about disproving others, we would also stop needing to prove ourselves right, for those two anxieties are twins. The pundits of all camps are engaged in this futility. Standing still, they debate. Standing still, one always errs; movement is the path. Even walking on a wrong path is better than standing still on a right one, because then at least you discover from experience that it is wrong, and you can correct course. Edison failed seven hundred times at a single experiment; he rejoiced because each failure removed one door, bringing success nearer.
Krishna speaks to prevent such disputes from arising in Arjuna’s mind: “All knowers of the essence have said this in many forms, in reasoned statements too.”
A further point: scriptures also use reason, but they are not rationalistic. The logician uses logic to arrive at truth; the mystic arrives at truth first, and then uses logic to communicate it. Truth cannot be attained by logic, but it can be communicated through it; logic can’t deliver truth, but it can remove untruth and ease understanding, preparing you to travel. Hence Indian texts are deeply logical: Shankara or Nagarjuna are peerless logicians—and the same Shankara sings and dances in a temple. Experience belongs to the heart; expression must address the head to bring you back down into the heart.
Now Krishna enumerates:
“And, Arjuna, that same I will tell you: the five great elements, ego, intellect, and the unmanifest primal nature (the three-guna maya), the ten senses and the one mind, and the five sense-objects—sound, touch, form, taste, and smell—also desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, the gross body, and consciousness and steadfastness: thus, with their modifications, this is the field stated in brief.”
Here are radical points. We can accept that the five elements, the body, the senses, and their objects are kshetra—known, observable. But Krishna adds a revolution: “consciousness and dhriti (steadfastness, concentration) are also kshetra”—they too belong to the field, not to the knower.
Western psychologists hold: consciousness means being conscious of something; without an object, there is no consciousness. If all objects disappear, you will become unconscious—so they say. There is weight in their argument. If there is no sound at all, you will never discover you have ears. If there is nothing to touch, you won’t discover touch. Likewise, if there is nothing to be conscious of, you won’t discover consciousness; consciousness as we ordinarily know it arises in relation to objects. Thus they argue: if meditation, as the Eastern seers describe, truly happens—no object remains—then the meditator must faint; the knower would go to sleep.
Experience partly supports this: if sleep doesn’t come, it is because thoughts and excitements crowd the mind. Remove all content and sleep descends. When nothing remains to keep you awake, you fall unconscious.
Krishna agrees that this consciousness, which arises in relation to objects, is part of the field; do not mistake it for your true self. This is subtle and final. Don’t even take this consciousness to be your consciousness. It too is outward-dependent, object-born. Only when you rise even beyond this will you know the real, unconditioned brahman—the true knower.
Thus we can now speak of three: yesterday we spoke of two—known object and knower-subject. Today Krishna adds: this knower that knows objects is still related to them; above both is a third that knows the object and the so-called knower. That third energy—you are. It cannot be known as an object; whatever you “know” becomes other than you.
For example, people come and say, “I am very restless.” Practice, and rest comes. Then I say, “Now drop even this peace, for it is the other pole of your unrest. Only when even the knowledge ‘I am peaceful’ is gone will the ultimate peace be. As long as you know ‘I am peaceful,’ the capacity for unrest persists.” The ultimate happens when neither “I am restless” nor even “I am peaceful” arises. True knowing happens when the thought “I am ignorant” is gone and so is “I am knowledgeable.”
There is a sweet story of Saint Francis: after realization, birds sat on his shoulders, fish leapt to see him, wild animals came close. This can happen. I recently read of a Japanese woman mystic; her biographer tells a paradox: when she was ignorant, no birds came near. When she became enlightened, birds and snakes gathered around. When she became supremely enlightened, they stopped coming. People asked, “Have you fallen?” She laughed. Those who knew her said: as long as there was awareness “I am enlightened,” even birds could sense it; now even she doesn’t know she is—so how will the birds? Zen says: at the beginning and at the ultimate, many outer things look similar: first there is no knowledge; at last there is knowledge—but no knower.
Thus three stages: first, identity with body and senses—ignorance. Second, the cognition “I am not the body or senses”—this too is still tied to the body as its reference. Third, even this knowing dissolves: neither “I am the body” nor “I am not the body” remains. Bodily torments drop—and the satisfactions derived from dropping them also drop. A supreme silence arises in which there is no knowledge, no knower, no known. In that emptiness the true kshetrajna reveals.
Hence, not consciousness, not dhriti. Dhriti means concentration, dharana. Often we get stuck to the ladder. What carries you to the goal becomes a hindrance if clutched. The masters say: your meditation is complete only when meditation itself falls away. As long as prayer is needed, distance remains. Once the other shore is reached, boats are left behind. If someone remains a Hindu, or Jain, or Muslim till the last, he has not yet arrived—these are boats. Before entering the divine, boats must be let go. Buddha told a parable: having crossed a river, some grateful men hoisted the boat on their heads “lest we be ungrateful.” Then they could go nowhere—enslaved by the boat. So too with religion and even with practices: if you fear dropping worship will destroy what you gained, then nothing real has been gained; the medicine has become the disease.
Therefore Krishna says: consciousness is kshetra, and so is dhriti, dhyana, dharana, your yoga—all part of the field, all with modifications. All these carry impurity in a precise sense: whatever depends upon its opposite is tainted. Love that contains hate is impure; Freud noted that our loves contain hate. Morning we love, by noon we quarrel; evening we love again. Where the opposite is needed for existence, there is modification, dependence.
Hence Krishna calls even ordinary consciousness a modification, because it requires an other. That’s why we crave the “new”: a trip to Kashmir feels vivid for two days; then dullness returns. The boatman of Dal Lake is as bored with his lake as you are with Bombay; he dreams of visiting your city. Repetition dulls consciousness; novelty excites it. Western labs study sense-deprivation: remove all stimuli and a person becomes unconscious in hours. Consciousness that depends on objects fades without them. Such consciousness, and such meditation that relies on objects, are kshetra.
When one goes beyond all of this field, the knower of the field is realized.
We will pause for five minutes. Please, no one get up. If one person rises midway, it disturbs. Join the kirtan for five minutes. Leave when the kirtan is complete.