Question for the (S)ages!

Kim tad Brahman: Arjuna kicks off the 8^th chapter with this question which every single person has asked at some point in their life journey. Literally meaning, what is Brahman or this absolute reality? Simply put: Who is God?

Krishna then reels off the most stunning, scientific & complex discourse explaining this eternal truth which, if understood, can lead to bliss almost instantaneously. He takes two approaches to explain the concept: One at a Micro level, taking us to the subtlest of subtle levels and then at a Macro level where he takes us to a dizzying expanse of vastness of the space-time continuum. He starts simply with a broad definition: It is an imperishable, supreme reality. While these seem like two different attributes, they are neither different, nor are they attributes, but more on that later. Obviously, this seems to be incomprehensible to our limited minds which struggle to process the infinitude of imperishable.

Hence Krishna starts with Micro and talks about a common reality pervading everything at an indivisible level, which is the substratum of everything. Science has been trying to find this common indivisible building block for centuries and when they discovered what they thought was the indivisible particle, they named it Atom based on the Greek Atomos or Atmein meaning 'that which cannot be divided'. Krishna the scientist remarks 5000 years back that while the etymology of Atom is correct,  (Atman is the indivisible substratum!), Atom is far from being the subtlest, undivided particle and this reality is much more subtler than atom (Anor aniyansam v 9). He starts indicating that this all-pervading reality within you is nothing but your consciousness (connoted through light: Divyam). It is the eternal witness that has been talked about in previous chapters as the passenger of the chariot of the body. It is a tough concept to understand and probably the best way to explain is via a dream simile (done beautifully in the Mandukya Upanishad). In a dream world, you have every single experience that is identical to your “real” world. There is a you in the dream, there are other people, there are objects & emotions but there is one common fabric: your consciousness. There isn’t a single nook or corner in your dream world which is not pervaded by your consciousness. Consciousness, as a building block pervading the universe, has been fascinating scientists over centuries. Galileo was one of the first to hypothesize this in the 17^th century and over centuries it has evolved into a separate branch of science with some radical consciousness studies in last 10 years including works by David Chalmers and Donald Hoffman.

While you are still reeling from the subtle, minutest all-pervading reality, Krishna jumps to a Macro view with a gargantuan view of space-time. He explains to Arjuna that the cosmic time scale is too huge for the mind to comprehend and gives him a glimpse of it by describing just one Kalpa: 1000 cycles of 4 yugas. Just to baffle you, if you do the math on the 17^th verse and add the years of the kalpa (1.728 million years for Satyuga, 1.296 million for Treta, 864 thousand for Dwapar and 432 thousand for Kaliyuga) you will come to 4.32 billion years as the start of this kalpa. Why is this number baffling? Just search for the age of Earth estimated by scientists today and you will marvel at this discourse by Krishna thousands of years ago.

As our mind is trying to understand this cryptic and perplexing definition of Brahman or God, Krishna makes it just a bit simpler for us to understand. As he comes towards the end of the chapter, he indicates that don’t try to understand this supreme reality as an object, as it is not some “thing” but actually a state: a state of pure consciousness (Param Gati: v 21). Further, since it is beyond the space-time continuum explained earlier, it is neither some place to be reached nor is it dependent on time. It is a state available to each one of us right here and right now within ourselves. So, while we spend a lifetime searching externally for an entity called God, always remember the statement of 13^th century Sufi mystic Rumi:

“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.”