Krishna speaks of a wide range of practices such as study, reflection, reasoning, dhyana, karma, jnana, bhakti, etc, to enable students of varying calibre tread the spiritual path to salvation. The effort to understand and explore the reasons for one’s presence in this world is most essential to each individual, pointed out Swami Ramakrishnananda in a discourse. The purpose of being endowed with the body mind complex is not for mere experiences of joy and sorrow, but to strive and attain awareness of the inner self that exists eternally, and is the essence of consciousness and bliss. The body is compared to a field where seeds are sown and crops harvested. In each birth, the individual gets a chance to make use of the field but he has to know what has to be harvested. If the harvest aimed for is worldly attainments, it binds him in the cycle of birth. If it is freedom from this cycle, he has to sow such seeds as will enable the flowering of the jnana about the nature of one’s atma and of the Paramatma. This means that each jivatma should understand that he is a Kshetrajna, the knower of both the body and the self. The Mundaka Upanishad speaks of the analogy of two birds living in one tree; one eats the fruit and experiences the taste while the other merely watches. This is exactly what happens in the tree of each jivatma, with the constant co-presence of the atma and the Paramatma. The self enjoys the sorrow and joy of the external world, while the Paramatma remains as the support and also the witness, permitting all the acts of the jivatma. If the baggage of karma that the individual accumulates through countless births has to be cut, it requires nothing but the sharp axe of vairagya and viveka so that one is determined to resist the temptations of the world.
