Gita, lesson 15: knowing isn't doing, and the knower is the Self itself

No one decides to see the color of a wall: one opens one's eyes and sees it. The fifteenth chapter in Swami Dayananda Saraswati's series starts from that mundane observation to make a case about self-knowledge: knowing is not an action one performs, but an event that occurs once the conditions are in place.

Action and knowledge

Doing, the karma of Indian tradition, depends on will: reaching, seeking, deciding. Knowing, jñāna, does not. It only requires an object within range and senses that function. Even perception, Dayananda notes, can be distorted by expectation, fear, and anxiety. Seeing clearly is, in part, a matter of reducing the projections the mind adds.

The means of knowing

Vedānta, the Indian school of reflection on Being, calls a valid means of knowledge a pramāṇa, and the chapter lists several: direct perception; inference, such as deducing fire from seeing smoke; perception of absence, such as knowing there is nothing in one's hand; analogy; and verbal testimony (śabda). The last is the most important for this topic, because the Self is not an object of the senses or of deduction. According to Dayananda, only the teaching of the Upaniṣads, transmitted by a qualified teacher, can reach it.

The witness

The chapter also introduces the concept of sākṣī, the inner witness: the continuous awareness that accompanies thoughts, which lets one notice that one thought something or changed one's mind, without resorting to any sense. This knower is said to be the Self. Action would come afterward, as a possibility, not as its essence.

From this follows the chapter's conclusion: self-knowledge does not require becoming something new. It requires ceasing to mistake oneself for what one is not — the body, the mind, social roles.

The complete study is in the book A Essência do Bhagavad Gītā (The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita), by Swami Dayananda Saraswati.