Lower and Higher Knowledge

The Spiritual Science (sarva-vidya pratishtha) of the East deals with subjective reality (Swami Vivekananda)

Lower and Higher Knowledge (Apara-vidya and Para-Vidya).

For Swami Vivekananda the method and process by which a disciple traditionally acquires knowledge from a teacher is called education. This knowledge or Vidya has been classified into two types: Apara-vidya (lower knowledge) and Para-vidya (higher knowledge).

This division, however, does not imply superiority or inferiority of knowledge, but rather is a way of indicating its objective and subjective contents.

Apara-vidya is the knowledge of the objective universe, while Para-vidya is the knowledge of the Subject, the Knower, not as an agent of the process of knowledge but as the Eternal Subject, the true embodiment of knowledge as Consciousness.

The materialist sciences cultivated to the West deal with objective reality, with what is perceived, seen and experienced.

Spiritual Science (Philosophy of Yoga), called the Science of all sciences (sarva-vidya pratishtha) in the Upanishads, cultivated in the East, deals with subjective reality, which is the Perceiver, the Seer, the Experiencer.

All chapters of the Bhagavad Gita end by quoting “the Science of Yoga”:

“Thus concludes the first chapter, entitled Arjuna's Yoga of Discouragement in the dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna, on the Science of Yoga as part of the Knowledge of Brahman in the Upanishad known as the Bhagavad Gita.”

The first, objective, is known as kshetra, the field of knowledge. Precisely the setting of the Bhagavad Gita (Yoga Arjuna’s Despondency) takes place in the great war of the Mahabharata between the Pandavas and the Kauravas that took place on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra.

The latter, the Subject, is called Kshetrajna, the Knower of this field. Chapter 13- The Yoga of the Field and the Knower the Field (Kshetra Kshetrajna Vibhaga Yoga) of the Bhagavad Gita precisely delves into this concept. For Gandhi this chapter deals with the distinction between the body (non-Self / non-I) and Atman (the Self / self).

The knowledge of Kshetra (objective reality) is Apara-vidya, and the realization of the Knower, the Self, the Atman, is Para-vidya.

The East has cultivated the science of Para-vidya, while the West, the science of Apara-vidya.

Conocimiento inferior y superior Bhagavad Gita Conhecimento inferior e superior Bhagavad-Gita.

Model
Bhagavad Gita Training


(c) Gita Institute & Pedro Nonell

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