40. indriyam mango buddhir
asya 'dhisthdnam ucyate
etair vimohayaty esa
jnanam arty dehinam
(40) The senses, the mind and the intelligence are said to be its seat. Veiling wisdom by these, it deludes the embodied (soul)
41 tasmat tvam indrayrany adau
myamya bharatarsabha
papmanarh pyajahi hy
enam jnanaviananalanam
(41) Therefore, 0 Best of Bharatas (Arjuna), control thy senses from the beginning and slay this sinful destroyer of wisdom and discrimination.
The wisdom of the Vedanta and the detailed knowledge of the Samkhya may be meant by jnana and vijnana. S. explains jnana as ``knowledge of the self and other things acquired from the scriptures and the teachers," and vijnana as "the personal experience, anubhava, of the things so taught."
For R., jnana relates to atmasvarupa or the nature of the self and vijnana to atmaviveka or discriminatory knowledge of the self. In the translation here given jnana is taken as spiritual wisdom and vijnana as logical knowledge.
Sridhara supports both the mnterpretations.[1]
42. indrayani parany ahur
indrayebhyah param manah
manasas tu para. buddhir yo
buddheh paratas tu sah
(42) The senses, they say, are great, greater than the senses is the mind, greater than the mind is the intelligence but greater than the intelligence is he.
Kasha Up., III, lo; see also VI, 7. Consciousness must be raised step by step. The higher we rise the more free we are. If
we act under the sway of the senses, we are least free. We are freer when we adopt the dictates of manas; still more free when our manas is united with buddhi ; we attain the highest freedom when our acts are determined by buddhi suffused by the light from beyond, the self. This verse gives us a hierarchy of levels of consciousness.
