193. So Near Yet So Far.

Once, a father took his ten-year-old son to a playground. He threw a ball and told the boy that the game was to bring the ball back to him. The ground, however, was scattered with many toys. As the boy ran after the ball, he noticed a toy along the way. He got distracted, picked it up, and began to play with it, forgetting the ball altogether -until his father called out to remind him of the task. The boy dropped the toy and ran again in search of the ball.

There were many other children in the playground. Soon, the boy found another attractive toy and became absorbed in it. When a stronger child came and snatched the toy away, the boy began to cry. Later, he himself snatched a toy from a smaller child. As he moved through the playground, conflicts and fights kept erupting over toys.

All this while, the father was walking just behind his son. Yet, for the boy who was lost in the toys, his father -though so near, remained so far.

This story helps us to understand when Krishna says, “‘That’ is within and without all that exists, the unmoving and also the moving; ‘That’ is incomprehensible (avijneyam) due to subtlety and ‘That’ is far and near” (13.16). Like the father in the above story, ‘That’ is just behind us throughout our life’s journey, and we just have to look back. When we get lost in attachments, ‘That’ helps us by sending various experiences; giving us tough situations to remind us like the father shouting at the boy.

When Krishna says ‘That’ is incomprehen-sible, the indication is that ‘That’ is incomprehen-sible to our senses because of their limitations. He can be attained through experiences but not through explanations. Experiences can teach us what lies beyond the senses, while explanations remain confined to the realm of the senses. For someone who never tasted salt or sugar, no amount of explanation would help to understand their taste. The only way to comprehend them is to taste them i.e. experience them with awareness.