The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 7.1. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday, September 14,  2020. 11:00.AM.

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Chapter 7: Can War Ever be Justified? - 1.

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)

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1.

It is easy to enter into the spirit, the intention, the purpose and the meaning of what the Bhagavadgita is attempting to tell us because, as we know already, it is said to be a message come from Eternity. ‘Eternity’ is the word. It was a grand, cosmical circumstance. The word ‘cosmical’ is inadequate; something more than that it was, which was the source of this message, and it defied all limitations of time and space – defied in the sense that it overcame all these limitations.

2.

It is necessary for us to properly appreciate what it would mean to break through the limitations of space and time. What would happen to us if we are not to think in space and not to think in time? If we are to speak something not in space and not in time, what would we say? Now, we may be under the impression that we will tell some grand, perpetual message if we are not in space and not in time. It is not like that. We will not be saying merely some grand thing. It is not possible for us to imagine that kind of state. Even when we try to understand and appreciate and place ourselves in the context of there being no space and no time, we will be thinking in space and time only. Even in our attempt to overcome space and time, we are in space and time. So even our non-spatial attempt is bound by spatial limitations.

3.

Therefore, human beings that we are, we may not be able to fully appreciate that divine occurrence. We do not know what word to use to describe it. No word will be sufficient. How do we speak, how do we explain ourselves in the presence of what we consider as the Almighty Creator of the universe? Even when we conceive the Almighty, we have our own human way of thinking. There is no other way except the human way. Such is the depth into which man has sunk into the human way of thinking. We have been saturated through every pore of our personality, saturated through every pore of our being, by the intrusion of the conditions of space, time and objects. There is no other way of thinking except through objects. God is an object for us, and a message is nothing but a word written or spoken. It cannot be anything else. But this is none of this. It is not a sound uttered by the tongue of a person, and it is not conceivable by us. And when I said it is Eternity that gave the message for the solution of temporal problems, we may not be able to accommodate ourselves to this peculiar condition where the temporal stands face to face with the Eternal. It is man facing God. We do not know what it means, what it can mean. Our heads shall reel even to think what it could be. How would we face the Almighty?

4. 

There is no such thing as that. We cannot face that condition. We get transfigured when we come face to face with that circumstance. We become another thing altogether. The temporal, if at all it is to be accepted that it can face the Eternal, has to get suffused by the law of the Eternal. It is like seeking an interview, to speak in homely language, with a lofty personality, and we will adjust ourselves to the circumstances of that person. We would not go as we are at your home. The person with whom we are seeking an interview may be in a very highly placed, lofty position, and we have to adjust ourselves in every way to the circumstance of that person. In that way, the temporal may have to adjust itself to the conditions of Eternity to understand what Eternity can say.

To be continued ....

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