The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 8.5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, December 28, 2020. 11:18. AM.
Chapter 8: The Realism and Idealism of the Bhagavadgita-5.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)

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We have vestures of personality. By vesture, I do not necessarily mean the physical body and the vital sheath, and so on, which philosophers speak of. It is a vesture of your personality, your makeup, your outlook, your attitude, your behaviour, your conduct, your viewpoint, your opinion, your philosophy. All these have certain vestures. They are graded stage by stage.

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Our personality is made up of certain levels. The personality of ours looks like an abstract thing. It is not necessarily the physical body. It is abstract in the sense that a human being is also some abstract principle, finally. We cannot say that we are a body, though it looks like we are that only. All the values that we admire in life are not necessarily material and physical, because we have seen that a materially well-placed and physically well-built personality is not necessarily a complete personality, not a satisfied personality. Our involvements are the levels of our personality. Each one has to understand for oneself what are the involvements of oneself. There are immediate involvements, and other subtle ones which come as layers inside, which can be considered a little later. But immediate problems are immediate involvements. A pressing situation which has to be attended to just now is the most immediate involvement of a person, though there are other involvements which are also important enough, and it takes a little time for us to go deep into this issue of what our involvements are. We have to take time to understand that. Sometimes it may look that we are involved in nothing. Some people feel, “What involvement have I got? I am a free man.” It is not so simple as that. Involvement means the recognition of anything outside you as real to the extent it affects your existence. Is there anything real outside you, or is there nothing real outside you? No sensible person will say there is nothing outside them. We feel that there are certain things outside us, and they are real to us, and to the extent that we accord reality to that which is outside us, to that extent we are involved in it. The concession of reality that we have granted to something outside us is also the extent to which we are involved in it, and no one can say that it is not involvement.

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Various types of involvements will be unravelled gradually as we move through the chapters of the Bhagavadgita. The lowest involvement, at least as we have it described in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita, is the politically motivated involvement. Every person as a citizen of a nation or a country, every person who is internationally conditioned in some way or the other, is a political unit. And it is difficult for anyone to say that such a condition is absent entirely. Clarified, dispassionate thinking is necessary to accept the extent of this involvement. The security that we require politically and the obligations that we owe politically in any manner determine the extent of our involvement politically. Political involvement does not necessarily mean being an officer in the government or a soldier on the battlefield. Our very existence as a human being, conditioned by an atmosphere of outward administration, is a political involvement. A reply from that point of view also has to be given. It is our obligation to pay a tax. Now, we may think this is not a spiritual instruction. What connection do spirituality and religion have to paying a tax to the government?

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We have to understand religion properly, as I mentioned a little before. Religion is not avoiding duty. In fact, the whole of the Bhagavadgita is a gospel of duty. If to be religious is a duty, then religion as a duty, perhaps as a comprehensive duty, will also have the sense to accept various other aspects of duty which have to be included within this comprehensiveness of duty, which is religion. Religion is sometimes said to be the final duty of man, the only duty of man, and so on. But, as I mentioned at the very outset, that would be to take an idealistic view of things, holding on to an ideal which is ahead, and forgetting the fact that which is ahead, in the future, is not unconnected with the present. Realism is the characteristic of the present. Idealism is the characteristic of the future. Now, how can you have only a future without the present?

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To be continued...

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