A Study of the Bhagavadgita - Chapter 7.6. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, August 22, 2021. 7:25.PM.
Chapter 7:The Entry of the Absolute into the Relative - 6.
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So, who is seeing the world? “I am seeing the world” – don’t say that. Prakriti is seeing itself. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni, : A person is working through the ego only, centring himself in the consciousness of himself excessively. 

Kartāham iti manyate : I am doing. Neither are you doing anything, nor are you perceiving anything. Your consciousness of being an agent in action is due to the ego that is predominant in you, and your feeling that you are perceiving an external world is due to the operation of the gunas of Prakriti, both subjectively and objectively.

Therefore, caution is the watchword of a spiritual seeker. It is difficult to live in this world which is so complicated before you. The complication arises on account of your not knowing how you are placed in this world. In the beginning itself I told you, you cannot do anything worthwhile in this world unless you know your placement in the context of the world – where you are standing, where you are sitting, what is around you. If you know the context and the environment around you, you will also know what to do in that context. For that purpose it is that I have given you a large detail of the cosmic evolutionary process, and you know where you are standing. Hence, you will never assert your ego. You will not feel that you are existing at all. You will melt into the menstruum of the world outside. You will be a well-wisher of everybody, a friend of all – a friend, philosopher and guide, a master.

Atha kena prayuktoyaṁ pāpaṁ carati pūruṣaḥ (Gita 3.36). Arjuna asks a question: “Wonderful is this teaching, Master, but why is it that we are not able to live like this? We commit sins, as it were, errors every day. We commit blunders. Knowing this, what is the matter?”

Sri Krishna gives a reply. Kāma eṣa krodha eṣa rajoguṇasamudbhavaḥ, mahāśano mahāpāpmā viddhy enam iha vairiṇam (Gita 3.37): The predominance of rajas in your personality engenders the work of kama and krodha, desire and anger. Somehow or other, with this knowledge, you also simultaneously seem to have inside you the roots and the seeds of potential longing and anger. You love God, but you also love Mammon at the same time. You love the objects of the senses together with your love for being a God-man and a Super-man. There is a clash between your noble aspirations and your pull of the sense organs – a very difficult situation.

Arjuna says, “I understand what you say.” Insatiable is this fire of longing for objects of sense. It will consume you. The more you pamper it, the more it asks. Fire cannot be satisfied by any amount of fuel. It asks for more and more fuel so that it may enlarge itself and burn everything. Desire wants to consume you completely so that you may not be here at all. And if your desire is obstructed by an event, you are angry. You want to destroy that cause which is apparently obstructing the fulfilment of your desire. So anger is only another form of longing. It is the longing to perpetuate your longing which, obstructed, manifests itself as the obverse of what you call a desire, and you call it anger. Actually, this one impulse that is rising in you on one side looks like longing, desire, passion, lust; on the other side it looks like irascibility and anger.

Arjuna knows what this means. “Now, what is the use of hearing all these things? How am I to overcome this wondrous malady, kama and krodha, if they are predominantly present in individuals as rajasic properties working havoc in everyone? How would we live this cosmic life which you have so gloriously described?”

To be continued ...

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