Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 23-1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, July 18, 2022. 19:40.

Chapter 23: Introduction to the Sixth Chapter - 1.

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The Bhagavadgita, in its Sixth Chapter, is the yoga of meditation, dhyana yoga.

The gospel, the teaching of the Bhagavadgita, gradually tunes itself up to high concentration as it moves onward and forward. In the initial step, at the very beginning of the First Chapter, we have the presentation of the picture of political turmoil, the worst of things that one can have in the world, a field of battle with high-strung nerves of people ready to pounce on one another. Tension is the name of that condition. This is the Mahabharata. The First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita gives the description of an intensified scene at the onset of this battle. Warriors are arrayed from both sides in a large field of conflict, with each one disliking the other, wanting to root out the other, to exterminate the other completely. They hate the other, and have no consideration for the other.

In this situation of the event of an impending conflict we are placed in the First Chapter of the Gita. It was all emotion, all nerves and readiness to action. It was, no doubt, a preparedness to act. There cannot be a more concentrated action than the act of battle or fighting, and people were prepared. They had girt up their loins; soldiers they were, and the human in the person became the soldier in the field. Each one was a soldier there – everyone, without exception. To be a soldier is to be entirely a potentiality for action. It was all action, and nothing but that. It was only to burst forth into its concrete manifestation of conflict onslaught.

But though it was a preparedness for action, a preparation to do something vehemently, it lacked the direction of requisite understanding, which was highlighted in the personality of a great General in the army, Arjuna. So while the worst kind of conduct, which is action as battle, was the picture of the Mahabharata and of the First Chapter of the Gita, it did not end there. The layers of human nature are revealed stage by stage as we rise higher and higher along the rungs of the ladder of the teaching.

In the lowest level we are politicians, which is to say, we shed the personal character of our human figure and convert ourselves into contending units of an administrative field. Every human being is also a social unit, a part of human society, but there is a differentiating character in being a political individual. While a political individual also is in human society as every human being is in human society, there is a distinction between a social person and a political person. This does not require much of an explanation or commentary. There is a greater artificiality of the placement of oneself in the field of action in politics than in human society, and as we know very well, politicians who either are thrown out of the field or are fed up with that work become social workers. They say, “We are fed up with politics. We shall do some good work for people.” So a political individual reverts to the state of a social individual under the impression that it is an inwardisation of himself, from the extreme externalisation of himself as an individual in political circles.

Now, we are political units and social individuals, no doubt, but we are not merely that. We are independent persons. We are persons, not merely units in a huge crowd, and so the instinct of self-regard, in whatever sense the self may be considered under a given condition, asserts itself when a person is cornered, and a politician may get fed up with his work and become a social leader; he may get fed up with even social work and would like to live an independent, secluded life. “I shall mind my business. I have tried everything in the politician's circles and also in the social field. Finally, I find it is a dog's tail. I shall confine myself to myself.” So we come back inwardly to our own self and we are the greatest value finally, not our relation to others in the social field or even the political field.

To be continued ......

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