Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 23-2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, July 22, 2022. 19:15.

Chapter 23: Introduction to the Sixth Chapter - 2.

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Arjuna's arguments were both social and political. Sometimes they were even personal. But we do not describe ourselves fully even when we consider ourselves as individuals or persons as we regard ourselves normally in the commonsense way of looking at things. We are not politicians really. We are also not social units really. But we are also not persons really. There is something more about us, so more and more is to be learned about ourselves as we become more and more inward in our outlook of life. In the crudest form of behaviour and enterprise, we are totally extrovert. We are immensely busy bodies, as if the world outside alone is, and we are nobodies at all. Our existence becomes pronounced as we grow and mature in our life, and we recognise the subjectivity of experience in greater and greater forms of intensity than the objectivity of life. We consider the world as an object, as if the subjective element is totally absent. We will see gradually that the Bhagavadgita takes us to deeper secrets of subjectivity – secrets, hidden potentialities and reservoirs at the back of subjects – and not merely the physical, physiological or anatomical subject.

When we are business people, traders, politicians, soldiers or even social workers, we seem to be outwardly motivated more than contemplatives on the subjectivity of experience, on the assumption that life is an outwardly spread-out externality, a field of external action. The world is a Dharmakshetra and a Kurukshetra, a field of action, a field of operation by an individual subject or a group of subjects. The importance is more to the external field than to that which works in the field. This is an overemphasis we sometimes lay in our enterprises and social occupations. There is a very important factor which is generally missed in human experience, namely, the extent of importance that can be given to the subject: How far are we valuable? To what extent is there meaning in our individual existence, our existence as a person? Are we important, or do we have no importance at all? The whole philosophy, the entire occupation of religion and the striving of spiritual life, is a study in subjectivity finally, and the meaning of the word ‘subject' has to be properly grasped here.

In the earliest stages, it appears as if the subject is insignificant and the object is all significant, as in politics, in state affairs, and in social fields, in business and trade, in activities which are of an outward nature, even if it is in the scientific field. It is all objectivity, externality. The individual does not seem to have much meaning there. It is all the world outside, all space, all time, all the earth, all planets, and all business. We seem to be little crawling individuals performing something in this terrifying outward field which demands everything from us and sits on our heads as the master.

The subject is ruled by the object. Is this true? Can the object rule the subject? It looks as if the world is such a terror of objectivity that we as individual subjects look like nobodies. What are we before this mighty world? We know the powers of nature, the powers of the planets and the solar system and the winds and the waters and the fires. Nobody can stand before them if they become ravaging. The world is all power, and man has no power at all before the power of the world. This is what we may feel in our total involvement and identification with this physical frame. If we are only this physical body, which we seem to be and nothing more, what else are we except this little body? That is all. If this is the case, we are done for. We can expect nothing from this world. The world can swallow us as an elephant can munch a butterfly. In this world of such a relentless and mighty operation, we may better not exist. Our life will have no meaning.

But is this true? The question is raised: Are we like that, like little grasshoppers, butterflies or mosquitoes in the mouth of the huge giant of power which is nature? Sometimes we seem to be like that when we cry under the weight of responsibility and the crushing pressure of the demands of the external world. All these sorrows, sorrows manifold galore, multifaceted and painted in all colours, were vented by Arjuna who said, “I shall do nothing in this terrible field.”

To be continued .....

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