The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 2.2. : Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, December 09, 2022. 06:30.

Chapter 2: The Battlefield of Life - 2.

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If there is no alignment in the inward structure of our psyche, we can go crazy, become neurotic and a patient psychopathologically. Health is the harmony of the layers of our personalities. If they are disbalanced we are sick physically or psychologically. There is a necessity to maintain inward balance. But that will not do entirely; we have also to maintain a similar balance in our relationship outside. There should be a balanced relationship between ‘you' and ‘me', for instance, a balanced relationship with the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—the climatic conditions and the many other conditions that constitute what we call the outward life of individuals, and ourselves.

There is, thus, a conflict everywhere, cosmically and individually. Life is a battle, a situation which does not require a commentary. It is a struggle from birth to death. It is a process of confronting something or the other every day, a necessity that we feel every moment of time to resolve a situation that has arisen in front of us. When we wake up in the morning, we are face to face with the reality that confronts us as a conflict. We have conflicts inside and conflicts outside. We are not always happy, because happiness is the outcome of a rare preponderance of sattva guna, the balancing part within us, and to the extent we are balanced inwardly and outwardly, to that extent we are also happy, delighted and joyous. To the extent rajas preponderates in us, there is a tendency to upset everything; it may be an upsetting of the layers of our own individual personality or the upsetting of our relationships with the outside world. Any kind of upsetting of an existing balance is the tendency to the absence of joy, which is tantamount to an entering into grief and sorrow.

The whole of life is an arena of such a conflict. If we read Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, if we read Milton's Paradise Lost, if we read the Ramayana of Valmiki, if we read the Mahabharata, we shall find everywhere the same thing presented in different languages and styles, the whole picture presented being the scene of a tremendous conflict, a rubbing of shoulders, a circumstance into which we are thrown unwittingly, the circumstance becoming worse when we have not got the adequate understanding of the causes of the occurrences. Our condition seems to be growing worse because we do not know why a situation has arisen at all, why there should be conflict of any kind. Why should we not be happy always? Why should there not be a balance, a harmony, an equilibrated relationship inwardly and outwardly? We do not know, and nobody can know, easily. But this state of affairs cannot continue for a long time, and we do not wish that it should continue indefinitely.

We are not merely entangled individuals, but also individuals in whom is planted a light of reason and a flash of insight which occurs sometimes in our personal lives, telling us that, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves in the world, there is some hope for the better. We do not always entertain a despairing mood of dejection and utter hopelessness, though, occasionally, when the power of rajas, of external relationship and a loss of inward stability, becomes very strong and overwhelms, we may lose our balance completely. We may not then be even able to think in a right manner.

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To be continued

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