The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 2.5. : Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, December 21,  2022. 06:00.

Chapter 2: The Battlefield of Life - 5.

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That conflict there is, is obvious enough. We all know that the world is wretched. We complain about the world every day that it is stupid and it is going to the dogs. We are very much concerned about the future, but we are not fully awakened to the needs of the hour, the means that are to be employed, and the way we have to conduct ourselves under such circumstances. We are not in a state of Yoga. 

We only perceive things as they happen outwardly in the world of space and time. We are sense-ridden, entangled completely in the perceptions of the senses. We are living in a sense-world and we are wholly relying upon the reports of the senses. We do not exercise our reason and understanding to the extent necessary to counterbalance the distracting reports that we receive from the senses. Our reason is not equally strong, our understanding is feeble, but the senses are vigorous, they are impetuous. 

So low we are in the cadre of creation; we have fallen very low indeed, while the senses are active and rebellious, the organising power in us, the understanding, is not equally powerful. One can imagine the state of affairs if individuals who rebel are stronger than the organising power of a government. This is what has happened to us. The organising power in us, called reason and understanding, is not able to cope up with the situation of conflict that is presented before us in experience by the senses that work in terms of the objects outside. We are slaves of the senses, and not their masters. We stoop down every moment to the level of the demand of a particular sense organ; and this cannot be regarded as freedom of any kind. Whatever the senses say is acquiesced to by our reason and understanding, by our knowledge and education, by our culture; and everything that we have is a subsidiary stooge, as it were, to these revolting dacoits called the senses. The Bhagavadgita does not want this circumstance to continue.

There should be a strong organising force, a Central Government, to establish a central administration in the cosmos, and, as a consequence thereof, in our own selves and in society. This is to enter into the field of Yoga. We generally argue in terms of human society or human relationship, and not in the light of reason and the higher understanding. We have a poor reason and a sentimental argument to justify our social conditions, and we have not got the understanding or the reason enough to awaken ourselves to the existence of the higher power of dharma, the power of God, the law of the universe. 

The Bhagavadgita takes its stand as a good teacher in a school or a college, and leads us by our hand, by degrees to the various levels to which we have to rise for the purpose of the real freedom that we have to achieve. The greater the operation of law and justice, the greater is its intensity of action, the greater is the freedom that we are assured. Salvation and freedom mean the same thing, and a recognition of the law and obedience to this law is necessary in order to achieve true freedom. If we do not know how the law of the universe operates in relation to ourselves and to other things, if we are oblivious of the law of our own country, how can we abide by that law? We are ignorant of the law, and so we are likely to blunder, and we are blundering every day, and every error in respect of the law is to court punishment from the law. The punishment comes upon us as a grief, a sorrow, an unhappiness, an insecurity, a feeling that something is wrong.

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To be continued

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