The Importance of the Bhagavadgita-3 : Swami Krishnananda

07/04/2019
(Gita Jayanti Message spoken on December 26, 1982.)
3.

There is a gradual deepening of the intensity which got gathered up gradually as the conversation went further and further into heights of divine necessity, and many of the students, the teachers and the interpreters of the Bhagavadgita Gita hold the common opinion that Sri Krishna, though he might have spoken for some time in common and normal language, broke through the limits of language at a certain point of the conversation. Arjuna was not merely spoken to or addressed by a person, but was possessed by a supernormal existence because the context demanded a type of action which could not be carried out through mere sermonising or speaking through words.

The difficulty of Arjuna at the commencement of the war has been rightly considered as similar to, or rather identical with, the astonishing problem facing a spiritual seeker in his arduous struggle to move towards God and His realisation. Where to demarcate this point of difference between the ordinary conversation that might have taken place between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, and where it overcame this limit, we cannot say. All this is beyond us. However, it is certain that it grew into terrible intensity as it reached the Ninth or the Tenth Chapter perhaps, and it burst all boundaries when it reached the Eleventh. When the Eleventh Chapter records the conversation, it is difficult to believe that any ordinary conversation took place. The Being that spoke even on the verge of the conclusion of the Tenth Chapter, more properly in the Eleventh Chapter, could not be a linguistic medium that spoke in any language whatsoever. Something entered the soul of Arjuna at his very core and spoke, as I mentioned, as we would expect God to speak.

We cannot know how God speaks – with His tongue, with His eyes, with His hands, with what medium? That medium is not mortal. It is an immortal non-communicational system of communication, a type of enlightenment which cannot be communicated because it is not possible for want of a communicating medium. This is what Vasishtha spoke to Sri Rama on one occasion when he said this heightened form of wisdom, knowledge or enlightenment cannot be communicated from one to another because there is no means of communication. What is the instrument to be used in communicating this wisdom? Language is inappropriate. No word known to man can carry this wisdom, as a dry straw cannot carry hot embers. Thus, the Bhagavadgita is considered as a divine revelation and not an ordinary written textbook. It is charged with some power which can only be called divine, nothing less.

To be continued ...