The Bhagavad gita's Message of Knowledge and Action -1. Swami Krishnananda

11/04/2019. (Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1974) 1. In the history of the culture of the world, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita may be regarded as the central spiritual message to mankind. These two gospels of the spiritual ideal offset each other, as it were; they give us the art of life in consonance with the eternal on the one hand, and in consonance with the temporal on the other. The problem of the human being is principally one of reconciliation between the eternal and the temporal or, to put it in modern terms, bringing about a harmony between the religious ideal and the secular call of duty. This has been an age-old problem, a question that has never been adequately answered. And the Upanishads, while holding aloft the banner of the magnificence of life eternal, seem to absorb into their bosom all the values that may be regarded as secular and temporal ā so that we are faced with a lionās den, as it were. The values that we regard as dear and near in ...