The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 9.1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, January 22, 2021. 10:32. AM.
Chapter 9: The Classification of Society-1.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)

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we noticed that our involvements in life determine the extent of reality in which we are also involved at the same time, which practically mean one and the same thing. The response from Bhagavan Sri Krishna came as an appeal to all these involvements, all the levels of connection of the human individual that Arjuna was, which is so dear to each person.

Every one of our involvements is a dear object of ours. If you are involved in something as a part and parcel of your requirement in that given condition of your life in this world, that becomes yourself. It is your kith and kin. It is dear and near, and an appeal to that relation also is a part of the treatment of the human personality. Even in a medical treatment which may be considered as related to the illness of the physical body, there is a necessity for consideration of other involvements of the patient also. The illness of a person need not necessarily mean a physical nonalignment exclusively. It may look like that, but it may have relations with many other things. When a person is ill, that person is ill in every way, not merely in one sense.

So as a good instructor, as a good physician, as a good friend, as a good philosopher, as a well-wisher, as a real benefactor, the Lord’s response comes from all sides. There is an appeal to the social sense, which is important; there is an appeal to the physical sense, there is an appeal to the emotional sense, there is an appeal to the rational sense, and then there is at the same time an appeal to the deepest core of everything, the spiritual, the bottom of all things.

As a social individual, it is incumbent on every person to perform that duty which is related to social relation. It becomes an obligation, an unavoidable necessity. It is unavoidable because that relation called social does exist as a reality, and anything that is real is unavoidable. A totally unreal thing may not be your concern, but your social relation is not an unreality. Any person with some common sense will know to what extent each person is social – socially related, socially conditioned, socially dependent – and to that extent there is a debt that one owes to that on which one is dependent, and to that which conditions, to a large extent, even one’s own existence. It is one of the principle teachings of the ancient masters, particularly in this country, that every debt has to be discharged. One cannot be a debtor. It is very, very awful to be in that condition. It is no use living by owing something to somebody else. You owe something to that with which you have an inviolable relation, which contributes something, visibly or invisibly, to your welfare and existence, and which decides your existence itself in some measure.

Dispassionate thinking is a great virtue, the greatest of virtues. To analyse one’s circumstance in this world honesty is an endowment and a great achievement indeed. To the extent I receive support from others, to that extent I also have to contribute my support to that. The world is a cooperative existence. Individuals do not exist in the world. There are no such things as individuals, finally. The whole human society is a fabric of interconnections, interrelations and interdependence. In that sense, we may say the whole of human society is one person. Taken to the logical limits, this one person is extolled as the cosmical person in a great hymn of the Veda, called the Purusha Sukta. The whole cosmic relation of living beings is considered as one body, and he is the Purushottama who is hymned in this great sukta called the Purusha Sukta, commencing with that wondrous statement sahasra??r?? puru?a? (P.S. 1): All these heads of people, all these locations of individuals, are planted in the body of this large society to which this great man, Purusha, is compared.

To be continued ------

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